The Lee Shore Part 14

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 business, 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 willing for me to give part of my time to it, there's no reason 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 going 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 Illuminato 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 Stefani 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 pa.s.sed her, and her smile for him was curiously pitiful.

"We'll do our best to mend, my dear; we'll do our best," was what she soothingly murmured; and then, to Illuminato, "There, my froglet; cuddle up and sleep," and to Hilary, "You poor old dear, will we let the little brother have his way, because he's a darling entirely, and quite altogether in the right?"

CHAPTER IX

THE FAT IN THE FIRE

Peter, self-appointed sub-editor to the Gem, was revising 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 sensitive 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 interesting trying to set the Gem on its legs; there were immense 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 speculating, 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 att.i.tude that he had detected in himself. He settled himself to his job again, and made a rather savage 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 moment, his mobile face flickering nervously, as it did when he was tired or embarra.s.sed.

"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.

Peter sat quite still in his chair and bit his pen. From his expression, Mrs. Johnson might have inferred that he had been in the Cathedral again, smelling 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 a.s.s. I'm a suspicious, low-minded a.s.s."

But he was somehow revolted by the thought of going 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 conceded 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 purposes 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 susceptible 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 behind his back. He looked extraordinarily agitated; 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 distressingly 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 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 absurdities 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.

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 began, 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 '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...."