lord evelyn urquhart dined with his nephew on the last evening in february. it was a characteristic urquhart dinner-party; the guests were mostly cheerful, well-bred young people of high spirits and of the worldly station that is not much concerned with any aspect of money but the spending of it. high living, plain thinking, agreeable manners and personal appearance, plenty of humour, enough ability to make a success of the business of living and not enough to agitate the brain, a light tread along a familiar and well-laid road, and a serene blindness to side-tracks and alleys not familiar nor well-laid and to those that walked thereon—these were the characteristics of the pleasant people who frequented denis urquhart's pleasant house in park lane.
lucy was among them, small and pale, and rather silent, and intensely alive. she, of course, was a native not of park lane but of chelsea; and the people who had frequented her home there were of a different sort. they had had, mostly, a different kind of brain, a kind more restless and troublesome and untidy, and a different type of wit, more pungent and ironic, less well-fed and hilarious, and they were less well-dressed and agreeable to look at, and had (perhaps) higher thoughts (though how shall one measure height?) and ate (certainly) plainer food, for lack of richer. these were the people lucy knew. her father himself had been of these. she now found her tent pitched among the prosperous; and the study of them touched her wide gaze with a new, pondering look. denis hadn't any use for cranks. none of his set were socialists, vegetarians, quakers, geniuses, anarchists, drunkards, poets, anti-breakfasters, or anti-hatters; none of them, in fine, the sort of person lucy was used to. they never pawned their watches or walked down bond street in norfolk coats. they had, no doubt, their hobbies; but they were suitable, well-bred hobbies, that did not obtrude vulgarly on other people's notice. peter had once said that if he were a plutocrat he would begin to dream dreams. lucy supposed that the seemingly undreaming people who were denis's friends were not rich enough; they hadn't reached plutocracy, where romance resides, but merely prosperity, which has fewer possibilities. lucy began in these days to ponder on the exceeding evil of socialism, which the devil has put it into certain men's hearts to desire. for, thought lucy, sweep away the romantic rich, sweep away the dreaming destitute, and what have you left? the prosperous; the comfortable; the serenely satisfied; the sanely reasonable. dives, with his purple and fine linen, his sublime outlook over a world he may possess at a touch, goes to his own place; lazarus, with his wallet for crusts and his place among the dogs and his sharp wonder at the world's black heart, is gathered to his fathers: there remain the sanitary dwellings of the comfortable, the monotonous external adequacy that touches no man's inner needs, the lifeless rigour of a superintended well-being. decidedly, thought lucy, siding with the holy roman church, a scheme of the devil's. denis and his friends also thought it was rot. so no doubt it was. denis belonged to the conservative party. lucy thought parties funny things, and laughed. though she had of late taken to wandering far into seas of thought, so that her wide forehead was often puckered as she sat silent, she still laughed at the world. perhaps the more one thinks about it the more one laughs; the height and depth of its humour are certainly unfathomable.
on this last night of february, lord evelyn, when the other guests had gone, put his unsteady white hand under lucy's chin and raised her small pale face and looked at it out of his near-sighted, scrutinising eyes, and said:
"humph. you're thinner."
lucy's eyes laughed up at him.
"am i? i suppose i'm growing old."
"you're worrying. what's it about?" asked lord evelyn.
they were in the library. lord evelyn and denis sat by the fire in leather chairs and smoked, and lucy sat on a hassock between them, her chin in her hands.
she was silent for a moment. then she looked up at denis, who was reading punch, and said, "i've had a letter from peggy margerison this morning."
denis gave a sound between a grunt and a chuckle. the grunt element was presumably for peggy margerison, the chuckle for punch.
lord evelyn, tapping his eye-glass on the arm of his chair, said, "well? well?" impatiently, nervously.
lucy drew a note from her pocket (she was never pocketless) and spread it on her knees. it was a long letter on crinkly paper, written in a large, dashing, sprawling hand, full of curls, generosities, extravagances.
"she says," said lucy, "(please listen, denis,) that—that they want money."
"i somehow thought that would be what she said," denis murmured, still half preoccupied. "i'm sure she's right."
"a woman who writes a hand like that," put in lord evelyn, "will always spend more than she has. a hole in the purse; a hole in the purse."
"she says," went on lucy, looking through the letter with wrinkled forehead, "that they're all very hard-up indeed. of course, i knew that; i can see it whenever i go there; only peter will never take more than silly little clothes and things for thomas. and now peggy says they're in great straits; thomas is going to teethe or something, and wants better milk, all from one cow, and they're all awfully in debt."
"i should fancy that was chronic," remarked denis, turning to essence of parliament.
"a hole in the purse, a hole in the purse," muttered lord evelyn, tapping with his eye-glass.
"peggy says that peter won't ask for help himself, but he's let her, it seems. and their boarders are nearly all gone, one of them quite suddenly, without paying a sixpence for all the time he was there."
"i suppose he didn't think he'd had sixpence worth," said denis. "he was probably right."
"and thomas is still very delicate after his bronchitis, and peter's got a bad cold on the chest and wants more cough-mixture than they can afford to buy; and they owe money to the butcher and the fishmonger and the baker and the doctor and the tailor, and hilary's lost his latest job and isn't earning anything at all. so i suppose peter is keeping the family."
"scamps; scamps all," muttered lord evelyn. "deserve all they get, and more. people like the margerisons an't worth helping. they'd best go under at once; best go under. swindlers and scamps, the lot of them. i daresay the woman's stories are half lies; of course, they want money, but it's probably only to spend on nonsense. why can't they keep themselves, like decent people?"
"oh," said lucy, dismissing that as absurd, "they can't. of course they can't. they never could ... denis."
"lucy." denis absently put out a hand to meet hers.
"how much shall we give them, denis?"
denis dropped punch onto the floor, and lay back with his hands clasped behind his fair head. lucy, looking at his up-turned, foreshortened, cleanly-modelled face, thought with half of her mind what a perfect thing it was. sudden aspects of denis's beauty sometimes struck her breathless, as they struck peter.
"the margerison family wants money, i understand," said denis, who hadn't been listening attentively.
"very badly, denis."
denis nodded. "they always do, of course.... well, is it our business to fill the bottomless margerison purse?"
lucy sat very still, looking up at him with wide eyes.
"our business? i don't know. but, of course, if peter and peter's people want anything, we shall give it them."
"but i gather it's not peter that asks? peter never asks, does he?"
"no," said lucy. "peter never asks. not even for thomas."
"well, i should be inclined to trust peter rather than his charming family. peter's name seems to be dragged into that letter a good deal, but it doesn't follow that peter sanctioned it. i'm not going to annoy peter by sending him what he's never asked for. i should think probably peter knows they can get on all right as they are, and that this letter must be taken with a good deal of salt. i expect the egregious hilary only wants the money for some new enterprise of his own, that will fail, as usual. anyhow, i really don't fancy having any further dealings with hilary margerison or his wife; i've had enough there. he's the most impossible cad and swindler."
"swindlers all, swindlers all," said lord evelyn, getting up and pacing up and down the room, his hands behind his back.
lucy, after a moment, said simply, "i shall give them something, denis. i must. don't you see? whoever it was, i would. because anyhow, they're poor and we're rich, and they want things we can give them. it's so obvious that when people ask one for things they must have them if one can give them. and when it's peter who's in want, and peter's baby, and peter's people ..."
"you see," said denis, "i doubt about peter or the baby benefiting by anything we give them. it will all go down the drain where hilary margerison's money flows away. give it to peter or give it to his relations, it'll come to the same thing. peter gives them every penny he gets, i don't doubt. you know what peter is; he's as weak as a baby in his step-brother's hands; he lets himself be dragged into the most disgraceful transactions because he can't say no."
lucy looked up at him, open-eyed, pale, quiet.
"you think of peter like that?" she said, and her voice trembled a little.
lord evelyn stopped in his walk and listened.
"i'm sorry, lucy," said denis, throwing away his cigar-end. "i don't want to say anything against peter to you. but ... one must judge by facts, you know. i don't mean that peter means any harm; but, as i say, he's weak. i'm fond of peter, you know; i wish to goodness he wouldn't play the fool as he does, mixing himself up with his precious relations and helping them in their idiotic schemes for swindling money out of people—but there it is; he will do it; and as long as he does it i don't feel moved to have much to do with him. i should send him money if he asked me personally, of course, even if i knew it would only go into his brother's pocket; but i'm not going to do it at his sister-in-law's command. if you ask me whether i feel inclined to help hilary margerison and his wife, my answer is simply no i don't. they're merely scum; and why should one have anything to do with scum?"
lucy looked at him silently for a while. then she said slowly, "i see. yes, i see you wouldn't want to, of course. they are scum. and you're not. but i am, i think. i belong to the same sort of people they do. i could swindle and cheat too, i expect. it's the people at the bottom who do that. they're my relations, you see, not yours."
"my dear lucy, only peter is your relation."
"peter and thomas. and i count the rest too, because they're peter's. so let me do all that is to be done, denis. don't you bother. i'll take them money."
"let them alone, lucy. you'd better, you know. what's the good?"
"i don't know," said lucy. "none, i expect. none at all; because peter wouldn't take it from me without you."
she came a little nearer him, and put her hand on his knee like a wistful puppy.
"denis," she said, "i wish you would. they know already that i care. but i wish you would. peter'd like you to. he'd be more pleased than if i did; much more. peter cares for you and me and thomas extraordinarily much; and you can't compare carings, but the way he cares for you is the most wonderful of all, i believe. if you went to him ... if you showed him you cared ... he'd take it from you. he wouldn't take it from me without you, because he'd suspect you weren't wanting him to have it. denis, won't you go to peter, as you used to do long ago, before he was in disgrace and poor, before he was scum? can't you, denis?"
denis had coloured faintly. he always did when people were emotional. lucy seldom was; she had a delicious morning freshness that was like the cool wind on the hills in spring.
"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 passed him in the doorway at astleys, that it had taken his breath away.
