The Lee Shore Part 27

"Oh well, I don't know. Don't you worry about ways and means; something will surely turn up before long." Peggy was an optimist.

"And anyhow," went on Peggy, to change the subject from ways and means, which was a depressing one, "isn't our little Peter a darling with his baby? I love to see them together. He washes it himself as often as not, you know; only he can't always catch it again when it slips through his hands, and that worries him. He's dreadfully afraid of its getting drowned or spoilt or lost or something."

"It probably will," said Hilary, who was a pessimist. "Peter is no hand at keeping things. We are not a fortunate family."

"Never mind, darling; we've kept three; and more by token Kitty _must_ have a new pair of boots this winter; she's positively indecent the way she goes about now. I can't help it, Hilary; you must p.a.w.n your ring again or something."

Peggy didn't want to say anything else depressing, so she didn't mention that Miss Matthews had that morning given notice of her departure. But in Peggy's own mind there was a growing realisation that something drastic must really be done soon.

October went by. When Peter knew that the Urquharts had come back to London, he wondered why Lucy didn't come to see Thomas. So he wrote and asked her to, and on that she came.

She came at tea-time, one day when Rhoda happened to have gone out. So Peter and Lucy had tea alone together, and Thomas lay in his crib and looked at them, and Algernon snored on Lucy's knee, and the November fog shut out the outer world like a blanket, and blurred the gas-light in the dingy room.

Peter thought Lucy was rather quiet and pale, and her chuckle was a little subdued. Her dominant aspect, of clear luminousness, was somehow dimmed and mystified, with all other lights, in this blurred afternoon.

Her wide clear eyes, strange always with the world's gay wonder and mystery, had become eyes less gay, eyes that did not understand, that even shrank a little from what they could not understand. Lucy looked a touch puzzled, not so utterly the glad welcomer of all arriving things that she had always been.

But for Thomas, the latest arrived thing, she had a glad welcome.

Like Peter, she loved all little funny weak things; and Thomas seemed certainly that, as he lay and blinked at the blurred gas and curled his fingers round one of Peter's. A happy, silent person, with doubts, one fancied, as to the object of the universe, but no doubts that there were to be found in it many desirable things.

When Lucy came in, Peter was reading aloud to him some of Traherne's "Divine Reflections on the Native Objects of an Infant-Eye," which he seemed rather to like.

"I that so long [Peter told him he was thinking, Was _Nothing_ from Eternity, Did little think such Joys as Ear and Tongue To celebrate or see: Such Sounds to hear, such Hands to feel, such Feet, Such Eyes and Objects on the Ground to Meet.

"New burnisht Joys!

Which finest Gold and Pearl excell!"

"Oo," said Thomas expectantly.

"A Stranger here, [Peter told him further, Strange things doth meet, strange Glory see; Strange Treasures lodg'd in this fair World appear, Strange all and New to me: But that they _mine_ should be who Nothing was, _That_ strangest is of all; yet brought to pa.s.s."

"Ow," said Thomas, agreeing.

Peter turned over the pages. "Do you like it? Do you think so too? Here's another about you."

"But little did the Infant dream That all the Treasures of the World were by, And that himself was so the Cream And Crown of all which round about did ly.

Yet thus it was!..."

"I don't think you'd understand the rest of that verse, Thomas; it's rather more difficult. 'Yet thus it was!' We'll end there, and have our tea."

Turning his head he saw that Lucy had come in and was standing behind him, looking over his shoulder at Thomas in his crib.

"Oh, Lucy," he said, "I'm reading to Thomas. Thomas is that. Do you like him? He is surprised at life, but quite pleased. He that was _Nothing_ from Eternity did little think such Joys to celebrate or see. Yet thus it is. He is extraordinarily happy about it all, but he can't do anything yet, you know--not speak or sit up or anything. He can only make noises, and cry, and drink, and slither about in his bath like a piece of wet soap. Wasn't there a clergyman once who thought his baby ought to be baptised by immersion unless it was proved not well able to endure it, as it says in the rubric or somewhere, so he put it in a tub to try if it could endure it or not, and he let it loose by accident and couldn't catch it again, it was so slippery, just like a horrid little fish, and its mother only came in and got hold of it just in time to prevent its being drowned? So after that he felt he could honestly certify that the child couldn't well endure immersion. I'm getting better at catching Thomas, though. He isn't supposed to slip off my hand at all, but he kicks and slithers so I can't hold him, and swims away and gets lost.

After tea will you come and help me wash him? Rhoda's out to tea; I'm so sorry. But there's tea, and Thomas and Algernon and me, and--and rather thick bread and b.u.t.ter only, apparently; but I shall have jam now you've come. First I must adjust Thomas's drinking-bottle; he always likes a drink while we have our tea. He's two months old. Is he good for that, do you think, or should he be a size larger? But I rather like them small, don't you? They're lighter so, for one thing. Is he nice? Do you like him?"

Lucy, kneeling by the crib, nodded.

"He's very old and wise, Peter; very old and gay. Look at his eyes. He's much--oh very much--older than you or me. That's as it should be."

"He'll rejuvenate with years, won't he?" said Peter. "At present he's too old to laugh when I make jokes; he thinks them silly; but he'll be sillier than anyone himself in about six months, I expect. Now we'll have tea."

Lucy left Thomas and came to the tea-table and poured out tea for both of them.

"I'm trying to learn to do without three lumps," said Peter, as Lucy put them in. "I expect it's extravagant to have three, really. But then Rhoda and Thomas don't take any, so it's only the same as if we each had one, isn't it. Thomas shan't be allowed more than one in each cup when he grows young enough to want any; Rhoda and I mean him to be a refined person."

"I don't think he will be," said Lucy, looking thoughtfully into the future. "I expect he'll be as vulgar as you and me. He's awfully like you to look at, Peter."

"So I am informed. Well, I'm not vain, and I don't claim to be an Adonis, like Denis. Is Denis flouris.h.i.+ng? The birds were splendid; they came so thick and fast that I gathered it was being a remarkable season. But as you only answered my numerous letters by one, and that apropos merely of Thomas's arrival, I could only surmise and speculate on your doings. I suppose you thought the grouse were instead of letters."

"They were Denis's letters. _I_ didn't shoot the grouse, dear darlings, nor send them."

"What were your letters, then?"

"Well, I sent rowan berries, didn't I? Weren't they red?"

"Yes. Even Thomas read them. We're being rather funny, aren't we? Is Denis going on with Parliament again this autumn, or has he begun to get tired of it?"

"Not a bit tired of it. He doesn't bother about it particularly, you know; not enough to tire himself; he sort of takes it for granted, like going up to Scotland in August."

Peter nodded. "I know. He would take it just like that if he was Prime Minister, or Archbishop of Canterbury. I daresay he will be one day; isn't it nice the way things drop into his hands without his bothering to get them."

He didn't see the queer, silent look Lucy turned on him as he spread his thick bread and b.u.t.ter with blackberry jam.

"Thomas," she said after a moment, "has dropped into your hands, Peter."

It was as if she was protesting against something, beating herself against some invisible, eternal barrier that divided the world into two unequal parts.

Peter said, "Rather, he has. I do hope he'll never drop out. I'm getting very handy about holding him, though. Oh, let's take him upstairs and tub him now; do you mind?"

So they took him upstairs and tubbed him, and Lucy managed to hold him so firmly that he didn't once swim away and get lost.

As they were drying him (Lucy dried him with a firmer and more effective hand than Peter, who always wiped him very gingerly lest he should squash) Rhoda came in. She was strange-eyed and pale in the blurred light, and greeted Lucy in a dreamy, absent way.

"I've had tea out.... Oh, have you bathed baby? How good of you. I meant to be in earlier, but I was late.... The fog's awful; it's getting thicker and thicker."

She sat down by the fire and loosened her coat, and took off her hat and rubbed the fog from her wet hair, and coughed. Rhoda had grown prettier lately; she looked less tired and listless, and her eyes were brighter, and the fire flushed her thin cheek to rose-colour as she bent over it.

Peter took her wet things from her and took off her shoes and put slippers on her feet, and she gave him an absent smile. Rhoda had had a dreamy way with her since Thomas's birth; moony, as Peggy, who didn't approve, called it.

A little later, when Thomas was clean and warm and asleep in his bed, they were told that Mrs. Urquhart's carriage had come.

Lucy bent over Thomas and kissed him, then over Rhoda. Rhoda whispered in her ear, without emotion, "Baby ought to have been yours, not mine," and Lucy whispered back:

"Oh hush, hus.h.!.+"

Rhoda still held her, still whispered, "Will you love him? Will you be good to him, always?"

And Lucy answered, opening wide eyes, "Why, of course. No one could help it, could they?" and on that Rhoda let her go.

Peter thought that Lucy must have infected Rhoda with some of her own appreciation of Thomas, opened her eyes to his true worth; for during the next week she was newly tender to him. She bathed him every evening herself, only letting Peter help a little; she held him in her arms without wearying of his weight, and wasn't really annoyed even when he was sick upon her shoulder, an unfortunate habit of Thomas's.