Part 5 (1/2)
Urquhart, looking at her said, ”Do you want to go?” and she nodded, with her mouth tight shut as if to keep back floods of eloquence on that subject. ”So do I,” said Urquhart, and added, in his casual way, ”Will you and your father come with me?”
”You paying?” said Lucy, in her frank, unabashed way like a child's; and he smiled down at her.
”Yes. Me paying.”
”'Twould be nice,” she breathed, her grey eyes wide with wistful pleasure. ”I would love it. But--but father wouldn't, you know. He wouldn't want to go, and if he did he'd want to pay for it himself, and do it his own way, and travel third-cla.s.s and be dreadfully uncomfortable. Wouldn't he, Peter?”
Peter feared that he would.
”Thank you tremendously, all the same,” said Lucy, prettily polite.
”I shall have to go by myself, then,” said Urquhart. ”What a bore. I really am going, you know, sometime this spring, to stay with my uncle in Venice. I expect I shall come across you, Margery, with any luck. I shan't start yet, though; I shall wait for better motoring weather. No, I can't stop for tea, thanks; I'm going off for the week-end. Good-bye.
Good-bye, Margery. See you next in Venice, probably.”
He was gone. Lucy sat still in her characteristic att.i.tude, hands clasped on her knees, solemn grey eyes on the fire.
”He's going away for the week-end,” she said, realising it for herself and Peter. ”But it's more amusing when he's here. When he's in town, I mean, and comes in. That's nice and funny, isn't it.”
”Yes,” said Peter.
”But one can go out into the streets and see the people go by--and that's nice and funny too. And there are the Chinese paintings in the British Museum ... and concerts ... and the Zoo ... and I'm going to a theatre to-night. It's _all_ nice and funny, isn't it.”
”Yes,” said Peter again. He thought so too.
”Even when you and he are both gone to Italy,” said Lucy, rea.s.suring herself, faintly interrogative. ”Even then ... it can't be dull. It can't be dull ever.”
”It hasn't been yet,” Peter agreed. ”But I wish you were coming too to Italy. You must before long. As soon as ...” He left that unfinished, because it was all so vague at present, and he and Lucy always lived in the moment.
”Well,” said Lucy, ”let's have tea.” They had it, out of little Wedgwood cups, and Lucy's mood of faint wistfulness pa.s.sed over and left them chuckling.
Lucy was a little sad about Felicity, who was now engaged to the young professor who was conspiring in Poland.
”I knew she would, of course. I told you so long ago. He's quite sure to get arrested before long, so that settled it. And they're going to be married directly and go straight out there and plot. He excites the students, you know; as if students needed exciting by their professors.... I shall miss Felicity horribly. _'Tis_ too bad.”
Peter, to cheer her up, told her what he and Leslie were going to do in Italy.
”I'll write, of course. Picture post cards, you know. And if ever I've twopence halfpenny to spare I'll write a real letter; there'll be a lot to tell you.” Peter expected Leslie to be rather funny in Italy, picking things up.
”A great country, I believe, for picking things up,” he had said.
”Particularly for the garden.” He had been referring to his country seat.
”I see,” said Peter. ”You want to Italianise the garden. I'm not quite sure.... Oh, you might, of course. Iron-work gates, then; and carved Renaissance oil-tanks, and Venetian well-heads, and such-like. All right; we'll see what we can steal. But it's rather easy to let an Italianised garden become florid; you have to be extremely careful with it.”
”That's up to you,” said Mr. Leslie tranquilly.
So they went to Italy, and Peter picked things up with judgment, and Leslie paid for them with phlegm. They picked up not only carved olive-oil tanks and well-heads and fifteenth-century iron-work gates from ancient and impoverished gardens, but a contemporarily copied Della Robbia fireplace, and designs for Renaissance ceilings, and a rococo carved and painted altar-piece from a mountain church whose _parroco_ was hard-up, and a piece of 1480 tapestry that Peter loved very much, whereon St. Anne and other saints played among roses and raspberries, beautiful to behold. These things made both the picker-up and the payer exceedingly contented. Meanwhile Peter with difficulty restrained Leslie from ”picking up” stray pieces of mosaic from tessellated pavements, and other curios. Oddly together with Leslie's feeling for the costly went the insane and indiscriminate avidity of the collecting tourist.
”You can't do it,” Peter would shrilly and emphatically explain. ”It's like a German tripper collecting souvenirs. Things aren't interesting merely because you happen to have been to the places they belong to. What do you want with that bit of gla.s.s? It isn't beautiful; when it's taken out of the rest of its pattern like that it's merely ridiculous. I thought you wanted _beautiful_ things.”
Leslie would meekly give in. His leaning on Peter in this matter of what he wanted was touching. In the matter of what he admired, where no questions of acquisition came in, he and his shopping-man agreed less.