it was rather fun shopping for leslie. leslie was a stout, quiet, ponderous person between thirty and forty, and he really did not bound at all; urquhart had done him less than justice in his description. there was about him the pathos of the very rich. he was generous in the extreme, and peter's job proved lucrative as well as pleasant. he grew curiously fond of leslie; his attitude towards him was one of respect touched with protectiveness. no one should any more "do" leslie, if he could help it.
"he's let me," peter told his cousin lucy, "get rid of all his horrible lowestoft forgeries; awful things they were, with the blue hardly dry on them. frightful cheek, selling him things like that; it's so insulting. leslie's awfully sweet-tempered about being gulled, though. he's very kind to me; he lets me buy anything i like for him. and he recommends me to his friends, too. it's a splendid profession; i'm so glad i thought of it. if i hadn't i should have had to go into a dye shop, or be a weaver or something. it wouldn't have been good form; it wouldn't even have been clean. i should have had a day-before-yesterday's handkerchief and rodney would have liked me more, but denis would probably have cut me. as it is i'm quite good form and quite clean, and i move in the best circles. i love the ignorant rich; they're so amusing. i know such a nice lady. she buys potato rings. she likes them to be dublin hall-marked and clearly dated seventeen hundred and something—so, naturally, they always were till i began to buy them for her. i've persuaded her to give away the most blatant forgeries to her god-children at their baptisms. babies like them, sham or genuine."
peter was having tea with his cousin lucy and urquhart in the white city. peter and lucy were very fond of the white city. peter's cousin lucy was something like a small, gay spring flower, with wide, solemn grey eyes that brimmed with sudden laughters, and a funny, infectious gurgle of a laugh. she was a year younger than peter, and they had all their lives gone shares in their possessions, from guinea-pigs to ideas. they admired the same china and the same people, with unquestioning unanimity. lucy lived in chelsea, with an elder sister and a father who ran at his own expense a revolutionary journal that didn't pay, because those who would have liked to buy it couldn't, for the most part, afford to, and because those who could have afforded to didn't want to, and because, in short, journals run by nice people never do pay.
lucy played the 'cello, the instrument usually selected by the small in stature. in the intervals of this pursuit, she went about the world open-eyed to all new-burnished joys that came within her vision, and lived by admiration, hope and love, and played with peter at any game, wise or foolish, that turned up. often urquhart played with them, and they were a happy party of three. peter and lucy shared, among other things, an admiration of urquhart.
peter was finding the world delightful just now. this first winter in london was probably the happiest time he ever had. he hardly missed cambridge; he certainly didn't miss the money that the robinsons had. his profession was to touch and handle the things he loved; the ignorant rich were delightful; the things he bought for them were beyond all words; the sales he attended were revels of joy; it was all extremely entertaining, and leslie a dear, and everyone very kind. the affection that always found its way to peter through his disabilities spoke for something in him that must, it would seem, be there; possibly it was merely his friendly smile. he was anyhow of the genus comedian, that readily endears itself.
he and urquhart and lucy all knew how to live. they made good use of most of the happy resources that london offers to its inhabitants. they went in steamers to and fro between putney and greenwich, listening to concertinas and other instruments of music. they looked at many sorts of pictures, talked to many sorts of people, and attended many sorts of plays. urquhart and peter had even become associates of the y.m.c.a. (representing themselves as agnostics seeking for light) on account of the swimming-baths. as peter remarked, "christian young men do not bathe very much, and it seems a pity no one should." on the day when they had tea at the white city, they had all had lunch at a very recherché café in soho, where the smart set like to meet bohemians, and you can only get in by being one or the other, so peter and lucy went as the smart set, and urquhart as a bohemian, and they liked to meet each other very much.
the only drawback to peter's life was the bronchitis that sprang at him out of the fogs and temporarily stopped work. he had just recovered from an attack of it on the day when he was having tea at the white city, and he looked a weak and washed-out rag, with sunken blue eyes smiling out of a very white face.
"you would think, to look at him," urquhart said to lucy, "that he had been going in extensively for the flip-flap this afternoon. it's a pity stephen can't see you, margery; you look starved enough to satisfy even him. you never come across stephen now, i suppose? you wouldn't, of course. he has no opinion of the ignorant rich. nor even of the well-informed rich, like me. he's blindly prejudiced in favour of the ignorant poor."
lucy nodded. "i know. he's nice to me always. i go and play my 'cello to his friends."
"i always keep him in mind," said peter, "for the day when my patrons get tired of me. i know rodney will be kind to me directly i take to street peddling or any other thoroughly ill-bred profession. the kind he despises most, i suppose, are my dear ignorant rich—the ill-bred but by no means breadless. (that's my own and not very funny, by the way.) did i tell you, denis, that leslie is going to begin educating the people in appreciation of objects of art? isn't it a nice idea? i'm to help. leslie's a visionary, you know. i believe plutocrats often are. they've so much money and are so comfortable that they stop wanting material things and begin dreaming dreams. i should dream dreams if i was a plutocrat. as it is my mind is earthly. i don't want to educate anyone. well, anyhow we're going to italy in the spring, to pick things up, as leslie puts it. that always sounds so much as if we didn't pay for them. then we shall bring them home and have free exhibits for the ignorant poor, and i shall give free and instructive lectures. isn't it a pleasant plan? we're going to venice. there's a berovieri goblet that some venetian count has, that leslie's set his heart on. we are to acquire it, regardless of expense, if it turns out to be all that is rumoured."
urquhart scoffed here.
"nice to be infallible, isn't it. you and your goblets and your ignorant rich. and your brother hilary and my uncle evelyn. your great gifts seem to run in the family. my uncle, i hear, is ruining himself with buying the things your brother admires. my poor uncle, miss hope, is getting so weak-sighted that he can't judge for himself as he used, so he follows the advice of margery's brother. it keeps him very happy and amused, though he'll soon be bankrupt, no doubt."
lucy, as usual, laughed at the urquhart family and the margerison family and the world at large. when she laughed, she opened her grey eyes wide, while they twinkled with dancing light.
then she said, "oh, i want to go on the flip-flap. peter mustn't come, because it always makes him sick; so will you?"
urquhart said he would, so they did, and peter watched them, hoping urquhart didn't mind much. urquhart never seemed to mind being ordered about by lucy. and lucy, of course, had accepted him as an intimate friend from the first, because peter had said she was to, and because, as she remarked, he was so astonishingly nice to look at and to listen to.
among the visitors who frequented lucy's home, people whom she considered astonishingly pleasant to look at and to listen to did not abound; so lucy enjoyed the change all the more.
the first time peter took urquhart down to chelsea to call on his hope uncle and cousins, one sunday afternoon, he gave him a succinct account of the sort of people they would probably meet there.
"they have oddities in, you know—and particularly on sunday afternoons. they usually have one or two staying in the house, too. they keep open house for wastrels. a lot of them are aliens—polish refugees, russian anarchists, oppressed finns, massacred armenians who do embroidery; violinists who can't earn a living, decayed chimney-sweeps and so forth. 'disillusioned (or still illusioned) geniuses, would-bes, theorists, artistic natures, failed reformers, knaves and fools incompetent or over-old, broken evangelists and debauchees, inebriates, criminals, cowards, virtual slaves' ... anyhow it's a home for lost hopes. (do you see that?) my uncle is keen on anyone who tries to revolt against anything—governments, russians, proprieties, or anything else—and felicity is keen on anyone who fails."
"and your other cousin—what is she keen on?"
"oh, lucy's too young for the oddities, like me. she and i sit in a corner and look on. it's my uncle and felicity they like to talk to. they talk about liberty to them, you know. my uncle is great on liberty. and they give them lemon in their tea, and say how wicked russians are, and how stupid royal academicians are, and buy the armenians' embroidery, and so forth. lucy and i don't do that well. i disapprove of liberty for most people, i think, and certainly for them; and i don't like lemon in my tea, and though i'm sure russians are wicked, i believe oppressed poles are as bad—at least their hair is as bushy and their nails as long—and i prefer the embroidery i do myself; i do it quite nicely, i think. and i don't consider that celtic poets or armenian christians wash their hands often enough.... they nearly all asked me the time last sunday. i was sorry about it."
"you feared they were finding their afternoon tedious?"
"no; but i think their watches were up the spout, you see. so i was sorry. i never feel so sorry for myself as when mine is. i'm really awfully grateful to leslie; if it wasn't for him i should never be able to tell anyone the time. by the way, leslie's awfully fond of felicity. he writes her enormous cheques for her clubs and vagabonds and so on. but of course she'll never look at him; he's much too well-off. it's not low to tell you that, because he makes it so awfully obvious. he'll probably be there this afternoon. oh, here we are."
they found the hopes' small drawing-room filled much as peter had predicted. dermot hope was a tall, wasted-looking man of fifty-five, with brilliant eyes giving significance to a vague face. he had very little money, and spent that little on "progress," whose readers were few and ardent, and whose contributors were very cosmopolitan, and full of zeal and fire; several of them were here this afternoon. dermot hope himself was most unconquerably full of fire. he could be delightful, and exceedingly disagreeable, full of genial sympathy and appreciation, and of a biting irony. he looked at urquhart, whom he met for the first time, with a touch of sarcasm in his smile. he said, "you're exactly like your father. how do you do," and seemed to take no further interest in him. he had certainly never taken much in lord hugh, during the brief year of their brotherhood.
for peter his glance was indulgent. peter, not being himself a reformer, or an idealist, or a lover of progress, or even, according to himself, of liberty, but an acceptor of things as they are and a lover of the good things of this world, was not particularly interesting to his uncle, of course; but, being rather an endearing boy, and the son of a beloved sister, he was loved; and, even had he been a stranger, his position would have been regarded as more respectable than urquhart's, since he had so far failed to secure many good things.
felicity, a gracious and lovely person of twenty-nine, gave peter and urquhart a smile out of her violet eyes and murmured "lucy's in the corner over there," and resumed the conversation she was trying to divide between joseph leslie and a young english professor who was having a holiday from stirring up revolutions at a polish university. the division was not altogether easy, even to a person of felicity's extraordinary tact, particularly as they both happened to be in love with her. felicity had a great deal of listening to do always, because everyone told her about themselves, and she always heard them gladly; if she hastened the end a little sometimes, gently, they never knew it. she, in fact, wanted to hear about them as much—really as much, though the desire in these proportions is so rare as to seem incredible—as they wanted to let her hear. her wish to hear was a temptation to egotism; those who disliked egotism in themselves had to fight the temptation, and seldom won. she did not believe—no one but a fool (and she was not that) could have believed—all the many things that were told her; the many things that must always, while pity and the need to be pitied endure, be told to the pitiful; but she seldom said so. she merely looked at the teller with her long and lovely violet eyes, that took in so much and gave out such continual friendship, and saw how, behind the lies, the need dwelt pleading. then she gave, not necessarily what the lies asked for, but what, in her opinion, pity owed to that which pleaded. she certainly gave, as a rule, quite too much, in whatever coin she paid. that was inevitable.
"you give from the emotions," joseph leslie told her, "instead of from reason. how bad for you: how bad for them. and worse when it is friendship than when it is coin that you can count and set a limit to. yes. abominably bad for everyone concerned."
"should one," wondered felicity, "give friendship, as one is supposed to give money, on c.o.s. principles? perhaps so; i must think about it."
but her thinking always brought her back to the same conclusion as before. consequently her circle of friends grew and grew. she even included in it a few of the rich and prosperous, not wishing her chain of fellowship, whose links she kept in careful repair, to fail anywhere. but it showed strain there. it was forged and flung by the rich and prosperous, and merely accepted by felicity.
leslie, though rich and prosperous, stepped into the linked circle led by peter, who was neither. having money, and a desire to make himself conscious of the fact by using it, he consulted miss hope as to how best to be philanthropic. he wanted, it seemed, to be a philanthropist as well as a collector, and felt incapable of being either otherwise than through agents. his personal share in both enterprises had to be limited to the backing capital.
miss hope said, "start a settlement," and he had said, "i can't unless you'll work it for me. will you?" so he started a settlement, and she worked it for him, and he came about the place and got in the way and wrote heavy cheques and adored felicity and suggested at suitable intervals that she should marry him.
felicity had no intention of marrying him. she called him a rest. no one likes being called a rest when they desire to be a stimulant, or even a gentle excitement. felicity was an immense excitement to mr. leslie (though he concealed it laboriously under a heavy and matter-of-fact exterior) and it is of course pleasanter when these things are reciprocal. but mr. leslie perceived that she took much more interest even in her young cousin peter than in him. "do you find him a useful little boy?" she asked him this afternoon, before peter and urquhart arrived.
leslie nodded. "useful boy—very. and pleasant company, you know. i don't know much about these things, but he seems to have a splendid eye for a good thing. funny thing is, it works all round—in all departments. native genius, not training. he sees a horse between a pair of shafts in a country lane; looks at it; says 'that's good. that would have a fair chance for the grand national'—urquhart buys it for fifty pounds straight away—and it does win the grand national. and he knows nothing special about horses, either. that's what i call genius. it's the same eye that makes him spot a dusty old bit of good china on a back shelf of a shop among a crowd of forged rubbish. i've none of that sort of sense; i'm hopeless. but i like good things, and i can pay for them, and i give that boy a free rein. he's furnishing my house well for me. it seems to amuse him rather."
"he loves it," said felicity. "his love of pleasant things is what he lives by. including among them denis urquhart, of course."
"yes." leslie pursed thoughtful lips over denis urquhart. he was perhaps slightly touched with jealousy there. he was himself rather drawn towards that tranquil young man, but he knew very well that the drawing was one-sided; urquhart was patently undrawn.
"rather a flash lot, the urquharts, aren't they?" he said; and peter, who liked him, would have had to admit that the remark was perilously near to a bound. "seem to have a sort of knack of dazzling people."
"he's an attractive person, of course," miss hope replied; and she didn't say it distantly; she was so sorry for people who bounded, and so many of her friends did. "it's pleasing to see, isn't it—such whole-souled devotion?"
mr. leslie grunted. "i won't say pearls before swine—because urquhart isn't a swine, but a very pleasant, ordinary young fellow. but worship like that can't be deserved, you know; not by anyone, however beautifully he motors through life. margerison's too—well, too nice, to put it simply—to give himself to another person, body and soul, like that. it's squandering."
"and irritates you," she reflected, but merely said, "is squandering always a bad thing, i wonder?"
it was at this point that peter and urquhart came in. directed by felicity to lucy in an obscure corner, they found her being talked to by one of the oddities; he looked rather like an oppressed finn. he was talking and she was listening, wide-eyed and ingenuous, her small hands clasped on her lap. peter and urquhart sat down by her, and the oppressed finn presently wandered away to talk to lucy's father.
lucy gave a little sigh of relief.
"wish they wouldn't come and talk to me," she said. "i'm no good to them; i don't understand; and i hate people to be unhappy. i'm dreadfully sorry they are. i don't want to have to think about them. why can't they be happy? there are so many nice things all about. 'tis such waste." she looked up at urquhart, and her eyes laughed because he was happy and clean, and shone like a new pin.
"it's nicest," she said, "to be happy and clean. and it's not bad to be happy and dirty; or very bad to be unhappy and clean; but ..." she shut her lips with a funny distaste on the remaining alternative. "and i'm horribly afraid felicity's going to get engaged to mr. malyon, that young one talking to her, do you see? he helps with conspiracies in poland."
"but he's quite clean," said urquhart, looking at him.
lucy admitted that. "but he'll get sent to siberia soon, don't you see, and felicity will go too, i know."
peter said, "if i was felicity i'd marry leslie; i wouldn't hesitate for a moment. i wish it was me he loved so. fancy marrying into all those lovely things i'm getting for him. only i hope she won't, because then she'd take over the shopping department, and i should be left unemployed. oh, lucy, he's let me buy him the heavenliest pair of chelsea jardinières, shaped like orange-tubs, with cupids painted on blue panels. you must come and see them soon."
lucy's eyes, seeing the delightful things, widened and danced. she loved the things peter bought.
suddenly peter, who had a conscience somewhere, felt a pang in it, and, to ease it, regretfully left the corner and wandered about among his uncle's friends, being pleasant and telling them the time. he did that till the last of them had departed. urquhart then had to depart also, and peter was alone with his relatives. it was only after urquhart had gone that peter realised fully what a very curious and incongruous element he had been in the room. realising it suddenly, he laughed, and lucy laughed too. felicity looked at them indulgently.
"babies. what's the matter now?"
"only denis," explained peter.
"that young man," commented dermot hope, without approbation, "is remarkably well-fed, well-bred, and well-dressed. why do you take him about with you?"
"that's just why, isn't it, peter," put in lucy. "peter and i like people to be well-fed and well-bred and well-dressed."
felicity touched her chin, with her indulgent smile.
"baby again. you like no such thing. you'd get tired of it in a week."
"oh, well," said lucy, "a week's a long time."
"he's got no fire in all his soul and body," complained dermot hope. "he's a symbol of prosperous content—of all we're fighting. it's people like him who are the real obstructionists; the people who don't see, not because they're blind, but because they're too pleased with their own conditions to look beyond them. it's people like him who are pouring water on the fires as they are lit, because fires are such bad form, and might burn up their precious chattels if allowed to get out of hand. take life placidly; don't get excited, it's so vulgar; that's their religion. they've neither enthusiasm nor imagination in them. and so ..."
and so forth, just as it came out in "progress" once a month. peter didn't read "progress," because he wasn't interested in the future, being essentially a child of to-day. besides, he too hated conflagrations, thinking the precious chattels they would burn up much too precious for that. peter was no lover either of destruction or construction; perhaps he too was an obstructionist; though not without imagination. his uncle knew he had a regrettable tendency to put things in the foreground and keep ideas very much in the background, and called him therefore a phenomenalist. lucy shared this tendency, being a good deal of an artist and nothing at all of a philosopher.
