The Lee Shore Part 17

That afternoon Hilary received a note from Lord Evelyn. It was to the effect that Lord Evelyn had decided not to bring an action, on the understanding that Hilary and his brother and Vyvian left Venice at once and discontinued for ever the profession of artistic advisers. If any of the three was discovered engaging again in that business, those who employed them should promptly be advised of their antecedents. They were, in fact, to consider themselves warned off the turf. There was also to be a paragraph about them in the English art papers.

"Well," was Peggy's comment, "it hasn't been such a grand trade that we need mind much. We'll all come back to England and keep a boarding-house there instead, and you shall paint the great pictures, darling, and have ever so much more fun. And we'll never need to see that Vyvian again; there's fine news for the babies, anyhow. And I will be relieved to get them away from the ca.n.a.ls; one of them would have been surely drowned before long. In London they'll have only gutters."

Hilary, who was looking tired and limp after a distressing night and day, said, "What shall you do, Peter?"

"I don't know," said Peter. "I must find something, I suppose. Some sort of work, you know." He p.r.o.nounced the word gingerly, distastefully, as if it were a curious, unwonted one. "Perhaps I shall be able to get a post as door-keeper somewhere; in some museum, you know, or perhaps a theatre, or the White City. I've always thought that might be amusing."

"You wouldn't earn much that way," Hilary said hopelessly.

"Need one earn much?" Peter wondered; then remembered how exceedingly little Hilary would be earning, and that perhaps one need, because of the babies.

"Or perhaps I can get taken on as a clerk in some business," he amended.

"Or in a bank; only I don't believe my sums or manners are good enough for a bank, really.... Oh, well, I must see what I can squeeze into.

Perhaps Leslie can think of something. And perhaps the Robinsons will interest themselves in me, though they'll be even more disgusted at our downfall than they were when I took up my profession, and they thought that perfectly idiotic. They always do think we're perfectly idiotic, and now they'll know we're something worse. But they may help me to a job, if I bother them enough.... Anyhow, I'll be one of your boarders, if I may."

"You darling," said Peggy, beaming at him. "It'll give the house quite a different feeling if you're in it. And how delighted the babies will be.

I believe we're going to have the fine time, after all, in spite of this bothersome business. Hurrah for London and no mosquitoes! And we'll be quite near a Catholic church, the way the children'll be able to run in and out as they do here, and not pick up heathen customs. Why, Hilary, I'm really pleased!"

Peggy was splendid. She was nearly always really pleased.

They started for England a week later. In the course of that week two things happened. One was that Leslie gave Peter the Berovieri goblet for his own.

"You've got to take it," he said. "If you don't, I shall give it back to the prince. I've no right to it; I can't appreciate it properly. Since I first saw you look at the thing I knew it was really yours. Take it and keep it. You won't let me do anything else for you, but you shall let me do that."

Peter looked at it with wistful love. His fingers lingered about its exquisiteness.

"It will break," he said. "My things do break. Break and get lost, and go with the dust. Or thieves will break in and steal it. I shan't be able to keep it, I know; I'm such a bad hand at keeping things."

"Well, well, have a try," said Leslie. So Peter took it and was glad. It was his one link with the world of exquisiteness and new-burnished joys out of which he was being thrust; he would keep it if he could.

Leslie also said that he could get him a place in a business, if he really wanted one.

"I shall be extremely little use," said Peter.

"Extremely little," Leslie agreed. "You'd much better not try. But if you must you must."

"I'm afraid I must," said Peter.

So Leslie wrote letters about him, and secured him a humble post in a warehouse. Leslie was not going to return to England at present. He was going a tour round the world. Since Peter refused to accompany him, he went alone.

"There's no one else I can fancy hanging round me day and night," he said. "I wanted you, Margery"--the nickname fell from him with a clumsy pathos--"but if you won't you won't. I shall acquire an abominable collection of objects without you to guide me; but that can't be helped."

The other thing that happened was that Mrs. Johnson fell suddenly ill and died. Before she died, she talked to Peter about Rhoda.

"It's leaving of her as I can't bear," she whispered. "All alone and unprotected like. I can't leave her by herself in this heathen country.

I want to get her back to England. But she's got no relatives there as'll do for her; none, you know, as I should care to trust her to, or as 'ud be really good to her. And I'm afraid of what'll come to the child without me; I'm _afraid_, Mr. Peter. That man--it gives me the creeps of nights to think of him comin' after Rhoder when I'm gone. I'm just frightened as he'll get her; you know what Rhoder is, like a soft wax candle that gets droopy and gives before his bold look; he can do anythin' with her. And if he gets her, he won't be good to her, I know that. He'll just break her and toss her away, my little gal. Oh, what can I do, Mr. Peter, to save that?"

She was in great pain; drops of sweat kept gathering on her forehead and rolling on to the pillow. Peter took her hand that picked at the blanket.

"May we try to take care of her?" he gently asked. "If she will come and stay with us, in London, it would be better than being alone among strangers, wouldn't it? She could get work near, and live with us. Peggy is fond of her, you know; we all are. We would try to make her as happy as we could."

She smiled at him, between laboured breaths.

"G.o.d bless you, dear Mr. Peter. I somehow thought as how you'd be good to my little gal.... You are so sympathetic to everyone always.... Yes, Rhoder shall do that; I'll have her promise. And that man--you'll keep him off of her?"

"I will try," said Peter. "I will do my very best."

"Oh, Lord, oh, dear Lord," said Mrs. Johnson, "the pain!"

But it didn't last long, for she died that night.

And four days later the boarding-house was broken up, and the Margerison family and Rhoda Johnson left Italy together.

Rhoda was very quiet and still and white. She was terribly alone, for her mother was gone, and the man she loved was gone, hurriedly, without a word to her. There remained the Margerisons; Peter, with his friendly smile and gentle companionableness; Hilary, worried and weary and hardly noticing her un.o.btrusive presence; Silvio, Caterina, and Illuminato sucking gingerbread and tumbling off the rack, and Peggy, on whose broad shoulder Rhoda suddenly laid her head and wept, all through the Mont Cenis tunnel.

CHAPTER XI

THE LOSS OF AN IDEA

Peter's room was the smallest and highest in the boarding-house. It was extremely small and high, and just above the bed was a ceiling that got hot through and through like a warming-pan, so that the room in summer was like a little oven below. What air there was came in came through a small skylight above the wash-stand; through this also came the rain when it rained; the dirtiest rain Peter had ever seen.

It was not raining this morning, when Peter, after pa.s.sing a very warm night, heard the bells beginning. A great many bells begin on Sunday mornings in this part of London, no doubt in any part of London, but here they seem particularly loud. The boarding-house was in a small street close to a large English church and a small Roman church; and the English church had its first Ma.s.s at seven, and the Roman church at six, and each had another an hour later, and bells rang for all. So Peter lay and listened.

Sometimes he went with Hilary and Peggy to the Roman Ma.s.s. That pleased Peggy, who had hopes of some day converting him. And occasionally he went alone to the English Ma.s.s, and he liked that better, on the whole, because the little Roman church was rather ugly. Peter didn't think he would ever join the Roman church, even to please Peggy. It certainly seemed to him in some ways the most finely expressive of the churches; but equally certainly it often expressed the wrong things, and (like all other churches) left whole worlds unexpressed. And so much of its expression had a crudity.... It kept saying too little and too much, and jarring.

Anyhow, this morning Peter, who had a headache after his warm night, lay and heard the bells and thought what a nice day Sunday was, with no office to go to. Instead, he would take Rhoda on the river in the morning, and go and see Lucy in the afternoon, and probably have tea there. When Peter went to see Lucy he always had a faint hope that Urquhart would perhaps walk in, and that they would all be friendly and happy together in the old way, for one afternoon. It hadn't happened yet. Peter hadn't seen Urquhart since they had left Venice, two months ago. Sunday was his day for going to see Lucy, and it wasn't Urquhart's day, perhaps because Urquhart was so often away for week-ends; though last Sunday, indeed, he had just left the Hopes' house when Peter arrived.

Lucy, when Peter had told her his tale of dishonour two months ago, had said, half laughing at him, "How _stupid_ of all of you!" She hadn't realised quite how much it mattered. Lucy judged everything by a queer, withdrawn standard of her own.

Peter had agreed that it had been exceedingly stupid of all of them.

Once, since then, when he heard that Urquhart had returned and had seen Lucy, he had asked her, "Does he dislike us all very much? Is he quite too disgusted to want to see me again?"

Lucy had wrinkled her forehead over it.

"He's not angry," she had said. "You can fancy, can't you?

Merely--merely ..."

"Detached," said Peter, who had more words, and always expressed what Lucy meant; and she nodded. "Just that, you know." She had looked at him wistfully, hoping he wasn't minding too horribly much.

"It's _stupid_ of him," she had said, using her favourite adjective, and had added, dubiously, "Come and meet him sometime. You can't go on like this; it's too silly."

Peter had shaken his head. "I won't till he wants to. I don't want to bother him, you see."

"He does want to," Lucy had told him. "Of course he does. Only he thinks _you_ don't. That's what's so silly."