CHILDREN OF SHADOW
'A Politician! I'd as soon be a policeman,' remarked Miles Childwick,
with delicate scorn. 'I don't dispute the necessity of either--I never
dispute the necessity of things--but it would not occur to me to become
either.'
'You're not tall enough for a policeman, anyhow,' said Elfreda Flood.
'Not if it became necessary to take you in charge, I admit' (Elfreda
used to be called 'queenly' and had played Hippolyta), 'but your remark
is impertinent in every sense of the term. Politicians and policemen are
essentially the same.'
Everybody looked at the clock. They were waiting for supper at the
Magnifique; it was Tommy Trent's party, and the early comers sat in a
group in the luxurious outer room.
'From what I know of policemen in the witness-box, I incline to agree,'
said Manson Smith.
'The salaries, however, are different,' yawned Tommy, without removing
his eyes from the clock.
'I'm most infernally hungry,' announced Arty Kane, a robust-looking
youth, somewhat famous as a tragic poet. 'Myra Lacrimans' was perhaps
his best-known work.
Mrs. John Maturin smiled; she was not great at repartee outside her
writings. 'It is late,' she observed.
'But while policemen,' pursued Miles Childwick, sublimely careless of
interruption, 'while policemen make things endurable by a decent neglect
of their duties (or how do we get home at night?), politicians are
constantly raising the income tax. I speak with no personal bitterness,
since to me it happens to be a small matter, but I observe a laceration
of the feelings of my wealthy friends.'
'He'd go on all night, whether we listened or not,' said Horace Harnack,
half in despair, half in admiration. 'I suppose it wouldn't do to have a
song, Tommy?'
His suggestion met with no attention, for at the moment Tommy sprang to
his feet, exclaiming, 'Here's Peggy at last!'
The big glass doors were swung open and Peggy came in. The five men
advanced to meet her; Mrs. John Maturin smiled in a rather pitying way
at Elfreda, but Elfreda took this rush quite as a matter of course and
looked at the clock again.
'Is Airey here?' asked Peggy.
'Not yet,' replied Tommy. 'I hope he's coming, though.'
'He said something about being afraid he might be kept,' said Peggy;
then she drew Tommy aside and whispered, 'Had to get his coat mended,
you know.'
Tommy nodded cautiously.
'And she hasn't come either?' Peggy went on.
'No; and whoever she is, I hate her,' remarked Arty Kane. 'But who is
she? We're all here.' He waved his arm round the assembly.
'Going to introduce you to society to-night, Arty,' his host promised.
'Mrs. Trevalla's coming.'
'Duchesses I know, and countesses I know,' said Childwick; 'but who----'
'Oh, nobody expected you to know,' interrupted Peggy. She came up to
Elfreda and made a rapid scrutiny. 'New frock?'
Elfreda nodded with an assumption of indifference.
'How lucky!' said Peggy, who was evidently rather excited. 'You're
always smart,' she assured Mrs. John Maturin.
Mrs. John smiled.
Timidly and with unfamiliar step Airey Newton entered the gorgeous
apartment. Relief was dominant on his face when he saw the group of
friends, and he made a hasty dart towards them, giving on the way a
nervous glance at his shoes, which showed two or three spots of mud--the
pavements were wet outside. He hastened to hide himself behind Elfreda
Flood, and, thus sheltered, surveyed the scene.
'I was just saying, Airey, that politicians----'
Arty Kane stopped further progress by the hasty suggestion of a glass of
sherry, and the two went off together to the side room, where supper was
laid, leaving the rest again regarding the clock--except Peggy, who had
put a half-crown in her glove, or her purse, or her pocket, and could
not find it, and declared that she could not get home unless she did;
she created no sympathy and (were such degrees possible) less surprise,
when at last she distinctly recollected having left it on the piano.
'Whose half-crown on whose piano?' asked Manson Smith with a forensic
frown.
When the sherry-bibbers returned with the surreptitious air usual in
such cases, the group had undergone a marked change; it was clustered
round a very brilliant person in a gown of resplendent blue, with a
flash of jewels about her, a hint of perfume, a generally dazzling
effect. Miles Childwick came up to Manson Smith.
'This,' said Childwick, 'we must presume to be Mrs. Trevalla. Let me be
introduced, Manson, before my eyes are blinded by the blaze.'
'Is she a new flame of Tommy's?' asked Manson in a whisper.
The question showed great ignorance; but Manson was comparatively an
outsider, and Miles Childwick let it pass with a scornful smile.
'What a pity we're not supping in the public room!' said Peggy.
'We might trot Mrs. Trevalla through first, in procession, you know,'
suggested Tommy. 'It's awfully good of you to come. I hardly dared ask
you,' he added to Trix.
'I was just as afraid, but Miss Ryle encouraged me. I met her two or
three nights ago at Mrs. Bonfill's.'
They went in to supper. Trix was placed between Tommy and Airey Newton,
Peggy was at the other end, supported by Childwick and Arty Kane. The
rest disposed themselves, if not according to taste, yet with apparent
harmony; there was, however, a momentary hesitation about sitting by
Mrs. John. 'Mrs. John means just one glass more champagne than is good
for one,' Childwick had once said, and the remark was felt to be just.
'No, politicians are essentially concerned with the things that perish,'
resumed Miles Childwick; he addressed Peggy--Mrs. John was on his other
side.
'Everything perishes,' observed Arty Kane, putting down his empty
soup-cup with a refreshed and cheerful air.
'Do learn the use of language. I said "essentially concerned." Now we
are essentially concerned with----'
Trix Trevalla heard the conversation in fragments. She did not observe
that Peggy took much part in it, but every now and then she laughed in a
rich gurgle, as though things and people in general were very amusing.
Whenever she did this, all the young men looked at her and smiled, or
themselves laughed too, and Peggy laughed more and, perhaps, blushed a
little. Trix turned to Tommy and whispered, 'I like her.'
'Rather!' said Tommy. 'Here, waiter, bring some ice.'
Most of the conversation was far less formidable than Miles Childwick's.
It was for the most part frank and very keen discussion of a number of
things and persons entirely, or almost entirely, unfamiliar to Trix
Trevalla. On the other hand, not one of the problems with which she, as
a citizen and as a woman, had been so occupied was mentioned, and the
people who filled her sky did not seem to have risen above the horizon
here. Somebody did mention Russia once, and Horace Harnack expressed a
desire to have 'a slap' at that great nation; but politics were
evidently an alien plant, and soon died out of the conversation. The
last play or the last novel, the most recent success on the stage, the
newest paradox of criticism, were the topics when gossip was ousted for
a few moments from its habitual and evidently welcome sway. People's
gossip, however, shows their tastes and habits better than anything
else, and in this case Trix was not too dull to learn from it; it
reproduced another atmosphere and told her that there was another world
than hers. She turned suddenly to Airey Newton.
'We talk of living in London, but it's a most inadequate description.
There must be ten Londons to live in!'
'Quite--without counting the slums.'
'We ought to say London A, or London B, or London C. Social districts,
like the postal ones; only far more of them. I suppose some people can
live in more than one?'
'Yes, a few; and a good many people pay visits.'
'Are you Bohemian?' she asked, indicating the company with a little
movement of her hand.
'Look at them!' he answered. 'They are smart and spotless. I'm the only
one who looks the part in the least. And, behold, I am frugal,
temperate, a hard worker, and a scientific man!'
'There are believed to be Bohemians still in Kensington and Chelsea,'
observed Tommy Trent. 'They will think anything you please, but they
won't dine out without their husbands.'
'If that's the criterion, we can manage it nearer than Chelsea,' said
Trix. 'This side of Park Lane, I think.'
'You've got to have the thinking too, though,' smiled Airey.
Miles Childwick had apparently been listening; he raised his voice a
little and remarked: 'The divorce between the theoretical bases of
immorality----'
'Falsely so called,' murmured Hanson Smith.
'And its practical development is one of the most----'
It was no use; Peggy gurgled helplessly, and hid her face in her
napkin. Childwick scowled for an instant, then leant back in his chair,
smiling pathetically.
'She is the living negation of serious thought,' he complained,
regarding her affectionately.
Peggy, emerging, darted him a glance as she returned to her chicken.
'When I published "Myra Lacrimans"----' began Arty Kane.
In an instant everybody was silent. They leant forward towards him with
a grave and eager attention, signing to one another to keep still. Tommy
whispered: 'Don't move for a moment, waiter!'
'Oh, confound you all!' exclaimed poor Arty Kane, as he joined in the
general outburst of laughter.
Trix found herself swelling it light-heartedly.
'We've found by experience that that's the only way to stop him,' Tommy
explained, as with a gesture he released the grinning waiter. 'He'll
talk about "Myra" through any conversation, but absolute silence makes
him shy. Peggy found it out. It's most valuable. Isn't it, Mrs. John?'
'Most valuable,' agreed Mrs. John. She had made no other contribution to
the conversation for some time.
'All the same,' Childwick resumed, in a more conversational tone, but
with unabated perseverance, 'what I was going to say is true. In nine
cases out of ten the people who are----' He paused a moment.
'Irregular,' suggested Manson Smith.
'Thank you, Manson. The people who are irregular think they ought to be
regular, and the people who are regular have established their right to
be irregular. There's a reason for it, of course----'
'It seems rather more interesting without one,' remarked Elfreda Flood.
'No reason, I think?' asked Horace Harnack, gathering the suffrages of
the table.
'Certainly not,' agreed the table as a whole.
'To give reasons is a slur on our intellects and a waste of our time,'
pronounced Manson Smith.
'It's such a terribly long while since I heard anybody talk nonsense on
purpose,' Trix said to Airey, with a sigh of enjoyment.
'They do it all the time; and, yes, it's rather refreshing.'
'Does Mr. Childwick mind?'
'Mind?' interposed Tommy. 'Gracious, no! He's playing the game too; he
knows all about it. He won't let on that he does, of course, but he does
all the same.'
'The reason is,' said Childwick, speaking with lightning speed, 'that
the intellect merely disestablishes morality, while the emotions
disregard it. Thank you for having heard me with such patience, ladies
and gentlemen.' He finished his champagne with a triumphant air.
'You beat us that time,' said Peggy, with a smile of congratulation.
Elfreda Flood addressed Harnack, apparently resuming an interrupted
conversation.
'If I wear green I look horrid, and if she wears blue she looks horrid,
and if we don't wear either green or blue, the scene looks horrid. I'm
sure I don't know what to do.'
'It'll end in your having to wear green,' prophesied Harnack.
'I suppose it will,' Elfreda moaned disconsolately. 'She always gets her
way.'
'I happen to know he reviewed it,' declared Arty Kane with some warmth,
'because he spelt "dreamed" with a "t." He always does. And he'd dined
with me only two nights before!'
'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.
'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.