' she began timidly.
'Beaufort Chance! Yes, better if he didn't!' His lips, grimly closing again, were a strong condemnation of his colleague.
'They're kind people, really.'
'They're entirely beneath you – and beneath your friends.'
There was no mistaking the position. Mervyn was delivering an ultimatum. It was little use to say that he had no right because he had made her no offer. He had the power, which, it is to be feared, is generally more the question. And at what a moment the ultimatum came! Must Trix relinquish that golden dream of the Dramoffsky Concessions, and give up those hundreds – welcome if few – from the Glowing Star? Or was she to defy Mervyn and cast in her lot with the Frickers – and with Beaufort Chance?
'Promise me,' he said softly, with as near an approach to a lover's entreaty as his grave and condescending manner allowed. 'I never thought you'd make any difficulty. Do you really hesitate between doing what pleases me and what pleases Chance or the Frickers?'
Trix would have dearly liked to cry 'Yes, yes, yes!' Such a reply would, she considered, have been wholesome for Mortimer Mervyn, and it would have been most gratifying to herself. She dared not give it; it would mean far too much.
'I can't be actually rude,' she pleaded. 'I must do it gradually. But since you ask me, I will break with them as much and as soon as I can.'
'That's all I ask of you,' said Mervyn. He bent and kissed her hand with a reassuring air of homage and devotion. But evidently homage and devotion must be paid for. They bore a resemblance to financial assistance in that respect. Trix was becoming disagreeably conscious that people expected to be paid, in one way or another, for most things that they gave. Chance and Fricker wanted payment. Mervyn claimed it too. And to pay both as they asked seemed now impossible.
Somehow life appeared to have an objection to being played with, the world to be rather unmalleable as material, the revenge not to be the simple and triumphant progress that it had looked.
Trix Trevalla, under pressure of circumstances, got thus far on the way towards a judgment of herself and a knowledge of the world; the two things are closely interdependent.
CHAPTER VI
CHILDREN OF SHADOW
'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
