Lucy looked up at him, open-eyed, pale, quiet.

"You think of Peter like that?" she said, and her voice trembled a little.

Lord Evelyn stopped in his walk and listened.

"I'm sorry, Lucy," said Denis, throwing away his cigar-end. "I don't want to say anything against Peter to you. But ... one must judge by facts, you know. I don't mean that Peter means any harm; but, as I say, he's weak. I'm fond of Peter, you know; I wish to goodness he wouldn't play the fool as he does, mixing himself up with his precious relations and helping them in their idiotic schemes for swindling money out of people—but there it is; he will do it; and as long as he does it I don't feel moved to have much to do with him. I should send him money if he asked me personally, of course, even if I knew it would only go into his brother's pocket; but I'm not going to do it at his sister-in-law's command. If you ask me whether I feel inclined to help Hilary Margerison and his wife, my answer is simply no I don't. They're merely scum; and why should one have anything to do with scum?"

Lucy looked at him silently for a while. Then she said slowly, "I see. Yes, I see you wouldn't want to, of course. They are scum. And you're not. But I am, I think. I belong to the same sort of people they do. I could swindle and cheat too, I expect. It's the people at the bottom who do that. They're my relations, you see, not yours."

"My dear Lucy, only Peter is your relation."

"Peter and Thomas. And I count the rest too, because they're Peter's. So let me do all that is to be done, Denis. Don't you bother. I'll take them money."

"Let them alone, Lucy. You'd better, you know. What's the good?"

"I don't know," said Lucy. "None, I expect. None at all; because Peter wouldn't take it from me without you."

She came a little nearer him, and put her hand on his knee like a wistful puppy.

"Denis," she said, "I wish you would. They know already that I care. But I wish you would. Peter'd like you to. He'd be more pleased than if I did; much more. Peter cares for you and me and Thomas extraordinarily much; and you can't compare carings, but the way he cares for you is the most wonderful of all, I believe. If you went to him ... if you showed him you cared ... he'd take it from you. He wouldn't take it from me without you, because he'd suspect you weren't wanting him to have it. Denis, won't you go to Peter, as you used to do long ago, before he was in disgrace and poor, before he was scum? Can't you, Denis?"

Denis had coloured faintly. He always did when people were emotional. Lucy seldom was; she had a delicious morning freshness that was like the cool wind on the hills in spring.

"Peter never comes here, Lucy, does he. If he wanted to see me, I suppose he would."

Lucy was looking strangely at the beautiful face with the faint flush rising in it. She apparently thought no reply necessary to his words, but said again, "Can't you, Denis? Or is it too hard, too much bother, too much stepping out of the way?"

"Oh, it's not the bother, of course. But ... but I really don't see anything to be gained by it, that's the fact.... Our meetings, on the last few occasions when we have met, haven't been particularly comfortable. I don't think Peter likes them any better than I do.... One can't force intercourse, Lucy; if it doesn't run easily and smoothly, it had better be left alone. There have been things between us, between Peter's family and my family, that can't be forgotten or put aside by either of us, I suppose; and I don't think Peter wants to be reminded of them by seeing me any more than I do by seeing him. It's—it's so beastly uncomfortable, you know," he added boyishly, ruffling up his hair with his hand; and concluded didactically, "People must drift apart if their ways lie in quite different spheres; it's inevitable."

Denis, who had a boyish reticence, had expanded and explained himself more than usual.

Lucy's hand dropped from his knee on to her own.

"I suppose it is inevitable," she said, beneath her breath. "I suppose the distance is too great. 'Tis such a long, long way from here to there ... such a long, long way.... Good-night, Denis; I'm going to bed."

She got up slowly, cramped and tired and pale. It was not till she was on her feet that she saw Lord Evelyn sitting in the background, and remembered his presence. She had forgotten him; she had been thinking only of Denis and Peter and herself. She didn't know if he had been listening much; he sat quietly, nursing his knee, saying nothing.

But when Lucy had gone he said to Denis, "You're right, Denis; you're utterly right, not to have anything to do with those swindlers," and, as if in a sudden fresh anger against them, he began again his quick, uneven pacing down the room.

"False through and through," he muttered. "False through and through."

Lucy's face, as she had risen to her feet and said "Good night, Uncle Evelyn," had been so like Peter's as he had last seen it, when Peter had passed him in the doorway at Astleys, that it had taken his breath away.



CHAPTER XVII

QUARRELS IN THE RAIN

In Brook Street the rain fell. It fell straight and disconsolate, unutterably wet, splashing drearily on the paved street between the rows of wet houses. It fell all day, from the dim dawn, through the murky noon, to the dark evening, desolately weeping over a tired city.

Inside number fifty-one, Peggy mended clothes and sang a little song, with Thomas in her lap, and Peter, sitting in the window-seat, knitted Thomas a sweater of Cambridge blue. Peter was getting rather good at knitting. Hilary was there too, but not mending, or knitting, or singing; he was coughing, and complaining of the climate.

"I fancy it is going to be influenza," he observed at intervals, shivering. "I feel extraordinarily weak, and ache all up my back. I fancy I have a high temperature, only Peter has broken the thermometer. You were a hundred and four, I think, Peter, the day you went to bed. I rather expect I am a hundred and five. But I suppose I shall never know, as it is impossible to afford another thermometer. I feel certain it is influenza; and in that case I must give up all hope of getting that job from Pickering, as I cannot possibly go and see him to-morrow. Not but that it would be a detestable job, anyhow; but anything to keep our heads above water.... My headache is now like a hot metal band all round my head, Peggy."

"Poor old boy," said Peggy. "Take some more phenacetine. And do go to bed, Hilary. If you have got flu, you'll only make yourself as bad as Peter did by staying up too long. You've neither of you any more sense than Tommy here, nor so much, by a long way, have they, little man? No, Kitty, let him be; you'd only drop him on the floor if I let you, and then he'd break, you know."

Silvio was kneeling up on the window-seat by Peter's side, taking an interest in the doings of the street.

Peggy said, "Well, Larry, what's the news of the great world?"

"It's raining," said Silvio, who had something of the mournful timbre of Hilary's voice in his.

Peggy said, "Oh, darling, be more interesting! I'm horribly afraid you're going to grow up obvious, Larry, and that will never do. What else is it doing?"

"There's a cat in the rain," said Silvio, flattening his nose against the blurred glass, and manifestly inclined to select the sadder aspects of the world's news for retail. That tendency too, perhaps, he inherited from Hilary.

Presently he added, "There's a taxi coming up the street," and Peggy placed Thomas on Peter's knees and came to the window to look. When she had looked she said to Peter, "It must be nearly six o'clock" (the clock gained seventeen minutes a day, so that the time was always a matter for nicer calculation than Peggy could usually afford to give it); "and if Hilary's got flu, I should think Tommy'd be best out of the room.... I haven't easily the time to put him to bed this evening, really."

Peter accepted the suggestion and conveyed his son from the room. As he did so, someone knocked at the front door, and Peggy ran downstairs to open it.

She let in the unhappy noise of the rain and a tall, slim person in a fur coat.

Peggy was surprised, and (most rarely) a little embarrassed. It wasn't the person she had looked for. She even, in her unwonted confusion, let the visitor speak first.

He said, "Is Mr. Peter Margerison in?" frostily, giving her no sign of recognition.

"He is not, Lord Evelyn," said Peggy, hastily. "That is, he is busy with the baby upstairs. Will I take him a message?"

"I shall be glad if you will tell him I have called to see him."

"I will, Lord Evelyn. Will you come up to the drawing-room while I get him?"

Peggy led the way, drawing meanwhile on the resources of a picturesque imagination.

"He may be a little while before he can leave the baby, Lord Evelyn. Poor mite, it's starved with hunger, the way it cries and cries and won't leave off, and Peter has to cheer it."

Lord Evelyn grunted. The steep stairs made him a little short of breath, and not sympathetic.

"And even," went on Peggy, stopping outside the drawing-room door, "even when it does get a feed of milk, it's to-day from one kind of cow, to-morrow from another. Why, you'd think all the cows in England, turn and turn about, supplied that poor child with milk; and you know they get pains from changing. It's not right, poor baby; but what can we and his father do? The same with his scraps of clothes—this weather he'd a right to be having new warm ones—but there he lies crying for the cold in his little thin out-grown things; it brings the tears to one's eyes to see him. And he's not the only one, either. His father's just out of an illness, and keeps a cough on the chest because he can't afford a warm waistcoat or the only cough-mixture that cures him.... But Peter wouldn't like me to be telling you all this. Will you go in there, Lord Evelyn, and wait?"

She paused another moment, her hand on the handle.

"You'll not tell Peter I told you anything. He'd not be pleased. He'll not breathe a word to you of it himself—indeed, he'll probably say it's not so."

Lord Evelyn made no comment; he merely tapped his cane on the floor; he seemed impatient to have the door opened.

"And," added Peggy, "if ever you chanced to be offering him anything—I mean, you might be for giving him a birthday present, or a Xmas present or something sometime—you'd do best to put it as a gift to the baby, or he'll never take it."

Having concluded her diplomacy, she opened the door and ushered him into the room, where Hilary sat with his headache and the children played noisily at horses.

"Lord Evelyn Urquhart come to see Peter," called Peggy into the room. "Come along out of that, children, and keep yourselves quiet somewhere."

She bundled them out and shut the door on Lord Evelyn and Hilary.

Hilary rose dizzily to his feet and bowed. Lord Evelyn returned the courtesy distantly, and stood by the door, as far as possible from his host.

"This is good of you," said Hilary, "to come and see us in our fallen estate. Do sit down."

Lord Evelyn, putting his glass into his eye and turning it upon Hilary as if in astonishment at his impertinence in addressing him, said curtly, "I came to see your half-brother. I had not the least intention, nor the least desire, to see anyone else whatever; nor have I now."

"Quite so," said Hilary, his teeth chattering with fever. (His temperature, though he would never know, as Peter had broken the thermometer, must be anyhow a hundred and three, he was sure.) "Quite so. But that doesn't affect my gratitude to you. Peter's friends are mine. I must thank you for remembering Peter."

Lord Evelyn, presumably not seeing the necessity, was silent.

"We have not met," Hilary went on, passing his hot hand over his fevered brow, where the headache ran all round like a hot metal band, "for a very long time, Lord Evelyn; if we put aside that momentary encounter at Astleys last year." Hilary did put that aside, rather hastily, and went on, "Apart from that, we have not met since we were both in Venice, nearly two years ago. Lord Evelyn, I have often wished to tell you how very deeply I have regretted certain events that came between us there. I think there is a great deal that I might explain to you...."

Lord Evelyn, with averted face, said, "Be good enough to be silent, sir. I have no desire to hear any of your remarks. I have come merely to see your half-brother."

"Of course," said Hilary, who was sensitive, "if you take that line, there is nothing to be said between you and me."

Lord Evelyn acknowledged this admission with a slight inclination of the head.

"Nothing whatever, sir."

So there was silence, till Peter came in, pale and sickly and influenzaish, but with a smile for Lord Evelyn. It was extraordinarily nice of Lord Evelyn, he thought, to have come all the way to Brook Street in the rain to see him.

Lord Evelyn looked at him queerly, intently, out of his short-sighted eyes as they shook hands.

"I wish to talk to you," he remarked, with meaning.

Hilary took the hint, looked proud, said, "I see that my room is preferred to my company," and went away.

When he had gone, Peter said, "Do sit down," but Lord Evelyn took no notice of that. He had come to see Peter in his need, but he had not forgiven him, and he would remain standing in his house. Peter had once hurt him so badly that the mere sight of him quickened his breath and flushed his cheek. He tapped his cane impatiently against his grey spats.

"You're ill," he said, accusingly.

"Oh, I've only had flu," said Peter; "I'm all right now."

"You're ill," Lord Evelyn repeated. "Don't contradict me, sir. You're ill; you're in want; and you're bringing up a baby on insufficient diet. What?"

"Not a bit," said Peter. "I am not in want, nor is Thomas. Thomas' diet is so sufficient that I'm often afraid he'll burst with it."

Lord Evelyn said, "You're probably lying. But if you're not, why d'ye countenance your sister-in-law's begging letters? You're a hypocrite, sir. But that's nothing I didn't know before, you may say. Well, you're right there."

Lord Evelyn's anger was working up. He hadn't known it would be so difficult to talk to Peter and remain calm.

"You want to make a fool of me again," he broke out, "so you join in a lying letter and bring me here on false pretences. At least, I suppose it was really Lucy you thought to bring. You play on Lucy's soft heart, knowing you can squeeze money out of her—and so you can afford to say you've no use for mine. Is that it?"

Peter said, dully looking at his anger as at an ancient play re-staged, "I don't know what you're talking about. I know nothing of any letter. And you don't suppose I should take your money, or Lucy's either. Why should I? I don't want money."

Lord Evelyn was pacing petulantly up and down the shabby carpet, waving his cane as he walked.

"Oh, you know nothing of any letter, don't you. Well, ask your sister-in-law, then; ask that precious brother of yours. Haven't you always chosen to hang on to them and join in their dirty tricks? And now you turn round and say you know nothing of their doings; a pretty story.... Now look here, Mr. Peter Margerison, you've asked for money and you shall take it, d'ye see?"

Peter flung at him, in a queer and quite new hot bitterness and anger (it was perhaps the result of influenza, which has strange after effects). "You've no right to come here and say these things to me. I didn't want you to come; I never asked you to; and now I never want to see you again. Please go, Lord Evelyn."

Lord Evelyn paused in his walk, and stood looking at him for a moment, his lips parted to speak, his hands clasped behind him over the gold head of his cane.

Then, into the ensuing silence, came Lucy, small and pale and wet in her grey furs, and stood like a startled kitten, her wide eyes turning from one angry face to the other.

Peter said to her, in a voice she had never heard from him before, "So you've come too."

Lord Evelyn tittered disagreeably. "Didn't expect her, of course, did you. So unlikely she'd come, after getting a letter like that.... I suppose you're wondering, Lucy, what I'm doing dans cette galere."

"No," said Lucy, "I wasn't. I know. You've come to see Peter, like me."

He laughed again. "Yes, that's it. Like you. And now he pretends he won't take the money he asked for, Lucy. Won't be beholden to me at any price. Perhaps he was waiting for you."

Lucy was looking at Peter, who looked so ill and so strange and new. Never before had he looked at her like that, with hard eyes. Peter was angry; the skies had fallen.

She said, and put out her hands to him, "What's the matter, Peter? Don't ... don't look like that.... Oh, you're ill; do sit down; it's so stupid to stand about."

Peter said, his own hands hanging at his sides, "Do you mind going away, both of you. I don't think I want to talk to either of you to-day.... I suppose you've brought money to give me too, Lucy, have you?"

Lucy coloured faintly over her small pale face.

"I won't give you anything you don't like, Peter. But I may give a present to Thomas, mayn't I?"

"No," said Peter, without interest or emotion.

So they stood in silence for a moment, facing each other, Lucy full-handed and impotent before Peter whose empty hands hung closed and unreceiving; Lucy and Peter, who had once been used to go shares and to give and take like two children, and who could give and take no more; and in the silence something oddly vibrated, so that Lord Evelyn, the onlooker, abruptly moved and spoke.

"Come home, Lucy. He's told us he'll have none of us."

Lucy still stood pleading, like a child; then, at Lord Evelyn's touch on her arm, she suddenly began to cry, again like a child, helpless and conquered.

At her tears Peter turned away sharply, and walked to the window.

"Please go," he said. "Please go."

They went, Lucy quietly crying, and Lord Evelyn, suddenly become oddly gentle, comforting her.

At the door he paused for a moment, looked round at Peter, hesitated, took a step back towards him, began to say something.

"Peter...."

Then Peggy came in, followed by Hilary. Lord Evelyn shut his lips lightly, bowed, and followed Lucy downstairs. Peggy went after them to let them out.

Hilary flung himself into a chair.

"Well, Peter? Well?"

Peter turned round from the window, and Hilary started at his face.

"My dear boy, what on earth is the matter?"

Then Peggy came in, her eyes full of dismayed vexation, but laughter twitching at her lips.

"Oh, my dears! What a mood they're in! Lord Evelyn looked at me to destroy me—and Lucy crying as if she'd never stop; I tried to make her take some sal volatile, but he wouldn't let her, but wisked her into her carriage and shut the door in my face. Mercy, what temper!"

The last words may not have had exclusive reference to Lord Evelyn, as Peggy was now looking at Peter in some astonishment and alarm. When Peter looked angry, everyone was so surprised that they wanted to take his temperature and send him to bed. Peggy would have liked to do that now, but really didn't dare.

What had come to the child, she wondered?

"What did they talk about, Peter? A funny thing their coming within half an hour of each other like that, wasn't it. And I never thought to see Lord Evelyn here, I must say. Now I wonder why was Lucy crying and he so cross?"

Peter left her to wonder that, and said merely, "Once for all, I won't have it. You shall not beg for money and bring my name into it. It's—it's horrid."

With a weak, childish word his anger seemed to explode and die away. After all, no anger of Peter's could last long. And somehow, illogically, his anger here was more with the Urquharts than with the Margerisons and most with Lucy. One is, of course, most angry, with those who have most power to hurt.

Suddenly feeling rather ill, Peter collapsed into a chair.

Peggy, coming and kneeling by him, half comforting, half reproaching, said, "Oh, Peter darling, you haven't been refusing money, when you know you and Tommy and all of us need it so much?"

Hilary said, "Peter has no regard whatever for what we all need. He simply doesn't care. I suppose now we shall never be able to afford even a new thermometer to replace the one Peter broke. Again, why should it matter to Peter? He took his own temperature all through his illness, and I suppose that is all he cares about. I wonder how much fever I have at this moment. Is my pulse very wild, Peggy?"

"It is not," said Peggy, soothingly, without feeling it. "And I daresay Peter's temperature is as high as yours now, if we knew; he looks like it. Well, Peter, it was stupid of you, my dear, wasn't it, to say no to a present and hurt their feelings that way when they'd been so good as to come in the rain and all. If they offer it again—"

Peter said, "They won't. They won't come here again, ever. They've done with us, I'm glad to say, and we with them. So you needn't write to them again; it will be no use."

Peter was certainly cross, Peggy and Hilary looked at him in surprised disapproval. How silly. Where was the use of having friends if one treated them in this unkind, proud way?

"Peter," said Hilary, "has obviously decided that we are not fit to have anything to do with his grand friends. No doubt he is well-advised—" he looked bitterly round the unkempt room—"and we will certainly take the hint."

Then Peter recovered himself and said, "Oh don't be an ass, Hilary," and laughed dejectedly, and went up to finish putting Thomas to bed.

In the carriage that rolled through the rain from Brook Street to Park Lane, Lord Evelyn Urquhart was saying, "This is the last time; the very last time. Never again do I try to help any Margerison. First I had to listen for full five minutes to the lies of that woman; then to the insufferable remarks of that cad, that swindler, Hilary Margerison, who I firmly believe had an infectious disease which I have no doubt caught," (he was right; he had caught it). "Then in comes Peter and insults me to my face and tells me to clear out of the house. By all means; I have done so, and it will be for good. What, Lucy? There, don't cry, child; they an't worth a tear between the lot of 'em."

But Lucy cried. She, like Peter, was oddly not herself to-day, and cried and cried.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE BREAKING-POINT

The boarding-house suddenly ceased to be. Its long illness ended in natural death. There was a growing feeling among the boarders that no self-respecting person could remain with people whose financial affairs were in the precarious condition of the Margerisons'—people who couldn't pay the butcher, and lived on ill-founded expectations of subsidies. As two years ago the Margerisons had been thrown roughly out of the profession of artistic experts, so now the doors of the boarding-house world were shut upon them. Boarders are like that; intensely respectable.

All the loosed dogs of ill-fortune seemed to be yelping at the Margerisons' heels at once. Hilary, when he recovered from his influenza and went out to look for jobs, couldn't find one. Again and again he was curtly refused employment, by editors and others. Every night he came home a little more bitter than the day before. Peter too, while he lay mending of his breakages, received a letter from the place of business he adorned informing him that it would not trouble him further. He had never been much use to it; he had been taken on at Leslie's request and given a trial; but it could not last for ever, as Peter fair-mindedly admitted.

"Well," he commented, "I suppose one must do something else, eventually. But I shall put off reflecting on that till I can move about more easily."

Hilary said, "We are being hounded out of London as we were hounded out of Venice. It is unbearable. What remains?"

"Nothing, that I can see at the moment," said Peter, laughing weakly.

"Ireland," said Peggy suddenly. "Let's go there. Dublin's worth a dozen of this hideous old black dirty place. You could get work on 'The Nationalist,' Hilary, I do believe, for the sub-editorship's just been given to my cousin Larry Callaghan. Come along to the poor old country, and we'll try our luck again."

"Dublin I believe to be an unspeakable place to live in," said Hilary, but mainly from habit. "Still, I presume one must live somewhere, so ..."

He turned to Peter. "Where shall you and Thomas live?"

Peter flushed slightly. He had supposed that he and Thomas were also to live in the unspeakable Dublin.

"Oh, we haven't quite made up our minds. I must consult Thomas about it."

"But," broke in Peggy, "of course you're coming with us, my dear. What do you mean? You're not surely going to desert us now, Peter?"

Peter glanced at Hilary. Hilary said, pushing his hair, with his restless gesture, from his forehead, "Really, Peggy, we can't drag Peter about after us all our lives; it's hardly fair on him to involve him in all our disasters, when he has more than enough of his own."

"Indeed and he has. Peter's mischancier than you are, Hilary, on the whole, and I will not leave him and Tommy to get lost or broken by themselves. Don't be so silly, Peter; of course you're coming with us."

"I think," said Peter, "that Thomas and I will perhaps stay in London. You see, I can't, probably, get work on 'The Nationalist' and it's doubtful what I could do in Dublin. I suppose I can get work of a sort in London; enough to provide Thomas with milk, though possibly not all from one cow."

"I daresay. And who'd look after the mite, I'd like to know, while you're earning his milk?"

"Oh, the landlady, I should think. Everyone likes Thomas; he's remarkably popular."

Afterwards Hilary said to Peggy, "Really, Peggy, I see no reason why Peter should be dragged about with us in the future. The joint menage has not, in the past, been such a success that we need want to perpetuate it. In fact, though, of course, it is pleasant to have Peter in the house...."

"Indeed it is, the darling," put in Peggy.

"One can't deny that disasters have come upon us extraordinarily fast since he came to live with us in Venice two years ago. First he discovered things that annoyed him in my private affairs, which was extremely disagreeable for all of us, and really he was rather unnecessarily officious about that; in fact, I consider that it was owing largely to the line he took that things reached their final very trying denouement. Since then disaster upon disaster has come upon us; Peter's unfortunate marriage, and consequent serious expenses, including the child now left upon his hands (really, you know, that was an exceedingly stupid step that Peter took; I tried to dissuade him at the time, but of course it was no use). And he is so very frequently ill; so am I, you will say"—(Peggy didn't, because Hilary wasn't, as a matter of fact, ill quite so often as he believed)—"but two crocks in a household are twice as inconvenient as one. And now there has been this unpleasant jar with the Urquharts. Peter, by his rudeness to them, has finally severed the connection, and we can hope for nothing from that quarter in future. And I am not sure that I choose to have living with me a much younger brother who has influential friends of his own in whom he insists that we shall have neither part nor lot. I strongly object to the way Peter spoke to us on that occasion; it was extremely offensive."

"Oh, don't be such a goose, Hilary. The boy only lost his temper for a moment, and I'm sure that happens seldom enough. And as to the rest of it, I don't like the way you speak of him, as if he was the cause of our mischances, and as if his being so mischancey himself wasn't a reason why we should all stick together, and him with that scrap of a child, too; though I will say Peter's a handier creature with a child than anyone would think. I suppose it's the practice he's had handling other costly things that break easy.... Well, have it your own way, Hilary. Only mind, if Peter wants to come with us, he surely shall. I'm not going to leave him behind like a left kitten. And I'd love to have him, for he makes sunshine in the house when things are blackest."

"Lately Peter has appeared to me to be rather depressed," said Hilary, and Peggy too had perceived that this was so. It was something so new in Peter that it called for notice.

There was needed no further dispute between Peggy and Hilary, for Peter said that he and Thomas preferred to stay in London.

"I can probably find a job of some sort to keep us. I might with luck get a place as shop-walker. That always looks a glorious life. You merely walk about and say, 'Yes, madam? This way for hose, madam.' Something to live on and nothing to do, as the poet says. But I expect they are difficult places to get, without previous experience. Short of that, I could be one of the men round stations that open people's cab doors and take the luggage out; or even a bus-conductor, who knows? Oh, there are lots of openings. But in Dublin I feel my talents might be lost.... Thomas and I will move into more modest apartments, and go in for plain living and high thinking."

"You poor little dears," said Peggy, and kissed both of them. "Well, it'll be plain living for the lot of us, that's obvious, and lucky too to get that.... I'd love to have you two children with us, but ..."

But Peter, to whom other people's minds were as books that who runs may read, had no intention of coming with them. That faculty of intuition of Peter's had drawbacks as well as advantages. He knew, as well as if Hilary had said so, that Hilary considered their life together a disastrous series of mishaps, largely owing to Peter, and that he did not desire to continue it. He knew precisely what was Denis Urquhart's point of view and state of feelings towards himself and his family, and how unbridgeable that gulf was. He knew why Lucy was stopping away, and would stop away (for if other people's thoughts were to him as pebbles in running water, hers were pebbles seen white and lucid in a still, clear pool). And he knew very well that he relieved Peggy's kind heart when he said he and Thomas would stop in London; for to Peggy anything was better than to worry her poor old Hilary more than need be.

So, before March was out, about St. Cuthbert's day, in fact, Hilary Margerison and his family left England for a more distressful country, to seek their fortunes fresh, and Peter and his family sought modest apartments in a little street behind St. Austin's Church, where the apartments are very modest indeed.

"Are they too modest for you, Thomas?" Peter asked dubiously. "And do you too much hate the Girl?"

The Girl was the landlady's daughter, and undertook for a small consideration to look after Thomas while Peter was out, and feed him at suitable intervals. Thomas and Peter did rather hate her, for she was a slatternly girl, matching her mother and her mother's apartments, and didn't always take her curlers off till the evening, and said "Boo" to Thomas, merely because he was young—a detestable habit, Peter and Thomas considered. Peter had to make a great deal of sensible conversation to Thomas, to make up.

"I'm sorry," Peter apologised, "but, you see, Thomas, it's all we can afford. You don't earn anything at all, and I only earn a pound a week, which is barely enough to keep you in drink. I don't deserve even that, for I don't address envelopes well; but I suppose they know it's such a detestable job that they haven't the face to give me less."

Peter was addressing envelopes because a Robinson relative had given him the job, and he hadn't the nerve to refuse it. He couldn't well refuse it, because of Thomas. Uncompanioned by Thomas he would probably have chosen instead to sweep a crossing or play a barrel-organ, or stand at a street corner with outstretched hat (though this last would only have done for a summer engagement, as Peter didn't like the winds that play round street corners in winter). But Thomas was very much there, and had to be provided for; so Peter copied letters and addressed envelopes and earned twenty shillings weekly, and out of it paid for Thomas's drink and Thomas's Girl and his own food, and beds and a sitting-room and fires and laundry for both, and occasional luxuries in the way of wooden animals for Thomas to play with. So they were not extremely poor; they were respectably well-to-do. For Thomas's sake, Peter supposed it was worth while not to be extremely poor, even though it meant addressing envelopes and living in a great grey prison-house of a city, where one only surmised the first early pushings of the spring beyond the encompassing gloom.

Peter used to tell Thomas about that, in order that he might know something of the joyous world beyond the walls. He told Thomas in March, taking time by the forelock, about the early violets that were going some time to open blue eyes in the ditches by the roads where the spring winds walk; about the blackthorn that would suddenly make a white glory of the woods; about the green, sticky budding of the larches, and the keen sweet smell of them, and the damp fragrance of the roaming wind that would blow over river-flooded fields, smelling of bonfires and wet earth. He took him through the seasons, telling him of the blown golden armies of the daffodils that marched out for Easter, and the fragrant white glory of the may; and the pale pink stars of the hedge-roses, and the yellow joy of buttercup fields wherein cows stand knee-deep and munch, in order to give Thomas sweet white milk.

"Ugh," said Thomas, making a face, and Peter answered, "Yes, I know; sometimes they come upon an onion-flower and eat that, and that's not nice, of course. But mostly it's grass and buttercups and clover." Then he told him of hot July roads, where the soft white dust lies, while the horses and the cows stand up to their middles in cool streams beneath the willows and switch their tails, and the earth dreams through the year's hot noon; and of August, the world's welfare and the earth's warming-pan, and how, in the fayre rivers, swimming is a sweet exercise. "And my birthday comes then. Oh, 'tis the merry time, wherein honest neighbours make good cheer, and God is glorified in his blessings on the earth. Then cometh September, Thomas"—Peter was half talking, half reading out of a book he had got to amuse Thomas—"then cometh September, and then he (that's you, Thomas) doth freshly beginne to garnish his house and make provision of needfull things for to live in winter, which draweth very nere.... There are a few nice things in September; ripe plums and pears and nuts—(no, nuts aren't nice, because our teeth aren't good, are they; at least mine aren't, and you've only got one and a half); but anyhow, plums, and a certain amount of yellow sunshine, and Thomas's birthday. But on the whole it's too near the end of things; and in briefe, I thus conclude of it, I hold it the Winter's forewarning and the Summer's farewell. Adieu.... We won't pursue the year further, my dear; the rest is silence and impenetrable gloom, anyhow in this corner of the world, and doesn't bear thinking about."

Thus did Peter talk to Thomas of an evening, when they sat together after tea over the fire.

Sometimes he told him news of the world of men. One evening he said to him, very gently and pitifully, "Dear old man, your mother's dead. For her sake, one's glad, I suppose. You and I must try to look at it from her point of view. She's escaped from a poor business. Some day I'll read you the letter she wrote to you and me as she lay dying; but not yet, for I never read you sad things, do I? But some day you may be glad to know that she had thoughts for you at the last. She was sorry she left us, Thomas; horribly, dreadfully sorry.... I wish she hadn't been. I wish she could have gone on being happy till the end. It was my fault that she did it, and it didn't even make her happy. And I suppose it killed her at the last; or would she anyhow have escaped that way before long? But I took more care of her than he did.... And now she'll never come back to us. I've thought sometimes, Thomas, that perhaps she would; that perhaps she would get tired of him, so tired that she would leave him and come back to us, and then you'd have had a mother to do for you instead of only me and the Girl. Poor little Thomas; you'll never have a mother now. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry about it. Sorry for you, and sorry for her, and sorry for all of us. It's a pitiful world, Thomas, it seems. I wonder how you're going to get through it."

Never before had he talked to Thomas like that. He had been used to speak to him of new-burnisht joys and a world of treasure. But of late Peter had been conscious of increasing effort in being cheerful before Thomas. It was as if the little too much that breaks had been laid upon him and under it he was breaking. For the first time he was seeing the world not as a glorious treasure-place full of glad things for touch and sight and hearing, full of delightful people and absurd jokes, but as a grey and lonely sea through which one drifted rudderless towards a lee shore. He supposed that there was, somewhere, a lee shore; a place where the winds, having blown their uttermost, ceased to blow, and where wrecked things were cast up at last broken beyond all mending and beyond all struggling, to find the peace of the utterly lost. He had not got there yet; he and his broken boat were struggling in the grey cold waters, which had swept all his cargo from him, bale by bale. From him that hath not shall indeed be taken away even that which he hath.

It was Thomas who caused Peter to think of these things newly; Thomas, who was starting life with so poor a heritage. For Thomas, so like himself, Peter foresaw the same progressive wreckage. Thomas too, having already lost a mother, would lose later all he loved; he would give to some friend all he was and had, and the friend would drop him in the mud and leave him there, and the cold bitterness as of death would go over Thomas's head. He would, perhaps, love a woman too, and the woman would leave him quite alone, not coming near him in his desolation, because he loved her. He would also lose his honour, his profession, and the beautiful things he loved to handle and play with. "And then, when you've lost everything, and perhaps been involved in some of my disgraces, you'll think that at least you and I can stick together and go under together and help each other a little. And I daresay you'll find that I shall say, 'No, I'm going off to Ireland, or Italy, or somewhere; I've had enough of you, and you can jolly well sink or swim by yourself'—so you see you won't have even me to live for in the end, just when you want me most. That's the sort of thing that happens.... Oh, what chance have you?" said Peter very bitterly, huddled, elbows on knees, over the chilly fire, while Thomas slumbered in a shawl on the rug.

Bitterness was so strange in Peter, so odd and new, that Thomas was disturbed by it, and woke and wailed, as if his world was tumbling about his ears.

Peter too felt it strange and new, and laughed a little at it and himself as he comforted Thomas. But his very laughter was new and very dreary. He picked Thomas up in his arms and held him close, a warm little whimpering bundle. Then it was as if the touch of the small live thing that was his own and had no one in the world but him to fend for it woke in him a new instinct. There sprang up in him swiftly, new-born out of the travail of great bitterness, a sharp anger against life, against fate, against the whole universe of nature and man. To lose and lose and lose—how that goes on and on through a lifetime! But at last it seems that the limit is reached, something snaps and breaks, and the loser rises up, philosopher no more, to take and grasp and seize. The lust to possess, to wring something for Thomas and himself out of life that had torn from them so much—it sprang upon him like a wild beast, and fastened deep fangs into his soul and will.

Outside, a small April wind stirred the air of the encompassing city, a faint breath from a better world, seeming to speak of life and hope and new beginnings.

Peter, laying Thomas gently on a chair, went to the open window and leant out, looking into the veil of the unhappy streets that hid an exquisite world. Exquisiteness was surely there, as always. Mightn't he too, he and Thomas, snatch some of it for themselves? The old inborn lust for things concrete, lovely things to handle and hold, caught Peter by the throat. In that hour he could have walked without a scruple into an empty house or shop and carried away what he could of its beauties, and brought them home to Thomas, saying, "Anyhow, here's something for us to go on with." He was in the mood in which some people take to drink, only Peter didn't like any drinks except non-alcoholic ones; or to reckless gambling, only he didn't find gambling amusing; or to some adventure of love, only to Peter love meant one thing only, and that was beyond his reach.

But when he had put Thomas to bed, in his little common cheap night-shirt, he went out into the streets with his weekly earnings in his pockets and spent them. He spent every penny he had. First he went to a florist's and bought daffodils, in great golden sheaves. Then he went to a toyshop and got a splendid family of fluffy beasts, and a musical box, and a Noah's Ark, and a flute. He had spent all his money by then, so he pawned his watch and signet ring and bought Thomas some pretty cambric clothes and a rocking cradle. He had nothing else much to pawn. But he badly wanted some Japanese paintings to put in the place of the pictures that at present adorned the sitting-room. Thomas and he must have something nice and gay to look at, instead of the Royal Family and the Monarch of the Glen and "Grace Sufficient" worked in crewels. So he went into a shop in Holborn and chose some paintings, and ordered them to be sent up, and said, "Please enter them to me," so firmly that they did. Having done that once, he repeated it at several other shops, and sometimes they obeyed him and sometimes said that goods could not be sent up without pre-payment. Pre-payment (or, indeed, as far as Peter could look forward, post-payment) being out of the question, those goods had to be left where they were. But Peter, though handicapped by shabby attire, had an engaging way with him, and most shopmen are trustful and obliging. If they lost by the transaction, thought Peter recklessly, it was their turn to lose, not his. It was his turn to acquire, and he had every intention of doing so. He had a glorious evening, till the shops shut. Then he went home, and found that the daffodils had come, and he filled the room with them, converting its dingy ugliness into a shining glory. Then he took down all the horrible pictures and texts and stacked them behind the sofa, awaiting the arrival of the Japanese paintings. He thought Thomas would like the paintings as much as he did himself. Their room in future should be a bright and pleasant place, fit for human beings to live in. He cleared the chimney-piece of its horrid, tinkling ornaments to leave space for his brown pottery jars full of daffodils. He put the ornaments with the pictures behind the sofa, and when the Girl came in with his supper requested her at her leisure to remove them.

"I have been getting some new pictures, you see," he told her, and was annoyed at the way her round eyes widened. Why shouldn't he get as many new pictures as he chose, without being gaped at?

There was more gaping next day, when his purchases were sent up. He had warned his landlady and the Girl beforehand, that they might not tell the messengers it must be a mistake and send them away, on what would, no doubt be their stupid and impertinent impulse. So they gaped and took them in, and Peter hurried back early from his work and fetched Thomas in to watch him open parcels and admire the contents. He spread bright rugs over the horse-hair sofa and chairs, and flung big soft cushions about them, and said "Hurrah! The first time I've been really comfortable since I left Cambridge." Then he bathed Thomas and put him into a new little soft cambric night-shirt, and put him to bed in the rocking-cradle. Thomas was delighted with it all. He had no doubt inherited Peter's love of all things bright and beautiful, and now for the first time he had them.

"That's more the style, isn't it, old man?" said Peter, stretching himself among cushions in the arm-chair. Thomas agreed that it was, and the two epicureans took their ease among the pleasures of the senses.

"What next?" Peter wondered. "We must have more things still, mustn't we? Nice things of all sorts; not only the ones we can buy. But we must begin with the ones we can buy.... Mrs. Baker will have to wait for her rent for a time; I can't spare any for that.... I've a good mind, Thomas, to take a whole holiday; a long one. Chuck the envelopes and take to living like a lord, on tick. It's wonderful how far tick will carry you, if you try. Muffins for tea, you see, Thomas, only you can't have any. Well, what's the matter? Why shouldn't I have muffins for tea? You've got milk, haven't you, and I'm not getting a share in that. Don't be grudging.... But we want more than muffins and milk, Thomas; and more than cushions and daffodils and nice pictures. We want a good time. We want friends; we want someone to love us; we want a holiday. If Leslie was in England I'd go and say, 'Thomas and I are coming to stay with you for a time, and you've just got to fork out supplies for us and let us spend them.' Leslie would do it, too. But people are always away when one wants them most.... Oh, hang it all, Thomas, I'm not going on with those horrible envelopes; I'm not. I'm going to do things I like. Why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't I? Lots of people do; all the best people. I shall give notice to-morrow. No, I shan't; I shall just not turn up, then I shan't be bothered with questions.... And we're not going on with the friends we have here—Mrs. Baker, and the Girl, and the other envelope-gummers. No; we're going to insist on having nice amusing friends to play with; friends who are nicer than we are. The Girl isn't so nice, not by a long way. Rodney is; but he's too busy to be bothered with us much. We want friends of leisure. We will have them; we will. Why should we be chucked out and left outside people's doors, just because they're tired of us? The thing that matters is that we're not tired of them.... To-morrow, Thomas, you and I are going down to a place called Astleys, in Berkshire, to visit some friends of ours. If they don't want us, they can just lump us; good for them. Why should they always have only the things they want? Be ready at nine, old man, and we'll catch a train as soon after that as may be."

Thomas laughed, thinking it a splendid plan. He had never seen Astleys in Berkshire, but he knew it to be a good place, from Peter's voice when he mentioned it.

"But I don't want to excite you so late at night," said Peter, "so don't think any more about it, but go to sleep, if you've finished that milk. Does your head ache? Mine does. That's the worst of weak heads; they always ache just when things are getting interesting. But I don't care; we're going to have things—things to like; we're going to get hold of them somehow, if we die in gaol for it; and that's worth a headache or two. Someone says something about having nothing and yet possessing all things; it's one of the things with no meaning that people do say, and that make me so angry. It ought to be having nothing and then possessing all things; because that's the way it's going to be with us. Good night, Thomas; you may go to sleep now."

Thomas did so; and Peter lay on the sofa and gazed at the daffodils in the brown jars that filled the room with light.



CHAPTER XIX

THE NEW LIFE

Peter, with Thomas over his shoulder, stepped out of the little station into a radiant April world. Between green, budding hedges, between ditches where blue violets and joyous-eyed primroses peered up out of wet grass, a brown road ran, gleaming with puddles that glinted up at the blue sky and the white clouds that raced before a merry wind.

Peter said, "Do you like it, old man? Do you?" but Thomas's heart was too full for speech. He was seeing the radiant wonderland he had heard of; it crowded upon him, a vivid, many-splendoured thing, and took his breath away. There were golden ducklings by the grassy roadside, and lambs crying to him from the fields, and cows, eating (one hoped) sweet grass, with their little calves beside them. A glorious scene. The gay wind caught Peter by the throat and brought sudden tears to his eyes, so long used to looking on grey streets.

He climbed over a stile in the hedge and took a field path that ran up to a wood—the wood way, as he remembered, to Astleys. Peter had stayed at Astleys more than once in old days, with Denis. He remembered the keen, damp fragrance of the wood in April; the smooth stems of the beeches, standing up out of the mossy ground, and the way the primroses glimmered, moon-like, among the tangled ground-ivy; and the way the birds made every budding bough rock with their clamorous delight. It was a happy wood, full of small creatures and eager happenings and adventurous quests; a fit road to take questers after happiness to their goal. In itself it seemed almost the goal already, so alive was it and full of joy. Was there need to travel further? Very vividly the impression was borne in on Peter (possibly on Thomas too) that there was no need; that here, perhaps round the next twist of the little brown path, was not the way but the achievement.

And, rounding the next bend, they knew it to be so; for above the path, sitting at a beech-tree's foot among creeping ivy, with head thrown back against the smooth grey stem, and gathered primroses in either hand, was Lucy.

Looking round at the sound of feet on the path, she saw them, and smiled a little, not as if surprised, nor as if she had to change the direction of her thought, but taking them into her vision of the spring woods as if they were natural dwellers in it.

Peter stood still on the path and looked up at her and smiled too. He said, "Oh, Lucy, Thomas and I have come."

She bent down towards them, and reached out her hands, dropping the primroses, for Thomas. Peter gave her Thomas, and she laid him on her lap, cradled on her two arms, and smiled, still silently.

Peter sat down on the sloping ground just below her, his back against another tree.

"We've come to see you and Denis. You won't come to see us, so we had to take it into our own hands. We decided, Thomas and I, two days ago, that we weren't going on any longer in this absurd way. We're going to have a good time. So we went out and got things—lots of lovely things. And I've chucked my horrible work. And we've come to see you. Will Denis mind? I can't help it if he does; we've got to do it."

Lucy nodded, understanding. "I know. In thinking about you lately, I've known it was coming to this, rather soon. I didn't quite know when. But I knew you must have a good time."

After a little while she went on, and her clear voice fell strange and tranquil on the soft wood silence:

"What I didn't quite know was whether you would come and take it—the good time—or whether I should have to come and bring it to you. I was going to have come, you know. I had quite settled that. It's taken me a long time to know that I must: but I do know it now."

"You didn't come," said Peter suddenly, and his hands clenched sharply over the ivy trails and tore them out of the earth, and his face whitened to the lips. "All this time ... you didn't come ... you kept away...." The memory of that black emptiness shook him. He hadn't realised till it was nearly over quite how bad it had been, that emptiness.

The two pale faces, so like, were quivering with the same pain, the same keen recognition of it.

"No," Lucy whispered. "I didn't come ... I kept away."

Peter said, steadying his voice, "But now you will. Now I may come to you. Oh, I know why you kept away. You thought it would be less hard for me if I didn't see you. But don't again. It isn't less hard. It's—it's impossible. First Denis, then you. I can't bear it. I only want to see you sometimes; just to feel you're there. I won't be grasping, Lucy."

"Yes," said Lucy calmly, "you will. You're going to be grasping in future. You're going to take and have.... Peter, my dear, haven't you reached the place I've reached yet? Don't you know that between you and me it's got to be all or nothing? I've learnt that now. So I tried nothing. But that won't do. So now it's going to be all.... I'm coming to Thomas and you. We three together will find nice things for one another."

Peter's forehead was on his drawn-up knees. He felt her hand touch his head, and shivered a little.

"Denis," he whispered.

She answered, "Denis has everything. Denis won't miss me among so much. Denis is the luckiest, the most prosperous, the most succeeding person I know. Peter, let me try and tell you about Denis and me."

She paused for a moment, leaning her head back against the beech-tree and looking up wide-eyed at the singing roof overhead.

"You know how it was, I expect," she said, with the confidence they always had in each other's knowledge, that saved so many words. "How Denis came among us, among you and me and father and Felicity and our unprosperous, dingy friends, and how he was all bright and shining and beautiful, and I loved him, partly because he was so bright and beautiful, and a great deal because you did, and you and I have always loved the same things. And so I married him; and at the time, and oh, for ever so long, I didn't understand how it was; how it was all wrong, and how he and I didn't really belong to each other a bit, because he's in one lot of people, and I'm in another. He's in the top lot, that gets things, and I'm in the under lot, with you and father and all the poorer people who don't get things, and have to find life nice in spite of it. I'd deserted really; and father and Felicity knew I had; only I didn't know, or I'd never have done it. I only got to understand gradjully" (Lucy's long words were apt to be a blur, like a child's), "when I saw what a lot of good things Denis and his friends had, and how I had to have them too, 'cause I couldn't get away from them; and oh, Peter, I've felt smothered beneath them! They're so heavy and so rich, and shut people out from the rest of the world that hasn't got them, so that they can't hear or see each other. It's like living in a palace in the middle of dreadful slums, and never caring. Because you can't care, however much you try, in the palace, the same as you can if you're down in the middle of the poorness and the emptiness. Wasn't it Christ who said how hardly rich men shall enter into the kingdom of heaven? And it's harder still for them to enter into the other kingdoms, which aren't heaven at all. It's hard for them to step out from where they are and enter anywhere else. Peter, can anyone ever leave their world and go into another. I have failed, you see. Denis would never even begin to try; he wouldn't see any object. I don't believe it can be done. Except perhaps by very great people. And we're not that. People like you and me and Denis belong where we're born and brought up. Even for the ones who try, to change, it's hard. And most of us don't try at all, or care ... Denis hardly cares, really. He's generous with money; he lets me give away as much as I like; but he doesn't care himself. Unhappiness and bad luck and disgrace don't touch him; he doesn't want to have anything to do with them; he doesn't like them. Even his friends, the people he likes, he gets tired of directly they begin to go under. You know that. And it's dreadful, Peter. I hate it, being comfortable up there and not seeing and not hearing and not caring. Seems to me we just live to have a good time. Well, of course, people ought to do that, it's the thing to live for, and I usen't to mind before I was rich, and father and Felicity and you and I had a good time together. But when you're rich and among rich people, and have a good time not because you make it for yourself out of all the common things that everyone shares—the sunshine and the river and the nice things in the streets—but have a special corner of good things marked off for you, then it gets dreadful. 'Tisn't that one thinks one ought to be doing more for other people; I don't think I've that sort of conscience much; only that I don't belong. I can't help thinking of all the down-below people, the disreputable, unlucky people, who fail and don't get things, and I know that's where I really belong. It's like being born in one family and going and living in another. You never fit in really; your proper family is calling out to you all the time. Oh, not only because they aren't rich and lucky, but because they really suit you best, in little ways as well as big ways. You understand them, and they understand you. All the butlers and footmen and lady's-maids frighten me so; I don't like telling them to do things; they're so—so solemn and respectable. And I don't like creatures to be killed, and I don't like eating them afterwards. But Denis and his friends and the servants and everyone thinks it's idiotic to be a vegetarian. Denis says vegetarians are nearly all cranks and bounders, and long-haired men or short-haired women. Well, I can't help it; I s'pose that shows where I really and truly belong, though I don't like short-haired women; it's so ugly, and they talk so loud very often. And there it is again; I dislike short hair 'cause of that, but Denis dislikes it 'cause it isn't done. That's so often his reason; and he means not done by his partic'lar lot of top-room people.... So you see, Peter, I don't belong there, do I? I don't belong any more than you do."

Peter shook his head. "I never supposed you did, of course."

"Well," she said next, "what you're thinking now is that Denis wants me. He doesn't—not much. He's not awf'ly fond of me, Peter; I think he's rather tired of me, 'cause I often want to do tiresome things, that aren't done. I think he knows I don't belong. He's very kind and pleasant always; but he'd be as happy without me, and much happier with another wife who fitted in more. He only took me as a sort of luxury; he didn't really need me. And you do; you and Thomas. You want me much more than he ever did, or ever could. You want me so much that even if Denis did want me a great deal, I should come to you, because you want me more, and because all his life he's had the things he wanted, and now it's your turn. 'Tisn't fair. Why shouldn't you have things too—you and Thomas? Thomas and you and I can be happy together with no money and nothing else much; we can make our own good time as we go along, if we have each other. Oh, Peter, let's!"

She bent down to him, reaching out her hands, and Thomas smiled on her lap. So for a moment the three stayed, and the woods were hushed round them, waiting. Then in the green roof above a riot of shrill, sweet triumph broke the hush, and Peter leaped to his feet and laughed.

"Oh, Lucy, let's. Why not? I told Thomas the day before yesterday that we were going to have a good time now. Well, then, let's have it. Who's to prevent it? It's our turn; it's our turn. We'll begin from now and take things and keep them.... Oh, d'you mean it, Lucy? D'you mean you'll come and play with us, for ever and ever?"

"'Course I will," she said, simply, like a child.

He fell on his knees beside her and leant on his hands and peered into Thomas's face.

"Do you hear, Thomas? She's coming; she's coming to us, for always. You wanted her, didn't you? You wanted her nearly as much as I did, only you didn't know it so well.... Oh, Lucy, oh, Lucy, oh, Lucy ... I've wanted you so ..."

"I've wanted you too," she said. "I haven't talked about that part of it, 'cause it's so obvious, and I knew you knew. All the time, even when I thought I cared for Denis, I was only half a person without you. Of course, I always knew that, without thinking much about it, from the time we were babies. Only I didn't know it meant this; I thought it was more like being brother and sister, and that we could both be happy just seeing each other sometimes. It's only rather lately that I've known it had to be everything. There's nothing at all to say about the way we care, Peter, because it's such an old stale thing; it's always been, and I s'pose it always will be. 'Tisn't a new, surprising, sudden thing, like my falling in love with Denis. It's so deep, it's got root right down at the bottom, before we can either of us remember. It's like this ivy that's all over the ground, and out of which all the little flowers and things grow. And when it's like that...."

"Yes," said Peter, "when it's like that, there's only one way to take. What's the good of fighting against life? We're not going to fight any more, Thomas and I. We're going simply to grab everything we can get. The more things the better; I always knew that. Who wants to be a miserable Franciscan on the desert hills? It's so unutterably profane. Here begins the new life."

They sat in silence together on the creeping, earth-rooted ivy out of which all the little flowers and things grew; and all round them the birds sang how it was spring-time. The fever of the spring was in Peter's blood, flowing through his veins like fire, and he knew only that life was good and lovely and was calling to the three of them to come and live it, to take the April paths together through green woods. The time was not long past, though it seemed endless years ago, when he would have liked them to be four, when he would have liked Denis to come too, because he had so loved Denis that to hurt him and leave him would have been unthinkable. But the time was past. Peter and Lucy had come to the place where they couldn't share and didn't want to, and no love but one matured. They had left civilisation, left friendship, which is part of civilisation, behind, and knew only the primitive, selfish, human love that demands all of body and soul. They needed no words to explain to one another their change of view. For always they had leaped to one another's thoughts and emotions and desires.

Lucy said wistfully, after a time, "Denis will never see us again."

But thoughts of Denis did not, could not, dim the radiant vision of roads running merrily through the country of the spring.

Thomas here said that it was milk-time, and Peter, who had thoughtfully remembered to bring his bottle, produced it from his pocket and applied it, while Lucy looked on and laughed.

"In future," she said, "I shall take over that job."

"I wonder," murmured Peter, "exactly what we contemplate living on. Shall we sell boot-laces on the road, or play a barrel-organ, or what?"

"Oh, anything that's nice. But I've got a little, you know. Father hadn't much, but there was something for Felicity and me. It's seemed nothing, compared with what I've been living on lately; but it will look quite a lot when it's all we've got.... Father'd be glad, Peter, if he knew. He'd say we ought to do it, I know he would. It's partly him I've been hearing all this time, calling and calling to me to come away and live. He did so hate fat and sweetness and all smothering things. They just bored him dreadfully. He wouldn't ever come and stay with us, you know.... Oh, and I've written to Felicity, telling her what I meant to do. I don't quite know what she'll say; nobody ever does know, with Felicity.... Now I'm going back to the house, Peter, and you and Thomas must go back too. But first we'll settle what to do, and when to do it."

It didn't take much settling, between three people who saw no difficulties anywhere, but said simply, "Let us do this," and did it, as children do. But such plans as they thought desirable they made, then parted.

"I shall tell Denis," said Lucy, "I must do that. I'll explain to him all I can, and leave the rest. But not yet. I shall tell him on Sunday night."

"Yes," Peter agreed, simply, while the shadow fell again momentarily on his vision. "You must do that, of course...."

He left it at that; for Denis he had no words.

Lucy got up, and laid Thomas in Peter's arms.

"How much I've talked and talked, Peter. I've never talked so much before, have I? And I s'pose I never will again. But it had to be all said out once. I'm tired of only thinking things, even though I knew you understood. Saying things makes them alive. They're alive now, and always will be. So good-bye."

They stood and looked at one another for a moment in silence, then turned and took their opposite ways.

Peter didn't go back to London till the late afternoon. He had things to show Thomas on this his first day in the country. So he took him a long walk, and Thomas sat in meadows and got a near view of cows and sheep, and saw Peter paddle in a stream and try to catch minnows in an old tin pot that he found.

Another thing that he found, or rather that found them, was a disreputable yellow dog. He was accompanying a tramp and his wife along the road. When the tramp sat down and untied a handkerchief full of apple pie and cold potatoes (tramps have delightful things to eat as a rule) the dog came near and asked for his share, and was violently removed to a distance by the tramp's boot. He cried and ran through the hedge and came upon Peter and Thomas, who were sitting on the other side, in a field. Peter looked over the hedge and said, "Is he yours?" and was told, "Mine! No, 'e ain't. 'E's been follerin' us for miles, and the more I kick 'im the more 'e follers. Wish someone'd pison 'im. I'm sick of 'im." His wife, who had the weary, hopeless, utterly resigned face of some female tramps, said, "'E'll do for 'im soon, my man will," without much interest.

"I'll take him with me," said Peter, and drew the disreputable creature to him and gently rubbed his bruised side, and saw that he had rather a nice face, meant to be cheerful, and friendly and hopeful eyes. Indeed, he must be friendly and hopeful to have followed such companions so far.

"Will you be our dog?" said Peter to him. "Will you come walking with us in future, and have a little bit of whatever we get? And shall we call you San Francesco, because you like disreputable people and love your brother, the sun, and keep company with your little sisters, the fleas? Very good, then. This is Thomas, and you may lick his face very gently, but remember that he is smaller than you and has to be tenderly treated lest he break."

San Francesco stayed with them through the afternoon, and accompanied them back to London, smuggled under a seat, because Peter couldn't afford a ticket for him. He proved a likeable being on further acquaintance, with a merry grin and an amused cock of the eye; obviously one who took the world's vagaries with humorous patience. Peter conveyed him from Paddington to Mary Street with some difficulty, and bought a bone for him from a cat's-meat-what-orfers man, and took him up to the bright and beautiful sitting-room. Then he told his landlady that he was about to leave her.

"It isn't that I'm not satisfied, you know," he added, fearing to hurt her, "but I'm going to give up lodgings altogether. I'm going abroad, to Italy, on Monday."

"I see." Mrs. Baker saw everything in a moment. Her young gentleman had obviously been over-spending his income (all these new things must have cost a pretty penny), and had discovered, what many discover, that flight was the only remedy.

"About the rent," she began, "and the bills ..."

Peter said, "Oh, I'll pay you the rent and the bills before I go. I promise I will. But I can't pay much else, you know, Mrs. Baker. So when people come to dun me, tell them I've gone no one knows where. I'm awfully sorry about it, but I've simply no money left."

His smile, as always, softened her, and she nodded.

"I'll deal with 'em, sir ... I knew you was over-spending yourself, as it were; I could have told you, but I didn't like. You'd always lived so cheap and quiet till the day before yesterday; then all these new things so suddenly. Ader and I said as you must 'ave come in for some money, or else as (you'll excuse me, sir) you was touched in the 'ead."

"I wasn't," said Peter. "Not in the least. I wanted the things, so I got them. But now I come to think of it, I shan't want most of them any more, as I'm going away, so I think I'll just return them to the shops they came from. Of course they won't be pleased, but they'll prefer it to losing the money and the things, I suppose, won't they. And we haven't spoiled them a bit, except that cushion Francesco has just walked over, and that can be cleaned, I expect. I had to have them, you know, just when I wanted them; I couldn't have borne not to; but I don't really need them any more, because I'm going to have other things now. Oh, I'm talking too much, and you want to be cooking the supper, don't you, and I want to put Thomas to bed."



CHAPTER XX

THE LAST LOSS

Three days later it was Easter Day. In the evening, about half-past nine, when Thomas lay sleeping and Peter was packing the rugs and cushions and pictures he hadn't paid for into brown paper parcels (a tedious job), Rodney came in. Peter hadn't seen him for some time.

"What on earth," said Rodney, lighting his pipe and sitting down, "are you doing with all that upholstery? Has someone been sending you Easter presents? Well, I'm glad you're getting rid of them as speedily as may be."

Peter said ruefully, because he was tired of the business, "The stupid things aren't paid for. So I'm packing them up to be sent back directly the shops open again. I can't afford them, you see. Already most of my belongings are in pawn."

"I see." Rodney wasn't specially struck by this; it was the chronic condition of many of his friends, who were largely of the class who pawn their clothes on Monday and redeem them on Saturday to wear for Sunday, and pawn them again, paying, if they can afford it, a penny extra to have the dresses hung up so that they don't crush.

"A sudden attack of honesty," Rodney commented. "Well, I'm glad, because I don't see what you want to cumber yourself with all those cushions and rugs for. You're quite comfortable enough without them."

Peter said, "Thomas and I wanted nice things to look at. We were tired of horse-hair and 'Grace Sufficient'. Thomas is fastidious."

Rodney put a large finger on Thomas' head.

"Thomas isn't such a fool.... Hullo, there's another of you." Francesco woke and came out of his corner and laid his nose on Rodney's knee with his confiding grin.

"Yes, that's San Francesco. Rather nice, isn't he. He's coming with us too. I called him Francesco instead of Francis that he might feel at home in Italy."

"Oh, in Italy."

Peter hadn't meant to tell Rodney that, because he didn't think that Rodney would approve, and he wanted to avoid an argument. But he had let it out, of course; he could never keep anything in.

"That's where we're going to-morrow, to seek our fortunes. Won't it be rather good in Italy now? We don't know what we shall do when we get there, or where we shall go; but something nice, for sure."

"I'm glad," said Rodney. "It's a good country in the spring. Shall you walk the roads with Thomas slung over your back, or what?"

"I don't know. Partly, I daresay. But we want to find some little place between the hills and the sea, and stay there. Perhaps for always; I don't know. It's going to be extraordinarily nice, anyhow."

Rodney glanced at him, caught by the ring in his voice, a ring he hadn't heard for long. He didn't quite understand Peter. When last he saw him, he had been very far through, alarmingly near the bottom. Was this recovery natural grace, or had something happened? It seemed to Rodney rather admirable, and he looked appreciatively at Peter's cheerful face and happy eyes.

"Good," he said. "Good—splendid!"

And then Peter, meeting his pleased look and understanding it, winced back from it, and coloured, and bent over his brown paper and string. He valued Rodney's appreciation, a thing not easily won. He felt that in this moment he had won it, as he had never won it before. For he knew that Rodney liked pluck, and was thinking him plucky.

Against his will he muttered, half beneath his breath, "Oh, it isn't really what you call good. It is good, you know: I think it's good; but you won't. You'll call it abominable."

"Oh," said Rodney.

Peter went on, with a new violence, "I know all you'll say about it, so I'm not going to give you the opportunity of saying it till I'm gone. You needn't think I'm going to tell you now and let you tell me I'm wrong. I'm not wrong; and if I am I don't care. Please don't stay any more; I'd rather you weren't here to-night. I don't want to tell you anything; only I had just got to say that, because you were thinking.... Oh, do go now."

Rodney sat quite still and looked at him, into him, through him, beyond him. Then he said, "You needn't tell me anything. I know. Lucy and you are going together."

Peter stood up, rather unsteadily.

"Well? That's not clever. Any fool could have guessed that."

"Yes. And any fool could guess what I'm going to say about it, too. You know it all already, of course...."

Rodney was groping for words, helplessly, blindly.

"Peter, I didn't know you had it in you to be a cad."

Peter was putting books into a portmanteau, and did not answer.

"You mean to do that ... to Denis...."

Peter put in socks and handkerchiefs.

"And to Lucy.... I don't understand you, Peter.... I simply don't understand. Are you mad—or drunk—or didn't I really ever know you in the least?"

Peter stuffed in Thomas' nightgowns, crumpling them hideously.

"Very well," said Rodney, very quietly. "It doesn't particularly matter which it is. In any case you are not going to do it. I shall prevent it."

"You can't," Peter flung at him, crushing a woolly rabbit in among Thomas' clothes.

Rodney sat still and looked at him, resting his chin on his hand; looked into him, through him, beyond him.

"I believe I can," he said simply.

Peter stopped filling the bag, and, still sitting on the floor by it, delivered himself at last.

"We care for each other. Isn't that to count, then? We always have cared for each other. Are we to do without each other for always? We want each other, we need each other. Denis doesn't need Lucy. He never did; not as I do. Are Lucy and I to do without each other, living only half a life, because of him? I tell you, I'm sick to death of doing without things. The time has come when it won't do any more, and I'm going to take what I can. I think I would rob anyone quite cheerfully if he had what I wanted. A few days ago I did rob; I bought things I knew I couldn't pay for. I'm sending them back now simply because I don't want them any more, not because I'm sorry I took them. It was fair I should take them; it was my turn to have things, mine and Thomas's. And now I'm going to take this, and keep it, till it's taken away from me. I daresay it will be taken away soon; my things always are. Everything has broken and gone, one thing after another, all my life—all the things I've cared for. I'm tired of it. I was sick of it by the time I was ten years old, sick of always getting ill or smashed up; and that's gone on ever since, and people have always thought, I know, 'Oh, it's only him, he never minds anything, he doesn't count, he's just a crock, and his only use is to play the fool for us.' But I did mind; I did. And I only played the fool because it would have been drearier still not to, and because there was always something amusing left to laugh at, not because I didn't mind. And then I cared for Denis as ... Oh, but you know how I cared for Denis. He was the most bright and splendid thing I knew in all the splendid world ... and he chucked me, because everything went wrong that could go wrong between us without my fault ... and our friendship was spoilt.... And I cared for Hilary and Peggy; and they would go and do things to spoil all our lives, and the more I tried, like an ass, to help, the more I seemed to mess things up, till the crash came, and we all went to bits together. And we had to give up the only work we liked—and I did love mine so—and slave at things we hated. And still we kept sinking and sinking, and crashing on worse and worse rocks, till we hadn't a sound piece left to float us. And then, when I thought at least we could go down together, they went away and left me behind. So I'd failed there too, hopelessly. I always have failed in everything I've tried. I tried to make Rhoda happy, but that failed too. She left me; and now she's dead, and Thomas hasn't any mother at all.... And Lucy ... whom I'd cared for since before I could remember ... and I'd always thought, without thinking about it, that some day of course we should be together... Lucy left me, and our caring became wrong, so that at last we didn't care to see one another at all. And then it was as if hell had opened and let us in. The other things hadn't counted like that; health, money, beautiful things, interesting work, honour, friends, marriage, even Denis—they'd all collapsed and I did mind, horribly. But not like that. As long as I could see Lucy sometimes, I could go on—and I had Thomas too, though I don't know why he hasn't collapsed yet. But at last, quite suddenly, when the emptiness and the losing had been getting to seem worse and worse for a long time, they became so bad that they were impossible. I got angry; it was for Thomas more than for myself, I think; and I said it should end. I said I would take things; steal them, if I couldn't get them by fair means. And I went down to Astleys, to see them, to tell them it must end. And in the woods I met Lucy. And she'd been getting to know too that it must end, for her sake as well as for mine.... And so we're going to end it, and begin again. We're going to be happy, because life is too jolly to miss."

Peter ended defiantly, and flung his razor in among the socks.

Rodney had listened quietly, his eyes on Peter's profile. When he stayed silent, Peter supposed that he had at last convinced him of the unbreakable strength of his purpose for iniquity, and that he would give him up and go away. After a minute he turned and looked up at Rodney, and said, "Now do you see that it's no good?"

Rodney took out his pipe and knocked it out and put it away before he answered:

"I'm glad you've said all that, Peter. Not that I didn't know it all before; of course I did. When I said at first that I didn't understand you, I was lying. I did understand, perfectly well. But I'm glad you've said it, because it's well to know that you realise it so clearly yourself. It saves my explaining it to you. It gives us a common knowledge to start on. And now may I talk for a little, please? No, not for a little; for some time."

"Go on," said Peter. "But it's no use, you know.... What do you mean by our common knowledge? The knowledge that I'm a failure?"

Rodney nodded. "Precisely that. You've stated the case so clearly yourself—in outline, for you've left out a great deal, of course—that really it doesn't leave much for me to say. Let's leave you alone for the moment. I want to talk about other people. There are other people in the world besides ourselves, of course, improbable as the fact occasionally seems. The fact, I mean, that it's a world not of individual units but of closely connected masses of people, not one of whom stands alone. One can't detach oneself; one's got to be in with one camp or another. The world's full of different and opposing camps—worse luck. There are the beauty-lovers and the beauty-scorners, and all the fluctuating masses in between, like most of us, who love some aspects of it and scorn others. There are the well-meaning and the ill-meaning—and again the incoherent cross-benchers, who mean a little good and a little harm and for the most part mean nothing at all either way. Again, there are what people call the well-bred, the ill-bred, and of course the half-bred. An idiotic division that, because what do we know, any of us, of breeding, that we should call it good or bad? But there it is; a most well-marked division in everyone's eyes. And (and now I'm getting to the point) there are the rich and the poor—or call them, rather, the Haves and the Have-nots. I don't mean with regard to money particularly, though that comes in. But it's an all-round, thing. It's an undoubted fact, and one there's no getting round, that some people are born with the acquiring faculty, and others with the losing. Most of us, of course, are in the half-way house, and win and lose in fairly average proportions. But some of us seem marked out either for the one or for the other. I know personally a good many in both camps. Many more of the Have-nots, though, because I prefer to cultivate their acquaintance. There's a great deal to be done for the Haves too; they need, I fancy, all the assistance they can get if they're not to become prosperity-rotten. The Have-Nots haven't that danger; but they've plenty of dangers of their own; and, well, I suppose it's a question of taste, and that I prefer them. Anyhow, I do know a great many. People, you understand, with nothing at all that seems to make life tolerable. Destitutes, incapables, outcasts, slaves to their own lusts or to a grinding economic system or to some other cruelty of fate or men. Whatever the immediate cause of their ill-fortune may be, its underlying, fundamental cause is their own inherent faculty for failure and loss, their incompetence to take and hold the good things of life. You know the stale old hackneyed cry of the anti-socialists, how it would be no use equalising conditions because each man would soon return again to his original state. It's true in a deeper sense than they mean. You might equalise economic conditions as much as you please, but you'd never equalise fundamental conditions; you'd never turn the poor into the rich, the Have-Nots into the Haves. You know I'm not a Socialist. I don't want to see a futile attempt to throw down barriers and merge all camps in one indeterminate army who don't know what they mean or where they're going. I'm not a Socialist, because I don't believe in a universal outward prosperity. I mean, I don't want it; I should have no use for it. I'm holding no brief for the rich; I've nothing to say about them just now; and anyhow you and I have no concern with them." Rodney pulled himself back from the edge of a topic on which he was apt to become readily vehement. "But Socialism isn't the way out for them any more than it's the way out for the poor; it's got, I believe, to be by individual renunciation that their salvation will come; by their giving up, and stripping bare, and going down one by one and empty-handed into the common highways, to take their share of hardness like men. It will be extraordinarily difficult. Changing one's camp is. It's so difficult as to be all but impossible. Perhaps you've read the Bible story of the young man with great possessions, and how it was said, 'With men it is impossible...' Well, the tradition, true or false, goes that in the end he did it; gave up his possessions and became financially poor. But we don't know, even if that's true, what else he kept of his wealth; a good deal, I daresay, that wasn't money or material goods. One can't tell. What we do know is that to cross that dividing line, to change one's camp, is a nearly impossible thing. Someone says, 'That division, the division of those who have and those who have not, runs so deep as almost to run to the bottom.' The great division, he calls it, between those who seize and those who lose. Well, the Haves aren't always seizers, I think; often—more often, perhaps—they have only to move tranquilly through life and let gifts drop into their hands. It's pleasant to see, if we are not in a mood to be jarred. It's often attractive. It was mainly that that attracted you long ago in Denis Urquhart. The need and the want in you, who got little and lost much, was somehow vicariously satisfied by the gifts he received from fortune; by his beauty and strength and good luck and power of winning and keeping. He was pleasant in your eyes, because of these gifts of his; and, indeed, they made of him a pleasant person, since he had nothing to be unpleasant about. So your emptiness found pleasure in his fullness, your poverty in his riches, your weakness in his strength, and you loved him. And I think if anything could (yet) have redeemed him, have saved him from his prosperity, it would have been your love. But instead of letting it drag him down into the scrum and the pity and the battle of life, he turned away from it and kept it at a distance, and shut himself more closely between his protecting walls of luxury and well-being. Then, again, Lucy gave him his chance; but he hasn't (so far) followed her love either. She'd have led him, if she could, out of the protecting, confining walls, into the open, where people are struggling and perishing for lack of a little pity; but he wouldn't. So far the time hasn't been ripe for his saving; his day is still to come. It's up to all of us who care for him—and can any of us help it?—to save him from himself. And chiefly it's your job and Lucy's. You can do your part now only by clearing out of the way, and leaving Lucy to do hers. She will do it, I firmly believe, in the end, if you give her time. Lucy, I know, for I have seen it when I have been with her, has been troubled about her own removal from the arena, about her own being confined between walls so that she can't hear the people outside calling; but that is mere egotism. She can hear and see all right; she has all her senses, and she will never stop using them. It's her business to be concerned for Denis, who is blind and deaf. It's her business to use her own caring to make him care. She's got to drag him out, not to let herself be shut inside with him. It can be done, and Lucy, if anyone in the world, can do it—if she doesn't give up and shirk. Lucy, if anyone in the world, has the right touch, the right loosing power, to set Denis free. I think that you too have the touch and the power—but you mustn't use yours; the time for that is gone by. Yours is the much harder business of clearing out of the way. If you ever loved Denis, you will do that."

He paused and looked at Peter, who was still sitting on the floor, motionless, with bent head.

"May I go on?" said Rodney, and Peter answered nothing.

Rodney looked away again out of the window into a grey night sky that hid the Easter moon, and went on, gently. He was tired of talking; his discourse had been already nearly as long as an average woman; but he went on deliberately talking and talking, to give Peter time.

"So, you see, that is an excellent reason—to you it is, I believe, the incontrovertible reason—why you should once more give up and lose, and not take. But, deeper than that, to me more insurmountable than that, is the true reason, which is simply that that very thing—to lose, to do without—is your business in life, as you've said yourself. It's your profession. You are in the camp of the Have-Nots; you belong there. You can't desert. You can't step out and go over to the enemy. If you did, if you could (only you can't) it would be a betrayal. And, whatever you gained, you'd lose by it what you have at present—your fellowship with the other unfortunates. Isn't that a thing worth having? Isn't it something to be down on the ground with the poor and empty-handed, not above them, where you can't hear them crying and laughing? Would you, if you could, be one of the prosperous, who don't care? Would you, if you could, be one of those who have their joy in life ready-made and put into their hands, instead of one of the poor craftsmen who have to make their own? What's the gaiety of the saints? Not the pleasant cheerfulness of the Denis Urquharts and their kind, who have things, but the gaiety, in the teeth of circumstances, of St. Francis and his paupers, who have nothing and yet possess all things. That's your gaiety; the gaiety that plays the fool, as you put it, looking into the very eyes of agony and death; that loses and laughs and makes others laugh in the last ditch; the gaiety of those who drop all cargoes, fortune and good name and love, overboard lightly, and still spread sail to the winds and voyage, and when they're driven by the winds at last onto a lee shore, derelicts clinging to a broken wreck, find on the shore coloured shells to play with and still are gay. That's your gaiety, as I've always known it and loved it. Are you going to chuck that gaiety away, and rise up full of the lust to possess, and take and grasp and plunder? Are you going to desert the empty-handed legion, whose van you've marched in all your life, and join the prosperous?" Rodney broke off for a moment, as if he waited for an answer. He rose from his chair and began to walk about the room, speaking again, with a more alright vehemence. "Oh, you may think this is mere romance, fancy, sentiment, what you will. But it isn't. It's deadly, solid truth. You can't grasp. You can't try to change your camp. You—and Lucy too, for she's in the same camp—wouldn't be happy, to put it at its simplest. You'd know all the time that you'd shirked, deserted, been false to your business. You'd be fishes out of water, with the knowledge that you'd taken for your own pleasure something that someone else ought to have had. It isn't in either of you to do it. You must leave such work to the Haves. Why, what happens the first time you try it on? You have to send back the goods you've tried to appropriate to where they came from. It would be the same always. You don't know how to possess. Then in heaven's name leave possessing alone, and stick to the job you are good at—doing without. For you are good at that. You always have been, except just for just one short interlude, which will pass like an illness and leave you well again. Believe me, it will. I don't know when, or how soon; but I do know that sometime you will be happy again, with the things, the coloured shells, so to speak, that you find still when all the winds and storms have done their worst and all your cargoes are broken wrecks at your feet. It will be then, in that last emptiness, that you'll come to terms with disaster, and play the fool again to amuse yourself and the other derelicts, because, when there's nothing else left, there's always laughter."

Rodney had walked to the window, and now stood looking out at the dim, luminous night, wherein, shrouded, the Easter moon dwelt in the heart of shadows. From many churches, many clocks chimed the hour. Rodney spoke once more, slowly, leaning out into the shadowy night.

"Through this week," he said, "they have been watching in those churches a supreme renouncement, the ultimate agony of giving up, the last triumph of utter loss. I'm not going to talk about that; it's not my business or my right ... But it surely counts, that giving up whatever we may or may not believe about it. It shines, a terrible counsel of perfection for those who have, burning and hurting. But for those who have not, it doesn't burn and hurt; it shines to cheer and comfort; it is the banner of the leader of the losing legion, lifted up that the rest may follow after. Does that help at all?... Perhaps at this moment nothing helps at all.... Have I said enough? Need I go on?"

Peter's voice, flat and dead, spoke out of the shadow of the dim room.

"You have said enough. You need not go on."

Then Rodney turned and saw him, sitting still on the floor by the half-packed bag, with the yellow dog sleeping against him. In the dim light his face looked pale and pinched like a dead man's.

"You've done your work," the flat voice said. "You've taken it away—the new life we so wanted. You've shown that it can't be. You're quite right. And you're right too that nothing helps at all.... Because of Denis, I can't do this. But I find no good in emptiness; why should I? I want to have things and enjoy them, at this moment, more desperately than you, who praise emptiness and doing without, ever wanted anything."

"I am aware of that," said Rodney.

"You've got in the way," said Peter, looking up at the tall gaunt figure by the window; and anger shook him. "You've stepped in and spoilt it all. Yes, you needn't be afraid; you've spoilt it quite irrevocably. You knew that to mention Denis was enough to do that. I was trying to forget him; I could have, till it was too late. You can go home now and feel quite easy; you've done your job. There's to be no new life for me, or Thomas, or Lucy, or Francesco—only the same old emptiness. The same old ... oh, damn!"

Peter, who never swore, that ugly violence being repugnant to his nature, swore now, and woke Francesco, who put up his head to lick his friend's face. But Peter pushed him away, surprising him violently, and caught at his half-filled bag and snatched at the contents and flung them on the top of one another on the floor. They lay in a jumbled chaos—Thomas's clothes and Peter's socks and razor and Thomas's rabbit and Peter's books; and Francesco snuffled among them and tossed them about, thinking it a new game.

"Go away now." Peter flung out the words like another oath. "Go away to your poverty which you like, and leave us to ours which we hate. There's no more left for you to take away from us; it's all gone. Unless you'd like me to throw Thomas out of the window, since you think breakages are so good."

Rodney merely said, "I'm not going away just yet. Could you let me stay here for the night and sleep on the sofa? It's late to go back to-night."

"Sleep where you like," said Peter. "There's the bed. I don't want it."

But Rodney stretched himself instead on the horse-hair sofa. He said no more, knowing that the time for words was past. He lay tired and quiet, with closed eyes, knowing how Peter and the other disreputable forsaken outcast sat together huddled on the floor through the dim night, till the dawn looked palely in and showed them both fallen asleep, Peter's head resting on Francesco's yellow back.

It was Rodney who got up stiffly from his hard resting-place in the dark unlovely morning, and made tea over Peter's spirit-lamp for both of them. Peter woke later, and drank it mechanically. Then he looked at Rodney and said, "I'm horribly stiff. Why did neither of us go to bed?" He was pale and heavy-eyed, and violent no more, but very quiet and tired, as if, accepting, he was sinking deep in grey and cold seas, that numbed resistance and drowned words.

The milk came in, and Peter gave Thomas to drink; and on the heels of the milk came the post, and a letter for Peter.

"I suppose," said Peter dully, as he opened it, "she too has found out that it can't be done."

The letter said: "Peter, we can't do it. I am horribly, horribly sorry, but I know it now for certain. Perhaps you know it too, by now. Because the reason is in you, not in me. It is that you love Denis too much. So you couldn't be happy. I want you to be happy, more than I want anything in the world, but it can't be this way. Please, dear Peter, be happy sometime; please, please be happy. I love you always—if that helps at all.—Lucy."

Peter let the note fall on the floor, and stood with bent head by the side of Thomas's crib, while Thomas guggled his milk.

"Two minds with but a single thought," he remarked, in that new, dreary voice of his. "As always.... Well, it saves trouble. And we're utterly safe now, you see; doubly safe. You can go home in peace."

Then Rodney, knowing that he could be no more use, left the three derelicts together.



CHAPTER XXI

ON THE SHORE

There is a shore along which the world flowers, one long sweet garden strip, between the olive-grey hills and the very blue sea. Like nosegays in the garden the towns are set, blooming in their many colours, linked by the white road running above blue water. For vagabonds in April the poppies riot scarlet by the white road's edge, and the last of the hawthorn lingers like melting snow, and over the garden walls the purple veils of the wistaria drift like twilight mist. Over the garden walls, too, the sweetness of the orange and lemon blossom floats into the road, and the frangipani sends delicate wafts down, and the red and white roses toss and hang as if they had brimmed over from sheer exuberance. If a door in one of the walls chance to stand ajar, vagabonds on the road may look in and see an Eden, unimaginably sweet, aflame with oleanders and pomegranate blossom, and white like snow with tall lilies.

The road itself is good, bordered on one side by the garden sweetness and the blossoms that foam like wave-crests over the walls, on the other breaking down to a steep hill-slope where all the wild flowers of spring star the grassy terraces, singing at the twisted feet of the olives that give them grey shadow. So the hillside runs steeply down to where at its rocky base the blue waves murmur. All down the coast the road turns and twists and climbs and dips, above little lovely bays and through little gay towns, caught between mountains and blue water. For those who want a bed, the hush of the moonlit olives that shadow the terraced slopes gives sweeter sleep than the inns of the towns, and the crooning of the quiet sea is a gentler lullaby than the noises of streets, and the sweetness of the myrtle blossom is better to breathe than the warm air of rooms. To wander in spring beneath the sun by day and the moon by night along the sea's edge is a good life, a beautiful life, a cheerful and certainly an amusing life. Social adventures crowd the road. There are pleasant people along this shore of little blue bays. Besides the ordinary natives of the towns and the country-side, and besides the residents in the hotels (whose uses to vagabonds are purely financial) there is on this shore a drifting and incalculable population, heterogeneous, yet with a note of character common to all. A population cosmopolitan and shifting, living from hand to mouth, vagrants of the road or of the street corner, finding life a warm and easy thing in this long garden shut between hills and sea. So warm and lovely and easy a garden is it that it has for that reason become a lee shore; a shore where the sick and the sad and the frail and the unfortunate are driven by the winds of adversity to find a sheltered peace. On the shore all things may be given up; there is no need to hold with effort any possession, even life itself, for all things become gifts, easily bestowed and tranquilly received. You may live on extremely little there, and win that little lightly. You may sell things along the road for some dealer, or for yourself—plaster casts, mosaic brooches, picture postcards, needlework of divers colours. If you have a small cart drawn by a small donkey, you are a lucky man, and can carry your wares about in it and sell them at the hotels, or in the towns at fair-time. If you possess an infant son, you can carry him also about in the cart, and he will enjoy it. Also, if your conversation is like the sun's, with a friendly aspect to good and bad, you will find many friends to beguile the way. You may pick them up at fairs, on festa days, like blackberries.