THE LEE SHORE
R. MACAULAY
THE LEE SHORE
BY
R. MACAULAY
HODDER & STOUGHTON
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
Copyright, 1912
By George H. Doran Company
TO
P. R.
2137086
That division, the division of those who have
and those who have not, runs so deep as almost
to run to the bottom.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
A HEREDITARY BEQUEST ...... > .. 1
CHAPTEE II
THE CHOICE OF A CAREER ...... -. ,. 18
CHAPTEE III
THE HOPES .., ,., v -. . 37
CHAPTEE IV
THE COMPLETE SHOPPER ...... .. ... . 50
CHAPTEE V
THE SPLENDID MORNING .... r ., ... ,.. . 61'
CHAPTEE VI
HILARY, PEGGY, AND THE BOARDERS . . ... lfc 74
CHAPTEE VII
DIANA, ACTION, AND LORD EVELYN . . . ,. . 88
CHAPTEE VIII
PETER UNDERSTANDS . . . . . . . 104
CHAPTEE IX
THE FAT IN THE FIRE 123
CHAPTEE X
THE Loss OP A PROFESSION . . 133
CONTENTS
CHAPTER XI
PAGE
THE Loss OF AN IDEA 145
CHAPTER XII
THE Loss OF A GOBLET AND OTHER THINGS . . . 159
CHAPTER XIII
THE Loss OF THE SINGLE STATE ...... 175
CHAPTER XIV
PETER, RHODA, AND LUCY ....... ,.- . 190
CHAPTER XV
THE Loss OF A WIFE 204
CHAPTER XVI
A LONG WAY 220
CHAPTER XVII
MISCHANCES IN THE RAIN 229
CHAPTER XVIII
THE BREAKING-POINT . 240
CHAPTER XIX
THE NEW LIFE 255
CHAPTER XX
THE LAST Loss 268
CHAPTER XXI
ON THE SHORE . 284
THE LEE SHORE
THE LEE SHORE
CHAPTEE I
A HEUEDITAEY BEQUEST
DURING the first week of Peter Margerison's first
term at school, Urquhart suddenly stepped, a radiant
figure on the heroic scale, out of the kaleidoscopic maze
of bemusing lights and colours that was Peter's vision
of his new life.
Peter, seeing Urquhart in authority on the football
field, asked, " Who is it 2 " and was told, " Urquhart,
of course," with the implication " Who else could it
be?"
" Oh," Peter said, and blushed. Then he was told,
" Standing right in Urquhart's way like that ! Urqu-
hart doesn't want to be stared at by all the silly little
kids in the lower-fourth." But Urquhart was, as a
matter of fact, probably used to it,
So that was Urquhart Peter Margerison hugged
secretly his two pieces of knowledge; so secret they
were, and so enormous, that he swelled visibly with
them; there seemed some danger that they might even
burst him. That great man was Urquhart. Urquhart
was that great man. Put so, the two pieces of knowl-
edge may seem to have a certain similarity; there was
in effect a delicate discrimination between them. If
not wholly distinct one from the other, they were any-
how two separate aspects of the same startling and
rather magnificent fact.
1
2 THE LEE SHORE
Then there was another aspect: did Urquhart know
that he, Margerison, was in fact Margerison? He
showed no sign of such knowledge; but then it was
naturally not part of his business to concern himself
with silly little kids in the lower-fourth. Peter never
expected it.
But a few days after that, Peter came into the lava-
tories and found Urquhart there, and Urquhart looked
round and said, " I say, you Margerison. Just cut
down to the field and bring my cap. You'll find it by
the far goal, Smithson's ground. You can bring it to
the lavatories and hang it on my peg. Cut along
quick, or you'll be late."
Peter cut along quick, and found the velvet tasselled
thing and brought it and hung it up with the care due
to a thing so precious as a fifteen cap. The school bell
had clanged while he was down on the field, and he was
late and had lines. That didn't matter. The thing
that had emerged was, Urquhart knew he was Margeri-
son.
After that, Urquhart did not have occasion to honour
Margerison with his notice for some weeks. It was, of
course, a disaster of Peter's that brought them into
personal relations. Throughout his life, Peter's re-
lations were apt to be based on some misfortune or
other ; he always had such bad luck. Vainly on Litany
Sundays he put up his petition to be delivered " from
lightning and tempest, from plague, pestilence, and
famine, from battle and murder, and from sudden
death." Disasters seemed to crowd the roads on which
he walked; so frequent were they and so tragic that
life could scarcely be lived in sober earnest ; it was, for
Peter the comedian, a tragi-comic farce. Circum-
stances provided the tragedy, and temperament the farce.
Anyhow, one day Peter tumbled on to the point of
A HEREDITARY BEQUEST 3
his right shoulder and lay on his face, his arm crooked
curiously at his side, remarking that he didn't think
he was hurt, only his arm felt funny and he didn't
think he would move it just yet. People pressed about
him ; suggested carrying him off the field ; asked if he
thought it was broken; asked him how he felt now;
asked him all manner of things, none of which Peter
felt competent to answer. His only remark, delivered
in a rather weak and quavering voice, was to the effect
that he would walk directly, only he would like to stay
where he was a little longer, please. He said it very
politely. It was characteristic of Peter Margerison
that misfortune always made him very polite and pleas-
ant in his manners, as if he was saying, " I am sorry
to be so tiresome and feeble: do go on with your own
businesses, you more fortunate and capable people, and
never mind me."
As they stood in uncertainty about him, someone
said, " There's Urquhart coming," and Urquhart came.
He had been playing on another ground. He said,
" What is it ? " and they told him it was Margerison,
his arm or his shoulder or something, and he didn't
want to be moved. Urquhart pushed through the crowd
that made way for him, and bent over Margerison and
felt his arm from the shoulder to the wrist, and Mar- v
gerison bit at the short grass that was against his face.
"That's all right," said Urquhart. "I wanted to
see if it was sprained or broken anywhere. It's not;
it's just a put-out shoulder. I did that once, and they
put it in on the field; it was quite easy. It ought to
be done at once, before it gets stiff." He turned Peter
over on his back, and they saw that he was pale, and
his forehead was muddy where it had pressed on the
ground, and wet where perspiration stood on it. Ur-
quhart was unlacing his own boot,
4 THE LEE SHORE
" I'm going to haul it in for you," he told Peter.
" It's quite easy. It'll hurt a bit, of course, but less
now than if it's left. It'll slip in quite easily, because
you haven't much muscle," he added, looking at the
frail, thin, crooked arm. Then he put his stockinged
foot beneath Peter's arm-pit, and took the arm by the
wrist and straightened it out. The other thin arm was
thrown over Peter's pale face and working mouth.
The muddy forehead could be seen getting visibly
wetter. Urquhart threw himself back and pulled, with
a long and strong pull. Sharp gasps came from be-
neath the flung-up left arm, through teeth that were
clenched over a white jersey sleeve. The thin legs
writhed a little. Urquhart desisted, breathing deeply.
" Sorry," he said ; " one more'll do it." The one
more was longer and stronger, and turned the gasps
into semi-groans. But as Urquhart had predicted, it
did it.
" There," said Urquhart, resting and looking pleased,
as he always did when he had accomplished something
neatly. "Heard the click, didn't you? It's in all
right. Sorry to hurt you, Margerison ; you were jolly
sporting, though. Now I'm going to tie it up before
we go in, or it'll be out again."
So he tied Peter's arm to Peter's body with his neck
scarf. Then he took up the small light figure in his
arms and carried it from the field.
" Hurt much now ? " he asked, and Peter shook an
untruthful head and grinned an untruthful and pain-
ful grin. Urquhart was being so inordinately decent
to him, and he felt, even in his pain, so extremely
flattered and exalted by such decency, that not for the
world would he have revealed the fact that there had
been a second faint click while his arm was being bound
to his side, and an excruciating jar that made him sus-
A HEREDITARY BEQUEST 3
pect the abominable thing to be out again. He didn't
know how the mechanism worked, but he was sure that
the thing Urquhart had with such labour hauled in
had slipped out and was disporting itself at large in
unlawful territory. He said nothing, a little because
he really didn't think he could quite make up his mind
to another long and strong pull, but chiefly because of
Urquhart and his immense decency. Success was
Urquhart's role; one did not willingly imagine him
failing. If heroes fail, one must not let them know it.
Peter shut his eyes, and, through his rather sick vision
of trespassing rabbits popping in and out through holes
in a fence, knew that Urquhart's arms were carrying
him very strongly and easily and gently. He hoped
he wasn't too heavy. He would have said that he
could walk, only he was rather afraid that if he said
anything he might be sick. Besides, he didn't really
want to walk ; his shoulder was hurting him very much.
He was so white about the cheeks and lips that Urqu-
hart thought he had fainted.
After a little while, Urquhart was justified in his
supposition; it was characteristic of Peter to convert,
as promptly as was feasible, any slight error of Urqu-
hart's into truth. So Peter knew nothing when Ur-
quhart carried him indoors and delivered him into other
hands. He opened his eyes next on the doctor, who
was untying his arm and cutting his sleeve and saying
cheerfully, " All right, young man, all right."
The next thing he said was, " I was told it had been
put in."
" Yes," said Peter languidly. " But it came out
again, I think."
" So it seems. Didn't they discover that down
there?"
Peter moved his head limply, meaning " No."
6 THE LEE SHORE
" But you did, did you ? Well, why didn't you say
so? Didn't want to have it hauled at again, I sup-
pose ? Well, we'll have it in directly. You won't feel
it much."
So the business was gone through again, and this
time Peter not only half but quite groaned, because
it didn't matter now.
When the thing was done, and Peter rigid and
swathed in bed, the doctor was recalled from the door
by a faint voice saying, " Will you please not tell any-
one it came out again ? "
" Why not ? " The doctor was puzzled.
"Don't know," said Peter, after finding that he
couldn't think of a reason. But then he gave the true
one.
" Urquhart thought he'd got it in all right, that's
all."
" Oh." The doctor was puzzled still. " But that's
Urquhart's business, not yours. It wasn't your fault,
you know."
" Please," said Peter from the bed. " Do you
mind?"
The doctor looked and saw feverish blue lamps alight
in a pale face, and soothingly said he did not mind.
" Your shoulder, no one else's, isn't it ? " he admitted.
" Now you'd better go to sleep ; you'll be all right di-
rectly, if you're careful not to move it or lie on it or
anything."
Peter said he would be careful. He didn't at all
want to move it or lie on it or anything. He lay and
had waking visions of the popping rabbits. But they
might pop as they liked; Peter hid a better thing in
his inmost soul. TJrquhart had said, " Sorry to hurt
you, Margerison. You were jolly sporting, though."
A HEREDITARY BEQUEST 7
In the night it seemed incredible that Urquhart had
stooped from Valhalla thus far; that Urquhart had
pulled in his arm with his own hands and called him
sporting to his face. The words, and the echo of the
soft, pleasant, casual voice, with its unemphasised in-
tonations, spread lifting wings for him, and bore him
above the aching pain that stayed with him through
the night.
Next morning, when Peter was wishing that the
crumbs of breakfast that got between one's back and
one's pyjamas were less sharp-cornered, and wondering
why a dislocated shoulder should give one an aching
bar of pain across the forehead, and feeling very sad
because a letter from home had just informed him that
his favourite guinea-pig had been trodden on by the
gardener, Urquhart came to see him.
Urquhart said, " Hullo, Margerison. How are you
this morning ? " and Peter said he was very nearly all
right now, thanks very much. He added, " Thanks
awfully, Urquhart, for putting it in, and seeing after
me and everything."
" Oh, that's all right." Urquhart's smile had the
same pleasant quality as his voice. He had never
smiled at Peter before. Peter lay and looked at him,
the blue lamps very bright in his pale face, and thought
what a jolly voice and face Urquhart had. Urquhart
stood by the bed, his hands in his pockets, and looked
rather pleasantly down at the thin, childish figure in
pink striped pyjamas. Peter was fourteen, and looked
less, being delicate to frailness. Urquhart had been
rather shocked by his extreme lightness. He had also
been pleased by his pluck ; hence the pleasant expression
of his eyes. He was a little touched, too, by the un-
mistakable admiration in the over-bright blue regard.
8 THE LEE SHORE
Urquhart was not unused to admiration; but here was
something very whole-hearted and rather pleasing.
Margerison seemed rather a nice little kid.
Then, quite suddenly, and still in his pleasant, soft,
casual tones, Urquhart dragged Peter's immense secret
into the light of day.
" How are your people ? " he saifl.
Peter stammered that they were quite welL
" Of course," Urquhart went on, " I don't remember
your mother; I was only a baby when my father died.
But I've always heard a lot about her. Is she . . ."
" She's dead, you know," broke in Peter hastily,
lest Urquhart should make a mistake embarrassing to
himself. " A long time ago," he added, again anxious
to save embarrassment.
" Yes ; oh yes." Urquhart, from his manner,
might or might not have known.
" I live with my uncle," Peter further told him, thus
delicately and unobstrusively supplying the information
that Mr. Margerison too was dead. He omitted to men-
tion the date of this bereavement, having always a deli-
cate sense of what did and did not concern his hearers.
The decease of the lady who had for a brief period
been Lady Hugh Urquhart, might be supposed to be of
a certain interest to her stepson; that of her second
husband was a private family affair of the Margerisons.
(The Urquhart-Margerison connection, which may
possibly appear complicated, was really very simple,
and also of exceedingly little importance to anyone but
Peter; but in case anyone feels a desire to have these
things elucidated, it may here be mentioned that Peter's
mother had made two marriages, the first being with
Urquhart's father, Urquhart being already in existence
at the time ; the second with Mr. Margerison, a clergy-
man, who was also already father of one son, and be-
A HEREDITARY BEQUEST 9
came Peter's father later. Put so, it sounds a little
difficult, chiefly because they were all married so fre-
quently and so rapidly, but really is simplicity itself.)
" I live with my uncle too," Urquhart said, and the
fact formed a shadowy bond. But Peter's tone had
struck a note of flatness that faintly indicated a lack
of enthusiasm as to the menaga This note was, to
Peter's delicately attuned ears, absent from Urquhart's
voice. Peter wondered if Lord Hugh's brother (sup-
posing it to be a paternal uncle) resembled Lord Hugh.
To resemble Lord Hugh, Peter had always understood
(till three years ago, when his mother had fallen into
silence on that and all other topics) was to be of a
charm. . . . One spoke of it with a faint sigh. And
yet of a charm that somehow had lacked something, the
intuitive Peter had divined; perhaps it had been too
splendid, too fortunate, for a lady who had loved all
small, weak, unlucky things. Anyhow, not long after
Lord Hugh's death (he was killed out hunting) she had
married Mr. Margerison, the poorest clergyman she
could find, and the most devoted to the tending of the
unprosperous.
Peter remembered her compassionate, delicate,
lovely, full of laughter, with something in the dance
of her vivid dark-blue eyes that hinted at radiant and
sad memories. She had loved Lord Hugh for a glori-
ous and brief space of time. The love had perhaps
descended, a hereditary bequest, with the deep blue eyes,
to her son. Peter would have understood the love ; the
thing he would not have understood was the feeling
that had flung her on the tide of reaction at Mr. Mar-
gerison's feet. Mr. Margerison was a hard liver and a
tremendous giver. Both these things had come to mean
a great deal to Sylvia Urquhart much more than
they had meant to the girl Sylvia Hope.
io THE LEE SHORE
And hence Peter, who lay and looked at Lord Hugh
TJrquhart's son with wide, bright eyes. With just such
eyes only holding, let us hope, an adoration more
masked Sylvia Hope had long ago looked at Lord
Hugh, seeing him beautiful, delicately featured, pale,
and fair of skin, built with a strong fineness, and smil-
ing with pleasant eyes. Lord Hugh's beauty of person
and charm of manner had possibly (not certainly)
meant more to Sylvia Hope than his son's meant to her
son; and his prowess at football (if he had any) had
almost certainly meant less. But, apart from the
glamour of physical skill and strength and the official
glory of captainship, the same charm worked on mother
and son. The soft, quick, unemphasised voice, with
the break of a laugh in it, had precisely the same dis-
turbing effect on both.
" Well," Urquhart was saying, " when will they let
you play again? You must buck up and get all right
quickly. ... I shouldn't wonder if you made a pretty
decent three-quarter sometime. . . . You ought to use
your arm as soon as you can, you know, or it gets stiff,
and then you can't, and that's an awful bore. . . .
Hurt like anything when I hauled it in, didn't it?
But it was much better to do it at once."
" Oh, much," Peter agreed.
" How does it feel now ? "
" Oh, all right. I don't feel it much. I say, do you
think I ought to use it at once, in case it gets stiff ? "
Peter's eyes were a little anxious ; he didn't much want
to use it at once.
But Urquhart opined that this would be over-great
haste. He departed, and his last words were, " You
must come to breakfast with me when you're up again."
Peter lay, glorified, and thought it all over. Urqu-
hart knew, then; he had known from the first. He
A HEREDITARY BEQUEST II
had known when he said, " I say, you, Margerison, just
cut down to the field . . ."
Not for a moment did it seem at all strange to Peter
that Urquhart should have had this knowledge and
given no sign till now. What, after all, was it to a
hero that the family circle of an obscure individual
such as he should have momentarily intersected the
hero's own orbit? School has this distinction fam-
ilies take a back place; one is judged on one's own in-
dividual merits. Peter would much rather think that
Urquhart had come to see him because he had put his
arm out and Urquhart had put it in (really though,
only temporarily in) than because his mother had once
been Urquhart's stepmother.
Peter's arm did not recover so soon as Urquhart's
sanguineness had predicted. Perhaps he began taking
precautions against stiffness too soon; anyhow he did
not that term make a decent three-quarter, or any sort
of a three-quarter at all. It always took Peter a long
time to get well of things; he was easy to break and
hard to mend made in Germany, as he was fre-
quently told. So cheaply made was he that he could
perform nothing. Defeated dreams lived in his eyes;
but to light them there burned perpetually the blue and
luminous lamps of undefeated mirth, and also an im-
mense friendliness for life and mankind and the de-
lightful world. Like the young knight Agenore, Peter
the unlucky was of a mind having no limits of hope.
Over the blue and friendly eyes that lit the small pale
face, the half wistful brows were cocked with a kind
of whimsical and gentle humour, the same humour that
twitched constantly at the corners of his wide and flexi-
ble mouth. Peter was not a beautiful person, but one
liked, somehow, to look at him and to meet his half-
enquiring, half -amused, wholly friendly and sympa-
12 THE LEE SHORE
i
thetic regard. By the end of his first term at school,
he found himself unaccountably popular. Already he
was called " Margery " and seldom seen by himself.
He enjoyed life, because he liked people and they liked
him, and things in general were rather jolly and very
funny, even with a dislocated shoulder. Also the great
Urquhart would, when he remembered, take a little
notice of Peter enough to inflate the young gentle-
man's spirit like a blown-out balloon and send him soar-
ing skywards, to float gently down again at his leisure.
Towards the end of the term, Peter's half-brother
Hilary came to visit him. Hilary was tall and slim
and dark and rather beautiful, and he lived abroad
and painted, and he told Peter that he was going to be
married to a woman called Peggy Callaghan. Peter,
who had always admired Hilary from afar, was rather
sorry. The woman Peggy Callaghan would, he vaguely
believed, come between Hilary and his family; and al-
ready there were more than enough of such obstacles to
intercourse. But at tea-time he saw the woman, and
she was large and fair and laughing, and called him, in
her rich, amused voice " little brother dear," and he did
not mind at all, but liked her and her laugh and her
mirthful, lazy eyes.
Peter was a large-minded person; he did not mind
that Hilary wore no collar and a floppy tie. He did
not mind this even when they met Urquhart in the
street. Peter whispered as he passed, " That's Urqu-
hart," and Hilary suddenly stopped and held out his
hand, and said pleasantly, " I am glad to meet you."
Peter blushed at that, naturally (for Hilary's cheek,
not for his tie), and hoped that Urquhart wasn't much
offended, but that he understood what half-brothers who
lived abroad and painted were, and didn't think it was
Peter's fault Urquhart shook hands quite pleasantly,
A HEREDITARY BEQUEST 13
and when Hilary added, " We shared a stepmother, you
and I ; I'm Peter's half-brother, you know," he amiably
agreed. Peter hoped he didn't think that the Urquhart-
Margerison connection was being strained beyond due
bounds. Hilary said further, " You've been very good
to my young brother, I know," and it was characteristic
of Peter that, even while he listened to this embarrass-
ing remark, he was free enough from self-conscious-
ness to be thinking with a keen though undefined
pleasure how extraordinarily nice to look at both Hilary
and Urquhart, in their different ways, were. (Peter's
love of the beautiful matured with his growth, but in
intensity it could scarcely grow.) Urquhart was say-
ing something about had luck and shoulders; it was
decent of Urquhart to say that. In fact, things were
going really well till Hilary, after saying, " Good-bye,
glad to have met you," added to it the afterthought,
" You must come and stay at my uncle's place in Sussex
some time. Mustn't he, Peter ? " At the same time
fitting accompaniment to the over-bold words
Peter saw a half-crown, a round, solid, terrible half-
crown, pressed into Urquhart's unsuspecting hand.
Oh, horror! Which was the worse, the invitation or
the half-crown ? Peter could never determine. Which
was the more flagrant indecency that he, young
Margerison of the lower fourth, should, without any en-
couragement whatever, have asked Urquhart of the
sixth, captain of the fifteen, head of his house, to come
and stay with him; or that his near relative should
have pressed half-a-crown into the great Urquhart's
hand as if he expected him to go forthwith to the tuck-
shop at the corner and buy tarts? Peter wriggled,
scarlet from his collar to his hair.
Urquhart was a polite person. He took the half-
crown. He murmured something about being very
I 4 THE LEE SHORE
glad. He even smiled his pleasant smile. And Peter,
entirely unexpectedly to himself, did what he always
did in the crises of his singularly disastrous life he
exploded into a giggle. So, some years later, he
laughed helplessly and suddenly, standing among the
broken fragments of his social reputation and his pro-
fessional career. He could not help it. When the
worst had happened, there was nothing else one could
do. One laughed from a sheer sense of the complete-
ness of the disaster. Peter had a funny, extremely
amused laugh; hardly the laugh of a prosperous per-
son; rather that of the unhorsed knight who acknowl-
edges the utterness of his defeat and finds humour in
the very fact. It was as if misfortune and this mis-
fortune of the half-crown and the invitation is not to
be under-estimated sharpened all the faculties, never
blunt, by which he apprehended humour. So he looked
from Hilary to Urquhart, and, mentally, from both to
his cowering self, and exploded.
Urquhart had passed on. Hilary said, " What's the
matter with you?" and Peter recovered himself and
said " Nothing." He might have cried, with Miss
Evelina Anvill, " Oh, my dear sir, I am shocked to
death!" He did not. He did not even say, "Why
did you stamp us like that ? " He would not for the
world have hurt Hilary's feelings, and vaguely he knew
that this splendid, unusual half-brother of his was in
some ways a sensitive person.
Hilary said, " The TJrquharts ought to invite you to
stay. The connection is really close. I believe your
mother was devoted to that boy as a baby. You'd like
to go and stay there, wouldn't you ? "
Peter looked doubtful. He was nervous. Suppose
Hilary met Urquhart again. . . . Dire possibilities
opened. Next time it might be " Peter must go and
A HEREDITARY BEQUEST 15
stay at your uncle's place in Berkshire." That would
be worse. Yes, the worst had not happened, after all.
TJrquhart might have met Peggy. Peggy would in that
case have said, " You nice kind boy, you've been such
a dear to this little brother of ours, and I hear you and
these boys used to share a mamma, so you're really
brothers, and so, of course, my brother too; and what
a nice face you've got ! " There were in fact, no limits
to what Peggy might say. Peggy was outrageous.
But it was surprising how much one could bear from
her. Presumably, Peter used to reflect in after years,
when he had to bear from her a very great deal indeed,
it was simply by virtue of her being Peggy. It was
the same with Hilary. They were Hilary and Peggy,
and one took them as such. Indeed, one had to, as there
was certainly no altering them. And Peter loved both
of them very much indeed.
When Peter went home for the holidays, he found
that Hilary's alliance with the woman Peggy Callaghan
was not smiled upon. But then none of Hilary's proj-
ects were ever smiled upon by his uncle, who always
said, " Hilary must do as he likes. But he is acting
with his usual lack of judgment." For four years he
had been saying so, and he said it again now. To
Hilary himself he further said, " You can't afford a
wife at all. You certainly can't afford Miss Callaghan.
You have no right whatever to marry until you are
earning a settled livelihood. You are not of the tem-
perament to make any woman consistently happy. Miss
Callaghan is the daughter of an Irish doctor, and a
Catholic."
" It is," said Hilary, " the most beautiful of all the
religions. If I could bring myself under the yoke of
any creed at all . . ."
" Just so," said his uncle, who was a disagreeable
16 THE LEE SHORE
man ; " but you can't," and Hilary tolerantly left it at
that, merely adding, " There will be no difficulty. We
have arranged all that. Peggy is not a bigot. As to
the rest, I think we must judge for ourselves. I shall
be earning more now, I imagine."
Hilary always imagined that; imagination was his
strong point. His initial mistake was to imagine that
he could paint. He did not think that he had yet
painted anything very good; but he knew that he was
just about to do so. He had really the artist's eye, and
saw keenly the beauty that was, though he did not
know it, beyond his grasp. His uncle, who knew noth-
ing about art, could have told him that he would never
be able to paint, simply because he had never been,
and would never be, able to work. That gift he wholly
lacked. Besides, like young Peter, he seemed consti-
tutionally incapable of success. A wide and quick re-
ceptiveness, a considerable power of appreciation and
assimilation, made such genius as they had ; the power
of performance they desperately lacked; their enter-
prises always let them through. Failure was the
tragi-comic note of their unprosperous careers.
However, Hilary succeeded in achieving marriage
with the cheerful Peggy Callaghan, and having done
so they went abroad and lived an uneven and rather
exciting life of alternate squalor and luxury in one
story of what had once been a glorious roseate home
of Venetian counts, and was now crumbling to pieces
and let in flats to the poor. Hilary and his wife were
most suitably domiciled therein, environed by a splendid
dinginess and squalor, pretentious, tawdry, grandiose,
and superbly evading the common. Peggy wrote to
Peter in her large sprawling hand, " You dear little
brother, I wish you'd come and live with us. We have
such fun. . . ." That was the best of Peggy. Al-
A HEREDITARY BEQUEST 17
ways and everywhere she had such fun. She added,
" Give my sisterly regards to the splendid hero who
shared your mamma, and tell him we too live in a
palace." That was so like Peggy, that sudden and
amused prodding into the most secret intimacies of one's
emotions. Peggy always discerned a great deal, and
was blind to a great deal more.
CHAPTEK II
THE CHOICE OF A CAEEEE
HILARY, stretching his slender length wearily in
Peter's fat arm-chair, was saying in his high, sweet
voice:
" It's the merest pittance, Peter, yours and mine.
The Robinsons have it practically all. The Robinsons.
Really, you know . . ."
The sweet voice had a characteristic, vibrating break
of contempt. Hilary had always hated the Robinsons,
who now had it practically all. Hilary looked pale
and tired; he had been settling his dead uncle's affairs
for the last week. The Margerisons' uncle had not
been a lovable man; Hilary could not pretend that he
had loved him. Peter had, as far as he had been per-
mitted to do so; Peter found it possible to be attached
to most of the people he came across; he was a person
of catholic sympathies and gregarious instincts. Even
when he heard how the Robinsons had it practically all,
he bore no resentment either against his uncle or the
Robinsons. Such was life. And of course he and
Hilary did not make wise use of money ; that they had
always been told.
" You'll have to leave Cambridge," Hilary told him.
" You haven't enough to keep you here. I'm sorry,
Peter; I'm afraid you'll have to begin and try to earn
a living. But I can't imagine how, can you? Has
any paying line of life ever occurred to you as pos-
sible?"
" Never," Peter assured him. " But I've not had
18
THE CHOICE OF A CAREER 19
time to think it over yet, of course. I supposed I
should be up here for two years more, you see."
At Hilary's " You'll have to leave Cambridge," his
face had changed sharply. Here was tragedy indeed.
Bother the Eobinsons. . . . But after a moment's
pause for recovery he answered Hilary lightly enough.
Such, again, was life. A marvellous two terms and a
half, and then the familiar barred gate. It was an old
story.
Hilary's thoughts turned to his own situation. They
never, to tell the truth, dwelt very long on anybody
else's.
" We," he said, " are destitute absolutely. It's
simply frightful, the wear and strain of it. Peggy, of
course," he added plaintively, " is not a good manager.
She likes spending, you know and, there's so seldom
anything to spend, poor Peggy. So life is disappoint-
ing for her. The babies, I needn't say, are growing
up little vagabonds. And they will bathe in the canals,
which isn't respectable, of course; though one is re-
lieved in a way that they should bathe anywhere."
" If he was selling any pictures," Peter reflected,
" he would tell me," so he did not enquire. Peter had
tact as to his questions. One rather needed it with
Hilary. But he wondered vaguely what the babies
had, at the moment, to grow up upon, even as little
vagabonds. Presently Hilary enlightened him.
" I edit a magazine," he said, and Peter perceived
hat he was both proud and ashamed of the fact. " At
least I am going to. A monthly publication for the
entertainment and edification of the Englishman in
Venice. Lord Evelyn Urquhart is financing it. You
know he has taken up his residence in Venice ? A
pleasant crank. Venice is his latest craze. He buys
glass. And, indeed, most other things. He shops all
20 THE LEE SHORE
day. It's a mania. When he was young I believe he
had a very fine taste. It's dulled now a fearful
life, as they say. Well, his last fancy is to run a maga-
zine, and I'm to edit it. It's to be called ( The Gem.'
' Gemm' Adriatica,' you know, and all that ; besides, it's
more or less appropriate to the contents. It's to be
largely concerned with what Lord Evelyn calls ' charm-
ing things.' Things the visiting Englishman likes to
hear about, you know. It aims at being the Complete
Tourist's Guide. I have to get hold of people who'll
write articles on the Duomo mosaics, and the galleries
and churches and palaces and so on, and glass and lace
and anything else that occurs to them, in a way cal-
culated to appeal to the cultivated British resident or
visitor. I detest the breed, I needn't say. Pampered
hotel Philistines pretending to culture and profaning
the sanctuaries, Ruskin in hand. Ruskin. Really,
you know. . . . Well, anyhow, my mission in life for
the present is to minister to their insatiable appetite
for rhapsodising over what they feel it incumbent on
them to admire."
" Rather fascinating," Peter said. It was a pity
that Hilary always so disliked any work he had to do.
Work a terrific, insatiable god, demanding its hide-
ous human sacrifices from the dawn of the world till
twilight so Hilary saw it. The idea of being hor-
rible, all the concrete details into which it was trans-
lated were horrible too.
" If it was me," said Peter, " I should minister to
my own appetite, no one else's. Bother the cultivated
resident. He'd jolly well have to take what I gave him.
And glass and mosaic and lace what glorious things
to write about. ... I rather love Lord Evelyn, don't
you."
THE CHOICE OF A CAREER 21
Peter remembered him at Astleys, in Berkshire
Urquhart's uncle, tall and slim and exquisite, with
beautiful waistcoats and white, attractive, nervous
hands, that played with a monocle, and a high-pitched
voice, and a whimsical, prematurely worn-out face, and
a habit of screwing up short-sighted eyes and saying,
with his queer, closed enunciation, " Quate charming.
Quate." He had always liked Peter, who had been a
gentle and amused boy and had reminded him of Sylvia
Hope, lacking her beauty, but with a funny touch of
her charm. Peter had loved the things he loved, too
the precious and admirable things he had collected
round him through a recklessly extravagant life. Peter
at fifteen, in the first hour of his first visit to Astleys,
had been caught out of the incredible romance of being in
Urquhart's home into a new marvel, and stood breath-
less before a Bow rose bowl of soft and mellow paste,
ornamented with old Japan May flowers in red and gold
and green, and dated " New Canton, 1750."
" Lake it ? " a high voice had asked behind his shoul-
der. " Lake the sort of thing ? " and there was the
tall, funny man swaying on his heels and screwing his
glass into his eye and looking down on Peter with
whimsical interest. Little Peter had said shyly that
he did.
" Prefer chaney to cricket ? " asked Urquhart's uncle,
with his agreeable laugh that was too attractive to be
described as a titter, a name that its high, light quality
might have suggested. But to that Peter said " No."
He had been asked to Astleys for the cricket week; he
was going to play for Urquhart's team. Not that he
was any good; but to scrape through without disgrace
(of course he didn't) was at the moment the goal of
life.
22 THE LEE SHORE
Lord Evelyn had seemed disappointed. " If I could
get you away from Denis," he said, " I'll be bound
cricket wouldn't be in the ' also rans.' '
And at that moment Denis had sauntered up, and
Peter's worshipping regard had turned from Lord
Evelyn's rose bowl to his nephew, and it was Bow china
that was not among the also rans. At that too Lord
Evelyn had laughed, with his queer, closed mirth.
" Keep that till you fall in love," he had inwardly
admonished Peter's back as the two walked away to-
gether. " I daresay she won't deserve it any better
but that's a law of nature, and this is sheer squander-
ing. My word, how that boy does lake things and
people ! " After all, it was hardly for any Urquhart
to condemn squandering,
That was Lord Evelyn, as he lived in Peter's memory
a generous, whimsical, pleasant crank, touched with
his nephew's glamour of charm.
When Peter said, " I rather love him, don't you,"
Hilary replied, " He's a fearful old spendthrift."
Peter demurred at the old. It jarred with one's con-
ceptions of Lord Evelyn. " I don't suppose he's much
over fifty," he surmised.
" No, I daresay," Hilary indifferently admitted.
" He's gone the pace, of course. Drugs, and all that.
He soon won't have a sound faculty left. Oh, I'm
attached to him; he's entertaining, and one can really
talk to him, which is exceptional in Venice, or, indeed,
anywhere else. Is his nephew still up here, by the
way ? "
" Yes. He's going down this term."
" You see a good deal of him, I suppose ? "
" Off and on," said Peter.
" Of course," said Hilary, " you're almost half-
brothers. I do feel that the TJrquharts owe us some-
THE CHOICE OF A CAREER 23
thing, for the sake of the connexion. I shall talk to
Lord Evelyn about you. He was very fond of your
mother. ... I am very sorry about you, Peter. We
must think it over sometime, seriously."
He got up and began to walk about the room in his
nervous, restless way, looking at Peter's things. Peter's
room was rather pleasing. Everything in it had the
air of being the selection of a personal and discriminat-
ing affection. There was a serene self-confidence about
Peter's tastes ; he always knew precisely what he liked,
irrespective of what anyone else liked. If he had hap-
pened to admire " The Soul's Awakening " he would
-beyond doubt have hung a copy of it in his room. What
he had, as a matter of fact, hung in his room very suc-
cessfully expressed an aspect of himself. The room
conveyed restfulness, and an immense love, innate
rather than grafted, of the pleasures of the eye. The
characteristic of restfulness was conveyed partly by the
fat green sofa and the almost superfluous number of
extremely comfortable arm-chairs, and Peter's attitude
in one of them. On a frame in a corner a large piece
of embroidery was stretched a cherry tree in blossom
coming to slow birth on a green serge background.
Peter was quite good at embroidery. He carried pieces
of it (mostly elaborately designed book-covers) about in
his pockets, and took them out at tea-parties and (sur-
reptitiously) at lectures. He said it was soothing, like
smoking; only smoking didn't soothe him, it made him
feel ill. On days when he had been doing tiresome or
boring or jarring things, or been associating with a
certain type of person, he did a great deal of em-
broidery in the evenings, because, as he said, it was such
a change. The embroidery stood for a symbol, a type
of the pleasures of the senses, and when he fell to it
with fervour beyond the ordinary, one understood that
24 THE LEE SHORE
he had been having a surfeit of the displeasures of the
senses, and felt need to restore the balance.
Hilary stopped before a piece of extremely shabby,
frayed and dingy tapestry, that had the appearance
of having once been even dingier and shabbier. It
looked as if it had lain for years in a dusty corner of
a dusty old shop, till someone had found it and been
pleased by it and taken possession, loving it through its
squalor.
" Rather nice," said Hilary. " Really good, isn't
it?"
Peter nodded. " Gobelin, of the best time. Some-
one told me that afterwards. When I bought it, I only
knew it was nice. A man wanted to buy it from me
for quite a lot."
Hilary looked about him. " You've got some good
things. How do you pick them up ? "
" I try," said Peter, " to look as if I didn't care
whether I had them or not. Then they let me have
them for very little. The man I got that tapestry from
didn't know how nice it was. I did, but I cheated
him."
" Well," Hilary said, passing his hand wearily over
his forehead, " I must go to your detestable station and
catch my train. . . . I've got a horrible headache.
The strain of all this is frightful."
He looked as if it was. His pale face, nervous and
strained, stabbed at Peter's affection for him. Peter's
affection for Hilary had always been and always would
be an unreasoning, loyal, unspoilably tender thing.
He went to the station to help Hilary to catch his
train. The enterprise was a failure; it was not a job
at which either Margerison was good. They had to
wait in the detestable station for another. The annoy-
ance of that (it is really an abnormally depressing sta-
THE CHOICE OF A CAREER 25
tion) worked on Hilary's nervous system to such an
extent that he might have flung himself on the line and
so found peace from the disappointments of life, had
not Peter been at hand to cheer him up. There were
certainly points ahout young Peter as a companion for
the desperate.
Peter, having missed hall, as well as Hilary's train,
went back to his room and put an egg on to boil. He
lay back in his most comfortable chair to watch it; he
needed comfort rather. He was going down. It had
been so jolly and it was over.
He had not got much to show for the good time he
had had. Physically, he was more of a wreck than
he had been when he came up. He was slightly lame
in one leg, having broken it at football (before he had
been forbidden to play) and had it badly set. He
mended so badly always. He was also at the moment
right-handed (habitually he used his left) and that was
motor bicycling. He had not particularly distinguished
himself in his work. He was good at nothing except
diabolo, and not very good at that. And he had spent
more money than he possessed, having drawn lavishly
on his next year's allowance. He might, in fact, have
been described as an impoverished and discredited
wreck. But for such a one he had looked very cheer-
ful, till Hilary had said that about going down. That
was really depressing.
Peter, as the egg boiled, looked back rather wistfully
over his year. It seemed a very long time ago since he
had come up. His had been an undistinguished ar-
rival ; he had not come as a sandwich man between two
signboards that labelled his past career and explained
his path that was to be; he had been unaddressed to
any destination. The only remark on his vague and
undistinguished label had perhaps been of the nature
26 THE LEE SHORE
of " Brittle. This side up with care." He had no
fame at any game; he did not row; he was neither a
sporting nor, in any marked degree, a reading man.
He did a little work, but he was not very fond of it or
very good. The only things one could say of him were
that he seemed to have an immense faculty of enjoy-
ment and a considerable number of friends, who knew
him as Margery and ate muffins and chocolates between
tea and dinner in his rooms.
He had been asked at the outset by one of these
friends what sort of things he meant to " go in for."
He had said that he didn't exactly know. " Must one
go in for anything, except exams. ? " The friend, who
was vigorously inclined, had said that one certainly
ought. One could he had measured Peter's frail
physique and remembered all the things he couldn't do
play golf. Peter had thought that one really
couldn't; it was such a chilly game. Well, of course,
one might speak at the Union, said the persevering
friend, insisting, it seemed, on finding Peter a career.
" Don't they talk about politics ? " enquired Peter. " I
couldn't do that, you know. I don't approve of poli-
tics. If ever I have a vote I shall sell it to the highest
female bidder. Fancy being a Liberal or a Conserva-
tive, out of all the nice things there are in the world
to be! There are health-fooders, now. I'd rather be
that. And teetotallers. A man told me he was a tee-
totaller to-day. I'll go in for that if you like, because
I don't much like wine. And I hate beer. These are
rather nice chocolates I mean, they were."
The indefatigable friend had further informed him
that one might be a Fabian and have a red tie, and
encourage the other Fabians to wash. Or one might
ride.
" One might " Peter had made a suggestion of his
THE CHOICE OF A CAREER 27
own " ride a motor bicycle. I saw a man on one to-
day ; I mean he had been on it it was on him at the
moment; it had chucked him off and was dancing on
him, and something that smelt was coming out of a
hole. He was such a long way from home ; I was sorry
about it."
His friend had said, " Serve him right. Brute," ex-
pressing the general feeling of the moment about men
who rode motor bicycles.
" Isn't it funny," Peter had reflectively said.
" They must get such an awful headache first and
then to be chucked off and jumped on so hard, and cov-
ered with the smelly stuff and then to have to walk
home dragging it, when it's deformed and won't run on
its wheels. Unless, of course, one is blown up into little
bits and is at rest. . . . But it is so awfully, frightfully
ugly, to look at and to smell and to hear. Like your
wallpaper, you know."
Peter's eyes had rested contentedly on his own peace-
ful green walls. He really hadn't felt in the least like
" going in for " anything, either motor bicycling or ex-
aminations.
" I suppose you'll just footle, then," his friend had
summed it up, and left him, because it was half-
past six, and they had dinner at that strange hour.
That was why they were able to run it into their tea,
since obviously nothing could be done between, even
by Peter's energetic friend. This friend had little hope
for Peter. Of course, he would just footle; he always
had. But one was, nevertheless, rather fond of him.
One would like him to do things, and have a sporting
time.
,, As a matter of fact, Peter gave his friend an agree-
able surprise. He went in, or attempted to go in, for
a good many things. He plunged ardently into foot-
28 THE LEE SHORE
ball, though he had never been good, and though he
always got extremely tired over it, which was supposed
to be bad for him, and frequently got smashed up, which
he knew to be unpleasant for him. This came to an
abrupt end half way through the term. Then he took,
quite suddenly, to motor bicycling. All this is merely
to say that the incalculable factor that sets temperament
and natural predilection at nought had entered into
Peter's life. Of course, it was absurd. Urquhart, be-
ing what he was, could successfully do a number of
things that Peter, being what he was, must inevitably
come to grief over. But still he indomitably tried.
He even profaned the roads and outraged all aesthetic
fitness in the endeavour, clacking into the country upon
a hired motor-bicycle and making his head ache badly
and getting very cold, and being from time to time
thrown off and jumped upon and going about in band-
ages, telling enquirers that he supposed he must have
knocked against something somewhere, he didn't remem-
ber exactly. The energetic friend had been caustic.
" I've no intention of sympathising with you," he
had remarked; "because you deserve all you get. 1
You ass, you know when it's possible to get smashed
up over anything you're safe to do it, so what on earth
do you expect when you take up a thing like this ? "
" Instant death every minute," Peter had truly re-
plied. (His nerves had been a little shaken by his last
ride, which had set his trouser-leg on fire suddenly, and
nearly, as he remarked, burnt him to death.) " But I
go on. I expect the worst, but I am resigned. The
hero is not he who feels no fear, for that were brutal
and irrational."
"What do you do it for?" his friend had queru-
lously and superfluously demanded.
" It's so frightfully funny," Peter had said, reflect-
THE CHOICE OF A CAREER 29
ing, "that I should be doing it. That's why, I sup-
pose. It makes me laugh. You might take to the
fiddle if you wanted a good laugh. I take to my motor-
bicycle. It's the only way to cheer oneself up when
life is disappointing, to go and do something entirely
ridiculous. I used to stand on my head when I'd been
rowed or sat upon, or when there was a beastly wind;
it cheered me a lot. I've given that up now; so I
motor-bicycle. Besides," he had added, " you said I
must go in for something. You wouldn't like it if
I did my embroidery all day."
But on the days when he had been motor-bicycling,
Peter had to do a great deal of embroidery in the even-
ings, for the sake of the change.
" I don't wonder you need it," a friend of the more
aesthetically cultured type remarked one evening, find-
ing him doing it. " You've been playing round with
the Urquhart-Fitzmaurice lot to-day, haven't you ?
Nice man, Fitzmaurice, isn't he? I like his tie-pins.
You know, we almost lost him last summer. He hung
in the balance, and our hearts were in our mouths. But
he is still with us. You look as if he had been very
much with you, Margery."
Peter looked meditative and stitched. " Old Fitz,"
he murmured, " is one of the best. A real sportsman.
. . . Don't, Elmslie; I didn't think of that, I heard
Childers say it. Childers also said, l By Jove, old Fitz
knocks spots out of 'em every time,' but I don't know
what he meant. I'm trying to learn to talk like
Childers. When I can do that, I shall buy a tie-pin
like Fitzmaurice's, only mine will be paste. Streater's
is paste; he's another nice man."
" He certainly is. In fact, Margery, you really are
not particular enough about the company you keep.
You shun neither the over-bred nor the under-bred.
30 THE LEE SHORE
Personally I affect neither, because they don't amuse
me. You embrace both."
" Yes," Peter mildly agreed. " But I don't embrace
Streater, you know. I draw the line at Streater.
Everyone draws the line at Streater; he's of the baser
sort, like his tie-pins. Wouldn't it be vexing to have
people always drawing lines at you. There'd be noth-
ing you could well do, except to draw one at them, and
they wouldn't notice yours, probably, if they'd got
theirs in first. You could only sneer. One can always
sneer. I sneered to-day."
" You can't sneer," Elmslie told him brutally ;
" and you can't draw lines ; and what on earth you
hang about with so many different sorts of idiots for
I don't know. ... I think, if circumstances absolutely
compelled me to make bosom friends of either, I should
choose the under-bred poor rather than the over-bred
rich. That's the sort of man I've no use for. The sort
of man with so much money that he has to chuck it all
about the place to get rid of it. The sort of man who
talks to you about beagles. The sort of man who has a
different fancy waistcoat for each day of the week."
" Well," said Peter, " that's nice. I wish I had."
His friend turned a grave regard on him. " The
sort of man who rides a motor-bicycle. . . . You really
should, Margery," he went on, " learn to be more fas-
tidious. You mustn't let yourself be either dazzled by
fancy waistcoats or sympathetically moved by unclean
collars. Neither is interesting."
" I never said they were," Peter said. " It's the
people inside them. . . ."
> Peter, in brief, was a lover of his kind, and the music
life played to him was of a varied and complex nature.
But, looking back, it was easy to see how there had
THE CHOICE OF A CAREER 31
been, running through all the variations, a dominant
motive in the piece.
As Peter listened to the boiling of his egg, and
thought how hard it would be when he took it off, the
dominant motive came in and stood by the fire, and
looked down on Peter. He jingled things in his
.pockets and swayed to and fro on his heels like his
uncle Evelyn, and he was slim in build, and fair and
pale and clear-cut of face, and gentle and rather indif-
ferent in manner, and soft and casual in voice, and he
was in his fourth year, and life went extremely well
with him.
" It boils," he told Peter, of the egg.
Peter took it off and fished it out with a spoon, and
began rummaging for an egg-cup and salt and marma-
lade and buns in the locker beneath his window seat.
Having found these things, he composed himself in the
fat arm-chair to dine, with a sigh of satisfaction.
" You slacker," Urquhart observed. " Well, can you
come to-morrow ? The drag starts at eleven."
" It's quite hard," said Peter, unreasonably disap-
pointed in it. "Oh, yes, rather; I'll come." How
short the time for doing things had suddenly become.
Urquhart remarked, looking at the carpet, " What a
revolting mess. Why ? "
" My self -filling bath," Peter explained. " I in-
vented it myself. Well it did fill itself. Quite
suddenly and all at once, you know. It was a very
beautiful sight. But rather unrestrained at present.
I must improve it. ... Oh, this is my last term."
" Sent down ? " Urquhart sympathetically enquired.
It was what one might expect to happen to Peter.
" Destitute," Peter told him. " The Eobinsons have
it practically all. Hilary told me to-day. I am
32 THE LEE SHORE
thrown on the world. I shall have to work. Hilary-
is destitute too, and Peggy has nothing to spend, and
the babies insist on bathing in the canals. Bad luck for
us, isn't it. Oh, and Hilary is going to edit a magazine
called ' The Gem,' for your uncle in Venice. That
seems rather a nice plan. The question is, what am I
to apply my great gifts to ? "
Urquhart whistled softly. " As bad as all that, is
it?" -
" Quite as bad. Worse if anything. . . . The only
thing in careers that I can fancy at the moment is art
dealing picking up nice things cheap and selling them
dear, you know. Only I should always want to keep
them, of course. If I don't do that I shall have to live
by my needle. If they pass the Sweated Industries
Bill, I suppose one will get quite a lot. It's the only
Bill I've ever been interested in. My uncle was ex-
tremely struck by the intelligent way I took notice of
it, when I had disappointed him so much about Tariff
Reform and Education."
" You'd probably be among the unskilled millions
whom the bill turns out of work."
" Then I shall be unemployed, and march with a
flag. I shall rather like that. . . . Oh, I suppose
somehow one manages to live, doesn't one, whether
one has a degree or not. And personally I'd rather
not have one, because it would be, such a mortifying
one. Besides," Peter added, after a luminous mo-
ment of reflection, " I don't believe a degree really
matters much, in my profession. You didn't know
I had a profession, I expect; I've just thought of it.
I'm going to be a buyer for the Ignorant Rich.
Make their houses liveable-in. They tell me what they
want I get hold of it for them. Turn them out an
Italian drawing-room Delia Robbia mantel-piece,
THE CHOICE OF A CAREER 33
Florentine fire-irons, Renaissance ceiling, tapestries and
so on. Things they haven't energy to find for them-
selves or intelligence to know when they see them. I
love finding them, and I'm practised at cheating. One
has to cheat if one's poor but eager. ... A poor trade,
but my own. I can grub about low shops all day, and
go to sales at Christie's. What fun."
Urquhart said, " You'd better begin on Leslie.
You're exactly what he wants."
" Who's Leslie ? " Peter was eating buns and mar-
malade, in restored spirits.
" Leslie's an Ignorant Rich. He's a Hebrew. His
parents weren't called Leslie, but never mind. Leslie
rolls. He also bounds, but not aggressively high. One
can quite stand him; in fact, he has his good points.
He's rich but eager. Also he doesn't know a good
thing when he sees it. He lacks your discerning eye,
Margery. But such is his eagerness that he is de-
termined to have good things, even though he doesn't
know them when he sees them. He would like to be
a connoisseur a collector of world-wide fame. He
would like to fill his house with things that would make
people open their eyes and whistle. But at present
he's got no guide but price and his own pure taste.
Consequently he gets hopelessly let in, and people
whistle, but not in the way he wants. He's quite frank ;
he told me all about it. What he wants is a man with
a good eye, to do his shopping for him. It would be
an ideal berth for a man with the desire but not the
power to purchase; a unique partnership of talent
with capital. There you are. You supply the talent.
He'd take you on, for certain. It would be a very nice
little job for you to begin with. By the time you've
decorated his town house and his country seat and his
shooting-box and all his other residences, you'll be fairly
34 THE LEE SHORE
started in your profession. I'll write to him about
you."
Peter chuckled. " How frightfully funny, though.
I wonder why anyone should want to have things unless
they like to have them for themselves. Just as if I
were to hire Streater, say, to buy really beautiful photo-
graphs of actresses for me! . . . Well, suppose he
didn't like the things I bought for him ? Suppose our
tastes didn't agree ? Should I have to try and suit his,
or would he have to put up with mine ? "
" There's only one taste in the matter," Urquhart
told him. " He hasn't got any. You could buy him.
any old thing and tell him it was good and he'd be-
lieve you, provided it cost enough. That's why he has
to have a buyer honest though poor he couldn't check
him in the least. I shall tell him that, however many
the things you might lie about, you are a George Wash-
ington where your precious bric-a-brac is concerned, be-
cause it's the one thing you care about too much to take
it flippantly."
Peter chuckled again. Life, having for a little while
drifted perilously near to the shores of dullness, again
bobbed merrily on the waters of farce. What a lot of
funny things there were, all waiting to be done ! Tins
that Urquhart suggested should certainly, if possible,
be one of them.
A week later, when Mr. Leslie had written to engage
Peter's services, Urquhart's second cousin Rodney
came into Peter's room (a thing he had never done be-
fore, because he did not know Peter much) and said,
" But why not start a curiosity shop of your own ?
Or be a travelling pedlar ? It would be so much more
amusing."
Peter felt a little flattered. He liked Rodney, who
was in his third year and had never before taken any
THE CHOICE OF A CAREER 35
particular notice of him. Rodney was a rather brilliant
science man ; he was also an apostle, a vegetarian, a fine
football player, an ex-Fabian, and a few other things.
He was a large, emaciated-looking person, with extraor-
dinarily bright grey eyes, inspiring a lean, pale, dark-
browed face the face of an ascetic, lit by a flame of
energising life. He looked as if he would spend and
be spent by it to the last charred fragment, in pursuit
of the idea. There was nothing in his vivid aspect
of Peter Margerison's gentle philosophy of acquies-
cence ; he looked as if he would to the end dictate terms
to life rather than accept them an attitude combined
oddly with a view which regarded the changes and
chances of circumstance as more or less irrelevant to
life's vital essence.
Peter didn't know why Rodney wanted him to be a
travelling pedlar except that, as he had anyhow once
been a Socialist, he presumably disliked the rich (igno-
rant or otherwise) and included Leslie among them.
Peter always had a vague feeling that Rodney did not
wholly appreciate his cousin Urquhart, for this same
reason. A man of means, Rodney would no doubt have
held, has much ado to save his soul alive; better, if
possible, be a bricklayer or a mendicant friar.
" Some day," said Peter politely, " I may have to
be a travelling pedlar. This is only an experiment, to
see if it works."
He was conscious suddenly of two opposing prin-
ciples that crossed swords with a clash. Rodney and
Urquhart poverty and wealth he could not analyse
further.
But Rodney was newly friendly to him for the rest
of that term. Urquhart commented on it.
" Stephen always takes notice of the destitute. The
best qualification for his regard is to commit such a
36 THE LEE SHORE
solecism that society cuts you, or such a crime that you
get a month's hard. Short of that, it will do to have
a hole in your coat, or paint a bad picture, or produce
a yesterday's handkerchief. He probably thinks you're
on the road to that. When you get there, he'll swear
eternal friendship. He can't away with the prosper-
ous."
" What a mistake," Peter said. It seemed to him a
singularly perverse point of view.
CHAPTEK III
THE HOPES
IT was rather fun shopping for Leslie. Leslie was
a stout, quiet, ponderous person between thirty and
forty, and he really did not bound at all; Urquhart
had done him less than justice in his description. There
was about him the pathos of the very rich. He was
generous in the extreme, and Peter's job proved lucra-
tive as well as pleasant. He grew curiously fond of
Leslie; his attitude towards him was one of respect
touched with protectiveness. No one should any more
" do " Leslie, if he could help it.
" He's let me," Peter told his cousin Lucy, " get
rid of all his horrible Lowestoft forgeries ; awful things
they were, with the blue hardly dry on them. Fright-
ful cheek, selling him things like that ; it's so insulting.
Leslie's awfully sweet-tempered about being gulled,
though. He's very kind to me ; he lets me buy anything
I like for him. And he recommends me to his friends,
too. It's a splendid profession; I'm so glad I thought
of it. If I hadn't I should have had to go into a dye
shop, or be a weaver or something. It wouldn't have
been good form; it wouldn't even have been clean. I
should have had a day-before-yesterday's handkerchief
and Rodney would have liked me more, but Denis would
probably have cut me. As it is I'm quite good form
and quite clean, and I move in the best circles. I love
the Ignorant Rich; they're so amusing. I know such
a nice lady. She buys potato rings. She likes them to
be Dublin hall-marked and clearly dated seventeen him-
37
38 THE LEE SHORE
dred and something so, naturally, they always were
till I began to buy them for her. I've persuaded her
to give away the most blatant forgeries to her god-child-
ren at their baptisms. Babies like them, sham or genu-
ine."
Peter was having tea with his cousin Lucy and Urqu-
hart in the White City. Peter and Lucy were very
fond of the White City. Peter's cousin Lucy was some-
thing like a small, gay spring flower, with wide, solemn
grey eyes that brimmed with sudden laughters, and a
funny, infectious gurgle of a laugh. She was a year
younger than Peter, and they had all their lives gone
shares in their possessions, from guinea-pigs to ideas.
They admired the same china and the same people, with
unquestioning unanimity. Lucy lived in Chelsea, with
an elder sister and a father who ran at his own expense
a revolutionary journal that didn't pay, because those
who would have liked to buy it couldn't, for the most
part, afford to, and because those who could have af-
forded to didn't want to, and because, in short, journals
run by nice people never do pay.
Lucy played the 'cello, the instrument usually
selected by the small in stature. In the intervals of
this pursuit, she went about the world open-eyed to all
new-burnished joys that came within her vision, and
lived by admiration, hope and love, and played with
Peter at any game, wise or foolish, that turned up.
Often Urquhart played with them, and they were a
happy party of three. Peter and Lucy shared, among
other things, an admiration of Urquhart.
Peter was finding the world delightful just now.
This first winter in London was probably the happiest
time he ever had. He hardly missed Cambridge; he
certainly didn't miss the money that the Robinsons had.
His profession was to touch and handle the things he
THE HOPES 39
loved; the Ignorant Rich were delightful; the things
he bought for them were beyond all words; the sales
he attended were revels of joy ; it was all extremely en-
tertaining, and Leslie a dear, and everyone very kind.
The affection that always found its way to Peter
through his disabilities spoke for something in him that
must, it would seem, be there; possibly it was merely
his friendly smile. He was anyhow of the genus
comedian, that readily endears itself.
He and Urquhart and Lucy all knew how tc live.
They made good use of most of the happy resources
that London offers to its inhabitants. They went in
steamers to and fro between Putney and Greenwich,
listening to concertinas and other instruments of music.
They looked at many sorts of pictures, talked to many
sorts of people, and attended many sorts of plays.
Urquhart and Peter had even become associates of
the Y.M.C.A. (representing themselves as agnostics
seeking for light) on account of the swimming-baths.
As Peter remarked, " Christian Young Men do not
bathe very much, and it seems a pity no one should."
On the day when they had tea at the White City, they
had all had lunch at a very recherche cafe in Soho,
where the Smart Set like to meet Bohemians, and you
can only get in by being one or the other, so Peter
and Lucy went as the Smart Set, and Urquhart as a
Bohemian, and they liked to meet each other very
much.
The only drawback to Peter's life was the bronchitis
that sprang at him out of the fogs and temporarily
stopped work. He had just recovered from an attack
of it on the day when he was having tea at the White
City, and he looked a weak and washed-out rag, with
sunken blue eyes smiling out of a very white face.
" You would think, to look at him," Urquhart said
40 THE LEE SHORE
to Lucy, " that lie had been going in extensively for
the flip-flap this afternoon. It's a pity Stephen can't
see you, Margery; you look starved enough to sat-
isfy even him. You never come across Stephen now,
I suppose? You wouldn't, of course. He has no
opinion of the Ignorant Rich. Nor even of the well-
informed rich, like me. He's blindly prejudiced in
favour of the Ignorant Poor."
Lucy nodded. " I know. He's nice to me always.
I go and play my 'cello to his friends."
" I always keep him in mind," said Peter, " for the
day when my patrons get tired of me. I know Rodney
will be kind to me directly I take to street peddling or
any other thoroughly ill-bred profession. The kind he
despises most, I suppose, are my dear Ignorant Rich
the ill-bred but by no means breadless. (That's my
own and not very funny, by the way.) Did I tell
you, Denis, that Leslie is going to begin educating the
People in Appreciation of Objects of Art? Isn't it a
nice idea ? I'm to help. Leslie's a visionary, you
know. I believe plutocrats often are. They've so
much money and are so comfortable that they stop
wanting material things and begin dreaming dreams.
I should dream dreams if I was a plutocrat. As it is
my mind is earthly. I don't want to educate anyone.
Well, anyhow we're going to Italy in the spring, to
pick things up, as Leslie puts it. That always sounds
so much as if we didn't pay for them. Then we shall
bring them home and have free exhibits for the Igno-
rant Poor, and I shall give free and instructive lectures.
Isn't it a pleasant plan? We're going to Venice.
There's a Berovieri goblet that some Venetian count
has, that Leslie's set his heart on. We are to acquire
it, regardless of expense, if it turns out to be all that
is rumoured."
THE HOPES 41
Urquhart scoffed here.
" Nice to be infallible, isn't it. You and your
goblets and your Ignorant Rich. And your brother
Hilary and my uncle Evelyn. Your great gifts seem
to run in the family. My uncle, I hear, is ruining
himself with buying the things your brother admires.
My poor uncle, Miss Hope, is getting so weak-sighted
that he can't judge for himself as he used, so he fol-
lows the advice of Margery's brother. It keeps him
very happy and amused, though he'll soon be bank-
rupt, no doubt."
Lucy, as usual, laughed at the Urquhart family
and the Margerison family and the world at large.
When she laughed, she opened her grey eyes wide,
while they twinkled with dancing light.
Then she said, " Oh, I want to go on the flip-flap.
Peter mustn't come, because it always makes him sick;
so will you ? "
Urquhart said he would, so they did, and Peter
watched them, hoping Urquhart didn't mind much.
Urquhart never seemed to mind being ordered about
by Lucy. And Lucy, of course, had accepted him as
an intimate friend from the first, because Peter had
said she was to, and because, as she remarked, he was
so astonishingly nice to look at and to listen to.
Among the visitors who frequented Lucy's home,
people whom she considered astonishingly pleasant to
look at and to listen to did not abound; so Lucy en-
joyed the change all the more.
The first time Peter took Urquhart down to Chelsea
to call on his Hope uncle and cousins, one Sunday af-
ternoon, he gave him a succinct account of the sort of
people they would probably meet there.
" They have oddities in, you know and particu-
larly on Sunday afternoons. They usually have one
42 THE LEE SHORE
or two staying in the house, too. They keep open house
for wastrels. A lot of them are aliens Polish refu-
gees, Russian anarchists, oppressed Finns, massacred
Armenians who do embroidery; violinists who can't
earn a living, decayed chimney-sweeps and so forth.
' Disillusioned (or still illusioned) geniuses, would-bes,
theorists, artistic natures, failed reformers, knaves
and fools incompetent or over-old, broken evangelists
and debauchees, inebriates, criminals, cowards, virtual
slaves ' . . . Anyhow it's a home for Lost Hopes.
(Do you see that ?) My uncle is keen on anyone who
tries to revolt against anything governments, Rus-
sians, proprieties, or anything else and Felicity is
keen on anyone who fails."
" And your other cousin what is she keen on ? "
" Oh, Lucy's too young for the Oddities, like me.
She and I sit in a corner and look on. It's my uncle
and Felicity they like to talk to. They talk about
Liberty to them, you know. My uncle is great on
Liberty. And they give them lemon in their tea, and
say how wicked Russians are, and how stupid Royal
Academicians are, and buy the Armenians' embroidery,
and so forth. Lucy and I don't do that well. I dis-
approve of liberty for most people, I think, and cer-
tainly for them ; and I don't like lemon in my tea, and
though I'm sure Russians are wicked, I believe op-
pressed Poles are as bad at least their hair is as
bushy and their nails as long and I prefer the em-
broidery I do myself; I do it quite nicely, I think.
And I don't consider that Celtic poets or Armenian
Christians wash their hands often enough. . . . They
nearly all asked me the time last Sunday. I was sorry
about it."
" You feared they were finding their afternoon tedi-
ous ? "
THE HOPES 43
" No ; but I think their watches were up the spout,
you see. So I was sorry. I never feel so sorry for
myself as when mine is. I'm really awfully grateful
to Leslie; if it wasn't for him I should never be able
to tell anyone the time. By the way, Leslie's awfully
fond of Felicity. He writes her enormous cheques
for her clubs and vagabonds and so on. But of course
she'll never look at him; he's much too well-off. It's
not low to tell you that, because he makes it so awfully
obvious. He'll probably be there this afternoon. Oh,
here we are."
They found the Hopes' small drawing-room filled
much as Peter had predicted. Dermot Hope was a
tall, wasted-looking man of fifty-five, with brilliant
eyes giving significance to a vague face. He had very
little money, and spent that little on " Progress,"
whose readers were few and ardent, and whose contribu-
tors were very cosmopolitan, and full of zeal and fire;
several of them were here this afternoon. Dermot
Hope himself was most unconquerably full of fire. He
could be delightful, and exceedingly disagreeable, full
of genial sympathy and appreciation, and of a biting
irony. He looked at Urquhart, whom he met for
the first time, with a touch of sarcasm in his smile.
He said, " You're exactly like your father. How do
you do," and seemed to take no further interest in him.
He had certainly never taken much in Lord Hugh, dur-
ing the brief year of their brotherhood.
For Peter his glance was indulgent. Peter, not be-
ing himself a reformer, or an idealist, or a lover of
progress, or even, according to himself, of liberty, but
an acceptor of things as they are and a lover of the
good things of this world, was not particularly inter-
esting to his uncle, of course; but, being rather an
endearing boy, and the son of a beloved sister, he
44 THE LEE SHORE
was loved; and, even had he been a stranger, his posi-
tion would have been regarded as more respectable than
Urquhart's, since he had so far failed to secure many
good things.
Felicity, a gracious and lovely person of twenty-
nine, gave Peter and Urquhart a smile out of her
violet eyes and murmured " Lucy's in the corner over
there," and resumed the conversation she was trying
to divide between Joseph Leslie and a young English
professor who was having a holiday from stirring up
revolutions at a Polish university. The division was
not altogether easy, even to a person of Felicity's ex-
traordinary tact, particularly as they both happened to
be in love with her. Felicity had a great deal of listen-
ing to do always, because everyone told her about them-
selves, and she always heard them gladly; if she
hastened the end a little sometimes, gently, they never
knew it. She, in fact, wanted to hear about them as
much really as much, though the desire in these
proportions is so rare as to seem incredible as they
wanted to let her hear. Her wish to hear was a temp-
tation to egotism; those who disliked egotism in them-
selves had to fight the temptation, and seldom won.
She did not believe no one but a fool (and she was
not that) could have believed all the many things
that were told her; the many things that must always,
while pity and the need to be pitied endure, be told
to the pitiful; but she seldom said so. She merely
looked at the teller with her long and lovely violet eyes,
that took in so much and gave out such continual friend-
ship, and saw how, behind the lies, the need dwelt
pleading. Then she gave, not necessarily what the lies
asked for, but what, in her opinion, pity owed to that
which pleaded. She certainly gave, as a rule, quite too
much, in whatever coin she paid. That was inevitable.
THE HOPES 45
" You give from the emotions," Joseph Leslie told
her, " instead of from reason. How bad for you : how
bad for them. And worse when it is friendship than
when it is coin that you can count and set a limit to.
Yes. Abominably bad for everyone concerned."
" Should one," wondered Felicity, " give friendship,
as one is supposed to give money, on C.O.S. principles 2
Perhaps so; I must think about it"
But her thinking always brought her back to the
same conclusion as before. Consequently her circle
of friends grew and grew. She even included in it a
few of the rich and prosperous, not wishing her chain
of fellowship, whose links she kept in careful repair,
to fail anywhere. But it showed strain there. It was
forged and flung by the rich and prosperous, and merely
accepted by Felicity.
Leslie, though rich and prosperous, stepped into the
linked circle led by Peter, who was neither. Having
money, and a desire to make himself conscious of the
fact by using it, he consulted Miss Hope as to how
best to be philanthropic. He wanted, it seemed, to be
a philanthropist as well as a collector, and felt in-
capable of being either otherwise than through agents.
His personal share in both enterprises had to be limited
to the backing capital.
Miss Hope said, " Start a settlement," and he had
said, " I can't unless you'll work it for me. Will
you ? " So he started a settlement, and she worked
it for him, and he came about the place and got in the
way and wrote heavy cheques and adored Felicity and
suggested at suitable intervals that she should marry
him.
Felicity had no intention of marrying him. She
called him a rest. ~No one likes being called a rest when
they desire to be a stimulant, or even a gentle excite-
46 THE LEE SHORE
ment. Felicity was an immense excitement to Mr.
Leslie (though he concealed it laboriously under a
heavy and matter-of-fact exterior) and it is of course
pleasanter when these things are reciprocal. But Mr.
Leslie perceived that she took much more interest even
in her young cousin Peter than in him. " Do you
find him a useful little boy ? " she asked him this af-
ternoon, before Peter and Urquhart arrived.
Leslie nodded. " Useful boy very. And pleas-
ant company, you know. I don't know much about
these things, but he seems to have a splendid eye for
a good thing. Funny thing is, it works all round in
all departments. Native genius, not training. He
sees a horse between a pair of shafts in a country lane ;
looks at it ; says ' That's good. That would have a fair
chance for the Grand National ' Urquhart buys it
for fifty pounds straight away and it does win the
Grand National. And he knows nothing special about
horses, either. That's what I call genius. It's the
same eye that makes him spot a dusty old bit of good
china on a back shelf of a shop among a crowd of
forged rubbish. I've none of that sort of sense; I'm
hopeless. But I like good things, and I can pay for
them, and I give that boy a free rein. He's furnishing
my house well for me. It seems to amuse him rather."
" He loves it," said Felicity. " His love of pleas-
ant things is what he lives by. Including among them
Denis Urquhart, of course."
" Yes." Leslie pursed thoughtful lips over Denis
Urquhart. He was perhaps slightly touched with jeal-
ousy there. He was himself rather drawn towards that
tranquil young man, but he knew very well that the
drawing was one-sided; Urquhart was patently un-
drawn.
" Eather a flash lot, the Urquharts, aren't they ? " he
THE HOPES 47
said; and Peter, who liked him, would have had to
admit that the remark was perilously near to a bound.
" Seem to have a sort of knack of dazzling people."
" He's an attractive person, of course," Miss Hope
replied; and she didn't say it distantly; she was so
sorry for people who bounded, and so many of her
friends did. " It's pleasing to see, isn't it such
whole-souled devotion ? "
Mr. Leslie grunted. " I won't say pearls before
swine because Urquhart isn't a swine, but a very
pleasant, ordinary young fellow. But worship like that
can't be deserved, you know; not by anyone, however
beautifully he motors through life. Margerison's
too well, too nice, to put it simply to give himself
to another person, body and soul, like that. It's
squandering."
" And irritates you," she reflected, but merely said,
" Is squandering always a bad thing, I wonder ? "
It was at this point that Peter and Urquhart came
in. Directed by Felicity to Lucy in an obscure corner,
they found her being talked to by one of the Odd-
ities ; he looked rather like an oppressed Finn. He was
talking and she was listening, wide-eyed and ingenuous,
her small hands clasped on her lap. Peter and Urqu-
hart sat down by her, and the oppressed Finn presently
wandered away to talk to Lucy's father.
Lucy gave a little sigh of relief.
" Wish they wouldn't come and talk to me," she said.
" I'm no good to them ; I don't understand ; and I
hate people to be unhappy. I'm dreadfully sorry they
are. I don't want to have to think about them. Why
can't they be happy? There are so many nice things
all about. 'Tis such waste." She looked up at Urqu-
hart, and her eyes laughed because he was happy and
clean, and shone like a new pin.
48 THE LEE SHORE
" It's nicest," she said, " to be happy and clean.
And it's not bad to be happy and dirty; or very bad
to be unhappy and clean ; but . . ." She shut her lips
with a funny distaste on the remaining alternative.
% " And I'm horribly afraid Felicity's going to get en-
gaged to Mr. Malyon, that young one talking to her,
do you see ? He helps with conspiracies in Poland."
" But he's quite clean," said Urquhart, looking at
him.
Lucy admitted that. " But he'll get sent to Siberia
soon, don't you see, and Felicity will go too, I know."
Peter said, " If I was Felicity I'd marry Leslie ;
I wouldn't hesitate for a moment. I wish it was me
he loved so. Fancy marrying into all those lovely
things I'm getting for him. Only I hope she won't, be-
cause then she'd take over the shopping department, and
I should be left unemployed. Oh, Lucy, he's let me
buy him the heavenliest pair of Chelsea jardinieres,
shaped like orange-tubs, with Cupids painted on blue
panels. You must come and see them soon."
Lucy's eyes, seeing the delightful things, widened
and danced. She loved the things Peter bought.
Suddenly Peter, who had a conscience somewhere,
felt a pang in it, and, to ease it, regretfully left the
corner and wandered about among his uncle's friends,
being pleasant and telling them the time. He did that
till the last of them had departed. Urquhart then had
to depart also, and Peter was alone with his relatives.
It was only after Urquhart had gone that Peter realised
fully what a very curious and incongruous element he
had been in the room. Realising it suddenly, he
laughed, and Lucy laughed too. Felicity looked at
them indulgently.
" Babies. What's the matter now ? "
" Only Denis," explained Peter.
THE HOPES 49
" That young man," commented Dermot Hope, with-
out approbation, " is remarkably well-fed, well-bred, and
well-dressed. Why do you take him about with you ? "
" That's just why, isn't it, Peter," put in Lucy.
" Peter and I like people to be well-fed and well-
bred and well-dressed."
Felicity touched her chin, with her indulgent smile.
" Baby again. You like no such thing. You'd get
tired of it in a week."
" Oh, well," said Lucy, " a week's a long time."
" He's got no fire in all his soul and body," com-
plained Dermot Hope. " He's a symbol of prosperous
content of all we're fighting. It's people like him
who are the real obstructionists; the people who don't
see, not because they're blind, but because they're too
pleased with their own conditions to look beyond them.
It's people like him, who are pouring water on the
fires as they are lit, because fires are such bad form,
and might burn up their precious chattels if allowed to
get out of hand. Take life placidly ; don't get excited,
it's so vulgar; that's their religion. They've neither
enthusiasm nor imagination in them. And so . . ."
And so forth, just as it came out in " Progress "
once a month. Peter didn't read " Progress," because
he wasn't interested in the future, being essentially a
child of to-day. Besides, he too hated conflagrations,
thinking the precious chattels they would burn up
much too precious for that. Peter was no lover either
of destruction or construction; perhaps he too was an
obstructionist, though not without imagination. His
uncle knew he had a regrettable tendency to put things
in the foreground and keep ideas very much in the
background, and called him therefore a phenomenalist.
Lucy shared this tendency, being a good deal of an
artist and nothing at all of a philosopher.
CHAPTER IV
4
THE COMPLETE SHOPPER
Six months later Peter called at the Hopes' to say
good-bye before he went to Italy. He found Lucy in,
and Urquhart was there too, talking to her in a room
full of leaping fire-shadows. Peter sat down on the
coal-scuttle (it was one of those coal-scuttles you can
sit on comfortably) and said, " Leslie's taking me to
Italy on Sunday. Isn't it nice for me. I wish he was
taking you too."
Lucy, clasping small hands, said, " Oh, Peter, I wish
he was ! "
Urquhart, looking at her said, " Do you want to
go ? " and she nodded, with her mouth tight shut as if
to keep back floods of eloquence on that subject. " So
do I," said Urquhart, and added, in his casual way,
" Will you and your father come with me ? "
" You paying ? " said Lucy, in her frank, unabashed
way like a child's ; and he smiled down at her.
" Yes. Me paying."
" 'Twould be nice," she breathed, her grey eyes wide
with wistful pleasure. " I would love it. But
but father wouldn't, you know. He wouldn't want to
go, and if he did he'd want to pay for it himself, and
do it his own way, and travel third-class and be dread-
fully uncomfortable. Wouldn't he, Peter ? "
Peter feared that he would.
" Thank you tremendously, all the same," said Lucy,
prettily polite.
" I shall have to go by myself, then," said Urqu-
50
THE COMPLETE SHOPPER 51
hart. " What a bore. I really am going, you know,
sometime this spring, to stay with my uncle in Venice.
I expect I shall come across you, Margery, with any
luck. I shan't start yet, though; I shall wait for bet-
ter motoring weather. No, I can't stop for tea, thanks ;
I'm going off for the week-end. Good-bye. Good-
bye, Margery. See you next in Venice, probably."
He was gone. Lucy sat still in her characteristic at-
titude, hands clasped on her knees, solemn grey eyes on
the fire.
" He's going away for the week-end," she said, real-
ising it for herself and Peter. " But it's more amusing
when he's here. When he's in town, I mean, and
comes in. That's nice and funny, isn't it."
" Yes," said Peter.
" But one can go out into the streets and see the
people go by and that's nice and funny too. And
there are the Chinese paintings in the British Museum
. . . and concerts . . . and the Zoo . . . and I'm go-
ing to a theatre to-night. It's all nice and funny,
isn't it."
" Yes," said Peter again. He thought so too.
" Even when you and he are both gone to Italy,"
said Lucy, reassuring herself, faintly interrogative.
" Even then ... it can't be dull. It can't be dull
ever."
" It hasn't been yet," Peter agreed. " But I wish
you were coming too to Italy. You must before long.
As soon as . . . ' He left that unfinished, because it
was all so vague at present, and he and Lucy always
lived in the moment.
" Well," said Lucy, " let's have tea." They had it,
out of little Wedgwood gups, and Lucy's mood of faint
wistfulness passed over and left them chuckling.
Lucy was a little sad about Felicity, who was now
52 THE LEE SHORE
engaged to the young professor who was conspiring in
Poland.
" I knew she would, of course. I told you so long
ago. He's quite sure to get arrested before long, so
that settled it. And they're going to be married di-
rectly and go straight out there and plot. He excites
the students, you know; as if students needed exciting
by their professors. ... I shall miss Felicity horri-
bly. 'Tis too bad." i
Peter, to cheer her up, told her what he and Leslie
were going to do in Italy.
" Pll write, of course. Picture post cards, you know.
And if ever I've twopence halfpenny to spare I'll write
a real letter; there'll be a lot to tell you." Peter ex-
pected Leslie to be rather funny in Italy, picking
things up.
" A great country, I believe, for picking things up,"
he had said. " Particularly for the garden." He had
been referring to his country seat.
" I see," said Peter. " You want to Italianise the
garden. I'm not quite sure. . . . Oh, you might, of
course. Iron-work gates, then; and carved Renais-
sance oil-tanks, and Venetian well-heads, and such-like.
All right ; we'll see what we can steal. But it's rather
easy to let an Italianised garden become florid; you
have to be extremely careful with it."
" That's up to you," said Mr. Leslie tranquilly.
So they went to Italy, and Peter picked things up
with judgment, and Leslie paid for them with phlegm.
They picked up not only carved olive-oil tanks and
well-heads and fifteenth-century iron-work gates from
ancient and impoverished gardens, but a contemporarily
copied Delia Robbia fireplace, and designs for Renais-
sance ceilings, and a rococo carved and painted altar-
piece from a mountain church whose parroco was hard-
THE COMPLETE SHOPPER 53
up, and a piece of 1480 tapestry that Peter loved very
much, whereon St. Anne and other saints played
among roses and raspberries, beautiful to behold.
These things made both the picker-up and the payer
exceedingly contented. Meanwhile Peter with diffi-
culty restrained Leslie from " picking up " stray pieces
of mosaic from tessellated pavements, and other curios.
Oddly together with Leslie's feeling for the costly went
the insane and indiscriminate avidity of the collecting
tourist.
" You can't do it," Peter would shrilly and em-
phatically explain. " It's like a German tripper col-
lecting souvenirs. Things aren't interesting merely
because you happen to have been to the places they
belong to. What do you want with that bit of glass?
It isn't beautiful; when it's taken out of the rest of
its pattern like that it's merely ridiculous. I thought
you wanted beautiful things."
Leslie would meekly give in. His leaning on Peter
in this matter of what he wanted was touching. In
the matter of what he admired, where no questions of
acquisition came in, he and his shopping-man agreed
less. Leslie here showed flashes of proper spirit. He
also read Euskin in the train. Peter had small al-
legiance there ; he even, when irritated, called Euskin a
muddle-head.
" He's a good man, isn't he ? " Leslie queried,
puzzled. " Surely he knows what he's talking about ? "
and Peter had to admit that that was so.
" He tells me what to like," the self-educator said
simply. " And I try to like it. I don't always suc-
ceed, but I try. That's right, isn't it ? "
" I don't know." Peter was puzzled. " It seems
to me rather a funny way of going about it. When
you've succeeded, are you much happier? I mean,
54 THE LEE SHORE
what sort of a liking is it? Oh, but I don't under-
stand there aren't two sorts really. You either like
a thing, or ... well."
At times one needed a rest from Leslie. But out-
side the province of art and the pleasures of the eye
he was lovable, even likeable, having here a self-de-
pendence and a personality that put pathos far off, and
made him himself a rest. And his generosity was limit-
less. It was almost an oppression; only Peter, being
neither proud nor self-conscious, was not easily op-
pressed. He took what was lavished on him and did
his best to deserve it. But it was perhaps a little tiring.
Leslie was a thoroughly good sort a much better sort
than most people knew but Italy was somehow not
the fit setting for him. Nothing could have made Peter
dislike things pleasant to look at; but Leslie's perse-
vering, uncomprehending groping after their pleasant-
ness made one feel desirous to dig a gulf between them
and him. It was rather ageing. Peter missed Urqu-
hart and Lucy; one felt much younger with them.
The thought of their clean, light, direct touch on life,
that handled its goods without fumbling, and without
the need of any intervening medium, was as refreshing
as a breath of fresh air in a close room.
Rodney too was refreshing. They came across him
at Pietrasanta ; he was walking across Tuscany by him -
self, and came to the station, looking very dusty and
disreputable, to put the book he had finished into his
bag that travelled by train and get out another.
" Come out of that," he said to Peter, " and walk
with me to Florence. Trains for bags ; roads for men.
You can meet your patron in Florence. Come along."
And Peter, after a brief consultation with the ac-
commodating Leslie, did come along. It was certainly
more than amusing. The road in Tuscany is much
THE COMPLETE SHOPPER 55
better than the railway. And Rodney was an inter-
esting and rather attractive person. Since he left Cam-
bridge he had been pursuing abstruse chemical re-
search in a laboratory he had in a Westminster slum.
Peter never saw him in London, because the Ignorant
Rich do not live in slums, and because Rodney was not
fond of the more respectable quarters of the city.
Peter was set speculating vaguely on Rodney's vivid
idealism. To Peter, ideas, the unseen spirits of life,
were remote, neither questioned nor accepted, but
simply in the background. In the foreground, for the
moment, were a long white road running through a
river valley, and little fortress cities cresting rocky
hills, and the black notes of the cypresses striking on
a background of silver olives. In these Peter believed ' r
and he believed in blue Berovieri goblets, and Gobelin
tapestries, and in a great many other things that he
had seen and saw at this moment ; he believed intensely,
with a poignant vividness of delight, in all things visi-
ble. For the rest, it was not that he doubted or won-
dered much; he had not thought about it enough for
that; but it was all very remote. What was spirit,
apart from form? Could it be? If so, would it be
valuable or admirable ? It was the shapes and colours
of things, after all, that mattered. As to the pre-ex-
istence of things and their hereafter, Peter seldom
speculated; he knew that it was through entering the
workshop (or the play-room, he would rather have
said) of the phenomenal, where the idea took limiting
lines and definite shape and the tangible charm of the
sense-apprehended, that life for him became life. Rod-
ney attained to his real by looking through the manifold
veils of the phenomenal, as through so much glass;
Peter to his by an adoring delight in their complex
loveliness. He was not a symbolist ; he had no love of
56 THE LEE SHORE
mystic hints and mist-veiled distances; he was George
Herbert's
Man who looks on glass
And on it rests his eye,
because glass was so extremely jolly. Rodney looked
with the mystic's eyes on life revealed and emerging
behind its symbols; Peter with the artist's on life ex-
pressed in the clean and lovely shapes of things, their
colours and tangible sweetness. To Peter Rodney's
idealism would have been impossibly remote; things,
as things, had a delightful concrete reality that was its
own justification. They needed to interpret nothing;
they were themselves; no veils, but the very inner
sanctuary.
Both creeds, that of things visible and that of the
idea, were good, and suited to the holders; but for
those on whom fortune frequently frowns, for those
whose destiny it is to lose and break and not to attain,
Peter's has drawbacks. Things do break so ; break and
get lost and are no more seen ; and that hurts horribly.
Remains the idea, Rodney would have said; that, be-
ing your own, does not get lost unless you throw it
away; and, unless you are a fool, you don't throw it
away until you have something better to take its place.
Anyhow they walked all day and slept on the road.
On the third night they slept in an olive garden; till
the moon, striking in silver slants between silver trees,
lit on Rodney's face, and he opened dreamy eyes on a
pale, illumined world. At his side Peter, still in the
shadows, slept rolled up in a bag. Rodney slept with
a thin plaid shawl over his knees. He glanced for a
moment at Peter's pale face, a little pathetic in sleep,
a little amused too at the corners of the lightly-closed
lips. Rodney's brief regard was rather friendly and
THE COMPLETE SHOPPER 57
affectionate; then lie turned from the dreaming Peter
to the dreaming world. They had gone to sleep in a
dark blue night lit by golden stars, and the olive trees
had stood dark and unwhispering about them, gnarled
shapes, waiting their transformation. Now there had
emerged a white world, a silver mystery, a pale dream ;
and for Rodney the reality that shone always behind
the shadow-foreground dropped the shadows like a veil
and emerged in clean and bare translucence of truth.
The dome of many-coloured glass was here transcended,
its stain absorbed in the white radiance of the elucidat-
ing moon. So elucidating was the moon's light that it
left no room for confusion or doubt. So eternally
silver were the still ranks of the olives that one could
imagine no transformation there. That was the pale
and immutable light that lit all the worlds. Getting
through and behind the most visible and obvious of the
worlds one was in the sphere of true values ; they lay all
about, shining in unveiled strangeness, eternally and
unalterably lit. So Rodney, who had his own value-
system, saw them.
Peter too was caught presently into the luminous
circle, and stirred, and opened pleased and friendly
eyes on the white night Peter was nearly always po-
lite, even to those who woke him then, half apolo-
getically, made as if to snuggle again into sleep, but
Rodney put out a long thin arm and shoved him, and
said, " It's time to get up, you slacker," and Peter mur-
mured :
" Oh, bother, all right, have you made tea ? "
" No," said Rodney. " You can do without tea this
morning."
Peter sat up and began to fumble in his knapsack.
" I see no morning," he patiently remarked, as he
struck a match and lit a tiny spirit-lamp. " I see no
58 THE LEE SHORE
morning; and whether there is a morning or merely a
moon I cannot do without tea. Or biscuits."
He found the biscuits, and apparently they had been
underneath him all night.
" I thought the ground felt even pricklier than
usual," he commented. " I do have such dreadfully
bad luck, don't I. Crumbs, Rodney? They're quite
good, for crumbs. Better than crusts, anyhow. I
should think even you could eat crumbs without pam-
pering yourself. And if crumbs then tea, or you'll
choke. Here you are."
He poured tea into two collapsible cups and passed
one to Eodney, who had been discoursing for some time
on his special topic, the art of doing without.
Then Peter, drinking tea and munching crumbs, sat
up in his bag and looked at what Rodney described as
the morning. He saw how the long, pointed olive
leaves stood with sharp edges against pale light; how
the silver screen was, if one looked into it, a thing of
magic details of delight, of manifold shapes and sharp
little shadowings and delicate tracery; how gnarled
stems were light-touched and shadow-touched and silver
and black; how the night was delicate, marvellous, a
radiant wonder of clear loveliness, illustrated by a large
white moon. Peter saw it and smiled. He did not
see Rodney's world, but his own.
But both saw how the large moon dipped and
dipped. Soon it would dip below the dim land's rim,
and the olive trees would be blurred and twisted shad-
ows in a still shadow-world.
" Then," said Peter dreamily, " we shall be able to go
to sleep again."
Rodney pulled him out of his bag and firmly rolled
it up.
" Twelve kilometres from breakfast. Thirty from
THE COMPLETE SHOPPER 59
tea. "No, we don't tea before Florence. Go and wash."
They washed in a copper bucket that hung beside
a pulley well. It was rather fun washing, till Peter
let the bucket slip off the hook and gurgle down to the
bottom. Then it was rather fun fishing for it with
the hook, but it was not caught, and they abandoned it
in sudden alarm at a distant sound, and hastily scram-
bled out of the olive garden onto the white road.
Beneath their feet lay the thick soft dust, unstirred
as yet by the day's journeyings. The wayfaring smell
of it caught at their breath. Before them the pale road
wound and wound, between the silver secrecy of the
olive woods, towards the journeying moon that dipped
above a far and hidden city in the west. Then a dim
horizon took the dipping moon, and there remained a
grey road that smelt of dust and ran between shadowed
gardens that showed no more their eternal silver, but
gnarled and twisted stems that mocked and leered.
One traveller stepped out of his clear circle of
illumined values into the shrouded dusk of the old
accustomed mystery, and the road ran faint to his eyes
through a blurred land, and he had perforce to take up
again the quest of the way step by step. Reality, for a
lucid space of time emerging, had slipped again behind
the shadow-veils. The ranks of the wan olives, waiting
silently for dawn, held and hid their secret.
The other traveller murmured, " How many tones
of grey do you suppose there are in an olive tree when
the moon has set? But there'll be more presently.
Listen. . . ."
The little wind that comes before the dawn stirred
and shivered, and disquieted the silence of the dim
woods. Peter knew how the stirred leaves would be
shivering white, only in the dark twilight one could not
see.
60 THE LEE SHORE
The dusk paled and paled. Soon one would catch the
silver of upturned leaves.
On the soft deep dust the treading feet of the travel-
lers moved quietly. One walked with a light uneven-
ness, a slight limp.
CHAPTER V
THE SPLENDID MORNING
" LISTEN," said Peter again ; and some far off thing
was faintly jarring the soft silence, on a crescendo note.
Rodney listened, and murmured, " Brute." He
hated them more than Peter did. He was less wide-
minded and less sweet-tempered. Peter had a gentle
and not intolerant aesthetic aversion, Rodney a fervid
moral indignation.
It came storming over the rims of twilight out of
an unhorn dawn, and the soft dust surged behind.
Its eyes flamed, and lit the pale world. It was run-
ning to the city in the dim west ; it was in a hurry ; it
would be there for breakfast. As it ran it played the
opening bars of something of Tchaichowsky's.
Rodney and Peter leant over the low white wall and
gazed into grey shivering gardens. So could they show
aloof contempt ; so could they elude the rioting dust.
The storming took a diminuendo note; it slackened
to a throbbing murmur. The brute had stopped, and
close to them. The brute was investigating itself.
" Perhaps," Rodney hoped, but not sanguinely,
" they'll have to push it all the way to Florence."
Still contempt withheld a glance.
Then a pleasant, soft voice broke the hushed dusk
with half a laugh, and Peter wheeled sharply about.
The man who had laughed was climbing again into
his seat, saying, " It's quite all right." That remark
was extremely characteristic ; it would have been a suit-
able motto for his whole career.
6*
62 THE LEE SHORE
The next thing he said, in his gentle, unsurprised
voice, was to the bare-headed figure that smiled up at
him from the road.
" You, Margery ? . . . What a game. But what
have you done with the Hebrew? Oh, that's Stephen,
isn't it. That accounts for it: but how did he get
you? I say, you can't have slept anywhere; there's
been nowhere, for miles. And have you left Leslie to
roam alone among the Objects of Beauty with his own
unsophisticated taste for guide ? I suppose he's chucked
you at last; very decent-spirited of him, I think, don't
you, Stephen ? "
" I chucked him," Peter explained, " because he
bought a sham Carlo Dolci. I drew the line at that.
Though if one must have a Carlo Dolci, I suppose it
had better be a sham one, on the whole. Anyhow, I
came away and took to the road. We sleep in ditches,
and we like it very much, and I make tea every morn-
ing in my little kettle. I'm going to Florence to help
Leslie to buy bronze things for his grates dogs, you
know, and shovels and things. Leslie will have been
there for three days now; I do wonder what he's
bought."
" You'd better come on in the car," Urquhart said.
" Both of you. Why is Stephen looking so proud ? I
shall be at Florence for breakfast. You won't, though.
Bad luck. Come along; there's loads of room."
Rodney stood by the wall. He was unlike Peter
in this, that his resentment towards a person who
motored across Tuscany between dusk and dawn was
in no way lessened by the discovery of who it was.
Peter stood, his feet deep in dust, and smiled at
Urquhart. Rodney watched the two a little cynically
from the wall. Peter looked what he was a limping
vagabond tramp, dust-smeared, bare-headed, very much
THE SPLENDID MORNING 63
part of the twilight road. In spite of his knapsack, he
had the air of possessing nothing and smiling over the
thought.
Peter said, " How funny," meaning the combination
of Urquhart and the motor-car and Tuscany and the
grey dawn and Rodney and himself; Urquhart was
smiling down at them, his face pale in the strange dawn-
twilight. The scene was symbolical of their whole re-
lations; it seemed as if Urquhart, lifted triumphantly
above the road's dust, had always so smiled down on
Peter, in his vagabond weakness.
" I don't think," Urquhart was saying, " that you
ought to walk so far in the night. It's weakening."
To Urquhart Peter had always been a brittle incom-
petent, who could not do things, who kept breaking into
bits if roughly handled.
" Eodney and I don't think," Peter returned, in the
.hushed voice that belonged to the still hour, " that you
ought to motor so loud in the night. It's common.
Eodney specially thinks so. Eodney is sulking; he
won't come and speak to you."
Urquhart called to his cousin : " Come with me to
Florence, you and Margery. Or do you hate them too
much?"
" Much too much," Eodney admitted, coming for-
wards perforce. " Thank you," he added, " but I'm
on a walking tour, and it wouldn't do to spoil it.
Margery isn't, though. You go, Margery, if you
like."
Urquhart said, " Do, Margery," and Peter looked
wistful, but declined. He wanted horribly badly to
go with Urquhart ; but loyalty hindered.
Urquhart said he was going to Venice afterwards,
to stay with his uncle Evelyn.
" Good," said Peter. " Leslie and I are going to
64 THE LEE SHORE
do Venice directly we've cleared Florence of its Ob-
jects of Beauty. You can imagine the way Leslie will
go about Florence, his purse in his hand, asking the
price of the Bargello. ' Worth having, isn't it ? A
good thing, I think ? ' If we decide that it is he'll
have it, whatever the price; he always does. He's a
sportsman ; I can't tell you how attached I am to him."
Peter had not told even Urquhart that one was ever
glad of a rest from Leslie.
Urquhart said, " Well, if you won't come," and
hummed into the paling twilight, and before him fled
the circle of golden light and after him swept the
dust. Peter's eyes followed the golden light and the
surging whiteness till a bend in the road took them, and
the world was again dim and grey and very still. Only
the little cool wind that soughed among the olive leaves
was like the hushed murmuring of quiet waves. East-
wards, among the still, mysterious hills and silver
plains, a translucent dawn was coming.
Peter's sigh was very unobtrusive. " After all," he
murmured, " motoring does make me feel sick."
Rodney gave half a cynical smile with the corner
of his mouth not occupied with his short and ugly pipe.
Peter was pipeless ; smoking, perhaps, had the same dis-
astrous effect.
" But all the same," said Peter, suddenly aggrieved,
" you might be pleasant to your own cousin, even if
he is in a motor. Why be proud ? "
He was really a little vexed that Rodney should look
with aloofness on Urquhart. For him Urquhart em-
bodied the brilliance of life, its splendidness and beauty
and joy. Rodney, with his fanatical tilting at pros-
perity, would, Peter half consciously knew, have to see
Urquhart unhorsed and stripped bare before he would
take much notice of him.
65
" Too many things," said Rodney, indistinctly over
his thick pipe. " That's all."
Peter, irritated, said, " The old story. The more
things the better; -why not? You'd be happy on a
desert island full of horrid naked savages. You think
you're civilised, but you're really the most primitive per-
son I know."
Rodney said he was glad; he liked to be primitive,
and added, " But you're wrong, of course. The naked
savages would like anything they could get beads
or feathers or top hats; they're not natural ascetics;
the simple life is enforced. ... St. Francis took off
all his clothes in the Piazza and began his new career
without any."
" Disgusting," murmured Peter.
" That," said Rodney, " is what people like Denis
should do. They need to unload, strip bare, to find
themselves, to find life."
" Denis," said Peter, " is the most alive person I
know, as it happens. He's found life without needing
to take his clothes off so he scores over St. Francis."
Denis had rushed through the twilight vivid like a
flame he had lit it for a moment and left it grey.
Peter knew that
" But he hasn't," Rodney maintained, " got the key
of the thing. If he did take his clothes off, it would be
a toss-up whether he found more life or lost what he's
got. That's all wrong, don't you see. That's what ails
all these delightful, prosperous people. They're swim-
ming with life-belts."
" You'll be saying next," said Peter, disgusted, " that
you admire Savonarola and his bonfire."
" I do, of course. But he'd only got hold of half
of it half the gospel of the empty-handed. The point
is to lose and laugh." For a moment Rodney had a
66 THE LEE SHORE
vision of Peter standing bare-headed in the dust and
smiling. " To drop all the trappings and still find life
jolly just because it is life, not because of what it
brings. That's what St. Francis did. That's where
Italy scores over England. I remember at Lerici the
beggars laughing on the shore, with a little maccaroni
to last them the day. There was a man all done up
in bandages, hopping about on crutches and grinning.
Smashed to bits, and his bones sticking out of his skin
for hunger, but there was the sun and the sea and the
game he was playing with dice, and he looked as if he
was saying, ' Nihil habentes, omnia possidentes; isn't
it a jolly day ? ' When Denis says that, I shall begin
to have hopes for him. At present he thinks it's a
jolly day because he's got money to throw about and a
hundred and one games to play at and friends to play
them with, and everything his own way, and a new
motor. . . . Well, but look at that now. Isn't it bare
and splendid all clean lines no messing and soft-
ness; it might be cut out of rock. Oh, I like Tus-
cany."
They had rounded a bend, and a spacious country
lay there stretched to the morning, and over it the
marvel of the dawn opened and blossomed like a flower.
From the basin of the shining river the hills stood back,
and up their steep sides the vine-hung mulberries and
close-trimmed olives climbed (olives south of the
Serchio are diligently pruned, and lack the generous
luxuriance of the north), and against the silver back-
ground the sentinel cypresses stood black, like sharp
music notes striking abruptly into a vague symphony;
and among the mulberry gardens and the olives and
the cypresses white roads climbed and spiralled up to
little cresting cities that took the rosy dawn. Tuscany
emerging out of the dim mystery of night had a splen-
THE SPLENDID MORNING 67
did clarity, an unblurred cleanness of line, an austere
fineness, as of a land hewn sharply out of rock.
Peter would not have that fine bareness used as illus-
tration ; it was too good a thing in itself. Kodney the
symbolist saw the vision of life in it, Peter the joy of
self-sufficient beauty.
The quiet road bore them through the hushed
translucence of the dawn-clear land. Everything was
silent in this limpid hour; the little wind that had
whitened the olives and set the sea-waves whispering
there had dropped now and lay very still.
The road ran level through the river basin. Ear
ahead they could see it now, a white ribbon laid beside
a long golden gleam that wound and wound.
Peter sighed, seeing so much of it all at once, and
stopped to rest on the low white wall, but instead of
sitting on it he swayed suddenly forward, and the hill
cities circled close about him, and darkened and shut
out the dawn.
The smell of the dust, when one was close to it, was
bitter and odd. Somewhere in the further darkness a
voice was muttering mild and perplexed imprecations.
Peter moved on the strong arm that was supporting him
and opened his eyes and looked on the world again.
Between him and the rosy morning, Rodney loomed
large, pouring whisky into a flask.
It all seemed a very old and often-repeated tale.
One could not do anything; one could not even go
a walking-tour: one could not (of this one was quite
sure) take whisky at this juncture without feeling hor-
ribly sick. The only thing that occurred to Peter, in
the face of the dominant Rodney, was to say, " I'm a
teetotaller." Rodney nodded and held the flask to his
lips. Rodney was looking rather worried.
Peter said presently, still at length in the dust, " I'm
68 THE LEE SHORE
frightfully sorry. I suppose I'm tired. Didn't we get
up rather early and walk rather fast ? "
" I suppose," said Rodney, " you oughtn't to have
come. What's wrong, you rotter ? "
Peter sat up, and there lay the road again, stretching
and stretching into the pink morning.
" Thirty kilometres to breakfast," murmured Peter.
"And I don't know that I want any, even then.
Wrong? . . . Oh . . . well, I suppose it's heart. I
have one, you know, of a sort. A nuisance, it's always
been. Not dangerous, but just in the way. I'm sorry,
Rodney I really am."
Rodney said again, " You absolute rotter. Why
didn't you tell me ? What in the name of anything in-
duced you to walk at all ? You needn't have."
Peter looked down the long road that wound and
wound into the morning land. " I wanted to," he said.
" I wanted to most awfully. ... I wanted to try it.
... I thought perhaps it was the one thing. . . .
Football's off for me, you know 'and most other
things. . . . Only diabolo left . . . and ping-pong
. . . and jig-saw. I'm quite good at those . . . but
oh,, I did want to be able to walk. Horribly I
wanted it."
" Well," said Rodney practically, " it's extremely ob-
vious that you aren't. You ought to have got into that
thing, of course. Only then, as you remarked, you
would have felt sick. Really, Margery. . . ."
" Oh, I know," Peter stopped him hastily. " Don't
say the usual things; I really feel too unwell to bear
them. I know I'm made in Germany and all that
I've been hearing so all my life. And now I should
like you to go on to Florence, and I'll follow, very slow.
It's all very well, Rodney, but you were going at about
seven miles an hour. Talk of motors I couldn't see
THE SPLENDID MORNING 69
the scenery as we rushed by. That's such a Vandal-
like way of crossing Tuscany."
" Well, you can cross the rest of Tuscany by train.
There's a station at Montelupo; we shall be there di-
rectly."
Peter, abruptly renouncing his intention of getting
up, lay back giddily. The marvellous morning was
splendid on the mountains.
" How extremely lucky," remarked Peter weakly,
" that I wasn't in this position when Denis came by.
Denis usually does come by at these crucial moments
you know always has. He probably thinks by now
that I am an escaped inhabitant of the Permanent
Casualty Ward. Bother. I wish he didn't."
" Since it's obvious," said Rodney, " that you can't
stand, let alone walk, I had better go on to Montelupo
and fetch a carriage of sorts. I wonder if you can lie
there quietly till I come back, or if you'll be having
seizures and things? Well, I can't help it. I must
go, anyhow. There's the whisky on your left."
Peter watched him go; he went at seven miles an
hour ; the dust ruffled and leapt at his heels.
Peter sat very still leaning back against the rough
white wall, and thought what a pity it all was. What
a pity, and what a bore, that one could not do things
like other people. Short of being an Urquhart, who
could do everything and had everything, whose passing
car flamed triumphant and lit the world into a splen-
did joy, and was approved under investigation with
" quite all right " short of that glorious competence
and pride of life, one might surely be an average man,
who could walk from San Pietro to Florence without
tumbling on the road at dawn. Peter sighed over it,
rather crossly. The marvellous morning was insulted
by his collapse; it became a remote thing, in which he
70 THE LEE SHORE
might have no share. As always, the inexorable " Not
for you " rose like a barred gate between him and the
lucid country the white road threaded.
Peter in the dust began to whistle softly, to cheer
himself, and because he was really feeling better, and
because anyhow, for him or not for him, the land at
dawn was a golden and glorious thing, and he loved it.
What did it- matter whether he could walk through it or
not? There it lay, magical, clear-hewn, bathed in
golden sunrise.
Round the turn of the road a bent figure came, step-
ping slowly and with age, a woodstack on his back.
Heavier even than a knapsack containing a spirit kettle
and a Decameron and biscuit remainders in a paper bag,
it must be. Peter watched the slow figure sympathetic-
ally. Would he sway and topple over; and if he did
would the woodstack break his fall ? The whisky flask
stood ready on Peter's left.
Peter stopped whistling to watch; then he became
aware that once more the hidden distances were jarring
and humming. He sat upright, and waited; a little
space of listening, then once again the sungod's chariot
stormed into the morning.
Peter watched it grow in size. How extremely for-
tunate. . . . Even though one was again, as usual,
found collapsed and absurd.
The woodstack pursued its slow advance. The music
from Tchaichowsky admonished it, as a matter of form,
from far off, then sharply, summarily, from a lessening
distance. The woodstack was puzzled, vaguely worried.
It stopped, dubiously moved to one side, and pursued its
cautious way a little uncertainly.
Urquhart, without his chauffeur this time, was driv-
ing over the speed-limit, Peter perceived. He usually
did. But he ought to slacken his pace now, or he would
THE SPLENDID MORNING 71
miss Peter by the "wall. He was nearing the woodstack,
just going to pass it, with a clear two yards between.
It was not his doing : it was the woodstack that suddenly
lessened the distance, lurching over it, taking the middle
of the road.
Peter cried, " Oh, don't oh, don't," idiotically,
sprawling on hands and knees.
The car swung sharply about like a tugged horse;
sprang to the other side of the road, hung poised on
a wheel, as near as possible capsized. A less violent
jerk and it would have gone clean over the woodstack
that lay in the road on the top of its bearer.
By the time Peter got there, Urquhart had lifted the
burden from the old bent figure that lay face down-
wards. Gently he turned it over, and they looked on a
thin old face gone grey with more than age.
" He can't be," said Urquhart. " He can't be. I
didn't touch him."
Peter said nothing. His eyes rested on the broken
end of a chestnut-stick protruding from the faggot,
dangling loose by its bark. Urquhart's glance followed
his.
"I see," said Urquhart quietly. "That did it.
The lamp or something must have struck it and knocked
him over. Poor old chap." Urquhart's hand shook
over the still heart. Peter gave him the whisky flask.
Two minutes passed. It was no good.
" His heart must have been bad," said Urquhart, and
the soft tones of his pleasant voice were harsh and un-
steady. " Shock, I suppose. How how absolutely
awful."
How absolutely incongruous, Peter was dully think-
ing. Urquhart and tragedy; Urquhart and death. It
was that which blackened the radiant morning, not the
mercifully abrupt cessation of a worn-out life. For
72 THE LEE SHORE
Peter death had two sharply differentiated aspects one
of release to the tired and old, for whom the grass-
hopper was a burden ; the other of an unthinkable black-
ness of tragedy sheer sharp loss that knew no com-
pensation. It was not with this bitter face that death
had stepped into their lives on this clear morning. One
could imagine that weary figure glad to end his way-
faring so; one could even imagine those steps to death
deliberately taken; and one did imagine those he left
behind him accepting his peace as theirs.
Peter said, " It wasn't your fault. It was his doing
poor chap."
The uncertain quaver in his voice brought TJrquhart's
eyes for a moment upon his face, that was always pale
and was now the colour of putty.
" You're ill, aren't you ? . . . I met Stephen. . . .
I was coming back anyhow; I knew you weren't fit to
walk."
He muttered it absently, frowning down on the other
greyer face in the grey dust. Again his hand unstead-
ily groped over the still heart, and lay there for a mo-
ment.
Abruptly then he looked up, and met Peter's shadow-
circled eyes,
" I was over-driving," he said. " I ought to have
slowed down to pass him." He stood up, frowning
down on the two in the road.
" We've got to think now," he said, " what to do
about it"
To that thinking Peter offered no help and no hin-
drance. He sat in the road by the dead man and the
bundle of wood, and looked vaguely on the remote morn-
ing that death had dimmed. Denis and death: Peter
would have done a great deal to sever that incredible
connection.
THE SPLENDID MORNING 73
But it was, after all, for Denis to effect that severing,
to cut himself loose from tLat oppressing and impossible
weight.
He did so.
" I don't see," said Denis, " that we need . . . that
we can ... do anything about it."
Above the clear mountains the sun swung up tri-
umphant, and the wide river valley was bathed in
radiant gold.
CHAPTER VI
HILARY, PEGGY, AND HER BOARDERS
WHEKT Leslie and Peter went to Venice to pick up
Berovieri goblets and other things, Leslie stayed at
the Hotel Europa and Peter in the Palazzo Amadeo.
The Palazzo Amadeo is a dilapidated palace looking
onto the Rio delle Beccarie; it is let in flats to the
poor ; and in the sea-story suite of the great, bare, dingy,
gilded rooms lived Hilary and Peggy Margerison, and
three disreputable infants who insisted on bathing in the
canals, and the boarders. The boarders were at the
moment six in number; Peter made seven. The great
difficulty with the boarders, Peggy told him, was to
make them pay. They had so little money, and such a
constitutional reluctance to spend that little on their
board.
" The poor things," said Peggy, who had a sympa-
thetic heart. " I'm sure I'm sorry for them, and I hate
to ask them for it. But one's got to try and live."
She was drying Illuminato (baptized in that name
by his father's desire, but by his mother called Micky)
before the stove in the great dining-room. Illuminato
had just tumbled off the bottom step into the water, and
had been fished out by his uncle Peter; he was three,
and had humorous, screwed-up eyes and a wide mouth
like a frog's, so that Hilary, who detested ugliness,
could really hardly be fond of him. Peggy was; but
then Peggy always had more sense of humour than
Hilary.
A boarder looked in to see if lunch was ready. It
74
HILARY, PEGGY, AND BOARDERS 75
was not, but Peggy began preparations by screaming
melodiously for Teresina. They heard the boarder
sigh. He was a tall young man with inspired eyes and
oily hair. " Peter had observed him the night before,
with some interest.
" That's Guy Vyvian," Peggy told him, looking for
Illuminato's dryer suit in the china cupboard.
" Fancy/' said Peter.
" Yes," said Peggy, pulling out a garment and drop-
ping a plate out of its folds on the polished marble
floor. " There now ! Micky, you're a tiresome little
ape and I don't love you. Guy Vyvian's an ape, too,
entirely ; his one merit is that he writes for ' The Gem,'
so that Hilary can take the rent he won't pay out of
the money he gives him for his articles. It works out
pretty well, on the whole, I fancy; they're neither of
them good at paying, so it saves them both bother.
( " J) pronto, Teresina ? " " Subito, subito," cried
Teresina from the kitchen.) " I can't abide Vyvian,"
Peggy resumed. " The babies hate him, and he makes
himself horrid to everyone, and lets Rhoda Johnson
grovel to him, and stares at the stains on the table-
cloth, as if his own nails weren't worse, and turns up
his nose at the food. Poor little Rhoda! You saw
her ? The little thin girl with a cough, who hangs on
Vyvian's words and blushes when her mother speaks.
She's English governess to the Marchesa Azzareto's chil-
dren. Mrs. Johnson's a jolly old soul ; I'm fond of her ;
she's the best of the boarders, by a lot. Now, precious,
if you tumble in again this morning, you shall sit next
to Mr. Vyvian at dinner. You go and tell the others
that from me. It isn't respectable, the way you all
go on. Here's the minestra at last."
Teresina, clattering about the marble floor with the
minestra, screamed " Pronto," very loud, and the
76 THE LEE SHORE
boarders trailed in one by one. First came Mr. Guy
Vyvian, sauntering with resignedly lifted brows, and
looking as if it ought to have been ready a long time
ago; he was followed by Mrs. Johnson, a stout and
pleasant lady, who looked as if she was only too de-
lighted that it was ready now, and the more the bet-
ter; her young daughter, Rhoda, wearing a floppy
smocked frock and no collar but a bead necklace,
coughed behind her ; she looked pale and fatigued, and
as if it didn't matter in the least if it was never ready
at all. She was being talked to by a round-faced,
fluffy-haired lady in a green dress and pince-nez, who
took an interest in the development of her deplorably
uncultured young mind a Miss Barnett, who was
painting pictures to illustrate a book to be called
" Venice, Her Spirit." The great hope for young
Rhoda, both Miss Barnett and Mr. Vyvian felt, was
to widen the gulf between her and her unspeakable
mother. They, who quarrelled about everything else,
were united in this enterprise. The method adopted
was to snub Mrs. Johnson whenever she spoke. That
was no doubt why, as Peggy had told Peter, Rhoda
blushed on those frequent occasions.
The party was completed by a very young curate,
and an elderly spinster with mittens and many ail-
ments, the symptoms of which she lucidly specified in
a refined undertone to any lady who would listen ; with
gentlemen, however, she was most discreet, except with
the curate, who complained that his cloth was no pro-
tection. Finally Hilary came in and took the head of
the table, and Peggy and the children took the other
end. Peter found himself between Mrs. Johnson and
Miss Barnett, and opposite Mr. Vyvian and Rhoda.
Mrs. Johnson began to be nice to him at once, in her
cheery way.
HILARY, PEGGY, AND BOARDERS 77
" Know Venice ? " and when Peter said, " Not yet,"
she told him, " Ah, you'll like it, I know. So pleas-
ant as it is. Particlerly for young people. It gives
me rheumatics, so much damp about. But my gel
Rhoder is that fond of it. Spends all her spare time
not as she's got much, poor gel in the gall'ries and
that. Art, you know. She goes in for it, Ehoder
does. I don't, now. I'm a stupid old thing, as they'll
all tell you." She nodded cheerfully and inclusively
at Mr. Vyvian and Ehoda and Miss Barnett. They
did not notice. Vyvian, toying disgustedly with his
burnt minestra, was saying in his contemptuous voice,
" Of course, if you like ihai, you may as well like the
Frari monuments at once and have done."
Khoda was crimson; she had made another mistake.
Miss Barnett, who disputed the office of mentor with
Vyvian, whom she jealously disliked, broke in, in her
cheery chirp, " I don't agree with you, Mr. Vyvian. I
consider it a very fine example of Carpaccio's later
style; I think you will find that some good critics are
with me." She addressed Peter, ignoring the inter-
vening solidity of Mrs. Johnson. " Do you support me,
Mr. Margerison ? "
" Pve not seen it yet," Peter said rather timidly.
" It sounds very nice."
Miss Barnett gave him a rather contemptuous look
through her pince-nez and turned to Hilary.
" Lor ! " whispered Mrs. Johnson to Peter. " They
do get so excited about pictures. Just like that they
go on all day, squabblin' and peckin' each other. Al-
ways at Rhoder they are too, tellin' her she must think
this and mustn't think that, till the poor gel don't know
if she's on her head or her heels. She don't like me
to interfere, or it's all I can do .sometimes not to put
in my word and say, ' You stick to it, Rhoder my dear;
78 THE LEE SHORE
you stand up to 'em and jour mother'll back you.' But
Rhoder don't like that. ' Mother,' she says, quite
sharp, ' Mother, you don't know a thing about Art, and
they do. You let be, and don't put me to shame before
my friends.' That's what she'd like to say, anyhow,
if she's too good a gel to say it. Khoder's ashamed
of my ignorance, that's what it is." This was a furtive
whisper, for Peter's ear alone. Having thus unbur-
dened herself Mrs. Johnson cleared her throat noisily
and said very loud, " An' what do you think of St.
Mark's ? " That was a sensible and intelligent ques-
tion, and she hoped Ehoda heard.
Peter said he thought it was very nice. That Rhoda
certainly heard, and she looked at him with a curious
expression, in which hope predominated. Was this
brother of the Margerisons another fool, worse than her ?
Would he perhaps make her folly shine almost like
wisdom by comparison ? She exchanged a glance with
Vyvian; it was extraordinarily sweet to be able to do
that; so many glances had been exchanged apropos of
her remarks between Vyvian and Miss Barnett. But
here was a young man who thought St. Mark's was very
nice. " The dear Duomo ! " Miss Barnett murmured,
protecting it from Tourist Insolence.
Mrs. Johnson agreed enthusiastically with Peter.
" I call it just sweet. You should see it on a Sun-
day, Mr. Margerison Mr. Peter, as I should say,
shouldn't I ? all the flags flying, and the sun shining
on the gilt front an' all, and the band playing in the
square; an' inside half a dozen services all at once,
and the incense floatin' everywhere. Not as I'm partial
to incense ; it makes me feel a bit squeamish and
Miss Gould there tells me it affects her similarly, don't
it, Miss Gould ? Incense, I say don't it give you
funny f eelin's within ? Seem to upset you, as it were ? "
HILARY, PEGGY, AND BOARDERS 79
Miss Gould, disturbed in her intimate conversation
with the curate, held up mittened hands in deprecating
horror, either at the delicacy of the question called
across the tahle with gentlemen present, or at the mem-
ory it called up in her of the funny feelings within.
Mrs. Johnson took it as that, and nodded. " Just
like me, she is, in that way. But I like to see the
worship goin' on, all the same. Popish, you know, of
course," she added, and then, bethinking herself, " But
perhaps you're a Eoman, Mr. Peter, like your dear
brother and sister? Well, Roman or no Roman, I al-
ways say as how Mrs. Margerison is one of the best.
A dear, cheery soul, as has hardships to contend with;
and if she finds the comforts of religion in graven
images an' a bead necklace, who am I to say her no ? "
" Peggy," said Hilary wearily across the table, " II-
luminato is making a little beast of himself. Put him
out."
Peggy scrubbed Illuminato's bullet head dry with her
handkerchief (it had been lying in his minestra bowl),
slapped him lightly on the hands, and said absently,
" Don't worry poor Daddy, who's so tired." She was
wishing that the risotto had been boiled a little; one
gathered from the hardness of the rice that that process
had been omitted. Vyvian, who was talking shop with
Hilary, sighed deeply and laid down his fork. He
wondered why he ever came in to lunch. One could get
a much better one nearly as cheap at a restaurant.
Miss Barnett, with an air of wishing to find out how
bad a fool Peter was, leaned across Mrs. Johnson and
said, " What are you to Venice, Mr. Margerison, and
Venice to you? What, I mean, are you going to get
out of her? Which of her aspects do you especially
approach ? She has so infinitely many, you know.
What, in fact, is your connecting link ? " She waited
8o THE LEE SHORE
with some interest for what Peter would say. She
had not yet " placed " him.
Peter said, " Oh, well ... I look at things, you
know . . . much the same as anyone else, I expect.
And I go in gondolas; and then there are the things
one would like to buy."
Mrs. Johnson approved this. " Lovely, ain't they !
Only one never has the money to spend."
" I watch other people spending theirs," said Peter,
" which is the next best thing, I suppose. . . . I'm
sorry I'm stupid, Miss Barnett but it's all so jolly
that I don't like to be invidious."
" Do you write ? " she enquired.
" Sometimes," he admitted. " You're illustrating
a book about Venice, aren't you ? That must be awfully
interesting." c/ vr ^<r, ^-( < < v <
" I am trying," she said, " to catch the most elusive
thing in the world the Spirit of Venice. It breaks
my heart, the pursuit. Just round the corner, always ;
you know Browning's ' Love in a Life ' ?
Heart, fear nothing, for heart, thou shalt find her,
Next time herself! not the trouble behind her . . .
Still the same chance ! she goes out as I enter.
Spend my whole day in the quest; who cares? . . .
It's like that with me and my Venice. It hurts rather
but I have to go on."
" You shouldn't, my dear," Mrs. Johnson mur-
mured soothingly. " I'm sure you should be careful.
We mustn't play tricks with our constitutions."
Rhoda kicked Peter under the table in mistake for
her mother, and never discovered the error.
" Can you tell me," Miss Barnett added abruptly,
in her cheerful voice, " where it hides ? "
Peter looked helpful and intelligent, and endeared
himself to her thereby. She thought him a sympa-
HILARY, PEGGY, AND BOARDERS 81
thetic young man, with possibilities, probably unde-
veloped.
Vyvian, who regarded Miss Barnett and " Venice,
Her Spirit," with contemptuous jealousy, thought that
Rhoda was paying them too much attention, and ef-
fectually called her away by saying, " If you care to
come with me to the Schiavoni, I can better explain to
you what I mean."
Ehoda kindled and flushed and looked suddenly
pretty. Peter heard a smothered sigh on his left.
" I don't like it," Mrs. Johnson murmured to him.
" !N"o, I don't. If it was you, now, as offered to take
her But there, I daresay you wouldn't be clever
enough to suit Rhoder; she's so partic'lar. You and
me, now we get on very well ; seems as if we liked
to talk on the same subjects, as it were; but Rhoder' s
different. When we go about together, it's always,
i Mother, not so loud ! Oh, mother, you mustn't !
Mother, that ain't really beautiful at all, and you're
givin' of us away. Mother, folks are listening.' Let
'em listen is what I say. They won't hear anything
that could hurt 'em from me. But Rhoder' s so quiet ;
she hates a bit of notice. Not that she minds when
she's with Mm; he talks away at the top of his voice,
and folks do turn an' listen I've seen 'em. But I
suppose that's clever talk, so Rhoder don't mind."
She raised her voice from the thick and cautious
whisper which she thought suitable for these remarks,
and addressed Peggy.
" Well, we've had a good dinner, my dear plenty
of it, if the rice was a bit underdone."
" A grain," Miss Gould was murmuring to the curate,
" a single grain would have had unspeakable effects.
?j
Peggy was endeavouring to comb Caterina's exceed-
82 THE LEE SHORE
ingly tangled locks with the fingers of one hand, while
with the other she slapped Silvio's (Larry's) bare and
muddy feet to make him take them off the table-cloth.
Kot that they made much difference to the condition
of the table-cloth ; but still, there are conventions.
" It is a disgrace," Hilary remarked mechanically,
" that my children can't behave like civilised beings at
a meal. . . . Peter, what are you going to do this after-
noon ? "
The boarders rose. Mrs. Johnson patted Peter ap-
provingly on the arm, and said, " I'm glad to of had
the pleasure. One day we'll go out together, you and
me. Seem as if we look at things from the same point
of view, as it were. You. mayn't be so clever as some,
but you suit me. !N"ow, my dear, I'm goin' to help you
about the house a bit. The saloon wants dustin', I
noticed."
Peggy sighed and said she was sure it did, and
Teresina was hopeless, and Mrs. Johnson was really too
kind, but it was a shame to bother her, and the saloon
could go another while yet. She was struggling with
the children's bibs and rather preoccupied.
The boarders went out to pursue their several avoca-
tions; Ehoda and Mr. Vyvian to the church of San
Giorgio degli Schiavoni, that Mr. Vyvian might the bet-
ter explain what he meant; Miss Barnett, round-about
and cheerful, sketch-book in hand, to hunt for " Venice,
Her Spirit," in the Pescaria; Miss Gould to lie down
on her bed and recover from lunch ; the curate to take
the air and photographs for his magic-lantern lectures
to be delivered in the parish-room at home; and Mrs.
Johnson to find a feather broom.
Hilary sat down and lit a cigar, and Illuminato
crawled about his legs.
" I'm going out with Leslie," said Peter. " We're
HILARY, PEGGY, AND BOARDERS 83
going to call on the prince and see the goblet and be-
gin the haggling. We must haggle, though as a matter
of fact Leslie means to have it at any price. It must
be a perfectly ripping thing. . . . Now let me have a
number of ' The Gem ' to read. I've not seen it yet,
you know."
" It's very dull, my dear," Peggy murmured, rinsing
water over the place on the table-cloth where Silvio's
feet had been.
Hilary was gazing into the frog-like countenance
of his youngest son. It gave him a disappointment
ever new, that Illuminate should be so plain. " But
your mother's handsome, frog," he murmured, " and
I'm not worse than my neighbours to look at." (But he
knew he was better than most of them). " Let's hope
you have intellect to make up. Now crawl to your
uncle Peter, since you want to."
Illuminate did want to. He adored his uncle Peter.
"The Gem, Peter?" said Hilary. "Bother the
Gem. As Peggy remarks, it's very dull, and you won't
like it. I don't know that I want you to read it, to say
the truth."
Peter was in the act of doing so. He had found three
torn pages of it on the floor. He was reading an article
called " Osele." Hilary glanced at it, with the slight
nervous frown frequent with him.
" What have you got hold of ? ... Oh, that." His
frown seemed to relax a little. " I really don't recom-
mend the thing for your entertainment, Peter. It'll
bore you. I have to provide two things food for the
interested visitor, and guidance for Lord Evelyn's
mania for purchasing."
" So I am gathering," Peter said. " I'm reading
about osele, marked with the Mocenigo rose. Signer
Antonio Sardi seems to be a man worth a visit. I must
84 THE LEE SHORE
take Leslie there. That's just the sort of thing he
likes. And sixteenth-century visiting cards. Yes,
he'd like those too. By all means we'll go to your
friend Sardi. You wrote this, I suppose ? "
Hilary nodded. His white nervous fingers played on
the arm of his chair. It seemed to be something of an
ordeal to him, this first introduction of Peter to the
Gem.
Peggy, assisting Teresina to bundle the crockery off
the table, shot a swift glance at the group at Hilary
lying back smoking, with slightly knitted forehead, one
unsteady hand playing on his chair; at Peter sitting
on the marble floor with the torn fragments of paper in
his hands and Illuminate astride on his knee. Peggy's
grey, Irish eyes were at the moment a little speculative,
touched with a dispassionate curiosity and a good deal
of sisterly and wifely and maternal and slightly com-
passionate affection. She was so fond of them all, the
dear babes.
Peter had gone on from osele to ivory plaques. He
was not quite so much interested in reading about them
because he knew more about them for himself, but he
took down the name of a dealer who had, according to
the Gem, some good specimens, and said he should take
Leslie there too.
Hilary got up rather suddenly, and jerked his cigar
away into a corner (marble floors are useful in some
ways) and said, " Is Leslie going to buy the whole place
up ? I'm sick of these wealthy Jews. They're ruining
Venice. Buying all the palaces, you know. I suppose
Leslie'll be wanting to do that next. There's altogether
too much buying in this forsaken world. Why can't
people admire without wanting to acquire? Lord
Evelyn can't. The squandering old fool; he's ruining
himself over things he's too blind even to look at
HILARY, PEGGY, AND BOARDERS 85
properly. And this Leslie of yours, who can't even ap-
preciate, still must get and have, of course; and the
more he gets the more he wants. Can't you stop him,
Peter? It's such a monstrous exhibition of the vice of'
the age."
" It's not my profession to stop him," Peter said.
" And, after all, why shouldn't they ? If it makes them
happy well " His finality conveyed his creed;
if it makes them happy, what else is there? To be
happy is to have reached the goal. Peter was a little
sad about Hilary, who seemed as far as ever from that
goal. Why? Peter wondered. Couldn't one be
happy in this lovable water-city, which had, after all,
green ways of shadow and gloom between the peeling
brick walls of ancient houses, and, beyond, the broad
spaces of the sea ? Couldn't one be happy here even if
the babies did poise muddy feet on a table-cloth, not,
after all, otherwise clean ; and even if the poor boarders
wouldn't pay their rent and the rich Jews would buy
palaces and plaques ? Bother the vice of the age,
thought Peter, as he crossed the sun-bathed piazza and
suddenly smelt the sea. There surely never was such a
jolly world made as this, which had Venice in it for
laughter and breathless wonder and delight, and her
Duomo shining like a jewel.
" An' the sun shinin' on the gilt front an' all," mur-
mured Peter. " I call it just sweet."
He went in (he was to meet Leslie there), and the
soft dusk rippled about him, and beyond the great pil-
lars stretched the limitless, hazy horizons of a dream.
Presently Leslie came. He had an open " Stones of
Venice " in his hand, and said, " Now for those
mosaics." Leslie was a business-like person, who
wasted no time. So they started on the mosaics, and
did them for an hour. Leslie said, " Good. Capital,"
86 THE LEE SHORE
with the sober, painstaking, conscientious appreciation
he was wont to bestow on unpurchasable excellence ; and
Peter said, " How jolly," and felt glad that there were
gome excellences unpurchasable even by rich Jews.
They then went to the Accademia and looked at pic-
tures. There Leslie had a clue to merit. " Anything
on hinges, I presume," he remarked, " is worth inspec-
tion. Only why don't they hinge more of the good ones ?
They ought to give us a hint ; they really ought. How's
a man to be sure he's on the right tack ? "
After an hour of that they went to see the prince who
had the goblet. Half an hour's conversation with him,
and the goblet belonged to Leslie. It was a glorious
thing of deep blue glass and translucent enamel and
silver, with the Berovieri signature cut on it. Peter
looked at it much as he had seen a woman in the Duomo
look up at her Lady's shrine, much as Rodney had
looked on the illumined reality behind the dreaming
silver world.
Peter said, " My word, suppose it broke ! " It was
natural that he should think of that; things so often
broke. Only that morning his gold watch had broken,
in Illuminato's active hands. Only that afternoon his
bootlace had broken, and he had had none to replace it
because Caterina had been sailing his other boots in the
canal. Peter sighed over the lovely and brittle world.
Then he and Leslie visited Signor Sardi's shop and
looked at osele and sixteenth-century visiting cards.
Peter said he knew nothing about either personally,
but quoted Hilary in the Gem, to Leslie's satisfaction.
" Your brother's a good man," said Leslie. " Knows
what's what, doesn't he? If he says these are good
osele, we may take it that they are good osele, though
we don't know one osele from another. That's right,
isn't it?"
HILARY, PEGGY, AND BOARDERS 87
Peter said he supposed it was, if one wanted osele
at all, which personally he didn't care about; but one
never knew, of course, what might come in useful.
Anyhow Leslie bought some, and a visiting card be-
longing to the Count Amadeo Vasari, which gave him
much satisfaction. Then they visited the person who,
the Gem had said, had good plaques, and inspected
them critically. Then they had tea at Sant' Ortes' tea-
room, and then Peter went home.
Hilary, who was looking worried, said, " Lord
Evelyn wants us to dine with him to-night," and passed
Peter a note in delicate, shaky handwriting.
" Good/' said Peter. Hilary wore a bored look and
said, " I suppose we must go," and then proceeded to
question Peter concerning Leslie's shopping adventures.
He seemed on the whole more interested in the pur-
chase of osele than of the Berovieri goblet.
" But," said Peter presently, " your plaque friend
wasn't in form to-day. He had only shams. Eather
bright shams, but still So we didn't get any,
which, I suppose, will please you to hear. Leslie was
disappointed. I told your friend we would look in
on a better day, when he had some of the real thing.
He wasn't pleased. I expect he passes off numbers
of those things on people as antiques. You ought to
qualify your remarks in the Gem, Hilary add that
Signer Leroni has to be cautiously dealt with or
you'll be letting the uncritical plaque-buyer through
rather badly."
" I daresay they can look after themselves," Hilary
said, easily; and Peggy added:
" After all, so long as they are uncritical, it can't
matter to them what sort of a plaque they get ! " which
of course, was one point of view.
CHAPTER VII
DIANA, ACTION, AND LOUD EVELYN
HILARY and Peter gondoled to Lord Evelyn Urqu-
hart's residence, a rather exquisite little old palace
called Ca' delle Gemme, and were received affection-
ately by the tall, slim, dandified-looking young-old man,
with his white ringed hands and high sweet voice and
courtly manner. He had aged since Peter remem-
bered him; the slim hands were shakier and the near-
sighted eyes weaker and the delicate face more deeply
lined with the premature lines of dissipation and weak
health. He put his monocle in his left eye and smiled
at Peter, with the old charming smile that was like
his nephew's, and tilted to and fro on his heels.
" Not changed at all, as far as I can see," he said to
Peter, with the same mincing, finicking pronunciation
that had pleased the boy Peter eight years ago. " Only
my sight isn't what it was. Are you changed at all ?
Do you still like Bow rose-bowls better than anything
except Denis ? Denis is coming here soon, you know,
so I shall be able to discover. Oh, I beg pardon
Mr. Peter Margerison, Mr. Cheriton."
Mr. Cheriton was a dark, sturdy young man with
an aggressive jaw, who bowed without a smile and
looked one rather hard in the face. Peter was a little
frightened of him these curt, brisk manners made
him nervous always and felt a desire to edge behind
Hilary. He gathered that Hilary and Cheriton did
not very much like ane another. He knew what that
slight nervous contraction of Hilary's forehead meant.
Dinner was interesting. Lord Evelyn told pleasant
88
DIANA AND LORD .EVELYN 89
and funny stories in his high, tittering voice, address-
ing himself to all his guests, but looking at Peter
when he came to his points. (People usually looked
at Peter when they came to the points of their
stories.) Hilary talked a good deal and drank a good
deal and ate very little, and was obviously on very
friendly terms with Lord Evelyn and on no terms at
all with Mr. Cheriton. Cheriton looked a good deal at
Peter, with very bright and direct eyes, and flung into
the conversation rather curt and spasmodic utterances
in a slightly American accent. He seemed a very de-
cided and very much alive young man, a little rude,
thought Peter, but possibly that was only his trans-
Atlantic way, if, as his voice hinted, he came from
America. Once or twice Peter met the direct and vivid
regard fixed upon him, and nearly was startled into
" I beg your pardon," for there seemed to him an odd
element of accusation in the look.
" But it isn't my fault," he told himself reassuringly.
" I've not done anything, I'm sure I haven't. It's just
the way he's made, I expect. Or else people have
done him badly once or twice, and he's always think-
ing it's going to happen again. Rough luck on him;
poor chap."
After dinner they went into what Lord Evelyn called
the saloon. " Where I keep my especial treasures,"
he remarked to Peter. " You'd like to walk round and
look at some of them, I expect. These bronzes, now
," he indicated two statuettes on brackets by the
door.
Peter looked at them, then swiftly up at Lord Evelyn,
who swayed at his side, his glass screwed into one
smiling eye.
Lord Evelyn touched the near statuette with his
light, unsteady, beautifully-ringed hand.
90 THE LEE SHORE
" Rather lovely, isn't she," he said, caressing her.
" We found her and the Actseon in a dusty hole of a
place in a miserable little calle off the Campo delle
Beccarie, kept by a German Jew. Quite a find, the
old sinner. What an extortioner, though! Eh, Mar-
gerison? How much has the old Schneller got out of
my pocket? It was your brother who discovered him
for me, young Peter. He took me there, and we found
the Diana together. Like her? Giacomo Treviso, a
pupil of Verrocchio's. Heard of him ? The Action's
not so good now. Same man, but not so happy."
He turned the Diana about ; he posed her for Peter's
edification. Peter looked from her to the Acta&on,
from the Actoeon to Lord Evelyn's face. He opened
his lips to say something, and closed them on silence.
He looked past Lord Evelyn to Hilary, who stood in
the background, leaning a little against a chair. It
seemed to Peter that there was a certain tensity, a
strain, in his face.
Then Peter met full the bright, hard, vivid gaze of
the alert Cheriton. It had an odd expression at this
moment; unmistakably inimical, observantly curi-
ous, distinctly sardonic. A faint ironic smile just
touched the corners of his determined mouth. Peter
returned the look with his puzzled, enquiring eyes that
sought to understand.
This much, anyhow, he seemed to understand: his
role was silence. If Cheriton didn't speak (and Cheri-
ton's expression showed that he knew) and if Hilary
didn't speak . . . well, he, Peter, couldn't speak either.
He must acquiesce in what appeared to be a conspiracy
to keep this pathetic, worn-out dilettante in a fool's
paradise.
The pathos of it gripped Peter's heart. Lord
Evelyn had once known so well. What havoc was this
DIANA AND LORD EVELYN 91
that one could apparently make of one's faculties?
It wasn't only physical semi-blindness; it was a
blindness of the mind, a paralysis of the powers of
discrimination and appreciation, which was pitiful.
Peter was angry. He thought Hilary and Cheriton
so abominably, unmitigatedly wrong. And- yet' he
himself had said, " If it makes them happy " and
left that as the indubitable end. Ah, but one didn't
lie to people, even for that.
Peter was brought up sharply, as he had often
been before, against Hilary's strange Hilaryish, per-
verted views of the conduct of life's businesses. Then,
as usual when he should have felt furthest from
mirth, he abruptly collapsed into sudden helpless
laughter.
Lord Evelyn turned the eyeglass on him.
" Eh ? " he queried. " Why so ? But never mind ;
you always suffered in that way, I remember. Get it
from your mother, I think; she did, too. Never ex-
plain jokes; they lose so in the telling. Now I want
to show you something over here."
Peter crossed the room, his laughter dead. After
all, funny wasn't what it really was. Mainly, it was
perplexing. Till he could have it out with Hilary, he
couldn't understand it at all.
He saw more of Lord Evelyn's treasures, and per-
plexity grew. He did not laugh again; he was very
solemn and very silent and very polite where he could
not admire. Where he could he did; but even here
his admiration was weighed down to soberness by the
burden of the things beyond the pale.
Lord Evelyn found him lukewarm, changed and
dulled from the vivid devotee of old, who had coloured
up all over his pale face at the sight of a Bow rose-
bowl. He coloured indeed now, when Lord Evelyn
92 THE LEE SHORE
said " Like it ? " coloured and murmured indistin-
guishable comments into his collar. He coloured most
when Lord Evelyn said, as he frequently did, " Your
brother's find. A delicious little man in some sotto-
portico or other quite an admirable person. Eh,
Margerison ? "
Hilary in the background would vaguely assent.
Peter, who looked at him no more, felt the indefinable
challenge of his tone. It meant either, " I've as much
right to my artistic taste as you have, Peter, and I'm
not ashamed of it," or, " Speak out, if you want to
shatter the illusions that make the happiness of his
ridiculous life; if not, be silent."
And all the time the vivid stare of Jim Cheriton
was turned like a search-light on Peter's face, and his
odd smile grew and grew. Cheriton was watching,
observing, taking in something new, trying to solve
some problem.
At the end of half an hour Lord Evelyn said, " Peter
Margerison, you've lost some of the religious fervour
of your youth. The deceitfulness of riches and the
cares of this world is that it ? What's come to you
that you're so tepid about this Siena chalice ? Don't be
tepid, young Peter; it's the' symptom of ai ruined
soul." '
He polished his glass, screwed it into his left eye,
and looked down on Peter with his whimsical, kindly
scrutiny. Peter did not return the look; he stood with
bent head, looking vaguely down at the Sienese chalice.
That too was one of Hilary's finds. Hilary it seemed,
had approved its seller in an article in the Gem.
" Damme," said Lord Evelyn suddenly, with unusual
explosiveness, " if I didn't like you better when you
were fifteen! Now, you blase and soulless generation,
I suppose you want to play bridge. Do you play as
DIANA AND LORD EVELYN 93
badly as ever, Peter? A remarkable player you were,
I remember quite remarkable. Denis always told
you so. Now Cheriton will tell you so, because he's
rude."
Bridge was a relief to Peter, though he was still a
rather remarkable player. He played with Cheriton,
who was not rude, because he was absolutely silent. It
was an absurd game. Cheriton was a brilliant player,
even when he was only giving half his mind to it, as
he seemingly was to-night. Lord Evelyn had been a
brilliant player once, and was now brilliant with alterna-
tions of eccentricity; he talked most of the time, mak-
ing the game the centre of his remarks, from which he
struck out along innumerable paths of irrelevancy.
The Margerisons too were irrelevant ; Hilary thought
bridge a bore, and Peter, who thought nothing a bore,
was always a little alarmed by anything so grown-up.
But to-night he didn't much mind what he did, so long
as he stopped looking at Lord Evelyn's things. Peter
only wanted to get away; he was ashamed and per-
plexed and sorry and angry, and stabbed through with
pity. He wanted to get out of Lord Evelyn's house,
out of the range of his kindly, whimsical smile and
Cheriton's curious hostile stare; he wanted to be alone
with Hilary, and to understand.
The irony of Cheriton's look increased during bridge ;
it was certainly justified by the abstraction of Peter's
play.
Lord Evelyn laughed at him. " You need Denis to
keep you in order, young Peter. Lord, how frightened
you used to be when Denis was stern. Smiled and pre-
tended you weren't, but I knew. . . ." He chuckled
at the painted ceiling. " Knew a man at Oxford,
Peter . . . well, never mind that story now, you're too
young for it. ... Anyhow I make it no trumps."
94 THE LEE SHORE
At eleven o'clock Hilary and Peter went home.
Lord Evelyn shook hands with Peter rather affection-
ately, and said, " Come and see me again soon, dear
boy. Lunch with me at Florian's to-morrow you
and your wealthy friend. Busy sight-seeing, are you ?
How banal of you. Morning in the Duomo, afternoon
on the Lido, and the Accademia to fill the spare hours ;
I know the dear old round. Never could be worried
with it myself; too much else to do. But one manages
to enjoy life even without it, so don't overwork. And
come and see my toys again by daylight, and try to
enthuse a Jittle more over them next time. You're too
young to be blase. You'd better read the Gem, to en-
courage yourself in simple pleasures. Good-night.
Good-night, Margerison."
He shook hands with them both again, possibly to
make up for Cheriton, who did not shake hands at all,
but stood with his own in his pockets, leaning against
the wall, his eyes still on Peter's face.
" Queer manners you have, dear Jim," was what
they heard Lord Evelyn say as they stepped into the
Ca' delle Gemme gondola, that was taking them back
to the Rio delle Beccarie.
They swung out into the faintly-shining darkness
of the water-road, into which the climbing moon could
not look a darkness crossed and flecked by the red
gleamings of the few gondola and sandolo lights abroad
at this hour in the quiet street. They sent their own
red path before them as they softly travelled ; and round
it the stars flickered and swain, deep down. Peter
could have sworn he heard their thin, tinkling, sub-
merged, funny song, somewhere above or beneath the
soft and melodious " Cherie Birri-Bim," that someone
(not Lord Evelyn's beautifully trained and tactiturn
poppe) was crooning near at hand.
DIANA AND LORD EVELYN 95
The velvet darkness of a bridge drowned the stars
for a moment; then, with a musical, abrupt cry of
" Sta i ! " they swung round a corner into a narrow
way that was silver and green in the face of the climb-
ing moon.
The musically lovely night, the peace of the dim
water-ways, the shadowing mystery of the steep, shut-
tered houses, with here and there a lit door or window
ajar, sending a slant of yellow light across the deep
green lane full of stars and the moon, the faint croon-
ing of music far off, made a cool marvel of peace for
strung nerves. Peter sat by Hilary in silence, and
no longer wanted to ask questions. In the strange, en-
veloping wonder of the night, minor wonders died.
What did it matter, anyhow? Hilary and Venice
Venice and Hilary give them time, and one would
explain the other.
It was Hilary who began to talk, and he talked
about Cheriton, his nervous voice pitched on a high
note of complaint.
" I do intensely dislike that man. The sort of per-
son I've no use for, you know. So horribly on the
spot; such sharp, unsoftened manners. All the ter'
rible bright braininess of the Yankee combined with the
obstreperous energy of the Philistine Briton. His
mother is a young American, about to be married for
the third time. The sort of exciting career one would
expect from a parent of the delightful Jim. I cannot
imagine why Lord Evelyn, who is a person of refine-
ment, encourages him. Really, you know ! "
He grew very plaintive over it. Peter really did
not wonder.
Peter's subconscious mind registered a dim impres-
sion that this was defensive talk, to fill the silence.
Hilary was a nervous person, easily agitated. Prob-
96 THE LEE SHORE
ably the evening had agitated him. But he was no
good at defence. His complaint of Jim Cheriton broke
weakly on an unsteady laugh. Peter nodded assent,
and looked up the street of dim water, his chin propped
in his hands, and thought how extraordinarily pleasant
was the red light that slanted across the dark water
from green doors ajar in steep house-walls.
Hilary tried to light a cigar, and flung broken
matches into spluttering darkness. At last he suc-
ceeded ; and then, when he had smoked in silence for
two minutes, he turned abruptly on Peter and said,
"Well?"
Peter, dreamily turning towards him, felt the nerv-
ous challenge of his tone, and read it in his pale, tired
face.
Peter pulled himself together and collected his
thoughts. After all, one might as well know.
" Oh, well ... what ? Yes, what about those
ghastly statuettes, and all the rest of them ? Why,
when, how . . . and what on earth for ? "
Hilary, after a moment of silence, said, with a rather
elaborate carelessness, " I saw you didn't like them."
At that Peter started a little, and the dreaminess of
the night fell away from him.
" You saw . . . oh." For a moment he couldn't
think of anything else to say. Then he laughed a
little. "Why, yes, I imagine you did. . . . But
what's the object of it all? Have you and Cheriton
(by the way, why does he glare at us both so?) come
to the conclusion that it's worth while playing that
sort of game? If you have, I can't tell you how
utterly wrong I think you are. Make him happy
oh, I know but what extraordinary cheek on your
part ! I as near as possible gave you away I did
really. Besides, what did he mean by saying you'd
DIANA AND LORD EVELYN 97
advised him to buy the things praised them in the
Gem, and all that ? You can't have gone so far as that
did you ? "
After a moment of silence, Hilary turned abruptly
and looked Peter in the face, taking the long cigar out
of his mouth and holding it between two white, nervous
fingers.
" Upon my word," said Hilary, speaking rather
slowly, " Talk of cheek ! Do you know what you're
accusing me of ? You and your precious taste ! Leslie
and your other fool patrons seem to have given you a
fair opinion of yourself. Because you, in your om-
niscience, think a thing bad, which I ... which I
obviously consider good, and have stated so in print
. . . you don't so much as deign to argue the ques-
tion, but get upon your pedestal and ask me why I tell
lies. You think one thing and I think another; of
course, you must know best, but I presume I may be
allowed to hold my misguided and ill-informed opinion
without being accused blankly of fraud. Upon my
word, Peter . . . it's time you took to some other line
of life, I think."
His high, unsteady voice trailed away into silence.
Peter, out of all the dim beauty of the night, saw
only the pale, disturbed, frowning face, the quivering
hand that held the lean cigar. All the strangeness
and the mystery of the mysterious world were here con-
centrated. Numbly and dully he heard the soft,
rhythmic splashing of the dipping oar, the turning
cry of " Premie ! " Then, sharper, " Sciar, Signori,
sciar ! " as they nearly jostled another gondola, swing-
ing , round sharply into a moonless lane of ancient
palaces.
Peter presently said, " But . . ." and there stopped.
What could he say, beyond " but ? "
98 THE LEE SHORE
Hilary answered him sharply, " Well ? " and then,
after another pause, Peter pulled himself together, gave
up trying to thread the maze of his perplexity, and said
soberly, " I beg your pardon, Hilary. I'm an ass."
Hilary let out his breath sharply, and resumed his
cigar.
" It's possible, of course," he said, more quietly,
" that you may be right and I wrong about the things.
That's another question altogether. I may be a fool:
I only resent being called a knave. 'Really, you know ! "
" I never meant that," Peter hopelessly began to
explain. And, indeed, now that Hilary disclaimed it,
it did seem a far too abominable thing that he had
implied. He had hurt Hilary; he deserved to be
kicked. His anger with himself rose. To hurt anyone
was atrocious ; to hurt Hilary unforgivable. He would
have done a great deal now to make amends.
He stammered over it. " I did think, I'm afraid,
that you and Cheriton were doing it to make him happy
or something. I'm awfully sorry; I was an ass; I
ought to have known. But it never occurred to me that
you didn't kn that you had a different opinion of the
things. I say, Hilary Cheriton knows ! I saw him
know. He knew, and he was wondering what I was
going to say."
" Knew, knew, knew ! " Hilary nervously exploded.
" There you go again. You're intolerable, Peter,
really. All the spoiling you've had has gone to your
head."
" I beg your pardon," said Peter again. " I meant,
Cheriton agreed with me, I'm sure. . . . But, Hilary
those statuettes you can't really. . . . They're
mid- Victorian, and positively offensive ! " His voice
rose shrilly. They had been so horrible, Diana and
Actseon. He couldn't forget them, in their podgy
DIANA AND LORD EVELYN 99
sentimentality. " And and that chalice . . ." he
shuddered over it " and "
" That'll do, thanks," Hilary broke in. " You can
say at once that you disagree with me about every-
thing I admire, and leave it there. But, if I may ask
you, don't say so to Lord Evelyn, if you can resist the
temptation to show me up before him. It will only
bother and disturb him, whichever of us he ends by
agreeing with. He's shown that he trusts my taste
more or less, by giving me his paper to edit, and I
should think we might leave it at that."
" Yes, the paper " Peter was reminded of it, and
it became a distracting puzzle. Hilary thought Diana
and Actseon and the Siena chalice good things and
Hilary edited an art paper. What in the name of all
that was horrible did he put in it ? A light was shed
on Signor Leroni, who was, said the Gem, a good
dealer in plaques, and who was, Peter had thought, a
bare-faced purveyor of shams. Peter began to ques-
tion the quality of the osele that Leslie had purchased
from Signor Sardi.
How curious it was; and rather tragic, too. For
Hilary, like Lord Evelyn, had known once. Had
Hilary too, in ruining much else of himself, ruined his
critical faculties ? And could one really do that and
remain ignorant of the fact ? Or would one rather have
a lurking suspicion, and therefore be all the more
defiantly corroborative of one's own judgment ? In
either case one was horribly to be pitied; but but
one shouldn't try to edit art papers. And yet this
couldn't be conveyed without a lacerating of feelings
that was unthinkable. There was always this about
Hilary one simply couldn't bear to hurt him. He
was so easily hurt and so often ; life used him so hardly
and he felt it so keenly, that it behoved Peter, at
ioo THE LEE SHORE
least, to insert as many cushions as possible between
him and the sharp edges of circumstance. Peter was
remorseful. He had taken what he should have seen
before was an unforgivable line ; he had failed abomin-
ably in comprehension and decent feeling. Poor
Hilary. Peter was moved by the old impulse to be
extraordinarily nice to him.
They turned out of the Eio della Madonnetta into
the narrow rio that was the back approach to the
Palazzo Amadeo. It is a dark little canal, a rio of
the poor. The doors that stood open in the peeling
brick walls above the water let out straggling shafts
of lamplight and quarrelling voices and singing and
the smell of wine. The steep house walls leant to meet
one another from either side ; from upper windows the
people who hadn't gone to bed talked across a space of
barely six feet.
The gondola crept cautiously under two low bridges,
then stopped outside the water-washed back steps of the
Palazzo Amadeo.
One pleasant thing about Lord Evelyn's exquisitely
mannered poppe was that one didn't feel that he was
thinking " I am not accustomed to taking my master's
visitors to such low haunts." In the first place, he
probably was. In the second, he was not an English
flunkey, and not a snob. He was no more a snob than
the Margerisons were, or Lord Evelyn himself. He
deposited them at the Palace back door, politely saluted,
and slipped away down the shadowy water-street.
Hilary and Peter stepped up two water-washed steps
to the green door, and Peggy opened it from within.
Peggy (Peter occasionally wondered when, if ever, she
went to bed) was in the hall, nursing Illuminato, who
couldn't sleep a small bundle of scarlet night-shirt
and round bullet head, burrowing under his mother's
DIANA AND LORD EVELYN 101
left arm and staring out from that place of comfort
with very bright and wakeful eyes. When, indeed, it
might have been asked, did any of the Margerison
family take their rest? ~No one of them ever felt or
expressed any surprise at finding any other awake and
active at any hour of the night.
Peggy looked at her three male infants with her
maternal serenity touched with mirth. There were
nearly always those two elements in Peggy's look
a motherly sympathy and desire to cheer and soothe, and
a glint from some rich and golden store of amusement.
She patted Peter on the arm, softly.
" Was it a nice evening, then ? No, not very, I
think. Dear, dear! You both look so unutterably
tired. I wonder had you better go to bed, quite
straight ? "
It seemed to be suggested as a last resource of the
desperate, though the hour was close on midnight.
" And the children have been pillow-fighting, till Mr.
Vyvian the creature came down with nothing in
particular on, to complain to me that he couldn't sleep.
Sleep, you know ! It wasn't after ten but it seems
he had a headache, as usual, because Mrs. Johnson
had insisted on going to look at pictures with him and
Ehoda, and her remarks were such - Nervous pros-
tration, poor Mr. Vyvian. So I've had Illuminato
down here with me since then. He wants to go to you,
Peter, as usual."
Peter took the scarlet bundle, and it burrowed
against his shirt-front with a contented sigh. Peggy
watched the two for a moment, then said to the uncle,
" You poor little boy, you're tireder than Hilary even.
You must surely go to bed. But isn't Lord Evelyn
rather a dear ? "
" Quite a dear," Peter answered her, his face bent
102 THE LEE SHORE
over the round cropped head. " Altogether charming
and delightful. Do you know, though, I'm not really
fond of bridge. Jig-saw is my game and we didn't
have it. That's why I'm tried I expect. And because
there was a Mr. Cheriton, who stared, and seemed some-
how to have taken against us didn't he, Hilary ?
Or perhaps it was only his queer manners, dear Jim.
Anyhow, he made me feel shy. It takes it out of one,
not being liked. Nervous prostration, like poor Mr.
Vyvian. So let's go to bed, Hilary, and leave these
two to watch together."
" Give me the froglet." She took it from his arms,
gently, and kissed first one then the other.
" Good night, little Peter. You are a darling en-
tirely, and I love you. And don't worry, not over not
being liked or anything else, because it surely isn't
worth it."
She was always affectionate and maternal to Peter ;
but to-night she was more so than usual. Looking at
her as she stood in her loose, slatternly neglige, beneath
the extravagantly blazing chandelier, the red bundle
cuddling a round black head into her neck, her grey
eyes smiling at him, lit with love and laughter and a
pity that lay deeper than both, Peter was caught into
her atmosphere of debonair and tranquil restfulness,
that said always, " Take life easy ; nothing's worth
worrying over, not problems or poverty or even one's
sins." How entirely true. Nothing was worth worry-
ing over; certainly other people's strange points of
view weren't. It was a gospel of ease and laissez-faire
well suited to Peter's temperament. He smiled at Peggy
and Hilary and their son, and went up the marble
stairs to bed. He was haunted till he slept by the
memory of Hilary's nervous, tired face as he had seen
it in the moonlight in the gondola, and again in the hall
DIANA AND LORD EVELYN 103
as lie said good night. Hilary wasn't coming to bed
yet. He stayed to talk to Peggy. If anything could
be good for Hilary's moods of depression, thought Peter,
Peggy would. How jolly for Hilary to be married
to her! She was such a refreshment always. She
was so understanding ; and was there a lapse somewhere
in that very understandingness of her that made it the
more restful that made her a relaxation to strained
minds ? To those who were breaking their moral sense
over some problem, she would return simply, " There
isn't any problem. Take things as they come and make
the best of them, and don't, don't worry ! " " I'm
struggling with a temptation to steal a purse," Peter
imagined himself saying to her, " What can I do about
it ? " And her swift answer came, with her indulgent,
humorous smile, " Dear little boy, if it makes you any
happier do it ! " And then she would so well under-
stand the ensuing remorse; she would be so sympa-
thetic, so wholly dear and comforting. She would say
anything in the world to help, except " Put it back."
Even that she would say if one's own inclinations were
tending in that direction. But never if they weren't.
She would never be so hard, so unkind. That sort of
uncongenial admonition might be left to one's con-
fessor; wasn't that what confessors were there for?
But why think of stealing purses so late at night?
~No doubt merely because it was late at night. Peter
curled himself up and drew the sheet over his ears and
sighed sleepily. He seemed to hear the rich, pleasant
echoes of Peggy's best nursery voice far off, and
Hilary's high, plaintive tones rising above it.
But above both, dominant and insistent, murmured
the lapping voice of the wonderful city at night. A faint
rhythm of snoring beyond a thin wall somehow sug-
gested Mrs. Johnson, and Peter laughed into his pillow.
CHAPTEE VIII
PETEB UNDEBSTANDS
ON the shores of the Lido, three days later, Peter
and Leslie came upon Denis TJrquhart. He was lying
on the sand in the sun on the Adriatic side, and build-
ing St. Mark's, rather well. Peter stood and looked
at it critically.
" Not bad. But you'd better let us help you.
We've been studying the original exhaustively, Leslie
and I."
" A very fine and remarkable building," said Leslie,
ponderously, and Peter laughed for the sheer pleasure
of seeing Urquhart's lazy length stretched on the warm
sand.
" Cheriton's somewhere about," said Urquhart.
" But he wouldn't help me with St. Mark's. He was
all for walking round the island at a great pace and see-
ing how long it took him. So superfluously energetic,
isn't he? Fancy being energetic in Venice."
Peter was thankful that he was. The thought of
Cheriton's eyes upon him made him shudder.
" He has his good points," Urquhart added ; " but
he excites himself too much. Always taking up some
violent crusade against something or other. Can't live
and let live. Another dome here, I think."
Peter wondered if Cheriton's latest crusade was
against Hilary's taste in art, and if so what Urquhart
thought on that subject. It was an uncomfortable
thought. He characteristically turned away from it.
104
PETER UNDERSTANDS 105
" The intense blue of the sea, contrasted with the
fainter blue of the Euganean Hills," said Leslie sud-
denly, " is most remarkable and beautiful. What ? "
He was proud of having noticed that. He was al-
ways proud of noticing beauty unaided. He made
his remark with the simple pleasure of a child in his
own appreciation. His glance at Peter said, " I am
getting on, I think ? "
The others agreed that he was correct. He then
bent his great mind to the completion of St. Mark's,
and Urquhart discovered what Peter had long known,
that he could really play in earnest. The reverse art
handling serious issues with a light touch he was
less good at. Grave subjects, like the blue of the sea
or the shape of a goblet, he approached with the same
solidity of earnestness which he brought to bear on sand
cathedrals. It was just this that made him a little
tiring.
But the three together on the sands made a happy
and congruous party of absorbed children, till Cheriton
the energetic came swinging back over the sand-hills.
Peter saw him approaching, watched the resolute lunge
of his stride. His mother was about to be married for
the third time : one could well believe it.
" I hope he is going to be nicer to me to-day," Peter
thought. Even as he hoped it, and before Cheriton
saw the party on the sands, Peter saw the determined
face stiffen, and into the vivid eyes came the blank
look of one who is cutting somebody. Peter turned and
looked behind him to see who it was, and saw Mr. Guy
Vyvian approaching. It was obvious from his checked
recognition that he thought he knew Cheriton, and that
Cheriton did not share the opinion. Peter saw
Vyvian's mortified colour rise; he was a vain and
sensitive person.
io6 THE LEE SHORE
Cheriton came and sat down among them. His
words as he did so, audibly muttered, were, " The most
unmitigated cad ! " He looked angry. Then he saw
Peter, and seemed a little surprised, but did not cut
him; he hardly could. Peter supposed that he owed
this only to the accident of Urquhart's presence, since
this young man seemed to go about the world ignoring
everyone who did not please his fastidious fancy, and
Peter could not hope that he had done that.
Peter looked after Vyvian's retreating figure. He
could detect injured pride in his back.
He got up and brushed the sand from him.
" I must go and talk to that man," he said. " He's
lodging with my brother."
The situation for a moment was slightly difficult.
Leslie and Urquhart had both heard Cheriton's de-
scription of Peter's brother's lodger. Besides, they had
seen him, and that was enough.
It was unlike Peter to make awkward situations.
He ended this one abruptly by leaving it to itself, and
walking away after his brother's lodger.
Vyvian greeted him huffily. It needed all Peter's
feeling for a hurt man to make him anything but dis-
tantly aloof. Cheriton's description was so manifestly
correct. The man was a cad an oily bounder with
a poisonous mind. Peter wondered how Hilary could
bear to have his help on the Gem.
Vyvian broke out about Cheriton.
" Did you see that grand fellow who was too proud
to know me? Driven you away too, has he? We
don't know people in boarding-houses we're in our
private flat ourselves ! It makes me sick ! "
But his vulgarity when he was angry was a shade
less revolting, because more excusable, than when he
wasn't. So Peter bore it, and even tried to be com-
PETER UNDERSTANDS 107
forting, and to talk about pictures. Vyvian really
knew something about art ; Peter was a little surprised
to find that he knew so much, remembering certain
curious blunders of his in the Gem.
He did not talk about the Gem to Vyvian; in-
stinctively he avoided it. Peter had a rather useful
power of barring his mind against thoughts that he
did not desire to have there; without reasoning about
it, he had placed the Gem in this category.
He was absently watching the dim blue of the
Euganean Hills against the clearer blue of the sky
when he discovered that Vyvian was talking about
Ehoda Johnson.
" A dear little gurl, with real possibilities, if one
could develop them. I do my best. She's fond enough
of me to let me mould her atrocious taste. But what
can one do to fight the lifelong influence of a home like
that a mother like that? Oh, frightful! But she
is fond of me, and there's her hope "
" Good-bye," said Peter. " I must go." He could
not for the life of him have said any of the other
things he was thinking. He would have given a lot
to have been Cheriton for the moment, so that he
wouldn't mind being rude and violent. It was horri-
bly feeble ; all he could say was " Goodbye." Having
said it, he went abruptly.
He sighed as he went back to Urquhart and Leslie.
Things were so difficult to manage. One left one's
friends to comfort a hurt bounder; that was all very
well, but what if the bounder comforted was much
more offensive than the bounder hurt? However, it
was no good reasoning about these things. Peter
knew that one had to try and cheer up the hurt, in
the face of all reason, simply because one felt so un-
comfortable oneself if one didn't.
io8 THE LEE SHORE
But it was almost worth while to have a few rather
revolting people about ; they threw the others into such
glorious relief. As long as there were the nice peo-
ple, who laughed at life and themselves, playing about
the world, nothing else in particular mattered. And
it was really extraordinarily good luck that Urquhart
should happen to be playing about Venice at the same
time as Peter. In spite of Cheriton, they would have
a good time together. And Cheriton would perhaps
become friendly in time dear Jim, with his queer
manners. People mostly did become friendly, in quite
a short time, according to Peter's experience.
That the time, as far as Cheriton was concerned,
had not yet arrived, was rather obvious, however. His
manners to Peter on the sands were still quite queer
so queer that Peter and Leslie only stayed a few min-
utes more. Peter refused Urquhart's suggestion that
they should have tea together on the island, and they
crossed over to the lagoon side and got into their wait-
ing gondola.
The lagoon waters were smooth like glass, and pale,
and unflushed as yet with the coming sunset. Dark
lines of stakes marked the blue ship-ways that ran out
to open sea, and down them plied the ships, spreading
painted wings to the evening breeze.
Leslie said, " I see in the Gem that there is a good
old well-head to be had from a man on the Eiva Ca' di
Dio. I want well-heads, as you know. We'll go and
see, shall we ? "
The crystal peace of the lagoon was shattered for
Peter. He had been getting into a curious mood of
late; he almost disliked well-heads, and other pur-
chasable forms of beauty. After all, when one had this
limpid loveliness of smooth water and men walking on
its surface like St. Peter, why want anything more?
PETER UNDERSTANDS 109
Because, Leslie would say, one wants to possess, to call
beauty one's own. Bother, said Peter, the vice of the
age, which was certainly acquisitiveness. He was
coming to the conclusion that he hated buying things.
And it was so awkward to explain to Leslie about Hilary
and the Gem. He had spent the last few days in try-
ing, without too much giving Hilary away, to restrain
Leslie from following his advice. He said now, " All
right ; we'll go and see. But, to say the truth, I'm not
sure that Hilary is a very good authority on well-
heads." He blushed a little as he said it ; it seemed to
him that he had been saying that sort of thing very
often of late. Leslie was so persistent, so incorrigibly
intent on his purpose.
Leslie looked at him now over his large cigar a little
speculatively.
" According to you," he remarked placidly after a
moment, " your brother is uncommonly little of an
authority on anything he mentions. Fraternal scepti-
cism developed to its highest point."
Peter nodded. " Our family way," he said ; and
added, " Besides, that Vyvian man does as much of the
Gem as Hilary. There's a young man, Leslie! My
word, what a dog ! Talks about gurls. So I left him.
I turned upon him and said, ' Sir, this is no talk for a
gentleman to listen to.' I said it because I knew it
was what he would expect. Then I turned on my heel
and left him without a word. He ground his teeth and
hissed, ' A time will come.' But Cheriton seems rather
a rude man, all the same. He hurts my feelings too,
whenever I meet him. I too hiss, ' A time will come.'
But I don't believe it ever will. Do you suppose the
water is shallow over there, or that the men walking on
it are doing miracles? It must be fun, either way.
Let's do it instead of buying well-heads, Leslie. The
no THE LEE SHORE
fact is, buying so many things is rather demoralising,
I think. Let's decide to buy no more. I'm beginning
to believe in the simple life, like Rodney. Rodney
hates men like you and Urquhart rolling plutocrats.
He wanted me to leave you and the other plutocrats and
be a travelling pedlar. I'm not sure that I shan't, be-
fore long."
" Can't spare you," Leslie grunted.
Peter flattered himself that he had successfully
turned the conversation from well-heads.
When, after having tea with Leslie at Florian's, he
returned to the Palazzo Amadeo, Teresina told him that
someone had called to see the Signore, and the Signore,
being out, was waiting in the saloon. Peter went to
the saloon to see if he would do instead of the Signore,
and found a stout gentleman with a black moustache
and up-brushed hair, spitting on the saloon floor. A re-
volting habit, as Hilary was wont wearily to remark;
but Peter always accepted it with anyhow outward
equanimity.
" My brother is unfortunately away from the house,"
he explained, with his polite smile and atrocious Italian.
" But perhaps I can give him a message ? "
The visitor gave him a sharp look, bowed cere-
moniously, and said, " Ah ! The Signore is the brother
of Signer Margerison ? Truly the brother ? "
Peter assured him, not even halving the relationship ;
and indeed, he seldom did that, even in his thoughts.
The visitor gave him a card, bearing the name of
Signer Giacomo Stefani, sat down, at Peter's request,
spat between his feet, and said, " I have had various
affairs with your Signer brother before. I am come
to solicit his patronage in the matter of a pair of vases.
If he would recommend them for me in his paper, as
before. They are good; they might easily be antiques."
PETER UNDERSTANDS in
" You wish my brother to mention them in his
paper ? " Peter gathered. He was correct.
"Exactly so," Signer Stefani told him. "Of
course, on the same terms as before, if the Signor
would be satisfied with them."
" Terms ? " Peter repeated after him.
Signor Stefani became more explicit. He named the
terms.
" That was what I paid Signor Margerison before,
for an article on a pseudo-Sienese chalice. But the
vases are better; they are good; they might deceive
an expert. Truly, they might be antiques ! "
He continued to talk, while Peter listened. He was
taking it in rather slowly. But at last, not being
stupid, he no longer thought Hilary so. He under-
stood.
He stood up presently, looking a little dazed.
" It appears," he said slowly, in his broken Italian,
to Signor Stefani, " that you are making a rather bad
mistake, which is a pity. I think you had better go
home."
Signor Stefani gave a startled upward twist to his
moustache, and stood up too.
" Excuse me," he said rather angrily, " there is no
mistake. Your brother and I have very frequently
had affairs together."
Peter looked at him, frowning doubtfully as he col-
lected his words.
" I am right, I think," he said slowly, " that you are
offering my brother a bribe to publish a fraudulent
article on fraudulent goods of yours ? That is so ?
Then, as I said, you are making a very serious mis-
take, and . . . and you had better go home. Will you
come this way, please ? "
Signor Stefani continued to talk, but so rapidly and
112 THE LEE SHORE
loudly now that Peter couldn't follow him. He merely
shook his head and opened the door, saying, " This way,
please. I can't understand you when you talk so fast."
Signor Stefani, with a final angry shrug and ex-
pectoration, permitted himself to be ushered out of the
room.
On the stairs outside they met Vyvian coming up,
who nodded affably to both of them. Signor Stefani,
as he passed, shrugged his shoulders up to his ears and
spread his two hands wide, with a look of resigned de-
spair over his shoulder at Peter, and Vyvian's brows
went up at the gesture. Peter ushered his guest out
at the street entrance. Signor Stefani's last words
were, " I shall return shortly and see your brother in
person. I have made a foolish mistake in thinking
that you were in his confidence. Good evening."
So they parted, more in sorrow than in anger.
Peter met Vyvian again on the stairs. He was pass-
ing on, but Vyvian stopped and said, " What have you
been doing to Stefani to put him out so ? "
Peter stopped and looked at him for a moment. He
felt rather dazed, as if someone had hit him a blow
on the head. He had to remember what was this funny
bounder's place in the newly-revealed scheme of things.
!Not merely a funny bounder after all, it seemed, but
just what Cheriton had called him. But one couldn't
let him know that one thought so ; one was ostensibly on
Hilary's side, against honesty, against decency, against
all the world.
So Peter, having located Vyvian and himself in this
matter, said nothing at all, but went on upstairs.
Vyvian, staring after him in astonishment (none of
Hilary's boarders had seen Peter discourteous before),
raised his eyebrows again, and whistled beneath his
breath.
PETER UNDERSTANDS 113
" So we're too fine for our brother's dirty jobs !
I'm dashed if I don't believe it's that ! "
Peter went upstairs rather too quickly for his heart.
He returned to the saloon and collapsed suddenly into
a chair, feeling giddy. Mrs. Johnson came in a mo-
ment later and found him leaning back with closed eyes.
She was disturbed about his complexion.
" The colour of putty, poor Mr. Peter ! You've bin
excitin' yourself, tearin' about sight-seein', I know.
Tell me now just how you feel. I'm blest if I don't be-
lieve you've a-bin in the Cathedral, smellin' at that
there choky incense! It takes me like that, always;
and Miss Gould says she's just the same. Funny feel-
in's within, haven't you now ? "
" Yes," said Peter, " just exactly that " ; and they
so overcame him that he began to laugh helplessly.
" I'm sorry, Mrs. Johnson," he said presently. " I'm
an ass. But I'm all right now. I came upstairs in a
hurry, that's all. And before that a man talked so
loud and so fast that it took my breath away. It may
be silly, but I am like that, as Miss Barnett says. My
brother and sister-in-law are both out, aren't they ? "
Mrs. Johnson, sitting down opposite him and study-
ing the returning tints of his complexion, nodded.
" That's it," she said, more cheerfully. " You're
gettin' a wholesome white again now. I didn't like
that unhealthy greeny-grey. But you've none of you
any colour, you gentlemen not you nor your brother
nor that pasty Vyvian. None of you but the little
curate ; he had a nice little pink face. I'm sure I wish
some gals cared more for looks, and then they wouldn't
go after some as are as well let alone." This cryptic
remark was illuminated by a sigh. Mrs. Johnson, now
that she saw Peter improving in complexion, reverted
to her own troubles.
114 THE LEE SHORE
Peter replied vaguely, " No, I suppose they wouldn't.
People ought to care for looks, of course. They matter
so much more than anything else, really."
" Without goin' all that way with you, Mr. Peter,"
said Mrs. Johnson, " and with all due respect to Great
Minds (which I haven't got and never shall have, and
nor had my poor dear that's gone, so I'm sure I don't
know where Ehoder got her leanin's from), I will say
I do like to see a young man smart and well-kept. It
means a respect for himself, not to mention for those
he takes out, that is a stand-by, at least for a mother.
And the young fellows affect the gals, too. Ehoder,
now she'd take some pains with herself if she went
out with a smart fellow, that was nicely turned out him-
self and expected her to be the same. But as it is
hair dragged and parted like a queer picture, and a
string of green beads for a collar, as if she was a
Roman with prayers to say and her waist, Mr. Peter !
But there, I oughtn't to talk like this to a gentleman,
as Miss Gould would say; (I do keep on shockin' Miss
Gould, you know!) But I find it hard to rec'lect that
about you, Mr. Peter ; you're so sympathetic, you might
be a young lady. An' I feel it's all safe with you, an'
I do believe you'd help me if you could."
" I should be glad to," said Peter, wondering whether
it was for the improvement of Rhoda's hair, waist, or
collar that his assistance might be acceptable.
Mrs. Johnson was looking at him very earnestly; it
was obvious that something was seriously amiss, and
that she was wondering how much she could venture to
say to this sympathetic young man who might be a
young lady. She made a sudden gesture with her stout
hands, as if flinging reticence to the winds, and leant
forward towards him.
" Mr. Peter ... I don't hardly like to say it ...
PETER UNDERSTANDS 115
but could you take my gal out sometimes? It does
sound a funny thing to ask but I can't abide it that
she should be for ever with that there Vyvian. I don't
like him, and there it is. And Ehoder does . . . And
he's just amusin' himself, and I can't bear it for my
little gal, that's where it is. ... Mr. Peter, I hate the
fellow, though you may say I'm no Christian for it,
and of course one is bidden not to judge but to love all
men. But he fair gives me the creeps, like a toad.
. . . Do you know that feelin' ? "
" Oh, yes," said Peter readily. " And of course, I
should like immensely to go out with Miss Ehoda some-
times, if she'll let me. But do you think she will?
I'm afraid she would be dreadfully bored with me. I
haven't a Great Mind, you know."
" Ehoder likes you," said Mrs. Johnson, a smile of
relief overspreading her jolly face. " She was sayin'
so only the other day. She has a great respect for
your knowledge of art, too. ' You wouldn't think it
just to talk with him,' she said, l but he knows the most
surprisin' things. Knows them for himself ' that
was how she put it ' without needin' to depend on
any books, or what anyone else says. I wish I was
like that, mother,' she says, and sighs. And of course,
I knew why she wished that, and I said to her, ' Ehoder,
my dear, never you mind about knowin' things; gals
don't need to bother their heads about that. You look
after the outside of your head,' I said, chaffing her
about her hair, you know, ' and leave the inside to
look after itself.' I made her cross, of course; I'm
for ever makin' Ehoder cross without meanin' it. But
that just shows what she feels towards you, you see.
And you'd talk healthy-like to her, which is more than
some does, if I know anythin'. One feels that of you,
Mr. Peter, if you'll excuse my sayin' it, that your talk
Ii6 THE LEE SHORE
is as innocent as a baby's prattle, though it mayn't al-
ways mean much."
" Thank you very much," said Peter. " I will cer-
tainly prattle to Miss Rhoda whenever she will let me.
I should enjoy it, of course."
" Then that's settled." Mrs. Johnson rose, and
shook out her skirts with relief. " And a weight off
my mind it will be. . . . You could make a third with
Rhoder and that Vyvian to-morrow afternoon, if you
were so good and not otherwise employed. They're off
together somewhere, I know."
" Making a third " was a little beyond even Peter's
readiness to be helpful, and he looked dubious.
" I wonder if Mr. Vyvian would let me do that.
You see, he doesn't much like me. I expect I give
him the creeps, like a toad. . . ." Then, seeing Mrs.
Johnson's relieved face cloud, he added, " Oh, well,
I'll ask them to take me," and she smiled at him as at a
good child. " I knew you would ! "
Hilary didn't come in to dinner. That was as well ;
it gave Peter more time. Perhaps it would be easier
late at night to speak of the hopeless, weary, impossible
things that had suddenly risen in the way; easier to
think of things to say about them that wouldn't too
much hurt Hilary or himself.
At dinner Peter was very quiet and polite to every-
one. Vyvian's demeanour towards him was touched
with irony; his smile was a continual reference to the
fellowship of secrecy that bound them. Rhoda was
very silent ; Peter supposed that Vyvian had been snub-
bing her.
Hilary came home late. Peter and Peggy and
Vyvian were sitting in the dimly-lighted saloon, and the
ubiquitous Illuminate was curled up, a sleepy ball, on
the marble top of a book-case. Peggy had a habit of
PETER UNDERSTANDS 117
leaving him lying about in convenient corners, as a lit-
tle girl her doll.
" You look tired to death, my dear," she commented,
as Hilary came in. Her kindly grey eyes turned from
him to Peter, who had looked up from the book he was
reading with a nervous movement. Peter's sweet-
tempered companionableness had been oddly obscured
this evening. Perhaps he too was tired to death. And
poor little Ehoda had been so unmercifully snubbed all
the evening that at last she had crept up to bed all but
in tears. Peggy felt very sorry for everyone to-night;
they all seemed to need it so much.
Vyvian, as usual, had a headache. When Hilary
came in, he rose and said he was going upstairs to
try and get some sleep an endeavour seldom success-
ful in this noisy and jarring world, one gathered. Be-
fore he embarked on it he said to Peter, squirting soda
into a large tumbler of whisky, " Stef ani want anything
particular to-day ? "
He had waited to say it till Hilary came in. Peter
supposed that he said it merely out of his general desire
to be unpleasant, and perhaps to revenge himself for
that unanswered enquiry on the stairs. Or possibly he
merely wished to indicate to Peter how entirely he was
privy to Stefani's business with Hilary, and that it
might just as well be discussed in his presence. Or
again, he might be desirous of finding out how far Peter
himself was in the know.
Peter said, " Nothing very particular," and bent
over Illuminate, that he might not meet Hilary's eyes
or Peggy's. He knew that Hilary was violently
startled, and he heard Peggy's softly let out breath,
that might have been a sigh or a gentle whistle, and
that conveyed in either case dismay touched with a
laugh.
u8 THE LEE SHORE
Vyvian, who had been watching the three with a
covert smile, drained his glass and said, " Well, it's
supposed to be partly my business, you know. But
since you don't think so, I'll say goodnight."
He included the three in a supercilious nod, and left
the room.
He left a queer silence behind him. When it had
lasted for a moment, Peter looked up from his inspec-
tion of Illuminato's screwed-up face, with an effort, and
met Hilary's eyes searching his own. Peggy was in the
background; later she would be a comforting, easing
presence; but for the moment the situation held only
these two, and Peter's eyes pleaded to Hilary's, " For-
give me; I am horribly sorry," and in Hilary's
strained face shame intolerably grew, so that Peter
looked away from it, bending over Illuminate in his
arms.
It was Peggy who broke the silence with a tearful
laugh.
" Oh, don't look like that, you poor darling boys !
Peter, little dear Peter . . . you must try and under-
stand ! You're good at understanding, you know. Oh,
take it easy, my dear! Take it easy, and see how it's
nothing to matter, how it's all one great joke after all ! "
Her arm was round his shoulders as he sat on the
table's edge ; she was comforting him like a child. To
her he was always about Illuminato's age, a most beloved
infant.
Peter smiled a little at her. " Why, yes, of course
it's a joke. Everything is, isn't it. But . . .
but . . ."
He was more than ever a child, stammering unword-
able protest, blindly reaching out for help.
Hilary stood before him now, with his hands in his
pockets, nervous, irritable, weary, shame now masked
PETER UNDERSTANDS 119
by self-defence. That was better; but still Peter kept
his eyes for the curled-up child.
" My dear boy," said Hilary, in his sweet, plaintive
tones, edged with irritation, " if people like to be taken
in, is it my business ? "
And Peggy echoed, " Yes, Peter darling, is it
Hilary's business ? "
Then Peter laughed suddenly. After all, it was all
too hopeless, and too absurd, for anything else.
" You can't go on, you know," he said then.
" You've got to resign." And Peggy looked at him
in surprise, for he spoke now like a man instead of a
child, with a man's finality. He wasn't giving a com-
mand, but stating an obvious fact.
" Darling we've got to live ! " Peggy murmured.
" You mayn't see the necessity," Hilary ironically
put the approved answer into Peter's mouth, " but we,
unfortunately, do."
" Oh, don't be silly," said Peter unusually. " You
are being silly, you know; merely absurd. Because,
of course, it's simply a question between resigning and
being chucked out before long. You can't go on with
this sort of thing indefinitely. You see," he explained,
apologetic now, " it isn't even as if you did it well.
You really don't. And it's an awfully easy thing to
see through, if once anyone gets on the track. All that
rubbish you've saddled Lord Evelyn with anyone who
isn't as blind as a bat can spot it in a minute. I did ;
Cheriton has (that's why he's so queer-mannered, by
the way, I suppose) ; probably Denis has. Well, with
everyone knowing about it like that, someone is bound
before long to ferret out the real facts. Cheriton won't
be long, I fancy, before he gets hold of it all. And
then : and then it will be so frightfully awkward.
Oh, you can't go on, Hilary; you've got to drop it."
120 THE LEE SHORE
" You're talking very lightly," said Hilary, " of
throwing up one's entire income."
Peter sighed. " Not lightly ; I'm really not. I
.know what a bore it will be but not such a bore as
the other thing. . . . Well, then, don't throw it up:
simply chuck Stefani and the rest, and run the thing
on different lines. I'd help, if you'd let me. I'd
chuck Leslie and stay on here and write for you. I
would love to. I made a start to-day, you see; I told
Stefani he was out of his reckonings, so he'll be pre-
pared. We'll tell all the rest the same. ... I suppose
Vyvian's in it, too? Can't you get rid of the man?
I do so dislike him, you know. Well, never mind ; any-
how, we'll tell him he's got to run on new lines now.
Oh, we'll make a decent thing of the Gem after all;
Hilary, do let's. Peggy, don't you think that would be
jolly?"
He looked up into his sister-in-law's face, and met
smiling eyes suddenly tear-dimmed. She smiled down
at him.
" Very jolly, you beloved child. ... So you'll
chuck your Mr. Leslie and your own profession and
help to run the Gem ? I don't think we can let him do
that, Hilary, can we ? "
Hilary's strained face had softened and relaxed.
" I confess," he said, " that it would be in many
ways a great relief to me to drop that side of the busi-
ness, if I could see my way to it. But it won't be easy
now, Peter. It will mean a certain amount of going
back on former statements, for one thing."
" Oh, that'll be all right. Papers are always doing
that. We'll manage all right and put a good face on
it. And we'll make the thing sell make it funny
and interesting and nice. Of course, if Leslie is will-
ing for me to give part of my time to it, there's no rea-
PETER UNDERSTANDS 121
son why I should leave him, as long as he stays in
Venice. It will be all in his interests really, because
he can get tips from the Gem. I've warned him off
it lately because I thought you were such an awful
muddler, Hilary. By the way, it's rather a relief that
you aren't quite so wanting as I was beginning to fear ;
seriously, I was wondering how on earth you were go-
ing to get through this difficult world. There's no
remedy for a muddler ; he can't mend."
But a swindler can; a swindler certainly must, that
was conveyed by the appeal in Peter's tired face. So
tired it was that Peggy gently took Illuminate from his
uncle's arms and said, " And now we'll all go to bed.
My beloved little brother you're an angel in the house,
and we'll all do just as you say, if it's only to make you
smile again. Won't we, Hilary ? "
She leant a soft cheek against Hilary's shoulder,
smiling at Peter; but Peter waited for Hilary's reply
before he smiled back.
Hilary's reply came after a moment.
" Of course, if Peter can contrive a way of keeping
our heads above water without having recourse to these
detestable methods, I shall be only too relieved. I
loathe having to traffic with these dirty swindlers; it's
too insufferably wearying and degrading. . . . By the
way, Peter, what did Stef ani want to-day ? "
Peter said, " Oh, bother Stefani. I'm tired of him.
Really, I can't remember oh, yes, it was antique
vases, that might deceive an expert. But let's stop
thinking about Stefani and go to bed. I'm so awfully
sleepy; do let's go upstairs and try to get a little rest,
as Vyvian puts it."
Peggy patted him softly on the cheek as he passed
her, and her smile for him was curiously pitiful.
"We'll do our best to mend, my dear; we'll do our
122 THE LEE SHORE
best," was what she soothingly murmured ; and then, to
Illuminate, " There, my froglet ; cuddle up and sleep,"
and to Hilary, " You poor old dear, will we let the lit-
tle brother have his way, because he's a darling entirely,
and quite altogether in the right ? "
CHAPTER IX
THE FAT IN THE FIRE
PETEB, self-appointed sub-editor to the Gem, was re-
vising a dissertation of Vyvian's on lace. It was a
difficult business, this. Vyvian, in Peter's opinion,
needed so much expurgation; and yet one couldn't be
unkind. Peter wished very much that Hilary would
get rid of Vyvian. Vyvian often wrote such tosh;
though he was clever, too. Came of being a bounder,
perhaps. Peter had often noticed that bounders were
apt to write tosh, even clever bounders. Such a sensi-
tive bounder, too ; that made it extraordinarily difficult
to edit him satisfactorily. Decidedly Hilary ought to
get rid of him, gently but finally. That would have the
added advantage of freeing Peter from the obligation
of " making a third " with him and Rhoda Johnson.
Also, one would feel safer; one didn't really trust
Vyvian not to be doing little private deals of his own ;
so little, in fact, did one trust him that the names of
dealers were rigorously taboo now on the Gem.
Peter sighed over this rather tiresome article on lace.
He wanted to be finishing one of his own on well-heads ;
and then he wanted to go out with Leslie and look for
stone lions for Leslie's gate-posts ; and then he and Leslie
were going to dine with Lord Evelyn Urquhart.
There were a lot of jolly things to be done, when he
had finished with Vyvian's lace.
Peter was quite enjoying life just now ; it was inter-
esting trying to set the Gem on its legs ; there were im-
123
124 THE LEE SHORE
mense potentialities in the Gem now that toshery with
dealers had been put an end to. And to be allowed to
write ad infinitum about well-heads or anything else
was simply splendid.
Peter heard, with a small, abstracted part of his
mind, someone talking to Hilary in the hall. The low-
toned conversation vaguely worried his subconscious
self; he wished people would converse more audibly.
But probably it was private. . . . Peter suddenly
frowned irritably and sat upright, biting at his pen.
He was annoyed with himself. It was so impertinent,
so much the sort of thing he most disliked, to be spec-
ulating, as he had suddenly found himself doing, on the
nature of another person's private business. Had he
come to that? It must be some emanation from that
silly, syrupy article of Vyvian's; Vyvian, Peter felt
sure, would have towards a private conversation just
such an attitude that he had detected in himself. He
settled himself to his job again, and made a rather sav-
age excision of two long sentences.
The outer door shut. Peter heard Hilary's steps
crossing the hall alone, rather slowly, till they stopped
at the door of the saloon. Hilary came in; his head
was thoughtfully bent, and he didn't at first see Peter
at the table in a corner. When he did see him, he
started violently. Hilary had such weak nerves; he
was always starting for no reason.
Peter said, " Things going on all right ? " and
Hilary said, "Yes, quite," and stood silent for a mo-
ment, his mobile face flickering nervously, as it did
when he was tired or embarrassed.
" I was looking for Peggy," he added, and went out.
He had forgotten, apparently, that Peggy had told them
an hour ago that she was going shopping and would be
out all the afternoon.
THE FAT IN THE FIRE 125
Peter sat quite still in his chair and bit his pen.
From his expression, Mrs. Johnson might have in-
ferred that he had been in the Cathedral again, smell-
ing at the choky incense, and had got " funny feelin's "
within. They were like the nauseating reminiscence
of an old sickness. He tried to ignore them. He said
to himself, " I'm an ass. I'm a suspicious, low-minded
ass."
But he was somehow revolted by the thought of go-
ing on with the work for " The Gem " just then. He
was glad when Leslie called to fetch him out.
Leslie said, " What's the matter, my son ? "
Leslie had, with all his inapprehensiveness of things,
an extraordinary amount of discernment of people; he
could discern feelings that had no existence. Or, if
they had any existence in this case, they must have been
called into it by Vyvian's sugary periods. Peter con-
ceded that to that extent he ailed.
" A surfeit of Vyvian. Let's come out and take the
air and look for little stone lions."
Leslie was restful and refreshing, with his direct pur-
poses and solid immobility. You could be of use to
Leslie, because he had a single eye; he knew what he
wanted, and requested you to obtain it for him. That
was simple; he didn't make your task impossible by
suddenly deciding that after all he didn't really want
what you were getting for him. He was a stable man,
and perhaps it is only the stable who are really suscepti-
ble of help, thought Peter vaguely.
At seven o'clock Peter and Leslie went to the Ca*
delle Gemme. They found Cheriton there. Cheriton
was talking when they arrived, in his efficient, decisive,
composed business tones. Lord Evelyn was pacing up
and down the room, his fine, ringed hands clasped be-
hind his back. He looked- extraordinarily agitated;
126 THE LEE SHORE
his delicate face was flushed crimson. Denis was lying
back in a low chair, characteristically at ease.
When Leslie and Peter came in, Cheriton stopped
speaking, and Lord Evelyn stopped pacing, and absolute
silence momentarily fell.
Then Denis gave his pleasant, casual " Hullo."
Cheriton's silence continued. But Lord Evelyn's
did not. Lord Evelyn, very tall and thin, and swaying
to and fro on his heels, looked at Peter, turning redder
than before ; and Peter turned red too, and gave a little
apprehensive, unhappy sigh, because he knew that the
fat was at last in the fire.
There ensued an uncomfortable scene, such as may
readily be imagined.
Lord Evelyn said, and his sweet voice quavered dis-
tressingly up and down, " I suppose it's been a good
joke. But I wouldn't have thought it of you, Peter
Margerison; I wouldn't have thought it of you. Of
your brother I say nothing; it's a dishonest world, and
he's like the rest, and I can't say he ever gave me any
reason to trust him, so I've myself to blame. But you
I did trust you. I thought you were a nice boy,
and cared too much for nice things to lie about them."
He broke off, and looked round the room at the Diana
and Actaeon, at the Siena chalice, at all the monstrous
collection. They weren't nearly all monstrous, either
not even most but he didn't know that; they
might be for all he could tell. He looked at them all
with the same bewildered, hurt, inimical eyes, and it
was that which gave Peter his deepest stab of pitiful
pain.
" You've made a fool of me between you," said Lord
Evelyn, and suddenly sat down, as if very tired. Leslie
sat down too, ponderous and silent in the shadowed
background. But Peter remained standing before them
THE FAT IN THE FIRE 127
all, his head a little bent, his eyes on Denis Urquhart's
profile. He was wondering vaguely if Denis would say
anything, and if so what it would be.
Still looking at Denis, he made foolish apologies
because he was always polite.
" I'm frightfully sorry . . . I've been frightfully
sorry all along. ..."
Lord Evelyn lifted a white hand, waving his ab-
surdities contemptuously aside.
" All along ! Oh, I see. At least you're honest now ;
you don't attempt to deny that you've known all about
it, then." There was perhaps a fresh ring of bitterness
in his voice, as if some last faint hope had been killed
by Peter's words.
Cheriton, whose eyes were studying the floor, lifted
them sharply for a moment, and glanced at Denis, who
was lighting a cigarette and didn't look at him.
" You knew that first evening, when you looked at
the things," said Lord Evelyn, half a question still in
his querulous voice. " You saw through them at once,
of course. Anyone but a blind fool would have, I've
no manner of doubt. Cheriton here says he saw you
see through them."
Peter stammered over it. "I I knew they
weren't much."
Lord Evelyn turned to Cheriton whose face was still
bent down as if he didn't much like the scene now he
had brought it about.
" You were right, as usual, Jim. And Denis was
wrong. Denis, you know," he added to Peter, " was
inclined to put your morals above your intelligence.
He said you couldn't have known. Cheriton told him
he was sure you had. It seems Cheriton was right."
It seemed that he was. Peter imagined that
Cheriton would always be right.
128 THE LEE SHORE
After a moment's silence Peter gathered that they
were all waiting to hear if he had anything to say about
it. He hadn't much, but he might as well say it, such
as it was.
" It won't make much difference, of course," he be-
gan, and his voice sounded odd and small and tired
in the great room, " but I think I should like you to
know that all this stopped three weeks ago. Hilary
we decided then to to give it up, and run l The
Gem ' on different lines in future. We couldn't easily
undo the past but but there's been nothing of the
sort since then, and we didn't mean there to be again.
Oh, I know that doesn't make much difference, of
course. . . ."
The only difference that mattered was that Denis
frowned. Incidentally only that didn't matter
Cheriton laughed curtly, and Lord Evelyn wearily said,
" Oh, stop lying, stop lying. I'm so unutterably tired
of your lies. . . . You think we don't know that your
brother accepted a bribe this very afternoon. . . .
Tell him, Jim."
So Jim told him. He told him shortly, and in plain
words, and not as if he was pleased with his triumph in
skilful detection, which he no doubt was.
" I rather wanted to sift this business, Margerison,
as I had suspected for a good while more than I could
prove. So to-day I sent a man to your brother, com-
missioning him to pretend to be an art-dealer and offer
a sum of money for the insertion in ' The Gem ' of an
appreciative notice of some spurious objects. As per-
haps you are aware, the offer was accepted. ... It
may seem to you an underhand way of getting evidence
but the case was peculiar."
He didn't look at Peter; his manner, though dis-
tant, was not now unfriendly; perhaps, having gained
THE FAT IN THE FIRE 129
his object and sifted the business, there was room for
compassion. It was a pity that Peter had made things
worse by that last lie, though.
" I see," said Peter. " It's all very complete."
And then he laughed, as he always did when dis-
asters were so very complete as to leave no crevice of
escape to creep through.
"You laugh," said Lord Evelyn, and rose from his
chair, trembling a little. " You laugh. It's been an
admirable joke, hasn't it ? And you always had plenty
of sense of humour."
Peter didn't hear him. He wasn't laughing any
more; he was looking at Denis, who had never looked
at him once, but sat smoking with averted face.
" Shall I go now ? " said Peter. " There isn't much
more to say, is there ? And what there is, perhaps you
will tell us to-morrow. ... It seems so silly to say one
is sorry about a thing like this but I am, you know,
horribly. I have been all along, ever since I found out.
You think that must be a lie, because I didn't tell.
But things are so mixed and difficult and it's not a
lie." He was looking at Lord Evelyn now, at the deli-
cate, working face that stabbed at his pity and shame.
After all, it was Lord Evelyn, not Denis, whom they
had injured and swindled and fooled; one must re-
member that. To Lord Evelyn he made his further
feeble self-exculpation. " And, you know, I did really
think Hilary had dropped it weeks ago; he said he
would. And that's not a lie, either." But he believed
they all thought it was, and a silly one at that.
It was Lord Evelyn who laughed now, with his high,
scornful titter.
" You and your sorrow ! I've no doubt your brother
will be sorry too, when he hears the news. I may tell
you that he'll have very good reason to be. ... Yes,
I 3 o THE LEE SHORE
by all means go now unless you'd like to stay and
dine, which I fancy would be carrying the joke too far
even for you. . . . Will you stay one moment, though ?
There's a little ceremony to be performed."
He crossed the room, and took the Sienese chalice be-
tween his hands, holding it gingerly for a moment as
if it had been some unclean thing ; then he dashed it on
to the marble floor and it lay in splinters about his feet.
He took up the pair of vases next it, one in each hand
(they happened to be of great value), and threw them
too among the splinters ; he had cleared the shelf of all
its brittle objects before Leslie, who had sat motionless
in the background until now, rose and laid a heavy hand
on his arm.
" My dear sir," said Leslie tranquilly, " don't be
melodramatic. And don't give the servants so much
trouble and possible injury when they do the room to-
morrow. If you want to part with your goods, may I
ask to be allowed to inspect them with a view to pur-
chase ? Some of them, as you are no doubt aware, are
of considerable intrinsic value, and I should be happy
to be allowed to buy."
Lord Evelyn looked at the man of commerce with dis-
tant contempt.
" As you please, sir. I've no doubt that Mr. Peter
Margerison will be equally happy to give you his val-
uable advice in the business. He is your counsellor in
.these matters, isn't he. An excellent adviser, of sound
judgment and most disinterested honesty ! "
He bowed to Peter, who took it as a dismissal, and
said " Good night."
Denis, at the opposite side of the room, nodded in
his casual way, neither hostile nor friendly, but gentle
and indifferent. You couldn't make Denis seem angry,
or hurt, or agitated in any way whatever. He had al-
THE FAT IN THE FIRE 131
ways the air of reserving his opinion ; and he extremely
disliked scenes. To be present at this one must have
been painful to him. Peter, who knew him so well,
knew that. He liked things to go easily and smoothly
always. He had winced at the crash of glass on marble ;
it seemed to him in such bad taste. This, no doubt,
was his attitude towards the whole business ; towards the
Magerisons' behaviour, Cheriton's exposure of it, and
this final naked, shameful scene of accusation and con-
fession.
Peter was realising this as he put on his coat in the
hall, when the door he had shut behind him was opened,
and steps followed him. He started and faced round,
a hope leaping in his face. The swift dying of it left
him rather pale.
Leslie said, " I'm coming too."
It was good of Leslie, thought Peter dully, and not
caring in the least. He said, " No, stay and dine.
Really, I'd like you to. ... We'll talk to-morrow."
Leslie put on his overcoat and said to the footman,
" Call a gondola," and the footman stood on the steps
and cried " Poppe " till a poppe came ; then they swung
away down a rose-flushed water-street with the after-
glow in their eyes.
Leslie was restful ; he didn't bother one. He merely
said, " We'll dine to-night at Luigi's."
It was not until they had done so, and were having
coffee' outside, that Peter said, " We'll have to leave
Venice, of course, directly we can."
" You too ? " said Leslie. " You go with them ? "
" I go with them," said Peter. " Well, I can't well
stay here, can I. And we may as well stick together
a family party. . . . You see, I haven't a notion
what Hilary will do to live now. I can go into business
of sorts. Hilary can't; he'd hate it so. Hilary's not
132 THE LEE SHORE
business-like, you know. !N"or is Peggy. I couldn't
trust them by themselves; they'd tumble into some-
thing and get broken. They need my common sense to
sustain them."
Leslie said, " What's the matter with your own line
of life, that you want to chuck it ? "
Peter looked at him in surprise.
" It's chucked me," he said. " Violently with a
smash. You don't suppose anyone will hire me again
to buy their things for them ? There'll be something of
a crab on the Margerison family in future. It's going
to be made very public, you know, this business; I
gathered that. We shall be rather notorious, in a
very few days."
Leslie said, after a moment, " I've hired you to buy
my things for me. Are you going to chuck me ? "
And Peter, leaning his forehead on his hand as if
tired, returned beneath his breath, " Don't be good to
me, please, just now. And you must see I've got to
chuck it all all that side of things. We must do
something quite new, Hilary and I. We we've
spoiled this."
After a pause, Leslie said gently, afraid of blunder-
ing, " You stick together, you and your brother ? You
go through it together all the way ? "
Peter answered hopelessly, " All the way. We're in
it together, and we must get out together, as best we
can," and Leslie accepted that, and asked no further
question.
CHAPTER X
THE LOSS OF A PEOFESSION
PETER went back to the Palazzo Amadeo and said to
Hilary, who was writing an article for " The Gem " in
the saloon, " I wouldn't go on with that, Hilary. It's
no use."
The flatness of his voice, the pallor of his face, startled
Hilary and Peggy.
Peggy said, " You're tired to death, child. Take the
big chair."
Hilary said, " How do you mean, no use ? "
And Peter told him. While he did so, he stood at
the window, looking down at the canal between the
green shutters that swung ajar, and did not look at
Hilary's face.
It was an impossible position for Hilary, so utterly
impossible that it was no use trying to make the best of
it ; one could only look away, and get through it quickly.
Peter didn't say much. He only said, " We've been
found out. That man who came to you this afternoon
was a spy sent by Cheriton. He reported the result of
his interview with you, and Lord Evelyn knows all
about everything. Cheriton suspected from the first,
you see. . . . From what Lord Evelyn said, I gather
he means to prosecute. . . . He is ... very angry in-
deed. . . They all are. . . ."
On the last statement Peter's voice sank a little in
pitch, so that they hardly heard it. But the last state-
ment mattered to no one but Peter.
Hilary had got up sharply at the first words, and
133
I 3 4 THE LEE SHORE
stood very still to listen, letting out one long breath of
weary despair. Peggy came and stood close to him, and
took one slim white hand in her large kind ones, and
gently held it. The fat was indeed in the fire. Poor old
Hilary! How he would feel it! Peggy divined that
what stung Hilary most deeply at the moment was
Peter's discovery of his faithlessness.
It was of that that his first shamed, incoherent words
were.
" What was I to do ? How could I break abruptly
with the old methods, as you suggested? It had to
come gradually. You know nothing of business,
Peter nothing." His voice ran up the scale of pro-
testing self-defence.
" Nothing," Peter admitted drearily. Hilary's
shame before him could hardly now add to the badness
of the situation, as it had once done; the badness of
situations has a limit, and this one had reached its
limit some three hours since, just before he had laughed
in Lord Evelyn's drawing-room.
" Oh," said Peter, very tired suddenly, " never mind
me; what does that matter? The point is ... well,
you see the point, naturally."
Yes, Hilary saw the point. With a faint groan he
ran his fingers through his hair and began to pace
up and down the room in agitation.
He said, " That brute Cheriton. . . . An execrable
bounder ; I always knew it. What right had he ? ...
It's too horrible, too abominable. . . . Just when we
were doing our best to get the thing onto straight
lines. . . ." He wheeled about and paced back again,
with quick, uneven steps. Between him and the
motionless Peter, Peggy stood, looking from one to
the other. Her merry eyes were quite grave now.
The situation was certainly appalling.
THE LOSS OF A PROFESSION 135
" We must leave Venice," said Peggy, on a sigh.
That seemed, certainly, the only thing to be done.
Hilary groaned again.
" Oh, Lord, what are we let in for ? What will be
the result, if he prosecutes? It may be utter ruin.
... I know nothing of these things. Of course, in.
justice nothing could be done to us for, after all,
what harm have we done? Anyone may insert adver-
tisements for pay, and it only amounted to that. . . .
But justice isn't taken into much account in the law-
courts. ... It is a horrible, cast-iron system the
relic of a barbarous age. ... I don't know what we
mayn't be in for, or how we shall come out of it. You
don't know either, Peter ; you know nothing of law
nothing. It mustn't come into court ; that is unthink-
able. We will make full apologies any restitution
within our power that Lord Evelyn demands. ... I
shall go there; I shall see him about it, and appeal
to his better feelings. He has been a friend of mine.
He has always been good to you, Peter. The memory
of your mother. . . . Appeal to that. You must go to
him and see what can be done. Yes, it had better be you ;
he has a kinder feeling for you, I believe, than for me."
" He has no kind feeling for me," said Peter dully.
" He is more annoyed with me than with you."
Hilary jerked his head impatiently.
" Nonsense. You want to shirk ; you want to leave
me to get out of the mess for myself. Oh, of course,
you're not legally involved; I am aware of that; you
can leave the sinking ship if you choose, and save
yourself."
Peggy said, " Don't be ridiculous, darling. Peter's
doing his best for us, as he always has," and came and
stood at her brother-in-law's side, kind and big and
comforting, with a hand on his arm.
136 THE LEE SHORE
Hilary went on querulously, " I'm asking Peter to
do a simple thing to use his friendship with the
Urquharts to help me out of this mess. If you don't
want to see Lord Evelyn, Peter, you can go to Denis.
He's a friend of yours ; he's he's your kind of step-
brother. You can easily persuade him to get the
thing hushed up. You've always pretended that he
was a friend of yours. Go and see him, then, for
heaven's sake, and help us all out of this miserable pre-
dicament."
Peter was still silent, staring down at the dark rib-
bon of shining water that lapped against two old brick
walls, a shut lane full of stars.
Peggy, her hand on his arm, said gently, " Oh,
Peter'll do his best for us, of course he will, won't
you, Peter."
Peter sighed very faintly into the dark night.
" I will do anything I can, naturally. It won't be
much, you know."
" You will go to the Urquharts to-morrow morning,
and appeal to them ? " said Hilary.
" Yes," said Peter. I will do that."
Hilary breathed a sigh of relief, and flung himself
into a chair.
" Thanks, Peter. I believe that is the best we can
do. You will persuade them at least to be just, not
to push the matter to unfair extremes. . . . Oh, my
God, what a life ! " His beautiful, unhappy face was
hidden in his hands; he shuddered from head to foot,
feeling horribly sick. The Margerison organism was
sensitive.
Peggy, bending over him, drew caressing fingers
through his dark hair and said, " Go to bed, you
poor old dear, and don't worry any more to-night.
Worry won't help now, will it ? "
THE LOSS OF A PROFESSION 137
"Bed?" said Hilary. "Bed? What's the use of
that? I shouldn't sleep a wink. I have a frightful
head, and I must go and find Vyvian and tell him."
Peggy sniffed. " Much Vyvian'll care ! He's been
in bad odour all his life, I should fancy. One more
row won't bother him much. I wish it would ; it would
be almost worth while to be upset if Guy Vyvian was
going to be upset too the waster. Well, I wonder
anyhow will this show that silly little Khoda what sort
of a creature she's been making a golden calf of. ...
Well, go and wake Vyvian, then, darling, and then come
and tell me what he said to it. Peter, you're dropping
to sleep as you stand."
Peter went to bed. There didn't seem to be any-
thing to stay up for, and bed is a comforting friend
on these occasions. Hilary had a perverse tendency
to sit up all night when the worst had happened and
he had a frightful head; Peter's way with life was
more amenable; he always took what comfort was
offered him. Bed is a good place; it folds protecting,
consoling arms about you, and gives at best oblivion,
at worst a blessed immunity from action.
In the morning, about eleven o'clock, Peter went
to the Ca* delle Gemme. That had to be done, so it
was no use delaying. He asked for Lord Evelyn
Urquhart, and supposed that the servant who showed
him in was astonished at his impudence. However,
he was permitted to wait in the reception-room while
the servant went to acquaint Lord Evelyn with his
presence. He waited some time, standing in the middle
of the big room, looking at some splinters of glass and
china which had been left on the marble floor, forming
on his tongue what he was going to say. He could
form nothing that was easy to say; honestly he didn't
know whether, when the door should open and that
138 THE LEE SHORE
tall, elegant, fastidious figure should walk in, he would
find himself able to say anything at all. He feared
he might only grow hot, and stammer, and slink out.
But he pulled himself together ; he must do his best ;
it was quite necessary. He would try to say, " Lord
Evelyn, I know it is abominably impertinent of me
to come into your house like this. Will you forgive
me this once? I have come to ask you, is there any
consideration whatever, any sort of reparation my
brother and I can make, which will be of any use as
amends for what we did? If so, of course we should
be grateful for the chance. . . ."
That was what he would try to say. And what he
would mean was : " Will you let Hilary off ? Will
you let him just go away into obscurity, without
further disgrace? Isn't he disgraced enough already?
Because you are kind, and because you have been fond
of me, and because I ask you, will you do this
much ? "
And what the answer would be, Peter had not the
faintest idea. To him personally the answer was in-
different. From his point of view, the worst had
already happened, and no further disgrace could affect
him much. But Hilary desperately cared, so he must
do his best; he must walk into the fire and wrest out
of it what he could.
And at last the door opened, and Denis Urquhart
came in.
He was just as usual, leisurely and fair and tranquil,
only usually he smiled at Peter, and to-day he did
not smile. One might have fancied under his tran-
quillity a restrained nervousness. He did not shake
hands; but then Peter and he never did shake hands
when they met.
He said, " Sit down, won't you. My uncle isn't
THE LOSS OF A PROFESSION 139
available just now, so I have come instead. . . . You
have something to say to him, haven't you ? "
He sat down himself, and waited, looking at the
splinters of glass on the floor.
Peter stood, and his breath came shortly. Yes, he
had something to say to Lord Evelyn, but nothing to
Lord Evelyn's nephew. He grew hot and cold, and
stammered something, he did not know what.
" Yes ? " said Denis, in his soft, casual voice, politely
expectant.
Peter, who did not, after all, lack a certain desperate
courage, walked into the fire, with braced will. It
was bad that Denis should be brought into the business ;
but it had to be gone through, all the same.
" I only wanted to know ... to know . . . what
Lord Evelyn is going to do about this matter." He
jerked out the words like stones from a catapult.
Denis was silent for a moment. He disliked being
dragged into this revolting affair; but he had had to
come and see Peter, since his uncle refused and he
could not let Peter go unseen away. He didn't want
to see him ever again, since he had behaved as he had
behaved, but neither did he want to violate the laws
of courtesy and hospitality.
" I don't quite know," he said, after a moment.
" Is he ... does he intend to prosecute ? " Peter
asked, blushing.
Denis answered to that at once : " I shall certainly
do my best to prevent anything of the sort. I don't
think he will. At present he is still very angry; but
I think when he cools down he will see reason. To
prosecute would be to make himself absurd; he will
see that, no doubt. He values his reputation as an
art connoisseur, you see." At the faint, cool irony
in the words, Peter winced.
140 THE LEE SHORE
" Of course," went on Denis, lighting a cigarette,
" your brother will leave Venice at once, I suppose ? "
He passed Peter his cigarette box; Peter refused it.
"Naturally. We mean to leave as soon as we can.
. . . Thank you, that is all I had to say. . . . Good-
bye."
Denis got up, and Peter saw relief through the mask
of politeness.
" Good-bye. ... I needn't say how sorry I am about
all this. It was hard lines on you being brought
into it."
He was making a transparent effort after friendli-
ness; Peter almost smiled at it. Poor Denis; what
a relief it would be to him when the disreputable
Margerisons were off the scenes.
Peter paused at the door and said, in a low, em-
barrassed voice, " Would you mind telling Lord Evelyn
what I told him myself last night that I'm horribly
sorry about it sorrier than I have ever been for
anything. ... It won't make any difference to him,
I know but if you will just tell him. . . . And I'm
sorry it happened while you were here, too. You've
been dragged in. ... Good-bye."
" Good-bye, Margerison." Denis was grave, em-
barrassed, restrained, and not unkind. It was obvious
that he had nothing to say about it all.
Peter left the Ca' delle Gemme.
That afternoon Hilary received a note from Lord
Evelyn. It was to the effect that Lord Evelyn had
decided not to bring an action, on the understanding
that Hilary and his brother and Vyvian left Venice
at once and discontinued for ever the profession of
artistic advisers. If any of the three was discovered
engaging again in that business, those who employed
them should promptly be advised of their antecedents.
THE LOSS OF A PROFESSION 141
They were, in fact, to consider themselves warned off
the turf. There was also to be a paragraph about them
in the English art papers.
" Well," was Peggy's comment, " it hasn't been such
a grand trade that we need mind much. We'll all come
back to England and keep a boarding-house there in-
stead, and you shall paint the great pictures, darling,
and have ever so much more fun. And we'll never
need to see that Vyvian again; there's fine news for
the babies, anyhow. And I will be relieved to get
them away from the canals; one of them would have
been surely drowned before long. In London they'll
have only gutters."
Hilary, who was looking tired and limp after a
distressing night and day, said, " What shall you do,
Peter?"
" I don't know," said Peter. " I must find some-
thing, I suppose. Some sort of work, you know."
He pronounced the word gingerly, distastefully, as
if it were a curious, unwonted one. " Perhaps I shall
be able to get a post as door-keeper somewhere ; in some
museum, you know, or perhaps a theatre, or the White
City. I've always thought that might be amusing."
" You wouldn't earn much that way," Hilary said
hopelessly.
" Need one earn much ? " Peter wondered ; then
remembered how exceedingly little Hilary would be
earning, and that perhaps one need, because of the
babies.
" Or perhaps I can get taken on as a clerk in some
business," he amended. " Or in a bank ; only I don't
believe my sums or manners are good enough for a
bank, really. . . . Oh, well, I must see what I can
squeeze into. Perhaps Leslie can think of something.
And perhaps the Robinsons will interest themselves
142 THE LEE SHORE
in me, though they'll be even more disgusted at our
downfall than they were when I took up my profession,
and they thought that perfectly idiotic. They always
do think we're perfectly idiotic, and now they'll know
we're something worse. But they may help me to
a job, if I bother them enough. . . . Anyhow, I'll be
one of your boarders, if I may."
" You darling," said Peggy, beaming at him.
" It'll give the house quite a different feeling if you're
in it. And how delighted the babies will be. I believe
we're going to have the fine time, after all, in spite of
this bothersome business. Hurrah for London and
no mosquitoes! And we'll be quite near a Catholic
church, the way the children'll be able to run in and
out as they do here, and not pick up heathen customs.
Why, Hilary, I'm really pleased ! "
Peggy was splendid. She was nearly always really
pleased.
They started for England a week later. In the
course of that week two things happened. One was
that Leslie gave Peter the Berovieri goblet for his own.
" You've got to take it," he said. " If you don't,
I shall give it back to the prince. I've no right to
it; I can't appreciate it properly. Since I first saw
you look at the thing I knew it was really yours.
Take it and keep it. You won't let me do anything
else for you, but you shall let me do that."
Peter looked at it with wistful love. His fingers
lingered about its exquisiteness.
" It will break," he said. " My things do break.
Break and get lost, and go with the dust. Or thieves
will break in and steal it. I shan't be able to keep
it, I know ; I'm such a bad hand at keeping things."
"Well, 'well, have a try," said Leslie. So Peter
took it and was glad. It was his one link with the
THE LOSS OF A PROFESSION 143
world of exquisiteness and new-burnished joys out of
which he was being thrust; he would keep it if he
could.
Leslie also said that he could get him a place in a
business, if he really wanted one.
" I shall be extremely little use," said Peter.
" Extremely little," Leslie agreed. " You'd much
better not try. But if you must you must."
" I'm afraid I must," said Peter.
So Leslie wrote letters about him, and secured him
a humble post in a warehouse. Leslie was not going
to return to England at present. He was going a.
tour round the world. Since Peter refused to accom-
pany him, he went alone.
" There's no one else I can fancy hanging round me
day and night," he said. " I wanted you, Margery "
the nickname fell from him with a clumsy pathos
" but if you won't you won't. I shall acquire an
abominable collection of objects without you to guide
me ; but that can't be helped."
The other thing that happened was that Mrs. Johnson
fell suddenly ill and died. Before she died, she talked
to Peter about Ehoda.
" It's leaving of her as I can't bear," she whispered.
" All alone and unprotected like. I can't leave her
by herself in this heathen country. I want to get her
back to England. But she's got no relatives there as'll
do for her; none, you know, as I should care to trust
her to, or as 'ud be really good to her. And I'm afraid
of what'll come to the child without me; I'm afraid,
Mr. Peter. That man it gives me the creeps of
nights to think of him comin' after Rhoder when I'm
gone. I'm just frightened as he'll get her; you know
what Ehoder is, like a soft wax candle that gets droopy
and gives before his bold look; he can do anythin'
144 THE LEE SHORE
with her. And if he gets her, he won't be good to her, I
know that. He'll just break her and toss her away, my
little gal. Oh, what can I do, Mr. Peter, to save that ? "
She was in great pain; drops of sweat kept gather-
ing on her forehead and rolling on to the pillow.
Peter took her hand that picked at the blanket.
" May we try to take care of her ? " he gently asked.
" If she will come and stay with us, in London, it
would be better than being alone among strangers,
wouldn't it? She could get work near, and live with
us. Peggy is fond of her, you know ; we all are. We
would try to make her as happy as we could."
She smiled at him, between laboured breaths.
" God bless you, dear Mr. Peter. I somehow thought
as how you'd be good to my little gal. . . . You are
so sympathetic to everyone always. . . . Yes, Rhoder
shall do that; I'll have her promise. And that man
you'll keep him off of her ? "
" I will try," said Peter. " I will do my very best."
" Oh, Lord, oh, dear Lord," said Mrs. Johnson,
" the pain ! "
But it didn't last long, for she died that night.
And four days later the boarding-house was broken
up, and the Margerison family and Rhoda Johnson
left Italy together.
Ehoda was very quiet and still and white. She
was terribly alone, for her mother was gone, and the
man she loved was gone, hurriedly, without a word
to her. There remained the Margerisons; Peter, with
his friendly smile and gentle companionableness ;
Hilary, worried and weary and hardly noticing her
unobtrusive presence; Silvio, Caterina, and Illuminato
sucking gingerbread and tumbling off the rack, and
Peggy? on whose broad shoulder Ehoda suddenly laid
her head and wept, all through the Mont Cenis tunnel.
CHAPTEK XI
THE LOSS OF AN IDEA
PETER'S room was the smallest and highest in the
boarding-house. It was extremely small and high, and
just above the bed was a ceiling that got hot through
and through like a warming-pan, so that the room in
summer was like a little oven below. What air there was
came in came through a small skylight above the wash-
stand ; through this also came the rain when it rained ;
the dirtiest rain Peter had ever seen.
It was not raining this morning, when Peter, after
passing a very warm night, heard the bells beginning.
A great many bells begin on Sunday mornings in this
part of London, no doubt in any part of London, but
here they seem particularly loud. The boarding-house
was in a small street close to a large English church
and a small Roman church ; and the English church had
its first Mass at seven, and the Roman church at six,
and each had another an hour later, and bells rang for
all. So Peter lay and listened.
Sometimes he went with Hilary and Peggy to the
Roman Mass. That pleased Peggy, who had hopes of
some day converting him. And occasionally he went
alone to the English Mass, and he liked that better, on
the whole, because the little Roman church was rather
ugly. Peter didn't think he would ever join the Roman
church, even to please Peggy. It certainly seemed to
him in some ways the most finely expressive of the
churches; but equally certainly it often expressed
the wrong things, and (like all other churches) left
145
146 THE LEE SHORE
whole worlds unexpressed. And so much of its ex-
pression had a crudity. ... It kept saying too little
and too much, and jarring.
Anyhow, this morning Peter, who had a headache
after his warm night, lay and heard the bells and
thought what a nice day Sunday was, with no office to
go to. Instead, he would take Rhoda on the river in
the morning, and go and see Lucy in the afternoon,
and probably have tea there. When Peter went to see
Lucy he always had a faint hope that Urquhart would
perhaps walk in, and that they would all be friendly
and happy together in the old way, for one afternoon.
It hadn't happened yet. Peter hadn't seen Urquhart
since they had left Venice, two months ago. Sunday
was his day for going to see Lucy, and it wasn't Urqu-
h art's day, perhaps because Urquhart was so often
away for week-ends; though last Sunday, indeed, he
had just left the Hopes' house when Peter arrived.
Lucy, when Peter had told her his tale of dishonour
two months ago, had said, half laughing at him, " How
stupid of all of you ! " She hadn't realised quite how
much it mattered. Lucy judged everything by a queer,
withdrawn standard of her own.
Peter had agreed that it had been exceedingly stupid
of all of them. Once, since then, when he heard that
Urquhart had returned and had seen Lucy, he had
asked her, " Does he dislike us all very much ? Is he
quite too disgusted to want to see me again ? "
Lucy had wrinkled her forehead over it.
" He's not angry," she had said. " You can fancy,
can't you? Merely merely . . ."
" Detached," said Peter, who had more words, and
always expressed what Lucy meant; and she nodded.
" Just that, you know." She had looked at him wist-
fully, hoping he wasn't minding too horribly much.
THE LOSS OF AN IDEA 147
" It's stupid of him," she had said, using her favour-
ite adjective, and had added, dubiously, " Come and
meet him sometime. You can't go on like this; it's
too silly."
Peter had shaken his head. " I won't till he wants
to. I don't want to bother him, you see."
" He does want to," Lucy had told him. " Of course
he does. Only he thinks you don't. That's what's so
silly."
They had left it there for the present. Some day
Peter meant to walk into Denis's rooms and. say,
" Don't be stupid. This can't go on." But the day
hadn't come yet. If it had been Denis who had done
the shady thing and was in penury and dishonour
thereby, it would have been so simple. But that was
inconceivable; such things didn't happen to Denis;
and as it was it was not simple.
Peter got out of his hot bed on to his hot floor, and
made for the bathroom. There was only one bath-
room in the boarding-house, but there was no great
competition for it, so Peter had his bath in peace, and
sang a tune in it as was his custom, and came back to
his hot room and put on his hot clothes (his less tidy
clothes, because it was the day of joy), and came down
to breakfast at 9 :25.
Most of the other boarders had got there before him.
It was a mixed boarding-house, and contained at the
moment two gentlemen besides Hilary and Peter, and
five ladies besides Peggy and Ehoda. They were on
the whole a happy and even gay society, and particu-
larly on Sundays.
Peggy, looking up from the tea-cups, gave Peter a
broad smile, and Ehoda gave him a little subdued one,
and Peter looked pleased to see everyone; he always
did, even on Mondays.
148 THE LEE SHORE
" I'm sure your brother hasn't a care in the world,"
an envious lady boarder had once said to Peggy ; " he's
always so happy-looking."
This was the lady who was saying, as Peter entered,
" And my mother's last words were, ' Find Elizabeth
Dean's grave.' Elizabeth Dean was an author, you
know oh, very well known, I believe. She treated
my mother and me none too well; didn't stand by us
when she should have but we won't say anything
about that now. Anyhow, it was a costly funeral
forty pounds and eight horses and my mother hadn't
an idea where she was laid. So she said, ' Find Eliza-
beth Dean's grave/ just like that. And the strange
thing was that in the first churchyard I walked into, in
a little village down in Sussex, there was a tombstone,
1 Elizabeth Dean, 65. The Lord gave and the Lord
hath taken away.' Wasn't that queer, now? So I
went straight and . . ."
" The woman's a fool," muttered the gentleman next
Peter, a cynical-faced commercial traveller. Peter had
heard the remark from him frequently before, and did
not feel called upon to reply to it.
But the tale of Elizabeth Dean was interrupted by a
lady of a speculative habit of mind.
" Now I want to ask you all, should one put up a
tombstone to the departed ? I've been having quite
a kick-up with my sisters about it lately. Hadn't one
better spend the money on the living? What do you
think, Miss Matthews ? "
Miss Matthews said she liked to see a handsome
headstone.
" After all, one honours them that way. It's all
one can do for them, isn't it. "
"Oh, Miss Matthews, all?" Several ladies were
shocked. " What about one's prayers for the dead ? "
THE LOSS OF AN IDEA 149
" I don't pray for the dead," said Miss Matthews,
who was a protestant, and did not attend the large
church in the next street. " I do not belong to the
Romish religion. I'm not saying anything against
those who do, but I consider that those who do not
should confine their prayers to those who may require
them in this troubled world, and not waste them upon
those whose fate we have every reason to believe is
settled once and for all."
The lady who always quarrelled with her on this
subject rose to the occasion. Peggy, soothing them
down, said mechanically, " There now. . . . Three
lumps, Peter? . . . Micky, one doesn't suck napkin
rings ; naughty."
Peter was appealed to by his neighbour, who knew
that he occasionally attended St. Austin's church. Peo-
ple were always drawing him into theological discus-
sions, which he knew nothing at all about.
" Mr. Peter, isn't that against all reason, to stop
praying for our friends merely because they've passed
through the veil ? "
" Yes," Peter agreed. " I should have thought so."
But all he really thought was that beyond the veil was
such darkness that he never looked into it, and that
it was a pity people should argue on a holiday.
" Now," said someone else, wishing to be a peace-
maker, " I'm afraid you'll all say I'm very naughty,
but I attend the early Mass at St. Austin's, high Mass
at the 'Roman church " she nodded at Peggy
" and the City Temple in the evening " she smiled
at the commercial traveller, who was believed to be a
ISTew Theologian. " Aren't I naughty, now ? "
Mademoiselle, the French governess, came down at
this point, saying she had had a dream about a hat
with pink roses. The peace-making lady said, " Bad
ISO THE LEE SHORE
little thing, she's quite frisky this morning." Hilary,
to whom Mademoiselle was the last straw, left the room.
Rhoda followed his example. She had sat very si-
lent, as usual, over breakfast, eating little. Peter came
out with her, and followed her into the sitting-room,
where she stood listlessly playing with the tassel of the
blind. Rhoda was thinner than ever, and floppier, and
took even less pains to be neat. She had left off her
beads, but had not replaced them by a collar.
Peter said, " Are you coming out with me this morn-
ing?"
She replied, listless and uncaring, " If you like."
" We might go," said Peter, " and see if the New
English Art Club is open on Sunday mornings. And
then we'll go on the river. Shall we ? "
She assented again. " Very well."
A moment later she sighed, and said wearily, " How
it does go on, day after day, doesn't it ! "
Peter said it did.
" On and on," said Rhoda. " Same stupid people
saying the same stupid old things. I do wonder they
don't get tired. They don't know anything, do they ? "
Khoda's hankering was still after Great Minds.
" They're funny sometimes," suggested Peter ten-
tatively; but she was blind to that.
" They don't know a thing. And they talk and
talk, so stupidly. About religion as if one religion
was different from another. And about dead people,
as if they knew all about them and what they were
doing. They seem to make sure souls go on Miss
Matthews and Miss Baker were both sure of that.
But how can they tell? Some people that know lots
more than them don't think so, but say . . . say it's
nothingness."
THE LOSS OF AN IDEA 151
Peter recognised Guy Vyvian's word. Rhoda would
have said " nothing to follow."
" People say," he agreed, " quite different things,
and none of them know anything about it, of course.
One needn't worry, though."
" You never worry," she accused him, half fretfully.
" But," she added, " you don't preach, either. You
don't say things are so when you can't know. . . . Do
you think anything about that, Peter about going
on? I don't believe you do."
Peter reflected. " No," he said. " I don't believe
I do. I can't look beyond what I can see and touch;
I don't try. I expect I'm a materialist. The colours
and shapes of things matter so awfully much; I can't
imagine anything of them going on when those are
dead. I rather wish I could. Some people that know
lots more than me do, and I think it's splendid of them
and for them. They're very likely right, too, you.
know."
Rhoda shook her head. " I believe it's nothingness."
Peter felt it a dreary subject, and changed it.
" Well, let's come and look at pictures. And I can't
imagine nothingness, can you? We might have lunch
out somewhere, if you don't mind."
So they went out and looked at pictures, and went
up the river in a steamer, and had lunch out some-
where, and Khoda grew very gentle and more cheerful,
and said, " I didn't mean to be cross to you, Peter.
You're ever so good to me," and winked away tears,
and the gentle Peter, who hated no one, wished that
some catastrophe would wipe Guy Vyvian off the face
of the earth and choke his memory with dust. When-
ever one thought Rhoda was getting rather better, the
image of Vyvian, who knew such a lot more than most
152 THE LEE SHORE
people, came up between her and the world she ought
to have been enjoying, and she had a relapse.
Peter and Rhoda came home together, and Rhoda
said, " Thank you ever so much for taking me. I've
liked it ever so," and went up to her room to read
poetry. Rhoda read a good deal of the work of our
lesser contemporary poets; Vyvian had instilled that
taste into her.
Peter, about tea-time, went to see Lucy. He went
by the Piccadilly tube, from Holborn to South Ken-
sington (he was being recklessly extravagant to-day,
but it was a holiday after all, and very hot).
Peter climbed the stairs to the Hopes' drawing-room
and opened the door, and what he had often dreamed of
had come about, for Denis was there, only in a strange,
undreamed-of way that made him giddy, so he stood
quite still for a moment and looked.
He would have turned away and gone before they
saw him ; but they had seen him, and Lucy said, " Oh,
Peter come in," and Denis said, " Oh . . . hullo,"
and held out his hand.
Peter, who was dizzily readjusting certain rather
deeply-rooted ideas, said, " How do you do ? I've
come . . . I've come to tea, you know."
" 'Course you have," said Lucy. Then she looked
up into Peter's face and smiled, and slipped her hand
into his. " How nice ; we're three again."
" Yes," said Peter.
" But I must go," said Urquhart. " I'm awfully
sorry, but I've got to meet a man. ... I shall see you
some time, shan't I, Margery? Why don't you ever
come and see me, you slacker ? Well, good-bye. Good-
bye, Lucy. Lunch to-morrow; don't forget."
He was gone.
THE LOSS OF AN IDEA 153
Peter sat on the coal-scuttle, and Lucy gave him tea,
with three lumps in it.
" Thank you," said Peter.
Lucy looked at him. " You did know, didn't you ?
All this time, I mean? I didn't tell you, because I
never tell you things, of course. You always know
them. And this particularly. You did know it,
Peter? But when you came in you looked . . . you
looked as if you didn't."
" I was stupid," said Peter. " I ought to have
known."
Looking back, he saw that he certainly ought. He
certainly must have, only that his vision had been
blocked by a certain deeply-rooted idea, that was as
old as his growth. He had assumed, without words.
He had thought that she too had assumed; neither
had ever required words to elucidate their ideas one
to the other ; they had kept words for the other things,
the jolly, delightful things of the foreground.
" How long ? " asked Peter, drinking his tea to warm
him, for, though it was so hot outside, he felt very cold
in here.
She told him. " Oh, since the beginning, I think.
I thought you knew, Peter. . . . We didn't say any-
thing about it till quite lately. Only we both knew."
She came and sat on the rug by his side, and slipped
her hand into his. " Are you glad, Peter ? Please,
Peter, be glad."
" I will presently," said Peter, with one of his fainter
smiles. " Let me just get used to it, and I will."
She whispered, stroking his hand, " We've always
had such fun, Peter, we three. Haven't we? Let's
go on having it."
" Yes," said Peter. " Let's."
154 THE LEE SHORE
He was vague still, and a little dizzy, but he could
smile at her now. After all, wasn't it splendid?
Denis and Lucy the two people he loved best in the
world ; so immeasurably best that beside them everyone
else was no class at all.
He sat very still on the coal-scuttle, making a fresh
discovery about himself. He had known before that
he had a selfish disposition, though he had never thought
about it particularly; but he hadn't known that it was
in him to grudge Denis anything Denis, who was
consciously more to him than anyone else in the world.
Lucy was different; she was rooted in the very fibre
of his being; it wasn't so much that he consciously
loved her as that she was his other self. Well, hadn't
he long since given to Denis, to use as he would, all
the self he had ?
But the wrench made him wince, and left him chilly
and grown old.
" It's perfectly splendid for both of you," said Peter,
himself again at last. " And it was extraordinarily
stupid of me not to see it before. . . . Do you think
Denis really meant I could go and see him? I think
I will."
" 'Course he did. 'Course you will. Go to-morrow.
But now it's going to be just you and me and tea.
And honey sandwiches oh, Peter ! " Her eyes
danced at him, because it was such a nice world.
He came off the coal-scuttle and made himself com-
fortable in a low chair near the honey sandwiches.
" Will you and Denis try always to have them when I
come to tea with you? I do love them so. Have
you arranged svhen it is to be, by the way ? "
" No. Father won't want it to be for ages he
won't like it to be at all, of course, because Denis isn't
poor or miserable or revolutionary. But Felicity has
THE LOSS OF AN IDEA 155
done so nicely for him in that way (Lawrence is get-
ting into horrid rows in Poland, you know) that I
think I've a right to someone happy and clean, don't
you ? . . . And Denis wants it to be soon. So I sup-
pose it will be soon."
" Sure to be," Peter agreed.
The room was full of roses; their sweetness was ex-
uberant, intoxicating; not like Lucy, who usually had
small, pale, faint flowers.
" Isn't it funny," she said, " how one thinks one
can't be any happier, and then suddenly something
happens inside one, and one sees everything new. I
used to think things couldn't be brighter and shine
more but now they glitter like the sun, all new."
" I expect so," said Peter.
Then she had a little stab of remorse; for Peter
had been turned out of the place of glittering things,
and moved in a grey and dusty world among things
no one could like.
" 'Tis so stupid that your work is like that," she
isaid, with puckered forehead. " I wish you could
find something nice to do, Peter dear."
" Oh, I'm all right," said Peter. " And there are
all the nice things which aren't work, just the same.
Rhoda and I went a ride in a steamer this morning.
And the sun was shining on the water rather nice,
it was. Even Rhoda grew a little brighter to see it.
Poor Ehoda ; the boarders do worry her so. I'm sorry
about it; they don't worry me; I rather like them.
Some day soon I want you to come and see Rhoda; it
would cheer her up. I wish she liked things more.
She's left off her bead necklace, you know. And she
gets worried because people discuss the condition of ' the
departed ' (that's what we call them in the boarding-
house). Rhoda is sure they are in nothingness. I
156 THE LEE SHORE
told her it was impossible for me to speculate on such
things. How can one, you know ? People have so
much imagination. Mine always sticks at a certain
point and won't move on. Could you do it if some-
one asked you to imagine Denis, say, without his
body?"
She wrinkled her forehead, trying to.
" Denis's body matters a lot," was her conclusion.
" I suppose it's because it's such a nice one."
" Exactly," said Peter. " People's bodies are nice.
And when they're not I don't believe their minds are
very nice either, so I'd rather not think about them.
Now I must go home."
It was very hot going home. London was a baked
place, full of used air Peter's bedroom on a large
scale. Peter tried walking back, but found he was
rather giddy, so got into a bus that took him the wrong
way, a thing he often did. Riding across London on
the top of a bus is, of course, the greatest fun, even if
it is the wrong bus. It makes up for almost any mis-
fortune.
A few days later, after office hours, Peter took Urqu-
hart at his word and went to his rooms. Urquhart
wasn't there, but would be in some time, he was told,
so he sat and waited for him. It was a pleasant change
after the boarding-house rooms. Urquhart's things
were nice to look at, without being particularly artistic.
There was nothing dingy, or messy, or second-rate, or
cheap. A graceful, careless expensiveness was the dom-
inant note. An aroma of good tobacco hung about.
Peter liked to smell good tobacco, though he smoked
none, good or bad.
Urquhart came in at seven o'clock. He was going to
dine somewhere at eight, so he hadn't much time.
" Glad to see you, Margery. Quite time you came."
THE LOSS OF AN IDEA 157
Peter thought it nice of him to speak so pleasantly,
seeming to ignore the last time Peter had come to see
him. He had been restrained and embarrassed then;
now he was friendly, in the old casual, unemphasised
way.
" How splendid about you and Lucy," said Peter.
" A very suitable alliance, I call it."
" So do I," said Denis, lighting a cigarette. " She's
so much the nicest person I know. I perceived that
the day you introduced us."
" Of course," said Peter. " You would."
" Do you mind," said Denis, " if I dress ? We can
talk meanwhile. Rotten luck that I'm booked for din-
ner, or we could have had it together. You must come
another day."
While he dressed he told Peter that he was going
to stand at the next elections. Peter had known be-
fore that Denis was ultimately destined to assist in the
government of his country, and now it appeared that
the moment had arrived.
" Do you really take a side ? " Peter enquired. " Or
is it just a funny game ? "
" Oh, of course it's a game too ; most things are.
But, of course, one's a Conservative and all that, if
one's a person of sense. It's the only thing to be, you
know."
" I rather like both sides," said Peter. " They're
both so keen, and so sure they're right. But I expect
Conservatives are the Tightest, because they want to
keep things. I hate people who want to make a mess
and break things up and throw them away. Besides,
I suppose one couldn't really be on the same side as
what's his name that man everyone dislikes so
could one ? or any of those violent people."
Urquhart said one certainly couldn't. Besides, there
158 THE LEE SHORE
were Free Trade and Home Bule, and dozens of other
things to be considered. Obviously Conservatives were
right.
" I ought to get in," he said, " unless anything up-
sets it. The Unionist majority last time was two hun-
dred and fifty."
Peter laughed. It was rather nice to hear Denis
talking like a real candidate.
When Denis was ready, he said, " I'm dining in
Norfolk Street. Can you walk with me part of the
way ? "
Peter said it was on the way to Brook Street, where
he lived. Denis displayed no interest in Brook Street.
As far as he intended to cultivate Peter's acquaint-
ance, it was to be as a unit, detached from his dis-
graceful relatives. Peter understood that. As he
hadn't much expected to be cultivated again at all,
he was in good spirits as he walked with Denis to
Norfolk Street. No word passed between them as to
Peter's past disgrace or present employment; Denis
had an easy way of sliding lightly over embarrassing
subjects.
They parted, and Denis dined in Norfolk Street with
a parliamentary secretary, and Peter supped in Brook
Street with the other boarders.
CHAPTER XII
THE LOSS OF A GOBLET AND OTHEB THINGS
DENIS and Lucy were married at the end of Septem-
ber. They went motoring in Italy for a month, and
by the beginning of November were settled at Astleys.
Astleys was in Berkshire, and was TJrquhart's home.
It was rather beautiful, as homes go, with a careless,
prosperous grace about it at which Lucy laughed be-
cause it was so Urquhartesque.
Almost at once they asked some people to stay there
to help with the elections and the pheasant shooting.
The elections were hoped for in December. Urquhart
did not propose to bother much about them; he was a
good deal more interested in the pheasants; but he
had, of course, every intention of doing the usual and
suitable things, and carrying the business through well.
Lucy only laughed ; to want to get into Parliament was
so funny, looked at from the point of view she had al-
ways been used to. Denis, being used by inheritance
and upbringing to another point of view, did not see
that it was so funny ; to him it was a very natural pro-
fession for a man to go into; his family had always
provided a supply of members for both houses. Lucy
and Peter, socially more obscure, laughed childishly
together over it. " Fancy being a Liberal or a Con-
servative out of all the things there are in the world to
be ! " as Peter had once commented.
But it was delightfully Urquhart-like, this lordly
assumption of a share in the government of a country.
No doubt it was worth having, because all the things
160 THE LEE SHORE
TJrquhart wanted and obtained were that; he had an
eye for good things, like Peter, only he gained posses-
sion of them, and Peter could only admire from afar.
They were talking about the election prospects at
dinner on the evening of the fifteenth of November.
They were a young and merry party. At one end of
the table was Denis, looking rather pale after a hard
day's hunting, and very much amused with life; at
the other Lucy, in a white frock, small and open-eyed
like a flower, and very much amused too ; and between
them were the people, young mostly, and gay, who were
staying with them. Lucy, who had been brought up
in a secluded Bohemianism, found it very funny and
nice having a house-party, and so many servants to
see after them all that one needn't bother to run round
and make sure everyone had soap, and so on.
One person, not young, who was staying there, was
Lord Evelyn TJrquhart. Lucy loved him. He loved
her, and told funny stories. Sometimes, between the
stories, she would catch his near-sighted, screwed up
eyes scanning her face with a queer expression that
might have been wistfulness; he seemed at times to be
looking for something in her face, and finding it. Par-
ticularly when she laughed, in her chuckling, gurgling
way, he looked like this, and would grow grave sud-
denly. They had talked together about all manner of
things, being excellent friends, but only once so far
about Lucy's cousin Peter. Once had been too much,
Lucy had found. The Margerisons were a tabooed
subject with Lord Evelyn TJrquhart.
Denis shrugged his shoulders over it. " They did
him brown, you see," he explained, in his light, casual
way. " TJncle Evelyn can't forgive that. And it's
because he was so awfully fond of Peter that he's so
bitter against him now. I never mention him; it's
THE LOSS OF A GOBLET 161
best not. . . . You know, you keep giving the poor
dear shocks by looking like Peter, and laughing like
him, and using his words. You are rather like, you
know."
" I know," said Lucy. " It's not only looking and
laughing and words; we think alike too. So perhaps
if he gets fond of me he'll forgive Peter sometime."
" He's an implacable old beggar," Denis said.
" It's stupid of him. It never seems to me worth while
to get huffy; it's so uncomfortable. He expects too
much of people, and when they disappoint him he "
" Takes umbradge," Lucy filled in for him. That
was another of Peter's expressions; they shared to-
gether a number of such stilted, high-sounding phrases,
mostly culled either out of Adelphi melodrama or the
fiction of a by-gone age.
To-night, when the cloth had been removed that they
might eat fruit, Denis was informed that there was
a gentleman waiting to see him. The gentleman had
not vouchsafed either his name or business, so he could
obviously wait a little longer, till Denis had finished
his own business. In twenty minutes Denis went to
the library, and there found Hilary Margerison, sitting
by the fire in a great coat and muffler and looking cold.
When he rose and faced him, Denis saw that he also
looked paler than of old, and thinner, and less perfectly
shaved, and his hair was longer. He might have been
called seedy-looking; he might have been Sidney Car-
ton in " The Only Way " ; he had always that touch of
the dramatic about him that suggested a stage character.
He had a bad cough.
" Oh," said Urquhart, polite and feeling embar-
rassed ; " how do you do ? I'm sorry to have kept you
waiting; they didn't tell me who it was. Sit down,
won't you ? "
162 THE LEE SHORE
Hilary said thanks, he thought not. He had a keen
sense of the fit. So he refused the cigarette Urquhart
offered him, and stood by the fire, looking at the floor.
Urquhart stood opposite him, and thought how ill and
how little reputable he looked.
Hilary said, in his high, sweet, husky voice, " It is
no use beating about the bush. I want help. We are
in need ; we are horribly hard up, to put it baldly. That
has passed between your family and mine which makes
you the last person I should wish to appeal to as a
beggar. I propose a business transaction." He paused
to cough.
Urquhart, feeling impatient at the prospect of a pro-
voking interview when he wanted to be playing bridge,
said " Yes ? " politely.
" You," said Hilary, " are intending to stand as a
candidate for this constituency. You require for that,
I fancy, a reputation wholly untarnished; the least
breath dimming it would be for you a disastrous calam-
ity. I have some information which, if sent to the local
Liberal paper, would seriously tell against you in the
public mind. It is here."
He took it out of his breast pocket and handed it to
Urquhart a type-written sheet of paper. He must
certainly have been to a provincial theatre lately; he
had hit its manners and methods to a nicety, the silly
ass.
Urquhart took the paper gingerly and did not look
at it.
" Thanks ; but ... I don't know that I am inter-
ested, do you know. Isn't this all rather silly, Mr.
Margerison ? "
" If you will oblige me by reading it," said Mr.
Margerison.
So Urquhart obliged him. It was all about him,
THE LOSS OF A GOBLET 163
as was to be expected; enough to make a column of
the Berkshire Press.
" Well ? " said Hilary, when he had done.
" Well," said Urquhart, folding up the paper and
returning it, " thank you for showing it me. But
again I must say that I am not particularly interested.
Of course you will send anything you like to any pa-
per you like; it is no business of mine. There's the
libel law, as of course you know; newspapers are as a
rule rather careful about that. No respectable paper,
I needn't say, would care to use such copy as this of
yours. . . . Well, good night. . . . Oh, by the way, I
suppose your brother told you all that ? "
Hilary said, " I had it from various reliable sources."
He stood uncertain, with wavering eyes, despair killing
hope. " You will do nothing at all to save your repu-
tation, then ? "
Urquhart laughed, unamused, with hard eyes. He
was intensely irritated.
" Do you think it likely ? I don't care what you
get printed in any dirty rag about me, man. Why on
earth should I ? "
The gulf between them yawned; it was unbridge-
able. From Hilary's world insults might be shrieked
and howled, dirt thrown with all the strength of hate,
and neither shrieks nor dirt would reach across the
gulf to Urquhart's. They simply didn't matter.
Hilary, realising this, grew slowly, dully red, with the
bitterness of mortified expectation. Urquhart's look
at him, supercilious, contemptuous, aloof, slightly dis-
gusted, hurt his vanity. He caught at the only weapon
he had which could hurt back.
" I must go and tell Peter, then, that his informa-
tion has been of no use."
Urquhart said merely, " Peter won't be surprised.
164 THE LEE SHORE
It's no good your trying to make me think that Peter
is joining in this absurdity. He has too much sense
of the ridiculous. He seems to have talked to you
pretty freely of my concerns, which I certainly fancied
he would keep to himself; I suppose he did that by
way of providing entertaining conversation; Peter was
always a chatterbox" it was as well that Peter was
not there to hear the edge in the soft, indifferent voice
" but he isn't quite such a fool as to have counte-
nanced this rather stagey proceeding of yours. He
knows me used to know me pretty well, you see.
. . . Good night. You have plenty of time to catch
your train, I think."
Hilary stopped to say, " Is that all you have to say ?
Xou won't let your connexion with our family with
Peter induce you to help us in our need ? . . . I've
done an unpleasant thing to-night, you know; I've put
my pride in my pocket and stooped to the methods of
the cad, for the sake of my wife and little children.
I admit I have made a mistake, both of taste and judg-
ment; I have behaved unworthily; you may say .like
a fool. But are you prepared to see us go under to
drive by and leave us lying in the road, as you did to
that old Tuscan peasant? Does it in no way affect
your feelings towards us that you are now Peter's
cousin by marriage besides being practically, his
half-brother ? "
" I am not practically, or in any other way, Peter's
half-brother," said Urquhart casually. " But that is
neither here nor there. Peter and I are have been
friends, as you know. I should naturally give him
help if he asked me for it. He has not done so; all
that has happened is that you have tried to blackmail
me. ... I really see no use in prolonging this inter-
THE LOSS OF A GOBLET 165
view, Mr. Margerison. Good night." Urquhart was
bored and impatient with the ahsurd scene.
Into the middle of it walked Peter, pale and breath-
less. He stood by the door and looked at them, dazed
and blinking at the light; looked at Urquhart, who
stood leaning his shoulder against the chimney-piece,
his hands in his pockets, the light full on his fair, tran-
quil, bored face, and at Hilary, pale and tragic, with
wavering, unhappy eyes. So they stood for a type
and a symbol and a sign that never, as long as the world
endures, shall Margerisons get the better of Urquharts.
They both looked at Peter, and Urquhart's brows
rose a little, as if to say, " More Margerisons yet ? "
Hilary said, " What's the matter, Peter ? Why have
you come ? "
Peter said, rather faintly, " I meant to stop you
before you saw Denis. I suppose I'm too late. . . .
I made Peggy tell me. I found a paper, you see ; and
I asked Peggy, and she said you'd come down here to
use it. Have you ? "
" He has already done his worst," Denis's ironic
voice answered for him. " Sprung the awful threat
upon me."
Peter leant back against the door, feeling rather sick.
He had run all the way from the station; and, as al-
ways, he was too late.
Then he laughed a little. The contrast of Hilary's
tragedian air and Urquhart's tranquil boredom was
upsetting to him.
Urquhart didn't laugh, but looked at him enquir-
ingly.
" It's certainly funny rather," he said quietly.
" You must have got a good deal of quiet fun out of
compiling that column."
166 THE LEE SHORE
" Oh," said Peter. " But I didn't, you know."
" I gather you helped supplied much of the in-
formation. That story of the old man I brutally slew
and then callously left uncared for on the road you
seem to have coloured that rather highly in passing it
on. ... I suppose it was stupid of me to fancy that
you weren't intending to make that public property.
Not that I particularly mind: there was nothing to be
ashamed of in that business ; but it somehow never hap-
pened to occur to me that you were relating it."
" I didn't," said Peter. " I have never told anyone."
Urquhart said nothing; his silence was expressive.
Peter stammered into speech incoherently.
" At least at least yes, I believe I did tell Peggy
the story, months ago, in Venice but I didn't say it
was you. I merely said, if someone had done that
. . . what would she think? I wanted to know if,
she thought we ought to have found the old man's peo-
ple and told them."
" I see," said Urquhart. " And did she ? "
"!No. She thought it was all right." Peter had
known beforehand that Peggy would think it was all
right; that was why he had asked her, to be reassured,
to have the vague trouble in his mind quieted.
And she, apparently, had seen through his futile
pretence, had known it was Urquhart he spoke of,
needed reassuring about (Peter didn't realise that even
less shrewd observers than Peggy might easily know
when it was Urquhart he spoke of) and had gone and
told Hilary. And Hilary, in his need, had twisted it
into this disgusting story, and had typed it and brought
it down to Astleys to-night, with other twisted stories.
" I suppose the rest too," said Urquhart, " you re-
lated to your sister-in-law to see what she would think."
Peter stammered, " I don't think so. No, I don't
THE LOSS OF A GOBLET 167
believe anything else came from me. Did it, Hilary ? "
Hilary shrugged his shoulders, and made no other
answer.
" It really doesn't particularly matter," said Urqu-
hart, " whether the informant was you or some other
of my acquaintances. I daresay my gyp is responsible
for the story of the actresses I brought down to the
St. Gabriel's dance; he knew about it at the time, I
believe. I am not in the least ashamed of that either ;
the ' Berkshire Press ' is extremely welcome to it, if
it can find space for it. ... Well, now, will you both
stay the night with me, or must you get back? The
last good train goes at 10.5, I think."
Peter said, " Come along, Hilary."
Urquhart stood and watched them go.
As they turned away, he said, in his gentle, inex-
pressive voice, that hadn't been raised in anger once,
" Can I lend you any money, Peter ? "
Peter shook his head, though he felt Hilary start.
" !No, thank you. It is very good of you. . . . Good
night."
" Good night."
Going out of the room, they came face to face with
Lord Evelyn Urquhart coming in. He saw them; he
stiffened a little, repressing a start ; he stood elaborately
aside to let them pass, bowing slightly.
Neither Margerison said anything. Hilary's bow
was the stage copy of his own; Peter didn't look at
him at all, but hurried by.
The servant let them out, and shut the hall door be-
hind them.
Lord Evelyn said to his nephew in the library, swing-
ing his eyeglass restlessly to and fro, " Why do you let
those people into your house, Denis? I thought we
had done with them."
i68 THE LEE SHORE
" They came to call," said Denis, who did not seem
disposed to be communicative. " I can't say why they
chose this particular hour."
Lord Evelyn paced up the room, restless, nervous,
petulant.
" It's monstrous," he said querulously. " Perfectly
monstrous. Shameless. How dare they show their
faces in this house? ... I suppose they wanted some-
thing out of you, did they ? "
Denis merely said, " After all, Peter is my cousin
by marriage, you must remember. And I have never
broken with him."
Lord Evelyn returned, " The more shame to you.
He's as great a swindler as his precious brother ; they're
a pair, you can't deny that."
Denis didn't attempt to deny it; probably he was
feeling a little tired of the Margerisons to-night.
" I'm not defending Peter, or his brother either. I
only said that he's Lucy's cousin, and she's very fond
of him, and I'm not keen on actually breaking with
him. As to the brother, he's so much more of an ass
than anything else that to call him a swindler is more
than he deserves. He simply came here to-night to
play the fool; he's no more sense than a silly ass out
of a play."
That was what Peter was telling Hilary on the way
to the station. Hilary defended himself rather feebly.
" My good Peter, we must have money. We are in
positive want. Of course, I never meant to proceed
to extremities; I thought the mere mention of such a
threat would be enough to make him see that we really
were desperately hard up, and that he might as well
help us. But he doesn't care. Like all rich people, he
is utterly callous and selfish. . . . Do you think Lucy
would possibly give us any help, if you asked her ? "
THE LOSS OF A GOBLfcT 169
" I shan't ask her/' said Peter. " Don't, please,
Hilary," he added miserably. " Can't you see. . . ."
" See what ? I see that we get a little more desti-
tute every day: that the boarders are melting away;
that I am reduced to unthinkably sordid hackwork,
and you to the grind of uncongenial toil; that Peggy
can't afford to keep a cook who can boil a potato re-
spectably (they were like walnuts to-day) that she and
the children go about with their clothes dropping off
them. I see that; and I see these Urquharts, closely
connected with our family, rolling in unearned riches,
spending and squandering and wasting and never giv-
ing away. I see the Robinsons, our own relations, fat-
tening on the money that ought to have come to us, and
now and then throwing us a loan as you throw a dog
a bone. I see your friend Leslie taking himself off to
the antipodes to spend his millions, that he may be out
of the reach of disturbing appeals. I see a world con-
stituted so that you would think the devils in hell must
cry shame on it." His cough, made worse by the fog,
choked his relation of his vision.
Peter had nothing to say to it: he could only sigH
over it. The Haves and the Have-Nots there they
are, and there is no getting round the ugly fact.
" Denis," said Peter, " would lend me money if I
asked him. You heard him offer. But I am not going
to ask him. We are none of us going to ask him. If
I find that you have, and that he has given it you,
I shall pay it straight back. . . . You know, Hilary,
we're really not so badly off as all that; we get along
pretty well, I think; better than most other people."
The other Have-Nots; they made no difference, in
Hilary's eyes, to the fact that of course the Margeri-
sons should have been among the Haves.
Hilary said, " You are absolutely impervious, Peter,
170 THE LEE SHORE
to other people's troubles," and turned up his coat-col-
lar and sank down on a seat in the waiting-room. (Of
course, they had missed the 10.5, the last good train,
and were now waiting for the 11.2, the slow one.)
Peter walked up and down the platform, feeling very
cold. He had come away, in his excitement, without
his overcoat. The chill of the foggy night seemed to
sink deep into his innermost being.
Hilary's words rang in his ears. " I see that we
get a little more destitute every day." It was true.
Every day the Margerisons seemed to lose something
more. To-night Peter had lost something he could ill
afford to part with another degree of Denis Urqu-
hart's regard. That seemed to be falling from him bit
by bit ; perhaps that was why he felt so cold. However
desperately he clung to the remnants, as he had clung
since that last interview in Venice, he could not think
to keep them much longer at this rate.
As he walked up and down the platform, his cold
hands thrust deep into his pockets, he was contem-
plating another loss one that would hurt absurdly
much.
If Hilary felt that he needed more money so badly,
he must have it. There were certain things Peter de-
clined to do. He wouldn't borrow from the Urquharts ;
but he would sell his last treasured possession to soothe
Hilary for a little while. The Berovieri goblet had
been bought for a lot of money, and could at any mo-
ment be sold for a lot of money. The Berovieri goblet
must go.
That evening, in the tiny attic room, Peter took the
adorable thing out of the box where it lay hid, and set
it on the chest of drawers, in front of the candle, so
that the flame shone through the blue transparency like
the setting sun through a stained-glass window.
THE LOSS OF A GOBLET 171
It was very, very beautiful. Peter sat on the bed
and looked at it, as a devotee before a shrine. In itself
it was very beautiful, a magic thing of blue colour and
deep light and pure shadow and clear, lovely form.
Peter loved it for itself, and for its symbolic character.
For it was a symbol of the world of great loveliness
that did, he knew, exist. When he had been turned
out of that world into a grey and dusty place, he had
kept that one thing, to link him with loveliness and
light. Peter was a materialist: he loved things, their
shapes and colours, with a passion that blinded him to
the beauty of the colourless, the formless, the super-
sensuous.
He slipped his fingers up the chalice's slim stem and
round its cool bowl, and smiled for pleasure that such
a thing existed had existed for four hundred years
to gladden the world.
"Well, anyone would have thought I should have
smashed you before now," he remarked, apostrophis-
ing it proudly. " But I haven't. I shall take you to
Christie's myself to-morrow, as whole as you were the
day Leslie gave you me."
It was fortunate that Leslie was out of reach, and
would not hear of the transaction. If he had been in
England, Peter would have felt bound to offer him
the goblet, and he would have paid for it too enor-
mous a price to be endured. Leslie's generosity was
sometimes rather overwhelming.
When Peter took Hilary and Peggy the cheque he
had received, and told them what he had received it
for, Hilary said, " I suppose these things must be.
It was fortunate you did not ask my advice, Peter; I
should have hesitated what to say. It is uncommonly
like bartering one's soul for guineas. To what we are
reduced ! "
172 THE LEE SHORE
He was an artist, and cared for beautiful goblets.
He would much rather have borrowed the money, or
had it given him.
Peggy, who was not an artist, said, " Oh, Peter dar-
ling, how sweet of you! Now I really can pay the
butcher; I've had to hide. from him the last few morn-
ings, in the coal-hole. You dear child, I hope you
won't miss that nice cup too much. When our ship
comes in you shall have another."
" When" sighed Hilary, who was feeling over-
worked that evening. (He did advertisement pic-
tures for a weekly paper; a sordid and degrading pur-
suit. )
" Well," said Peggy hopefully, " the boarders we
have now really do pay their rent the way they never
did in Venice. That's such a comfort. If only Lar-
ry's cough gets off his chest without turning to bron-
chitis, I will be quite happy. But these loathsome
fogs! And that odious man coming round wanting to
know why aren't the children attending school ! * I'm
sure/ I said to him, ' I wish they were ; the house
would be the quieter missing them; but their father
insists on educating them himself, because he won't
let them mix up with the common children in the
school; they're by way of being little gentry, do you
see,' I said, ' though indeed you mightn't think it to
look at them.' Oh dear me, he was so impolite; he
wouldn't believe that Hilary was doing his duty by
them, though I assured him that he read them all the
'Ancient Mariner' yesterday morning while they
watched him dress, and that I was teaching them the
alphabet whenever I had a spare minute. But noth-
ing would satisfy him; and off the two eldest must go
to the Catholic school next week to be destroyed by the
THE LOSS OF A GOBLET .173
fog and to pick up with all the ragamuffins in the dis-
trict."
" An abominable, cast-iron system," Hilary mur-
mured mechanically. " Of a piece with all the other
institutions of an iniquitous state."
"And what do you think," added Peggy, who was
busy putting a patch in Silvio's knickerbockers, " Guy
Vyvian turned up out of nowhere and called this after-
noon, bad manners to him for a waster. When he
found you were out, Hilary, he asked where was Rhoda ;
he'd no notion of sitting down to listen to me talking.
Ehoda was out at work too, of course; I told him it
wasn't most of us could afford to play round in the
afternoons the way he did. I suppose he'll come again,
bothering and upsetting the child just when she's set-
tling down a bit. I've thought her seeming brighter
lately; she likes going about with you, Peter. But
there'll be pretty doings again when that man comes
exciting her."
" Vyvian is a cad and a low fellow," Hilary said,
" and I always regretted being forced into partner-
ship with him; but I suppose one can't kick one's past
acquaintances from the door. I, at least, cannot.
Some people can and do; they may reconcile it with
their standards of decency if they choose; but I can-
not. Vyvian must come if he likes, and we must be
hospitable to him. We must ask him to dinner if he
comes again."
" Yes," sniffed Peggy, " I can see him ! Sticking
his fork into the potatoes and pretending he can't get
it through! Oh, have him to dinner if you like; he
must just make the best of what he gets if he comes.
He'll be awfully rude to the rest, too, but I'll apolo-
gise for him beforehand."
174 THE LEE SHORE
" Though a cad," Hilary observed, " Vyvian is less
of a vacuous fool than most of the members of our
present delightful house-party. He at least knows
something of art and literature, and can converse with-
out jarring one's taste violently by his every word. He
is not, after all, a Miss Matthews or a Mr. Bridger.
Apologies, therefore, are scarcely called for, perhaps."
Peggy said, " What a solemn face, Peter. Is it the
Vyvian man, or the beautiful cup, that we've never half
thanked you for getting rid of yet ? "
Peter said, " It's the Vyvian man. He makes me
feel solemn. You see, I promised Mrs. Johnson
faithfully to keep Rhoda out of his clutches, if I could."
" Darling, what a silly promise. Oh, of course,
we'll all do our best; but if he wants to clutch her,
the silly little bird, he'll surely do it. Not that I'm
saying he does want to; I daresay he only wants to
upset her and make her his slave and then run away
again to his own place, the Judas."
" But I don't want him to do that. Rhoda will be
unhappier than ever again."
" Oh, well, I wouldn't wonder if, when Rhoda sees
him again now, she sees what a poor creature it is,
after all. It may be a turning-point with her, and
who knows will she perhaps settle down afterwards and
be a reasonable girl and darn her stockings and wear
a collar ? "
" If one is to talk of stockings," began Hilary, " I
noticed Caterina's to-day, and really, you know. . . ."
Peggy bit off her cotton and murmured, " Oh dear,
oh dear, oh dear, what's to become of us all ? "
CHAPTER XIII
THE LOSS OF THE SINGLE STATE
THE man Vyvian came. He came again and again,
but not to dinner. Perhaps he suspected about the
potatoes, and thought that they would not even be
compensated for by the pleasure of sneering at the
boarders. He came in the evenings and sat in the sit-
ting-room and drank coffee (the only thing that was
well cooked in Peggy's household), and talked to Hil-
ary, and looked at Rhoda. Rhoda, embroidering apple-
boughs on a green dress-front, shivered and trembled
under his eyes.
" Now I know," thought Peter, seeing Vyvian look,
" what villians in books are really like. Vyvian is just
like one; specially about the eyes." He was sitting
near Rhoda, playing that sort of patience called cal-
cul, distinguished from other patiences by the fact that
it comes out ; that was why Peter liked it. He had re-
fused to-night to join in the game the others were play-
ing, which was animal grab, though usually he enjoyed
it very much. Peter liked games, though he seldom
won them. But this evening he played patience by
himself and sat by Rhoda and consulted her at crucial
moments, and babbled of many things and knew when-
ever Vyvian looked and Rhoda shook. At half-past
nine Vyvian stopped talking to Hilary and crossed the
room and took the arm-chair on Rhoda's other side.
" Enthralling evenings you spend here," he re-
marked, including in his glance Rhoda's embroidery,
Peter's patience, and the animal grab table, from which
175
176 THE LEE SHORE
cheerfully matter-of-fact farmyard and jungle cries
proceeded with spirit.
Ehoda said nothing. Her head was bent over her
work. The next moment she pricked her finger vio-
lently, and started. Before she could get her handker-
chief out, Vyvian had his, and was enveloping her small
hand in it.
" Too bad," he said, in a voice so low that the farm-
yard cries drowned it as far as Peter was concerned.
" Poor little finger." He held it and the handkerchief
closely in his two hands. .l*:-** 1 "**
Ehoda, her colour flooding and ebbing over her thin
face and thin neck down to the insertion yoke of her
evening blouse, trembled like a captured bird. Her
eyes fell from his look ; a bold, bad look Peter thought,
finding literary terminology appropriate.
The next moment the little table on which Peter was
playing toppled over onto the floor with a small crash,
and all his cards were scattered on the carpet.
Ehoda started and looked round, pulling her hand
away as if a spell was broken.
" Dear me," said Peter regretfully, " it was just
on coming out, too. I shan't try again to-night; it's
not my night, obviously." He was picking up the
cards. Ehoda watched him silently.
" Do you know calcul, Mr. Vyvian ? " Peter en-
quired, collecting scattered portions of the pack from
under the arm-chair.
Mr. Vyvian stared at Peter's back, which was the
part of him most visible at the moment.
" I really can't say I have the pleasure ; no." (That,
Peter felt certain, was an insolent drawl.)
" Would you like to learn it ? " said Peter politely.
" Are you fond of patience ? "
" I can't say I am," said Mr. Vyvian.
THE LOSS OF THE SINGLE STATE 177
u
Oh! Then you would like calcul. People who
are really fond of other patiences don't; they despise
it because it comes out. I don't like any other sort
of patience ; I'm not clever enough ; so I like this. Let
me teach you, may I ? "
Vyvian got up.
" Thanks ; you're quite too kind. On the whole,
I think I can conduct my life without any form of
patience, even one which comes out."
" You have a turn, then, Miss Johnson," said Peter,
arranging the cards. " Perhaps it'll come out for you,
though it won't for me to-night."
" Since you are all so profitably occupied," said
Vyvian, " I think I will say good night."
Peter said, " Oh, must you ? . . . Good night, then.
We play calcul most nights, so you can learn it some
other time if you'd like to."
" A delightful prospect," .Vyvian murmured, his
glance again comprehensively wandering round the
room. " A happy family party you seem here. . . .
Good night." He bent over Rhoda with his ironic po-
liteness.
" I was going to ask you if you would come out
with me to-morrow evening to a theatre. . . . But
since your evenings seem to be so pleasantly filled other-
wise . . ."
She looked up at him a moment, wavered, met his
dark eyes, was caught by the old domination, and swept
off her feet as of old.
" Oh, ... I should like to come. . . ." She was
a little breathless.
" Good ! I will call for you then, at seven, and
we will dine together. Au revoir."
" He swept her a mocking bow and was gone," Peter
murmured to himself.
178 THE LEE SHORE
Then lie looked at Rhoda, and found her eyes upon
his face, wide, frightened, bewildered, and knew in a
flash that she had never meant to consent to go out
with Vyvian, that she had been caught by the old
power he had over her and swept off her feet. That
knowledge gave him confidence, and he could say,
" You don't want to go, do you ? Let me go after him
and tell him."
" Oh," she pressed her hands together in front of
her. " But I must go I said I would."
Peter was on his feet and out of the door in a second.
He saw Vyvian in the passage downstairs, putting on
his coat. He spoke from half-way down the stairs :
" Oh, Miss Johnson asks me to say she is sorry she
can't go with you to-morrow night after all; she finds
she has another engagement."
Vyvian turned and looked up at him, a slight smile
lifting his lip.
" Really ? " was all he said. " All the same, I think
I will call at seven and try to persuade her to change
her mind again. Good night."
As plainly as possible he had said to Peter, " I be-
lieve you to be lying." Peter had no particular ob-
jection to his believing that ; he was not proud ; but he
did object to his calling at seven and trying to persuade
Rhoda to change her mind again, for he believed that
that would be a task easy of achievement.
He went back into the sitting-room. Rhoda was sit-
ting still, her hands twisted together on the green serge
on her lap. Peter sat down by her and said, " Will
you come out with me instead to-morrow evening ? "
and she looked at him, her teeth clenched over her lower
lip as if to steady it, and said after a moment, forlornly,
" If you like."
THE LOSS OF THE SINGLE STATE 179
It was so much less exciting than going with Vyvian
would have been, that Peter felt compunction.
" You shall choose the play," he said. " ' Peter
Pan,' do you think ? Or something funny * The Sins
of Society,' or something ? "
Rhoda whispered " Anything," nearly on the edge
of tears. A vividness had flashed again into her grey
life, and she was trying to quench it. She had heroic-
ally, though as an afterthought, flung an extinguishing
douche of water at it ; but now that she had done so she
was melting into unheroic self-pity.
" I want to go to bed," she said shakily, and did so,
feeling for her pocket-handkerchief as she crossed the
room.
At a quarter to seven the next evening Peter looked
for Ehoda, thinking it well that they should be out
of the house by seven o'clock, but couldn't find her,
till Miss Clegson said she had met her " going
into church " as she herself came out. Peter went to
the church to find her. Rhoda didn't as a rule frequent
churches, not believing in the creeds they taught; but
even to the unbelieving a church is often a refuge.
Peter, coming into the great dim place out of the
wet fog, found it again, as he had long since known
it to be, a refuge from fogs and other ills of living.
Far up, the seven lamps that never go out burned dimly
through the blurred air. It was a gaudy place, no
doubt; over-decorated; a church for the poor, who love
gaudiness. Perhaps Peter too loved gaudiness. Any-
how, he loved this place and its seven lamps and its
shrines and statued saints.
Surely, whatever one believed of the mysterious
world and of all the other mysterious worlds that
might be floating behind the veils, surely here was a
i8o THE LEE SHORE
very present help in trouble, a luminous brightness
shining in a fog-choked world.
Peter, sitting by the door, sank into a great peace.
Half-way up the church he saw Rhoda sitting very
still. She too was looking up the church towards the
lamps and the altar beyond them.
Presently a cassocked sacristan came and lit the ves~
per lights, for evensong was to be at seven, and the
altar blazed out, an unearthly brilliance in the dim
place. The low murmur of voices (a patient priest
had been hearing confessions for an hour) ceased, and
people began coming in one by one for service. Rhoda
shivered a little, and got up and came down the church.
Peter joined her at the door, and they passed shivering
into the fog together.
" I was looking for you," said Peter, when they
were out in the alley that led to the church door.
" It's time we went, isn't it," she said apathetically.
Then she added, inconsequently, " The church
seems the only place where one can find a bit of peace.
I can't think why, when probably it's all a fairy-tale."
" I suppose that's why," said Peter. " Fairyland
is the most peaceful country there is."
" You can't get peace out of what's not true," Rhoda
insisted querulously.
" Oh, I don't know. . . . Besides, fairy-tales aren't
necessarily untrue, do you think? I don't mean that,
when I call what churches teach a fairy-tale. I mean
it's beautiful and romantic and full of light and col-
our and wonderful things happening. And it's prob-
ably the truer for that."
'" D'you believe it all ? " queried Rhoda ; but he
couldn't answer her as to that.
" I don't know. I never do know exactly what I
believe. I can't think how anyone does. But yes, I
THE LOSS OF THE SINGLE STATE 181
think I like to believe in those things ; they're too beau-
tiful not to be true."
" It's the ugly things that are true," she said, cough-
ing in the fog.
" Why, yes, the ugly things and the beautiful ; God
and the devil, if one puts it like that. Oh, yes, I be-
lieve very much in the devil; I can't believe that any
street of houses could look quite like this without the
help of someone utterly given over to evil thinking.
We aren't, you see ; none of us are ugly enough in our
minds to have thought out some of the things one sees ;
so there must be a devil."
Rhoda was silent. He thought she was crying. He
said gently, " I say, would you like to come out to-night,
or would you rather be quiet at home ? " It would be
safe to return home by half-past seven, he thought.
She said, in a small muffled voice, that she didn't
care.
A tall figure passed by them in the narrow alley,
looming through the fog. Rhoda started, and shrank
back against the brick wall, clutching Peter's arm.
The next moment the figure passed into the circle of
light thrown down by a high lamp that glimmered
over a Robbia-esque plaque shrine let into the wall,
and they saw that it was a cassocked priest from the
clergy-house going into church. Rhoda let out her
breath faintly in a sigh, and her fingers fell from Peter's
coat-sleeve.
" Oh," she whispered, " I'm frightened. . . . Let's
stay close to the church; just outside the door, where
we can see the light and hear the music. I don't want
to go out into the streets to-night, Peter, I want to
stay here. I'm ... so frightened."
" Come inside," suggested Peter, as they turned back
to the church. " It would be warmer."
182 THE LEE SHORE
But she shook her head. "No. I'd rather be out-
side. I don't belong in there."
Peter said, "Why not?" and she told him, "Be-
cause for me it's the ugly things that are true."
So together they stood in the porch, outside the
great oak door, and heard the sound of singing stealing
out, fog-softened, and smelt the smell of incense (it
was the festal service of some saint) that pierced the
thick air with its pungent sweetness.
They sat down on the seat in the porch, and Rhoda
shivered, not with cold, and Peter waited by her very
patiently, knowing that she needed him as she had
never needed him before.
She told him so. " You don't mind staying, Peter ?
I feel safer with you than with anyone else. . . . You
see, I'm afraid. . . . Oh, I can't tell you how it is I
feel. When he looks at me it's as if he was drawing
me and dragging me, and I feel I must get up and fol-
low him wherever he goes. It's always been like that,
since first I met him, more than a year ago. He made
me care; he made me worship* the ground he walked
on; if he'd thrown me down and kicked me, I'd have
let him. But he never cared himself; I know that
now. I've known it a long time. And I've vowed to
myself, and I vowed to mother when she lay dying,
that I wouldn't let him have anything more to do with
me. He frightens me, because he can twist me round
his finger and make me care so ... and it hurts. . . .
And he's just playing; he'll never really care. But for
all I know that, I know he can get me whenever he
wants me. And he's come back again to amuse himself
seeing me worship him . . . and he'll make me follow
him about, and all the time he'll be thinking me a little
fool, and I shall know it ... but I can't help it,
Peter, I can't help it. ... I've nothing to hold on to,
THE LOSS OF THE SINGLE STATE 183
to save me. If I could be religious, if I could pray,
like the people in there . . . but he says there's noth-
ing in that ; he's made me believe like him, and I some-
times think he only believes in himself, and that's why
I can only believe in him too. So I've got nothing in
the world to hold on to, and I shall be carried away
and drowned. . . ."
She was crying with strangled sobbings, her face
in her thin hands.
Peter's arm was put gently about her shoulders, com-
forting her.
" No, you won't, Rhoda. Rhoda dear, you won't be
carried away, because I shall be here, holding you.
Is that any help at all ? "
He felt her relax beneath his arm and lean back
against him ; he heard her whisper, " Yes ; oh, yes. If
I can hold onto you, Peter, I shall feel safe."
" Hold on, then," said Peter, " as tight as you
like."
She looked up at him with wet eyes and he felt
the claim and the appeal of her piercing straight into
his heart.
" I could care . . ." she whispered. " Are you
sure, Peter ? "
His arm tightened about her. He hadn't meant
precisely what she had understood him to mean; at
least, he hadn't translated his purpose to help her to
the uttermost into a specified relation, as she was doing ;
but if the purpose, to be fulfilled, had to be so trans-
lated, he was ready for that too. So he said, " Quite
sure, Rhoda. I want to be the most to you that you'll
let me be," and her face was hidden against his coat,
and her tension relaxed utterly, 'and she murmured,
" Oh, I can be safe like that"
So they sat in silence together, between the lit sane-
184 THE LEE SHORE
tuary and the desolate night, and heard, as from a long
way off, the sound of chanting :
"Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace: ac-
cording to thy word;
"For mine eyes have seen . . ."
Later on, Ehoda said, quiet and happy now, " I've
thought you cared, Peter, for some time. And last
night, when I saw you hated Guy to be near me, I felt
sure. But I feel I've so little to give you. So much
of me is burnt away and spoilt. But it'll come back,
Peter, I think, if you love me. I do love you, very
much ; you've been such a dear to me always, from the
very first night at the Palazzo, when you spoke to me
and smiled. Only I couldn't think of anyone but Guy
then. But lately I've been thinking, ' Peter's worth
a hundred Guys, and if only I could care for him, I
should feel safe.' And I do care, ever so much ; and if
it's a different sort of caring from what I've felt for
Guy, it's a better sort. That's a bad, black sort, that
hurts ; I never want any more of that. Caring for you
will keep me from that, Peter." . i
" It's dear of you to care for me at all," said Peter.
" And we won't let Guy come near us, now or ever."
" You hate him, don't you ? " said Ehoda. " I know
you do."
" Oh, well, I don't know that it's as bad as all that.
He's more funny than anything else, it seems to me.
He might have walked straight out of a novel ; he does
all the things they do in books, you know, and that one
never thinks people really do outside them. He sneers
insolently. I watch him sometimes, to see how it's
done. He curls his upper lip, too, when he's feeling
contemptuous; that's another nice trick that I should
like to acquire. Oh, he's quite an interesting study
THE LOSS OF THE SINGLE STATE 185
really. You've taken him wrong, you know. You've
taken him seriously. He's not meant for that."
" Oh," said Ehoda, vaguely uncomprehending.
" You are a funny boy, Peter. You do talk so. ... I
never know if you mean half you say."
" About two-thirds, I think," said Peter. " The rest
is lies. We all lie in my family, and not well either,
because we're rather weak in the intellect. . . . Now
do you feel like supper, because I do ? Let's come home
and have it, shall we ? "
They went home through the fog, Ehoda clinging
to Peter's arm as to an anchor in a sweeping sea. A
great peace and security possessed her; she no longer
started at the tall figures that loomed by.
They let themselves into 51 Brook Street, and blinked
at one another in the lamp-lit, linoleumed little hall.
Rhoda looked at herself in the glass, and said, " What
a fright I am ! " seeing her tear-stained countenance
and straggling fog-wet locks. The dinner-bell rang,
and she ran upstairs to tidy herself. Peter and she
came into the dining-room together, during the soup.
" Let's tell them at once, Peter," whispered Khoda ;
so Peter obediently said, as he sat down by Peggy,
" Rhoda and I have just settled to marry."
"Marry'?" Hilary queried, from the end of the ta-
ble. " Marry whom ? " And Ehoda, blushing,
laughed for the first time for some days.
Peggy said, " Don't be silly, Hilary. Each other,
of course, the darlings mean. Well, well, and to think
I never guessed that all this time ! "
" Oh," said Miss Clegson, " I did, Mrs. Margerison ;
I had a very shrewd suspicion, I assure you. And
this evening, when Mr. Peter asked me where Miss
Johnson was gone, and I told him into church, and
he followed her straight away, I said to myself, l Well,
i86 THE LEE SHORE
that looks like something we all know about very well ! '
I didn't say it to anyone else; I wouldn't breathe a
word till all was settled ; I knew you asked me in con-
fidence, Mr. Peter; but I thought the more. I was
always one to see things; they used to tell me I could
see through a stone wall. Well, I'm sure I offer my
congratulations to both of you."
" And I too, with all my heart," said Miss Matthews,
the lady who did not attend ritualistic churches. " Do
I understand that the happy arrangement was made
in church, Miss Johnson? I gather from Miss Cleg-
son that Mr. Peter followed you there."
" Oh, not inside, Miss Matthews," said Ehoda, blush-
ing again, and looking rather pretty. " In the porch,
we were."
Miss Matthews sniffed faintly. Such goings-on
might, she conveyed, be expected in the porch of St.
Austin's, with all that incense coming through the door,
and all that confessing going on inside.
" Well," said Mr. Bridger, " we ought to have some
champagne to drink success to the happy event. Short
of that, let us fill the festive bumpers with the flowing
lemonade. Pass the jug down. Here's to you, Miss
Ehoda; here's to you, Mr. Peter Margerison. May
you both be as happy as you deserve. No one will want
me to wish you anything better than that, I'm sure."
" Here's luck, you dears," said Peggy, drinking.
Engagements in general delighted her, and Peter's in
particular. And poor little Ehoda was looking so
bright and happy at last. Peggy wouldn't have taken
it upon herself to call it a remarkably suitable alliance
had she been asked; but then she hadn't been asked,
and Peter was such a sweet-natured, loving, lovable
dear that he would get on with anyone, and Ehoda,
though sometimes a silly and sometimes fractious, was
THE LOSS OF THE SINGLE STATE 187
a dear little girl too. The two facts that would have
occurred to some sisters-in-law, that they had extremely
few pennies between them, and that Rhoda wasn't pre-
cisely of Peter's gentle extraction, didn't bother Peggy
at all.
They occurred, however, to Hilary. It occurred to
him that Peter would now require all his slender earn-
ings for himself and wife, which was awkward; also
that Peter really needn't have looked down to the lower
middle classes for a wife. Hilary believed in gentle
birth ; through all his vicissitudes a pathetic pride of
breeding clung to him. One might be down at heels;
one might be reduced to sordid means of livelihood,
even to shady schemes for enlarging one's income; but
once a gentleman always so, and one was not to be
ranked with the bounders, the Vyvians, the wealthy
Leslies even.
Hilary looked resigned and weary. Why should
Peter want to marry a commonplace and penniless little
nobody, and not so very pretty either, though she looked
nice and bright when she was animated, as now.
" Well," he said, " when is it to be ? "
Peter looked across at Rhoda.
" I should hope very soon," he said. It was ob-
viously safer, and safety was the object, to have it very
soon.
" How soon can one get married ? There have to
be banns and so on, don't there? The third time of
asking that brings it to the eighteenth of December.
What about the nineteenth, Rhoda ? That's a Monday."
" Really, Peter . . ." Rhoda blushed more than
ever. " That seems awfully soon."
" Well," said Peter, blind to the unusualness of such
a discussion at the dinner-table, " the sooner the better,
don't ou think ? There's nothing to wait for. I don't
i88 THE LEE SHORE
suppose we shall ever have more money to do it on
than we have now. I know of a man who waited years
and years because he thought he hadn't got quite
enough, and he got a little more each year, and at the
end of six years he thought to double his fortune by
putting it all on a winner, because he was getting so
impatient. And the horse came in last. So the girl
broke it off and married someone else, and the man's
heart broke and he took to drink."
" Well ? " enquired Miss Matthews, who thought
Peter habitually irrelevant in his remarks.
" Well so let's be married on December the nine-
teenth."
" I'm sure," said Rhoda, " we're quite embarrass-
ing everybody, being so public. Let's settle it after-
wards, Peter, when we're alone."
But she too meant to have it as soon as might be
after the third time of asking; it was safer, much
safer, so.
"Well," said Miss Clegson, as the ladies rose from
the table, " now we're going to carry Miss Johnson
away to tell us all about it ; and we'll leave Mr. Peter
to tell you gentlemen his secrets. And after that we'll
have a good round game; but two of the present com-
pany can be left out if they like better to sit in the win-
dow-seat ! "
But when the other gentlemen repaired to the draw-
ing-room for the good round game, Peter stayed behind,
with Hilary. He didn't want to talk or be talked to, only
to stay where he was and not to have to sit in the win-
dow-seat.
" The insufferable vulgarity of this class of person
on this subject is really the limit," Hilary remarked
plaintively, as if it had jarred him beyond endurance.
" They're awfully kind, aren't they," said Peter, who
THE LOSS OF THE SINGLE STATE 189
looked tired. Then he laughed to himself. Hilary
looked at him enquiringly.
" I suppose you know your own business, Peter.
But I must confess I am surprised. I had literally
no idea you had such a step in mind."
" I hadn't any idea either," Peter admitted frankly.
" I thought of it quite suddenly. But I think it is
a good plan, you know. Of course," he added, word-
ing what he read in Hilary's face, " I know my life
will cost me more. But I think it is worth while."
" It's quite entirely your own business," Hilary said
again, throwing responsibility from him with a gesture
of the hands. Then he leant back and shut his eyes.
Peter looked at him as he lay in the arm-chair and
smoked; his eyes rested on the jaded, still beautiful
face, the dark lock of hair falling a little over the tired
forehead, the brown velvet smoking coat and large red
silk tie. He knew that he had hurt and puzzled Hilary.
And he knew that Hilary wouldn't understand if he
were to explain what he couldn't ever explain. At
the most he would say, " It is Peter all over," and
shrug his shoulders at Peter and Peter's vagaries.
A great desire to smooth Hilary's difficult road,
as far as might be, caught and held Peter. Poor old
Hilary! He was so frightfully tired of life and its
struggles ; tired of being a Have-Not.
To help the other Have-Nots, to put pleasant things
into their hands as far as might be, seemed to Peter
at this moment the thing for which one existed. It
is obviously the business of the Have-Nots to do that
for one another; for the Haves do not know or under-
stand. It is the Have-Nots who must give and give
and give, with emptying hands ; for from him that hath
not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
Peter went upstairs to the drawing-room to play
animal grab.
CHAPTER XIV-
PETER, E.HODA, AND LUCY
Mr. Vyvian called at 51 Brook Street one
evening and was informed by the assembled company
that Miss Johnson had got engaged to Mr. Peter
Margerison, he sneered a little and wished them both
joy, and said good-night rather markedly early.
" He won't come back," said Rhoda in Peter's ear
when he had gone. " He's gone for good." She sat
very still, realising it, and shivered a little. Then,
casting off that old chain of the past, she turned on
Peter eyes full of tears and affection.
" Now I'm going to forget all about him and be
happy," she whispered. " He's not going to be part
of my life any more at all. How queer that seems ! "
If in her heart she wished a little that Peter had
had Guy Vyvian's handsome face and person (Peter
had no presence: one might overlook him; the only
vivid note about him, except when he smiled, was the
blue of his eyes), she stifled the wish with firm pressure.
What were looks, after all? And that bold, hand-
some stare of Guy's had burnt and hurt; in the blue
of Peter's she found healing and coolness, as one finds
it in a summer sea.
So, after the third time of asking, they were married,
in St. Austin's Church, and Rhoda, coming out of it,
whispered to Peter, " Some of the beautiful things
are true after all, I do believe ; " and he smiled at her
and said, " Of course they are."
They left the boarding-house, because Rhoda was
190
PETER, RHODA, AND LUCY 191
tired of the boarders and wanted a little place to them-
selves. Peter, who didn't really care, but who would
have rather liked to stay and be with Peggy and Hilary,
pretended that he too wanted a little place to them-
selves. So they took lodgings in Greville Street, which
runs out of Brook Street. Rhoda gave up her work
and settled down to keep house and do needlework.
They kept a canary in the sitting-room, and a kitten
with a blue bow, and Rhoda took to wearing blue bows
in her own hair, and sewed all the buttons on her frocks
and darned her gloves and stockings and Peter's socks,
and devoted herself to household economy, a subject in
which her mother had always tried to interest her with-
out success. Ehoda thought it a great relief to have
escaped from the tiresome boarders who chattered so
about things they knew nothing about, and from her
own daily drudgery, that had tired her back. (She
had been a typist.) It was nice to be able to sit at
peace with one's needlework and one's own reflections,
and have Peter, who was always kind and friendly and
cheerful, to brighten breakfast and leave her in peace
during the day and come in again to brighten the even-
ing. Peter's chatter didn't worry her, though she often
thought it childish and singularly inconsequent ; Peter,
of course, was only a boy, though such a dear, kind,
affectionate boy. He would spend his evenings teasing
the kitten and retying the blue bow, or lying on the rug
before the fire, talking nonsense which made Khoda
laugh even when she was feeling low. Sometimes they
would go to Brook Street and spend the evening there ;
and often Hilary would drop in and smoke with Peter ;
only Rhoda didn't much care for these evenings, for
she never felt at ease with Hilary, who wasn't at ease
with her either. The uncultured young creatures of
either sex never quite knew where they were with the
192 THE LEE SHORE
aesthetic Hilary ; at any moment they might tread heav-
ily on his sensitive susceptibilities and make him wince
visibly, and no one likes being winced at. Rhoda in
particular was very sensitive; she thought Hilary ill-
mannered and conceited, and vaguely resented his atti-
tude towards her without understanding it, for (now that
she was removed from the crushing influence of a person
who had always ruthlessly shown her her limitations
and follies) she didn't think of herself as uncultured,
she with her poetical and artistic tastes, sharpened and
refined by contact with the culture of Guy Vyvian and
broadened by acquaintance with the art of foreign cities.
On the contrary, she felt in herself yearnings for a
fuller and freer life of beauty and grace. She wasn't
sure that Peter ever felt such, yearnings; he seemed
quite contented with the ugly rooms in the ugly street,
and the dingy lace curtains and impossible pictures ; he
could make a joke of it all ; and things one could make
a joke of couldn't really hurt, thought Rhoda.
But anyhow, cramped and squalid and dingy though
9 Greville Street might be, it held security and peace.
" The Snuggery, that's what we call it at fifty-one,"
said Miss Clegson, who sometimes looked in to rally
them.
Fifty-one was getting less of a snuggery than ever.
Fifty-one, Peter feared, was going down, the hill. The
Berovieri goblet had made a little piece of level road
for it, but that was soon over, and the descent began
again. Peggy, try as she would, could not make both
ends meet. Hilary, despise his job as he might, found
it slipping from him more and more. Week by week
he seemed to earn a little less; week by week they
seemed to spend a little more. Peggy, as Hilary had
frequently remarked, was not a good manager. One
or two of the boarders left, to seek more commodious
PETER, RHODA, AND LUCY 193
quarters elsewhere. More frequently, as the winter ad-
vanced, Peggy wailed, " Whatever is to become of us,
dear only knows ! What with Larry drinking pints of
cough-syrup, and Micky rolling in the gutter in his best
suit, and Norah, the creature, letting the crockery fly
about as if it was alive, and Hilary insisting on the
table cloth being cleaner than it ever is, and the board-
ers having to have food they can eat, and now Lent's
coming on and half of them don't take any notice of
it but eat their joints just the same, bad manners to
them for heretics. Oh, dear, oh dear, oh dear ! "
Whenever Peter could spare any money he gave it
to Peggy. But his own fortunes were not exactly on
the make. He was not proving good at his job.
Recommended to his employers by Leslie, he had begun,
of course, on a very small salary, to learn his trade ; he
hadn't so far learnt enough of it to justify his promo-
tion. Every day he went through the same drudgery,
with the same lack of intelligence, (it is odd how dis-
cernment and talent in one trade serve so little for
another) and every week came home with the same
meagre sum.
As far as he hated anything, he hated this work of
his; long ago, had he been alone concerned, he would
have dropped it, and taken to tramping the roads with
boot-laces to sell, or some other equally unstrenuous and
unlucrative avocation. But he had not, from the first,
been alone concerned; first he had had to help Hilary
and Peggy, and now he had to keep a wife too. Even-
tually there would probably be also children to keep;
Peter didn't know how much these cost, but vaguely
believed them to be expensive luxuries. So there
seemed no prospect of his being able to renounce his
trade, though there was a considerable prospect of its
renouncing him, as he was from time to time informed.
I 9 4 THE LEE SHORE
The winter dragged quietly through, and the spring
came; the queer London ghost of spring, with its bitter
winds and black buds and evasive hints of what is going
on in the real world, where things change. Peter
dreamt of green things coming up and hawthorn hedges
growing edible. Ehoda's cough grew softer and her
eyes more restless, as if she too had her dreams. She
developed a new petulance with Peter and with the
maid-of-all-work, and left off tying the kitten's neck-
ribbon. It was really a cat now, and cats are tiresome.
She said she was dull all day with so little to do.
Peter, full of compunction, suggested asking people to
the house more, and she assented, rather listlessly. So
Peter hinted to Peggy, who had a cheering presence,
that Ehoda would be glad to see her more often, and
Peggy made what time she could to come round. Their
circle of friends was limited; they chiefly consisted of
the inhabitants of fifty-one, and a few relatives of
Ehoda's, who amused and pleased Peter but vexed
Ehoda by being common.
" But I like them," said Peter.
" You like to see me put to shame, I suppose," said
Ehoda, with tears in her eyes. " As if it was my fault
that my parents came of common people. I've cried
myself sick over it sometimes, when I was younger, and
now I just want to forget it."
Peter said no more. It was one of the sides of
Ehoda with which he felt he had no connexion ; it was
best let alone, as Peter always let alone the things he
could not like. But he was sorry she felt like that, for
her nice, common, friendly relations might have been
company for her.
Peter sometimes brought friends home from his
office; Peter could not have been in an office without
collecting friends, having the social instinct strongly
PETER, RHODA, AND LUCY 195
developed. But Rhoda didn't much care about seeing
his fellow-clerks ; they hadn't, she was sure, great minds,
and they made silly jokes.
Another person who came to see Peter sometimes was
Rodney. Ever since the Margerisons' abrupt fall into
ignominy, Rodney had cultivated Peter's acquaintance.
Peter perceived that he had at last slipped into the ranks
of those unfortunates who were qualified for Rodney's
regard ; it was enough for that, Urquhart had long since
told him, to be cut by society or to produce a yester-
day's handkerchief. Peter, driven from the faces of
the rich, found Rodney waiting to receive him cheer-
fully among the ranks of the poor. Rodney was a
much occupied person; but when he found time from
his other pursuits he walked up from his Westminster
slum to Holborn and visited 9 Greville Street. He
hadn't known quite what to make of Peter's marriage ;
though when he got to know Rhoda a little he began
to understand rather more. She, being very manifestly
among the Have-Nbts, and a small, weak, and pitiable
thing, also entered in a manner into the circle of his
tolerance. He was gentle with her always, though not
expansive. She was a little in awe of the gaunt young
man, with his strange eyes that seemed to see so much
further than anyone else's. She pronounced him
" queer."
" I suppose he's very clever," she said to Peter.
" Yes," Peter agreed.
But even that didn't further him in Rhoda's regard.
She thought him rude, as indeed he was, though he
tried to conceal it. He seldom spoke to her, and when
he did it was with an unadorned brevity that offended
her. Mostly he let her alone, and saw Peter when he
could outside his home. Rodney, himself a celibate,
thought matrimony a mistake, though certainly a neces-
196 THE LEE SHORE
sary mistake if the human race was to continue to adorn
the earth a doubtful ornament to it, in Rodney's
opinion.
Rhoda said one evening to Peter, " You don't see
anything of your friends the Urquharts now, do you ? "
" No," said Peter, who was stroking the kitten's fur
the wrong way, to bring sparks out of it before the gas
was lit. " They've been in the country all the winter."
" Mr. Urquhart got elected a member, didn't he ? "
said Rhoda, without much interest.
" Yes," said Peter.
" I suppose they'll be coming up to town soon, then,
for him to attend Parliament."
Peter supposed they would.
" When last Lucy wrote, she said they were coming
up this month."
" Have you heard from her again, since Monday
week ? " enquired Rhoda.
" No. We write alternate Sundays, you know. We
always have. Last Sunday it was my turn."
" Fancy going on all these years so regular," said
Rhoda. " I couldn't, not to any of my cousins. I
should use up all there was to say."
" Oh, but there are quite new things every fortnight,"
Peter explained.
Certainly it wasn't easy to picture Rhoda correspond-
ing with any of the Johnson relatives once a fortnight.
" I expect you and she have heaps to tell each other
always when you meet," said Rhoda, a little plaintive
note in her weak voice.
Peter considered.
" Not so much to tell exactly as to talk about. Yes,
there's lots to say. . . . She's coming to see you, Rhoda,
directly they come up to town. It's so funny to think
you and she have never met."
PETER, RHODA, AND LUCY 197
" Is it ? Well, I don't know. I've not met any of
your cousins really, have I ? "
Rhoda was in one of her slightly pettish moods this
evening. Peter didn't better matters by saying, " Oh,
well, none of the others count. Lucy and I have always
been different from most cousins, I suppose; more like
brother and sister, I daresay."
Rhoda looked at him sharply. She was in a fault-
finding mood.
" You think more of her than you do of anyone else.
Of course, I know that."
Peter was startled. He stopped stroking the kitten
and looked at her through the dim firelight. The
suspicion of a vulgar scene was in the air, and fright-
ened him. Then he remembered that Rhoda was in
frail health, and said very gently, " Oh, Rhoda darling,
don't say silly things, like a young gurl in a novelette,"
and slithered along the floor and laid his arm across
her lap and laughed up into her face.
She sniffed a little, and dabbed her handkerchief at
her eyes.
" It's all very well, Peter, but you do care for her a
lot, you know you do."
" But of course I do," said Peter, laying his cheek
against her knee. " You don't mind., Rhoda, do you ? "
" You care for her," said Rhoda, but softening under
his caresses, " and you care for her husband. You care
for him awfully, Peter; more than for her really, I
believe ; more than for anyone in the world, don't you ? "
" Don't," said Peter, his voice muffled against her
dress. " I can't compare one thing with another like
that, and I don't want to. Isn't one's caring for each
of the people one knows quite different from every
other? Isn't yours? Can you say which you love
best, the sun rising over the river, or St. Mark's, or a
198 THE LEE SHORE
Bellini Madonna ? Of course you can't, and it's im-
moral to try. So I'm not going to place Lucy and
Denis and you and Rodney and Peggy and the kitten
in a horrid class-list. I won't. Do you hear ? "
He drew one of her small thin hands down to his
lips, then moved it up and placed it on his head, and
drew it gently to and fro, ruffling his hair.
" You're a silly, Peter," said Rhoda, and there was
peace.
Very soon after that Lucy came. She came in the
afternoon before Peter got home, and Rhoda looked
with listless interest at the small, wide-eyed person in a
grey frock and big grey hat that made her small, pale
face look like a white flower. Pretty? Rhoda wasn't
sure. Very like Peter ; so perhaps not pretty ; only one
liked to look at her. Clever ? It didn't transpire that
she was. Witty? Well, much more amused than
amusing ; and when she was amused she came out with
Peter's laugh, which Rhoda wasn't sure was in good
taste on her part. Absurdly like Peter she was, to look
at and to listen to, and in some inner essence which
was beyond definition. The thought flashed through
Rhoda's mind that it was no wonder these two found
things to tell each other every other Sunday ; they would
be interested in all the same things, so it must be easy.
Remotely, dully, Rhoda thought these things, as
things which didn't concern her particularly. Less and
less each day she had grown to care whether Peter
found his cousin Lucy a kindred spirit or not. She
could work herself up into a fit of petulant jealousy
about it at times ; but it didn't touch her inmost being ;
it was a very surface grievance.
So she looked at Lucy dispassionately, and let her-
self, without a struggle, be caught and held by that
ingenuous charm, a charm as of a small woodland
PETER, RHODA, AND LUCY 199
flower set dancing by the winds of spring. She noticed
that when the kitten that was now nearly a cat sprang,
on to Lucy's lap, she stroked its fur backwards with
her flat hand and spread fingers precisely as Peter
always did.
Then Peter came in, and he and Lucy laughed the
same laugh at one another, and then they had tea.
After all, Ehoda didn't see now that they were so like.
Peter talked much more ; he said twenty words to Lucy's
one; Lucy wasn't a great talker at all. Peter was a
chatterbox; there was no denying that. And their
features and eyes and all weren't so like, either. But
when one had said all this, there was something . . .
something inner, essential, indefinable, of the spirit,
that was not of like substance but the same. So it is
sometimes with twins. Khoda, her intuitive faculties
oddly sharpened, took in this. Peter might care most
for Denis Urquhart; he might love Ehoda as a wife;
but Lucy, less consciously loved than either, was inti-
mately one with himself.
Peter asked " How is Denis ? " and Lucy answered
" Very well, of course. And very busy playing at
being a real member. Isn't it fun? Oh, he sent you
his love. And you're to come and see us soon."
That last wasn't a message from Denis; Peter knew
that. He knew that there would be no more such mes-
sages from Denis ; the Margerisons had gone a little too
far in their latest enterprise ; they had strained the cord
to breaking-point, and it had broken. In future Denis
might be kind and friendly to Peter when they met, but
he wouldn't bring about meetings; they would embar-
rass him. But Lucy knew nothing of that. Denis
hadn't mentioned to her what had happened at Astleys
last November; he never dwelt on unpleasant subjects
or made a talk about them. So Lucy said to Peter and
200 THE LEE SHORE
Rhoda, "You must come and see us soon," and Peter
said, " You're so far away, you know," evading her,
and she gave him a sudden wide clear look, taking in all
he didn't say, which was the way they had with one an-
other, so that no deceits could ever stand between them.
" Don't be silly, Peter," she told him ; then, " 'Course
you must come " ; but he only smiled at her and said,
" Some day, perhaps."
" Honey sandwiches, if you come at tea-time," she
reminded him. " D'you like them, Rhoda ? " She
used the name prettily, half shyly, with one of her lumi-
nous, friendly looks. " They're Peter's favourite food,
you know."
But Rhoda didn't know; Peter had never told her;
perhaps because it would be extravagant to have them,
perhaps because he never put even foods into class-lists.
Only Lucy knew without being told, probably because
it was her favourite food too.
When Lucy went, it was as if a ray of early spring
sunshine had stolen into the room and gone. A lumi-
nous person: that was the thing Rhoda felt her to be;
a study in clear pale lights; one would not have been
surprised if she had crept in on a wind from a strange
fairy world with her arms full of cold wet primroses,
and danced out, taking with her the souls of those who
dwelt within. Rhoda wasn't jealous now, if she had
%ver had a touch of that.
Neither Peter nor Rhoda went to the TJrquharts'
house, which was a long way off. But Lucy came again,
many times, to Greville Street, through that spring and
summer, stroking the cat's fur backwards, laughing at
Peter, shyly friendly to Rhoda.
And then for a time her laughter was sad and her
eyes wistful, because her father died. She said once,
" I feel so stranded now, Peter ; cut off from what was
PETER, RHODA, AND LUCY 201
my life; from what really is my life, you know.
Father and Felicity and I were so disreputable always,
and as long as I had father I could be disreputable
too, whenever I felt I couldn't bear being prosperous.
I had only to go inside the house and there I was
you know, Peter ? it was all round me, and I was
part of it. ... Now I'm cut off from all that sort of
thing. Denis and I are so well off, d'you know.
Everything goes right. Denis's friends are all so
happy and successful and beautifully dressed. I like
them to be, of course ; they are joys, like the sun shin-
ing; only . . ."
" The poor are always with you," suggested Peter.
" You can always come to Greville Street, if you can't
find them nearer at hand. And when you come we'll
take Algernon's blue neck-ribbon off, that none of us
may appear beautifully dressed."
" But I like Algernon's blue bow," Lucy protested.
" I love people to be bright and beautiful. . . . That's
why I like Denis so much, you know. Only I'm not
sure I properly belong, that's all."
Obviously the remedy was to come to Greville Street.
Lucy came more and more as the months went by.
Ehoda said once, " Doesn't it bother you to come all
this way, into these ugly streets ? " and she shook her
head.
" Oh, I like it. I like these streets better than the
ones round us. And I like your house better than ours
too ; it's smaller."
Ehoda could have thought she looked wistful, this
fortunate person who was in love with her splendid
husband and lived in the dwellings of the prosperous.
" Don't you like large houses ? " she asked, without
much caring ; for she was absorbed in her own thoughts
in these days.
202 THE LEE SHORE
Lucy puckered her wide forehead.
"Why, no. ]STo, I don't believe I do," she said, as
if she was finding it out with a little surprise.
E-hoda saw her one day in July. In a few weeks,
she told Rhoda (Peter was out that afternoon), she and
Denis were going up to Scotland, to stay with people.
" We shall miss you," said Rhoda dully.
'" And me you," said Lucy, with a more acute sense
of it.
" Peter'll miss you dreadfully," said Rhoda. She
was lying on the sofa, pale and tired in the heat.
" Only," said Lucy, " next month you'll both be feel-
ing too interested to miss anyone."
" Peter," said Rhoda, " cares more about the baby
coming than I do."
Lucy said, " Peter loves little weak funny things
like that." She was a little sad that Rhoda didn't seem
to care more about the baby ; babies are such entrancing
toys to those who like toys, people like her and Peter.
Suddenly Lucy saw that two large tears were rolling
down Rhoda's pale cheeks as she lay. Lucy knelt by
the sofa side and took Rhoda's hand in both of hers and
laid her cheek upon it.
" Please, little Rhoda, not to cry. Please, little
.Rhoda, tell me."
Rhoda, with her other hand, brushed the tears away.
" I'm a silly. I suppose I'm crying because I can't
feel to care about anything in the world, and I wish I
could. What's the use of a baby if you can't love it ?
What's the use of a husb "
Lucy's hand was over her lips, and Lucy whispered,
" Oh, hush, little Rhoda, hush ! "
But Rhoda pushed the hand away and cried, " Oh,
why do we pretend and pretend and pretend ? It's
Guy I care for Guy, Guy, Guy, who's gone for good
and all."
PETER, RHODA, AND LUCY 203
She fell to crying drearily, with Lucy's arms about
her.
" But you mustn't cry," said Lucy, her own eyes
brimming over ; " you mustn't, you mustn't. And you
do care for Peter, you know you do, only it's so hot,
and you're tired and ill. If that horrible Guy was
here oh, I know he's horrible you'd know you
cared for Peter most. You mustn't say things, Rhoda ;
it makes them alive." Her eyes were wide and fright-
ened as she looked over Rhoda' s head out of the window.
Slowly Rhoda quieted down, and lay numb and
still.
" You won't tell Peter," she said ; and Lucy said,
"Oh, Ehoda!"
" Well, of course I know you wouldn't. Only that
you and Peter tell one another things without saying
anything. . . . Peter belongs to you really, you know,
not to me at all. All he thinks and says and is it's
all yours. He's never really been near me like that,
not from the beginning. I was a silly to let him sacri-
fice himself for me the way he's done. We don't belong
really, Peter and I ; however friendly we are, we don't
belong; we don't understand each other like you two
do. ... You don't mind my saying that, do you 1 " for
Lucy had dropped her hands and fallen away.
" I mind your saying anything," said Lucy, " just
now. Don't say things : it makes them alive. It's hot,
and you're tired, and I'm not going to stay any more."
She got up from the floor and stood for a moment
looking down at Rhoda. Rhoda saw her eyes, how they
were wet and strange and far-away, and full of what
seemed an immense weight of pity; pity for all the
sadnesses of mankind.
The next moment Lucy's cool finger-tips touched her
forehead in a light caress, and Lucy was gone.
CHAPTEE XV
THE LOSS OF A WIFE
IN September Peter and Ehoda had a son, whom
they called Thomas, because, Peter said, he had a
sceptical look about the eyes and nose. Peter was
pleased with him, and he with Peter. Ehoda wasn't
much interested; she looked at him and said he was
rather like Peter, and might be taken away now, please.
" Like me ? " Peter wondered dubiously. " Well, I
know I'm not handsome, but . . ."
Peggy, a born mother, took Thomas into her large
heart at once, with her out-at-elbows infants, and was
angry with Ehoda for not showing more interest.
" You'd think, from the way of her, that it was her
thirteenth instead of her first," she complained to
Hilary. " I've no patience with the silly, mooning
child. She's nothing like good enough for Peter, and
that's a fact, and she'd have a right to realise it and
try to improve for very shame, instead of moping the
way she does. It's my belief, Hilary, that her silly
little heart's away after the Vyvian man, whatever
haunt of wickedness he's adorning now. I don't want
to believe it of her; but there's no end to the folly of
the human heart, is there, now? I wish she was a
Catholic and had a priest to make her take shame to
herself; but there's no hold one has over her as it is,
for she won't say a word to me beyond * Yes ' and ' No/
and ' Take him away, please, he tires me.' I nearly
told her she'd a right not to be so easily tired by her
204
THE LOSS OF A WIFE 205
own son now she's getting her health. But there, she's
a poor frail thing and one can't speak roughly to her
for fear she breaks in two."
Hilary said, " After all, there's no great cause for
rejoicing in a man's being born into the world to trou-
ble; I suppose she feels that. It will make it more
difficult than ever for them and for us to make both
ends meet."
" Oh, meet," groaned Peggy, " that's not what there's
any thought of their doing in these days, my dear. If
one can bring them within a mile of one another, one's
thankful for small mercies."
Hilary rested his head on his hand and sighed.
" Have you spoken to Peter yet about appealing to
the TJrquharts ? " he asked.
" Darling, I have not, and I'm not going to. Why
should I annoy the poor child to no purpose ? He'll not
appeal to the Urquharts, we know that well, and I'm
not going to waste my breath. I'd far rather "
" What ? " asked Hilary, as she paused.
" Oh well, I don't know. Don't you worry about
ways and means ; something will surely turn up before
long." Peggy was an optimist.
" And anyhow," went on Peggy, to change the sub-
ject from ways and means, which was a depressing one,
" isn't our little Peter a darling with his baby ? I love
to see them together. He washes it himself as often as
not, you know; only he can't always catch it again
when it slips through his hands, and that worries him.
He's dreadfully afraid of its getting drowned or spoilt
or lost or something."
" It probably will," said Hilary, who was a pessi-
mist. " Peter is no hand at keeping things. We are
not a fortunate family."
" Never mind, darling ; we've kept three ; and more
206 THE LEE SHORE
by token Kitty must have a new pair of boots this
winter ; she's positively indecent the way she goes about
now. I can't help it, Hilary; you must pawn your
ring again or something."
Peggy didn't want to say anything else depressing,
so she didn't mention that Miss Matthews had that
morning given notice of her departure. But in Peggy's
own mind there was a growing realisation that some-
thing drastic must really be done soon.
October went by. When Peter knew that the Urqu-
harts had come back to London, he wondered why Lucy
didn't come to see Thomas. So he wrote and asked
her to, and on that she came.
She came at tea-time, one day when Rhoda happened
to have gone out. So Peter and Lucy had tea alone
together, and Thomas lay in his crib and looked at
them, and Algernon snored on Lucy's knee, and the
November fog shut out the outer world like a blanket,
and blurred the gas-light in the dingy room.
Peter thought Lucy was rather quiet and pale, and
her chuckle was a little subdued. Her dominant aspect,
of clear luminousness, was somehow dimmed and mysti-
fied, with all other lights, in this blurred afternoon.
Her wide clear eyes, strange always with the world's
gay wonder and mystery, had become eyes less gay, eyes
that did not understand, that even shrank a little from
what they could not understand. Lucy looked a touch
puzzled, not so utterly the glad welcomer of all arriving
things that she had always been.
But for Thomas, the latest arrived thing, she had a
glad welcome. Like Peter, she loved all little funny
weak things; and Thomas seemed certainly that, as he
lay and blinked at the blurred gas and curled his fingers
round one of Peter's. A happy, silent person, with
doubts, one fancied, as to the object of the universe,
THE LOSS OF A WIFE 207
but no doubts that there were to be found in it many
desirable things.
When Lucy came in, Peter was reading aloud to him
some of Traherne's " Divine Reflections on the Native
Objects of an Infant-Eye," which he seemed rather to
like.
" I that so long [Peter told him he was thinking,
Was Nothing from Eternity,
Did little think such Joys as Ear and Tongue
To celebrate or see:
Such Sounds to hear, such Hands to feel, such Feet,
Such Eyes and Objects on the Ground to Meet.
" New burnisht Joys !
Which finest Gold and Pearl excell! "
" Oo," said Thomas expectantly.
"A Stranger here, [Peter told him further,
Strange things doth meet, strange Glory see;
Strange Treasures lodg'd in this fair World appear,
Strange all and New to me:
But that they mine should be who Nothing waa,
That strangest is of all ; yet brought to pass."
" Ow," said Thomas, agreeing.
Peter turned over the pages. " Do you like it ? Do
you think so too ? Here's another about you."
" But little did the Infant dream
That all the Treasures of the World were by,
And that himself was so the Cream
And Crown of all which round about did ly.
Yet thus it was! . . ."
" I don't think you'd understand the rest of that
verse, Thomas ; it's rather more difficult. * Yet thus it
was ! ' We'll end there, and have our tea."
Turning his head he saw that Lucy had come in and
was standing behind him, looking over his shoulder at
Thomas in his crib.
" Oh, Lucy," he said, " I'm reading to Thomas.
208 THE LEE SHORE
Thomas is that. Do you like him? He is surprised
at life, but quite pleased. He that was Nothing from
Eternity did little think such Joys to celebrate or see.
Yet thus it is. He is extraordinarily happy about it
all, but he can't do anything yet, you know not speak
or sit up or anything. He can only make noises, and
cry, and drink, and slither about in his bath like a
piece of wet soap. Wasn't there a clergyman once who
thought his baby ought to be baptised by immersion
unless it was proved not well able to endure it, as it
says in the rubric or somewhere, so he put it in a tub
to try if it could endure it or not, and he let it loose
by accident and couldn't catch it again, it was so slip-
pery, just like a horrid little fish, and its mother only
came in and got hold of it just in time to prevent its
being drowned ? So after that he felt he could honestly
certify that the child couldn't well endure immersion^
I'm getting better at catching Thomas, though. He
isn't supposed to slip off my hand at all, but he kicks
and slithers so I can't hold him, and swims away and
gets lost. After tea will you come and help me wash
him ? Rhoda's out to tea ; I'm so sorry. But there's
tea, and Thomas and Algernon and me, and and
rather thick bread and butter only, apparently; but I
shall have jam now you've come. First I must adjust
Thomas's drinking-bottle ; he always likes a drink while
we have our tea. He's two months old. Is he good
for that, do you think, or should he be a size larger?
But I rather like them small, don't you ? They're
lighter so, for one thing. Is he nice? Do you like
him ?
Lucy, kneeling by the crib, nodded.
" He's very old and wise, Peter ; very old and gay.
Look at his eyes. He's much oh very much older
than you or me. That's as it should be."
THE LOSS OF A WIFE 209
" He'll rejuvenate with years, won't he ? " said Peter.
"At present he's too old to laugh when I make jokes;
he thinks them silly; but he'll be sillier than anyone
himself in about six months, I expect. Now we'll have
tea."
Lucy left Thomas and came to the tea-table and
poured out tea for both of them.
" I'm trying to learn to do without three lumps,"
said Peter, as Lucy put them in. " I expect it's ex-
travagant to have three, really. But then Rhoda and
Thomas don't take any, so it's only the same as if we
each had one, isn't it. Thomas shan't be allowed more
than one in each cup when he grows young enough to
want any; Rhoda and I mean him to be a refined
person."
" I don't think he will be," said Lucy, looking
thoughtfully into the future. " I expect he'll be as
vulgar as you and me. He's awfully like you to look
at, Peter."
" So I am informed. Well, I'm not vain, and I
don't claim to be an Adonis, like Denis. Is Denis
flourishing? The birds were splendid; they came so
thick and fast that I gathered it was being a remark-
able season. But as you only answered my numerous
letters by one, and that apropos merely of Thomas's
arrival, I could only surmise and speculate on your
doings. I suppose you thought the grouse were instead
of letters."
" They were Denis's letters. I didn't shoot the
grouse, dear darlings, nor send them."
" What were your letters, then ? "
" Well, I sent rowan berries, didn't I ? Weren't
they red ? "
" Yes. Even Thomas read them. We're being
rather funny, aren't we? Is Denis going on with
210 THE LEE SHORE
Parliament again this autumn, or has he begun to get
tired of it ? "
" Not a bit tired of it. He doesn't bother about it
particularly, you know; not enough to tire himself; he
sort of takes it for granted, like going up to Scotland
in August."
Peter nodded. " I know. He would take it just
like that if he was Prime Minister, or Archbishop of
Canterbury. I daresay he will be one day; isn't it
nice the way things drop into his hands without his
bothering to get them."
He didn't see the queer, silent look Lucy turned on
him as he spread his thick bread and butter with black-
berry jam.
" Thomas," she said after a moment, " has dropped
into your hands, Peter." It was as if she was pro-
testing against something, beating herself against some
invisible, eternal barrier that divided the world into two
unequal parts.
Peter said, " Rather, he has. I do hope he'll never
drop out. I'm getting very handy about holding him,
though. Oh, let's take him upstairs and tub him now ;
do you mind ? "
So they took him upstairs and tubbed him, and Lucy
managed to hold him so firmly that he didn't once
swim away and get lost.
As they were drying him (Lucy dried him with a
firmer and more effective hand than Peter, who always
wiped him very gingerly lest he should squash) Rhoda
came in. She was strange-eyed and pale in the blurred
light, and greeted Lucy in a dreamy, absent way.
" I've had tea out. . . . Oh, have you bathed baby ?
How good of you. I meant to be in earlier, but I was
late. . . . The fog's awful; it's getting thicker and
thicker."
THE LOSS OF A WIFE 211
She sat down by the fire and loosened her coat, and
took off her hat and rubbed the fog from her wet hair,
and coughed. Rhoda had grown prettier lately; she
looked less tired and listless, and her eyes were brighter,
and the fire flushed her thin cheek to rose-colour as
she bent over it.
Peter took her wet things from her and took off her
shoes and put slippers on her feet, and she gave him
an absent smile. Rhoda had had a dreamy way with
her since Thomas's birth ; moony, as Peggy, who didn't
approve, called it.
A little later, when Thomas was clean and warm and
asleep in his bed, they were told that Mrs. Urquhart's
carriage had come.
Lucy bent over Thomas and kissed him, then over
Rhoda. Rhoda whispered in her ear, without emo-
tion, " Baby ought to have been yours, not mine," and
Lucy whispered back:
"Oh hush, hush!"
Rhoda still held her, still whispered, " Will you love
him ? Will you be good to him, always ? "
And Lucy answered, opening wide eyes, " Why, of
course. ]STo one could help it, could they ? " and on
that Rhoda let her go.
Peter thought that Lucy must have infected Rhoda
with some of her own appreciation of Thomas, opened
her eyes to his true worth; for during the next week
she was newly tender to him. She bathed him every
evening herself, only letting Peter help a little; she
held him in her arms without wearying of his weight,
and wasn't really annoyed even when he was sick upon
her shoulder, an unfortunate habit of Thomas's.
But a habit, Peter thought, that Thomas employed
with some discrimination; for the one and only one
time that Guy Vyvian took him in his arms or
212 THE LEE SHORE
rather submitted to his being put there by Ehoda
Thomas was sicker than he had ever been before, with
an immense completeness.
" Just what I always feel myself," commented
Peter in his own mind, as Thomas was hastily removed.
" I'm glad someone has shown him at last what the best
people feel about him."
Vyvian had come to call. It was the first time Peter
had met him since his marriage; he hoped it would be
the last. The object of the call was to inspect Thomas,
Ehoda said. Thomas was inspected, produced the im-
pression indicated above, and was relegated to the region
of things for which Vyvian had no use. He detested
infants; children of any sort, in fact; and particularly
Thomas, who had Peter's physiognomy and expressed
Peter's sentiments in a violently ill-bred way.
Peter, a little later, was very glad that Thomas had
revealed himself thus openly on this occasion. For
it quite sealed Thomas's fate, if anything more was
needed to seal it than the fact that Thomas would be
an impossible burden, and also belonged by right to
Peter. Anyhow, they left Thomas behind them when
they went.
Ehoda wrote a scrawled note for Peter one foggy
Monday morning, and hugged Thomas close and cried
a little, and slipped out into the misty city with a hand-
bag. Peter, coming in at tea-time, found the note on
the sitting-room chimneypiece. It said :
" Don't try to follow me, Peter, for I can't come back.
I have tried to care for you more than him and be a
good wife, but I can't You know I told you when we
got engaged that I cared for him, and I tried so hard
to stop, and I thought I would be able, with you to help
me, but I couldn't do it. For the first few months I
THE LOSS OF A WIFE 213
thought I could, but all the time it was there, like a fire
in me, eating me up ; and later on he began writing to
me, but for a long time I wouldn't answer, and then he
came to see me, and I said he mustn't, but he's been
meeting me out and I couldn't stop him, and at last it
grew that I knew I loved him so that it was no use pre-
tending any more. I'd better go, Peter, for what's the
use of trying to be a good wife to you when all I care
for is him. I know he's not good, and you are, but I
love him, and I must go when he wants me. It was
all a mistake ; you and I ought never to have married.
You meant it kindly, I know; you meant to help me
and make me happy, but it was no use. You and I
never properly belonged. When I saw you and Lucy
together, I knew we didn't belong, not like that; we
didn't properly understand each other's ways and
thoughts, like you two did. I love Lucy, too. You
and she are so like. And she'll be good to Baby; she
said she would. I hate to leave Baby, but Guy won't
let me bring him, and anyhow I suppose I couldn't, be-
cause he's yours. I've written a list of his feeds, and
it's on the chimneypiece behind the clock ; please make
whoever sees to him go by it or he gets a pain. Please
be careful when you bath him; I think Mrs. Adams
had better do it usually. She'll take care of him for
you, or Peggy will, perhaps. You'll think I never
cared for him, but I do, I love him, only I must love
Guy most of all. I don't know if I shall be happy
or miserable, but I expect miserable, only I must go
with Guy. Please, dear Peter, try and understand
this, and forgive me. I think you will, because you al-
ways do understand things, and forgive them too; I
think you are the kindest person I ever knew. If I
thought you loved me really, I don't think I'd go, even
for Guy; but I know you've only felt kindly to me all
214 THE LEE SHORE
along, so I think it is best for you too that I should
go, and you will be thankful in the end. Good-bye.
You promised mother to see after me, I know, for she
told me before she died; well, you've done your best,
and mother' d be grateful to you if she could know. I
suppose some would say she does know, perhaps; but I
don't believe those stories; I believe it's all darkness
beyond, and silence. And if it is, we must try and
get all the light and warmth here that we can. So
I'm going. Good-bye, Peter.
" RHODA."
Peter read it through, sitting on the rug by the fire.
When he had finished it, he put it into the fire and
watched it burn. Then he sighed, and sat very still for
a while, his hands clasped round one knee.
Presently he got up and looked behind the clock,
and saw that the next feeding-time was due now. So
he rang for Mrs. Adams, the landlady, and asked her
if she would mind bringing Thomas's bottle.
When Thomas had it, Peter stood and looked down
upon him as he drank with ill-bred noises.
" Gently, Thomas : you'll choke. You'll choke and
die, I know you will. Then you'll be gone too. Every-
thing goes, Thomas. Everything I touch breaks;
everything I try to do fails. That's because I'm such
an ass, I suppose. I did think I could perhaps make
one little unlucky girl decently happy; but I couldn't,
you see. So she's gone after light and warmth, and
she'll she'll break her heart in a year, and it'll be
my fault. Follow her? ~No, I shan't do that. I
shouldn't find her, and if I did what would be the use ?
If she must go, she must ; she was only eating her heart
out here; and perhaps it's better to break one's heart
on something than eat it out in emptiness. No, it
THE LOSS OF A WIFE 215
isn't better in this case. Anything in the world would
have been better than. this; that she should have gone
with that that person. Yet thus it is. And they'll
all set on her and speak against her, and I shall have
to bear it. You and I will have to bear it together,
Thomas. ... I suppose I ought to be angry. I ought
to want to go after them, to the end of the world or
wherever they've gone and kill him and bring her back.
But I can't. I should fail in that too. I'm tired of
trying to do things; simply horribly tired of it,
Thomas." He sat down on the rug with Thomas in his
arms; and there, an hour later, Peggy found them.
She swung in breezily, crying, " Oh, Peter, all alone
in the dark? Where's Ehoda? Why, the silly chil-
dren haven't had their tea ! " she added, looking at the
unused cups on the tea-table.
Peter looked up vaguely. " Oh, tea. I forgot. I
don't think I want any tea to-day. And Thomas has
had his. And Rhoda's gone. It's no good not telling
you is it ? because you'll find out. She's gone
away. It's been my fault entirely; I didn't make her
happy, you see. And she's written out a list of the
times Thomas has to feed at. I suppose Mrs. Adams
will do that if I ask her, and generally look after
him when I'm out."
Peggy stood aghast before him for a moment, star-
ing, then collapsed, breathless, on the sofa, crying, with
even more r's than usual.
"Peter! . . . Why, she's gone and rrun off with
that toad, that rreptile man! Oh, I know it, so it's
not a bit of use your trying to keep it from me."
" Very well," said Peter ; " I suppose it's not."
" Oh, the little fool, the little, silly, wicked fool !
But if ever a little fool got her rich deserts without
needing to wait for purgatory, that one'll be Rhoda.
216 THE LEE SHORE
. . . Oh, Peter, be more excited and angry! Why
aren't you stamping up and down and vowing ven-
geance, instead of sitting on the hearth saying, ' Khoda's
gone,' as if it was the kitten ? "
" I'm sorry, Peggy." Peter sighed a little. " I'm
nursing Thomas, you see."
Peggy at that was on her knees on the floor, taking
both of them into her large embrace.
" Oh, you two poor little darling boys, what's to be-
come of you both ? That child has a heart of stone, to
leave you to yourselves the way she's done. Don't de-
fend her, Peter ; I won't hear a word said for her again
as long as I live; she deserves Guy Vyvian, and I
couldn't say a worse word for her than that. You
poor little Tommy; come to me then, babykins. You
must come back to us now, Peter, and I'll look after
you both."
She cuddled Thomas to her breast with one arm, and
put the other round Peter's shoulders as he sat huddled
up, his chin resting on his knees. At the moment it
was difficult to say which of the two looked the most
forsaken, the most left to himself. Only Thomas
hadn't yet learnt to laugh, and Peter had. He laughed
now, softly and not happily.
" It has been rather a ghastly fiasco, hasn't it," he
said. " Absurd, you know, too, in a way. I thought it
was all working out so nicely, Thomas coming and
everything. But no. It wasn't working out nicely at
all. Things don't as a rule, do they ? "
There was a new note of dreariness in his voice; a
note that had perhaps been kept out of it of set purpose
for a long time. Now there seemed at the moment no
particular reason to keep it out any more, though fresh
reasons would arrive, no doubt, very soon ; and Thomas
when waking was a reason in himself. But in this dim
THE LOSS OF A WIFE 217
hour between two roads, this hour of relaxation of ten-
sion in the shadowy firelight, when Thomas slept and
only Peggy listened, Peter, having fallen crashing
through floor after floor of his pleasant house of life,
till he was nearly at the bottom, looked up at all the
broken floors and sighed.
Peggy's arm was comfortingly about him. To her
he was always a little, brittle, unlucky boy, as she had
first seen him long ago.
" Never you mind, Peterkin. There's a good time
coming, I do believe. She'll come back, perhaps ; who
knows? Vyvian wouldn't do for long, not even for
Rhoda. Besides, you may be sure he'll throw her off
soon, and then she'll want to come back to you and
Tommy. I wouldn't say that to any other man, be-
cause, of course, no other man would have her back ; but
I do believe, Peterkin, that you would, wouldn't you
now ? I expect you'd smile and say, ' Oh, come in,
you're just in time for tea and to see me bath Thomas,'
and not another word about it."
" Probably," said Peter. " There wouldn't be much
to say, would there ? But she won't come back ; I know
that. Even if she leaves him she won't. Ehoda's hor-
ribly proud really, you know. She'd sooner sweep a
crossing, or trim hats or something, than come near
us again. I don't know what to hope about it. I
suppose one must hope they'll go on together, as Rhoda
seems to like him as he is; but it's an awful thought.
. . . She's right that we never understood each other.
I couldn't, you know, bear to think of spending even
one day alone with Vyvian. I should be sick, like
Thomas. The mere sight of his hair is enough, and his
hand with that awful ring on it. I I simply draw
the line at him. Why does Ehoda care for him ? How
can she ? " Peter frowned over it in bewilderment.
218 THE LEE SHORE
Peggy said, " Girls are silly things. And I suppose
the way one's been brought up counts, and what one's
inherited, and all that."
" Well, if Rhoda'd taken after Mrs. Johnson she
wouldn't have liked Vyvian. He used to give her the
creeps, like a toad. She told me so. She disliked him
more than I did. . . . Well, I shall never understand.
I suppose if I could Rhoda would have found me more
sympathetic, and might have stayed."
" Now, darling, you're not to sit up and brood any
more; that won't help. You're coming straight back
with me to dinner, and Tommy's coming too, to sleep.
I shall ask Mrs. Adams to help me get his things to-
gether."
" He hasn't many things," said Peter, looking
vaguely round for them. " I got him a rattle and a
ball, but he doesn't seem to care about them much ;
Lucy says he's not young enough yet. Here's his bot-
tle. And his night clothes are upstairs, and his other
day clothes, and his bath. Thomas leads the simple
life, though ; he really possesses very little ; I think he's
probably going to be a Franciscan later on. But he can
sleep with me here all right ; I should like to have him ;
only it would be awfully good of you if you'd have him
to-morrow, while I'm out at work. But in the night
he and I rather like each other's company."
" Rubbish," said Peggy. " You're both coming
along to fifty-one this minute. You don't suppose I'm
going to leave you two infants alone together like that.
We've heaps of room at fifty-one " she sighed a lit-
tle " people have been fading away like the flowers
of the forest, and we should be thankful to have you
back."
" Oh, we'll come then ; thanks very much, Peggy."
Peter's ready sympathy was turned on again, having
THE LOSS OF A WIFE 219
temporarily been available only for himself and Rhoda
and Thomas. He remembered now that Peggy and
Hilary needed it too. He and Thomas would go and
be boarders in the emptying boarding-house; it might
amuse Thomas, perhaps, to see the other boarders.
"And we'll have him baptized," went on Peggy,
thinking of further diversions for Thomas and Peter.
"You'll let him be a Catholic, Peter, won't you?"
" Thomas," said Peter, " can be anything he likes
that's nice. As long as he's not a bigot. I won't have
him refusing to go into one sort of church because he
prefers another; he mustn't ever acquire the rejecting
habit. Short of that, he may enter any denomination
or denominations he prefers."
They were collecting Thomas's belongings as they
talked. Thomas lay and looked at them with the very
blue slits that were like his father's eyes grown old.
And suddenly Peggy, looking from son to father, saw
that Peter's eyes had grown as old as Thomas's, looking
wearily out of a pale, pinched face.
Peggy's own eyes brimmed over as she bent over
Thomas's night-shirt.
CHAPTEE XVI
A LONG WAY
LORD EVELYN UEQUHAET dined with his nephew on
the last evening in February. It was a characteristic
Urquhart dinner-party; the guests were mostly cheer-
ful, well-bred young people of high spirits and of the
worldly station that is not much concerned with any
aspect of money but the spending of it. High living,
plain thinking, agreeable manners and personal appear-
ance, plenty of humour, enough ability to make a suc-
cess of the business of living and not enough to agitate
the brain, a light tread along a familiar and well-laid
road, and a serene blindness to side-tracks and alleys
not familiar nor well-laid and to those that walked
thereon these were the characteristics of the pleasant
people who frequented Denis Urquhart's pleasant house
in Park Lane.
Lucy was among them, small and pale, and rather
silent, and intensely alive. She, of course, was a na-
tive not of Park Lane but of Chelsea; and the people
who had frequented her home there were of a different
sort. They had had, mostly, a different kind of brain,
a kind more restless and troublesome and untidy, and a
different type of wit, more pungent and ironic, less
well-fed and hilarious, and they were less well-dressed
and agreeable to look at, and had (perhaps) higher
thoughts (though how shall one measure height?) and
ate (certainly) plainer food, for lack of richer. These
were the people Lucy knew. Her father himself had
220
A LONG WAY 221
been of these. She now found her tent pitched among
the prosperous ; and the study of them touched her wide
gaze with a new, pondering look. Denis hadn't any
use for cranks. None of his set were socialists, vege-
tarians, Quakers, geniuses, anarchists, drunkards, poets,
anti-breakf asters, or anti-hatters ; none of them, in fine,
the sort of person Lucy was used to. They never
pawned their watches or walked down Bond Street in
Norfolk coats. They had, no doubt, their hobbies ; but
they were suitable, well-bred hobbies, that did not ob-
trude vulgarly on other people's notice. Peter had
once said that if he were a plutocrat he would begin
to dream dreams. Lucy supposed that the seemingly
undreaming people who were Denis's friends were not
rich enough; they hadn't reached plutocracy, where ro-
mance resides, but merely prosperity, which has fewer
possibilities. Lucy began in these days to ponder on
the exceeding evil of Socialism, which the devil has put
it into certain men's hearts to desire. For, thought
Lucy, sweep away the romantic rich, sweep away the
dreaming destitute, and what have you left? The
prosperous; the comfortable; the serenely satisfied; the
sanely reasonable. Dives, with his purple and fine
linen, his sublime outlook over a world he may possess
at a touch, goes to his own place; Lazarus, with his
wallet for crusts and his place among the dogs and his
sharp wonder at the world's black heart, is gathered to
his fathers: there remain the sanitary dwellings of the
comfortable, the monotonous external adequacy that
touches no man's inner needs, the lifeless rigour of a
superintended well-being. Decidedly, thought Lucy,
siding with the Holy Roman Church, a scheme of the
devil's. Denis and his friends also thought it was rot.
So no doubt it was. Denis belonged to the Conserva-
tive party. Lucy thought parties funny things, and
222 THE LEE SHORE
laughed. Though she had of late taken to wandering
far into seas of thought, so that her wide forehead was
often puckered as she sat silent, she still laughed at the
world. Perhaps the more one thinks about it the more
one laughs ; the height and depth of its humour are cer-
tainly unfathomable.
On this last night of February, Lord Evelyn, when
the other guests had gone, put his unsteady white hand
under Lucy's chin and raised her small pale face and
looked at it out of his near-sighted, scrutinising eyes,
and said:
" Humph. You're thinner."
Lucy's eyes laughed up at him.
" Am I ? I suppose I'm growing old."
" You're worrying. What's it about ? " asked Lord
Evelyn.
They were in the library. Lord Evelyn and Denis
sat by the fire in leather chairs and smoked, and Lucy
sat on a hassock between them, her chin in her hands.
She was silent for a moment. Then she looked up
at Denis, who was reading Punch, and said, " I've had
a letter from Peggy Margerison this morning."
Denis gave a sound between a grunt and a chuckle.
The grunt element was presumably for Peggy Marger-
ison, the chuckle for Punch.
Lord Evelyn, tapping his eye-glass on the arm of his
chair, said, " Well ? Well ? " impatiently, nervously.
Lucy drew a note from her pocket (she was never
pocketless) and spread it on her knees. It was a long
letter on crinkly paper, written in a large, dashing,
sprawling hand, full of curls, generosities, extrava-
gances.
" She says," said Lucy, " (Please listen, Denis,) that
that they want money."
" I somehow thought that would be what she said,"
A LONG WAY 223
Denis murmured, still half preoccupied. " I'm sure
she's right."
" A woman who writes a hand like that," put in
Lord Evelyn, "will always spend more than she has.
A hole in the purse ; a hole in the purse."
" She says," went on Lucy, looking through the letter
with wrinkled forehead, " that they're all very hard-
up indeed. Of course, I knew that ; I can see it when-
ever I go there; only Peter will never take more than
silly little clothes and things for Thomas. And now
Peggy says they're in great straits; Thomas is going
to teethe or something, and wants better milk, all from
one cow, and they're all awfully in debt."
" I should fancy that was chronic," remarked Denis,
turning to Essence of Parliament.
" A hole in the purse, a hole in the purse," muttered
Lord Evelyn, tapping with his eye-glass.
" Peggy says that Peter won't ask for help himself,
but he's let her, it seems. And their boarders are
nearly all gone, one of them quite suddenly, without
paying a sixpence for all the time he was there."
" I suppose he didn't think he'd had sixpence worth,"
said Denis. " He was probably right."
" And Thomas is still very delicate after his bron-
chitis, and Peter's got a bad cold on the chest and
wants more cough-mixture than they can afford to buy ;
and they owe money to the butcher and the fishmonger
and the baker and the doctor and the tailor, and Hilary's
lost his latest job and isn't earning anything at all.
So I suppose Peter is keeping the family."
" Scamps ; . scamps all," muttered Lord Evelyn.
" Deserve all they get, and more. People like the
Margerisons an't worth helping. They'd best go under
at once ; best go under. Swindlers and scamps, the lot
of them. I daresay the woman's stories are half lies;
224 THE LEE SHORE
of course, they want money, but it's probably only to
spend on nonsense. Why can't they keep themselves,
like decent people ? "
" Oh," said Lucy, dismissing that as absurd, " they
can't. Of course they can't. They never could . . .
Denis."
" Lucy." Denis absently put out a hand to meet
hers.
" How much shall we give them, Denis ? "
Denis dropped Punch onto the floor, and lay back
with his hands clasped behind his fair head. Lucy,
looking at his up-turned, foreshortened, cleanly-mod-
elled face, thought with half of her mind what a per-
fect thing it was. Sudden aspects of Denis's beauty
sometimes struck her breathless, as they struck Peter.
" The Margerison family wants money, I under-
stand," said Denis, who hadn't been listening atten-
tively.
" Very badly, Denis."
Denis nodded. " They always do, of course. . . .
Well, is it our business to fill the bottomless Margeri-
son purse ? "
Lucy sat very still, looking up at him with wide
eyes.
" Our business ? I don't know. But, of course, if
Peter and Peter's people want anything, we shall give
it them."
" But I gather it's not Peter that asks ? Peter
never asks, does he?"
" No," said Lucy. " Peter never asks. Not even
for Thomas."
" Well, I should be inclined to trust Peter rather
than his charming family. Peter's name seems to be
dragged into that letter a good deal, but it doesn't fol-
low that Peter sanctioned it. I'm not going to annoy
A LONG WAY 225
Peter by sending him what he's never asked for. I
should think probably Peter knows they can get on
all right as they are, and that this letter must be taken
with a good deal of salt. I expect the egregious Hilary
only wants the money for some new enterprise of his
own, that will fail, as usual. Anyhow, I really don't
fancy having any further dealings with Hilary Mar-
gerison or his wife; I've had enough there. He's the
most impossible cad and swindler."
" Swindlers all, swindlers all," said Lord Evelyn,
getting up and pacing up and down the room, his
hands behind his back.
Lucy, after a moment, said simply, " I shall give
them something, Denis. I must. Don't you see?
Whoever it was, I would. Because anyhow, they're
poor and we're rich, and they want things we can give
them. It's so obvious that when people ask one for
things they must have them if one can give them. And
when it's Peter who's in want, and Peter's baby, and
Peter's people . . ."
" You see," said Denis, " I doubt about Peter or
the baby benefiting by anything we give them. It will
all go down the drain where Hilary Margerison's money
flows away. Give it to Peter or give it to his relations,
it'll come to the same thing. Peter gives them every
penny he gets, I don't doubt. You know what Peter
is; he's as weak as a baby in his step-brother's hands;
he lets himself be dragged into the most disgraceful
transactions because he can't say no."
Lucy looked up at him, open-eyed, pale, quiet.
" You think of Peter like that ? " she said, and her
voice trembled a little.
Lord Evelyn stopped in his walk and listened.
" I'm sorry, Lucy," said Denis, throwing away his
cigar-end. " I don't want to say anything against
226 THE LEE SHORE
Peter to you. But . . . one must judge by facts, you
know. I don't mean that Peter means any harm ; but,
as I say, he's weak. I'm fond of Peter, you know; I
wish to goodness he wouldn't play the fool as he does,
mixing himself up with his precious relations and help-
ing them in their idiotic schemes for swindling money
out of people but there it is; he will do it; and as
long as he does it I don't feel moved to have much to
do with him. I should send him money if he asked
me personally, of course, even if I knew it would only
.go into his brother's pocket; but I'm not going to do
it at his sister-in-law's command. If you ask me
whether I feel inclined to help Hilary Margerison and
his wife, my answer is simply no I don't. They're
merely scum ; and why should one have anything to do
with scum ? "
Lucy looked at him silently for a while. Then she
said slowly, " I see. Yes, I see you wouldn't want to,
of course. They are scum. And you're not. But I
am, I think. I belong to the same sort of people they
do. I could swindle and cheat too, I expect. It's the
people at the bottom who do that. They're my rela-
tions, you see, not yours."
" My dear Lucy, only Peter is your relation."
" Peter and Thomas. And I count the rest too, be-
cause they're Peter's. So let me do all that is to be
done, Denis. Don't you bother. I'll take them
money."
" Let them alone, Lucy. You'd better, you know.
What's the good ? "
" I don't know," said Lucy. " None, I expect.
None at all; because Peter wouldn't take it from me
without you."
She came a little nearer him, and put her hand on
his knee like a wistful puppy.
A LONG WAY 227
!
" Denis/' she said, " I wish you would. They know
already that I care. But I wish you would. Peter'd
like you to. He'd be more pleased than if I did ; much
more. Peter cares for you and me and Thomas ex-
traordinarily much ; and you can't compare carings, but
the way he cares for you is the most wonderful of all,
I believe. If you went to him ... if you showed
him you cared . . . he'd take it from you. He
wouldn't take it from me without you, because he'd
suspect you weren't wanting him to have it. Denis,
won't you go to Peter, as you used to do long ago, be-
fore he was in disgrace and poor, before he was scum ?
Can't you, Denis ? "
Denis had coloured faintly. He always did when
people were emotional. Lucy seldom was; she had a
delicious morning freshness that was like the cool wind
on the hills in spring.
" Peter never comes here, Lucy, does he. If he
wanted to see me, I suppose he would."
Lucy was looking strangely at the beautiful face with
the faint flush rising in it. She apparently thought no
reply necessary to his words, but said again, " Can't
you, Denis? Or is it too hard, too much bother, too
much stepping out of the way ? "
" Oh, it's not the bother, of course. But . . . but
I really don't see anything to be gained by it, that's
the fact. . . . Our meetings, on the last few occasions
when we have met, haven't been particularly comforta-
ble. I don't think Peter likes them any better than I
do. . . . One can't force intercourse, Lucy; if it
doesn't run easily and smoothly, it had better be left
alone. There have been things between us, between
Peter's family and my family, that can't be forgotten
or put aside by either of us, I suppose; and I don't
think Peter wants to be reminded of them by seeing
228 THE LEE SHORE
me any more than I do by seeing him. It's it's so
beastly uncomfortable, you know," he added boyishly,
ruffling up his hair with his hand ; and concluded didac-
tically, " People must drift apart if their ways lie in
quite different spheres; it's inevitable."
Denis, who had a boyish reticence, had expanded and
explained himself more than usuaL
Lucy's hand dropped from his knee on to her own.
" I suppose it is inevitable," she said, beneath her
breath. " I suppose the distance is too great. 'Tis
such a long, long way from here to there . . . such a
long, long way. . . . Good-night, Denis; I'm going to
bed."
She got up slowly, cramped and tired and pale. It
was not till she was on her feet that she saw Lord
Evelyn sitting in the background, and remembered his
presence. She had forgotten him ; she had been think-
ing only of Denis and Peter and herself. She didn't
know if he had been listening much; he sat quietly,
nursing his knee, saying nothing.
But when Lucy had gone he said to Denis, " You're
right, Denis ; you're utterly right, not to have anything
to do with those swindlers," and, as if in a sudden
fresh anger against them, he began again his quick, un-
even pacing down the room.
" False through and through," he muttered. " False
through and through."
Lucy's face, as she had risen to her feet and said
" Good night, Uncle Evelyn," had been so like Peter's
as he had last seen it, when Peter had passed him in
the doorway at Astleys, that it had taken his breath
CHAPTER XVII
QUAERELS IS THE BAIN
Iw Brook Street the rain fell. It fell straight and dis-
consolate, unutterably wet, splashing drearily on the
paved street between the rows of wet houses. It fell
all day, from the dim dawn, through the murky noon,
to the dark evening, desolately weeping over a tired
city.
Inside number fifty-one, Peggy mended clothes and
sang a little song, with Thomas in her lap, and Peter,
sitting in the window-seat, knitted Thomas a sweater
of Cambridge blue. Peter was getting rather good at
knitting. Hilary was there too, but not mending, or
knitting, or singing ; he was coughing, and complaining
of the climate.
" I fancy it is going to be influenza," he observed at
intervals, shivering. " I feel extraordinarily weak, and
ache all up my back. I fancy I have a high tempera-
ture, only Peter has broken the thermometer. You were
a hundred and four, I think, Peter, the day you went
to bed. I rather expect I am a hundred and five.
But I suppose I shall never know, as it is impossible
to afford another thermometer. I feel certain it is in-
fluenza; and in that case I must give up all hope of
getting that job from Pickering, as I cannot possibly
go and see him to-morrow. Not but that it would be
a detestable job, anyhow ; but anything to keep our heads
above water. . . . My headache is now like a hot metal
band all round my head, Peggy."
229
230 THE LEE SHORE
" Poor old boy," said Peggy. " Take some more
phenacetine. And do go to bed, Hilary. If you have
got flu, you'll only make yourself as bad as Peter did
by staying up too long. You've neither of you any
more sense than Tommy here, nor so much, by a long
way, have they, little man? No, Kitty, let him be;
you'd only drop him on the floor if I let you, and then
he'd break, you know."
Silvio was kneeling up on the window-seat by Peter's
side, taking an interest in the doings of the street.
Peggy said, " Well, Larry, what's the news of the
great world ? "
" It's raining," said Silvio, who had something of the
mournful timbre of Hilary's voice in his.
Peggy said, " Oh, darling, be more interesting ! I'm
horribly afraid you're going to grow up obvious, Larry,
and that will never do. What else is it doing ? "
" There's a cat in the rain," said Silvio, flattening his
nose against the blurred glass, and manifestly inclined
to select the sadder aspects of the world's news for re-
tail. That tendency too, perhaps, he inherited from
Hilary.
Presently he added, " There's a taxi coming up the
street," and Peggy placed Thomas on Peter's knees
and came to the window to look. When she had looked
she said to Peter, " It must be nearly six o'clock " (the
clock gained seventeen minutes a day, so that the time
was always a matter for nicer calculation than Peggy
could usually afford to give it) ; " and if Hilary's got
flu, I should think Tommy'd be best out of the room.
... I haven't easily the time to put him to bed this
evening, really."
Peter accepted the suggestion and conveyed his son
from the room. As he did so, someone knocked at the
front door, and Peggy ran downstairs to open it.
QUARRELS IN THE RAIN 231
She let in the unhappy noise of the rain and a tall,
slim person in a fur coat.
Peggy was surprised, and (most rarely) a little em-
barrassed. It wasn't the person she had looked for.
She even, in her unwonted confusion, let the visitor
speak first.
He said, " Is Mr. Peter Margerison in ? " frostily,
giving her no sign of recognition.
" He is not, Lord Evelyn," said Peggy, hastily.
" That is, he is busy with the baby upstairs. Will I
take him a message ? "
" I shall be glad if you will tell him I have called to
see him."
" I will, Lord Evelyn. Will you come up to the
drawing-room while I get him ? "
Peggy led the way, drawing meanwhile on the re-
sources of a picturesque imagination.
" He may be a little while before he can leave the
baby, Lord Evelyn. Poor mite, it's starved with hun-
ger, the way it cries and cries and won't leave off, and
Peter has to cheer it."
Lord Evelyn grunted. The steep stairs made him a
little short of breath, and not sympathetic.
" And even," went on Peggy, stopping outside the
drawing-room door, " even when it does get a feed of
milk, it's to-day from one kind of cow, to-morrow from
another. Why, you'd think all the cows in England,
turn and turn about, supplied that poor child with
milk; and you know they get pains from changing.
It's not right, poor baby; but what can we and his
father do ? The same with his scraps of clothes
this weather he'd a right to be having new warm ones
but there he lies crying for the cold in his little
thin out-grown things; it brings the tears to one's eyes
to see him. And he's not the only one, either. His
232 THE LEE SHORE
father's just out of an illness, and keeps a cough on the
chest because he can't afford a warm waistcoat or the
only cough-mixture that cures him. . . . But Peter
wouldn't like me to be telling you all this. Will you go
in there, Lord Evelyn, and wait ? "
She paused another moment, her hand on the handle.
"You'll not tell Peter I told you anything. He'd
not be pleased. He'll not breathe a word to you of it
himself indeed, he'll probably say it's not so."
Lord Evelyn made no comment ; he merely tapped his
cane on the floor ; he seemed impatient to have the door
opened.
" And," added Peggy, " if ever you chanced to be
offering him anything I mean, you might be for giv-
ing him a birthday present, or a Xmas present or some-
thing sometime you'd do best to put it as a gift to
the baby, or he'll never take it."
Having concluded her diplomacy, she opened the
door and ushered him into the room, where Hilary sat
with his headache and the children played noisily at
horses.
" Lord Evelyn Urquhart come to see Peter," called
Peggy into the room. " Come along out of that, chil-
dren, and keep yourselves quiet somewhere."
She bundled them out and shut the door on Lord
Evelyn and Hilary.
Hilary rose dizzily to his feet and bowed. Lord
Evelyn returned the courtesy distantly, and stood by
the door, as far as possible from his host.
" This is good of you," said Hilary, " to come and see
us in our fallen estate. Do sit down."
Lord Evelyn, putting his glass into his eye and turn-
ing it upon Hilary as if in astonishment at his imper-
tinence in addressing him, said curtly, " I came to
see your half-brother. I had not the least intention,
QUARRELS IN THE RAIN 233
nor the least desire, to see anyone else whatever; nor
have I now."
" Quite so," said Hilary, his teeth chattering with
fever. (His temperature, though he would never
know, as Peter had broken the thermometer, must be
anyhow a hundred and three, he was sure.) " Quite
so. But that doesn't affect my gratitude to you.
Peter's friends are mine. I must thank you for re-
membering Peter."
Lord Evelyn, presumably not seeing the necessity,
was silent.
" We have not met," Hilary went on, passing his hot
hand over his fevered brow, where the headache ran
all round like a hot metal band, " for a very long time,
Lord Evelyn; if we put aside that momentary encoun-
ter at Astleys last year." Hilary did put that aside,
rather hastily, and went on, " Apart from that, we have
not met since we were both in Venice, nearly two years
ago. Lord Evelyn, I have often wished to tell you
how very deeply I have regretted certain events that
came between us there. I think there is a great deal
that I might explain to you. . . ."
Lord Evelyn, with averted face, said, " Be good
enough to be silent, sir. I have no desire to hear any
of your remarks. I have come merely to see your half-
brother."
" Of course," said Hilary, who was sensitive, " if
you take that line, there is nothing to be said between
you and me."
Lord Evelyn acknowledged this admission with a
slight inclination of the head.
" Nothing whatever, sir."
So there was silence, till Peter came in, pale and
sickly and influenzaish, but with a smile for Lord
Evelyn. It was extraordinarily nice of Lord Evelyn,
234 THE LEE SHORE
he thought, to have come all the way to Brook Street
in the rain to see him.
Lord Evelyn looked at him queerly, intently, out of
his short-sighted eyes as they shook hands.
" I wish to talk to you," he remarked, with meaning.
Hilary took the hint, looked proud, said, " I see
that my room is preferred to my company," and went
away.
When he had gone, Peter said, " Do sit down," but
Lord Evelyn took no notice of that. He had come to
see Peter in his need, but he had not forgiven him, and
he would remain standing in his house. Peter had
once hurt him so badly that the mere sight of him
quickened his breath and flushed his cheek. He tapped
his cane impatiently against his grey spats.
" You're ill," he said, accusingly.
" Oh, I've only had flu," said Peter; " I'm all right
now."
" You're ill," Lord Evelyn repeated. " Don't con-
tradict me, sir. You're ill ; you're in want ; and you're
bringing up a baby on insufficient diet. What ? "
" Not a bit," said Peter. " I am not in want, nor is
Thomas. Thomas' diet is so sufficient that I'm often
afraid he'll burst with it."
Lord Evelyn said, " You're probably lying. But if
you're not, why d'ye countenance your sister-in-law's
begging letters? You're a hypocrite, sir. But that's
nothing I didn't know before, you may say. Well,
you're right there."
Lord Evelyn's anger was working up. He hadn't
known it would be so difficult to talk to Peter and re-
main calm.
" You want to make a fool of me again," he broke
out, " so you join in a lying letter and bring me here
QUARRELS IN THE RAIN 235
on false pretences. At least, I suppose it was really
Lucy you thought to bring. You play on Lucy's soft
heart, knowing you can squeeze money out of her
and so you can afford to say you've no use for mine.
Is that it ? "
Peter said, dully looking at his anger as at an ancient
play re-staged, " I don't know what you're talking about.
I know nothing of any letter. And you don't suppose
I should take your money, or Lucy's either. Why
should I ? I don't want money."
Lord Evelyn was pacing petulantly up and down the
shabby carpet, waving his cane as he walked.
" Oh, you know nothing of any letter, don't you.
Well, ask your sister-in-law, then; ask that precious
brother of yours. Haven't you always chosen to hang
on to them and join in their dirty tricks? And now
you turn round and say you know nothing of their do-
ings; a pretty story. . . . Now look here, Mr. Peter
Margerison, you've asked for money and you shall take
it, d'ye see ? "
Peter flung at him, in a qiieer and quite new hot
bitterness and anger (it was perhaps the result of in-
fluenza, which has strange after effects). " You've no
right to come here and say these things to me. I
didn't want you to come; I never asked you to; and
now I never want to see you again. Please go, Lord
Evelyn."
Lord Evelyn paused in his walk, and stood looking
at him for a moment, his lips parted to speak, his
hands clasped behind him over the gold head of his
cane.
Then, into the ensuing silence, came Lucy, small
and pale and wet in her grey furs, and stood like a
startled kitten, her wide eyes turning from one angry
face to the other.
236 THE LEE SHORE
Peter said to her, in a voice she had never heard
from him before, " So you've come too."
Lord Evelyn tittered disagreeably. " Didn't expect
her, of course, did you. So unlikely she'd come, after
getting a letter like that. ... I suppose you're won-
dering, Lucy, what I'm doing dans cette galere."
" No," said Lucy, " I wasn't. I know. You've
come to see Peter, like me."
He laughed again. " Yes, that's it. Like you.
And now he pretends he won't take the money he asked
for, Lucy. Won't be beholden to me at any price.
Perhaps he was waiting for you."
Lucy was looking at Peter, who looked so ill and so
strange and new. Never before had he looked at her
like that, with hard eyes. Peter was angry; the skies
had fallen.
She said, and put out her hands to him, " What's
the matter, Peter? Don't . . . don't look like that.
. . . Oh, you're ill ; do sit down ; it's so stupid to stand
about."
Peter said, his own hands hanging at his sides, " Do
you mind going away, both of you. I don't think I
want to talk to either of you to-day. ... I suppose
you've brought money to give me too, Lucy, have
you?"
Lucy coloured faintly over her small pale face.
" I won't give you anything you don't like, Peter.
But I may give a present to Thomas, mayn't I ? "
" No," said Peter, without interest or emotion.
So they stood in silence for a moment, facing each
other, Lucy full-handed and impotent before Peter
whose empty hands hung closed and unreceiving ; Lucy
and Peter, who had once been used to go shares and to
give and take like two children, and who could give and
take no more; and in the silence something oddly vi-
QUARRELS IN THE RAIN 237
brated, so that Lord Evelyn, the onlooker, abruptly
moved and spoke.
" Come home, Lucy. He's told us he'll have none of
us."
Lucy still stood pleading, like a child ; then, at Lord
Evelyn's touch on her arm, she suddenly began to cry,
again like a child, helpless and conquered.
At her tears Peter turned away sharply, and walked
to the window.
" Please go," he said. " Please go."
They went, Lucy quietly crying, and Lord Evelyn,
suddenly become oddly gentle, comforting her.
At the door he paused for a moment, looked round
at Peter, hesitated, took a step back towards him, began
to say something.
"Peter. . . ."
Then Peggy came in, followed by Hilary. Lord
Evelyn shut his lips lightly, bowed, and followed Lucy
downstairs. Peggy went after them to let them out.
Hilary flung himself into a chair.
"Well, Peter? Well?"
Peter turned round from the window, and Hilary
started at his face.
" My dear boy, what on earth is the matter ? "
Then Peggy came in, her eyes full of dismayed vexa-
tion, but laughter twitching at her lips.
" Oh, my dears ! What a mood they're in ! Lord
Evelyn looked at me to destroy me and Lucy crying
as if she'd never stop; I tried to make her take some
sal volatile, but he wouldn't let her, but wisked her
into her carriage and shut the door in my face. Mercy,
what temper ! "
The last words may not have had exclusive reference
to Lord Evelyn, as Peggy was now looking at Peter in
some astonishment and alarm. When Peter looked
238 THE LEE SHORE
angry, everyone was so surprised that they wanted to
take his temperature and send him to bed. Peggy
would have liked to do that now, but really didn't dare.
What had come to the child, she wondered ?
" What did they talk about, Peter ? A funny thing
their coming within half an hour of each other like
that, wasn't it. And I never thought to see Lord
Evelyn here, I must say. Now I wonder why was
Lucy crying and he so cross ? "
j Peter left her to wonder that, and said merely, " Once
for all, I won't have it. You shall not beg for money
and bring my name into it. It's it's horrid."
With a weak, childish word his anger seemed to ex-
plode and die away. After all, no anger of Peter's
could last long. And somehow, illogically, his anger
here was more with the Urquharts than with the Mar-
gerisons and most with Lucy. One is, of course, most
angry, with those who have most power to hurt.
Suddenly feeling rather ill, Peter collapsed into a
chair.
Peggy, coming and kneeling by him, half comfort-
ing, half reproaching, said, " Oh, Peter darling, you
haven't been refusing money, when you know you
and Tommy and all of us need it so much ? "
Hilary said, " Peter has no regard whatever for what
we all need. He simply doesn't care. I suppose now
we shall never be able to afford even a new thermome-
ter to replace the one Peter broke. Again, why should
it matter to Peter? He took his own temperature all
through his illness, and I suppose that is all he cares
about. I wonder how much fever I have at this mo-
ment. Is my pulse very wild, Peggy ? "
" It is not," said Peggy, soothingly, without feeling
it. " And I daresay Peter's temperature is as high as
yours now, if we knew; he looks like it. Well, Peter,
QUARRELS IN THE RAIN 239
it was stupid of you, my dear, wasn't it, to say no to
a present and hurt their feelings that way when they'd
been so good as to come in the rain and all. If they
offer it again "
Peter said, " They won't. They won't come here
again, ever. They've done with us, I'm glad to say,
and we with them. So you needn't write to them
again ; it will he no use."
Peter was certainly cross. Peggy and Hilary looked
at him in surprised disapproval. How silly. "Where
was the use of having friends if one treated them in this
unkind, proud way ?
" Peter," said Hilary, " has obviously decided that
we are not fit to have anything to do with his grand
friends. No doubt he is well-advised " he looked
bitterly round the unkempt room " and we will cer-
tainly take the hint."
Then Peter recovered himself and said, " Oh don't
be an ass, Hilary," and laughed dejectedly, and went
up to finish putting Thomas to bed.
In the carriage that rolled through the rain from
Brook Street to Park Lane, Lord Evelyn Urquhart
was saying, " This is the last time ; the very last time.
Never again do I try to help any Margerison. First I
had to listen for full five minutes to the lies of that
woman; then to the insufferable remarks of that cad,
that swindler, Hilary Margerison, who I firmly believe
had an infectious disease which I have no doubt caught "
(he was right; he had caught it). '"Then in comes
Peter and insults me to my face and tells me to clear
out of the house. By all means; I have done so, and
it will be for good. What, Lucy? There, don't cry,
child; they an't worth a tear between the lot of 'em."
But Lucy cried. She, like Peter, was oddly not her-
self to-day, and cried and cried.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE BREAKING-POINT
THE boarding-house suddenly ceased to be. Its long
illness ended in natural death. There was a growing
feeling among the boarders that no self-respecting per-
son could remain with people whose financial affairs
were in the precarious condition of the Margerisons'
people who couldn't pay the butcher, and lived on ill-
founded expectations of subsidies. As two years ago
the Margerisons had been thrown roughly out of the
profession of artistic experts, so now the doors of the
boarding-house world were shut upon them. Boarders
are like that; intensely respectable.
All the loosed dogs of ill-fortune seemed to be yelping
at the Margerisons' heels at once. Hilary, when he
recovered from his influenza and went out to look for
jobs, couldn't find one. Again and again he was curtly
refused employment, by editors and others. Every
night he came home a little more bitter than the day
before. Peter too, while he lay mending of his break-
ages, received a letter from the place of business he
adorned informing him that it would not trouble him
further. He had never been much use to it; he had
been taken on at Leslie's request and given a trial ; but
it could not last for ever, as Peter fair-mindedly ad-
mitted.
" Well," he commented, " I suppose one must do
something else, eventually. But I shall put off reflect-
ing on that till I can move about more easily."
Hilary said, " We are being hounded out of London
240
THE BREAKING-POINT 241
as we were hounded out of Venice. It is unbearable.
What remains ? "
"Nothing, that I can see at the moment," said
Peter, laughing weakly.
" Ireland," said Peggy suddenly. " Let's go there.
Dublin's worth a dozen of this hideous old black dirty
place. You could get work on ' The Nationalist/
Hilary, I do believe, for the sub-editorship's just been
given to my cousin Larry Callaghan. Come along to
the poor old country, and we'll try our luck again."
" Dublin I believe to be an unspeakable place to live
in," said Hilary, but mainly from habit. " Still, I pre-
sume one must live somewhere, so . . ."
He turned to Peter. " Where shall you and Thomas
live?"
Peter flushed slightly. He had supposed that he
and Thomas were also to live in the unspeakable Dub-
lin.
" Oh, we haven't quite made up our minds. I must
consult Thomas about it."
" But," broke in Peggy, " of course you're coming
with us, my dear. What do you mean? You're not
surely going to desert us now, Peter ? "
Peter glanced at Hilary. Hilary said, pushing his
hair, with his restless gesture, from his forehead,
" Really, Peggy, we can't drag Peter about after us
all our lives; it's hardly fair on him to involve him
in all our disasters, when he has more than enough of
his own."
" Indeed and he has. Peter's mischancier than you
are, Hilary, on the whole, and I will not leave him and
Tommy to get lost or broken by themselves. Don't be
so silly, Peter ; of course you're coming with us."
" I think," said Peter, " that Thomas and I will per-
haps stay in London. You see, / can't, probably, get
242 THE LEE SHORE
work on ' The Nationalist,' and it's doubtful what I
could do in Dublin. I suppose I can get work of a sort
in London; enough to provide Thomas with milk,
though possibly not all from one cow."
" I daresay. And who'd look after the mite, I'd like
to know, while you're earning his milk ? "
" Oh, the landlady, I should think. Everyone likes
Thomas ; he's remarkably popular."
Afterwards Hilary said to Peggy, " Eeally, Peggy,
I see no reason why Peter should be dragged about with
us in the future. The joint menage has not, in the past,
been such a success that we need want to perpetuate it.
In fact, though, of course, it is pleasant to have Peter
in the house . . ."
" Indeed it is, the darling," put in Peggy.
" One can't deny that disasters have come upon us
extraordinarily fast since he came to live with us in
Venice two years ago. First he discovered things that
annoyed him in my private affairs, which was ex-
tremely disagreeable for all of us, and really he was
rather unnecessarily officious about that ; in fact, I con-
sider that it was owing largely to the line he took that
things reached their final very trying denouement.
Since then disaster upon disaster has come upon us;
Peter's unfortunate marriage, and consequent serious
expenses, including the child now left upon his hands
(really, you know, that was an exceedingly stupid step
that Peter took; I tried to dissuade him at the time,
but of course it was no use). And he is so very fre-
quently ill ; so am I, you will say " (Peggy didn't,
because Hilary wasn't, as a matter of fact, ill quite so
often as he believed) " but two crocks in a house-
hold are twice as inconvenient as one. And now there
has been this unpleasant jar with the Urquharts.
Peter, by his rudeness to them, has finally severed the
THE BREAKING-POINT 243
connection, and we can hope for nothing from that
quarter in future. And I am not sure that I choose
to have living with me a much younger brother who
has influential friends of his own in whom he insists
that we shall have neither part nor lot. I strongly ob-
ject to the way Peter spoke to us on that occasion; it
was extremely offensive."
" Oh, don't be such a goose, Hilary. The boy only
lost his temper for a moment, and I'm sure that hap-
pens seldom enough. And as to the rest of it, I don't
like the way you speak of him, as if he was the cause
of our mischances, and as if his being so mischancey
himself wasn't a reason why we should all stick to-
gether, and him with that scrap of a child, too ; though
I will say Peter's a handier creature with a child than
anyone would think. I suppose it's the practice he's
had handling other costly things that break easy. . . .
Well, have it your own way, Hilary. Only mind, if
Peter wants to come with us, he surely shall. I'm
not going to leave him behind like a left kitten. And
I'd love to have him, for he makes sunshine in the house
when things are blackest."
" Lately Peter has appeared to me to be rather de-
pressed," said Hilary, and Peggy too had perceived that
this was so. It was something so new in Peter that it
called for notice.
There was needed no further dispute between Peggy
and Hilary, for Peter said that he and Thomas pre-
ferred to stay in London.
" I can probably find a job of some sort to keep us.
I might with luck get a place as shop-walker. That
always looks a glorious life. You merely walk about
and say, ' Yes, madam ? This w r ay for hose, madam.'
Something to live on and nothing to do, as the poet
says. But I expect they are difficult places to get,
244 THE LEE SHORE
without previous experience. Short of that, I could
be one of the men round stations that open people's
cab doors and take the luggage out; or even a bus-con-
ductor, who knows? Oh, there are lots of openings.
But in Dublin I feel my talents might be lost. . . .
Thomas and I will move into more modest apartments,
and go in for plain living and high thinking."
" You poor little dears," said Peggy, and kissed both
of them. " Well, it'll be plain living for the lot of us,
that's obvious, and lucky too to get that. ... I'd love
to have you two children with us, but . . ."
But Peter, to whom other people's minds were as
books that who runs may read, had no intention of
coming with them. That faculty of intuition of
Peter's had drawbacks as well as advantages. He
knew, as well as if Hilary had said so, that Hilary con-
sidered their life together a disastrous series of mis-
haps, largely owing to Peter, and that he did not desire
to continue it. He knew precisely what was Denis
Urquhart's point of view and state of feelings towards
himself and his family, and how unbridgeable that gulf
was. He knew why Lucy was stopping away, and
would stop away (for if other people's thoughts were
to him as pebbles in running water, hers were pebbles
seen white and lucid in a still, clear pool). And he
knew very well that he relieved Peggy's kind heart
when he said he and Thomas would stop in London;
for to Peggy anything was better than to worry her poor
old Hilary more than need be.
So, before March was out, about St. Cuthbert's day,
in fact, Hilary Margerison and his family left England
for a more distressful country, to seek their fortunes
fresh, and Peter and his family sought modest apart-
ments in a little street behind St. Austin's Church,
where the apartments are very modest indeed.
THE BREAKING-POINT 245
" Are they too modest for von, Thomas ? " Peter
asked dubiously. " And do you too much hate the
Girl?"
The Girl was the landlady's daughter, and under-
took for a small consideration to look after Thomas
while Peter was out, and feed him at suitable inter-
vals. Thomas and Peter did rather hate her, for she
was a slatternly girl, matching her mother and her
mother's apartments, and didn't always take her curlers
off till the evening, and said " Boo " to Thomas, merely
because he was young a detestable habit, Peter and
Thomas considered. Peter had to make a great deal of
sensible conversation to Thomas, to make up.
" I'm sorry," Peter apologised, " but, you see,
Thomas, it's all we can afford. You don't earn any-
thing at all, and I only earn a pound a week, which is
barely enough to keep you in drink. I don't deserve
even that, for I don't address envelopes well; but I
suppose they know it's such a detestable job that they
haven't the face to give me less."
Peter was addressing envelopes because a Robinson
relative had given him the job, and he hadn't the
nerve to refuse it. He couldn't well refuse it, because
of Thomas. Uncompanioned by Thomas he would
probably have chosen instead to sweep a crossing or
play a barrel-organ, or stand at a street corner with
outstretched hat (though this last would only have
done for a summer engagement, as Peter didn't like
the winds that play round street corners in winter).
But Thomas was very much there, and had to be pro-
vided for; so Peter copied letters and addressed en-
velopes and earned twenty shillings weekly, and out
of it paid for Thomas's drink and Thomas's Girl and
his own food, and beds and a sitting-room and fires
and laundry for both, and occasional luxuries in the
246 THE LEE SHORE
way of wooden animals for Thomas to play with. So
they were not extremely poor; they were respectably
well-to-do. For Thomas's sake, Peter supposed it was
worth while not to be extremely poor, even though it
meant addressing envelopes and living in a great grey
prison-house of a city, where one only surmised the
first early pushings of the spring beyond the encom-
passing gloom.
Peter used to tell Thomas about that, in order that
he might know something of the joyous world beyond
the walls. He told Thomas in March, taking time by
the forelock, about the early violets that were going
some time to open blue eyes in the ditches by the roads
where the spring winds walk ; about the blackthorn that
Would suddenly make a white glory of the woods;
about the green, sticky budding of the larches, and the
keen sweet smell of them, and the damp fragrance
of the roaming wind that would blow over river-flooded
fields, smelling of bonfires and wet earth. He took
him through the seasons, telling him of the blown golden
armies of the daffodils that marched out for Easter,
and the fragrant white glory of the may, and the pale
pink stars of the hedge-roses, and the yellow joy of
buttercup fields wherein cows stand knee-deep and
munch, in order to give Thomas sweet white milk.
" Ugh," said Thomas, making a face, and Peter an-
swered, " Yes, I know ; sometimes they come upon an
onion-flower and eat that, and that's not nice, of course.
But mostly it's grass and buttercups and clover." Then
he told him of hot July roads, where the soft white dust
lies, while the horses and the cows stand up to their
middles in cool streams beneath the willows and switch
their tails, and the earth dreams through the year's hot
noon ; and of August, the world's welfare and the earth's
warming-pan, and how, in the fayre rivers, swimming
THE BREAKING-POINT 247,
is a sweet exercise. " And my birthday comes then.
Oh, 'tis the merry time, wherein honest neighbours
make good cheer, and God is glorified in his blessings
on the earth. Then cometh September, Thomas "
Peter was half talking, half reading out of a book he
had got to amuse Thomas " then cometh September,
and then he (that's you, Thomas) doth freshly beginne
to garnish his house and make provision of needfull
things for to live in winter, which draweth very nere.
. . . There are a few nice things in September; ripe
plums and pears and nuts (no, nuts aren't nice, be-
cause our teeth aren't good, are they; at least mine
aren't, and you've only got one and a half) ; but any-
how, plums, and a certain amount of yellow sunshine,
and Thomas's birthday. But on the whole it's too near
the end of things ; and in brief e, I thus conclude of it,"
I hold it the Winter's forewarning and the Summer's
farewell. Adieu. . . . We won't pursue the year fur-
ther, my dear; the rest is silence and impenetrable
gloom, anyhow in this corner of the world, and doesn't
bear thinking about."
Thus did Peter talk to Thomas of an evening, when
they sat together after tea over "the fire.
Sometimes he told him news of the world of men.
One evening he said to him, very gently and pitifully,
" Dear old man, your mother's dead. For her sake,
one's glad, I suppose. You and I must try to look at
it from her point of view. She's escaped from a poor
business. Some day I'll read you the letter she wrote
to you and me as she lay dying ; but not yet, for I never
read you sad things, do I ? But some day you may
be glad to know that she had thoughts for you at the
last. She was sorry she left us, Thomas; horribly,
dreadfully sorry. ... I wish she hadn't been. I wish
she could have gone on being happy till the end. It
248 THE LEE SHORE
was my fault that she did it, and it didn't even make
her happy. And I suppose it killed her at the last; or
would she anyhow have escaped that way before long ?
But I took more care of her than he did. . . . And now
she'll never come back to us. I've thought sometimes,
Thomas, that perhaps she would; that perhaps she
would get tired of him, so tired that she would leave
him and come back to us, and then you'd have had a
mother to do for you instead of only me and the Girl.
Poor little Thomas; you'll never have a mother now.
I'm sorry, sorry, sorry about it. Sorry for you, and
sorry for her, and sorry for all of us. It's a pitiful
world, Thomas, it seems. I wonder how you're going
to get through it."
Never before had he talked to Thomas like that.
He had been used to speak to him of new-burnisht joys
and a world of treasure. But of late Peter had been
conscious of increasing effort in being cheerful before
Thomas. It was as if the little too much that breaks
had been laid upon him and under it he was breaking.
For the first time he was seeing the world not as a
glorious treasure-place full of glad things for touch and
sight and hearing, full of delightful people and absurd
jokes, but as a grey and lonely sea through which one
drifted rudderless towards a lee shore. He supposed
that there was, somewhere, a lee shore; a place where
the winds, having blown their uttermost, ceased to blow,
and where wrecked things were cast up at last broken
beyond all mending and beyond all struggling, to find
the peace of the utterly lost. He had not got there yet ;
he and his broken boat were struggling in the grey cold
waters, which had swept all his cargo from him, bale
by bale. From him that hath not shall indeed be taken
away even that which he hath.
It was Thomas who caused Peter to think of these
THE BREAKING-POINT 249
things newly; Thomas, who was starting life with so
poor a heritage. For Thomas, so like himself, Peter
foresaw the same progressive wreckage. Thomas too,
having already lost a mother, would lose later all he
loved ; he would give to some friend all he was and had,
and the friend would drop him in the mud and leave
him there, and the cold bitterness as of death would
go over Thomas's head. He would, perhaps, love a
woman too, and the woman would leave him quite alone,
not coming near him in his desolation, because he loved
her. He would also lose his honour, his profession,
and the beautiful things he loved to handle and play
with. " And then, when you've lost everything, and
perhaps been involved in some of my disgraces, you'll
think that at least you and I can stick together and go
under together and help each other a little. And I
daresay you'll find that I shall say, ' No, I'm going off
to Ireland, or Italy, or somewhere; I've had enough of
you, and you can jolly well sink or swim by yourself 9
so you see you won't have even me to live for in the
end, just when you want me most. That's the sort of
thing that happens. . . . Oh, what chance have you ? "
said Peter very bitterly, huddled, elbows on knees, over
the chilly fire, while Thomas slumbered in a shawl on
the rug.
Bitterness was so strange in Peter, so odd and new,
that Thomas was disturbed by it, and woke and wailed,
as if his world was tumbling about his ears.
Peter too felt it strange and new, and laughed a little
at it and himself as he comforted Thomas. But his
very laughter was new and very dreary. He picked
Thomas up in his arms and held him close, a warm
little whimpering bundle. Then it was as if the touch
of the small live thing that was his own and had no one
in the world but him to fend for it woke in him a new
250 THE LEE SHORE
instinct. There sprang up in him swiftly, new-born
out of the travail of great bitterness, a sharp anger
against life, against fate, against the whole universe
of nature and man. To lose and lose and lose how
that goes on and on through a lifetime ! But at last it
seems that the limit is reached, something snaps and
breaks, and the loser rises up, philosopher no more, to
take and grasp and seize. The lust to possess, to wring
something for Thomas and himself out of life that had
torn from them so much it sprang upon him like a
wild beast, and fastened deep fangs into his soul and
will.
Outside, a small April wind stirred the air of the
encompassing city, a faint breath from a better world,
seeming to speak of life and hope and new beginnings.
Peter, laying Thomas gently on a chair, went to
the open window and leant out, looking into the veil
of the unhappy streets that hid an exquisite world.
Exquisiteness was surely there, as always. Mightn't
he too, he and Thomas, snatch some of it for them-
selves ? The old inborn lust for things concrete, lovely
things to handle and hold, caught Peter by the throat.
In that hour he could have walked without a scruple
into an empty house or shop and carried away what he
could of its beauties, and brought them home to
Thomas, saying, " Anyhow, here's something for us to
go on with." He was in the mood in which some people
take to drink, only Peter didn't like any drinks except
non-alcoholic ones; or to reckless gambling, only he
didn't find gambling amusing; or to some adventure of
love, only to Peter love meant one thing only, and that
was beyond his reach.
But when he had put Thomas to bed, in his little
common cheap nightshirt, he went out into the streets
with his weekly earnings in his pockets and spent them.
THE BREAKING-POINT 251
He spent every penny he had. First he went to a
florist's and bought daffodils, in great golden sheaves.
Then he went to a toyshop and got a splendid family
of fluffy beasts, and a musical box, and a Noah's Ark,
and a flute. He had spent all his money by then, so
he pawned his watch and signet ring and bought
Thomas some pretty cambric clothes and a rocking
cradle. He had nothing else much to pawn. But he
badly wanted some Japanese paintings to put in the
place of the pictures that at present adorned the sitting-
room. Thomas and he must have something nice and
gay to look at, instead of the Royal Family and the
Monarch of the Glen and " Grace Sufficient " worked
in crewels. So he went into a shop in Holborn and
chose some paintings, and ordered them to be sent up,
and said, " Please enter them to me," so firmly that
they did. Having done that once, he repeated it at
several other shops, and sometimes they obeyed him and
sometimes said that goods could not be sent up without
pre-payment. Pre-payment (or, indeed, as far as Peter
could look forward, post-payment) being out of the
question, those goods had to be left where they were.
But Peter, though handicapped by shabby attire, had
an engaging way with him, and most shopmen are trust-
ful and obliging. If they lost by the transaction,
thought Peter recklessly, it was their turn to lose, not
his. It was his turn to acquire, and he had every in-
tention of doing so. He had a glorious evening, till the
shops shut. Then he went home, and found that the
daffodils had oome, and he filled the room with them,
converting its dingy ugliness into a shining glory.
Then he took down all the horrible pictures and texts
and stacked them behind the sofa, awaiting the arrival
of the Japanese paintings. He thought Thomas would
like the paintings as much as he did himself. Their
252 THE LEE SHORE
room in future should be a bright and pleasant place,
fit for human beings to live in. He cleared the chim-
neypiece of its horrid, tinkling ornaments to leave space
for his brown pottery jars full of daffodils. He put
the ornaments with the pictures behind the sofa, and
when the Girl came in with his supper requested her at
her leisure to remove them.
" I have been getting some new pictures, you see,"
he told her, and was annoyed at the way her round eyes
widened. Why shouldn't he get as many new pictures
as he chose, without being gaped at ?
There was more gaping next day, when his purchases
were sent up. He- had warned his landlady and the
Girl beforehand, that they might not tell the messengers
it must be a mistake and send them away, on what
would, no doubt be their stupid and impertinent im-
pulse. So they gaped and took them in, and Peter
hurried back early from his work and fetched Thomas
in to watch him open parcels and admire the contents.
He spread bright rugs over the horsehair sofa and
chairs, and flung big soft cushions about them, and said
" Hurrah ! The first time I've been really comfortable
since I left Cambridge." Then he bathed Thomas and
put him into a new little soft cambric nightshirt, and
put him to bed in the rocking-cradle. Thomas was de-
lighted with it all. He had no doubt inherited Peter's
love of all things bright and beautiful, and now for the
first time he had them.
" That's more the style, isn't it, old man ? " said
Peter, stretching himself among cushions in the arm-
chair. Thomas agreed that it was, and the two epi-
cureans took their ease among the pleasures of the senses.
" What next ? " Peter wondered. " We must have
more things still, mustn't we ? Nice things of all sorts ;
not only the ones we can buy. But we must begin with
THE BREAKING-POINT 253
the ones we can buy. . . . Mrs. Baker will have to wait
for her rent for a time ; I can't spare any for that. . . .
I've a good mind, Thomas, to take a whole holiday; a
long one. Chuck the envelopes and take to living like
a lord, on tick. It's wonderful how far tick will carry
you, if you try. Muffins for tea, you see, Thomas, only
you can't have any. Well, what's the matter? Why
shouldn't I have muffins for tea ? You've got milk,
haven't you, and I'm not getting a share in that. Don't
be grudging. . . . But we want more than muffins and
milk, Thomas; and more than cushions and daffodils
and nice pictures. We want a good time. We want
friends; we want someone to love us; we want a
holiday. If Leslie was in England I'd go and say,
' Thomas and I are coming to stay with you for a time,
and you've just got to fork out supplies for us and let
us spend them.' Leslie would do it, too. But people
are always away when one wants them most. . . . Oh,
hang it all, Thomas, I'm not going on with those horri-
ble envelopes ; I'm not. I'm going to do things I like.
Why shouldn't I ? Why shouldn't I ? Lots of people
do ; all the best people. I shall give notice to-morrow.
No, I shan't ; I shall just not turn up, then I shan't be
bothered with questions. . . . And we're not going on
with the friends we have here Mrs. Baker, and the
Girl, and the other envelope-gummers. No; we're
going to insist on having nice amusing friends to play
with ; friends who are nicer than we are. The Girl
isn't so nice, not by a long way. Rodney is; but he's
too busy to be bothered with us much. We want
friends of leisure. We will have them ; we will. Why
should we be chucked out and left outside people's
doors, just because they're tired of us ? The thing that
matters is that we're not tired of them. . . . To-mor-
row, Thomas, you and I are going down to a place
254 THE LEE SHORE
called Astleys, in Berkshire, to visit some friends of
ours. If they don't want us, they can just lump us;
good for them. Why should they always have only the
things they want ? Be ready at nine, old man, and
we'll catch a train as soon after that as may be."
Thomas laughed, thinking it a splendid plan. lie
had never seen Astleys in Berkshire, but he knew it to
be a good place, from Peter's voice when he mentioned it.
" But I don't want to excite you so late at night,"
said Peter, " so don't think any more about it, but
go to sleep, if you've finished that milk. Does your
head ache? Mine does. That's the worst of weak
heads; they always ache just when things are getting
interesting. But I don't care; we're going to have
things things to like ; we're going to get hold of them
somehow, if we die in gaol for it; and that's worth a
headache or two. Someone says something about hav-
ing nothing and yet possessing all things; it's one of
the things with no meaning that people do say, and that
make me so angry. It ought to be having nothing and
then possessing all things; because that's the way it's
going to be with us. Good night, Thomas ; you may go
to sleep now."
Thomas did so ; and Peter lay on the sofa and gazed
at the daffodils in the brown jars that filled the room
with light.
CHAPTER XIX
THE NEW LIFE
PETES, with Thomas over his shoulder, stepped out
of the little station into a radiant April world. Be-
tween green, budding hedges, between ditches where
blue violets and joyous-eyed primroses peered up out
of wet grass, a brown road ran, gleaming with puddles
that glinted up at the blue sky and the white clouds
that raced before a merry wind.
Peter said, " Do you like it, old man ? Do you ? "
but Thomas's heart was too full for speech. He was
seeing the radiant wonderland he had heard of; it
crowded upon him, a vivid, many-splendoured thing,
and took his breath away. There were golden duck-
lings by the grassy roadside, and lambs crying to him
from the fields, and cows, eating (one hoped) sweet
grass, with their little calves beside them. A glorious
scene. The gay wind caught Peter by the throat and
brought sudden tears to his eyes, so long used to looking
on grey streets.
He climbed over a stile in the hedge and took a field
path that ran up to a wood the wood way, as he
remembered, to Astleys. Peter had stayed at Astleys
more than once in old days, with Denis. He remem-
bered the keen, damp fragrance of the wood in April;
the smooth stems of the beeches, standing up out of the
mossy ground, and the way the primroses glimmered,
moon-like, among the tangled ground-ivy ; and the way
the birds made every budding bough rock with their
255
256 THE LEE SHORE
clamorous delight. It was a happy wood, full of small
creatures and eager happenings and adventurous quests ;
a fit road to take questers after happiness to their goal.
In itself it seemed almost the goal already, so alive was
it and full of joy. Was there need to travel further?'
Very vividly the impression was borne in on Peter (pos-
sibly on Thomas too) that there was no need ; that here,
perhaps round the next twist of the little brown path,
was not the way but the achievement.
And, rounding the next bend, they knew it to be
so; for above the path, sitting at a beech-tree's foot
among creeping ivy, with head thrown back against the
smooth grey stem, and gathered primroses in either
hand, was Lucy.
Looking round at the sound of feet on the path, she
saw them, and smiled a little, not as if surprised, nor
as if she had to change the direction of her thought,
but taking them into her vision of the spring woods as
if they were natural dwellers in it.
Peter stood still on the path and looked up at her
and smiled too. He said, " Oh, Lucy, Thomas and I
have come."
She bent down towards them, and reached out her
hands, dropping the primroses, for Thomas. Peter
gave her Thomas, and she laid him on her lap, cradled
on her two arms, and smiled, still silently.
Peter sat down on the sloping ground just below her,
his back against another tree.
" We've come to see you and Denis. You won't
come to see us, so we had to take it into our own hands.
We decided, Thomas and I, two days ago, that we
weren't going on any longer in this absurd way. We're
going to have a good time. So we went out and got
things lots of lovely things. And I've chucked my
horrible work. And we've come to see you. Will
THE NEW LIFE 257
Denis mind ? I can't help it if he does ; we've got to
do it."
Lucy nodded, understanding. " I know. In think-
ing about you lately, I've known it was coming to this,
rather soon. I didn't quite know when. But I knew
you must have a good time."
After a little while she went on, and her clear voice
fell strange and tranquil on the soft wood silence :
" What I didn't quite know was whether you would
come and take it the good time 'Or whether I
should have to come and bring it to you. I was going
to have come, you know. I had quite settled that.
It's taken me a long time to know that I must: but
I do know it now."
" You didn't come," said Peter suddenly, and his
hands clenched sharply over the ivy trails and tore
them out of the earth, and his face whitened to the
lips. " All this time . . . you didn't come . . . you
kept away. . . ." The memory of that black empti-
ness shook him. He hadn't realised till it was nearly
over quite how bad it had been, that emptiness.
The two pale faces, so like, were quivering with the
same pain, the same keen recognition of it.
" ISTo," Lucy whispered. " I didn't come ... I
kept away."
Peter said, steadying his voice, " But now you will.
Now I may come to you. Oh, I know why you kept
away. You thought it would be less hard for me if
I didn't see you. But don't again. It isn't less hard.
It's it's impossible. First Denis, then you. I can't
bear it. I only want to see you sometimes ; just to feel
you're there. I won't be grasping, Lucy."
" Yes," said Lucy calmly, " you will. You're going
to be grasping in future. You're going to take and
have. . . . Peter, my dear, haven't you reached the
258 THE LEE SHORE
place I've reached yet? Don't you know that between
you and me it's got to be all or nothing? I've learnt
that now. So I tried nothing. But that won't do.
So now it's going to be all. . . . I'm coming to Thomas
and you. We three together will find nice things for
one another."
Peter's forehead was on his drawn-up knees. He
felt her hand touch his head, and shivered a little.
" Denis," he whispered.
She answered, " Denis has everything. Denis won't
miss me among so much. Denis is the luckiest, the
most prosperous, the most succeeding person I know.
Peter, let me try and tell you about Denis and me."
She paused for a moment, leaning her head back
against the beech-tree and looking up wide-eyed at the
singing roof overhead.
- " You know how it was, I expect," she said, with
the confidence they always had in each other's knowl-
edge, that saved so many words. " How Denis came
among us, among you and me and father and Felicity
and our unprosperous, dingy friends, and how he was
all bright and shining and beautiful, and I loved him,
partly because he was so bright and beautiful, and a
great deal because you did, and you and I have always
loved the same things. And so I married him; and
at the time, and oh, for ever so long, I didn't under-
stand how it was; how it was all wrong, and how he
and I didn't really belong to each other a bit, because
he's in one lot of people, and I'm in another. He's in
the top lot, that gets things, and I'm in the under lot,
with you and father and all the poorer people who don't
get things, and have to find life nice in spite of it. I'd
deserted really ; and father and Felicity knew I had ;
only I didn't know, or I'd never have done it. I only
got to understand gradjully " (Lucy's long words were
THE NEW LIFE 259
apt to be a blur, like a child's), "when I saw what a
lot of good things Denis and his friends had, and how
I had to have them too, 'cause I couldn't get away from
them ; and oh, Peter, I've felt smothered beneath them !
They're so heavy and so rich, and shut people out
from the rest of the world that hasn't got them, so that
they can't hear or see each other. It's like living in
a palace in the middle of dreadful slums, and never
caring. Because you can't care, however much you try,
in the palace, the same as you can if you're down in
the middle of the poorness and the emptiness. Wasn't
it Christ who said how hardly rich men shall enter into
the kingdom of heaven ? And it's harder still for them
to enter into the other kingdoms, which aren't heaven
at all. It's hard for them to step out from where they
are and enter anywhere else. Peter, can anyone ever
leave their world and go into another. I have failed,
you see. Denis would never even begin to try; he
wouldn't see any object. I don't believe it can be done.
Except perhaps by very great people. And we're not
that. People like you and me and Denis belong where
we're born and brought up. Even for the ones who
try, to change, it's hard. And most of us don't try at
all, or care . . . Denis hardly cares, really. He's gen-
erous with money; he lets me give away as much as I
like; but he doesn't care himself. Unhappiness and
bad luck and disgrace don't touch him ; he doesn't want
to have anything to do with them ; he doesn't like them.
Even his friends, the people he likes, he gets tired of
directly they begin to go under. You know that. And
it's dreadful, Peter. I hate it, being comfortable up
there and not seeing and not hearing and not caring.
Seems to me we just live to have a good time. Well,
of course, people ought to do that, it's the thing to live
for, and I usen't to mind before I was rich, and father
260 THE LEE SHORE
and Felicity and you and I had a good time together.
But when you're rich and among rich people, and have
a good time not because you make it for yourself out
of all the common things that everyone shares the
sunshine and the river and the nice things in the streets
but have a special corner of good things marked off
for you, then it gets dreadful. 'Tisn't that one thinks
one ought to be doing more for other people; I don't
think I've that sort of conscience much; only that I
don't belong. I can't help thinking of all the down-
below people, the disreputable, unlucky people, who fail
and don't get things, and I know that's where I really
belong. It's like being born in one family and going
and living in another. You never fit in really; your
proper family is calling out to you all the time. Oh,
not only because they aren't rich and lucky, but because
they really suit you best, in little ways as well as big
ways. You understand them, and they understand
you. All the butlers and footmen and lady's-maids
frighten me so ; I don't like telling them to do things ;
they're so so solemn and respectable. And I don't
like creatures to be killed, and I don't like eating them
afterwards. But Denis and his friends and the serv-
ants and everyone thinks it's idiotic to be a vegetarian.
Denis says vegetarians are nearly all cranks and bound-
ers, and long-haired men or short-haired women. Well,
I can't help it ; I s'pose that shows where I really and
truly belong, though I don't like short-haired women ;
it's so ugly, and they talk so loud very often. And
there it is again ; I dislike short hair 'cause of that, but
Denis dislikes it 'cause it isn't done. That's so often
his reason ; and he means not done by his partic'lar lot
of top-room people. ... So you see, Peter, I don't
belong there, do I ? I don't belong any more than you
do."
THE NEW LIFE 261
Peter shook his head. " I never supposed you did,
of course."
" Well," she said next, " what you're thinking now
is that Denis wants me. He doesn't not much.
He's not awf ' ly fond of me, Peter ; I think he's rather
tired of me, 'cause I often want to do tiresome things,
that aren't done. I think he knows I don't belong.
He's very kind and pleasant always; but he'd be as
happy without me, and much happier with another wife
who fitted in more. He only took me as a sort of
luxury; he didn't really need me. And you do; you
and Thomas. You want me much more than he ever
did, or ever could. You want me so much that even
if Denis did want me a great deal, I should come to
you, because you want me more, and because all his
life he's had the things he wanted, and now it's your
turn. 'Tisn't fair. Why shouldn't you have things
too you and Thomas ? Thomas and you and I can
be happy together with no money and nothing else
much ; we can make our own good time as we go along,
if we have each other. Oh, Peter, let's ! "
She bent down to him, reaching out her hands, and
Thomas smiled on her lap. So for a moment the three
stayed, and the woods were hushed round them, wait-
ing. Then in the green roof above a riot of shrill,
sweet triumph broke the hush, and Peter leaped to his
feet and laughed.
"Oh, Lucy, let's. Why not? I told Thomas the
day before yesterday that we were going to have a
good time now. Well, then, let's have it. Who's to
prevent it? It's our turn; it's our turn. We'll begin
from now and take things and keep them. . . . Oh,
d'you mean it, Lucy? D'you mean you'll come and
play with us, for ever and ever ? "
" 'Course I will," she said, simply, like a child.
262 THE LEE SHORE
He fell on his knees beside her and leant on his hands
and peered into Thomas's face.
" Do you hear, Thomas ? She's coming ; she's com-
ing to us, for always. You wanted her, didn't you?
You wanted her nearly as much as I did, only you
didn't know it so well. . . . Oh, Lucy, oh, Lucy, oh,
Lucy . . . I've wanted you so . . ."
" I've wanted you too," she said. " I haven't talked
about that part of it, 'cause it's so obvious, and I knew
you knew. All the time, even when I thought I cared
for Denis, I was only half a person without you. Of
course, I always knew that, without thinking much
about it, from the time we were babies. Only I didn't
know it meant this; I thought it was more like being
brother and sister, and that we could both be happy just
seeing each other sometimes. It's only rather lately
that I've known it had to be everything. There's noth-
ing at all to say about the way we care, Peter, because
it's such an old stale thing; it's always been, and I
s'pose it always will be. 'Tisn't a new, surprising,
sudden thing, like my falling in love with Denis. It's
so deep, it's got root right down at the bottom, before
we can either of us remember. It's like this ivy that's
all over the ground, and out of which all the little
flowers and things grow. And when it's like that. . . ."
" Yes," said Peter, " when it's like that, there's only
one way to take. What's the good of fighting against
life ? We're not going to fight any more, Thomas and
I. We're going simply to grab everything we can get.
The more things the better ; I always knew that. Who
wants to be a miserable Franciscan on the desert hills ?
It's so unutterably profane. Here begins the new life."
They sat in silence together on the creeping, earth-
rooted ivy out of which all the little flowers and things
grew; and all round them the birds sang how it was
THE NEW LIFE 263
spring-time. The fever of the spring was in Peter's
blood, flowing through his veins like fire, and he knew
only that life was good and lovely and was calling to
the three of them to come and live it, to take the April
paths together through green woods. The time was not
long past, though it seemed endless years ago, when he
would have liked them to be four, when he would have
liked Denis to come too, because he had so loved Denis
that to hurt him and leave him would have been un-
thinkable. But the time was past. Peter and Lucy
had come to the place where they couldn't share and
didn't want to, and no love but one matured. They
had left civilisation, left friendship, which is part of
civilisation, behind, and knew only the primitive, self-
ish, human love that demands all of body and soul.
They needed no words to explain to one another their
change of view. For always they had leaped to one
another's thoughts and emotions and desires.
Lucy said wistfully, after a time, " Denis will never
see us again."
But thoughts of Denis did not, could not, dim the
radiant vision of roads running merrily through the
country of the spring.
Thomas here said that it was milk-time, and Peter,
who had thoughtfully remembered to bring his bottle,
produced it from his pocket and applied it, while Lucy
looked on and laughed.
" In future," she said, " I shall take over that job."
" I wonder," murmured Peter, " exactly what we
contemplate living on. Shall we sell boot-laces on the
road, or play a barrel-organ, or what ? "
" Oh, anything that's nice. But I've got a little,
you know. Father hadn't much, but there was some-
thing for Felicity and me. It's seemed nothing, com-
pared with what I've been living on lately; but it will
264 THE LEE SHORE
look quite a lot when it's all we've got. . . . Father' d
be glad, Peter, if he knew. He'd say we ought to do
it, I know he would. It's partly him I've been
hearing all this time, calling and calling to me to come
away and live. He did so hate fat and sweetness and
all smothering things. They just bored him dreadfully.
He wouldn't ever come and stay with us, you know.
. . . Oh, and I've written to Felicity, telling her what
I meant to do. I don't quite know what she'll say;
nobody ever does know, with Felicity. . . . Now I'm
going back to the house, Peter, and you and Thomas
must go back too. But first we'll settle what to do,
and when to do it."
It didn't take much settling, between three people
who saw no difficulties anywhere, but said simply, " Let
us do this," and did it, as children do. But such plans
as they thought desirable they made, then parted.
" I shall tell Denis," said Lucy, " I must do that.
I'll explain to him all I can, and leave the rest. But
not yet. I shall tell him on Sunday night."
" Yes," Peter agreed, simply, while the shadow fell
again momentarily on his vision. " You must do that,
of course. . . ."
He left it at that ; for Denis he had no words.
Lucy got up, and laid Thomas in Peter's arms.
" How much I've talked and talked, Peter. I've
never talked so much before, have I ? And I s'pose
I never will again. But it had to be all said out once.
I'm tired of only thinking things, even though I knew
you understood. Saying things makes them alive.
They're alive now, and always will be. So good-
bye."
They stood and looked at one another for a moment
in silence, then turned and took their opposite ways.
Peter didn't go back to London till the late afternoon.
THE NEW LIFE 265
He had things to show Thomas on this his first day in
the country. So he took him a long walk, and Thomas
sat in meadows and got a near view of cows and sheep,
and saw Peter paddle in a stream and try to catch
minnows in an old tin pot that he found.
Another thing that he found, or rather that found
them, was a disreputable yellow dog. He was accom-
panying a tramp and his wife along the road. When
the tramp sat down and untied a handkerchief full of
apple pie and cold potatoes (tramps have delightful
things to eat as a rule) the dog came near and asked
for his share, and was violently removed to a distance
by the tramp's boot. He cried and ran through the
hedge and came upon Peter and Thomas, who were
sitting on the other side, in a field. Peter looked over
the hedge and said, " Is he yours ? " and was told,
" Mine ! No, 'e ain't. 'E's been follerin' us for miles,
and the more I kick 'im the more 'e follers. Wish
someone'd pison 'im. I'm sick of 'im." His wife,
who had the weary, hopeless, utterly resigned face of
some female tramps, said, " 'E'll do for 'im soon, my
man will," without much interest.
" I'll take him with me," said Peter, and drew the
disreputable creature to him and gently rubbed his
bruised side, and saw that he had rather a nice face,
meant to be cheerful, and friendly and hopeful eyes.
Indeed, he must be friendly and hopeful to have fol-
lowed such companions so far.
" Will you be our dog? " said Peter to him. " Will
you come walking with us in future, and have a little
bit of whatever we get? And shall we call you San
Francesco, because you like disreputable people and
love your brother, the sun, and keep company with
your little sisters, the fleas? Very good, then. This
is Thomas, and you may lick his face very gently, but
266 THE LEE SHORE
remember that he is smaller than you and Has to be
tenderly treated lest he break."
San Francesco stayed with them through the after-
noon, and accompanied them back to London, smuggled
under a seat, because Peter couldn't afford a ticket for
him. He proved a likeable being on further acquaint-
ance, with a merry grin and an amused cock of the eye ;
obviously one who took the world's vagaries with hu-
morous patience. Peter conveyed him from Padding-
ton to Mary Street with some difficulty, and bought a
bone for him from a cat's-meat-what-orfers man, and
took him up to the bright and beautiful sitting-room.
Then he told his landlady that he was about to leave
her.
" It isn't that I'm not satisfied, you know," he added,
fearing to hurt her, " but I'm going to give up lodgings
altogether. I'm going abroad, to Italy, on Monday."
"" / see." Mrs. Baker saw everything in a moment.
Her young gentleman had obviously been over-spending
his income (all these new things must have cost a pretty
penny), and had discovered, what many discover, that
flight was the only remedy.
" About the rent," she began, " and the bills . . ."
Peter said, " Oh, I'll pay you the rent and the bills
before I go. I promise I will. But I can't pay much
else, you know, Mrs. Baker. So when people come to
dun me, tell them I've gone no one knows where. I'm
awfully sorry about it, but I've simply no money left."
His smile, as always, softened her, and she nodded.
" I'll deal with 'em, sir ... I knew you was over-
spending yourself, as it were; I could have told you,
but I didn't like. You'd always lived so. cheap and
quiet till the day before yesterday; then all these new
things so suddenly. Ader and I said as you must 'ave
THE NEW LIFE 267
come in for some money, or else as (you'll excuse me,
sir) you was touched in the 'ead."
" I wasn't," said Peter. " Not in the least. I
wanted the things, so I got them. But now I come to
think of it, I shan't want most of them any more, as
I'm going away, so I think I'll just return them to the
shops they came from. Of course they won't be
pleased, but they'll prefer it to losing the money and
the things, I suppose, won't they. And we haven't
spoiled them a bit, except that cushion Francesco has
just walked over, and that can be cleaned, I expect.
I had to have them, you know, just when I wanted
them; I couldn't have borne not to; but I don't really
need them any more, because I'm going to have other
things now. Oh, I'm talking too much, and you want
to be cooking the supper, don't you, and I want to put
Thomas to bed."
CHAPTER XX
THE LAST LOSS
THREE days later it was Easter Day. In the even-
ing, about half-past nine, when Thomas lay sleeping
and Peter was packing the rugs and cushions and pic-
tures he hadn't paid for into brown paper parcels (a
tedious job), Rodney came in. Peter hadn't seen him
for some time.
" What on earth," said Rodney, lighting his pipe
and sitting down, " are you doing with all that up-
holstery? Has someone been sending you Easter
presents? Well, I'm glad you're getting rid of them
as speedily as may be."
Peter said ruefully, because he was tired of the busi-
ness, " The stupid things aren't paid for. So I'm
packing them up to be sent back directly the shops open
again. I can't afford them, you see. Already most of
my belongings are in pawn."
" I see." Eodney wasn't specially struck by this ;
it was the chronic condition of many of his friends,
who were largely of the class who pawn their clothes
on Monday and redeem them on Saturday to wear for
Sunday, and pawn them again, paying, if they can
afford it, a penny extra to have the dresses hung up
so that they don't crush.
" A sudden attack of honesty," Eodney commented.
" Well, I'm glad, because I don't see what you want
to cumber yourself with all those cushions and rugs
for. You're quite comfortable enough without them."
268
THE LAST LOSS 269
Peter said, " Thomas and I wanted nice things to
look at. We were tired of horse-hair and ' Grace Suffi-
cient.' Thomas is fastidious."
Rodney put a large finger on Thomas' head.
" Thomas isn't such a fool. . . . Hullo, there's an-
other of you." Francesco woke and came out of his
corner and laid his nose on Eodney's knee with his con-
fiding grin.
" Yes, that's San Francesco. Rather nice, isn't he.
He's coming with us too. I called him Francesco
instead of Francis that he might feel at home in Italy."
" Oh, in Italy."
Peter hadn't meant to tell Rodney that, because he
didn't think that Rodney would approve, and he wanted
to avoid an argument. But he had let it out, of course ;
he could never keep anything in.
" That's where we're going to-morrow, to seek our
fortunes. Won't it be rather good in Italy now ? We
don't know what we shall do when we get there, or
where we shall go ; but something nice, for sure."
" I'm glad," said Rodney. " It's a good country in
the spring. Shall you walk the roads with Thomas
slung over your back, or what ? "
" I don't know. Partly, I daresay. But we want
to find some little place between the hills and the sea,
and stay there. Perhaps for always; I don't know.
It's going to be extraordinarily nice, anyhow."
Rodney glanced at him, caught by the ring in his
voice, a ring he hadn't heard for long. He didn't
quite understand Peter. When last he saw him, he
had been very far through, alarmingly near the bottom.
Was this recovery natural grace, or had something
happened? It seemed to Rodney rather admirable,
and he looked appreciatively at Peter's cheerful face
and happy eyes.
270 THE LEE SHORE
" Good," he said. " Good splendid ! "
And then Peter, meeting his pleased look and under-
standing it, winced back from it, and coloured, and
bent over his brown paper and string. He valued
Rodney's appreciation, a thing not easily won. He
felt that in this moment he had won it, as he had
never won it before. For he knew that Rodney liked
pluck, and was thinking him plucky.
Against his will he muttered, half beneath his breath,
" Oh, it isn't really what you call good. It is good,
you know: I think it's good; but you won't. You'll
call it abominable."
" Oh," said Rodney.
Peter went on, with a new violence, " I know all
you'll say about it, so I'm not going to give you the
opportunity of saying it till I'm gone. You needn't
think I'm going to tell you now and let you tell me
I'm wrong. I'm not wrong; and if I am I don't care.
Please don't stay any more; I'd rather you weren't
here to-night. I don't want to tell you anything ; only
I had just got to say that, because you were thinking.
. . . Oh, do go now."
Rodney sat quite still and looked at him, into him,
through him, beyond him. Then he said, " You
needn't tell me anything. I know. Lucy and you are
going together."
Peter stood up, rather unsteadily.
" Well ? That's not clever. Any fool could have
guessed that."
" Yes. And any fool could guess what I'm going
to say about it, too. You know it all already, of
course. ..."
Rodney was groping for words, helplessly, blindly.
" Peter, I didn't know you had it in you to be a
cad."
THE LAST LOSS 271
Peter was putting books into a portmanteau, and did
not answer.
" You mean to do that ... to Denis. . . ."
Peter put in socks and handkerchiefs.
" And to Lucy. ... I don't understand you, Peter.
... I simply don't understand. Are you mad or
drunk or didn't I really ever know you in the least ? "
Peter stuffed in Thomas' nightgowns, crumpling
them hideously.
" Very well," said Eodney, very quietly. " It
doesn't particularly matter which it is. In any case
you are not going to do it. I shall prevent it."
" You can't," Peter flung at him, crushing a woolly
rabbit in among Thomas' clothes.
Rodney sat still and looked at him, resting his chin
on his hand ; looked into him, through him, beyond him,
" I believe I can," he said simply.
Peter stopped filling the bag, and, still sitting on the
floor by it, delivered himself at last.
" We care for each other. Isn't that to count, then?
We always have cared for each other. Are we to do
without each other for always ? We want each other
we need each other. Denis doesn't need Lucy. He
never did ; not as I do. Are Lucy and I to do without
each other, living only half a life, because of him?
I tell you, I'm sick to death of doing without things.
The time has come when it won't do any more, and
I'm going to take what I can. I think I would rob any-
one quite cheerfully if he had what I wanted. A few
days ago I did rob; I bought things I knew I couldn't
pay for. I'm sending them back now simply because
I don't want them any more, not because I'm sorry I
took them. It was fair I should take them ; it was my
turn to have things, mine and Thomas's. And now
I'm going to take this, and keep it, till it's taken away
272 THE LEE SHORE
from me. I daresay it will be taken away soon; my
things always are. Everything has broken and gone,
one thing after another, all my life all the things
I've cared for. I'm tired of it. I was sick of it by
the time I was ten years old, sick of always getting ill
or smashed up; and that's gone on ever since, and peo-
ple have always thought, I know, t Oh, it's only him,
he never minds anything, he doesn't count, he's just a
crock, and his only use is to play the fool for us.' But
I did mind; I did. And I only played the fool be-
cause it would have been drearier still not to, and be-
cause there was always something amusing left to
laugh at, not because I didn't mind. And then I
cared for Denis as ... Oh, but you know how I cared
for Denis. He was the most bright and splendid thing
I knew in all the splendid world . . . and he chucked
me, because everything went wrong that could go wrong
between us without my fault . . . and our friendship
was spoilt. . . . And I cared for Hilary and Peggy;
and they would go and do things to spoil all our lives,
and the more I tried, like an ass, to help, the more I
seemed to mess things up, till the crash came, and we
all went to bits together. And we had to give up
the only work we liked and I did love mine so
and slave at things we hated. And still we kept sink-
ing and sinking, and crashing on worse and worse
rocks, till we hadn't a sound piece left to float us. And
then, when I thought at least we could go down together,
they went away and left me bejimd. So I'd failed
there too, hopelessly. I always have failed in every-
thing I've tried. I tried to make Ehoda happy, but
that failed too. She left me; and now she's dead, and
Thomas hasn't any mother at all. . . . And Lucy . . .
whom I'd cared for since before I could remember . . .
and I'd always thought, without thinking about it, that
THE LAST LOSS 273
some day of course we should be together . . . Lucy
left me, and our caring became wrong, so that at last
we didn't care to see one another at all. And then it
was as if hell had opened and let us in. The other
things hadn't counted like that; health, money, beau-
tiful things, interesting work, honour, friends, mar-
riage, even Denis they'd all collapsed and I did
mind, horribly. But not like that. As long as I could
see Lucy sometimes, I could go on and I had Thomas
too, though I don't know why he hasn't collapsed yet.
But at last, quite suddenly, when the emptiness and
the losing had been getting to seem worse and worse
for a long time, they became so bad that they were im-
possible. I got angry; it was for Thomas more than
for myself, I think; and I said it should end. I said
I would take things ; steal them, if I couldn't get them
by fair means. And I went down to Astleys, to see
them, to tell them it must end. And in the woods I
met Lucy. And she'd been getting to know too that
it must end, for her sake as well as for mine. . . . And
so we're going to end it, and begin again. We're going
to be happy, because life is too jolly to miss."
Peter ended defiantly, and flung his razor in among
the socks.
Rodney had listened quietly, his eyes on Peter's pro-
file. When he stayed silent, Peter supposed that he
had at last convinced him of the unbreakable strength
of his purpose for iniquity, and that he would give him
up and go away. After a minute he turned and looked
up at Rodney, and said, " Now do you see that it's no
good?"
Rodney took out his pipe and knocked it out and
put it away before he answered :
" I'm glad you've said all that, Peter. Not that I
didn't know it all before; of course I did. When I
274 THE LEE SHORE
said at first that I didn't understand you, I was lying.
I did understand, perfectly well. But I'm glad you've
said it, because it's well to know that you realise it
so clearly yourself. It saves my explaining it to you.
It gives us a common knowledge to start on. And now
may I talk for a little, please? No, not for a little;
for some time."
" Go on," said Peter. " But it's no use, you know.
. . . What do you mean by our common knowledge?
The knowledge that I'm a failure ? "
Rodney nodded. " Precisely that. You've stated
the case so clearly yourself in outline, for you've
left out a great deal, of course that really it doesn't
leave much for me to say. Let's leave you alone for
the moment. I want to talk about other people.
There are other people in the world besides ourselves,
of course, improbable as the fact occasionally seems.
The fact, I mean, that it's a world not of individual
units but of closely connected masses of people, not one
of whom stands alone. One can't detach oneself ; one's
got to be in with one camp or another. The world's
full of different and opposing camps worse luck.
There are the beauty-lovers and the beauty-scorners,
and all the fluctuating masses in between, like most
of us, who love some aspects of it and scorn others.
There are the well-meaning and the ill-meaning and
again the incoherent cross-benchers, who mean a little
good and a little harm and for the most part mean noth-
ing at all either way. Again, there are what people
call the well-bred, the ill-bred, and of course the half-
bred. An idiotic division that, because what do we
know, any of us, of breeding, that we should call it
good or bad? But there it is; a most well-marked
division in everyone's eyes. And (and now I'm getting
to the point) there are the rich and the poor or call
THE LAST LOSS 275
them, rather, the Haves and the Have-nots. I don't
mean with regard to money particularly, though that
comes in. But it's an all-round thing. It's an un-
doubted fact, and one there's no getting round, that
some people are born with the acquiring faculty, and
others with the losing. Most of us, of course, are in
the half-way house, and win and lose in fairly average
proportions. But some of us seem marked out either
for the one or for the other. I know personally a good
many in both camps. Many more of the Have-nots,
thoug;h, because I prefer to cultivate their acquaintance.
There's a great deal to be done for the Haves too ; they
need, I fancy, all the assistance they can get if they're
not to become prosperity-rotten. The Have-Nbts
haven't that danger; but they've plenty of dangers of
their own; and, well, I suppose it's a question of taste,
and that I prefer them. Anyhow, I do know a great
many. People, you understand, with nothing at all
that seems to make life tolerable. Destitutes, inca-
pables, outcasts, slaves to their own lusts or to a grind-
ing economic system or to some other cruelty of fate
or men. Whatever the immediate cause of their ill-
fortune may be, its underlying, fundamental cause is
their own inherent faculty for failure and loss, their in-
competence to take and hold the good things of life.
You know the stale old hackneyed cry of the anti-so-
cialists, how it would be no use equalising conditions
because each man would soon return again to his orig-
inal state. It's true in a deeper sense than they mean.
You might equalise economic conditions as much as
you please, but you'd never equalise fundamental con-
ditions; you'd never turn the poor into the rich, the
Have-Nots into the Haves. You know I'm not a So-
cialist. I don't want to see a futile attempt to throw
down barriers and merge all camps in one indetermin-
276 THE LEE SHORE
ate army who don't know what they mean or where
they're going. I'm not a Socialist, because I don't be-
lieve in a universal outward prosperity. I mean, I
don't want it ; I should have no use for it. I'm holding
no brief for the rich ; I've nothing to say about them
just now; and anyhow you and I have no concern with
them." Rodney pulled himself back from the edge
of a topic on which he was apt to become readily
vehement. " But Socialism isn't the way out for them
any more than it's the way out for the poor; it's got,
I believe, to be by individual renunciation that their sal-
vation will come ; by their giving up, and stripping bare,
and going down one by one and empty-handed into the
common highways, to take their share of hardness like
men. It will be extraordinarily difficult. Changing
one's camp is. It's so difficult as to be all but impos-
sible. Perhaps you've read the Bible story of the
young man with great possessions, and how it was
said, l With men it is impossible . . .' "Well, the tra-
dition, true or false, goes that in the end he did it;
gave up his possessions and became financially poor.
But we don't know, even if that's true, what else he
kept of his wealth ; a good deal, I daresay, that wasn't
money or material goods. One can't tell. What we
do know is that to cross that dividing line, to change
one's camp, is a nearly impossible thing. Someone
says, ' That division, the division of those who have
and those who have not, runs so deep as almost to run
to the bottom.' The great division, he calls it, between
those who seize and those who lose. Well, the Haves
aren't always seizers, I think ; often more often, per-
haps they have only to move tranquilly through life
and let gifts drop into their hands. It's pleasant to
see, if we are not in a mood to be jarred. It's often
attractive. It was mainly that that attracted you long
THE LAST LOSS 277
ago in Denis Urquhart. The need and the want in
you, who got little and lost much, was somehow vicari-
ously satisfied by the gifts he received from fortune;
by his beauty and strength and good luck and power of
winning and keeping. He was pleasant in your eyes,
because of these gifts of his; and, indeed, they made
of him a pleasant person, since he had nothing to be
unpleasant about. So your emptiness found pleasure
in his fullness, your poverty in his riches, your weak-
ness in his strength, and you loved him. And I think
if anything could (yet) have redeemed him, have saved
him from his prosperity, it would have been your love.
But instead of letting it drag him down into the scrum
and the pity and the battle of life, he turned away
from it and kept it at a distance, and shut himself more
closely between his protecting walls of luxury and well-
being. Then, again, Lucy gave him his chance ; but he
hasn't (so far) followed her love either. She'd have
led him, if she could, out of the protecting, confining
walls, into the open, where people are struggling and
perishing for lack of a little pity; 'but he wouldn't.
So far the time hasn't been ripe for his saving ; his day
is still to come. It's up to all of us who care for him
and can any of us help it ? to save him from him-
self. And chiefly it's your job and Lucy's. You can
do your part now only by clearing out of the way,
and leaving Lucy to do hers. She will do it, I firmly
believe, in the end, if you give her time. Lucy, I
know, for I have seen it when I have been with her,
has been troubled about her own removal from the
arena, about her own being confined between walla so
that she can't hear the people outside calling; but that
is mere egotism. She can hear and see all right; she
has all her senses, and she will never stop using them.
It's her business to be concerned for Denis, who is blind
278 THE LEE SHORE
and deaf. It's her business to use her own caring to
make him care. She's got to drag him out, not to let
herself be shut inside with him. It can be done, and
Lucy, if anyone in the world, can do it if she doesn't
give up and shirk. Lucy, if anyone in the world, has
the right touch, the right loosing power, to set Denis
free. I think that you too have the touch and the
power but you mustn't use yours; the time for that
is gone by. Yours is the much harder business of clear-
ing out of the way. If you ever loved Denis, you will
do that."
He paused and looked at Peter, who was still sitting
on the floor, motionless, with bent head.
" May I go on ? " said Rodney, and Peter answered
nothing.
Rodney looked away again out of the window into
a grey night sky that hid the Easter moon, and went
on, gently. He was tired of talking ; his discourse had
been already nearly as long as an average woman ; but
he went on deliberately talking and talking, to give
Peter time.
" So, you see, that is an excellent reason to you
it is, I believe, the incontrovertible reason why you
should once more give up and lose, and not take. But,
deeper than that, to me more insurmountable than that,
is the true reason, which is simply that that very thing
to lose, to do without is your business in life, as
you've said yourself. It's your profession. You are
in the camp of the Have-Nots ; you belong there. You
can't desert. You can't step out and go over to the
enemy. If you did, if you could (only you can't) it
would be a betrayal. And, whatever you gained, you'd
lose by it what you have at present your fellowship
with the other unfortunates. Isn't that a thing worth
having? Isn't it something to be down on the ground
THE LAST LOSS 279
with the poor and empty-handed, not above them, where
you can't hear them crying and laughing ? Would you,
if you could, be one of the prosperous, who don't care ?
Would you, if you could, be one of those who have their
joy in life ready-made and put into their hands, instead
of one of the poor craftsmen who have to make their
own ? What's the gaiety of the saints ? Not the pleas-
ant cheerfulness of the Denis Urquharts and their kind,
who have things, but the gaiety, in the teeth of cir-
cumstances, of St. Francis and his paupers, who have
nothing and yet possess all things. That's your gaiety ;
the gaiety that plays the fool, as you put it, looking
into the very eyes of agony and death; that loses and
laughs and makes others laugh in the last ditch; the
gaiety of those who drop all cargoes, fortune and good
name and love, overboard lightly, and still spread sail
to the winds and voyage, and when they're driven by the
winds at last onto a lee shore, derelicts clinging to a
broken wreck, find on the shore coloured shells to play
with and still are gay. That's your gaiety, as I've al-
ways known it and loved it. Are you going to chuck
that gaiety away, and rise up full of the lust to possess,
and take and grasp and plunder? Are you going to
desert the empty-handed legion, whose van you've
marched in all your life, and join the prosperous ? "
Rodney broke off for a moment, as if he waited for an
answer. He rose from his chair and began to walk
about the room, speaking again, with a more alright
vehemence. " Oh, you may think this is mere romance,
fancy, sentiment, what you will. But it isn't. It's
deadly, solid truth. You can't grasp. You can't try to
change your camp. You and Lucy too, for she's in
the same camp wouldn't be happy, to put it at its
simplest. You'd know all the time that you'd shirked,
deserted, been false to your business. You'd be fishes
280 THE LEE SHORE
out of water, with the knowledge that you'd taken for
your own pleasure something that someone else ought
to have had. It isn't in either of you to do it. You
must leave such work to the Haves. Why, what hap-
pens the first time you try it on ? You have to send
back the goods you've tried to appropriate to where they
came from. It would be the same always. You don't
know how to possess. Then in heaven's name leave
possessing alone, and stick to the job you are good at
doing without. For you are good at that. You al-
ways have been, except just for just one short inter-
lude, which will pass like an illness and leave you well
again. Believe me, it will. I don't know when, or
how soon; but I do know that sometime you will be
happy again, with the things, the coloured shells, so to
speak, that you find still when all the winds and storms
have done their worst and all your cargoes are broken
wrecks at your feet. It will be then, in that last empti-
ness, that you'll come to terms with disaster, and play
the fool again to amuse yourself and the other derelicts,
because, when there's nothing else left, there's always
laughter."
Rodney had walked to the window, and now stood
looking out at the dim, luminous night, wherein,
shrouded, the Easter moon dwelt in the heart of
shadows. From many churches, many clocks chimed
the hour. Rodney spoke once more, slowly, leaning
out into the shadowy night.
" Through this week," he said, " they have been
watching in those churches a supreme renouncement,
the ultimate agony of giving up, the last triumph of
utter loss. I'm not going to talk about that; it's not
my business or my right . . . But it surely counts, that
giving up whatever we may or may not believe about
it. It shines, a terrible counsel of perfection for those
THE LAST LOSS 281
who have, burning and hurting. But for those who
have not, it doesn't burn and hurt; it shines to cheer
and comfort ; it is the banner of the leader of the losing
legion, lifted up that the rest may follow after. Does
that help at all? ... Perhaps at this moment noth-
ing helps at all. ... Have I said enough ? Need I go
on?"
Peter's voice, flat and dead, spoke out of the shadow
of the dim room.
" You have said enough. You need not go on."
Then Rodney turned and saw him, sitting still on the
floor by the half-packed bag, with the yellow dog sleep-
ing against him. In the dim light his face looked pale
and pinched like a dead man's.
"You've done your work," the flat voice said.
" You've taken it away the new life we so wanted.
.You've shown that it can't be. You're quite right.
And you're right too that nothing helps at all. . . .
Because of Denis, I can't do this. But I find no good
in emptiness; why should I? I want to have things
and enjoy them, at this moment, more desperately than
you, who praise emptiness and doing without, ever
wanted anything."
" I am aware of that," said Rodney.
" You've got in the way," said Peter, looking up at
the tall gaunt figure by the window; and anger shook
him. " You've stepped in and spoilt it all. Yes, you
needn't be afraid; you've spoilt it quite irrevocably.
You knew that to mention Denis was enough to do that.
I was trying to forget him ; I could have, till it was too
late. You can go home now and feel quite easy ; you've
done your job. There's to be no new life for me, or
Thomas, or Lucy, or Francesco only the same old
emptiness. The same old . . . oh, damn ! "
Peter, who never swore, that ugly violence being re-
282 THE LEE SHORE
pugnant to his nature, swore now, and woke Francesco,
who put up his head to lick his friend's face. But
Peter pushed him away, surprising him violently, and
caught at his half-filled bag and snatched at the con-
tents and flung them on the top of one another on the
floor. They lay in a jumbled chaos Thomas's
clothes and Peter's socks and razor and Thomas's rab-
bit and Peter's books; and Francesco snuffled among
them and tossed them about, thinking it a new game.
" Go away now." Peter flung out the words like
another oath. " Go away to your poverty which you
like, and leave us to ours which we hate. There's no
more left for you to take away from us; it's all gone.
Unless you'd like me to throw Thomas out of the win-
dow, since you think breakages are so good."
Eodney merely said, " I'm not going away just yet.
Could you let me stay here for the night and sleep on
the sofa? It's late to go back to-night."
" Sleep where you like," said Peter. " There's the
bed. I don't want it."
But Eodney stretched himself instead on the horse-
hair sofa. He said no more, knowing that the time
for words was past. He lay tired and quiet, with closed
eyes, knowing how Peter and the other disreputable
forsaken outcast sat together huddled on the floor
through the dim night, till the dawn looked palely in
and showed them both fallen asleep, Peter's head rest-
ing on Francesco's yellow back.
It was Eodney who got up stiffly from his hard rest-
ing-place in the dark unlovely morning, and made tea
over Peter's spirit-lamp for both of them. Peter woke
later, and drank it mechanically. Then he looked at
Eodney and said, " I'm horribly stiff. Why did neither
of us go to bed ? " He was pale and heavy-eyed, and
violent no more, but very quiet and tired, as if, ac-
THE LAST LOSS 283
cepting, lie was sinking deep in grey and cold seas, that
numbed resistance and drowned words.
The milk came in, and Peter gave Thomas to drink;
and on the heels of the milk came the post, and a let-
ter for Peter.
" I suppose," said Peter dully, as he opened it, " she
too has found out that it can't be done."
The letter said : " Peter, we can't do it. I am hor-
ribly, horribly sorry, but I know it now for certain.
Perhaps you know it too, by now. Because the reason
is in you, not in me. It is that you love Denis too
much. So you couldn't be happy. I want you to be
happy, more than I want anything in the world, but
it can't be this way. Please, dear Peter, be happy
sometime; please, please be happy. I love you always
if that helps at all. LUCY."
Peter let the note fall on the floor, and stood with
bent head by the side of Thomas's crib, while Thomas
guggled his milk.
" Two minds with but a single thought," he remarked,
in that new, dreary voice of his. " As always. . . .
Well, it saves trouble. And we're utterly safe now, you
see; doubly safe. You can go home in peace."
Then Rodney, knowing that he could be no more use,
left the three derelicts together.
ON THE SHOEE
THEBE is a shore along which the world flowers, one
long sweet garden strip, between the olive-grey hills
and the very blue sea. Like nosegays in the garden
the towns are set, blooming in their many colours, linked
by the white road running above blue water. For
vagabonds in April the poppies riot scarlet by the white
road's edge, and the last of the hawthorn lingers like
melting snow, and over the garden walls the purple
veils of the wistaria drift like twilight mist. Over the
garden walls, too, the sweetness of the orange and lemon
blossom floats into the road, and the frangipani sends
delicate wafts down, and the red and white roses toss
and hang as if they had brimmed over from sheer ex-
uberance. If a door in one of the walls chance to
stand ajar, vagabonds on the road may look in and see
an Eden, unimaginably sweet, aflame with oleanders
and pomegranate blossom, and white like snow with tall
lilies.
The road itself is good, bordered on one side by the
garden sweetness and the blossoms that foam like wave-
crests over the walls, on the other breaking down to
a steep hill-slope where all the wild flowers of spring
star the grassy terraces, singing at the twisted feet of,
the olives that give them grey shadow. So the hill-
side runs steeply down to where at its rocky base the
blue waves murmur. All down the coast the road turns
and twists and climbs and dips, above little lovely bays
284
ON THE SHORE 285
and through little gay towns, caught between moun-
tains and blue water. For those who want a bed, the
hush of the moonlit olives that shadow the terraced
slopes gives sweeter sleep than the inns of the towns,
and the crooning of the quiet sea is a gentler lullaby
than the noises of streets, and the sweetness of the
myrtle blossom is better to breathe than the warm air
of rooms. To wander in spring beneath the sun by day
and the moon by night along the sea's edge is a good
life, a beautiful life, a cheerful and certainly an amus-
ing life. Social adventures crowd the road. There
are pleasant people along this shore of little blue bays.
Besides the ordinary natives of the towns and the coun-
try-side, and besides the residents in the hotels (whose
uses to vagabonds are purely financial) there is on this
shore a drifting and incalculable population, heteroge-
neous, yet with a note of character common to all. A
population cosmopolitan and shifting, living from hand
to mouth, vagrants of the road or of the street corner,
finding life a warm and easy thing in this long garden
shut between hills and sea. So warm and lovely and
easy a garden is it that it has for that reason become a
lee shore; a shore where the sick and the sad and the
frail and the unfortunate are driven by the winds of
adversity to find a sheltered peace. On the shore all
things may be given up; there is no need to hold with
effort any possession, even life itself, for all things
become gifts, easily bestowed and tranquilly received.
You. may live on extremely little there, and win that
little lightly. You may sell things along the road for
some dealer, or for yourself plaster casts, mosaic
brooches, picture postcards, needlework of divers col-
ours. If you have a small cart drawn by a small don-
key, you are a lucky man, and can carry your wares
about in it and sell them %t the hotels, or in the towns
286 THE LEE SHORE
at fair-time. If you possess an infant son, you can
carry him also about in the cart, and he will enjoy it.
Also, if your conversation is like the sun's, with a
friendly aspect to good and bad, you will find many
friends to beguile the way. You may pick them up at
fairs, on festa days, like blackberries.
On Santa Caterina's day, the 30th of April, there
is a great festa in the coast towns. They hold the saint
in especial honour on this shore, for she did much kind-
ness there in plague-time. Vagabonds with wares to
sell have a good day. There was, on one Santa Ca-
terina's day, a young man, with a small donkey-cart and
a small child and a disreputable yellow dog, who was
selling embroidery. He had worked it himself ; he was
working at it even now, in the piazza at Varenzano,
when not otherwise engaged. But a fair is too pleas-
antly distracting a thing to allow of much needle-work
being done in the middle of it. There are so many in-
teresting things. There are the roulette tables, round
which interested but cautious groups stand, while the
owners indefatigably and invitingly twirl. The gam-
bling instinct is not excessively developed in Varenzano.
There was, of course, the usual resolute and solitary
player, who stood through the hours silently laying one
halfpenny after another on clubs, untempted to any
deviation or any alteration of stake, except that on the
infrequent occasions when it really turned out clubs he
stolidly laid and lost his gained halfpennies by the other.
By nine o'clock in the morning he had become a char-
acter; spectators nudged new-comers and pointed him
out, with " Sempre fiori, quello." The young man with
the embroidery was sorry about him; he had an ex-
pression as if he were losing more halfpence than he
could well afford. The young man himself lost all
the stakes he made ; but he didn't gamble much, know-
ON THE SHORE 287
ing himself not lucky. Instead, he watched the fluctu-
ating fortunes of a vivacious and beautiful youth near
him, who flung on his stakes with a lavish gesture of
dare-devil extravagance, that implied that he was put-
ting his fortune to the touch to win or lose it all. It
was a relief to notice that his stakes were seldom more
than threepence. When he lost, he swore softly to
himself : " Dio mio, mio Dio, Dio mio," and then turned
courteously to the embroidery-seller, who was English,
with a, free interpretation "In Engliss, bai George."
This seemed to the embroidery-seller to be true polite-
ness in misfortune. The beautiful youth seemed to be
a person of many languages; his most frequent inter-
jection was, " Dio mio Holy Moses oh hang ! "
After which he would add an apology, addressed to the
embroidery-seller, who had a certain air of refined in-
nocence, " Bestemmiar, no. Brutio bestemmiare.
Non gli piace, no" and resume his game.
Peter, who was selling embroidery, liked him so much
that he followed him when he went to try his luck at
the cigar game. Here Peter, who never smoked, won
two black and snake-like cigars, which he presented to
the beautiful young man, who received them with im-
mense cordiality. A little later the young man, whose
name was Livio, involved himself in a violent quarrel
with the cigar banker, watched by an amused, placid
and impartial crowd of spectators. Peter knew Livio
to have the right on his side, because the banker had
an unpleasant face and Livio accused him of being not
only a Venetian but a Freemason. The banker in re-
sponse remarked that he was not going to stay to be
insulted by a Ligurian thief, and with violent gestures
unscrewed his tin lady and her bunch of real lemons
and put away his board. Livio burst into a studied
and insulting shout of laughter, stopped abruptly with-
288 THE LEE SHORE
out remembering to bring it to a proper finish, and be-
gan to be pleasant to the embroidery-seller, speaking
broken American English with a strong nasal twang.
" My name is Livio Ceresole. Bin in America ; the
States. All over the place. Chicago, 'Frisco, Pull-
man cars, dollars you know. Learnt Engliss there.
Very fine country; I should smile." He did so, and
looked so amiable and so engaging that the embroidery-
seller smiled back, thinking what a beautiful person he
was. He had the petulant, half sensuous, spoilt-boy
beauty of a young Antinuous, with a rakish touch added
by the angle of his hat and his snappy American idioms.
So it came about that those two threw in their lots
for a time. There was something about the embroid-
ery-seller that drew these casual friendships readily to
him ; he was engaging, with a great innocence of aspect
and gentleness of demeanour, and a friendly smile that
sweetened the world, and a lovable gift of amusement.
He had been wandering on this shore for now six
months, and had friends in most of the towns. One
cannot help making them; the people there are, for
the most part, so pleasant. A third-class railway car-
riage, vilely lighted and full of desperately uncom-
fortable wooden seats, and so full of warm air and bad
tobacco smoke that Peter often felt sick before the
train moved (he always did so, in any train, soon after)
was yet full of agreeable people, merry and sociable
and engagingly witty, and, whether achieving wit or
not, with a warm welcome for anything that had that
intention. There is a special brand of charm, of hu-
mour, of infectious and friendly mirth, and of exceed-
ing personal beauty, that is only fully known by those
who travel third in Italy.
From Varenzano on this festa day in the golden
afternoon the embroidery-seller and his donkey-cart and
ON THE SHORE 289
his small son and his yellow dog and Livio Ceresole
walked to Castoleto. Livio, who had a sweet voice,
sang snatches of melody in many languages; doggerel
songs, vulgarities from musical comedies, melodies of
the street corner; and the singer's voice redeemed and
made music of them all. He was practising his songs
for use at the hotels, where he sang and played the
banjo in the evenings, to add to his income. He told
Peter that he was, at the moment, ruined.
" In Engliss," he translated, " stony-broke." A
shop he had kept in Genoa had failed, so he was thrown
upon the roads.
" You too are travelling, without a home, for gain ? "
he inferred. " You are one of us other unfortunates,
you and the little child. Poor little one ! "
" Oh, he likes it," said Peter. " So do I. We don't
want a home. This is better."
" Not so bad," Livio admitted, " when one can live.
But we should like to make our fortunes, isn't it so ? "
Peter said he didn't know. There seemed so little
prospect of it that the question was purely academical.
They were coming to Castoleto. Livio stopped, and
proceeded to pay attention to his personal appearance,
moistening a fragment of yesterday's " Corriere della
Sera " in his mouth, and applying it with vigour to
his dusty boots. When they shone to his satisfaction,
he produced from his pocket a comb and a minute hand-
mirror, and arranged his crisp waves of dark hair to
a gentlemanly neatness. Then he replaced his pseudo-
panama hat, with the slight inclination to the left side
that seemed to him suitable, re-tied his pale blue tie,
and passed the mirror to Peter, who went through sim-
ilar operations.
" Castoleto will be gay for the festa," Livio said.
" Things doing," he interpreted ; adding, " Christopher
290 THE LEE SHORE
Columbus born there ; found America. Very big man ;
yes, sir."
Peter said he supposed so.
Livio added, resuming his own tongue, " Santa Ca-
terina da Siena visited Castoleto. Are you a Chris-
tian?"
" Oh, well," said Peter, who found the subject diffi-
cult, and was not good at thinking out difficult things.
Livio nodded. " One doesn't want much church, of
course; that's best for the women. But so many Eng-
lish aren't Christians at all, but heretics."
They came into Castoleto, which is a small place
where the sea washes a shingly shore just below the
town, and the narrow streets smell of fish and other
things. Livio waved his hand towards a large new
hotel that stood imposingly on the hill just behind the
town.
" There we will go this evening, I with my music,
you with your embroideries." That seemed a good
plan. Till then they separated, Livio going to try
his fortune at the fair, and Peter and Thomas and
Francesco and Suor Clara (the donkey) establishing
themselves on the shore by the edge of the waveless
sea. There Peter got out of the cart a tea-caddy and
a spirit lamp and made tea (he was always rather un-
happy if he missed his tea) and ate biscuits, and gave
Thomas now an interested and cheerful person of
a year and a half old milk and sopped biscuit, and
produced a bone for Francesco and carrots for Clara,
and so they all had tea.
It was the hour when the sun dips below the western
arm of hills that shuts the little bay, leaving behind
it two lakes of pure gold, above and below. The sea
burned like a great golden sheet of liquid glass spread-
ing, smooth and limpid, from east to west, and swaying
ON THE SHORE 291
with a gentle hushing sound to and fro which was all
the motion it had for waves. From moment to mo-
ment it changed; the living gold melted into green and
blue opal tints, tender like twilight.
" After tea we'll go paddling," Peter told Thomas.
" And then perhaps we'll get a fisherman to take us
out while he drops his net. Santa Caterina should
give good fishing."
In the town they were having a procession. Peter
heard the chanting as they passed, saw, through the
archways into the streets, glimpses of it. He heard
their plaintive hymn that entreated pity:
"Difendi, O Caterina
Da peste, fame e guerra,
II popol di Cartoleto
In mare e in terra . . ."
Above the hymn rose the howls of little St. John
the Baptist, who had been, no doubt, suddenly mas-
tered by his too high-spirited lamb and upset on to
his face, so that his mother had to rush from out the
crowd to comfort him and brush the dust from his curls
that had been a-curling in papers these three weeks
past.
It was no doubt a beautiful procession, and Peter
and Thomas loved processions, but they had seen one
that morning at Varenzano, so they were content to see
and hear this from a distance.
Why, Peter speculated, do we not elsewhere thus
beautify and sanctify our villages and cities and coun-
try places ? Why do they not, in fishing hamlets of a
colder clime, thus bring luck to their fishing, thus sum-
mon the dear saints to keep and guard their shores ?
Why, Peter for the hundredth time questioned, do we
miss so much gaiety, so much loveliness, so much grace,
that other and wiser people have?
292 THE LEE SHORE
Peter shook his head over it.
"A sad business, Thomas. But here we are, you
and I, and let us be thankful. Thankful for this lovely
country set with pleasant towns and religious manners
and nice people, and for the colour and smoothness
of the sea we're going paddling in, and for our nice
tea. Are you thankful, Thomas? Yes, I'm sure you
are."
Someone, passing behind them, said with surprise,
" Is that you, Margerison ? "
Peter, looking round, his tin mug in one hand and
a biscuit in the other, recognised an old schoolfellow.
He was standing on the beach staring at the tea-party
the four disreputable vagabonds and their cart.
Peter laughed. It rather amused him to come into
sudden contact with the respectable; they were always
so much surprised. He had rather liked this man.
Some people had good-temperedly despised him for a
molly-coddle ; he had been a delicate boy, and had cher-
ished himself rather. Peter, delicate himself, inca-
pable of despising anyone, and with a heart that went
out to all unfortunates, had been, in a mild and casual
way, his friend. Looking into his face now, Peter
was struck to sorrow and compassion, because it was
the face of a man who had accepted death, and to
whom life gave no more gifts, not even the peace of
the lee shore. It was a restless face, with hollow cheeks
unnaturally flushed, and bitter, querulous lips. His
surprise at seeing Peter and his vagabond equipment
made him cough.
When he had done coughing, he said, " What are
you doing, Margerison ? "
Peter said he was having tea. " Have you had
yours ? I've got another mug somewhere a china
one."
ON THE SHORE 293
As he declined with thanks, Peter thought, " He's
dying. Oh, poor chap, how ghastly for him," and his
immense pity made him even gentler than usual. He
couldn't say, " How are you ? " because he knew ; he
couldn't say, " Isn't this a nice place ? " because Ashe
must leave it so soon ; he couldn't say, " I am having a
good time," because Ashe would have no more good
times, and, Peter suspected, had had few.
What he did say was, " This is Thomas. And this is
San Francesco, and this is Suor Clara. They're all
mine. Do you like their faces ? "
Ashe looked at Francesco, and said, " Rather a
mongrel, isn't he ? " and Peter took the comment as
condemning the four of them, and divined in Ashe the
respectability of the sheltered life, and was compassion-
ate again. Ashe cared, during the brief space of time
allotted to him, to be respectably dressed; he cared to
lead what he would call a decent life. Peter, in his
disreputability, felt like a man in the open air who
looks into the prison of a sick-room.
Ashe said he was staying at Varenzano with his
mother, and they were passing through Castoleto on the
way back from their afternoon's drive.
" It's lungs, you know. They don't give me much
chance the doctors, I mean. It's warm and sheltered
on this coast, so I have to be here. I'd rather be here,
I suppose, than doing a beef-and-snow cure in one of
those ghastly places. But it's a bore hanging round
and doing nothing. I'd as soon it ended straight
off."
Ashamed of having been so communicative (but Peter
was used to people being unreserved with him, and
never thought it odd), he changed the subject.
" Are you on the tramp, or what ? Is it comfort-
able?"
294 THE LEE SHORE
" Very," said Peter, " and interesting."
" Is it interesting ? How long are you going on
with it ? When are you going home ? "
" Oh, this is as much home as anywhere else, you
know. I don't see any reason for leaving it yet. We
all like it. I've no money, you see, and life is cheap
here, and warm and nice."
" Cheap and warm and nice. . . ." Ashe repeated
it, vaguely surprised. He hadn't realised that Peter
was one of the permanently destitute, and tramping
not from pleasure but from necessity.
"What do you do? " he asked curiously, seeing that
Peter was not at all embarrassed.
" Oh, nothing very much. A little needlework,
which I sell as I go along. And various sorts of ped-
dling, sometimes. I'm going up to the hotel this even-
ing, to try and make the people there buy things from
me. And we just play about, you know, and enjoy the
roads and the towns and the fairs and the seashore.
It's all fun."
Ashe laughed and made himself cough.
" You awfully queer person ! You really like it,
living like that? . . . But even I don't like it, you
know, living shut away from life in this corner, though
I've money enough to be comfortable with. Should I
like it, your life, I wonder ? You're not bored, it seems.
I always am. What is it you like so much ? "
Peter said, lots of things. No, he wasn't bored;
things were too amusing for that.
They couldn't get any further, because Ashe's mother
called him from the carriage in the road. She too
looked tired, and had sad eyes.
Peter looked after them with compassion. They
were wasting their little time together terribly, being
sad when they should have found, in these last few
ON THE SHORE 295
months or years of life, quiet fun on the warm shore
where they had come to make loss less bitter.
Tea being over, he went paddling, with Thomas
laughing on his shoulder, till it was Thomas's bedtime.
Then he put Thomas away in his warm corner of the
cart, and Livio joined him, and they had supper to-
gether at a trattoria, and then climbed the road between
vineyards and lemon gardens up to the new white hotel.
Livio, as they walked, practised his repertory of
songs, singing melodious snatches in the lemon-scented
dusk. They came to the hotel, and found that the in-
habitants were sitting round little tables in the dim
garden, having their coffee by the light of hanging
lanterns.
From out of the dusk Livio struck his mandolin and
sweetly sang. Peter meanwhile wandered round from
group to group displaying his wares by the pink light
of the lanterns. He met with some success; he really
embroidered rather nicely, and people were good-natured
and kind to the pale-faced, delicate-looking young man
who smiled with his very blue, friendly eyes. There
was always an element in Peter that inspired pity ; one
divined in him a merry unfortunate.
The people in the hotel were of many races
French, Italian, German, and one English family.
Castoleto is not an Anglo-Saxon resort; it is small and
of no reputation, and not as yet Anglicised. Probably
the one English family in the hotel was motoring down
the coast, and only staying for one night.
Peter, in his course round the garden, came suddenly
within earshot of cultured English voices, and heard
some one laugh. Then a voice, soft in quality, with
casual, pleasant, unemphasised cadence, said, " Consid-
ering these vile roads, she's running extraordinarily
well. Eeally, something ought to be done about the
296 THE LEE SHORE
roads, though; it's absolutely disgraceful. Blake says
. . ." one of the things that chauffeurs do say, and that
Peter did not listen to.
Peter had stopped suddenly where he was when the
speaker had laughed. Of the many personal attributes
of man, some may become slurred out of all character,
disguised and levelled down among the herd, blurred
with time, robbed of individuality. Faces may be so
lost and blurred, almost beyond the recognition of those
who have loved them. But who ever forgot a friend's
laugh, or lost the character of his own ? If Ulysses had
laughed when he came back to Ithaca, his dog would
have missed his eternal distinction.
Soft, rather low, a thing not detached from the
sentence it broke into, but rather breaking out of it,
and merging then into words again Peter had car-
ried it in his ears for ten years. Was there ever any
man but one who laughed quite so ?
Looking down the garden, he saw them, sitting under
a pergola, half-veiled by the purple drifts of the wis-
taria that hung in trails between them and him.
Through its twilight screen he saw Denis in a dinner-
jacket, leaning back in a cane chair, his elbow on its
arm, a cigarette in his raised hand, speaking. The
light from a big yellow lantern swinging above them
lit his clear profile, gleamed on his fair hair. Opposite
him was Lucy, in a white frock, her elbows on a little
table, her chin in her two hands, her eyes wide and grey
and full of the wonder of the twilight. And beyond
her sat Lord Evelyn, leaning back with closed eyes, a
cigar in his delicate white hand.
Peter stood and looked, and a little faint, doubtful
smile twitched at his lips, as at a dear, familiar sight
long unseen. Should he approach ? Should he speak ?
For a moment he hung in doubt.
ON THE SHORE 297
Then he turned away. He had no part with them,
nor they with him. His part Rodney had said it
once was to clear out.
Livio, close to him, was twanging his mandolin and
singing some absurd melody:
" Ah, Signer ! '?
"Scusi, Signora?"
" E forse il mio marito,
Da molti anni smarrito? . . ."
Peter broke in softly, " Livio, I go. I have had
enough."
Livio's eyebrows rose; he shrugged his shoulders,
but continued his singing. He, anyhow, had not yet
had enough of such a good-natured audience.
Peter slipped out of the garden into the white road
than ran down between the grey mystery of the olive
groves to the little dirty fishing-town and the dark,
quiet sea. In the eastern sky there was a faint shim-
mer, a disturbance of the deep, star-lit blue, a pallor
that heralded the rising of the moon. But as yet the
world lay in its mysterious dusk.
Peter, his feet stirring on the white dust of the
road, drew in the breath of the lemon-grown, pine-
grown, myrtle-sweet hills, and the keen saltness of the
sea, and the fishiness of the little, lit, clamorous town
on its edge. In the town there was singing, raucous
and merry. Behind in the garden there was singing,
melodious and absurd. It echoes fleeted down the road.
"Ah, Signer! "
"Scusi, Signora?"
" El forse il mio marrito . . ."
Peter sat on the low white wall to watch the moon
rise. And for a moment the bitter smell of the soft
dust on the road was in his nostrils, and he was taken
298 THE LEE SHORE
back into a past bitterness, when the world had been
dust to his feet, dust to his touch, dust in his throat,
so that he had lain dust-buried, and choked for breath,
and found none. This time a year ago he had lain so,
and for many months after that. Those months had
graved lines on his face lines perhaps on his soul
that all the quiet, gay years could not smooth out. For
the peace of the lee shore is not a thing easily won ; to
let go and drift before the storms wheresoever they
drive needs a hard schooling; to lose comes first, and
to laugh long after.
The dust Peter's feet had stirred settled down; and
now, instead of its faint bitterness, the sweetness of
the evening hills stole about. And over the still sea
the white moon rose, glorious, triumphant, and straight
from her to Peter, cleaving the dark waters, her bright
road ran.
Peter went down into the little, merry town.
He and Thomas slept at an inn that night. Livio
joined them there next morning at breakfast. He
said, " You were foolish to leave the hotel so soon. I
got a good sum of money. There was an English fam-
ily, that gave me a good reward. My music pleased
them. The English are always generous and extrava-
gant. Oh, Dio, I forgot; one of them sent you this
note by me. He explained nothing ; he said, ' Is he
that was with you your friend ? Then give him this
note.' Did he perhaps know you of old, or did he
merely perceive that you were of his country ? I know
nothing. One does not read the letters entrusted to
one for one's friends. Here it is."
He handed Peter a folded-up piece of notepaper.
Opening it, Peter read, scrawled unsteadily in pencil,
" Come and see me to-morrow morning. I shall be
alone." E. P. IT.
ON THE SHORE 299
" He followed me to the garden door as I went away,"
continued Livio, " and gave it me secretly. I fancy
he did not mean his companions to know. You will
go?"
Peter smiled, and Livio looked momentarily embar-
rassed.
" Oh, you know, it came open in my hand ; and un-
derstanding the language so well, it leaped to my eyes.
I knew you would not mind. You will go and see this
milord? He is a milord, for I heard the waiter ad-
dress him."
" Yes," said Peter. " I will go and see him."
An hour later he was climbing the white road again
in the morning sunshine.
Asking at the hotel for Lord Evelyn Urquhart, he
was taken through the garden to a wistaria-hung sum-
mer-house. The porter indicated it to him and de-
parted, and Peter, through the purple veils, saw Lord
Evelyn reclining in a long cane chair, smoking the
eternal cigarette and reading a French novel.
He looked up as Peter's shadow fell between him
and the sun, and dropped the yellow book with a slight
start. For a moment neither of them spoke; they
looked at each other in silence, the pale, shabby, dusty
youth with his vivid eyes; the frail, foppish, middle-
aged, worn-out man, with his pale face twitching a lit-
tle and his near-sighted eyes screwed up, as if he was
startled, or dazzled, or trying hard to see something.
The next moment Lord Evelyn put out a slim, fine
hand.
" How are you, Peter Margerison ? Sit down and
talk to me."
Peter sat down in the chair beside him.
Lord Evelyn said, " I'm quite alone this morning.
Denis and Lucy have motored to Genoa. I join them
300 THE LEE SHORE
there this afternoon. . . . You didn't know last night
that I saw you."
" No," said Peter. " I believed that none of you
had seen me. I didn't want you to ; so I came away."
Lord Evelyn nodded. " Quite so ; quite so. I un-
derstood that. And I didn't mention you to the others.
Indeed, I didn't mean to take any notice of you at all ;
but at the end I changed my minde, and sent for yon
to come. I believe I'm right in thinking that your
wish is to keep out of the way of our family."
" Yes," said Peter.
" You're right. You've been very right indeed.
There's nothing else you could have done, all this time."
Peter glanced at him quickly, to see what he knew,
and saw.
Lord Evelyn saw the questioning glance.
" Oh, yes, yes, boy. Of course, I knew about you
and Lucy. I'm not such a blinde fool as I've some-
times been thought in the past eh, Peter Margeri-
son ? I always knew you cared for Lucy ; and I knew
she cared for you. And I knew when she and you all
but went off together. I asked Lucy; I can read the
child's eyes better than books, you see. I read it,
and I asked her, and she admitted it."
" It was you who stopped her," said Peter quietly.
Lord Evelyn tapped his fingers on his chair arm.
" I'm not a moralist ; anything but a moralist,
y'know. But as a man of the world, with some ex-
perience, I knew that couldn't be. So I told her the
truth."
" The truth ? " Peter wondered.
" Yes, boy, the truth. The only truth that mattered
to Lucy. That you couldn't be happy that way. That
you loved Denis too much to be happy that way. When
I said it, she knew it. 'Deed, I believe she'd known it
ON THE SHORE 301
before, in her heart. So she wrote to you, and ended
that foolish idea. You know now that she was right,
I think?"
" I knew it then. I was just going to telegraph to
her not to come when I got her letter. ISTo, I didn't
know she was right; but I knew we couldn't do it.
I didn't know it for myself, either; I had to be told.
When I was told, I knew it."
" Ah." Lord Evelyn looked at the pale face, that
had suddenly taken a look of age, as of one who looks
back into a past bitterness.
" Ah." He looked in silence for a moment, then
said, " You've been through a bad time, Peter."
Peter's face twitched suddenly, and he answered
nothing.
" All those months," said Lord Evelyn, and his high,
unsteady voice shook with a curious tremor, " all that
summer, you were in hell."
Peter gave no denial.
" I knew it," said Lord Evelyn. " And you never
answered the letter I wrote you."
" No," said Peter slowly. " I answered no letters
at all, I think. I don't remember exactly what I did,
through that summer. I suppose I lived because
here I am. And I suppose I kept Thomas alive
because he's here too. But for the rest I don't know.
I hated everyone and everything. I believe Rodney
used to come and see me sometimes; but I didn't care.
. . . Oh, what's the good of talking about it? It's
over now."
Lord Evelyn was shading his face with a shaking
hand.
" Poor boy," he muttered to himself. " Poor boy.
Poor boy."
Peter, recovering his normal self, said, " You've
302 THE LEE SHORE
been awfully good to me, Lord Evelyn. I've behaved
very badly to you, I believe. Tbanks most awfully
for everything. But don't pity me now, because I've
all I want."
" Happy, are you ? " Lord Evelyn looked up at him
again, searchingly.
" Quite happy." Peter's smile was reassuring.
" The dooce you are ! " Lord Evelyn murmured.
" Well, I believe you. . . . Look here, young Peter,
I've a proposal to make. In the first place, is it over,
that silly business of yours and Lucy's ? Can you meet
without upsetting each other ? "
Peter considered for a moment.
" Yes ; I think we can. I suppose I shall always
care I always have but now that we've made up
our minds that it won't do ... accepted it, you know.
. . . Oh, yes, I think we could meet, as far as that
goes."
Lord Evelyn nodded approval.
" Very good, very good. Now listen to me. You're
on the roads, aren't you, without a penny, you, and
your boy ? "
" Yes. I make a little as I go along, you know.
One doesn't need much here. We're quite comfort-
able."
" Are you, indeed ? . . . Well now, I see no reason
why you shouldn't be more comfortable still. I want
you to come and live with me."
Peter startled, looked up, and coloured. Then he
smiled.
" It's most frightfully good of you. . . ."
" Rubbish, rubbish." Lord Evelyn testily waved
his words aside. " 'Tisn't for your sake. It's for
mine. I want your company. . . . My good boy,
haven't you ever guessed, all these years, that I rather
ON THE SHORE 303
like your company? That was why I was so angry
when you and your precious brother made a fool of me
long ago. It hurt, because I liked you, Peter Margeri-
son. That was why I couldn't forgive you. Demme !
I don't think I've forgiven you yet, nor ever shall.
That is why I came and insulted you so badly one day
as you remember. That's why I've such a soft place
for Lucy, who's got your laugh and your voice and your
tricks of talk, and looks at me with your white face.
That's why I wasn't going to let her and you make
young fools of yourselves together. That, I suppose,
is why I know all the time what you're feeling; why
I knew you were in hell all last summer; why I saw
you, though I'm such a blinde bat now, last night, when
neither Denis nor Lucy did. And that's why I want
you and your boy to come and keep me company now,
till the end."
Peter put out his hand and took Lord Evelyn's.
" I don't know what I can say to thank you. I do
appreciate it, you know, more than anything that's
ever happened to me before. I can't think how you
can be so awfully nice to me. . . ."
" Enough, enough," said Lord Evelyn. " Will you
or won't you ? Yes or no ? "
Peter at that gave his answer quickly.
" No. I can't, you know."
Lord Evelyn turned on him sharply.
" You wont? The devil take it ! "
" It's like this," said Peter, disturbed and apolo-
getic, " we don't want to lead what's called respectable
lives, Thomas and I. We don't want to be well-off
to live with well-off people. We we can't, d'you see.
It's not the way we're made. We don't belong. We're
meant just to drift about the bottom, like this, and pick
up a living anyhow."
304 THE LEE SHORE
" The boy's a fool," remarked Lord Evelyn, throw-
ing back his head and staring at the roof.
Peter, who hated to wound, went on, " If we could
share the life of any rich person, it would be you."
" Good Lord, I'm not rich. Wish I were. Eich ! "
" Oh, but you are, you know. You're what we mean
by rich. . . . And it's not only that. There's Denis
and Lucy too. We've parted ways, and I do think it's
best we shouldn't meet much. What's the good of be-
ginning again to want things one can't have ? I might,
you know; and it would hurt. I don't now. I've
given it all up. I don't want money; I don't want
Denis's affection ... or Lucy ... or any of the
things I have wanted, and that I've lost. I'm happy
without them; without anything but what one finds to
play with here as one goes along. One finds good
things, you know friends, and sunshine, and beauty,
and enough minestra to go on with, and sheltered places
on the shore to boil one's kettle in. I'm happy.
Wouldn't it be madness to leave it and go out and begin
having and wanting things again?"
Lord Evelyn had been listening with a curious ex-
pression of comprehension struggling with impatience.
" And the boy ? " he said. " D'you suppose there'll
never come a time when you want for the boy more
than you can give him here, in these dirty little towns
you like so much ? "
" Oh," said Peter, " how can one look ahead ? De-
pend on it, if Thomas is one of the people who are
born to have things, he will have them. And if he's
not, he won't, whatever I try to get for him. He's
only one and a half now ; so at least there's time before
we need think of that. He's happy at present with
what he's got."
" And is it your purpose, then, to spend all your
ON THE SHORE 305
life anyhow, many years in these parts, selling
needlework ? "
" I've no purpose," said Peter. " I must see what
turns up. RTo, I daresay I shall try England again
some time. But, wherever I am, I think I know now
what is the happy way to live, for people like me.
We're no use, you see, people like me ; we make a poor
job at the game, and we keep failing and coming bad
croppers and getting hurt and in general making a
mess of things. But at least we can be happy. We
can't make our lives sublime, and departing leave be-
hind us footprints on the sands of time oh, I don't
think I want to, in the least but we can make a fairly
good time for ourselves and a few other people out of
the things we have. That's what we're doing, Thomas
and I. And it's good enough."
Lord Evelyn looked at him long in silence, with his
narrowed, searching eyes, that seemed always to be look-
ing for something in his face and finding it there.
Then he sighed a little, and Peter, struck through
by remorse, saw how old he looked in that moment.
" How it takes one back takes one back," mut-
tered Lord Evelyn.
Then he turned abruptly on Peter.
" Lest you get conceited, young Peter, with me beg-
ging for your company and being kindly refused, I'll
tell you something. I loved your mother ; my brother's
wife. Did you ever guess that ? guess why I liked
you a good deal ? "
" Yes," said Peter, and Lord Evelyn started.
" You did ? Demme ! that's her again. She always
guessed everything, and so did you. She guessed I
cared. . . . You're her own child only she was
lovely, you know, and you're not, don't think it. ...
Well, she had her follies, like you a romantic child,
3 o6 THE LEE SHORE
she always was. . . . You must go your own way,
young Peter. I'll not hinder or help you till you want
me. . . . And now I'm tired; I've talked too much.
I'm not going to ask you to lunch with me, for I don't
want you. Leave me now."
Peter paused for a moment still. He wanted to ask
questions, and could not.
" Well, what now ? Oh, I see ; you want the latest
news of your Denis and Lucy. Well, they're doing as
well as can be expected. Denis I need hardly say,
need I? flourishes like the green bay tree in all his
works. He's happy, like you. No, not like you, a bit ;
he's got things to be happy about; his happiness isn't
a reasonless lunacy; it's got a sound bottom to it. The
boy is a fine boy, probably going to be nearly as beau-
tiful as Denis, but with Lucy's eyes. And Lucy's
happy enough, I hope. Knows Denis inside and out,
you know, and has accepted him, for better or worse. I
don't believe she's pining for you, if that's what you
want to know. You may be somewhere deep down at
the bottom of her always shouldn't wonder if you
are but she gives the top of her to Denis all right
and more than that to the boy and all of her to life
and living, as she always did and always must. You
two children seem to be tied to life with stronger ropes
than most people, an't you. Sylvia was, before you.
Not to any one thing in life, or to many things, but
just to life itself. So go and live it in your own way,
and don't bother me any more. You've tired me out."
Peter said good-bye, and went. He loved Lord
Evelyn, and his eyes were sad because he had thrown
back his offer on his hands. He didn't think Lord
Evelyn had many more years before him, though he
was only fifty-five; and for a moment he wondered
ON THE SHORE 307
whether he couldn't, after all, accept that offer till the
end came. He even, at the garden wall, hung for a
moment in doubt, with the echo of that high, wistful
voice in his ears.
But before him the white road ran down from the
olive-grey hills to the little gay town by the blue sea's
edge, and the sweetness of the scented hills in the May
sunshine caught him by the throat, and, questioning no
more, he took the road.
He loved Lord Evelyn; but the life he offered was
not for Peter, not for Thomas as yet ; though Thomas,
in the years to come, should choose his own path. At
present there was for both of them the merry, shifting
life of the roads, the passing friendships, lightly made,
lightly loosed, the olive hills, silver like ghostly armies
in the pale moonlight, the sweetness of the starry flow-
ers at their twisted stems, the sudden blue bays that
laughed below bends of the road, the cities, like many-
coloured nosegays on a pale chain, the intimate sweet-
ness of lemon gardens by day and night, the happy
morning on the hills and sea.
For these Peter analysed the distinction are, or
may be, for all alike. There is no grabbing here; a
man may share the overflowing sun not with one but
with all. The down-at-heels, limping, broken, army of
the Have-Nots are not denied such beauty and such
peace as this, if they will but take it and be glad. The
lust to possess here finds no fulfilment ; having nothing,
yet possessing all things, the empty-handed legion laughs
along its way. The last, the gayest, the most hilarious
laughter begins when, destitute utterly, the wrecked
pick up coloured shells upon the lee shore. For there
are shells enough and to spare for all ; there is no grasp-
ing here.
308 THE LEE SHORE
Peter, with a mind at ease and Francesco grinning
at his heels, sauntered down the warm, dusty road to
find Thomas and have lunch.
THE END.
A 000 046 293 7
LORD'S BOOK STORE
755 S.Olive St., TU.3423
R. C. LORD. BOOK CO.
612 WEST 9TH ST.
LOS ANGELES. CALIF.
