There was a loud and cheerful knock on the door.
'Visitors! When people come, how do you account for me?'
'I say nothing. I believe you're taken for my daughter.'
'Not since you trimmed your beard! Well, it doesn't matter, does it? Let him in.'
The visitor proved to be nobody to whom Peggy needed to be accounted for; he was Tommy Trent, the smart, trim young man who had danced with her at Mrs. Bonfill's party.
'You here again!' he exclaimed in tones of grave censure, as he laid down his hat on the top of the red-leather book on the little table. He blew on the book first, to make sure it was not dusty.
Peggy smiled, and Airey relit his pipe. Tommy walked across and looked at the débris of the loaf. He shook his head when Peggy offered him tea.
A sudden idea seemed to occur to him.
'I'm awfully glad to find you here,' he remarked to her. 'It saves me going up to your place, as I meant. I've got some people dining to-night, and one of them's failed. I wonder if you'd come? I know it's a bore coming again so soon, but – '
'I haven't been since Saturday.'
'But it would get me out of a hole.' He spoke in humble entreaty.
'I'd come directly, but I'm engaged.'
Tommy looked at her sorrowfully, and, it must be added, sceptically.
'Engaged to dinner and supper,' averred Peggy with emphasis as she pulled her hat straight and put on her gloves.
'You wouldn't even look in between the two and – and have an ice with us?'
'I really can't eat three meals in one evening, Tommy.'
'Oh, chuck one of them. You might, for once!'
'Impossible! I'm dining with my oldest friend,' smiled Peggy. 'I simply can't.' She turned to Airey, giving him her hand with a laugh. 'I like you best, because you just let me – '
Both words and laughter died away; she stopped abruptly, looking from one man to the other. There was something in their faces that arrested her words and her merriment. She could not analyse what it was, but she saw that she had made both of them uncomfortable. They had guessed what she was going to say; it would have been painful to one of them, and the other knew it. But whom had she wounded – Tommy by implying that his hospitality was importunate and his kindness clumsy, or Airey by a renewed reference to his poverty as shown in the absence of pressing invitations from him? She could not tell; but a constraint had fallen on them both. She cut her farewell short and went away, vaguely vexed and penitent for an offence which she perceived but did not understand.
The two men stood listening a moment to her light footfall on the stairs.
'It's all a lie, you know,' said Tommy. 'She isn't engaged to dinner or to supper either. It's beastly, that's what it is.'
'Yours was all a lie too, I suppose?' Airey spoke in a dull hard voice.
'Of course it was, but I could have beaten somebody up in time, or said they'd caught influenza, or been given a box at the opera, or something.'
Airey sat down by the fireplace, his chin sunk on his necktie. He seemed unhappy and rather ashamed. Tommy glanced at him with a puzzled look, shook his head, and then broke into a smile – as though, in the end, the only thing for it was to be amused. Then he drew a long envelope from his pocket.
'I've brought the certificates along,' he said. 'Here they are. Two thousand. Just look at them. It's a good thing; and if you sit on it for a bit, it'll pay for keeping.' He laid the envelope on the small table by Airey's side, took up his hat, put it on, and lit a cigarette as he repeated, 'Just see they're all right, old chap.'
'They're sure to be right.' Airey shifted uncomfortably in his chair and pulled at his empty pipe.
Tommy tilted his hat far back on his head, turned a chair back foremost, and sat down on it, facing his friend.
'I'm your business man,' he remarked. 'I do your business and I hold my tongue about it. Don't I?'
'Like the tomb,' Airey acknowledged.
'And – Well, at any rate let me congratulate you on the bread-and-butter. Only – only, I say, she'd have dined with you, if you'd asked her, Airey.'
His usually composed and unemotional voice shook for an almost imperceptible moment.
'I know,' said Airey Newton. He rose, unlocked the safe, and threw the long envelope in. Then he unlocked the red-leather book, took a pen, made a careful entry in it, re-locked it, and returned to his chair. He said nothing more, but he glanced once at Tommy Trent in a timid way. Tommy smiled back in recovered placidity. Then they began to talk of inventions, patents, processes, companies, stocks, shares, and all manner of things that produce or have to do with money.
'So far, so good,' ended Tommy. 'And if the oxygen process proves commercially practicable – it's all right in theory, I know – I fancy you may look for something big.' He threw away his cigarette and stood up, as if to go. But he lingered a moment, and a touch of embarrassment affected his manner. Airey had quite recovered his confidence and happiness during the talk on money matters.
'She didn't tell you any news, I suppose?' Tommy asked.
'What, Peggy? No, I don't think so. Well, nothing about herself, anyhow.'
'It's uncommonly wearing for me,' Tommy complained with a pathetic look on his clear-cut healthy countenance. 'I know I must play a waiting game; if I said anything to her now I shouldn't have a chance. So I have to stand by and see the other fellows make the running. By Jove, I lie awake at nights – some nights, anyhow – imagining infernally handsome poets – Old Arty Kane isn't handsome, though! I say, Airey, don't you think she's got too much sense to marry a poet? You told me I must touch her imagination. Do I look like touching anybody's imagination? I'm about as likely to do it as – as you are.' His attitude towards the suggested achievement wavered between envy and scorn.
Airey endured this outburst – and its concluding insinuation – with unruffled patience. He was at his pipe again, and puffed out wisdom securely vague.
'You can't tell with a girl. It takes them all at once sometimes. Up to now I think it's all right.'
'Not Arty Kane?'
'Lord, no!'
'Nor Childwick? He's a clever chap, Childwick. Not got a sou, of course; she'd starve just the same.'
'She'd have done it before if it had been going to be Miles Childwick.'
'She'll meet some devilish fascinating chap some day, I know she will.'
'He'll ill-use her perhaps,' Airey suggested hopefully.
'Then I shall nip in, you mean? Have you been treating yourself to Drury Lane?'
Airey laughed openly, and presently Tommy himself joined in, though in a rather rueful fashion.
'Why the deuce can't we just like 'em?' he asked.
'That would be all right on the pessimistic theory of the world.'
'Oh, hang the world! Well, good-bye, old chap. I'm glad you approve of what I've done about the business.'
His reference to the business seemed to renew Airey Newton's discomfort. He looked at his friend, and after a long pause said solemnly:
'Tommy Trent!'
'Yes, Airey Newton!'
'Would you mind telling me – man to man – how you contrive to be my friend?'
'What?'
'You're the only man who knows – and you're my only real friend.'
'I regard it as just like drinking,' Tommy explained, after a minute's thought. 'You're the deuce of a good fellow in every other way. I hope you'll be cured some day too. I may live to see you bankrupt yet.'
'I work for it. I work hard and usefully.'
'And