Mammon and Co.

"At what?"

"At what she said, and at what I said – perhaps most of what I said. She told me she was going to try not to be such a brute. And, upon my soul, I thought it was an excellent plan. I said I would try too."

Toby laughed.

"There's your whisky," he said. "Hang it all! I haven't got any money. You'll have to pay for it yourself, Jack – and mine, too. So you and Kit made a bargain?"

Jack glanced round the room, which had emptied of all its well-dressed, weary occupants. He and Toby were alone.

"Yes, we made a bargain. The worst of it was that neither of us know how to try, so we consulted Lily. Did it ever occur to you, Toby, that you have married the nicest girl that ever breathed?"

"I had an idea of it. It was Kit's doing, too. Funny, that."

"Well, Lily told us. She said some damned clever things. She said that turning over a new leaf meant not even looking back once to the old one. You know, Toby, that's devilish good. I thought she'd tell us to think what brutes we had been, and repent. Not a bit of it. We've just got to go straight on. Don't grin; I'm perfectly serious."

"I'm sure you are. I was only grinning at the notion of Lily telling you to repent. You know, if there are two things that girl is not, Jack, they are a preacher and a prig."

"You're quite right, and I always thought that to be good you had to be either one or the other, and probably both. She tells me it is not necessarily so, and so Kit and I are going to set to work. We are not going to run up any more huge bills which we can't pay; we are not going to invent or to listen to scandalous stories about other people; and we are going to flirt. We suggested that, and Lily thought it would do to begin upon. Also I was to tell the truth about Alington's bankruptcy. I did that. Really, Toby, it's very easy to tell the truth: it requires no effort of the imagination. But the truth is a brute when it comes out."

Toby looked up smiling, but Jack was perfectly grave and serious.

"Yes, you may think I don't mean it," he said, "but I do. We mean to reform, in fact; God knows it is high time. Kit and I have lived in what I suppose you would call rather a careless manner all these years, and we have come to an almighty, all-round smash. We had a very serious talk – we had never talked seriously before, as far as I can remember – and we are going to try to do better."

Jack got up and went to the window, and leaned out for a moment into the warm summer night. Then he turned into the room again.

"We are indeed," he said. "Good-night, Toby;" and he walked off.

Ted Comber had been to the opera that night, and was going on to a dance. They had been doing the "Meistersingers," and it was consequently after twelve when he got out. The dance was in Park Lane, and he turned into the Bachelors' Club to freshen himself before going on. He had spent a really delightful day; for he had lunched with amusing people, had sat an hour listening to Jack Conybeare's examination in the Alington bankruptcy case, and had had the opportunity of telling a very exalted personage about it afterwards, making him laugh for ten minutes, and Ted, who had a fine loyal regard for exalted personages – some people called him a snob – was proportionately gratified. Of course it was too terrible for poor Jack, but it was absurd not to see the light side of it when properly considered.

"I was really so sorry for him I didn't know what to do," he had said to Lady Coniston at dinner. "Isn't it too terrible?" and they had both burst into shrieks of laughter, and discussed the question from every point and wondered how dear Kit took it.

The freshening up in the lavatory of the Bachelors' Club meant some little time and delicacy of touch. He had to be careful how he washed his face, for he had taken pains with it. Certainly the effect was admirable; for the least touch of rouge on the cheek-bone, and positively only the shadow of an antimony pencil below his eyes had given his face the freshness of a boy's. He looked at himself quite candidly in the glass, and said, "Not a day more than twenty-five." For he was no friend of false modesty, and any modesty he might have assumed about himself would have been undeniably false.

All this care for one's appearance, it is true, made a terrible hole in one's time; but if it lengthened one's youth, it was an excellent investment of hours. There was nothing that could weigh against that paramount consideration. He dried his hands, still looking at himself, and put on his rings. A touch of the hairbrush was necessary, and for his hands the file of the nail-scissors. Then he put on his coat again and went into the hall. Jack Conybeare was in the act of coming out of the smoking-room.

Ted had only a short moment for reflection, and almost without a pause he went on, meeting Jack.

"Good-evening, Jack," he said; "are you coming to the Tauntons'? Kit is in the country still, is she not?"

Jack had stopped on seeing him, and looked him over slowly from head to heel; then he walked by him without speaking, and went out.

Ted was only a little amused, and more than a little annoyed. Just now it did not matter much what Jack did, but, being wise in his generation, he did not care about being cut by anybody. The Conybeares would probably pick up again in a year or two, and to be cut by the master of quite one of the nicest houses in London was a bore. Besides, he was in an acme of good-fellowship after his amusing day.

He went on into the smoking-room to look round before proceeding to his dance. Toby was still sitting in the window where Jack had left him. Since their reconciliation a day or two before, Ted had felt most friendly towards him, and he went delicately across the room to him, looking charming.

"I just met Jack in the hall," he said; "he looks terribly tired and old."

Toby bristled like a large collie dog.

"Naturally," he said.

"In fact, he was rather short with me," said Ted plaintively.

This was too much. Toby got up.

"Naturally," he said again.

The poor little butterfly felt quite bruised. Really, the Conybeares had not any manners. It serves so little purpose to be rude to anyone, and it was so easy and repaying to be pleasant. He knew this well, for the whole of his nasty little life was spent in reaping the fruits of being constantly pleasant to people. They asked you to dinner, they asked you to stay at their country houses, and having asked you once they asked you again, because you took the trouble to talk and amuse people. What more can a butterfly want than a sunny garden with flowers always open? Such a simple need! so easy to satisfy!

Well, there was a delicious flower open in Park Lane, and he went on to his dance. He must really give up the Conybeares, he thought; they were becoming too prickly. He had written twice to Kit, and had received no answer. Jack had given him a dead cut; Toby was a bear. And he sighed gently, thinking how stupid it was of the flowers to shut themselves up.

As soon as he had gone, Toby resumed his seat by the window. During the last few months he had touched life in a way he had never done before. To him this business of living had hitherto been a cheery, comfortable affair; the question of taking it seriously, even of taking it at all, had never formally presented itself to him. Then quite suddenly, as it were, as he paddled pleasantly along, he had got out of his depth. The great irresistible forces of life had swept him away, the swift current of love had borne him far out into the great ocean of human experience. Then, still encircled by that, he had seen storm-clouds gather, grim tempests had burst in hail and howling wind, the sea had grown black and foam-flecked. He had seen the tragedy of his brother's home – sin and its wages ruthlessly paid. There were such things as realities. And after that what? Into what new forms would the wreckage be fashioned, these riven planks of a pleasure-boat? But underneath the lightness of Jack's words to-night there had lain, Toby felt, a seriousness which was new. And the change in Kit was more marked still.

Outside, the world rolled on its way, and each unit in the crowd moved to his appointed goal, some of set purpose, others unconscious of it, but none the less on an inevitable way. In the brains of men stirred the thoughts which, for good or ill, should be the heritage of the next generation, part of their instinctive equipment. The vast design was being worked out, unerringly, unceasingly, unhurried and undelayed, through the sin of one, the virtue of another. To fall itself and to fail was but a step towards the ultimate perfection; behind all worked the Master-hand. By strange pathways and chance meetings, by the death of the scarcely born and the innocent, by the unscathed life and health of the guiltiest, by love and beautiful things and terrible things, had all reached the spot where they stood to-day. Devious might be the paths they should hereafter follow, but He who had led them thus far knew.

And as Toby thought on these things, moved beyond his wont, he looked out, and saw with a strange quickening of the blood that in the east already there were signs that out of night was shortly to be born another day.