The Lee Shore Part 24

"Oh," said Rhoda, 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, 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 gla.s.s, 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 a.s.sure 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, _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 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 made _in 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 b.u.mpers with the flowing lemonade. Pa.s.s the jug down. Here's _to_ you, Miss Rhoda; 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 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 cla.s.ses 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 n.o.body, 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 embarra.s.sing 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 gentlemen _his_ secrets. 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 cla.s.s 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.

CHAPTER XIV

PETER, RHODA, AND LUCY

When Mr. Vyvian called at 51 Brook Street one evening and was informed by the a.s.sembled 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 b.u.t.tons 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 s.e.x never quite knew where they were with the aesthetic 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 att.i.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.