in september peter and rhoda had a son, whom they called thomas, because, peter said, he had a sceptical look about the eyes and nose. peter was pleased with him, and he with peter. rhoda wasn't much interested; she looked at him and said he was rather like peter, and might be taken away now, please.
"like me?" peter wondered dubiously. "well, i know i'm not handsome, but..."
peggy, a born mother, took thomas into her large heart at once, with her out-at-elbows infants, and was angry with rhoda for not showing more interest.
"you'd think, from the way of her, that it was her thirteenth instead of her first," she complained to hilary. "i've no patience with the silly, mooning child. she's nothing like good enough for peter, and that's a fact, and she'd have a right to realise it and try to improve for very shame, instead of moping the way she does. it's my belief, hilary, that her silly little heart's away after the vyvian man, whatever haunt of wickedness he's adorning now. i don't want to believe it of her; but there's no end to the folly of the human heart, is there, now? i wish she was a catholic and had a priest to make her take shame to herself; but there's no hold one has over her as it is, for she won't say a word to me beyond 'yes' and 'no,' and 'take him away, please, he tires me.' i nearly told her she'd a right not to be so easily tired by her own son now she's getting her health. but there, she's a poor frail thing and one can't speak roughly to her for fear she breaks in two."
hilary said, "after all, there's no great cause for rejoicing in a man's being born into the world to trouble; i suppose she feels that. it will make it more difficult than ever for them and for us to make both ends meet."
"oh, meet," groaned peggy, "that's not what there's any thought of their doing in these days, my dear. if one can bring them within a mile of one another, one's thankful for small mercies."
hilary rested his head on his hand and sighed.
"have you spoken to peter yet about appealing to the urquharts?" he asked.
"darling, i have not, and i'm not going to. why should i annoy the poor child to no purpose? he'll not appeal to the urquharts, we know that well, and i'm not going to waste my breath. i'd far rather—"
"what?" asked hilary, as she paused.
"oh well, i don't know. don't you worry about ways and means; something will surely turn up before long." peggy was an optimist.
"and anyhow," went on peggy, to change the subject from ways and means, which was a depressing one, "isn't our little peter a darling with his baby? i love to see them together. he washes it himself as often as not, you know; only he can't always catch it again when it slips through his hands, and that worries him. he's dreadfully afraid of its getting drowned or spoilt or lost or something."
"it probably will," said hilary, who was a pessimist. "peter is no hand at keeping things. we are not a fortunate family."
"never mind, darling; we've kept three; and more by token kitty must have a new pair of boots this winter; she's positively indecent the way she goes about now. i can't help it, hilary; you must pawn your ring again or something."
peggy didn't want to say anything else depressing, so she didn't mention that miss matthews had that morning given notice of her departure. but in peggy's own mind there was a growing realisation that something drastic must really be done soon.
october went by. when peter knew that the urquharts had come back to london, he wondered why lucy didn't come to see thomas. so he wrote and asked her to, and on that she came.
she came at tea-time, one day when rhoda happened to have gone out. so peter and lucy had tea alone together, and thomas lay in his crib and looked at them, and algernon snored on lucy's knee, and the november fog shut out the outer world like a blanket, and blurred the gas-light in the dingy room.
peter thought lucy was rather quiet and pale, and her chuckle was a little subdued. her dominant aspect, of clear luminousness, was somehow dimmed and mystified, with all other lights, in this blurred afternoon. her wide clear eyes, strange always with the world's gay wonder and mystery, had become eyes less gay, eyes that did not understand, that even shrank a little from what they could not understand. lucy looked a touch puzzled, not so utterly the glad welcomer of all arriving things that she had always been.
but for thomas, the latest arrived thing, she had a glad welcome. like peter, she loved all little funny weak things; and thomas seemed certainly that, as he lay and blinked at the blurred gas and curled his fingers round one of peter's. a happy, silent person, with doubts, one fancied, as to the object of the universe, but no doubts that there were to be found in it many desirable things.
when lucy came in, peter was reading aloud to him some of traherne's "divine reflections on the native objects of an infant-eye," which he seemed rather to like.
"i that so long [peter told him he was thinking,
was nothing from eternity,
did little think such joys as ear and tongue
to celebrate or see:
such sounds to hear, such hands to feel, such feet,
such eyes and objects on the ground to meet.
"new burnisht joys!
which finest gold and pearl excell!"
"oo," said thomas expectantly.
"a stranger here, [peter told him further,
strange things doth meet, strange glory see;
strange treasures lodg'd in this fair world appear,
strange all and new to me:
but that they mine should be who nothing was,
that strangest is of all; yet brought to pass."
"ow," said thomas, agreeing.
peter turned over the pages. "do you like it? do you think so too? here's another about you."
"but little did the infant dream
that all the treasures of the world were by,
and that himself was so the cream
and crown of all which round about did ly.
yet thus it was!..."
"i don't think you'd understand the rest of that verse, thomas; it's rather more difficult. 'yet thus it was!' we'll end there, and have our tea."
turning his head he saw that lucy had come in and was standing behind him, looking over his shoulder at thomas in his crib.
"oh, lucy," he said, "i'm reading to thomas. thomas is that. do you like him? he is surprised at life, but quite pleased. he that was nothing from eternity did little think such joys to celebrate or see. yet thus it is. he is extraordinarily happy about it all, but he can't do anything yet, you know—not speak or sit up or anything. he can only make noises, and cry, and drink, and slither about in his bath like a piece of wet soap. wasn't there a clergyman once who thought his baby ought to be baptised by immersion unless it was proved not well able to endure it, as it says in the rubric or somewhere, so he put it in a tub to try if it could endure it or not, and he let it loose by accident and couldn't catch it again, it was so slippery, just like a horrid little fish, and its mother only came in and got hold of it just in time to prevent its being drowned? so after that he felt he could honestly certify that the child couldn't well endure immersion. i'm getting better at catching thomas, though. he isn't supposed to slip off my hand at all, but he kicks and slithers so i can't hold him, and swims away and gets lost. after tea will you come and help me wash him? rhoda's out to tea; i'm so sorry. but there's tea, and thomas and algernon and me, and—and rather thick bread and butter only, apparently; but i shall have jam now you've come. first i must adjust thomas's drinking-bottle; he always likes a drink while we have our tea. he's two months old. is he good for that, do you think, or should he be a size larger? but i rather like them small, don't you? they're lighter so, for one thing. is he nice? do you like him?"
lucy, kneeling by the crib, nodded.
"he's very old and wise, peter; very old and gay. look at his eyes. he's much—oh very much—older than you or me. that's as it should be."
"he'll rejuvenate with years, won't he?" said peter. "at present he's too old to laugh when i make jokes; he thinks them silly; but he'll be sillier than anyone himself in about six months, i expect. now we'll have tea."
lucy left thomas and came to the tea-table and poured out tea for both of them.
"i'm trying to learn to do without three lumps," said peter, as lucy put them in. "i expect it's extravagant to have three, really. but then rhoda and thomas don't take any, so it's only the same as if we each had one, isn't it. thomas shan't be allowed more than one in each cup when he grows young enough to want any; rhoda and i mean him to be a refined person."
"i don't think he will be," said lucy, looking thoughtfully into the future. "i expect he'll be as vulgar as you and me. he's awfully like you to look at, peter."
"so i am informed. well, i'm not vain, and i don't claim to be an adonis, like denis. is denis flourishing? the birds were splendid; they came so thick and fast that i gathered it was being a remarkable season. but as you only answered my numerous letters by one, and that àpropos merely of thomas's arrival, i could only surmise and speculate on your doings. i suppose you thought the grouse were instead of letters."
"they were denis's letters. i didn't shoot the grouse, dear darlings, nor send them."
"what were your letters, then?"
"well, i sent rowan berries, didn't i? weren't they red?"
"yes. even thomas read them. we're being rather funny, aren't we? is denis going on with parliament again this autumn, or has he begun to get tired of it?"
"not a bit tired of it. he doesn't bother about it particularly, you know; not enough to tire himself; he sort of takes it for granted, like going up to scotland in august."
peter nodded. "i know. he would take it just like that if he was prime minister, or archbishop of canterbury. i daresay he will be one day; isn't it nice the way things drop into his hands without his bothering to get them."
he didn't see the queer, silent look lucy turned on him as he spread his thick bread and butter with blackberry jam.
"thomas," she said after a moment, "has dropped into your hands, peter." it was as if she was protesting against something, beating herself against some invisible, eternal barrier that divided the world into two unequal parts.
peter said, "rather, he has. i do hope he'll never drop out. i'm getting very handy about holding him, though. oh, let's take him upstairs and tub him now; do you mind?"
so they took him upstairs and tubbed him, and lucy managed to hold him so firmly that he didn't once swim away and get lost.
as they were drying him (lucy dried him with a firmer and more effective hand than peter, who always wiped him very gingerly lest he should squash) rhoda came in. she was strange-eyed and pale in the blurred light, and greeted lucy in a dreamy, absent way.
"i've had tea out.... oh, have you bathed baby? how good of you. i meant to be in earlier, but i was late.... the fog's awful; it's getting thicker and thicker."
she sat down by the fire and loosened her coat, and took off her hat and rubbed the fog from her wet hair, and coughed. rhoda had grown prettier lately; she looked less tired and listless, and her eyes were brighter, and the fire flushed her thin cheek to rose-colour as she bent over it.
peter took her wet things from her and took off her shoes and put slippers on her feet, and she gave him an absent smile. rhoda had had a dreamy way with her since thomas's birth; moony, as peggy, who didn't approve, called it.
a little later, when thomas was clean and warm and asleep in his bed, they were told that mrs. urquhart's carriage had come.
lucy bent over thomas and kissed him, then over rhoda. rhoda whispered in her ear, without emotion, "baby ought to have been yours, not mine," and lucy whispered back:
"oh hush, hush!"
rhoda still held her, still whispered, "will you love him? will you be good to him, always?"
and lucy answered, opening wide eyes, "why, of course. no one could help it, could they?" and on that rhoda let her go.
peter thought that lucy must have infected rhoda with some of her own appreciation of thomas, opened her eyes to his true worth; for during the next week she was newly tender to him. she bathed him every evening herself, only letting peter help a little; she held him in her arms without wearying of his weight, and wasn't really annoyed even when he was sick upon her shoulder, an unfortunate habit of thomas's.
but a habit, peter thought, that thomas employed with some discrimination; for the one and only one time that guy vyvian took him in his arms—or rather submitted to his being put there by rhoda—thomas was sicker than he had ever been before, with an immense completeness.
"just what i always feel myself," commented peter in his own mind, as thomas was hastily removed. "i'm glad someone has shown him at last what the best people feel about him."
vyvian had come to call. it was the first time peter had met him since his marriage; he hoped it would be the last. the object of the call was to inspect thomas, rhoda said. thomas was inspected, produced the impression indicated above, and was relegated to the region of things for which vyvian had no use. he detested infants; children of any sort, in fact; and particularly thomas, who had peter's physiognomy and expressed peter's sentiments in a violently ill-bred way.
peter, a little later, was very glad that thomas had revealed himself thus openly on this occasion. for it quite sealed thomas's fate, if anything more was needed to seal it than the fact that thomas would be an impossible burden, and also belonged by right to peter. anyhow, they left thomas behind them when they went.
rhoda wrote a scrawled note for peter one foggy monday morning, and hugged thomas close and cried a little, and slipped out into the misty city with a handbag. peter, coming in at tea-time, found the note on the sitting-room chimney-piece. it said:—
don't try to follow me, peter, for i can't come back. i have tried to care for you more than him and be a good wife, but i can't. you know i told you when we got engaged that i cared for him, and i tried so hard to stop, and i thought i would be able, with you to help me, but i couldn't do it. for the first few months i thought i could, but all the time it was there, like a fire in me, eating me up; and later on he began writing to me, but for a long time i wouldn't answer, and then he came to see me, and i said he mustn't, but he's been meeting me out and i couldn't stop him, and at last it grew that i knew i loved him so that it was no use pretending any more. i'd better go, peter, for what's the use of trying to be a good wife to you when all i care for is him. i know he's not good, and you are, but i love him, and i must go when he wants me. it was all a mistake; you and i ought never to have married. you meant it kindly, i know; you meant to help me and make me happy, but it was no use. you and i never properly belonged. when i saw you and lucy together, i knew we didn't belong, not like that; we didn't properly understand each other's ways and thoughts, like you two did. i love lucy, too. you and she are so like. and she'll be good to baby; she said she would. i hate to leave baby, but guy won't let me bring him, and anyhow i suppose i couldn't, because he's yours. i've written a list of his feeds, and it's on the chimney-piece behind the clock; please make whoever sees to him go by it or he gets a pain. please be careful when you bath him; i think mrs. adams had better do it usually. she'll take care of him for you, or peggy will, perhaps. you'll think i never cared for him, but i do, i love him, only i must love guy most of all. i don't know if i shall be happy or miserable, but i expect miserable, only i must go with guy. please, dear peter, try and understand this, and forgive me. i think you will, because you always do understand things, and forgive them too; i think you are the kindest person i ever knew. if i thought you loved me really, i don't think i'd go, even for guy; but i know you've only felt kindly to me all along, so i think it is best for you too that i should go, and you will be thankful in the end. good-bye. you promised mother to see after me, i know, for she told me before she died; well, you've done your best, and mother'd be grateful to you if she could know. i suppose some would say she does know, perhaps; but i don't believe those stories; i believe it's all darkness beyond, and silence. and if it is, we must try and get all the light and warmth here that we can. so i'm going.
good-bye, peter.
rhoda.
peter read it through, sitting on the rug by the fire. when he had finished it, he put it into the fire and watched it burn. then he sighed, and sat very still for a while, his hands clasped round one knee.
presently he got up and looked behind the clock, and saw that the next feeding-time was due now. so he rang for mrs. adams, the landlady, and asked her if she would mind bringing thomas's bottle.
when thomas had it, peter stood and looked down upon him as he drank with ill-bred noises.
"gently, thomas: you'll choke. you'll choke and die, i know you will. then you'll be gone too. everything goes, thomas. everything i touch breaks; everything i try to do fails. that's because i'm such an ass, i suppose. i did think i could perhaps make one little unlucky girl decently happy; but i couldn't, you see. so she's gone after light and warmth, and she'll—she'll break her heart in a year, and it'll be my fault. follow her? no, i shan't do that. i shouldn't find her, and if i did what would be the use? if she must go, she must; she was only eating her heart out here; and perhaps it's better to break one's heart on something than eat it out in emptiness. no, it isn't better in this case. anything in the world would have been better than this; that she should have gone with that—that person. yet thus it is. and they'll all set on her and speak against her, and i shall have to bear it. you and i will have to bear it together, thomas.... i suppose i ought to be angry. i ought to want to go after them, to the end of the world or wherever they've gone and kill him and bring her back. but i can't. i should fail in that too. i'm tired of trying to do things; simply horribly tired of it, thomas." he sat down on the rug with thomas in his arms; and there, an hour later, peggy found them. she swung in breezily, crying, "oh, peter, all alone in the dark? where's rhoda? why, the silly children haven't had their tea!" she added, looking at the unused cups on the tea-table.
peter looked up vaguely. "oh, tea. i forgot. i don't think i want any tea to-day. and thomas has had his. and rhoda's gone. it's no good not telling you—is it?—because you'll find out. she's gone away. it's been my fault entirely; i didn't make her happy, you see. and she's written out a list of the times thomas has to feed at. i suppose mrs. adams will do that if i ask her, and generally look after him when i'm out."
peggy stood aghast before him for a moment, staring, then collapsed, breathless, on the sofa, crying, with even more r's than usual.
"peter!... why, she's gone and rrun off with that toad, that rreptile man! oh, i know it, so it's not a bit of use your trying to keep it from me."
"very well," said peter; "i suppose it's not."
"oh, the little fool, the little, silly, wicked fool! but if ever a little fool got her rich deserts without needing to wait for purgatory, that one'll be rhoda.... oh, peter, be more excited and angry! why aren't you stamping up and down and vowing vengeance, instead of sitting on the hearth saying, 'rhoda's gone,' as if it was the kitten?"
"i'm sorry, peggy." peter sighed a little. "i'm nursing thomas, you see."
peggy at that was on her knees on the floor, taking both of them into her large embrace.
"oh, you two poor little darling boys, what's to become of you both? that child has a heart of stone, to leave you to yourselves the way she's done. don't defend her, peter; i won't hear a word said for her again as long as i live; she deserves guy vyvian, and i couldn't say a worse word for her than that. you poor little tommy; come to me then, babykins. you must come back to us now, peter, and i'll look after you both."
she cuddled thomas to her breast with one arm, and put the other round peter's shoulders as he sat huddled up, his chin resting on his knees. at the moment it was difficult to say which of the two looked the most forsaken, the most left to himself. only thomas hadn't yet learnt to laugh, and peter had. he laughed now, softly and not happily.
"it has been rather a ghastly fiasco, hasn't it," he said. "absurd, you know, too, in a way. i thought it was all working out so nicely, thomas coming and everything. but no. it wasn't working out nicely at all. things don't as a rule, do they?"
there was a new note of dreariness in his voice; a note that had perhaps been kept out of it of set purpose for a long time. now there seemed at the moment no particular reason to keep it out any more, though fresh reasons would arrive, no doubt, very soon; and thomas when waking was a reason in himself. but in this dim hour between two roads, this hour of relaxation of tension in the shadowy firelight, when thomas slept and only peggy listened, peter, having fallen crashing through floor after floor of his pleasant house of life, till he was nearly at the bottom, looked up at all the broken floors and sighed.
peggy's arm was comfortingly about him. to her he was always a little, brittle, unlucky boy, as she had first seen him long ago.
"never you mind, peterkin. there's a good time coming, i do believe. she'll come back, perhaps; who knows? vyvian wouldn't do for long, not even for rhoda. besides, you may be sure he'll throw her off soon, and then she'll want to come back to you and tommy. i wouldn't say that to any other man, because, of course, no other man would have her back; but i do believe, peterkin, that you would, wouldn't you now? i expect you'd smile and say, 'oh, come in, you're just in time for tea and to see me bath thomas,' and not another word about it."
"probably," said peter. "there wouldn't be much to say, would there? but she won't come back; i know that. even if she leaves him she won't. rhoda's horribly proud really, you know. she'd sooner sweep a crossing, or trim hats or something, than come near us again. i don't know what to hope about it. i suppose one must hope they'll go on together, as rhoda seems to like him as he is; but it's an awful thought.... she's right that we never understood each other. i couldn't, you know, bear to think of spending even one day alone with vyvian. i should be sick, like thomas. the mere sight of his hair is enough, and his hand with that awful ring on it. i—i simply draw the line at him. why does rhoda care for him? how can she?" peter frowned over it in bewilderment.
peggy said, "girls are silly things. and i suppose the way one's been brought up counts, and what one's inherited, and all that."
"well, if rhoda'd taken after mrs. johnson she wouldn't have liked vyvian. he used to give her the creeps, like a toad. she told me so. she disliked him more than i did.... well, i shall never understand. i suppose if i could rhoda would have found me more sympathetic, and might have stayed."
"now, darling, you're not to sit up and brood any more; that won't help. you're coming straight back with me to dinner, and tommy's coming too, to sleep. i shall ask mrs. adams to help me get his things together."
"he hasn't many things," said peter, looking vaguely round for them. "i got him a rattle and a ball, but he doesn't seem to care about them much; lucy says he's not young enough yet. here's his bottle. and his night clothes are upstairs, and his other day clothes, and his bath. thomas leads the simple life, though; he really possesses very little; i think he's probably going to be a franciscan later on. but he can sleep with me here all right; i should like to have him; only it would be awfully good of you if you'd have him to-morrow, while i'm out at work. but in the night he and i rather like each other's company."
"rubbish," said peggy. "you're both coming along to fifty-one this minute. you don't suppose i'm going to leave you two infants alone together like that. we've heaps of room at fifty-one"—she sighed a little—"people have been fading away like the flowers of the forest, and we should be thankful to have you back."
"oh, we'll come then; thanks very much, peggy." peter's ready sympathy was turned on again, having temporarily been available only for himself and rhoda and thomas. he remembered now that peggy and hilary needed it too. he and thomas would go and be boarders in the emptying boarding-house; it might amuse thomas, perhaps, to see the other boarders.
"and we'll have him baptized," went on peggy, thinking of further diversions for thomas and peter. "you'll let him be a catholic, peter, won't you?"
"thomas," said peter, "can be anything he likes that's nice. as long as he's not a bigot. i won't have him refusing to go into one sort of church because he prefers another; he mustn't ever acquire the rejecting habit. short of that, he may enter any denomination or denominations he prefers."
they were collecting thomas's belongings as they talked. thomas lay and looked at them with the very blue slits that were like his father's eyes grown old. and suddenly peggy, looking from son to father, saw that peter's eyes had grown as old as thomas's, looking wearily out of a pale, pinched face.
peggy's own eyes brimmed over as she bent over thomas's night-shirt.
