USURPERS ON THE THRONE
Airey Newton was dressing for dinner, for that party of his which Tommy
Trent had brought about, and which was causing endless excitement in the
small circle. He arrayed himself slowly and ruefully, choosing with care
his least frayed shirt, glancing ever and again at a parcel of
five-pound notes which lay on the table in front of him. There were more
notes than the dinner would demand, however lavish in his orders Tommy
might have been; Airey had determined to run no risks. He was trying
hard to persuade himself that he was going to have a pleasant evening,
and to enjoy dispensing to his friends a sumptuous hospitality. The task
was a difficult one. He could not help thinking that those notes were
not made to perish; they were created in order that they might live and
breed; he hated to fritter them away. Yet he hated himself for hating
it.
To this pass he had come gradually. First the money, which began to roll
in as his work prospered and his reputation grew, had been precious as
an evidence of success and a testimony of power. He really wanted it for
nothing else; his tastes had always been simple, he had no expensive
recreations; nobody (as he told Tommy Trent) had any claim on him; he
was alone in the world (except for the rest of mankind, of course). He
saved his money, and in that seemed to be doing the right and reasonable
thing. When the change began or how it worked he could not now trace.
Gradually his living had become more simple, and passed from simple to
sparing; everything that threatened expense was nipped in the bud. It
began to be painful to spend money, sweet only to make it, to invest it,
and to watch its doings. By an effort of will he forced himself to
subscribe with decent liberality to a fair number of public
institutions--his bankers paid the subscriptions for him. Nor did he
fail if a direct appeal was made for an urgent case; then he would give,
though not cheerfully. He could not be called a miser, but he had let
money get altogether out of its proper place in life. It had become to
him an end, and was no longer a means; even while he worked he thought
of how much the work would bring. He thought more about money than about
anything else in the world; and he could not endure to waste it. By
wasting it he meant making his own and other people's lives pleasanter
by the use of it.
Nobody knew, save Tommy Trent. People who did business with him might
conjecture that Airey Newton must be doing pretty well; but such folk
were not of his life, and what they guessed signified nothing. Of his
few friends none suspected, least of all Peggy Ryle, who came and ate
his bread-and-butter, believing that she was demanding and receiving
from a poor comrade the utmost stretch of an unreserved hospitality. He
suffered to see her mistake, yet not without consolation. There was a
secret triumph; he felt and hated it. That had been his feeling when he
asked Tommy Trent how he could continue to be his friend. He began to
live in an alternation of delight and shame, of joy in having his money,
of fear lest somebody should discover that he had it. Yet he did not
hate Tommy Trent, who knew. He might well have hated Tommy in his heart.
This again was peculiar in his own eyes, and perhaps in fact. And his
friends loved him--not without cause either; he would have given them
anything except what to another would have been easiest to give; he
would give them even time, for that was only money still uncoined. Coin
was the great usurper.
The dinner was a splendid affair. Airey had left all the ordering to
Tommy Trent, and Tommy had been imperial. There were flowers without
stint on the table; there were bouquets and button-holes; there was a
gorgeously emblazoned bill of fare; there were blocks of ice specially
carved in fantastic forms; there were hand-painted cards with the names
of the guests curiously wrought thereon. Airey furtively fingered his
packet of bank-notes, but he could not help being rather pleased when
Tommy patted him on the back and said that it all looked splendid. It
did look splendid; Airey stroked his beard with a curious smile. He
actually felt now as though he might enjoy himself.
The guests began to arrive punctually. Efforts in raiment had evidently
been made. Mrs. John was in red, quite magnificent. Elfreda had a lace
frock, on the subject of which she could not be reduced to silence.
Miles Childwick wore a white waistcoat with pearl buttons, and tried to
give the impression that wearing it was an ordinary occurrence. They
were all doing their best to honour the occasion and the host. A pang
shot through Airey Newton; he might have done this for them so often!
Trix came in splendour. She was very radiant, feeling sure that her
troubles were at an end, and her sins forgiven in the popular and
practical sense that she would suffer no more inconvenience from them.
Had not Beaufort Chance raved his worst? and was not Fricker--well, at
heart a gentleman? asked she with a smile. There was more. Triumph was
impending; nay, it was won; it waited only to be declared. She smiled
again to think that she was going to dine with these dear people on the
eve of her greatness How little they knew! In this moment it is to be
feared that Trix was something of a snob. She made what amends she could
by feeling also that she was glad to have an evening with them before
her greatness settled on her.
Peggy was late; this was nothing unusual, but the delay seemed long to
Tommy Trent, who awaited with apprehension her attitude towards the
lavishness of the banquet. Would she walk out again? He glanced at
Airey. Airey appeared commendably easy in his mind, and was talking to
Trix Trevalla with reassuring animation.
'Here she comes!' cried Horace Harnack.
'She's got a new frock too,' murmured Elfreda, regarding her own
complacently, and threatening to renew the subject on the least
provocation.
Peggy had a new frock. And it was black--plain black, quite unrelieved.
Now she never wore black, not because it was unbecoming, but just for a
fad. A new black frock must surely portend something. Peggy's manner
enforced that impression. She did indeed give one scandalised cry of
'Airey!' when she saw the preparations, but evidently her mind was
seriously preoccupied; she said she had been detained by business.
'Frock hadn't come home, I suppose?' suggested Miles Childwick
witheringly.
'It hadn't,' Peggy admitted, 'but I had most important letters to write,
too.' She paused, and then added, 'I don't suppose I ought to be here at
all, but I had to come to Airey's party. My uncle in Berlin is dead.'
She said this just as they sat down. It produced almost complete
silence. Trix indeed, with the habits of society, murmured condolence,
while she thought that Peggy might either have stayed away or have said
nothing about the uncle. Nobody else spoke; they knew that Peggy had not
seen the uncle for years, and could not be supposed to be suffering
violent personal grief. But they knew also the significance of the
uncle; he had been a real, though distant, power to them; the cheques
had come from him. Now he had died.
Their glances suggested to one another that somebody might put a
question--somebody who had tact, and could wrap it up in a decorous
shape. Peggy herself offered no more information, but sat down by Tommy
and began on her soup.
Conversation, reviving after the shock that Peggy had administered,
presently broke out again. Under cover of it Peggy turned to Tommy and
asked in a carefully subdued whisper: 'How much is a mark?'
'A mark?' repeated Tommy, who was tasting the champagne critically.
'Yes. German money, you know.'
'Oh, about a shilling.'
'A shilling?' Peggy pondered. 'I thought it was a franc?'
'No, more than that. About a shilling.'
Peggy gave a sudden little laugh, and her eyes danced gleefully.
'You mustn't look like that. It's not allowed,' said Tommy firmly.
'Then twenty thousand marks----?' whispered Peggy.
'Would be twenty thousand shillings--or twenty-five thousand francs--or
in the depreciated condition of Italian silver some twenty-seven
thousand lire. It would also be five thousand dollars, more cowrie
shells than I can easily reckon, and, finally, it would amount to one
thousand pounds sterling of this realm, or thereabouts.'
Peggy laughed again.
'I'm sorry your uncle's dead,' pursued Tommy gravely.
'Oh, so am I! He was always disagreeable, but he was kind too. I'm
really sorry. Oh, but Tommy----'
The effort was thoroughly well-meant, but sorrow had not much of a
chance. Peggy's sincerity was altogether too strong and natural. She was
overwhelmed by the extraordinary effect of the uncle's death.
'He's left me twenty thousand marks,' she gasped out at last. 'Don't
tell anybody--not yet.'
'Well done him!' said Tommy Trent. 'I knew he was a good sort--from
those cheques, you know.'
'A thousand pounds!' mused Peggy Ryle. She looked down at her garment.
'So I got a frock for him, you see,' she explained. 'I wish this was my
dinner,' she added. Apparently the dinner might have served as a mark of
respect as well as the frock.
'Look here,' said Tommy. 'You've got to give me that money, you know.'
Peggy turned astonished and outraged eyes on him.
'I'll invest it for you, and get you forty or fifty pounds a year for
it--regular--quarterly.'
'I'm going to spend it,' Peggy announced decisively. 'There are a
thousand things I want to do with it. It is good of uncle!'
'No, no! You give it to me. You must learn to value money.'
'To value money! Why must I? None of us do.' She looked round the table.
'Certainly we've none of us got any.'
'It would be much better if they did value it,' said Tommy with a
politico-economical air.
'You say that when you've made poor Airey give us this dinner!' she
cried triumphantly.
With a wry smile Tommy Trent gave up the argument; he had no answer to
that. Yet he was a little vexed. He was a normal man about money; his
two greatest friends--Peggy and Airey Newton--were at the extreme in
different directions. What did that signify? Well, after all, something.
The attitude people hold towards money is, in one way and another, a
curiously far-reaching thing, both in its expression of them and in its
effect on others. Just as there was always an awkwardness between Tommy
and Airey Newton because Airey would not spend as much as he ought,
there was now a hint of tension, of disapproval on one side and of
defiance on the other, because Peggy meant to spend all that she had.
There is no safety even in having nothing; the problems you escape for
yourself you raise for your friends.
Peggy, having sworn Tommy to secrecy, turned her head round, saw Arty
Kane, could by no means resist the temptation, told him the news, and
swore him to secrecy. He gave his word, and remarked across the table to
Miles Childwick: 'Peggy's been left a thousand pounds.'
Then he turned to her, saying, 'I take it all on myself. It was really
the shortest way, you know.'
Indescribable commotion followed. Everybody had a plan for spending the
thousand pounds; each of them appropriated and spent it on the spot; all
agreed that Peggy was the wrong person to have it, and that they were
immensely glad that she had got it. Suggestions poured in on her. It may
be doubted whether the deceased uncle had ever created so much
excitement while he lived.
'I propose to do no work for weeks,' said Miles Childwick. 'I shall just
come and dine.'
'I think of an _édition de luxe_,' murmured Arty Kane.
'I shall take nothing but leading business,' said Horace Harnack.
'We shall really have to make a great effort to avoid being maintained,'
murmured Mrs. John, surprised into a remark that sounded almost as
though it came from her books.
Trix Trevalla had listened to all the chatter with a renewal of her
previous pleasure, enjoying it yet the more because, thanks to Fricker's
gentlemanly conduct, to the worst of Beaufort Chance being over, and to
her imminent triumph, her soul was at peace, and her attention not
preoccupied. She, too, found herself rejoicing very heartily for Peggy's
sake. She knew what pleasure Peggy would get, what a royal time lay
before her.
'She'll spend it all. How will she feel when it's finished?'
The question came from Airey Newton, her neighbour. There was no touch
of malice about it; it was put in a full-hearted sympathy.
'What a funny way to look at it!' exclaimed Trix, laughing.
'Funny! Why? You know she'll spend it. Oh, perhaps you don't; we do. And
when it's gone----'
He shrugged his shoulders; her last state would be worse than her first,
he meant to say.
Trix stopped laughing. She was touched; it was pathetic to see how the
man who worked for a pittance felt a sort of pain at the idea of
squandering--an unselfish pain for the girl who would choose a brief
ecstasy of extravagance when she might ensure a permanent increase of
comfort. She could not herself feel like that about such a trifle as a
thousand pounds (all in, she was wearing about a thousand pounds, and
that not in full fig), but she saw how the case must appear to Airey
Newton; the windfall that had tumbled into Peggy's lap meant years of
hard work and of self-respecting economy to him.
'Yes, you're right,' she said. 'But she's too young for the lesson. And
I--well, I'm afraid I'm incurable. You don't set us the best example
either.' She smiled again as she indicated the luxurious table.
'A very occasional extravagance,' he remarked, seeing her
misapprehension quite clearly, impelled to confirm it by his unresting
fear of discovery, fingering the packet of five-pound notes in his
pocket.
'I wish somebody could teach me to be prudent,' smiled Trix.
'Can one be taught to be different?' he asked, rather gloomily.
'Money doesn't really make one happy,' said Trix in the tone of a
disillusionised millionaire.
'I suppose not,' he agreed, but with all the scepticism of a hopeless
pauper.
They both acted their parts well; each successfully imposed on the
other. But pretence on this one point did not hinder a genuine sympathy
nor a reciprocal attraction between them. He seemed to her the haven
that she might have loved, yet had always scorned; she was to him the
type of that moving, many-coloured, gay life which his allegiance to his
jealous god forbade him to follow or to know. And they were united again
by a sense common to them, apart from the rest of the company--the sense
of dissatisfaction; it was a subtle bond ever felt between them, and
made them turn to one another with smiles half-scornful, half-envious,
when the merriment rose high.
'I'm glad to meet you to-night,' she said, 'because I think I can tell
you that your advice--your Paris advice--has been a success.'
'You seemed rather doubtful about that when we met last.'
'Yes, I was.' She laughed a little. 'Oh, I've had some troubles, but I
think I'm in smooth water now.' She hardly repressed the ring of triumph
in her voice.
'Ah, then you won't come again to Danes Inn!'
There was an unmistakable regret in his tone. Trix felt it echoed in her
heart. She met his glance for a moment; the contact might have lasted
longer, but he, less practised in such encounters, turned hastily away.
Enough had passed to tell her that if she did not come she would be
missed, enough to make her feel that in not going she would lose
something which she had come to think of as pleasant in life. Was there
always a price to be paid? Great or small, perhaps, but a price always?
'You should come sometimes where you can be seen,' she said lightly.
'A pretty figure I should cut!' was his good-humoured, rather despairing
comment.
Trix was surprised by a feeling stronger than she could have
anticipated; she desired to escape from it; it seemed as though Airey
Newton and his friends were laying too forcible a hold on her. They had
nothing to do with the life that was to be hers; they were utterly
outside that, though they might help her to laugh away an evening or
amuse her with their comments on human nature and its phases. To her his
friends and he were essentially a distraction; they and he must be kept
in the place appropriate to distractions.
At the other end of the table an elementary form of joke was achieving a
great success. It lay in crediting Peggy with unmeasured wealth, in
assigning her quarters in the most fashionable part of the town, in
marrying her to the highest bigwig whose title occurred to any one of
the company. She was passed from Park Lane to Grosvenor Square and
assigned every rank in the peerage. Schemes of benevolence were proposed
to her, having for their object the endowment of literature and art.
'You will not continue the exercise of your profession, I presume?'
asked Childwick, referring to Peggy's projected lessons in the art of
painting and a promise to buy her works which she had wrung from a
dealer notoriously devoted to her.
'She won't know us any more,' moaned Arty Kane.
'She'll glare at us from boxes--boxes paid for,' sighed Harnack.
'I shall never lose any more frocks,' said Elfreda with affected
ruefulness.
Trix smiled at all this--a trifle sadly. What was attributed in
burlesque to the newly enriched Peggy was really going to be almost true
of herself. Well, she had never belonged to them; she had been a visitor
always.
The most terrible suggestion came from Mrs. John--rather late, of
course, and as if Mrs. John had taken some pains with it.
'She'll have her hair done quite differently.'
The idea produced pandemonium.
'What of my essay?' demanded Childwick.
'What of my poem?' cried Arty Kane.
Everybody agreed that a stand must be made here. A formal pledge was
demanded from Peggy. When she gave it her health was drunk with
acclamation.
A lull came with the arrival of coffee. Perhaps they were exhausted. At
any rate when Miles Childwick began to talk they did not stop him at
once as their custom was, but let him go on for a little while. He was a
thin-faced man with a rather sharp nose, prematurely bald, and bowed
about the shoulders. Trix Trevalla watched him with some interest.
'If there were such a thing as being poor and unsuccessful,' he remarked
with something that was almost a wink in his eye (Trix took it to
deprecate interruption), 'it would probably be very unpleasant. Of
course, however, it does not exist. The impression to the contrary is an
instance of what I will call the Fallacy of Broad Views. We are always
taking broad views of our neighbours' lives; then we call them names.
Happily we very seldom need to take them of our own.' He paused, looked
round the silent table, and observed gravely, 'This is very unusual.'
Only a laugh from Peggy, who would have laughed at anything, broke the
stillness. He resumed:--
'You call a man poor, meaning thereby that he has little money by the
year. Ladies and gentlemen, we do not feel in years, we are not hungry
_per annum_. You call him unsuccessful because a number of years leave
him much where he was in most things. It may well be a triumph!' He
paused and asked, 'Shall I proceed?'
'If you have another and quite different idea,' said Arty Kane.
'Well, then, that Homogeneity of Fortune is undesirable among friends.'
'Trite and obvious,' said Manson Smith. 'It excludes the opportunity of
lending fivers.'
'I shall talk no more,' said Childwick. 'If we all spoke plain English
originality would become impossible.'
The end of the evening came earlier than usual. Peggy was going to a
party or two. She had her hansom waiting to convey her. It had, it
appeared, been waiting all through dinner. With her departure the rest
melted away. Trix Trevalla, again reluctant to go, at last found herself
alone with Airey Newton, Tommy having gone out to look for her carriage.
The waiter brought the bill and laid it down beside Airey.
'Is it good luck or bad luck for Peggy?' she asked reflectively.
'For Peggy it is good luck; she has instincts that save her. But she'll
be very poor again.' He came back to that idea persistently.
'She'll marry somebody and be rich.' A sudden thought came and made her
ask Airey, 'Would you marry for money?'
He thought long, taking no notice of the bill beside him. 'No,' he said
at last, 'I shouldn't care about money I hadn't made.'
'A funny reason for the orthodox conclusion!' she laughed. 'What does it
matter who made it as long as you have it?'
Airey shook his head in an obstinate way. Tommy Trent, just entering the
doorway, saw him lay down three or four notes; he did not look at the
bill. The waiter with a smile gave him back one, saying '_Pardon,
monsieur!_' and pointing to the amount of the account. Tommy stood where
he was, looking on still.
'Well, I must go,' said Trix, rising. 'You've given us a great deal of
pleasure; I hope you've enjoyed it yourself!'
The waiter brought back the bill and the change. Airey scooped up the
change carelessly, and gave back a sovereign. Tommy could not see the
coin, but he saw the waiter's low and cordial bow. He was smiling
broadly as he came up to Airey.
'Business done, old fellow? We must see Mrs. Trevalla into her
carriage.'
'Good-bye to you both,' said Trix. 'Such an evening!' Her eyes were
bright; she seemed rather moved. There was in Tommy's opinion nothing to
account for any emotion, but Airey Newton was watching her with a
puzzled air.
'And I shall remember that there's no such thing as being poor or
unsuccessful,' she laughed. 'We must thank Mr. Childwick for that.'
'There's nothing of that sort for you anyhow, Mrs. Trevalla,' said
Tommy. He offered his arm, but withdrew it again, smiling. 'I forgot the
host's privileges,' he said.
He followed them downstairs, and saw Airey put Trix in her carriage.
'Good-bye,' she called wistfully, as she was driven away.
'Shall we stroll?' asked Tommy. The night was fine this time.
They walked along in silence for some little way. Then Airey said:--
'Thank you, Tommy.'
'It was no trouble,' said Tommy generously, 'and you did it really
well.'
It was no use. Airey had struggled with the secret; he had determined
not to tell anybody--not to think of it or to take account of it even
within himself. But it would out.
'It's all right. I happened to get a little payment to-day--one that I'd
quite given up hope of ever seeing.'
'How lucky, old chap!' Tommy was content to say.
It was evident that progress would be gradual. Airey was comforting
himself with the idea that he had given his dinner without encroaching
on his hoard.
Yet something had been done--more than Tommy knew of, more than he could
fairly have taken credit for. When Airey reached Danes Inn he found it
solitary, and he found it mean. His safe and his red book were not able
to comfort him. No thought of change came to him; he was far from that.
He did not even challenge his mode of life or quarrel with the motive
that inspired it. The usurper was still on the throne in his heart, even
as Trix's usurper sat still enthroned in hers. Airey got no farther than
to be sorry that the motive and the mode of life necessitated certain
things and excluded others. He was not so deeply affected but that he
put these repinings from him with a strong hand. Yet they recurred
obstinately, and pictures, long foreign to him, rose before his eyes. He
had a vision of a great joy bought at an enormous price, purchased with
a pang that he at once declared would be unendurable. But the vision was
there, and seemed bright.
'What a comforting thing impossibility is sometimes!' His reflections
took that form as he smoked his last pipe. If all things were possible,
what struggles there would be! He could never be called upon to choose
between the vision and the pang. That would be spared him by the
blessing of impossibility.
Rare as the act was, it could hardly be the giving of a dinner which had
roused these new and strange thoughts in him. The vision borrowed form
and colour from the commonest mother of visions--a woman's face.
Two or three days later Peggy Ryle brought him seven hundred
pounds--because he had a safe. He said the money would be all right,
and, when she had gone, stowed it away in the appointed receptacle.
'I keep my own there,' he had explained with an ironical smile, and had
watched Peggy's carefully grave nod with an inward groan.