Mammon and Co.

For the present there was a lull in the Carmel transaction, and after a very short spell at the ledgers Mr. Alington closed them with a sigh. There were several receipts lying on his table, and he took them up, read each, and docketed it. One was for a considerable sum of money paid to a political agency. He hesitated a moment before putting the docket on it, and finally wrote on the top left-hand corner:

"Baronetcy."

CHAPTER III

LILY DRAWS A CHEQUE

Toby was sitting after breakfast in the dining-room of his house in town reading the Times. It had been settled for him by Lily before their marriage that he was to have some sort of a profession, and, the choice being left to him, he had chosen politics. He was proposing to stand for a perfectly safe borough in about a month's time, and though hitherto he had known nothing whatever about the public management of his country's affairs, since he was going to take a hand in them himself, he now set himself, or had set for him, day by day to read the papers. He had just got through the political leaders in the Times with infinite labour, and had turned with a sigh of relief for a short interval to the far more human police reports, when Lily came in with a note in her hand.

"Good boy," she said approvingly, and Toby rustled quickly back to the leaders again.

"A most important speech by the Screamer," he announced, honouring by this name a prominent member of the Cabinet. "He seems to suggest an Anglo-Russo-Germanic-French-Italian-American alliance, and says with some justice that it ought to be a very fairly powerful combination. It is directed, as far as I can make out, against Mr. and Mrs. Kruger."

Lily looked over his shoulder for a moment, and saw the justice of the résumé.

"Yes, read it all very carefully, very carefully indeed, Toby," she said. "But just attend to me a moment first; I shan't keep you."

Toby put down the paper with alacrity. The Sportsman tumbled out from underneath it, but he concealed this with the dexterity bred of practice.

"What is it?" he asked, vexed at the interruption, you would have said, but patient of it.

"Toby, speaking purely in the abstract, what do you do if a man wants to borrow money from you?" she asked.

"In the abstract I am delighted to lend it to him," he said. "In the concrete I tell him I haven't got a penny, as a rule."

"I see," said Lily; "but if you had, you would lend it him?"

"Yes; for, supposing that it is the right sort of person who asks you for money, it is rather a compliment. It must be a difficult thing to do, and it implies a sort of intimacy."

"And if it is the wrong sort of person?" asked Lily.

"The wrong sort of person has usually just that shred of self-respect that prevents him asking you."

Lily sighed, and pulled his hair gently, rather struck by his penetration, but not wishing to acknowledge it.

"Door-mats – door-mats!" she observed.

"All right; but why be personal? Who wants to borrow money from you, Lily?"

"I didn't say anyone did," she replied, throwing the note of her envelope into the grate. "Don't be inquisitive. I shall ask abstract questions if I like, and when I like, and how I like. Read the Screamer's speech with great care, and be ready by twelve. You are going to take me to the Old Masters."

She went out of the room, leaving Toby to his politics. But he did not at once pick up the paper again, but looked abstractedly into the fire. He did not at all like the thought that someone was borrowing money from his wife, for his brain involuntarily suggested to him the name of a possible borrower. Lily had held a note in her hand, he remembered, when she came into the room, and it was the envelope of it, no doubt, which she had thrown into the grate. For one moment he had a temptation to pick it up and see whether the handwriting confirmed his suspicions, the next he blushed hotly at the thought, and, picking up the crumpled fragment from the grate with the tongs, thrust it into the hottest core of the fire.

But the interruption had effectually destroyed his power of interesting himself in this world-wide combination against Mr. and Mrs. Kruger. There was trouble in the air; what trouble he did not know, but he had been conscious of it ever since he had gone down one day late in last December to stay with Kit and Jack at Goring, and they had been blocked by the snow a couple of stations up the line. He had noticed then, and ever since, that there was something wrong between Kit and his brother. Kit had been unwell when they were there: she had hardly appeared at all during those few days, except in the evenings. Then, it is true, she had usually eaten and drank freely, screamed with laughter, and played baccarat till the small hours grew sensibly larger. But underneath it all lay an obvious sense of effort and the thundery, oppressive feeling of trouble – something impossible to define, but impossible not to perceive. In a way, supposing it was Kit who wanted to borrow money from his wife, it would have been a relief to Toby; he would have been glad to know that cash alone was at the bottom of it all. He feared – he hardly knew what he feared – but something worse than a want of money.

He sat looking at the fire for a few minutes longer, and then, getting up, went to his wife's room. She was seated at the table, writing a note, and Toby noticed that her cheque-book was lying by her hand. He abstained carefully from looking even in the direction of the note she was writing, and stood by the window with his broad back to the room.

"Lily," he said, "will you not tell me who it is who wants to borrow money from you? For I think I know."

Lily put down her pen.

"Toby, you are simply odious," she said. "It is not fair of you to say that."

Toby turned round quickly.

"I am not a bit odious," he said. "If I had wanted not to play fair, I could have looked at the envelope you left in the dining-room grate. Of course, I burnt it without looking at it. But I thought of looking at it. I didn't; that is all."

Lily received this in silence. For all his freckles, she admired Toby too much to tell him so. And this simple act, necessitated by the crudest code of honour, impressed her.

"That is true," she said. "All the same, I don't think it is quite fair of you to ask me who it was."

Toby came across the room, and sat down by the fire. The suspicion had become a certainty.

"Lily, if it is the person I mean," he said, "it will be a positive relief to me to know it. Why, I can't tell you. I haven't spoken to you before about the whole thing; but since we went down to Goring on that snowy day I have had a horrible feeling that something is wrong. Don't ask me what: I don't know – I honestly don't know. But if it is only money I shall be glad."

Lily directed an envelope and closed it.

"Yes, it is Kit," she said at length.

"Ah, what have you done?"

"I have done what she asked."

"How much?" The moment after he was ashamed of the question; it was immaterial.

"That is my own affair, Toby," she said.

Toby poked the fire aimlessly, and a dismal, impotent anger against Kit burned in his heart.

"Borrowing! Kit borrowing!" he said at length.

"Of course, I haven't let her borrow," said Lily quietly, sealing the note.

"You have made her a present of it?"

"Oh, Toby, how you dot your i's this morning!" she said. "Shall I unseal what I have written, and put a postscript saying you wish it to be understood that so much interest is charged on a loan? No, I am talking nonsense. Come, it is time to go out. Kit is coming to see me this afternoon, soon after lunch, so we must be back before two."

"Kit coming to see you? What for?"

"She asked me if I would be in at three. I know no more. Oh, my good child, why look like a boiled owl?"

The boiled owl got up.

"It is a disgrace," he said; "I've a good mind to tell Jack."

"If you do," remarked Lily, "I shall get a divorce – that's all!"

"I'm not certain about the law in England," said Toby, with emphasis, "but I don't believe for a moment that they'd give it you for such a reason. But make the attempt. Try – do try."