THE WHIP ON THE PEG
Of that drive with Connie Fricker Miles Childwick had, in the
after-time, many tales to tell. Truth might claim the inspiration, an
artistic intellect perfected them. 'She said things to which no
gentleman should listen in a hansom cab, but the things she said were
nothing to the things she looked as if she was going to say. In a
hansom! No screen between you and a scrutinising public, Mrs. John!'
That was the first stage. In the second he had invented for poor Connie
all the sayings which he declared her expression to suggest. Whatever
the exact facts, while he forgave Peggy Ryle everything else, he did not
cease to harbour malice on account of that ride. Connie thought him
nice, but rather slow. His must be the blame, since it is agreed that in
such cases the man should adapt himself.
The work of the bodyguard was done; it was disbanded with a gracious
invitation to supper. Peggy flew up the stairs ahead of her guest. There
was a great question to be solved.
'The gentleman has come, miss,' said the charwoman.
'And Mrs. Trevalla?'
'I told him Mrs. Trevalla would be in directly.'
'And where is she?'
'She's still in her room, I think, miss.'
Peggy turned triumphant eyes on her companion. 'Now then, Miss Fricker!'
said she. 'That's the door! I shall go and keep Trix quiet. That's the
door!' She pointed encouragingly, if rather imperiously, to the
sitting-room.
'I'm not afraid,' laughed Connie, putting her hat straight and giving a
rattle to her bangles. But there was a ring of agitation in her voice,
and in her heart she half-regretted the dismissal of the bodyguard.
Still, she had pluck.
She swept in with the sustaining consciousness of a highly dramatic
entrance. To come in well is often half the battle.
'You here! The devil!' exclaimed Beaufort Chance.
'Mr. Chance! Well, I declare!' said Connie. 'And alone too!' She looked
round suspiciously, as though Trix might perhaps be under the table.
'Well, I suppose Miss Ryle won't be long taking off her things.'
Beaufort already suspected a plot, but, his first surprise over, he
would not plead guilty to being an object that invited one.
'I got away earlier than I expected,' he told her, 'and looked in here
on my way to Cadogan Square. There was no chance of finding you at home
so early.'
'And there was a chance of finding Mrs. Trevalla?' She sat down opposite
him, showing her teeth in a mocking smile. His confusion and the
weakness of his plea set her courage firmly on its feet.
'I don't know whether there was or not. She's not here, you see.'
'Oh, I'll amuse you till she comes!'
'I sha'n't wait for her long.'
'I sha'n't stay long either. You can drive me back home, can't you?'
He was pitifully caught, and had not the adroitness to hide his sense of
it. Perhaps he had been cruelly used. When he had written to Trix,
saying he meant to come again and asking for a date, it was hardly fair
of Peggy, performing the office of amanuensis for Trix, to say that Mrs.
Trevalla saw few visitors, but that this particular day (on which Peggy
was to visit Fricker) would be the best chance of seeing her. Such
language might be non-committal; it was undoubtedly misleading. He had
found in it a sign that Trix was yielding, coming to a sensible frame
of mind, recognising what seemed to him so obvious--the power he had
over her and her attraction towards him. In his heart he believed that
he held both these women, Trix and Connie, in his hand, and could do as
he liked with them; thus he would cajole and conciliate Connie (he
thought kisses would not lose their efficacy, nor that despotic air
either) while he made Trix his own--for towards her lay his stronger
inclination. To secure her would be his victory over all the sneerers,
over Mervyn, and--the greatest came last--over herself. But, however
clever we are, there is a point at which things may fall out too
perversely. If Connie came by chance, this acme of bad luck was reached;
if by design, then he had miscalculated somewhere.
'You're not greeting me very enthusiastically,' remarked Connie. 'You
don't sit stock-still and say you won't stay long when I come to you in
the drawing-room at home!'
'Nonsense! That girl may be in here any minute.'
'Well, and mamma might come in any minute at home--which would be much
worse. After all, what would she matter? You're not ashamed of me, I
suppose?'
Assumption is a valuable device in argument; Connie was using it
skilfully. She assumed that she was first in his thoughts, and did not
charge him with preferring another; let him explain that--if he dared.
'Nonsense!' he repeated fretfully. 'But I can't play the fool now. I've
come to see Mrs. Trevalla on business. 'Isn't there another room?'
'No; and I thought papa did all the business there was with Mrs.
Trevalla.'
He had sat down near the table; she came and perched herself on it.
Intimidation must probably be the main weapon, but she was alive to the
importance of reinforcing it.
'He thinks he does,' she went on significantly.
'Oh, it's a small matter. It won't do him any harm. And I'm a free
agent, I suppose?'
'You're free enough anyhow, pretty often,' Connie admitted.
'You've never objected,' he snarled, his temper getting out of hand.
'Well, no. I knew I had to do with a gentleman.'
Kisses might be out of place, even dangerous in view of a possible
interruption; but there was the despotic air. Now seemed the minute for
it.
'Don't you talk nonsense, child,' he said. 'If I've treated you kindly,
it doesn't entitle you to take that tone. And get off that table.'
'I'm very comfortable here,' remarked Connie.
'It doesn't look respectable.'
'What, not with you and me? There's nobody here, is there?'
'Stop playing the fool,' he commanded brusquely. 'What's the matter with
you to-day?'
'I'm in ripping spirits to-day, Beaufort. Can't you guess why?'
'I don't believe you came here to see Peggy Ryle at all,' he broke out.
'Never mind why I came here.'
'Have you got an idea that you've done something clever?'
'Never mind. I've awfully good news, Beaufort.'
'They may be listening at the door.' His uneasiness was pitiful.
'It wouldn't matter. Everybody'll know soon,' said Connie consolingly.
'What the deuce are you talking about?' he growled.
She bent forward towards him with a striking, if rather overdone, air of
joyous confusion.
'I've spoken to papa, Beaufort,' she whispered.
Startled out of pretence, he sprang to his feet with an oath. His look
was very ugly, he glared threateningly. Connie braced her courage and
did not quail.
'I know I ought to have asked you,' she admitted with a smile that
belied her professed penitence, 'but I caught him in such a beautiful
humour that I had to take advantage of it. So I told him everything. I
just confessed everything, Beaufort! Of course he scolded me--it hasn't
been quite right, has it?--but he was very kind. He said that, since we
were engaged, he'd forgive me and make mamma forgive me too.' She paused
before her climax. 'I think that he's really simply awfully pleased.'
'You've told your father that you're engaged to me? You know it's a
damned lie.'
Connie's eyes gleamed dangerously, but she kept admirably cool.
'Well, I told him that you'd said you loved me, and that you always
kissed me when we were alone, and called me your little Connie, and so
on, you know. And papa said that he presumed from all that that we were
engaged.'
'Well?' he muttered savagely.
'And I said that of course I presumed so too.'
It was spoken with the innocence of the dove, but it put Beaufort Chance
in a very awkward position; the reference is not to his sensibilities
but to his tactics. Connie's dexterity forced him to a broad
alternative--submission or open war. She deprived him of any half-way
house, any compromise by which cajolery and kisses would serve in place
of a promise and an obligation. She did not leave the matter there; she
jumped down from the table and put her arm on his shoulder--indeed,
half-way round his neck. 'You must have meant me to; and it made me so
happy to--to feel that I was yours, Beaufort.'
To this pass his shifty dealings had brought him, even as in public
affairs they had forbidden him a career, and in business had condemned
him to a sort of outlawry, although an outlawry tempered by riches. He
was in an extremity; his chance of Trix was at stake, his dominion over
Connie herself was challenged. He saw the broad alternative, and he
chose open war.
'It's all a very pretty trick of yours, my dear,' he sneered throwing
her arm off him none too gently; 'but a man doesn't marry every girl he
kisses, especially not when she's so ready to be kissed as some people
we know. You can explain it to your father any way you like, but you're
not going to bluff me.'
'I see why you came here now,' said Connie coolly. 'You came to make
love to Trix Trevalla. Well, you can't, that's all.'
'That's for Mrs. Trevalla to say, not for you.'
'I don't expect Mrs. Trevalla'll show up at all,' remarked Connie,
leaning against the table again.
'That's the little plan, is it?' He gave a jerk of his head. 'By Jove, I
see! That hussy of a Ryle girl's in it!'
'I don't know who's in it; you seem rather out of it,' smiled Connie.
'I am, am I? We'll see. So Mrs. Trevalla won't show, won't she? That's
hardly final, is it? She's on the premises, I rather fancy.'
'Going to force your way into her bedroom? Oh, Beaufort!'
'You'd be mightily shocked, wouldn't you?' He moved towards the door;
his purpose was only half-formed, but he wished her to think it was
absolute.
'I don't mind; but I'm sure papa and mamma would. I don't think they'd
like you for a son-in-law after that.'
'Then we should all be pleased.'
'Or perhaps for a partner either.'
He turned round sharply, and came back a step or two towards her.
'What do you mean by that?' he asked slowly.
'I don't suppose papa would care to have anything to do with a man who
trifled with his daughter's affections.' Connie stuck loyally to the old
phrases.
He was full in front of her now and looking hard at her.
'You little devil! I believe you've squared him,' said he.
Connie, well on the table again, put her arms akimbo, stuck her legs
out in front of her straight from the knee, and laughed in his face.
'If you're going into Mrs. Trevalla's room, you might ask her if, from
her experience, she thinks it wise to quarrel with papa.'
'I'm not a woman and a fool.'
'Oh, you know your own business best, Beaufort!'
It was sorely against the grain, but he shirked his open war; he tried
coaxing.
'Come, be reasonable, Connie. You're a sensible girl. I mean all that's
square, but----'
'I mean that if you wait here after I've gone, or go now and see Trix
Trevalla, I'll never speak to you again. And papa---- Well, as I say,
you know your own business best about that.'
Her cool certainty, her concentration on one purpose, gave her all the
advantage over him with his divided counsels, his inconsistent desires,
his efforts to hedge. Again she pinned him to a choice.
'What do you want?' he asked curtly.
'I want you to take me home to Cadogan Square.' That was hard and
business-like, and bore for him all the significance that she meant to
put into it. Then her voice grew lower and her large eyes turned on him
with a different expression. 'We can have a really friendly talk about
it there.' She meant to beat him, but she was highly content to soften
the submission by all means in her power. She would not hesitate about
begging his forgiveness, provided the spoils of victory were hers--in
the fashion of some turbulent vassal after defying his feeble overlord.
Beaufort read it all well enough. He saw that she liked him and was
ready to be pleasant: his dream of mastery vanished from before his
eyes. He might have broken Trix Trevalla's proud but sensitive spirit;
Miss Connie's pliant pride and unpliant purposes were quite different
things to deal with. He knew that in effect, whatever the forms were, he
submitted if he took her to Cadogan Square. Henceforward his lot was
with the Frickers--and not as their master either.
The truth came home to him with cutting bitterness. He had been able to
say to himself that he might use Fricker, but that he was very different
from Fricker; that he flirted with Connie, but that his wife would have
to be very different from her. He had to give up, too, all thought of
Trix Trevalla. Or he must face the alternative and be at war with
Fricker. Had he the courage? Had he the strength? He stood looking
gloomily at Connie.
'You're a fool, Beaufort,' she told him plainly, with a glittering
smile. 'I'm sure you seemed fond enough of me. Why shouldn't we be very
jolly? You think I'm nasty now, but I'm not generally, am I?' She coaxed
him with the look that she would have said was her most 'fetching.' To
do her justice, a more expressive word for the particular variety of
glance is hard to find.
At this moment Peggy Ryle came out of Trix's room (where she had
beguiled the time in idle conversation), shut the door carefully behind
her, crossed the passage, and entered the sitting-room. The time Connie
had estimated as sufficient for the interview had elapsed.
'Oh, Mr. Chance, I'm sorry! Trix has such a headache that she can't come
in. She has tried, but standing up or moving----' Peggy threw out her
hands in an expressive gesture. 'That's what kept me,' she added
apologetically to Connie. 'I hope you've amused one another all this
time?'
The plot was plain now; the bulk of Beaufort's resentment turned on
Peggy. What was the use of that? Peggy had no fear of him. She was
radiantly invulnerable.
'I'm sorry she's so seedy.' He hesitated; he longed to see Trix, even if
it were no more than to see her and to give her a parting blow. 'Perhaps
you'll let me send a note in, to say what my business is? It's pressing,
and she might make an effort to see me for----'
'I'm afraid I must go,' Connie interrupted. 'I promised to be home.'
'Must you really? I suppose the cab's waiting.'
'You mustn't bother poor Mrs. Trevalla with business now, must he, Miss
Ryle? It must wait for another day. You were coming to Cadogan Square,
weren't you? I'll take you with me.'
He looked from one to the other. Never was man in a more hopeless
corner. Nothing would have pleased him so much as to knock their heads
together. Connie was imitating Peggy's external unconsciousness of
anything remarkable in the situation as well as she could.
'We mustn't stay. Mrs. Trevalla must want you,' pursued Connie.
'Oh, I can leave her for just a few minutes,' Peggy assured her, with an
anxious look at the clock.
'Good-bye, Miss Ryle,' said Connie, giving Peggy's hand a hearty
squeeze. She passed on towards the door and opened it. Holding it ajar,
she looked round and waited for Beaufort Chance. For an instant he stood
where he was. The idea of rebellion was still in him. But his spirit
failed. He came up to Peggy and sullenly bade her farewell.
'Good-bye,' said Peggy in a low voice. Its tone struck him as odd; when
he looked in her eyes he saw a touch of compassion. It flashed across
him that she understood what he was feeling, that she saw how his acts
had brought him lower than his nature need have been brought--or at
least that she was sorry that this fate, and nothing less than this,
must be held to be justice.
'Good-bye, Miss Ryle. My regrets to Mrs. Trevalla. I hope for another
opportunity. Now I'm ready, Miss Fricker, and most delighted to have the
chance.'
At all times let the proprieties be sacred!
That is, let them be observed in the presence of third
parties--especially if those parties have brought us to humiliation.
They are not so exacting in a vehicle that holds only two.
'Your turn to-day; mine some other day, Connie,' said Beaufort Chance,
as he sullenly settled himself in the cab.
'Oh, don't talk bosh, and don't sulk. You've found out that I'm not a
fool. Is there any harm in that?' She turned to him briskly. 'There are
just two ways of taking this,' she told him. 'One is to be bullied into
it by papa. The other is to do it pleasantly. Since there's no way not
to do it, which of those two do you think best?'
'Did you mean it all the time?' he asked, sullen still, but curious.
'As soon as I began to be really gone on you,' she answered him. The
phrase is not classical, but she used it, and used it with a very clear
purpose. 'You don't suppose I like being--being disagreeable, and
seeming to have--to have to force you to what you'd always let me
understand you wanted? A girl has some self-respect, Beaufort.'
'Some girls have got a deuced good set of brains, anyhow,' he said,
feeling for her some of the admiration that her father's clear purposes
and resolute pursuit of them always claimed for him.
'Do you suppose' (Connie's face looked out of the other side of the cab)
'that if I hadn't been awfully fond of you----?'
He believed her, which was not strange; what she said was near enough to
the truth to be rather strange. Yet it was not incongruous in her. And
she seized a good moment for confessing it. If he would choose the
pleasant way of accepting the inevitable, it should be made very
pleasant to him. Nor was she indifferent as to which way he chose. She
had her father in reserve, and would invoke his help if need be; but she
hated to think of his smile while he gave it. Suddenly, under the board
of the cab, she put her hand into Beaufort Chance's and gave his a
squeeze.
He surrendered; but he kept up a little bit of pretence to the last.
Connie let him keep it up, and humoured him in it.
'All right. But I'll tell you what I think of your little game when
we're alone together!'
'Oh, I say, you frighten me!' cried Connie tactfully. 'You won't be
cruel, will you, Beaufort dear?'
She would have made an excellent Mayor of the Palace to a blustering but
easily managed king.
He had chosen the pleasant way, and verily all things were made pleasant
to him. Mrs. Fricker was archly maternal. A mother's greeting for him,
an indulgent mother's forgiveness for Connie's secrecy. No more than a
ponderously playful 'Naughty child!' redeemed in an instant by 'But we
could always trust her!' Not thus always Mrs. Fricker towards Connie and
her diversions, as Connie's anxiety in the past well testified. But
there, an engagement in the end does make a difference--if it is a
desirable one. It would seem dangerous to divorce morality and prudence,
since the apostles of each have ever been supremely anxious to prove
that it coincided with, if it did not even include, the other; let us
hope that they seek rather to excuse their opponents than to fortify
themselves.
Fricker too was benevolent; he hinted at millions; he gave Beaufort to
understand that while a partner or associate was one thing, a member of
the family would be quite another; crumbs from the rich man's table
compared with 'All that I have is thine' was about the difference. It is
true that Fricker smiled here and there, and just at first had seemed to
telegraph something to his daughter's wide-awake eyes, and to receive a
reply that increased his cordiality. What of that? Who cares for a whip
if it be left hanging on the peg? It is at worst a hint which any wise
and well-bred slave will notice, but ignore. Not a reminder of it came
from Fricker, unless in a certain far-away reflectiveness of smile. He
had spent an hour that day in the task of finding out how entirely he
held Beaufort in the hollow of his hand. The time was not
wasted--besides, it was a recreation. But he did not wish to have to
shut his fist and squeeze; he preferred at all times that things should
go pleasantly, and his favourite moral lessons be inculcated by the
mild uses of persuasion. 'Now you're one of us,' he told Beaufort,
grasping his hand. Well, possibly he glanced at the whip out of the
corner of his eye when he was saying that.
And Connie herself? She was the finest diplomatist of the three, for her
heart was in the work. So much falsehood comes from no cause as from
labelling human folk with a single ticket; a bundle of them might have
been adequate to Connie. The time came which Beaufort had
threatened--when they were alone as an affianced pair. The thing was
done; she had spared no roughness in doing it. Now she set herself to
make him content; nor did she force him to retract his threats. Her own
mind was divided as to their relations When it came to the point of a
clash of wills (to use a phrase consecrated by criticism), she found
always that she wished her's to prevail; in lighter questions she was
primitive enough to cherish the ideal of herself as a willing slave. If
Beaufort had not been able to raise that illusion in her from time to
time, she would not have liked him so much, nor gone to such lengths to
prove her own ultimate mastery. Almost persuading herself, she almost
persuaded him; and in this effort she became pleasant to him again. Thus
she compromised between her woman's temperament and her masculine will.
If he would accept the compromise as a permanent basis, their union
promised to go very smoothly.
'If you'd been like this,' he told her, 'there wouldn't have been any
trouble this afternoon.'
She endorsed the monstrous falsehood readily.
'No, it was all my fault. But I was--so terrified of losing you.'
'You tried to threaten me into it!'
He could not be so deluded as to doubt what she had done. But he wanted
the forlorn comfort of a brave face over a beaten heart.
'You threatened me too,' whispered Connie.
She broke away from him and took up her old jaunty attitude--arm on the
mantel-piece, foot on the fender--again: there was challenge in the eyes
that met his boldly.
'You did want some persuading,' she reminded him.
He laughed. 'Well, Trix Trevalla's a devilish pretty woman--and a bit
easier to hold than you.'
'I'm easy enough, if your hand's light. As for her, she'd have worried
you to death. She'd have hated you, Beaufort.'
He did not like that, and showed it.
'And I--don't!' Connie went on with a dazzling smile. 'Well, you're
staring at me. How do I look?'
So she played her fish, with just enough hint of her power, with just
enough submission to the legitimate sway she invited him to exercise. It
was all very dexterous; there was probably no other road to her end. If
it seems in some ways not attractive--well, we must use the weapons we
have or be content to go to the wall. When she bade him
good-night--still Mrs. Fricker was strong on reputable hours, and Connie
herself assumed a new touch of scrupulousness (she was a free lance no
more)--his embrace did not lack ardour. She disengaged herself from his
arms with a victorious laugh.
Her mother waited for her, vigilant but approving--just a little anxious
too.
'Well, Connie, is he very happy?'
'It's all right, mamma.' Her assurance was jovially impudent. 'I can do
just what I like with him!'
'You'll have a job sometimes,' opined Mrs. Fricker.
'That's half the fun.' She thought a moment, and then spoke with a
startling candour--with an unceremoniousness which Mrs. Fricker would
have reproved twenty-four hours earlier. 'I'm very fond of him,' she
said, 'but Beaufort's a funk in the end, you know.' She swung herself
off to bed, singing a song. Her title to triumph is not to be denied.
Peggy Ryle had furnished the opportunity, but the use of it had been all
her own. A natural exultation may excuse the exclamation with which she
jumped into bed:
'I knew Mrs. Trevalla wouldn't be in it if I got a fair show!'
Beaufort Chance stayed a while alone in the drawing-room before he went
down to join Fricker over a cigar. He had enjoyed Connie's company that
night; the truth stood out undeniable. She had made him forget what her
company meant and would cost--nay, more, what it would bring him in
worldly gain. She had made him forget, or cease to wish for, Trix
Trevalla. She had banished the thought of what he had been and once had
hoped to be. If she could do that for him, would he be unhappy? For a
moment he almost prayed to be always unhappy in the thing which he was
now set to do. For after an hour of blindness there came, as often, an
hour of illumination almost unnatural. In the light of it he saw one of
the worst things that a man can see. Enough of his old self and of his
old traditions remained to make his eyes capable of the vision. He knew
that the worst in him had been pleased; he saw that to please the worst
in him threatened now to become enough. His record was not very good,
but had he deserved this? It is useless to impugn the way of things. The
knowledge came to him that, as he had more and more sought the low and
not the high, so more and more the low had become sufficient to him. The
knowledge was very bitter; but with a startled horror he anticipated the
time when he would lose it. He had lost so much--public honour, private
scruples, delicacy of taste. He had set out with at least a respect for
these things and with that share in them which the manner of his life
and the standard of his associates imparted to him. They were all gone.
He was degraded. He knew that now, and he feared that even the
consciousness of it would soon die.
There was no help for it. In such cases there is none, unless a man will
forsake all and go naked into the wilderness. To such a violent remedy
he was unequal. It did not need Fricker's smooth assumption that all was
settled to tell him that all was settled indeed. It did not need
Fricker's welcome to the bosom of the family to tell him that of that
family he would now be. Fricker's eulogy of his daughter was
unnecessary, since soon to Beaufort too she would seem a meet subject
for unstinted praise.
Yet Fricker did not lack some insight into his thoughts.
'I daresay, old fellow,' he remarked, warming his back before the
fire--which he liked at nights, whatever the season of the year--'that
this isn't quite what you expected when you began life, but, depend upon
it, it's very good business. After all, we very few of us get what we
think we shall when we set up in the thing. Here am I--and, by Jove, I
started life secretary to a Diocesan Benevolent Fund, and wanting to
marry the Archdeacon's daughter! Here are you--well, we know all about
you, Beaufort, my boy! Old Mervyn hasn't quite done the course he set
out to do. Where's our friend Mrs. Trevalla? What's going to happen to
pretty Peggy Ryle?' He dropped his coat-tails and shrugged his
shoulders. 'Between you and me, and not for the ladies, we take what we
can get and try to be thankful. It's a queer business, but you haven't
drawn such a bad ticket after all.'
Beaufort Chance took a long pull of whisky-and-soda. The last idea of
violent rebellion was gone. Under the easy tones, the comfortably
pessimistic doctrine (there is much and peculiar comfort in doctrine of
that colour), proceeding from the suave and well-warmed preacher on the
hearthrug, there lay a polite intimation of the inevitable. If Fate and
the Frickers seemed to mingle and become indistinct in conception, why,
so they did in fact. Whose was the whip on the peg--Fate's or Fricker's?
And who gives either Fate or Frickers power? Whatever the answer to
these questions, Beaufort Chance had no mind that the whip should be
taken down.
'I've nothing to complain of,' said he, and drank again.
Fricker watched the gulps with a fatherly smile.