The Lee Shore Part 28

But a habit, Peter thought, that Thomas employed with some discrimination; for the one and only one time that Guy Vyvian took him in his arms--or rather submitted to his being put there by Rhoda--Thomas was sicker than he had ever been before, with an immense completeness.

"Just what I always feel myself," commented Peter in his own mind, as Thomas was hastily removed. "I'm glad someone has shown him at last what the best people feel about him."

Vyvian had come to call. It was the first time Peter had met him since his marriage; he hoped it would be the last. The object of the call was to inspect Thomas, Rhoda said. Thomas was inspected, produced the impression indicated above, and was relegated to the region of things for which Vyvian had no use. He detested infants; children of any sort, in fact; and particularly Thomas, who had Peter's physiognomy and expressed Peter's sentiments in a violently ill-bred way.

Peter, a little later, was very glad that Thomas had revealed himself thus openly on this occasion. For it quite sealed Thomas's fate, if anything more was needed to seal it than the fact that Thomas would be an impossible burden, and also belonged by right to Peter. Anyhow, they left Thomas behind them when they went.

Rhoda wrote a scrawled note for Peter one foggy Monday morning, and hugged Thomas close and cried a little, and slipped out into the misty city with a handbag. Peter, coming in at tea-time, found the note on the sitting-room chimney-piece. It said:--

"Don't try to follow me, Peter, for I can't come back. I _have_ tried to care for you more than him and be a good wife, but I can't. You know I told you when we got engaged that I cared for him, and I tried so hard to stop, and I thought I would be able, with you to help me, but I couldn't do it. For the first few months I thought I could, but all the time it was there, like a fire in me, eating me up; and later on he began writing to me, but for a long time I wouldn't answer, and then he came to see me, and I said he mustn't, but he's been meeting me out and I couldn't stop him, and at last it grew that I knew I loved him so that it was no use pretending any more. I'd better go, Peter, for what's the use of trying to be a good wife to you when all I care for is him. I know he's not good, and you are, but I love him, and I must go when he wants me. It was all a mistake; you and I ought never to have married. You meant it kindly, I know; you meant to help me and make me happy, but it was no use. You and I never properly belonged. When I saw you and Lucy together, I knew we didn't belong, not like that; we didn't properly understand each other's ways and thoughts, like you two did. I love Lucy, too. You and she are so like. And she'll be good to Baby; she said she would. I hate to leave Baby, but Guy won't let me bring him, and anyhow I suppose I couldn't, because he's yours. I've written a list of his feeds, and it's on the chimney-piece behind the clock; please make whoever sees to him go by it or he gets a pain. Please be careful when you bath him; I think Mrs. Adams had better do it usually. She'll take care of him for you, or Peggy will, perhaps. You'll think I never cared for him, but I do, I love him, only I must love Guy most of all. I don't know if I shall be happy or miserable, but I expect miserable, only I must go with Guy. Please, dear Peter, try and understand this, and forgive me. I think you will, because you always do understand things, and forgive them too; I think you are the kindest person I ever knew. If I thought you loved me really, I don't think I'd go, even for Guy; but I know you've only felt kindly to me all along, so I think it is best for you too that I should go, and you will be thankful in the end. Good-bye.

You promised mother to see after me, I know, for she told me before she died; well, you've done your best, and mother'd be grateful to you if she could know. I suppose some would say she does know, perhaps; but I don't believe those stories; I believe it's all darkness beyond, and silence.

And if it is, we must try and get all the light and warmth here that we can. So I'm going.

"Good-bye, Peter.

"Rhoda."

Peter read it through, sitting on the rug by the fire. When he had finished it, he put it into the fire and watched it burn. Then he sighed, and sat very still for a while, his hands clasped round one knee.

Presently he got up and looked behind the clock, and saw that the next feeding-time was due now. So he rang for Mrs. Adams, the landlady, and asked her if she would mind bringing Thomas's bottle.

When Thomas had it, Peter stood and looked down upon him as he drank with ill-bred noises.

"Gently, Thomas: you'll choke. You'll choke and die, I know you will.

Then you'll be gone too. Everything goes, Thomas. Everything I touch breaks; everything I try to do fails. That's because I'm such an a.s.s, I suppose. I did think I could perhaps make one little unlucky girl decently happy; but I couldn't, you see. So she's gone after light and warmth, and she'll--she'll break her heart in a year, and it'll be my fault. Follow her? No, I shan't do that. I shouldn't find her, and if I did what would be the use? If she must go, she must; she was only eating her heart out here; and perhaps it's better to break one's heart on something than eat it out in emptiness. No, it isn't better in this case.

Anything in the world would have been better than this; that she should have gone with that--that person. Yet thus it is. And they'll all set on her and speak against her, and I shall have to bear it. You and I will have to bear it together, Thomas.... I suppose I ought to be angry. I ought to want to go after them, to the end of the world or wherever they've gone and kill him and bring her back. But I can't. I should fail in that too. I'm tired of trying to do things; simply horribly tired of it, Thomas." He sat down on the rug with Thomas in his arms; and there, an hour later, Peggy found them. She swung in breezily, crying, "Oh, Peter, all alone in the dark? Where's Rhoda? Why, the silly children haven't had their tea!" she added, looking at the unused cups on the tea-table.

Peter looked up vaguely. "Oh, tea. I forgot. I don't think I want any tea to-day. And Thomas has had his. And Rhoda's gone. It's no good not telling you--is it?--because you'll find out. She's gone away. It's been my fault entirely; I didn't make her happy, you see. And she's written out a list of the times Thomas has to feed at. I suppose Mrs. Adams will do that if I ask her, and generally look after him when I'm out."

Peggy stood aghast before him for a moment, staring, then collapsed, breathless, on the sofa, crying, with even more r's than usual.

"_Peter!_... Why, she's gone and rrun off with that toad, that rreptile man! Oh, I know it, so it's not a bit of use your trying to keep it from me."

"Very well," said Peter; "I suppose it's not."

"Oh, the little fool, the little, silly, wicked fool! But if ever a little fool got her rich deserts without needing to wait for purgatory, that one'll be Rhoda.... Oh, Peter, be more excited and angry! Why aren't you stamping up and down and vowing vengeance, instead of sitting on the hearth saying, 'Rhoda's gone,' as if it was the kitten?"

"I'm sorry, Peggy." Peter sighed a little. "I'm nursing Thomas, you see."

Peggy at that was on her knees on the floor, taking both of them into her large embrace.

"Oh, you two poor little darling boys, what's to become of you both? That child has a heart of stone, to leave you to yourselves the way she's done. Don't defend her, Peter; I won't hear a word said for her again as long as I live; she deserves Guy Vyvian, and I couldn't say a worse word for her than that. You poor little Tommy; come to me then, babykins.

You must come back to us now, Peter, and I'll look after you both."

She cuddled Thomas to her breast with one arm, and put the other round Peter's shoulders as he sat huddled up, his chin resting on his knees.

At the moment it was difficult to say which of the two looked the most forsaken, the most left to himself. Only Thomas hadn't yet learnt to laugh, and Peter had. He laughed now, softly and not happily.

"It _has_ been rather a ghastly fiasco, hasn't it," he said. "Absurd, you know, too, in a way. I thought it was all working out so nicely, Thomas coming and everything. But no. It wasn't working out nicely at all.

Things don't as a rule, do they?"

There was a new note of dreariness in his voice; a note that had perhaps been kept out of it of set purpose for a long time. Now there seemed at the moment no particular reason to keep it out any more, though fresh reasons would arrive, no doubt, very soon; and Thomas when waking was a reason in himself. But in this dim hour between two roads, this hour of relaxation of tension in the shadowy firelight, when Thomas slept and only Peggy listened, Peter, having fallen crashing through floor after floor of his pleasant house of life, till he was nearly at the bottom, looked up at all the broken floors and sighed.

Peggy's arm was comfortingly about him. To her he was always a little, brittle, unlucky boy, as she had first seen him long ago.

"Never you mind, Peterkin. There's a good time coming, I do believe.

She'll come back, perhaps; who knows? Vyvian wouldn't do for long, not even for Rhoda. Besides, you may be sure he'll throw her off soon, and then she'll want to come back to you and Tommy. I wouldn't say that to any other man, because, of course, no other man would have her back; but I do believe, Peterkin, that you would, wouldn't you now? I expect you'd smile and say, 'Oh, come in, you're just in time for tea and to see me bath Thomas,' and not another word about it."

"Probably," said Peter. "There wouldn't be much to say, would there?

But she won't come back; I know that. Even if she leaves him she won't.

Rhoda's horribly proud really, you know. She'd sooner sweep a crossing, or trim hats or something, than come near us again. I don't know what to hope about it. I suppose one must hope they'll go on together, as Rhoda seems to like him as he is; but it's an awful thought.... She's right that we never understood each other. I couldn't, you know, bear to think of spending even one day alone with Vyvian. I should be sick, like Thomas. The mere sight of his hair is enough, and his hand with that awful ring on it. I--I simply draw the line at him. _Why_ does Rhoda care for him? How can she?" Peter frowned over it in bewilderment.

Peggy said, "Girls are silly things. And I suppose the way one's been brought up counts, and what one's inherited, and all that."

"Well, if Rhoda'd taken after Mrs. Johnson she wouldn't have liked Vyvian. He used to give her the creeps, like a toad. She told me so.

She disliked him more than I did.... Well, I shall never understand. I suppose if I could Rhoda would have found me more sympathetic, and might have stayed."

"Now, darling, you're not to sit up and brood any more; that won't help.

You're coming straight back with me to dinner, and Tommy's coming too, to sleep. I shall ask Mrs. Adams to help me get his things together."

"He hasn't many things," said Peter, looking vaguely round for them. "I got him a rattle and a ball, but he doesn't seem to care about them much; Lucy says he's not young enough yet. Here's his bottle. And his night clothes are upstairs, and his other day clothes, and his bath. Thomas leads the simple life, though; he really possesses very little; I think he's probably going to be a Franciscan later on. But he can sleep with me here all right; I should like to have him; only it would be awfully good of you if you'd have him to-morrow, while I'm out at work. But in the night he and I rather like each other's company."

"Rubbish," said Peggy. "You're both coming along to fifty-one this minute. You don't suppose I'm going to leave you two infants alone together like that. We've heaps of room at fifty-one"--she sighed a little--"people have been fading away like the flowers of the forest, and we should be thankful to have you back."

"Oh, we'll come then; thanks very much, Peggy." Peter's ready sympathy was turned on again, having temporarily been available only for himself and Rhoda and Thomas. He remembered now that Peggy and Hilary needed it too. He and Thomas would go and be boarders in the emptying boarding-house; it might amuse Thomas, perhaps, to see the other boarders.

"And we'll have him baptized," went on Peggy, thinking of further diversions for Thomas and Peter. "You'll let him be a Catholic, Peter, won't you?"

"Thomas," said Peter, "can be anything he likes that's nice. As long as he's not a bigot. I won't have him refusing to go into one sort of church because he prefers another; he mustn't ever acquire the rejecting habit.

Short of that, he may enter any denomination or denominations he prefers."

They were collecting Thomas's belongings as they talked. Thomas lay and looked at them with the very blue slits that were like his father's eyes grown old. And suddenly Peggy, looking from son to father, saw that Peter's eyes had grown as old as Thomas's, looking wearily out of a pale, pinched face.

Peggy's own eyes brimmed over as she bent over Thomas's night-shirt.

CHAPTER XVI

A LONG WAY

Lord Evelyn Urquhart dined with his nephew on the last evening in February. It was a characteristic Urquhart dinner-party; the guests were mostly cheerful, well-bred young people of high spirits and of the worldly station that is not much concerned with any aspect of money but the spending of it. High living, plain thinking, agreeable manners and personal appearance, plenty of humour, enough ability to make a success of the business of living and not enough to agitate the brain, a light tread along a familiar and well-laid road, and a serene blindness to side-tracks and alleys not familiar nor well-laid and to those that walked thereon--these were the characteristics of the pleasant people who frequented Denis Urquhart's pleasant house in Park Lane.

Lucy was among them, small and pale, and rather silent, and intensely alive. She, of course, was a native not of Park Lane but of Chelsea; and the people who had frequented her home there were of a different sort.

They had had, mostly, a different kind of brain, a kind more restless and troublesome and untidy, and a different type of wit, more pungent and ironic, less well-fed and hilarious, and they were less well-dressed and agreeable to look at, and had (perhaps) higher thoughts (though how shall one measure height?) and ate (certainly) plainer food, for lack of richer. These were the people Lucy knew. Her father himself had been of these. She now found her tent pitched among the prosperous; and the study of them touched her wide gaze with a new, pondering look. Denis hadn't any use for cranks. None of his set were socialists, vegetarians, Quakers, geniuses, anarchists, drunkards, poets, anti-breakfasters, or anti-hatters; none of them, in fine, the sort of person Lucy was used to.

They never p.a.w.ned their watches or walked down Bond Street in Norfolk coats. They had, no doubt, their hobbies; but they were suitable, well-bred hobbies, that did not obtrude vulgarly on other people's notice. Peter had once said that if he were a plutocrat he would begin to dream dreams. Lucy supposed that the seemingly undreaming people who were Denis's friends were not rich enough; they hadn't reached plutocracy, where romance resides, but merely prosperity, which has fewer possibilities. Lucy began in these days to ponder on the exceeding evil of Socialism, which the devil has put it into certain men's hearts to desire. For, thought Lucy, sweep away the romantic rich, sweep away the dreaming dest.i.tute, and what have you left? The prosperous; the comfortable; the serenely satisfied; the sanely reasonable. Dives, with his purple and fine linen, his sublime outlook over a world he may possess at a touch, goes to his own place; Lazarus, with his wallet for crusts and his place among the dogs and his sharp wonder at the world's black heart, is gathered to his fathers: there remain the sanitary dwellings of the comfortable, the monotonous external adequacy that touches no man's inner needs, the lifeless rigour of a superintended well-being. Decidedly, thought Lucy, siding with the Holy Roman Church, a scheme of the devil's. Denis and his friends also thought it was rot.

So no doubt it was. Denis belonged to the Conservative party. Lucy thought parties funny things, and laughed. Though she had of late taken to wandering far into seas of thought, so that her wide forehead was often puckered as she sat silent, she still laughed at the world. Perhaps the more one thinks about it the more one laughs; the height and depth of its humour are certainly unfathomable.