The Lee Shore Part 23

"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 ca.s.socked 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 pa.s.sed 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'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 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; G.o.d 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. _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 m.u.f.fled voice, that she didn't care.

A tall figure pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 ca.s.socked 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'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 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 ..."

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."