Mammon and Co Part 17

He had gone up to town by an early train, and Kit, who disliked getting up early almost as much as she disliked going to bed early, followed him later. He was out when she reached Park Lane, and it was close on lunch-time when she heard a cab drive up. Next moment the butler had announced Mr. Alington. The two looked just like brothers.

"Good-morning, Lady Conybeare," he said very smoothly. "Your husband asked me to lunch here, as we have some business to talk over. I was to give you a message, if he was not yet in, asking you not to wait lunch for him. He might"--Mr. Alington appeared to ponder deeply for a moment--"he might be detained."

This meeting was intensely annoying to Kit. She had told Jack that she had had enough of the mine-man, and it was very tiresome to have this _tete-a-tete_, and quite particularly disagreeable after their last meeting to see him alone. However, she put on the best face she could to the matter, and spoke with familiar geniality.

"Oh, Jack is always late," she said. "But why he should think it necessary to ask me not to wait for him is more than I can say. I suppose you have been imbuing him with business habits. Jack a business man! You have no idea how droll that seems to his wife, Mr. Alington.

Let us lunch at once; I am so hungry. Kindly ring that bell just behind you, please."

Mr. Alington sat still a moment, and then rose with deliberation, but did not ring.

"I am lucky to find you alone, Lady Conybeare," he said, "for the truth is, there was a little matter I wanted to talk over with you."

Kit rose swiftly from her seat before he had finished his sentence, and rang the bell herself. It was answered immediately, and as the man came into the room, "Indeed; and what is that?" she said. "Is lunch ready, Poole? Let us go in, Mr. Alington. I am always so hungry in London and elsewhere."

Kit could scarcely help smiling as she spoke. She had no intention whatever of talking any little matter over with Mr. Alington, especially if it was the one she had in her mind; and she could not help feeling amused by the simplicity of the means by which she had put the stopper on the possibility of a private talk. She wished to hold no private communications with the man. She had done her part in launching him, for the convenience of Jack; she had given him to understand, or rather given other people to understand, that he was an _ami de la maison_, and she washed her hands of him. He was very kindly going to make Jack's fortune in return for benefits received, but he had distinctly said that the arrangement was one of mutual advantage. It was give and take; he was on the same level as your grocer or bootmaker, except that those tradesmen gave in the hopes of eventually taking, while Mr. Alington took as he went along. At the best he was a sort of cash-down shop, and Kit did not habitually deal with such. She did not consider him dangerous, and she was so well pleased with her own adroitness that she very unwisely determined to drive her advantage home.

So, as he followed her through the folding-doors into the dining-room, "What is the little matter you referred to?" she asked again, feeling perfectly secure in the presence of servants in the room.

Mr. Alington closed his eyes for a moment before he took his seat, and murmured a brief grace to himself. He opened them a moment afterwards with a short sigh, and Kit's _riposte_ to his thrust did not seem to have ruffled or disconcerted him in the least.

His broad butler-like face was as serene as ever.

"It was a matter which I thought you might have preferred to discuss alone," he said; "but as you seem to wish it, I will tell you here. The other night when I had the pleasure of playing baccarat with you, you won on a natural----"

A flush of anger rose to Kit's face. The man was intolerable, insolent, before the servants, too; but as he spoke she felt a sudden fear of him.

He looked her full in the face with mild firmness, breaking his toast with one hand, while with the other he manipulated his macaroni on the end of his fork.

"Stop!" said Kit, quick as the curl of a whiplash.

But Mr. Alington did not wince.

"You will be so kind, then, as to give me the opportunity of speaking to you privately about it," he said. "I am quite of your way of thinking.

It is far better discussed so. I quite see."

Kit felt herself trembling. She was not accustomed to such bland brutality at the hands of anyone. She would have been scarcely more surprised if her stationer or butcher had suddenly appeared in the room, and urged the propriety of a private talk. Alington, it is true, had been to her house, had a right to consider himself a guest; but that made it even more intolerable. Apparently he had no idea of the distinction between guests and guests, and it would be a shocking thing if this were overlooked. Meantime he went on eating macaroni with a superb mastery over that elusive provender, in silence, since Kit did not reply.

The dining-room was one of the most charming rooms in London, rather dark, as dining-rooms should be, the walls of a sober, self-tint green, and bare but for some half-dozen small pictures of the Barbizon school, which, if alienable, would long ago have been alienated to supply the chronic scarcity of money in the Conybeare establishment. They were wonderful examples, but Kit hated them, since they could not be sold.

"They make me feel like a man on a desert island with millions of gold sovereigns and no food," she had said once. The chairs were all armed, and upholstered in green brocade, and the thick Ispahan carpet made noiseless the feet of those "who stand and wait." Partly this, partly the distraction of her thoughts, brought it about that red mullets were at Kit's elbow a full ten seconds unperceived. She could not make up her mind what to do. She bitterly repented having said "Stop!" just now to Alington, for the vehemence of her interjection gave herself away. She had practically admitted that something had occurred on the night they played baccarat which she earnestly desired not to have discussed in public. A fool could have seen that, and with all her distaste for the man she did not put this label to him. And with odiously familiar deference he had agreed with her; he had a.s.sumed the right of discussing things with her in private.

Again, she could not quarrel with him. Conybeare's application to business, his early visits to the City, his frequent conferences with Alington, his unexampled preoccupation, all showed for certain that there were great issues at stake, for he would not give himself such trouble for a few five-pound notes. All this pa.s.sed through her mind very rapidly, and at the end of ten seconds she leaned back in her chair, saw the red mullets, and took two of them.

"Yes, you are quite right," she said; "we will talk of it afterwards.

Ah, here is Jack! Morning, Jack!"

Jack nodded to her and Alington, and took his seat.

"You have heard the news, Kit?" he asked.

"Lots; but which?"

"Toby is engaged to Miss Murchison. The Croesum told me in the train this morning. She is coming to see you this afternoon."

Kit for the moment forgot her other worries.

"Oh, how delightful!" she cried. "Dear Toby! And Lily is most charming, and so pretty! Do you know her, Mr. Alington?"

"I have met her at your house, I think. And an heiress, is she not?"

"I believe she has a little money," said Kit. "One has heard people say so. But mere gossip, perhaps."

Jack laughed low and noiselessly.

"That will be so pleasant for Toby," he observed, "if it is true."

Kit sighed.

"What a pity that it is not the custom for a bride to settle money on her husband's brother, Jack!" she said.

"Yes, or give it in order to escape death duties. What opportunities for unusual kindness some people have!"

"Well, it is charming, anyhow," said Kit. "I noticed they went for a stroll in the punt yesterday afternoon, which I thought promising. A punt is so often a matrimonial agency. You aren't afraid of tipping it up like an ordinary boat. You proposed to me in a racing pair, or something skittish--do you remember, Jack?--and I said I'd do anything in the world if you would only row straight to sh.o.r.e. And you kept me to it. Hardly fair, was it, Mr. Alington?"

Mr. Alington smiled like an elderly clergyman at a school feast, and his smile was suggestive of his liking to see young people happy.

"I wonder the Matrimonial News doesn't keep a few punts for the use of clients," went on Kit, in nervous anxiety to get lunch over as quickly as possible. She had made up her mind about Alington in the last half-minute or so, and was desirous of getting a word with him, her intention being to deny his charge point-blank, and in turn accuse him.

"Punts and evening hymns do wonders with people who can't quite make up their minds to propose."

Mr. Alington looked mildly interested at this surprising information, and he appeared to be weighing it carefully as he ate his quail before giving it his support.

"They might keep a small choir and a harmonium as well," went on Kit. "I believe all the respectable middle-cla.s.s go to evening church on Sunday and sing hymns very loud out of one book, and propose to each other afterwards. Dear Toby, how happy he will be! How nice--how exceedingly nice!" she murmured sympathetically.

Alington and Kit had by this time finished lunch, and she rose.

"I can't stop and see you eat, Jack," she said. "Come, Mr. Alington; we will go and have coffee, and Jack will join us."

On these hot July days Kit often sat in the inner hall, which was cooler than the drawing-room. It was a charming place of palms and parquetry, with furniture at angles, and a general atmosphere of coolness and sequestered corners. Coffee came immediately with cigarettes, and Kit took one. Mr. Alington, however, explained that except on Sundays he did not allow himself to smoke till after dinner.

"I find a little abstinence very helpful," he gave as his modest excuse.

The servants withdrew, and Kit began playing with her subject.

"I am afraid you thought me very abrupt at lunch," she said, "but I have a great objection to discussing matters, which it is conceivable might be better kept private, before servants, and when you mentioned baccarat I thought it better to stop you, even at the risk of seeming very brusque. You will hardly believe it, Mr. Alington"--here her voice sank to a low confidential murmur--"you will hardly believe it, but only a few weeks ago I saw a man cheat at baccarat at a friend's house. Very distressing, was it not? I talked it over with a friend, and we found it most difficult to decide what to do. That sort of thing might so easily get about; it is so dangerous to speak before servants."

"I think you talked it over with Lady Haslemere?" remarked Mr. Alington.

Kit was stirring her coffee and smiling sweetly. She was getting on beautifully. But at these words and their peculiarly calm delivery her hand stopped stirring, and her smile faded.

"I think also you agreed to ask the suspect to play again, in order to watch him," went on the impa.s.sive butler. "Was it not so, Lady Conybeare? And I think the suspect was none other than myself."