KIT'S LITTLE PLAN
To many people the events of the day before, and the anticipations of
the day to come, give with the most pedantic exactness an automatic
colour to the waking moments. The first pulse of conscious
consciousness, without apparent cause, is happy, unhappy, or
indifferent. Then comes a backward train of thought, the brain gropes
for the reason of its pleasure or chagrin, something has happened,
something is going to happen, and the instinct of the first moment is
justified. The thing lay in the brain; it gave the colour of itself to
the moment when reasoned thought was yet dormant.
Bacon and tea were the first savours of an outer world to Kit when she
awoke, for she had slept soundly, but simultaneously, and not referring
to these excellent things, her brain said to her, "Not nice!" Now, this
was odd: she shared with her husband his opinion of the paramount
importance of money, and the night before she had locked up in her safe
enough to pay for six gowns at least, and a year's dentist bills, for
her teeth were very good. Indeed, it was generally supposed that they
were false, and though Kit always laughed with an open mouth, she had
been more than once asked who her dentist was. Herein she showed less
than her ordinary wisdom when she replied that she had not got one, for
the malignity of the world, how incomparable she should have known, felt
itself justified.
Yet in spite of that delightful round sum in her jewel-safe, the smell
of bacon woke her to no sense of bliss beyond bacon. For a moment she
challenged her instinct, and told herself that she was going to have tea
with the Carburys, and that Coquelin was coming; that she was dining
with the Arbuthnots, where they were going to play a little French farce
so screaming and curious that the Censor would certainly have had a fit
if he had known that such a piece had been performed within the bounds
of his paternal care. All this was as it should be, yet as the river of
thought began to flow more fully, she was even less pleased with the
colour of the day. Something unpleasant had happened; something
unpleasant was still in the air--ah! that was it, and she sat up in bed
and wondered exactly how she should put it to Lady Haslemere. Anyhow she
had _carte blanche_ from Jack, and if between half-past ten and a
quarter past twelve she could not think of something simple and
sufficient, she was a fool, and that she knew she certainly was not.
With her breakfast came the post. There were half a dozen cards of
invitation to concerts and dinners and garden-parties; an autograph note
from a very great personage about her guests at the banquet next week; a
number of bills making a surprising but uninteresting total; another
note, which she read with interest twice, and then tore into very small
pieces; and a few lines from Jack, scribbled on a half-sheet of paper.
"Do the best you can, Kit," he said; "I am off to the City to see A. I
shall behave as if I knew nothing."
Kit tore up this also, but not into small pieces, with a little sigh of
relief. "Sense cometh in the morning," she said to herself, and ate her
breakfast with a very good appetite.
Whatever she had been doing, however unwisely she had supped, Kit always
"wanted" her breakfast, and as she took it the affair of the night
before seemed to her to assume a somewhat different complexion. In her
heart of hearts she began to be not very sorry for the lapse in social
morality of which Mr. Alington had been guilty on the previous night. It
seemed to her on post-prandial consideration that it might not be
altogether a bad thing that she should have some little check upon him.
It might even be called a blessing, with hardly any disguise at all, and
she put the position to herself thus. When you went careering about in
unexplored goldfields with the owner, a comparative stranger, harnessed
to your cart, it was just as well to have some sort of a break ready to
your hand. Very likely it would be unnecessary to use it; indeed, she
did not want to have to use it at all, but it was certainly preferable
to know that it was there, and that if the comparative stranger took it
into his head to bolt, he would find it suddenly clapped on. The only
drawback was that Alice knew about it too; at least, Kit was morally
certain that she had noticed Mr. Alington's surreptitious pushing
forward of his stake after the declaration of his card, which was very
clumsily done, and she would have preferred, had it been possible, that
only Jack and she should have known, for a secret has only one value,
and the more it is shared the less valuable does each share become, on
the simple arithmetical postulate that if you divide a unit into pieces,
each piece is less than the original unit.
Indeed, the more she thought of it, the more convenient did it appear
that Mr. Alington should have made this little mistake, and that she
should have noticed it. And, after all, perhaps it would save trouble
that Alice should have noticed it too, for in all probability it would
be necessary to make Alington play again and watch him. For this she
must have some accomplice, and as Jack was not to come into the affair
at all, there really was no better accomplice to have than Alice. To lay
this trap for the bland financier did not seem to Kit to be in any way a
discreditable proceeding. She put it to herself that, if a man cheated,
he ought not to be allowed to play cards and win his friends' money, and
that it was in justice to him that it was necessary to verify the
suspicion. But that it was a low and loathsome thing to ask a man as a
friend to play cards in order to see whether he cheated or not did not
present itself to her. Her mind--after all, it is a question of
taste--was not constructed in such a way as to be able to understand
this point of view, and she was not hide-bound or pedantic in her idea
of the obligation entailed by hospitality. To cheat at cards was an
impossible habit, it would not do in the least; for a rich man to cheat
at cards was inexplicable. Indeed, it would not be too much to say that
Kit was really shocked at the latter.
In the course of an hour came an answer from Lady Haslemere. She was
unavoidably out till two, but if Kit would come to lunch then she would
be at home. Haslemere and Tom were both out, and they could be alone.
Kit always found Alice Haslemere excellent company, and during lunch
they blackened the reputations of their more intimate friends with all
the mastery of custom, and a firm though gentle touch. Like some
deductive detective of unreadable fiction, Kit could most plausibly
argue guilt from cigarette ashes, muddy boots, cups of tea--anything, in
fact, wholly innocent in itself. But luckier than he, she had not got to
wrest verdicts from reluctant juries, but only to convince Lady
Haslemere, which was a far lighter task, as she could without the
slightest effort believe anything bad of anybody. Kit, moreover, was a
perfect genius at innuendo; it was one of the greatest charms of her
conversation.
After lunch they sat in the card-room and smoked gold-tipped,
opium-tainted cigarettes, and when the servants had brought coffee and
left them, Kit went straight to the point, and asked Alice whether she
had seen anything irregular as they played baccarat the night before.
Lady Haslemere took a sip of coffee and lit another cigarette; she
intended to enjoy herself very much.
"You mean the Australian," she said. "Well, I had suspicions; that is to
say, last night I felt certain. It is so easy to feel certain about that
sort of thing when one is losing."
Kit laughed a sympathetic laugh.
"It _is_ a bore, losing," she said. "If there is one thing I dislike
more than winning other people's money, it is losing my own. And the
certainty of last night is still a suspicion to-day?"
"Ye-es. But you know a man may mean to stake, and yet not put the
counters quite clear of that dear little chalk line. I am sure, in any
case, that Tom saw nothing, because I threw a hint at him this morning,
which he would have understood if he had seen anything."
"Oh, Tom never sees anything," said Kit; "he is like Jack."
Lady Haslemere's natural conclusion was that Jack had not seen anything
either, and for the moment Kit was saved from a more direct
misstatement. Not that she had any prudish horror of misstatements, but
it was idle to make one unless it was necessary; it is silly to earn a
reputation for habitual prevarication. Lies are like drugs or
stimulants, the more frequent use you make of them, the less effect they
have, both on yourself and on other people.
"Well, then, Kit," continued Lady Haslemere, "we have not yet got much
to go on. You, Tom, Jack, and I are the only four people who could
really have seen: Jack and I because we were sitting directly opposite
Mr. Alington, you and Tom because you were sitting one on each side of
him. And of us four, you alone really think that this--this unfortunate
moral collapse, I think you called it, happened. And Jack is so sharp. I
don't at all agree that he never sees anything; there is nothing,
rather, that he does not see. I attach as much weight to his seeing
nothing as to anybody else seeing anything. You and I see things very
quick, you know, dear," she added with unusual candour.
"Perhaps Jack was lighting a cigarette or something," said Kit. "Indeed,
now I come to think of it, I believe he was."
"Jack can see through cigarette smoke as well as most people," remarked
Alice. "But on the whole I agree with you, Kit; we cannot leave it as it
is. I believe the recognised thing to do is to get him to play again and
watch him."
"I believe so," said Kit, with studied unconcern.
Here she made a mistake; the unconcern was a little overdone, and it
caused Lady Haslemere to look up quickly. At that moment it occurred to
her for the first time that Kit was not being quite ingenuous.
"But I don't like doing that sort of thing," she went on, throwing out a
feeler.
"But what else are we to do?" asked Kit, who since breakfast had evolved
from her inner consciousness several admirable platitudes. "It is really
not fair to Alington himself to leave it like this; to have lurking in
one's mind--one can't help it--a suspicion against the man which may be
quite erroneous. On the other hand, supposing it is not erroneous,
supposing he did cheat, it is not fair on other people that he should be
allowed to go on playing. He either did cheat or else he did not."
There was no gainsaying the common-sense of this, and Lady Haslemere was
silent a moment.
"Tell Jack," she suggested at length, after racking her brains for
something rather awkward to say.
As a rule she and Kit were excellent friends, and treated each other
with immense frankness; but Lady Haslemere this morning had a very
distinct impression that Kit was keeping something back, which annoyed
her. Doubtless it was something quite trivial and unimportant, but she
herself did not relish being kept in the dark about anything by anybody.
But Kit replied immediately.
"I don't see why we should tell anybody, Alice," she said; "and poor
dear Jack would pull his moustache off in his perplexity, if he were to
know," she added, with a fine touch of local colour. "In any case, the
last thing we want is a scandal, for it never looks well to see in the
papers that the 'Marchioness of Conybeare, while entertaining a large
baccarat party last night, detected one of her guests cheating. Her
ladyship now lies in a precarious state.' You know the sort of thing.
Then follow the names of the guests. I hate the public press!" she
observed with dignity.
"Yes; it is like X rays," observed Lady Haslemere; "and enables the
curious public to see one's bones. And however charming one may be,
one's bones are not fit for public inspection. Also the papers would put
the name of one of the guests with dashes for vowels, and the excited
reader would draw his conclusions. Really, the upper class is terribly
ill-used. It is the whipping-boy of the nation. Supposing Smith and
Jones had a baccarat-party, and Smith cheated, no one would care, not
even Robinson."
Kit laughed.
"That is just why I don't want to tell anybody," she said. "If three
people are in a secret, the chances of it getting out are enormously
greater than if only two are. Not that anyone tells it exactly; but the
atmosphere gets impregnated with it. You know what happened before. One
has to keep the windows open, so to speak, and let in plenty of fresh
air, politics, and so on. Other people breathe the secret."
"We can't tackle the man alone," said Alice.
"Why not? A man always hates a scene, because a man is never any good at
a scene; and, personally, I rather like them. I am at my best in a
scene, dear; I really am ripping."
Again Lady Haslemere had a quite distinct sensation that Kit was keeping
something back. She seemed to wish to prove her case against Alington,
yet she did not want anybody else to know. It was puzzling why she
desired a private handle against the man. Perhaps--Lady Haslemere
thought she had an inkling of the truth, and decided to take a shot at
it.
"Of course it would be awkward for Jack," she observed negligently, "to
be connected in business with this man, if it became known that he knew
that Alington had cheated at baccarat."
Kit was off her guard.
"That is just what he feels--what I feel," she said.
She made this barefaced correction with the most silken coolness; she
neither hurried nor hesitated, but Lady Haslemere burst out laughing.
"My dear Kit!" she said.
Kit sat silent a moment, and then perfectly naturally she laughed too.
"Oh, Alice," she said, "how sharp you are! Really, dear, if I had been a
man and had married you, we should have been King and Queen of England
before you could say 'knife.' Indeed, it was very quick of you, because
I didn't correct myself at all badly. I was thinking I had carried my
point, and so I got careless. Now I'll apologize, dear, and I promise
never to try to take you in again, partly because it's no use, and
partly because you owe me one. Jack does know, and he, at my request,
left me to deal with it as if he didn't. It would be very awkward for
him if he knew, so to speak, officially. At present, you see, he has
only his suspicions. He could not be certain any more than you or I. As
you so sensibly said, dear, we have only suspicions. But now, Alice, let
us leave Jack out of it. Don't let him know that you know that he knows.
Dear me, how complicated! You see, he would have to break with Alington
if he knew."
Lady Haslemere laughed.
"I suppose middle-class people would think us wicked?" she observed.
"Probably; and it would be so middle-class of them," said Kit. "That is
the convenient thing about the middle class; they are never anything
else. Now, there is no counting on the upper and lower class; at one
time we both belong to the criminal class, at another we are both honest
labourers. But the middle class preserves a perpetual monopoly of being
shocked and thinking us wicked. And then it puts us in pillories and
throws dirt. Such fun it must be, too, because it thinks we mind. So
don't let us have a scandal."
Lady Haslemere pursed her pretty mouth up, and blew an excellent
smoke-ring. She was a good-humoured woman, and her detection of Kit took
the sting out of the other's attempted deception. She was quite pleased
with herself.
"Very well, I won't tell him," she said.
"That's a dear!" said Kit cordially; "and you must see that it would do
no good to tell anybody else. Jack would have to break with him if it
got about, and when a reduced marquis is really wanting to earn his
livelihood it is cruel to discourage him. So let's get Alington to play
again, and watch him, you and I, like two cats. Then if we see him cheat
again, we'll ask him to lunch and tell him so, and make him sign a
paper, and stamp it and seal it and swear it, to say he'll never play
again, amen."
Lady Haslemere rose.
"The two conspirators swear silence, then," she said. "But how awkward
it will be, Kit, if anyone else notices it on this second occasion!"
"Bluff it out!" said Kit. "You and I will deny seeing anything at all,
and say the thing is absurd. Then we'll tell this Alington that we know
all about it, but that unless he misbehaves or plays again the incident
will be clo-o-o-sed!"
"I should be sorry to trust my money to that man," said Alice.
"Oh, there you make a mistake," said Kit. "You are cautious in the wrong
place, and I shouldn't wonder if you joined us Carmelites before long.
For some reason he thinks that Conybeare's name is worth having on his
'front page,' as he calls it, and I am convinced he will give him his
money's worth. He may even give him more, especially as Jack hasn't got
any. He thinks Jack is very sharp, and he is quite right. You are very
sharp, too, Alice, and so am I. How pleasant for us all, and how right
we are to be friends! Dear me! if you, Jack, and I were enemies, we
should soon make London too hot to hold any of us. As it is, the
temperature is perfectly charming."
"And is this bounder going to make you and Jack very rich?" asked Lady
Haslemere.
"The bounder is going to do his best," laughed Kit; "at least, Jack
thinks so. But it would need a very persevering sort of bounder to make
us rich for long together. Money is so restless; it is always flying
about, and it so seldom flies in my direction."
"It has caught the habit from the world, perhaps," said Alice.
"I dare say. Certainly we are always flying about, and it is so tiresome
having to pay ready money at booking-offices. Jack quite forgot the
other day when we were going to Sandown, and he told the booking-office
man to put it down to him, which he barbarously refused to do."
"How unreasonable, dear!"
"Wasn't it? I'd give a lot to be able to run up a bill with railway
companies. Dear me, it's after three! I must fly. There's a bazaar for
the prevention of something or the propagation of something at
Knightsbridge, and I am going to support Princess Frederick, who is
going to open it, and eat a large tea. How they eat, those people! We
are always propagating or preventing, and one can't cancel them against
each other, because one wants to propagate exactly those things one
wants not to prevent."
"What are you going to propagate to-day?"
"I forget. I believe it is the anti-propagation of prevention in
general. Do you go to the Hungarian ball to-night? Yes? We shall meet
then. _Au revoir!_"
"You are so full of good works, Kit," said Lady Haslemere, with no touch
of regret in her tone.
Kit laughed loudly.
"Yes, isn't it sweet of me?" she said. "Really, bazaars are an excellent
policy, as good as honesty. And they tell so much more. If you have been
to a bazaar it is put in the papers, whereas they don't put it in the
papers if you have been honest. I often have. Bazaars are soon over,
too, and you feel afterwards as if you'd earned your ball, just as you
feel you've earned your dinner after bicycling."
Kit rustled pleasantly downstairs, leaving Alice in the card-room where
they had talked. That lady had as keen a scent for money as Kit herself,
and evidently if Kit denied herself the pleasure of causing a scandal
over this cheating at baccarat (a piquant subject), she must have a
strong reason for doing so. She wanted, so Lady Haslemere reasoned, to
have Alington under her very private thumb, not, so she concluded, to
get anything definite out of him, for blackmail was not in Kit's line,
but as a precautionary measure. She followed her train of thought with
admirable lucidity, and came to the very sensible conclusion that the
interest that the Conybeares had in Alington was large. Indeed, taking
into consideration the utter want of cash in the Conybeare
establishment, it must be immense; for neither of them would have
considered anything less than a fair settled income or a very large sum
of money worth trying for. This being the case, she wished to have a
hand in it, too.
Tom, she knew, had been approached by Mr. Alington and Jack on the
subject of his becoming a director, and she determined to persuade him
to do so. At present he had not decided. Anyhow, to win money out of
mines was fully as respectable as to lose it at cards, and much more
profitable. Besides, the daily papers might become interesting if it was
a personal matter whether Bonanzas were up or Rands down. Tom had a
large interest as it was in Robinsons--whatever they were, and they
sounded vulgar but rich--and she had occasionally read the reports of
the money market from his financial paper, as an idle person may spell
out words in some unknown language. The "ursine operators," "bulls,"
"flatness," "tightness," "realizations"--how interesting all these terms
would become if they applied to one's own money! She had often noticed
that the political outlook affected the money market, and during the
Fashoda time Tom had been like a bear with a sore head. To know
something about politics, to have, as she had, a Conservative leader
ready to whisper to her things that were not officially supposed to be
whispered, would evidently be an advantage if you had an interest in
prices. And the demon of speculation made his introductory bow to her.
It is difficult for those who dwell on the level lands of sanity to
understand the peaks and valleys of mania. To fully estimate the
intolerable depression which ensues on the conviction that you have a
glass leg, or the secret majesty which accompanies the belief that one
is Charles I., is impossible to anyone who does not know the heights and
depths to which such creeds conduct the holder. But the mania for
speculation--as surely a madness as either of these--is easier of
comprehension. Only common-sense of the crudest kind is required; if it
is supposed that your country is on the verge of war, and you happen to
know for certain that reassuring events will be made public to-morrow,
it is a corollary to invest all you can lay hands on in the sunken
consols in the certainty of a rise to-morrow. This is as simple as A B C,
and your gains are only limited by the amount that you can invest. A
step further and you have before you the enchanting plan of not paying
for what you buy at all. Buy merely. Consols (of this you must be sure)
will rise before next settling-day, and before next settling-day sell.
And thus the secret of not taking up shares is yours.
But consols are a slow gamble. They may conceivably rise two points in a
day. Instead of your hundred pounds you will have a hundred and two
(minus brokerage), an inglorious spoil for so many shining sovereigns to
lead home. But for the sake of those who desire to experience this
fascinating form of excitement in less staid a manner there are other
means supplied, and the chiefest and choicest is mines. A single mining
share which, judiciously bought, cost a sterling sovereign may under
advantageous circumstances be worth three or four in a week or two. How
much more stirring an adventure! When we estimate this in hundreds and
thousands, the prospect will be found to dazzle comparatively sober
eyes.
Now, of the people concerned at present in this story, no less than
five, as Kit drove to her bazaar, were pondering these simple things.
Alington was always pondering them and acting on them; Jack had been
pondering them for a full week, Kit for the same period, and Tom
Abbotsworthy was on the point of consenting to become a director. And
Lady Haslemere, thinking over her interview with Kit, said to herself,
with her admirable common-sense, that if there was a cake going, she
might as well have a slice. She had immense confidence in the power of
both Kit and Jack to take care of themselves, and knew well that neither
would have stirred a finger for Mr. Alington, if they had not quite
clearly considered it to be worth their while. And Kit was stirring all
her fingers; she was taking Alington about as constantly as she took her
pocket-handkerchief; she took him not merely to big parties and large
Grundy dinners, but to the intimate gatherings of the brightest and
best. For she was a good wife to Jack, and she at any rate believed that
there was a cake going.