"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 always, 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 enquiringly.
"It's certainly funny rather," he said quietly. "You must have got a good deal of quiet fun out of compiling that column."
"Oh," said Peter. "But I didn't, you know."
"I gather you helped—supplied much of the information. 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 happened 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 people 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 related to your sister-in-law to see what she would think."
Peter stammered, "I don't think so. No, I don't 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 Urquhart, "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, inexpressive 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 behind them.
Lord Evelyn said to his nephew in the library, swinging his eye-glass restlessly to and fro, "Why do you let those people into your house, Denis? I thought we had done with them."
"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 something 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?"
"I shan't ask her," said Peter. "Don't, please, Hilary," he added miserably. "Can't yousee...."
"See what? I see that we get a little more destitute 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 respectably (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 giving away. I see the Robinsons, our own relations, fattening 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 constituted 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 Margerisons should have been among the Haves.
Hilary said, "You are absolutely impervious, Peter, to other people's troubles," and turned up his coat-collar 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 Urquhart'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 contemplating 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 declined 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 moment 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.
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, apostrophising 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 enormous 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!"
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 darling, how sweet of you! Now I reallycanpay the butcher; I've had to hide from him the last few mornings, 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 pictures for a weekly paper; a sordid and degrading pursuit.)
"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 Larry's cough gets off his chest without turning to bronchitis, 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 nothing would satisfy him; and off the two eldest must go to the Catholic school next week to be destroyed by the fog and to pick up with all the ragamuffins in the district."
"An abominable, cast-iron system," Hilary murmured 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 afternoon, 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 tometalking. Rhoda 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 settling 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 partnership 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 cannot. 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 apologise for him beforehand."
"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 knowssomethingof art and literature, and can converse without 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 oneisto 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?"
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 sitting-room and drank coffee (the only thing that was well cooked in Peggy's household), and talked to Hilary, 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 villains 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 calcul, distinguished from other patiences by the fact that it comes out; that was why Peter liked it. He had refused to-night to join in the game the others were playing, 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 whenever 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 remarked, including in his glance Rhoda's embroidery, Peter's patience, and the animal grab table, from which cheerfully matter-of-fact farmyard and jungle cries proceeded with spirit.
Rhoda said nothing. Her head was bent over her work. The next moment she pricked her finger violently, and started. Before she could get her handkerchief out, Vyvian had his, and was enveloping her small hand in it.
"Too bad," he said, in a voice so low that the farmyard cries drowned it as far as Peter was concerned. "Poor little finger." He held it and the handkerchief closely in his two hands.
Rhoda, 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.
Rhoda 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. Rhoda watched him silently.
"Do you know calcul, Mr. Vyvian?" Peter enquired, 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.
"Oh! Then youwouldlike 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 politeness.
"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 otherwise...."
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.
Then he 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 believe you to be lying." Peter had no particular objection 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 sitting 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."
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 heroically, 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 Rhoda, 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. Anyhow, 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 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 vesper 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 colour and wonderful things happening. And it's probably the truer for that."
"D'youbelieveit 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 think I like to believe in those things; they're too beautiful not to be true."
"It's the ugly things that are true," she said, coughing in the fog.
"Why, yes, the ugly things and the beautiful; God and the devil, if one puts it like that. Oh, yes, I believe 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.Wearen'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."
But she shook her head. "No. I'd rather be outside. I don't belong in there."
Peter said, "Why not?" and she told him, "Because 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'tmindstaying, 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 follow 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, to save me. If I could be religious, if I could pray, like the people in there ... but he says there's nothing in that; he's made me believe like him, and I sometimes 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, comforting 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 translated, 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 sanctuary 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: according to thy word;"For mine eyes have seen ..."
"Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace: according to thy word;
"For mine eyes have seen ..."
Later on, Rhoda 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."
"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 Rhoda. "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 really. You've taken him wrong, you know. You've taken him seriously. He's not meant for that."
"Oh," said Rhoda, vaguely uncomprehending. "Youarea 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, Rhoda 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 Rhoda; 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 table. "Marry whom?" And Rhoda, 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, 'Well,thatlooks 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 confidence, 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 madein church, Miss Johnson? I gather from Miss Clegson that Mr. Peter followed you there."
"Oh, not inside, Miss Matthews," said Rhoda, blushing 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'stoyou, Miss Rhoda; here'stoyou, 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 Rhoda 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 Rhoda, though sometimes a silly and sometimes fractious, was 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 precisely 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 earnings 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 obviously 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 you think? There's nothing to wait for. I don't 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 nineteenth."
"I'm sure," said Rhoda, "we're quite embarrassing everybody, being so public. Let's settle it afterwards, 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 gentlemenhissecrets. And after that we'll have a good round game; but two of the present company can be left out if they like better to sit in the window-seat!"
But when the other gentlemen repaired to the drawing-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 window-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 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, wording 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 understand. 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.
When 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, handsome 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 tired of the boarders and wanted a little place to themselves. 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 themselves. 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 without success. Rhoda 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 evening. 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 Rhoda 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 æsthetic Hilary; at any moment they might tread heavily 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 attitude 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, wasnota good manager. One or two of the boarders left, to seek more commodious quarters elsewhere. More frequently, as the winter advanced, 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 boarders 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 promotion. Every day he went through the same drudgery, with the same lack of intelligence,—(it is odd how discernment 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. Eventually 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.
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. Rhoda'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 Rhoda 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 Rhoda's, who amused and pleased Peter but vexed Rhoda by being common.
"But I like them," said Peter.
"You like to see me put to shame, I suppose," said Rhoda, with tears in her eyes. "As if it wasmyfault 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 Rhoda 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 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 yesterday's handkerchief. Peter, driven from the faces of the rich, found Rodney waiting to receive him cheerfully 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-Nots, 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 necessary 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 corresponding 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."
"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 frightened 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'tmind, 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 Bellini Madonna? Of course you can't, and it's immoral 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 herself, without a struggle, be caught and held by that ingenuous charm, a charm as of a small woodland 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, Rhoda 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. Rhoda, her intuitive faculties oddly sharpened, took in this. Peter might care most for Denis Urquhart; he might love Rhoda as a wife; but Lucy, less consciously loved than either, was intimately 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 messages 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 embarrass 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 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 another, so that no deceits could ever stand between them.
"Don't besilly, Peter," she told him; then, "'Courseyou 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'youlike them, Rhoda?" She used the name prettily, half shyly, with one of her luminous, 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 luminous 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 ever had a touch of that.
Neither Peter nor Rhoda went to the Urquharts' 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 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 Iareso well off, d'you know. Everything goes right. Denis's friends are all so happy and successful and beautifully dressed. Ilikethem to be, of course; they are joys, like the sun shining; 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 IlikeAlgernon'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.
Rhoda said once, "Doesn't it bother you to come all this way, into these ugly streets?" and she shook her head.
"Oh, Ilikeit. I like these streets better than the ones round us. And I like your house better than ours too; it's smaller."
Rhoda 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.
Lucy puckered her wide forehead.
"Why, no. No, I don't believe I do," she said, as if she was finding it out with a little surprise.
Rhoda 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 feeling 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."
She fell to crying drearily, with Lucy's arms about her.
"But youmustn'tcry," 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'tsaythings, Rhoda; it makes them alive." Her eyes were wide and frightened 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, Rhoda!"
"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 nearmelike that, not from the beginning. I was a silly to let him sacrifice 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?" 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.