The Lee Shore Part 26

"Honey sandwiches, if you come at tea-time," she reminded him. "D'_you_ like them, Rhoda?" She used the name prettily, half shyly, with one of her 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 cla.s.s-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 I _are_ so well off, d'you know.

Everything goes right. Denis's friends are all so happy and successful and beautifully dressed. I _like_ them to be, of course; they are joys, like the sun 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 I _like_ Algernon's blue bow," Lucy protested. "I love people to be bright and beautiful.... That's why I like Denis so much, you know. Only I'm not sure I properly belong, that's all."

Obviously the remedy was to come to Greville Street. Lucy came more and more as the months went by.

Rhoda said once, "Doesn't it bother you to come all this way, into these ugly streets?" and she shook her head.

"Oh, I _like_ it. I like these streets better than the ones round us. And I like your house better than ours too; it's smaller."

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 you _mustn't_ cry," said Lucy, her own eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g over; "you mustn't, you mustn't. And you do care for Peter, you know you do, only it's so hot, and you're tired and ill. If that horrible Guy was here--oh, I know he's horrible--you'd know you cared for Peter most. You mustn't _say_ things, Rhoda; it makes them alive." Her eyes were wide and 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 near _me_ like 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.

CHAPTER XV

THE LOSS OF A WIFE

In September Peter and Rhoda had a son, whom they called Thomas, because, Peter said, he had a sceptical look about the eyes and nose. Peter was pleased with him, and he with Peter. Rhoda wasn't much interested; she looked at him and said he was rather like Peter, and might be taken away now, please.

"Like me?" Peter wondered dubiously. "Well, I know I'm not handsome, but..."

Peggy, a born mother, took Thomas into her large heart at once, with her out-at-elbows infants, and was angry with Rhoda for not showing more interest.

"You'd think, from the way of her, that it was her thirteenth instead of her first," she complained to Hilary. "I've no patience with the silly, mooning child. She's nothing like good enough for Peter, and that's a fact, and she'd have a right to realise it and try to improve for very shame, instead of moping the way she does. It's my belief, Hilary, that her silly little heart's away after the Vyvian man, whatever haunt of wickedness he's adorning now. I don't want to believe it of her; but there's no end to the folly of the human heart, is there, now? I wish she was a Catholic and had a priest to make her take shame to herself; but there's no hold one has over her as it is, for she won't say a word to me beyond 'Yes' and 'No,' and 'Take him away, please, he tires me.' I nearly told her she'd a right not to be so easily tired by her own son now she's getting her health. But there, she's a poor frail thing and one can't speak roughly to her for fear she breaks in two."

Hilary said, "After all, there's no great cause for rejoicing in a man's being born into the world to trouble; I suppose she feels that. It will make it more difficult than ever for them and for us to make both ends meet."

"Oh, meet," groaned Peggy, "that's not what there's any thought of their doing in these days, my dear. If one can bring them within a mile of one another, one's thankful for small mercies."

Hilary rested his head on his hand and sighed.

"Have you spoken to Peter yet about appealing to the Urquharts?" he asked.

"Darling, I have not, and I'm not going to. Why should I annoy the poor child to no purpose? He'll not appeal to the Urquharts, we know that well, and I'm not going to waste my breath. I'd far rather--"

"What?" asked Hilary, as she paused.