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From the Library 

of 
JOCELYN BROOKE 





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PETER 



PETER 



By 
E. F. BENSON 

Author of "Mike," "The Countess of Lowndes Square," etc. 



CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD 

London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne 



First published February, 1922 
Reprinted March, 1922 



PETER 



CHAPTER I 

The two who mattered were lounging on the 
cushioned seat in the low window, of which the 
lower panes had been pushed quite up in order to 
admit the utmost possible influx of air. Little came 
in, for the afternoon was sultry and windless, but 
every now and then some current moved outside, some 
trickle of comparative coolness from the grass and 
trees of the Green Park, sufficient to stir the girl's 
hair. On this high floor of the house of flats London 
seemed far remote ; the isolation as of an aeroplane, 
as of a ship at sea, protected them from external 
intrusion. 

Inside the room a party of four were assembled 
round the tea-table ; the hostess, mother of the girl 
who sat in the window-seat, was wondering, without 
impatience, as was becoming to so chinned and con- 
tented a face, when Mrs. Alston would cease gesticu- 
latmg with her sandwich and eat it, instead of using 
it as a conductor's baton to emphasize her points in 
the discourse to which nobody was listening. The 
sandwich had already a large semicircular bite out of 
it, which penetrated well past its centre, and one 
more application (if she would only make it) to that 
capacious mouth would render it reasonable to suppose 
that she had finished her tea. Mrs. Heaton herself 



2 Peter 

had done so; so also had the stout grey-haired man 
with the varnished face, and as for Mrs. Underwood, 
she had long ago drunk her cup of hot water and re- 
fused any further nourishment. But while Mrs. Alston 
brandished her crescent of a sandwich, and continued 
talking as if somebody had contradicted her, it was 
impossible to suggest a move to the bridge-table that 
stood ready with new packs and sharpened pencils a 
couple of yards away. To the boy and girl in the 
window that quartette of persons seemed of supreme 
unimportance both by reason of their age and of the 
earnest futility of their conversation. They talked 
eagerly about dull things like politics and prices 
instead of being flippant, in the modern style, about 
interesting things. Between them and the younger 
generation there was the great gulf digged by the 
unrelenting years, and set on fire by the war. It was 
not flaring and exploding any longer, but lay there 
in smouldering impassable clinkers. 

"High prices and high wages! " asserted Mrs. 
Alston. "That's what is going to be the ruin of the 
country. I've said over and over again, ' Why not 
have an Act of Parliament to halve the price of food 
and coal and that sort of thing, and another Act, 
unless you could get it into the same one, to reduce 
wages by a half also? ' High prices, so everybody 
allows, are the cause of high wages, and if miners 
and that sort of person could buy their food and their 
clothes at half the price they pay for them now, there 
would not be the slightest difficulty in reducing wages 
by a half, instead of multiplying them by two every 
time that they threaten to strike. Coal ! The root 
of all the trouble is the price of coal. Reduce the 
price of coal by half, and instantly the price of trans- 
port and gas and electricity will go down in a corre- 



Peter 3 

spending manner. Steel, too, and linen; it all 
depends on coal. The English sovereign has to-day 
hardly more than half the buying power it used to 
have. Hardly more than half ! Restore it, then, by 
reducing the price of everything else, including 
wages. Including wages, mind ! Otherwise you will 
find yourselves in a fine mess ! " 

She put the rest of her sandwich into her mouth, 
precisely as Mrs. Heaton had hoped and even fore- 
seen. That made her mouth quite full, and for the 
moment she was as dumb as the adder. Her hostess, 
alert for this psychological occasion, gave a short, 
judicial and fulsome summing-up, addressed to the 
court in general. 

"Well, dearest Mary," she said. "You have 
made me understand it all now, a thing which I never 
did before. So well put, was it not, Mr. Steel, and 
I'm sure quite unanswerable. We must none of us 
attempt to argue with dearest Mary, because she 
would show us at once how stupid it was of us, and I, 
for one, hate to be made a fool of. What a good 
explanation ! Quite brilliant ! So now shall we get 
to our bridge? I expect we're all going to the opera 
to-night, and so we shall all want to dress early. 
Dear me, it's after half-past five already ! Will 
nobody have any more tea ? Quite sure ? Shall we 
cut, then? Oh, there are Nellie and Peter in the 
window. Wouldn't you like to cut in, too, dear? " 

"No, mother, we shouldn't ! " said Nellie. 

The four others swooped to the bridge-table, with 
the swift sure flight of homing pigeons, and hastily 
cut their cards in order to give no time for repentance 
on the part of the two others. 

"You and I, Mr. Steel," said Mrs. Heaton hastily. 
"Quite sure you wouldn't like to play, Peter? " 



4 Peter 

"Quite," said Peter gently. "I should hate it; 
thanks awfully." 

"Well, if you're quite sure you won't — my deal I 
think, partner. Shall it be pennies? " 

Mr. Steel had a whimsical idea. 

"Oughtn't we to halve our points, too, Mary?" 
he said. " Like wages and coal ? " 

For a moment he was sorry he had been so rashly 
humorous, for Mrs. Alston opened her mouth and 
drew in her breath as if to speak on a public platform 
to the largest imaginable audience. Then, luckily, 
she found something so remarkable in her hand that 
her fury for political elucidation was quenched, and 
she devoted the muscles of her athletic mind to con- 
sidering what she would do if the dealer was so rash 
as to call no trumps. Thereafter the great deeps, 
dimly peopled with enemies ready to pounce out of the 
subaqueous shadows and double you, completely sub- 
merged the four of them. They lit cigarettes as in a 
dream, and smoked them in alternate hells and 
heavens. 

Nellie looked at them once or twice, as an 
anaesthetist might look at his patient to see whether 
he was quite unconscious. The third glance was 
convincing. 

" It must be rather sweet to be middle-aged, Peter," 
she said. " For the next two hours they'll think about 
nothing but aces and trumps ! " 

"Sign of youth," said Peter. 

"Why?"' 

"Because they're absorbed, like children. When 
you were little, you could only think about one thing 
at a time. It might be dentist or it might be hoops. 
But you and I can't think about anything for more 
than five minutes together, or care about anything 



Peter 5 

for more than two. I suppose that when you're old 
you recapture that sort of youthfulness." 

He paused a moment. 

"Go on : tell me about it all," he said. 

Nellie did not reply at once, but began plaiting 
her fingers together with the little finger on the top. 
They were slender and small like her face, which 
narrowed very rapidly from the ears downwards to a 
pointed chin. Loose yellow hair, the colour of honey, 
grew low over her forehead, and just below it, her 
eyebrows, noticeably darker than her hair, made high 
arches, giving her face an expression of irony and 
surprise. Her forehead ran straight into the line of 
her nose, and a short upper lip held her mouth in 
imperfect control, for it hinted and wondered, and 
was amused and contemptuous as its mood took it. 
Now it half-smiled; now it was half serious, but 
always it only hinted. 

Peter apparently grew impatient of her silence and 
her finger plaiting. 

" You're making them look like bananas on a street- 
barrow," he observed. 

Nellie smoothed them out and gave an apprecia- 
tive sigh. 

"Oh, I bought two to-day," she said, "and ate 
them in the street. I had to throw the skins away, 
and then I was afraid that somebody would slip on 
them and break his leg." 

"So you picked them up again," suggested Peter. 

"No, I didn't. I was only sorry for anybody who 
might slip on them. I couldn't tell who it was going 
to be, and probably I shouldn't know him " 

"Get on," he said. 

"Oh, about Philip. Well, there it was. He 
asked me, you see, and— of course, he's rather old, 



\ 



6 Peter 

but he's tremendously attractive. And it's so safe 
and pleasant, and I like being adored. After all, 
you and I have talked it over often enough, and you 
knew just as well as I did that I was going to accept 
him if he wanted me." 

Nellie suddenly felt that she was justifying what 
she had done, and she did not mean to do that. What 
she had done justified itself by its own inherent good 
sense. She changed her tone, and began counting 
on those slim fingers which just now had introduced 
the extraneous subject of bananas. 

"Peter, darling," she said. "If his grandfather 
and an uncle and two children of the uncle die, there 
is no doubt whatever that I shall be a peeress. Won't 
that be fun ? I feel that Uncle Robert and the two 
children may easily die; they're the sort of people 
who do die, but I doubt whether grandpapa ever will. 
He's like the man with the white beard; do I mean 
the Ancient Mariner or the Ancient of Days, who 
comes in Ezekiel ? " 

Peter Mainwaring rocked backwards in the 
window-seat with a sudden little explosion of 
laughter that made all the bridge players look up 
as if their heads were tied to the same tweaked string. 
Then they submerged again. 

"Not Ezekiel, anyhow," he said. "It's either 
Daniel or Coleridge. I expect Coleridge." 

"Yes, I mean Coleridge," she said. "The man 
who stops the wedding guest; wedding guest was 
what suggested it. Grandpapa always wanted Philip 
to marry one of those cousins of his, who look like 
tables with drawers in them. Long legs and bumps 
on their faces like the handles of the drawers. But 
Philip wouldn't." 

Peter ran his fingers along the line of his jaw as if 



Peter 7 

to be sure that he had shaved that morning. His 
face for a man of twenty-two was ridiculously smooth 
and hairless; it did not much matter whether he had 
shaved or not. 

"Naturally Philip wouldn't," he said, "but that's 
got nothing to do with it. I don't want to know why 
Philip didn't do something, but why you did. I 
want to see your point, to do you justice. At present 
I feel upset about it. You know quite well that 
there's only one person you ought to marry." 

"You?" asked Nellie, feeling that the question 
was quite unnecessary. 

"How clever of you to guess. You are clever 
sometimes. Oh, I know we've talked it over enough 
and seen how impossible it was, but when it comes 
to your marrying someone else " 

He lit a match and blew it out again. 

"I know," he said. "You've got threepence a 
year, and I've got twopence, so that in the good old 
times we should have been able to buy one pound of 
sugar every Christmas. Even then we should have 
had nothing to eat with it. But what you haven't 
sufficiently reckoned with is the fact that by the time 
I am a hundred and fifty years old, I shall get a 
pension of a hundred and fifty pounds from the 
Foreign Office. But it's rather a long time to 
wait." 

Nellie's eyes suddenly grew fixed and rapt. 

"Oh, Peter, one moment!" she whispered. 
"Look quickly at mamma's face. When that holy 
expression comes on it, it always means that she is 
intending to declare no trumps. So when I'm play- 
ing against her, if it's my turn first I always declare 
one no trumps, and then she has to declare two. 
Wait one second, Peter." 



8 Peter 

"No trumps," said Mrs. Heaton. 

"There, I told you so ! " said Xellie. "Yes; it is 
rather long to wait, though I don't mean to say that 
a hundred and fifty isn't a very pleasant age, dear. 
The people in Genesis usually lived five hundred years 
before they married, and begat sons and daughters. 
Anyhow, I shall be a widow before you're a 
hundred and fifty, and then we shall be engaged for 
three hundred and fifty years more, and then 
we shall totter to the altar. I can't help talking 
drivel; it's all too serious to take seriously. By the 
way, I shall be richer than you eventually, for when 
mamma dies I shall have two thousand a year, but 
that won't be for two thousand years. We have been 
born too soon, Peter I " 

Peter thought this not worth answering, but lift- 
ing one of his knees, nursed it between his clasped 
hands in silence. For her loose honey-coloured hair, 
he had a crisp coal-blackness; he was tall for her 
small slim stature, and his lips were set to definite 
purposes, whereas hers were malleable to adapt them- 
selves to any emotion that might waywardly blow on 
her. But both, in compensation for differences that 
were complementary, were triumphantly alike in the 
complete soullessness of their magnificent youth; 
without violation of any internal principle they might, 
either of them, shoot up singing with the lark, or pad 
and prowl with the ruthless hunger of the tiger, or 
burrow with the mole. They were Satyr and Hama- 
dryad, some ancient and eternally young embodi- 
ment of life, with whim to take the place of conscience, 
and the irresponsible desire of wild things to do duty 
for duty, and impulse to take the place of reason. 
Each, too, had developed to an almost alarming 
degree that modern passion for introspection, which 



Peter 9 

is an end in itself, and like a barren tree, yields no 
fruit in the ways of action or renunciation. 

Peter hugged his knee, and his eye grew hazy 
and unfocused in meditation. 

"Am I in love with you, do you think ? " he asked 
at length. 

She laughed, quite disregarding the ears of the 
bridge players. With Peter she was more herself 
than with anyone else, or even than when alone. 

"Oh, that's so like you," she said, "and so won- 
derfully like me. Certainly you're not in love with 
me; you're not in love with anybody. You never 
have been; you never will be. You're fonder of me 
than of anybody else, but that's a very different 
thing." 

"But how do you know I'm not in love with 
you?" he asked. "I may be. You're not so un- 
attractive. Why shouldn't I be in love with you? " 

"It's obvious you aren't. To begin with, you 
don't feel the smallest jealousy of Philip. Besides, 
though you so kindly say that I'm not so unattractive, 
you're the one person who really sees and notes and 
mentions my imperfections. You wouldn't be so 
critical of me if you were in love. And then, as I 
said, you're not jealous of Philip." 

"Good Lord, how could I be jealous of Philip? " 
asked he. " I should have to want to be Philip before 
I could be jealous of him, and I wouldn't be Philip, 
even as things stand, for anything in the world. 
Besides, you don't really think him so tremendously 
attractive though you said so just now. You said 
that out of pure conventionality, not out of convic- 
tion." 

Some momentary perplexity, like a cloud on a 
sunny windy day of spring bowled its shadow over 



10 



Peter 



her face, and creased a soft perpendicular furrow 
between her eyebrows. 

"Peter, I think I want to become conventional," 
she said, "and, if you wish, I will confess I was 
practising for it when I said that. Oh, my dear, 
we're all human, cast in a mould and put in a cage, 
if you don't mind mixed metaphors. I'm going to 
marry in the ordinary way, just because girls do 
marry. Mamma married, so did my two grand- 
mammas, and four great-grandmammas, and eight 
great-great-grandmammas. In fact the further you 
go back, the commoner marriage seems to have been. 
Some awful human hereditary spell has been cast 



on me." 



Peter leaned forward, bright-eyed and faun-like. 

"Break it ! " he said. "Exorcise it ! Spells don't 
exist excepit for those who allow themselves to be 
bound by them. The fact is we all weave our own 
spells." 

" But if I did refuse now, what then ? " said she. 
"If you don't obey conventions, you must have con- 
viction to take their place, and I haven't got any. 
Besides, if I don't marry I shall become an old maid, 
unless I die young. Oh, we are all in a trap, we girls. 
There are three awful alternatives to choose from, and 
I dislike them all. I don't want to die young, but if 
I live to be sixty I've got to be a grandmother or a 
stringy old maid." 

"You've got to be stringy, anyhow, at sixty," said 
Peter. 

" Not at all. Grandmothers are usually plump and 
comfortable : it is great aunts who are stringy. And 
grandmothers remain young, I notice, whereas elderly 
maiden ladies are only sprightly. I think that it's 
because they cling to youth, and there's nothing so 



Peter n 

ageing as to cling to anything. If you want to 
retain anything, the best plan is to drop it, and then 
it clings to you instead." 

"That's rather ingenious," said Peter. "You may 
go on about it for a minute." 

"I was going to. It's perfecdy true. All the 
people who don't eat potatoes and sweets for fear of 
getting fat become elephants, like mamma, who lives 
on cracknel biscuits." 

"Does she?" said Peter with deep interest. 
"How wonderful of her." 

"And all the people who take immense care of 
themselves die at the age of forty, because they are 
clinging to life, while those who break every ordin- 
ance of health never die at all. And all the people 
who lay themselves out to be brilliant are crashing 
bores " 

"Oh yes; proved," said Peter. "Let's go on to 
something else. What's to happen to me when you 
marry ? " 

"Nothing," said Nellie. "Why should it? 
You'll go on being quite different from anybody else. 
That's a career in itself. You aren't human, any- 
how, however many great-grandmammas you may 
have had. You're a wild thing, partly domesticated, 
and when you're tired of us all, you go waving your 
tail, and walking in the wet woods, and telling 
nobody. Kipling, you know. Then you come back 
rather sleepy and pleased, and allow us to put a blue 
riband round your neck and tickle you under the 
chin, and then you lie down on a cushion in front of 
the fire and purr. You don't purr at us, though, you 
purr at yourself." 

"Lor ! " said Peter. "All that about me ! " 

Nellie pushed back her hair from her forehead, 



12 



Peter 



and again plaited her fingers together. But this time 
it was no dehberative, meditative process, but a swift 
unconscious action. 

"Yes, my dear, and there's more, too," she said. 
"It's my swan-song, remember, for soon I am going 
to become ordinary and conventional. I used to go 
in the wet woods, too, you know, though we never 
met each other there. But that has been the bond 
between us, up till now we have been completely 
independent. You're going to remain so, but not I. 
Oh, Peter, there was a bond ! My dear, do you think 
that I'm rather mad? I have serious doubts about it 
myself." 

"You always were rather mad," said he. "But 
go on ; sing your swan-song." 

"Then don't look as if you had taken a guinea 
stall to hear me," she said. "Where had I got to? 
Oh, yes. There was a bond; you know it yourself. 
I've never been conscious of anybody else as I've 
been conscious of you, nor have you ever been con- 
scious of anyone else as you've been conscious of me. 
You've never been in the least in love with me, nor 
have I with you. But we're the same kind of person, 
and one doesn't often see the same kind of person as 
oneself. Do you understand at all, or am I simply 
reading out of my own book ? " 

He was silent a moment. 

"Nellie, would you marry me if I were rich?" 
he asked. 

She made a gesture of impatience. 

"How on earth can I tell? " she said. "If you 
were rich you would be quite a different person." 

"No, I shouldn't " 

"Oh, Peter, how stupid you are," she said. "And 
how frightfully Victorian, That is so shallow. Wealth 



Peter 13 

is just as much part of a man or a woman as brains 
or beauty. I don't say that a girl loves a man for 
his brains, or his money, or his beauty, but they all 
make a part of him. Wealth isn't an accident; it's 
an attribute. A poor man — I'm not talking about 
you and me, but only speaking in the abstract — may 
be the same in character and charm as a rich man, 
but what a gulf money makes between them ! Let 
one man be poor, and another, his absolute double 
in every way, be rich. They cease to be doubles 
at once." 

"But if you happened to love the coster- 
monger " began Peter. 

"We can leave that out, because neither of us has 
the slightest idea what love means." 

"How about the bond you spoke of, then?" 
asked he. "Hasn't that got anything to do 
with it? " 

She considered this, and then laid her hand on 
his arm. 

"If I could choose now, this minute," she said, 
" in what relationship we should stand to each other, 
I would choose you as my brother. I haven't got 
one; I should like to have one tremendously. And 
yet, if I might have it all just the way I liked, I 
think I should have you for my sister. I don't so 
much want you to take care of me as I want to take 
care of you. I want " 

"Oh, come now," said Peter. 

"It's true, though." 

They had turned themselves about in the window- 
seat, so as to secure for this surprising conversation 
a greater privacy from the party at the bridge- 
table, and were leaning out of the window. A 
hundred feet below Piccadilly roared and rattled, but 

B 



14 



Peter 



here the clatter of it was shorn of its sharp edges ; 
it was as if a stir of bees was swarming in some hive 
down there. Seen like this from above, passengers 
and vehicles alike were but crawling dots and blots; 
everything, from the swiftest motor down to the 
laziest loiterer, seemed to be drowsily and sound- 
lessly sauntering. Often had Peter and Nellie leaned 
out here looking on the traffic at the base of the cliff, 
capturing for themselves a certain sense of isolation. 
Even leaning out they could see nothing of the pre- 
cipitous cliff side of the house, for a couple of feet 
below the window a stone cornice jutted out some 
ten or twelve inches, and beyond the edge of that the 
nearest visible objects below were the tops of motor 
buses and the hats of the foot passengers along the 
pavements. So still was the air that now, when 
Peter flicked the ash off his cigarette, it floated down, 
still cohering, till it dwindled into invisibility. He 
followed its fall with that detached intentness which 
the surface mind gives to the ticking of a clock or 
the oscillation of some flower-head, when the whole 
psychic attention is focused elsewhere ; and it seemed 
that Nellie, as far as her surface mind went, was 
trotting in harness with him, for though he had 
not hinted at what occupied his eyes, scarcely know- 
ing it himself, she was equally intent. 

"I've lost sight of it, Peter," she said, breaking 
the silence of a whole minute. 

"Of what?" he asked. 

"Of your cigarette end. You were watching it 
too. Don't pretend that you weren't." 

"Well, if I was, what then?" he asked. 

"Nothing particular. I only felt you were watch- 
ing it — just the bond." 

He shifted himself again. Hitherto, as they 



Peter 15 

leaned out, his left shoulder touched hers. Now he 
broke the contact. 

"I think that's about the extent of the bond," 
he said. "And your marrying Philip shows pre- 
cisely what sort of value you put on it. You've 
made it clearer than you know, for you've defined 
your feelings for me as being a desire to have a 
brother, or rather a sister to take care of. I don't 
think that's worth much. You defined it further by 
saying that you couldn't tell whether you would 
marry me or not if I were rich, because if I were, 
I should be a quite different person. If the quality 
of the bond would be affected by that, it must be of 
remarkably poor quality, and you're quite right to 
break it. When you began talking about the bond 
I thought you might be going to say something 
interesting, something I didn't know, something that, 
when you stated it, I should recognize to be true. 
If that's all your swan has got to sing it might as 
well have been a goose." 

Nellie's eyebrows elevated themselves up under 
the loose yellow of her hair. 

"Peter dear, are you quarrelling with me? " she 
asked . 

"Yes. No. No, I'm not quarrelling. But the 
whole thing is such a bore. Where's my tail, and 
where are the wet woods ? " 

vShe leaned her chin on her hands, that lay along 
the window sill. 

"I wish you were in love with me," she said. 

"I'm extremely glad that I'm not," said he. 
"Otherwise I suppose I should want to be Philip, 
or, as the madrigal says, some other * favoured 
swain.' But for you to talk about a bond between 
us is the absolute limit. You want everything your 



i6 Peter 

own way, and expect everybody else to immolate 
himself, thankfully and ecstatically, on your beastly 
altar." 

"So do you," murmured Nellie. "We all do." 

"I? How do you make that out?" demanded 
Peter. 

" Because you object to my marrying Philip when 
you haven't the smallest desire to have me yourself. 
If you knew tlTat I should say ' Yes,' supposing 
you asked me to jilt Philip and marry you, you 
wouldn't ask me to. You want me to marry nobody 
and not to marry me yourself. That's not good 
enough, you know." 

Peter's mouth lengthened itself into a smile, and 
broadened into a laugh. 

"It's a putrid business," he said. "Why 
shouldn't I take a neat header from the window and 
have done with it? I'm twenty-two, and already I 
think the whole affair is rot. And if it doesn't amuse 
me now, when is it going to amuse me ? It was 
even more amusing during the war, when one came 
back for a fortnight's leave before going out to that 
hell again. One did grab at pleasure then, because 
in all probability one would be blown to bits very 
soon afterwards. But now that one is not going 
to be blown to bits very soon afterwards the whole 
seasoning has gone out of it. No, not quite. I want 
to be admired. What is love? Good Lord, what is 
love? As I haven't the slightest idea, the best thing 
I can do is to grab at pleasures." 

"Or the worst," suggested Nellie, rather sen- 
tentiously. 

"Now get off the high horse," said Peter. "Or, 
rather, don't attempt to get on it. You can't, any 
more than I. Let's be comfortable. Marry your silly 



Peter 17 

Philip, and I'll— I'll Shall I take to drink ? No, 

that wouldn't do, for people would say I was trying 
to drown my despair at your marriage. I haven't 
got feelings of that sort, and I should hate anybody 
to think that I had. I loathe being pitied, anyhow, 
and to be pitied for something you don't suffer from 
would be intolerable. And though you will remain 
just the same to me after you're married, and I shall 
certainly remain the same, our relations will be 
altered." 

Nellie let her eyes flit over him, never quite 
alighting. They skimmed over his crisp hair, over 
the handsome, smooth, soulless profile, over his 
shoulders, over the knee he was nursing, over the 
hiatus where white skin showed between his rucked- 
up trouser and a drooping sock. At this moment 
she, with the knowledge of the definite step that she 
had taken in life by engaging herself to Philip 
Beaumont, felt far older and more experienced than 
he. She, anyhow, could look ahead and see a placid, 
prosperous life in front of her, whereas Peter, a 
year older than she, was still as experimental as a 
boy. All the same, if he wanted anything, he had 
remarkable assiduity in the pursuit of it until he 
caught it, but nothing beyond the desire of the 
moment was to him worth bothering about. Her 
own prudence, her own commitment of herself she 
knew to be a development of to-day and yesterday, 
and now it seemed suddenly to have aged and con- 
solidated her. But she had no answer for that voice 
crying in the wilderness "What is love?" Or was 
there some sort of signpost by the wayside enveloped 
in mist? She passed over that point. 

"If it really all seems to you so putrid," she 
said, "I can't imagine why you don't, as you say. 



i8 Peter 

take a header into the street. But you've no intention 
of doing anything of the sort. You would firmly 
resist any attempt of mine to tip you out. You like 
life quite passably as it is, you know, and also you 
do expect something more from it. In fact, I never 
saw anyone so thoroughly unlikely to give up living 
or to run any risk that could reasonably be avoided. 
You say it's a putrid business, but really you find 
it a pleasant one." 

Peter sighed. 

"Oh, yes, it will have to do," he said. "Don't 
tip me out, Nellie. But don't, on the other hand, 
think that I cling so desperately to life." 

"Not desperately, but instinctively. It would be 
silly of anybody to throw up a hand that may contain 
some glorious ace without looking very carefully 
through it. Everyone goes on playing and clutching 
at the new deals until he is sure that there isn't an 
ace in the pack for him. Indeed, it's when you've 
found the ace that you don't value the rest of the 
hand so much." 

"I don't follow. Explain," said Peter. 

"Well, this kind of thing. For instance, if you 
found the ace, that is to say, if you fell tremendously 
in love, you might not care about the rest of the 
hand. If the adorable was in my bedroom, two 
windows off, and if she was locked in there, and 
if the house was on fire " 

"Any more ' ifs ' ?" asked Peter. 

"Not one. But supposing all these things, you 
would instantly get out on to that cornice, at peril 
of your life, and shuffle your way along it. You 
would have to be with her. You wouldn't give two 
thoughts as to what might happen to you." 

Peter thought this over. 



Peter 19 

"I should be a consummate ass, then," he re- 
marked. "A fellow with a grain of sense would go 
down the passage and bash the door in." 

"But let's pretend that for some reason you 
couldn't. If the only way of reaching the room 
v/as along the cornice you would go." 

Peter looked at the ledge. 

"And if I got there in safety, what then?" he 
asked. "I couldn't carry her back along the ledge." 

"But that wouldn't prevent your going," said she. 
"Whatever the risk to yourself was, and however 
useless your going was, you would go." 

Peter was silent a m^oment, frowning. 

"I feel as if all this has happened before," he 
said. "Do you know that feeling? Did we ever 
sit here before and talk about just this?" 

"Not that I remember. No, I'm sure we never 
have. Isn't it odd, that sensation? Does it seem to 
you like remembrance of a previous occasion, or a 
presentiment of a future one? " 

"Or a slightly faulty action of the two lobes of 
the brain?" said Peter. "What were we talking 
about? Aces?" 

"Yes. That's what I mean about throwing the 
rest of your hand away for the sake of an ace." 

Peter looked at his watch. 

"I must go," he said. "I've got to get home to 
dress, and rush back to the Ritz to dine early before 
the opera." 

"Oh, not just yet," said she. "But I wish you 
wouldn't live in South Kensington. Why do you ? " 

Peter had a direct glance and a direct answer for 
this. 

"Because it's cheaper living with my father and 
mother than being on my oAvn," he said. "Also " 



20 



Peter 



"Well?" she asked. 

" I was going to say because they like having me 
with them," said he. "But I don't think that's true, 
so I didn't say it. I mean, if I had plenty of money 
I should take a flat of my own, quite regardless of 
whether they liked to have me with them." 

Nellie gave a little sigh, with a click of impatience 
at fhe end of it. 

"There's an odd kind of honesty about you," she 
said. "You state that sort of thing quite baldly, 
whereas I should conceal it. If I had been you I 
should have said that I lived at home because my 
mother liked having me with her. It wouldn't have 
been true, but I should have said it. Very likely 
by saying it often I should have got to believe it." 

"Nobody else would have," remarked Peter. 

"You're rather a brute, my dear," said she. "Go 
away to South Kensington." 

"I'm going. But about aces for one second more. 
Have you found your ace, Nellie? Don't bother to 



answer." 



"That is spoken like a rather spiteful woman," 
was Nellie's perfectly justifiable rejoinder. 

"Maybe. I'm your spiteful sister," said Peter. 

He walked gracefully and gently over to the card- 
table. 

"Good-bye, Mrs. Heaton," he said. "Nellie and 
I have had a lovely talk. I hope you've won every 
rubber. "- 

"And three aces, thirty," said Mrs. Heaton. 
"Good-bye, dear Peter. I suppose you'll be at the 
Opera to-night. Parsifal. My deal ? So it is." 



CHAPTER II 

Peter descended from these heights into the hot dusty 
well of the streets, and soon was on his way home to 
dress and return to the Ritz, where an early dinner 
preceded the opera and any other diversions that 
might present themselves. On this sweltering June 
evening the top of a bus was a cooler progression 
than a taxi, besides advancing the sacred cause of 
economy, which he had just confessed was more real 
to him than that of filial piety, and at Hyde Park 
Corner he could catch a conveyance that would deposit 
him not fifty yards from his father's house. Cool- 
ness and economy were sufficiently strong of them- 
selves to make him board it with alacrity, and the 
detachment of a front seat just suited the meditative 
mood which his talk with Nellie had induced. 

Peter knew himself and her pretty well, and with 
the admirable contributions she had made to their 
discussion there was little to puzzle out, but much to 
appraise and estimate. The notion that the news of 
her engagement had been a blow of any sharp or 
stunning quality could be at once dismissed, for never 
had he known so well, as when she, earlier in the 
day, had communicated the news of her engagement 
to him over the telephone (that was like her), how 
whole-heartedly he was not in love with her, and how 
unintelligibly alien to him, as she had pointed out, 
was that emotion. During the last year which had 
witnessed a very decent flowering of intimacy between 
him and her, there had never been, on either side, 

21 



22 Peter 

the least attempt at love-making; their relations had 
been wholly free from sentiment, and not once had 
either of them tripped or stuttered over the foreign 
use of love-language. But in ways wholly unsenti- 
mental they had certainly arrived at some extremely 
close relation of intimacy; there had emphatically 
been a bond between them, which to his mind her 
engagement, if it did not actually loosen it, would 
shift, so to speak, on to a new place ; the harness must 
be worn elsewhere. If it was to be maintained, he, 
at any rate, must accustom himself to its new adjust- 
ment. She had defined that comradeship this after- 
noon in a way that was rather surprising, for the ideal 
relation of him to her, apparently, was that of a 
brother, or, with greater precision, that of a sister. 
That had not struck him before, but even when first 
presented, it did not in the least puzzle him. Indeed, 
it satisfactorily accounted for that elimination of sex 
which had always marked their intimacy. She had 
not sought the male element in him, nor he in her the 
female. So far he was in complete agreement with 
the casual conclusion they had jointly arrived at, but 
at that point Peter detected the presence of something 
that seemed to show a lurking fallacy somewhere. 
For he had no doubt that if he had been rich, he 
would before now have proposed to her, and in spite 
of her provision that, since riches were an attribute 
of a man and not an external accident, they turned 
him into a different person, and that thus she could 
not tell whether she would have accepted him or not, 
he did not, for himself, believe that she would have 
hesitated in doing so. Finally, as material to medi- 
tate upon, came her firm statement that though 
Peter did not want or intend to marry her, he objected 
to anybody else doing so. With the extreme frank- 



Peter 23 

ness with which he habitually judged any criticism on 
himself, he instantly admitted that there was a great 
deal to be said for Nellie's assertion. When it was 
stated brutally like that, he recognized the justice of 
her outline. She might have made a caricature of 
him, but her sketch contained salient features, the 
identity of which, as he contemplated this scribble 
of her inspired pencil, he could not disclaim. With- 
out doubt she had caught a likeness; more tersely she 
had "got him." Even as he acknowledged that, he 
felt a resentment that she had so unerringly compre- 
hended him, and shown him to himself. He enjoyed, 
rather than otherwise, his own dissection of himself, 
without bias or malice, but he felt less sure that when 
Nellie was the dissector he welcomed so deft an 
exposure. 

The retrospect had been sufficiently absorbing to 
make him unaware that, somewhere in Knights- 
bridge, the top of the bus had become a strenuous 
goal for travellers. Every seat was occupied, and 
beside him a young man had planted himself in the 
vacant place and was talking to a girl who had 
plumped herself into a seat two tiers behind his. 
Peter instantly jumped up. 

"Let me change places with your young lady," 
he said, "and then you'll be together and talk more 
conveniently." 

The change was made with a tribute of simpering 
gratitude on the part of the "young lady," and Peter, 
with laurels of popularity round his straw hat, took 
the single place. He knew perfectly well that he had 
disturbed himself from no motive of kindliness; he 
did not in the least want to please either the man or 
the girl. His motive had been only to appear 
pleasant, to obtain cheaply and fraudulently the certi- 



24 



Peter 



ficate of being a "kind gentleman." For himself, he 
did not care two straws if the pair of sundered lovers 
bawled at each other from sundered seats. . . . 

And then as he took his new place it struck him 
that the quality which had prompted the transference 
of himself from one seat on the top of a bus to 
another, was precisely the same as had led him to 
resent Nellie's dissection of him. In the one case his 
vanity was gratified, in the other his vanity was hurt. 

"That's it," he said to himself, and mentally he 
prinked, like a girl, in the glass that had so unerringly 
shown him to himself. Yet it did not show him an 
aspect of himself that was in any way surprising, 
either for pleasure or distaste, for he knew well how 
prolific a spring of native vanity was in him. He 
would always take an infinity of trouble in order to 
appear admirable, or, on the other hand, to conceal 
what was not so admirable. He would always 
inconvenience himself in order to appear kind, 
exert himself to appear amusing, bore himself, 
while preserving the brightness of an attentive 
and interested eye, in order to confirm his reputa- 
tion for being sympathetic. But though vanity was 
the root of such efforts, there was, at any rate, no 
trace of it in his acknowledgment of it. He never 
deluded himself into thinking that he suffered fools 
gladly, because he liked them, or desired to secure for 
them a pleasant half-hour in which they could tedi- 
ously inflict themselves on him ; he suffered them 
with the show of gladness in order to be thought kind 
and agreeable in the abstract, and in the concrete to 
pick up the gleanings of welcome and entertainment 
which, for such as him, lie so thick on the fields of 
human intercourse, when the great machines have 
gone by. He had no reason to complain of these 



Peter 25 

gleanings; there was no one among the youth of 
London who was more consistently in request, or who 
more merited his mild harvestings. In a rather 
fatigued and casual generation, tired with the strain 
of the last five years, and now suddenly brought to 
book after the irresponsibility of wartime, when for 
all young men each leave snatched from the scythe of 
the French front might easily be their last, there was 
a certain license given, Peter had always been a shin- 
ing exception to such slack social conduct of life. 
He did not, as he had told Nellie, expect much from 
it, but as long as you were "on tap," it was undeni- 
ably foolish not to present yourself presentably. Your 
quality was certainly enhanced by a little foam, a 
little effervescence. "That nice Mr. Peter, always 
so polite and pleasant," was his reward ; and at this 
moment Nellie's divination of his true attitude to- 
wards her engagement was his punishment. 

The bus hummed and droned along the Bromp- 
ton Road ; there was still a solid stretch before 
it halted just opposite the side street which was his 
goal, and there was time to consider her further 
criticism that he went off, waving his tail, into the 
wet woods and saying nothing to anybody. What 
had she meant exactly by that ? He had, at any rate, 
his own consciousness that she had hit on something 
extremely real and vitally characteristic of him. 
Surely she meant his aloofness from any intimate 
surrender of himself, the self-sufficiency that neither 
gave nor sought strong affection. He had acknow- 
ledged the vanity as of a be-ribanded cat, and now 
he added to that his desire for material comfort, 
a quiet, determined selfishness, and the reservation 
to himself of solitary expeditions in the wet woods 
with a waving tail. Probably she meant no more 



26 Peter 

than that, and though Peter quite acknowledged the 
justice of these definitions, he again felt a certain 
resentment against her clear-sightedness. She had a 
touch of these defects and qualities herself; it was that 
which made the bond between them. 

Peter let himself into his father's house in the 
grilling, dusty street nearly opposite the Oratory with 
the anticipation of finding a speedy opportunity for 
a domestic exhibition of vanity, for he felt sure that 
something ludicrous or tiresome and uncomfortable 
would await him ; something he would certainly 
tolerate with bland serenity and agreeableness. The 
house, the front of which had been baking in the sun 
all the afternoon, was intolerably hot and stuffy; the 
door at the head of the kitchen stairs had, as gener- 
ally happened, been left open, and the nature of the 
dinner which would presently ascend could be con- 
fidently predicted. Beyond, at the back of the hall, 
the door into his father's studio was also open, and 
a languid, odorous tide of oil-paint and Virginian 
tobacco made a peculiarly deadly combination with 
kitchen-smells, and indicated that Mr. Alainwaring 
had been occupied with his audacious labours. Just 
now he was engaged on the perpetration of a series 
of cartoons (suitable or not for mural decoration). 
The practical difficulty, if these ever attained com- 
pletion, would be the discovery of the wall that should 
be large enough to hold them ; indeed, the great 
wall of China seemed the only destination which, 
though remote, was sufficiently spacious. The sub- 
ject of them was the European war from a psychic 
no less than from a sanguinary point of view, for 
the series (of which the sketches were complete) 
started with a prodigious cartoon which depicted 
Satan whispering odious counsels into the ear of the 



Peter 27 

Emperor William II, who wore a smile of bland 
imperial ambition at the very attractive prospects 
presented by the Father of Lies. In the background 
an army corps of the hosts of Hell stretched from 
side to side of the picture like some leering, male- 
volent flower-bed. Thereafter the series was to 
traverse the annals of all kinds of frightfulness : 
Zeppelins dropped bombs on Sunday-schools, sub- 
marine crews, agape with laughter, shot down the 
survivors from torpedoed liners. All these existed 
only in sketches; the first, however, as Peter knew, 
was rapidly approaching completion on the monstrous 
scale, and took up the whole end of the studio. 
Neither Peter nor his mother had as yet been per- 
mitted a glimpse of it; the full blast of its withering 
force, so Mr. Mainwaring had planned, was, on 
completion, to smite and stun them. 

He had heard Peter's entrance into the house, for 
an outburst of jubilant yodelling came to the young, 
man's ears as he put down his hat. 

"Tirra lirra, tirra lirra," sang out the boisterous 
voice. "Is that my Peter? Ha-de-ah-de-ho ! " 

Peter's eyebrows went up, his mouth slackened 
to a long sigh, and his slim shoulders shrugged. But 
his voice — all of him that at present could convey 
his mood to his father — was brisk and cordial. 

"Hallo, father," he said. "Do you want me? " 

"Yes, my dear; come in a moment. I have some- 
thing to show you." 

Peter closed the door of the kitchen stairs and 
went into the studio. His father was standing high 
on a slepladder in front of his canvas, dashing the 
last opulent brushful of sombre colour on to the 
thundercloud which, portending war, formed so effec- 
tive a background of Prussian blue to the Emperor's 



28 Peter 

head. He painted with swoops and dashes; such 
things as "finish " were out of place in designs for 
the wall of China. . . . Even as Peter entered he 
skipped down from the steps of the ladder and laid 
aside his palette and brushes. 

" Finito, e ben finito ! " he cried. "Congratulate 
me, my Peter ! I made the last stroke as you en- 
tered, an added horror — is it not so? — in that cloud. 
Ha ! You have not seen it yet ; sit down and drink 
it in for five minutes. Does it make you hot and 
miserable to look at? Yes, you'll see more of that 
cloud and of what it holds for distracted Europe be- 
fore I come to the end of my cartoons. Bombs and 
torpedoes are in that cloud, my Peter; devastation 
and destruction and damnation ! " 

He struck a splendid attitude in front of the tre- 
mendous canvas, and with a sweep of his hand caused 
his thick crop of long, grey hair to stand out in 
billows round his head. Physically, as regards height 
and fineness of feature, Peter certainly owed a good 
deal to his father, for John Mainwaring's head — with 
its waves of hair, its high colour, its rich exuberance 
■ — was like some fine manuscript now enriched with 
gilt and florid illuminations, of which Peter was, so 
to speak, the neat, delicate text unadorned by these 
flamboyant additions. Peter's vanity, doubtless, came 
from the same paternal strain, for never was there 
anyone more superbly conscious of his own supreme 
merits than his father. Highly ornamental, he knew 
that his mission was not only to adorn the palace of 
art with his work, but to enlighten the dimness of the 
world with his blazing presence. Like most men who 
are possessed of extraordinary belief in themselves, 
of high colour and exuberant spirits, he was liable to 
accesses of profound gloom, when, with magnificent 



Peter 29 

gestures, he would strike his forehead and wail over 
his own wasted life and the futility of human en- 
deavour. These attacks, which were very artistic and 
studied performances, chiefly assailed him when the 
Royal Academy had intimated that some stupendous 
canvas of his awaited removal before varnishing day. 
Then, with bewildering rapidity, his spirits would 
mount to unheard-of altitudes again, and, brush in 
hand, he would exclaim that he asked no more of the 
world than to allow him to pursue his art unrecog- 
nized and unhonoured, like Millet or Corot. His 
temperament, in fact, was that of some boisterous 
spring day which, opening with bright sunshine, 
turns to snow in the middle of the afternoon, and 
draws to a close in lambent serenity ; and whether 
exalted, depressed, or normal, he was simply, though 
slangily, the prmce of "bounders." 

He clapped his hand on Peter's shoulder. 

"I need not point out to you the merits, or, indeed, 
the defects of my composition," he said, "for my 
Peter inherits something of his father's perceptions. 
Look at it then once more and tell me if my picture 
recalls to you the method, even, perhaps, the inspira- 
tion of any master not, like me, unknown to fame. 
Who, my boy, if we allow ourselves for a moment to 
believe in psychic possession, who, I ask you — or, 
rather, to cast my sentence differently — to whom do I 
owe the realization of terror, of menace, of spiritual 
horror, which, ever so faintly, smoulders in my 
canvas ? " 

He folded his arms, awaiting a reply, and Peter 
cudgelled his brains in order to make his answer as 
agreeable as possible. The name of Blake occurred 
to him, but he remembered that of late his father 
had been apt to decry this artist for poverty of de- 

c 



Peter 

sign and failure to render emotional vastness. Then, 
with great good luck, his eye fell on some photo- 
graphic reproductions from the ceiling of the Sistine 
Chapel that decorated the wall of the studio, and he 
felt he had guessed right. 

"No one but Michael Angelo," he said. "That's 
all the influence I can see, father." 

Mr. Mainwaring rested his chin on his hand 
and was gazing at his work with frowning, seer-like 
scrutiny. It was difficult to realize that it was he 
who had yodelled so jubilantly just now. 

"Curious that you should have said that, Peter," 
he said in a deep, dreamy voice. " For days past, 
as I worked, it has seemed to me that M.A. — Master 
of Art, as well as Michael Angelo, note you — that 
M.A. was standing by me. At times, indeed, it 
seemed that not I, but another, controlled my brush. 
I do not say he approved, no, no ; that he was pleased 
with me; but he was then, my boy. So, if there is 
any merit in my work, I beseech you to attribute it 
not to me but to him. It was as if I was in a 
trance. . . ." 

He closed his eyes for a moment and bowed his 
head, and then, as if at the last "Amen " of some 
solemn service, he came out of the dim cathedral into 
sunlight. 

"Your mother! " he said. "We must not forget 
her in this great moment. Is she in? Tirra lirra ! 
Ha-de-ah-de-ho ! My own ! " 

He pranced to the door, ringing the bell, as he 
passed, and repeated his yodelling cries. From up- 
st-airs a quiet, thin voice gave some fiat echo of his 
salutation ; from below a hot parlourmaid opened the 
door of the kitchen stairs and set free a fresh gale 
of roast ings. 



Peter 31 

"Three glasses," he said to the latter "Three 
glasses, please, and the decanter of port. Maria 
mia! Come down, my dear, and, if you love me, 
keep shut your lustrous eyes and take my hand, and 
I will guide you to the place I reserve for you. So ! 
Eyes shut and no cheating ! " 

Mrs. Mainwaring, small in stature, with a porce- 
lain neatness about her as of a Dresden shepherdess, 
suffered herself to be led into the studio, preserving 
the scrupulous honesty of closed eyelids. By her 
side her rococo husband looked more than ever like 
some preposterous dancing-master, and if it was 
correct to attribute to him Peter's inherited vanity, 
it was equally right to derive from the young man's 
mother that finish and precision which characterized 
his movements and his manners. Easily, too, though 
with a shade more subtlety, a psychologist might 
have conjectured where Peter's habit of walking in 
the wet woods and telling nobody was derived 
from, for it was not hard to guess that Mrs. Main- 
waring's tranquil self-possession, her smiling, serene 
indulgence of her husband's whim, w-as the result 
of a quality firm and deeply rooted. Self-repression 
had, perhaps, become a habit, for her conduct seemed 
quite effortless; but in that tight, thin-lipped mouth, 
gently smiling, there was something inscrutably in- 
dependent. She was like that, secret and self- 
contained, because she chose to be like that; her 
serenity, her coUectedness, were the mask she chose 
to wear. Thus, probably, Peter's inheritance from 
her was of more durable stuff than the vanity he owed 
to his father, for how, if his mother had not been 
somehow adamantine, could she have lived for nearly 
a quarter of a century with this flamboyant partner, 
and yet have neither imbibed one bubble of his effer- 



32 



Peter 



vescence nor lost any grain of her own restraint? 
Indeed, she must have been like some piece of quartz 
for ever dashed along by the turbulence of his 
impetuous flood, and yet all the effect that this buf- 
feting and bruising had produced on her had been 
but to polish and harden her. She went precisely 
where the current dashed her, but remained solid 
and small and impenetrable. 

Such was her relation to the bounding extra- 
vagance of her husband; he swept her along, quite 
unresisting, but never parting from her self-contained 
integrity, and all his whirlings and waterfalls had 
never stripped one atom off her nor roughened her 
surface. To him she appeared transparently clear, 
though, as a matter of fact, not only had he never 
seen into her, but, actually, he had never seen her 
at all. He bounced her about, demanding now 
homage, when the exuberance of creation was his, 
now sympathy when the rejection of a picture by the 
Royal Academy made him a despairing pessimist; 
but she never varied with his feverish temperature, 
and on the surface, at any rate, remained of an 
unchangeable coolness. His trumpets never intoxi- 
cated her small, pink ear; his despair of himself and 
the world in general never came within measurable 
distance of sullying her serenity, any more than a 
thunderstorm disturbs the effulgence of a half-moon 
that neither waxes nor wanes. She still continued 
calmly shining behind his clouds, as was obvious 
when those clouds had discharged their violence. 
John Mainwaring never dreamed of considering what, 
possibly, might lie below that finished surface; it 
was enough for him that she should always be ready 
to pay a scentless homage to his achievements, or sit 
quietly like a fLxed star above the clouds of despair 



Peter 33 

that occasionally darkened his day. She was "Maria 
mia, my beloved," when he was pleased with him- 
self, and, when otherwise, it was enough that she 
should repeat at intervals: "Fancy their rejecting 
your picture. I am sure there are hundreds in the 
exhibition not half so good." 

To Peter she was an enigma to which he never 
now attempted or desired to find the key. She 
seemed to him quite impervious to external influences 
behind that high wall of her reserve. Nothing, so 
far as he knew, roused emotion in her; nothing ex- 
cited, nothing depressed her. Sometimes, when a 
boy, he had gone to her with a trouble to confide, 
and she would say: "How tiresome for you, dear," 
and perhaps suggest some sensible course of action. 
But neither his troubles nor her own (if she had 
any) seemed to touch her emotions; while, on the 
other hand, if there was something agreeable to com- 
municate, if his father sold a picture, or Peter had 
the announcement of promotion in the Foreign Office, 
her sympathy and pleasure (if she felt any) were just 
as iced as her condolence had been. The event 
— to Peter's apprehension — that most had power to 
move her was the fact that somebody had left open 
the door at the top of the kitchen stairs. When that 
was "quite shut," and when all household cares had 
their sunset after dinner, her habitual mode of self- 
employment was to read a page or two of a novel 
(returning it to the library next day) and then to take 
some sort of railway guide and scan the advertise- 
ments of hotels situated in agreeable places on the 
south coast or among the Derbyshire Highlands. 
Often and often had Peter returned from dinner to 
find his mother thus employed. His father, when in 
the throes of creation, went early to bed in order to 



34 



Peter 



be fresh and spry for the light of the morning hours ; 
but she slept badly, and slept best if she went late 
to bed. There she would be then when Peter latch- 
keyed himself into the house on his return from 
dining out, or even, occasionally, when he returned 
far later from a dance, with the Bradshaw in her hand 
open among the advertisements of hotels. She would 
put a paper-knife in the leaves to keep her place while 
she exchanged a few words with him ; then, when he 
went to bed, she would resume her reading. Quite 
naturally and warrantably he had always considered 
this a "sad narcotic exercise " on her part, producing, 
it was to be hoped, the drowsiness which she was 
wooing. A more promising device for dulling the 
activity of the brain, than reading about unknown 
hotels at unvisited places, could hardly be desired, 
and so reasonable a process provoked no curiosity 
on his part. 

But the door at the top of the kitchen stairs was 
the most active of her interests, and took precedence 
in her mind of any mood of her husband's. So when 
to-day he led her with a prancing processional move- 
ment to a throne of Spanish brocade at a suitable 
focusing distance from the finished cartoon, she, 
with nostrils open though with shut eyes, gave the 
door to the kitchen stairs the first claim on her 
attention. 

"That door has been left open again," she said. 
"How careless Burrows is ! Please shut it, my dear. 
I will keep my eyes tightly shut." 

It struck Peter at this moment that both he and 
his mother treated his father as if he had been a 
child. They both played his games, treating them 
with due seriousness, lest they should damp the 
excited pleasure of the young. She was playing now 



Peter 35 

without collusion, for, led in as she had been, with 
closed eyes, she had no idea that Peter was present. 
Then, faintly up the kitchen stairs came the jingle 
of the glasses, and Burrow^s entered with the tray that 
had been ordered, once more leaving that fatal door 
agape. By some exercise of domestic intuition Mrs. 
Mainwaring divined the sort of thing going on round 
her, and with eyes still honourably closed said : 

" Be sure you close the door at the top of the stairs, 
Burrows, when you go down again." 

John Mainwaring, with a wealth of gesticulation 
in order to enjoin silence on Peter, and with much 
stealthiness of action, completed his festive prepara- 
tions. Demanding from his wife steadiness of hand 
and no questions, he thrust between her fingers a 
brimming glass of port, took one himself, and filled 
a third for Peter. In obedience to his pantomime 
Peter stood on one side of his enthroned mother and 
elevated his glass. 

"Open your dear blue eyes, Maria mia!" ex- 
claimed John Mainwaring, "and before you say a 
single word drink to your husband's offering to 
Art ! " 

Mrs. Mainwaring opened her eyes, and found as 
she had already guessed from previous experience, 
her brimming glass. 

"I couldn't possibly drink all that, my dear," 
she said, " but I will sip it with pleasure before I 
say anything. There ! Dear me, what a fine great 
picture ! All success to it ! So that's what has kept 
you so busy all these days when I wasn't allowed 
to come into your studio. Oh, there's Peter ! Are 
you going to dine at home, dear ? I thought you 
said you were going out." 



36 Peter 

"I've only come home to dress," said he. 

"I see. Now let me look at your father's picture. 
Whv, there's the German Emperor ! And what a 
quantity of other people. Dear me ! And who is 
that whispering to the Emperor? What a horrid 
expression he has ! " 

The artist drank his glass of port at a gulp, and 
at another the rest of hers. 

"Horrid? I should think it was. If you had 
said devilish you would have been even more on the 
bullseye. Now you shall be our Moliere's house- 
maid. Speak, voice of the British public! Tell me 
and Peter what you see before you." 

Mrs. Mainwaring, with the aid of her glasses, 
and the slight hint already given, was perfectly 
certain that it must be Satan who was whispering 
to the Emperor, and that all those dreadful faces 
behind must have something to do with him. Then 
there was that huge dark cloud in the background. 

"The Emperor and Satan," she said with a sort 
of placid excitement, like an adult trying to guess 
a child's riddle. "Now wait a minute, my dear. 
Yes, I'm sure that dreadful thundercloud behind is 
the war, and if the Emperor wouldn't listen to Satan 
it would go away. But he's looking pleased and 
proud; he is listening. I suspect that Satan is telling 
him that he will win the war and be Emperor of 
the earth, as you've always said he would have been 
if the Germans had won. Well, I do think it's 
clever of you to have made me think of all that. 
Such a few weeks, too, to paint such a big picture ! 
How well you kept your secret ! You only told 
me that you were very busy, and that I mustn't 
come into your studio. I never thought that when 
you allowed me in again I should see anything so 



Peter 37 

large and remarkable. Most striking! Isn't it, 

Peter ? " 

"Splendid! " said Peter. Then he wondered if 
he had put enough conviction into his voice to satisfy 
the gourmandise of his father. 

"Quite splendid!" he said, rather louder. 

Then it was Mrs. Mainwaring's turn in this 

game. 

"And it's only the first of a series," said she. 
"You must send it to some exhibition at once, John, 
in order to make room for the rest. So large, is it 
not? It fills up all the end of the studio. Such an 
important picture. Dear me, how wicked the 
Emperor looks ! And what will the next picture be ? " 

"War. Picture of war. Allegorical. Shells 
bursting into shapes of devilish malignity." 

He leaned on the back of the throne, regarding 
the picture intently. 

"It will kill me, painting the rest of them," he 
said with a fell intensity. "I've got to go through 
the hell of it all myself before I can paint them." 

The calm of Mrs. Mainwaring's voice was un- 
touched by this gloomy prospect. 

"No, dear, it won't kill you," she said consolingly. 
"That's your artistic temperament. You will have 
a good holiday afterwards. You must be sure to 
do that. I see; the other pictures will all come 
out of that dreadful thundercloud. Such a poetical 
idea ! And I hope you'll have a picture of Peace 
for the last one. Everything quite serene again, 
and the thundercloud vanished, and no Emperor at 
all, unless you paint a very little figure of him in 
the background to show how small he has become. 
Just him in the background, somewhere in Holland." 

John Mainwaring left his domestic position, lean- 



38 Peter 

ing on the throne, and strode up and down the 
studio. 

"Ah, that intolerable happy ending!" he said. 
"That's the convention that spoils all art. Art's a 
stern, bitter business; you mustn't expect to find a 
bit of sugar at the bottom of your cup. Art, as the 
Greeks said, is meant to move pity and terror." 

Mrs. Mainwaring stepped from her throne. 

"Well, I shall think of a peaceful picture for 
myself, then," she said, "and when I have looked 
at all yours I shall imagine my own. After all, the 
war is over, and it's had a happy ending for us, 
since the Germans have been beaten and Peter has 
come back from it all safe and sound. That's my 
ending." 

He projected his fine grey hair again with a 
dexterous sweep of the hand. 

"Well, well," he said, as if he was an adult play- 
ing with a child, whereas certainly the relation was 
the other way about. "I will do my best for you, 
Maria. But I make no promise, mind. Remember 
that." 

As Peter started off again for the various enter- 
tainments of the evening he tried to imagine himself 
in serious sympathy with either of his parents, and 
ruinously failed. Beginning with his father, he sur- 
veyed with the critical clear-sightedness of his terribly 
sensible nature those hysterical daubings of paint, 
those mysteries as to what his father was engaged 
on, those prancing port wine ceremonies when his 
labour was finished, that crystal confidence, never 
clouded, in the worth of his fatuous achievements. 
Long ago it had soaked into his soul that his father 
was a magnificent buffoon, who, decking himself in 
the habiliments of Hamlet, had no idea that instead 



Peter 39 

of being engaged in heroic drama, he was a figure in 
a farce so outrageous that you could not really laugh 
at him; you could only marvel. Had his pictures, 
every one of them, been masterpieces, his own 
enthusiasm over them would have verged on the 
grotesque. As it was they were preposterous and 
childish performances, inspiring the observer with 
pity and terror for the perpetrator rather than, in the 
sense of Aristotle, whom his father so often quoted, 
for the works themselves. How was it possible to 
feel sympathy with one whose impenetrable egoism 
burned radiantly unconsumed like that? Yet, while 
he rejected that possibility, Peter found himself some- 
how envying the temperament that transmuted life 
for Its owner into an endless orgy and carouse. Even 
the deepest despairs into which reaction plunged his 
father were psychical feasts to him, served up with 
the same sauce of transcendental egoism as were his 
raptures. That was like some pungent essential oil 
of so ammoniacal an aroma that it pervaded its whole 
accessible atmosphere. No neutral quality on the 
part of others, no individual indifference was per- 
mitted to exist, or, if it existed, it was either wholly 
unnoticed or, if noticed, sublimely pitied. Peter's 
father, so it struck the young man, galloped through 
life "like a ramping and a roaring lion," the king 
of the beasts. 

It w^as no manner of good to attempt to sym- 
pathize with so predatory an animal, and from the 
thought of his father Peter switched off to the thought 
of his mother, who was the habitual prey. There 
he was confronted with the mild enigma, of which 
he had not the faintest comprehension, and for the 
hundredth time, guessing out of a dubious, incurious 
twilight, he wondered if there was, could be, any- 



40 



Peter 



thing to comprehend. He tried to sum up his know- 
ledge of her. She ordered dinner, she wore day and 
night some family inheritance of her own of splendid 
pearls, she read advertisements in railway guides of 
hotels on Cornish Rivieras and Derbyshire Switzer- 
lands. That she should order dinner and wear her 
own pearls was an accidental happening, because she 
was mistress of a house and had some pearls, but 
beyond that she receded, as far as Peter was con- 
cerned, into a dreamland without logic. Indeed, as 
he devoted his mind to her now, the most illogical 
thing about her was that for twenty-three years she 
had contrived to live with his father, and had pre- 
serv^ed a certain personality of her own. It seemed 
frankly impossible that anyone who had lived so 
long with that maniacal egoist should not have been 
in any way affected by him. But there she was. 
His father had neither crushed her nor vitalized her, 
and whatever her real personality might be, Peter 
felt sure that the ramping and the roaring lion had 
not invaded an atom of it. If his father sustained 
himself on the flamboyance of his own existence, 
she, none the less, was self-sufficient, demanding 
neither sympathy nor comprehension from others. 
The chasm that yawned between himself and his 
father was a mere rabbit-scrape compared to the abyss 
on the other side of which there sat his mother, 
delicate and immovable, covered with hoar frost and 
decked with her pearls, and reading her railway 
guide. 

Peter owed that deep-seated vanity of his to his 
father; to his mother he owed that aloofness which 
was no less characteristic of him. But to himself he 
seemed to have nothing to do with either of them ; 
they both appeared to him to be distant and ancient 



Peter 41 

phenomena, and he waved a mild salutation to them 
as acknowledgment of the debt of his own existence. 
Between them they had projected him, but his own 
individuality swamped that as completely as his 
father's egoism drowned all other flavours. Was it 
always like that nowadays? Were all the last genera- 
tion so far sundered from the adolescent present as 
he from his father and mother ? . . . Was there a new 
plan of life, a new outlook, a new everything? 



CHAPTER III 

Peter's dinner at the Ritz was no dinner-party, and 
there were but three young men, of whom he was one, 
and their hostess who assembled in the Yawning- 
place. People always yawned there; they were either 
waiting for somebody to come, or they were waiting 
for somebody to go away. . . . 

His hostess to-night was the perennial Mrs. Trent- 
ham, with whom a party of herself and three young 
men was a favourite form of entertainment. She 
always professed a coquettish contrition at not having 
been able to get some girls to meet her young men — 
which, indeed, she had been quite wonderfully unable 
to do, since it never occurred to her to take the pre- 
liminary step of asking them, and no nice girl would 
come to dine with Mrs. Trentham without being 
asked. So the girls, not being asked, stayed away, 
and Mrs. Trentham apologized. 

She was considerably older than the rest of her 
youthful assemblage; but she looked almost as 
young as any of them, and might charitably have 
been supposed to be a sister, or a wife, or something. 
She had only one real passion in her excited life, 
and that was to dine as publicly as possible with 
several young men, sending her husband, to his great 
contentment, to amuse himself comfortably at his 
club. There he talked politics and played Bridge, 
and the very number of these public entertainments 
on the part of his wife, and the diversity of the youths 
who partook of them, were guarantee against any 

42 



Peter 43 

breath of scandal sullying herself or anybody else. 
With perfect justice, nobody believed anything 
against her; yet this delightful immunity from 
gossip rather annoyed her. But, in order to give 
colour to compromise, she would have been obliged to 
descend to duets in quiet corners, which would have 
been no fun at all. The loss of publicity, the loss, 
too, of the pleasing phenomenon that batch after 
batch of young men, in groups of two or three, so 
constantly accompanied her to one of the most 
strategic tables at the Ritz, would not have been 
compensated for by the added chance of scandalous 
talkings. After all, London was not so violently 
likely to care what she did, especially since she did 
not care either, and it was far more agreeable to 
continue doing what she liked rather than gain an 
entirely spurious loss of reputation by less enjoyable 
methods. She had a pleasant, prurient mind, and 
her morals were beyond reproach. She called atten- 
tion to her age, when she was with the young, in a 
somewhat excessive manner, and often alluded to 
her beautiful hair, which had been grey before she 
was thirty. "Such an old woman as me," was an 
ungrammatical phrase which she often affected, and 
this was a preventive measure against anybody else 
thinking of such a thing. Her favourite subject of 
conversation was love. 

Mrs. Trentham was not really quite so silly as 
she sounded, though her immense sprightliness often 
seemed to plunge her into the nethermost depths of 
fatuousness. During the war she had taken to dress- 
ing in the uniform of a nurse, which she discovered 
suited her, though, for fear of witnessing distressing 
sights, she kept well away from hospitals; since then, 
having realized the decorative value of black and 



44 



Peter 



white, she had adopted a garb which seemed to in- 
dicate that she was a widow, though not quite recently 
bereaved. An occasional bright note of colour in 
her hair or round her charming waist seemed to have 
forgotten about her widowhood and was extremely 
becoming. ... So garbed, so minded, she awaited 
Peter, who was the last of her conspicuous party of 
young men. He was certainly late for her appointed 
hour, but she did not dislike that as the Yawning- 
place was full, and, instead of scolding him, she had 
her usual apologetic greetings volubly ready. 

"My dear, you will be furious with me, I know," 
she said, "but I simply couldn't get hold of any girls, 
so you and Charlie and Tommy will just have to put 
up with an old woman until we go to the opera, and 
then you will breathe loud sighs of relief, and I shall 
see you no more. Why are you so late, Peter? 
Whom have you been flirting with ? " 

"My father and my mother," said Peter. "He 
has just finished the largest picture in the world." 

" How sweet of him ! Ah, they have brought 
some cocktails at last." 

She waited till the servant was well out of hearing. 

"But how stupid the waiter is," she said. "I am 
sure I told him to bring three not four. Shall I taste 
it ? Shall I like it, do you think ? " 

It seemed not too optimistic to hope that she 
would, for, otherwise, she would long ago have ceased 
not only tasting the fourth cocktail which she was 
sure she had not ordered, but consuming it so com- 
pletely that the strip of lemon-peel overbalanced 
against the tip of her pretty nose. 

"My dear, how strong! " she exclaimed. "I feel 
perfectly tipsy, and one of you must give me your 
arm, as if you were a nephew or something if I 



Peter 45 

stagger or reel. Let us go in to dinner at once. I 
promised Ella we would get to Mrs. Wardour's box 
by the beginning of the opera." 

"Who is Mrs. Wardour?" asked Charlie 
Harman. 

"Oh, quite new," said Mrs. Trentham. "Hardly 
anyone has seen her yet. Rich, fabulously rich. Her 
husband was one of the hugest profiteers— not eggs 
at fourpence, but steamers at a quarter of a million. 
He bought up everything that floats and sold it to 
the Government, and most of it got sunk. He died 
a couple of years ago. Too sad." 

"More about her, please," said Peter. 

"I haven't seen her yet, my dear, but Ella Thirl- 
mere is being her godmother — sponsor, you know — 
and she asked me to take people to her box and her 
dinners and her dances. Her name's Lucy : it would 
be. I shall begin by calling her Lucy almost im- 
mediately. There's no time nowadays to get to know 
people. You have to pretend to know them intimately 
almost the moment you set eyes on them." 

"And pretend not to know them afterwards, if 
necessary," said Peter. 

May Trentham gave a hasty glance round the 
room and, becoming aware that quite a sufficient 
number of people were looking at her and her party, 
slapped the back of Peter's hand with the tips of her 
fingers, and gave a scream of laughter to show what 
a tremendously amusing time she was having. 

"You naughty boy!", she said. "Is he not 
cynical about Lucy? I shan't talk to you any more. 
Tommy, my dear, tell me what you've been doing. 
You look flushed. I believe you're in love." 

"No. I've been playing squash," said Tommy. 

"What is squash? I believe it's one of your 

D 



46 Peter 

horrid new words and means flirting. Who is 

she?" 

"She is CharHe. At least, I was playing squash 
with Charlie," said Tommy, with laborious precision. 
"He didn't like it." 

Charlie fingered two little tails of blond hair that 
grew directly below his nostrils and formed his 
moustache. Otherwise his face was completely 
feminine — plain and pink and plump. He gesticu- 
lated a good deal with his hands, flapping and 
dabbing with them. 

"Odious game," he said, showing a great many 
teeth between his red lips. "You go on hitting a 
ball against a putrid wall until you're too tired to 
hit it any more, and then Tommy says ' One love.' 
When you've done that fifteen times, he says ' Game,' 
and then you begin another one. I hoped I should 
never hear of it again." 

"You shan't, my dear; but don't be such a cross- 
patch. I know you're annoyed with me for not get- 
ting you some pretty girl to talk to. You must talk 
to Peter. He's in disgrace with me. Oh, Peter, is 
it true about Nellie Heaton's engagement ? " 

"Perfectly," said Peter. 

"Then why aren't you broken-hearted? I don't 
believe any of you young men have got hearts 
nowadays. 

"That accounts for their not being broken," said 
Peter. 

It was time to laugh loudly again in order to 
remind the rest of the diners what a brilliant time she 
was having, and May Trentham did this. 

"There he goes again!" she said. "Is he not 
shocking ? My dear, have you had a dreadful scene 
with her?" 



Peter 47 

"No. I only had tea with her." 

"Oh, don't pretend you weren't desperately in love 
with her. But never mind. I will find some other 
girl for you, who will adore you so violently that you 
will lose your heart to her, though you say you 
haven't got one. She shall be rich and lovely, and 
we shall all be frantically jealous of her. And you 
shall both call me Aunt May, because I have brought 
you together." 

"Thank you. Aunt May," said Peter. "Go on 
about her, please." 

"No, I've talked to you long enough. Tommy is 
feeling left out. When the opera is over, by the way, 
I want you all to come on to Ella Thirlmere's dance. 
I promised to bring you all. Mrs. Wardour is sure 
to be coming, and she will certainly have plenty of 
motor-cars to take us. Oh, there is that marvellous 
Spanish boxer, is it not, dining alone with Ella. 
How gentle and kind he looks ! Darling Ella ! I 
wonder if she will have six rounds with him in the 
middle of her dance. I would certainly back her : 
look at her chest. But how daring of her to dine 
with him here ! They say he marries again after each 
of his fights and settles all the money he has won on 
his new wife. But, after all, 1 suppose it's just as 
daring of me to dine with three such attractive young 
men as for her to dine with just one Solomon like 
that ! " 

Tommy puzzled over this for a moment. He was 
very good-looking, but there was no other reason for 
him. 

"Solomon?" he asked. 

"Yes, my dear; think of his wives. I was talking 
to Anthony Braille to-day, who makes all those won- 
derful tables about population, and what encourages 



48 Peter 

and hinders it. He said the only chance for England 
was to close all the music-hall bars and introduce 
polygamy. Every Englishman, after this dreadful 
war — you know I was a nurse during the war — must 
have fifty children a year for two years — or did he 
say two children a year for fifty years i — in order to 
bring up the population again to its proper level. It 
was all most interesting — if he only didn't stutter 
so much ! " 

" He seems to have stuttered out the main facts," 
said Peter. 

"Oh, I couldn't tell a young man half the things 
he said to me. We ought all to be Patagonians and 
polygamists. The birth-rate among Patagonians is 
colossal. They behead all women of the age of thirty- 
five who aren't married, and all bachelors at the age 
of forty. It has something to do with eugenics." 

The intoxication of a restaurant now crowded with 
people had gained complete ascendancy over Peter's 
hostess. She never felt quiet and contented unless 
she was surrounded by a host of friends, acquaint- 
ances, and people she knew by sight, and had to shout 
at the top of her voice in order to be h6ard above the 
roar of other conversations and the blare of a band. 
It was equally necessary for the establishment of this 
tranquil frame of mind that several young men, and, 
if possible, no women, should be with her, and that 
she should constantly be convulsed by shrieks of 
laughter, and should have both herelbowson the table. 
A finer nuance in success w'as that she must appear 
wholly absorbed in the brilliance of her own table, 
and quite unconscious of the hubbub round her, 
though presently, when she got up, she would seem 
to awake to the fact that she was in a crowded 
restaurant, and would blow kisses all over the room, 



Peter 49 

and have dozens of little smiles and words for all 
those whose position between her and the door she 
had unerringly noted. Just a sentence or two for 
each, reminding her "my dears" of a meeting, to- 
morrow, or a meeting yesterday with a phrase of 
flattery and a bit of whispered scandal and the con- 
clusion : " I must fly ; those boys will be so cross with 
me if I keep them w-aiting. Meet you at dearest 
Ella's ? Yes ? Lovely ! "... All this was faithfully 
performed on her part, and her face, with its pretty 
little features all bunched together in the middle of 
it, like the markings in a pansy, had expanded and 
contracted again sufficient times before she reached 
the door of the restaurant to enable a weary conclave 
to express itself as it w^aited for her. 

"Parsifal, too," said Charlie. "Thank God we've 
missed the first act. Aged stunt — flower-maidens and 
grails. Can't we get away, Peter? Come home with 
me. Say we're busy at the P.O. German compli- 
cations. Bolshevists on the Rhine." 

Tommy stood first on one leg scratching a slim 
calf with the other instep, and then on the other leg 
scratching in a corresponding manner. 

"You simply can't," he said. "How am I to deal 
with her and Lucy ? And Parsifal ? " 

"Polygamy and Patagonians," said Peter, with 
a vague remembrance of the preposterous conver- 
sation that had garlanded their dinner. "Flirt, 
Tommy. Can you flirt? Hold hands. Sigh. Beam. 
Can't you manage it? " 

"No," said Tommy. 

"Then Tommy and I will go away," said Charlie. 
"After all, she doesn't want us, except as a stage 
crowd. She wants you most, Peter. I say, I like 
your studs. Who?" 



50 Peter 

"Nobod3^ I liked them, too, so I got them. But 
we've all got to go on. After all, we've had dinner." 

"All the more reason for not going on," said 
Charlie. 

"That's no good. It doesn't pay. Besides, she's 
awfully decent " 

"Don't be priggish, Peter. I say, is Nellie really 
going to marry Philip Beaumont? Do you mind?" 

This atrocious conversation was interrupted by 
the sprightly tripping advent of their hostess, who 
put her fingers in her ears, which she knew were 
"shell-like," as she passed through the direct blast 
of the band, and consoled them for her want of 
appreciation of their professional functions by dis- 
tributing more of her little smiles. 

"Now I know you are all going to scold me," 
she said, "because I've kept you waiting. But there 
w-ere so many dears who insisted on my having a 
word with them. They nearly tore my frock off. 
Let's all cram into one taxi, and I will sit bodkin. 
And after Ella's dance we'll all go on to Margie 
Clifford's. She specially told me to bring all of you, 
and scold you well first for not having talked to 
her on your way out. I don't know what everybody 
will think when I appear at the Ritz and the Opera, 
and two dances with the same young men. I shall 
have to tell my darling Bob that the Morning Post 
hasn't come, or he'll storm at me. What a lovely 
white lie." 

There flashed through Peter's consciousness at 
that moment an insane wonder as to what woul<f 
happen if he said calmly and clearly and genuinely^ 
"My good woman, who cares? As for the com^ 
promising young men who accompany you, they 
are all dying to get away, and only the debt of the 



Peter 51 

excellent dinner you gave us, of which I reminded 
them, prevents us from doing so." There was the 
truth of the matter, and it was all rather mean and 
miserable. Her guests were spending the evening 
with her and ministering to her hopeless delight in 
daring situations simply because she had, on her 
side, administered the nosebag. They consented, 
with a grudging sense of honourable engagement, 
to plough their way in her wake merely because she 
had fed them. If she had asked them severally or 
collectively to drop in after dinner, in the way of a 
friend, for conversation and soda water, none of 
them would have dreamed of gratifying her. And 
now, when they had fed deliciously at her ex- 
pense, they would all have preferred to go back 
to Charlie's rooms in Jermyn Street, or to Tommy's 
flat (Peter's house was handicapped by the presence 
of parents), rather than trail along to Parsifal, 
and to a dance, and yet another dance. The 
dances, perhaps, might be amusing, for there 
would be girls there, and some sitting about on 
stairs, and some sliding about on slippery floors, 
and an irresponsible atmosphere, and certainly some 
more champagne. You had to get through the night 
somehow, and nowadays you could smoke while you 
were dancing, and you needn't dance much. The 
nuisance — rather a serious one — was that Mrs. 
Trentham would be there all the time, screaming and 
dabbing at them to show how amusing and brilliant 
they all were, keeping them firmly planted round 
her while she told them that they must go away and 
dance and make themselves agreeable to others rather 
than hang round an old woman like her, and con- 
tinually whistling them back if they attempted to 
do anything of the sort. She would take up a position 



52 



Peter 



where she could most advantageously be seen and 
heard, and get them all plastered about her, swiftly 
talking to each in turn, so that he could not possibly 
go away as long as she so volubly told him to. She 
had that artless art to perfection ; no one had such 
a gift for making young men adhesive as she, while 
all the time she was scolding them for wasting their 
time on an old woman. There was no semblance of 
sentiment in these proceedings; the entire objective 
of the manoeuvres was to demonstrate to the world 
that these boys insisted on crowding round her and 
not leaving her. That was her notion of a successful 
evening, and since they had signed their bond by 
eating her dinner, she managed to exact the full 
pound of flesh. 

The curtain went down on the first act of Parsifal 
precisely as Mrs. Trentham led her shrill way into 
one of the two boxes that bore the name of Mrs. 
Wardour. She tripped in, all feather fan and stock- 
ings, like some elegant exotic hen, proudly conscious 
of the brood of most presentable chicks, though not 
of her rearing, which followed her. The house at 
that moment started into light again, and black 
against the oblong of brightness were the backs of 
two female heads, both of which turned round at the 
click of the opened door. One of them had a great 
tiara on, sitting firmly on a desert of pale sandy hair. 

May Trentham advanced with both hands held out. 

"My dear, how late we are," she said. "You must 
scold these boys, for they kept me in such shrieks 
of laughter at dinner that I had no idea of the time. 
Dearest Ella has so often talked to me about you ; 
always asking: ' Haven't I met Mrs. Wardour yet? 
Was it possible I had not met her great friend Lucy 
Wardour? ' Charmed! " 



Peter 53 

In the hard light of the theatre, Mrs. Wardour's 
face appeared to her to be quite flat ; the shadows on 
it looked like dark smudges applied to the surface 
with a brush, rather than markings derived from 
projections and depressions. This apparition of a 
diamond-crowned oval of meaningless flesh was 
slightly embarrassing, and she turned to the second 
occupant of the box. There, in the younger face, she 
saw what Lucy might, perhaps, once have been like, 
before the years had flattened her out. Obviously 
this was a daughter, though Ella Thirlmere had 
altogether omitted to mention such a thing. Then, 
with her rather short-sighted eyes growing accus- 
tomed to the staring light, Mrs. Trentham observed 
that her first impression of her hostess's face was an 
illusion, though founded on fact; just as when the 
figure of a man resolves itself into a hat and coat 
hanging on the wall. There was nothing, in fact, 
abnormal about Mrs. Wardour's countenance : it was 
just blankish. She had large cheeks of uniform sur- 
face, a nose of small elevation, no eyebrows, and 
eyes set in very shallow sockets. Then another 
shadow came on to her face ; but this time, without 
delay, May Trentham saw that it was her mouth 
opening. When she had opened it, she spoke, but 
she did not conduct both processes simultaneously. 

"Well, I'm pleased to see you," she said; "but 
there are so many friends of Lady Thirlmere — Ella, 
I should say ; she told me always to say Ella — there 
are so many of Ella's friends visiting me to-night 
that I don't quite seem to know your name." 

May Trentham felt that her brain was giving way. 
Here was a perfectly empty box, except for Mrs. 
Wardour and her daughter, and yet here was Mrs. 
Wardour assuring her that so many friends of Ella 



54 



Peter 



were here. . . . Where were the friends? Were they 
invisible? Was the box in reality crowded with 
unseen presences ? . . . 

"I'm Mrs. Trentham," she said, cHnging firmly to 
that sure and certain fact. "May Trentham. Ella 
told me you would expect me." 

Mrs. Wardour appeared to be making an effort 
of recollection. This, in a few moments, seemed 
successful. 

"That's correct," she said. "I remember; and 
this is my daughter Silvia." 

For a moment her face slipped off its sheath of 
meaninglessness, and something homely and kindly 
and simple gleamed in it. 

"I've got two boxes to-night, Mrs. Trentham," 
she said. "This and the next, as Lady Thirlmere — 
Ella — so kindly sent along such a quantity of her 
friends. That's what it is; and so Silvia and I 
(didn't we, Silvia?) we left the other box, seeing that 
it was so full, and came in here, for, naturally, I 
wanted to put my guests where they could see the 
play, and Silvia and I, we wanted to see, too. Mrs. 
Trentham was it? And I'm sure I'm very glad to 
see you and your young friends. I should like them 
all to be introduced to me and Silvia." 

Charlie had hung up his hat and coat during this 
amazing conversation, and now came forward. 

"How-de-do? " he said. 

"I haven't caught the name yet," said Mrs. War- 
dour. The sheath had gone back over her face again. 

"This is Lord Charles Harmer," said Mrs. 
Trentham. 

"Indeed. The son of the Marquis of Nairn?" 
asked Mrs. Wardour. 

Charlie opened his mouth very wide. 



Peter 55 

'• Brother ! " he exclaimed, as if he were saying 
"Murder! " on the Lyceum stage. 

Tommy and Peter were less important ; the latter, 
when the introductions were over, found himself 
sitting between Silvia and her mother. On the further 
side of Mrs. Wardour was May Trentham between 
the other two young men and already absorbed in 
identifying the occupants of boxes opposite and blow- 
ing kisses. 

"There! There's just room for all of us," said 
Mrs. Wardour, "without squeezing each other. We 
were too squeezed in the other box, weren't we 
Silvia? There's six in the other box, and now we're 
six here. Let me think; there's Lord Poole and 
there's Lady Poole. There's Mrs. Heaton, and 
there's Miss Heaton, and there's Mr. Philip Beau- 
mont. That's five. Miss Heaton is engaged to Mr. 
Beaumont; isn't that it, Silvia? I want to get it 
clear." 

"Yes, that's right," said Peter. 

"Indeed! Do you know Miss Heaton?" asked 
Mrs. Wardour. 

"Yes, very well," said he. 

"That's what's so pleasant," said she. "Just to 
sit here and know everybody. That's what we want, 
Silvia, isn't it ? Just to sit and know everybody. But 
that only makes five. Who's the other one?" His 
name began with F, and he was very fat." 

"Perhaps that was his name," said Peter. He 
was beginning to enjoy himself; the whole thing was 
such complete nonsense. What kept up the high 
level of it was that Mrs. Wardour replied with 
seriousness : 

"No; if his name had been Fat, I should have 
remembered it," she said. "It wasn't Mr. Fat, nor 



56 Peter 

Lord Fat. He seemed to know everybody, too. He 
just sat there and knew everybody." 

From Peter's other side, where Silvia sat, there 
came some little tremor of a laugh, hardly audible, 
and turning, he saw that her face dimpled with 
amusement. It was singularly sexless; the curve of 
her jaw, the lines of her mouth were more like a 
boy's than a girl's; boyish, too, was her sideways 
cross-legged attitude. If she was laughing at her 
mother's remark, her amusement was clearly of the 
most genial kindliness. 

Mrs. Wardour continued in a perfectly even voice 
that almost intoned the words, so void was it of 
inflection. 

" It's a pity your party has missed so much of the 
opera," she said. "There's been a lot of pretty 
music ; some of it reminded me of being in church 
and hymns. It'll seem quite strange going to a dance 
afterwards. A lot of knights singing hymns. Parsi- 
fal, you know. Some say it's the best opera Wagner 
ever wrote." 

This time Silvia certainly laughed, and again 
her laugh had not the smallest hint of satirical en- 
joyment; she was just amused. Peter found himself, 
though he had scarcely yet glanced at her, somehow 
understanding her. He recognized in her amuse- 
ment all that he himself failed to feel with regard 
to his father's cartoons and his mother's readings in 
Bradshaw. He knew intuitively that Silvia had got 
hold of the right way to regard absurdities; to see 
comedy without contempt. Whether she knew it 
or not (it was quite certain that she did not), she had 
given him a glimpse, a hint, an enlightenment, not 
only of what she was, but of what he was not. Look- 
ing at her now directly for the first time, his 



Peter 57 

handsome face caught some reflection of her boyish 
brightness. 

"And what do you think of Parsifal? " he asked. 

She raised her eyebrows. 

" How can I tell ? " she asked. " I never saw an 
opera before," 

"I envy you," said Peter. 

"Why? For not having seen one, or because I 
am at last seeing one ? " she asked. 

Peter, as usual, found himself wanting to make 
a good impression. If he had been in a lift with a 
crossing-sweeper he would certainly have tried to 
make the crossing-sweeper like him, and have exerted 
his wits to hit upon something which the crossing- 
sweeper would think to be admirable, even though 
on arriving at the next floor he would never see him 
again. He quickly decided now that the girl would 
not admire mere drivel. . . . She happened to want 
to know what he envied her for. 

"For both," he said. "For getting a new im- 
pression. That includes both. You mustn't have 
seen an opera before, and you must be seeing one 
now." 

She looked at him with perfectly unshadowed 
frankness. 

"I believe you meant the first," she said. "I 
believe when you said you envied me, that you meant 
I was lucky in not having spent a quantity of boring 
evenings." 

"In any case, I don't mean that now," said Peter. 

"Ah, then you did. Why do you mean it no 
longer? " 

Peter found himself criticizing her. A conver- 
sation between the acts of an opera was not meant 
to degenerate into a catechism. You talked in order 



58 Peter 

to mask the ticking of the minutes. But as he was 
in for a catechism, it was better to be an agreeable 
candidate. 

"Why? " he asked. "Because I expect that you 
never spend boring evenings. Probably you are not 
a person who is bored." 

Clearly, as he suspected, she was not going to 
commit herself to any statement without considera- 
tion, even when so violently trivial a subject was 
under discussion. Her eyebrows, much darker than 
the shade of her hair, like Nellie's, pulled themselves 
a little downwards and inwards, so that they nearly 
met. 

"Oh, I could easily be bored," she said. "A lot 
of bored people would infect me and make me bored." 

She leaned a little forward towards him, again 
with that boyish appeal. 

"Please don't be bored," she said. "Be interested 
and amused. Make yourself into a sort of disinfectant 
to protect me." 

"Is there an epidemic?" he asked. 

"Yes; the place is reeking with it. My mother, 
for instance, detests music. Isn't it darling of her? " 

"How very odd of her, then " he began. 

He stopped because, in some emphatic, intangible 
way, the girl retreated from the platform of intimacy 
on to which she had stepped. She moved her chair 
an inch or two away from him, hitching it back with 
her foot, but that was only a symbol of her change of 
attitude. What to Peter made the significance of that 
small steering was a certain quenching of light in 
her face, as if, over it, she had put up some mask 
of herself that might easily have been mistaken for 
her, if the beholder had not, for a glimpse or two, 
seen her unmasked. She shifted from the personal 



Peter 59 

ground on which, for a minute, they had met, and 
became Miss Silvia Wardour, generaUzing in small 
talk, in the usual imbecile and social manner. She 
also became much more feminine. . . . 

"I wonder how many people in the house, who 
have come to hear Wagner, really dislike it," she 
said. "Probably we all of us like some species of 
noise, and dislike another species of noise. If you 
like the Beethoven noise, you probably dislike the 
Wagner noise. Only nobody will say so. They 
come to look at each other." 

She had carried back the conversation on to the 
personal platform again, as if she was sorry to have 
slipped off it so suddenly. But she carried it on to 
another part of the platform. Quite clearly she did 
not intend to discuss her mother's presence at the 
opera. 

"Tell me," she said. "What sort of noise do you 
really like ? This or somebody else's ? " 

Peter wondered for the moment whether she was 
to prove to be the earnest sort of girl, who, whatever 
you said, insisted on discussing your random state- 
ments, until you contradicted yourself (which usually 
happened quite soon), and then, vouchsafing a gleam 
of daylight, found an explanation for them in order 
that you might be encouraged to entangle yourself 
further. The earnest girl, the inquisitorial girl ; he 
did not like that type. . . . They gave you pencils 
and pieces of paper after dinner and made you write 
acrostics : they took letters out of a box and gave you 
eight of them, from which you had to make a word ; 
they divided the guests up into equal numbers, told 
them that this was "Clumps," and that two people 
were going to leave the room and guess whatever 
had been thought of. These were their lighter. 



6o Peter 

intellectual motions, and you feverishly played 
"Clumps" in order to avoid intolerable abstract 
discussions. Yet Silvia had not the sleuth-hound 
expression that usually accompanied these hunters 
after intellect. 

"What a searching question," he said. "But, 
really, I'm omnivorous about noises. I like the noise 
I'm listening to. I like it particularly." 

There was not in her face the smallest conscious- 
ness that he might conceivably be alluding to the 
fact that she was talking to him. She let her eyes 
sweep across the crov.ded theatre. 

"That noise?" she asked. "All those people 
talking? I love it, too. Oh, wouldn't it be interest- 
ing to be somebody else for a minute, and know 
what he meant, what he felt like when he said 
anything? " 

Clearly she had used the masculine gender quite 
unconsciously. Peter's answer, on the other hand, 
was deliberate. 

"Yes, I should love to know what she feels like, 
even over the most trivial speech," he said. 

Silvia dropped on to this with a precision that 
only showed how complete her own unconsciousness 
had been. 

"She?" she asked. 

"Certainly ' she,' " he said. "I know well enough 
the kind of thing which men feel like." 
She leaned forward again. 
"Oh, tell me about that," she said. 
Certainly they were together on the personal plat- 
form again. Peter was quite at home there; his 
passion for making, a good impression on new 
acquaintances, his rather uncanny skill in extracting 
intimacy from them, gave him a confident gait on 



Peter 6i 

these boards. He felt that this queer, attractive girl 
did not in the least wish to be talked to in the ordinary, 
nonsensical manner. In the gabble of the ballroom, 
and in the more intimate duologue on the stairs out- 
side it, girls, the generality of them, liked to be told 
that men thought exclusively about them, and spent 
their waking and sleeping moments in the contempla- 
tion of their divinity and pricelessness. Nellie, of 
course, was an exception, for between them there 
certainly was some peculiar bond of understanding; 
but the majority of girls, so ran his indolent and 
incurious creed, just wanted to be told that they were 
too priceless for anything, and some wanted to be 
kissed. It was all nonsense; they knew that as well 
as he did; but such was the inherited instinct, or, 
if you wished to be precise, the inherited instinct 
acting on the new conditions. But he knew that 
Silvia was not like that ; there was some eager, 
friendly quality about her. She was not quite the 
normal girl of the ballroom ; nor again, was she the 
earnest girl, who wanted to explore your brains and 
prove that you hadn't got any. She seemed merely 
interested in the topic, not because it would lead to 
a demonstration of her cleverness. 

"Men? " he said. " What do men feel ? They 
are as vain as peacocks, and they think entirely about 
themselves. They think of you as an inferior sex 
designed to amuse them." 

"Ah, the darlings!" said Silvia, quite unex- 
pectedly. 

The great pervading brilliance of the lights went 
out. A row of veiled illuminations only remained 
in front of the red confectionery of the curtain, against 
which the conductor's head was silhouetted. Silvia, 
after her surprising exclamation, drew her chair more 



62 Peter 

into the corner in order to enable Peter to pull his 
up to the front of the box. 

"Klingsor's Castle," said Mrs. Wardour, with a 
final desperate glance at her programme. "Who is 
Klingsor, Silvia ?" 

Peter wondered whether he could whisper, "Who 
is Silvia?"; but decided against it. 

"A magician, darling," said Silvia, with the same 
underlying bubble of amusement. 



CHAPTER IV 

There was a mad brutality of discordant noise, and 
the risen curtain disclosed an astrologer. He roared 
and yelled, and soon a dishevelled female, in an 
advanced stage of corruption, shrieked back at him. 
Silvia found herself disliking the Wagner noise, and 
her attention came closer home ; came, in fact, to the 
quarter-view of Peter's face, as he sat low in his 
chair in order to give her a clear view of Klingsor. 
She was not sure that she liked Peter any better than 
the hurly-burly that was going on, and though she 
knew she had been liking him during the interval 
between the acts, she now seriously set herself to 
the task of disliking him, and the easiest method of 
achieving that result was to class him as just one 
of the crowd which had come that night to occupy, 
by request, her mother's two boxes. She perfectly 
understood the situation : Lady Thirlmere, the woman 
with the pearls and the blue-black hair, had told a 
lot of her friends that they could go to see Parsifal 
for nothing, and reap a quantity of subsequent bene- 
fits at the price of knowing Mrs. Wardour, of fre- 
quenting her house, and of permitting her to eddy 
round in the general whirlpool. For some reason, 
inscrutable to Silvia, her mother wanted that; she 
and her mother, in fact, were like a pill, which Lady 
Thirlmere had guaranteed that the world should 
swallow. The pill was nobly gilded, and there was 
any amount of jam to assist the swallowing of it. 
Without doubt Peter was one of the open mouths. 

63 



64 Peter 

Klingsor and Kundry continued to rave at each 
other, and so far from listening, Silvia used that ex- 
ternal noise to drive her own thought into seclusion ; 
much as a dull sermon, a tedious lecture, makes for 
introspection in the audience. And hardly had she 
classed Peter among the open mouths than she won- 
dered if she had been quite fair in doing so, for 
the talk they had had was not of the same timbre as 
the conventional quackings which for the last week 
had made her mother's house like a farmyard, with 
her, like Mrs. Bond of the nursery rhyme, calling 
"Dilly, dilly . . . you shall be stuffed," and stuffed 
they were. Silvia could no more enter with sympathy 
into her mother's aims than she could enter with 
sympathy into stamp-collecting; but out of love for 
the stamp-collector — the dear, weary, steadfast stamp- 
collector — she was eager to feel the highest possible 
interest in the collection and collect for her with all 
her might. But she knew that she despised the spirit 
of the stamps, which, in return for food and drink 
and opera-boxes, were so willing to be collected. Next 
week there was to be a dance "for her," in that 
immense mansion which had been re-christened War- 
dour House, and pages of the stamp-book would on 
that occasion be filled with adhesive specimens. 
"Everybody," so she understood Ella Thirlmere to 
say, would come, and no doubt it would be tre- 
mendous fun. . . . 

There were certainly some stamps here now. Lord 
Charles was one, though why had he been willing 
to be collected? He sat with his head propped be- 
tween two long hands, and a queer sort of nose, just 
protruding, indicated by its downward angle that 
he was profoundly meditating. Next him was her 
mother, whose pearls clinked rhythmically to her 



Peter 65 

breathing, and nearest to herself she could see the 
half-averted profile of the young man whom she was 
encouraging herself to dislike. He appeared to be 
looking at the stage; certainly he was paying no 
attention to her, and she got back to what she actu- 
ally thought of him, instead of forcing herself into 
a defensive attitude against him. Somehow they 
seemed (not that it mattered) to have been talking to 
each other from odd standpoints. When, ridiculously 
interested for the moment, she had asked him what 
men "felt," he had not given a masculine answer. 
He had spoken to her as if he had been a girl ; he 
had said that men were as vain as peacocks, and 
thought of women as an inferior sex, designed for 
their amusement. Very likely that was quite true; 
but now in this isolation of darkness and loud noises, 
which cut her off from him and everyone else in the 
box, it seemed to her to have required a woman to 
state that. That was a woman's view of a man; a 
man, though he shared it, could scarcely have said 
it. Instead, he would have told her that women 
were the angelic sex, meant to be adored. . . . 

Some violent concussion had occurredon the stage ; 
there was no longer a gloomy black man with a 
photographic lens, but some insane sort of flower- 
bed; and remembering her programme, she recol- 
lected that this was the enchanted garden. The 
enchantment seemed to lie in a quantity of prodigious 
calico or cardboard flowers. Presently they burst. 
If they had not burst they must have burst, for mature 
females, singing loudly, were hatched out of the 
centre of each. The change had awakened Charlie, 
and he opened his mouth very wide. 

"My dear, what unspeakable wenches! " he said 
loudly to Mrs. Trentham. 



66 Peter 

"Silvia, look at the flower-maidens," said her 
mother. "They all came out of the flowers. Was 
not that wonderful ? Look at the one from the blue 
convolvulus! Isn't she sweet?" 

Silvia choked a laugh with an audible effort, 
swallowing it whole. 

" Yes, darling," she said. " Aren't they pretty ? " 

Peter turned to her quickly. 

"Oh, that's just how I talk to my father! " he 
said, and instantly looked back at the stage again. 

She reconsidered her verdict of him as merely 
belonging to the open mouths which Lady Thirlmere 
showered on her mother. They, at any rate, did not 
behave in that unwarranted way. Her neighbour 
was ill-bred, odious, familiar, and having thrown 
an impertinence like that over his shoulder, he did 
not even wait for her rejoinder. What it would have 
been she did not quite know. But . . . was it im- 
pertinent of him after all ? Was it, perhaps, rather 
a pleasant indication of intimacy? For intimacy, in 
the ordinary sense, there had not been time or oppor- 
tunity; but had he, perhaps, just spoken quite 
naturally, assuming a corresponding naturalness on 
her part ? 

If so, she had failed him. . . . 

Silvia was annoyed with herself for such a sug- 
gestion. How could she have "failed " a young man 
whom she had seen for the first time half an hour 
ago, who was only one specimen out of that flock of 
rooks which had alighted there in this new field, 
where worms were to be had for the mere picking 
of them up. . . . 

There was a long interval at the end of this second 
act, and a reseating of the occupants of the two boxes. 



Peter 67 

Lord Poole, whom Mrs. Wardour's godmother had 
chosen as a genial acquaintance, came in with his 
great towering frame and his immense red face and 
his unlimited capacity for enjoying himself. 

"Lucky dog, Parsifal," he remarked to Silvia, "to 
have had all those girls to choose from. He should 
have taken the one that came out of that great white 
lily. My word, she did surprise me when she came 
out of that lily. I wish I knew where I could get 
some of those lilies. Hallo, Peter ! Get out of that 
chair like a good boy, and let me sit between Miss 
Silvia and her mother. Haven't had a word with 
either of them yet. Go and make love to my wife 
for ten minutes; you'll find her next door, and come 
back and tell me how you've been getting on." 

When this great licensed victualler of London 
appeared on the scene and made some such sugges- 
tion, it was usual to go and do as he told you. But 
now Peter glanced at the girl as if to ask whether 
she wished him to make way or not. She gave him 
no sign, however, no hint that he was to stop where 
he was, and so the best thing, as his cool, quick 
brain told him, was to answer Lord Poole genially 
according to his folly. 

"You condone it, then," he said. 

"Lord, yes, I condone anything," he said. "We 
all condone everything nowadays. Saves a lot of 
trouble in the courts." 

The frankness of these odious sentiments made 
it quite impossible not to treat them as a farce. No 
one in his senses took Lord Poole seriously; he was 
so jolly and so preposterous, and so successfully 
sought safety in numbers. He instantly spread him- 
self over Peter's chair and firmly put one arm round 
Silvia's waist and the other round her mother's. 



68 Peter 

"Nice young fellow that," he observed as Peter 
went out of the box. "What a pair he and Miss 
Silvia make, hey? He's black and she's fair, and 
he's a clever fellow and won't have a penny, and I 
wish I was his age. Do you know his father? He's 
a rum 'un." 

These remarkable statements were addressed in 
a loud, hoarse whisper to Mrs. Wardour, and were, 
of course, perfectly audible to Silvia. Then he turned 
to the girl. 

"I've been asking your mother to elope with me," 
he said, "so I hope you didn't overhear. Now I'm 
going to talk to you and she mustn't listen. You're 
perfectly delicious, my dear, you and your golden 
hair, and that little foot that's kicking me. Let it 
go on kicking; I like it. Wonder how Peter's getting 
on with my missus. Peep round the corner. Miss 
Silvia, and see if she looks like going off with him. 
There are several topping girls in that box, but she's 
the pick of them, bless her heart. What ! Here's 
your mother getting up and leaving me. More 
friends coming in ! I never saw such a lot of friends. 
Why, it's Ella ! I'm in luck to-night. And there's 
May Trentham only one chair away. Look at her 
profile against the light. Did you ever see anything 
so perfect ? Looks rather like the head on a postage- 
stamp, but don't say I said so." 

Lord Poole was now satisfactorily engaged in his 
usual evening occupation of getting as many girls 
and pretty women round him as possible, while Mrs. 
Trentham was performing a similar office with re- 
gard to every young man who came into the box. Her 
pansy face was growing sillier than ever as she kept 
telling them all to go and talk to somebody else. 
The object of these two middle-aged magnets was 



Peter 69 

precisely similar : one wanted to attract to itself all 
the men, the other all the women ; but there was an 
infinite divergence in their methods. May Trentham, 
pretending to be young, kept asserting how old she 
was; Lord Poole, pretending to be old, could not 
conceal the fact of how young he was. He, again, 
was not thinking one atom about himself, but was 
entirely absorbed in his collection of sirens; she was 
thinking exclusively about herself, and was only 
anxious that every one in the house should turn 
green with envy at her galaxy of adorers. . . . Then 
Ella Thirlmere and a friend or two joined the group, 
and he returned blatantly, fatuously, delightfully to 
the opera. 

"Well, now, I do feel like Parsifal," he said. 
"Here I am in the middle of such flower-maidens, 
any of whom could give a couple of furlongs in a 
mile to those on the stage and come romping home 
in a canter. Look at Ella now : there's a picture 
for you ! Why, my gracious, here's Winifred, too ! 
Come and tell us all about it, Winifred; how many 
hearts, not reckoning mine, have you broken to- 
night ? Look at that hair of hers ! Did anybody ever 
see hair like that? I never did, and I've seen a lot 
in my time. May Trentham, too! Do you wonder 
that all the young men go swarming round her? 
Pm sure I don't, and Pd join the swarm myself if 
I wasn't so blissfully situated just where I am. 
Haven't enjoyed an evening so much for years. Wish 
this interval would last till Doomsday, and then 
we'd all go up to heaven together ! St. Peter would 
let me in without a question when he saw whom I'd 
brought along with me." 

Among the people who had drifted in at the end 
of the act was Philip Beaumont, whom Mrs. Trent- 



70 



Peter 



ham had instantly rendered adhesive by her voluble 
commands to go back to Nellie Heaton at once. 
Nellie, however, had very designedly sent him here, 
for she had become aware by a glimpse, a sound 
(an instinct, perhaps even more) that Peter was in 
the box next door, and her dispatch of her lover 
there would certainly signify to Peter that she wished 
him to take the chair now vacant by her and resume 
the talk in the window that had taken place that 
afternoon. Somehow that talk had made for itself 
an anchorage uncomfortable to her consciousness; it 
had been like a fishbone in her throat. She had taken 
gulps of her fiance, so to speak, in order to dislodge 
it; but she had not succeeded in swallowing it. She 
had tried to divert her attention from it; had pounced 
with fixed claws on the opera in front of her; had 
jotted down in her memory, with the fell example of 
Lady Poole as an object-lesson, a quantity of ways 
of behaviour and of the presentation of yourself to 
others which were undesirable when you were fifty 
or seventy or whatever Lady Poole happened to be. 
You must be quiet and calm when you had tottered 
up to those hoary altitudes; you must leave your 
hair to turn any colour it chose. . . . You mustn't 
wriggle and snort, for whereas wriggling in the 
young might exhibit (quite advantageously) a grace- 
ful litheness, it suggested in the old that a galvanic 
battery had been unexpectedly applied to the knees 
and the elbows and the middle part of the person. 
But there was something remote about these glean- 
ings of knowledge; they might prove to be nutritious 
(and possibly palatable) if preserved and remembered 
for thirty or forty years; at the present moment they 
were not of sufficiently arresting a quality to divert 
her mind from this fishbone of her interview with 



Peter 71 

Peter. . . . There had been a harshness, a crudity in 
it; there had been, to her mind, a certain hostihty in 
it; there had been also a certain hunger in it, an 
emptiness that ached. He had clearly pronounced 
that their relationship— the bond, in fact, of which 
she had spoken— must be changed by her engagement, 
and, though she would have combated that with wit 
and good sense, some internal fibre of her throbbed, 
vibrated to the truth of it. She wanted to convince 
Peter (and even more to convince herself) that the 
old bond, the old relationship, still flowered and had 
lost no petal of its fragrance. 

She had not to wait long for his entry; Philip 
had barely left the box before Peter appeared in the 
doorway, and she applauded his quickness in answer- 
ing the signal she had waved to him in the ejection 
of the other. He was silhouetted there for a moment 
as he spoke to someone in the corridor outside, cool 
and crisp and complete. Peter was always like that; 
nature had applied to him some extra polish, some 
exquisite finish, which detached him from all others 
in the moist or dusty crowd. Adorable though that 
was, the thought came to the girl that, above all else, 
she wanted to disturb and disarrange that. Peter 
excited and dishevelled. Peter enthusiastic. Peter 
undetached and clinging was perhaps the real 
Peter. ... A clamorous, turbulent Peter. . . . 

He looked round as he entered ; he clearly saw 
her, and as clearly disregarded the obvious movement 
of her hand to the vacant seat which Philip had just 
quitted. Though that rejection — that "cut " you 
might call it, considering their friendship — was in 
no way premeditated, it was, when he saw Nellie 
beckoning as with proprietorship, or so it struck 
him, quite deliberate. He had given no thought to 



72 Peter 

it before, and apparently gave no further thought 
now, for he instantly placed himself next Lady Poole, 
beside whom there was another empty seat. There 
was a great green feather nodding a welcome from 
her violent hair ; it matched her green shoes and the 
lars"e slabs of false emerald with which her dress 
was hazardously held together. She was quite as 
absurd as her husband, and had a witty poison under 
her tongue, which she sprayed profusely over most 
subjects of discussion. But her poison hurt nobody, 
since nobody ever believed a word she said. She 
was, in fact, as harmless as a serpent, and certainly 
not as wise as a dove. 

The serpent aspect showed its innocuous fangs. 

"Monster," she said to Peter. "Sit down and 
tell me at once what's going on next door. Whom's 
my Christopher flirting with?" 

"Everybody," said Peter. "He sent me away 
to flirt with you. Let's begin. Shall I begin? Tell 
me why you and he should always remain young 
when all the rest of us are as old as the hills." 

The wisdom of the mature dove peeped out for a 
moment, but was driven back by a hiss of the serpent, 
as a loud squeal of laughter sounded from the next 
box. 

"That's May Trentham," said Lady Poole un- 
erringly. "My dear, what a woman! Why do all 
you young men crowd round her like moths round 
a night-light. Whom has she got? " 

"The rest of the males," said Peter. "Male and 
female, you know " 

"Stuff and nonsense. There are people who are 
things ! Look at our hostess, whom Christopher is 
probably embracing at this moment. I assure you 
she hasn't got a face; she's got a slab. What are 



Peter 73 

we coming to? Then there's her daughter. She's a 
boy; a nice, handsome, healthy boy, doing well. I 
wish my son was like her. Do you know him ? He's 
like a pincushion." 

Peter was not actively listening to these extra- 
ordinary remarks; he was taking in and assimilating 
just what he had done in not occupying the place 
indicated to him by Nellie. He came to the conclu- 
sion that he had not done so precisely because she 
intended him to. She was meaning to get on per- 
fectly well without him, and had better begin at once. 

"Why pincushion? " he asked. 

"Because I put pins into him whenever I see him, 
which isn't often, and he just sits there and keeps 
my pins. He doesn't mind; he doesn't bleed. He's 
nothing at all, poor wretch. I beg him to steal or bear 
false witness or break any commandment that comes 
handy so long as he does something. He eats 
chocolate and trims hats. I shall have no pins left 
soon. 

"Never mind Eddy ! But what a horrible opera; 
must have been written by an organist in collaboration 
with a choirboy. I wonder if Christopher is in the 
next box at all. I expect he's gone behind to scrape 
acquaintance with some flower-maiden — probably that 
voluptuous crone who came out of a large white lily, 
though how she got into it originally is more than 
I can say, because she was bigger than anything I 
ever saw. If only Eddy would do that sort of thing : 
so much more suitable. Anaemic; that's what you all 
are. The women aren't quite so bad as the men. I 
know personally five grandmothers who have mar- 
ried again in the last fortnight. But the grand- 
mothers who continue optimistically marrying will 
die in time, and what's going to happen to England 



74 



Peter 



then ? What's the use of saying ' emigration,' when 
there won't be anybody to emigrate? " 

"I didn't say ' emigration,' " said Peter, with his 
head whirling. This sort of speech was character- 
istic of Lady Poole. She dashed pictures on to a 
screen like a magic lantern, and took them off again 
before you had seen them, leaving darkness and the 
smell of oil. 

"May Trentham, too," said this amazing lady. 
"I hear you've been dining with her. She would 
like every boy in the kingdom to remain celibate 
for her antiquated sake. I will say for Christopher 
that he doesn't want that. He would like every 
woman to do just the opposite. . . . Good gracious, 
here's another act and I thought it was all over 
and that we were only waiting for our motors. 
Come and see me to-morrow. Any time, I'm always 
at home. Where is one to go in these days? Pro- 
fiteers and Bolshevists and Jews! That's England; 
mark my words ! " 

Peter groped his way out of the box in the sudden 
eclipse of the lights, sidling by others who were tip- 
toeing back again, without any response to Nellie's 
signal. He knew quite well that there was an un- 
occupied seat next her, and that it would have 
been the most natural thing in the world for him 
to have appropriated it; but he chose to consider that 
it was more suitable yet that Philip should find his 
way back to it. She had given him the right to be 
there, and Peter, with a tinge of insincerity, told 
himself that he was behaving with extreme correct- 
ness in not occupying it; the insincerity lying in the 
fact that his root-reason for going back to the other 
box being that he was determined that Nellie should 
not have everything quite her ow^n way. 



Peter 75 

Then again— another reason for behaving so pro- 
perly—she had said herself that afternoon that she 
meant to fit herself to the conventional mould, and 
here was he helping to secure a perfect fit. No 
doubt she was right; she was right also in divining 
that the nature of the bond between them must now 
necessarily be changed. It had never been a pas- 
sionate one; their individual independence, no less 
than the material obstacles in the way of declared 
and complete surrender to each other, had always 
stood between them ; but there seemed, now that the 
bond was slackened, to have been potential passion 
woven into it. Perhaps the slight collision with 
Philip in the doorway, and the knowledge that he 
was groping his way back to the chair by Nellie 
again, accentuated that perception. For a moment 
Peter paused ; he had yet just time to slide past 
Philip and occupy the chair; but there seemed to 
glimmer in the seat of it some label "Reserved," and 
he checked his impulse. No doubt he would resume 
natural relations with Nellie again to-morrow, or 
probably even to-night in the dance — or two dances, 
was it? — where they would be sure to meet, and a 
certain subtle antagonism which had begun to smoke 
and smoulder witliin him would be quenched. He 
left it, for the present, at that. 

For three or four hours more that night, after the 
conclusion of the opera, Sylvia found herself in touch 
with one or other of the guests who had so agreeably 
and with so little ceremony decorated the fronts of 
her mother's boxes. They seemed just as much at 
home in Lady Thirlmere's house, taking genial pos- 
session of it, dancing to her band, drinking her 
champagne in the same clubable manner. Lord 
Poole was greatly in evidence, surrounding himself 



76 Peter 

with the gay moths that positively stuck in the spiced 
honey of his outrageous compHments and could 
scarcely disentangle their feet therefrom. He squeezed 
their hands, he put his arm round their waists, he 
made the most amazing speeches right and left as to 
their irresistibility. He was like some mirror into 
which every woman looked and saw there a fascinat- 
ing reflection of herself, that presented an image of 
herself more delicious than, even when trying on a 
new hat, she had ever supposed herself to be. 
"What's to happen to us poor men," he asked 
Silvia, "if you're all of you going on being so tip- 
top? We shan't do a stroke more work; we shall 
spend all our time in looking at you, and then 
who's to pay your bills? I've lost my heart twenty 
times already to-night, and that's enough for an old 
chap like me, so I shall take myself off to bed. 
Where's my wife, I wonder ? Can your bright eyes 
pick out any extra dense crowd of young men ? If 
you can, I shall plunge straight into them, like 
taking, a dive after a pearl-oyster, and I'll find her 
right in the very middle of them." 

There seemed to be an unusual congregation at 
the end of the drawing-room, which opened on to 
the dancing floor, and Lord Poole accordingly took 
his dive. Silvia could see, as the waves of black 
coats and white shirts split up round him, that it was 
Mrs. Trentham who was the pearl-oyster just there ; 
but the dive must have been satisfactory, for Lord 
Poole disappeared fathoms deep. 

Silvia began to revise her judgment on the non- 
chalant greed of the mouths that flocked to be fed. 
Everyone was so gay and pleasant, so intent on 
laughter and amusement; everyone knew everyone 
else. She had done no more than set eyes on a young 



Peter 77 

man who had come in with Mrs. Trentham to her 
mother's box, but Tommy confidently claimed her 
as an old friend, and she stalked and slid about the 
floor with him. At the conclusion of that a girl 
whom she remembered with even mistier vagueness 
disentangled herself from another young man (the 
one who had slept so quietly and cried out so audibly 
at the appearance of the flower-maiden) and ejected 
Tommy from the seat next Silvia. She was en- 
trancingly pretty in some wild, dewy manner, and 
had all the assurance that the knowledge of a de- 
lightful appearance gives its possessor. 

"I haven't had a word with you all the evening," 
she said, "and I want to tell you how delicious it was 
of your mother to let me come to her box. I saw 
you round the edge of the curtain talking to Peter. 
He raves about you ; so, as I wanted to rave too, I — 
well, here I am. Don't send me away." 

Silvia was utterly unaccustomed to exercise any 
critical faculty where friendliness seemed to be 
offered. There were no outlymg forts to her heart, 
no challenging sentries; if a girl seemed to like her, 
that was passport enough. Who this was she could 
not for the moment remember, though doubtless her 
name was among those which her mother had re- 
peated as being occupant next door. Then the name, 
Nellie Heaton, found a lodging in her mind and 
seemed secure. She was not sure that she liked the 
information that Peter was "raving" about her; but 
it was surely friendliness, the desire to be pleasant, 
that had prompted the retailing of it to her. 

"You must be Miss Heaton," she said. "Am I 
right ? There were so many new faces to-night, you 
know. . . ." 

She looked at Nellie with that direct gaze that 

F 



y^ Peter 

sought only to appreciate. There was certainly a 
great deal to appreciate : the girl was dazzlingly 
pretty. 

Nellie laughed. 

"Yes; I suppose I am Miss Heaton for the pre- 
sent," she said. 

A little more of her mother's commentaries came 
into Silvia's mind. Had there not been a man in 
the next box — name missing for the moment — to 
whom Miss Heaton was engaged? Perhaps her 
phrase, "for the present," alluded to that. 

"Ah, I'm beginning to remember," she said. "I 
remember that you are soon to be married. I hope 
you'll be tremendously happy." 

"That's dear of you," said Nellie. "But when I 
said I was Miss Heaton for the present, I didn't quite 
mean that." 

Silvia, with all her friendliness, shrank ever so 
slightly from this. There was a certain reserve about 
her which did not quite allow the indicated response. 
But the welcome of her manner was not abated. 

" Do be kind and sort out all these nice people for 
me," she said. "I have grasped Lord Poole, and 
isn't it Mr. Mainwaring who is Peter? He sat next 
me for an act. All the Christian names are a little 
puzzling at first. Then there's Tommy; I haven't the 
slightest idea what his surname is, though I shall 
know him again, because I danced with him just now. 
And there's Lord Charles, who went to sleep — I shall 
know him again " 

"And won't you know Peter again ? " asked Nellie. 
"That's one for Peter." 

"Oh, but I shall," said Silvia. "He's " 

The two were sitting close to the door into the 
ballroom, and at that moment Peter passed in front 



Peter 79 

of them talking to a girl. He just glanced at them, 
took them both in, and melted into the crowd. 

"Yes; that's Mr. Mainwaring," said Silvia con- 
fidently. "I — I liked him. Don't you like him? " 

Nellie made a little sideways, bird-like movement 
of her head. Out of her changed relations with Peter 
she felt that something like antagonism had minutely 
sprouted. She wanted . . . yes, she would give an 
answ'er that would seem wholly appreciative of Peter, 
and that would yet contain something that Silvia 
possibly (just possibly) w^ould not like. 

"Dear Peter! " she said. "Of course, we're all 
devoted to Peter. It's the fashion to be devoted to 
Peter." 



CHAPTER V 

During the next month the foam and froth which 
spouted from the weir of London, into which Mrs. 
Wardour, of her own design and desire, had been 
so expensively plunged, began to be less tumultuous 
as she floated away from the occasion of her first 
bewildering dive. Lady Thirlmere, that admirable 
godmother, had chucked her into it, holding her 
breath and shutting her eyes, and now Mrs. War- 
dour was getting her head above water and beginning 
to paddle on her own account. The sponsor had 
provided the richness of total immersion, and Lucy 
Wardour was certainly swimming. As she came up 
to the surface, she found herself surrounded by 
iridescent bubbles; she was bobbing along in a mill- 
race of desirable acquaintances. She had made no 
friends — there was no time for leisurely processes of 
this sort; but when she had decided that she wanted 
to spend her months and her money in the pursuit of 
some such indefinite goal as now loomed promisingly 
in front of her, she had not expected to make friends. 
She had not "gone for" friends; she had gone for 
something that attracted the attention of the accom- 
plished gentlemen who wTote those small and ex- 
quisite paragraphs in the daily papers. Inscrutably 
enough, that happened to be her ambition; what she 
wanted was to see (though she knew it already) that 
"Mrs. Wardour was among those who brought a 
party to the first night of The Bugaboo." . . . "Mrs. 
Wardour gave a dinner at Wardour House last night, 

80 



Peter 8i 

followed by a small dance." . . . "Mrs. Wardour was 
in the Park, chatting to her friends, and wearing a 
green toque and her famous pearls." . . . Among her 
secretary's duties was that of pasting these juicy 
morsels, supplied by a press-agency, into a red 
morocco scrapbook. In fact, she was streaking her 
way across the bespangled firmament of London, like 
a comet, with a blank face and an anxious eye. But 
those who thought that the anxious eye received no 
impressions just because they were not instantly re- 
corded on the blank face, made the mistake of this 
season. 

May Trentham had undeniably been guilty of this 
error. From that first night, when she had brought 
iier young men to the opera, she had thought that 
Mrs. Wardour was not sufficiently alive to her value, 
and as Mrs. Wardour did not appear to be learning 
any better, she had certainly permitted herself to 
indulge in little rudenesses, little patronizations, little 
contempts, which Mrs. Wardour did not appear to 
notice. Certainly she made no direct allusion to 
them, and her rather meaningless countenance showed 
no sign of having perceived them. . . . 

This afternoon she was occupied with her sec- 
retary in making out a list of a favoured few, not 
more than eighty all told, who were to be bidden to 
an entertainment at which the Russian ballet was to 
figure. She ran her short, blunt forefinger down the 
alphabetical pages of her "visiting-list," and dictated 
names to the gaunt Miss Winterton, who took them 
down in an angry scribble of shorthand. The last 
few pages were approaching. 

"Then there's Mrs. Trentham," she said to Silvia. 
"I think we'll leave out Mrs. Trentham." 

Silvia put in a mild plea. 



82 Peter 

"She rather enjoys things, mother," she said. 

There was a pause, in which Mrs. Wardour 
slowly and deliberately recalled certain moments 
which nobody would have thought she had noticed. 

"Well, she isn't going to enjoy my things," she 
said. 

They were seated in Mrs. Wardour's private sit- 
ting-room in the great house in Piccadilly. It was 
hung with French brocade; an immense Aubusson 
carpet covered the floor, and a Reisener table and 
bureau, with half a dozen very splendid chairs, 
echoed the same epoch. Mrs. Wardour had found 
this a little too stiff for domestic ease, and a decidedly 
more homely note was struck by a few wicker chairs, 
upholstered in cretonne, and a tea-table of the same 
imperishable material, with flaps which let down on 
hinges and formed convenient shelves for cakes and 
teacups. On the top of the bureau was a large photo- 
graph of the late Mr. Wardour in watch-chain and 
broadcloth. There were but a few more names, and 
Mrs. Wardour closed the book. 

"Then you'll send invitations to the names I've 
given you, Miss Winterton," she said, "on R.S.V.P. 
cards. There's no one else you'd like to ask, Silvia ? " 

Silvia knew quite well what she was intending to 
say, and wondered why she hesitated. 

"Will you ask Mr. Peter Mainwaring? " she said. 

"xMr. Mainwaring? I don't seem to recollect " 

"Darling, of course you can't recollect every- 
body," said the girl; "but I should like him to be 
asked." 

"Certainly then. What's his initials and ad- 
dress?" 

Silvia supplied this information, and Miss Win- 
terton gathered up her papers and left them. She 



Peter 83 

had the air of some dethroned queen, for whom dis- 
astrous circumstances had made it necessary to 
perform menial offices. Mrs. Wardour breathed a 
sigh of obvious reHef when she had gone. 

"She terrifies me, Silvia," she said, when the door 
had closed. "She and that new butler. To think 
that one of them is called Summerton and the other 
Winterton. Well, I'm sure ! " 

Silvia blevv^ out a little bubble of laughter. 

"Stand up to them, dear," she said. 

"Yes, it's all very well to talk; but how am I to 
stand up to them when my knees tremble ? I wouldn't 
have it known, but that's the fact. Well, we are 
going to have a grand party next week." 

Mrs. Wardour relaxed herself in the wicker chair. 

"It's been a job and a half," she said, "and I wish 
your father was alive to see what a good job and a 
half I've made of it. He always had a hankering 
for high life himself, but he was too busy to catch 
hold of it. ' When I give the word, Lucy,' he's often 
said to me, ' we'll start in and show them all how to 
do it.' Often he's said that to me. And I always 
had a taste for it, too; and sure enough it came 
natural to me from the first. We're pretty well sit- 
ting down and knowing everybody now." 

Hard work it certainly had been ; for the last two 
months Mrs. Wardour had worked as hard at secur- 
ing the goal she had so steadfastly set before her as 
her husband had ever done in providing the parapher- 
nalia for the enterprise; but now she might fairly 
claim that she was beginning to sit and know every- 
body. She had brought to her task an unremitting 
industry, and — when the tide was once flowing in 
her favour, so that it was possible to consider not 
so much whom she would ask but whom she would 



84 Peter 

leave out — a steely ruthlessness. That ruthless- 
ness, indeed, had been a weapon throughout the 
campaign ; if a desirable guest was unable to come 
on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, Mrs. Wardour 
had adamantinely proceeded with Thursday, Friday, 
and Saturday ; she had even taken her place at the 
telephone and demanded in her flat, firm voice that 
her quarry should consult his engagement-book and 
let her know which was the first disengaged night. 
Ruthless, also, she had now become, as in the case 
of Mrs. Trentham, when the question was one of 
exclusion, and the party for the Russian ballet had 
been selected on the sternest principles. Thinking 
over that now, her mind reverted to Silvia's final 
invitatio'.i. 

"And who is your Mr. Mainwaring ? " she asked. 

Silvia again had to stifle some embarrassment that, 
since it did not exist on the surface at all, must have 
had some more secret origin. 

"Oh, I've met him a score of times," she said. 
"He's one of the people who is always there. He sat 
between us once at the opera, I think I remember. 
One evening when Lord Poole made love to you, 
dear. But, somehow, he's never been to your house 
yet." 

"That's more than most can say," remarked 
Mrs. Wardour, so nearly smacking her lips that 
an impartial umpire might have said that "it 
counted." This set Silvia laughing. 

"And what have I said now?" asked Mrs. 
Wardour. 

It was not so much what her mother was saying 
as what she was being that so continually kept Silvia 
in a state of simmering hilarity. Contemplate it as 
she might, she had never been able to comprehend 



Peter 85 

the impulse, or rather the steady, unwavering de- 
votion, that had kept Mrs. Wardour at such high 
pressure all these weeks. She did not enjoy the pro- 
cess of these eternal entertainments; the gaiety of 
others did not make her gay ; music made no appeal 
to her; she was long past the age of dancing (though 
so many of her contemporaries were not), and yet she 
would sit benignly content through the short hours 
of the summer night, with her great tiara on her 
head, and feeling the heat acutely, for the mere plea- 
sure of being there. That she was there was now- 
undeniable, and, happily, having got there, she 
suffered no disillusionment. The mere chasse, the 
acquisition, was certainly not the mainspring of her 
activities. She had engaged in the chasse not for 
the sake of getting but of having. . . . 

The second terror of her busy life entered. 

"Miss Heaton wants to know if you are at home, 
miss? " said the formidable Summerton. 

It was a relief to Silvia's mother that she had not 
got to "stand up" to Summerton, and, indeed, there 
was no crisis at all, for close behind him was 
Nellie. 

" My dear, I was so afraid you might say that you 
weren't at home,' she said, "that I thought it only 
my duty to save you telling lies. Am I interrupting? 
How are you, Mrs. Wardour? Send me away if I 
am intruding, or say that you have just gone out 
if you don't want me to stop, and I will promise to 
believe you." 

Silvia had risen with a flush of pleasure on her 
face at the entrance of her friend. From all the new 
acquaintances of London, Nellie had made a shining 
emergence; through all the mists and bewilderments 
of the new life she shone with a steady beam, like 



86 Peter 

the luminous finger from a lighthouse, clear and 
steadfast above the complicated currents. 

"But this is lovely," said Silvia. "Sit down. 
Tea? Something? Anything?" 

She stood looking at her with frank, surrendered 
gaze; a little dazzled, as she always was, with such 
easy unconscious splendour. She regarded Nellie, 
if she could have put her appreciation into words, as 
she might have regarded some golden casket, set 
with gems, which seemed to have been laid in her 
hands. She had, as yet, no idea what was inside it; 
she had not attempted to raise the lid. It was enough 
at present to be allowed to hold it in shy, adoring 
fingers. 

"No, nothing," said Nellie; "not even to sit 
down. I came, in fact, to make you stand up." 

"I'm doing that," said Silvia. 

"That's not enough. . . . My dear, what a de- 
licious frock ! But my horrible Philip has been 
obliged to go out of town, and I'm at a loose end 
till dinner, and thought it would be wonderfully 
pleasant to sit on the grass somewhere. Isn't that 
original ? At the moment when that rural idea 
occurred to me, I passed your gilded portals and 
thought it would be even more wonderful if you came 
and sat there too. I don't mean ordinary, dirty 
grass, but clean grass. Richmond Park, or some- 
thing. Top of a bus, of course. Old hats." 

There could have been no more attractive notion 
to Silvia. She felt that it was just that she had long 
been wanting; namely, to be with Nellie on the grass 
in an old hat. She could still ecstatically be dazzled, 
could follow the beam of the lighthouse with steady 
rapture; but a fresh aspect of her, away from ball- 
rooms and crowds, just that old-hat aspect, she felt 



Peter 87 

at once to be what most she desired. She might, it 
is true, be just as dazzling thus, she might, indeed, 
be more dazzHng when other lesser brightnesses were 
withdrawn from her vicinity; but however she turned 
out, she could not fail to show a new enchantment. 

"Of course I'll come," she said. "Let me go and 
get an old hat. You don't want me, mother, do 
you ? " 

"No, dear. But if you'll ring the bell, I'll order 
the car for you. Far more comfortable and far 
quicker than the top of a bus." 

Nellie had been taking in the appurtenances of 
this room, to which she had not previously pene- 
trated, with those quick, bird-like glances which were 
away again, scarcely alighting, before you knew they 
had perched at all. Mrs. Wardour's hospitable sug- 
gestion seemed to contrast with her own project in just 
the manner in which those creaking cretonne chairs 
contrasted with the brocade on the walls and the 
Aubusson on the floor. 

"Ah, how kind," she said; "but, dear Mrs. War- 
dour, the point of our expedition is not to be com- 
fortable and quick, but uncomfortable and slow. I 
yearn for that, and for being rustic and common. 
Otherwise, I should ask you to lend me one of those 
glorious chairs and let me sit and look at Buckingham 
Palace." 

"Yes, you can see it out of the window," said 
Mrs. Wardour. "But the top of a bus — let me see, 
Miss Heaton, isn't it — is the top of a bus quite the 
thing for girls like Silvia and you ? " 

"But absolutely," said Nellie. "It wouldn't be 
a bit the thing to drive in your lovely Rolls-Royce. 
And we shall have tea somewhere quite unspeakable, 
with dirty napkins." 



88 Peter 

Mrs. Wardour shook her head. 

"Now a nice tea-basket and the car," she insinu- 
ated. "Ready in ten minutes, I beg you. Miss 
Heaton." 

Why the notion of Richmond Park and a bus 
and a tea-shop had blown in upon Nellie she had 
no clear idea; but as she and Silvia swayed and 
bounced westwards, it easily yielded an unconscious 
analysis. Her morning had been taken up with dress 
and trousseau for the imminent wedding, her mother 
had joined her at the dressmaker's flushed with 
triumph over some grabbing business called settle- 
ments, and over the afternoon there had hung, rather 
sultrily, the prospect of long hours with Philip, who 
was coming to lunch. Her mother, as usual, had a 
bridge party of harpies, and no doubt she and Philip, 
just as she and Peter had done not many weeks ago, 
would sit in the window and pass for being absorbed 
in each other. It was owing, no doubt, to the hy- 
meneal morning, and the prospect of a similar after- 
noon, that, on the outpouring through the telephone 
of Philip's calm, but sincere, regrets that business 
claimed him in the country, reaction had opened its 
sluice-gates and overwhelmed her with the desire for 
hours physically and morally remote from rich fabrics 
and opulent comfort, and from the ambient atmos- 
phere of things connected with just one theme. She 
was perfectly well satisfied with the general prospect, 
matrimonially considered; but she wanted just now, 
as celibacy was so soon to vanish, a foreground of 
it and simplicity and freedom to her picture. Origin- 
ally, when the telephone had first told her of Philip's 
defection, she had scarcely made the needful pause 
of ringing off before getting into communication with 
Peter to know whether he could sHp the official collar 



Peter 89 

for an afte-rnoon. Certainly that was "ringing off " 
Philip with some completeness, and with whom better 
than with the other could she take a last excursion 
into the country that would so soon be severed from 
her by the sea, placid she hoped, of matrimony? 
But the official collar could not, so Peter's very dis- 
tinct voice told, be shifted. He, Peter's voice, at 
any rate, said he was sorry ; but he added no super- 
latives of regret, and before she had removed her ear 
she heard the click of the replaced instrument at the 
other end. He rang off, so it seemed to her, with a 
certain finality, not lingering to gossip. That had 
been rather characteristic of him lately ; though she 
had constantly met him, he had always appeared in 
that light, impenetrable armour of his aloofness, 
never raising his visor, nor showing a joint in his 
harness where she could get at him. Ever since the 
interview on the window-seat six weeks ago he had 
been withdrawn like that. 

Failing to get Peter, her next inclination had been 
to sip her celibacy alone, for though Peter, better 
than anybody, symbolized the things that were pass- 
ing away (the wet woods and the roving and the inde- 
pendence), she would, in his absence, get nearest 
to them alone. So she had already started on her 
suburban pilgrimage, strolling down the glare and 
wilderness of Piccadilly to get on to a Richmond 
bus at the corner of Hyde Park, when, finding her- 
self dazzled by the sun on the newly-gilded gates of 
Wardour House, the notion of Silvia's companion- 
ship suggested itself, and she paused weighing its 
advantages. Silvia would certainly give her an eager, 
appreciative comradeship (so much was instantly 
clear), and on the heels of that a tangle of other 
interesting little curiosities, with tentacles protruding, 



90 



Peter 



plumped themselves into the same scale. She did 
not trouble to unravel them now; they would 
straighten themselves out as the afternoon went on. 

Richmond Park proved very empty of loiterers; 
occasionally a motor-bicycle, with a wake of dust 
hanging in the air behind it, streaked down the yellow 
road ; but, by the Pen Ponds, no more than the distant 
throb of such passenger was audible. Summer was in 
full leaf among the oaks and beeches, retaining still 
the varnished freshness of spring, and populous in the 
shade of the leafy trees were herds of fallow-deer, 
which lay sleepy and yet alert, with twitching ears 
and whisking tail against the incorrigible menace of 
flies, until an abatement of the heat restored appetite 
for the voung tussocky grass. The hawthorn was 
nearly over; smouldering coronets of faded flame, or 
grey ash of dazzling blossom represented the glories 
of May ; but round the ponds the humps of the rho- 
dodendron banks were still on fire. 

Such talk as had flourished between the two girls 
had not yet penetrated beyond the barrier where 
triviality ceases, and past dances, with keen criticism 
on their merits, and dances to come, and the adequacy 
of various partners (among whom Peter's name flitted 
by like blowing thistledown) had been flashed on and 
off the public plate. There had been a little longer 
exposure for the projected party at which the Russian 
ballet were to supply the entertainment, and Nellie 
had been informed, with horrified eagerness on the 
part of Silvia, that, of course, she had been 
bidden : the invitation had only been inscribed that 
afternoon. Her acceptance of it was equally "of 
course," and with the luck that attended friends, the 
date of it was a clear two days before her marriage. 
Trivial though it had all been, she felt that the Hama- 



Peter 91 

dryad (herself) had been doing spade-work in the 
shade. The ground was cleared and levelled; every 
topic that she might now wish to work up into a more 
elaborate tapestry had been put in on tentative 
threads, much as characters in a decently-written 
drama, flit, at any rate, across the stage in the first 
act. The two, delightfully grouped, hatless, and 
secure from interruption, had come to anchor in the 
circular shade of an old thorn-bush not far from the 
edge of reeds that fringed the pond. The red petals 
of the spent blossom dropped down from time to time ; 
the hum and murmur of June woods was a carpet on 
which more intimate conversation could lightly spread 
itself. 

Nellie drew up and clasped her knees. 

"Fancy my impertinence in dragging you out to 
Richmond Park when I know that you had a hun- 
dred things that you wanted to do," she said. "Tell 
me, what would you have done if I hadn't appeared 
like some bird of prey and clawed you? Now don't 
say that you would have had tea with your mother 
and gone for a drive in the Park. If you do, I simply 
shan't believe you." 

Yes, she was more dazzling, so Silvia found, when 
there was no one to contrast her with. The sheer, 
silly, conventional tittle-tattle took a sparkling quality 
quite alien to it when it came from her mouth. Her 
personality was like coloured lights playing on a 
fountain and turning the drops to gems. 

"I must be silent, then," she said. 

"Oh, don't be silent ! When people are silent it 
means they are only being polite. If they were less 
polite they would say that they were excruciatingly 
bored. Then, after a suitable silence, they say, 
' How charming it is here ! ' Don't say ' how charm- 



92 



Peter 



ing it is here.' That will be the last straw, Silvia. 
Dear me, I said ' Silvia ' by accident. It — what 
they call — slipped out." 

"Oh, do say it on purpose, then," said Silvia. 

"Very well; me too, you understand. What a 
funny business is Christian names ! The Christian 
name is never really ripe till it drops. I wonder if 
you know what an unutterable boon you and your 
mother have been to that smoky place over there. 
And to crown it all, you are giving the most de- 
lightful party with the most gorgeous punctuality, 
as far as I am concerned. Do say you settled it for 
that night because you knew I couldn't come on any 
subsequent night." 

Silvia gave a little moan like a dove in a tree. 

"I can't say that," she said. 

Nellie sighed, wholly appreciatively. 

"That's so refreshing of you," she said. "You're 
one of the real people, I expect ; the people who mean 
what they say. I usually mean what I don't say." 

Silvia turned round and lay facing her friend. 

"Don't say it, then, Nellie," she said. "I mean — 
do say the things you mean. How complicated it 
sounds, and how simple it is. Shall we stop talking 
about me, do you think? I've got another subject." 

" I know it," said Nellie. " What about Peter ? I 
adore Peter, by the way; don't say anything horrid." 

A certain sense of shock came to Silvia. Peter 
had not, ever so remotely, been the subject to which 
she alluded. But when Nellie suggested him, he was 
flashed on the screen with disconcerting vividness. 

"But I didn't mean him at all," she said. "I 
wasn't thinking about — about Mr. Mainwaring." 

"He wouldn't like that," said Nellie. 

Silvia sat up. She had a perfectly clear conscience 



Peter 93 

to endorse an immediate repudiation. What caused 
that suspicious, that questionable little leap of blood 
to her cheeks, was, indeed, not that she had been 
thinking of Peter, but that Nellie supposed she had. 

"Oh, but this is quite silly ! " she exclaimed. " In- 
deed, he wasn't in my mind at all. Why should he 
be? I scarcely know him." 

Nellie knew that she had ceased for that moment 
to dazzle Silvia, to whom the suggestion that Peter 
had been in her mind w^as clearly unwelcome and 
unexpected. It might be true or it might not (so ran 
Nellie's swift argument) that Silvia was not thinking 
of Peter at all ; but that she should be ruffled — ever 
so delightfully — at the notion that she had been, con- 
stituted a symptom, did it not ? . . . But it was enough 
to note that, and pass on at once to the easy task of 
dazzling Silvia again. 

"You are too delicious," she said. "Yes, I'm 
going to stick to my subject for a minute longer, 
which is you, since yours isn't Peter. You've got 
the most lovely lack of self-consciousness, do you 
know ? Of course you don't, or you wouldn't have it. 
But when I talk to other girls, we each think about 
ourselves. It's like talking to a boy — not Peter, mind 
— to talk to you." 

Silvia made some gesture of deprecation. 

"No, I will go on," said Nellie. "Look at the 
glass I hold up to you, please. It isn't only the lovely 
parties that you and your mother have given us that 
have polished up the rusty old season : it's your 
quality— what shall I call it— wind and sun, sexless- 
ness. You just move along like a spring day, with 
all your banners streaming, in the most entrancing 
glee. You're absolutely insouciante, if you under- 
stand French." 

G 



94 



Peter 



Silvia had lost sight of Peter by now; he was 
round the corner, and how near that corner was, was 
immaterial. She wanted to put herself round the 
corner, too, and seized on this as a possible diversion. 

"Oh, yes, I do," she said. "I only came back 
this spring from three years in France." 

"There you are again ! There's another of your 
completenesses. You're spread evenly, richly, like 
butter (when we're all eating margarine) over the 
whole slice of life. I wish I could bite you ! I 
believe that with a little trouble I could, and, if so, I 
should hate you, not for what you've got but for what 
I haven't." 

At this moment Nellie became aware that her day 
in the wet woods had changed the character with 
which, prospectively, she had endowed it. She had 
meant, first with Peter as her companion, and next 
by herself, to enjoy the last hours of her celibacy. 
With Silvia, on the other hand, she was now not 
enjoying her own, but envying her companion's. 
What she envied her most for was her decorated 
simplicity. Silvia wore her decorations externally; 
she didn't attempt to swallow them and, by digestion, 
make them build up a complicated identity. Worst 
of all — from the envious point of view — she didn't 
know how splendidly embellished she was. ... It 
was as if you said to a gallant soldier, "Have you got 
the V.C? " sarcastically almost, and then he looked 
down — not up — at his decorations, and found that the 
little piece of riband was there. 

Silvia moved a shade away from her companion. 
The break in the thorn tree, with the consequent oval 
of hot sunlight, quite accounted for that. 

"But what haven't you got?" she asked. "You 
live, as naturally as drawing breath, the life that's so 



Peter 95 

new to me, and so puzzling and so delightful ; and 
below and beyond all that, you're on the point of 
being married. He chose you, out of all the world, 
and you found all the time that you had chosen him. 
What is there left for you, just you now and here, 
to want? You're adorable " 

Silvia wrestled and threw the bugbear of shyness 
which so often sat on her shoulders and strangled her 
neck. There it writhed on the grass, not in the least 
dead, but, for the moment, knocked out. 

"Oh, sometimes I wish I was a boy," she said. 
"I'm more in that key than in ours. Sometimes I 
think " 

Nellie projected herself into that gap of sunlight 
from which, possibly, Silvia shrank. She had no 
definite scheme of exploration for the moment, but 
it seemed to her that something in the tangle of 
motives with which she had invited Silvia to share 
her afternoon was faintly stirring as if with unravel- 
ment. Those loops and knots might get more inex- 
tricably muddled, it is true ; but, conceivably, the 
whole thing might "come out " like a conjuring 
trick. 

"Ah, what is it that you think?" she asked. 
"Don't stop so tantalizingly. As if thinking wasn't 
everything ! Whatever one does is only a clumsy 
translation of what one has thought. Think aloud ! " 

Nellie looked more than ever at that moment like 
some exquisite wild presence of the woodlands. 
Dryad or Bacchante, delicate and subtle in face and 
limb and brain, and merely proto-plasmic in soul, 
a creature made for the bedazzlement and the undoing 
of man. Certainly she had woven her spells over 
Silvia again; the momentary check in the incantation, 
when she had attributed " Peter-thought " to her, had 



96 Peter 

passed as swiftly as the shadow of one of those light 
clouds which drifted over the grass. 

But at that moment, when she so bewilderingly 
shone out again, there formed itself in Silvia's mind, 
as she tried to follow this injunction to think aloud, 
not the image of her at all, but of Peter. For if 
Nellie was divinely akin to the blossoming thickets 
and the shadows that were beginning to lengthen over 
the ^rass, making cool islands on which the deer 
were grazing now, he, too, would be no less har- 
moniously bestowed by this reflecting lake-side. It 
was not that either of them suggested rurality ; no 
one, indeed, was more emphatically of the street and 
the ballroom and the complication of the city than 
they. But by some secret pedigree of soul they were 
of the house and lineage of the things that glowed 
and enjoyed and were lovely, and gave as little 
thought to yesterday as they took for to-morrow. All 
this, not catalogued in detail, but fused into a single 
luminous impression, passed through Silvia's con- 
sciousness like the wink of summer lightning. . . . 

"As if it wasn't difficult enough to think at all," 
she said, "and as for thinking aloud, thinking articu- 
lately — if I'm to sum it up, ever so clumsily, it's 
merely that I adore, with all the incense I've got, the 
thought of your happiness. It does matter so much 
to me, and . . . and isn't it noble fun to find someone 
who matters? Very few people really matter; I sup- 
pose little, silly, finite hearts like ours can't take in 
many. But those who do matter must come right 
in, if they don't mind. They mustn't risk themselves 
by hanging about on the doorstep; they might catch 
cold. Aren't I talking nonsense? It's your fault 
for taking me into the country, for assuredly it has 
gone to my head. Where there's a stifle of roofs and 



Peter 97 

a choke of streets nobody matters and everyone is 
quite delightful. What a stupid word that is, and 
how expressive of a stupid thing." 

Silvia very deliberately shot off into the back- 
water of nonsense, so to speak, out of the main 
stream, for the sun was on the water, in this dazzle 
of Nellie's personality, and she could not see towards 
what weir the hurrying river might be taking her. 
Very likely there was no weir; the glistening tide, 
running swift, would very likely spread out into some 
broad expanse of Peace-pools; but it was the bright- 
ness that prevented scrutiny. 

By some flash of woodland instinct, by some un- 
canny perception, Nellie divined the cause of this 
retirement into the backwater of triviality. With a 
ruthlessness that rivalled Mrs. Wardour's pursuit 
of desirable guests, she caught the rope of Silvia's 
boat, so to speak, before she could tie it to the 
security of some overhanging branch, and shot it 
out into the main stream again. 

"Yes, my dear," she said, "you talk nonsense 
delightfully. Ah, I didn't mean stupidly; I didn't 
mean in the sense you had just labelled it with. I 
meant delightfully, charmingly. But just for a 
change after that delightful (now I mean stupid) 
London, we're talking sense. You interested me in- 
describably just now. You said you were more in 
a boy's key than a girl's. What did you mean 
exactly ? " 

Silvia watched the receding shore to which she 
had hoped to tie up. . . . After all, what did it matter 
if there was a weir, not a Peace-pool down there in 
that dazzle of benignant sunshine? But there was 
another difficulty in the way of expression. 

"I can't really explain," she said. "There are 



98 Peter 

things so simple that no explanation is possible. If 
I said, ' It is a hot day,' and you told me to explain, 
I couldn't. I could only say, ' If you don't feel it, 
if you don't know what that means, I can't help 
you.' It's the same with all elemental things." 

Nellie regarded her with eyes that were framed 
in some steely sort of interest; eyes that were eager 
to know not from the kindly tenderness of friends 
but from some surgical curiosity. 

" I think I know what you mean by a ' boy's 
key,' " she said. "Let me see if I can explain you to 
yourself, Silvia, since you won't — ah, can't — explain 
yourself to me. If you were in love, for instance, 
you would passionately want to give love, to pour 
yourself out, instead of, like most girls, provoking 
love and permitting it and ever so eagerly receiving 
it. You wouldn't want a man's homage so much as 
you would want to be allowed to love him. You 
would want, and how queer and delicious of you — 
you lovely upside-down, inside-out creature." 

This abrupt termination of the presentment of 
Silvia in love, as imagined by her friend, was due 
to something quite unexpected. There came on 
Silvia's face, as her own privacy was thus invaded, 
a dumb, but none the less violent signal of protest. 
She shrank and withdrew herself, as if a burglarious 
bullseye had been shot through the window of her 
room, where she lay lost in cool, soft maidenliness. 
The contact was even more direct than that; it was 
as if some pitiless incision had been made in her 
very flesh. But with this pause in the application 
of the knife, this shuttering of the bullseye — for any 
further beam would have disclosed the deliberate 
attempt to rifle the jewel-chest — there came the com- 
plete withdrawal of her protesting signal. ... It had 



Peter 99 

been the bullseye of a friend that looked in, the 
scissors of a dear amateur manicurist. . . . 

She was sitting there hatless in the shade, and 
with her hand she pushed her hair back. 

"Oh, you're a witch, NeUie," she said. "Two 
hundred years ago you would have been burned, 
and I should have helped to pile the faggots. I ex- 
pect that you're magically right. I can't tell, you 
know, because I assure you, literally and soberly, that 
I never have been in love. Literally never. Soberly 
never. But, somehow, what you suggested (how did 
you divine it, you witch ?) touched something, made 
something vibrate and sing. I didn't know any- 
thing about it; I didn't know it was there. Then you 
put your finger on it, and I knew ... I knew I 
had it." 

"And then you just hated me for a moment," 
said Nellie. 

Silvia did not quite accept this. 

"You made me wince," she said in correction. 
"And, oh, yes, I'll confess: just for a moment you 
seemed to me hostile and hurting. You aren't; 
you're heavenly and healing. You taught me, bless 
you. But I think you're a witch all the same. It wasn't 
telepathy; you told me something about myself that 
I didn't know, and couldn't have known, and can't 
know now, for that matter. Oh, you lucky creature. 
You've fallen in love. You know it all. Did you 
do it in the manner you attribute to me? Did you 
savagely give, not wanting anything but to give, 
give. . . . How did you put it just now? To be 
allowed to love, to pour yourself out, to pay homage 
instead of exacting it? The boy's key! My dear, 
it seems ages and ages since that phrase came up. 
I've had a whole drama since then, you know." 



100 



Peter 



Nellie, in point of fact, had had her drama, too. 
But it was as yet undetermined. She had not got 
at the root facts for which she was burrowing. 
Silvia's volley of questions, anyhow, were easy of 
response. They were, barring, a certain inversion, 
very Victorian questions, dating from the days when 
men blindly adored and women swooned at the de- 
claration of the passion which they had done their 
level best to excite. But that inversion made to her, 
and for particular reasons, a wildly interesting specu- 
lation. Silvia, when she loved (so much was certain), 
would love in the "boy's key^" the eager, evocative 
key. She acknowledged herself, in contemplation of 
the event, as blindly adoring, as being "allowed" to 
love. Whether that was entirely a prognostication, 
or w^hether it was already partially, potentially ful- 
filled was another question, and the application of 
that concerned Nellie, and her own purposes, alone. 
Soon, deftly now, with the lesson of Silvia's revolt 
against surprises, she would get a further result from 
her dissection. At present there was the impatient, 
intimate volley of questions to answer. 

"Oh, my dear, I understand so well the ' boy's 
key,' " she said. "A triumphal, victorious surrender, 
with all the bells ringing— isn't that it? A march 
out with white flags insolently flying. I should love 
to be like that, if I %vas like that. But that isn't my 
key. I just surrendered, rather terrified, you know. 
But I couldn't be terrified of Philip for long: he's 
such a dear." 

This could not be considered more than an 
approximate account, a vague sketch, very faintly 
resembling the scene it portrayed— a quiet, feminine 
disclosure. But Nellie did not want to discuss that; 
she wanted to get back to her tangled skeins again. 



Peter loi 

"I should like to see you in love, Silvia," she 
said. "Promise to tell me when it happens. At 
least, you needn't; it will be wonderfully obvious, 
you in your ' boy's key.' Whom can we find for you 
who will just fall in with that, and be the comple- 
ment of it, making, it complete and round and per- 
fect? Hasn't ever so little a bit of him, just the top 
of his head, come over the horizon yet ? " 

Silvia did not withdraw or raise any signal of 
protest this time. She made no signal at all; none, 
at any rate, that could be perceived by the girl who 
sat watching her very narrowly. And once more 
Nellie fumbled, so to speak, at the shutter of her 
bullseye, which would flash on the light. 

She looked at the watch on her wrist. 

"My dear, how late it is! " she said. "We must 
go at once. I promised to go to Mr. Mainwaring's 
studio. Peter's father, you know. Peter will be 
vexed if I don't come." 

Then came the signal. Silvia jumped up with 
wholly unnecessary alacrity. But more nimbly yet 
did the high colour mount to her face. 



CHAPTER VI 

One evening, a week or so before the date fixed for 
the wedding, PhiUp Beaumont and Nelhe had dined 
and gone together to the first night of some new 
play. It was saliently characteristic of him — a peak, 
so to say, prominendy uprising from the smooth level 
of his cultivated plains— that when arrangements for 
such diversions and businesses were in his hands 
they always went without a hitch. Nellie had 
expressed a desire to see this play, without giving 
long notice to him of her wish, and it followed, as 
a matter of course, that he managed to get gangway 
seats in the stalls at the most advantageous distance 
from the stage. 

Things happened like that with him : his own 
unruffled smoothness, which seemed immune from 
any of the attacks of asperities of one kind or another, 
to which human nature is subject, seemed to create 
a similar well-ordered decorum in his activities. To- 
night, for instance, the dinner which preceded the 
theatre was punctual and swiftly served, so that 
neither hurry nor undue lingering followed it : his 
motor slid up to the kerb-stone precisely as they 
quitted the restaurant, and it might be taken for 
granted that at the conclusion of the piece it would be 
bubbling up opposite the portals of the theatre pre- 
cisely as they emerged. Once in their seats there had 
been but a few minutes to wait before the lights were 
lowered for the first act; these afforded a convenient 
time to grasp the real and the histrionic names of the 
actors and see where the acts were laid. 

I02 



Peter 103 

In those few minutes Nellie's glance had swept 
over stalls and boxes, noting the position of various 
friends. Silvia was in a box with her mother, and 
loud screams of laughter from another box opposite, 
perhaps temporarily turned into a parrot-house, made 
it almost certain, that Mrs. Trentham was having her 
usual splendid time surrounded by a bevy of young 
men. A glance verified that, and the same glance 
showed her that Peter, who, she knew, was to be 
present, was not among them. Then someone 
entered the box where Silvia and her mother sat, 
and she knew where Peter was. Immediately a loud 
flamboyant voice just behind her informed her that 
Peter's entry had been noticed by someone else. 

"Glance, Maria mia," it said, "at that box next 
the stage on the right, where is the lady with the 
wealth of Golconda (I allude to diamonds) on her 
head. You and I have no reason to be ashamed of 
that tall handsome boy. Ah, behold just in front 
of us the adorable Miss Heaton. Miss Heaton, the 
box by the stage, the lady in diamonds : her name. 
A word, a whisper. . . ! " 

The quenching of lights gave suitable cover for 
the emotions evoked by this particular brand of 
theatrical slosh. There were whimsicalities, there was 
slyness, there was maidenliness and womanliness, 
there was the sense of looking through a keyhole; 
but all these qualities were soaked and dyed with 
slosh. Mr. Mainwaring, to Nellie's sense, seemed to 
make himself spokesman for the house : he thrilled 
to every slyness, however subtle, and he advertised, 
on behalf of the rest of the audience, his appreciation. 
His resonant laugh proclaimed the gorgeousness of 
the less abstruse humours, as when the heroine, being 
asked to give her lover a kiss, wore a face of horror 



104 



Peter 



and said, "Eh, on the Sawbath ! " His giggling 
and his slapping of his great big thigh gave the cue 
for more recondite deliciousnesses ; he exclaimed 
"Bravd! Bravd!" at the end of a long speech; he 
blew his nose loudly at the blare of the Highland 
Vox Humana, and bestowed one splendid sob on his 
handkerchief when the author really let himself go 
and opened all the sluices of sentimentality. Mr. 
Mainwaring had to recover with gulps and hiccups 
from that, but he pulled himself together like a man, 
and ran his fingers through his hair to make it stand 
out from his interesting head. 

Though these convulsions were resonant only just 
behind her, Nellie gave them no more attention than 
she would to raindrops on the window : and the 
doings of the stage occupied her as little, and as 
little the presence next her of the perfect organizer. 

... A certain antagonism had grown up, had seeded 
itself and was rapidly propagating. A vigorous 
seedling was the fact of Peter's being where he was. 
It was no business of hers, so she told herself, with 
whom Peter went to the play, and she tried to divert 
her mind by ironical comment. Peter, poor and 
parasitic, would always dance a graceful attendance 
on anyone who would give him dinner and a seat in 
the box. Peter was like that, and for his grace and 
politeness there was due reward. He had a trick of 
sympathetic listening, of intelligent interrogation that 
made his companion feel herself interesting. You 
could put him next the most crashing bore, and he 
would wreathe himself in smiles until the crashing 
bore felt herself to be the wittiest of sirens. And then 
suddenly the stupidity of her comments and their 
irrelevance failed to divert Nellie altogether. 



Peter 105 

There was the antagonism, hugely grown by now. 
Peter, so she made out, was as conscious of it as she, 
and had certainly during the last w-eek or two con- 
tributed to its growth. He had answered Nellie's 
formalities with similar politeness : he had watered 
where she had sown, and she wondered whether he 
contemplated with the dismay of which she was 
conscious, the lively crop of their combined 
husbandry. 

It was the fashion, as she had once said to Silvia, 
to be devoted to Peter, and Silvia seemed to have 
"picked up " the fashion with the same ease as she 
had exhibited all along her social pilgrimage. She 
welcomed all that came up with a frolic, boy-like 
enjoyment, but there was, as Nellie perfectly well 
knew, a real Silvia, a serious Silvia, somebody with 
a heart and the shy treasures of it, a personality 
curiously ungirl-like, something eager and hungry 
and wholesome. She knew in advance what her way 
of love would be, and her feet, firm and unstumbling 
— Silvia would never stumble — were on the high road. 
Of all the saunterers that she might meet there, would 
she not, by the mere instinct of divination, choose 
the complement to her own unusual personality ? The 
complement certainly was someone feminine but not 
effeminate, indeterminate in desire, somebody, in 
fact, extraordinarily like Nellie herself. In the way 
of a girl, Silvia had already quite succumbed to a 
charm that Nellie had not troubled to exercise : she 
had recognized and surrendered to it w^ith that vic- 
torious white-flag abandonment. With what ring- 
ing of bells would she not march out to the mildest 
call for capitulation when a boy of that type blew his 
lazy horn ? 

Long before the act was over Nellie had known 



io6 Peter 

that she would present herself in the interval at Mrs. 
Wardour's box. She would, in anticipation, have 
much to say to Silvia : there would be plans for the 
next day, or regrets over the dreadful occupations 
that made plans impossible. There would be some 
flat steady compliment about diamonds and parties 
for Mrs. Wardour, and — there would be nothing at 
all for Peter. She wanted, as far as she was aware, 
just to take him in in the new situation which was 
surely forming, as clouds form on a chilly windless 
day. She wanted to get used to it, she wanted — or did 
she not want ? — to put the weed-killer of familiarity 
on the crop of antagonism which was certainly pros- 
pering in a manner wholly unlooked for. And then, 
much quieted and reassured, she would return to 
Philip, and feel for his hand when the lights went 
down again. He had a good hand, cool and secure 
and efficient : there was the sense of safety about it, 
of correctness : it was all that a hand should be. 
Then, still secure, and vastly more content than she 
was now, he would take her back to her mother's 
flat, and perhaps drop in for a half-hour. She 
would say, quite correctly, "Come upstairs and 
talk to mother and me for a few minutes." She 
would work the lift herself, and he would be sur- 
prised at her mastery of it. Then, when they were 
vomited forth at the fifth floor, she would remember 
that her mother had gone to a bridge-party and would 
certainly not be home before twelve. That would give 
them their half-hour alone. 

Nellie was not prepared for the companionship 
in her expedition with which Mr. Mainwaring 
decorated her. Standing in the middle of the gang- 
way, he made her a sonorous and embellished little 



Peter 107 

speech when, rather rashly, she revealed her destina- 
tion at the end of this interminable first act. 

"Peter's friends, my Peter's friends, are mine," 
he magnificently observed, "and I feel it my duty to 
pay my respects to them. Oblige me, Miss Heaton, 
by accepting my escort to the box that glitters with 
the combined distinction of diamonds and Peter's 
presence. My wife — will you not, Maria mia? — will 
prefer to remain precisely where she is. Chocolates, 
my beloved? A cup of coffee ? I will leave my purse 
with you. Refresh yourself!" 

Mrs. Mainwaring declined refreshment, except in 
so far as it was ministered to by some advertisements 
of Brighton hotels which appeared on the back of 
the programme. There was one there which she had 
not previously heard of and which seemed very 
reasonable. 

Her husband offered the sleeve of a velveteen-clad 
arm to Nellie, and they proceeded upstairs with pomp 
and the slight odour of turpentine, which was all that 
was left of a dab of paint which had dropped from 
his brush on to the skirt of his coat as a profound 
inspiration seized him after he had dressed for dinner. 
Philip gave a slightly iced negative to Nellie's inquiry 
whether he was to join this pilgrimage. 

Mr. Mainwaring did all the usual things. He 
clapped his hand on Peter's shoulder when the intro- 
ductions had been made, and hoped, with a stately 
bow, that his boy had been behaving himself. He 
waved his hand when Mrs. Wardour pronounced the 
first act "very interesting," and recognized a fellow 
artist. Before ten minutes were over Mrs. Wardour 
was committed to look in next afternoon and see "his 
few poor efforts." Then he became more confidential 
and whispery. 



io8 Peter 

"A marvellous, an incomparable type ! " he said, 
looking at Silvia, and back again at her mother. 
"Who has had the felicity, the difficult felicity, of 
painting that glorious head? No one? I am 
astonished. I would be shocked if I were capable 
of so bourgeois an emotion. H'm ! " 

Beyond a visit to the private view of the Royal 
Academy, Mrs. Wardour had not penetrated into 
pictorial circles, and faintly, through the impression, 
volubly audible, of Silvia and Nellie talking together, 
Peter heard his father leading up to the series of war- 
cartoons suitable for mural decoration. As regards 
that, he went walking in the wet woods, as aloof 
from his father as from any other magnificent self- 
advertiser. He had heard Mrs. Wardour's promise 
to go to the studio next day and to bring Silvia, and 
he thought that very probably the relations of Great 
Britain with foreign countries might struggle through 
a free hour without his co-operation. Meantime 
Nellie seemed to be talking secrets to Silvia, and he 
sat, nursing his knee, a little aloof from either group. 
Presently Nellie would go back to her seat in the 
stalls, and his father would do the same, and then 
he would hitch his chair a little forward again. . . . 

People began to troop back into the stalls; 
obviously a bell had rung announcing the imminence 
of the second act. Nellie recognized that, and got 
up. As yet she had barely spoken to him. 

"I must get back to my Philip," she said very 
properly. "Good night, darling Silvia." 

Peter had gone to open the door for them. 

"Come to the flat, Peter," she said, without turn- 
ing her head, as she passed him. " I shall go straight 
home." 

The words were just dropped from her, as if by 



Peter 109 

accident or inadvertence, but the moment she had 
spoken them she knew that this had been in the main 
the object of her visit to the box : it was this which 
she had primarily wanted. The merest hint of an 
affirmative nod on Peter's part was sufficient answer. 

The play came to its happy concluding treacli- 
ness, and they went out. Philip and Nellie, of course, 
were among the first into the vestibule, where he 
instantly caught his footman's eye. The Wardour 
group must have left their box slightly before the 
end, for Peter was seeing them into their motor, 
thanking Mrs. Wardour for "such an awfully nice 
evening " and excusing himself from being given a 
lift, as after a day in the office he liked walking home 
— yes, all the way to South Kensington. How nice 
it would be to see Mrs. Wardour at his father's house 
next day. . . . He lingered a moment on the pave- 
ment, and as Nellie passed him on her way to the 
motor, just nodded again, without seeming to see her. 

Philip's first concern, as they slid off into the 
traffic, was that there should be air, but no draught 
for Nellie. Perhaps if he put her window quite up 
and his half down. . . . Was that comfortable ? And 
a match for her cigarette? After which he slipped 
her hand into his, and after a moment's delay she 
returned the pressure. 

In a flash of general, comprehensive consciousness 
NelHe was aware how comfortable and well-ordered 
the whole evening had been, and realized that all 
days, evenings and mornings and afternoons alike, 
would to the end of life, owing to the very ample 
"settlements" which she understood to have been 
made, be padded and cushioned like this. She was 
conscious at the same moment that her appreciation 
of that lacked acuteness; she would just as soon, to 

H 



no 



Peter 



take an example, be walking with Peter along the 
pavements, where nobody cared if she felt a draught 
or not, as be having it all her own way in unjostled 
progress. . . . The flash of this perception was in- 
stantaneous, measured only by that moment's delay 
in response to Philip's hand, for he instantly began 
to tick again, as she put it to herself, a pleasant 
tick, a good, reliable, firm tick. 

"A charming play, was it not, dear?" said he. 
"And that delicious humour of his." 

Well, if Nellie w^as going to be comfortable all her 
life, it was only fair that she should contribute, should 
put her penny into the placid bag. 

"Delicious," she said. "I am sure it will have a 
great success. And how interesting to be there on 
the first night." 

She broke ofif suddenly, and clasped Philip's arm. 

"Ah— we nearly ran over that man," she cried. 

Philip remained quite calm. He would obviously 
be an admirable companion in a shipwreck or a 
thunderstorm or a railway accident. This was, 
delightfully, a new point about him, and Nellie 
found, on the discovery of it, that she must have been 
collecting his good points, for with the collector's 
zeal she hastened to net it and add it to her specimens. 

He pressed the hand that she had laid on his arm, 
and looked out of the window which he had opened 
on his side of the motor. 

"My dear, there is nothing to be alarmed about," 
he said. "The man is quite safe, and has not for- 
gotten his usual vocabulary. You need never be 
afraid with Logan ; he is the most careful of drivers, 
and has an extraordinary command of the brakes." 

Nellie collected this new genus Philip ; sub-species 
Logan. It added a little bit to the completeness. 



Peter m 

"Logan is quite trustworthy," he went on; "you 
need never have a moment's qualm when he is on the 
box. We w^ere discussing the play. I should like 
to see it again. Does not that strike you as the true 
criterion as to whether you have essentially enjoyed 
a play? If there is only mere glitter, one does not 
want to repeat the experience. But there was gold, 
I thought, this evening." 

He was silent a moment, patting her hand, and 
Nellie divined his mind with a rather terrible dis- 
tinctness. She had been very considerably agitated 
for that moment, and he assumed (how wisely and 
how consciously) a complete oblivion of that. The 
best method of reassuring her after the little testi- 
monial to Logan was to be unaware of any fluttering 
incident. A manly calm was the efficient medicine 
for feminine alarm. He went on talking aboijt the 
play as if nothing agitating had occurred. . . . 

Swiftly as the car slid down Piccadilly Nellie's 
brain was just a little in advance of it, and before 
it slowed up at the house of flats she was mentally 
on the doorstep. Earlier in the evening she had con- 
templated Philip's admiring ascent with her in the 
lift, her own surprised recollection, on their emer- 
gence, that her mother would not yet be in. But 
now that picture had been whisked off the screen 
altogether; there would be no ascent with Philip, 
no sudden remembrance of her mother's absence. A 
subsequent engagement, not so conventional, had 
been proposed by her and assented to with a nod 
so imperceptible that it had been repeated. 

Philip had so often spent a final half-hour like 
this, that, as the motor stopped, he almost assumed it. 

"And may I come up for a few minutes?" he 
asked. 



112 



Peter 



She laid her hand on his shoulder as if to press 
him back on to his seat. 

"Don't find it horrid of me, dear," she said, "if 
I say * no.' I am a little tired, do you think? But 
what a lovely evening we have had. You come and 
fetch me in the morning, don't you? Good night, 
my dear." 

The most ardent of lovers could hardly have 
insisted, after this little collection of sentences, each 
unmistakably clinking with some sort of final "ring," 
and it was out of the question for Philip to repeat a 
request which, in any case, had habit rather than 
craving to back it. He would certainly have liked 
to sit with Nellie and her mother — so he supposed — 
for a quarter of an hour, discuss the play a little 
more, quietly sun himself, contentedly basking in 
Nellie's presence, and consider himself a very for- 
tunate fellow; but if she was a little tired, it would 
have been unthinkably intrusive to beg her to take 
a part and let him take a part in a seance that she 
had no wish for. But she lingered a moment yet 
in order to give no impression of being in any hurry; 
then, forbidding him to get out of the motor, she 
disappeared, with a final gesture as of but a short 
separation, into the house. 

Her mother, as Nellie knew would be the case, 
had not yet returned from her card-party, nor would 
she be likely to do so for a full hour yet, and her 
absence, in relation to the visitor she now expected, 
took for itself a totally different aspect. She had 
limitless opportunities and facilities for a tete-a-tete 
with Philip, and her mother's absence, if it had been 
he who had come admiringly up with her as she 
managed the lift, would in no way have been a 



Peter 113 

special, even a desirable, condition. She and Philip 
were so often alone together, and, before many 
days were passed, would be so exclusively alone 
together, that the gain of another such hour was, 
frankly, quite imponderable. But for the last fort- 
night she had scarcely had a private word with Peter, 
and whatever it was that she had to say to him in 
this visit she had bidden him to, and whatever he had 
to say to her (that he had something to say was 
probable from his reiterated acceptance of her request), 
it was quite certain that these things could not be 
satisfactorily said, even, perhaps, be said at all, before 
any audience whatever. 

Nellie had no definite know-ledge, in any detail, 
of even her own contribution to the coming inter- 
view; all that she knew was that when, half an hour 
later or an hour later, she would click the door on 
his departure, she must somehow have looked 
minutely, with his eyes to help her, at the antagonism 
which had so odiously flourished. She intensely 
hoped that it could be rooted up altogether and put 
on to the rubbish heap of mistakes and misappre- 
hensions; but whether her hope had much of the 
luminosity of faith about it was not so certain. Too 
much depended on what he had to tell her, and she 
did not fall into the error of forecasting the upshot 
before she knew what contribution he was to make 
towards the preliminary process. . . . Then, with an 
internal vibration — partly of suspense, partly, she 
admitted, of eager anticipation — she heard the faint 
tingle of the electric bell. The servants, no doubt, 
had gone to bed, and she went to the door herself. 

"Hullo! " said Peter. 

He stood there a moment, after the door was 
opened, without moving, his eyes agleam, and a 



114 



Peter 



smile hovering over his mouth. Often and often had 
they met in precisely similar fashion, he, as he 
passed the door on his way home, giving one discreet 
little ring, which Nellie would answer if she felt 
disposed to see him. Sometimes her mother would 
be in ; but oftener, if in, she had gone to bed, and the 
two would sit over the fire, or, on hot nights, seek 
the window-seat and spend an hour of desultory in- 
timacy, as two boys might, or two girls. But to- 
night there was some little effervescent quality added 
to the meeting ; the spice that a combined manoeuvre, 
however innocent, brought with it. Both realized, 
too, that a talk, which must attempt to readjust their 
old relations or fit them into the changed conditions, 
lay ahead, and, for the moment, each brought gaiety 
and goodwill to the task. The best evidence for that 
was the assumption of the old relations pending the 
readjustment. . . . 

"Peter ! How lovely of you ! " she said. "Come 



in." 



"Is she in?" he asked, putting down his coat 
and hat. 

"Mother? No; she's at a harpy party. Four 
women rooking each other at bridge. They'll all be 
trembling and being frightfully polite by this time. 
Peter, bring your hat and coat in with you. If mother 
sees them there she will think Philip's here and 
will come in to sit with us." 

"And if she thought they were mine " 

"She would come in twice. But if there are no 
signs of anybody she will probably go to bed and 
not interrupt us." 

The night was hot, with a thundery, overcast sky, 
and they sat together again in the window-seat. A 
hundred feet below the street was roaring and rolling 



Peter 



115 



along, thick with the discharge from theatres and 
music halls. 

"The clever one ! And how did you get rid of 
Philip ? " asked Peter. 

"Lied, darling," said Nellie, succinctly. 
"Did you, indeed? Nellie, I don't think you're 
getting on very well with your determination to be 
conventional." 

Nellie blew reproach at him in the shape of a 
ragged smoke-ring. 

"I never heard anything so unjust," she said. 
"Oh, Peter, it was just here we sat when I told you 
I was going to be quite conventional. Wasn't it? 
Don't say you don't remember. Well, I'm being the 
model of conventionality." 

"Pleasant, is it? " asked Peter, in a wonderfully 
neutral voice. He did not yet quite know why Nellie 
had summoned him here, and he was greatly aloof 
still. 

"Don't make slightly acid comments," said she, 
"about conventionality. It's a fortnight, more than 
a fortnight, since I saw you last. Oh, I don't count 
balls and that sort of thing. Your friends are in- 
visible at balls. You can only see your acquaint- 
ances. What's the use of just seeing a friend? 
You've got to be alone with a friend in order to see 
him." 

Nellie was still unaware of what course she was 
really meaning to steer. It was to be a safe course, 
anyhow, avoiding shoals and avoiding icebergs. Just 
at present Peter was making himself an iceberg. She 
went on, talking rapidly and quite naturally, with a 
view to bringing Peter out of his frozen aloofness. 

"But my scheme for conventionality never went 
so far as to exclude my seeing my friends altogether," 



ii6 Peter 

she said. "And if, in order to see a particular friend, 
I have to tell lies to one person and — and tell the 
other not to leave his coat in the hall, that's not my 
fault. It's mother's fault for not having gone to bed 
yet; it's Philip's fault for proposing to drop in." 

Peter's smile hovered over his face again, not 
quite breaking through. 

"Brutes," he said. "Perfect brutes." 

"I'm not sure that you aren't the worst of them 
all," remarked Nellie. 

His smile broke through at that, and he laughed. 

"You may be quite sure I'm not a brute," he 
said. "But I should like to know why you think so." 

Nellie was sincere enough in her desire to re- 
establish a genuine, friendly relationship with him 
again. At present their grip on eacli other was 
clogged and rusted. If this rather unconventional 
meeting was to be of any use (what use she did not 
clearly define), the first essential was to wipe the 
wheels clean. 

"You know perfectly well," she said. "Ever 
since my engagement you have taken yourself com- 
pletely away. You have shut yourself up. You have 
bolted your windows and barred your doors to me. 
Haven't you ? " 

Peter weighed this accusation. It might possibly 
be true; but it contained an arguable point, which 
was easy to state. 

"I never bolted the windows and barred the 
doors," he said. "It was you who did that. I didn't 
arrange that you should marry Philip. That's what 
shut me up, if you choose to put it like that. I told 
you at the time that our relations must be changed." 

She shook her head. 

"No relations that ever existed between us need 



Peter 117 

have been changed," she said. "You speak as if we 
had been in love with each other." 

"Not at all. We never were in love with each 
other; that we both know. But " 

"What then? " she asked. 

"I'll take your simile," he said. " My windows 
and doors were open to you. I might easily have 
fallen in love with you, or, for that matter, you with 
me. Our relationship, and the possibilities it held, 
were just those of open doors and windows. Then 
you came round and shut me up. And Philip drew 
the curtains." 

She took this in and turned it about before she 
answered. 

"By which'you mean," she said, "that whatever 
our relationship might have ripened into, I nipped 
it off— like a frost." 

"Yes," said he. "A latish frost." 

She got up and moved about the room, patting a 
cushion here and setting a chair straight there. Peter 
did not move; he did not even turn his head; but he 
was quite aware of her pondering restlessness. He 
was aware, too, that so long as he held his tongue he 
had the whip-hand. The evidence for that was soon 
apparent. 

"I didn't know that my engagement would have 
that effect," she said. "I think it is unreasonable 
that it should have that effect. If you had been in 
love with me it would have been different ; in that 
case I could have understood it. But, as it was, why 
should it have made any change in our friendship? " 

"What's the use of asking me? " said Peter, with 
a sudden touch of irritation. "I can't tell you why. 
I don't know the ' why ' of anything under the sun. 
But put it the other way about. Suppose that it had 



ii8 Peter 

been I who had got engaged to some girl, wouldn't 
that have made any change in your sense of our 
friendship ? " 

Peter had spread himself a little over the window- 
seat when she got up. Now when she came back to 
her old seat she pushed his encroaching knee aside. 

"That's not the same thing," she said. "A girl 
can't be a very intimate friend of a married man in 
the same way that a man can be a very intimate friend 
of a married woman." 

"I won't ask why," said Peter gently, "because 
I'm aware that you don't know." 

"What I say is perfectly true, though." 

"Not in the instance of you and me. You knew 
quite well that I wasn't going to give myself a free 
rein to fall in love with you after you had settled 
to marry someone else. Besides, if you come to 
think of it, a man dangling after a married woman 
is just as ridiculous as a girl dangling after a married 
man. I don't see why a man shouldn't be allowed 
to retain his self-respect as much as a woman." 

Though, as far as the spoken word went, they had 
arrived at no agreement, no compromise even on 
which agreement could be based, they both felt that 
somehow in the region of unspoken treaties the 
ground had been cleared. Though the wheels did 
not yet revolve again, rust had been wiped off them. 
And in Peter's next speech the scouring of the wash- 
leather was busy. 

"You mustn't think that I don't regret what we're 
suffering under, Nellie," he said. "I regret it most 
awfully. I've been saying, and I stick to it still, 
that you are responsible for it. It was you who closed 
my windows and bolted my doors. It would be 
simply silly of me to pretend that I was broken- 



Peter 119 

hearted about it, for that would imply that I had been 
or was in love with you. But that doesn't prevent 
my being sorry, or my missing, which I acutely do, 
our old relationship. I don't know if it's any use 
trying to recapture it. 'Trying,' probably, hasn't 
much effect on what you feel. It's no use ' trying ' 
to feel hot if you happen to feel cold, or trying to feel 
ill when you do feel well " 

"My dear, it makes the whole difference," said 
Nellie quickly. "Will you try to — to feel yourself back 
in your relationship with me? I want it, too, Peter." 

She pulled back his encroaching knee which just 
now she had pushed away and kept her hand on it. 
The very fact that this triviality was so instinctive 
constituted the significance of it. 

"I hadn't reckoned with losing you," she went 
on. "No, I don't excuse myself or account for my- 
self. Probably I should have done just the same if 
I had reckoned with it. Probably, if it was all to do 
again now, I should do the same. Don't let us labour 
the point; if you'll try, that's all I ask. I'll try, too, 
if that wall be of any use. I put my nose in the air 
just as much as you did, as if my nose wasn't sufii- 
ciently in the air already. But it always turns up at 
the end." 

"Not to matter; don't mention it," said Peter. 

"That's the old style, Peter," she said. "Keep 
it up; run with it till it works on its own account. 
Motor-cycle, you know." 

They were looking at each other now with some- 
thing of the alert unconsciousness of two old friends 
alone together. But certainly the machine required 
running with at present. 

"They're heavy things to push when they won't 
get going," said he. 



120 



Peter 



"How odious you are ! " 

" Hurrah for that word ! " said Peter. 

"Why?" 

"I wonder how often we have told each other we 
were odious." 

NelHe was silent, and in that moment's pause 
Peter was conscious that, real, no doubt, as had 
been her desire to uproot the antagonism that had 
grown up between them, that process had been no 
more than preliminary to something- that should 
follow. The ground had to be cleared first, but the 
clearing of the ground was not her ultimate objective. 
The moment he perceived that at all, he saw how 
obvious it was; how her appearance suddenly in Mrs. 
Wardour's box that evening gave a clue to the nature 
of the further development. Then, quick as an echo, 
she began to reproduce the thought in his mind. 

"Let's pick up the thread again," she said. "I 
can give you my weavings very simply. Trousseau, 
Philip; Philip, trousseau. How lucky men are I 
When a man is going to be married he doesn't have 
to spend his days in buying things. He doesn't have 
to buy anything." 

"Wedding-ring," said Peter, in parenthesis. 

"Yes; but you can't have occupied yourself with 
that unless you have had a private marriage behind 
the locked doors and curtained windows. We were 
telling each other what we had been doing in this 
long interval. It was your turn." 

"Oh, usual things," said he. "Foreign Office, 
dinner; breakfast. Foreign Office." 

"And how's May Trentham ? " asked Nellie, 
wheeling in smaller circles round this objective. 
"You've left her out; she wouldn't like that." 

"She left me out to-night," said Peter. "She had 



Peter 121 

that immense box for the play and never asked me 
to it." 

Nellie folded her wings and dropped. 

"But you got there all right/' she said. "She 
saw you, too, sitting with Mrs. Wardour, who hasn't 
asked her to the party for the Russian ballet. Blood, 
my dear; there'll be blood over that. Do you know, 
I think Silvia is one of the most attractive girls I 
have ever seen." 

As she spoke there came from outside the tingle 
of the front door bell. Nellie got up with a finger 
on her lip. 

"Who on earth can that be ? " she whispered. 

"It may be anybody," said Peter, very prudently. 
"You can't tell till you go and see. Perhaps it's 
Philip; we may have got hold of each other's hats 
by mistake, and he's come here " 

Nellie suppressed a laugh. 

"Probably mother," she said. "She forgets her 
latchkey when she thinks she'll be late home. I 
shan't say you're here, or she'd come in and spoil 
our talk." 

"Oh, what a tangled " began Peter. 

Nellie took the additional precaution of turning 
out the lights in the room where they were sitting 
and leaving the door open. Close outside was the 
entrance door from the stairs into the flat, and Peter, 
sitting in the window-seat, heard with an amusement 
that dimpled his cheeks Nellie's unhesitating account 
of herself. It appeared that she had just come in 
and was just going to bed; she had already put out 
the lights in the sitting-room. There followed a 
triumphant announcement of her mother's winnings, 
an affectionate good night, and the closing of a door 



122 



Peter 



down the passage. Sitting there in the dark Peter 
drew the conclusion that NeUie put a high premium 
on the pursuit of the conversation in which, as he 
infallibly conjectured, she had just got down to the 
bone. She would scarcely, for the aesthetic delight in 
tortuosity, have concealed the fact that he had 
dropped in, as he had done a hundred times before, 
for a few minutes' chat on his way home. She wanted 
to talk about Silvia. For his part he was perfectly 
ready to talk about Silvia. 

Just before the closing of the door, which must 
certainly be that of Mrs. Heaton's bedroom, Nellie 
had said : "I'll put out the lights; good night, dear. 
What a lovely last rubber," and Peter, feeling his 
way, so to speak, into Nellie's mind by the analogy 
of his own, knew exactly what she was doing. In a 
moment now there would be the click of the extin- 
guished light in the hall, and she would very softly 
rustle back in the dark into the room where he was 
sitting, close the door of that, and then, perhaps, 
turn on the light inside again, or, as likely as not, 
shuffle back into the window-seat. So often had they 
sat there talking in the dark. 

And as he waited for those five or ten seconds to 
pass, he was invaded by a sense ot passionate re- 
bellion against himself. There was the girl, whom 
for the last two years he had been interested in, 
fond of to the practical exclusion of anyone else, and 
now, at this moment she, engaged to a man whom 
she did not ever so remotely love, was presently 
stealing back, on the eve of her marriage, to spend 
a more than midnight hour with him. He ought to 
have been a balloon, rising into some stratum of 
sunlight high above the twi-lit earth, and instead he 
was bumping heavily over uneven ground, quite 



Peter 123 

unable to get into the air. No matter what the ballast 
of worldly consideration he threw out, he could not 
feel himself lifting, and Nellie, when she came back, 
would only add to the weight. 

His expectations were ruthlessly, even ruefully, 
fulfilled. She stole in, invisible in the darkened 
oblong of the doorway, closed it, and without turning 
up the light, established herself in the window-seat 
again. 

"Mother's gone to her room," she said. "I did 
it so cleverly, Peter. I said I had just come in " 

"I know; I heard," said Peter. "Brilliant." 

"Wasn't it? Now we can talk without any fear 
of interruption. Where had we got to? Oh, I know. 
I think Silvia is perfectly fascinating. Don't you ? " 

Here was the bumping process, the added weight. 
Eager though Nellie had been to re-establish old 
relations between herself and him, there was a livelier 
eagerness to ascertain anything about new relations 
between himself and Silvia. If Nellie, as he had 
affirmed, had shut his windows and bolted his doors 
for him, he now made a <our of the secure premises 
to see that she had don^ her work thoroughly. 

"I don't know if I snould say perfectly fascina- 
ting," he said. 

"But you like her, don't you? " 

"Extremely, but " 

Nellie waited to hear the qualification. She liked 
the fact that there was a qualification, though at 
present she did not know what it was. As nothing, 
further came, she spoke again, quite in the old style. 

"Oh, it's so rude to say ' but,' and then not go 
on," she said. 

Peter jerked back his head. 

"Let me be polite, then," he said. "One can 



124 



Peter 



always observe the small decencies of life. What I 
nearly said was : ' But I'm not in love with her.' I 
stopped myself, Nellie, if you want to know, because 
it seemed to me very vividly that it wasn't your 
business." 

There was an illumination cast on to her face from 
the street lamps from below. To his intense surprise 
he saw that her eyes, wide and unfocused, grew 
suddenly dim. 

"That's just what I, too, am beginning to 
realize," she said. "Whatever you do now is none 
of my business. I've got a separate establishment. 
I'm bound to say that you have quite realized that. 
You haven't asked me a single question about what 
goes on in mine. It doesn't concern you any more; 
therefore, you don't care. I shall learn to respect 
your privacy, too, Peter. Another snub or so will 
teach me." 

"That's nonsense ! " he said quickly. 

"It isn't nonsense. You treat me like a stranger 
because I happen to be marrying someone else. If 
you had been in love with me " 

"We've had that already," said Peter. 

"Then listen to it this time. You've absolutely 
been turning your back on me. You are piqued — 
horrid word — because I don't want to remain an 
old maid for your sake. Mayn't I feel interested in 
you without your resenting it? You object to my 
marrying Philip when you could have made it per- 
fectly clear " 

"What could I have made clear? " he asked. 

"You could have made yourself indispensable to 
me," she said. "A single further turn of the 
screw " 

Again she broke off. 



Peter 125 

"No, I'm wronging you," she said. "That final 
turn of the screw must be made mutually. It never 
came to us, though I was there, wasn't I, with my 
screwdriver, and you with yours? It just didn't 
happen. Let's make the best of what remains. A 
good deal remains after all. We have everything 
that is of value between us, except that final turn 
of the screw. Good heavens, Peter, how I wish I 
adored you ! I do all but that. And you do the same 
for me, darling, when all is said and done. If only 
you were masterful and masculine, or if only I were, 
the thing would be solved. As it is, we are like two 
oysters in the flow of the tide, just gaping at each 
other." 

Nellie's ultimate objective, unless Peter had com- 
pletely misunderstood her, had sunk out of sight for 
him. 

"And all the time the tide is flowing," he said; 
"that's so maddening of it. I mean that the days and 
weeks and months are passing, and one doesn't even 
think, still less does one feel ; one only exists. I am 
an oyster, it's quite true. But I don't make pearls. 
Pearls, I believe, are only pieces of grit which the 
clever oyster covers up with iridescent stuff'. All that 
stuff comes from the oyster's inside, somehow. I 
can't make ; I can't manufacture like that. The clever 
oyster does it, or the normal oyster, somewhere in 
the South Seas. I suppose I'm a northern oyster — 
only meant to be eaten. Just to be eaten. I really 
want somebody to come along and gobble me up. 
I'm nothing but a small piece of food." 

Nellie found herself hugely interested in this. It 
gave her what she wanted to know — namely, Peter's 
own personal estimate as to how he stood to Silvia. 
He had defined it negatively when he told her ihat 



126 Peter 

he was not in love with her ; but here was a more in- 
timate revelation — namely, that of his willingness to 
be absorbed. There, too, was the difference, vital 
and essential, between herself and him, for she never 
contemplated the possibility of being, absorbed by 
Philip. There would certainly be no absorption there 
on either side ; he, so she judged, was as little likely 
to make that surrender as she. 

For a moment she thought over what he had said, 
instantly finding herself unable to accept it. 

"I can imagine your being very indigestible," 
she remarked. "I don't really think, nor, perhaps, 
do you, that you will allow yourself to be assimilated. 
I can't imagine you giving up your wet woods." 

"I shall always remain selfish, you mean," said 
he. "Self-centred; whatever you like to call it." 
She frowned over this. 

"What I suppose I really mean is that I don't 
understand you," she said. And, getting up, she 
fumbled for the switch of the light by the door. 
"Let's throw some light on you." 
He got up, too. 

"I must go to bed," he said. "It's any hour of 
the night." 

She stood in front of him, stretching her arms, 
which were a little cramped with leaning on the 
window-sill, and looked at him gravely. 

"You're going to ask Silvia to marry you, then ? " 
she said. 

"I am, as soon as I think she will accept me." 
Nellie received this point-blank. She had fully 
expected it, and now, when it came, there was nothing 
in her that ever so faintly winced. Then she took 
two steps forward, put her hands on his shoulders 
and kissed him. 



Peter 127 

"Peter, darling, what good friends we've been," 
she said, "and we'll carry all that forward into the 
future. There's no one like you. That's just what 
I meant by kissing you, that, and to wish you all 
good luck. Perhaps your son will marry my 
daughter; wouldn't that be nice; and then we can 
envy them both, and be wildly jealous. As for asking 
Silvia — well, what about to-morrow ? Perhaps it's 
rather late to ask her to-night." 

He tiptoed his way out, and Nellie closed the door 
very cautiously behind him. At that moment, when 
she kissed him, she had given him all of the very 
best of her. She exulted in having done it, but 
assuredly virtue had gone out of her. Restless and 
unquiet in her bed, she thought over what was left 
for her. 



CHAPTER VII 

John Mainwaring had prepared his studio for the 
visit of Mrs. Wardour and Silvia next day with the 
utmost dramatic completeness, employing for their 
reception the scenery and the setting which suggested 
Itself as being most likely to impress and astound. 
With this end in view he had littered the room with 
all possible properties, bringing down from the attics 
stacks of his own pictures, which he disposed in care- 
less profusion round the walls. Sketch books and 
paint boxes littered the tables, lay figures peeped from 
behind easels, robes trailed over sofa-backs, and he, 
when his visitors were announced, had designed that 
he himself should be found, in his oldest velveteen 
coat and morocco slippers, at the top of the step- 
ladder which he had put into position again in front 
of the great canvas representing Satan odiously whis- 
pering to the German Emperor. There, absorbed in 
his inspired labours, he was to be giving the last, the 
crowning, the positively final terrific touch to it as his 
visitors (and, as he hoped, his victims) entered. 

Since the work had actually been finished at least 
a month ago, and on that occasion had been toasted 
in glasses of port wine by himself, his wife and Peter, 
he had thought it prudent to inform her that more 
last touches were to be applied to it again to-day. 
Visitors, he had added, were dropping in that after- 
noon, and she would, no doubt, be sitting upstairs 
in the drawing-room when they arrived, with tea 
prepared for their refreshment. When the time came 

128 



Peter 129 

he would yodel for her, and she would come dow^n, 
be presented to Mrs. Wardour and her daughter, 
and would scold him for keeping these ladies looking 
at his stupid pictures instead of bringing them up to 
tea. . . . 

Such was the general idea of the opening of a 
manoeuvre from w^hich he, with a quite incurable 
optimism, expected very gratifying results. Peter 
had already alluded to the surprising dawn of Mrs. 
Wardour on the town, and he himself, at the play the 
night before, had paved the way for a commission to 
execute a portrait of Silvia. He had no idea whether 
or not Mrs. Wardour inserted any of these golden 
tentacles with w^hich, like an octopus, she appeared 
to be enveloping London, into the domain of art, 
but it was worth while hoping that her sense of com- 
pletion would not be satisfied unless she had Silvia's 
portrait painted. That, so he had ascertained, had 
not been done, and he had, so to speak, left a card 
"soliciting the favour of a call." The call certainly 
was to be made that afternoon, and his imagination 
now, bit in teeth and wildly galloping, foresaw 
another possible commission in the portrait of Mrs. 
Wardour herself. Perhaps — here was the rosiest of 
the summits yet in view — he might profitably dispose 
of that great cartoon which Mrs. Wardour would so 
soon be privileged to see receiving its finishing 
touches. Farther than that his vision did not 
definitely project itself, but in sunlit and shining 
mists he could vaguely see himself working for all 
he was worth (and for much of what Mrs. Wardour 
was worth) at more of these stupendous canvases, and 
berthing each, as soon as possible, in the same 
remunerative harbourage. 

The ring at the bell of the street door warned him 



130 Peter 

to scamper up his step-ladder, and absorb himself in 
finishing touches at the top of the thundercloud of 
war. In due time the studio door opened and 
Burrows, announcing his visitors, had to raise her 
voice to the pitch of a vendor of street-wares and 
recite the names again before she was so fortunate 
as to attract his attention. Then Mr. Maimvaring 
turned slowly round with a dazed expression and, 
shading his eyes, perceived the expected presences. 
Then with brush in one hand and palette in the other, 
he gave an ecstatic cry of welcome (not to be con- 
fused with the yodelling summons for his wife), and 
came bounding down the step-ladder. Divesting 
himself of his palette and brush, he held out both 
hands. 

" Ah, my dear friends," he said, " but this is charm- 
ing. I am ashamed of myself to be found in such 
dishevelment, but — well, we artists are like that, silly 
donkeys as we are, and I had forgotten, for the 
moment I had forgotten the advent of my delightful 
visitors." 

He held a hand of each of them for a moment, 
with pressure and expression, and then withdrew his 
left hand, holding it to his forehead. 

"A finishing touch," he said. "I was at that very 
moment putting the last touch of paint on to my 
canvas. Let me forget that : give me a moment to 
forget it. You are here, that is the great point." 

He made a splendid obeisance, and as he recovered 
thrust back his hair, and embarked on a period. 

"You find me, dear Mrs. Wardour," he said, "in 
a moment of triumph, of jubilation even. Little as 
that can possibly mean to others, this is one of my 
red letter days. A moment ago my brush touched 
my canvas for the last time. My picture is done, 



Peter 131 

all but for the obscure initials, which, in vermilion, 
I shall humbly inscribe in the corner. Would it, 
by chance, be of the smallest interest to you to see 
that little rite performed? I take my brush then, 
I squeeze out a morsel of paint, I trace those obscure 
initials." 

No inspiration could have been happier. Mrs. 
Wardour's eye was already travelling over the huge 
canvas with rapture and astonishment, and it was 
thrilling that she should have come just in time to 
see the artist testify in vermilion that this great thing 
was of his own creation. Naturally she could not be 
expected to know that if she had arrived half an 
hour ago, or had not arrived for half an hour to come, 
she would have been just in time for this ceremony. 
She turned to Silvia. 

"Well, if that isn't interesting, Silvia," she said 
(as if Silvia had denied it). "Weren't we saying 
to each other as we came along that perhaps we should 
find Mr. Mainwaring painting? And what a work 
of art too I My ! " 

John Mainwaring having recorded himself as 
creator, became showman and spectator in one, and 
moved the step-ladder aside so that he should both 
get and give an uninterrupted view. Then, losing 
himself once more as spectator, he propped his chin 
on his hand and gazed at the work. 

"Finished! Finished!" he said with a magni- 
ficent detachment. "Now let us see what we think 
of it." 

Mrs. Wardour gazed too, and the more she gazed 
the more powerful — that was exactly the word she 
would have used — appeared the significance of this 
tremendous presentment. She had no great taste 
for pictures, but if you were in pursuit of pictures 



132 



Peter 



(and pictures had certainly been the objective of 
this expedition), here was what she meant by a 
picture. Not long before his death her husband had 
bought what he called "a picture or two," destined 
to adorn the walls of the gallery which was so great 
a feature in the castellated residence which he had 
built on the ridge of Ashdown Forest. It ran the 
whole length of the house, and when complete as to 
embellishment, was to be a lane of pictures from end 
to end hung on red Spanish brocade. To her mind, 
no less than his, real pictures, true pictures, pictures 
worth looking at, were brightly (or sombrely) coloured 
illustrations of famous personages, of well-known 
places, or told a story ; best of all were those that told 
a story. A few such had already been plucked and 
gathered there; there was a very splendid record of 
the coronation of Queen Victoria, the rock of Gib- 
raltar, with a P. and O. steamer to the left and a 
sunset to the right, an execution of Mary, Queen of 
wScots, and, in lighter mood, a delicious immensity 
called "Knights of the Bath," in which a small boy 
and a large puppy shared a sponging-tin. Here 
then and now the image of the walls of the great 
picture-gallery, at present insufficiently clad, and cry- 
ing out for covering, like a bather who has lost his 
clothes, flashed into her mind. The image was not 
sufficiently clearly realized to admit of a definite asso- 
ciation of ideas between it and the allegory at which 
they were all gazing, but certainly as she looked at 
the size — particularly the size — of Mr. Mainwaring's 
masterpiece, the gallery at Howes occurred to her. 
If there were to be pictures, here or elsewhere, she 
liked to know what such pictures were "about," and 
she instantly perceived what this one was about. Now 
that the war was won, and the German Emperor, for 



Peter 133 

all practical purposes, annihilated (he had served his 
turn because the destruction of ships by his sub- 
marines had brought her so excessive a fortune), she 
could, perceiving the message of the picture, un- 
reservedly gloat over the realism of it. 

"If that isn't the German Emperor," she loudly 
enunciated, "and if that isn't Satan whispering to 
him about the war. Satan's saying that he would 
help, and, to be sure, he tried to. I do call that a 
picture. And there's the war coming up behind, 
like a thunderstorm. There's a subject for a picture, 
and how beautifully you've done it, Mr. Main- 
waring." 

He leaned his chin still more heavily against his 
hand. 

"Ah, you think so? " he asked. " I wish I thought 
so!" 

"But what is there to want? " asked Mrs. War- 
dour. "It's all as clear as day. We saw nothing 
so striking at the Royal Academy, did we, Silvia, 
even at the Private View." 

"The Academy? The Academy?" murmured 
Mr. Mainwaring, as if he wondered whether he had 
heard that name before. Then he shook his head 
gently, as if abandoning the attempt to remember 
what the Academy was. 

"And I see lots of guns and bayonets underneath 
the thundercloud," said Mrs. Wardour unerringly. 
"They're coming up." 

The artist still gazed, and, smoothing his chin 
with his hand, he repeated : 

"Yes; they're coming up, coming up." . . . 

He gave a great start, and seemed to shake him- 
self like a big retriever emerging from the water, 
where he had brought some thrown token to land. 



134 



Peter 



He did not know of the great gallery at Howes, which 
starved for decoration ; but even if he had, he would 
have bounded out of the water just like that. 

"Basta! Basta!" he cried. "I am boring you, 
dear ladies, I am wearying you, I am making myself 
a most unutterable tedium for you. Where is my 
wife ? Why is she not here to tap me on the shoulder 
and say ' Tea ' ? " 

He gave the preconcerted signal of a yodel, and 
opening the door of the studio, repeated it. A faint 
cry from upstairs answered him, and on the heels of 
that cry Mrs. Mainwaring came downstairs. The 
introductions were floridly effected, and she shook 
her finger at her husband, and explained her reproof 
to her visitors. 

"I always tell him that when he is at his painting 
he never knows the time," she said. "John, it is 
very wrong of you to have kept Mrs. Wardour and 
Miss Wardour down here." 

She turned to Mrs. Wardour, as her husband 
vented himself in contrition and apology to Silvia. 

"Of course I'm no judge," she said, "for I always 
think that everything my husband does is so striking. 
But is not that a wonderful thing? The Emperor, 
Satan. Yes. Such expressive faces ! Now I must 
insist on your coming to have a cup of tea. I always 
have to drive my husband away from his easel. Look 
at him in his old coat, too. John, I'm ashamed of 
you ! Go and put on something more tidy." 

Silvia felt somehow, as Mrs. Mainwaring gave 
this skilful rendering of the general hints that she 
had received, as if she was listening to some auto- 
maton wound up to emit through a mask-like face 
certain words, certain sentences that formed its 
accomplishment. That was the immediate effect, but 



Peter 135 

immediately afterwards followed the conjecture that it 
was not a mere automaton that spoke. It said, so 
she seemed to gather, what it had been told (or 
thereabouts) to say, but probably Mrs. Mainwaring 
was capable of saying and doing things for herself. 
Though she had been pulled through the funnel of 
Mr. Mainwaring's personality, she had not lost her 
own individual self. But what that individual self 
was she could form no conjecture. It was as if a 
voice came from inside a window over which a blind 
had been completely drawn. She could arrive at no 
perception of who it was who talked behind the blind, 
nor was the room lit within so that, at the least, 
there came a shadow on the blind, suggesting 
features. All this was no more than the details of 
the first impression made by a new acquaintance, her 
instinctive valuation of her hostess, something to 
work upon provisionally. Mrs. ]\Iain waring was 
only repeating her lessons, which she seemed to know 
so excellently well ; she gave at present no indication 
of what she was like when her lessons were over. 
But that she existed Silvia had no doubt whatever. 
There were people like that, people who had an 
aloof, sequestered life of their own. Then, without 
being conscious of the transition, she knew that she 
was thinking of Mrs. Mainwaring no longer, but of 
Peter. 

More yodelling proclaimed that the artist had put 
on his tidy coat, and he pranced back, and led the way 
upstairs with Mrs. Wardour, saying that he was 
as hungry as a hunter, and hoping that his wife had 
provided them with a good tea. Mrs. Mainwaring, 
on the other hand, seemed a little to be detaining 
Silvia; she pointed out other of the works of art that 
so plentifully bestrewed the room, and this struck 



136 Peter 

the girl, somehow, as being part of a manoeuvre in 
no way connected with the lesson she had so fault- 
lessly repeated. The blind had been ever so slightly 
pushed aside ; someone was looking out. 

"Yes, there's a picture my husband painted of 
my son last year," she said. "I think you've met 
Peter, haven't you, Miss Wardour? That was con- 
sidered to be very like him. I hope he will be home 
for tea; he said he thought he could get away from 
the Foreign Office early to-day. Very interesting 
for him to be in the Foreign Office." 

Silvia said something amiable about the portrait, 
which was quite recognizable. 

"So pleased you think it like," continued Mrs. 
Mainwaring. "Yes, Peter is at the Foreign Office 
all day, and he is generally out in the evening. I 
do not go out very much. I sit at home mostly in 
the evening and read." 

Silvia welcomed a new topic. Though the blind 
had been distinctly twitched aside she could not see 
in ; she was only conscious of being observed. But 
this seemed an encouraging opportunity of getting 
a glimpse. 

" What do you read most ? " she asked. " Novels ? 
Memoirs ? " 

"No, what I like reading about is places I have 
never been to," said Mrs. Mainwaring. "I wonder, 
when I read, what life is like in those places, and 
how I should enjoy it." 

If that was a glimpse for the girl it was a very 
momentary one, lit, so to speak, not by any clear 
illumination, but rather by some vague dim phos- 
phorescence. vSilvia, by some whimsical association 
of ideas, found herself thinking of a phosphorescent 
match-box; if you felt for it in the dark, you might 



Peter 137 

find matches there which would produce something 
more illuminating. 

"Ah, I, too, love new places," she said. "I love 
waking in a new place, where I have arrived after 
dark, and wondering what it is going to be like." 

The glimpse grew a little more definite. 

"I should like that, too," said Mrs. Mainwaring. 
"But my husband's work keeps him in London, and 
I do not get away very often. Shall we go upstairs 
to tea ? " " 

As they turned, Mrs. Mainwaring cast one glance 
at the great cartoon. For the moment, infinitesimal 
in duration, her neat smooth porcelain face grew 
hostile and malevolent. 

No sooner did Silvia appear in the doorway of 
the little drawing-room facing the street, than Mr. 
Mainwaring, to her immense surprise, bounded from 
his seat, chasseed across the room to her, and fell on 
his knees before her. 

"Behold me in an attitude of abject entreaty ! " 
he said. " Your mother, subject to your acquiescence, 
dear Miss Silvia, has asked me to attempt to use my 
best endeavours, feeble as they may be, to render 
you the eager homage of an artist's skill. She has 
asked me, subject to your consent, I repeat, to paint 
your portrait for her." 

Even as he spoke there came the quick light step 
on the stairs, the identity of which Silvia, seldom 
as she had heard it, knew with a certainty that sur- 
prised her, and Peter came in. 

"Kneel, Peter, my dear," said his father, enjoying 
himself tremendously and puttmg up hands of sup- 
plication. "Maria, my angel, I beseech you to kneel 
too. We are entreating Miss Silvia; we are urging 
the sacred claims of Art." 



138 Peter 

Silvia gave a laugh of sheer amusement at this 
ludicrous situation. Amusement" was the only 
possible solvent for it. 

"Oh please, let nobody kneel ! " she said. "And 
you, Mr. Mainwaring, please get up. Yes, of course, 
if my mother wishes it, and if Mr. Mainwaring will 
be very patient and tell me what to do " 

He bounded up again, ecstatic at the granting of 
his petition. 

"To do?" he asked. "Dear young lady, you 
have only got to be. Be ! Be just as you are now." 

Again he supported his head on his hand, as 
when he gazed at the cartoon, and with the other 
shaded his eyes, staring at her in an embarrassing 
manner. He gave a gay yodelling cry. 

"I see it — I see it ! " he announced. "My superb 
picture is already flaming in my brain. Madam " — 
he turned to Mrs. Wardour — "you shall have a 
masterpiece, and I, John Mainwaring, will have 
created it." 

He took his hand from his forehead, and made 
a movement as if to cast something away. 

"Enough!" he said. "Let us descend to earth 
again. My angel, give us our tea. We are ex- 
hausted by our adventures." 

Peter, so Silvia noticed, was lookmg at his father 
with eyebrows ever so little raised, as if in contem- 
plation of some phenomenon that, however familiar, 
was still remarkable, and his lips were faintly smil- 
ing. When he turned to Silvia, as he now did, that 
expression still remained there, and she felt that, 
wordlessly, he had somehow taken her into his con- 
fidence. Certainly his father amused him ; his raised 
eyebrows and half-smiling mouth told her that. And 
was there a touch of indulgent contempt in it? 



Peter 139 

John Mainwaring continued to claim the atten- 
tion of the little party in a boisterous rollicking 
fashion; it was like being out in a high wind, where 
shouting was the only means of communication. He 
assuaged the hunger which he confessed was pro- 
digious, with incredible quantities of tea-cakes; he 
ate cherries backwards, beginning with the stem. 
He roared with laughter at his own jokes, he apolo- 
gized for his boyishness, and whispered to Mrs. 
Wardour that he was "in for" a scolding afterwards 
from his wife for making such a noise. . . . And 
there, all the time, far more potently vital was Peter 
blowing off no steam like his father, but quietly, self- 
containedly reserving it. There was something 
inscrutable about that smooth handsome face, though 
now and then, as their eyes casually met, Silvia 
felt that she was looking into clear dark beckoning 
water, and if her eyes could not fathom it, that was 
no fault of his transparence, but only of her own 
purblind penetration. . . . 

Mr. Mainwaring was, just now, launched on a 
story, the very recollection of which made him laugh 
in anticipation of what was coming, and Silvia could 
let her eyes roam at will. She looked at her mother, 
at the narrator, at Mrs. Mainwaring, all in turn, in 
order, for the purposes of strict impartiality, to look 
at Peter as well. Mrs. Mainwaring with wifely and 
domestic devotion had managed to attach to her face 
some faint semblance of interest in the story, as if it 
were new to her. Then came Peter's turn, and that 
handsome inscrutability suddenly seemed to Silvia 
to be like a reflecting surface, which, when you looked 
at it, showed you not itself, but presented your own 
image. She saw not at all how he stood to her, but 
how she stood to him. Her own subjective relation, 



140 Peter 

the image of herself regarding him was flashed back 
at her. Looking at him, in some mysterious way, 
she saw herself. His dark clear water gave back to 
her her own soul. . . . She whisked her eyes away, 
forgetting the impartiality of her rotation, and found 
herself met by Mrs. Mainwaring. And there, so it 
seemed, she found comprehension of this bewildering 
impression. As regards Mrs. Mainwaring herself, 
the blind was still drawn, but from behind the blind 
Silvia heard inwardly and unmistakably that quiet, 
precise voice saying, "The girl's in love with my 
Peter." Mrs. Mainwaring, by some divination as 
mysterious as herself, was in possession of that; she 
and Silvia shared the secret knowledge. And then, 
before the girl's eyes could shift themselves to Mr. 
Mainwaring, who, it seemed clear, from his thumping 
with his fist on the tea-table, was now at the climax 
of his narrative, there peeped out from his wife's face 
that same secret malevolence, with which, as they 
left the studio, she had looked at the great work 
of art that hung there, while she admitted that her 
husband's work kept him and her in London. 

The point of Mr. Mainwaring's story entailed the 
use of the falsetto voice, and Peter at its conclusion 
got up on the pretext of handing cigarettes, and 
reseated himself next Silvia. 

"It is good of you," he said. 

That was fragmentary enough, undetached from 
any context, but Silvia found herself understanding 
him perfectly. 

"My mother and Mr. Mainwaring arranged it," 
she said. "I couldn't very well say no, could I? 
Not that I wanted to; I don't mean that." 

"My father's delighted," said Peter, 

He paused a moment. 



Peter 141 

"He's in great form," he added. "You've de- 
lighted him. Aren't we a weird family? " 

There seemed no direct reply possible to this. 
Silvia could not imagine herself assenting, and it 
seemed banal as well as untrue to say, "No, you're 
quite ordinary." But she found herself not wanting 
and not even needing to reply at all. She wanted, 
and for that matter she needed no more than to have 
Peter there and be wonderfully happy. He shifted 
himself a little in his very low chair as he turned to 
get a match for his cigarette, and she again just found 
herself noticing little things about him. His fingers 
were very long and smooth, the nails very neatly 
sheathed in the skin that held them : they grew beau- 
tifully. Best of all was the short, closely-clipped 
hair which, when he bent his head forward towards 
the match, stopped just above his collar. 

"You needn't answer that," he said. "Tell me, 
instead, what you thought of the play last night. Are 
people sentimental — girls particularly — like that when 
they are really moved? I should have thought that 
emotion killed sentimentality. But it may be dif- 
ferent in Scotland." 

Peter, at the conclusion of this ridiculous speech, 
suddenly found himself in the dilemma of talking 
nonsense without the co-operation and backing of 
the person whom he was talking nonsense to. Silvia, 
at any rate, did not contribute any soap-bubbles of 
her own, and, quick to perceive that, he turned to 
his mother. 

"What sort of hotels are there in Scotland, 
mother?" he asked. "Oh, I must explain to Miss 
Wardour. My mother loves reading the advertise- 
ments of hotels in Bradshaw. It gives her the sense 
of (ravel, doesn't it, mother?" 

J 



142 



Peter 



He paused no more than infinitesimally and went 
on again in the same breath. 

"I love the sense of travel, too, and I got it by 
going to the Foreign Office. Guatemala has been my 
apres-midi." 

Silvia triumphantly applauded his quickness. She 
had seen on Mrs. Mainwaring's face a protest at 
the invasion of her privacy ; but Peter had done more 
than merely see it, he had slammed the door again 
with allusions to himself and Guatemala. That, some- 
how, a perception as quick as intuition, seemed to her 
extraordinarily characteristic of him. There was no 
stumbling, no hesitation, where she would have drawn 
attention to a similar mistake by a bungling silence. 
His mind was like the hair on his neck — abrupt and 
crisp. 

The ball was with Peter again. 

"I nearly fell asleep over Guatemala," he said. 
"Surely Guatemala is very remote; there are many 
things more immediately interesting. Nellie's wed- 
ding, by the way. It's less than a week ahead, and 
every young man I know is buying new pocket- 
handkerchiefs to weep into. I've bought an extremely 
large one. There'll be room for you to cry into one 
half of it, Miss Silvia, while I cry into the other. 
They promised to send it round on a hand trolley, 
like a sack of coals." 

Silvia laughed. 

"Ah, I shall want some of that handkerchief," she 
said, "but not to cry into, only to wave. She is going 
to be tremendously happy, isn't she? What's he 
like? I hardly know him." 

Peter considered this. 

"He's like — he's like a very tidy room," he said 
"Solid furniture and not a speck of dust." 



Peter 143 

"And the person who sits in it? " asked the girl. 

"Nobody sits in it. At least I never found any- 
one there. Philip is the room. There's The Times 
warmed and folded; there's letter-paper, big and 
little, and envelopes, big and little. Perhaps Nellie 
has found someone there. Philip may get under the 
sofa when anybody else comes in." 

"And she's very much in love with him? " asked 
Silvia. 

"You ought to know. She takes you out to Rich- 
mond Park and sits on the grass with you all 
afternoon." 

Silvia wrinkled up her eyes as if she were focusing 
that afternoon. 

" Nellie dazzles me," she said. " She's like the sun 
on water. I expect she'll make his room, that tidy 
room, look lovely. But I shall never understand 
what Nellie does. I shall only understand the effect 
of what she has done. She has a spell. She makes 
you see what she has seen." 

She was conscious now of receiving from Peter 
a more direct answer of eyes than she had ever done 
before. She knew they were talking about the same 
things now. They might, each of them, though they 
were talking of Nellie (superficially the same thing), 
have been regarding her, have been framing their 
remarks about her from different angles. Given that, 
as Silvia had said, she was a dazzle of sunlight as 
well, one of them, owing to the prismatic process, 
might have been seeing blue, another seeing yellow. 
But Peter's answer convinced her that they were 
both seeing Nellie from the same standpoint. 

"That's hit her," he said. "Nellie says and does 
nothing trivial; one is continually discovering that. 
She waves her fingers, and she mutters, and then, 



144 



Peter 



afterwards, you find she has been making a spell. 
Isn't she uncanny ? Or she tells you something about 
yourself that you didn't know, or scarcely knew, and 
you find that it is quite solidly true. Is she a witch, 
do you think ? " 

Silvia leaned forward towards him. It was im- 
possible not to "close up" with this. 

"That's just what I said to her once," she said. 
"I said that she was a witch. She told me something 
about myself that I never had known. It was true* 
it had been true all the time. But, literally, I had 
never had the smallest notion of it till she told me." 

Indeed, as Silvia acknowledged to herself, the 
truth of what Nellie had said on that occasion was 
receiving a firm endorsement at this moment. Etched 
and bitten-in to her consciousness from the moment of 
that prophetic babbling had been the image of her- 
self in love, singing, so Nellie had said, in a boy's 
key ; eager to be allowed to give homage rather than 
receive it ; eager to be allowed to love rather than per- 
mitting love with whatever ardency of welcome. And 
here was Peter repeating on general grounds exactly 
what she had found, and in especial was finding 
now, to be magically true. 

"Since we both agree she is a witch," said he, 
"we ought surely to collect evidence against her. 
What was it she said to you, that something unknown 
to you, which you found to be true when she said it? 
I have evidence also; she said something to me last 
night which I didn't know, but which " 

What went through his brain at that moment, 
with the sureness of a surgeon's incision, was just 
that which Nellie had said when he told her that he 
was intending to ask Silvia to marry him. He had 
hedged that with the reservation that he would do so 



Peter 145 

when he thought that he had a chance of success, and 
witch-Hke, with swift incontinent prophecy, she had 
told him that it was rather late already as regards 
to-night. The prophecy had been encouraging at the 
time, but not convincing. Now he suddenly felt him- 
self convinced. Why or how — their conversation had 
only been about Nellie — he did not know. But it 
seemed that Nellie had penetrated where he had 
not. . . . 

There was his father sitting on the sofa beside 
Mrs. Wardour; there was his mother veiled and 
shrouded from him as she had ever been, do- 
ing something with a teapot, doing something 
with crumbs left on plates, for which she made 
some concoction, placed in the balcony outside, for 
birds. . . . Had he been alone with Silvia, he would 
have proposed to her, fortified with Nellie's encour- 
agement, fortified even more by his present sense of 
its reliability, then and there. But unless he knelt 
on the floor to her, as he had found his father doing 
when he came in . . . 

"Oh, what did Nellie say to you last night?" 
asked the girl. "Let's collect evidence, as you 
say." 

"And have her burned outside St. Margaret's, in- 
stead of letting her marry Philip inside ? " suggested 
Peter. 

Silvia gave a parenthetic gasp. 

"I suggested that she ought to be burned, too," 
she said. "More evidence, please." 

Peter found her entrancing at that moment. There 
was some keen boyish kind of frank enthusiasm about 
her that attacked and challenged instead of merely 
provoking. She asked for no effort : you only had 
to allow yourself to be caught up. 



146 Peter 

"But it's your turn," he said. "You first sug- 
gested that Nellie told you things you didn't know." 

"No; it was you who said that." 

" It may have been ; but it was you who suggested 
the witch-like quality. You said that she makes you 
see what she has seen. You know you did." 

Silvia, ever so slightly, withdrew herself. 

"Did I?" she asked. 

"Of course you did. Now do be fair. You be- 
gan, and therefore it's your turn to bring out the first 
piece of evidence. It w^as in Richmond Park, you 
know, and she told you something about yourself 
which you didn't know." 

Peter put his hand in some judicial manner 
through that short crisp hair above his neck. 

"I am prepared to hear your evidence," he said. 
"You're on oath. Get on. Miss Silvia. Don't keep 
the court waiting." 

Silvia shot a chance arrow. 

"If I promise to tell you," she said, "will you 
promise to tell me your evidence ? " 

Peter laughed. 

"I think we're both better at cross-examination 
than at confession," he remarked. 

"Oh, but that's no answer," she said. 

"I know it isn't. It wasn't meant to be." 

"Then be serious. Will you tell me your evidence 
against Nellie in her character of a witch?" 

Peter, quite clearly, let his eyes rest on the other 
occupants of the room. One by one he looked at 
them. 

"No ! " he said. "I supose the trial is adjourned 
owing to the inexplicable coyness of the witnesses. 
So there we are. Nellie will marry her Philip without 
a stain on her blessed character." 



Peter 147 

In his glance round the room Peter had observed 
that Mrs. Wardour was trying to catch Silvia's eyes. 
She would certainly succeed in doing so before long, 
and then, as her custom was, she would make some 
faint little clucking noises, like a hen that mildly 
wants to be let out. She was incapable of going 
away, however much she wanted to do so, unless 
Silvia took the initiative. She clucked, and then 
Silvia said that it was time to go. . . . 

But Peter did not want Silvia to go just yet; on 
the other hand, if they were all to sit here until the 
clucking became perceptible to Silvia, their visitors 
might just as well, for any practical purpose, go 
away at once. Besides, it was impossible to forget 
that Nellie last night had prophesied, and it had 
struck another as well as himself, that she was a 
reliable seer. 

He got up rather slowly, rather tentatively, and 
fixed in his mind was the idea that Silvia would make 
some sort of initial step. It seemed to him that they 
were both hand in hand : it was just a question of 
who lifted a foot first. . . . 

Silvia did not turn her head to look at her mother. 
If she had, she would have been bound to attend to 
the duckings; but what she wanted, more precisely 
what she needed, was to get away from a masked fire 
of elderly eyes and, with Peter of course, just to be 
natural. There was smouldering in this room some 
ember of supervision ; she felt herself (and him) under 
a magnifying glass being looked at, being noted, be- 
ing examined. It would answer her need perfectly 
well to go with him on to the balcony outside the 
room, to see if the evening was likely to be fine, to 
be sure that the motor was waiting. . . . Here, there 
was Mr. Mainwaring visualizing her portrait; worse 



148 Peter 

than that, here was the more gimlet-hke attention of 
his wife, who, ostensibly, was making a sloppy saucer 
of food for the London sparrows. Certainly she 
would sooner go out on the balcony alone than remain 
here, but when she thought of that it did not in the 
least satisfy her. After all, she did not want to "sit 
out " alone. What girl would want that? But she 
wanted to sit out. . . . There was no sort of em- 
barrassment in her voice when she spoke to Peter. 

" May we go down to your father's studio again ? " 
she asked. "I haven't seen all I wanted to." 

Surely his glance met hers with a comprehension 
that seemed immeasurably marvellous. 

"Yes; do come down," he said 

The clucking became inarticulate. 

"We ought to be going, Silvia," said her mother. 

Peter took this up. 

"Oh, you must give Miss Silvia five minutes, Mrs. 
Wardour," he said. "It's only fair that she should 
know the sort of thing that father's going to make of 
her." 

Mr. Mainwaring gave a great shout of laughter. 

"The impertinence of youth ! " he cried. "Peter, I 
disown you. I would cut you off with a shilling if I 
had one ! " 

The two went down the stairs in silence. In 
silence also they came into the studio. The huge 
cartoon filled up one end of it; on the other three 
sides was the stacked debris from the attics; land- 
scapes and portraits and sketches littered the tables. 

"That's rather jolly," said Peter, pointing to one 
at random. "And, O Lord, my father has brought 
out a thing he did of me last year. Rather like a 
hair-dresser." 

" Not a bit," said Silvia. "But it's very like you." 



Peter 149 

Peter wheeled about and faced her. 

" Evidence ! " he said. " Do you know what NelHe 
said to me last night? Of course you don't, but I'll 
tell you now. We were talking about you. She said 
— she encouraged me to think I had a chance " 

Silvia stood stock still, every fibre of her stiff and 
arrested. 

"About you. A chance," said Peter again. "Is 
it true ? Was she right ? Was she being a watch ? " 

Silvia had been looking at him when this spell of 
stillness struck her. Now her eyelids fluttered and 
drooped, then once more she looked at him as steadily 
as before. 

"All true," she said. "And Nellie told me some- 
thing. She said that when I loved anybody, I — I 
should love just as I love now. Just as I love now, 
Peter." 



CHAPTER VIII 

Silvia was sitting in Mr. Mainwaring's studio one 
Saturday afternoon, waiting, without impatience, for 
the arrival from the Foreign Office of Peter, with 
whom she was motoring down to Howes, there to 
spend the Sunday. Silvia was perfectly capable of 
humour with regard to Howes, for she called it "the 
family seat." This indeed it was, since her father had 
bought the Norman ruin some twenty years ago, and 
quite unmistakably it belonged to the Wardours. 
He had made it habitable while Silvia was still a 
child, and during the war, when he became quite fabu- 
lously rich, he made it abominable also. To that 
period belonged the great picture gallery. 

The gathering there for the week-end was, though 
small, a rather crucial one. It was to introduce to 
each other the families which would be brought into 
alliance over her wedding. Henry Wardour, Silvia's 
uncle on her father's side, was to be ponderously 
there, and his wife elegantly so. Then there was to 
be Aunt Joanna Darley, Mrs. Wardour's sister, and 
her husband. He, Sir Abel Darley, was a round pink 
profiteer, who in recognition of the considerable for- 
tune he had made for himself by overcharging the 
Government for millions of yards of khaki, had been 
made a baronet, presumably in order to stop his mouth 
if he felt inclined to brag over the gullible Govern- 
ment. Then there was Mr. Mainwaring to represent 
Peter's side of the connection, but he was to sustain 
his part alone, since Mrs. Mainwaring, with an im- 

150 



Peter 151 

pregnable quietness of negation, had absolutely 
refused to take part in this reunion of families. 

"You'll be eight without me, Silvia," she had said, 
"and eight's a very good number. I shall stop 
quietly in London and think of you all enjoying your- 
selves." 

Silvia's sense of humour prevented her from form- 
ing any tragic anticipations about this party, though, 
as she would have been perfectly willing to confess, 
she did not suppose that the meeting of the clans 
would lead to any instinctive blood-brotherhood. But 
Peter would be there, and she would ba there, and 
however outrageous and incompatible the rest of them 
proved themselves, they would be like the heathen 
"furiously raging together," but unable to disturb 
seriously the foundation fact of that. She trusted to 
her own sense of humour and to Peter's, to enable 
them both to be indifferent to what happened outside 
their own charmed corner. Uncle Henry and Uncle 
Abe, and Mr. Mainwaring and Peter would form a 
very curious company after dinner that night, when 
she and her mother and Aunt Joanna and Aunt 
Eleanor had left them to "punish " — as Uncle Henry 
would undoubtedly say — the 1870 port of which he 
was so inordinately fond, while the ladies would form 
an equally inconceivable committee upstairs. But 
since these things were to be, there was no use in 
imagining impossible situations. Somehow she con- 
jectured that Mr. Mainwaring would impress himself 
more strongly on the circle downstairs than either of 
the uncles; he had more exuberance. 

If Silvia had been set down to construct an in- 
congruous party of eight, she could not by any 
fantastic selection have bettered this gathering. 
Aunt Joanna, for instance, nourished an ineradicable 



152 



Peter 



hatred towards her sister for havnig married Silvia's 
father, and for being- so much richer than Sir Abe, and 
even Sir Abe's rank and her own were powerless to 
compensate her for this. Rich, immensely rich, Sir 
Abe certainly was, but she could not bear that her 
sister should be so much richer. Aunt Eleanor, on 
the other hand, Mrs. Wardour's sister-in-law, had 
only reverence for Mrs. Wardour's wealth, but what 
she thoroughly despised her for was her truckling (so 
Aunt Eleanor put it) to the smart world. Aunt 
Eleanor had been present at the great party, where the 
Russian ballet entertained the guests, and the 
presence of so many distinguished people made her 
feel perfectly sick. The true diagnosis of her indis- 
position, however, was that since she had tried to do 
for years without a particle of success what Mrs. War- 
dour had so brilliantly accomplished in a few weeks, 
it was only reasonable that she should have a violent 
reaction against that sort of thing. If, instead of 
marrying Peter, Silvia had been about to wed a peer, 
or somebody of that kind, Aunt Eleanor would cer- 
tainly have felt it her duty never to speak to either her 
or her mother again. Indeed, she would never have 
accepted Mrs. Wardour's invitation at all, so she had 
made quite plain, unless she had felt it her duty to 
take an interest in her husband's relations. 

Silvia was conscious of a vein of caricature in this 
flitting survey, but ridiculous people made caricatures 
of themselves without the collusion of the observer. 
Mr. Mainwaring was a caricature too : she could not 
think of him quite seriously. Probably most people, 
if you regarded them from a strictly individual stand- 
point, had a touch of caricature about them, for if 
you rated yourself as a normal person, everybody else 
must be a little out of drawing. But she looked at the 



Peter 153 

caricatures with the friendliest amusement; she loved 
them (and here in particular was her mother included) 
for being so entirely different from her — for being, in 
fact, precisely what they were. Humorous observa- 
tion was, with her, less a critical than an appreciative 
process, and now, as she waited for Peter, she wanted 
definitely to include Mrs. Mainwaring in her fascinat- 
ing gallery. But for this last fortnight, since her 
engagement to Peter, she had found herself increas- 
ingly unable to give her this genial amused observa- 
tion. More and more did Mrs. Mainwaring baffle 
and elude her. There was, so far as Silvia could 
notice, nothing humanly ridiculous about her, and, 
what was even more disconcerting, the girl found 
herself ever more incapable of attaching herself 
to her. To attempt to do that resembled, in some 
uncomfortable manner, the notion of attaching your- 
self in the dark to a hard smooth surface ; you 
could nowhere get hold of her or find projection or 
crevice in which to crook or to insert a finger tip. 
The more closely Silvia looked at her, the more 
strenuously she attempted to get into any sort of 
psychical contact w^ith Mrs. Mainwaring, the more 
directly was she baffled. She could not, for herself, 
give up as insoluble the mystery of that lady's mental 
and spiritual processes; there must be, if you could 
only lay your hands on it in the dark, some key to 
her future mother-in-law, something that explained, 
for instance, her unwearied study of the advertise- 
ments of hotels. No one could be as completely tran- 
quil and emotionless all through as Mrs. Mainwar- 
ing appeared to be. Twice only had her mind slipped 
for a definite instant into the open, like a lizard 
emerging into the sunlight and flicking back again; 
once when, on the first visit that Silvia and her 



154 



Peter 



mother had paid to the house, Mrs. Mainwaring un- 
veiled a glance of malicious hostility in the direction 
of the great cartoon. Less definite, but like in kind, 
was the habitual, though veiled, hostility with which 
Silvia felt that Mrs. Mainwaring regarded herself. It 
did not flame, but she knew that she was right in 
conjecturing that it incessantly smouldered. And that 
enmity, to Silvia's sense, was of the same quality, 
though smouldering, as that which had leaped in that 
swift little tongue of flame towards the cartoon : what 
puzzled her was the kinship between the two. From 
the context of that moment in the studio, it seemed to 
be Mr. Mainwaring's work which kept him in London 
(and her therefore with him) that had kindled that 
odd swift spark. Or was the origin of it a little deeper 
down than that ? Did some shut furnace of im- 
patience at her husband, so floridly symbolized there, 
some deep-seated core of incompatibility suddenly 
flame out then ? If so, what was the kindred nature 
of her hostility to the girl ? Was it that she was 
taking Peter away from the home which his presence 
there just rendered tolerable ? But apart from those 
two "escapes," so to speak, of genuine feeling, the 
origin of which, after all, was only a matter of con- 
jecture, Silvia had no clue to Mrs. Mainwaring at all ; 
she was practically featureless and even without out- 
line. She could not sketch her at all, or delineate from 
her as model, one of those genial caricatures, such as 
her friends so freely supplied her with material for. 
Such features and such outline as she could perceive 
were tinged with bitter suggestions. . . . 

Silvia did not find the waiting for Peter in anv way 
tedious; there was plenty in the studio to furnish a 
larder for thought, though what most occupied her 
was her alert attention for the sound of his light 



Peter 155 

footstep coming- down the passage. But apart from 
that food for reflection was abundant. To-day the 
end of the studio where the cartoon had hung was 
empty, so that if Mrs. Mainwaring's resentment was 
inspired purely by that work of art, she mighi now 
regain her tranquillity again. Silvia would see it 
this evening, for her mother, following up the idea 
with which it had first fired her in connection with the 
empty walls of the picture gallery at Howes, had a 
few days ago made a purchase of it. 

Mr. Mainwaring had been very glorious on this 
occasion ; at first he had hysterically refused to part 
with it. It was his chef-d'ceuvre, and while he had a 
couple of pennies in his pocket, he was, though poor, 
too proud to think of selling it. Then, lest that refusal 
should be taken too seriously, he almost immediately 
declared that it should be his wedding present to 
Silvia. He let himself be hunted out of so untenable 
a magnificence, and finally he so far humiliated him- 
self as to accept a fancy price for it. As Mrs. War- 
dour knew (he reminded her, to make certain) that 
it was the first of a series of six, upon which he was 
contented to stand or fall in the verdict of posterity, 
it seemed probable that, at some future time, the walls 
of the picture gallery at Howes would be far less 
empty than they were to-day. 

On an easel near where Silvia sat was the portrait 
of herself now approaching completion. To her there 
was something uncanny and arresting about it, for, 
by accident or design, the artist had caught some 
aspect of her which secretly she recognized as a piece 
of intimate revelation. She herself inclined to an acci- 
dental derivation, for certainly in all but one point it 
was a flamboyant and uninspired performance, a 
chronicle of a green "jumper " and a scarlet skirt, a 



156 Peter 

haystack of dyed hair, and a rouged, simpering mouth. 
Her head was turned full to the spectator, looking 
over the shoulder, in precisely the same pose (a 
favourite trick of the artist's) as that in which the 
German Emperor listened to Satanic counsels. But 
in the eyes, in the badly drawn outstretched hand, 
clumsily posed, Silvia saw some unconscious render- 
ing of the "boy's key." She acquitted Mr. Main- 
waring of all intention and of all inspiration ; he had 
certainly not meant that. He had, through faulty 
drawing, given a certain brisk violence to her hand, a 
certain domination to her eyes. 

And then she heard the click of the street door, 
and the quick light footstep for which she had been 
waiting. She wondered if she could ever get used 
to the mere fact of Peter's return from however short 
an absence. 

He kissed her, holding her hand for a moment. 

"It's too bad of me to have kept you waiting," he 
said. "I couldn't help myself. There was a mes- 
senger starting for Rome. Haven't they brought you 
tea ? " 

"No; I thought I would wait and have it with 
you." 

Peter rang the bell. 

"And my father's gone? " he asked. 

" Yes ; mother called for him and drove him down. 
Pve brought my little Cording car for us." 

"Just you and me? That'll be lovely," said 
Peter. "Do I quite trust your driving, though?" 

"You may drive yourself, if you like," said she. 

"No, thanks; I trust that far less. I must see if 
my bag is packed. Tell Burrows we want tea at 



once." 



"Can't I help you to pack it, if it isn't done?" 



Peter 157 

asked Silvia. . . . Somehow she would have liked to 
do that, to fold his clothes, to squeeze out his sponge. 

"No; it's so sordid," said Peter. "Besides, it's 
probably done already." 

"If it isn't, call me," said she. "No man has any 
idea of how to pack." 

"And you want to teach me ? " asked Peter, linger- 
ing on the stairs. 

Silvia hesitated only for a moment. 

"No, you darling," she said. "I don't want to 
teach you anything. I just want to do it." 

"Why?" asked he. 

She came closer, raising her face towards him, as 
he leaned over the banisters. 

"Your things," she said. "Your sponge, your 
coat. . . ." 

That pleasure was denied her, for Burrows had 
already bestowed Peter's requirements in his bag, and 
he came downstairs again. Silvia had given his 
father a sitting for the portrait this morning, and he 
stood frowning in front of it. 

"Trash! Rubbish! " he said at length. "And 
the worst of it is that he has got into it some infernal 
resemblance to you. It's a caricature." 

"Oh, we're all caricatures to each other," said she. 
"with just a few exceptions." 

"What a heathenish doctrine. Why am I a 
caricature, for instance ? " 

"You aren't. You're one of the exceptions. But 
tell me what your father has caricatured of me in 
that? " 

Peter looked from her to the portrait and back 
again. 

"All of you," he said. "The reality of you : the 
rest is quite unlike. You haven't got mouth and 

K 



158 Peter 

nose and forehead and hair and chin the least like 
that. But the person inside is horribly like you." 

Silvia put her arm through his. 

"Horribly? " she said. "Thanks so much." 

"I didn't say — just then — that you were horrible," 
said he. " I said horribly like you, your parody, your 
caricature. I wonder how I dared ask such a master- 
ful young woman to marry me." 

"You knew it would be good for you," said Silvia. 
"It was far more daring of me to accept you." 

"There's just time for you to remedy your mis- 
take," said he. "Positively the last chance." 

This frank kind of chaffing talk, as between friends 
rather than lovers, had grown to be characteristic of 
their privacy. Silvia delighted in it : it had the 
charm of some cipher about it; the blunt common- 
place words held for her a secret meaning known to 
the two utterers of them, which was only to be ex- 
pressed by these symbols. When she feigned to mis- 
understand Peter, and thanked him for calling her 
horrible, there lay below her foolish words a treasure 
which w^ords were quite powerless to express. Or 
when he just now wondered that he had dared to ask 
her to marry him, she felt that he conveyed something 
which no amount of impassioned speech could have 
indicated so well. From the hilltops there flashed the 
signal that no voice could convey. Then sometimes, 
as now, she had to use another symbol, which again 
was only a symbol, and with her hands tremblingly, 
eagerly, shyly clasping him round the neck, she drew 
his head down towards her, not kissing him, but 
simply looking close into his eyes. 

"Positively the last chance!" she said. "Oh, 
Peter, what a fool I am about you. Doesn't it bore 
you frightfully ? " 



Peter 159 

"Frightfully," said Peter, keeping to the first code 
of symbols. 

"You bear it beautifully, darling," she said. "Oh, 
shall I ever get used to you ? I hope so : I mustn't 
go on being such a donkey all my days. No; I 
don't think I do hope so. Being a donkey is good 
enough for me. Hee haw ! Oh, let go : here's 
Burrows coming with the tea. She'll think it so 
undignified." 

It was, as a matter of fact, she who had to "let 
go," as Burrows entered, followed by Mrs. Main- 
waring. Silvia had before now tried to call her 
"mother," but the experiment somehow had not suc- 
ceeded. Mrs. Mainwaring answered to it quite 
readily, but she received it, so the girl thought, 
much as she might have received an unsolicited 
nickname. 

"Why, Mrs. Mainwaring ! " she said. "I didn't 
know you were in." 

Mrs. Mainwaring paused just long enough to let 
it be inferred that if Silvia had made any inquiries as 
to that, she would have obtained the information she 
sought. 

"Yes, dear, I have been reading upstairs since 
lunch time," she said. "I came to have a cup of tea 
with you before you started. I hope you will have 
a pleasant drive." 

Silvia tried to approach. 

"Ah, do come too," she said. "Change your 
mind, and come with me. Heaps of room." 

"Thank you, dear, I think I will keep to my 
original plan," said she. "I like a quiet Sunday 
sometimes. I shall go to church, and perhaps in the 
afternoon hear a concert at the Queen's Hall. The 
time will pass very pleasantly." 



i6o Peter 

There was an aura of correct armed neutrality 
about this, accompanied as it was by that cold 
sheathed glance, furtive and hostile, that caused some 
half-comic, half-impatient despair in the girl at her 
aloofness. Mrs. Mainwaring, so it seemed to her, 
wanted nobody except herself; she wanted just to be 
let alone. 

"Father went off all right?" asked Peter. 

"Yes; Mrs. Wardour kindly called for him after 
lunch. A beautiful car; so roomy. There was 
another lady and gentleman there : I think Mrs. 
Wardour said it was her sister and her husband. 
Your father insisted on going in the box seat with 
the driver. He made a great noise with the motor 
horn, which sounded like a bugle. He was in very 
high spirits." 

The neutrality exhibited in this speech was almost 
too correct to be credible. Nobody could have been 
so neutral. Even Mrs. Mainwaring could not quite 
keep it up, and something very far from neutral lay, 
ever so little below the surface, in her announcement 
of her husband's high spirits. Her neutrality to- 
wards Silvia was not so deadly as that towards her 
husband. ... 

Peter laughed. There was neutrality there too, 
but it was more contemptuous than deadly, and quite 
good humoured in its contempt. 

"Oh, they'll have a noisy drive," he said. "And 
if Mrs. Wardour drives him back on Monday, you'll 
be aware of their approach, mother, while they're 
still a mile or two away." 

Mrs. Mainwaring had one of those fine-lipped 
mouths (very neat and finished at the outer corners), 
about which it is impossible to say whether they are 
smiling or not without consulting the conditions pre- 



i 



Peter i6i 

vailing round the eyes. But as Peter spoke she very 
definitely ceased to smile. 

" Monday ? " she said. " I thought Mrs. Wardour 
was so kind as to ask him to stop till Tuesday." 

Peter got up : he noticed nothing about his 
mother, having long ago given up any attempt to 
comprehend her. 

"Tuesdav, is it?" he said. "I'm back on Mon- 
day, anyhow : otherwise what would happen to our 
foreign relations? Shall we sLart, Silvia? Pm ready 
when you are." 

Mrs. Mainwaring rose too. 

"Yes, indeed, you had better be off," she said. 
"You won't have too much time. Then I shall 
expect you on Monday, Peter. Tell your father " 

She stopped. 

"That you don't expect him till Tuesday? " asked 
he, without the slightest indication of any mental 
comment. 

"Yes, I think Mrs. Wardour quite took for 
granted that he was stopping till then." 

Silvia made one further attempt to evoke a touch 
of cordiality. 

"Mother will be delighted," she said. "But it's 
horrid for you being all alone." 

"No, dear, I shall be very happy," said Mrs. 
Mainwaring with quiet decision. 

Howes stood, of course, in a park of considerable 
acreage, surrounded by a massive brick wall, and 
reflected its colossal self in the lake that lay below its 
terraced garden. This lake had been artificially made 
by the damming up of the stream that had previously 
wasted itself unornamentally, and the road that had 
dipped into the shallow valley now ran along the 



i62 Peter 

causeway that formed the farther margin of the lake, 
and gave the visitor his first complete and stupendous 
view of the house. The wings and galleries that had 
been built out rendered the original Norman core 
comparatively insignificant, and the whole resembled 
an apotheosis of a station hotel combined with a 
fortress, for the character of the older part was borne 
out in the battlemented walls that spread so amply to 
right and left of it. An avenue of monkey-puzzlers led 
up to the long fa9ade, and the gardens overlooking the 
lake were like some glorified arboretum, where you 
might expect tin labels, asking visitors to keep off the 
grass and not touch the flowers. At intervals along the 
edge of its immense lawns were aloes in square green 
tubs, and below the house was a riband border of 
geraniums, calceolarias and lobelias. Inside, the 
expectations aroused by this sumptuous exterior were 
fully justified, for the high panelled hall was peopled 
with suits of armour, each with its numbered label, so 
that a glance at the catalogue would put you into 
possession of interesting information about it. 
Armour had long been a hobby of the late Mr. 
Wardour, and he had, very quaintly, installed elec- 
tric light in the gauntleted hands. There was a 
passenger lift in one corner, a groined roof, and the 
famous malachite table. Heads and antlers of stags 
hung in the panels. 

Silvia had rather dreaded this moment. The whole 
place with its monkey-puzzlers and malachite, its 
aloes and its awfulness, had been left by her father 
to her absolutely, and Peter knew (and she knew he 
knew) that he was making his first acquaintance with 
what would be "home" to him. She had not seen 
it herself since the day of her father's funeral, two 
vears ago, and it seemed to her — and how would it 



II 



Peter 163 

strike Peter? — that, though it had the traditional 
quaUty of home, in that there was no place, as far 
as she was aware, in the least like it, its unique ful- 
filment of that definition was its only merit. 

Wfth a sideways glance now and again she had 
observed Peter's growing awe, from the time they 
had crossed the causeway (the pride of it !) to their 
approach through the monkey-puzzlers, and to the 
final revelation of the malachite table. And there 
was much more to follow — ever so much more ; the 
Gothic staircase, the blue drawing-room, the pink 
drawing-room, the picture-gallery, the swimming 
bath. And it was not inanimate magnificence alone 
that was to assail him, for there was Uncle Henry and 
Uncle Abe and Aunts Joanna and Eleanor, She 
ought to have brought him down quietly and alone 
for his first sight of Howes. . . . 

Peter had been gazing in a fascinated manner at 
the malachite table, and even while Silvia was won- 
dering how to convey to him her sympathy and en- 
couragement, he, with one of the flashes of intuition 
which she adored in him, showed that he had com- 
prehended with unerring accuracy what she was 
feeling about him. 

"But you're going to be here," he said, just 
as if she had spoken out all that she was puzzling 
over. 

She took his arm. 

"Oh, my dear, I promise you that," she said. 
"And I've got to get used to it, too. But 
then you'll be here ! Shall we butter each other's 
paws, Peter, until we feel at home? Let's have 
some more tea, in fact, and find where the rest of 
them are." 

The picture-gallery seemed a likely kind of place, 



i64 Peter 

and there, indeed, the six representatives of the 
famiHes proved to be, and when kissing ceremonies 
were over for herself and the rite of introduction for 
Peter, Silvia found herself thinking that it was really 
all for the best that they should have burst on Peter 
in one comprehensive revelation rather than that he 
should have been subjected to a series of shocks and 
surprises. Already staggered by Uncle Henry, Peter 
might have been quite thrown off his balance — so 
flashed the alternative comedy through her head — 
by Uncle Abe ; or what if, reeling from Aunt Eleanor, 
he ran into Aunt Joanna just round the corner? 
Silvia had not the smallest inclination or intention to 
be ashamed of her relations, but it would have shown 
the joylessness of a Puritan not to be amused at the 
blandness and the blankness on so many faces (Peter's 
included) as he was taken to each in turn ; it would 
have shown too an almost dangerous rigidity that 
her voice should not betray a tremor of suppressed 
hilariousness. 

Aunt Eleanor came first : she looked like a hand- 
some seal with adenoidal breathing. She bowed to 
Peter with freezing propriety, but when he was moved 
on to Aunt Joanna her curiosity got the better of her, 
and she instantly put up her glasses to get a better 
look at him. Aunt Joanna, large and marvellously 
bedizened, with flowers in her hat and her bosom and 
her hand, irresistibly suggested a van going to Covent 
Garden in the early mornmg : she, too, had her 
notions of propriety, and these expressed themselves 
in a cordiality as warm as Aunt Eleanor's was cold. 
Then came Uncle Abe, who was so like a fish that 
it really seemed dangerous for him to be sitting so 
near Aunt Eleanor. He held out a hand, and took a 
cigar out of his mouth, which remained open in the 



Peter 165 

precise shape of the cigar : and finally came Uncle 
Henry, who was busy with "a drop of brandy," be- 
cause tea, as he instantly proceeded to inform Peter, 
ofave him heartburn. Then all four of them stared 
at Peter to see how he was going to comport 
himself. 

Peter was never more grateful to his father than 
when at this embarrassing moment Mr. Mainwaring, 
who had been mysteriously employed at the far end 
of the picture-gallery with a cord and a sheet and 
a step-ladder and three bewildered footmen, gave a 
loud yodel, set to some words like mio jiglio, to an- 
nounce his perception of his son's arrival, and the 
accomplishment of that on which he had been so 
busily engaged. "JSen arrivato " was the concluding 
stave of his melody, and he came running up the 
gallery (there was quite enough space to enable him to 
get a good speed up), and after holding Peter for a 
moment in a joint embrace with Silvia, he cast himself 
down for a moment on a white bear skin at Mrs. 
Wardour's feet. 

"Ecco!" he said. "Ladies and gentlemen, when 
you will distinguish me with the gift of a moment of 
your leisure, I shall have the honour to show you 
the first of my completed labours. The picture, the 
poor suppliant's picture, is on the wall : masked by a 
fair linen sheet, which, so I fondly hope, is in control 
of a cord, just a cord, which, when you are ready, 
I will, in fact, pull. Unless the mechanism which 
I have been contriving is sadly at fault, there 
will then be revealed to you that which the sheet, 
at the moment, is so discreetly veiling. Valour, 
perhaps, my valour, is but the worse part of 
discretion" — Peter had heard this before — "but for 
the moment I am less discreet than valorous. I will 



166 Peter 

show you, complete and materialized, the vision that 
since August, 1914, has obsessed and dominated my 
life. I pray you, gentle sirs and madams, to indulge 
your humble servant, and to take your places, exactly 
where I shall have the honour to indicate, opposite 
the discretionary linen which, when removed, will 
unbare my valour." 

He rose from his reclining posture, and after a 
superb obeisance, placed himself at the head of the 
procession. Already, as Silvia had foreseen, he was 
in a position of dominance : Uncle Abe and Uncle 
Henry obeyed his orders; Aunt Joanna and Aunt 
Eleanor clearly "perked up " at this ingratiating sup- 
pliance. For himself he took Mrs. Wardour's hand, 
holding it high, as in a minuet, and led the way. 
He grouped them ; he requested them all, with humble 
apologies, to have the goodness to move a step 
backwards; he set chairs for them; he put his 
finger on his lips, and on tiptoe advanced to the 
dangling end of the cord and pulled it. Up flew 
the sheet, waving wildly, but eventually festooning 
itself clear of the cartoon. Then, swiftly retreating, 
he magnificently posed himself, and gazed at the 
picture. 

For the moment there was dead silence : then 
vague clickings and murmurs began to grow articu- 
late. The uncles and aunts vied with each other in 
perception. 

"The Emperor," said Uncle Henry. "Good 
likeness, eh ? " 

"August, 1914," exclaimed Lady Darley. "Terri- 
ble ! Wonderful ! " And she drew in her breath 
with a hissing sound. The perception of the date 
was not so clever, as it was largely inscribed on the 
frame, and Aunt Eleanor smiled indulgently. 



Peter 167 

'*Yes, dear Joanna," she said, "we all see that. 
But look at Satan whispering to the Emperor ! " 

"And the hosts of hell," said Joanna swiftly. 

Uncle Abe turned to Uncle Henry. 

"A marvellous thing," he said. "Tells its own 
story. I call that a picture." 

Mrs. Wardour merely wore the pleased air of 
proprietorship. She had seen it all before, and she 
could see it again as many times as she chose. Mr. 
Mainwaring, chin in hand, just contemplated while 
these appreciations were in progress, but now he 
seemed to wake out of a swoon, and passed his hands 
over his eyes. 

"Was it I who painted that?" he muttered. "I 
didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know till 
this moment, when at last I see my work properly dis- 
played, with no discordant note to mar it, what I had 
done. Does it terrify you, dear ladies and gentle- 
men? Does it put you in possession of August, 
1914? Does it — ah, Dio miol " He covered his face 
with his hands and shuddered. Then advancing to 
the picture again, he violently shook the cord, and 
the two linen sheets (double bed) rolled back into their 
original places. 

"Enough, enough!" he cried. "We will con- 
template it more calmly when we have recovered from 
the first shock of our bleeding hearts. Let us con- 
verse, let us smile and laugh again. Let us remember 
that the war is over. But it is laid on me by destiny 
to execute five more such pictures, not less terrible. 
If I live, they shall be done. Yes, yes; I do not 
falter ! But, for a while, let me forget, let me 
forget." 

Mrs. Wardour spaced out the wall with a pleased 
eye. 



i68 Peter 

"They will just fill the length of the gallery," she 
said, "if we do not crowd them. Silvia, my dear, 
you must persuade Mr. Mainwaring. . . . Well, 
I'm sure, if that isn't the dressing bell." 

A vindictive purpose was weaving itself below the 
embowering flowers of Lady Darley's hat, and ac- 
celerating the heart-beat below the nosegay on her 
bosom, so that the gardenias were all of a tremble. 
Lucy might be rich (indeed, it was quite certain that 
she was horribly rich), but comparative paupers such 
as herself were not to be altogether trampled upon, 
and other people beside Lucy had picture-galleries. 
Apparently the series of these tremendous allegories 
was not yet painted, was not yet either definitely 
"bespoken " by her sister, and Joanna, as she waded 
through the thick Kidderminster rugs that carpeted 
the Gothic staircase on the way to her room, felt that 
the only thing in life that was w^orth living for at this 
moment was to order a replica of the first, and secure 
(with an embargo on replicas) the remainder of this 
series. 

Never in her life had she been so artistically over- 
whelmed as by that prodigious canvas, and if all the 
rest were going to be "up to sample" she could, as 
their possessor, scoff at the art treasures of the world. 
Sir Abe had dabbled in pictures already : he had a 
Turner sunset which hung in the dining-room, at 
which he often pointed over his shoulder as a "pooty 
little thing" ; he had a Rembrandt of a very puckered- 
looking old woman which had aroused the envy of 
those who were permitted to see it and to be told that 
it came out of the Marquis of Brentford's collection. 
These were desirable possessions, but they were 
jejune compared to Mr. Mainwaring's masterpiece 



Peter 169 

and the masterpieces that were to follow. The war ! 
That was something to paint pictures about. . . . 

Her envy of her sister rose to the austerity of a 
passion when she contemplated the equipment of her 
bedroom, and that of her husband next door. There 
was a bathroom attached to each, both fitted with the 
most amazing taps and squirts, and a little sitting- 
room attached to each, and a lift of which Mrs. War- 
dour (showing her her room, and hoping she would 
be comfortable) explained the working. You pressed 
a button and were wafted. . . . The same lift served 
Aunt Eleanor's rooms, but Lucy and Peter and Silvia 
used another one. . . . The lift clinched her reso- 
lution, and she conjugally conferred with Sir Abe. 
He, to her delight, was as much impressed with 
the passion for "scoring off" Lucy as with the 
merits of the cartoon, but his business habits had to 
make hesitations and conditions, not "do a deal" 
blindly. 

"Well, my lady," he said, "you shall have the 
pictures if they're to be obtained reasonably. What 
shall I offer, now? Most striking that one was, and 
that and similar are worth paying a pretty penny for. 
What did your sister give for that one ? Then, if 
reasonable, I don't mind if I add twenty-five per cent, 
more, and secure the lot. They'll be something to 
point at. Get along and let me have my bath. You 
try to find out what your sister paid, and then we'll 
know where we are, my lady." 

She noted with pleasure that he relapsed into a 
cockney accent and a slight uncertainty about as- 
pirates as he spoke. That was a good sign : it showed 
he was in earnest and interested, for in dalHance of 
light conversation Sir Abe was "as good at his h's" 
as anybody 



170 



Peter 



It was not to be expected that the cartoon and the 
magnificence of its introduction should have no effect 
on Aunt Eleanor, or that (her general animosity to- 
wards Mrs. Wardour being of the same fine order as 
Aunt Joanna's) she should not have been kindled 
with ambition to bring off some similar vindictive 
stroke. But for her the acquisition of these immense 
decorations was out of the question, for her husband 
would certainly not pay such a price as she felt sure 
would be necessary to secure them, and even if he did 
his house did not contain sufficient uninterrupted wall 
space, so that to hang them at all she would have to 
cut them up into sections and paper several different 
rooms with them. But Mr. Mainwaring had said 
something about the original sketches for them, which 
had suggested an idea that took her fancy at once. 
The sketches were, after all, the "originals," the 
significant buds from which these over-blown blos- 
soms had developed, and the sketches would be far 
more manageable, both from point of view of hang- 
ing, and from that of purchase. There was a 
subtlety, a refinement in possessing "originals" that 
these acreages of paint could not compete with. Her 
powerful imagination pictured herself exhibiting them 
to envious friends. 

"Yes, my sister-in-law, I believe, has copies, on 
a large scale," she would say, "of my series. These, 
of course, are the originals. Such freshness, such 
power, all quite lost in the later and larger version." 
And she held her seal-like head very high, and snorted 
through her nostrils as she sailed into the pink draw- 
ing-room just before the dinner bell rang. She was 
the first to come down, and had time to examine with 
pain and disgust the photograph of a royal personage, 
with a crown on its frame, that stood very con- 



Peter 171 

spicuously alone on the table by the sofa where she 
seated herself. 

Mr. Mainwaring's star continued to be violently 
ascendant all evening. His harangues, his humour, 
his habit of pausing in the middle of one of his inter- 
minable stories, until complete silence had been 
established round the table, dominated dinner, and 
when the ladies rose to leave the gentlemen to their 
cigars and wine, Mrs. Wardour addressed him 
directly and laid upon him not to permit them too 
long a sitting. This gave him the rank of host, 
and developed his social horse-power to so high an 
efficiency that on rejoining the ladies he sang the 
Toreador's song out of Carmen. Then after that 
had been repeated he permitted the uncles and aunts 
to indulge themselves with bridge, and since wives 
partnered their own husbands, this gave scope for 
some pleasant family revilings, in which the ladies 
came off far the best. Having thus arranged for their 
pleasure, Mr. Mainwaring grouped himself with his 
hostess, Silvia and Peter, and grew patriarchal and 
full of sentiment over the charming family party of 
parents and children. On Mrs. Wardour 's going to 
bed, leaving the bridge-party jealously over-calling 
their hands, he conducted her once more to pay 
homage to the cartoon, and remained there in 
meditation. 

Silvia and Peter had wandered out on to the dusky 
terrace. A twilight of stars lit the still night, and 
she drew long breaths of restoration from the ex- 
haustion of these stupendous hours. Once clear of 
the house, and leaning over the balustrade above the 
lake, she gave way to hopeless laughter. 

"Peter, darling, are my relations more than you 



172 Peter 

ought to be asked to stand?" she said. "Did you 
know there were such people as Uncle Abe ? " 

"Did you know there were such people as my 
father? " said Peter. 

"Oh, but he's your father," said Silvia quickly. 
"You mustn't bring him in." 

"Why not? After all, it's he who brings himself 
in. There's only one word for him. Bounder. 
Uncle Abe isn't a bounder exactly. Uncle Henry 
isn't a bounder." 

"No, he's just a cad," said Silvia enthusiastically. 
"I love people being themselves, whatever they 
happen to he. I should enjoy them much more, 
though, if you weren't here." 

"I can go to-morrow morning," said Peter. 

For one moment she thought that he spoke 
seriously : the next she laughed at herself for having 
been hoaxed by his assumed sincerity of voice : 
"assumed " it just had to be. 

"Ah, you said that beautifully," she announced; 
"and all the evening, do you know, you've been say- 
ing things beautifully, with your mask on, too, your 
best and smartest mask. Pve been listening to you, 
and never for a moment could I catch a word or a 
silence on your part to show that you weren't 
thoroughly amused and interested by the aunts. You 
behaved as if they were just the sort of people you 
were accustomed to meet, but rather more charming. 
You have been convincing, and you were con- 
vincing just now when you suggested going away 
to-morrow." 

Peter had not, of course, meant to convey that he 
really could go away to-morrow, but it had been quite 
easy for him to render his seriousness plausible, since, 
though impossible, this was a most agreeable project. 



Peter 173 

But what rendered that project so attractive was the 
escape not from the aunts and uncles, with whom he 
was quite as wilHng to be diverted as their niece, but 
from his father. His father, in this milieu, with his 
bounce and his bounding, his general "make-up" of 
the large-souled, childlike artist, now humbly be- 
speaking the indulgence of his patrons, and imme- 
diately afterwards behaving as if he was Michael 
Angelo, was intolerable. His gaiety, his sing- 
ing, his family grouping, with himself as aged and 
contemplative parent, while the moment before he 
had been twirling his moustaches and bellowing out 
the song of the toreador, were indecencies for a son's 
eye. If only he had been slighdy fuzzy and intoxi- 
cated with many liqueur brandies like Uncle Henry, 
that would have been a palliative : as it was he was 
onlv intoxicated with himself. . . . 

Peter recalled himself from these impious medita- 
tions to the needs of or (if not the needs) the appro- 
priateness for the immediate occasion. Silvia and he 
had contrived a lovers' interlude under the stars. 

" Will you always be as charitable to me as you 
are to my father? " he asked. "When I am absurd 
and annoying, will you just be amused? " 

The question seemed to him well framed : it led 
him and her away from all these nonsensicalities into 
the region where the simple things abided. He 
expected some pressure on his arm, some little depre- 
cation of his silliness, some whisper to inform him 
that he was a goose or an idiot. Instead, Silvia's 
hand slackened in the crook of his arm and withdrew 
itself. 

" Oh, Peter, what a thing to ask I " she said. " As 
if I could be ' charitable ' to you as long as you loved 
me, or as if I could find you annoying so long as I 
I4 



174 



Peter 



loved you. You're pretending not to understand. 
Don't pretend like that any more." 

Peter's quick brain was alert on the scent. He 
had meant his words to be construed into a lover-like 
speech, and had completely thought that they could 
be interpreted thus. But her answer convinced 
him that to her they were not construable at all, but 
only gibberish. Before he could emend himself, 
or even quite follow her, she flashed out her full 
meaning. 

"Anybody else in the world except you can be 
annoying," she said, **and I hope I can be charitable 
to anybody else in the world except you. But how 
can I be charitable to you ? Or how can you be try- 
ing to me? Don't you know that I am you? For 
a month I've ceased to be myself at all. There isn't 
any ' me.' It isn't ' me ' you think you are in love 
with ; it's — it's just the completion of your own won- 
derfulness. And as for their being any ' you,' why, 
you've ceased long ago. I've absorbed you. I've — 
I've drowned you in myself and in my adoration. 
I'm round you. I crush you and I worship you " 

Silvia broke off suddenly as there appeared at the 
drawing-room window a black tall silhouette yodelling 
and crying, "Coo-ee. Children! " 

"Oh, damn that man," said she. "Sorry, Peter, 
but, well, there it is." 



CHAPTER IX 

Peter was sitting (so superbly that it might have been 
called lying) on a long dream-provoking chair set 
outside the south facade at Howes. For the moment 
he was alone, and he surprised himself with the un- 
bidden thought of how seldom he had been alone 
during the last fortnight — since the day of the wed- 
ding, which had taken place in the unfashionable 
early days of September. This constant companion- 
ship of Silvia, their motor drives, their golf, their 
fishing in the lake, their long sittings with books or 
newspapers of which but little was read, had seemed 
to him as he looked back on them (conglomerated and 
coagulated, like little drops of mercury running to- 
gether to form a globular brightness) to have been 
wholly delightful and satisfying. These days had 
been for him, in fact, a soft luminous revelation of 
how completely pleasant days could be. Without a 
touch of complacency he could not help knowing how 
every word and every whim of his had seemed ador- 
able to Silvia, and he knew that, search as he might 
(he did not propose to search at all), he would be able 
to find no movement or mood of hers that he could 
have corrected or rectified. She had taken possession 
of him tenderly, and, as if with held breath, watched, 
beautifully bright-eyed, to discover and anticipate the 
moods of his desires; and in answer he had given her 
not acquiescence alone, but the eager consent of every 
fibre of his being. It seemed perfect that she should 
be like that. 

175 



176 Peter 

Silvia had just left him to meet her mother, who, 
at the expiration of their uninterrupted fortnight, was 
coming down to Howes that day ; and Peter, alone 
for an hour on this September afternoon, let the hot 
sunshine, fructifying and caressing, melt the marrow 
of his bones, the impressed records on his brain, into 
definite consciousness. The bees humming over the 
flower-beds, the red-admiral butterflies opening and 
shutting their vermilion streaked wings, the swallows 
not yet gathering for their autumn departure, all con- 
duced to leisurely summer-like meditation, and he 
found himself in possession of propositions and con- 
clusions which he had scarcely known were his. This 
supreme sense of content came first; that, like a wash 
of warm colour, underlay the details that now began 
with a finer brushwork to outline themselves, and each 
of them appeared equally admirable, equally germane 
to the values of the emerging picture. 

Mrs. Wardour's arrival was an important touch ; 
it might almost be called a fresh wash of colour. Out 
of numerous reflections, considerations, weighings of 
this and that, each of them at the time too liquid and 
inconclusive to call a plan, a plan now had certainly 
crystallized. They, the three contributory contrivers 
of it, had, so to speak, pooled the London house and 
this, making two houses for the three of them. Peter 
would be returning to his work in Whitehall next 
day, and since no sane being would wish to remain in 
London in these mellow radiances of September and 
October for longer than was absolutely necessary, he 
would, as a rule, flow up in the swiftest of cars in the 
morning, and stream back again in the late afternoon. 
For one reason or another, again, he might find 
himself wanting or being obliged to spend a night in 
town ; he would be away all day, anyhow, and what 



Peter 177 

could be more convenient tlian Mrs. Wardour's per- 
fect willingness to establish herself for the present at 
Howes, where she would supply companionship for 
Silvia, and find it herself? Silvia again might want 
to spend a day or two in town, and her mother could 
please herself as to whether she joined her or not. 
From such a germ the idea of keeping both houses 
pooled and permanently open for any or all of them 
had easily developed. Headquarters for the present 
would be in the country, and London, to Mrs. War- 
dour's notion, would be something of a picnic, with 
the house half shut up. But with four or five servants 
there, there would, she hoped, be no angles of real 
discomfort. 

Mrs. Wardour then, to all intents and purposes, 
was to live with them ; but Peter, so ran the deed, 
was "master" at Howes; while in London he and 
Silvia would have the wide licence of guests pecu- 
liarly privileged, at liberty to ask friends there when- 
ever they wished. The crystallization of it, the defi- 
nite statement and treaty, after infinite probings and 
testings on her part into Peter's most intimate feel- 
ings on the subject, had been entirely Silvia's. It 
had been she who had finally suggested it, with the 
proviso that anybody — by which she undoubtedly 
meant her husband — was to tear up the treaty with- 
out any possibility of offence, if he found it unwork- 
able or unsatisfactory; but, as he thought over it 
now, he was frankly surprised at himself to find how 
eminently satisfactory a fulfilment of it he augured. 
Silvia had suggested it (there was the great point), 
and though he felt that he could not himself have 
conceivably presented a treaty like tJiat to her 
for her signature, he applauded her insight in so 
doing. A man could hardly have suggested that to 



178 Peter 

the girl he had but lately married; it would have 
savoured, would it not, of his considering that the 
ideal arrangement did not procure for them their 
own undiluted companionship ? But she had known 
that he would not put such a construction on her 
proposition. She did not, in fact, let an attitude 
which would have been typically feminine deter her 
from adopting this more sensible and more manly 
pose. But that was Silvia all through : there was a 
robust quality about her, an impotence to harbour 
littlenesses. . . . 

They expected another visitor that day in the 
person of Peter's father, who had, in a letter which 
was no less than a bouquet of flowering eloquence, 
indicated that for the due, the supreme, the sublime 
execution of the second cartoon, it was necessary for 
the artist to soak himself once more in the contempla- 
tion of the first, so as (this was rather involved) to 
catch to the fraction of a tone the key in which it was 
pitched. There had to be a gradual crescendo, a 
deliberate tuning up and up, a continual ascent 
throughout the series. . . . Shorn of the mixture of 
metaphor, he wanted to study the first cartoon before 
plunging, with the aid of his sketches, into the re- 
mainder. These sketches, he added, were, as soon 
as he had finished with their use, to pass out of his 
possession, for the charming Mrs. Henry Wardour 
had induced him to let her purchase them at a figure 
which convinced him that they would find an ap- 
preciative home. . . . Then the letter became slightly 
mysterious. The projected series of cartoons, he had 
reason to know, was exciting stupendous interest in 
artistic circles. Flattering — perhaps a man who was 
proud of his work ought not to say flattering — 
evidence of that was to hand, evidence substantial and 



Peter 179 

conclusive. He had not made — this was lucky, since 
he would not have dreamed of going back on his 
bargain — he had not made any contract with Mrs. 
Wardour — to whom all salutations — about the rest of 
the series, and thought himself fortunate in not part- 
ing with them for a comparative pittance. He did not 
(mark you, my Peter) complain of the price she had 
paid him for the first of them, and he was quite sure 
that, with Peter's assistance, everything, would be 
arranged quite satisfactorily. 

Peter had read this letter, which he must talk over 
with Silvia on her return, with the detachment of 
which he was so terribly capable, and had come to the 
conclusion that his father had somehow^ induced a 
deluded Croesus of some sort to oflfer a higher price 
per cartoon for his future perpetrations than that 
which his mother-in-law had, no doubt, already given 
him for the first. For this deduction he had the most 
cordial welcome. As long as his father was dumping 
his "beastly " goods — so Peter was now at liberty to 
think — on the picture-gallery at Howes for fancy, if 
not fantastic prices, he could not in mere pious 
decency put it to Mrs. Wardour that she was paying, 
as he supposed, heavily, for colossal rubbish. 
But his father's letter, maturely considered, made 
it quite certain that somebody was willing to pay more 
for rubbish than Mrs. Wardour. Already the general 
question had received his attention : Mrs. Wardour 
was, so he supposed, under contract to buy those 
melodramatic daubs for the decoration of a house that 
belonged to Silvia, and of which he, by attested treaty, 
was master. So long as his father could profitably 
dispose of this rubbish here, Peter was filially pro- 
hibited from any protest, but when once his fadier 
announced that he was receiving a mere pittance. 



i8o Peter 

though without complaint, for what he would in 
another market receive a less despicable dole, his son, 
surely, was free to welcome his taking his wares else- 
where. His son, in any case, was heart and soul 
allied to the new enterprise, for already Peter had 
experienced a vivid distaste of the fact that he coun- 
tenanced, by mere acquiescence, this further decora- 
tion of Howes. He knew that if the artist had not 
been his father he must have already protested against 
the bargain which perhaps was not yet complete on 
either side. His acquiescence, in fact, had brought 
home to him that his father was profiting by his 
marriage. . . . 

Then, so swiftly and involuntarily that he had not 
time to stop the thought on the threshold, there burst 
into the door of his mind the inquiry as to whether he, 
too, as well as his father, was not unloading rubbish 
at a high price. And the price that he, Peter, was 
receiving for his rubbish was infinitely the higher. 
His father received, no doubt, a substantial cheque; 
he himself received, as far as the material considera- 
tion went, an immunity from the meaning of cheques, 
and, in a standard immeasurably higher, some sort of 
blank cheque which, as Silvia told him one night (or 
was in the middle of telling him when his father made 
that fiamboyant interruption), would be honoured by 
her to any figure he chose to fill in, and yet leave 
her richer, in such standard, than ever. There, in 
that immortal bank, he divined then, and knew now 
her illimitable credit. Whatever she paid out, by 
that, in the royal mathematics of love, was she the 
richer. 

The impression made by that unsolicited thought 
was to him like having seen some pass-book of the 
soul which was hers. It had blown open in front of his 



Peter iSi 

eyes, and before he had, so to speak, time to close 
it, he had caught a ghmpse of sums so vast that they 
exceeded his powers of realization. His eye, in that 
involuntary survey, had received no impression of his 
payments into her account; the credit side was but a 
catalogue of her own inconceivable affluence. Every 
moment, it seemed, she was giving, and every 
moment her bounty flowed back to her. It was with 
some kind of sceptical envy that, in that glimpse, he 
realized this omnipotent finance. It was not so mar- 
vellous that love should be stronger than death ; the 
miracle was that it could be so much stronger than 
life. 

It was at this moment in Peter's reflections, a 
moment that, only half realized, he was glad to get 
away from, that an interruption, reasonably claiming 
his attention, occurred in the shape of a little old 
butler, who had been drafted down here from London 
in view of Mrs. Wardour's advent. He was black- 
eyed and grey-headed, and "perky " in movement to 
an extent that fully justified Peter's exclamation of 
"The Jackdaw," when he had quitted the scene last 
night, and now the Jackdaw's immediate mission was 
to hand Peter a couple of letters on an immense silver 
salver, and inquire where Mr. Mainwaring, who, so 
the Jackdaw understood, was to arrive that evening, 
should be "put." He should be "put " clearly, in 
the place that would please him most, for this was 
Peter's undevlating creed when self-sacrifice was not 
involved, and beyond doubt the state-rooms, so 
called, would please his father inordinately. 

The state-rooms had been insisted on in the re- 
building of the house by his father-in-law, in a rich 
vision, so Silvia had half piously, half humorously 
intimated, of royal personages being sumptuously 



i82 Peter 

housed there. There was a tremendous tapestried 
bedroom, en suite with a second bedroom, a breakfast- 
room, a sitting-room, all tapestry and oak mantel- 
pieces and silver sconces. Yes, the state-rooms for 
Mr. Mainwaring. Silvia (they w^ere on humorous 
terms now about Peter's father) would enjoy that 

immensely. 

Peter took his letters from the Jackdaw, as the 
latter gave a pleasant sort of croak in answer to this 
order, and remembered how Nellie had once said 
that wealth was not an accident, but an attribute, a 
quality. He had been disposed to dispute that at the 
time, but somehow his own allocation of the state- 
rooms to his father confirmed the suspicion that she 
was right. He himself, for instance, was clearly a 
different person in the eyes of his father now, when he 
could gloriously endow him with state-rooms, from 
what he had been when he, as on that same occasion he 
told Nellie, only lived in the beastly little house off the 
Brompton Road because free meals and free lodging 
were a consideration to his exiguous purse. You were 
different — Nellie was right— when you could dispense 
material magnificence instead of accepting a tolerable 
shelter, where, though the rain was kept out, the 
odour of dinner, with that careless Burrows, could 
not be kept in. 

Still fingering his letters, and trying to insert a 
thumb into a too honestly adhesive envelope flap, 
Peter slightly amplified by corrobative illustration this 
thesis. How often had he, so to speak, "sung for 
his dinner," accepting and welcoming such invita- 
tions as Mrs. Trentham extended to him, by which, 
for the pleasure of comfortable, decent food, he had 
gladly spent an insincere and boring evening ! It 
had not quite been greed combined with moderate 



Peter 183 

penuriousness which had enjoined that : it was the 
natural thing to do, if you were young and poor; to 
dine, that is to say, comfortably, and by way of 
acknowledging your indebtedness, to be towed about 
for the rest of the evening by a foolish, married, 
middle-aged woman who, for some inscrutable reason 
of her own, wanted to present her unblemished repu- 
tation in some sort of compromising limelight. But 
now, on this opulent sunny afternoon, Peter tried in 
vain to recapture the mood, once habitual to him, of 
accepting any invitation merely because it implied a 
good dinner and perhaps a good supper, with a 
boring opera in between. Certainly it had been easy 
for him to fulfil his part of the bargain in these even- 
ings : it was natural and also habitual for him to 
make himself pleasant, to look handsome, to tell Mrs. 
Trentham that she had never been so marvellous, so 
chic, so smart, so entrancing generally. But now the 
mere notion of such an evening seemed foreign. If 
he wanted to dine at the Ritz and go to the opera and 
have some supper, he could do it, and secure as guests 
just those with whom it was pleasant to spend an 
evening. Henceforth if he wanted to do that he 
could, vulgarly speaking, "pick and choose" the re- 
cipients of his bounty. . . . Stated like that the 
whole thing sounded rather sordid, but it seemed to 
him that, for himself, he had got rid of that sordid- 
ness, the "court-fool-touch" which compelled you to 
make jokes in payment for your dinner, or (which was 
worse) to talk to your hostess in the serious, wistful 
note of an adorer, or at any rate of a dazzled and de- 
lighted guest. To be host, to pay the bill, provided 
you had plenty of money, was far the easier part. 

There it was then : he had no longer to be asked 
to dine at the Ritz, and to go to the theatre or what not 



i84 Peter 

afterwards. He could bid to his feasts, and no more 
consider the expense than in the old days he would 
have considered whether he could afford a bus 
fare. Whatever enjoyments of that kind the world 
had to offer were his for the mere formation of his 
inclination to enjoy them. . . . And then, suddenly 
as a blink of distant lightning, and, so it seemed, 
w^hoUy independent of his own brain, there came the 
question as to what he had paid for these privileges. 
And remote as drowsy thunder, the question supplied 
its own indubitable answer. He had somehow — the 
thing was done — convinced Silvia that he loved her. 
He had, at any rate, given her the signal of response 
that had ecstatically, rapturously contented her, 
when, below her breath, as she accepted him as 
her lover, she had whispered, "Ah, just let me love 
you, all I want is to love you, to be allowed to love 
you." . . . He had known quite well what that 
"allow " really implied. He had to be on the same 
plane of emotion as she ; else, to her understanding of 
it all, they could never have arrived at this. 

All the time (he knew that then, and knew it in- 
finitely better now) her level shone in sunlight like 
some peak far above the clouds, compared with his little 
wooded hill that drowsed in the grey day below them. 
Round him there was no gleam of that ethereal bright- 
ness in which she walked, or, at the most, through 
some rent in the clouds, he caught a glimpse of her. 
She, at present, so it appeared to him, was so encom- 
passed with brightness that, dazzled, she took for 
granted that he was with her, and indeed, by some 
device of desire and of cleverness on his part, he could 
convince her that through the clasp of their hands 
there throbbed the sweet entanglement of the soul. She 
interpreted his lightest action, his words, his glances, 



Peter 185 

by some magic of her own ; but already he knew that 
he, though with consummate care, was "keeping it 
up." There was no element of difficulty about it, any 
more than there had been any difficulty about behaving 
to the complete satisfaction of Mrs. Trentham at her 
Ritz-Opera entertainments. But in both roles, as 
guest at the Ritz and as "master " of Howes, there 
was an inherent falsity. In both he was dressed up for 
the part. The difference between the two situations 
was that in the one Mrs. Trentham was dressed up 
too, and in the other Silvia was not. 

Peter was quite ruthless in tearing off the motley 
from himself, and contemplating with the candidness 
of a true egoist the revealed deformities. He never 
cultivated illusions about himself, nor strove to soften 
down his own uncomeliness. There he was; that 
was he, to make the best or the worst of. He did not, 
on the other hand, try to depreciate his assets; he 
tried, in fact, to make the most of them and use them 
to the utmost possible advantage. He was, and knew 
it, a marvellous physical type, handsome as the 
young Hermes, and crowned with the glory and 
flower of adolescence. He surrendered to Silvia all 
that physical perfection ; he gave her the wit and 
charm of his mind ; and he was aware that with these 
he dazzled her much in the same way as Nellie had 
dazzled her. The use and the enjoyment of them, 
utterly at her service, was responsible for the splendid 
success of this solitary fortnight. 

In spite of the divine conditions of these golden 
country days, he knew that he was not sorry to be 
enjoying the last of them. To-morrow he had to get 
back to his work, and this sword of his, body and 
mind, would be sheathed for intervals of absence. 
And then, with the sure certainty of apprehension 



i86 Peter 

that had stamped out these conclusions, he knew that 
it was not for these alone, or even for these at all, that 
Silvia had loved him. At the most they were for her 
the bright-plumaged lure, to which her attention had 
been originally attracted. But even in the first 
moments of this attention she had divined something 
in him, below the feathers and the fur, which she 
sought. Her quest had gone deeper than skin and 
conversation, than glances and smiles and level 
shoulders and firm neck, and quick response, and 
humour and all the lures of the male for the female. 
She had claimed and clasped him for something other 
than what certainly appeared to her as mere appurten- 
ances. And what on his side had he looked for in 
her? Nothing, so he branded it on himself, except 
her mere physical attraction, her mere mental charm 
and freshness and her wealth. 

But the admission of this was a branding : the hot 
iron hurt him, and, not liking to be hurt, he recol- 
lected the letters which, a few minutes ago, the Jack- 
daw had presented to him, and which— the first of 
them, upside down in his hand — was so honestly 
gummed that he could make no insertion into its 
flap. 

He turned it over and saw the handwriting of the 
address. He managed then to open it. 

"Isn't it delightful to be married? " wrote Nellie. 
"I didn't write to you at first, Peter, because you 
wouldn't have enjoyed anything that came from out- 
side. But after a fortnight, you ought to be able to 
be congratulated. Before that it would have been 
merely impertinent (and probably is now) ; but your 
friends have to take up the threads again some time. 
All we blissful people, in fact, must remember that we 



Peter 187 

are human beings, after all, and break ourselves into 
'behavin' according' (Mrs. Gamp, isn't it? No, I 
don't think it is). Anyhow, we shall all meet again, 
shan't we, and buzz about in London, and ask each 
other to our lovely country houses. We've got to go 
on, Peter; the world has got to go on. Hasn't it? " 

Peter turned a page, and began to be quite ab- 
sorbed in this new but familiar atmosphere. He 
slipped out of his present environment under some 
spell which lurked in these trivialities. 

"I'm getting on beautifully," so began the second 
page, "for Philip and I understand each other so well, 
and it's tremendously comfortable. We seem to want 
just the same sort of thing. He's awfully keen about 
birds, for instance, and I am becoming so. We go 
out with field-glasses, and see willow-wrens, and yes- 
terday we saw a marsh-warbler. Then I like golf — 
you always hated it, I remember — so Philip is learn- 
ing to like it too. He nearly lost his temper yester- 
day when he missed a short putt, and that's always a 
good sign. We don't quite agree about motoring, 
because I always want to go as fast as the machine 
can manage, and he always wants to slow down when 
there's a cross-road. He talks to the chauffeur through 
a beastly little tube, and it's like a funeral. 

"Peter darling, what rot I am writing. Fancy my 
writing such rot to you. It's the wrong sort of rot, 
isn't it? There are rots and rots. You and I always 
used to talk rot, but it wasn't about birds and golf. 
(I'm having a new sort of mashie.) But, bar rot, 
when are we going to meet again ? Isn't the country 
a sleepy place? Do come up to town soon, and 
Philip and I will come up, too. (You and Silvia, I 
mean, of course.) I want to be in the silly old thick 
of it again. Because when you're in the thick of it 



i88 Peter 

you can make privacies, but when you're in the 
privacy of the country you can't make a thick, except 
when you have a great house-party, as we're going, to 
have next week, and that isn't really a ' thick ' : it's 
only partridges. The men go out in the morning, 
and the women join them for lunch, and then the men 
come home in the evening, and the morning and even- 
ing are the first day. But it's all extremely comfort- 
able — that's the word I come back to. Mother has 
been here for the last three weeks, and she's almost 
ceased saying that she must go away the day after 
to-morrow. I suppose that's because she's tired of 
hearing either Philip or me murmur something about 
its being such a short visit. P. and I really both like 
her being with us : it isn't half a bad plan, and I 
expect she'll stop till we go back to town again. 

" I want you and Silvia to come over here on 
November loth for the week-end. There will be hosts 
of rather nice people here : so many, in fact, that you 
and I can steal away without being, noticed, and have 
a scamper through the wet woods (they are sure to 
be wet in November) and wave our tails and con- 
gratulate ourselves on being settled for life. We've 
both of us got somebody to take care of us (Yes, I 
mean that), and if you're as pleased with the arrange- 
ment as I am, why, we're very lucky people. You 
and I, you know, if things had been utterly and com- 
pletely different, would have quarrelled so frightfully. 
... I saw two cats yesterday sitting with their faces 
within an inch of each other, scowling and screeching 
at each other in a perfect tempest of irritation. 

"Here's Philip come to take me out. He will sit 
in the chair there waiting quite placidly till I have 
finished this letter, not reading the paper or doing 
anything at all, but just waiting. He knows where 



Peter 189 

there are a pair of golden crested wrens. Isn't that 
exciting? . . . Oh, I can't go on with him sitting 
there. Good-bye, my dear. Mind you and Silvia 
come on the loth." 

As Peter read, he heard, by some internal audi- 
tion, Nellie's voice enunciating, the sentences with that 
familiar intonation of light staccato mockery. The 
written words were but like a prompter's copy which 
he held and glanced at ; it was Nellie who stood there 
and said the lines. He would have liked to argue a 
point or two with her, but he knew that there was 
between them that deep fundamental agreement and 
comprehension without which argument develops into 
mere contradiction. . . . 

Peter thrust the letter into his pocket as steps 
sounded on the gravel just behind him. 

"Been sitting here ever since I left you? " asked 
Silvia. "Oh, Peter, without your hat in this hot 
sun ! " She picked it up and perched it on his head. 

"There! Oh, dear, what a nuisance it is that 
this is your last day here. But what a last day. Any 
letters ? " 

Peter's hand fingered Nellie's letter. 

"Yes: one from Nellie," he said. "She wants 
you and me to go there for the week-end on November 
loth. Shall we?" 

"Oh, how unkind of her! What are we to do? 
Shall we say that mother will be here for that Sun- 
day ? It will be quite true in its way, though it won't 
mean precisely what she thinks it means." 

Peter looked at her below the rim of his straw hat. 
She had placed it rather forward over his forehead, 
and as she stood beside his chair he had to incline his 
head sharply back, so that the muscles at the side of 

M 



igo Peter 

his neck stood out below the sun-browned skin. She 
came a step closer and held his throat between thumb 

and fingers. 

"What shall we tell her? " she asked. "Speak, 

or I'll strangle you." 

"Strangle away ! " he said. 

"I would sooner you spoke," she said. "I don't 
want to murder you just yet. So unpleasant for 

mother." , 

"Whether it's unpleasant for me or not doesn t 
seem to matter," said Peter throatily, for Silvia in- 
creased the pressure of her hand. 

"Not a bit, darling," said she. "I shall squeeze 
tighter and tighter until you tell me what we shall say 

to Nellie." 

" Brute 1" said Peter. "Don't do it, Silvia. 
You're hurting me frightfully." 

He wrinkled up his forehead and drew in his 
breath quickly, as if in great pain. Instantly Silvia 
took her hand away. 

"Oh, my dear, I haven't really hurt you?" she 
asked with compunction. 

"Once upon a time," said Peter, "there was a 
woman who believed every word that her husband 
said." 

Silvia sat down on the edge of the long chair. 

"Was? There is one," she said. "If you told 
me you hated me, I should believe you." 

"I hate you," said Peter promptly. 

"You didn't say that," said she. "Your mouth 
said it. What are we to tell Nellie? Seriously, I 
mean. It will be nearly our last Sunday here, if we 
go to London in December." 

Peter made a short calculation. 

"Dear Nellie," he said, "we are so sorry we can't 



Peter 191 

come, because November loth will be our last evening 
but twenty-one alone here, as we go up to town the 
next month.' Will that do ? " 

"It sounds perfectly sensible," said Silvia. "She'll 
understand : it wasn't so long ago that she was mar- 
ried. Then you'll write that, will you ? " she added 
hopefully. 

"I will if you really wish it," said he; "but it's 
not very sane. You see . . . well, some time we've 
got to begin behaving like ordinary human beings 
again. And, after all, Nellie is a very old friend of 
mine, and a very intimate one of yours. She'll think 
it rather odd." 

Silvia sighed. 

"A whole Saturday to Monday," she said. "How 
selfish Nellie is ! I never knew that before. But 
perhaps we had better go. Shall I answer it for 
you ? " 

Peter got up. 

"No; I must write to her in any case," he said. 

"What else does she say? " asked Silvia. "No 
message for me ? " 

Peter could not definitely remember any, but there 
was sure to have been such. 

"Of course: all sorts of things. Come for a 
stroll, Silvia. I'm getting chilly in the shade of my 
straw hat. There's another thing I want to talk over 
with you. Let's go down by the lake I " 

"Hurrah! I love being consulted. What is it?" 

"It's about my father. Oh, by the way, the Jack- 
daw asked me where he should be put, and I said the 
state-rooms. Is that all right ? " 

Silvia pinched his arm. 

"When are you going to understand that you are 
the master? " she said. "Oh, Peter, it will be lovely 



192 Peter 

for him having the state-rooms. He'll like it tre- 
mendously. Won't he? I wish I had thought of it. 
It wasn't that, I hope, that you wanted to consult me 
about." 

"No. Now, before I consult you, I want to ask 
you a question or two, which you must promise to 
answer not tactfully, but truly." 

"Not even a little tact, if I find it necessary?" 
she asked. 

"Not an atom. Do you like that cartoon of his? " 

Silvia glanced sideways at him. 

"Well— I don't find I go and look at it for 
pleasure," she said. "Not often at least, not every 
day. Do you like it? " 

"I think it's the largest piece of rubbish I ever 
saw. Now try again to express your opinion." 

Silvia gave a sigh of relief. 

"Oh, I do agree!" she said. "It's the most 
appalling. Now, isn't it?" 

"Question number two," said Peter. "Do you 
think you will like the others any better ? Do you, 
in fact, look forward to seeing the whole wall of the 
gallery covered with allegorical Mainwarings ? " 

"Not in the very smallest degree. But we've got 
to have them, haven't we? " 

" I don't think so," said he. " In fact, from a letter 
I have received from my father, I gather that he 
doesn't consider he made a contract for them at all. 
It's clear from what he says that somebody else wants 
to buy them at a higher rate, considerably higher, 
than your mother paid for the first. In fact, he 
alludes to the price she paid for it as a pittance. By 
the way, what did she pay for it ? " 

Silvia looked sideways at him again. 

" Do you really want me to tell you ? " she asked. 



Peter 193 

"If you don't mind." 

"Well, she gave him a thousand guineas for it, 
Peter. I rather wish he hadn't called it a pittance; 
it makes mother seem mean. He was quite willing 
to accept it. And I don't suppose— do you ? — that he 
sells much at that sort of price ? " 

"And the rest of the unspeakable six at the same 
price ? " asked Peter. 

"I suppose so. Mother understood so," said she. 

"And does she want to have them ?" asked Peter. 

"No. I don't think she does, very much," said 
Silvia. "She spoke to-day of ' my cartoons ' — wasn't 
that darling of her? — when I said your father was 
coming this evening. But I think 1 could explain 
to her that she needn't have them; if I do it the 
right way, she won't think she wants them. But 
what about the one we've got ? " 

"Sell it back to him at the price she gave for it,'* 
said Peter. 

Silvia seemed to consider this simple proposition 
rather intently. 

"Yes, perhaps she would do that,'* she said, with- 
out much conviction as to its probability. "Oh, 
Peter, haven't we got rather odd parents? " 

"I have; but why have you, except in so far that 
it was odd to give a thousand guineas for that 
monstrosity? I'm delighted at the prospect of get- 
ting rid of it, not only, and not chiefly, because it's 
an atrocious object, but because I hate the idea of 
my father imposing upon your mother and then talk- 
ing about a pittance. He would have jumped at 
selling it in an auction room for a quarter of what she 
paid. I wonder who can have offered him more for 
it. Oh, by the way. Aunt Eleanor has bought his 
sketches for the cartoons." 



194 Peter 

Silvia burst out laughing. 

"Then Aunt Joanna has bought the cartoons them- 
selves," she said. " But don't suggest that to mother. 
Or rather, if you want me to talk about it all to her, 
I won't. Aunt Joanna, you see, wants to, what they 
call wipe mother's eye. I'm quite certain of it. And 
if mother got wind of it, she wouldn't part with that 
wretched picture for a million." 

"But how odd " 

"Yes; that's her oddness. I said we had got odd 
parents. And I doubt — at least, there's no doubt 
about it at all — whether she will let your father have 
back the one cartoon that she has got for what she 
paid for it. She doesn't want any money, and she's 
as generous as she can be, bless her, but she won't 
be ' done.' The picture is hers, and she won't let 
him have it back at a penny less than he is going to 
receive for it. Oh, let's talk about something more 
interesting. Anyhow, you and I don't want the car- 
toon we've got, or any more like it. But people are 
so queer, and I love their queernesses : they are 
part of them. After all, the queernesses in people are 
exactly what makes their individuality. You're queer, 
I'm queer." 

"Why am I queer?" demanded Peter. 

"I've told you so often," said she. 

Peter guessed at that what his imputed queerness 
was. It was true that she had told him often, but it 
was true also that there was a thing which a lover 
was never tired of repeating. 

"Never : never once," said he. 

"As if I wasn't doing it all day," she said. 
"Taking advantage, I mean, of your queerness — not 
merely telling you about it directly, but being so much 
more direct than just telling you. What's your queer- 



Peter 195 

ness, indeed, if it isn't that you allow me to be queer, 
just because you are ? " 

"You've changed the subject," said he. "You're 
talking- about your queerness now." 

"It's all the same queerness," she said. 

Peter could squint more atrociously than most 
people, and now, looking at Silvia, he allowed him- 
self to contemplate the end of his nose. Silvia coufdn't 
stand this trick, and a nonsensical ritual had built 
itself up upon it. 

"Oh, Peter, put your eyes back ! " she cried. 

"I can't. They've stuck. Push them back for 
me. 

He shut his eyes, and Silvia stroked the lids from 
the nose outwards. 

"They will stick some day," she said, "and then 
I shall divorce you." 

Peter looked at her straight again. 

"Go on about the queerness," he said. 

"Yours or mine? " she asked. 

"You said they were the same." 

"They are in a way. But your queerness is much 
the queerest. For it was I whom you loved. What 
I did wasn't queer; anything else would have been 
not queer, but imbecile. . . . Peter, don't ever be 
tired of knowing how awfully I love you. If you're 
not there, the thought of it frightens me; there's 
something crushing about it. But when you are with 
me, the only thing that frightens me is the thought 
that it shouldn't be so. But why on earth you're like 
that — like me, I mean — that's what is so incompre- 
hensible. Me, you know : this bit of nothing at all." 

Peter became aware, more consciously than 
through the hints he had previously been cognizant 
of, how, though Silvia's level was some sun-basked 



10 Peter 

plateau far above him, he welcomed and spread him- 
self in the gleams that came to him. There was a 
splendour in being loved like that, and at this moment 
the inherent falsity of his position was just burned out 
by that consuming ray. Her love, not in the least 
masculine, was yet male in its adoring self-surrender; 
his, as regards her, though not in the least feminine, 
was female in its reception of it. There was an ecstasy 
in being adored by so magnificent a lover. Even as 
in material ways, she showered herself on the Danae 
for whom, in their drama, he was cast, so in the 
subtler and splendid beauty of the soul, she poured 
herself out in a love that passed the love of woman. 
And that very quality, here triumphantly shining, 
drew out the essential fragrance of his. 

"More," he said, "more nothing at all." 

She seemed to step from her height at that, diving 
down to him, entrancingly tender. 

"That's all there is, my darling," she said. "If 
you want more than I've got, you must teach it me. 
Now I won't be absurd any longer. Look, there's a 
moorhen ! " 

This was quite in the habitual manner. Like a 
lark, she sang for so long as she was in the air, then 
folded her wings and dropped to her nest. The sing- 
ing was over, and it left her panting with the ecstasy 
of it. But Peter, to continue that metaphor, received 
something of a shock; he had not known she would 
so swiftly come to ground. Yet that sudden dip was 
equally characteristic of him ; he probably had shown 
her the trick of it, for often he had done just that. 
The sky, after all, extended to the actual ground : 
there was no intermediate element. 

"It's a coot," he said. 

"I don't care. I only hope it's happy," said she. 



Peter i97 

"Oh, my dear, there's the bell for lunch, and we're 
half a mile from the house. The Jackdaw will peck 
us for being late." 

"Not our fault. The lake shouldn't have been so 

long." 

"We might fill some of it up," said she. "Let's 
talk sensibly. What were we saying before you began 
to talk nonsense? Oh, yes, pictures, pittance " 

"Papa," said he. 

"Peter. ... I can't think of any more." 

"Peter's papa purchases the picture he sold for 
a pittance," said he. "American headlines. Make 
another." 

This sort of monkey-gymnastics of the mind, at 
which Peter and Nellie and all the rest of them so 
fluently excelled, was always productive in Silvia of 
an intense gravity ; she made her contributions with 
effort, struggle and bewilderment, amazed at how 
quickly everybody else — everybody else was so clever 
— made words out of words, and reeled off the names 
of eminent men which began with an X. . . . 

"Something about mother," said she with knitted 
brows. " I must manage — oh, Peter, isn't that good? 
— I must manage to make mother " 

Peter giggled. 

"That's not the right form," he said. "You must 
get the right form. Let's see. 'Millionaire mother 
manages to make — to make — oh, yes — money on Mr. 
Mainwaring's monstrosity,' " he finished up in a great 
hurrv. 

"Oh, Peter, how lovely! " said she. "How do 
you do it? And why can't I ?" 

Mr. Mainwaring rose magnificently to his tenancy 
of the state-rooms, feeling that it had been a very 



198 Peter 

proper arrangement to put him there. Here was the 
father of the master of Howes paying a visit to his 
son ; here, too, in the same earthly vesture, was the 
creator of the great cartoons which, among all the futile 
crosses and cenotaphs and hysterical verse and prose, 
were not unworthy of the heroic history which they 
commemorated. With the same abandoned thorough- 
ness with which he could be, when suitable, the 
rollicking, jovial boy, hungry for his tea, or the 
robust-throated Toreador, so now he saw in the 
assignation of the state-rooms to his occupancy 
a very proper and touching homage on the part of 
Peter or Silvia, or Mrs. Wardour (or more probably 
on their joint acclamation) to the sovereignty of his 
Art. These pleasant reflections that accompanied the 
appreciative exploration of his territory suggested that 
there was, so to speak, a little state business to be 
done, the nature of which he believed he had 
adequately indicated to Peter. Peter, good lad, 
would no doubt have attended to it, and it would be 
well for him to give his report. 

Probably it was as much the desire of having this 
conversation with Peter secure from interruption as 
anything else that caused him to send a message to 
his son that Mr. Mainwaring would be much obliged 
if he would spare him a few minutes in the state- 
rooms before dressing time; but it certainly fitted in 
pleasantly with his sovereignty that Peter should be 
requested to present himself, and that Mr. Main- 
waring should be set on a throne of Spanish brocade. 

He waved Peter to a seat. Peter seemed to prefer 
to perch himself on the tall steel fireguard. He 
divined with sufficient accuracy his father's pose, and 
was partly amused, partly irritated. Silvia would 
have been wholly amused. 



Peter 199 

"Hope you'll be comfortable here, father," he 

said. 

Mr. Mainwaring glanced round him. 

"Yes, indeed," he said. "I shall do very well. 
Ah, by the way, before we get to business, I have a 
letter from your mother which she asked me to give 
you. Perhaps you would hand me my despatch case. 
. . . Here it is." 

Peter was lighting a cigarette, and spoke between 
the puffs. 

"Right. I'll take it when I go," he said. 

His father looked at the tapestried walls. 

"My dear boy," he said, "I don't know if I am 
right to allow you to smoke here." 

Peter dropped his match on the carpet. He did 
that on purpose. 

"Oh, don't bother about that," he said. "I allow 
myself. Now I suppose you want to talk to me about 
that cartoon ? " 

" You got my letter ? You have arranged what I 
indicated ? " 

Peter felt his irritation gaining on him. 

"Well, your letter was rather — rather involved, 
rather vague and magnificent," he said. "What 
Silvia and I made out of it was that you had been 
offered a higher price for work that Mrs. Wardour 
had commissioned you to do for her, and wanted to 
call it off. That seemed to be the general drift of it." 

"No; there was no definite commission," said he. 
"I mentioned that." 

"Mrs. Wardour was under the impression that 
there was. But that, I think, can be arranged, for the 
series was intended — commissioned or not doesn't 
matter — to hang in the gallery here. This is Silvia's 
house, you see, and in a way mine, so that if we con- 



200 



Peter 



sent there will be — under certain conditions — no diffi- 
culty with my mother-in-law. Silvia has talked to 
her about it. We cordially consent, father. We are 
both quite willing that you should paint the rest of the 
series for somebody else." 

Mr. Mainwaring could find no fault with the sub- 
stance of the speech; indeed, it gave him precisely 
what he was wanting. But, in spite of Peter's neu- 
trality of statement, he found it dealing some dastardly 
wound to his vanity. 

"Ha! You and Silvia, it appears, don't want 
the great series," he remarked. 

"But apparently somebody else does," said Peter. 
"And you said in your letter that they were exciting 
a stupendous interest in artistic circles. That's all 
right, then; we are very glad." 

"Yes, glad to get rid of them," said the insatiable 
one. 

Peter practically never lost his temper. He used it 
as a stored-up force. But certainly the sight of his 
father on the Spanish throne, looking like Zeus, did 
not predispose him to exert his habitual pleasantness. 

"You are, of course, at liberty to make any com- 
ments you choose," he said. "You are vexed with 
me because I give you your way quite willingly 
instead of reluctantly. By the way, don't tell me, and 
in particular don't tell Mrs. Wardour, whether the 
* artistic circles ' is another expression for Lady 
Darley. If it is, I think it highly probable that she 
would refuse to let you have back the first cartoon, 
if that is part of your plan. You would, in that case, 
I suppose, have to copy it if she allowed you to." 

Mr. Mainwaring rose to a splendour of pomposity. 

"Copy? " he said. "And could I copy the fiery 
execution of it ? You speak of pictures, my Peter, as 



Peter 201 

if they could be produced like boots or hats. The in- 
tending purchaser — I do not say whether or no I refer 
to Lady Darley— wants no cold replica. She insists 
on the one that came hot and terrible from the furnace 
of my imagination." 

"Then on certain conditions," said Peter, "Lady 
Darley — I mean the purchaser — may have it." 

"Name them," said his father, looking like a 
captive king. 

"The first is that you completely withdraw, and 
if possible regret, the use of the expression ' pittance,' 
in connection with the price you received for it. 
There's an implication of meanness about it with 
regard to Mrs. Wardour." 

Mr. Mainwaring clicked his thumb and finger as 
if to say, " That for what I sold it for.'^ 

"I make no such implication," he said. "Mrs. 
Wardour or anybody else is well within her rights 
in acquiring fine work at such prices as the artist is 
obliged from straitened circumstances to accept." 

"The point is," said Peter, "that you hadn't often, 
if ever, been obliged to accept a thousand guineas 
before for any picture." 

"And may not an artist, after years of unremitting 
endeavour, be allowed to come into his own and enjoy 
the appreciation he has long merited ? " asked Mr. 
Mainwaring. 

"Certainly he may: we are all delighted. But 
when he does — when, that is to say, you at length 
receive a high price for a picture, you shouldn't, 
because you are offered immediately afterwards a 
higher price, talk of a pittance as applied to the first. 
You thought yourself, father," continued Peter pleas- 
antly and inexorably, "remarkably fortunate to get a 
thousand guineas." 



202 



Peter 



Mr. Mainwaring, at this, displayed the versa- 
tility of a quick-change artist. It was pretty well 
demonstrated that Peter was not impressed by the 
majestic attitude, and he yodelled and burst into a 

laugh. 

"Well, well, my Peter," he said, "you shall have 
it your own way. It was no pittance. I ought not 
to have called it a pittance— mea culpa, mea maxima 
culpa. Pittance it is— let us distinguish, my dear— 
when I contrast it with the subsequent offer that has 
reached me, but at the time a thousand guineas 
seemed to me a very fair remuneration. I had been 
too modest about my value, it appears now. Ah, yes, 
but recognition is pleasant enough, and when the 
brush slips from my hand, and my spirit flies " (he 
made a circular motion of his arms as if swimming) 
"to join the mightier dead, the Mainwaring estate will 
be found not too inconsiderable to place beside the 
fortunes of the Wardours. But that will not, I hope, 
be for a long time yet," he added, as the notion of 
picturing himself in front of some great canvas with 
the brush slipping from his nerveless hands, sup- 
ported by Silvia and Peter, occurred to him with an 
almost ominous vividness. 

"Quite," said Peter in general acknowledgment of 
this magnificence. "There remains then one thing 
to settle, and that is the price at which you re- 
purchase the cartoon of which Mrs. Wardour is the 
present possessor." 

Mr. Mainwaring did not for the moment see the 
bearing of this, and remained splendid. 

"I should not dream of repaying her one penny 
less than what I received for it," he said. "The full 
price, Peter : assure her of that." 

Peter thought it better to let another aspect of the 



Peter 203 

case strike his father, without suggesting it, and was 
silent till Mr. Mainwaring spoke again. 

"H'm. I see what you mean," he said. 

"I hoped you would, because really there doesn't 
seem to be any reason why she should let you have 
for a thousand guineas a thing which is now indubit- 
ably hers, and which you will immediately sell for 
a considerably higher sum." 

Mr. Mainwaring began to regret that he had said 
quite so much about the utter impossibility of re- 
capturing the fire of the original in a copy. 

"You would be offering her, you must remember," 
Peter added, "a pittance for her picture." 

"You think 1 ought to give her what I shall receive 
for it?" asked Mr. Mainwaring. 

Peter kept steadily before him his distaste of his 
father "scoring off " Mrs. Wardour. The whole 
thing, though humorous, was rather sordid; but he 
knew that he rather liked himself in the part he was 
playing in it. 

"I think the justice of that view will appeal to 
you," he said. "You couldn't very well do other- 
wise." 

Mr. Mainwaring was silent a moment, and then 
decided to be completely superb. 

"I have no experience in business or in bargain- 
ing," he said. "If you tell me that is right and fair 
and proper, I yield." 

"I think it's your only means of getting the pic- 
ture," said Peter. "So that's settled, is it? Oh, the 
letter from my mother. Thanks. Dinner at half- 
past eight." 



CHAPTER X 

Peter, as he strolled down the corridor, knew that 
he had been rather signorial — if that was the word — 
and designedly so, in this interview. In spite of Mr. 
Mainwaring's magnificent occupation of the state- 
rooms, for which, after all, he had his son to thank, 
Peter was pleased to feel that he had been putting his 
father in his place. It had certainly been with this 
object in view that he had smoked his cigarette, and 
dropped the expired match on the carpet, not exactly 
calling attention to his position, but casually assum- 
ing it. Again, in the matter of the picture, he had, 
ever so quietly, ever so indulgently, just hinted at the 
right course, and like a lamb — a great vain rococo, 
farcical lamb — his father had bleated his way into the 
proper fold. 

Peter confessed to himself — he seldom confessed to 
anybody else — that the motive which inspired these 
manoeuvres was an unamiable one. He might easily 
have obtained the results that he now, together v;ith 
his mother's unopened letter, carried away from this 
interview, by tact, by pleasantness, by the general 
small change of sympathy. Hitherto he had been 
accustomed to use such lubrications to make the 
wheels of life run smoothly in domestic dealings; but 
now that no further domestic lubrication was neces- 
sary on his part (his father, it is true, might have to 
flourish the oil-can with desperate agility, if he was to 
ensure smooth working) Peter knew that he had just 
driven ahead and let the wheels, if so they felt dis- 
posed, squeak and squeal, and grind and grumble. 

204 



Peter 205 

While that small, smelly house off the Brompton 
Road had been his home, it had paid to make the 
bearings run easily ; but now, when he thought with 
incredulous wonder that he could have "stuck" all 
that small stuffiness so long, he detachedly admired 
his own past deftness and patience in dealing with 
the daily situation there. He saw in the mirror of his 
own vanity the incomparable crudeness of his father's, 
and discovered, almost with a sense of shock, how 
cordially he disliked him. 

For the present his sense of humour with regard 
to him was in total eclipse; the type of quality which 
Silvia hugged as being the lovable queerness which 
makes for individuality, he saw only as tiresome and 
contemptible eccentricity, a thing to be contemplated 
baldly without comment, whenever contemplation of 
it was necessary, and to be dealt with summarily^. 
The vexing affair was that Peter caught some broken 
image of himself in all this. One glimpse of himself 
in especial was irritating; that, namely, in which he 
looked with great distaste on his father's profiting by 
the wealth of the Wardours without giving a due 
return for his depredations on it. 

It was natural that when, as now, he was so acutely 
aware of his father's unique capability for rubbing 
him up the wrong way, he should wonder afresh at 
the placid, unruffled tolerance that had enabled his 
mother to spend a quarter of a century with him. 
Women, of course, so ran his reflections, have a 
greater gift of patience with men than a man can be 
expected to have. Sex, no doubt, had something to 
do with it, for on the other hand men were more 
tolerant of a tiresome woman than other women. Yet 
that could not wholly explain his mother; she was 
quite inexplicable, for Silvia even, gifted as Peter ever 

N 



2o6 Peter 

so cordially recognized with the power of putting her- 
self into the position and realizing the identity of other 
people, had fallen back like a spent wave from the 
hard, smooth impenetrability of his mother. She had 
confessed herself baffled, had no idea whether there 
was something, somebody, hermetically sealed up be- 
hind that neat porcelain face by the inexorable will of 
its occupant, or if there was nothing beyond that blank 
imperturbability that cared only whether the door at 
the head of the kitchen stairs was "quite shut " and 
had no desire except to be left alone and allowed to 
read advertisements of hotels in railway guides. Had 
his mother been driven into that small, but apparently 
impregnable fortress by his father's colossal and ludi- 
crous personality, or was there indeed no one there 
at all, no beleaguered garrison grimly holding out? 

Peter wandered on to the terrace for a minute ot 
composing dusk and quietness. He half expected to 
find Silvia there, and felt a little ill-used that she was 
not. She knew what was the nature of his interview 
with his father, and Peter would have welcomed the 
warmth of her applause at his masterly conduct of it. 
But in her absence he could read the certainly placid 
communication from his mother. She would hope he 
was well, she would hope Silvia was well, she would 
let it be assumed that she was well. She would cer- 
tainly also say that she was so sorry she could not 
come to Howes with his father, but that she hoped 
to do so some time during the autumn. She would 
undoubtedly wind up by saying that it was nearly 
post time, and that she had other letters. . . . 
Peter drew the letter from his pocket, and prepared to 
let his eyes slide smoothly over the lines of it. She 
wrote a wonderfully clear hand : you could take a 
whole sentence in at a glance. 



Peter 207 

"My dearest Peter, — I am sending this letter to 
you by your father, because I want it to reach you 
without fail. Letters by post go wrong sometimes, 
and I don't want this to go wrong. When I have 
finished it, I shall put it into his despatch-box myself. 

"When your father comes back from his visit to 
you and Silvia, he will not find me here. It is no use 
mincing words, so I will tell you straight out that I 
can't stand him any longer. It would not have 
answered my purpose just to go away from him for a 
month, for I should have felt all the time that at the 
end of a month I should have to come back; I 
should have been on the end of the string still. As 
it is, I shall stop away just as long as I choose. I 
shall be free. I want a holiday without any tie what- 
ever. When I mean to come back (if I do) I shall 
write to him and ask him if he will take me back. 
I don't know how long it will be before I want to. 
It might be a fortnight, or it might be a year, or it 
might be never. I shall simply stay away from him, 
at some pleasant place which I have selected, until I 
feel better. 

"While you were living with your father and me 
I could just get along; but since you have gone I 
can't get along at all. We weren't much to each 
other, for all my individuality — isn't that what they 
call it? — had long ago been hammered back into me. 
I was like a small person in a large suit of armour. 
But somehow you were a part of me, and while you 
were there I couldn't go away. 

"I ask you, my dear, not to make any attempt to 
find me, and I want you to persuade your father not 
to. I shall be quite comfortable, and as I am never 
ill I don't see why I should begin to be so now. I 
shall go to a nice hotel, where I shan't have to order 



2o8 Peter 

lunch and dinner or add up bills. It is astonishing 
how many nice hotels there are, quite moderate in 
price, which will just suit me. 

"Now this may seem unkind, but the fact is that 
I don't want to hear a word from either you or your 
father. You and I have nothing in common ; in fact, 
I have nothing in common with anybody, and I only 
want to be left alone in peace, and not to be reminded 
of the last twenty-five years of my life at all. I want 
not to be bothered with anybody. I want to get up 
and go to bed when I choose, and go for my walk, 
and read my book, and play patience. You and I 
have never loved each other at all, so there's no use 
in pretending to be pathetic over that now. Before 
you were old enough to understand, I hadn't got any 
feeling left in me, or, at least, it was hammered right 
inside me. If any time during these last ten years 
I had died, you wouldn't have missed me, though if 
you had died I should have missed you to the extent, 
anyhow, of your absence making my life with your 
father quite intolerable. I don't bear him the slightest 
ill will, and I hope he'll bear me none. He has 
excellent servants, and they will make him quite com- 
fortable, which is all he wants. But I've got too 
much sense to remain with him any longer. 

"He has been saying great things lately about the 
immense sums of money he will get for his series of 
cartoons, so that I have no scruple in withdrawing 
from him the ^600 a year which is my own income. 
I can't be certain, of course, whether he has not been 
multiplying everything by ten, in order to glorify 
himself, but I suppose there is some truth in it all. 
Anyhow, he has got a cheque from Mrs. Wardour for 
a thousand guineas, because he showed me that. He 
was in great spirits that night, dancing round the 



Peter 209 

table and singing and drinking quantities of port. 
And that, it appears, is nothing to what he is about 
to get for the rest of his great series." 

Peter took his eyes off the neatly written sheets for 
a moment and gave a great gasp. The figure of his 
mother, as he was accustomed to behold it, veiled and 
still, and sitting in shadow and never giving a sign 
of individual life, had suddenly cast off its conceal- 
ment and tranquillities, and stood out violently illu- 
minated. That smooth, polished object which had 
lain inert so long in the midst of railway guides, had 
proved itself to be a live shell which, without any 
warning or preliminary sizzling, had exploded. He 
himself was unhurt, though immeasurably astonished 
and startled, and he exulted in the fact that the thing 
had been alive after all, carrying within it such store 
of devastating energy. His own marriage, his depar- 
ture from home, had set off the fuse ; he had been, all 
unconsciously, the controlling agent. 

He dived again into this most lucid report of the 
explosion, observing with regret that there were but 
a couple of pages more. At the moment Silvia ap- 
peared at the door from the terrace into the drawing- 
room close behind where he sat. 

" Peter, is that you ? " she asked. 

"Yes; one minute. Or come here, Silvia. Take 
these sheets and read them without saying anything 
till Pve finished. It's a letter from my mother." 

He buried himself in the remainder of the letter, 
hardly hearing Silvia's gasp of surprise as she came 
to the second paragraph. 

"Now I want you," the narrative continued, "to 
consider this before you pass any judgment on what I 



aio Peter 

have done. I am injuring nothing and nobody, 
except your father's vanity, and I have no doubt he 
will find some explanation of my leaving him which 
will quite satisfy him. He will not be the least less 
happy without me, nor will you. I have got no 
friends, for I am not the sort of person who can make 
friends or wants them ; I have been hammered, as I 
have said, into myself, and I break no ties the sever- 
ance of which is painful for others any more than 
for me. I see so few people, and those so very occa- 
sionally, that there need be no scandal of any kind; 
your father will only have to say, about once a month, 
that I am on a visit in the country, which is quite true. 

"My solicitor knows where I am, and from time 
to time he will let you have a note from me, saying 
how I am. As for news, I shall have none; I shall 
take my walk, and read my book, and entertain my- 
self very well, and I shall be very happy, because 
I shall be free. I rather believe that you are suffi- 
ciently like me to understand that, for you have always 
kept yourself independent of everybody. 

"Finally, I leave it to you (no doubt you will con- 
sult Silvia) as to whether you let your father find out 
that I have gone when he returns home, or whether 
you tell him. I think personally that it would be 
wiser to tell him, because when he got home and 
found the few lines (not like this long letter) which 
I have left for him there, just to say I have gone, he 
might make some dreadful scene and upset every- 
body. But that I leave entirely to you. 

"All the wages and books were paid up to the end 
of last week. The bills, with their receipts, are in 
their place in the third drawer of my knee-hole table. 
"Your affectionate mother, 

"Maria Mainwaring." 



Peter 



211 



Peter thrust the remaining pages into Silvia's 
hand, and waited till she had come to the end. Then 
they looked at each other in silence. 

"I'm going to laugh," said Peter at length. 

"No, please don't," said Silvia. "If you do I 
shall cry." 

Peter tapped the sheets that lay in her hand. 

"But it's gorgeous," he said. "I should laugh, 
if I did, not from amusement — though there are amus- 
ing things — but from pleasure. Every word in that 
letter is true ; that's something to be pleased about, 
and, what's more, every word in it is right. But the 
surprise, the wonder of it ! There's a splendour 
about it ! " 

Silvia shuffled the sheets together, and, giving 
them back to him, leaned her forehead on her hands. 

"Ah, haven't you got any tenderness? " she said. 
" Don't you see the bitter pathos of it ? Your mother, 
you know ! " 

"But she says there is nothing pathetic about it," 
said he. 

"And that's just the most pathetic thing of all ! " 
Silvia said. 

Peter puzzled over this a moment. He understood 
Silvia's feeling w^ell enough, but he understood 
equally well, and with greater sympathy, the answer 
(the retort almost) to it. 

"But if she sees nothing pathetic in the situation, 
and I quite agree with her, what's the use of trying 
to introduce pathos?" he asked. "Pathos painted 
on— like a varnish — ceases to be pathos at all; it be- 
comes simply sentimentality." 

Silvia turned to him like some patient affectionate 
teacher to a child who pretends only not to know his 
lessons. 



212 



Peter 



"If the absence of love in relationships like these 
isn't pathetic," she said, "love itself is only senti- 
mentality." 

Peter again saw precisely what she meant; he 
knew, too, that what she said was true. But he knew 
that he, for himself, did not realize it with conviction, 
with a sense of illumination. . . . The statement of 
it was just an instance the more of Silvia's shining 
there aloft of his confining cloudland. The thought 
of that dealt him a stab of envy, and under the hurt 
of it his spirit snapped and snarled, and retired, so 
to speak, into its kennel, leaving his mind outside to 
manage the situation. 

"Well, then, it's pathetic," he said, "but it has 
been pathetic so long that one has got used to it. I 
know you're right, but what you say hasn't any prac- 
tical bearing " 

"Ah, my dear, but it has," said she. "It has all 
the practical bearing. It is up to you, practically, to 
handle it in hardness in — in a sort of ruthlessness, or 
you can, recognizing what I say, deal with it 
tenderly." 

"By all means; but the facts aren't new. Leave 
me out : let's consider my father and mother only. 
There's the practical side of it. He's got to be told — 
at least, I suppose so. There's no new pathos there. 
They've both been aware of lovelessness for years. 
If my father takes the wounded, the pathetic pose, it 
will — it will just be a pose. Frankly, I'm all on my 
mother's side. By one big gesture she has explained 
herself; she has made a living comprehensible reality 
of herself. The Bradshaws, the railway guide adver- 
tisements — good Lord, we know what it has all been 
about now ! There's flesh and blood in it ! I always 
respect flesh and blood ! " 



Peter 213 

"But her way of doing it is an outrage," said 
Silvia. "She's your father's wife, after all : she's 
your mother. Take your mother's side by all means 
—we've all got to take sides in everything : nobody 
can be neutral— but take his side in her manner of 
doing what she has done. Sympathize with him in 
that ! That letter, too — will you show him the letter ? 
The hostility of it, the resentment ! " 

Peter sat still a moment fingering the leaves of the 
letter. 

"It's not so much resentment," he said, "as re- 
pression. She has been hammered back into herself 
all these years. Oh, I understand her better than 
you. It had to happen this way. What else was she 
to do? Could she go to my father and say, ' If you 
can't put some curb on your egoism and vanity, if 
you continue to be such a bounder (that's what 
bounders are) I really shall have to leave you ' ? " 

" You want to score off him, Peter," said she. 
"That's the hardness, the ruthlessness. And you 
aren't hard, my darling. Who knows that better 
than I ? " 

"Are you sure I'm not? " he said. 

She did not answer this directly. 

"You've got to be gentle," she said. 

Peter's fingers closed on the letter, hesitated, and 
then tore the sheets in half. He tore them across yet 
again. "Well, he shan't see the letter," he said, "It 
was written to me and I've destroyed it. But if, when 
I tell him, he becomes melodramatic how can I help 
being what you call ruthless? He's so vain: you 
don't know how vain he is. This will be a brutal 
outrage, an attempted assassination of his vanity. 
But it won't injure it. The dastardly blow will glance 
aside, and he'll put an extra bodyguard round his 



214 Peter 

vanity for the future. He's a ridiculous person, 
Silvia," said Peter in a loud, firm voice. 

Silvia gave a sigh. 

"Ah, that's better," she said, "for you've torn the 
letter up, anyhow, and when you said he was ridicu- 
lous, you said it, my dear, as if you were justifying 
yourself rather than accusing him. Oh, you said it 
firmly and loudly, but — will you mind if I say this 
too? — you didn't say it so spitefully. Now, let's be 
practical. You always used to be practical, Peter. 
When are you going to tell him ?" 

Peter looked at his watch. 

"That means that if I say that I haven't made up 
my mind," he said, "you will certainly let me know 
that there is plenty of time to tell him before dinner. 
You want me to tell him now : that's where we are. 
You call me practical : who was ever so practical as 
you, when it comes to the point? " 

She did not challenge that, but rather proceeded 
to justify Peter's opinion for him. 

"My dear, you can put off pleasant things if you 
like," she said, "because you enjoy the anticipation of 
them. But where — where is the use of putting off 
unpleasant things? That only lengthens a beastly 
anticipation." 

"He'll make a scene," said Peter. "I hate scenes." 

There was nothing to reply to this : it all came 
under the advisability, which she had already ex- 
pressed, of not putting off unpleasantnesses. So she 
made no reply, and soon, for the face of her continued 
to push him, he got up, still wondering if she would 
prefer to tell his father herself. How strongly she 
wanted to do that, and how, more strongly, she re- 
frained from doing it, he had no idea. Her inclina- 
tion, that which she combated, was simply to go 



Peter 215 

straight to those voluptuous state-rooms; but her will, 
her convinced sense of what was right, of what was 
Peter's own duty and development, kept her silent. 

"Oh, I am sorry for you," she said at length, as he 
turned to go into the house. "But don't forget to be 
sorry for him, Peter." 

His only answer to that was a just perceptible 
shrug of his shoulders (comment on the futility of her 
sympathy), and he walked away across the crackling 
gravel. 

Silvia knew how Peter's mere presence stifled her 
power of judgment with regard to him. Often and 
often she had to cling, desperately, to a mental in- 
tegrity of her own, in order not to be washed away 
by the mere tide of her devotion to him. Her desire, 
not only the flesh and the blood of her, but her very 
spirit, would always have surrendered to him, would 
have given up herself, whole and complete, to what 
pleased him, to what made him comfortable, content 
and happy. But somewhere between these two apexes 
of physical and spiritual longing there came another 
peak, a mental and judicial apex, so she framed it to 
herself, a thing solid and reliable, a kind of bleak 
umpire that gave inexorable decisions. 

Already in their fortnight of married life it had 
several times asserted itself — it was her will, she sup- 
posed, clear-eyed and unbribable, which was as dis- 
tinct from the blindness of love as it was from the 
abandonment of physical desire. Peter had sug- 
gested, for instance, that he should "chuck " his work 
in the Foreign Office (this was the most notable ot 
these instances) and live, just live, now at Howes, 
now in London, always with her. They would travel, 
they would entertain, they would have plenty of inter- 
ests to keep him busy enough. He had urged, he 



2i6 Peter 

had argued, he had appealed to her for her mere 
acquiescence, willing or not, and she had steadily 
and unshakably refused to give it. Here, to-night, 
was another test for this umpire of the mind. It 
would have been infinitely easier for her to tell Mr. 
Mainwaring herself, and she knew quite convincedly 
that she would have proved a far more sympathetic 
breaker of shocking tidings than Peter would be. 
Peter would now, on his way to the state-rooms, be 
framing adroit sentences, be schooling his anticipatory 
impatience at a melodramatic reception of that news 
by his father into tolerance and gentleness. But she 
had as little temptation to be intolerant or ungentle, 
as he had to be the reverse; she would naturally have 
stood in an attitude which Peter would find it gym- 
nastically difficult to maintain. But he had got to do 
his best, not to let her do so infinitely better. 

It took but a moment's stiffening of herself to 
baffle any inclination to follow Peter and shoulder his 
mission for him, and her thoughts went back to Mrs. 
Mainwaring's letter and its startling effect (or want 
of effect) on Peter. That had produced, so she found 
now when she was no longer under the spell of his 
presence, a certain incredulous dismay. "You aren't 
like that," she had assured him, but now she found 
herself saying, "He can't be like that ! " He appeared 
to have received this intelligence with a savage, or, 
if not a savage a wholly unpitiful comment. He 
had seemed, and indeed seemed now, to have 
applauded this tragic sequel to years of resentful 
companionship. He had confessed to a desire to 
laugh (this was the ruthlessness). It might be 
that the logical result of such years was that Mrs. 
Mainwaring, given that she retained any inde- 
pendent identity of her own, should have been goaded 



Peter 217 

into this assertion of it. It might, in the ultimate 
weighing of souls, be better that she should have cut 
the knot like this, rather than have been strangled 
by it. It was all very well for Peter to take her side, 
but to take her side competently included an apprecia- 
tion of what she had suffered, and what she had failed 
in. Anyone could form a fair idea of what she, as 
exhibited now, had suffered by the smallest recogni- 
tion of what it must have been to be tied to the present 
occupant of the state-rooms, and the same exhibition 
showed exactly her tragic failure in allowing herself 
to be driven into this hermetical compartment, where 
all that reached her was the contemplation of her 
escape, as shown by her study of hotels. But Peter 
turned over all this, which was the root of the matter, 
as he might turn over the leaves of a dull book, and 
only saw a dramatic comedy in it, deserving of 
applause for its fitness, of an exclamation, "Serve him 
right ! " or a laughing, "Well done, mother ! " . . . 
You couldn't deal with people like that; at that rate 
the whole world would become a relentless machine, 
always grinding, always seeing others ground, always 
being diverted at the pitiless revolution of the wheels. 
Compassion, tenderness, these were the qualities that 
just saved and redeemed the world from hell, or at 
least from being a wounding comedy, at which no 
human person could laugh for fear of crying instead. 
Silvia got up from the seat where she and Peter 
had read his mother's letter, definitely desiring to 
avoid the conclusion to which her thoughts were lead- 
ing her. He had wanted to laugh — that was certain, 
but she must forget that. Probably he had not meant 
it; it was only incongruousness and surprise (like 
funny things in church, which would not be in the 
least funny elsewhere) which had made a spasm. . . . 



2i8 Peter 

Peter assuredly was not like that really, and the 
loyalty of love derided her for supposing it. He was 
(her heart insisted on that) all that her love adored 
him for being. 

The dressing bell had already sumptuously 
sounded from the central turret, and, still quite 
ignorant of what had been the result of the disclosure, 
but conscious of a yearning anxiety to know, she 
went up to her bedroom. She was not so much 
anxious to know how Mr. Mainwaring was "taking 
it " (how he "took it " seemed to matter very little), 
but how Peter had done his part. Between his 
dressing-room and her bedroom were a couple of 
bathrooms, and she heard, with a certain clinging to 
the usualness of life, splashings and hissings of water 
coming from one of these. Whatever had happened, 
there was Peter having his bath, and soon, most 
likely, he would tap at her door, barefooted (he never 
would wear slippers as he paddled about between his 
room and hers) with the blue silk dressing-gown tied 
with a tasselled cord about his waist. Peter had a 
wondrous ritual for his bath : he had to immerse 
himself first of all, and then stand on the mat while 
he soaped himself from head to foot. Then, still slip- 
pery and soapy, in order to get cold and heighten 
the enjoyment of the next immersion, he turned on 
more hot taps, and put spoonful after spoonful of 
verbena salts into the water. Then he got in again, 
and stewed himself in this fragrant soup. When 
he was too hot to bear it any longer, he retired into a 
small waterproof castle at the end of the bath, and 
turned on all the cold water douches and squirts and 
syringes. Then, without drying himself at all, he 
put on the famous blue silk dressing-gown, which had 
a hood to it, lit a cigarette, and tapped at her door, 



Peter 219 

to ascertain whether he could sit and finish his cigar- 
ette there. Silvia, by this time, knew precisely the 
interpretation of these splashings and hissings of 
water, and she would hurry up her own dressing, or 
slow it down, so that she could admit him. Fresh 
from his scrubbings and soapings, with the glow of 
the cold water on his skin, he was paganly sensuous 
in his enjoyment of the physical conditions of the 
moment, and, sitting by her dressing-table, talked the 
most amazing nonsense. He dried his feet on the 
tail of his dressing-gown, he rubbed his hair on the 
hood of it ; there was the scent of soap and verbena 
and cigarette, and more piercing to her sense than 
these his firm, smooth skin, the cleansedness and the 
freshness of him. ... At such chattering undress 
seances she was most of all conscious of him to the 
exclusion of herself ; for whereas his kiss, his caress, 
united her with him, and she had part in it, when he 
came in thus, rough-haired, bare-legged, wet-footed, 
with a smooth shoulder emerging from his dressing- 
gown, while, enveloped in it, he rubbed himself dry, 
she felt herself merely a spectator of this beautiful 
animal. 

But if he came in now — he might or might not — 
she knew that to-night she would be involved, so to 
speak, with him ; his character, the essence of him, 
as exhibited in such account as he might give her of 
the interview with his father, would come like a cloud 
or a brightness that w^ould obstruct this purely spec- 
tator-like view of him. He would not only be the 
clean, lithe animal, which, for these few minutes, she 
could look at without passion, without love, without 
friendship even, and be absorbed in the mere joy that 
there should be in this world so young and wild and 
perfect a creature. . . . 



220 



Peter 



There came his knock, and the usual inquiry, and 
he entered while her maid, with chaste, averted face, 
rustled out, not waiting to be dismissed, through the 
other door. He sat down in the big low chair by her 
dressing-table. 

"Oh, the simplest pleasures are so much the best," 
he said. "Just washing, you know, just being hungry 
and sleepy. I never enjoy a play or a book or a joke 
nearly so much as a bath and food and getting my 
head well down into the pillow. But 1 hate sponges. 
Why should I scrub my nose with a piece of dead sea- 
weed?" 

Listen as she might, with all the delicacy of divina- 
tion that love had given to her ear, she could find in 
his voice no inflection, no hesitation, nor, on the other 
hand, any glibness (as of a lesson learned and fault- 
lessly repeated) that showed that he was speaking 
otherwise than completely naturally. The topics of 
bath and dinner and bed came to his lips with quite 
spontaneous fluency, as if he had not in this last hour 
been the bearer to his father of a tragic situation- 
one that, at least, must wound the vanity which was 
so predominant a passion in him. Or had ]\Ir. Main- 
waring taken it with the same ruthlessness, the same 
cynical amusement as Peter had appeared to ? Silvia 
could not believe that : he must have been hurt, been 
astounded. But why, in pity's name, did not Peter 
tell her about that interview ? He must have known 
how she longed to be told, whether there was good or 
bad to tell. . . . 

"A revolving brush covered with wash-leather," 
continued Peter, "like a small boxing-glove. You 
would cover it with soap and work it with your foot. 
But a sponge ! Odious in texture, dull in colour, and 
full of horrible dark holes which probably contain the 



Peter 



221 



pincers of defunct crabs and the fins of dead fish. 
. . . Oh, by the way, I quite forgot ! I did really, 
darling; I was thinking so much about substitutes for 
sponges." 

Silvia could not doubt the sincerity of this : he 
had been thinking about sponges; there was the full 
statement of the case. And with his acknowledgment 
of that, his mere physical presence, the mere glamour 
of his radiant animalism, which, after all, was part 
of his essence and his charm, captured her again, 
whisking away for the moment all possibility of 
criticism, or of wishing that he could be other than he 
was. She knew that her misgivings — they amounted 
to that — would come flooding back, but just for the 
moment they were like some remote line of the low 
tide, lying miles away across shining levels. 

"Oh, Peter," she cried, "if you can design a small 
revolving wash-leather boxing-glove to use for a 
sponge, I'll promise to have it made for you. But 
you must explain just how it's to work. . . ." 
She broke off. 

"And about your father?" she said. 
"Yes, I was just going to tell you when you inter- 
rupted about the sponge-plan," said he. "By the 
way, I'll draw you the revolving boxing-glove. A 
foot-pedal below — below, mind — the water, so that 
your foot doesn't get cold. And, of course, you hold 
the socket of the boxing-glove— the wrist, so to speak 
— in your hand, and it goes buzzing round as you 
work with your foot, and you apply it, well soaped, 
to your face. No more dead seaweed and lobster 
claws ! My father now ! " 

Peter gathered up his knees in his arms, and sat 
there nursing them. His dressing-gown had fallen 
off his shoulder; he looked like somp domesticated 
o 



222 



Peter 



Satyr, wild with the knowledge of the woodland, but 
tamed to this sojourn — enforced or voluntary — in 
human habitations. 

"I went to him, as you told me to do," he began. 

Silvia interrupted him. She wanted him to do 
himself justice. 

"No, my dear; you went quite of your own 
accord," she said. "I never urged you." 

Peter's eyelids hovered and fell and raised them- 
selves again. Often and often had Silvia noticed that 
shade of gesture on Nellie's face; but never, so it 
struck her, had she seen a man do just that. The 
gesture seemed to imply acquiescence without consent. 

"Well, I went anyhow," he said. "I tapped on 
his door, and as there was no answer I went in. He 
was standing in front of that big Italian mirror in — 
well, in an attitude. He is intending to paint his 
own portrait, when he has finished that daub of 
you." 

Silvia leaned forward towards him. 

"Oh, don't talk like that ! " she said. "Don't be 
ironical — not that quite : don't feel ironical." 

Peter turned on her a face of mild, injured inno- 
cence. " I was telling you the bald facts," he said. 

"The balder the better," said she. 

" 1 told him I had read my mother's letter," he con- 
tinued, "and that there was news in it which he had 
better know at once. I got him to sit down, and I got 
hold of his hand. And then I told him just the fact 
that she had gone away." 

Peter shifted himself a little further back in his 
chair and drew his legs more closely towards him, so 
that his chin rested on the plateau of his knees. 

"I am not being ironical," he said. "I am trying 
to tell you precisely what happened. He made a 



Peter 223 

noise— a gurgle, I think I should call it — and he asked 
who the damned villain was with whom she had gone. 
And, to be quite bald, that seemed to me to be unreal. 
I said that there wasn't any damned villain, and that 
she had gone just because she felt she must be free. 
He wanted to see the letter, and I told him that I had 
torn it up. Then he began throwing his hair-brushes 
and dress-clothes into a bag, in order to start off and 
look for her, and asked me where she was. When I 
told him that I hadn't the slightest idea, he accused 
me of collusion with her. I merely denied that, and 
said that her letter was as great a surprise to me as it 
was to him." 

Peter threw away the end of his cigarette. 

"Then he began to guess why she had gone. Now 
the point of my tearing up my mother's letter was 
that he shouldn't know, wasn't it, darling?" 

Silvia heard herself assent. There was a sickness 
of the heart coming over her, something too subtle for 
her to diagnose as yet. 

"So he began to guess," continued Peter, "and as 
he tried to guess I was sorry for him — really sorry, 
you understand? " 

Silvia's heart began to thrive again. 

"Yes, yes; 1 knew you would be ! " she cried. 

"He soon hit on the reason," said Peter quietly. 
"There could only have been one reason, so he 
thought, and it filled him with the utmost remorse. 
He had been too big for her, that was what it came to 
' — too great. He had not, in the exaltation of his art 
—this is quite what he said — remembered the limita- 
tions of — of the rest of us. She had fainted before 
the furnace of his genius. It was all his fault : he 
hadn't made allowance for the prodigious strain on 
her — for the effects, cumulative no doubt, of the higii 



224 



Peter 



pressure. He strode about the room, he knocked over 
a chair " 

Some fierce antagonism to his narrative blazed up 
in Silvia. She had wanted the facts, and here they 
were, but she had not allowed for the baldness of their 
presentation, though she had asked for it. 

"Ah, don't talk like that, Peter," she said. 
"You're not a newspaper reporter." 

Peter gave no reply at all. There he sat with his 
chin on his knees, quite silent. ... If Silvia chose to 
speak to him like that it was clear that she must either 
go on or draw back ; anyhow, the next word was with 
her. But all the time that he thus tacitly insisted on 
his rights, resenting what she had said, there was 
within him some little focus of light breaking through 
from her sunlit altitudes that illumined and justified 
her protest. Good Lord, wasn't she right? Wasn't 
his sentiment towards his father immeasurably ignoble 
compared to the comprehension of her love ? And 
that very fact — his own unavowable condemnation of 
himself, that is to say — irritated him. If she was like 
that there was no use in his continuing his story. 

Silvia spoke first. Humanly, she could not bear 
this silence in which Peter seemed to mock her, but 
divinely she must be ever so humble. . . . Humble ? 
How love sanctified humility and transformed it into 
an ineffable pride. She pushed back her chair and 
knelt by his. She longed to unclasp the brown lean 
hands that enclosed him in himself and make them 
embrace her also. But that might annoy Peter : there 
was a suggestion of "claiming " him about it. She 
did not want to claim him. 

"I don't know why I spoke like that," she said. 
"I asked you what happened, and you are telling me. 
Will you forgive me and go on?" 



Peter 225 

Peter had never seemed so remote from her as then. 
In the frantic telegraphy of her spirit, which seemed 
to be sending all the love that the waves of ether would 
bear, there came no response from him, in spite of his 
answer. *'I never heard such nonsense," he said. 
"We should be a pretty pair if we had to forgive. 
How silly — you know it — to ask me to forgive you." 

"Show you do, by going on," she said. 

It was clear to him that what she wanted was to 
know not his father's part in this interview, but his 
own. Whether she liked it or not, he was going to 
be perfectly honest about it. 

"When he knocked over a chair and strode about," 
he repeated, "and found out the reason for my 
mother's going away, I began to be less sorry for him. 
He enjoyed himself : it was all a tribute to his im- 
possible greatness. From then onwards I acted, be- 
cause he was acting. The alternative was to tell him 
that my mother simply found his egoism intolerable. 
That wouldn't have done any good, so I agreed with 
him : that was the best thing to do. He is in despair, 
a rather luxurious despair. I had either to explode 
that or let him enjoy it. So it was no use being sorry 
for him any longer." 

Silvia broke out again ; it was her love for Peter 
that spoke. 

"My dear, you ought to have been a million times 
sorrier," she cried. "If he had been just simply 
broken-hearted about it, it would have been so much 
better. Can't you see that? Can you help feeling 
it ? " She was shedding the gleam on him. 

"I know what you mean," he said. "But I'm tell- 
ing you what happened. I was less sorry for him 
when he began to console himself. 1 suppose I'm 
made like that." 



226 Peter 

Silvia bit her lip. 

" Indeed you are not," she said. "You're making 
yourself out to be hard and unloving." 

At the moment the clang of the dinner-bell from 
the turret just above Silvia's room broke in. . . . 
The whole neighbourhood must know when the family 
at Howes were warned that it was time to dress, and 
that three-quarters of an hour later it was time to dine. 
Peter, on the first evenings he had spent here with 
Silvia, had asked whether, like a Court Circular, such 
publicity need be given to their domestic affairs; but 
Silvia, confessing herself sentimental, had told him 
that her father had delighted in the installation of that 
sonorous announcement. The brazen proclamation 
"hurt" nobody, and "Daddy liked it/' . . . Cer- 
tainly it served a purpose now, and Peter jumped up. 

"Lord, there's dinner ! " he said. "And I haven't 
begun to dress. My father, by the way, wants to dine 
upstairs. Will you tell them, as you are so much 
more advanced than I, to send up his dinner ? I must 
fly." Peter stood for a moment looking at her. If a 
situation between them had not actually laid hold of 
them, it had thrown a shadow over them, and he 
wanted to get out into sunlight again. 

"Ah, you darling ! " he said with a blend of envy 
and of admiration somewhere gushing up. Envy at 
her immense nobility—he could think of no other word 
for it— and admiration at that shrine of love which 
rose from the ground of her heart. It was so beauti- 
ful an edifice : he despaired of being worthy of it, 
and at times, so he confessed to himself, he wearied of 
its white stainless purity. . . . Somehow this evening 
there seemed to have opened a little crack on its soar- 
ing vault, which he must mend somehow. 

"Give me a kiss, then," he said. 



CHAPTER XI 

Peter, though he often hung a veil over the real work- 
ings and processes of his mind for the benefit and 
admiration of others, before whom he was anxious to 
present a charming appearance, was honest with him- 
self, and found, during the next fortnight, without 
any desire to dissimulate, that he was distinctly grate- 
ful to Silvia's insistence that he should not resign 
his place in the Foreign Office, for, in the present con- 
ditions and environments at Howes, it was certainly 
preferable to spend the solidity of the day in London 
rather than enjoy uninterrupted leisure at home. Even 
then the evenings were full of crashes and crises and 
intolerable ludicrousness. . . . 

His father, who still majestically occupied the state- 
rooms (and showed no indications of vacating them), 
moved along peaks and summits of the ridiculous, 
which his son really believed had never before been 
trodden by foot of man. That he was enjoying him- 
self immensely Peter made no doubt whatever, living 
as he did on the heights of egoism, and free to in- 
dulge in the most extravagant exhibition of it. His 
standard (victoriously raised), his principle, his deter- 
mination (announced with magnificent gestures once 
if not more, during the evening) was that he would 
remain rock-like and immovable, fulfilling the destiny 
of his own supreme will, whatever bombs Fate might 
choose to drop on him. That his whole soul was 
bitter with remorse for his failings and failures he 
did not deny. He should not have isolated himself, 

227 



228 Peter 

as he had done, in the supernal realms of Art; he 
should have remembered that he was a man as 
well as an artist, and had a wife as well as the 
celestial mistress of his soul. He ought to have been 
kinder, more tender, more indulgent to the frailty 
and the weakness of his Carissima. But remorse (so 
waved his standard), if it was the genuine article, 
must express itself not in idle repinings, but in 
a manful facing of the consequences of past error. 
His remorse (the right kind of remorse) did not 
weaken, but strengthened a man to go forward. He 
must not lose touch with the joy of life ; he must 
not get from the severe spanking that remorse gave 
him only a smarting and a humiliation of the flesh. 
He must draw the lesson from his punishment, and 
proceed more tenderly but not less sublimely than 
before. . . . 

It must not be supposed that Mr. Mainwaring used 
such expressions as "spanking" in actual speech, or 
that the ironical account of his sublimity, as given 
above, was verbally his. But such, anyhow, was the 
manner in which these great tirades, delivered to 
Peter when he went up to see his father on his daily 
arrival at Howes an hour or so before dinner, im- 
pressed themselves on his mind. Usually there was 
a note for him on the table in the hall, which ran 
something like this : 

"My Peter,— I am very low and despondent to- 
night, and I do not know if I can face a sociable even- 
ing. Come up to see me, my dear, for you are the 
only link which is left to me of those happy — far too 
happy — years, and see if your sweet spirit will not, 
like David playing before Saul, exorcise the demons 
of remorse and regret which shriek and gibber round 



Peter 229 

the head of your unhappy father. I have tried so 
hard— ah, so hard — all day not to make myself a 
burden and a shadow to your dear ones, but I fear I 
have acquitted myself very ill. Come and cheer me 
up, Peter." 

Peter, to do him justice, always went, and in the 
majesty of egoism, his father, without any encourage- 
ment at all, would talk himself into a splendid 
courage. At whatever cost to himself, at whatever 
effort from worn and debilitated nerve-strings, he 
would show that there was some music yet left in his. 
He would twang his mental guitar, and if the frayed 
string snapped— well, his lawyer would know that his 
affairs were in order. . . . Then, sooner or later, to 
Peter's great relief, the sonorous dressing-bell would 
ring, and he could go and have his bath. As likely 
as not, before he definitely quitted the room, his father 
would allude to the magnificent 1896 port which 
formed so admirable a feature in the cellars of 
Howes. 

Usually after the bath he went in to see Silvia, 
but, for some reason or other, the spontaneous non- 
sense of these interviews had wilted and withered. 
Silvia, so it seemed to him, held herself in reserve, 
waiting for something from him. Peter would give 
an account of his day, of his talk with his father, 
and still Silvia seemed to wait. She was overbrim- 
ming with all that she ever iiad for him, but, to his 
perception, what she waited for was for him to turn 
the winch of the sluice. 

Once there had been a really outrageous scene 
wilii his father, in which, after tears, Mr. Mainwaring 
had slid from his chair with a groan, and lay, an 
ignoble heap, upon the floor. Peter on this occasion 



230 Peter 

had given Silvia a perfectly colourless precis of the 
degrading exhibition, and had endorsed it, brought 
collateral evidence to bear on its nature by the pro- 
duction of one of the notes which usually awaited 
him on his return from town. He had done that in 
some sort of self-justification : Silvia could not fail 
to realize how trying, from their very unreality, such 
scenes were for him, and he gave her also every even- 
ing a very respectable specimen of his patience with 
his father. And yet he felt that Silvia was not 
waiting for that; it was not how he behaved, how 
patient and cordial he schooled himself to be, that she 
waited for. He was patient, he was cordial, and 
though she often gave him a little sympathetic and 
appreciative word for his reward, it was no more than 
a sugar-plum to a child, something to keep it quiet. 
What she wanted, what she longed for the evidence 
of, was an internal loving driving force which turned 
the wheels of the machinery of his impeccable con- 
duct, and that he had not got for her. He spun the 
wheels with a clever finger from outside. 

But usually these wheels went round merrily 
enough. He reported his father's despondence; he, 
ever so lightly, alluded to the fact that he had cheered 
him up, and his estimate was justified, for Mr. Main- 
waring, on the crashing of the dinner-bell in the turret, 
would sometimes announce his progress from the 
state-rooms by a jubilant yodelling, and would remain 
for the greater part of dinner in a state of high elation. 
True, he would have a spasm now and then : if he hap- 
pened to have his attention called to Mrs. Wardour's 
pearls, he might for a brief dramatic moment cover 
his eyes and say in a choked voice : "My Carissima 
had some wonderful pearls"; but then, true to his 
manly determination, he would dismiss the 



Peter 231 

miserable association and become master of his 
soul again. 

Peter usually had a second dose of his father's 
Promethean attitude later in the evening, after Silvia 
and her mother had gone upstairs. 

"Your treasure, your pearl of great price, your 
angel! " he would ejaculate. "Her sweet pity, her 
divine compassion ! It is she — she and you — who 
reconcile me to life. But I must not bask too long in 
that healing effulgence. I must get back to Lonilon ; 
I must reinstate myself in my desolate house, and face 
it all, face it all. I must stand on my own feet again, 
poor sordid cripple that I am." Then perhaps, if 
quite overcome, he would bury his face in his hands, 
but much more usually he would stand up, throw out 
his chest, breathe deeply, and draw himself up to the 
last half-inch of his considerable stature. 

"Work ! " he said. "Work is the tonic that God 
puts in the reach of all of us. Remember that, my 
Peter, if grief and sorrow ever visit you. But then 
you have by your side the sweetest, the most sym- 
pathetic woman ever sent to enlighten the gloom of 
this transitory world. So had I, by God, so had I, 
and I did not recognize her preciousness and her 
fragility. . . . Enough ! Silvia ! Did you notice 
her exquisite love towards me at dinner to-day, when 
for a moment the sight of Mrs. Wardour's pearls un- 
manned me ?" 

Peter on this occasion was lashed to the extremity 
of irritation. 

"I don't think I did," he said. "I only remember 
that she instantly asked you if you would have some 
more j^heasant." 

He tried to do better than that. Certainly there 
was no use in saying that sort of thing. 



232 



Peter 



"But she looked at you, father," he added hastily. 
"You felt what she was feeling. Was that it? " 

His father clasped his hands. 

"A divine beam came to me," he said. "A 
message of consolation. It made me live again. 
Surely you saw its effect on me ? " 

Peter, at such moments, longed for his wet woods. 
He wanted to be by himself, or, at any rate, with 
someone who could understand and enjoy this stupen- 
dous farce. If only Nellie, for instance, had been 
sitting there with him, how would their eyes have 
telegraphed their mental ecstasy. Silvia, at this same 
moment, would not have served the purpose; she might 
see how ridiculous his father was being, but below 
her perception of that, which might easily have made 
her telegraph and smile to him, there would have 
been that huge, unspeakable tenderness which, when 
you wanted an answering perception of farce, would 
have spoiled it all. That universal embracing 
compassion required salting. Before now she had 
seen, and communicated to him, her sense of his 
father's absurdities, but now, when he turned trouble 
into an empty arena for his posturing, her sense of 
comedy completely failed her. Or, if she still 
possessed it, Peter could not get at it. With a 
flare of intuition he guessed that it might be un- 
locked to him, if only he could use the right key 
to it. But the key was compassion, and it was 
he for whom she waited to thrust it into the wards. 
If only he loved they could laugh at anything to- 
gether; without that the gate was locked. 

Well, if it was locked, he would enjoy his im- 
perfect vision of what lay within. 

"Yes, I saw its effect on you," he said, trying 
to imagine that Nellie was here, enthralled and wide- 



1 



Peter 233 

eyed. "You amused us all very much immediately 
afterwards by making that lovely sea-sick passenger 
out of an orange. Perfectly screaming ! " 

His father thrust his hands through his hair; it 
stood up like some glorious grey mane. 

"Yes, yes," he said, "I made an effort. I won't, 
no, my Peter, I will not lose sight of the dear 
gaieties of life. God knows what it costs me ! 
Even after a little thing like that I was more than 
ever plunged in the gulf of despondency. I know 
how wrong I am. I must never relax my efforts; I 
mustn't give myself time to think. Work and 
laughter — those divine twins." 

He poured himself out a glass of whisky and 
soda, and chose a cigar with proper care. 

"A word or two on practical affairs," he said, 
"before I go to my lonely and wakeful bed. You 
will be here, I understand, till early in December. 
By then I trust (I insist, indeed, on thus trusting) 
that I shall have schooled myself to face the desola- 
tion of my home (what once was home) again. May 
I, do you think, ask to remain here till then ? I 
look upon your beautiful Howes as my hospital. 
Soon, still maimed, still limping, still in the blue 
uniform of pain, I know that I must, indeed I insist 
on it, face the world again and make the best of 
my shattered existence. But till then ? Silvia, 
whom I consulted with regard to this matter, told me 
that you were the master of Howes, and suggested 
my speaking to you about it." 

Peter saw an opportunity. His father, it is true, 
was an odious infliction of an evening, but there was 
something to be gained by his own eager tolerance 
of that, which quite outweighed the inconvenience. 
But he must do more than tolerate; he must welcome; 



234 



Peter 



and Silvia — here was the point — must know how 
splendidly he had risen to it. Before he answered 
he made himself remember what the intonation of 
cordiality sounded like. 

"But that is perfectly charming of you," he said. 
"It's lovely that the suggestion came from your- 
self. She and I may be away for a day or two in 
November " 

Peter did not quite know what arrangement he 
was to suggest about such days when he and Silvia 
would be away, for instance, on their visit to Nellie. 
He was spared the trouble of formulating one by his 
father, who gave a great gesticulation, admirably 
expressive of courage. 

"I will go home — home for those days," he said. 
" I will, with set teeth and firm mouth, begin to 
grow accustomed to my desolation and loneliness. 
I will learn to bear it, taking in long draughts the 
inestimable tonic of work. Peter, Peter " — and the 
voice shook — "when will my Carissima come back 
tome?" 

He was unmanned only for a moment, and his 
mastery of himself returned to him. 

"Was ever a stricken man so blessed by the 
love of his children?" he exclaimed. "God bless 
you, my Peter. You are going to bed ? " 

The abruiDlness of this benediction convinced 
Peter that his father had got what he wanted and 
had no more use for him that night, and he went 
along the corridor to his room and Silvia's. His 
first impulse was to tell her how cordially, for his 
part, he had welcomed his father's suggestion; the 
second and wiser one was to say nothing about it. 
Mr. Mainwaring was sure to make the most of it 
to her; he might even attribute to it that force from 



Peter 235 

inside which turned the wheels. Yes, Silvia should 
learn about it like that. 

He let himself very quietly into liis room, and 
undressed and went to bed without going in to say 
good night to her. If he went in to see her, it 
was more than likely that she would ask him whether 
his father had alluded to the question of his remain- 
ing with them, and he wanted the information con- 
cerning that to be conveyed to her by one who would 
give him, Peter felt sure, a florid testimonial for 
cordiality. He had passed, moreover, a monotonous 
and fatiguing evening, and wanted not to talk at 
all, but to sleep. His father had been slightly more 
dreadful than usual, Mrs. Wardour had more than 
ever been non-existent, and Silvia, so it struck him, 
had been waiting, had been watching him, not, it 
need hardly be said, with fixed eye or stealthy 
glances, but with some steady psychical alertness 
that was incessantly poised on him. Without look- 
ing at him, without any talking to him or talking 
at him, he had felt all evening — this, perhaps, had 
been the most fatiguing part of it — that she had 
scarcely been conscious of anyone else but him. 
Though her eyes were on the cards, and she ruefully 
bemoaned that the goddess of piquet, whom she 
jointly invoked with Peter's father, had been so 
niggardly in her favours towards herself, it had been 
no more than an automaton that was thus victimized 
to the extent of three lost games, including a rubicon. 

Peter, as he curled himself up in bed, let his 
mind stray drowsily over such details of the evening, 
coming back always to this impression of Silvia's 
watching him. Whenever he spoke to her of his 
father she watched him — seldom with her eyes — m 
just that manner. By aid of his quick perception. 



236 Peter 

that felt rather than reasoned, Peter had, he was 
sure, arrived at what she watched for then. She 
watched for some token, she listened for some in- 
flection that indicated tenderness, sympathy, affection 
towards his father. She could not have been watching 
for any such token as that for herself, for he gave her 
those ; she knew they were hers. But he had never 
felt more certain about anything in these dim, vague 
regions of sentiment and desire than that she wanted 
something more than that which he gave her, and 
a certain impatience gained on him. What, after 
all, had been her own first words to him when he 
asked her to marry him ? Had not her face flamed 
with the light of the beacon that welcomed him as 
she whispered that all she asked was to be allowed 
to love him ? At the time that had seemed to him 
a divine intuition, one that, in a word, precisely de- 
fined her way of love and his. 

There came at that door of his bedroom which 
led to her room the lightest, most barely audible of 
touches; he was scarcely sure whether he had heard 
it or not. But he did not reply, for either it was 
imaginary, and needed no answer, or it was Silvia 
come to see whether he was in his room yet. In 
that case, even more, an answer must be withheld, 
for after this evening of strain and high pressure 
all he wanted was to be let alone and to go to sleep. 
But underneath his eyelids, not quite closed, he 
watched the door which was opposite his bed and 
was dimly visible in the glimmer of starshine that 
came in through the open and uncurtained window. 

Round the edge of the door, though he had heard 
no click of a turned handle, there came a thin "L " 
of light, which broadened until, in the shaft of it, 
appeared Silvia. She held a lighted candle, which 



Peter 237 

she screened from his bed with her hand, the fingers 
of which, close to the flame, were of a warm trans- 
parent crimson. Apparently his clothes, tumbled 
together on a chair, first caught her notice, and from 
them she looked straight towards the bed. Her face 
was vividly illuminated, and when she saw him 
lying there with shut eyes, some radiant, ineffable 
tenderness came like dawn over it. Never had he 
seen so selfless and wonderful a beam; she might 
have been some discarnate spirit permitted to look 
upon him who had been the love of her earthly heart. 
That, then, was how she regarded him when she 
thought she was unobserved by him ; he meant that 
to her. Next moment, round the half-open door, the 
light narrowed and disappeared, and he was left 
again in the glimmering dusk. Never had he seen 
with half such certainty and directness what Silvia 
was. She had thought he was asleep, and so she 
could let free her very soul. Neither by day nor 
night had she come to him quite like that; all other 
emotions, amusement, interest, sympathy, desire, 
passion even, had concealed rather than revealed her. 
They had been webs and veils across the sanctuary, 
illumined, indeed, by the light that burned there, 
but still hiding it. Now for one moment Peter had 
seen her with those veils drawn aside, the holy place 
of her, and her love was the light of it. 

He was sitting next afternoon in his room at 
the Foreign Office, rather harassed by the necessity 
of being polite to everybody. The clerk senior to 
him in his department was on leave, and it happened 
that an extra King's messenger had to be sent off 
to Rome, carrying a new cipher. That was a per- 
fectly usual incident in Peter's routine, but this 

p 



238 Peter 

messenger was fresh to his job, and had been in 
and out of the office all day, fussy and pompous, 
wishing to be assured that he had got reserved com- 
partments and a private cabin. There was a strike 
on the French railways going on, and Peter had 
told him that it might be impossible to secure a 
compartment farther than Paris, but all that could 
be done had been done, and, anyhow, he would find 
a seat reserved for him. Usually Peter rather en- 
joyed applying soothing ointments to agitated people, 
and his skill as a manipulator of pompous and fussy 
persons was so effective that by common consent (he 
quite agreeing) tiresome officials were often turned 
on to him for emollient manipulation. But to-day 
the telephonings and the interruptions and the pom- 
posity and the prime necessity of remaining dulcetly 
apologetic for inconveniences which were wholly out 
of his control had got on his nerves, and when 
finally, in answer to inquiries, it had been deter- 
mined that the King's messenger had better, in 
order to secure a journey probably unvexed by strikes, 
go round by Southampton and Havre, Peter had 
been treated to some very acid talk. Of course, the 
man was an ass, no one knew that better than he, 
and it was ludicrous to be infuriated by an ass. 

About six then, that afternoon, Peter had done all 
that patience and polite inquiries from French station- 
masters could do for the ass, and with undiminished 
civility he had wished him a pleasant journey. In 
half an hour, or, if he chose, now, since there was 
nothing more that could detain him, he could tele- 
phone for his car and slide down to Howes. He 
did not in the least look forward to his evening there; 
it would assuredly be an evening of as high a pressure 
as the day had been. His father would certainly 



Peter 239 

be voluble with blessings and gratitude, and Peter 
hated the prospect of these benedictions. Installed 
as Mr. Mainwaring now was for a couple of 
months more, he would surely develop the idea 
which he had before now outlined, when he assured 
Peter that during his daily absences in London he 
himself would act as his vice-regent. He had already 
caused the luncheon hour to be changed in order 
that he might get an extra half-hour of work into the 
morning; already he had got the estate carpenter to 
"knock him up " an immense frame in which he 
could see his second cartoon, now dismally ap- 
proaching completion, more satisfactorily displayed. 
And then Peter thought of that short candle-lit 
glimpse last night, when Silvia had looked into his 
room. 

For one moment the remembrance of that 
magnetically beckoned him; the next, as by some 
inexplicable reversal, the needle of that true com- 
pass swung round and pointed in the opposite 
direction. It no longer gave him his course back 
to Howes; it steadily pointed away from Howes. 
But even as he told himself how inexplicable that 
was, his subconscious self gave a convincing ex- 
planation of it. To hurry back to Silvia and her 
watch of love, to feel that there were veils which 
only he could draw aside, but which, when drawn 
aside by God knew what aspirations towards a light 
he did not comprehend, would reveal to him again 
the glory of her sanctuary, was a task for saints and 
lovers. He would rise to it in time, he would learn 
to be worthy of an ideal that somehow, in spite of 
its white heat, had the chill of asceticism frosting 
it; but just now he longed for ordinary, unreflective, 
unstruggling human gaiety. She — Silvia — lived 



240 



Peter 



naturally on those heights, just as his father lived 
in the cloud — or the shroud, maybe — of his own 
inimitable egoism. 

He was tidying his table, intending to ring 
up very soon for his motor to take him back to 
Howes. If he started in half an hour he would 
have time to see his father before dressing, and to 
talk to Silvia between bath and dinner. Then he 
changed his mind and determined not to ring for 
his motor at all. Instead he would walk back across 
the park — no, not across the park, but up Whitehall, 
and so by streets all the way to Piccadilly. He 
would have time to get a cup of tea at home and 
start from there immediately afterwards. The rather 
longer route by the streets was infinitely preferable. 
There would be crowds of ordinary human beings 
all the way, people not monstrous on the one hand, 
so far as he knew, from swollen egoism, nor 
irradiated by idealisms which made you pant in a 
rarefied atmosphere. There would be just masses 
of people, people gay, people sulky, ugly people, 
pretty people, but above all ordinary people. 

At the moment when his tidying was complete, 
and his table ready for his next day's work, the 
telephone on his table tinkled. He resigned him- 
self to more inquiries from the incomparable ass, 
but they could not last long, for his train left 
Waterloo within a manageable number of minutes. 
But in answer to his intimation that it was indeed 
he who waited at the end of the wire, there did not 
come the voice which he had listened to so often that 
day, but one quite other and equally recognizable. 

"Nellie?" he said. 

"Yes, my dear. How lucky I am to catch you. 
You're in town, then ? " 



Peter 241 

"At the moment," said he. "I'm going back 
to Howes in half an hour." 

"Oh, what a pity! You won't be in town to- 
night, then? " 

"Why?" asked Peter. 

"Only that Philip and I were going to the play, 
and Philip's got a cold and thinks it wiser not to 
go out. I thought perhaps — just a lovely off- 
chance— that you might come instead. Oh, do, 
Peter." 

"Hold on. Wait half a minute," said he. 

He put the receiver down on the table, seating 
himself on the edge of it. Here in excelsis was 
precisely what he longed for. Dinner, a theatre, a 
talk, all with Nellie, who represented to him (though 
in excelsis) the ideal epitome of the world of 
humanity. He had thought a moment before, with 
the sense of anticipating a "break," the mere walk 
through crowded streets. She would in this pro- 
gramme give him all that intimately, she would give 
also the sense of intimate friendship without effort. 
They would jabber and enjoy 

He took up the receiver again. 

"Yes, all quite easy," he said. "It's late already, 
and when it's late and I can't get down there, I 
can always sleep in town. Silvia and I settled that 
when I began work again in this doleful office." 

Nellie appeared to laugh at that. 

"Silvia evidently spoils you," she said. "But 
it's too lovely to catch you like this. Will you 
dine with me at the Ritz? Seven? The play — can't 
remember what it is — begins at eight. vSo we shan't 
have to hurry, and can sit with our elbows on the 
table for a bit and talk." 

"Sit with what?" asked he. 



242 



Peter 



"Elbows on the table," said Nellie with elaborate 
distinctness. "No hurry — talk." 

This time he laughed. 

"Oh, don't let's go to the Ritz," he said. "Come 
and have elbows at my great house. I'll go back 
there now and order dinner. It'll probably be beastly, 
but it's more private. Shall we do that ? " 

"Much nicer," said Nellie. "How are you, 
Peter? Oh, I can ask that afterwards. Seven, then. 
Wardour House." 

"Yes. Give condolences to Philip. Not con- 
gratulations, mind." 

Peter hung up the receiver, and then took it 
off again at once in order not to give himself 
time to think. There would be clamour and argu- 
ment if he thought, and he wanted nothing of that 
sort. Ten minutes afterwards he left the office, 
having telephoned to the Jackdaw that he was de- 
tained here and would be obliged to sleep in 
London. 

Two months had passed since Nellie and he had 
met, but whatever frontier-change of limitation or 
expansion had been decreed for each severally 
since then, their meeting to-night had the power to 
put such aside, and they hailed each other with- 
out the embarrascnient of altered circumstances. 
Their compasses were rigidly in accord, and as the 
excellent impromptu meal proceeded the talk sailed 
towards northern lights, in the direction of their 
steadfast needles. Soon they were sitting (at the 
elbow stage) with their coffee and cigar':ittes, with a 
quiet quarter of an hour in front of them before thev 
need start. 

"Motor at ten minutes to eight," said Peter to 



Peter 



243 



the servant, glancing at the clock. "Tell me when 
it comes round." 

He shifted his chair a little sideways towards her. 

"Oh, this is jolly," he said, "for we've gone on 

just where we left off. You're just the same. It's 

two months, you know, since I set eyes on you. Do 

say you've missed me." 

"What else did you expect?" said she. "Mar- 
riage isn't Oh, Peter, what's the name of that 

river ? " 

"Thames? " asked Peter. 

"No, the forgetting one — Lethe. Because I'm 
married to Philip I don't forget — other people. But 
tell me, has Silvia been giving you Lethe to drink 
instead of early morning tea?" 

"Not a drop. She's given me everything else in 
the world." 

Nellie still had that habit of plaiting her fingers 
together. 

"You ought to be very grateful to me," she said. 
"It was I, after all, one night at mv mother's flat, do 
you remember ? " 

"I was Jacob that night," remarked Peter. 
Nellie frowned. 

"Don't tell me how," she said. "I want to see if 
we think side by side still. Ah, I've got it ! Philip 
was Esau — isn't that clever? — and I told him I was 
tired, and so you supplanted him." 
"Right. Get on," said Peter, 
"Yes, about your gratitude. It was that night 
that I told you to ask Silvia to marry you. Didn't 
I?" 

"Yes. Thank you, dear Mrs. Beaumont," said 
Peter effusively. "So good of you to tell me." 
"It was a good idea, wasn't it?" 



244 



Peter 



Nellie's mind stiffened itself to "attention " at that 
moment. Before, it had been standing very much at 
ease. 

"The best idea in the world," he said. 

"I'm awfully glad," said she. "What you say, 
too, makes it all the more delightful of you to stop 
up in town to-night, instead of going back to her." 

Though up till now they had fitted into each other 
with all the old familiar smoothness, it appeared now, 
when they got near, in their conversation, to what 
had happened to each of them (not, so he still felt, 
altering them, but putting them into new cases) that 
there w^as fresh ground to be broken ; hitherto they 
had only picked their way over the old ground. Nellie 
felt this even more imperatively than he. They had 
got to run the plough (so why not at once on this 
admirable opportunity ?) through the unturned land. 
. . . Peter's servant had already appeared in the 
doorway, announcing the motor, and she had noticed 
that, but Peter had not. She concluded from that, 
that he, easy as their intercourse had up till now been, 
was feeling, some pre-occupation. His hesitation in 
answering her last acknowledgment of his amiability 
in remaining in town instead of going back to Howes, 
confirmed that impression. Then, before the pause 
was unduly prolonged, so as to amount to embarrass- 
ment, she put her word in again. 

"I appreciate that," she said, "because it shows 
that the new ties haven't demolished the old. And on 
my side I admit, far more definitely than you, that 
if my poor Philip must have a cold, I am glad — ever 
so glad — it visited him to-night, so as to give me an 
evening with you." 

She swept her plate and coffee-cup aside, to make 
room for an advance of the elbows. 



Peter 245 

"Oh, my dear, I have missed you," she said. 
"Naturally, however perfectly Philip is himself, he 
couldn't be you. My mind— perhaps you haven't 
noticed it — has wonderfully improved these last 
months — I am learning Italian, and we read Dante — 
but it needs just a little holiday. And I've found out 
such a lot of things about Philip, and all of them are 

good, worse luck." 

Peter looked up at her with that liquid seriousness 
of eye which to her meant that he was walking in the 
wet woods. 

"Oh, poor thing," he said. 

For some reason which she did not choose to in- 
vestigate, Nellie found that remark immensely encour- 
aging. Certainly, a few minutes ago, she had tried 
to provoke him to talk — really talk, but the ironical 
perfection of his condolence, which, so she felt, saw 
all round what she was saying, made her more than 
acquiesce in his listening instead of talking. She felt 
sure that this beloved Peter understood 

"I knew you would sympathize," she said; "but 
there's my tragic prosperity. My Philip isn't lazy 
or spiteful and inconsiderate or selfish, or bad- 
tempered or greedy or — or anything at all, except that 
he knows so much about birds. He has taught me a 
lot, and he's quite absolutely devoted to me. He 
never liked anybody so much as me. But do you 
know, darling, to a woman, at any rate, having a 
good, nice man quite devoted to her, as far as his 
affections go, gives her, once in a way, a little sense 
of strain. She has to find her hymn-book and sing." 

"I'll lend you mine," said Peter, speaking without 
thought, but only by instinct. 

"Tiianks. When will you wanl it back? No; I 
won't borrow it. But the fact is, thai an undilutedly 



246 Peter 

good man wants something to make him fizz. You 
must have humour or a vile temper or cynicism or 
greediness, or something to make you drinkable. 
. . . My dear, what am I saying? " 

The clock on the mantelpiece struck the hour at 
which the curtain of their play rose; but the chimes, 
eight sonorous thumps, preceded by the quarters, 
penetrated Peter's brain no more than the announce- 
ment of the motor ten minutes ago had done. 

"You're talking awfully good sense," he said. "At 
any rate, you're talking a language I can understand. 
You always did ; we quarrelled and wrangled, but 
we were on the same plane." 

"So we are now, thank heaven," said she. "It's 
time you gave me some news, you know." 

Whatever pre-occupation it was that held Peter, 
he seemed to shake himself free of it. 

"Yes, I've got news all right," he said. "Domes- 
tic tragedy." 

"Oh, my dear, what?" asked she. "Nothing 
awful ? " 

He seemed to know for certain that she was figur- 
ing in her mind something about himself and Silvia. 
So, in the upshot, the sequel, the development, he 
was. But he tested her, so to speak, over the domestic 
tragedy itself. 

"My mother has run away from home," he began. 

Nellie did not laugh. She only bit her tongue 
with firm purpose. 

"Dear Peter! " she said, when she released it. 

"She has simply gone," he said. "Round about 
ten days ago, when father arrived to study his first 
cartoon, with a view to the rest of the series — Mrs. 
Wardour bought it, by the way — gracious me, what a 
lot we have got to talk about." 



Peter 247 

"Never mind the cartoon," said Nellie with 
thrilled interest. "Get on with the tragedy." 

Quite uncontrollably Peter's mouth began to 
lengthen itself. He did not quite smile, but the 
promise of a smile was there. 

"Tragedy, then," he said. "My mother sent me 
a long— oh, such a priceless letter, to say that when 
my father came home again — his home, I mean — he 
would find she had gone." 

The Dryad, the gay conscienceless Nellie, could 
not, in spite of her improved mind, quite contain 
herself. 

"But your mother? " she asked. "At her age? 
How absolutely wonderful of her ! Do you know 
who he is ? " 

Peter tried not to laugh, and completely failed in 
that dutiful endeavour. She could but follow his 
lead, and the two, drawing psychically nearer to each 
other every moment, abandoned themselves, just for 
natural relief, to this irrepressible mirth. 

"You are such a damned fool, Nellie," he said at 
length. "Do listen: don't be funny. It's quite 
different." 

"'Pologies," said she, rather shakily. 

"It wasn't anything so romantic, but it was just 
as human," said Peter. "You know how my mother 
was hammered into herself — that phrase came in her 
letter, by the way : it's not original." 

"But I never guessed there was anything to 
hammer," said Nellie. 

"Nor did I; at least, I only half guessed. But 
there was. A breaking point came, and she couldn't 
stick my father any longer. She has just gone away. 
Do you remember how she used always to be looking 
up hotels in railway guides?" 



248 Peter 

" 1 remember that most of all," said she. "Well ? " 

"She's gone to one of them. She's just gone away 
to be free, not to lead somebody else's life any more. 
When she has got a good breath of air, she may, 
apparently, come back. But she doesn't promise." 

Nellie had grown quite serious again. 

"That's even more wonderful of her," she said. 
"She just went away because she wanted to be her- 
self. My dear, what a mother ! And waiting till 
you were married ! And your father? Go on." 

This time Peter's mouth strayed beyond the limits 
of mere reflective meditation, and smiled broadly. 

"He has discovered, to his complete satisfaction, 
why she left him," he said. "He knows — as if 
Gabriel had told him — that his tremendous person- 
ality, his devotion to Art, all that sort of thing, was 
too much for h^r. He reproaches himself bitterly — 
and oh, my dear, how he enjoys it — with having failed 
to realize the frailty — not moral — the weakness, the 
ordinariness of other people. She was scorched in 
his magnificent flames, and escaped from that furnace 
with her life." 

"But how lovely for him ! " said Nellie. "Lovely 
for her, too. But why tragedy ? You said it was a 
tragedy ? " 

His whole body gave a jubilant jerk. If he had 
been standing up he must have jumped. 

"Ah, you do see that, don't you ? " he cried. "I 
just rejoice in her ! At least, I would " 

Nellie divined perfectly well that "if Silvia under- 
stood" really completed the sentence. But if Peter 
wished, for the present anyhow, to leave that un- 
spoken, loyalty to their comradeship prevented her 
from suggesting it. Another motive, not less potent 
than that, dictated her silence on the point, for she 



Peter 



249 



infinitely preferred that he should volunteer some 
such information concerning himself and Silvia than 
that she should give away her knowledge of it. Cer- 
tainly she longed to know in what real relation he and 
Silvia stood to each other, but it would be a tactical 
error (tactical was too businesslike) to let him know 
that his incomplete sentence gave her so certain a 
hint. 

"I see," she said quickly. "You would rejoice 
in her if it wasn't for your father." 

Until the two ultimate words of that were spoken 
Peter's eyes had been bright and expectant. He 
evidently waited for the termination which she had 
refused to utter. When her sentence was complete 
she saw, unmistakably again, that his eyes accepted 
and acquiesced in her conclusion. 

"Quite," he said in a level voice. "So for the 
present my father is consumed with remorse, and 
is occupying the state-rooms — you've never seen 
them ; gorgeous tapestry and Lincrusta Walton 
ceilings — till we come up to town. He is painting 
away at the series of cartoons." 

Peter poured himself out a second cup of coffee 
from the tray that had been left between them half 
an hour or more before. 

"Aunt Joanna!" he said. "You never heard 
such a plot or saw such a person. She's my mother- 
in-law's sister, you know. She's * got at ' my 
father, there's no doubt of it, and she's secured all 
the cartoons by bribery and corruption, instead of 
their being painted for the gallery — the Art Gallery, 
1 should say — at Howes. Aunt Eleanor — she's my 
father-in-law's brother's wife — has secured the 
sketches for the cartoons. They've been to Howes 
once, but my father quite dominated them. That 



250 Peter 

was before the crash, so you may judge how much 
more, with that added string of tragedy to his bow, 
he would dominate them now. They are more price- 
less than words can say. There will be a family 
gathering at Christmas, I understand. Nellie, do 
come. We would have such a gorgeous time if you 
were there. We would sit quiet and notice and 
drink in, and then we would sit over the fire together 
when Uncle John and Uncle Abe " 

"Uncle Abe? " asked Nellie in an awed voice. 

"Yes. Sir Abel Darley, K.B.E., husband to 
Aunt Joanna. Don't interrupt. When Uncle John 
and Uncle Abe and Aunt Eleanor and Aunt Joanna 
have gone, not staggering at all, but * full up,' to 
bed, we would have such holy convocations about 
them." 

Nellie had inferred a little more information about 
Silvia by this time, but what occupied her most was 
not what she was inferring about anybody. It was 
quite enough for her to realize that for the duration, 
anyhow, of the first act of the play which they had 
meant to see she was in the old full enjoyment of 
Peter again. They had stepped back into the candour 
and closeness of their friendship, and though he 
had not, as she had, confessed that he was having 
a holiday, it was transparently clear that this was 
the case. But just there the candour was clouded; 
she guessed that, even as she was having a holiday 
from Philip (God bless him), so Peter was having 
a holiday from Silvia. Only — here was the differ- 
ence — he did not or would not own up to that. Even 
in the projected scheme of Christmas-hilariousness 
at the uncles and aunts, Silvia did not appear as ever 
so faintly ridiculous, or as ever so faintly partaking 
in the midnight merriment. Throughout their talk 



Peter 251 

Peter had kept her hermetically apart. Once or 
twice, Nellie conjectured, he had pointedly enough 
refrained from introducing her. She could visualize 
the rest of them down at Howes, but the part that 
to Peter Silvia played was mysteriously shrouded. 
When you were laughing at everybody all round, 
why should you except one person from the compli- 
ment of amused criticism ? It was clear that Silvia 
had no applause for the comedy of Peter's parents, 
for he had so cordially welcomed her — Nellie's — 
appreciation of it. What, then, was Silvia's line, 
what was her relation, above all, to Peter? 

She decided not to burn all her boats, but to set 
fire to just a little one. 

"Won't Silvia enjoy them too? " she asked. 

"Can't tell," said Peter. 

If there was a lapse of loyalty there, if, in a 
minor degree, there was a sense conveyed of dis- 
appointment, though of accepting that disappoint- 
ment without comment, Nellie decided that Peter 
was not intending to enlarge on it. She still (after 
that small burned boat) clung to the chance of Peter's 
volunteering information, but clearly she would not 
get that just now; and another heavy booming of 
quarters from the clock gave her an excellent oppor- 
tunity of abandoning that which, after all, had never 
been a discussion on her own initiative. 

"Good gracious, it's a quarter to nine," she said. 
"You wretch, Peter! We've missed one act, if not 
two." 

"Let's miss them all," he said, "and have an 
evening." 

That made her pause, but only for a moment. 
Peter had consistently shied away from that one topic 
she wanted to hear about, and a break of some sort 



252 



Peter 



was much more likely to produce in him the pressure 
that would eventually "go pop" than if they re- 
mained just sizzling here. 

"But we absolutely must go," she said. "Philip 
will ask me about the play, and I couldn't tell him 
that you and I simply sat talking till it was over." 

"Why not? " said Peter. 

"Because it isn't done. My dear, you and I 
have signed on to the conventionalities of life. Come 
along. A bore, but there it is. Besides, how would 
you account for your evening to Silvia? Dining 
at seven, you know. That requires a theatrical ex- 
planation." 

"Oh, don't be vulgar," said Peter. "As if Silvia 
wouldn't delight in my spending an evening with 
you." 

"I know that," said she. "Don't lose your sense 
of humour, Peter. It was a mild kind of joke." 

"Come on, then," he said. "And as for its being 
my fault that we're so late " 

The second act was drawing to an end when 
they stole into their box. On the stage there was 
proceeding the most elementary of muddles, to which 
it was not in the least worth while to devote any 
ingenuity. It was clear at the first glance that these 
people who pretended to be servants were really 
landed gentry, and that just before the end the Earl 
(who had taken the house) would propose to the cook 
and be violently accepted. Psychologically they pre- 
sented no point of interest. Far more engrossing 
to Nellie was the fact that she had got Peter with 
her, and the pleasure of that and the general problem 
it propounded was far more absorbing. Marriage had 
certainly quickened her emotional perceptions, and 



Peter 253 

she inferred, from the extraordinary delight that it 
was to be with him again, how much in the interval 
she had missed him. She had no reason to com- 
plain, either, of the welcome he had given her, but 
it was manifest (how she could not definitely have 
said) that the quality of that was different from hers 
to him. To his sense, as he had openly stated, they 
had taken up the old attitude, the old intimacy, 
without break, but as she thought over that in the 
few minutes that elapsed before the act was finished, 
she found that, for her part, she did not altogether 
endorse his view. Certainly the old intimacy was 
there, firm and unshaken, but somehow, hovering 
over it, like a mist which to her eyes seemed to be 
luminous with tears, there was some new atmospheric 
condition, sunny and tremulous. 

Peter turned to her as the house sprang into light 
again. 

"Oh, what a waste of time," he said. "We 
should have done much better to have left our elbows 
on the table. We're always doing it too. Do you 
remember the last play at which we met ? That 
time you were with Philip and I with Silvia and 
Mrs. Wardour. Then we had our talk afterwards; 
to-night we had it first. I like the other plan 
best." 

Though Peter had here stated several things with 
which she was in cordial agreement, his tone was not 
in tune with the old footing, the old intimacy. Not 
many minutes ago it had been she who, in opposition 
to his inclination, had insisted on breaking their 
tete-d-tete ; now, with all possible lightness of touch, 
she suggested its resumption. 

"I've seen enough," she said. "I can tell Philip 
all about it. Let's go back, my dear, and have half 

Q 



254 Peter 

an hour's more talk. It was my fault that we broke 
up; but how could I have told that the play would 
have been as silly as this? We shall talk more 
sense in five minutes than they'll put into the whole 
of the next act." 

Peter's eyes were wandering round the house. 
At this moment they were attracted by a feather fan 
violently signalling from a box directly opposite, and 
the general buzz of the theatre was quite distinctly 
pierced with a shrill scream of laughter which came 
from precisely the same direction as the gesticulating 
fan. It was hardly necessary to put up his glasses to 
ascertain the authorship of these phenomena. 

"Mrs. Trentham," he said unerringly, "with the 
usual myrmidons. She has seen us, Nellie. Come 
round and be conventional." 

"Oh, why? " said she. "If she wants to see us 
she can come here, can't she? But she doesn't want 
to see us :' she only wants to be seen." 

She felt that at that moment she was becoming, to 
Peter, part of the general foreground, a prominent 
object in it, but still only part of it. His next words 
confirmed the impression. 

"Oh, come along," he said. "Let's embark on the 
ordinary ridiculous evening. Let's all go back to 
supper with me. Or perhaps there's a dance going 
on. Come round and forage, Nellie. I've been in 
the country for a month, you know. Besides " 

She knew perfectly well what he had left unsaid, 
and answered it. 

"But what does it matter how much she talks? " 
she asked. 

Peter gave her a glance of brilliant surprise. 

"How did you know that that was what I didn't 
say?" he demanded. 



Peter 255 

"Because it's you, of course. Or, if you like, be- 
cause it's me." 

The fan waved more vehemently than ever. 

"We'd better go," said he. 

Nellie got up. In the old days she would almost 
certainly have been able to superimpose her wish over 
his. Now it was the other way about. She seemed 
to be in the grip of some internal necessity of doing 
what he wanted. He had to have his way, not be- 
cause he had become stronger of will, but because she 
had lost her power of self-assertion with regard to 
him. It was not any general debility of will on her 
part ; she had her way with Philip, for instance, with 
an effortless ease. But then she was not part only 
of the foreground to Philip, nor to her was Peter part 
only of the foreground. . . . 



CHAPTER XII 

Peter managed to get away from the Foreign Office 
next day, in the absence of anything to detain him, 
an hour or so before his usual time, and arriving at 
the gilded gates of the battlemented lodge of Howes 
while the warm October twilight still lingered in the 
sky, he got out to walk across the mile of park that 
separated him from the house. His truant evening 
in town last night, the plunge into the froth and noise 
and chatter, had quieted some sort of restlessness, had 
assuaged some sort of hunger, and he was still licking 
the chops of memory, content in a few minutes now 
to "wipe his mouth and go his journey " again. He 
just had the sense of having enjoyed an evening 
out, of having lolled in the old familiar tap-room, 
with the usual habitues, over a pot of beer, while a 
friendly barmaid (this was Mrs. Trentham) made the 
usual jokes over the counter as she served him. Some 
of these seemed to have sounded better by electric 
light, so to speak, than did the timbre of their memory 
in the dusky crimson of the dying day, and he recalled 
the welcome of screams and shrieks she had given to 
Nellie and himself when, at his insistence, they had 
visited her in the box opposite. She threatened when 
she learned they had already dined alone (appearing 
so very late at the play) to send anonymous letters to 
Silvia and Philip. There was a judge in the divorce 
court, she added, who was much devoted to her, and 
would no doubt give her admission for the two cases 
when they came on. The robust wit of Lord Poole 
had ably seconded her. 

256 



Peter 257 

Then, with the exception of Nellie, who had to go 
home to put an end to Philip's solitary evening, they 
had all gone back to Wardour House, where Peter 
promised some sort of scratch supper, and Nellie, 
finding that her husband had already gone to bed, 
joined them again. It had been altogether a pleasant 
ridiculous evening which had made itself in this im- 
promptu and accidental manner an ordinary human 
evening. Just twice there had for Peter been a slight 
check, a signal momentarily against him — once when 
he found that Nellie had left again, very soon after 
her reappearance at supper, without a word to him ; 
once when, without warning, it had entered his mind 
that at just about this time, the night before, he had 
seen his bedroom door open, and Silvia's face look 
in on him as he lay with closed eyelids, feigning 
sleep. That was rather a dreadful thing to have 
done. . . . 

He paused a moment on the bridge that crossed 
the lake, looking at the image of the house duskily 
reflected on its far margin. There was someone 
coming towards him along the path that led by the 
edge of the lake, and joined the road here, and before 
his eyes had time to tell him who it was, she waved 
a hand at him, without the screams, without the 
violent gesticulations by which Mrs. Trentham the 
night before had made herself known. She quickened 
her pace as he answered her signal, and in three 
minutes more he had joined her. 

"The chauffeur told me you had walked from the 
lodge," she said, "so I came to meet you. You're 
early." 

Peter kissed her. 

"I'll go away again, shall I ? " he said. 

"No; as you've come, you can stop," she said. 



258 Peter 

" And what did you do with yourself last night ? Not 
all alone, I hope : you found somebody ? " 

Peter smiled at her. 

"Somebody? " he said. "Crow^ds! First of all, 
Nellie rang up at the F.O., saying that she had been 
going to the play with Philip, but that he had a cold. 
So would I ? We dined at home, and talked so long 
with elbows on the table that we didn't get to the play 
till towards the end of the second act." 

"Ah, that was luck to find Nellie," said Silvia. "I 
was afraid you might have a horrid lonely evening. 
And then?" 

"Then just one act of Downstairs. But one act 
was better than four. There had been railway 
whistles and flags waving from the box opposite." 

"That was Mrs. Trentham," said Silvia. 

"It was. So we swept in her lot — the usual one 
— with Lord Poole, who told me to kiss you for him, 
and they all came to supper at home. Really, that 
plan of keeping the house open was an admirable one. 
It's awful fun ; we talked and smoked and laughed 
until everyone melted away." 

She saw (and loved to see) the brightness and 
briskness of him ; she heard (and loved to hear) his 
cheerfulness and alacrity. 

"Oh, I am glad you had a nice evening," she 
said. "I nearly telephoned to say I was coming up 
to keep you company. But then I thought I had 
better stop and — and try to make myself disagreeable 
at home." 

"Did you succeed, darling? " asked Peter. 

Exactly then it struck Silvia that if Peter had 
dined, had sat "so long " with elbows on the table, 
and had got to the theatre in time for anything at all, 
he could not have been detained very late at the 



Peter 259 

Foreign Office. She instantly drew down, with a 
rush and a rattle, some mental blind in front of that. 
She shut it out : she did not choose to see it. 

" Yes, pretty well," she said. " Mother went to bed 
at ten, anyhow, which is early for her, so I must have 
been fairly successful." 

"Not proved," said Peter. "She may have been 
sleepy. It's a sleepy place, you know." 

"I know," she said. "Two nights ago I came and 
looked into your room, as I had not heard you come 
to bed, and there you were, fast asleep." 

"Snoring, I suppose you'll tell me?" said he. 

This point about detention at the Foreign Office, 
with time yet to dine and confabulate and go to the 
theatre, had struck him too. He had meant it to be 
assumed that he had telephoned to signify the know- 
ledge that he would be detained, and now by this 
stupid inadvertence in giving the account of his even- 
ing, he had shown, for all who cared to think, that 
he had not been detained. But Silvia apparently had 
quite missed that, or she would surely have said some- 
thing to that effect ; as it was, she had passed it by : 
it was out of sight by now, behind another — well, 
another misunderstanding. 

She proceeded to put a further corner between her 
consciousness and it. 

"No, I don't say snoring," she said. "Oh, Peter, 
your father has told me how delightful, how angelic 
you were to him, about his stopping on here till we 
go back to London. It touched him very much." 

She took his arm. "It touched me too, dear," she 
said, " and I must tell you that it furnished a reason 
— one out of several — why I came to meet you. I've 
got a confession " 

Peter guessed what this reason was and what the 



26o Peter 

confession. When he made a plan he was quite 
accustomed to find it work itself out as he had meant. 
But now in the very apex of its success he felt 
ashamed of it. If it came to confessions he could 
make his contribution. He interrupted her. 

"I don't care about that reason," he said. "Tell 
me the other ones instead." 

"The other ones will come afterwards," she said, 
"if you want to hear them then. This has got to 
come first, so don't interrupt, darling. I will tell 
you : it's an affair of conscience." 

"And I'm a conscientious objector," said he. As 
it became more and more certain in his mind what 
Silvia's confession was, the less he wanted to hear 
it, though he himself, patting his own back for his 
cleverness, had contrived the plan of which this was 
the logical sequel. But when he did that he had not 
yet pretended to be asleep one night nor, on another, 
telephoned his detention in town. 

Silvia went on with a gentle but perfectly deter- 
mined firmness. 

"I've misjudged you altogether, Peter," she said, 
"and I've got to confess. For days now — more days 
than I like to number — I have been watching you, 
looking for something I missed in you. I thought 
you were unkind and sarcastic and cynical about your 
father, and what he told me of the manner in which 
you welcomed his proposal to stop on here convinced 
me how utterly I had been wronging you. It was 
owlishly stupid of me to suppose you could be like 
that, and, what was worse, it was brutally unloving." 

Peter laughed. 

"Any more big words coming?" he asked. 
"Owlish, stupid, brutal, unloving? That's you all 
over. Have you murdered anybody? " 



Peter 261 

She shook her head. 

"It's no use makhig Hght of it," she said. "It 
was stupid, it was unloving of me. I thought that 
because you saw certain absurdities and unrealities 
about your father, you saw nothing but them, and 
were impatient and untender with him. Do you for- 
give me for being such a fool ? " 

Peter tried to imagine himself telling her that she 
had been perfectly right throughout : that only a 
piece of trickery on his part, in getting his father to 
give an account of the welcome his proposition had 
met with, had deluded her into thinking she was 
wrong. But his vanity, the thought of the sorry 
figure he would present, made it quite impossible to 
contemplate so fundamental an honesty. Short of 
being honest, he had better be superb. 

He stopped, facing her, knowing well the effect 
his physical presence had on her. 

"You darling, there's one thing I don't forgive 
you for," he said, "and that is for being such a fool 
as to think there was anything for me to forgive." 

Even as he made this neat phrase, the truth of it 
came home to him. There was indeed nothing for 
him to forgive. She gave a long sigh. 

"Oh, you must teach me to be generous," she said. 

Peter felt himself unutterably mean at that 
moment. But the thing, was done; he had been 
superb as well as dishonest, and if honesty had been 
too high for his vanity to attain to, it was just as 
incapable of demolishing the golden image of him- 
self that he had set up for Silvia. Then there was 
the point concerning his apparent slumber two nights 
ago; there was the point concerning his telephone 
last night. . . . He wished intensely that she hadn't 
asked him to teach her generosity. 



262 Peter 

" Now for the other reasons why you came to meet 
me," he said. There would be balsam and food for 
his vanity here. He had the grace to recognize that 
even while he asked it. 

"Because I wanted to see you," said she. 

"I like that reason. Have you any more of that 
brand?" 

He knew that the word which took lightly what 
was so immense would, after her confession, cause 
her to smile. It was of the species which she had 
thought cynical, and which she now knew was just 
the everyday garb in which affection and tenderness 
clothed themselves. 

"Because it seemed so long since I saw you," she 
said. "Oh, Peter, there's only one reason really 
which matters. Because I love you." 

. . . And that brought home to him a meanness, 
a dishonesty against which all the rest was but 
feathers in a scale weighted on the other side with the 
world itself. Often before now he had known how 
unintelligibly great that was; now for the first time 
he was irritated at himself for his want of comprehen- 
sion with regard to it. He was accustomed to under- 
stand things to which he gave his mind, but here his 
mind was brought to a dead stop by this great shining 
wall that was unscalable and impenetrable. But, to 
be honest, was his irritation quite confined to himself, 
or did that shining wall from its very incomprehensi- 
bility provoke a portion of it ? 

Silvia seemed to herself to miss something in his 
silence, but with Peter there, nothing could really be 
missing. . . . 

"How often I say that," she whispered; "but how 
often I feel that there's nothing else worth saying." 

"More of that brand," said he. 



Peter 263 

"Not a drop. We must go in. You haven't 
seen your father yet, and after that you must have 
your bath." 

"And after that you must send your maid away, 
so that we can get a few minutes' sensible conversa- 
tion," said Peter. 

"I'll begin it now," said she. "Sometimes, you 
know, your bath goes to your head, and you're not 
quite as serious as you might be." 

"Say I'm drunk and have done with it," suggested 
he. 

"Very well; sometimes your bath makes you 
tipsy. But while you're sober, I want you to promise 
me something." 

"Shall I like it?" asked Peter prudently. "It 
isn't to spend a week with Uncle Abe or anything of 
that kind?" 

" Nothing of that kind. Poor Uncle Abe ! You'll 
like it. At least, you'll find you'll like it; you'll 
know it does you good." 

"That's not the same thing," objected he. "It 
does me good to get up bright and early, so as to 
start for town without hurrying, but I hate it." 

Silvia laughed. 

"It will relieve you of that to some extent," she 
said. "Oh, do be quick and promise instead of 
making such a fuss ! " 

"Right. But if you've deceived me, I'll never 
trust you again. I promise." 

"Well, for as long as we are here I want you to 
spend at least one night in the week in town." 

"I shall do nothing of the kind," said he. "I 
don't care an atom about my promise. Pish for my 
promise 1 And how will it relieve me? Oh, I see. 
But I shan't — unless you come too, that's to say." 



264 Peter 

Silvia stopped. 

"Now listen to me," she said. "You enjoyed last 
night immensely. It's perfectly natural that you 
should have. I should think you were ill if you 
hadn't." 

"How do you know I enjoyed it? I never said 
so," said he. 

"You did better than that. You beamed all over 
your atrocious countenance when you told me about 
it. You were obliged to stop in town, and being 
obliged you found, and you know it perfectly well, 
that it was a sort of night out. You saw your 
friends : you had a beano." 

Silvia kept her finger on the cord of the blind she 
had chosen to pull down in her mind. She refused 
with a sublime intellectual dishonesty to look at the 
fact that Peter certainly could have come down here 
by dinner time if he had time to dine early in town; 
she would not see it. Already, so she told herself, 
she had once fallen into an owlishly stupid error and 
worse, by doubting him, by watching him ; now at 
least she coulci repair that to some extent by the 
supreme honesty of trusting him without question. 
Something had happened to keep him in town, and 
it was no business of hers to think of that at all. He 
had said he was detained at the Foreign Office, and, 
for her, he was detained there. She held her eyes 
open to the intensest light of all, which was that of 
her own love, and the more it blinded her to every- 
thing else the better. It was only creatures like bats 
(and owls), things of the night, that were blinded 
by the dayspring. 

"You enjoyed it: you had a beano," she re- 
peated. "Why not say so?" 

Peter hesitated, but for a reason that she had 



Peter 265 

refused to entertain the existence of. The fact, now 
shiningly clear, that Silvia had never so remotely 
seen that he could easily have got down here in time 
for dinner, made it unintelligibly and unreasonably 
needful for him to tell her so. There was something 
sordid in not doing so. Had she shown the smallest 
suspicion of it, he would probably have explained it 
away in some ingenious manner. 

"Yes, I enjoyed it," he said. "That was why I 
did it. I could easily have got down here in time for 
dinner." 

Up went the blind at that with a snap and a whirr, 
and Silvia's face, beaming and delighted, smiled out 
at him. 

"Oh, Peter, how lovely of you to tell me," she 
cried. "Of course, I guessed, only I wouldn't guess. 
There's just the joy of it all." 

That came from her like the stroke of a bird's 
wing, that bore it through the sunny air. »With 
another stroke she returned to him. 

"Now you've got no excuse for refusing my beau- 
tiful plan," she said. "And it was nice of you not to 
tell me at once : you knew you had to some time, 
and it was all the better for keeping. My dear, there's 
the dressing bell. Just go and see your father for a 
minute : you can talk to him in the smoking-room 
after mother and I have gone to bed." 

As Silvia heard through her bedroom door the 
splashings and the rinsings and the gurglings which 
regulated her own speed of dressing, she was absorbed 
in the perception of the one thing that was great, and 
its myriad manifestations. Up the trunk of the tree 
and through the branches and to the remotest ends of 
the twigs flowed the sap, and all — the firmness of the 
trunk, the vigour of the branches, the elasticity of the 



266 Peter 

twigs, the decoration of flower and leaf and fruit, 
which made the tree lovely — were manifestations and 
embodiments of the sap. If there was a wound in its 
bark, the sap healed it; if there was a nest among its 
boughs, an external loveliness of life which visited it, 
it was still the sap which had fashioned its anchorage. 
The remotest leaf of that tower of forest greenery was 
nurtured by it, and all the being and the beauty 
sprang from it. . . . There was nothing big or little, 
if you looked at it in that way, though just now she 
had decided that only one thing was big and all the 
rest was little. . . . 

Then came a rare, an unusual splash. Occasion- 
ally when Peter began to stand up in his bath after 
the hot soaking, he fell down ; his foot slipped 
on the smooth surface, and this made the rare and 
enormous splash. This always caused her a certain 
anxiety : he might hit his head against the edge of 
the bath. . . . 

"Just tap at the bathroom door, Wilton," she 
said, "and ask if Mr. Mainwaring is all right." . . . 
But before the chaste Wilton could get as far as the 
door, a new splashing began. "It doesn't matter, 
Wilton," she said. 

"Your pearls, ma'am? " asked Wilton. 

Then came the tap at the door, and Wilton slid 
out of the picture. 

"I fell down," said Peter. "I might have hurt 
myself, but I didn't. I wish you weren't so wonder- 
ful." 

"I can't help that," said she. "You should have 
thought of it before." 

Peter began drying his toes. 

"I've had quite a long talk with my father," he 
said, "and all about you. He thinks you're wonder- 



Peter 267 

ful, too. He adores you : they all adore you, particu- 
larly Lord Poole." 

"Peter, don't be tipsy," said she. 

♦' I shall be as tipsy as I like. I want to know one 
thing. Why weren't you annoyed with me for say- 
ing that I couldn't get back last night? " 

Silvia held out the pearls for him to clasp round 
her neck. 

"If you don't understand that, you must be 
tipsy," she said. 

"And if I do?" he asked. 

She leaned her head a little back. 

"Why, then you understand it all," she said. 
"You understand, for instance, why I insist on your 
having a night in town every week." 

"Yes, I see. Just that you shall get rid of me 
now and then," he said. 

"Quite right. You're as sober as — as a com- 
moner, I suppose." 

She moved in her chair, and one end of her neck- 
lace slipped from his fingers. 

"Am I putting them on for dinner," he asked, "or 
am I taking them off for bedtime? " 

"Whatever you're doing, you are being wonder- 
fully clumsy," said she, as his fingers, warm and 
soft from his bath, touched the back of her neck. 

She was down before him next morning to give 
him his breakfast, and, waiting for him, strolled out 
on to the terrace. There had been one of those ex- 
quisite early October frosts, and in the air was that 
ineffable fragrance derived from absence of smell, the 
odourless odour of frosted dew. The sun was already 
warm with promise of a hot, cloudless day; but as 
yet the heat had not set in motion the weaving of the 



268 Peter 

scents of earth and grass and flowers which would 
soon decorate and veil the virginal beauty of 
the morning. Last night, when she and Peter had 
lingered here in the end of the twilight, the air was 
not less clear and windless, but it had been charged 
with all the myriad scents distilled by the hot hours 
of autumn sun. Now there was a precision, a crys- 
talline quality. . . . Some such sort of clear sparkle 
bathed her spirit also : her love basked in some 
such virginal beauty of young day, flamelike and 
scentless. 

All the evening before, from the time when she 
met Peter by the lake, she, body and soul and spirit, 
had been rising towards some new peak of passion, 
and the true topmost summit seemed to her now to 
be where she stood in this cool brightness, able to see 
that the upward path which led here was below her. 
They had dined after Peter had clasped her necklace 
for her; there had been the usual piquet for her 
and Mr. Mainwaring, and for the latter a triumphant 
psean of achievement over some effect of lightning in 
the second cartoon, which positively, as he stood 
aside as artist and became spectator, appalled him, 
and before they settled down to their cards he must 
needs conduct them to the masterpiece in question, 
and let them also feel the cold clutch of fear. 

But whatever Mr. Mainwaring did or said, what- 
ever her mother, it was Peter whom, in this rising 
tide of flame and self-surrender, Silvia watched, no 
longer looking for those signs of tenderness and aff'ec- 
tion which (owlish) she had missed, but in the rap- 
turous contemplation of them. Often she had seen 
him charming to her mother and to his own father; 
but always, so she had thought, she could detect in 
him politeness and amenity, the controlling hand of 



Peter 269 

breeding, the practice of pleasant behaviour. But 
this evening there had been no "behaviour" about 
him at all, he had been radiant with them both, 
divinely natural. ... He had sat next Mrs. War- 
dour on the sofa, as the piquet was in progress, and 
entertained her with ludicrous but hopelessly recog- 
nizable caricatures of her and his father over their 
cards ; he had held a skein of her wool, he had mixed 
her hot water and lemon juice for her. All these things 
he had often done before, and they were all trivial 
enough. . . . He was the same with his father, look- 
ing over his hand when so bidden, dutifully observing 
exactly how to play that puzzling game ; eager to 
anticipate his wants, chaffing him sometimes, behav- 
ing to him — this again was the wrong word — being to 
him, rather, all that his own sonship implied, ful- 
filling in every word and gesture the welcome which 
he had given to the suggestion of his remaining with 
them till they went to London. And all that was 
"the world's side" which anyone might see, and be- 
hind it in "lights and darks undreamed of " was that 
other aspect and reality of him, which was hers alone. 
. . . She was already in bed when she heard him, after 
his smoking-room chat with his father, come into 
his room, and presently, after tapping on her door, 
he looked in, coatless and shoeless. She pretended 
— in parody of what happened two nights before — to 
be asleep, and between her eyelids, nearly closed, she 
saw a broad smile overspread his face. 

"I don't believe a single word of it," he remarked. 

All this — all it was and all it meant — Silvia now, 
as she waited for him, looked at, looked down on even 
from this crowning pinnacle, as on upward, ultimate 
slopes. Even, as in the cool scentless air of the 

R 



270 A ctcr 

morning, the miracle of the sunshine on the windless 
world was more itself than when its beams had drawn 
that response of fragrance from all living things, so 
shone for her, untroubled with passion and desire, 
the essence itself of love in its own crystal globe. ^ Not 
less precious, now that it was conveyed to her in no 
material manifestation, would be the bodily presence 
of him through whom that essence was conveyed to 
her, who embodied love to her mortal sense, but for 
ever far more precious was it now that she, in this 
pause of content that crowned passion with a royal 
diadem, could for the moment see that in loving him 
she loved not him alone, but Love itself that "moved 
the sun and the other stars," and being all, gave 

all. ... 

The duration of the moment in which Silvia 
reached that point, not theoretically, but as a felt and 
experienced reality, was infinitesimal, just as in sig- 
nificance it was infinite. ... At the sound of Peter's 
step on the bare boards of the dining-room just 
within, the atmosphere of the summit where she stood 
grew laden and fragrant with the scents of the world. 
She did not come down from it : it did not rise up 
above her. She was there still, but she was there in 
body as well as in spirit, the fragrance of material 
sweetness was near her, even as when now she stepped 
back into the dining-room, a waft of rose-scent from 
the sun-warmed wall smothered her nostrils. 

Peter was poking about among dishes on the side 
table, and gave her a grunt, neither more nor less, in 
answer to her salutation. He held that to be in good 
spirits at breakfast-time was a symptom that could 
not be taken too seriously. By that test there was 
nothing wrong with him this morning. 



Peter 271 

He sat down with an ill-used sigh. 

"I've got a headache," he remarked. 

"Oh, I'm sorry," said she. "Where?" 

"In my left ankle, of course," said he. 

Silvia, passing behind him, just tweaked the 
short hair at the back of his neck. 

"Oh, don't finger me," said Peter angrily. 

He gave her so quick a glance that she could 
scarcely tell whether he had actually looked at her 
or not, and went on without pause and without 
hurry, clinking out his words like newly-minted 
coins, separate and crisply cut and hot. 

"Just let me alone sometimes," he said. "You 
know how I hate dabbing and pressing and grasp- 
ing. You're the limit, you know." 

He had got her stiff and staring, and still with- 
out pause and in precisely the same voice he went on : 

"Don't let me have to speak to you like that 
again," he said. "And don't be so owlish, but con- 
fess that you've fallen into that trap." 

Still she stood staring, and he took one step 
towards her and flung his arms close round her neck, 
pressing her face to his, and then, more directly, 
finding and claiming her mouth. 

"You utterly divine girl," he said. "I never 
dreamed I should take you in. I did. Kiss me 
three times to signify ' Yes,' and three times more 
to signify that you are a darling, and once more to — 
well, once more." 

" Peter, I thought you were cross with me," said 
she, when she could say anything. 

"How perfectly splendid! That joke did come 
off, didn't it?" 

She could smile again. 

"You brute!" she said. "But never take me 



272 



Peter 



in over that again, darling. Anything else; not 
that." 

Once more before his motor came round they 
strolled on the terrace outside. It was thick now 
with the web of scents, for the sun's weaving was 
busy. The late roses gave their fragrance, and the 
verbena and the mignonette, but these were but 
strung like beads on to the smell of the damp, fruitful 
earth. By now Silvia could laugh at herself about 
that fierce phantom moment, for never had Peter 
seemed more utterly hers. Usually in these early 
half-hours he was rather silent, rather morose; 
to-day, penitent perhaps, or consolatory for the 
fright — it was no less — that he had unwittingly given 
her, there was something of the bath-intoxication 
about him. 

"If you were in any sense a devoted wife," he 
said, "you would drive up with me, deposit me at 
the F.O., and then wait three hours for me in the 
motor till lunch time. I could give you an hour 
then, after which you would wait four hours more 
and drive back with me. Therefore shall a woman 
leave her father and her mother and cleave to her 
husband." 

"Yes, of course I'll come," said she, " if you 
want me to. You must just say you really want 
me. 

He took hold of her elbows from behind and ran 
her along the terrace. 

"Motor-bike," he observed. "I'm pushing you 
till you get your sense of humour working on its 
own account." 

"It's working — I swear it's working," shrieked 
Silvia. "Don't be such a bully." 



Peter 273 

A seat on the balustrade of the terrace seemed 
indicated after this violent exercise. 

"There's another thing," said Peter. "My mental 
power of association of ideas is decaying, which 
is a sign of softening of the brain. Aren't you 
sorry ? " 

"Is that the brain in your head? " asked she. 

"No; in the same place that ached when I had 
a headache. Left ankle. Don't interrupt. But 
there's something in this house front, and I believe 
it's the cornice, or whatever they call it, which runs 
all along there underneath the windows' on the first 
floor, which — that's the cornice — reminds me of some 
other house." 

Peter pointed to the broad frieze-like band which 
projected some foot or so from the wall of the house. 
It was of Portland stone, amazingly carved with 
masks at intervals, and ran, as he had said, just 
below the first floor windows from end to end of 
the fa9ade. Then he gave a yodel which, consciously 
or not, was a hoarse and surprising parody of his 
father's favourite method of indicating a general 
sumptuousness of sensation. 

"That's done it," he said. "Just speaking of 
it has reminded me what it was. And there's 
the motor, bother and blight it, confound and 
curse it." 

"And what is the house it reminds you of? " she 
asked. 

"The flat belonging to Nellie's mother. Just 
below the windows there ran a band like that. I 
noticed it one day last summer. She had said some- 
thing about it, but at that point there's softening 
of the brain again. All I said about the motor holds, 
though." 



274 



Peter 



"Send it away. Walk up to town instead," 
suggested Silvia. 

"Likely, with that headache in my ankle. But 
I would so much sooner sit here with you than do 
either." 

Silvia waved to him as he drove off, and waiting, 
waved again as he crossed the bridge over the lake. 
The air was thick with earthy fragrances now, and 
her mind with fragrant memories, and among them 
there was some new scent, not quite strange to her, 
but one from which she had always, whenever it pre- 
sented itself, turned her head. Now it insisted on 
being analysed, on being recognized. 

When, half an hour ago, she had just tweaked 
his hair as she passed him, his remonstrance, to her 
ears, had been wholly instinctive and sincere; he 
objected to being "fingered." He had piled that up, 
so she seemed to see, making of it a joke against 
her, until the joke grew preposterous. Then, ever 
so convincingly, he had smothered her with kisses. 
Yesterday evening, too, how convincing had been, 
on some other plane, his "dearness " — that word must 
serve — with her mother and Mr. Mainwaring. On 
one side were bright tokens of affection, and to her 
of so much more than affection ; on the other that 
one little hot coin that clinked with a true ring before, 
with admirable mimicry of himself, he had showered 
out a whole flood of such. 

Which was the more real ? And where, in these 
mists, was that austere and shining summit? 



CHAPTER XIII 

Just before Christmas, after three weeks in London, 
Silvia was driving down alone to Howes, in prepara- 
tion for the party which was to arrive next day. Peter 
would come then : he had got a devastating cold, and 
it was far wiser, in this grim inclemency of weather, 
that he should not come down with her to-day, only 
to come up again for his work next morning. 
It was much more sensible — Silvia had suggested 
it — that he should nurse his cold that evening, and, 
well wrapped up, make a single instead of a double 
journey to-morrow. But that piece of good sense was 
subsidiary to the fact that she did not want, just for 
this evening, to be alone with him ; even if his cold 
had not supplied an excellent argument in favour 
of this plan, she would have suggested her own 
solitary departure. 

Wilton, the correct virginal Wilton, sat opposite 
her on the front seat. Wilton had, at the start, depo- 
sited herself next the chauffeur, but Silvia had made 
her come inside. But there was little use, so thought 
Wilton, in coming inside, if her mistress still kept 
both windows open. 

The sleet had turned to uncompromising snow, 
and wSilvia seemed to notice it no more than if she 
were a Polar bear. Eventually, as the car flowed up 
the long hill through Putney, Wilton had been able 
to stand the draught no longer. 

"You'll be catching a worse cold than Mr. Main- 
waring's, ma'am," she said, "if you sit in that 

275 



276 Peter 

draught." . . . That made it more comfortable. 
Silvia roused herself for a moment. 

"His man doesn't take such care of him as you 
do of me, Wilton," she said. 

"And so much pneumonia about, ma'am," ob- 
served Wilton encouragingly. 

Silvia began to think consecutively, starting not 
from far back, but from the immediate past. Nellie 
had lunched with her alone, just before she started, 
for Mrs. Wardour had been out, and Nellie had hailed 
this tete-a-tete as the most delightful thing that could 
have happened. Nellie had been at Wardour House, 
too, the night before for a concert ; during this month 
of December, hardly yet three weeks old, she had been 
there half a dozen times, for Mrs. Wardour, resuming 
her social activities with extraordinary vigour after 
four months in the country, had, without the aid of 
any godmother, turned December into June. 

"You know the real name of this delicious house, 
darling," Nellie had said. "Everyone calls it the 
New Jerusalem, because its gates are never shut day 
or night. Your mother brings light into the darkest 
homes of the upper classes. There's such dreadful 
discontent among them : if it wasn't for people — 
angels — like your mother, they would all go and live 
in converted garages or in country cottages, and pre- 
tend to be the proletariat. It's being amused and 
entertained that keeps the upper class together ; other- 
wise they would be the leaders of Bolshevism. The 
Order of the British Empire now ! Why isn't she the 
only Dame in it ? The stability of the upper class 
depends on her, and the King depends on the upper 
class, and the Empire, in fact, if you see what I mean. 
I'm not quite sure that I do, but I do mean something. 



Peter 277 

We should all have groaned and grumbled if your 
mother hadn't set such a brilliant example." 

With Nellie's brilliant presence and charm to help 
out this engaging nonsense, it was a cheerful scin- 
tillation. Last June, so Silvia told herself, she would 
vastly have enjoyed such a month as she had just 
spent, and Nellie's resume of it made her wonder 
whether she — only she — had been dull and unappre- 
ciative. . . . 

The snow was driven against the glass which 
Wilton had put up : she could hear it softly tap at 
the window. . . . 

"And Peter!" Nellie had said. "What have 
you done to him, darling, or rather what haven't you 
done to him ? Everybody — I think I told you so once 
— used to be devoted to Peter : we used all to be in 
love with him, for he was so priceless, so marvellous, 
in not caring one atom for anybody. How long did 
it take you, do tell me, to discover his heart? Did 
you mine for it, and dredge for it, and blow up all the 
rocks round it ? Or did you get an aeroplane and fly 
up to it. Perhaps, after all, it was in the sky— so 
tremendously remote that nobody ever thought of 
looking for it there. You and Peter, up in the blue 
like the queen bee and her lover ! How wildly ro- 
mantic ! Or were you there, and did he fly up to you ? 
You met in the blue, anyhow, and left us all staring 
up after you till our eyes watered with the glare." 

Silvia, as the car hooted its way through King- 
ston, did not concern herself to recall with what small 
accompaniment she had sustained those arpeggios. 
She must have said something, for Nellie had gone 
on talking, talking. . . . Silvia had blinked before 
that brilliant vitality, which so decorated all that lay 
under its beams; but for the first time, when she 



278 Peter 

spoke like that about herself and Peter, the light hurt 
her. It dazzled rather than illuminated, and when it 
fell on certain dark places it did not illuminate them, 
it only showed up their blackness. She, with Nellie's 
light, Nellie's impressions, to help her, peered into 
them. Such glimpses as she caught between the 
dazzle and the darkness made her turn away with pro- 
test against this bull's-eye that now seemed to intrude 
on privacy. What, after all, had her relations with 
Peter to do with Nellie ? 

The streets were slippery with the newly-fallen 
snow, and at some corner, while they were still pass- 
ing through houses, there was a furious hooting of 
the horn outside, which to Silvia at that moment was 
not so much a warning of danger ahead on the road, 
as of danger lying somewhere deep within herself. 
They came to a dead stop, which made Wilton scream 
faintly and clutch the jewel-case, and for a yard or 
two they slid backwards. All that, too, seemed in- 
stantly translated in her mind into interior action, 
and, keeping pace with it, she slid a little farther back 
in her journey of thought. 

She brought out from the locked cupboard of 
her very soul, where she had turned the key on it, 
one particular moment. It was yesterday that she 
had put it there. She was in a room of a house in 
Welbeck Street, and at the end of the consultation 
the great man, jovial and kindly, had got up from his 
chair, and smoothed the pillow of a sofa on which she 
had lain just before. 

"Be quite active," Dr. Symes summed up, "with- 
out overtiring yourself. Appetite good? That's all 
right. Just go on with your ordinary life. What ? 
No : no doubt of any kind. Your husband well ? A 
cold? Everyone's got a cold." 



Peter 279 

Silvia paused over that while a wheel of her car 
slipped and skidded. Soon it hit the ground again. 
But in that pause she faced the fact that she had not 
told Peter. She meant to last night, but — but ... He 
had bewailed his cold; he had accepted her proposal 
that he should stop in London to-night. He had 
waved his hand at her and left her, not kissing her 
for fear of giving her his cold. But that was not the 
reason — it was only the excuse — for not telling him. 
She had welcomed it, at the time, as an adequate ex- 
cuse ; but if she had not found any such, she would 
have done without it. 

For a second or two her thought paused, merely 
contemplating this fact as if looking at some picture. 
It seemed quite incredible that she had not gone 
straight to him with her news, blurted it, whispered 
it, kissed him with it. Yet if he had been sitting here 
now instead of Wilton, in this privacy of snow and 
twilight-travel, she knew that she would again be 
struggling, and in vain, to tell him. 

From that point she swept back to one morning 
in October. It was then that some seed of knowledge 
which had previously lain dormant in her soul began 
to sprout. For two months now she had been con- 
scious of its growth, and for two months she had 
steadily refused to acknowledge it. Her relations 
with him had been of the most normal and friendly, 
but the fact, as she saw now, of his content and tran- 
quillity was sunshine and rain to the growth of it. 
Then, at the news Dr. Symes had given her, it burst 
into bitter blossom, and she could ignore it no longer. 

Peter had never loved her : he had never, in find- 
ing her, lost himself. Mentally and sympathetically 
she knew that he liked her — liked her, she was pre- 
pared to say, immensely; physically she attracted 



28o Peter 

and satisfied him. To think that he had married her 
"for " her money would be an exaggerated and hys- 
terical estimate ; her wealth had not been a counter- 
weight that overcame some opposing disadvantage, 
but it was, so she now believed, a determining factor. 
Without it he would not have sought her. 

It seemed odd to herself how little that mattered. 
Her wealth was an advantage — so, too, was her 
beauty; and even if he had married her "for" her 
wealth, that would have seemed to her no worse than 
if he had married her "for" her beauty, or "for" 
(had she been witty) her wit, or "for" any quality 
whatsoever of mind or body. All these were advan- 
tages, pleasant circumstances; but all of them, singly 
or together, compared with love, were no more than 
the bright shells on the seashore compared with the 
sea. 

It was just here that she blamed him with a bitter- 
ness that appalled her; it was this that had made it 
possible for her to accept any excuse (or if neces- 
sary to have done without one) for not telling him 
what she had learned yesterday. He had bidden 
her shut her eyes, and picking up a shell had held it 
to her ear, and had told her that what she heard there 
was the sea. . . . He had looked, he had spoken, he 
had acted as if he brought close to her that splendid 
shining vastness. She had trusted him, and had 
listened with all the rapture of love to that murmur- 
ing. Therein he had cheated her, passed off on her 
a "fake " which, had she not been blinded by his hand 
over her eyes, he knew she must have recognized as 
such. 

There was just one excuse for him ; she hesitated 
to adopt it, because while it excused him, it far more 
terribly accused him. It was that he did not know 



Peter 281 

what love meant. From the very first, from the day 
when he had asked her to marry him, he had not 
known. She had told him that all she wanted in the 
world was to be allowed to love him, and he had 
never seen that her surrender presupposed his own. 
He could not burn in her love without being alight 
himself. There was the root of it all, his ignorance. 

At that, compassion deep as love itself inundated 
her bitterness, not diluting it, but from its very nature 
neutralizing it. Sorrow was there, but "without 
sorrow " (who had said that?) "none liveth in love." 
Not as by one drop out of the whole ocean was her 
love for him diminished; but, while he did not under- 
stand, he ploughed his way in drought and desert : 
he could not reach her. 

It was through his constant affection for her and 
his gentleness, rather than through any failure in 
these, that the realization of this had come to her. 
She did not believe that she wearied him ; she knew 
that she attracted him physically, that he was faithful 
to her not on principle, but by inclination, and yet all 
this was nothing. He had not begun (say for a 
minute or two) by loving her, and then dropped into 
mere affection, mere desire : simply he had never 
loved her at all as she understood loving. He did 
not love anybody else, and Silvia, so far from being 
consoled by that thought, found herself passionately 
wishing that he did. He might love Nellie, or that 
fool of a woman who screamed ; for then, at any rate, 
he would know what love meant, and they would have 
common ground to meet on, though that very ground 
parted them. That might ruin her own life, which 
already she had given into his cool, careful hands; 
and if only, by smashing it to atoms, he could find his 
soul's salvation 1 



282 Peter 

There were problems ahead, and how they should 
be solved she did not know : she only knew what the 
upshot must be. Inconceivably dear as the mere 
touch of his hand was to her, she knew that never 
again, unless he learned what love was, or she forgot 
it, could hand clasp hand and mouth meet mouth. 
Not again could she give him those symbols of the 
infinite as the playthings for enjoyment. All that she 
had or was, was his, except just that; unless he loved 
her, the banners of her love must stay unfurled. 
Somehow she must let him know that, just as, some- 
how and soon, she must let him know about what 
she learned yesterday. 

As the car turned in through the park gates the 
snow beat in from the other window. It fell unheeded 
on her face and hands, till Wilton, encouraged to 
take care of her, drew up the sash. 

Peter's head on her shoulder, his breath coming 
soft and slow through his mouth. . . . Peter's eyes 
close to hers, so that if he winked his eyelashes 
brushed her cheek. . . . Peter's arm lying languid 
and relaxed across her bosom. . . . She would give 
her body to be burned for him, but not with such 
burning as this. Anyone, not she alone, could supply 
such need as his; none could supply hers but he, 
and he only if he loved her. Loving him as she did, 
she could not (so the leaping firelight in her bedroom 
that night illuminated it for her), she could not shut 
out her ideal in some burning chamber of its own, and 
take the rest of her, in ordinary human manner, to 
him, nor could she take from him, even though it 
was the highest he could give, anything that made 
its approach on some other plane. He must want her 
as she wanted him, surrendered and lost, and found 



Peter 283 

again in a new completeness, before they could come 
together as lovers. She conjectured that she was 
singular, exceptional in this : most men, most women 
gave what they could and got what they could. But 
there was no compromise possible for her that could 
produce this easily negotiable felicity. She could not, 
and if she could she would not, have accepted that in 
exchange for this drawn sword that lay between Peter 
and her. She had to tell him that. . . . She had to 
tell him also that the fruit of love on the one side, of 
affection on the other, was ripening. She must wait 
her occasion for that; some moment must be seized 
upon when he was most himself, most nearly, that is 
to say, what she had once thought him. 

She had nothing of her own ; all was his. That 
was her one inestimable possession, that she had 
given him all. Whatever happened, her utter penury 
was the one thing she must cling to. 

Peter had rung up Dr. Symes before he left the 
Foreign Office that evening, asking for five minutes 
of his time at any hour of morning or afternoon 
next day. Perhaps it was rather fussy to consult 
a physician over a cold, but really there never had 
been such a cold. Dr. Symes gave you a cabalistic 
slip of paper which, being duly interpreted, proved 
to be some marvellous tonic stuff, or, when he had 
felt a pulse, and looked at a tongue, and tapped you 
on a stomach or made your knee jump in a curious 
manner, he even more probably told you that you 
had the constitution of an armadillo, and roared 
you out of his room for wasting his time. With 
a week of uncles and aunts ahead, even though Nellie 
was to partake in the secret joys of them, Peter 
felt he would like some robust reassurance of that 



284 Peter 

sort. Or, on the other hand, since there never was 
such a cold 

These speculations, as he drove to Welbeck Street 
next morning, were cut short by his arrival and his 
internment in a waiting-room. There were several 
persons there, reading illustrated papers with sad 
faces, who looked up when he entered, and there- 
after regarded him with evident suspicion, fearing, 
so Peter figured it, that he might, though the latest 
arrival, be summoned before those who had waited 
longer. This, in fact, happened, and to the accom- 
paniment of sour looks he was conducted down a 
long passage into the consulting room. As he went 
he considered whether he slept well, and whether he 
had a feeling of oppression on his chest, or a pain 
in his right side. 

"How-de-do? " said Dr. Symes. "I've managed 
to squeeze you in between two of my patients, and 
I can give you just a couple of minutes, which will 
be quite enough. Naturally you wanted to see me. 
Well, there's nothing that should give you a 
moment's anxiety at present. Don't think about it 
at all, and don't let your wife think you're thinking 
about it." 

He turned backwards over the leaves of his en- 
gagement book. 

"Yes, as you know, I saw her the day before 
yesterday," he said. "All healthy and normal. But 
don't be fussed yourself, and certainly spare her all 
fuss. Of course, as I told her, there's no doubt 
at all. Let her — if she doesn't want to, make her — 
'ead an ordinary active, normal life." 

Peter had arrived by this time. 

"My wife?" he asked. 

Dr. Symes gave his great rollicking laugh. 



Peter 285 

"Yes, and your grandmother, too, for that matter," 
he said. "Don't let her confuse child-bearing with 
invalidism. They're radically opposed. Mind you, 
the way she spends these months is important. 
Make her go out, make her busy and employed. 
Don't let her get fancies into her head that she must 
coddle herself; there's no greater mistake." 

"I see," said Peter. 

"Just use your common sense," said the doctor. 
"She's got to bear a healthy child, and so she's got 
to be just as fit as we can make her. But take care 
of her too. What's her age now ? Twenty-two, I 
suppose. Well, regard her as a woman of forty in 
robust health. Make her behave like an older woman 
than she is," 

He rang a bell that stood on his table. 

"I've told you everything," he said. "You look 
fit enough, anyway, though you've got a bit of a 
cold, haven't you? Getting down into the country 
for Christmas, eh ? Change of air. I wish I was 
going to get some." 

He looked at his table of appointments. 

"Ask Mrs. Lucas to step this way," he said to 
the maid. "Good-bye. Good luck." 

As Peter drove down to Whitehall he kept de- 
tached, as by some dexterous jerk, such part of his 
mind as dealed in emotion, and contemplated with 
the same isolation, as through his closed car-window 
he looked out on the snow-slushy street, what he 
had just learned. He wanted to assimilate it before 
in any sense he studied it, and to do that he had 
first to wipe off his sheer surprise, which stood like 
condensed vapour on the glass of this astounding 
picture which had just been presented to him. Again 
and again he had to wipe that away before he could 

s 



286 Peter 

get any clear vision of the fact itself, that Silvia 
knew that she was with child and had not told him. 
When he had assimilated that he could perhaps arrive 
at what it meant. 

The glass was clear now; he had got it, and 
the enigma of it all stared him in the face; and the 
more he contemplated it the greater grew his be- 
wilderment as to the meaning of it. How often, 
with the hesitation of an intensity that choked utter- 
ance, had she said a word or two, given him a glance, 
a smile that conveyed better than any stamped symbol 
of speech, what the incarnation of their union, his 
and hers, would be to her. She had wondered how, 
just how, she would tell him ; no one knew into what 
shapes such joy would crystallize. And now it had 
come and she had not told him at all. Except for 
a trivial visit of his own, a superficial, unnecessary 
visit, he would still be ignorant. She had chosen 
to leave him in ignorance of what he had learned 
by accident. 

Nellie had often told him that he went walking 
in the wet woods and telling nobody, and Silvia, 
in some frank chafifing discussion, had affirmed that 
she knew precisely what Nellie meant. Certainly, 
thought Peter now, it was likely enough she did 
know. Had anyone ever gone solitary so far into 
the wet woods as Silvia? Had anyone ever so im- 
measurably told nobody ? 

He searched back through his impressions and 
memories of these last two months to see if he could 
discover any clue that should lead him to an inter- 
pretation. As far as he knew, their relations had 
been uniformly harmonious, without hitch or check; 
there had been no sign, no warning of any sort on 
her part of an emotional change. As for himself 



Peter 287 

Yes, there had been a change. A change was 
here, and as it was not in her it must be in him. 
Some psychical pigment, grain after grain, had been 
dropping, continually dropping, into his clean cup of 
life, each sinking down into it quietly, lying there at 
the bottom. Now it seemed that the astonishment 
of this morning's discovery had violently stirred up 
the whole, and the whole, so he saw, was tinged with 
the colour of that which had been dissolving in the 
cool depths. For often and often, increasingly and 
ever more vividly — here was the dropping of those 
grains of colour — he had had the image of Silvia 
moving splendidly on sunny heights, the rays from 
which shone down on him through rent clouds and 
patches of blue. There those grains had settled, 
dissolving perhaps, but only locally tinging minute 
remote areas of his consciousness : they had not 
affected the full contents of the cup, that clear, cool, 
untroubled self of his. Now with this rough shaking 
and stirring, he was suffused with the colour of them. 
There, high above, was Silvia and her .splendour, 
felt now, not only recognized. He had scrambled 
to his feet (was that it?), stung into standing, finger 
on mouth, instead of remotely contemplating. The 
ray that had merely shone on him now shone in him, 
and its light pierced the fogs of his egoism. It was 
the news itself, beyond doubt, not Silvia's withhold- 
ing of it, which gave him that enlightenment, for to 
his feminine nature the fact of his impending father- 
hood struck more intimately than it would have done 
on one more virile. It evoked, too, a dormant 
virility; his fatherhood was the sequel of another re- 
lationship. Clearer shone the ray; he must climb, he 
must go to her, he must give. . . . 

Close on the heels of that, and swiftly as reflection 



288 Peter 

answers light, came the remembrance, lost for that 
moment, that Silvia had withheld the knowledge from 
him. He could guess now with a conjecture that 
verged on certainty what the reason for that was, and 
his egoism, his deep-rooted vanity, returned and rein- 
forced, cried out against the outrage of it. She from 
those heights, shining no longer, but merely superior, 
looked down on him, and judged him unworthy to 
share that white joy which crowned and enveloped her 
love. All his pride stiffened at the thought. He 
knew how to walk in the wet woods, sufficient unto 
himself. 

Of intention Peter had started from London rather 
late, so that he should find the little party already 
assembled. His father, he rested assured, would have 
taken on himself the mantle of host, and would be 
wearing it far more superbly than he. That he found 
to be the case : John Mainwaring had complete pos- 
session of the place and all the members of what was, 
with the exception of Nellie and her husband, the 
same unique little family gathering which had pre- 
ceded Peter's marriage. There was Aunt Eleanor, 
stout and seal-like, there was a column of locomotive 
floral decoration around Aunt Joanna, there was Uncle 
Abe, now possessor of three monstrous cartoons, and 
Uncle Henry, the possessor of a nice stiff brandy and 
soda, for tea still continued to burn his heart. The 
cartoons, in fact, and the original sketches were the 
subject, as Peter entered, of debate between the aunts, 
to the glory and honour of their creator, who sat in 
clouds of incense. Mrs. Wardour had already got 
reconciled to the fact that her sister had been the 
purchaser, and bore it well. 

"Lovely they look," said Aunt Joanna; "all three 



Peter 289 

in a row, with the rest to come opposite. Many a 
half-hour do I spend at my buhl writing-table there, 
not getting along at all with my correspondence by 
reason of looking at them. I'm sure I don't know 
which I like best." 

"Tea, Peter?" asked Silvia. She had looked up 
at his entry; now she kept her eyes on her tray. 

"Yes, indeed," said Aunt Eleanor, "I'm sure they 
look very fine, Joanna. Three already finished! 
That's wonderful. I suppose, Mr. Mainwaring, 
you'll be soon wanting to borrow the fourth of my 
sketches ? " 

"Dear lady, I hesitate. I positively hesitate to 
ask you," said he, "for I know how you will hate 
parting with it even for a week or two. But without 
it I can never paint the larger version. The inspira- 
tion, the first rapture, is there ; I must study it again." 

Aunt Eleanor turned triumphantly to Nellie. 

"You must positively come to see those sketches, 
Mrs. Beaumont," she said. "I have all the original 
sketches of Mr. Mainwaring's great cartoons. Such 
a treat ! " 

"I'm. sure they're charming," said Nellie. 

"Charming indeed! Masterpieces! Such fire! 
Such inspiration as never could be realized again." 

"The three great cartoons," said Aunt Joanna 
firmly, while the floral decorations trembled, "fill up 
the whole side of Sir Abe's last addition to our house. 
A new wing, I may call it, with bedrooms above." 

"My sweet little sitting-room," said Aunt Eleanor 
absently. "All the sketches : the fire. . . ." 

"Yes, dear, and as I was telling you, the great 
cartoons," said Aunt Joanna. "That was what I was 
telling you." 

Uncle Henry made a diversion. He liked peace 



290 Peter 

and plenty. "Capital good brandy this," he said. 
"You should try my plan, Abe. Have a drop of 
brandy and leave the tea alone. A'most a pity to 
put soda into it." 

(He had not put much.) 

"Well, I don't say you're not right, Henry," said 
Uncle Abe. "But to my mind what's given me at 
my dinner, if it's a drop of something good, tastes 

all the better if I haven't had There's some old 

dry Petiot now. There's a wine ! You must get on 
the right side of Peter for that." 

Silvia handed Peter his cup. 

"And your cold's better ? " she asked. 

"'Bout the same, thanks." 

Nellie more than once had tried to catch Peter's 
eye in order to telegraph to him her rapt appreciation 
of the family. But though Peter had met her glance, 
he had nothing to send in reply. 

"I see the whole history of the war in my 
sketches," proclaimed Aunt Eleanor. "News from 
headquarters, I call them. Such insight! And the 
fourth, dear Joanna, the submarine, you know. Ah, 
no, you haven't seen that yet, but if Mr. Main- 
waring's cartoon from it comes up to the sketch, 
there'll be something for you to look at." 

"Capital good brandy," said Uncle Henry. 
Something had to be said. 

Peter drifted away from the tea-table and 
established himself next Nellie. 

"So you got down all right," he said. 

She let a circular sweeping glance pause in- 
finitesimally four times, once for each of the aunts and 
uncles. 

"Yes, and what a delicious room," she said. 
"You hadn't told me half." 



Peter 



291 



Peter was surely rather distrait, she thought. 
Even now he didn't catch the point of her appre- 
ciation. 

"It's good panelHng," he said. "There's more of 
it in my sitting-room next door. We'll go there 
after tea." 

She held out her cup. "Silvia, darling, one inch 
more tea, please," she said. "An inch. Pure greed." 

Silvia had an absent smile for her but no speech, 
and took the cup from Peter's hand without looking 
at him till he had turned again towards Nellie with 
the desired inch. She then followed him, quick as 
a lizard, with one glance of mute raised eyebrows. 
Nellie got that, too; plucked it off, put it in her book. 
She felt that she was surrounded by interests : there 
were the priceless uncles and aunts; there was also 
something else gomg on, not so farcical, not farcical 
at all, perhaps, but quite as interesting. 

"My dear, you have got a cold," she said to Peter. 

"I thought I had," said he wheezily. 

"I rather like having a cold," she went on. "It's 
an excuse for going to a doctor and being told that 
one has a brilliant constitution. That's Dr. Symes's 
cure. You're a Symite, aren't you?" 

Peter looked right and left, then for a single second 
straight in front of him, where Silvia sat. 

"Rather," he said. "We're all Symites." 

He paused a moment. 

"What a pity I didn't go to see him this morning," 
he said very deliberately, "before I left London. I 
might have been well by this time." 

Silvia did not look up : she turned away to Mr. 
Main waring, who was on her right. Some jerked 
movement of her hand caused a teaspoon to clatter 
from its saucer and fall on the floor. 



292 Peter 

His father gave a little yodel, adapted to the 
drawing-room. 

"Let me have a word with you sometime, my 
Peter," he said. 

"Yes. I'll come to see you before I dress. Just 
now Nellie and I are going to have a talk. Will that 
do? Come, Nellie." 

Peter drew two chairs up to the fire. 

"That's nice," he said. "Priceless, aren't they? 
Aunt Eleanor is really the most wonderful. Can you 
bear it for three days, do you think ? They go day 
after Christmas." 

He lit a cigarette and threw it away again. 

"Muck ! " he said. "By the way, Nellie, do stop 
till we go up to town." 

"Oh, my dear, I wish I could," said she. "But 
I know Philip's got some county business on the 
twenty-eighth that obliges him to go home. Some- 
thing ridiculous about forbidding people to shoot 
golden orioles, of which there aren't any." 

"Can't you let him go alone ? " asked Peter. 

"Well; yes, I think I might. I'll get my mother 
to go down. Mother will always go anywhere for 
board and lodging." 

"Don't I remember that feeling!" said Peter. 
"So do stop. I heard Silvia ask my father." 

Nellie produced an admirable mimicry of Aunt 
Eleanor's views on art, which, however, elicited from 
Peter onlv : 

"Very funny: yes, very like her," and he sub- 
sided into silence and fire-gazing again. 

"Silvia seemed rather silent," said Nellie at length. 

Peter roused himself. 

" Did she ? " he said. " The aunts were talking so 



Peter 293 

much that I didn't notice it. This is the panelling 
I spoke to you of, by the way." 

"Charming. Just the same as in the drawing- 
room, isn't it? " 

"The green drawing-room, please," said Peter. 

"I beg its pardon," she said. 

"Granted, I'm sure," said he without a smile. 

Nellie tried a handful of other topics, and her 
curiosity to know what was the matter vastly in- 
creased. She had narrowed down the field of her 
conjectures to a certainty that, whatever it was, it 
concerned her host and hostess. Yesterday at lunch, 
when she had been alone with Silvia, she had the 
first impression of it, yet she had seen Peter that same 
evening in town (by way of nursing his cold he had 
come to the theatre with her), and he, in spite of that 
affliction, had been immensely cheerful, chuckling 
with prophetic delight at the feast that the uncles and 
aunts would spread for them. And he had not seen 
Silvia since (for she had already left London) until 
his entry into the green drawing-room half an hour 
ago. 

She would much have preferred, as on that even- 
ing a month ago, when they dined alone together in 
London and he had been so pointedly reticent on the 
subject of Silvia, that he should volunteer a state- 
ment, but his reticence then seemed of totally different 
quality from what it was now. . . . She tried one 
more topic. 

"Peter, dear, isn't it lovely?" she said. "I'm 
going to have a baby." 

Peter jerked himself upright in his chair. 
"Really?" he said. "And here are you telling 
me that ! " 

He broke of!. 



294 



Peter 



"What's the matter, my dear?" she said. 
"There's something wrong." 

He got up and drove with his foot into the log 
fire. 

"It's really screamingly funny that you should 
tell me that," he said. 

Nellie felt that they were getting near it now. 

" Funny ? " she asked. 

"Oh, Lord, I said funny, didn't I?" said he. 

She got up too, laying a hand on his shoulder. 

"My dear, we're very old friends," she said. 

He turned round to her with some unspoken 
bitterness souring in his eyes. 

"Then I'll let you have the joke," he said. "You 
tell me that, and yet my wife, who knows the same 
thing about herself, has not told me." 

He paused a moment. 

" I found it out by accident this morning," he said. 
"I went to see Dr. Symes about my cold — odd that 
you should have spoken of him — and before I told 
him an3^thing he began telling me, and that was what 
he told me. Of course, he assumed I knew; thought 
that I had come to him for some general directions, 
which he gave me. Silvia had been to him two days 
before. She hasn't said a word to me. Not a word." 

Nellie heard herself give some ejaculation. 

"Now you're fond of psychological problems," he 
said. "Also you're a woman, and know how women 
feel. Under what circumstances, feeling how, in 
fact, would a woman do that? Interesting point, 
isn't it? It's beyond me." 

"No quarrel? No misunderstanding? Nothing 
of that sort ? " 

"None. I've felt she was watching me some- 
times. I've " 



Peter 295 

"Well? Can you describe that?" she asked. 

"I've only thought of that this minute," he said, 
"and now I don't really see any connexion. But when 
my father knew my mother had gone, and was posing 
and posturing as a lost and stricken man, Silvia was 
watching me to see, I think, if I had real sympathy, 
real pity for him. I did feel then as if I was 
being tested. But I made that all right. I did 
it cleverly. I gave the most cordial welcome to 
his stopping on here — Lord, what evenings they 
were ! — for endless weeks, and left him to tell her 
about it." 

"Are you quite sure you made it all right?" she 
asked. 

"She told me she had been wrong; she told me she 
had misjudged me, when she thought me feelingless," 
he said. "But even if she made a reservation, or 
reconsidered it, what then ? " 

Nellie's hand still rested, now with pressure, on 
his shoulder. 

"xVnd what if Silvia put herself, so to speak, in 
your father's place ? " she said. "What if it occurred 
to her that you had been charming with her, and 
clever with her? Mind, that's only a guess." 

Again Peter thrust the logs together. 

"She trusts me too much," he said at length. "She 
loves me too much." 

This time Nellie was silent. 

"Well? " said he at length. 

"She thinks you've been clever with her and 
charming with her," she said. "That's it. I think 
that she was quite wrong in keeping this news 
from you, but that's why. Silvia isn't like us, you 
must remember. We may be complicated and clever 
in our way, but she's not like that. There's some- 



296 Peter 

thing tremendous about vSilvia. A simplicity, a 
splendour." 

"And just when I was beginning to realize that, 
to adore it, she does this. I can't forgive it," 
said he. 

She felt then, as perhaps never before, the charm 
of his egoism : it really was such a charming fellow 
he was egoistic about. 

"My dear, it's jusL because you, as you say, are 
beginning, to realize that and to adore it, that you 
feel you can't forgive it. You would forgive it easily 
enough if you didn't care. But put yourself in her 
place. Assume, as I feel sure we're right in assum- 
ing, that we have got at the reason for her not telling 
you ; it is exactly what a woman of that simplicity 
and splendour would do. With all there is of her, 
she loves you." 

"A charming w-ay of show'ing it," said Peter. 

"You're hurt; you're smarting," she said. 
"Otherwise you wouldn't say that." 

"She has spoiled everything," exclaimed Peter. 
"Just when " 

All through their talk Nellie had been conscious 
of a dual stirring, not only in him — that was clear 
enough — but in herself. Not many weeks ago she 
would certainly have had her whole sympathies en- 
listed on his side. She would have fanned, secretly 
and stealthily no doubt, the flame of his resentment 
against Silvia, and with the same hidden action have 
insinuated into his mind that there was somebody who 
was eager to console, to help him to forget — one who 
gave him a welcome. . . . Even now some breath of 
woodland irresponsibility, the morality of Dryads and 
Satyrs, swept over her, with the whispering of wild 
things and the stirrings in the bushes. Like sought 



Peter 297 

like there, deriding the consequences to others. 
Should she twang that string, let the wind blow on 
that harp in the trees, she knew well that something 
would answer it. He was hurt and sore; there were 
woodland balms. . . . 

Something within her again jerked back the finger 
that hovered over the string, ready to pluck it, and 
turned her hand into a shield instead, that prevented 
the wind from making the harp vibrate. Silvia had 
her harp, too, and he had begun, ever so faintly, to 
vibrate in answer to Silvia's harp, and not to hers. 
... In this second impulse there was compassion for 
Silvia, there was motherhood. She made her choice. 

•'You can't say that she spoiled it, my dear," she 
said. ** You know how she loved you when you asked 
her to marry you." 

Peter had a frown for this. 

"I thought " he began. 

"I know what you thought. Silvia very likely 
told you that she wanted just to be allowed " 

"I never told you that," said he quickly. 

"Of course you didn't. But wasn't it clear that 
before you married, she loved you as a boy loves, with 
some tempestuous desire of possession ? " 

"But she's got me," said he. "Tt isn't as if there 
were anyone else." 

"I know that, and she knows that for certain. It's 
nothing, of that kind that revolts her." 

"Revolts? " asked he. 

"Oh, my dear, short of that, wouldn't she have 
told you what she has known for two days, and sus- 
pected long before ? But you w^ould be quite wrong 
to think that she loves you any less. What you don't 
see, especially, beyond that, is that Silvia has become 
a perfectly changed person. She keeps her splendour. 



298 Peter 

Keeps it? Good heavens! I should think she did. 
But what she learned the other day quite changes 
her. She has become a woman, and she must have 
not just a man to love, but a man to love her. You've 
hinted that she's on the way to get one. That's the 
sum of the consolation I've got for you." 

Nellie, having determined, having chosen, was be- 
ing magnificent just then, and all the time the Dryad 
within her scolded and derided her. 

"You fool, you conventionalist," the Dryad 
shrieked. "He might be yours; he's as weak as 
water, and vain, vain ! You want him : wait a few 
months and see how you want him ! Idiot ! " 

Nellie heard all that as plainly as she heard the 
whistle of the wind in the chimney. 

" It won't be easy," she said. "You've got to get 
out of yourself, Peter, a thing, by the way, that I've 
never succeeded in doing. And when you've got out 
of yourself you've got to convince her that you've got 
into herself. I wouldn't bet on your chance." 

"Have I been a brute? " asked he. 

Nellie hesitated : she had never yet realized how 
close to love had been her intimacy with Peter, or 
how far from love her own marriage-bond. And now, 
when, bitterly resenting what Silvia had done, he 
turned to her. . . . 

Peter, in her silence, repeated his question. 

"A brute? " he asked, and now his voice shook. 

She took her hand briskly off his shoulder. They 
had stood there like that, comrades and friends, for 
ten minutes now, and her fingers had dwelt on his 
shoulder, the bone and the muscle of it. 

"Not a brute at all," she said. "You couldn't be 
a brute, you darling. But a liar and a cheat." 

"Ha .'"said Peter. 



Peter 299 

He walked round the room after this, with a 
whistle for her and him, and a kick for a footstool 
that got in his Avay. 

"You don't help me," he said. "What's to be 
done ? " 

Somehow, at his absence of resentment at what 
she had said, and at his appeal to her for help, the 
old delightful level of comradeship smoothed itself 
out. 

" Tell her that you know," suggested Nellie. " Do 
it nicely." 

"I couldn't possibly do it nicely. Confound it 
all " 

She considered this. 

"If you can't do it nicely, it will only make it 
worse," she conceded. 

"What then?" 

"Wait." 

"For her to tell me? " demanded Peter. 

"Yes, or for you just to know. It won't come to 
that. Oh, you absurd people ! Shall I tell her that 
you know ? " 

Peter thought over this. 

"It's becoming comic," he said presently. 
"That's the silliest thing you've said yet." 

"Perhaps. But it isn't comic, my dear." 

"I know it isn't. That's my ferocious flippancy. 
Gravediggers." 

"And it isn't comic for Silvia," she added. 

The spasm of the woodland died away again. 

"She hasn't told me," said Peter hopelessly. "I 
can't get over that." 

"You've got to get over that. Otherwise there's 
nothing ahead. She's got to get over more than 
that." 



300 



Peter 



All the worst of him returned. 

"You speak as if I hadn't given her all I had got," 
he said. 

"You're getting more, my dear. Keep on getting 
it, and keep on giving it." 

Peter looked at the clock. 

"Here endeth the first lesson," he said. "Not 
even out of the prophets. I must go and see my 
father. More acting. Necessary, you know." 

He flung his arms out. 

" I daren't be real," he said. " No one knows what 
an abomination I am." 

Quite unexpectedly Nellie felt weary and done 
for. She pulled herself together for a final encour- 
agement. 

"Ah, what a hopeful sign ! " she said. 

He lingered a moment. 

"Quarter to eight," he said. "We dine at half- 
past. Think of the old quarter-to-eights ! Ritz, 
opera, Mrs. Trentham ! Charlie and Bobby and 
Tommy and me and you, and Sophy and Ella and 
any fool you like to mention. Lord Poole, now " 

"No, that won't do," said she. "He was real. I 
grant you the rest weren't. But he was real : he 
completely enjoyed himself — does still, bless him ! " 

"Wish I did," said Peter. "I used to. And I 
don't." 

"You won't as long as you think about it." 

There was the woodland touch to finish with. 

"You're only ninety, are you?" she said. "Or is 
it ninety-one? " 

"Ninety," said Peter, grinning. 



CHAPTER XIV 

The grin soon cleared off. His father rose from the 
sofa on which he had been so eleg^antly resting, as 
Peter entered, and clasped his hand, though he had 
seen him at tea a couple of hours before. 

"Have you heard from your mother? " he asked. 
"My loved and lost one?" He smoothed his vel- 
veteen coat as he spoke. 

My loved and lost one ! The velveteen coat ! . . . 
The little demons swarmed into Peter's soul — the 
demons of ridicule and cynicism and contempt and 
all the host of such. But rebel and ridicule as he 
might, he knew that he had been sham and charlatan 
on an immeasurably greater scale than his father. 

"I had a report of her a couple of days ago," he 
said. "Just a message through her solicitors." 

Mr. Mainwaring put the tips of his fingers in a 
neat row into his mouth, as if, in his suspense, to 
gnaw the nails of them. But he committed no such 
feat of violence. He merely sucked them, and took 
them out again. 

"Tell me," he said. 

Peter tried to evoke any sort of kindliness or sym- 
pathy from his mind, and failed. 

"She is quite well apparently," he said, "and 
she " 

"She asked after me?" suggested his father. 

"Yes, she asked after you. She hoped you were 
—comfortable, I think she said." 

"Comfortable! My God ! Comfortable!" 

T 301 



302 



Peter 



Peter waited till this paroxysm of irony was spent. 
"I ought to have written to her to-day," he said, 
"but I didn't. I shall write to-morrow. What 
shall I tell her about you ? " 

"What your heart bids you," said he. "Tell her 
about me, as I am. Miserable, homeless, except for 
the charity of my children. I count Silvia as a child," 
he explained. 

Peter felt absolutely relentless. 
"So you long for her to come back to you," he 
said. "I will tell her." 

He recrarded Peter with his chin in the hollow of 
his hand. 

"You don't understand, my dear, the depth " 

he began. 

"Explain it to me, then, father," said he. 
"Take your own case, then. Supposing Silvia — 
I use your case for the absurdity of it — supposing 
Silvia left your house. What would you do ? Would 
you not give her complete freedom to return or not 
to return ? Would not your heart say, ' My love for 
her wants only what she wants ' ? " 

"Then I won't say that you long for her to come 
back to you," said Peter. " I only want to know your 
wishes. I will transmit them. But — but why not 
do it yourself ? You know her solicitors. Anything 
you send them will be forwarded to her." 
"The scoundrels ! " cried Mr. Mainwaring. 
"Oh, I don't see that," said Peter. He stifled a 
yawn : it was all too stupid. 

"Scoundrels! " cried Mr. Mainwaring. "Aren't 

they " He appeared unable to say exactly what 

they were, and Peter got up. 

"I'll convey any message you like, father," he 
said. "I only suggest that you might just as well 



Peter 303 

send it yourself. There are two things you can do. 
You can summon my mother back, and, if you choose, 
divorce her if she doesn't come, on the grounds of 
desertion. The other is to acquiesce in her stopping 
away as long as she chooses. I don't see why you 
put a hypothetical case about Silvia and me. You 
want her to come back, or you don't." 

This point of view necessitated some more strid- 
ings on the part of Mr. Mainwaring. 

"My angel, your angel, your Silvia," he said, 
"has asked me if I would not like to spend the rest 
of the winter on the Riviera. A little sun for me, 
she said only to-night, a little change, a little chance 
of the healing of my wound. She offers me two 
months on the Riviera. Should not I be wrong if I 
did not accept her sweet charity ? " 

"Leave it over, you mean, about my mother," 
asked Peter, "till you get back ? Get a little sun first, 
and that sort of thing. I think that would be a very 
sensible arrangement. That was a charming idea of 
Silvia's." 

He laid his hand on Peter's shoulder, and his voice 
broke. 

"Make Silvia happier than I have made my 
Maria," he said. "The love of a good woman ! My 
God ! What brutes we men are ! No, not brutes : 
heaven forbid that I should call you, or indeed my- 
self, a brute. But more tenderness, my Peter, more 
making of allowances. Experto crede." 

He paused a moment in a fine attitude. 

" Abe Darley ! " he said. " Henry Wardour ! They 
and their wives ! Their pleasant chaff : their gentle 
fun ! Yes, when you begin to step down from the 
tableland of life you want to find such hands as those 
in yours. A brilliant woman, too, is Joanna Darley. 



304 



Peter 



How she appreciates the cartoons. And your Aunt 
Eleanor ! Eleanor, as she suggested that I should 
call her. We are John and Eleanor. She has com- 
missioned me to do her portrait before I attack the 
fourth, the tremendous cartoon. Submarines: you 
remember my sketch for it." 

Peter went down the corridor to his room and 
Silvia's with the gravity that attaches to the conclu- 
sion of a comic interlude. The tragic burden, all the 
worse for its temporary suspension, must be taken up 
again, and the interlude had hardened rather than 
softened him. He despised his father for being a 
"fake," and that contempt stung him also, as with the 
back-stroke of his own lash. Smarting from that his 
mind went back to what Silvia had withheld from 
him, and there was the shrewdest hurt of all. . . . 

His bath was ready for him, and as he soaked and 
sprayed himself some tautness of physical vigour 
pictured the usual sequence to his bath, the dressing- 
gowned and drying seance in the chair close to 
Silvia's toilet table. He would sink his resentment; 
he would tap at her door and go in to her with a flood 
of normal nonsense. Then, if she told him now, as 
she must surely do, the news she had withheld, he 
would receive it as news hitherto unknown to him. 

He arrived at this stage of resolution, finished his 
bath and came out. And at that moment, even as his 
knuckles were raised to inquire at her door, his re- 
sentment against her, seizing upon some new pretext 
of bitterness, poured over him again. His hand 
dropped as he turned and went into his own room. 
He was late also — that served for an excuse — for at 
the moment the sonorous bell in the turret above 
Silvia's room made its proclamation to the listening 
earth that dinner was served at Howes. 



Peter 305 

On the other side of the door Silvia, fully dressed 
and following the familiar sounds, was waiting for 
him to enter. How often had she waited like that, 
longing for him ! She longed for him now, though 
dreading his coming, and so intertwined were these 
two that she could not disentangle the one from the 
other. She would tell him just what she had deter- 
mined that he must know, she would ask his pardon 
for not having told him of the news before. She had 
used up, so it seemed to her, all the emotion of which 
she was mistress; what lay immediately in front of 
her covered like some hard integument the longing 
and dread with which she waited for him, though it 
left her superficial perceptions alert. The clink of 
the coals in the grate, the flapping of the flame there, 
were more vivid to her senses than anything else. 
There was the beating of rain on her windows, for 
the snow had ceased, and a wind from the south-west 
was beginning to bluster outside. . . . Then she 
heard Peter come out of his bathroom, and 
presently the door of his bedroom shut. Already 
the bell sounded sonorously above her : she must 
tell him then that night, when he came up to 
bed. There was relief in that. For an hour or two 
more the only barrier between him and her was in 
her own knowledge : it was not formally erected. 
She was conscious now that her heart had been beat- 
ing fast in the anticipation of his coming, and she 
sat down for a few minutes (Peter would be late also) 
to recover her poise before she went downstairs. 
There was to be a jollification that night for tenants 
and servants : a dance for the elders, a Christmas tree 
for the children. 

The wind which just now she had heard flinging 
the rain against her windows rose to a scream, and 



3o6 Peter 

Peter, hurrying on with his dressing next door, saw 
a cloud of smoke driven out from his grate, followed 
by another and yet another, till in a few minutes the 
room was thick with its pungency. He remembered 
then that the Jackdaw had told him that something 
had gone wrong with the cowl of the chimney, and 
no doubt this change of wind caused this regurgita- 
tion . . , these things always happened just before 
Christmas or bank holidays, when the British work- 
man became even more deliberate than usual. Open- 
ing the window seemed only to make things worse, 
w-nd, heavy with his cold, he had no intention on this 
chill and bitter night of sleeping fireless. As with 
choking throat and streaming eyes he redoubled the 
speed of his dressing, he rang his bell and told his 
servant to transfer the necessaries for sleep and toilet 
to some other room. The uncles and aunts occupied 
the next suites, but farther along, beyond the head of 
the main stairs, was an unoccupied bedroom and 
dressing room, and he ordered that a fire should be 
lit there, and the change made during dinner, so that 
he would find the room ready for his tenancy that 
night. As he came out from that mephitic fog on to 
the corridor Silvia also emerged from her room. 

"My chimney's smoking like the devil," he said. 
" I remember now that the Jackdaw told me there was 
somethmg wrong with it. It's quite impossible to 
sleep there. I'm having my room changed." 

He finished buttoning a shirt-link as he spoke, not 
looking at her. Somehow this set a key of coolness, 
of casualness. 

"How tiresome for you," she said. "Where"— 
she stumbled over the question — "where have you 
gone ? " 

"Oh, somewhere down the passage," said Peter. 



Peter 307 

Just now, if he had come in to talk to her after 
his bath, she would have told him what he had to 
know. Now her resolution had a little cooled : it was 
not hot enough to enable her to ask him to come and 
talk to her when he came upstairs that night, nor yet 
to ask him more definitely where his room was. Be- 
sides, with the entertainment for the servants they 
would all be very late, and to-morrow would furnish 
a more convenient occasion. Or if not then, and not 
spontaneously on her part, he would come to her some 
night, seeking her, and then she would tell him. . . . 
In the interval there was the family farce of jollity 
to be kept up : it would only add to the difficulty of 
that if from her communication to him something 
unconjecturably critical arose. She had no idea how 
Peter would take it : there could be no mortal wound, 
for that implied that she was to him all that she 
missed being. But his pride, his vanity; how she 
longed to kill it, and how she hated to hurt it. 

On his side, as they went down the broad stairs, 
resentment at what he knew she had withheld out- 
shouted all the counsel Nellie had given him, out- 
shouted, too, the authentic whisper of his own heart. 
He had but to listen to that, to act when action came, 
and always to think and to feel and to be without 
forethought, just blindly following its suggestions. 
But for that small voice to be heard he must unstopper 
his ears from that cotton-wool of vanity which shut 
out from his hearing all but the complaints and self- 
justifications which trickled through it. It had been 
and it was her business to tell him. . . . 

"My father says you have treated him to a month 
or two in the South," he said. "That is very good 
of you : he will enjoy it." 

There was the ring as of a duty discharged in this 



3o8 Peter 

that robbed it of spontaneousness, and it gave to her 
its own woodenness. Peter had not meant it like 
that : he wanted to thank her for her kindness, to 
let her know that he appreciated it. But all that 
passed now had to travel through the falsity of that 
situation between them, as through some mould which 
made it take a shape not truly its own, and come out 
at the end grimed and distorted. 

"January and February are delightful on the 
Riviera," she said. "A change will do him good." 

To him that seemed to double-lock the wards of 
the gate that should have stood open. They looked at 
each other through its bars : the very attempt on both 
sides to meet the conventional needs of the moment 
—the friendly word or two on the stairs — had but 
served to sever them. The femininity of his nature, 
already resentful at what had been withheld from 
him, construed her reply into a further withdrawal of 
herself, overlooking the fact that it was his own re- 
sentment that had led him into conventionalities of 
speech. His pride choked him : was it nothing to 
her that she was ripening with his fatherhood? Had 
she no inkling that not his head only but his heart 
was, as in some belated dawn, beginning to glow with 
her splendour? The male element in him was awak- 
ing, like Adam from the sleep which the Lord God 
had laid on him, and was beginning to find, to 
realize that what he expunged and expelled from him- 
self became the living glory and the complement of 
him. All such perception was still clouded with the 
blanketing vapours of his own resentment and egoism, 
but through the rifts, from high above Silvia 
shone. . . . 

His pride choked him. What choked her was her 
love, that could not breathe but in its own high air. 



Peter 309 

Uncle Henry, on the occasion of his first visit to 
Howes, just before Silvia's marriage, had found (and 
deplored) a certain "standoffishness," so he expressed 
it, in his new nephew. His wife had not agreed with 
him; she found Peter to be "very refined." But 
during the three days that now followed Uncle Henry 
quite scrapped his previous verdict. There could not 
have been a more seasonable host : Peter was full of 
fun, and indeed Aunt Eleanor was almost disposed 
to follow her husband's example and reconsider her 
favourable opinion of Peter's refinement. It was 
really naughty of him to put up that bit of mistletoe 
without warning her of it, and Mr. Mainwaring's 
chaste salute had come as a great surprise to her, 
before she realized the public temptation she was mak- 
ing of herself by standing so squarely and indubitably 
just below it. But there was no harm in a good old- 
fashioned Christmas, and if Peter would insist on 
having a bowl of wassail to usher in the midnight, 
after all, he was the host, and it would have been 
mere churlishness to refuse to drink that second (or 
was it third?) glass that he filled up for her when she 
was not looking. There were foolish games on these 
evenings, and when the ladies went to bed roars of 
laughter ascended from the billiard-room, where the 
men "kept it up " till any hour. There was no harm 
in being young, so she and Aunt Joanna agreed, 
melted into unwilling cordiality over this riotous 
hospitality. 

Indeed, if there was any "standofiishness " to be 
detected, it was Silvia who must be impeached. Yet 
"standoffishness," even to Uncle Henry's limited 
power of analysis, did not quite express Silvia's 
quality. "Just a bit under the mark, not up to 
romps," was the definition that he and Uncle Abe 



310 



Peter 



arrived at, as, after waving their fat hands from the 
window of the motor that took them to the station at 
the conclu