Mammon and Co.

by E. F. Benson

Jack Conybeare was still on the sunny side of thirty-five. He and Kit had been married some seven years, and had no children, a privation for which they were touchingly thankful. They had, both of them, quite sufficient responsibilities, or, to speak more precisely, liabilities; and to be in any way responsible for any liabilities beyond their own would have seemed to them a vicarious burden of the most intolerable sort. Their own, it is only fair to add, sat but lightly on them; Kit, in particular, wore hers most gracefully, like a becoming mantle. Chronic conditions, for the most part, tend to cease being acutely felt, and both she and Jack would far sooner have had a couple of thousand pounds in hand, and fifty thousand pounds in debt, than not to have owed or owned a penny. Kit had once even thought of advertising in the morning papers that a marchioness of pleasing disposition was willing to do anything in the world for a thousand pounds, and Jack had agreed that there was something in the idea, though the flaw in it was cheapness: you should not give yourself away. He himself had mortgaged every possible acre of his property, and sold all that was available to sell, and the close of every day exhibited to a wondering world how it was possible to live in the very height of fashion and luxury without any means of living at all. Had he and Kit sat down for a moment by the side of a road, or loitered in Park Lane, they would probably have been haled, by the fatherly care of English law, to the nearest magistrate, for that they had no apparent means of sustenance. Luckily they never thought of doing anything of the kind, finding it both safer and pleasanter to entertain princes and give the best balls in London.

A want of money is an amiable failing, common to the saint and the sinner alike, and does not stand in the way of the accusé acquiring great popularity. Jack, it is true, had no friends, for the very simple reason that he did not in the least want them; Kit, on the other hand, had enough for two.

Her rules of life were very uncomplicated, and they daily became more so. "You can't be too charming," was the chief of them. She took infinite pains to make herself almost universally agreeable, and was amply repaid, for she was almost universally considered to be so. This embracing desire had its drawbacks, but Kit's remedies for them quite met the case. For instance, when any woman whom she did not happen to remember by sight greeted her, as often happened, effusively at some evening party, Kit always kissed her with a corresponding effusion; if a man in the same circumstances did the same, she always said reproachfully, "You never come to see us now." In this way her total ignorance of who they were became a trivial thing; both were charmed, and when people are charmed, their names become of notable insignificance.

The finest inventions of all are the simplest, and the simplicity of Jack's modus vivendi rivalled its own subtlety and the subtlety of Kit's. He loudly professed staunch Conservative principles, always voted with the Bishops in the House of Lords on any question, and had made a special study of guano and Church ritual. A method exposed always sounds a little crude, but the crudity often belongs not to the method but to its exposure. Certainly Jack's method answered, and no method can do more. The mammon of unrighteousness, not being deceived, but not being shocked at such duplicity, thought him very clever, and the unmammon of righteousness, being deceived, was not shocked at other things which were occasionally in the air about him. With perfect justice they labelled the world scandal-loving and uncharitable when they were told these other things, and asked Jack to dinner, to show that they did not believe them. A further proof of his wisdom may be seen in the fact that he accepted such invitations, and if he and Kit left early, it was not because they were going on elsewhere to play round games, but because the laying of foundation-stones and the opening of bazaars had been so fatiguing.

But though both he and Kit were fond of appearing other than they were to sets other than their own, they were on the whole singularly unsecretive to each other. In the first place, they both knew that the other was reasonably sharp, and while each respected the other for this sharpness, they realized that any attempt to deceive would probably be detected. In the second place, a far better reason, even on the lowest grounds, on which they took it, they knew that mutual lying is a rotten basis for married life. Each allowed the other a wide latitude, and in consequence they were excellent friends, and always lent each other a helping hand if there was any scheme of mutual aggrandizement to be put through. There were just a few questions that Kit never put to Jack, nor he to her; each had a cupboard, a very little one, to which there was only one key, and they were wise enough never to ask each other for it. Such, hitherto, had been their married life—a great deal of frankness and confidence, and an absolute respect for the privacy of the other's innermost sanctum.

To-night there was a beautiful scheme in the egg ready to be hatched, or neither of them would have dreamed of dining in the City at half-past seven. Attention was just beginning to be directed to West Australian gold-mining, and the public had awoke to the fact that there were large fortunes to be made, or lost, in that direction. Thus Jack, having no fortune to lose, went into it with a light heart; he was clearly marked out as one of those who were destined to win. In pursuance of the laudable idea of avoiding a really serious financial crisis, they were dining at the Drapers' Company, where they would meet a Mr. Frank Alington, who had a whole fleet of little paper companies, it was understood, ready to be floated. Jack had met him once, and had taken this opportunity of meeting him again, hoping to find bread upon the waters. It was to be Kit's business to make herself inimitably agreeable, ask him to Park Lane, and leave the rest to Jack. She, of course, would have a finger in the profits.

Kit was delighted to take the part assigned to her. Jack had looked into her bedroom as she was dressing, and through the half-open door had said, "Very gorgeous, please, Kit," and she had understood that this was a really important operation, and that a dazzling wife was part of the apparatus necessary. She had not meant to dress very particularly; plush and cairngorms, she had once said to Jack, was the sort of thing the City really appreciated, but she was always ready, within reason, to do as Jack wished, and she told her maid to get out a dress that had arrived from Paris only that morning. But Jack's remark to her as she was dressing was the sort of hint that Kit always took. It cost so little to be pleasant in these ways, and how wise it was to obey one's husband in such matters! She had intended to keep this dress for a royal dinner a week hence, but she put it on without a murmur, and, indeed, her wifely devotion had its immediate reward.

For the dress! That surpassing man Jean Worth had said once, not to herself, but to some other customer, and no friend of hers, that it was a real pleasure to dress Lady Conybeare; and Lady Conybeare, on her side, kindly considered it a real pleasure to be dressed by Worth. Thus the gratification was mutual, and it must have been a consolation to the dressmaker, if he had to whistle long and loud for his cheque, to have his artistic pleasure to fall back on. Now Kit—a rare accomplishment—could stand orange, and to stand orange means to be admirably suited to orange. She loved it herself, Jean genuinely agreed with her, and in this dress four tints of orange chiffon, Dantè, faisan doré, Vésuve, and pomme d'or, blazed together. Even Worth, the greatly daring, had inwardly felt a qualm of audacity, but how admirably, when Kit was inside the gown, had his audacity succeeded! "Réussi!" he would have sighed had he seen it. Over all was a fine net of pale mandarin yellow, to which was tacked a cusped acanthus pattern of sequins; and Kit, looking at herself long and critically in her wardrobe glass, said "Lor'!" Her glorious red-gold hair, full of dusky flames, of a tint after which Nature blindly gropes where Paris leads the way, was the point to which Worth had worked, and his success was beyond all approval or praise.

Next came the question of jewels, and Hortense, her maid, with the artist's eye, thought that pearls and pearls only, pas un diamant, would be consummately chic. Kit saw what she meant, and from an artistic point of view devoutly agreed, but she turned up her nose at the suggestion. "We don't want to be chic, my good woman," she said. "We want to hit 'em in the eye. The rubies, Hortense!"

Now, the rubies were really fine, glorious molten lakes of colour, almost barbarically splendid, and being entailed, they had been forced to remain in the Conybeare coffers. But if ever a woman and her dress were designed and built for rubies, Kit and this creation were. Hortense, moved beyond her wont, ejaculated "Mon Dieu!" as the gorgeous baubles were clasped on Kit's dazzling neck; and her mistress, being as candid with herself as she was with her husband, smiled serenely at her own reflection.