Part 30 (1/2)

”Peter never comes here, Lucy, does he. If he wanted to see me, I suppose he would.”

Lucy was looking strangely at the beautiful face with the faint flush rising in it. She apparently thought no reply necessary to his words, but said again, ”_Can't_ you, Denis? Or is it too hard, too much bother, too much stepping out of the way?”

”Oh, it's not the bother, of course. But ... but I really don't see anything to be gained by it, that's the fact.... Our meetings, on the last few occasions when we have met, haven't been particularly comfortable. I don't think Peter likes them any better than I do.... One can't force intercourse, Lucy; if it doesn't run easily and smoothly, it had better be left alone. There have been things between us, between Peter's family and my family, that can't be forgotten or put aside by either of us, I suppose; and I don't think Peter wants to be reminded of them by seeing me any more than I do by seeing him. It's--it's so beastly uncomfortable, you know,” he added boyishly, ruffling up his hair with his hand; and concluded didactically, ”People _must_ drift apart if their ways lie in quite different spheres; it's inevitable.”

Denis, who had a boyish reticence, had expanded and explained himself more than usual.

Lucy's hand dropped from his knee on to her own.

”I suppose it _is_ inevitable,” she said, beneath her breath. ”I suppose the distance is too great. 'Tis such a long, long way from here to there ... such a long, long way.... Good-night, Denis; I'm going to bed.”

She got up slowly, cramped and tired and pale. It was not till she was on her feet that she saw Lord Evelyn sitting in the background, and remembered his presence. She had forgotten him; she had been thinking only of Denis and Peter and herself. She didn't know if he had been listening much; he sat quietly, nursing his knee, saying nothing.

But when Lucy had gone he said to Denis, ”You're right, Denis; you're utterly right, not to have anything to do with those swindlers,” and, as if in a sudden fresh anger against them, he began again his quick, uneven pacing down the room.

”False through and through,” he muttered. ”False through and through.”

Lucy's face, as she had risen to her feet and said ”Good night, Uncle Evelyn,” had been so like Peter's as he had last seen it, when Peter had pa.s.sed him in the doorway at Astleys, that it had taken his breath away.

CHAPTER XVII

QUARRELS IN THE RAIN

In Brook Street the rain fell. It fell straight and disconsolate, unutterably wet, splas.h.i.+ng drearily on the paved street between the rows of wet houses. It fell all day, from the dim dawn, through the murky noon, to the dark evening, desolately weeping over a tired city.

Inside number fifty-one, Peggy mended clothes and sang a little song, with Thomas in her lap, and Peter, sitting in the window-seat, knitted Thomas a sweater of Cambridge blue. Peter was getting rather good at knitting. Hilary was there too, but not mending, or knitting, or singing; he was coughing, and complaining of the climate.

”I fancy it is going to be influenza,” he observed at intervals, s.h.i.+vering. ”I feel extraordinarily weak, and ache all up my back. I fancy I have a high temperature, only Peter has broken the thermometer. You were a hundred and four, I think, Peter, the day you went to bed. I rather expect I am a hundred and five. But I suppose I shall never know, as it is impossible to afford another thermometer. I feel certain it is influenza; and in that case I must give up all hope of getting that job from Pickering, as I cannot possibly go and see him to-morrow. Not but that it would be a detestable job, anyhow; but anything to keep our heads above water.... My headache is now like a hot metal band all round my head, Peggy.”

”Poor old boy,” said Peggy. ”Take some more phenacetine. And do go to bed, Hilary. If you _have_ got flu, you'll only make yourself as bad as Peter did by staying up too long. You've neither of you any more sense than Tommy here, nor so much, by a long way, have they, little man? No, Kitty, let him be; you'd only drop him on the floor if I let you, and then he'd break, you know.”

Silvio was kneeling up on the window-seat by Peter's side, taking an interest in the doings of the street.

Peggy said, ”Well, Larry, what's the news of the great world?”

”It's raining,” said Silvio, who had something of the mournful timbre of Hilary's voice in his.

Peggy said, ”Oh, darling, be more interesting! I'm horribly afraid you're going to grow up obvious, Larry, and that will never do. What else is it doing?”

”There's a cat in the rain,” said Silvio, flattening his nose against the blurred gla.s.s, and manifestly inclined to select the sadder aspects of the world's news for retail. That tendency too, perhaps, he inherited from Hilary.

Presently he added, ”There's a taxi coming up the street,” and Peggy placed Thomas on Peter's knees and came to the window to look. When she had looked she said to Peter, ”It must be nearly six o'clock” (the clock gained seventeen minutes a day, so that the time was always a matter for nicer calculation than Peggy could usually afford to give it); ”and if Hilary's got flu, I should think Tommy'd be best out of the room.... I haven't easily the time to put him to bed this evening, really.”

Peter accepted the suggestion and conveyed his son from the room. As he did so, someone knocked at the front door, and Peggy ran downstairs to open it.

She let in the unhappy noise of the rain and a tall, slim person in a fur coat.

Peggy was surprised, and (most rarely) a little embarra.s.sed. It wasn't the person she had looked for. She even, in her unwonted confusion, let the visitor speak first.