unless, indeed, Trix were an innocent instrument in Mrs. Bonfill's hands. Trix was looking the part very well.
'I wish you'd do me a great kindness,' he said presently. 'Come to dinner some day.'
'Oh, that's a very tolerable form of benevolence. Of course I will.'
'Wait a bit. I mean – to meet the Frickers.'
'Oh!' Meeting the Frickers seemed hardly an inducement.
But Beaufort Chance explained. On the one side Fricker was a very useful man to stand well with; he could put you into things – and take you out at the right time. Trix nodded sagely, though she knew nothing about such matters. On the other hand – Beaufort grew both diplomatic and confidential in manner – Fricker had little ambition outside his business, but Mrs. and Miss Fricker had enough and to spare – ambitions social for themselves, and, subsidiary thereunto, political for Fricker.
'Viola Blixworth has frightened Mrs. Bonfill,' he complained. 'Lady Glentorly talks about drawing the line, and all the rest of them are just as bad. Now if you'd come – '
'Me? What good should I do? The Frickers won't care about me.'
'Oh, yes, they will!' He did not lack adroitness in baiting the hook for her. 'They know you can do anything with Mrs. Bonfill; they know you're going to be very much in it. You won't be afraid of Viola Blixworth in a month or two! I shall please Fricker – you'll please the women. Now do come.'
Trix's vanity was flattered. Was she already a woman of influence? Beaufort Chance had the other lure ready too.
'And I daresay you don't mind hearing of a good thing if it comes in your way?' he suggested carelessly. 'People with money to spare find Fricker worth knowing, and he's absolutely square.'
'Do you mean he'd make money for me?' asked Trix, trying to keep any note of eagerness out of her voice.
'He'd show you how to make it for yourself, anyhow.'
Trix sat in meditative silence for a few moments. Presently she turned to him with a bright friendly smile.
'Oh, never mind all that! I'll come for your sake – to please you,' she said.
Beaufort Chance was not quite sure that he believed her this time, but he looked as if he did – which serves just as well in social relations. He named a day, and Trix gaily accepted the appointment. There were few adventures, not many new things, that she was not ready for just now. The love of the world had laid hold of her.
And here at Mrs. Bonfill's she seemed to be in the world up to her eyes. People had come on from big parties as the evening waned, and the last hour dotted the ball-room with celebrities. Politicians in crowds, leaders of fashion, an actress or two, an Indian prince, a great explorer – they made groups which seemed to express the many-sidedness of London, to be the thousand tributaries that swell the great stream of its society. There was a little unusual stir to-night. A foreign complication had arisen, or was supposed to have arisen. People were asking what the Tsar was going to do; and, when one considers the reputation for secrecy enjoyed by Russian diplomacy, quite a surprising number of them seemed to know, and told one another with an authority only matched by the discrepancy between their versions. When they saw a man who possibly might know – Lord Glentorly – they crowded round him eagerly, regardless of the implied aspersion on their own knowledge. Glentorly had been sitting in a corner with Mrs. Bonfill, and she shared in his glory, perhaps in his private knowledge. But both Glentorly and Mrs. Bonfill professed to know no more than there was in the papers, and insinuated that they did not believe that. Everybody at once declared that they had never believed that, and had said so at dinner, and the very wise added that it was evidently inspired by the Stock Exchange. A remark to this effect had just fallen on Trix's ears when a second observation from behind reached her.
'Not one of them knows a thing about it,' said a calm, cool, youthful voice.
'I can't think why they want to,' came as an answer in rich pleasant tones.
Trix glanced round and saw a smart, trim young man, and by his side a girl with beautiful hair. She had only a glimpse of them, for in an instant they disentangled themselves from the gossipers and joined the few couples who were keeping it up to the last dance.
It will be seen that Beaufort Chance had not given up the game; Lady Blixworth's pin-pricks had done the work which they were probably intended to do: they had incited him to defy Mrs. Bonfill, to try to win off his own bat. She might discard him in favour of Mervyn, but he would fight for himself. The dinner to which he bade Trix would at once assert and favour intimacy; if he could put her under an obligation it would be all to the good; flattering her vanity was already a valuable expedient. That stupidity of his, which struck Viola Blixworth with such a sense of its density, lay not in misunderstanding or misvaluing the common motives of humanity, but in considering that all humanity was common: he did not allow for the shades, the variations, the degrees. Nor did he appreciate in the least the mood that governed or the temper that swayed Trix Trevalla. He thought that she preferred him as a man, Mervyn as a match. Both of them were, in fact, at this time no more than figures in the great ballet at which she now looked on, in which she meant soon to mix.
Mrs. Bonfill caught Trix as she went to her carriage – that smart brougham was in waiting – and patted her cheek more materno.
'I saw you were enjoying yourself, child,' she said. 'What was all that Beaufort had to say to you?'
'Oh, just nonsense,' answered Trix lightly.
Mrs. Bonfill smiled amiably.
'He's not considered to talk nonsense generally,' she said; 'but perhaps there was someone you wanted to talk to more! You won't say anything, I see, but – Mortimer stayed late! He's coming to luncheon to-morrow. Won't you come too?'
'I shall be delighted,' said Trix. Her eyes were sparkling. She had possessed wit enough to see the vacillation of Mrs. Bonfill. Did this mean that it was ended? The invitation to lunch looked like it. Mrs. Bonfill believed in lunch for such purposes. In view of the invitation to lunch, Trix said nothing about the invitation to dinner.
As she was driven from Grosvenor Square to the flat by the river, she was marvellously content – enjoying still, not thinking, wondering, not feeling, making in her soul material and sport of others, herself seeming not subject to design or accident. The change was great to her; the ordinary mood of youth that has known only good fortune seemed to her the most wonderful of transformations, almost incredible. She exulted in it and gloated over the brightness of her days. What of others? Well, what of the players in the pantomime? Do they not play for us? What more do we ask of or about them? Trix was not in the least inclined to be busy with more fortunes than her own. For this was the thing – this was what she had desired.
How had she come to desire it so urgently and to take it with such recklessness? The words of the shabby man on the boulevards came back to her. 'Life has played with you; go and play with it. You may scorch your fingers; for the fire burns. But it's better to die of heat than of cold.'
'Yes, better of heat than of cold,' laughed Trix Trevalla triumphantly, and she added, 'If there's anything wrong, why, he's responsible!' She was amused both at the idea of anything being wrong and at the notion of holding the quiet shabby man responsible. There could be no link between his life and the world she had lived in that night. Yet, if he held these views about the way to treat life, why did he not live? He had said he hardly lived, he only worked. Trix was in an amused puzzle about the shabby man as she got into bed; he actually put the party and its great ballet out of her head.
CHAPTER III
IN
