Part 10 (1/2)

”Not changed at all, as far as I can see,” he said to Peter, with the same mincing, finicking p.r.o.nunciation 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, st.u.r.dy 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, t.i.ttering 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 rea.s.suringly. ”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 gla.s.s 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 Actaeon 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 Actaeon'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 Actaeon, from the Actaeon 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 role 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-gla.s.s 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 a.s.sent. 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 gla.s.s, 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.