hilary and peter gondoled to lord evelyn urquhart's residence, a rather exquisite little old palace called ca' delle gemme, and were received affectionately by the tall, slim, dandified-looking young-old man, with his white ringed hands and high sweet voice and courtly manner. he had aged since peter remembered him; the slim hands were shakier and the near-sighted eyes weaker and the delicate face more deeply lined with the premature lines of dissipation and weak health. he put his monocle in his left eye and smiled at peter, with the old charming smile that was like his nephew's, and tilted to and fro on his heels.
"not changed at all, as far as i can see," he said to peter, with the same mincing, finicking pronunciation that had pleased the boy peter eight years ago. "only my sight isn't what it was. are you changed at all? do you still like bow rose-bowls better than anything except denis? denis is coming here soon, you know, so i shall be able to discover. oh, i beg pardon—mr. peter margerison, mr. cheriton."
mr. cheriton was a dark, sturdy young man with an aggressive jaw, who bowed without a smile and looked one rather hard in the face. peter was a little frightened of him—these curt, brisk manners made him nervous always—and felt a desire to edge behind hilary. he gathered that hilary and cheriton did not very much like one another. he knew what that slight nervous contraction of hilary's forehead meant.
dinner was interesting. lord evelyn told pleasant and funny stories in his high, tittering voice, addressing himself to all his guests, but looking at peter when he came to his points. (people usually looked at peter when they came to the points of their stories.) hilary talked a good deal and drank a good deal and ate very little, and was obviously on very friendly terms with lord evelyn and on no terms at all with mr. cheriton. cheriton looked a good deal at peter, with very bright and direct eyes, and flung into the conversation rather curt and spasmodic utterances in a slightly american accent. he seemed a very decided and very much alive young man, a little rude, thought peter, but possibly that was only his trans-atlantic way, if, as his voice hinted, he came from america. once or twice peter met the direct and vivid regard fixed upon him, and nearly was startled into "i beg your pardon," for there seemed to him an odd element of accusation in the look.
"but it isn't my fault," he told himself reassuringly. "i've not done anything, i'm sure i haven't. it's just the way he's made, i expect. or else people have done him badly once or twice, and he's always thinking it's going to happen again. rough luck on him; poor chap."
after dinner they went into what lord evelyn called the saloon. "where i keep my especial treasures," he remarked to peter. "you'd like to walk round and look at some of them, i expect. these bronzes, now—," he indicated two statuettes on brackets by the door.
peter looked at them, then swiftly up at lord evelyn, who swayed at his side, his glass screwed into one smiling eye.
lord evelyn touched the near statuette with his light, unsteady, beautifully-ringed hand.
"rather lovely, isn't she," he said, caressing her. "we found her and the actæon in a dusty hole of a place in a miserable little calle off the campo delle beccarie, kept by a german jew. quite a find, the old sinner. what an extortioner, though! eh, margerison? how much has the old schneller got out of my pocket? it was your brother who discovered him for me, young peter. he took me there, and we found the diana together. like her? giacomo treviso, a pupil of verrocchio's. heard of him? the actæon's not so good now. same man, but not so happy."
he turned the diana about; he posed her for peter's edification. peter looked from her to the actæon, from the actæon to lord evelyn's face. he opened his lips to say something, and closed them on silence. he looked past lord evelyn to hilary, who stood in the background, leaning a little against a chair. it seemed to peter that there was a certain tensity, a strain, in his face.
then peter met full the bright, hard, vivid gaze of the alert cheriton. it had an odd expression at this moment; unmistakably inimical, observantly curious, distinctly sardonic. a faint ironic smile just touched the corners of his determined mouth. peter returned the look with his puzzled, enquiring eyes that sought to understand.
this much, anyhow, he seemed to understand: his rôle was silence. if cheriton didn't speak (and cheriton's expression showed that he knew) and if hilary didn't speak ... well, he, peter, couldn't speak either. he must acquiesce in what appeared to be a conspiracy to keep this pathetic, worn-out dilettante in a fool's paradise.
the pathos of it gripped peter's heart. lord evelyn had once known so well. what havoc was this that one could apparently make of one's faculties? it wasn't only physical semi-blindness; it was a blindness of the mind, a paralysis of the powers of discrimination and appreciation, which, was pitiful. peter was angry. he thought hilary and cheriton so abominably, unmitigatedly wrong. and yet he himself had said, "if it makes them happy"—and left that as the indubitable end. ah, but one didn't lie to people, even for that.
peter was brought up sharply, as he had often been before, against hilary's strange hilaryish, perverted views of the conduct of life's businesses. then, as usual when he should have felt furthest from mirth, he abruptly collapsed into sudden helpless laughter.
lord evelyn turned the eye-glass on him.
"eh?" he queried. "why so? but never mind; you always suffered in that way, i remember. get it from your mother, i think; she did, too. never explain jokes; they lose so in the telling. now i want to show you something over here."
peter crossed the room, his laughter dead. after all, funny wasn't what it really was. mainly, it was perplexing. till he could have it out with hilary, he couldn't understand it at all.
he saw more of lord evelyn's treasures, and perplexity grew. he did not laugh again; he was very solemn and very silent and very polite where he could not admire. where he could he did; but even here his admiration was weighed down to soberness by the burden of the things beyond the pale.
lord evelyn found him lukewarm, changed and dulled from the vivid devotee of old, who had coloured up all over his pale face at the sight of a bow rose-bowl. he coloured indeed now, when lord evelyn said "like it?"—coloured and murmured indistinguishable comments into his collar. he coloured most when lord evelyn said, as he frequently did, "your brother's find. a delicious little man in some sotto-portico or other—quite an admirable person. eh, margerison?"
hilary in the background would vaguely assent. peter, who looked at him no more, felt the indefinable challenge of his tone. it meant either, "i've as much right to my artistic taste as you have, peter, and i'm not ashamed of it," or, "speak out, if you want to shatter the illusions that make the happiness of his ridiculous life; if not, be silent."
and all the time the vivid stare of jim cheriton was turned like a search-light on peter's face, and his odd smile grew and grew. cheriton was watching, observing, taking in something new, trying to solve some problem.
at the end of half an hour lord evelyn said, "peter margerison, you've lost some of the religious fervour of your youth. the deceitfulness of riches and the cares of this world—is that it? what's come to you that you're so tepid about this siena chalice? don't be tepid, young peter; it's the symptom of a ruined soul."
he polished his glass, screwed it into his left eye, and looked down on peter with his whimsical, kindly scrutiny. peter did not return the look; he stood with bent head, looking vaguely down at the sienese chalice. that too was one of hilary's finds. hilary it seemed, had approved its seller in an article in the gem.
"damme," said lord evelyn suddenly, with unusual explosiveness, "if i didn't like you better when you were fifteen! now, you blasé and soulless generation, i suppose you want to play bridge. do you play as badly as ever, peter? a remarkable player you were, i remember—quite remarkable. denis always told you so. now cheriton will tell you so, because he's rude."
bridge was a relief to peter, though he was still a rather remarkable player. he played with cheriton, who was not rude, because he was absolutely silent. it was an absurd game. cheriton was a brilliant player, even when he was only giving half his mind to it, as he seemingly was to-night. lord evelyn had been a brilliant player once, and was now brilliant with alternations of eccentricity; he talked most of the time, making the game the centre of his remarks, from which he struck out along innumerable paths of irrelevancy. the margerisons too were irrelevant; hilary thought bridge a bore, and peter, who thought nothing a bore, was always a little alarmed by anything so grown-up. but to-night he didn't much mind what he did, so long as he stopped looking at lord evelyn's things. peter only wanted to get away; he was ashamed and perplexed and sorry and angry, and stabbed through with pity. he wanted to get out of lord evelyn's house, out of the range of his kindly, whimsical smile and cheriton's curious hostile stare; he wanted to be alone with hilary, and to understand.
the irony of cheriton's look increased during bridge; it was certainly justified by the abstraction of peter's play.
lord evelyn laughed at him. "you need denis to keep you in order, young peter. lord, how frightened you used to be when denis was stern. smiled and pretended you weren't, but i knew...." he chuckled at the painted ceiling. "knew a man at oxford, peter ... well, never mind that story now, you're too young for it.... anyhow i make it no trumps."
at eleven o'clock hilary and peter went home. lord evelyn shook hands with peter rather affectionately, and said, "come and see me again soon, dear boy. lunch with me at florian's to-morrow—you and your wealthy friend. busy sight-seeing, are you? how banal of you. morning in the duomo, afternoon on the lido, and the accademia to fill the spare hours; i know the dear old round. never could be worried with it myself; too much else to do. but one manages to enjoy life even without it, so don't overwork. and come and see my toys again by daylight, and try to enthuse a little more over them next time. you're too young to be blasé. you'd better read the gem, to encourage yourself in simple pleasures. good-night. good-night, margerison."
he shook hands with them both again, possibly to make up for cheriton, who did not shake hands at all, but stood with his own in his pockets, leaning against the wall, his eyes still on peter's face.
"queer manners you have, dear jim," was what they heard lord evelyn say as they stepped into the ca' delle gemme gondola, that was taking them back to the rio delle beccarie.
they swung out into the faintly-shining darkness of the water-road, into which the climbing moon could not look—a darkness crossed and flecked by the red gleamings of the few gondola and sandolo lights abroad at this hour in the quiet street. they sent their own red path before them as they softly travelled; and round it the stars flickered and swam, deep down. peter could have sworn he heard their thin, tinkling, submerged, funny song, somewhere above or beneath the soft and melodious "chérie birri-bim," that someone (not lord evelyn's beautifully trained and taciturn poppe) was crooning near at hand.
the velvet darkness of a bridge drowned the stars for a moment; then, with a musical, abrupt cry of "sta—i!" they swung round a corner into a narrow way that was silver and green in the face of the climbing moon.
the musically lovely night, the peace of the dim water-ways, the shadowing mystery of the steep, shuttered houses, with here and there a lit door or window ajar, sending a slant of yellow light across the deep green lane full of stars and the moon, the faint crooning of music far off, made a cool marvel of peace for strung nerves. peter sat by hilary in silence, and no longer wanted to ask questions. in the strange, enveloping wonder of the night, minor wonders died. what did it matter, anyhow? hilary and venice—venice and hilary—give them time, and one would explain the other.
it was hilary who began to talk, and he talked about cheriton, his nervous voice pitched on a high note of complaint.
"i do intensely dislike that man. the sort of person i've no use for, you know. so horribly on the spot; such sharp, unsoftened manners. all the terrible bright braininess of the yankee combined with the obstreperous energy of the philistine briton. his mother is a young american, about to be married for the third time. the sort of exciting career one would expect from a parent of the delightful jim. i cannot imagine why lord evelyn, who is a person of refinement, encourages him. really, you know!"
he grew very plaintive over it. peter really did not wonder.
peter's subconscious mind registered a dim impression that this was defensive talk, to fill the silence. hilary was a nervous person, easily agitated. probably the evening had agitated him. but he was no good at defence. his complaint of jim cheriton broke weakly on an unsteady laugh. peter nodded assent, and looked up the street of dim water, his chin propped in his hands, and thought how extraordinarily pleasant was the red light that slanted across the dark water from green doors ajar in steep house-walls.
hilary tried to light a cigar, and flung broken matches into spluttering darkness. at last he succeeded; and then, when he had smoked in silence for two minutes, he turned abruptly on peter and said, "well?"
peter, dreamily turning towards him, felt the nervous challenge of his tone, and read it in his pale, tired face.
peter pulled himself together and collected his thoughts. after all, one might as well know.
"oh, well ... what? yes, what about those ghastly statuettes, and all the rest of them? why, when, how ... and what on earth for?"
hilary, after a moment of silence, said, with a rather elaborate carelessness, "i saw you didn't like them."
at that peter started a little, and the dreaminess of the night fell away from him.
"you saw ... oh." for a moment he couldn't think of anything else to say. then he laughed a little. "why, yes, i imagine you did.... but what's the object of it all? have you and cheriton (by the way, why does he glare at us both so?) come to the conclusion that it's worth while playing that sort of game? if you have, i can't tell you how utterly wrong i think you are. make him happy—oh, i know—but what extraordinary cheek on your part! i as near as possible gave you away—i did really. besides, what did he mean by saying you'd advised him to buy the things—praised them in the gem, and all that? you can't have gone so far as that—did you?"
after a moment of silence, hilary turned abruptly and looked peter in the face, taking the long cigar out of his mouth and holding it between two white, nervous fingers.
"upon my word," said hilary, speaking rather slowly, "talk of cheek! do you know what you're accusing me of? you and your precious taste! leslie and your other fool patrons seem to have given you a fair opinion of yourself. because you, in your omniscience, think a thing bad, which i ... which i obviously consider good, and have stated so in print ... you don't so much as deign to argue the question, but get upon your pedestal and ask me why i tell lies. you think one thing and i think another; of course, you must know best, but i presume i may be allowed to hold my misguided and ill-informed opinion without being accused blankly of fraud. upon my word, peter ... it's time you took to some other line of life, i think."
his high, unsteady voice trailed away into silence. peter, out of all the dim beauty of the night, saw only the pale, disturbed, frowning face, the quivering hand that held the lean cigar. all the strangeness and the mystery of the mysterious world were here concentrated. numbly and dully he heard the soft, rhythmic splashing of the dipping oar, the turning cry of "premié!" then, sharper, "sciar, signori, sciar!" as they nearly jostled another gondola, swinging round sharply into a moonless lane of ancient palaces.
peter presently said, "but ..." and there stopped. what could he say, beyond "but?"
hilary answered him sharply, "well?" and then, after another pause, peter pulled himself together, gave up trying to thread the maze of his perplexity, and said soberly, "i beg your pardon, hilary. i'm an ass."
hilary let out his breath sharply, and resumed his cigar.
"it's possible, of course," he said, more quietly, "that you may be right and i wrong about the things. that's another question altogether. i may be a fool: i only resent being called a knave. really, you know!"
"i never meant that," peter hopelessly began to explain. and, indeed, now that hilary disclaimed it, it did seem a far too abominable thing that he had implied. he had hurt hilary; he deserved to be kicked. his anger with himself rose. to hurt anyone was atrocious; to hurt hilary unforgivable. he would have done a great deal now to make amends.
he stammered over it. "i did think, i'm afraid, that you and cheriton were doing it to make him happy or something. i'm awfully sorry; i was an ass; i ought to have known. but it never occurred to me that you didn't kn—that you had a different opinion of the things. i say, hilary—cheriton knows! i saw him know. he knew, and he was wondering what i was going to say."
"knew, knew, knew!" hilary nervously exploded. "there you go again. you're intolerable, peter, really. all the spoiling you've had has gone to your head."
"i beg your pardon," said peter again. "i meant, cheriton agreed with me, i'm sure.... but, hilary—those statuettes—you can't really.... they're mid-victorian, and positively offensive!" his voice rose shrilly. they had been so horrible, diana and actæon. he couldn't forget them, in their podgy sentimentality. "and—and that chalice ..." he shuddered over it—"and—"
"that'll do, thanks," hilary broke in. "you can say at once that you disagree with me about everything i admire, and leave it there. but, if i may ask you, don't say so to lord evelyn, if you can resist the temptation to show me up before him. it will only bother and disturb him, whichever of us he ends by agreeing with. he's shown that he trusts my taste more or less, by giving me his paper to edit, and i should think we might leave it at that."
"yes, the paper"—peter was reminded of it, and it became a distracting puzzle. hilary thought diana and actæon and the siena chalice good things—and hilary edited an art paper. what in the name of all that was horrible did he put in it? a light was shed on signor leroni, who was, said the gem, a good dealer in plaques, and who was, peter had thought, a bare-faced purveyor of shams. peter began to question the quality of the osele, that leslie had purchased from signor sardi.
how curious it was; and rather tragic, too. for hilary, like lord evelyn, had known once. had hilary too, in ruining much else of himself, ruined his critical faculties? and could one really do that and remain ignorant of the fact? or would one rather have a lurking suspicion, and therefore be all the more defiantly corroborative of one's own judgment? in either case one was horribly to be pitied; but—but one shouldn't try to edit art papers. and yet this couldn't be conveyed without a lacerating of feelings that was unthinkable. there was always this about hilary—one simply couldn't bear to hurt him. he was so easily hurt and so often; life used him so hardly and he felt it so keenly, that it behoved peter, at least, to insert as many cushions as possible between him and the sharp edges of circumstance. peter was remorseful. he had taken what he should have seen before was an unforgivable line; he had failed abominably in comprehension and decent feeling. poor hilary. peter was moved by the old impulse to be extraordinarily nice to him.
they turned out of the rio della madonnetta into the narrow rio that was the back approach to the palazzo amadeo. it is a dark little canal, a rio of the poor. the doors that stood open in the peeling brick walls above the water let out straggling shafts of lamplight and quarrelling voices and singing and the smell of wine. the steep house walls leant to meet one another from either side; from upper windows the people who hadn't gone to bed talked across a space of barely six feet.
the gondola crept cautiously under two low bridges, then stopped outside the water-washed back steps of the palazzo amadeo.
one pleasant thing about lord evelyn's exquisitely mannered poppe was that one didn't feel that he was thinking "i am not accustomed to taking my master's visitors to such low haunts." in the first place, he probably was. in the second, he was not an english flunkey, and not a snob. he was no more a snob than the margerisons were, or lord evelyn himself. he deposited them at the palace back door, politely saluted, and slipped away down the shadowy water-street.
hilary and peter stepped up two water-washed steps to the green door, and peggy opened it from within. peggy (peter occasionally wondered when, if ever, she went to bed) was in the hall, nursing illuminato, who couldn't sleep—a small bundle of scarlet night-shirt and round bullet head, burrowing under his mother's left arm and staring out from that place of comfort with very bright and wakeful eyes. when, indeed, it might have been asked, did any of the margerison family take their rest? no one of them ever felt or expressed any surprise at finding any other awake and active at any hour of the night.
peggy looked at her three male infants with her maternal serenity touched with mirth. there were nearly always those two elements in peggy's look—a motherly sympathy and desire to cheer and soothe, and a glint from some rich and golden store of amusement.
she patted peter on the arm, softly.
"was it a nice evening, then? no, not very, i think. dear, dear! you both look so unutterably tired. i wonder had you better go to bed, quite straight?"
it seemed to be suggested as a last resource of the desperate, though the hour was close on midnight.
"and the children have been pillow-fighting, till mr. vyvian—the creature—came down with nothing in particular on, to complain to me that he couldn't sleep. sleep, you know! it wasn't after ten—but it seems he had a headache, as usual, because mrs. johnson had insisted on going to look at pictures with him and rhoda, and her remarks were such—nervous prostration, poor mr. vyvian. so i've had illuminato down here with me since then. he wants to go to you, peter, as usual."
peter took the scarlet bundle, and it burrowed against his shirt-front with a contented sigh. peggy watched the two for a moment, then said to the uncle, "you poor little boy, you're tireder than hilary even. you must surely go to bed. but isn't lord evelyn rather a dear?"
"quite a dear," peter answered her, his face bent over the round cropped head. "altogether charming and delightful. do you know, though, i'm not really fond of bridge. jig-saw is my game—and we didn't have it. that's why i'm tired i expect. and because there was a mr. cheriton, who stared, and seemed somehow to have taken against us—didn't he, hilary? or perhaps it was only his queer manners, dear jim. anyhow, he made me feel shy. it takes it out of one, not being liked. nervous prostration, like poor mr. vyvian. so let's go to bed, hilary, and leave these two to watch together."
"give me the froglet." she took it from his arms, gently, and kissed first one then the other.
"good night, little peter. you are a darling entirely, and i love you. and don't worry, not over not being liked or anything else, because it surely isn't worth it."
she was always affectionate and maternal to peter; but to-night she was more so than usual. looking at her as she stood in her loose, slatternly negligé, beneath the extravagantly blazing chandelier, the red bundle cuddling a round black head into her neck, her grey eyes smiling at him, lit with love and laughter and a pity that lay deeper than both, peter was caught into her atmosphere of debonair and tranquil restfulness, that said always, "take life easy; nothing's worth worrying over, not problems or poverty or even one's sins." how entirely true. nothing was worth worrying over; certainly other people's strange points of view weren't. it was a gospel of ease and laissez-faire well suited to peter's temperament. he smiled at peggy and hilary and their son, and went up the marble stairs to bed. he was haunted till he slept by the memory of hilary's nervous, tired face as he had seen it in the moonlight in the gondola, and again in the hall as he said good night. hilary wasn't coming to bed yet. he stayed to talk to peggy. if anything could be good for hilary's moods of depression, thought peter, peggy would. how jolly for hilary to be married to her! she was such a refreshment always. she was so understanding; and was there a lapse somewhere in that very understandingness of her that made it the more restful—that made her a relaxation to strained minds? to those who were breaking their moral sense over some problem, she would return simply, "there isn't any problem. take things as they come and make the best of them, and don't, don't worry!" "i'm struggling with a temptation to steal a purse," peter imagined himself saying to her, "what can i do about it?" and her swift answer came, with her indulgent, humorous smile, "dear little boy, if it makes you any happier—do it!" and then she would so well understand the ensuing remorse; she would be so sympathetic, so wholly dear and comforting. she would say anything in the world to help, except "put it back." even that she would say if one's own inclinations were tending in that direction. but never if they weren't. she would never be so hard, so unkind. that sort of uncongenial admonition might be left to one's confessor; wasn't that what confessors were there for?
but why think of stealing purses so late at night? no doubt merely because it was late at night. peter curled himself up and drew the sheet over his ears and sighed sleepily. he seemed to hear the rich, pleasant echoes of peggy's best nursery voice far off, and hilary's high, plaintive tones rising above it.
but above both, dominant and insistent, murmured the lapping voice of the wonderful city at night. a faint rhythm of snoring beyond a thin wall somehow suggested mrs. johnson, and peter laughed into his pillow.
