The Lee Shore Part 25

"The Snuggery, that's what we call it at fifty-one," said Miss Clegson, who sometimes looked in to rally them.

Fifty-one was getting less of a snuggery than ever. Fifty-one, Peter feared, was going down the hill. The Berovieri goblet had made a little piece of level road for it, but that was soon over, and the descent began again. Peggy, try as she would, could not make both ends meet. Hilary, despise his job as he might, found it slipping from him more and more.

Week by week he seemed to earn a little less; week by week they seemed to spend a little more. Peggy, as Hilary had frequently remarked, was _not_ a good manager. One or two of the boarders left, to seek more commodious quarters elsewhere. More frequently, as the winter advanced, Peggy wailed, "Whatever is to become of us, dear only knows! What with Larry drinking pints of cough-syrup, and Micky rolling in the gutter in his best suit, and Norah, the creature, letting the crockery fly about as if it was alive, and Hilary insisting on the table cloth being cleaner than it ever is, and the boarders having to have food they can eat, and now Lent's coming on and half of them don't take any notice of it but eat their joints just the same, bad manners to them for heretics. Oh, _dear_, oh dear, oh dear!"

Whenever Peter could spare any money he gave it to Peggy. But his own fortunes were not exactly on the make. He was not proving good at his job. Recommended to his employers by Leslie, he had begun, of course, on a very small salary, to learn his trade; he hadn't so far learnt enough of it to justify his promotion. Every day he went through the same drudgery, with the same lack of intelligence,--(it is odd how discernment and talent in one trade serve so little for another)--and every week came home with the same meagre sum.

As far as he hated anything, he hated this work of his; long ago, had he been alone concerned, he would have dropped it, and taken to tramping the roads with boot-laces to sell, or some other equally unstrenuous and unlucrative avocation. But he had not, from the first, been alone concerned; first he had had to help Hilary and Peggy, and now he had to keep a wife too. Eventually there would probably be also children to keep; Peter didn't know how much these cost, but vaguely believed them to be expensive luxuries. So there seemed no prospect of his being able to renounce his trade, though there was a considerable prospect of its renouncing him, as he was from time to time informed.

The winter dragged quietly through, and the spring came; the queer London ghost of spring, with its bitter winds and black buds and evasive hints of what is going on in the real world, where things change. Peter dreamt of green things coming up and hawthorn hedges growing edible.

Rhoda's cough grew softer and her eyes more restless, as if she too had her dreams. She developed a new petulance with Peter and with the maid-of-all-work, and left off tying the kitten's neck-ribbon. It was really a cat now, and cats are tiresome. She said she was dull all day with so little to do. Peter, full of compunction, suggested asking people to the house more, and she a.s.sented, rather listlessly. So Peter hinted to Peggy, who had a cheering presence, that Rhoda would be glad to see her more often, and Peggy made what time she could to come round. Their circle of friends was limited; they chiefly consisted of the inhabitants of fifty-one, and a few relatives of Rhoda's, who amused and pleased Peter but vexed Rhoda by being common.

"But I like them," said Peter.

"You like to see me put to shame, I suppose," said Rhoda, with tears in her eyes. "As if it was _my_ fault that my parents came of common people.

I've cried myself sick over it sometimes, when I was younger, and now I just want to forget it."

Peter said no more. It was one of the sides of Rhoda with which he felt he had no connexion; it was best let alone, as Peter always let alone the things he could not like. But he was sorry she felt like that, for her nice, common, friendly relations might have been company for her.

Peter sometimes brought friends home from his office; Peter could not have been in an office without collecting friends, having the social instinct strongly developed. But Rhoda didn't much care about seeing his fellow-clerks; they hadn't, she was sure, great minds, and they made silly jokes.

Another person who came to see Peter sometimes was Rodney. Ever since the Margerisons' abrupt fall into ignominy, Rodney had cultivated Peter's acquaintance. Peter perceived that he had at last slipped into the ranks of those unfortunates who were qualified for Rodney's regard; it was enough for that, Urquhart had long since told him, to be cut by society or to produce a yesterday's handkerchief. Peter, driven from the faces of the rich, found Rodney waiting to receive him cheerfully among the ranks of the poor. Rodney was a much occupied person; but when he found time from his other pursuits he walked up from his Westminster slum to Holborn and visited 9 Greville Street. He hadn't known quite what to make of Peter's marriage; though when he got to know Rhoda a little he began to understand rather more. She, being very manifestly among the Have-Nots, and a small, weak, and pitiable thing, also entered in a manner into the circle of his tolerance. He was gentle with her always, though not expansive. She was a little in awe of the gaunt young man, with his strange eyes that seemed to see so much further than anyone else's. She p.r.o.nounced him "queer."

"I suppose he's very clever," she said to Peter.

"Yes," Peter agreed.

But even that didn't further him in Rhoda's regard. She thought him rude, as indeed he was, though he tried to conceal it. He seldom spoke to her, and when he did it was with an unadorned brevity that offended her.

Mostly he let her alone, and saw Peter when he could outside his home.

Rodney, himself a celibate, thought matrimony a mistake, though certainly a necessary mistake if the human race was to continue to adorn the earth--a doubtful ornament to it, in Rodney's opinion.

Rhoda said one evening to Peter, "You don't see anything of your friends the Urquharts now, do you?"

"No," said Peter, who was stroking the kitten's fur the wrong way, to bring sparks out of it before the gas was lit. "They've been in the country all the winter."

"Mr. Urquhart got elected a member, didn't he?" said Rhoda, without much interest.

"Yes," said Peter.

"I suppose they'll be coming up to town soon, then, for him to attend Parliament."

Peter supposed they would.

"When last Lucy wrote, she said they were coming up this month."

"Have you heard from her again, since Monday week?" enquired Rhoda.

"No. We write alternate Sundays, you know. We always have. Last Sunday it was my turn."

"Fancy going on all these years so regular," said Rhoda. "I couldn't, not to any of my cousins. I should use up all there was to say."

"Oh, but there are quite new things every fortnight," Peter explained.

Certainly it wasn't easy to picture Rhoda corresponding with any of the Johnson relatives once a fortnight.

"I expect you and she have heaps to tell each other always when you meet," said Rhoda, a little plaintive note in her weak voice.

Peter considered.

"Not so much to tell exactly as to talk about. Yes, there's lots to say.... She's coming to see you, Rhoda, directly they come up to town.

It's so funny to think you and she have never met."

"Is it? Well, I don't know. I've not met any of your cousins really, have I?"

Rhoda was in one of her slightly pettish moods this evening. Peter didn't better matters by saying, "Oh, well, none of the others count. Lucy and I have always been different from most cousins, I suppose; more like brother and sister, I daresay."

Rhoda looked at him sharply. She was in a fault-finding mood.

"You think more of her than you do of anyone else. Of course, I know that."

Peter was startled. He stopped stroking the kitten and looked at her through the dim firelight. The suspicion of a vulgar scene was in the air, and frightened him. Then he remembered that Rhoda was in frail health, and said very gently, "Oh, Rhoda darling, don't say silly things, like a young gurl in a novelette," and slithered along the floor and laid his arm across her lap and laughed up into her face.

She sniffed a little, and dabbed her handkerchief at her eyes.

"It's all very well, Peter, but you do care for her a lot, you know you do."

"But of course I do," said Peter, laying his cheek against her knee. "You don't _mind_, Rhoda, do you?"

"You care for her," said Rhoda, but softening under his caresses, "and you care for her husband. You care for him awfully, Peter; more than for her really, I believe; more than for anyone in the world, don't you?"

"Don't," said Peter, his voice m.u.f.fled against her dress. "I can't compare one thing with another like that, and I don't want to. Isn't one's caring for each of the people one knows quite different from every other? Isn't yours? Can you say which you love best, the sun rising over the river, or St. Mark's, or a Bellini Madonna? Of course you can't, and it's immoral to try. So I'm not going to place Lucy and Denis and you and Rodney and Peggy and the kitten in a horrid cla.s.s-list. I won't. Do you hear?"

He drew one of her small thin hands down to his lips, then moved it up and placed it on his head, and drew it gently to and fro, ruffling his hair.

"You're a silly, Peter," said Rhoda, and there was peace.

Very soon after that Lucy came. She came in the afternoon before Peter got home, and Rhoda looked with listless interest at the small, wide-eyed person in a grey frock and big grey hat that made her small, pale face look like a white flower. Pretty? Rhoda wasn't sure. Very like Peter; so perhaps not pretty; only one liked to look at her. Clever? It didn't transpire that she was. Witty? Well, much more amused than amusing; and when she was amused she came out with Peter's laugh, which Rhoda wasn't sure was in good taste on her part. Absurdly like Peter she was, to look at and to listen to, and in some inner essence which was beyond definition. The thought flashed through Rhoda's mind that it was no wonder these two found things to tell each other every other Sunday; they would be interested in all the same things, so it must be easy.

Remotely, dully, Rhoda thought these things, as things which didn't concern her particularly. Less and less each day she had grown to care whether Peter found his cousin Lucy a kindred spirit or not. She could work herself up into a fit of petulant jealousy about it at times; but it didn't touch her inmost being; it was a very surface grievance.

So she looked at Lucy dispa.s.sionately, and let herself, without a struggle, be caught and held by that ingenuous charm, a charm as of a small woodland flower set dancing by the winds of spring. She noticed that when the kitten that was now nearly a cat sprang on to Lucy's lap, she stroked its fur backwards with her flat hand and spread fingers precisely as Peter always did.

Then Peter came in, and he and Lucy laughed the same laugh at one another, and then they had tea. After all, Rhoda didn't see now that they were so like. Peter talked much more; he said twenty words to Lucy's one; Lucy wasn't a great talker at all. Peter was a chatterbox; there was no denying that. And their features and eyes and all weren't so like, either. But when one had said all this, there was something... something inner, essential, indefinable, of the spirit, that was not of like substance but the same. So it is sometimes with twins. Rhoda, her intuitive faculties oddly sharpened, took in this. Peter might care most for Denis Urquhart; he might love Rhoda as a wife; but Lucy, less consciously loved than either, was intimately one with himself.

Peter asked "How is Denis?" and Lucy answered "Very well, of course. And very busy playing at being a real member. Isn't it fun? Oh, he sent you his love. And you're to come and see us soon."

That last wasn't a message from Denis; Peter knew that. He knew that there would be no more such messages from Denis; the Margerisons had gone a little too far in their latest enterprise; they had strained the cord to breaking-point, and it had broken. In future Denis might be kind and friendly to Peter when they met, but he wouldn't bring about meetings; they would embarra.s.s him. But Lucy knew nothing of that. Denis hadn't mentioned to her what had happened at Astleys last November; he never dwelt on unpleasant subjects or made a talk about them. So Lucy said to Peter and Rhoda, "You must come and see us soon," and Peter said, "You're so far away, you know," evading her, and she gave him a sudden wide clear look, taking in all he didn't say, which was the way they had with one another, so that no deceits could ever stand between them.

"Don't be _silly_, Peter," she told him; then, "'_Course_ you must come"; but he only smiled at her and said, "Some day, perhaps."