II

“Why, there’s Mr. Rushworth! Do go over and ask him to join us for coffee.”

Ivy Lexton was smiling at her husband⁠—a delicious, roguish smile. As he smiled back, he told himself with conscious satisfaction that his little wife was far the prettiest woman here tonight.

Her sleekly brushed-back auburn hair, white skin, violet eyes, and slender rounded figure were wont to remind those few of her admirers familiar with the art of Romney of a certain portrait of Nelson’s Emma, spinning.

Ivy’s husband was pleasantly aware that she was not only the prettiest, but also one of the smartest looking, of the women supping at the Savoy tonight. This was the more commendable, from simple Jervis Lexton’s point of view, as they were so hard up⁠—stony-broke, in fact.

He generally did at once anything Ivy asked him to do, but now he waited for a few moments.

“D’you mean that chap we met at the Hamptons? I don’t see him.”

“Don’t be stupid, darling! He’s over in that corner, with two dowdy-looking women, looking bored to death. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to join us for coffee.”

There had come an edge of irritation in her seductive voice. Ivy had a peculiar and very individual intonation, and many a man had found it the most enchanting voice in the world.

At last Lexton rose, just a thought unwillingly. He had been enjoying himself tonight, forgetting the money anxieties which had at last become desperately pressing, while listening to his wife’s gay chatter concerning the well-known people who were also supping at the Savoy this July night.

The young man liked a party of just three friends much better than the big noisy suppers to which he sometimes escorted his wife. In a way it was funny that their host, a grim-looking young doctor named Roger Gretorex, was their friend, for even Lexton realised that, though he and Gretorex were both country-bred, and belonged to the now vanishing old county gentry class, they had nothing else in common.

The host had hardly said a word during the whole evening, either at the theatre, or since they had come on here. So taciturn had he been that Lexton supposed the poor chap was glum because the pretty widow, Mrs. Arundell, whom they were to have brought with them to make a fourth, had fallen out. He knew that Ivy suspected that Gretorex liked Mrs. Arundell quite a little bit. If so, the young man was out of luck, for he was the last sort of chap an attractive widow was likely to fancy.

As he threaded his way between the crowded round tables, there came over Jervis Lexton a queer and very definite feeling of unwillingness to obey his wife. He remembered that he and Ivy had met this man, Miles Rushworth, about three weeks ago at a weekend country house party, and that Ivy had taken quite a fancy to him. But he, Jervis, remembered that he himself had not taken to Rushworth. For one thing, he had thought the man too damn clever and pleased with himself.

Rushworth was, however, an enormously rich man, and Ivy had spent most of the Saturday evening of that long weekend out in the moonlit garden, pacing up and down with him. Late that same night she had told her husband, excitedly, that her new friend had said he thought he could find what Lexton had long been looking for⁠—an easy, well-paid job.

But Ivy’s husband, simple though he might be, had learnt a thing or two since they had joined the ranks of what some call “the new poor.” One was that, though his wife could twist most men round her little finger, it didn’t follow she could make them do much to help him. This time he had been so far wrong that on the Monday morning this chap Rushworth, after motoring them both back to town, when saying goodbye had muttered something to Ivy as to “setting your husband on his feet again.” But this had happened a good three weeks ago, and their new acquaintance had given no further sign of life.

After Lexton had risen from the little round table, the two he had left sitting there kept silence for what seemed, to the woman, a long time. Then suddenly Gretorex exclaimed, in a low tense voice, “How I hate hearing you call that man ‘darling’!”

Ivy Lexton made no answer to that statement. She was picking up the tiny crumbs left by her fairy bread from the side of her plate, and arranging them in a diamond pattern on the tablecloth. But, though she seemed intent on her babyish task, she was angrily, impatiently aware that her companion was gazing at her with unhappy, frowning eyes. His words had cut across her pleasant thoughts⁠—her joyful relief at having seen Miles Rushworth, at knowing that in a few moments he would be here, with her.

“I’m sorry I made this plan about tonight,” she said at last, scarcely moving her lips. “It was stupid of me.”

“It was more than stupid of me to agree to it,” muttered Gretorex savagely. “I’ve never been more wretched in my life than I’ve been tonight!”

She told herself, with a touch of contempt, that what he had just said was not only stupid, but utterly untrue. Why should the presence of her good-humoured, easygoing husband make Roger wretched? But she kept her feeling of irritation in check.

She glanced round at him⁠—it was a pleading, tender glance⁠—and his heart leapt. How wondrous beautiful she was, and⁠—how divinely kind!

And then a curious thing happened to Roger Gretorex. In that softly illumined, flower-scented, luxurious London restaurant, it was as if he saw in a vision the wistful and plain, if intelligent, face of a girl he had known the whole of her short life. Her name was Enid Dent, and she was now twenty-one. Had he not met Ivy Lexton seven months ago, he and Enid Dent would now have been engaged to be married.⁠ ⁠…

So strong was the half-hallucination that he shut his eyes. When he opened them again the vision was gone, and he was hearing the voice which meant more to him than any other voice would ever mean to him in this world murmur gently, “It hasn’t been exactly cheerful for me.”

Impulsively he exclaimed, “You’re an angel, and I’m a selfish brute, Ivy⁠—”

She smiled, but it was a mirthless smile.

“Not a brute, Roger, only just a little selfish. I was a fool to ask you to ask us tonight⁠—”

For the first time this evening Ivy Lexton had uttered a few true, sincere words. She knew now that it had been a stupid act on her part to bring her husband and this strong-natured, not over good-tempered, young man who loved her together this evening. But after all they had to meet now and again! Poor Jervis quite liked Roger Gretorex. Why couldn’t Roger like Jervis, too?

Ivy was really fond of her husband. He was so kindly, so unsuspicious, on the whole so easy to manage, and still so absolutely devoted to her. And yet of late she often thought, deep in her heart, what a glorious life she might be leading now, if Jervis, less or more devoted, had granted her, two years ago, an arranged divorce. There had been a rich young man who had adored her. But Jervis had angrily refused to fall in with her scheme. It had led, in fact, to their only real quarrel. But “all that” was now forgiven and forgotten.

She stole a look at the occupants of the other tables and, as she did so, she felt a sharp stab of envy. They all seemed so prosperous, so carefree! Each woman had that peculiar, indefinable appearance which only a happy sense of material security bestows, each man, in his measure, looked like a lord of life.⁠ ⁠… But what was this Roger Gretorex was saying as he bent towards her? “I sometimes wonder if you really know, dearest, how much I love you?”

The ardent words were whispered low, but she heard them very clearly, and she smiled. Though she was growing very weary of Roger Gretorex, it is always sweet to a woman to feel she is loved as this man loved her.

Still, she felt relieved when she saw her husband, and the three she had sent him for, threading their way through the narrow lane left between the beflowered tables.

Miles Rushworth was leading the little company. He was the kind of man who always does lead the way. Though he was now only two or three tables off, Ivy realised that he had not yet seen her, and so she was able to cast on him a long measuring glance.

Mary Hampton, the woman at whose house they had met, had said that he was a millionaire. The word millionaire fascinated Ivy Lexton. And then all at once she told herself that it was Rushworth, of course it must be, who was the stranger coming into her life.

Miles Rushworth was tall and well built but, had he not kept himself in good condition, he would have been a stout man. He had a healthy, almost a ruddy, complexion; brown eyes; what is called a good nose; a large, firm mouth; and perfect teeth. His short-clipped brown hair was already slightly streaked with grey, though he was only thirty-six.

He was not in, and did not care to be in, what to herself Ivy called “society.” Neither was he nearly so much a man of the world as was, for instance, her own rather foolish husband. Yet Miles Rushworth had that undeniable air of authority, that power of making himself attended to at once, which always spells brains and character, as well as what old-fashioned folk call a good conceit of oneself.

She glanced also, with quick scrutiny, at Rushworth’s guests. They were probably a mother and daughter, and, though dowdily dressed, obviously well-bred women. The older lady was wearing a black lace gown of antiquated make; the lace was caught at her breast with an early-Victorian brooch made of fine diamonds. Hung round her long, thin neck was an emerald necklace. The girl had a pleasant, animated face, and a good figure. Her long hair was still dressed as it had been when she was eighteen⁠—a fact that marked her age as being about seven- or eight-and-twenty. She was wearing an unbecoming pale mauve dress, and there came over Ivy a fear that she might be a widow. Lovely Ivy Lexton shared the elder Mr. Weller’s opinion concerning widows.

The younger lady’s only ornament was a string of real pearls. The pearls, though not large, were beautifully matched.

As Miles Rushworth came close up to the table, Ivy Lexton rose from her chair, and her face broke into an enchanting expression of pleasure and welcoming surprise. As she held out her hand she exclaimed: “Jervis felt sure it was you! Thank you so much for coming over here. It is most kind of your friends to come too.”

Rushworth took her little hand in his strong grasp. He gazed down into her upturned face with a look which, to her at least, proved she had not been mistaken, and that, in spite of his broken promise, already she meant something to him.

He turned round: “May I introduce my friend Mrs. Lexton, Lady Dale?” And then, more lightly, he exclaimed: “Bella, I want you to know Mrs. Lexton!”

As she held out her hand, “Bella” smiled and looked, with unenvious admiration, at the lovely young woman before her. This pleased Ivy, for she had an almost morbid desire that all those about her should like her, feel attracted to her, and think well of her, whatever their relation to herself might happen to be.

A moment later Bella Dale found herself sitting next to a gloomy-looking young man who somehow interested her because he looked clever, as well as gloomy. Jervis Lexton was talking pleasantly, happily, to Lady Dale. As for Miles Rushworth, he had lowered himself into a chair which he had unceremoniously seized from another table, and which he had put a little apart from the rest of the party, and close to Mrs. Lexton.

“I have forgotten all you told me, and what I promised you,” he said in a low tone. “But I only came back to town this morning, and I’ve been fearfully busy all the time I’ve been away.”

He waited a moment, then he asked her what she felt to be a momentous question. “Would your husband take a job away from London?”

A feeling of acute dismay swept over her. It would be dreadful if this big powerful man⁠—powerful in every sense⁠—were to arrange suddenly that she and Jervis should go to live in some dreary, dull town in the north of England! So, after a perceptible pause, she answered frankly, “I don’t think I should like to leave London, and as for my husband, I’m afraid he’d be like a fish out of water, anywhere else.”

Miles Rushworth looked across to where Jervis Lexton was now sipping slowly a liqueur brandy. “The chap looks a regular slacker,” he said to himself contemptuously.

He considered it a tragic thing that the deliciously pretty, sweet-natured, little woman now sitting so close to him that they nearly touched, should be married to “that.”

He heard her whisper hesitatingly, “But Jervis must get something to do very soon now, Mr. Rushworth, or I don’t know what we shall do. We’re so horribly hard up,” and her mouth, that most revealing feature, quivered.

His strong face⁠—the face he believed to be so shrewd, and which was shrewd where “business” was concerned⁠—became filled with warm sympathy.

“That can’t be allowed to go on!” he exclaimed a little awkwardly.

During their last moonlit walk and talk in the dark, scented garden of the house where they had first met, Ivy Lexton had told him the pathetic story of her life. How, when she and Jervis Lexton had first married, they had been quite well off, but that a dishonest lawyer had somehow muddled away all “poor Jervis’s money.”

She had further confessed that now they were really “up against it,” hard-driven as they had never been before.

“An idle man,” she had said, speaking in that tremulous, husky voice which nearly always touched a listener’s heartstrings, “can’t help spending money. I would give anything to get my husband a job!”

Miles Rushworth remembered, now, that pathetic cry from the heart, and he felt much ashamed that he had not attended to the matter ere this. But he had not forgotten this dear little woman, and, had they not met tonight, she would have heard from him within a day or two.

All at once, by what was a real accident, his fingers touched her bare arm. They lay on her soft flesh for the fraction of a minute, and it was as if she could feel the thrill which ran through him.

She did not move, she scarcely breathed. Neither could have said how long it was before those hard, cool fingers slid down and grasped her soft hand. He crushed her hand in his strong grasp, then let it go.

“I suppose you would like Mr. Lexton to start work this autumn?” he said at last. “There isn’t much doing during August and September.”

His voice sounded strangely caressing and possessive, even to himself. But he felt sure that Ivy, a “nice” woman, had no suspicion of how much he had been moved by that casual, unexpected touch.

Miles Rushworth told himself that he must mind his step, for this seductive little creature, God help him, was another man’s wife, and he “wasn’t that sort.” Neither, he would have staked his life on it, was she.

And yet? Was it he?⁠—sensible, prudent, nay, where women were concerned, overcautious⁠—Miles Rushworth, or some tricksy, bold entity outside himself which uttered the words: “By the way, what are you doing next month? If you’re doing nothing in particular, I do wish you’d both join my yachting party. Lady Dale and her daughter are coming, together with two or three others.”

A look of real, almost childlike, joy and pleasure flashed into Ivy Lexton’s face and, once more, the man sitting so closely by her side felt shaken to the depths. Tenderness was now added to the feeling of passionate attraction of which he was already half uncomfortably, half exultantly, aware. How young she looked, how innocent⁠—now, at this moment, like a happy little girl.

“D’you really mean that?” she cried. “I’ve always longed to go yachting! But I’ve never even been in a yacht. Jervis is awfully fond of the sea, too; he was at Cowes when the war broke out!”

“Then that settles it,” exclaimed Rushworth delightedly. “We join the Dark Lady at Southampton on August the 5th! By the way, perhaps I ought to tell you that we’re not going on any specially wonderful trip. We’re only going to cruise about the coast of France. I’m afraid Lady Dale and her daughter will have to leave us fairly soon⁠—they’ve promised to stay with some people near Dieppe.”

“It will be heavenly⁠—heavenly!”

Ivy whispered those five words almost in his ear, for she was exceedingly anxious that Roger Gretorex should hear nothing of this delightful plan. She had promised the young man she would spend a week, during August, alone with him and his mother in the Sussex manor house which was still his own, though all the land up to the park gates had been sold.

As she gave a quick surreptitious glance at the host who was her dangerously jealous lover⁠—even jealous, grotesque thought, of her husband, entirely unsuspicious Jervis⁠—a feeling of sharp irritation again swept over Ivy Lexton.

She told herself angrily that, though Roger Gretorex might belong by birth to grand people (to her surprise he made no effort to keep up with them), he had never been taught to behave as a young man should always behave in pleasant company. Even now, he still had what Ivy called “his thundercloud face,” and he was scarcely paying any attention to the girl sitting by him.

Ivy, not for the first time, realised that she had been a fool indeed to allow herself to become attracted to a man who was so little of her own sort. And yet Gretorex had been such a wonderful wooer! And his ardour had moved and excited her all the more because, at times, he had been as if overwhelmed with what had seemed to her an absurd kind of remorse at the knowledge that the woman he loved was another man’s wife.

Dismissing the distasteful thought of Gretorex from her mind, she turned to Rushworth.

“Don’t say anything to my husband about this delightful plan,” she murmured. “I shall have to bring him round to the idea. You see, he’s so awfully eager to start work at once.”

The lights were now being turned off one by one, so Ivy smiled across at Lady Dale, and rose from the chair which touched that on which Rushworth was still sitting as if lost in a dream.

As, a few moments later, they all stood together outside in the cool night air⁠—all, that is, but Roger Gretorex who, after having uttered a curt good night, had gone back to the now fast-emptying restaurant to pay his bill⁠—Miles Rushworth exclaimed: “We can all squeeze into my car, or, if not, I’ll go outside.”

Ivy was delighted. She very much disliked the spending of any unnecessary ready money just now; and the thought of going home in a crowded omnibus on this fine July night had been unbearable.

In the end it was Jervis Lexton who sat outside by the chauffeur, while inside the car the other four discussed their coming yachting tour.

At last the Rolls-Royce drew up before the shabby-looking, stucco-fronted house in Pimlico, and Rushworth helped Ivy Lexton out of his car with a strong, careful hand.

“Don’t ring,” she said hurriedly; “Jervis has a latchkey. This house belongs to an old servant of the Lexton family; that’s why we are living here.”

As Ivy’s husband opened the door, Ivy’s new friend caught a glimpse of the dirty, gaslit hall, and his heart swelled with mingled disgust and pity. He must get this sweet, dainty little woman out of this horrible place at once⁠—at once. Taking her hand in his, he held it just a thought longer than is perhaps usual even when a man is bidding good night to an exceptionally pretty woman.

Long, long after Jervis Lexton was fast asleep in his crowded little back room, Ivy lay awake on the hard, lumpy, small double bed which took up most of the space in the front room.

She was tired, and with fatigue had come a feeling of depression. Miles Rushworth had said nothing as to their next meeting. He had forgotten her before⁠—he might forget her again. As for Mrs. Thrawn⁠—all that woman had told her might be fudge. The hard, shrewd side of Ivy’s nature came uppermost, and whispered that she had probably been very silly to spend a pound on a fortune-teller, and sillier still to believe in her predictions.

As she lay there, moving restlessly about, for it was a hot night, there came over her a feeling of revolt, almost of despair, at the conditions of her present day-to-day life. She was vividly aware of her own beauty⁠—what beautiful young woman is not? In a certain set, the world of the smart night clubs, she was known as “the lovely Mrs. Lexton.” Further, she was popular, well liked by all sorts of people, women as well as men, and dowered by nature with a keen appreciation of all that makes civilised life decorous, orderly, and attractive.

Unlike some of her friends, she hated and despised Bohemian ways. She had tasted something of what Bohemia can offer her subjects during the few weeks she had spent in the chorus of a musical comedy. Yet now she was condemned⁠—she sincerely believed through no fault of her own⁠—to lead an existence full of sordid shifts, and of expedients so ignoble that even she sometimes shrank from them, while always on her slender shoulders lay the dead weight of her husband, a completely idle, extravagant, and yes, well she knew it, very stupid young man.

With angry distress she now asked herself a question of immediate moment. How was she to procure even the very simplest clothes suitable for life on a yacht? For a long time, now, she had had to pay ready money where she had once been welcome to unlimited credit.

Then in the darkness her face lightened. She had remembered Roger Gretorex! Poor though he was, he could always find money for her at a pinch. He had done so this very morning, and would of course do so again.

Then her face shadowed. Though Roger had his uses, he was becoming a tiresome, even a dangerous, complication in her life. Yet had it not been for him, had he not taken them to the Savoy tonight, she might never again have seen the man on whom now all her hopes centred.

Ivy Lexton had an intimate knowledge of the ugly, sinister sides of human nature. Her own father, a big man of business, had failed when she was seventeen. He had killed himself to avoid legal proceedings which would have led to a term of imprisonment. Their large circle of acquaintances (of real friends they had none) were some kind, some cruel, to the feckless, foolish, still pretty widow, and her lovely young daughter. The widow had soon married again, to die within a year. Ivy, after drifting about rudderless for a while, had obtained the “walking-on” part which had introduced her to an idle, pleasure-seeking, rich class of young men. By the time she was twenty she could have married half a dozen times. Her choice finally fell on Jervis Lexton, partly because he was of a superior social world to the other men who made love to her, but far more because at that time he had been undisputed owner of what had seemed to her a large fortune. Yet that fortune had melted like snow, lasting the two of them barely six years.⁠ ⁠…

Tossing about in her hot bed, Ivy reminded herself with a dawning feeling of hope, almost of security, that dull Lady Flora, who was no gossip, had said, during the weekend they had first met, that Miles Rushworth’s income was over a hundred thousand a year.⁠ ⁠…

As she was drinking her cup of tea the next morning, there was brought up to her an envelope, marked “Personal,” which had come by hand.

Eagerly tearing it open, at once she saw that, in addition to a letter, it contained a small plain envelope:

The Albany,
Friday morning.

My dear Mrs. Lexton,

I have already thought of a job for your husband, but the earliest moment he can begin work would be the third week in September, say a week after our return from our yachting trip. This being so, I hope you will forgive me for sending you the enclosed cheque for a hundred pounds, which he can pay me back at his convenience after he has begun to draw his salary.

I shall be so pleased if you and he will lunch with me tomorrow at the Carlton Grill. We can then make our final arrangements as to meeting at Southampton on August 5th.

As Ivy drew out of the smaller envelope an uncrossed cheque made out to “self,” and endorsed “Miles Rushworth,” tears of joy rose to her eyes.

She ran into the next room, and excitedly told her husband the good news. But she said that the cheque their generous new friend had sent them “on account” was for fifty pounds.

Jervis Lexton leapt out of bed. “How splendid!” he exclaimed. And then, seizing her in his arms, he pirouetted in the tiny space left in the middle of the garret. “You are the cleverest as well as the prettiest little woman in the whole world!” he cried.