when mr. vyvian called at 51 brook street one evening and was informed by the assembled company that miss johnson had got engaged to mr. peter margerison, he sneered a little and wished them both joy, and said good-night rather markedly early.
"he won't come back," said rhoda in peter's ear when he had gone. "he's gone for good." she sat very still, realising it, and shivered a little. then, casting off that old chain of the past, she turned on peter eyes full of tears and affection.
"now i'm going to forget all about him and be happy," she whispered. "he's not going to be part of my life any more at all. how queer that seems!"
if in her heart she wished a little that peter had had guy vyvian's handsome face and person (peter had no presence: one might overlook him; the only vivid note about him, except when he smiled, was the blue of his eyes), she stifled the wish with firm pressure. what were looks, after all? and that bold, handsome stare of guy's had burnt and hurt; in the blue of peter's she found healing and coolness, as one finds it in a summer sea.
so, after the third time of asking, they were married, in st. austin's church, and rhoda, coming out of it, whispered to peter, "some of the beautiful things are true after all, i do believe;" and he smiled at her and said, "of course they are."
they left the boarding-house, because rhoda was tired of the boarders and wanted a little place to themselves. peter, who didn't really care, but who would have rather liked to stay and be with peggy and hilary, pretended that he too wanted a little place to themselves. so they took lodgings in greville street, which runs out of brook street. rhoda gave up her work and settled down to keep house and do needlework. they kept a canary in the sitting-room, and a kitten with a blue bow, and rhoda took to wearing blue bows in her own hair, and sewed all the buttons on her frocks and darned her gloves and stockings and peter's socks, and devoted herself to household economy, a subject in which her mother had always tried to interest her without success. rhoda thought it a great relief to have escaped from the tiresome boarders who chattered so about things they knew nothing about, and from her own daily drudgery, that had tired her back. (she had been a typist.) it was nice to be able to sit at peace with one's needlework and one's own reflections, and have peter, who was always kind and friendly and cheerful, to brighten breakfast and leave her in peace during the day and come in again to brighten the evening. peter's chatter didn't worry her, though she often thought it childish and singularly inconsequent; peter, of course, was only a boy, though such a dear, kind, affectionate boy. he would spend his evenings teasing the kitten and retying the blue bow, or lying on the rug before the fire, talking nonsense which made rhoda laugh even when she was feeling low. sometimes they would go to brook street and spend the evening there; and often hilary would drop in and smoke with peter; only rhoda didn't much care for these evenings, for she never felt at ease with hilary, who wasn't at ease with her either. the uncultured young creatures of either sex never quite knew where they were with the æsthetic hilary; at any moment they might tread heavily on his sensitive susceptibilities and make him wince visibly, and no one likes being winced at. rhoda in particular was very sensitive; she thought hilary ill-mannered and conceited, and vaguely resented his attitude towards her without understanding it, for (now that she was removed from the crushing influence of a person who had always ruthlessly shown her her limitations and follies) she didn't think of herself as uncultured, she with her poetical and artistic tastes, sharpened and refined by contact with the culture of guy vyvian and broadened by acquaintance with the art of foreign cities. on the contrary, she felt in herself yearnings for a fuller and freer life of beauty and grace. she wasn't sure that peter ever felt such yearnings; he seemed quite contented with the ugly rooms in the ugly street, and the dingy lace curtains and impossible pictures; he could make a joke of it all; and things one could make a joke of couldn't really hurt, thought rhoda.
but anyhow, cramped and squalid and dingy though 9 greville street might be, it held security and peace.
"the snuggery, that's what we call it at fifty-one," said miss clegson, who sometimes looked in to rally them.
fifty-one was getting less of a snuggery than ever. fifty-one, peter feared, was going down the hill. the berovieri goblet had made a little piece of level road for it, but that was soon over, and the descent began again. peggy, try as she would, could not make both ends meet. hilary, despise his job as he might, found it slipping from him more and more. week by week he seemed to earn a little less; week by week they seemed to spend a little more. peggy, as hilary had frequently remarked, was not a good manager. one or two of the boarders left, to seek more commodious quarters elsewhere. more frequently, as the winter advanced, peggy wailed, "whatever is to become of us, dear only knows! what with larry drinking pints of cough-syrup, and micky rolling in the gutter in his best suit, and norah, the creature, letting the crockery fly about as if it was alive, and hilary insisting on the table cloth being cleaner than it ever is, and the boarders having to have food they can eat, and now lent's coming on and half of them don't take any notice of it but eat their joints just the same, bad manners to them for heretics. oh, dear, oh dear, oh dear!"
whenever peter could spare any money he gave it to peggy. but his own fortunes were not exactly on the make. he was not proving good at his job. recommended to his employers by leslie, he had begun, of course, on a very small salary, to learn his trade; he hadn't so far learnt enough of it to justify his promotion. every day he went through the same drudgery, with the same lack of intelligence,—(it is odd how discernment and talent in one trade serve so little for another)—and every week came home with the same meagre sum.
as far as he hated anything, he hated this work of his; long ago, had he been alone concerned, he would have dropped it, and taken to tramping the roads with boot-laces to sell, or some other equally unstrenuous and unlucrative avocation. but he had not, from the first, been alone concerned; first he had had to help hilary and peggy, and now he had to keep a wife too. eventually there would probably be also children to keep; peter didn't know how much these cost, but vaguely believed them to be expensive luxuries. so there seemed no prospect of his being able to renounce his trade, though there was a considerable prospect of its renouncing him, as he was from time to time informed.
the winter dragged quietly through, and the spring came; the queer london ghost of spring, with its bitter winds and black buds and evasive hints of what is going on in the real world, where things change. peter dreamt of green things coming up and hawthorn hedges growing edible. rhoda's cough grew softer and her eyes more restless, as if she too had her dreams. she developed a new petulance with peter and with the maid-of-all-work, and left off tying the kitten's neck-ribbon. it was really a cat now, and cats are tiresome. she said she was dull all day with so little to do. peter, full of compunction, suggested asking people to the house more, and she assented, rather listlessly. so peter hinted to peggy, who had a cheering presence, that rhoda would be glad to see her more often, and peggy made what time she could to come round. their circle of friends was limited; they chiefly consisted of the inhabitants of fifty-one, and a few relatives of rhoda's, who amused and pleased peter but vexed rhoda by being common.
"but i like them," said peter.
"you like to see me put to shame, i suppose," said rhoda, with tears in her eyes. "as if it was my fault that my parents came of common people. i've cried myself sick over it sometimes, when i was younger, and now i just want to forget it."
peter said no more. it was one of the sides of rhoda with which he felt he had no connexion; it was best let alone, as peter always let alone the things he could not like. but he was sorry she felt like that, for her nice, common, friendly relations might have been company for her.
peter sometimes brought friends home from his office; peter could not have been in an office without collecting friends, having the social instinct strongly developed. but rhoda didn't much care about seeing his fellow-clerks; they hadn't, she was sure, great minds, and they made silly jokes.
another person who came to see peter sometimes was rodney. ever since the margerisons' abrupt fall into ignominy, rodney had cultivated peter's acquaintance. peter perceived that he had at last slipped into the ranks of those unfortunates who were qualified for rodney's regard; it was enough for that, urquhart had long since told him, to be cut by society or to produce a yesterday's handkerchief. peter, driven from the faces of the rich, found rodney waiting to receive him cheerfully among the ranks of the poor. rodney was a much occupied person; but when he found time from his other pursuits he walked up from his westminster slum to holborn and visited 9 greville street. he hadn't known quite what to make of peter's marriage; though when he got to know rhoda a little he began to understand rather more. she, being very manifestly among the have-nots, and a small, weak, and pitiable thing, also entered in a manner into the circle of his tolerance. he was gentle with her always, though not expansive. she was a little in awe of the gaunt young man, with his strange eyes that seemed to see so much further than anyone else's. she pronounced him "queer."
"i suppose he's very clever," she said to peter.
"yes," peter agreed.
but even that didn't further him in rhoda's regard. she thought him rude, as indeed he was, though he tried to conceal it. he seldom spoke to her, and when he did it was with an unadorned brevity that offended her. mostly he let her alone, and saw peter when he could outside his home. rodney, himself a celibate, thought matrimony a mistake, though certainly a necessary mistake if the human race was to continue to adorn the earth—a doubtful ornament to it, in rodney's opinion.
rhoda said one evening to peter, "you don't see anything of your friends the urquharts now, do you?"
"no," said peter, who was stroking the kitten's fur the wrong way, to bring sparks out of it before the gas was lit. "they've been in the country all the winter."
"mr. urquhart got elected a member, didn't he?" said rhoda, without much interest.
"yes," said peter.
"i suppose they'll be coming up to town soon, then, for him to attend parliament."
peter supposed they would.
"when last lucy wrote, she said they were coming up this month."
"have you heard from her again, since monday week?" enquired rhoda.
"no. we write alternate sundays, you know. we always have. last sunday it was my turn."
"fancy going on all these years so regular," said rhoda. "i couldn't, not to any of my cousins. i should use up all there was to say."
"oh, but there are quite new things every fortnight," peter explained.
certainly it wasn't easy to picture rhoda corresponding with any of the johnson relatives once a fortnight.
"i expect you and she have heaps to tell each other always when you meet," said rhoda, a little plaintive note in her weak voice.
peter considered.
"not so much to tell exactly as to talk about. yes, there's lots to say.... she's coming to see you, rhoda, directly they come up to town. it's so funny to think you and she have never met."
"is it? well, i don't know. i've not met any of your cousins really, have i?"
rhoda was in one of her slightly pettish moods this evening. peter didn't better matters by saying, "oh, well, none of the others count. lucy and i have always been different from most cousins, i suppose; more like brother and sister, i daresay."
rhoda looked at him sharply. she was in a fault-finding mood.
"you think more of her than you do of anyone else. of course, i know that."
peter was startled. he stopped stroking the kitten and looked at her through the dim firelight. the suspicion of a vulgar scene was in the air, and frightened him. then he remembered that rhoda was in frail health, and said very gently, "oh, rhoda darling, don't say silly things, like a young gurl in a novelette," and slithered along the floor and laid his arm across her lap and laughed up into her face.
she sniffed a little, and dabbed her handkerchief at her eyes.
"it's all very well, peter, but you do care for her a lot, you know you do."
"but of course i do," said peter, laying his cheek against her knee. "you don't mind, rhoda, do you?"
"you care for her," said rhoda, but softening under his caresses, "and you care for her husband. you care for him awfully, peter; more than for her really, i believe; more than for anyone in the world, don't you?"
"don't," said peter, his voice muffled against her dress. "i can't compare one thing with another like that, and i don't want to. isn't one's caring for each of the people one knows quite different from every other? isn't yours? can you say which you love best, the sun rising over the river, or st. mark's, or a bellini madonna? of course you can't, and it's immoral to try. so i'm not going to place lucy and denis and you and rodney and peggy and the kitten in a horrid class-list. i won't. do you hear?"
he drew one of her small thin hands down to his lips, then moved it up and placed it on his head, and drew it gently to and fro, ruffling his hair.
"you're a silly, peter," said rhoda, and there was peace.
very soon after that lucy came. she came in the afternoon before peter got home, and rhoda looked with listless interest at the small, wide-eyed person in a grey frock and big grey hat that made her small, pale face look like a white flower. pretty? rhoda wasn't sure. very like peter; so perhaps not pretty; only one liked to look at her. clever? it didn't transpire that she was. witty? well, much more amused than amusing; and when she was amused she came out with peter's laugh, which rhoda wasn't sure was in good taste on her part. absurdly like peter she was, to look at and to listen to, and in some inner essence which was beyond definition. the thought flashed through rhoda's mind that it was no wonder these two found things to tell each other every other sunday; they would be interested in all the same things, so it must be easy.
remotely, dully, rhoda thought these things, as things which didn't concern her particularly. less and less each day she had grown to care whether peter found his cousin lucy a kindred spirit or not. she could work herself up into a fit of petulant jealousy about it at times; but it didn't touch her inmost being; it was a very surface grievance.
so she looked at lucy dispassionately, and let herself, without a struggle, be caught and held by that ingenuous charm, a charm as of a small woodland flower set dancing by the winds of spring. she noticed that when the kitten that was now nearly a cat sprang on to lucy's lap, she stroked its fur backwards with her flat hand and spread fingers precisely as peter always did.
then peter came in, and he and lucy laughed the same laugh at one another, and then they had tea. after all, rhoda didn't see now that they were so like. peter talked much more; he said twenty words to lucy's one; lucy wasn't a great talker at all. peter was a chatterbox; there was no denying that. and their features and eyes and all weren't so like, either. but when one had said all this, there was something... something inner, essential, indefinable, of the spirit, that was not of like substance but the same. so it is sometimes with twins. rhoda, her intuitive faculties oddly sharpened, took in this. peter might care most for denis urquhart; he might love rhoda as a wife; but lucy, less consciously loved than either, was intimately one with himself.
peter asked "how is denis?" and lucy answered "very well, of course. and very busy playing at being a real member. isn't it fun? oh, he sent you his love. and you're to come and see us soon."
that last wasn't a message from denis; peter knew that. he knew that there would be no more such messages from denis; the margerisons had gone a little too far in their latest enterprise; they had strained the cord to breaking-point, and it had broken. in future denis might be kind and friendly to peter when they met, but he wouldn't bring about meetings; they would embarrass him. but lucy knew nothing of that. denis hadn't mentioned to her what had happened at astleys last november; he never dwelt on unpleasant subjects or made a talk about them. so lucy said to peter and rhoda, "you must come and see us soon," and peter said, "you're so far away, you know," evading her, and she gave him a sudden wide clear look, taking in all he didn't say, which was the way they had with one another, so that no deceits could ever stand between them.
"don't be silly, peter," she told him; then, "'course you must come"; but he only smiled at her and said, "some day, perhaps."
"honey sandwiches, if you come at tea-time," she reminded him. "d'you like them, rhoda?" she used the name prettily, half shyly, with one of her luminous, friendly looks. "they're peter's favourite food, you know."
but rhoda didn't know; peter had never told her; perhaps because it would be extravagant to have them, perhaps because he never put even foods into class-lists. only lucy knew without being told, probably because it was her favourite food too.
when lucy went, it was as if a ray of early spring sunshine had stolen into the room and gone. a luminous person: that was the thing rhoda felt her to be; a study in clear pale lights; one would not have been surprised if she had crept in on a wind from a strange fairy world with her arms full of cold wet primroses, and danced out, taking with her the souls of those who dwelt within. rhoda wasn't jealous now, if she had ever had a touch of that.
neither peter nor rhoda went to the urquharts' house, which was a long way off. but lucy came again, many times, to greville street, through that spring and summer, stroking the cat's fur backwards, laughing at peter, shyly friendly to rhoda.
and then for a time her laughter was sad and her eyes wistful, because her father died. she said once, "i feel so stranded now, peter; cut off from what was my life; from what really is my life, you know. father and felicity and i were so disreputable always, and as long as i had father i could be disreputable too, whenever i felt i couldn't bear being prosperous. i had only to go inside the house and there i was—you know, peter?—it was all round me, and i was part of it.... now i'm cut off from all that sort of thing. denis and i are so well off, d'you know. everything goes right. denis's friends are all so happy and successful and beautifully dressed. i like them to be, of course; they are joys, like the sun shining; only..."
"the poor are always with you," suggested peter. "you can always come to greville street, if you can't find them nearer at hand. and when you come we'll take algernon's blue neck-ribbon off, that none of us may appear beautifully dressed."
"but i like algernon's blue bow," lucy protested. "i love people to be bright and beautiful.... that's why i like denis so much, you know. only i'm not sure i properly belong, that's all."
obviously the remedy was to come to greville street. lucy came more and more as the months went by.
rhoda said once, "doesn't it bother you to come all this way, into these ugly streets?" and she shook her head.
"oh, i like it. i like these streets better than the ones round us. and i like your house better than ours too; it's smaller."
rhoda could have thought she looked wistful, this fortunate person who was in love with her splendid husband and lived in the dwellings of the prosperous.
"don't you like large houses?" she asked, without much caring; for she was absorbed in her own thoughts in these days.
lucy puckered her wide forehead.
"why, no. no, i don't believe i do," she said, as if she was finding it out with a little surprise.
rhoda saw her one day in july. in a few weeks, she told rhoda (peter was out that afternoon), she and denis were going up to scotland, to stay with people.
"we shall miss you," said rhoda dully.
"and me you," said lucy, with a more acute sense of it.
"peter'll miss you dreadfully," said rhoda. she was lying on the sofa, pale and tired in the heat.
"only," said lucy, "next month you'll both be feeling too interested to miss anyone."
"peter," said rhoda, "cares more about the baby coming than i do."
lucy said, "peter loves little weak funny things like that." she was a little sad that rhoda didn't seem to care more about the baby; babies are such entrancing toys to those who like toys, people like her and peter.
suddenly lucy saw that two large tears were rolling down rhoda's pale cheeks as she lay. lucy knelt by the sofa side and took rhoda's hand in both of hers and laid her cheek upon it.
"please, little rhoda, not to cry. please, little rhoda, tell me."
rhoda, with her other hand, brushed the tears away.
"i'm a silly. i suppose i'm crying because i can't feel to care about anything in the world, and i wish i could. what's the use of a baby if you can't love it? what's the use of a husb—"
lucy's hand was over her lips, and lucy whispered, "oh, hush, little rhoda, hush!"
but rhoda pushed the hand away and cried, "oh, why do we pretend and pretend and pretend? it's guy i care for—guy, guy, guy, who's gone for good and all."
she fell to crying drearily, with lucy's arms about her.
"but you mustn't cry," said lucy, her own eyes brimming over; "you mustn't, you mustn't. and you do care for peter, you know you do, only it's so hot, and you're tired and ill. if that horrible guy was here—oh, i know he's horrible—you'd know you cared for peter most. you mustn't say things, rhoda; it makes them alive." her eyes were wide and frightened as she looked over rhoda's head out of the window.
slowly rhoda quieted down, and lay numb and still.
"you won't tell peter," she said; and lucy said, "oh, rhoda!"
"well, of course i know you wouldn't. only that you and peter tell one another things without saying anything.... peter belongs to you really, you know, not to me at all. all he thinks and says and is—it's all yours. he's never really been near me like that, not from the beginning. i was a silly to let him sacrifice himself for me the way he's done. we don't belong really, peter and i; however friendly we are, we don't belong; we don't understand each other like you two do.... you don't mind my saying that, do you?" for lucy had dropped her hands and fallen away.
"i mind your saying anything," said lucy, "just now. don't say things: it makes them alive. it's hot, and you're tired, and i'm not going to stay any more."
she got up from the floor and stood for a moment looking down at rhoda. rhoda saw her eyes, how they were wet and strange and far-away, and full of what seemed an immense weight of pity; pity for all the sadnesses of mankind.
the next moment lucy's cool finger-tips touched her forehead in a light caress, and lucy was gone.
