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 From the Library 
 
 of 
 JOCELYN BROOKE
 
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 PETER
 
 PETER 
 
 By 
 E. F. BENSON 
 
 Author of "Mike," "The Countess of Lowndes Square," etc. 
 
 CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD 
 
 London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
 
 First published February, 1922 
 Reprinted March, 1922
 
 PETER 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The two who mattered were lounging on the 
 cushioned seat in the low window, of which the 
 lower panes had been pushed quite up in order to 
 admit the utmost possible influx of air. Little came 
 in, for the afternoon was sultry and windless, but 
 every now and then some current moved outside, some 
 trickle of comparative coolness from the grass and 
 trees of the Green Park, sufficient to stir the girl's 
 hair. On this high floor of the house of flats London 
 seemed far remote ; the isolation as of an aeroplane, 
 as of a ship at sea, protected them from external 
 intrusion. 
 
 Inside the room a party of four were assembled 
 round the tea-table ; the hostess, mother of the girl 
 who sat in the window-seat, was wondering, without 
 impatience, as was becoming to so chinned and con- 
 tented a face, when Mrs. Alston would cease gesticu- 
 latmg with her sandwich and eat it, instead of using 
 it as a conductor's baton to emphasize her points in 
 the discourse to which nobody was listening. The 
 sandwich had already a large semicircular bite out of 
 it, which penetrated well past its centre, and one 
 more application (if she would only make it) to that 
 capacious mouth would render it reasonable to suppose 
 that she had finished her tea. Mrs. Heaton herself
 
 2 Peter 
 
 had done so; so also had the stout grey-haired man 
 with the varnished face, and as for Mrs. Underwood, 
 she had long ago drunk her cup of hot water and re- 
 fused any further nourishment. But while Mrs. Alston 
 brandished her crescent of a sandwich, and continued 
 talking as if somebody had contradicted her, it was 
 impossible to suggest a move to the bridge-table that 
 stood ready with new packs and sharpened pencils a 
 couple of yards away. To the boy and girl in the 
 window that quartette of persons seemed of supreme 
 unimportance both by reason of their age and of the 
 earnest futility of their conversation. They talked 
 eagerly about dull things like politics and prices 
 instead of being flippant, in the modern style, about 
 interesting things. Between them and the younger 
 generation there was the great gulf digged by the 
 unrelenting years, and set on fire by the war. It was 
 not flaring and exploding any longer, but lay there 
 in smouldering impassable clinkers. 
 
 "High prices and high wages! " asserted Mrs. 
 Alston. "That's what is going to be the ruin of the 
 country. I've said over and over again, ' Why not 
 have an Act of Parliament to halve the price of food 
 and coal and that sort of thing, and another Act, 
 unless you could get it into the same one, to reduce 
 wages by a half also? ' High prices, so everybody 
 allows, are the cause of high wages, and if miners 
 and that sort of person could buy their food and their 
 clothes at half the price they pay for them now, there 
 would not be the slightest difficulty in reducing wages 
 by a half, instead of multiplying them by two every 
 time that they threaten to strike. Coal ! The root 
 of all the trouble is the price of coal. Reduce the 
 price of coal by half, and instantly the price of trans- 
 port and gas and electricity will go down in a corre-
 
 Peter 3 
 
 spending manner. Steel, too, and linen; it all 
 depends on coal. The English sovereign has to-day 
 hardly more than half the buying power it used to 
 have. Hardly more than half ! Restore it, then, by 
 reducing the price of everything else, including 
 wages. Including wages, mind ! Otherwise you will 
 find yourselves in a fine mess ! " 
 
 She put the rest of her sandwich into her mouth, 
 precisely as Mrs. Heaton had hoped and even fore- 
 seen. That made her mouth quite full, and for the 
 moment she was as dumb as the adder. Her hostess, 
 alert for this psychological occasion, gave a short, 
 judicial and fulsome summing-up, addressed to the 
 court in general. 
 
 "Well, dearest Mary," she said. "You have 
 made me understand it all now, a thing which I never 
 did before. So well put, was it not, Mr. Steel, and 
 I'm sure quite unanswerable. We must none of us 
 attempt to argue with dearest Mary, because she 
 would show us at once how stupid it was of us, and I, 
 for one, hate to be made a fool of. What a good 
 explanation ! Quite brilliant ! So now shall we get 
 to our bridge? I expect we're all going to the opera 
 to-night, and so we shall all want to dress early. 
 Dear me, it's after half-past five already ! Will 
 nobody have any more tea ? Quite sure ? Shall we 
 cut, then? Oh, there are Nellie and Peter in the 
 window. Wouldn't you like to cut in, too, dear? " 
 
 "No, mother, we shouldn't ! " said Nellie. 
 
 The four others swooped to the bridge-table, with 
 the swift sure flight of homing pigeons, and hastily 
 cut their cards in order to give no time for repentance 
 on the part of the two others. 
 
 "You and I, Mr. Steel," said Mrs. Heaton hastily. 
 "Quite sure you wouldn't like to play, Peter? "
 
 4 Peter 
 
 "Quite," said Peter gently. "I should hate it; 
 thanks awfully." 
 
 "Well, if you're quite sure you won't — my deal I 
 think, partner. Shall it be pennies? " 
 
 Mr. Steel had a whimsical idea. 
 
 "Oughtn't we to halve our points, too, Mary?" 
 he said. " Like wages and coal ? " 
 
 For a moment he was sorry he had been so rashly 
 humorous, for Mrs. Alston opened her mouth and 
 drew in her breath as if to speak on a public platform 
 to the largest imaginable audience. Then, luckily, 
 she found something so remarkable in her hand that 
 her fury for political elucidation was quenched, and 
 she devoted the muscles of her athletic mind to con- 
 sidering what she would do if the dealer was so rash 
 as to call no trumps. Thereafter the great deeps, 
 dimly peopled with enemies ready to pounce out of the 
 subaqueous shadows and double you, completely sub- 
 merged the four of them. They lit cigarettes as in a 
 dream, and smoked them in alternate hells and 
 heavens. 
 
 Nellie looked at them once or twice, as an 
 anaesthetist might look at his patient to see whether 
 he was quite unconscious. The third glance was 
 convincing. 
 
 " It must be rather sweet to be middle-aged, Peter," 
 she said. " For the next two hours they'll think about 
 nothing but aces and trumps ! " 
 
 "Sign of youth," said Peter. 
 
 "Why?"' 
 
 "Because they're absorbed, like children. When 
 you were little, you could only think about one thing 
 at a time. It might be dentist or it might be hoops. 
 But you and I can't think about anything for more 
 than five minutes together, or care about anything
 
 Peter 5 
 
 for more than two. I suppose that when you're old 
 you recapture that sort of youthfulness." 
 
 He paused a moment. 
 
 "Go on : tell me about it all," he said. 
 
 Nellie did not reply at once, but began plaiting 
 her fingers together with the little finger on the top. 
 They were slender and small like her face, which 
 narrowed very rapidly from the ears downwards to a 
 pointed chin. Loose yellow hair, the colour of honey, 
 grew low over her forehead, and just below it, her 
 eyebrows, noticeably darker than her hair, made high 
 arches, giving her face an expression of irony and 
 surprise. Her forehead ran straight into the line of 
 her nose, and a short upper lip held her mouth in 
 imperfect control, for it hinted and wondered, and 
 was amused and contemptuous as its mood took it. 
 Now it half-smiled; now it was half serious, but 
 always it only hinted. 
 
 Peter apparently grew impatient of her silence and 
 her finger plaiting. 
 
 " You're making them look like bananas on a street- 
 barrow," he observed. 
 
 Nellie smoothed them out and gave an apprecia- 
 tive sigh. 
 
 "Oh, I bought two to-day," she said, "and ate 
 them in the street. I had to throw the skins away, 
 and then I was afraid that somebody would slip on 
 them and break his leg." 
 
 "So you picked them up again," suggested Peter. 
 
 "No, I didn't. I was only sorry for anybody who 
 might slip on them. I couldn't tell who it was going 
 to be, and probably I shouldn't know him " 
 
 "Get on," he said. 
 
 "Oh, about Philip. Well, there it was. He 
 asked me, you see, and— of course, he's rather old,
 
 \ 
 
 6 Peter 
 
 but he's tremendously attractive. And it's so safe 
 and pleasant, and I like being adored. After all, 
 you and I have talked it over often enough, and you 
 knew just as well as I did that I was going to accept 
 him if he wanted me." 
 
 Nellie suddenly felt that she was justifying what 
 she had done, and she did not mean to do that. What 
 she had done justified itself by its own inherent good 
 sense. She changed her tone, and began counting 
 on those slim fingers which just now had introduced 
 the extraneous subject of bananas. 
 
 "Peter, darling," she said. "If his grandfather 
 and an uncle and two children of the uncle die, there 
 is no doubt whatever that I shall be a peeress. Won't 
 that be fun ? I feel that Uncle Robert and the two 
 children may easily die; they're the sort of people 
 who do die, but I doubt whether grandpapa ever will. 
 He's like the man with the white beard; do I mean 
 the Ancient Mariner or the Ancient of Days, who 
 comes in Ezekiel ? " 
 
 Peter Mainwaring rocked backwards in the 
 window-seat with a sudden little explosion of 
 laughter that made all the bridge players look up 
 as if their heads were tied to the same tweaked string. 
 Then they submerged again. 
 
 "Not Ezekiel, anyhow," he said. "It's either 
 Daniel or Coleridge. I expect Coleridge." 
 
 "Yes, I mean Coleridge," she said. "The man 
 who stops the wedding guest; wedding guest was 
 what suggested it. Grandpapa always wanted Philip 
 to marry one of those cousins of his, who look like 
 tables with drawers in them. Long legs and bumps 
 on their faces like the handles of the drawers. But 
 Philip wouldn't." 
 
 Peter ran his fingers along the line of his jaw as if
 
 Peter 7 
 
 to be sure that he had shaved that morning. His 
 face for a man of twenty-two was ridiculously smooth 
 and hairless; it did not much matter whether he had 
 shaved or not. 
 
 "Naturally Philip wouldn't," he said, "but that's 
 got nothing to do with it. I don't want to know why 
 Philip didn't do something, but why you did. I 
 want to see your point, to do you justice. At present 
 I feel upset about it. You know quite well that 
 there's only one person you ought to marry." 
 
 "You?" asked Nellie, feeling that the question 
 was quite unnecessary. 
 
 "How clever of you to guess. You are clever 
 sometimes. Oh, I know we've talked it over enough 
 and seen how impossible it was, but when it comes 
 to your marrying someone else " 
 
 He lit a match and blew it out again. 
 
 "I know," he said. "You've got threepence a 
 year, and I've got twopence, so that in the good old 
 times we should have been able to buy one pound of 
 sugar every Christmas. Even then we should have 
 had nothing to eat with it. But what you haven't 
 sufficiently reckoned with is the fact that by the time 
 I am a hundred and fifty years old, I shall get a 
 pension of a hundred and fifty pounds from the 
 Foreign Office. But it's rather a long time to 
 wait." 
 
 Nellie's eyes suddenly grew fixed and rapt. 
 
 "Oh, Peter, one moment!" she whispered. 
 "Look quickly at mamma's face. When that holy 
 expression comes on it, it always means that she is 
 intending to declare no trumps. So when I'm play- 
 ing against her, if it's my turn first I always declare 
 one no trumps, and then she has to declare two. 
 Wait one second, Peter."
 
 8 Peter 
 
 "No trumps," said Mrs. Heaton. 
 
 "There, I told you so ! " said Xellie. "Yes; it is 
 rather long to wait, though I don't mean to say that 
 a hundred and fifty isn't a very pleasant age, dear. 
 The people in Genesis usually lived five hundred years 
 before they married, and begat sons and daughters. 
 Anyhow, I shall be a widow before you're a 
 hundred and fifty, and then we shall be engaged for 
 three hundred and fifty years more, and then 
 we shall totter to the altar. I can't help talking 
 drivel; it's all too serious to take seriously. By the 
 way, I shall be richer than you eventually, for when 
 mamma dies I shall have two thousand a year, but 
 that won't be for two thousand years. We have been 
 born too soon, Peter I " 
 
 Peter thought this not worth answering, but lift- 
 ing one of his knees, nursed it between his clasped 
 hands in silence. For her loose honey-coloured hair, 
 he had a crisp coal-blackness; he was tall for her 
 small slim stature, and his lips were set to definite 
 purposes, whereas hers were malleable to adapt them- 
 selves to any emotion that might waywardly blow on 
 her. But both, in compensation for differences that 
 were complementary, were triumphantly alike in the 
 complete soullessness of their magnificent youth; 
 without violation of any internal principle they might, 
 either of them, shoot up singing with the lark, or pad 
 and prowl with the ruthless hunger of the tiger, or 
 burrow with the mole. They were Satyr and Hama- 
 dryad, some ancient and eternally young embodi- 
 ment of life, with whim to take the place of conscience, 
 and the irresponsible desire of wild things to do duty 
 for duty, and impulse to take the place of reason. 
 Each, too, had developed to an almost alarming 
 degree that modern passion for introspection, which
 
 Peter 9 
 
 is an end in itself, and like a barren tree, yields no 
 fruit in the ways of action or renunciation. 
 
 Peter hugged his knee, and his eye grew hazy 
 and unfocused in meditation. 
 
 "Am I in love with you, do you think ? " he asked 
 at length. 
 
 She laughed, quite disregarding the ears of the 
 bridge players. With Peter she was more herself 
 than with anyone else, or even than when alone. 
 
 "Oh, that's so like you," she said, "and so won- 
 derfully like me. Certainly you're not in love with 
 me; you're not in love with anybody. You never 
 have been; you never will be. You're fonder of me 
 than of anybody else, but that's a very different 
 thing." 
 
 "But how do you know I'm not in love with 
 you?" he asked. "I may be. You're not so un- 
 attractive. Why shouldn't I be in love with you? " 
 
 "It's obvious you aren't. To begin with, you 
 don't feel the smallest jealousy of Philip. Besides, 
 though you so kindly say that I'm not so unattractive, 
 you're the one person who really sees and notes and 
 mentions my imperfections. You wouldn't be so 
 critical of me if you were in love. And then, as I 
 said, you're not jealous of Philip." 
 
 "Good Lord, how could I be jealous of Philip? " 
 asked he. " I should have to want to be Philip before 
 I could be jealous of him, and I wouldn't be Philip, 
 even as things stand, for anything in the world. 
 Besides, you don't really think him so tremendously 
 attractive though you said so just now. You said 
 that out of pure conventionality, not out of convic- 
 tion." 
 
 Some momentary perplexity, like a cloud on a 
 sunny windy day of spring bowled its shadow over
 
 10 
 
 Peter 
 
 her face, and creased a soft perpendicular furrow 
 between her eyebrows. 
 
 "Peter, I think I want to become conventional," 
 she said, "and, if you wish, I will confess I was 
 practising for it when I said that. Oh, my dear, 
 we're all human, cast in a mould and put in a cage, 
 if you don't mind mixed metaphors. I'm going to 
 marry in the ordinary way, just because girls do 
 marry. Mamma married, so did my two grand- 
 mammas, and four great-grandmammas, and eight 
 great-great-grandmammas. In fact the further you 
 go back, the commoner marriage seems to have been. 
 Some awful human hereditary spell has been cast 
 
 on me." 
 
 Peter leaned forward, bright-eyed and faun-like. 
 
 "Break it ! " he said. "Exorcise it ! Spells don't 
 exist excepit for those who allow themselves to be 
 bound by them. The fact is we all weave our own 
 spells." 
 
 " But if I did refuse now, what then ? " said she. 
 "If you don't obey conventions, you must have con- 
 viction to take their place, and I haven't got any. 
 Besides, if I don't marry I shall become an old maid, 
 unless I die young. Oh, we are all in a trap, we girls. 
 There are three awful alternatives to choose from, and 
 I dislike them all. I don't want to die young, but if 
 I live to be sixty I've got to be a grandmother or a 
 stringy old maid." 
 
 "You've got to be stringy, anyhow, at sixty," said 
 Peter. 
 
 " Not at all. Grandmothers are usually plump and 
 comfortable : it is great aunts who are stringy. And 
 grandmothers remain young, I notice, whereas elderly 
 maiden ladies are only sprightly. I think that it's 
 because they cling to youth, and there's nothing so
 
 Peter n 
 
 ageing as to cling to anything. If you want to 
 retain anything, the best plan is to drop it, and then 
 it clings to you instead." 
 
 "That's rather ingenious," said Peter. "You may 
 go on about it for a minute." 
 
 "I was going to. It's perfecdy true. All the 
 people who don't eat potatoes and sweets for fear of 
 getting fat become elephants, like mamma, who lives 
 on cracknel biscuits." 
 
 "Does she?" said Peter with deep interest. 
 "How wonderful of her." 
 
 "And all the people who take immense care of 
 themselves die at the age of forty, because they are 
 clinging to life, while those who break every ordin- 
 ance of health never die at all. And all the people 
 who lay themselves out to be brilliant are crashing 
 bores " 
 
 "Oh yes; proved," said Peter. "Let's go on to 
 something else. What's to happen to me when you 
 marry ? " 
 
 "Nothing," said Nellie. "Why should it? 
 You'll go on being quite different from anybody else. 
 That's a career in itself. You aren't human, any- 
 how, however many great-grandmammas you may 
 have had. You're a wild thing, partly domesticated, 
 and when you're tired of us all, you go waving your 
 tail, and walking in the wet woods, and telling 
 nobody. Kipling, you know. Then you come back 
 rather sleepy and pleased, and allow us to put a blue 
 riband round your neck and tickle you under the 
 chin, and then you lie down on a cushion in front of 
 the fire and purr. You don't purr at us, though, you 
 purr at yourself." 
 
 "Lor ! " said Peter. "All that about me ! " 
 
 Nellie pushed back her hair from her forehead,
 
 12 
 
 Peter 
 
 and again plaited her fingers together. But this time 
 it was no dehberative, meditative process, but a swift 
 unconscious action. 
 
 "Yes, my dear, and there's more, too," she said. 
 "It's my swan-song, remember, for soon I am going 
 to become ordinary and conventional. I used to go 
 in the wet woods, too, you know, though we never 
 met each other there. But that has been the bond 
 between us, up till now we have been completely 
 independent. You're going to remain so, but not I. 
 Oh, Peter, there was a bond ! My dear, do you think 
 that I'm rather mad? I have serious doubts about it 
 myself." 
 
 "You always were rather mad," said he. "But 
 go on ; sing your swan-song." 
 
 "Then don't look as if you had taken a guinea 
 stall to hear me," she said. "Where had I got to? 
 Oh, yes. There was a bond; you know it yourself. 
 I've never been conscious of anybody else as I've 
 been conscious of you, nor have you ever been con- 
 scious of anyone else as you've been conscious of me. 
 You've never been in the least in love with me, nor 
 have I with you. But we're the same kind of person, 
 and one doesn't often see the same kind of person as 
 oneself. Do you understand at all, or am I simply 
 reading out of my own book ? " 
 
 He was silent a moment. 
 
 "Nellie, would you marry me if I were rich?" 
 he asked. 
 
 She made a gesture of impatience. 
 
 "How on earth can I tell? " she said. "If you 
 were rich you would be quite a different person." 
 
 "No, I shouldn't " 
 
 "Oh, Peter, how stupid you are," she said. "And 
 how frightfully Victorian, That is so shallow. Wealth
 
 Peter 13 
 
 is just as much part of a man or a woman as brains 
 or beauty. I don't say that a girl loves a man for 
 his brains, or his money, or his beauty, but they all 
 make a part of him. Wealth isn't an accident; it's 
 an attribute. A poor man — I'm not talking about 
 you and me, but only speaking in the abstract — may 
 be the same in character and charm as a rich man, 
 but what a gulf money makes between them ! Let 
 one man be poor, and another, his absolute double 
 in every way, be rich. They cease to be doubles 
 at once." 
 
 "But if you happened to love the coster- 
 monger " began Peter. 
 
 "We can leave that out, because neither of us has 
 the slightest idea what love means." 
 
 "How about the bond you spoke of, then?" 
 asked he. "Hasn't that got anything to do 
 with it? " 
 
 She considered this, and then laid her hand on 
 his arm. 
 
 "If I could choose now, this minute," she said, 
 " in what relationship we should stand to each other, 
 I would choose you as my brother. I haven't got 
 one; I should like to have one tremendously. And 
 yet, if I might have it all just the way I liked, I 
 think I should have you for my sister. I don't so 
 much want you to take care of me as I want to take 
 care of you. I want " 
 
 "Oh, come now," said Peter. 
 
 "It's true, though." 
 
 They had turned themselves about in the window- 
 seat, so as to secure for this surprising conversation 
 a greater privacy from the party at the bridge- 
 table, and were leaning out of the window. A 
 hundred feet below Piccadilly roared and rattled, but 
 
 B
 
 14 
 
 Peter 
 
 here the clatter of it was shorn of its sharp edges ; 
 it was as if a stir of bees was swarming in some hive 
 down there. Seen like this from above, passengers 
 and vehicles alike were but crawling dots and blots; 
 everything, from the swiftest motor down to the 
 laziest loiterer, seemed to be drowsily and sound- 
 lessly sauntering. Often had Peter and Nellie leaned 
 out here looking on the traffic at the base of the cliff, 
 capturing for themselves a certain sense of isolation. 
 Even leaning out they could see nothing of the pre- 
 cipitous cliff side of the house, for a couple of feet 
 below the window a stone cornice jutted out some 
 ten or twelve inches, and beyond the edge of that the 
 nearest visible objects below were the tops of motor 
 buses and the hats of the foot passengers along the 
 pavements. So still was the air that now, when 
 Peter flicked the ash off his cigarette, it floated down, 
 still cohering, till it dwindled into invisibility. He 
 followed its fall with that detached intentness which 
 the surface mind gives to the ticking of a clock or 
 the oscillation of some flower-head, when the whole 
 psychic attention is focused elsewhere ; and it seemed 
 that Nellie, as far as her surface mind went, was 
 trotting in harness with him, for though he had 
 not hinted at what occupied his eyes, scarcely know- 
 ing it himself, she was equally intent. 
 
 "I've lost sight of it, Peter," she said, breaking 
 the silence of a whole minute. 
 
 "Of what?" he asked. 
 
 "Of your cigarette end. You were watching it 
 too. Don't pretend that you weren't." 
 
 "Well, if I was, what then?" he asked. 
 
 "Nothing particular. I only felt you were watch- 
 ing it — just the bond." 
 
 He shifted himself again. Hitherto, as they
 
 Peter 15 
 
 leaned out, his left shoulder touched hers. Now he 
 broke the contact. 
 
 "I think that's about the extent of the bond," 
 he said. "And your marrying Philip shows pre- 
 cisely what sort of value you put on it. You've 
 made it clearer than you know, for you've defined 
 your feelings for me as being a desire to have a 
 brother, or rather a sister to take care of. I don't 
 think that's worth much. You defined it further by 
 saying that you couldn't tell whether you would 
 marry me or not if I were rich, because if I were, 
 I should be a quite different person. If the quality 
 of the bond would be affected by that, it must be of 
 remarkably poor quality, and you're quite right to 
 break it. When you began talking about the bond 
 I thought you might be going to say something 
 interesting, something I didn't know, something that, 
 when you stated it, I should recognize to be true. 
 If that's all your swan has got to sing it might as 
 well have been a goose." 
 
 Nellie's eyebrows elevated themselves up under 
 the loose yellow of her hair. 
 
 "Peter dear, are you quarrelling with me? " she 
 asked . 
 
 "Yes. No. No, I'm not quarrelling. But the 
 whole thing is such a bore. Where's my tail, and 
 where are the wet woods ? " 
 
 vShe leaned her chin on her hands, that lay along 
 the window sill. 
 
 "I wish you were in love with me," she said. 
 
 "I'm extremely glad that I'm not," said he. 
 "Otherwise I suppose I should want to be Philip, 
 or, as the madrigal says, some other * favoured 
 swain.' But for you to talk about a bond between 
 us is the absolute limit. You want everything your
 
 i6 Peter 
 
 own way, and expect everybody else to immolate 
 himself, thankfully and ecstatically, on your beastly 
 altar." 
 
 "So do you," murmured Nellie. "We all do." 
 
 "I? How do you make that out?" demanded 
 Peter. 
 
 " Because you object to my marrying Philip when 
 you haven't the smallest desire to have me yourself. 
 If you knew tlTat I should say ' Yes,' supposing 
 you asked me to jilt Philip and marry you, you 
 wouldn't ask me to. You want me to marry nobody 
 and not to marry me yourself. That's not good 
 enough, you know." 
 
 Peter's mouth lengthened itself into a smile, and 
 broadened into a laugh. 
 
 "It's a putrid business," he said. "Why 
 shouldn't I take a neat header from the window and 
 have done with it? I'm twenty-two, and already I 
 think the whole affair is rot. And if it doesn't amuse 
 me now, when is it going to amuse me ? It was 
 even more amusing during the war, when one came 
 back for a fortnight's leave before going out to that 
 hell again. One did grab at pleasure then, because 
 in all probability one would be blown to bits very 
 soon afterwards. But now that one is not going 
 to be blown to bits very soon afterwards the whole 
 seasoning has gone out of it. No, not quite. I want 
 to be admired. What is love? Good Lord, what is 
 love? As I haven't the slightest idea, the best thing 
 I can do is to grab at pleasures." 
 
 "Or the worst," suggested Nellie, rather sen- 
 tentiously. 
 
 "Now get off the high horse," said Peter. "Or, 
 rather, don't attempt to get on it. You can't, any 
 more than I. Let's be comfortable. Marry your silly
 
 Peter 17 
 
 Philip, and I'll— I'll Shall I take to drink ? No, 
 
 that wouldn't do, for people would say I was trying 
 to drown my despair at your marriage. I haven't 
 got feelings of that sort, and I should hate anybody 
 to think that I had. I loathe being pitied, anyhow, 
 and to be pitied for something you don't suffer from 
 would be intolerable. And though you will remain 
 just the same to me after you're married, and I shall 
 certainly remain the same, our relations will be 
 altered." 
 
 Nellie let her eyes flit over him, never quite 
 alighting. They skimmed over his crisp hair, over 
 the handsome, smooth, soulless profile, over his 
 shoulders, over the knee he was nursing, over the 
 hiatus where white skin showed between his rucked- 
 up trouser and a drooping sock. At this moment 
 she, with the knowledge of the definite step that she 
 had taken in life by engaging herself to Philip 
 Beaumont, felt far older and more experienced than 
 he. She, anyhow, could look ahead and see a placid, 
 prosperous life in front of her, whereas Peter, a 
 year older than she, was still as experimental as a 
 boy. All the same, if he wanted anything, he had 
 remarkable assiduity in the pursuit of it until he 
 caught it, but nothing beyond the desire of the 
 moment was to him worth bothering about. Her 
 own prudence, her own commitment of herself she 
 knew to be a development of to-day and yesterday, 
 and now it seemed suddenly to have aged and con- 
 solidated her. But she had no answer for that voice 
 crying in the wilderness "What is love?" Or was 
 there some sort of signpost by the wayside enveloped 
 in mist? She passed over that point. 
 
 "If it really all seems to you so putrid," she 
 said, "I can't imagine why you don't, as you say.
 
 i8 Peter 
 
 take a header into the street. But you've no intention 
 of doing anything of the sort. You would firmly 
 resist any attempt of mine to tip you out. You like 
 life quite passably as it is, you know, and also you 
 do expect something more from it. In fact, I never 
 saw anyone so thoroughly unlikely to give up living 
 or to run any risk that could reasonably be avoided. 
 You say it's a putrid business, but really you find 
 it a pleasant one." 
 
 Peter sighed. 
 
 "Oh, yes, it will have to do," he said. "Don't 
 tip me out, Nellie. But don't, on the other hand, 
 think that I cling so desperately to life." 
 
 "Not desperately, but instinctively. It would be 
 silly of anybody to throw up a hand that may contain 
 some glorious ace without looking very carefully 
 through it. Everyone goes on playing and clutching 
 at the new deals until he is sure that there isn't an 
 ace in the pack for him. Indeed, it's when you've 
 found the ace that you don't value the rest of the 
 hand so much." 
 
 "I don't follow. Explain," said Peter. 
 
 "Well, this kind of thing. For instance, if you 
 found the ace, that is to say, if you fell tremendously 
 in love, you might not care about the rest of the 
 hand. If the adorable was in my bedroom, two 
 windows off, and if she was locked in there, and 
 if the house was on fire " 
 
 "Any more ' ifs ' ?" asked Peter. 
 
 "Not one. But supposing all these things, you 
 would instantly get out on to that cornice, at peril 
 of your life, and shuffle your way along it. You 
 would have to be with her. You wouldn't give two 
 thoughts as to what might happen to you." 
 
 Peter thought this over.
 
 Peter 19 
 
 "I should be a consummate ass, then," he re- 
 marked. "A fellow with a grain of sense would go 
 down the passage and bash the door in." 
 
 "But let's pretend that for some reason you 
 couldn't. If the only way of reaching the room 
 v/as along the cornice you would go." 
 
 Peter looked at the ledge. 
 
 "And if I got there in safety, what then?" he 
 asked. "I couldn't carry her back along the ledge." 
 
 "But that wouldn't prevent your going," said she. 
 "Whatever the risk to yourself was, and however 
 useless your going was, you would go." 
 
 Peter was silent a m^oment, frowning. 
 
 "I feel as if all this has happened before," he 
 said. "Do you know that feeling? Did we ever 
 sit here before and talk about just this?" 
 
 "Not that I remember. No, I'm sure we never 
 have. Isn't it odd, that sensation? Does it seem to 
 you like remembrance of a previous occasion, or a 
 presentiment of a future one? " 
 
 "Or a slightly faulty action of the two lobes of 
 the brain?" said Peter. "What were we talking 
 about? Aces?" 
 
 "Yes. That's what I mean about throwing the 
 rest of your hand away for the sake of an ace." 
 
 Peter looked at his watch. 
 
 "I must go," he said. "I've got to get home to 
 dress, and rush back to the Ritz to dine early before 
 the opera." 
 
 "Oh, not just yet," said she. "But I wish you 
 wouldn't live in South Kensington. Why do you ? " 
 
 Peter had a direct glance and a direct answer for 
 this. 
 
 "Because it's cheaper living with my father and 
 mother than being on my oAvn," he said. "Also "
 
 20 
 
 Peter 
 
 "Well?" she asked. 
 
 " I was going to say because they like having me 
 with them," said he. "But I don't think that's true, 
 so I didn't say it. I mean, if I had plenty of money 
 I should take a flat of my own, quite regardless of 
 whether they liked to have me with them." 
 
 Nellie gave a little sigh, with a click of impatience 
 at fhe end of it. 
 
 "There's an odd kind of honesty about you," she 
 said. "You state that sort of thing quite baldly, 
 whereas I should conceal it. If I had been you I 
 should have said that I lived at home because my 
 mother liked having me with her. It wouldn't have 
 been true, but I should have said it. Very likely 
 by saying it often I should have got to believe it." 
 
 "Nobody else would have," remarked Peter. 
 
 "You're rather a brute, my dear," said she. "Go 
 away to South Kensington." 
 
 "I'm going. But about aces for one second more. 
 Have you found your ace, Nellie? Don't bother to 
 
 answer." 
 
 "That is spoken like a rather spiteful woman," 
 was Nellie's perfectly justifiable rejoinder. 
 
 "Maybe. I'm your spiteful sister," said Peter. 
 
 He walked gracefully and gently over to the card- 
 table. 
 
 "Good-bye, Mrs. Heaton," he said. "Nellie and 
 I have had a lovely talk. I hope you've won every 
 rubber. "- 
 
 "And three aces, thirty," said Mrs. Heaton. 
 "Good-bye, dear Peter. I suppose you'll be at the 
 Opera to-night. Parsifal. My deal ? So it is."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Peter descended from these heights into the hot dusty 
 well of the streets, and soon was on his way home to 
 dress and return to the Ritz, where an early dinner 
 preceded the opera and any other diversions that 
 might present themselves. On this sweltering June 
 evening the top of a bus was a cooler progression 
 than a taxi, besides advancing the sacred cause of 
 economy, which he had just confessed was more real 
 to him than that of filial piety, and at Hyde Park 
 Corner he could catch a conveyance that would deposit 
 him not fifty yards from his father's house. Cool- 
 ness and economy were sufficiently strong of them- 
 selves to make him board it with alacrity, and the 
 detachment of a front seat just suited the meditative 
 mood which his talk with Nellie had induced. 
 
 Peter knew himself and her pretty well, and with 
 the admirable contributions she had made to their 
 discussion there was little to puzzle out, but much to 
 appraise and estimate. The notion that the news of 
 her engagement had been a blow of any sharp or 
 stunning quality could be at once dismissed, for never 
 had he known so well, as when she, earlier in the 
 day, had communicated the news of her engagement 
 to him over the telephone (that was like her), how 
 whole-heartedly he was not in love with her, and how 
 unintelligibly alien to him, as she had pointed out, 
 was that emotion. During the last year which had 
 witnessed a very decent flowering of intimacy between 
 him and her, there had never been, on either side, 
 
 21
 
 22 Peter 
 
 the least attempt at love-making; their relations had 
 been wholly free from sentiment, and not once had 
 either of them tripped or stuttered over the foreign 
 use of love-language. But in ways wholly unsenti- 
 mental they had certainly arrived at some extremely 
 close relation of intimacy; there had emphatically 
 been a bond between them, which to his mind her 
 engagement, if it did not actually loosen it, would 
 shift, so to speak, on to a new place ; the harness must 
 be worn elsewhere. If it was to be maintained, he, 
 at any rate, must accustom himself to its new adjust- 
 ment. She had defined that comradeship this after- 
 noon in a way that was rather surprising, for the ideal 
 relation of him to her, apparently, was that of a 
 brother, or, with greater precision, that of a sister. 
 That had not struck him before, but even when first 
 presented, it did not in the least puzzle him. Indeed, 
 it satisfactorily accounted for that elimination of sex 
 which had always marked their intimacy. She had 
 not sought the male element in him, nor he in her the 
 female. So far he was in complete agreement with 
 the casual conclusion they had jointly arrived at, but 
 at that point Peter detected the presence of something 
 that seemed to show a lurking fallacy somewhere. 
 For he had no doubt that if he had been rich, he 
 would before now have proposed to her, and in spite 
 of her provision that, since riches were an attribute 
 of a man and not an external accident, they turned 
 him into a different person, and that thus she could 
 not tell whether she would have accepted him or not, 
 he did not, for himself, believe that she would have 
 hesitated in doing so. Finally, as material to medi- 
 tate upon, came her firm statement that though 
 Peter did not want or intend to marry her, he objected 
 to anybody else doing so. With the extreme frank-
 
 Peter 23 
 
 ness with which he habitually judged any criticism on 
 himself, he instantly admitted that there was a great 
 deal to be said for Nellie's assertion. When it was 
 stated brutally like that, he recognized the justice of 
 her outline. She might have made a caricature of 
 him, but her sketch contained salient features, the 
 identity of which, as he contemplated this scribble 
 of her inspired pencil, he could not disclaim. With- 
 out doubt she had caught a likeness; more tersely she 
 had "got him." Even as he acknowledged that, he 
 felt a resentment that she had so unerringly compre- 
 hended him, and shown him to himself. He enjoyed, 
 rather than otherwise, his own dissection of himself, 
 without bias or malice, but he felt less sure that when 
 Nellie was the dissector he welcomed so deft an 
 exposure. 
 
 The retrospect had been sufficiently absorbing to 
 make him unaware that, somewhere in Knights- 
 bridge, the top of the bus had become a strenuous 
 goal for travellers. Every seat was occupied, and 
 beside him a young man had planted himself in the 
 vacant place and was talking to a girl who had 
 plumped herself into a seat two tiers behind his. 
 Peter instantly jumped up. 
 
 "Let me change places with your young lady," 
 he said, "and then you'll be together and talk more 
 conveniently." 
 
 The change was made with a tribute of simpering 
 gratitude on the part of the "young lady," and Peter, 
 with laurels of popularity round his straw hat, took 
 the single place. He knew perfectly well that he had 
 disturbed himself from no motive of kindliness; he 
 did not in the least want to please either the man or 
 the girl. His motive had been only to appear 
 pleasant, to obtain cheaply and fraudulently the certi-
 
 24 
 
 Peter 
 
 ficate of being a "kind gentleman." For himself, he 
 did not care two straws if the pair of sundered lovers 
 bawled at each other from sundered seats. . . . 
 
 And then as he took his new place it struck him 
 that the quality which had prompted the transference 
 of himself from one seat on the top of a bus to 
 another, was precisely the same as had led him to 
 resent Nellie's dissection of him. In the one case his 
 vanity was gratified, in the other his vanity was hurt. 
 
 "That's it," he said to himself, and mentally he 
 prinked, like a girl, in the glass that had so unerringly 
 shown him to himself. Yet it did not show him an 
 aspect of himself that was in any way surprising, 
 either for pleasure or distaste, for he knew well how 
 prolific a spring of native vanity was in him. He 
 would always take an infinity of trouble in order to 
 appear admirable, or, on the other hand, to conceal 
 what was not so admirable. He would always 
 inconvenience himself in order to appear kind, 
 exert himself to appear amusing, bore himself, 
 while preserving the brightness of an attentive 
 and interested eye, in order to confirm his reputa- 
 tion for being sympathetic. But though vanity was 
 the root of such efforts, there was, at any rate, no 
 trace of it in his acknowledgment of it. He never 
 deluded himself into thinking that he suffered fools 
 gladly, because he liked them, or desired to secure for 
 them a pleasant half-hour in which they could tedi- 
 ously inflict themselves on him ; he suffered them 
 with the show of gladness in order to be thought kind 
 and agreeable in the abstract, and in the concrete to 
 pick up the gleanings of welcome and entertainment 
 which, for such as him, lie so thick on the fields of 
 human intercourse, when the great machines have 
 gone by. He had no reason to complain of these
 
 Peter 25 
 
 gleanings; there was no one among the youth of 
 London who was more consistently in request, or who 
 more merited his mild harvestings. In a rather 
 fatigued and casual generation, tired with the strain 
 of the last five years, and now suddenly brought to 
 book after the irresponsibility of wartime, when for 
 all young men each leave snatched from the scythe of 
 the French front might easily be their last, there was 
 a certain license given, Peter had always been a shin- 
 ing exception to such slack social conduct of life. 
 He did not, as he had told Nellie, expect much from 
 it, but as long as you were "on tap," it was undeni- 
 ably foolish not to present yourself presentably. Your 
 quality was certainly enhanced by a little foam, a 
 little effervescence. "That nice Mr. Peter, always 
 so polite and pleasant," was his reward ; and at this 
 moment Nellie's divination of his true attitude to- 
 wards her engagement was his punishment. 
 
 The bus hummed and droned along the Bromp- 
 ton Road ; there was still a solid stretch before 
 it halted just opposite the side street which was his 
 goal, and there was time to consider her further 
 criticism that he went off, waving his tail, into the 
 wet woods and saying nothing to anybody. What 
 had she meant exactly by that ? He had, at any rate, 
 his own consciousness that she had hit on something 
 extremely real and vitally characteristic of him. 
 Surely she meant his aloofness from any intimate 
 surrender of himself, the self-sufficiency that neither 
 gave nor sought strong affection. He had acknow- 
 ledged the vanity as of a be-ribanded cat, and now 
 he added to that his desire for material comfort, 
 a quiet, determined selfishness, and the reservation 
 to himself of solitary expeditions in the wet woods 
 with a waving tail. Probably she meant no more
 
 26 Peter 
 
 than that, and though Peter quite acknowledged the 
 justice of these definitions, he again felt a certain 
 resentment against her clear-sightedness. She had a 
 touch of these defects and qualities herself; it was that 
 which made the bond between them. 
 
 Peter let himself into his father's house in the 
 grilling, dusty street nearly opposite the Oratory with 
 the anticipation of finding a speedy opportunity for 
 a domestic exhibition of vanity, for he felt sure that 
 something ludicrous or tiresome and uncomfortable 
 would await him ; something he would certainly 
 tolerate with bland serenity and agreeableness. The 
 house, the front of which had been baking in the sun 
 all the afternoon, was intolerably hot and stuffy; the 
 door at the head of the kitchen stairs had, as gener- 
 ally happened, been left open, and the nature of the 
 dinner which would presently ascend could be con- 
 fidently predicted. Beyond, at the back of the hall, 
 the door into his father's studio was also open, and 
 a languid, odorous tide of oil-paint and Virginian 
 tobacco made a peculiarly deadly combination with 
 kitchen-smells, and indicated that Mr. Alainwaring 
 had been occupied with his audacious labours. Just 
 now he was engaged on the perpetration of a series 
 of cartoons (suitable or not for mural decoration). 
 The practical difficulty, if these ever attained com- 
 pletion, would be the discovery of the wall that should 
 be large enough to hold them ; indeed, the great 
 wall of China seemed the only destination which, 
 though remote, was sufficiently spacious. The sub- 
 ject of them was the European war from a psychic 
 no less than from a sanguinary point of view, for 
 the series (of which the sketches were complete) 
 started with a prodigious cartoon which depicted 
 Satan whispering odious counsels into the ear of the
 
 Peter 27 
 
 Emperor William II, who wore a smile of bland 
 imperial ambition at the very attractive prospects 
 presented by the Father of Lies. In the background 
 an army corps of the hosts of Hell stretched from 
 side to side of the picture like some leering, male- 
 volent flower-bed. Thereafter the series was to 
 traverse the annals of all kinds of frightfulness : 
 Zeppelins dropped bombs on Sunday-schools, sub- 
 marine crews, agape with laughter, shot down the 
 survivors from torpedoed liners. All these existed 
 only in sketches; the first, however, as Peter knew, 
 was rapidly approaching completion on the monstrous 
 scale, and took up the whole end of the studio. 
 Neither Peter nor his mother had as yet been per- 
 mitted a glimpse of it; the full blast of its withering 
 force, so Mr. Mainwaring had planned, was, on 
 completion, to smite and stun them. 
 
 He had heard Peter's entrance into the house, for 
 an outburst of jubilant yodelling came to the young, 
 man's ears as he put down his hat. 
 
 "Tirra lirra, tirra lirra," sang out the boisterous 
 voice. "Is that my Peter? Ha-de-ah-de-ho ! " 
 
 Peter's eyebrows went up, his mouth slackened 
 to a long sigh, and his slim shoulders shrugged. But 
 his voice — all of him that at present could convey 
 his mood to his father — was brisk and cordial. 
 
 "Hallo, father," he said. "Do you want me? " 
 
 "Yes, my dear; come in a moment. I have some- 
 thing to show you." 
 
 Peter closed the door of the kitchen stairs and 
 went into the studio. His father was standing high 
 on a slepladder in front of his canvas, dashing the 
 last opulent brushful of sombre colour on to the 
 thundercloud which, portending war, formed so effec- 
 tive a background of Prussian blue to the Emperor's
 
 28 Peter 
 
 head. He painted with swoops and dashes; such 
 things as "finish " were out of place in designs for 
 the wall of China. . . . Even as Peter entered he 
 skipped down from the steps of the ladder and laid 
 aside his palette and brushes. 
 
 " Finito, e ben finito ! " he cried. "Congratulate 
 me, my Peter ! I made the last stroke as you en- 
 tered, an added horror — is it not so? — in that cloud. 
 Ha ! You have not seen it yet ; sit down and drink 
 it in for five minutes. Does it make you hot and 
 miserable to look at? Yes, you'll see more of that 
 cloud and of what it holds for distracted Europe be- 
 fore I come to the end of my cartoons. Bombs and 
 torpedoes are in that cloud, my Peter; devastation 
 and destruction and damnation ! " 
 
 He struck a splendid attitude in front of the tre- 
 mendous canvas, and with a sweep of his hand caused 
 his thick crop of long, grey hair to stand out in 
 billows round his head. Physically, as regards height 
 and fineness of feature, Peter certainly owed a good 
 deal to his father, for John Mainwaring's head — with 
 its waves of hair, its high colour, its rich exuberance 
 ■ — was like some fine manuscript now enriched with 
 gilt and florid illuminations, of which Peter was, so 
 to speak, the neat, delicate text unadorned by these 
 flamboyant additions. Peter's vanity, doubtless, came 
 from the same paternal strain, for never was there 
 anyone more superbly conscious of his own supreme 
 merits than his father. Highly ornamental, he knew 
 that his mission was not only to adorn the palace of 
 art with his work, but to enlighten the dimness of the 
 world with his blazing presence. Like most men who 
 are possessed of extraordinary belief in themselves, 
 of high colour and exuberant spirits, he was liable to 
 accesses of profound gloom, when, with magnificent
 
 Peter 29 
 
 gestures, he would strike his forehead and wail over 
 his own wasted life and the futility of human en- 
 deavour. These attacks, which were very artistic and 
 studied performances, chiefly assailed him when the 
 Royal Academy had intimated that some stupendous 
 canvas of his awaited removal before varnishing day. 
 Then, with bewildering rapidity, his spirits would 
 mount to unheard-of altitudes again, and, brush in 
 hand, he would exclaim that he asked no more of the 
 world than to allow him to pursue his art unrecog- 
 nized and unhonoured, like Millet or Corot. His 
 temperament, in fact, was that of some boisterous 
 spring day which, opening with bright sunshine, 
 turns to snow in the middle of the afternoon, and 
 draws to a close in lambent serenity ; and whether 
 exalted, depressed, or normal, he was simply, though 
 slangily, the prmce of "bounders." 
 
 He clapped his hand on Peter's shoulder. 
 
 "I need not point out to you the merits, or, indeed, 
 the defects of my composition," he said, "for my 
 Peter inherits something of his father's perceptions. 
 Look at it then once more and tell me if my picture 
 recalls to you the method, even, perhaps, the inspira- 
 tion of any master not, like me, unknown to fame. 
 Who, my boy, if we allow ourselves for a moment to 
 believe in psychic possession, who, I ask you — or, 
 rather, to cast my sentence differently — to whom do I 
 owe the realization of terror, of menace, of spiritual 
 horror, which, ever so faintly, smoulders in my 
 canvas ? " 
 
 He folded his arms, awaiting a reply, and Peter 
 cudgelled his brains in order to make his answer as 
 agreeable as possible. The name of Blake occurred 
 to him, but he remembered that of late his father 
 had been apt to decry this artist for poverty of de- 
 
 c
 
 Peter 
 
 sign and failure to render emotional vastness. Then, 
 with great good luck, his eye fell on some photo- 
 graphic reproductions from the ceiling of the Sistine 
 Chapel that decorated the wall of the studio, and he 
 felt he had guessed right. 
 
 "No one but Michael Angelo," he said. "That's 
 all the influence I can see, father." 
 
 Mr. Mainwaring rested his chin on his hand 
 and was gazing at his work with frowning, seer-like 
 scrutiny. It was difficult to realize that it was he 
 who had yodelled so jubilantly just now. 
 
 "Curious that you should have said that, Peter," 
 he said in a deep, dreamy voice. " For days past, 
 as I worked, it has seemed to me that M.A. — Master 
 of Art, as well as Michael Angelo, note you — that 
 M.A. was standing by me. At times, indeed, it 
 seemed that not I, but another, controlled my brush. 
 I do not say he approved, no, no ; that he was pleased 
 with me; but he was then, my boy. So, if there is 
 any merit in my work, I beseech you to attribute it 
 not to me but to him. It was as if I was in a 
 trance. . . ." 
 
 He closed his eyes for a moment and bowed his 
 head, and then, as if at the last "Amen " of some 
 solemn service, he came out of the dim cathedral into 
 sunlight. 
 
 "Your mother! " he said. "We must not forget 
 her in this great moment. Is she in? Tirra lirra ! 
 Ha-de-ah-de-ho ! My own ! " 
 
 He pranced to the door, ringing the bell, as he 
 passed, and repeated his yodelling cries. From up- 
 st-airs a quiet, thin voice gave some fiat echo of his 
 salutation ; from below a hot parlourmaid opened the 
 door of the kitchen stairs and set free a fresh gale 
 of roast ings.
 
 Peter 31 
 
 "Three glasses," he said to the latter "Three 
 glasses, please, and the decanter of port. Maria 
 mia! Come down, my dear, and, if you love me, 
 keep shut your lustrous eyes and take my hand, and 
 I will guide you to the place I reserve for you. So ! 
 Eyes shut and no cheating ! " 
 
 Mrs. Mainwaring, small in stature, with a porce- 
 lain neatness about her as of a Dresden shepherdess, 
 suffered herself to be led into the studio, preserving 
 the scrupulous honesty of closed eyelids. By her 
 side her rococo husband looked more than ever like 
 some preposterous dancing-master, and if it was 
 correct to attribute to him Peter's inherited vanity, 
 it was equally right to derive from the young man's 
 mother that finish and precision which characterized 
 his movements and his manners. Easily, too, though 
 with a shade more subtlety, a psychologist might 
 have conjectured where Peter's habit of walking in 
 the wet woods and telling nobody was derived 
 from, for it was not hard to guess that Mrs. Main- 
 waring's tranquil self-possession, her smiling, serene 
 indulgence of her husband's whim, w-as the result 
 of a quality firm and deeply rooted. Self-repression 
 had, perhaps, become a habit, for her conduct seemed 
 quite effortless; but in that tight, thin-lipped mouth, 
 gently smiling, there was something inscrutably in- 
 dependent. She was like that, secret and self- 
 contained, because she chose to be like that; her 
 serenity, her coUectedness, were the mask she chose 
 to wear. Thus, probably, Peter's inheritance from 
 her was of more durable stuff than the vanity he owed 
 to his father, for how, if his mother had not been 
 somehow adamantine, could she have lived for nearly 
 a quarter of a century with this flamboyant partner, 
 and yet have neither imbibed one bubble of his effer-
 
 32 
 
 Peter 
 
 vescence nor lost any grain of her own restraint? 
 Indeed, she must have been like some piece of quartz 
 for ever dashed along by the turbulence of his 
 impetuous flood, and yet all the effect that this buf- 
 feting and bruising had produced on her had been 
 but to polish and harden her. She went precisely 
 where the current dashed her, but remained solid 
 and small and impenetrable. 
 
 Such was her relation to the bounding extra- 
 vagance of her husband; he swept her along, quite 
 unresisting, but never parting from her self-contained 
 integrity, and all his whirlings and waterfalls had 
 never stripped one atom off her nor roughened her 
 surface. To him she appeared transparently clear, 
 though, as a matter of fact, not only had he never 
 seen into her, but, actually, he had never seen her 
 at all. He bounced her about, demanding now 
 homage, when the exuberance of creation was his, 
 now sympathy when the rejection of a picture by the 
 Royal Academy made him a despairing pessimist; 
 but she never varied with his feverish temperature, 
 and on the surface, at any rate, remained of an 
 unchangeable coolness. His trumpets never intoxi- 
 cated her small, pink ear; his despair of himself and 
 the world in general never came within measurable 
 distance of sullying her serenity, any more than a 
 thunderstorm disturbs the effulgence of a half-moon 
 that neither waxes nor wanes. She still continued 
 calmly shining behind his clouds, as was obvious 
 when those clouds had discharged their violence. 
 John Mainwaring never dreamed of considering what, 
 possibly, might lie below that finished surface; it 
 was enough for him that she should always be ready 
 to pay a scentless homage to his achievements, or sit 
 quietly like a fLxed star above the clouds of despair
 
 Peter 33 
 
 that occasionally darkened his day. She was "Maria 
 mia, my beloved," when he was pleased with him- 
 self, and, when otherwise, it was enough that she 
 should repeat at intervals: "Fancy their rejecting 
 your picture. I am sure there are hundreds in the 
 exhibition not half so good." 
 
 To Peter she was an enigma to which he never 
 now attempted or desired to find the key. She 
 seemed to him quite impervious to external influences 
 behind that high wall of her reserve. Nothing, so 
 far as he knew, roused emotion in her; nothing ex- 
 cited, nothing depressed her. Sometimes, when a 
 boy, he had gone to her with a trouble to confide, 
 and she would say: "How tiresome for you, dear," 
 and perhaps suggest some sensible course of action. 
 But neither his troubles nor her own (if she had 
 any) seemed to touch her emotions; while, on the 
 other hand, if there was something agreeable to com- 
 municate, if his father sold a picture, or Peter had 
 the announcement of promotion in the Foreign Office, 
 her sympathy and pleasure (if she felt any) were just 
 as iced as her condolence had been. The event 
 — to Peter's apprehension — that most had power to 
 move her was the fact that somebody had left open 
 the door at the top of the kitchen stairs. When that 
 was "quite shut," and when all household cares had 
 their sunset after dinner, her habitual mode of self- 
 employment was to read a page or two of a novel 
 (returning it to the library next day) and then to take 
 some sort of railway guide and scan the advertise- 
 ments of hotels situated in agreeable places on the 
 south coast or among the Derbyshire Highlands. 
 Often and often had Peter returned from dinner to 
 find his mother thus employed. His father, when in 
 the throes of creation, went early to bed in order to
 
 34 
 
 Peter 
 
 be fresh and spry for the light of the morning hours ; 
 but she slept badly, and slept best if she went late 
 to bed. There she would be then when Peter latch- 
 keyed himself into the house on his return from 
 dining out, or even, occasionally, when he returned 
 far later from a dance, with the Bradshaw in her hand 
 open among the advertisements of hotels. She would 
 put a paper-knife in the leaves to keep her place while 
 she exchanged a few words with him ; then, when he 
 went to bed, she would resume her reading. Quite 
 naturally and warrantably he had always considered 
 this a "sad narcotic exercise " on her part, producing, 
 it was to be hoped, the drowsiness which she was 
 wooing. A more promising device for dulling the 
 activity of the brain, than reading about unknown 
 hotels at unvisited places, could hardly be desired, 
 and so reasonable a process provoked no curiosity 
 on his part. 
 
 But the door at the top of the kitchen stairs was 
 the most active of her interests, and took precedence 
 in her mind of any mood of her husband's. So when 
 to-day he led her with a prancing processional move- 
 ment to a throne of Spanish brocade at a suitable 
 focusing distance from the finished cartoon, she, 
 with nostrils open though with shut eyes, gave the 
 door to the kitchen stairs the first claim on her 
 attention. 
 
 "That door has been left open again," she said. 
 "How careless Burrows is ! Please shut it, my dear. 
 I will keep my eyes tightly shut." 
 
 It struck Peter at this moment that both he and 
 his mother treated his father as if he had been a 
 child. They both played his games, treating them 
 with due seriousness, lest they should damp the 
 excited pleasure of the young. She was playing now
 
 Peter 35 
 
 without collusion, for, led in as she had been, with 
 closed eyes, she had no idea that Peter was present. 
 Then, faintly up the kitchen stairs came the jingle 
 of the glasses, and Burrow^s entered with the tray that 
 had been ordered, once more leaving that fatal door 
 agape. By some exercise of domestic intuition Mrs. 
 Mainwaring divined the sort of thing going on round 
 her, and with eyes still honourably closed said : 
 
 " Be sure you close the door at the top of the stairs, 
 Burrows, when you go down again." 
 
 John Mainwaring, with a wealth of gesticulation 
 in order to enjoin silence on Peter, and with much 
 stealthiness of action, completed his festive prepara- 
 tions. Demanding from his wife steadiness of hand 
 and no questions, he thrust between her fingers a 
 brimming glass of port, took one himself, and filled 
 a third for Peter. In obedience to his pantomime 
 Peter stood on one side of his enthroned mother and 
 elevated his glass. 
 
 "Open your dear blue eyes, Maria mia!" ex- 
 claimed John Mainwaring, "and before you say a 
 single word drink to your husband's offering to 
 Art ! " 
 
 Mrs. Mainwaring opened her eyes, and found as 
 she had already guessed from previous experience, 
 her brimming glass. 
 
 "I couldn't possibly drink all that, my dear," 
 she said, " but I will sip it with pleasure before I 
 say anything. There ! Dear me, what a fine great 
 picture ! All success to it ! So that's what has kept 
 you so busy all these days when I wasn't allowed 
 to come into your studio. Oh, there's Peter ! Are 
 you going to dine at home, dear ? I thought you 
 said you were going out."
 
 36 Peter 
 
 "I've only come home to dress," said he. 
 
 "I see. Now let me look at your father's picture. 
 Whv, there's the German Emperor ! And what a 
 quantity of other people. Dear me ! And who is 
 that whispering to the Emperor? What a horrid 
 expression he has ! " 
 
 The artist drank his glass of port at a gulp, and 
 at another the rest of hers. 
 
 "Horrid? I should think it was. If you had 
 said devilish you would have been even more on the 
 bullseye. Now you shall be our Moliere's house- 
 maid. Speak, voice of the British public! Tell me 
 and Peter what you see before you." 
 
 Mrs. Mainwaring, with the aid of her glasses, 
 and the slight hint already given, was perfectly 
 certain that it must be Satan who was whispering 
 to the Emperor, and that all those dreadful faces 
 behind must have something to do with him. Then 
 there was that huge dark cloud in the background. 
 
 "The Emperor and Satan," she said with a sort 
 of placid excitement, like an adult trying to guess 
 a child's riddle. "Now wait a minute, my dear. 
 Yes, I'm sure that dreadful thundercloud behind is 
 the war, and if the Emperor wouldn't listen to Satan 
 it would go away. But he's looking pleased and 
 proud; he is listening. I suspect that Satan is telling 
 him that he will win the war and be Emperor of 
 the earth, as you've always said he would have been 
 if the Germans had won. Well, I do think it's 
 clever of you to have made me think of all that. 
 Such a few weeks, too, to paint such a big picture ! 
 How well you kept your secret ! You only told 
 me that you were very busy, and that I mustn't 
 come into your studio. I never thought that when 
 you allowed me in again I should see anything so
 
 Peter 37 
 
 large and remarkable. Most striking! Isn't it, 
 
 Peter ? " 
 
 "Splendid! " said Peter. Then he wondered if 
 he had put enough conviction into his voice to satisfy 
 the gourmandise of his father. 
 
 "Quite splendid!" he said, rather louder. 
 
 Then it was Mrs. Mainwaring's turn in this 
 
 game. 
 
 "And it's only the first of a series," said she. 
 "You must send it to some exhibition at once, John, 
 in order to make room for the rest. So large, is it 
 not? It fills up all the end of the studio. Such an 
 important picture. Dear me, how wicked the 
 Emperor looks ! And what will the next picture be ? " 
 
 "War. Picture of war. Allegorical. Shells 
 bursting into shapes of devilish malignity." 
 
 He leaned on the back of the throne, regarding 
 the picture intently. 
 
 "It will kill me, painting the rest of them," he 
 said with a fell intensity. "I've got to go through 
 the hell of it all myself before I can paint them." 
 
 The calm of Mrs. Mainwaring's voice was un- 
 touched by this gloomy prospect. 
 
 "No, dear, it won't kill you," she said consolingly. 
 "That's your artistic temperament. You will have 
 a good holiday afterwards. You must be sure to 
 do that. I see; the other pictures will all come 
 out of that dreadful thundercloud. Such a poetical 
 idea ! And I hope you'll have a picture of Peace 
 for the last one. Everything quite serene again, 
 and the thundercloud vanished, and no Emperor at 
 all, unless you paint a very little figure of him in 
 the background to show how small he has become. 
 Just him in the background, somewhere in Holland." 
 
 John Mainwaring left his domestic position, lean-
 
 38 Peter 
 
 ing on the throne, and strode up and down the 
 studio. 
 
 "Ah, that intolerable happy ending!" he said. 
 "That's the convention that spoils all art. Art's a 
 stern, bitter business; you mustn't expect to find a 
 bit of sugar at the bottom of your cup. Art, as the 
 Greeks said, is meant to move pity and terror." 
 
 Mrs. Mainwaring stepped from her throne. 
 
 "Well, I shall think of a peaceful picture for 
 myself, then," she said, "and when I have looked 
 at all yours I shall imagine my own. After all, the 
 war is over, and it's had a happy ending for us, 
 since the Germans have been beaten and Peter has 
 come back from it all safe and sound. That's my 
 ending." 
 
 He projected his fine grey hair again with a 
 dexterous sweep of the hand. 
 
 "Well, well," he said, as if he was an adult play- 
 ing with a child, whereas certainly the relation was 
 the other way about. "I will do my best for you, 
 Maria. But I make no promise, mind. Remember 
 that." 
 
 As Peter started off again for the various enter- 
 tainments of the evening he tried to imagine himself 
 in serious sympathy with either of his parents, and 
 ruinously failed. Beginning with his father, he sur- 
 veyed with the critical clear-sightedness of his terribly 
 sensible nature those hysterical daubings of paint, 
 those mysteries as to what his father was engaged 
 on, those prancing port wine ceremonies when his 
 labour was finished, that crystal confidence, never 
 clouded, in the worth of his fatuous achievements. 
 Long ago it had soaked into his soul that his father 
 was a magnificent buffoon, who, decking himself in 
 the habiliments of Hamlet, had no idea that instead
 
 Peter 39 
 
 of being engaged in heroic drama, he was a figure in 
 a farce so outrageous that you could not really laugh 
 at him; you could only marvel. Had his pictures, 
 every one of them, been masterpieces, his own 
 enthusiasm over them would have verged on the 
 grotesque. As it was they were preposterous and 
 childish performances, inspiring the observer with 
 pity and terror for the perpetrator rather than, in the 
 sense of Aristotle, whom his father so often quoted, 
 for the works themselves. How was it possible to 
 feel sympathy with one whose impenetrable egoism 
 burned radiantly unconsumed like that? Yet, while 
 he rejected that possibility, Peter found himself some- 
 how envying the temperament that transmuted life 
 for Its owner into an endless orgy and carouse. Even 
 the deepest despairs into which reaction plunged his 
 father were psychical feasts to him, served up with 
 the same sauce of transcendental egoism as were his 
 raptures. That was like some pungent essential oil 
 of so ammoniacal an aroma that it pervaded its whole 
 accessible atmosphere. No neutral quality on the 
 part of others, no individual indifference was per- 
 mitted to exist, or, if it existed, it was either wholly 
 unnoticed or, if noticed, sublimely pitied. Peter's 
 father, so it struck the young man, galloped through 
 life "like a ramping and a roaring lion," the king 
 of the beasts. 
 
 It w^as no manner of good to attempt to sym- 
 pathize with so predatory an animal, and from the 
 thought of his father Peter switched off to the thought 
 of his mother, who was the habitual prey. There 
 he was confronted with the mild enigma, of which 
 he had not the faintest comprehension, and for the 
 hundredth time, guessing out of a dubious, incurious 
 twilight, he wondered if there was, could be, any-
 
 40 
 
 Peter 
 
 thing to comprehend. He tried to sum up his know- 
 ledge of her. She ordered dinner, she wore day and 
 night some family inheritance of her own of splendid 
 pearls, she read advertisements in railway guides of 
 hotels on Cornish Rivieras and Derbyshire Switzer- 
 lands. That she should order dinner and wear her 
 own pearls was an accidental happening, because she 
 was mistress of a house and had some pearls, but 
 beyond that she receded, as far as Peter was con- 
 cerned, into a dreamland without logic. Indeed, as 
 he devoted his mind to her now, the most illogical 
 thing about her was that for twenty-three years she 
 had contrived to live with his father, and had pre- 
 serv^ed a certain personality of her own. It seemed 
 frankly impossible that anyone who had lived so 
 long with that maniacal egoist should not have been 
 in any way affected by him. But there she was. 
 His father had neither crushed her nor vitalized her, 
 and whatever her real personality might be, Peter 
 felt sure that the ramping and the roaring lion had 
 not invaded an atom of it. If his father sustained 
 himself on the flamboyance of his own existence, 
 she, none the less, was self-sufficient, demanding 
 neither sympathy nor comprehension from others. 
 The chasm that yawned between himself and his 
 father was a mere rabbit-scrape compared to the abyss 
 on the other side of which there sat his mother, 
 delicate and immovable, covered with hoar frost and 
 decked with her pearls, and reading her railway 
 guide. 
 
 Peter owed that deep-seated vanity of his to his 
 father; to his mother he owed that aloofness which 
 was no less characteristic of him. But to himself he 
 seemed to have nothing to do with either of them ; 
 they both appeared to him to be distant and ancient
 
 Peter 41 
 
 phenomena, and he waved a mild salutation to them 
 as acknowledgment of the debt of his own existence. 
 Between them they had projected him, but his own 
 individuality swamped that as completely as his 
 father's egoism drowned all other flavours. Was it 
 always like that nowadays? Were all the last genera- 
 tion so far sundered from the adolescent present as 
 he from his father and mother ? . . . Was there a new 
 plan of life, a new outlook, a new everything?
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Peter's dinner at the Ritz was no dinner-party, and 
 there were but three young men, of whom he was one, 
 and their hostess who assembled in the Yawning- 
 place. People always yawned there; they were either 
 waiting for somebody to come, or they were waiting 
 for somebody to go away. . . . 
 
 His hostess to-night was the perennial Mrs. Trent- 
 ham, with whom a party of herself and three young 
 men was a favourite form of entertainment. She 
 always professed a coquettish contrition at not having 
 been able to get some girls to meet her young men — 
 which, indeed, she had been quite wonderfully unable 
 to do, since it never occurred to her to take the pre- 
 liminary step of asking them, and no nice girl would 
 come to dine with Mrs. Trentham without being 
 asked. So the girls, not being asked, stayed away, 
 and Mrs. Trentham apologized. 
 
 She was considerably older than the rest of her 
 youthful assemblage; but she looked almost as 
 young as any of them, and might charitably have 
 been supposed to be a sister, or a wife, or something. 
 She had only one real passion in her excited life, 
 and that was to dine as publicly as possible with 
 several young men, sending her husband, to his great 
 contentment, to amuse himself comfortably at his 
 club. There he talked politics and played Bridge, 
 and the very number of these public entertainments 
 on the part of his wife, and the diversity of the youths 
 who partook of them, were guarantee against any 
 
 42
 
 Peter 43 
 
 breath of scandal sullying herself or anybody else. 
 With perfect justice, nobody believed anything 
 against her; yet this delightful immunity from 
 gossip rather annoyed her. But, in order to give 
 colour to compromise, she would have been obliged to 
 descend to duets in quiet corners, which would have 
 been no fun at all. The loss of publicity, the loss, 
 too, of the pleasing phenomenon that batch after 
 batch of young men, in groups of two or three, so 
 constantly accompanied her to one of the most 
 strategic tables at the Ritz, would not have been 
 compensated for by the added chance of scandalous 
 talkings. After all, London was not so violently 
 likely to care what she did, especially since she did 
 not care either, and it was far more agreeable to 
 continue doing what she liked rather than gain an 
 entirely spurious loss of reputation by less enjoyable 
 methods. She had a pleasant, prurient mind, and 
 her morals were beyond reproach. She called atten- 
 tion to her age, when she was with the young, in a 
 somewhat excessive manner, and often alluded to 
 her beautiful hair, which had been grey before she 
 was thirty. "Such an old woman as me," was an 
 ungrammatical phrase which she often affected, and 
 this was a preventive measure against anybody else 
 thinking of such a thing. Her favourite subject of 
 conversation was love. 
 
 Mrs. Trentham was not really quite so silly as 
 she sounded, though her immense sprightliness often 
 seemed to plunge her into the nethermost depths of 
 fatuousness. During the war she had taken to dress- 
 ing in the uniform of a nurse, which she discovered 
 suited her, though, for fear of witnessing distressing 
 sights, she kept well away from hospitals; since then, 
 having realized the decorative value of black and
 
 44 
 
 Peter 
 
 white, she had adopted a garb which seemed to in- 
 dicate that she was a widow, though not quite recently 
 bereaved. An occasional bright note of colour in 
 her hair or round her charming waist seemed to have 
 forgotten about her widowhood and was extremely 
 becoming. ... So garbed, so minded, she awaited 
 Peter, who was the last of her conspicuous party of 
 young men. He was certainly late for her appointed 
 hour, but she did not dislike that as the Yawning- 
 place was full, and, instead of scolding him, she had 
 her usual apologetic greetings volubly ready. 
 
 "My dear, you will be furious with me, I know," 
 she said, "but I simply couldn't get hold of any girls, 
 so you and Charlie and Tommy will just have to put 
 up with an old woman until we go to the opera, and 
 then you will breathe loud sighs of relief, and I shall 
 see you no more. Why are you so late, Peter? 
 Whom have you been flirting with ? " 
 
 "My father and my mother," said Peter. "He 
 has just finished the largest picture in the world." 
 
 " How sweet of him ! Ah, they have brought 
 some cocktails at last." 
 
 She waited till the servant was well out of hearing. 
 
 "But how stupid the waiter is," she said. "I am 
 sure I told him to bring three not four. Shall I taste 
 it ? Shall I like it, do you think ? " 
 
 It seemed not too optimistic to hope that she 
 would, for, otherwise, she would long ago have ceased 
 not only tasting the fourth cocktail which she was 
 sure she had not ordered, but consuming it so com- 
 pletely that the strip of lemon-peel overbalanced 
 against the tip of her pretty nose. 
 
 "My dear, how strong! " she exclaimed. "I feel 
 perfectly tipsy, and one of you must give me your 
 arm, as if you were a nephew or something if I
 
 Peter 45 
 
 stagger or reel. Let us go in to dinner at once. I 
 promised Ella we would get to Mrs. Wardour's box 
 by the beginning of the opera." 
 
 "Who is Mrs. Wardour?" asked Charlie 
 Harman. 
 
 "Oh, quite new," said Mrs. Trentham. "Hardly 
 anyone has seen her yet. Rich, fabulously rich. Her 
 husband was one of the hugest profiteers— not eggs 
 at fourpence, but steamers at a quarter of a million. 
 He bought up everything that floats and sold it to 
 the Government, and most of it got sunk. He died 
 a couple of years ago. Too sad." 
 
 "More about her, please," said Peter. 
 
 "I haven't seen her yet, my dear, but Ella Thirl- 
 mere is being her godmother — sponsor, you know — 
 and she asked me to take people to her box and her 
 dinners and her dances. Her name's Lucy : it would 
 be. I shall begin by calling her Lucy almost im- 
 mediately. There's no time nowadays to get to know 
 people. You have to pretend to know them intimately 
 almost the moment you set eyes on them." 
 
 "And pretend not to know them afterwards, if 
 necessary," said Peter. 
 
 May Trentham gave a hasty glance round the 
 room and, becoming aware that quite a sufficient 
 number of people were looking at her and her party, 
 slapped the back of Peter's hand with the tips of her 
 fingers, and gave a scream of laughter to show what 
 a tremendously amusing time she was having. 
 
 "You naughty boy!", she said. "Is he not 
 cynical about Lucy? I shan't talk to you any more. 
 Tommy, my dear, tell me what you've been doing. 
 You look flushed. I believe you're in love." 
 
 "No. I've been playing squash," said Tommy. 
 
 "What is squash? I believe it's one of your 
 
 D
 
 46 Peter 
 
 horrid new words and means flirting. Who is 
 
 she?" 
 
 "She is CharHe. At least, I was playing squash 
 with Charlie," said Tommy, with laborious precision. 
 "He didn't like it." 
 
 Charlie fingered two little tails of blond hair that 
 grew directly below his nostrils and formed his 
 moustache. Otherwise his face was completely 
 feminine — plain and pink and plump. He gesticu- 
 lated a good deal with his hands, flapping and 
 dabbing with them. 
 
 "Odious game," he said, showing a great many 
 teeth between his red lips. "You go on hitting a 
 ball against a putrid wall until you're too tired to 
 hit it any more, and then Tommy says ' One love.' 
 When you've done that fifteen times, he says ' Game,' 
 and then you begin another one. I hoped I should 
 never hear of it again." 
 
 "You shan't, my dear; but don't be such a cross- 
 patch. I know you're annoyed with me for not get- 
 ting you some pretty girl to talk to. You must talk 
 to Peter. He's in disgrace with me. Oh, Peter, is 
 it true about Nellie Heaton's engagement ? " 
 
 "Perfectly," said Peter. 
 
 "Then why aren't you broken-hearted? I don't 
 believe any of you young men have got hearts 
 nowadays. 
 
 "That accounts for their not being broken," said 
 Peter. 
 
 It was time to laugh loudly again in order to 
 remind the rest of the diners what a brilliant time she 
 was having, and May Trentham did this. 
 
 "There he goes again!" she said. "Is he not 
 shocking ? My dear, have you had a dreadful scene 
 with her?"
 
 Peter 47 
 
 "No. I only had tea with her." 
 
 "Oh, don't pretend you weren't desperately in love 
 with her. But never mind. I will find some other 
 girl for you, who will adore you so violently that you 
 will lose your heart to her, though you say you 
 haven't got one. She shall be rich and lovely, and 
 we shall all be frantically jealous of her. And you 
 shall both call me Aunt May, because I have brought 
 you together." 
 
 "Thank you. Aunt May," said Peter. "Go on 
 about her, please." 
 
 "No, I've talked to you long enough. Tommy is 
 feeling left out. When the opera is over, by the way, 
 I want you all to come on to Ella Thirlmere's dance. 
 I promised to bring you all. Mrs. Wardour is sure 
 to be coming, and she will certainly have plenty of 
 motor-cars to take us. Oh, there is that marvellous 
 Spanish boxer, is it not, dining alone with Ella. 
 How gentle and kind he looks ! Darling Ella ! I 
 wonder if she will have six rounds with him in the 
 middle of her dance. I would certainly back her : 
 look at her chest. But how daring of her to dine 
 with him here ! They say he marries again after each 
 of his fights and settles all the money he has won on 
 his new wife. But, after all, 1 suppose it's just as 
 daring of me to dine with three such attractive young 
 men as for her to dine with just one Solomon like 
 that ! " 
 
 Tommy puzzled over this for a moment. He was 
 very good-looking, but there was no other reason for 
 him. 
 
 "Solomon?" he asked. 
 
 "Yes, my dear; think of his wives. I was talking 
 to Anthony Braille to-day, who makes all those won- 
 derful tables about population, and what encourages
 
 48 Peter 
 
 and hinders it. He said the only chance for England 
 was to close all the music-hall bars and introduce 
 polygamy. Every Englishman, after this dreadful 
 war — you know I was a nurse during the war — must 
 have fifty children a year for two years — or did he 
 say two children a year for fifty years i — in order to 
 bring up the population again to its proper level. It 
 was all most interesting — if he only didn't stutter 
 so much ! " 
 
 " He seems to have stuttered out the main facts," 
 said Peter. 
 
 "Oh, I couldn't tell a young man half the things 
 he said to me. We ought all to be Patagonians and 
 polygamists. The birth-rate among Patagonians is 
 colossal. They behead all women of the age of thirty- 
 five who aren't married, and all bachelors at the age 
 of forty. It has something to do with eugenics." 
 
 The intoxication of a restaurant now crowded with 
 people had gained complete ascendancy over Peter's 
 hostess. She never felt quiet and contented unless 
 she was surrounded by a host of friends, acquaint- 
 ances, and people she knew by sight, and had to shout 
 at the top of her voice in order to be h6ard above the 
 roar of other conversations and the blare of a band. 
 It was equally necessary for the establishment of this 
 tranquil frame of mind that several young men, and, 
 if possible, no women, should be with her, and that 
 she should constantly be convulsed by shrieks of 
 laughter, and should have both herelbowson the table. 
 A finer nuance in success w'as that she must appear 
 wholly absorbed in the brilliance of her own table, 
 and quite unconscious of the hubbub round her, 
 though presently, when she got up, she would seem 
 to awake to the fact that she was in a crowded 
 restaurant, and would blow kisses all over the room,
 
 Peter 49 
 
 and have dozens of little smiles and words for all 
 those whose position between her and the door she 
 had unerringly noted. Just a sentence or two for 
 each, reminding her "my dears" of a meeting, to- 
 morrow, or a meeting yesterday with a phrase of 
 flattery and a bit of whispered scandal and the con- 
 clusion : " I must fly ; those boys will be so cross with 
 me if I keep them w-aiting. Meet you at dearest 
 Ella's ? Yes ? Lovely ! "... All this was faithfully 
 performed on her part, and her face, with its pretty 
 little features all bunched together in the middle of 
 it, like the markings in a pansy, had expanded and 
 contracted again sufficient times before she reached 
 the door of the restaurant to enable a weary conclave 
 to express itself as it w^aited for her. 
 
 "Parsifal, too," said Charlie. "Thank God we've 
 missed the first act. Aged stunt — flower-maidens and 
 grails. Can't we get away, Peter? Come home with 
 me. Say we're busy at the P.O. German compli- 
 cations. Bolshevists on the Rhine." 
 
 Tommy stood first on one leg scratching a slim 
 calf with the other instep, and then on the other leg 
 scratching in a corresponding manner. 
 
 "You simply can't," he said. "How am I to deal 
 with her and Lucy ? And Parsifal ? " 
 
 "Polygamy and Patagonians," said Peter, with 
 a vague remembrance of the preposterous conver- 
 sation that had garlanded their dinner. "Flirt, 
 Tommy. Can you flirt? Hold hands. Sigh. Beam. 
 Can't you manage it? " 
 
 "No," said Tommy. 
 
 "Then Tommy and I will go away," said Charlie. 
 "After all, she doesn't want us, except as a stage 
 crowd. She wants you most, Peter. I say, I like 
 your studs. Who?"
 
 50 Peter 
 
 "Nobod3^ I liked them, too, so I got them. But 
 we've all got to go on. After all, we've had dinner." 
 
 "All the more reason for not going on," said 
 Charlie. 
 
 "That's no good. It doesn't pay. Besides, she's 
 awfully decent " 
 
 "Don't be priggish, Peter. I say, is Nellie really 
 going to marry Philip Beaumont? Do you mind?" 
 
 This atrocious conversation was interrupted by 
 the sprightly tripping advent of their hostess, who 
 put her fingers in her ears, which she knew were 
 "shell-like," as she passed through the direct blast 
 of the band, and consoled them for her want of 
 appreciation of their professional functions by dis- 
 tributing more of her little smiles. 
 
 "Now I know you are all going to scold me," 
 she said, "because I've kept you waiting. But there 
 w-ere so many dears who insisted on my having a 
 word with them. They nearly tore my frock off. 
 Let's all cram into one taxi, and I will sit bodkin. 
 And after Ella's dance we'll all go on to Margie 
 Clifford's. She specially told me to bring all of you, 
 and scold you well first for not having talked to 
 her on your way out. I don't know what everybody 
 will think when I appear at the Ritz and the Opera, 
 and two dances with the same young men. I shall 
 have to tell my darling Bob that the Morning Post 
 hasn't come, or he'll storm at me. What a lovely 
 white lie." 
 
 There flashed through Peter's consciousness at 
 that moment an insane wonder as to what woul<f 
 happen if he said calmly and clearly and genuinely^ 
 "My good woman, who cares? As for the com^ 
 promising young men who accompany you, they 
 are all dying to get away, and only the debt of the
 
 Peter 51 
 
 excellent dinner you gave us, of which I reminded 
 them, prevents us from doing so." There was the 
 truth of the matter, and it was all rather mean and 
 miserable. Her guests were spending the evening 
 with her and ministering to her hopeless delight in 
 daring situations simply because she had, on her 
 side, administered the nosebag. They consented, 
 with a grudging sense of honourable engagement, 
 to plough their way in her wake merely because she 
 had fed them. If she had asked them severally or 
 collectively to drop in after dinner, in the way of a 
 friend, for conversation and soda water, none of 
 them would have dreamed of gratifying her. And 
 now, when they had fed deliciously at her ex- 
 pense, they would all have preferred to go back 
 to Charlie's rooms in Jermyn Street, or to Tommy's 
 flat (Peter's house was handicapped by the presence 
 of parents), rather than trail along to Parsifal, 
 and to a dance, and yet another dance. The 
 dances, perhaps, might be amusing, for there 
 would be girls there, and some sitting about on 
 stairs, and some sliding about on slippery floors, 
 and an irresponsible atmosphere, and certainly some 
 more champagne. You had to get through the night 
 somehow, and nowadays you could smoke while you 
 were dancing, and you needn't dance much. The 
 nuisance — rather a serious one — was that Mrs. 
 Trentham would be there all the time, screaming and 
 dabbing at them to show how amusing and brilliant 
 they all were, keeping them firmly planted round 
 her while she told them that they must go away and 
 dance and make themselves agreeable to others rather 
 than hang round an old woman like her, and con- 
 tinually whistling them back if they attempted to 
 do anything of the sort. She would take up a position
 
 52 
 
 Peter 
 
 where she could most advantageously be seen and 
 heard, and get them all plastered about her, swiftly 
 talking to each in turn, so that he could not possibly 
 go away as long as she so volubly told him to. She 
 had that artless art to perfection ; no one had such 
 a gift for making young men adhesive as she, while 
 all the time she was scolding them for wasting their 
 time on an old woman. There was no semblance of 
 sentiment in these proceedings; the entire objective 
 of the manoeuvres was to demonstrate to the world 
 that these boys insisted on crowding round her and 
 not leaving her. That was her notion of a successful 
 evening, and since they had signed their bond by 
 eating her dinner, she managed to exact the full 
 pound of flesh. 
 
 The curtain went down on the first act of Parsifal 
 precisely as Mrs. Trentham led her shrill way into 
 one of the two boxes that bore the name of Mrs. 
 Wardour. She tripped in, all feather fan and stock- 
 ings, like some elegant exotic hen, proudly conscious 
 of the brood of most presentable chicks, though not 
 of her rearing, which followed her. The house at 
 that moment started into light again, and black 
 against the oblong of brightness were the backs of 
 two female heads, both of which turned round at the 
 click of the opened door. One of them had a great 
 tiara on, sitting firmly on a desert of pale sandy hair. 
 
 May Trentham advanced with both hands held out. 
 
 "My dear, how late we are," she said. "You must 
 scold these boys, for they kept me in such shrieks 
 of laughter at dinner that I had no idea of the time. 
 Dearest Ella has so often talked to me about you ; 
 always asking: ' Haven't I met Mrs. Wardour yet? 
 Was it possible I had not met her great friend Lucy 
 Wardour? ' Charmed! "
 
 Peter 53 
 
 In the hard light of the theatre, Mrs. Wardour's 
 face appeared to her to be quite flat ; the shadows on 
 it looked like dark smudges applied to the surface 
 with a brush, rather than markings derived from 
 projections and depressions. This apparition of a 
 diamond-crowned oval of meaningless flesh was 
 slightly embarrassing, and she turned to the second 
 occupant of the box. There, in the younger face, she 
 saw what Lucy might, perhaps, once have been like, 
 before the years had flattened her out. Obviously 
 this was a daughter, though Ella Thirlmere had 
 altogether omitted to mention such a thing. Then, 
 with her rather short-sighted eyes growing accus- 
 tomed to the staring light, Mrs. Trentham observed 
 that her first impression of her hostess's face was an 
 illusion, though founded on fact; just as when the 
 figure of a man resolves itself into a hat and coat 
 hanging on the wall. There was nothing, in fact, 
 abnormal about Mrs. Wardour's countenance : it was 
 just blankish. She had large cheeks of uniform sur- 
 face, a nose of small elevation, no eyebrows, and 
 eyes set in very shallow sockets. Then another 
 shadow came on to her face ; but this time, without 
 delay, May Trentham saw that it was her mouth 
 opening. When she had opened it, she spoke, but 
 she did not conduct both processes simultaneously. 
 
 "Well, I'm pleased to see you," she said; "but 
 there are so many friends of Lady Thirlmere — Ella, 
 I should say ; she told me always to say Ella — there 
 are so many of Ella's friends visiting me to-night 
 that I don't quite seem to know your name." 
 
 May Trentham felt that her brain was giving way. 
 Here was a perfectly empty box, except for Mrs. 
 Wardour and her daughter, and yet here was Mrs. 
 Wardour assuring her that so many friends of Ella
 
 54 
 
 Peter 
 
 were here. . . . Where were the friends? Were they 
 invisible? Was the box in reality crowded with 
 unseen presences ? . . . 
 
 "I'm Mrs. Trentham," she said, cHnging firmly to 
 that sure and certain fact. "May Trentham. Ella 
 told me you would expect me." 
 
 Mrs. Wardour appeared to be making an effort 
 of recollection. This, in a few moments, seemed 
 successful. 
 
 "That's correct," she said. "I remember; and 
 this is my daughter Silvia." 
 
 For a moment her face slipped off its sheath of 
 meaninglessness, and something homely and kindly 
 and simple gleamed in it. 
 
 "I've got two boxes to-night, Mrs. Trentham," 
 she said. "This and the next, as Lady Thirlmere — 
 Ella — so kindly sent along such a quantity of her 
 friends. That's what it is; and so Silvia and I 
 (didn't we, Silvia?) we left the other box, seeing that 
 it was so full, and came in here, for, naturally, I 
 wanted to put my guests where they could see the 
 play, and Silvia and I, we wanted to see, too. Mrs. 
 Trentham was it? And I'm sure I'm very glad to 
 see you and your young friends. I should like them 
 all to be introduced to me and Silvia." 
 
 Charlie had hung up his hat and coat during this 
 amazing conversation, and now came forward. 
 
 "How-de-do? " he said. 
 
 "I haven't caught the name yet," said Mrs. War- 
 dour. The sheath had gone back over her face again. 
 
 "This is Lord Charles Harmer," said Mrs. 
 Trentham. 
 
 "Indeed. The son of the Marquis of Nairn?" 
 asked Mrs. Wardour. 
 
 Charlie opened his mouth very wide.
 
 Peter 55 
 
 '• Brother ! " he exclaimed, as if he were saying 
 "Murder! " on the Lyceum stage. 
 
 Tommy and Peter were less important ; the latter, 
 when the introductions were over, found himself 
 sitting between Silvia and her mother. On the further 
 side of Mrs. Wardour was May Trentham between 
 the other two young men and already absorbed in 
 identifying the occupants of boxes opposite and blow- 
 ing kisses. 
 
 "There! There's just room for all of us," said 
 Mrs. Wardour, "without squeezing each other. We 
 were too squeezed in the other box, weren't we 
 Silvia? There's six in the other box, and now we're 
 six here. Let me think; there's Lord Poole and 
 there's Lady Poole. There's Mrs. Heaton, and 
 there's Miss Heaton, and there's Mr. Philip Beau- 
 mont. That's five. Miss Heaton is engaged to Mr. 
 Beaumont; isn't that it, Silvia? I want to get it 
 clear." 
 
 "Yes, that's right," said Peter. 
 
 "Indeed! Do you know Miss Heaton?" asked 
 Mrs. Wardour. 
 
 "Yes, very well," said he. 
 
 "That's what's so pleasant," said she. "Just to 
 sit here and know everybody. That's what we want, 
 Silvia, isn't it ? Just to sit and know everybody. But 
 that only makes five. Who's the other one?" His 
 name began with F, and he was very fat." 
 
 "Perhaps that was his name," said Peter. He 
 was beginning to enjoy himself; the whole thing was 
 such complete nonsense. What kept up the high 
 level of it was that Mrs. Wardour replied with 
 seriousness : 
 
 "No; if his name had been Fat, I should have 
 remembered it," she said. "It wasn't Mr. Fat, nor
 
 56 Peter 
 
 Lord Fat. He seemed to know everybody, too. He 
 just sat there and knew everybody." 
 
 From Peter's other side, where Silvia sat, there 
 came some little tremor of a laugh, hardly audible, 
 and turning, he saw that her face dimpled with 
 amusement. It was singularly sexless; the curve of 
 her jaw, the lines of her mouth were more like a 
 boy's than a girl's; boyish, too, was her sideways 
 cross-legged attitude. If she was laughing at her 
 mother's remark, her amusement was clearly of the 
 most genial kindliness. 
 
 Mrs. Wardour continued in a perfectly even voice 
 that almost intoned the words, so void was it of 
 inflection. 
 
 " It's a pity your party has missed so much of the 
 opera," she said. "There's been a lot of pretty 
 music ; some of it reminded me of being in church 
 and hymns. It'll seem quite strange going to a dance 
 afterwards. A lot of knights singing hymns. Parsi- 
 fal, you know. Some say it's the best opera Wagner 
 ever wrote." 
 
 This time Silvia certainly laughed, and again 
 her laugh had not the smallest hint of satirical en- 
 joyment; she was just amused. Peter found himself, 
 though he had scarcely yet glanced at her, somehow 
 understanding her. He recognized in her amuse- 
 ment all that he himself failed to feel with regard 
 to his father's cartoons and his mother's readings in 
 Bradshaw. He knew intuitively that Silvia had got 
 hold of the right way to regard absurdities; to see 
 comedy without contempt. Whether she knew it 
 or not (it was quite certain that she did not), she had 
 given him a glimpse, a hint, an enlightenment, not 
 only of what she was, but of what he was not. Look- 
 ing at her now directly for the first time, his
 
 Peter 57 
 
 handsome face caught some reflection of her boyish 
 brightness. 
 
 "And what do you think of Parsifal? " he asked. 
 
 She raised her eyebrows. 
 
 " How can I tell ? " she asked. " I never saw an 
 opera before," 
 
 "I envy you," said Peter. 
 
 "Why? For not having seen one, or because I 
 am at last seeing one ? " she asked. 
 
 Peter, as usual, found himself wanting to make 
 a good impression. If he had been in a lift with a 
 crossing-sweeper he would certainly have tried to 
 make the crossing-sweeper like him, and have exerted 
 his wits to hit upon something which the crossing- 
 sweeper would think to be admirable, even though 
 on arriving at the next floor he would never see him 
 again. He quickly decided now that the girl would 
 not admire mere drivel. . . . She happened to want 
 to know what he envied her for. 
 
 "For both," he said. "For getting a new im- 
 pression. That includes both. You mustn't have 
 seen an opera before, and you must be seeing one 
 now." 
 
 She looked at him with perfectly unshadowed 
 frankness. 
 
 "I believe you meant the first," she said. "I 
 believe when you said you envied me, that you meant 
 I was lucky in not having spent a quantity of boring 
 evenings." 
 
 "In any case, I don't mean that now," said Peter. 
 
 "Ah, then you did. Why do you mean it no 
 longer? " 
 
 Peter found himself criticizing her. A conver- 
 sation between the acts of an opera was not meant 
 to degenerate into a catechism. You talked in order
 
 58 Peter 
 
 to mask the ticking of the minutes. But as he was 
 in for a catechism, it was better to be an agreeable 
 candidate. 
 
 "Why? " he asked. "Because I expect that you 
 never spend boring evenings. Probably you are not 
 a person who is bored." 
 
 Clearly, as he suspected, she was not going to 
 commit herself to any statement without considera- 
 tion, even when so violently trivial a subject was 
 under discussion. Her eyebrows, much darker than 
 the shade of her hair, like Nellie's, pulled themselves 
 a little downwards and inwards, so that they nearly 
 met. 
 
 "Oh, I could easily be bored," she said. "A lot 
 of bored people would infect me and make me bored." 
 
 She leaned a little forward towards him, again 
 with that boyish appeal. 
 
 "Please don't be bored," she said. "Be interested 
 and amused. Make yourself into a sort of disinfectant 
 to protect me." 
 
 "Is there an epidemic?" he asked. 
 
 "Yes; the place is reeking with it. My mother, 
 for instance, detests music. Isn't it darling of her? " 
 
 "How very odd of her, then " he began. 
 
 He stopped because, in some emphatic, intangible 
 way, the girl retreated from the platform of intimacy 
 on to which she had stepped. She moved her chair 
 an inch or two away from him, hitching it back with 
 her foot, but that was only a symbol of her change of 
 attitude. What to Peter made the significance of that 
 small steering was a certain quenching of light in 
 her face, as if, over it, she had put up some mask 
 of herself that might easily have been mistaken for 
 her, if the beholder had not, for a glimpse or two, 
 seen her unmasked. She shifted from the personal
 
 Peter 59 
 
 ground on which, for a minute, they had met, and 
 became Miss Silvia Wardour, generaUzing in small 
 talk, in the usual imbecile and social manner. She 
 also became much more feminine. . . . 
 
 "I wonder how many people in the house, who 
 have come to hear Wagner, really dislike it," she 
 said. "Probably we all of us like some species of 
 noise, and dislike another species of noise. If you 
 like the Beethoven noise, you probably dislike the 
 Wagner noise. Only nobody will say so. They 
 come to look at each other." 
 
 She had carried back the conversation on to the 
 personal platform again, as if she was sorry to have 
 slipped off it so suddenly. But she carried it on to 
 another part of the platform. Quite clearly she did 
 not intend to discuss her mother's presence at the 
 opera. 
 
 "Tell me," she said. "What sort of noise do you 
 really like ? This or somebody else's ? " 
 
 Peter wondered for the moment whether she was 
 to prove to be the earnest sort of girl, who, whatever 
 you said, insisted on discussing your random state- 
 ments, until you contradicted yourself (which usually 
 happened quite soon), and then, vouchsafing a gleam 
 of daylight, found an explanation for them in order 
 that you might be encouraged to entangle yourself 
 further. The earnest girl, the inquisitorial girl ; he 
 did not like that type. . . . They gave you pencils 
 and pieces of paper after dinner and made you write 
 acrostics : they took letters out of a box and gave you 
 eight of them, from which you had to make a word ; 
 they divided the guests up into equal numbers, told 
 them that this was "Clumps," and that two people 
 were going to leave the room and guess whatever 
 had been thought of. These were their lighter.
 
 6o Peter 
 
 intellectual motions, and you feverishly played 
 "Clumps" in order to avoid intolerable abstract 
 discussions. Yet Silvia had not the sleuth-hound 
 expression that usually accompanied these hunters 
 after intellect. 
 
 "What a searching question," he said. "But, 
 really, I'm omnivorous about noises. I like the noise 
 I'm listening to. I like it particularly." 
 
 There was not in her face the smallest conscious- 
 ness that he might conceivably be alluding to the 
 fact that she was talking to him. She let her eyes 
 sweep across the crov.ded theatre. 
 
 "That noise?" she asked. "All those people 
 talking? I love it, too. Oh, wouldn't it be interest- 
 ing to be somebody else for a minute, and know 
 what he meant, what he felt like when he said 
 anything? " 
 
 Clearly she had used the masculine gender quite 
 unconsciously. Peter's answer, on the other hand, 
 was deliberate. 
 
 "Yes, I should love to know what she feels like, 
 even over the most trivial speech," he said. 
 
 Silvia dropped on to this with a precision that 
 only showed how complete her own unconsciousness 
 had been. 
 
 "She?" she asked. 
 
 "Certainly ' she,' " he said. "I know well enough 
 the kind of thing which men feel like." 
 She leaned forward again. 
 "Oh, tell me about that," she said. 
 Certainly they were together on the personal plat- 
 form again. Peter was quite at home there; his 
 passion for making, a good impression on new 
 acquaintances, his rather uncanny skill in extracting 
 intimacy from them, gave him a confident gait on
 
 Peter 6i 
 
 these boards. He felt that this queer, attractive girl 
 did not in the least wish to be talked to in the ordinary, 
 nonsensical manner. In the gabble of the ballroom, 
 and in the more intimate duologue on the stairs out- 
 side it, girls, the generality of them, liked to be told 
 that men thought exclusively about them, and spent 
 their waking and sleeping moments in the contempla- 
 tion of their divinity and pricelessness. Nellie, of 
 course, was an exception, for between them there 
 certainly was some peculiar bond of understanding; 
 but the majority of girls, so ran his indolent and 
 incurious creed, just wanted to be told that they were 
 too priceless for anything, and some wanted to be 
 kissed. It was all nonsense; they knew that as well 
 as he did; but such was the inherited instinct, or, 
 if you wished to be precise, the inherited instinct 
 acting on the new conditions. But he knew that 
 Silvia was not like that ; there was some eager, 
 friendly quality about her. She was not quite the 
 normal girl of the ballroom ; nor again, was she the 
 earnest girl, who wanted to explore your brains and 
 prove that you hadn't got any. She seemed merely 
 interested in the topic, not because it would lead to 
 a demonstration of her cleverness. 
 
 "Men? " he said. " What do men feel ? They 
 are as vain as peacocks, and they think entirely about 
 themselves. They think of you as an inferior sex 
 designed to amuse them." 
 
 "Ah, the darlings!" said Silvia, quite unex- 
 pectedly. 
 
 The great pervading brilliance of the lights went 
 out. A row of veiled illuminations only remained 
 in front of the red confectionery of the curtain, against 
 which the conductor's head was silhouetted. Silvia, 
 after her surprising exclamation, drew her chair more
 
 62 Peter 
 
 into the corner in order to enable Peter to pull his 
 up to the front of the box. 
 
 "Klingsor's Castle," said Mrs. Wardour, with a 
 final desperate glance at her programme. "Who is 
 Klingsor, Silvia ?" 
 
 Peter wondered whether he could whisper, "Who 
 is Silvia?"; but decided against it. 
 
 "A magician, darling," said Silvia, with the same 
 underlying bubble of amusement.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 There was a mad brutality of discordant noise, and 
 the risen curtain disclosed an astrologer. He roared 
 and yelled, and soon a dishevelled female, in an 
 advanced stage of corruption, shrieked back at him. 
 Silvia found herself disliking the Wagner noise, and 
 her attention came closer home ; came, in fact, to the 
 quarter-view of Peter's face, as he sat low in his 
 chair in order to give her a clear view of Klingsor. 
 She was not sure that she liked Peter any better than 
 the hurly-burly that was going on, and though she 
 knew she had been liking him during the interval 
 between the acts, she now seriously set herself to 
 the task of disliking him, and the easiest method of 
 achieving that result was to class him as just one 
 of the crowd which had come that night to occupy, 
 by request, her mother's two boxes. She perfectly 
 understood the situation : Lady Thirlmere, the woman 
 with the pearls and the blue-black hair, had told a 
 lot of her friends that they could go to see Parsifal 
 for nothing, and reap a quantity of subsequent bene- 
 fits at the price of knowing Mrs. Wardour, of fre- 
 quenting her house, and of permitting her to eddy 
 round in the general whirlpool. For some reason, 
 inscrutable to Silvia, her mother wanted that; she 
 and her mother, in fact, were like a pill, which Lady 
 Thirlmere had guaranteed that the world should 
 swallow. The pill was nobly gilded, and there was 
 any amount of jam to assist the swallowing of it. 
 Without doubt Peter was one of the open mouths. 
 
 63
 
 64 Peter 
 
 Klingsor and Kundry continued to rave at each 
 other, and so far from listening, Silvia used that ex- 
 ternal noise to drive her own thought into seclusion ; 
 much as a dull sermon, a tedious lecture, makes for 
 introspection in the audience. And hardly had she 
 classed Peter among the open mouths than she won- 
 dered if she had been quite fair in doing so, for 
 the talk they had had was not of the same timbre as 
 the conventional quackings which for the last week 
 had made her mother's house like a farmyard, with 
 her, like Mrs. Bond of the nursery rhyme, calling 
 "Dilly, dilly . . . you shall be stuffed," and stuffed 
 they were. Silvia could no more enter with sympathy 
 into her mother's aims than she could enter with 
 sympathy into stamp-collecting; but out of love for 
 the stamp-collector — the dear, weary, steadfast stamp- 
 collector — she was eager to feel the highest possible 
 interest in the collection and collect for her with all 
 her might. But she knew that she despised the spirit 
 of the stamps, which, in return for food and drink 
 and opera-boxes, were so willing to be collected. Next 
 week there was to be a dance "for her," in that 
 immense mansion which had been re-christened War- 
 dour House, and pages of the stamp-book would on 
 that occasion be filled with adhesive specimens. 
 "Everybody," so she understood Ella Thirlmere to 
 say, would come, and no doubt it would be tre- 
 mendous fun. . . . 
 
 There were certainly some stamps here now. Lord 
 Charles was one, though why had he been willing 
 to be collected? He sat with his head propped be- 
 tween two long hands, and a queer sort of nose, just 
 protruding, indicated by its downward angle that 
 he was profoundly meditating. Next him was her 
 mother, whose pearls clinked rhythmically to her
 
 Peter 65 
 
 breathing, and nearest to herself she could see the 
 half-averted profile of the young man whom she was 
 encouraging herself to dislike. He appeared to be 
 looking at the stage; certainly he was paying no 
 attention to her, and she got back to what she actu- 
 ally thought of him, instead of forcing herself into 
 a defensive attitude against him. Somehow they 
 seemed (not that it mattered) to have been talking to 
 each other from odd standpoints. When, ridiculously 
 interested for the moment, she had asked him what 
 men "felt," he had not given a masculine answer. 
 He had spoken to her as if he had been a girl ; he 
 had said that men were as vain as peacocks, and 
 thought of women as an inferior sex, designed for 
 their amusement. Very likely that was quite true; 
 but now in this isolation of darkness and loud noises, 
 which cut her off from him and everyone else in the 
 box, it seemed to her to have required a woman to 
 state that. That was a woman's view of a man; a 
 man, though he shared it, could scarcely have said 
 it. Instead, he would have told her that women 
 were the angelic sex, meant to be adored. . . . 
 
 Some violent concussion had occurredon the stage ; 
 there was no longer a gloomy black man with a 
 photographic lens, but some insane sort of flower- 
 bed; and remembering her programme, she recol- 
 lected that this was the enchanted garden. The 
 enchantment seemed to lie in a quantity of prodigious 
 calico or cardboard flowers. Presently they burst. 
 If they had not burst they must have burst, for mature 
 females, singing loudly, were hatched out of the 
 centre of each. The change had awakened Charlie, 
 and he opened his mouth very wide. 
 
 "My dear, what unspeakable wenches! " he said 
 loudly to Mrs. Trentham.
 
 66 Peter 
 
 "Silvia, look at the flower-maidens," said her 
 mother. "They all came out of the flowers. Was 
 not that wonderful ? Look at the one from the blue 
 convolvulus! Isn't she sweet?" 
 
 Silvia choked a laugh with an audible effort, 
 swallowing it whole. 
 
 " Yes, darling," she said. " Aren't they pretty ? " 
 
 Peter turned to her quickly. 
 
 "Oh, that's just how I talk to my father! " he 
 said, and instantly looked back at the stage again. 
 
 She reconsidered her verdict of him as merely 
 belonging to the open mouths which Lady Thirlmere 
 showered on her mother. They, at any rate, did not 
 behave in that unwarranted way. Her neighbour 
 was ill-bred, odious, familiar, and having thrown 
 an impertinence like that over his shoulder, he did 
 not even wait for her rejoinder. What it would have 
 been she did not quite know. But . . . was it im- 
 pertinent of him after all ? Was it, perhaps, rather 
 a pleasant indication of intimacy? For intimacy, in 
 the ordinary sense, there had not been time or oppor- 
 tunity; but had he, perhaps, just spoken quite 
 naturally, assuming a corresponding naturalness on 
 her part ? 
 
 If so, she had failed him. . . . 
 
 Silvia was annoyed with herself for such a sug- 
 gestion. How could she have "failed " a young man 
 whom she had seen for the first time half an hour 
 ago, who was only one specimen out of that flock of 
 rooks which had alighted there in this new field, 
 where worms were to be had for the mere picking 
 of them up. . . . 
 
 There was a long interval at the end of this second 
 act, and a reseating of the occupants of the two boxes.
 
 Peter 67 
 
 Lord Poole, whom Mrs. Wardour's godmother had 
 chosen as a genial acquaintance, came in with his 
 great towering frame and his immense red face and 
 his unlimited capacity for enjoying himself. 
 
 "Lucky dog, Parsifal," he remarked to Silvia, "to 
 have had all those girls to choose from. He should 
 have taken the one that came out of that great white 
 lily. My word, she did surprise me when she came 
 out of that lily. I wish I knew where I could get 
 some of those lilies. Hallo, Peter ! Get out of that 
 chair like a good boy, and let me sit between Miss 
 Silvia and her mother. Haven't had a word with 
 either of them yet. Go and make love to my wife 
 for ten minutes; you'll find her next door, and come 
 back and tell me how you've been getting on." 
 
 When this great licensed victualler of London 
 appeared on the scene and made some such sugges- 
 tion, it was usual to go and do as he told you. But 
 now Peter glanced at the girl as if to ask whether 
 she wished him to make way or not. She gave him 
 no sign, however, no hint that he was to stop where 
 he was, and so the best thing, as his cool, quick 
 brain told him, was to answer Lord Poole genially 
 according to his folly. 
 
 "You condone it, then," he said. 
 
 "Lord, yes, I condone anything," he said. "We 
 all condone everything nowadays. Saves a lot of 
 trouble in the courts." 
 
 The frankness of these odious sentiments made 
 it quite impossible not to treat them as a farce. No 
 one in his senses took Lord Poole seriously; he was 
 so jolly and so preposterous, and so successfully 
 sought safety in numbers. He instantly spread him- 
 self over Peter's chair and firmly put one arm round 
 Silvia's waist and the other round her mother's.
 
 68 Peter 
 
 "Nice young fellow that," he observed as Peter 
 went out of the box. "What a pair he and Miss 
 Silvia make, hey? He's black and she's fair, and 
 he's a clever fellow and won't have a penny, and I 
 wish I was his age. Do you know his father? He's 
 a rum 'un." 
 
 These remarkable statements were addressed in 
 a loud, hoarse whisper to Mrs. Wardour, and were, 
 of course, perfectly audible to Silvia. Then he turned 
 to the girl. 
 
 "I've been asking your mother to elope with me," 
 he said, "so I hope you didn't overhear. Now I'm 
 going to talk to you and she mustn't listen. You're 
 perfectly delicious, my dear, you and your golden 
 hair, and that little foot that's kicking me. Let it 
 go on kicking; I like it. Wonder how Peter's getting 
 on with my missus. Peep round the corner. Miss 
 Silvia, and see if she looks like going off with him. 
 There are several topping girls in that box, but she's 
 the pick of them, bless her heart. What ! Here's 
 your mother getting up and leaving me. More 
 friends coming in ! I never saw such a lot of friends. 
 Why, it's Ella ! I'm in luck to-night. And there's 
 May Trentham only one chair away. Look at her 
 profile against the light. Did you ever see anything 
 so perfect ? Looks rather like the head on a postage- 
 stamp, but don't say I said so." 
 
 Lord Poole was now satisfactorily engaged in his 
 usual evening occupation of getting as many girls 
 and pretty women round him as possible, while Mrs. 
 Trentham was performing a similar office with re- 
 gard to every young man who came into the box. Her 
 pansy face was growing sillier than ever as she kept 
 telling them all to go and talk to somebody else. 
 The object of these two middle-aged magnets was
 
 Peter 69 
 
 precisely similar : one wanted to attract to itself all 
 the men, the other all the women ; but there was an 
 infinite divergence in their methods. May Trentham, 
 pretending to be young, kept asserting how old she 
 was; Lord Poole, pretending to be old, could not 
 conceal the fact of how young he was. He, again, 
 was not thinking one atom about himself, but was 
 entirely absorbed in his collection of sirens; she was 
 thinking exclusively about herself, and was only 
 anxious that every one in the house should turn 
 green with envy at her galaxy of adorers. . . . Then 
 Ella Thirlmere and a friend or two joined the group, 
 and he returned blatantly, fatuously, delightfully to 
 the opera. 
 
 "Well, now, I do feel like Parsifal," he said. 
 "Here I am in the middle of such flower-maidens, 
 any of whom could give a couple of furlongs in a 
 mile to those on the stage and come romping home 
 in a canter. Look at Ella now : there's a picture 
 for you ! Why, my gracious, here's Winifred, too ! 
 Come and tell us all about it, Winifred; how many 
 hearts, not reckoning mine, have you broken to- 
 night ? Look at that hair of hers ! Did anybody ever 
 see hair like that? I never did, and I've seen a lot 
 in my time. May Trentham, too! Do you wonder 
 that all the young men go swarming round her? 
 Pm sure I don't, and Pd join the swarm myself if 
 I wasn't so blissfully situated just where I am. 
 Haven't enjoyed an evening so much for years. Wish 
 this interval would last till Doomsday, and then 
 we'd all go up to heaven together ! St. Peter would 
 let me in without a question when he saw whom I'd 
 brought along with me." 
 
 Among the people who had drifted in at the end 
 of the act was Philip Beaumont, whom Mrs. Trent-
 
 70 
 
 Peter 
 
 ham had instantly rendered adhesive by her voluble 
 commands to go back to Nellie Heaton at once. 
 Nellie, however, had very designedly sent him here, 
 for she had become aware by a glimpse, a sound 
 (an instinct, perhaps even more) that Peter was in 
 the box next door, and her dispatch of her lover 
 there would certainly signify to Peter that she wished 
 him to take the chair now vacant by her and resume 
 the talk in the window that had taken place that 
 afternoon. Somehow that talk had made for itself 
 an anchorage uncomfortable to her consciousness; it 
 had been like a fishbone in her throat. She had taken 
 gulps of her fiance, so to speak, in order to dislodge 
 it; but she had not succeeded in swallowing it. She 
 had tried to divert her attention from it; had pounced 
 with fixed claws on the opera in front of her; had 
 jotted down in her memory, with the fell example of 
 Lady Poole as an object-lesson, a quantity of ways 
 of behaviour and of the presentation of yourself to 
 others which were undesirable when you were fifty 
 or seventy or whatever Lady Poole happened to be. 
 You must be quiet and calm when you had tottered 
 up to those hoary altitudes; you must leave your 
 hair to turn any colour it chose. . . . You mustn't 
 wriggle and snort, for whereas wriggling in the 
 young might exhibit (quite advantageously) a grace- 
 ful litheness, it suggested in the old that a galvanic 
 battery had been unexpectedly applied to the knees 
 and the elbows and the middle part of the person. 
 But there was something remote about these glean- 
 ings of knowledge; they might prove to be nutritious 
 (and possibly palatable) if preserved and remembered 
 for thirty or forty years; at the present moment they 
 were not of sufficiently arresting a quality to divert 
 her mind from this fishbone of her interview with
 
 Peter 71 
 
 Peter. . . . There had been a harshness, a crudity in 
 it; there had been, to her mind, a certain hostihty in 
 it; there had been also a certain hunger in it, an 
 emptiness that ached. He had clearly pronounced 
 that their relationship— the bond, in fact, of which 
 she had spoken— must be changed by her engagement, 
 and, though she would have combated that with wit 
 and good sense, some internal fibre of her throbbed, 
 vibrated to the truth of it. She wanted to convince 
 Peter (and even more to convince herself) that the 
 old bond, the old relationship, still flowered and had 
 lost no petal of its fragrance. 
 
 She had not to wait long for his entry; Philip 
 had barely left the box before Peter appeared in the 
 doorway, and she applauded his quickness in answer- 
 ing the signal she had waved to him in the ejection 
 of the other. He was silhouetted there for a moment 
 as he spoke to someone in the corridor outside, cool 
 and crisp and complete. Peter was always like that; 
 nature had applied to him some extra polish, some 
 exquisite finish, which detached him from all others 
 in the moist or dusty crowd. Adorable though that 
 was, the thought came to the girl that, above all else, 
 she wanted to disturb and disarrange that. Peter 
 excited and dishevelled. Peter enthusiastic. Peter 
 undetached and clinging was perhaps the real 
 Peter. ... A clamorous, turbulent Peter. . . . 
 
 He looked round as he entered ; he clearly saw 
 her, and as clearly disregarded the obvious movement 
 of her hand to the vacant seat which Philip had just 
 quitted. Though that rejection — that "cut " you 
 might call it, considering their friendship — was in 
 no way premeditated, it was, when he saw Nellie 
 beckoning as with proprietorship, or so it struck 
 him, quite deliberate. He had given no thought to
 
 72 Peter 
 
 it before, and apparently gave no further thought 
 now, for he instantly placed himself next Lady Poole, 
 beside whom there was another empty seat. There 
 was a great green feather nodding a welcome from 
 her violent hair ; it matched her green shoes and the 
 lars"e slabs of false emerald with which her dress 
 was hazardously held together. She was quite as 
 absurd as her husband, and had a witty poison under 
 her tongue, which she sprayed profusely over most 
 subjects of discussion. But her poison hurt nobody, 
 since nobody ever believed a word she said. She 
 was, in fact, as harmless as a serpent, and certainly 
 not as wise as a dove. 
 
 The serpent aspect showed its innocuous fangs. 
 
 "Monster," she said to Peter. "Sit down and 
 tell me at once what's going on next door. Whom's 
 my Christopher flirting with?" 
 
 "Everybody," said Peter. "He sent me away 
 to flirt with you. Let's begin. Shall I begin? Tell 
 me why you and he should always remain young 
 when all the rest of us are as old as the hills." 
 
 The wisdom of the mature dove peeped out for a 
 moment, but was driven back by a hiss of the serpent, 
 as a loud squeal of laughter sounded from the next 
 box. 
 
 "That's May Trentham," said Lady Poole un- 
 erringly. "My dear, what a woman! Why do all 
 you young men crowd round her like moths round 
 a night-light. Whom has she got? " 
 
 "The rest of the males," said Peter. "Male and 
 female, you know " 
 
 "Stuff and nonsense. There are people who are 
 things ! Look at our hostess, whom Christopher is 
 probably embracing at this moment. I assure you 
 she hasn't got a face; she's got a slab. What are
 
 Peter 73 
 
 we coming to? Then there's her daughter. She's a 
 boy; a nice, handsome, healthy boy, doing well. I 
 wish my son was like her. Do you know him ? He's 
 like a pincushion." 
 
 Peter was not actively listening to these extra- 
 ordinary remarks; he was taking in and assimilating 
 just what he had done in not occupying the place 
 indicated to him by Nellie. He came to the conclu- 
 sion that he had not done so precisely because she 
 intended him to. She was meaning to get on per- 
 fectly well without him, and had better begin at once. 
 
 "Why pincushion? " he asked. 
 
 "Because I put pins into him whenever I see him, 
 which isn't often, and he just sits there and keeps 
 my pins. He doesn't mind; he doesn't bleed. He's 
 nothing at all, poor wretch. I beg him to steal or bear 
 false witness or break any commandment that comes 
 handy so long as he does something. He eats 
 chocolate and trims hats. I shall have no pins left 
 soon. 
 
 "Never mind Eddy ! But what a horrible opera; 
 must have been written by an organist in collaboration 
 with a choirboy. I wonder if Christopher is in the 
 next box at all. I expect he's gone behind to scrape 
 acquaintance with some flower-maiden — probably that 
 voluptuous crone who came out of a large white lily, 
 though how she got into it originally is more than 
 I can say, because she was bigger than anything I 
 ever saw. If only Eddy would do that sort of thing : 
 so much more suitable. Anaemic; that's what you all 
 are. The women aren't quite so bad as the men. I 
 know personally five grandmothers who have mar- 
 ried again in the last fortnight. But the grand- 
 mothers who continue optimistically marrying will 
 die in time, and what's going to happen to England
 
 74 
 
 Peter 
 
 then ? What's the use of saying ' emigration,' when 
 there won't be anybody to emigrate? " 
 
 "I didn't say ' emigration,' " said Peter, with his 
 head whirling. This sort of speech was character- 
 istic of Lady Poole. She dashed pictures on to a 
 screen like a magic lantern, and took them off again 
 before you had seen them, leaving darkness and the 
 smell of oil. 
 
 "May Trentham, too," said this amazing lady. 
 "I hear you've been dining with her. She would 
 like every boy in the kingdom to remain celibate 
 for her antiquated sake. I will say for Christopher 
 that he doesn't want that. He would like every 
 woman to do just the opposite. . . . Good gracious, 
 here's another act and I thought it was all over 
 and that we were only waiting for our motors. 
 Come and see me to-morrow. Any time, I'm always 
 at home. Where is one to go in these days? Pro- 
 fiteers and Bolshevists and Jews! That's England; 
 mark my words ! " 
 
 Peter groped his way out of the box in the sudden 
 eclipse of the lights, sidling by others who were tip- 
 toeing back again, without any response to Nellie's 
 signal. He knew quite well that there was an un- 
 occupied seat next her, and that it would have 
 been the most natural thing in the world for him 
 to have appropriated it; but he chose to consider that 
 it was more suitable yet that Philip should find his 
 way back to it. She had given him the right to be 
 there, and Peter, with a tinge of insincerity, told 
 himself that he was behaving with extreme correct- 
 ness in not occupying it; the insincerity lying in the 
 fact that his root-reason for going back to the other 
 box being that he was determined that Nellie should 
 not have everything quite her ow^n way.
 
 Peter 75 
 
 Then again— another reason for behaving so pro- 
 perly—she had said herself that afternoon that she 
 meant to fit herself to the conventional mould, and 
 here was he helping to secure a perfect fit. No 
 doubt she was right; she was right also in divining 
 that the nature of the bond between them must now 
 necessarily be changed. It had never been a pas- 
 sionate one; their individual independence, no less 
 than the material obstacles in the way of declared 
 and complete surrender to each other, had always 
 stood between them ; but there seemed, now that the 
 bond was slackened, to have been potential passion 
 woven into it. Perhaps the slight collision with 
 Philip in the doorway, and the knowledge that he 
 was groping his way back to the chair by Nellie 
 again, accentuated that perception. For a moment 
 Peter paused ; he had yet just time to slide past 
 Philip and occupy the chair; but there seemed to 
 glimmer in the seat of it some label "Reserved," and 
 he checked his impulse. No doubt he would resume 
 natural relations with Nellie again to-morrow, or 
 probably even to-night in the dance — or two dances, 
 was it? — where they would be sure to meet, and a 
 certain subtle antagonism which had begun to smoke 
 and smoulder witliin him would be quenched. He 
 left it, for the present, at that. 
 
 For three or four hours more that night, after the 
 conclusion of the opera, Sylvia found herself in touch 
 with one or other of the guests who had so agreeably 
 and with so little ceremony decorated the fronts of 
 her mother's boxes. They seemed just as much at 
 home in Lady Thirlmere's house, taking genial pos- 
 session of it, dancing to her band, drinking her 
 champagne in the same clubable manner. Lord 
 Poole was greatly in evidence, surrounding himself
 
 76 Peter 
 
 with the gay moths that positively stuck in the spiced 
 honey of his outrageous compHments and could 
 scarcely disentangle their feet therefrom. He squeezed 
 their hands, he put his arm round their waists, he 
 made the most amazing speeches right and left as to 
 their irresistibility. He was like some mirror into 
 which every woman looked and saw there a fascinat- 
 ing reflection of herself, that presented an image of 
 herself more delicious than, even when trying on a 
 new hat, she had ever supposed herself to be. 
 "What's to happen to us poor men," he asked 
 Silvia, "if you're all of you going on being so tip- 
 top? We shan't do a stroke more work; we shall 
 spend all our time in looking at you, and then 
 who's to pay your bills? I've lost my heart twenty 
 times already to-night, and that's enough for an old 
 chap like me, so I shall take myself off to bed. 
 Where's my wife, I wonder ? Can your bright eyes 
 pick out any extra dense crowd of young men ? If 
 you can, I shall plunge straight into them, like 
 taking, a dive after a pearl-oyster, and I'll find her 
 right in the very middle of them." 
 
 There seemed to be an unusual congregation at 
 the end of the drawing-room, which opened on to 
 the dancing floor, and Lord Poole accordingly took 
 his dive. Silvia could see, as the waves of black 
 coats and white shirts split up round him, that it was 
 Mrs. Trentham who was the pearl-oyster just there ; 
 but the dive must have been satisfactory, for Lord 
 Poole disappeared fathoms deep. 
 
 Silvia began to revise her judgment on the non- 
 chalant greed of the mouths that flocked to be fed. 
 Everyone was so gay and pleasant, so intent on 
 laughter and amusement; everyone knew everyone 
 else. She had done no more than set eyes on a young
 
 Peter 77 
 
 man who had come in with Mrs. Trentham to her 
 mother's box, but Tommy confidently claimed her 
 as an old friend, and she stalked and slid about the 
 floor with him. At the conclusion of that a girl 
 whom she remembered with even mistier vagueness 
 disentangled herself from another young man (the 
 one who had slept so quietly and cried out so audibly 
 at the appearance of the flower-maiden) and ejected 
 Tommy from the seat next Silvia. She was en- 
 trancingly pretty in some wild, dewy manner, and 
 had all the assurance that the knowledge of a de- 
 lightful appearance gives its possessor. 
 
 "I haven't had a word with you all the evening," 
 she said, "and I want to tell you how delicious it was 
 of your mother to let me come to her box. I saw 
 you round the edge of the curtain talking to Peter. 
 He raves about you ; so, as I wanted to rave too, I — 
 well, here I am. Don't send me away." 
 
 Silvia was utterly unaccustomed to exercise any 
 critical faculty where friendliness seemed to be 
 offered. There were no outlymg forts to her heart, 
 no challenging sentries; if a girl seemed to like her, 
 that was passport enough. Who this was she could 
 not for the moment remember, though doubtless her 
 name was among those which her mother had re- 
 peated as being occupant next door. Then the name, 
 Nellie Heaton, found a lodging in her mind and 
 seemed secure. She was not sure that she liked the 
 information that Peter was "raving" about her; but 
 it was surely friendliness, the desire to be pleasant, 
 that had prompted the retailing of it to her. 
 
 "You must be Miss Heaton," she said. "Am I 
 right ? There were so many new faces to-night, you 
 know. . . ." 
 
 She looked at Nellie with that direct gaze that 
 
 F
 
 y^ Peter 
 
 sought only to appreciate. There was certainly a 
 great deal to appreciate : the girl was dazzlingly 
 pretty. 
 
 Nellie laughed. 
 
 "Yes; I suppose I am Miss Heaton for the pre- 
 sent," she said. 
 
 A little more of her mother's commentaries came 
 into Silvia's mind. Had there not been a man in 
 the next box — name missing for the moment — to 
 whom Miss Heaton was engaged? Perhaps her 
 phrase, "for the present," alluded to that. 
 
 "Ah, I'm beginning to remember," she said. "I 
 remember that you are soon to be married. I hope 
 you'll be tremendously happy." 
 
 "That's dear of you," said Nellie. "But when I 
 said I was Miss Heaton for the present, I didn't quite 
 mean that." 
 
 Silvia, with all her friendliness, shrank ever so 
 slightly from this. There was a certain reserve about 
 her which did not quite allow the indicated response. 
 But the welcome of her manner was not abated. 
 
 " Do be kind and sort out all these nice people for 
 me," she said. "I have grasped Lord Poole, and 
 isn't it Mr. Mainwaring who is Peter? He sat next 
 me for an act. All the Christian names are a little 
 puzzling at first. Then there's Tommy; I haven't the 
 slightest idea what his surname is, though I shall 
 know him again, because I danced with him just now. 
 And there's Lord Charles, who went to sleep — I shall 
 know him again " 
 
 "And won't you know Peter again ? " asked Nellie. 
 "That's one for Peter." 
 
 "Oh, but I shall," said Silvia. "He's " 
 
 The two were sitting close to the door into the 
 ballroom, and at that moment Peter passed in front
 
 Peter 79 
 
 of them talking to a girl. He just glanced at them, 
 took them both in, and melted into the crowd. 
 
 "Yes; that's Mr. Mainwaring," said Silvia con- 
 fidently. "I — I liked him. Don't you like him? " 
 
 Nellie made a little sideways, bird-like movement 
 of her head. Out of her changed relations with Peter 
 she felt that something like antagonism had minutely 
 sprouted. She wanted . . . yes, she would give an 
 answ'er that would seem wholly appreciative of Peter, 
 and that would yet contain something that Silvia 
 possibly (just possibly) w^ould not like. 
 
 "Dear Peter! " she said. "Of course, we're all 
 devoted to Peter. It's the fashion to be devoted to 
 Peter."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 During the next month the foam and froth which 
 spouted from the weir of London, into which Mrs. 
 Wardour, of her own design and desire, had been 
 so expensively plunged, began to be less tumultuous 
 as she floated away from the occasion of her first 
 bewildering dive. Lady Thirlmere, that admirable 
 godmother, had chucked her into it, holding her 
 breath and shutting her eyes, and now Mrs. War- 
 dour was getting her head above water and beginning 
 to paddle on her own account. The sponsor had 
 provided the richness of total immersion, and Lucy 
 Wardour was certainly swimming. As she came up 
 to the surface, she found herself surrounded by 
 iridescent bubbles; she was bobbing along in a mill- 
 race of desirable acquaintances. She had made no 
 friends — there was no time for leisurely processes of 
 this sort; but when she had decided that she wanted 
 to spend her months and her money in the pursuit of 
 some such indefinite goal as now loomed promisingly 
 in front of her, she had not expected to make friends. 
 She had not "gone for" friends; she had gone for 
 something that attracted the attention of the accom- 
 plished gentlemen who wTote those small and ex- 
 quisite paragraphs in the daily papers. Inscrutably 
 enough, that happened to be her ambition; what she 
 wanted was to see (though she knew it already) that 
 "Mrs. Wardour was among those who brought a 
 party to the first night of The Bugaboo." . . . "Mrs. 
 Wardour gave a dinner at Wardour House last night, 
 
 80
 
 Peter 8i 
 
 followed by a small dance." . . . "Mrs. Wardour was 
 in the Park, chatting to her friends, and wearing a 
 green toque and her famous pearls." . . . Among her 
 secretary's duties was that of pasting these juicy 
 morsels, supplied by a press-agency, into a red 
 morocco scrapbook. In fact, she was streaking her 
 way across the bespangled firmament of London, like 
 a comet, with a blank face and an anxious eye. But 
 those who thought that the anxious eye received no 
 impressions just because they were not instantly re- 
 corded on the blank face, made the mistake of this 
 season. 
 
 May Trentham had undeniably been guilty of this 
 error. From that first night, when she had brought 
 iier young men to the opera, she had thought that 
 Mrs. Wardour was not sufficiently alive to her value, 
 and as Mrs. Wardour did not appear to be learning 
 any better, she had certainly permitted herself to 
 indulge in little rudenesses, little patronizations, little 
 contempts, which Mrs. Wardour did not appear to 
 notice. Certainly she made no direct allusion to 
 them, and her rather meaningless countenance showed 
 no sign of having perceived them. . . . 
 
 This afternoon she was occupied with her sec- 
 retary in making out a list of a favoured few, not 
 more than eighty all told, who were to be bidden to 
 an entertainment at which the Russian ballet was to 
 figure. She ran her short, blunt forefinger down the 
 alphabetical pages of her "visiting-list," and dictated 
 names to the gaunt Miss Winterton, who took them 
 down in an angry scribble of shorthand. The last 
 few pages were approaching. 
 
 "Then there's Mrs. Trentham," she said to Silvia. 
 "I think we'll leave out Mrs. Trentham." 
 
 Silvia put in a mild plea.
 
 82 Peter 
 
 "She rather enjoys things, mother," she said. 
 
 There was a pause, in which Mrs. Wardour 
 slowly and deliberately recalled certain moments 
 which nobody would have thought she had noticed. 
 
 "Well, she isn't going to enjoy my things," she 
 said. 
 
 They were seated in Mrs. Wardour's private sit- 
 ting-room in the great house in Piccadilly. It was 
 hung with French brocade; an immense Aubusson 
 carpet covered the floor, and a Reisener table and 
 bureau, with half a dozen very splendid chairs, 
 echoed the same epoch. Mrs. Wardour had found 
 this a little too stiff for domestic ease, and a decidedly 
 more homely note was struck by a few wicker chairs, 
 upholstered in cretonne, and a tea-table of the same 
 imperishable material, with flaps which let down on 
 hinges and formed convenient shelves for cakes and 
 teacups. On the top of the bureau was a large photo- 
 graph of the late Mr. Wardour in watch-chain and 
 broadcloth. There were but a few more names, and 
 Mrs. Wardour closed the book. 
 
 "Then you'll send invitations to the names I've 
 given you, Miss Winterton," she said, "on R.S.V.P. 
 cards. There's no one else you'd like to ask, Silvia ? " 
 
 Silvia knew quite well what she was intending to 
 say, and wondered why she hesitated. 
 
 "Will you ask Mr. Peter Mainwaring? " she said. 
 
 "xMr. Mainwaring? I don't seem to recollect " 
 
 "Darling, of course you can't recollect every- 
 body," said the girl; "but I should like him to be 
 asked." 
 
 "Certainly then. What's his initials and ad- 
 dress?" 
 
 Silvia supplied this information, and Miss Win- 
 terton gathered up her papers and left them. She
 
 Peter 83 
 
 had the air of some dethroned queen, for whom dis- 
 astrous circumstances had made it necessary to 
 perform menial offices. Mrs. Wardour breathed a 
 sigh of obvious reHef when she had gone. 
 
 "She terrifies me, Silvia," she said, when the door 
 had closed. "She and that new butler. To think 
 that one of them is called Summerton and the other 
 Winterton. Well, I'm sure ! " 
 
 Silvia blevv^ out a little bubble of laughter. 
 
 "Stand up to them, dear," she said. 
 
 "Yes, it's all very well to talk; but how am I to 
 stand up to them when my knees tremble ? I wouldn't 
 have it known, but that's the fact. Well, we are 
 going to have a grand party next week." 
 
 Mrs. Wardour relaxed herself in the wicker chair. 
 
 "It's been a job and a half," she said, "and I wish 
 your father was alive to see what a good job and a 
 half I've made of it. He always had a hankering 
 for high life himself, but he was too busy to catch 
 hold of it. ' When I give the word, Lucy,' he's often 
 said to me, ' we'll start in and show them all how to 
 do it.' Often he's said that to me. And I always 
 had a taste for it, too; and sure enough it came 
 natural to me from the first. We're pretty well sit- 
 ting down and knowing everybody now." 
 
 Hard work it certainly had been ; for the last two 
 months Mrs. Wardour had worked as hard at secur- 
 ing the goal she had so steadfastly set before her as 
 her husband had ever done in providing the parapher- 
 nalia for the enterprise; but now she might fairly 
 claim that she was beginning to sit and know every- 
 body. She had brought to her task an unremitting 
 industry, and — when the tide was once flowing in 
 her favour, so that it was possible to consider not 
 so much whom she would ask but whom she would
 
 84 Peter 
 
 leave out — a steely ruthlessness. That ruthless- 
 ness, indeed, had been a weapon throughout the 
 campaign ; if a desirable guest was unable to come 
 on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, Mrs. Wardour 
 had adamantinely proceeded with Thursday, Friday, 
 and Saturday ; she had even taken her place at the 
 telephone and demanded in her flat, firm voice that 
 her quarry should consult his engagement-book and 
 let her know which was the first disengaged night. 
 Ruthless, also, she had now become, as in the case 
 of Mrs. Trentham, when the question was one of 
 exclusion, and the party for the Russian ballet had 
 been selected on the sternest principles. Thinking 
 over that now, her mind reverted to Silvia's final 
 invitatio'.i. 
 
 "And who is your Mr. Mainwaring ? " she asked. 
 
 Silvia again had to stifle some embarrassment that, 
 since it did not exist on the surface at all, must have 
 had some more secret origin. 
 
 "Oh, I've met him a score of times," she said. 
 "He's one of the people who is always there. He sat 
 between us once at the opera, I think I remember. 
 One evening when Lord Poole made love to you, 
 dear. But, somehow, he's never been to your house 
 yet." 
 
 "That's more than most can say," remarked 
 Mrs. Wardour, so nearly smacking her lips that 
 an impartial umpire might have said that "it 
 counted." This set Silvia laughing. 
 
 "And what have I said now?" asked Mrs. 
 Wardour. 
 
 It was not so much what her mother was saying 
 as what she was being that so continually kept Silvia 
 in a state of simmering hilarity. Contemplate it as 
 she might, she had never been able to comprehend
 
 Peter 85 
 
 the impulse, or rather the steady, unwavering de- 
 votion, that had kept Mrs. Wardour at such high 
 pressure all these weeks. She did not enjoy the pro- 
 cess of these eternal entertainments; the gaiety of 
 others did not make her gay ; music made no appeal 
 to her; she was long past the age of dancing (though 
 so many of her contemporaries were not), and yet she 
 would sit benignly content through the short hours 
 of the summer night, with her great tiara on her 
 head, and feeling the heat acutely, for the mere plea- 
 sure of being there. That she was there was now- 
 undeniable, and, happily, having got there, she 
 suffered no disillusionment. The mere chasse, the 
 acquisition, was certainly not the mainspring of her 
 activities. She had engaged in the chasse not for 
 the sake of getting but of having. . . . 
 
 The second terror of her busy life entered. 
 
 "Miss Heaton wants to know if you are at home, 
 miss? " said the formidable Summerton. 
 
 It was a relief to Silvia's mother that she had not 
 got to "stand up" to Summerton, and, indeed, there 
 was no crisis at all, for close behind him was 
 Nellie. 
 
 " My dear, I was so afraid you might say that you 
 weren't at home,' she said, "that I thought it only 
 my duty to save you telling lies. Am I interrupting? 
 How are you, Mrs. Wardour? Send me away if I 
 am intruding, or say that you have just gone out 
 if you don't want me to stop, and I will promise to 
 believe you." 
 
 Silvia had risen with a flush of pleasure on her 
 face at the entrance of her friend. From all the new 
 acquaintances of London, Nellie had made a shining 
 emergence; through all the mists and bewilderments 
 of the new life she shone with a steady beam, like
 
 86 Peter 
 
 the luminous finger from a lighthouse, clear and 
 steadfast above the complicated currents. 
 
 "But this is lovely," said Silvia. "Sit down. 
 Tea? Something? Anything?" 
 
 She stood looking at her with frank, surrendered 
 gaze; a little dazzled, as she always was, with such 
 easy unconscious splendour. She regarded Nellie, 
 if she could have put her appreciation into words, as 
 she might have regarded some golden casket, set 
 with gems, which seemed to have been laid in her 
 hands. She had, as yet, no idea what was inside it; 
 she had not attempted to raise the lid. It was enough 
 at present to be allowed to hold it in shy, adoring 
 fingers. 
 
 "No, nothing," said Nellie; "not even to sit 
 down. I came, in fact, to make you stand up." 
 
 "I'm doing that," said Silvia. 
 
 "That's not enough. . . . My dear, what a de- 
 licious frock ! But my horrible Philip has been 
 obliged to go out of town, and I'm at a loose end 
 till dinner, and thought it would be wonderfully 
 pleasant to sit on the grass somewhere. Isn't that 
 original ? At the moment when that rural idea 
 occurred to me, I passed your gilded portals and 
 thought it would be even more wonderful if you came 
 and sat there too. I don't mean ordinary, dirty 
 grass, but clean grass. Richmond Park, or some- 
 thing. Top of a bus, of course. Old hats." 
 
 There could have been no more attractive notion 
 to Silvia. She felt that it was just that she had long 
 been wanting; namely, to be with Nellie on the grass 
 in an old hat. She could still ecstatically be dazzled, 
 could follow the beam of the lighthouse with steady 
 rapture; but a fresh aspect of her, away from ball- 
 rooms and crowds, just that old-hat aspect, she felt
 
 Peter 87 
 
 at once to be what most she desired. She might, it 
 is true, be just as dazzling thus, she might, indeed, 
 be more dazzHng when other lesser brightnesses were 
 withdrawn from her vicinity; but however she turned 
 out, she could not fail to show a new enchantment. 
 
 "Of course I'll come," she said. "Let me go and 
 get an old hat. You don't want me, mother, do 
 you ? " 
 
 "No, dear. But if you'll ring the bell, I'll order 
 the car for you. Far more comfortable and far 
 quicker than the top of a bus." 
 
 Nellie had been taking in the appurtenances of 
 this room, to which she had not previously pene- 
 trated, with those quick, bird-like glances which were 
 away again, scarcely alighting, before you knew they 
 had perched at all. Mrs. Wardour's hospitable sug- 
 gestion seemed to contrast with her own project in just 
 the manner in which those creaking cretonne chairs 
 contrasted with the brocade on the walls and the 
 Aubusson on the floor. 
 
 "Ah, how kind," she said; "but, dear Mrs. War- 
 dour, the point of our expedition is not to be com- 
 fortable and quick, but uncomfortable and slow. I 
 yearn for that, and for being rustic and common. 
 Otherwise, I should ask you to lend me one of those 
 glorious chairs and let me sit and look at Buckingham 
 Palace." 
 
 "Yes, you can see it out of the window," said 
 Mrs. Wardour. "But the top of a bus — let me see, 
 Miss Heaton, isn't it — is the top of a bus quite the 
 thing for girls like Silvia and you ? " 
 
 "But absolutely," said Nellie. "It wouldn't be 
 a bit the thing to drive in your lovely Rolls-Royce. 
 And we shall have tea somewhere quite unspeakable, 
 with dirty napkins."
 
 88 Peter 
 
 Mrs. Wardour shook her head. 
 
 "Now a nice tea-basket and the car," she insinu- 
 ated. "Ready in ten minutes, I beg you. Miss 
 Heaton." 
 
 Why the notion of Richmond Park and a bus 
 and a tea-shop had blown in upon Nellie she had 
 no clear idea; but as she and Silvia swayed and 
 bounced westwards, it easily yielded an unconscious 
 analysis. Her morning had been taken up with dress 
 and trousseau for the imminent wedding, her mother 
 had joined her at the dressmaker's flushed with 
 triumph over some grabbing business called settle- 
 ments, and over the afternoon there had hung, rather 
 sultrily, the prospect of long hours with Philip, who 
 was coming to lunch. Her mother, as usual, had a 
 bridge party of harpies, and no doubt she and Philip, 
 just as she and Peter had done not many weeks ago, 
 would sit in the window and pass for being absorbed 
 in each other. It was owing, no doubt, to the hy- 
 meneal morning, and the prospect of a similar after- 
 noon, that, on the outpouring through the telephone 
 of Philip's calm, but sincere, regrets that business 
 claimed him in the country, reaction had opened its 
 sluice-gates and overwhelmed her with the desire for 
 hours physically and morally remote from rich fabrics 
 and opulent comfort, and from the ambient atmos- 
 phere of things connected with just one theme. She 
 was perfectly well satisfied with the general prospect, 
 matrimonially considered; but she wanted just now, 
 as celibacy was so soon to vanish, a foreground of 
 it and simplicity and freedom to her picture. Origin- 
 ally, when the telephone had first told her of Philip's 
 defection, she had scarcely made the needful pause 
 of ringing off before getting into communication with 
 Peter to know whether he could sHp the official collar
 
 Peter 89 
 
 for an afte-rnoon. Certainly that was "ringing off " 
 Philip with some completeness, and with whom better 
 than with the other could she take a last excursion 
 into the country that would so soon be severed from 
 her by the sea, placid she hoped, of matrimony? 
 But the official collar could not, so Peter's very dis- 
 tinct voice told, be shifted. He, Peter's voice, at 
 any rate, said he was sorry ; but he added no super- 
 latives of regret, and before she had removed her ear 
 she heard the click of the replaced instrument at the 
 other end. He rang off, so it seemed to her, with a 
 certain finality, not lingering to gossip. That had 
 been rather characteristic of him lately ; though she 
 had constantly met him, he had always appeared in 
 that light, impenetrable armour of his aloofness, 
 never raising his visor, nor showing a joint in his 
 harness where she could get at him. Ever since the 
 interview on the window-seat six weeks ago he had 
 been withdrawn like that. 
 
 Failing to get Peter, her next inclination had been 
 to sip her celibacy alone, for though Peter, better 
 than anybody, symbolized the things that were pass- 
 ing away (the wet woods and the roving and the inde- 
 pendence), she would, in his absence, get nearest 
 to them alone. So she had already started on her 
 suburban pilgrimage, strolling down the glare and 
 wilderness of Piccadilly to get on to a Richmond 
 bus at the corner of Hyde Park, when, finding her- 
 self dazzled by the sun on the newly-gilded gates of 
 Wardour House, the notion of Silvia's companion- 
 ship suggested itself, and she paused weighing its 
 advantages. Silvia would certainly give her an eager, 
 appreciative comradeship (so much was instantly 
 clear), and on the heels of that a tangle of other 
 interesting little curiosities, with tentacles protruding,
 
 90 
 
 Peter 
 
 plumped themselves into the same scale. She did 
 not trouble to unravel them now; they would 
 straighten themselves out as the afternoon went on. 
 
 Richmond Park proved very empty of loiterers; 
 occasionally a motor-bicycle, with a wake of dust 
 hanging in the air behind it, streaked down the yellow 
 road ; but, by the Pen Ponds, no more than the distant 
 throb of such passenger was audible. Summer was in 
 full leaf among the oaks and beeches, retaining still 
 the varnished freshness of spring, and populous in the 
 shade of the leafy trees were herds of fallow-deer, 
 which lay sleepy and yet alert, with twitching ears 
 and whisking tail against the incorrigible menace of 
 flies, until an abatement of the heat restored appetite 
 for the voung tussocky grass. The hawthorn was 
 nearly over; smouldering coronets of faded flame, or 
 grey ash of dazzling blossom represented the glories 
 of May ; but round the ponds the humps of the rho- 
 dodendron banks were still on fire. 
 
 Such talk as had flourished between the two girls 
 had not yet penetrated beyond the barrier where 
 triviality ceases, and past dances, with keen criticism 
 on their merits, and dances to come, and the adequacy 
 of various partners (among whom Peter's name flitted 
 by like blowing thistledown) had been flashed on and 
 off the public plate. There had been a little longer 
 exposure for the projected party at which the Russian 
 ballet were to supply the entertainment, and Nellie 
 had been informed, with horrified eagerness on the 
 part of Silvia, that, of course, she had been 
 bidden : the invitation had only been inscribed that 
 afternoon. Her acceptance of it was equally "of 
 course," and with the luck that attended friends, the 
 date of it was a clear two days before her marriage. 
 Trivial though it had all been, she felt that the Hama-
 
 Peter 91 
 
 dryad (herself) had been doing spade-work in the 
 shade. The ground was cleared and levelled; every 
 topic that she might now wish to work up into a more 
 elaborate tapestry had been put in on tentative 
 threads, much as characters in a decently-written 
 drama, flit, at any rate, across the stage in the first 
 act. The two, delightfully grouped, hatless, and 
 secure from interruption, had come to anchor in the 
 circular shade of an old thorn-bush not far from the 
 edge of reeds that fringed the pond. The red petals 
 of the spent blossom dropped down from time to time ; 
 the hum and murmur of June woods was a carpet on 
 which more intimate conversation could lightly spread 
 itself. 
 
 Nellie drew up and clasped her knees. 
 
 "Fancy my impertinence in dragging you out to 
 Richmond Park when I know that you had a hun- 
 dred things that you wanted to do," she said. "Tell 
 me, what would you have done if I hadn't appeared 
 like some bird of prey and clawed you? Now don't 
 say that you would have had tea with your mother 
 and gone for a drive in the Park. If you do, I simply 
 shan't believe you." 
 
 Yes, she was more dazzling, so Silvia found, when 
 there was no one to contrast her with. The sheer, 
 silly, conventional tittle-tattle took a sparkling quality 
 quite alien to it when it came from her mouth. Her 
 personality was like coloured lights playing on a 
 fountain and turning the drops to gems. 
 
 "I must be silent, then," she said. 
 
 "Oh, don't be silent ! When people are silent it 
 means they are only being polite. If they were less 
 polite they would say that they were excruciatingly 
 bored. Then, after a suitable silence, they say, 
 ' How charming it is here ! ' Don't say ' how charm-
 
 92 
 
 Peter 
 
 ing it is here.' That will be the last straw, Silvia. 
 Dear me, I said ' Silvia ' by accident. It — what 
 they call — slipped out." 
 
 "Oh, do say it on purpose, then," said Silvia. 
 
 "Very well; me too, you understand. What a 
 funny business is Christian names ! The Christian 
 name is never really ripe till it drops. I wonder if 
 you know what an unutterable boon you and your 
 mother have been to that smoky place over there. 
 And to crown it all, you are giving the most de- 
 lightful party with the most gorgeous punctuality, 
 as far as I am concerned. Do say you settled it for 
 that night because you knew I couldn't come on any 
 subsequent night." 
 
 Silvia gave a little moan like a dove in a tree. 
 
 "I can't say that," she said. 
 
 Nellie sighed, wholly appreciatively. 
 
 "That's so refreshing of you," she said. "You're 
 one of the real people, I expect ; the people who mean 
 what they say. I usually mean what I don't say." 
 
 Silvia turned round and lay facing her friend. 
 
 "Don't say it, then, Nellie," she said. "I mean — 
 do say the things you mean. How complicated it 
 sounds, and how simple it is. Shall we stop talking 
 about me, do you think? I've got another subject." 
 
 " I know it," said Nellie. " What about Peter ? I 
 adore Peter, by the way; don't say anything horrid." 
 
 A certain sense of shock came to Silvia. Peter 
 had not, ever so remotely, been the subject to which 
 she alluded. But when Nellie suggested him, he was 
 flashed on the screen with disconcerting vividness. 
 
 "But I didn't mean him at all," she said. "I 
 wasn't thinking about — about Mr. Mainwaring." 
 
 "He wouldn't like that," said Nellie. 
 
 Silvia sat up. She had a perfectly clear conscience
 
 Peter 93 
 
 to endorse an immediate repudiation. What caused 
 that suspicious, that questionable little leap of blood 
 to her cheeks, was, indeed, not that she had been 
 thinking of Peter, but that Nellie supposed she had. 
 
 "Oh, but this is quite silly ! " she exclaimed. " In- 
 deed, he wasn't in my mind at all. Why should he 
 be? I scarcely know him." 
 
 Nellie knew that she had ceased for that moment 
 to dazzle Silvia, to whom the suggestion that Peter 
 had been in her mind w^as clearly unwelcome and 
 unexpected. It might be true or it might not (so ran 
 Nellie's swift argument) that Silvia was not thinking 
 of Peter at all ; but that she should be ruffled — ever 
 so delightfully — at the notion that she had been, con- 
 stituted a symptom, did it not ? . . . But it was enough 
 to note that, and pass on at once to the easy task of 
 dazzling Silvia again. 
 
 "You are too delicious," she said. "Yes, I'm 
 going to stick to my subject for a minute longer, 
 which is you, since yours isn't Peter. You've got 
 the most lovely lack of self-consciousness, do you 
 know ? Of course you don't, or you wouldn't have it. 
 But when I talk to other girls, we each think about 
 ourselves. It's like talking to a boy — not Peter, mind 
 — to talk to you." 
 
 Silvia made some gesture of deprecation. 
 
 "No, I will go on," said Nellie. "Look at the 
 glass I hold up to you, please. It isn't only the lovely 
 parties that you and your mother have given us that 
 have polished up the rusty old season : it's your 
 quality— what shall I call it— wind and sun, sexless- 
 ness. You just move along like a spring day, with 
 all your banners streaming, in the most entrancing 
 glee. You're absolutely insouciante, if you under- 
 stand French." 
 
 G
 
 94 
 
 Peter 
 
 Silvia had lost sight of Peter by now; he was 
 round the corner, and how near that corner was, was 
 immaterial. She wanted to put herself round the 
 corner, too, and seized on this as a possible diversion. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I do," she said. "I only came back 
 this spring from three years in France." 
 
 "There you are again ! There's another of your 
 completenesses. You're spread evenly, richly, like 
 butter (when we're all eating margarine) over the 
 whole slice of life. I wish I could bite you ! I 
 believe that with a little trouble I could, and, if so, I 
 should hate you, not for what you've got but for what 
 I haven't." 
 
 At this moment Nellie became aware that her day 
 in the wet woods had changed the character with 
 which, prospectively, she had endowed it. She had 
 meant, first with Peter as her companion, and next 
 by herself, to enjoy the last hours of her celibacy. 
 With Silvia, on the other hand, she was now not 
 enjoying her own, but envying her companion's. 
 What she envied her most for was her decorated 
 simplicity. Silvia wore her decorations externally; 
 she didn't attempt to swallow them and, by digestion, 
 make them build up a complicated identity. Worst 
 of all — from the envious point of view — she didn't 
 know how splendidly embellished she was. ... It 
 was as if you said to a gallant soldier, "Have you got 
 the V.C? " sarcastically almost, and then he looked 
 down — not up — at his decorations, and found that the 
 little piece of riband was there. 
 
 Silvia moved a shade away from her companion. 
 The break in the thorn tree, with the consequent oval 
 of hot sunlight, quite accounted for that. 
 
 "But what haven't you got?" she asked. "You 
 live, as naturally as drawing breath, the life that's so
 
 Peter 95 
 
 new to me, and so puzzling and so delightful ; and 
 below and beyond all that, you're on the point of 
 being married. He chose you, out of all the world, 
 and you found all the time that you had chosen him. 
 What is there left for you, just you now and here, 
 to want? You're adorable " 
 
 Silvia wrestled and threw the bugbear of shyness 
 which so often sat on her shoulders and strangled her 
 neck. There it writhed on the grass, not in the least 
 dead, but, for the moment, knocked out. 
 
 "Oh, sometimes I wish I was a boy," she said. 
 "I'm more in that key than in ours. Sometimes I 
 think " 
 
 Nellie projected herself into that gap of sunlight 
 from which, possibly, Silvia shrank. She had no 
 definite scheme of exploration for the moment, but 
 it seemed to her that something in the tangle of 
 motives with which she had invited Silvia to share 
 her afternoon was faintly stirring as if with unravel- 
 ment. Those loops and knots might get more inex- 
 tricably muddled, it is true ; but, conceivably, the 
 whole thing might "come out " like a conjuring 
 trick. 
 
 "Ah, what is it that you think?" she asked. 
 "Don't stop so tantalizingly. As if thinking wasn't 
 everything ! Whatever one does is only a clumsy 
 translation of what one has thought. Think aloud ! " 
 
 Nellie looked more than ever at that moment like 
 some exquisite wild presence of the woodlands. 
 Dryad or Bacchante, delicate and subtle in face and 
 limb and brain, and merely proto-plasmic in soul, 
 a creature made for the bedazzlement and the undoing 
 of man. Certainly she had woven her spells over 
 Silvia again; the momentary check in the incantation, 
 when she had attributed " Peter-thought " to her, had
 
 96 Peter 
 
 passed as swiftly as the shadow of one of those light 
 clouds which drifted over the grass. 
 
 But at that moment, when she so bewilderingly 
 shone out again, there formed itself in Silvia's mind, 
 as she tried to follow this injunction to think aloud, 
 not the image of her at all, but of Peter. For if 
 Nellie was divinely akin to the blossoming thickets 
 and the shadows that were beginning to lengthen over 
 the ^rass, making cool islands on which the deer 
 were grazing now, he, too, would be no less har- 
 moniously bestowed by this reflecting lake-side. It 
 was not that either of them suggested rurality ; no 
 one, indeed, was more emphatically of the street and 
 the ballroom and the complication of the city than 
 they. But by some secret pedigree of soul they were 
 of the house and lineage of the things that glowed 
 and enjoyed and were lovely, and gave as little 
 thought to yesterday as they took for to-morrow. All 
 this, not catalogued in detail, but fused into a single 
 luminous impression, passed through Silvia's con- 
 sciousness like the wink of summer lightning. . . . 
 
 "As if it wasn't difficult enough to think at all," 
 she said, "and as for thinking aloud, thinking articu- 
 lately — if I'm to sum it up, ever so clumsily, it's 
 merely that I adore, with all the incense I've got, the 
 thought of your happiness. It does matter so much 
 to me, and . . . and isn't it noble fun to find someone 
 who matters? Very few people really matter; I sup- 
 pose little, silly, finite hearts like ours can't take in 
 many. But those who do matter must come right 
 in, if they don't mind. They mustn't risk themselves 
 by hanging about on the doorstep; they might catch 
 cold. Aren't I talking nonsense? It's your fault 
 for taking me into the country, for assuredly it has 
 gone to my head. Where there's a stifle of roofs and
 
 Peter 97 
 
 a choke of streets nobody matters and everyone is 
 quite delightful. What a stupid word that is, and 
 how expressive of a stupid thing." 
 
 Silvia very deliberately shot off into the back- 
 water of nonsense, so to speak, out of the main 
 stream, for the sun was on the water, in this dazzle 
 of Nellie's personality, and she could not see towards 
 what weir the hurrying river might be taking her. 
 Very likely there was no weir; the glistening tide, 
 running swift, would very likely spread out into some 
 broad expanse of Peace-pools; but it was the bright- 
 ness that prevented scrutiny. 
 
 By some flash of woodland instinct, by some un- 
 canny perception, Nellie divined the cause of this 
 retirement into the backwater of triviality. With a 
 ruthlessness that rivalled Mrs. Wardour's pursuit 
 of desirable guests, she caught the rope of Silvia's 
 boat, so to speak, before she could tie it to the 
 security of some overhanging branch, and shot it 
 out into the main stream again. 
 
 "Yes, my dear," she said, "you talk nonsense 
 delightfully. Ah, I didn't mean stupidly; I didn't 
 mean in the sense you had just labelled it with. I 
 meant delightfully, charmingly. But just for a 
 change after that delightful (now I mean stupid) 
 London, we're talking sense. You interested me in- 
 describably just now. You said you were more in 
 a boy's key than a girl's. What did you mean 
 exactly ? " 
 
 Silvia watched the receding shore to which she 
 had hoped to tie up. . . . After all, what did it matter 
 if there was a weir, not a Peace-pool down there in 
 that dazzle of benignant sunshine? But there was 
 another difficulty in the way of expression. 
 
 "I can't really explain," she said. "There are
 
 98 Peter 
 
 things so simple that no explanation is possible. If 
 I said, ' It is a hot day,' and you told me to explain, 
 I couldn't. I could only say, ' If you don't feel it, 
 if you don't know what that means, I can't help 
 you.' It's the same with all elemental things." 
 
 Nellie regarded her with eyes that were framed 
 in some steely sort of interest; eyes that were eager 
 to know not from the kindly tenderness of friends 
 but from some surgical curiosity. 
 
 " I think I know what you mean by a ' boy's 
 key,' " she said. "Let me see if I can explain you to 
 yourself, Silvia, since you won't — ah, can't — explain 
 yourself to me. If you were in love, for instance, 
 you would passionately want to give love, to pour 
 yourself out, instead of, like most girls, provoking 
 love and permitting it and ever so eagerly receiving 
 it. You wouldn't want a man's homage so much as 
 you would want to be allowed to love him. You 
 would want, and how queer and delicious of you — 
 you lovely upside-down, inside-out creature." 
 
 This abrupt termination of the presentment of 
 Silvia in love, as imagined by her friend, was due 
 to something quite unexpected. There came on 
 Silvia's face, as her own privacy was thus invaded, 
 a dumb, but none the less violent signal of protest. 
 She shrank and withdrew herself, as if a burglarious 
 bullseye had been shot through the window of her 
 room, where she lay lost in cool, soft maidenliness. 
 The contact was even more direct than that; it was 
 as if some pitiless incision had been made in her 
 very flesh. But with this pause in the application 
 of the knife, this shuttering of the bullseye — for any 
 further beam would have disclosed the deliberate 
 attempt to rifle the jewel-chest — there came the com- 
 plete withdrawal of her protesting signal. ... It had
 
 Peter 99 
 
 been the bullseye of a friend that looked in, the 
 scissors of a dear amateur manicurist. . . . 
 
 She was sitting there hatless in the shade, and 
 with her hand she pushed her hair back. 
 
 "Oh, you're a witch, NeUie," she said. "Two 
 hundred years ago you would have been burned, 
 and I should have helped to pile the faggots. I ex- 
 pect that you're magically right. I can't tell, you 
 know, because I assure you, literally and soberly, that 
 I never have been in love. Literally never. Soberly 
 never. But, somehow, what you suggested (how did 
 you divine it, you witch ?) touched something, made 
 something vibrate and sing. I didn't know any- 
 thing about it; I didn't know it was there. Then you 
 put your finger on it, and I knew ... I knew I 
 had it." 
 
 "And then you just hated me for a moment," 
 said Nellie. 
 
 Silvia did not quite accept this. 
 
 "You made me wince," she said in correction. 
 "And, oh, yes, I'll confess: just for a moment you 
 seemed to me hostile and hurting. You aren't; 
 you're heavenly and healing. You taught me, bless 
 you. But I think you're a witch all the same. It wasn't 
 telepathy; you told me something about myself that 
 I didn't know, and couldn't have known, and can't 
 know now, for that matter. Oh, you lucky creature. 
 You've fallen in love. You know it all. Did you 
 do it in the manner you attribute to me? Did you 
 savagely give, not wanting anything but to give, 
 give. . . . How did you put it just now? To be 
 allowed to love, to pour yourself out, to pay homage 
 instead of exacting it? The boy's key! My dear, 
 it seems ages and ages since that phrase came up. 
 I've had a whole drama since then, you know."
 
 100 
 
 Peter 
 
 Nellie, in point of fact, had had her drama, too. 
 But it was as yet undetermined. She had not got 
 at the root facts for which she was burrowing. 
 Silvia's volley of questions, anyhow, were easy of 
 response. They were, barring, a certain inversion, 
 very Victorian questions, dating from the days when 
 men blindly adored and women swooned at the de- 
 claration of the passion which they had done their 
 level best to excite. But that inversion made to her, 
 and for particular reasons, a wildly interesting specu- 
 lation. Silvia, when she loved (so much was certain), 
 would love in the "boy's key^" the eager, evocative 
 key. She acknowledged herself, in contemplation of 
 the event, as blindly adoring, as being "allowed" to 
 love. Whether that was entirely a prognostication, 
 or w^hether it was already partially, potentially ful- 
 filled was another question, and the application of 
 that concerned Nellie, and her own purposes, alone. 
 Soon, deftly now, with the lesson of Silvia's revolt 
 against surprises, she would get a further result from 
 her dissection. At present there was the impatient, 
 intimate volley of questions to answer. 
 
 "Oh, my dear, I understand so well the ' boy's 
 key,' " she said. "A triumphal, victorious surrender, 
 with all the bells ringing— isn't that it? A march 
 out with white flags insolently flying. I should love 
 to be like that, if I %vas like that. But that isn't my 
 key. I just surrendered, rather terrified, you know. 
 But I couldn't be terrified of Philip for long: he's 
 such a dear." 
 
 This could not be considered more than an 
 approximate account, a vague sketch, very faintly 
 resembling the scene it portrayed— a quiet, feminine 
 disclosure. But Nellie did not want to discuss that; 
 she wanted to get back to her tangled skeins again.
 
 Peter loi 
 
 "I should like to see you in love, Silvia," she 
 said. "Promise to tell me when it happens. At 
 least, you needn't; it will be wonderfully obvious, 
 you in your ' boy's key.' Whom can we find for you 
 who will just fall in with that, and be the comple- 
 ment of it, making, it complete and round and per- 
 fect? Hasn't ever so little a bit of him, just the top 
 of his head, come over the horizon yet ? " 
 
 Silvia did not withdraw or raise any signal of 
 protest this time. She made no signal at all; none, 
 at any rate, that could be perceived by the girl who 
 sat watching her very narrowly. And once more 
 Nellie fumbled, so to speak, at the shutter of her 
 bullseye, which would flash on the light. 
 
 She looked at the watch on her wrist. 
 
 "My dear, how late it is! " she said. "We must 
 go at once. I promised to go to Mr. Mainwaring's 
 studio. Peter's father, you know. Peter will be 
 vexed if I don't come." 
 
 Then came the signal. Silvia jumped up with 
 wholly unnecessary alacrity. But more nimbly yet 
 did the high colour mount to her face.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 One evening, a week or so before the date fixed for 
 the wedding, PhiUp Beaumont and Nelhe had dined 
 and gone together to the first night of some new 
 play. It was saliently characteristic of him — a peak, 
 so to say, prominendy uprising from the smooth level 
 of his cultivated plains— that when arrangements for 
 such diversions and businesses were in his hands 
 they always went without a hitch. Nellie had 
 expressed a desire to see this play, without giving 
 long notice to him of her wish, and it followed, as 
 a matter of course, that he managed to get gangway 
 seats in the stalls at the most advantageous distance 
 from the stage. 
 
 Things happened like that with him : his own 
 unruffled smoothness, which seemed immune from 
 any of the attacks of asperities of one kind or another, 
 to which human nature is subject, seemed to create 
 a similar well-ordered decorum in his activities. To- 
 night, for instance, the dinner which preceded the 
 theatre was punctual and swiftly served, so that 
 neither hurry nor undue lingering followed it : his 
 motor slid up to the kerb-stone precisely as they 
 quitted the restaurant, and it might be taken for 
 granted that at the conclusion of the piece it would be 
 bubbling up opposite the portals of the theatre pre- 
 cisely as they emerged. Once in their seats there had 
 been but a few minutes to wait before the lights were 
 lowered for the first act; these afforded a convenient 
 time to grasp the real and the histrionic names of the 
 actors and see where the acts were laid. 
 
 I02
 
 Peter 103 
 
 In those few minutes Nellie's glance had swept 
 over stalls and boxes, noting the position of various 
 friends. Silvia was in a box with her mother, and 
 loud screams of laughter from another box opposite, 
 perhaps temporarily turned into a parrot-house, made 
 it almost certain, that Mrs. Trentham was having her 
 usual splendid time surrounded by a bevy of young 
 men. A glance verified that, and the same glance 
 showed her that Peter, who, she knew, was to be 
 present, was not among them. Then someone 
 entered the box where Silvia and her mother sat, 
 and she knew where Peter was. Immediately a loud 
 flamboyant voice just behind her informed her that 
 Peter's entry had been noticed by someone else. 
 
 "Glance, Maria mia," it said, "at that box next 
 the stage on the right, where is the lady with the 
 wealth of Golconda (I allude to diamonds) on her 
 head. You and I have no reason to be ashamed of 
 that tall handsome boy. Ah, behold just in front 
 of us the adorable Miss Heaton. Miss Heaton, the 
 box by the stage, the lady in diamonds : her name. 
 A word, a whisper. . . ! " 
 
 The quenching of lights gave suitable cover for 
 the emotions evoked by this particular brand of 
 theatrical slosh. There were whimsicalities, there was 
 slyness, there was maidenliness and womanliness, 
 there was the sense of looking through a keyhole; 
 but all these qualities were soaked and dyed with 
 slosh. Mr. Mainwaring, to Nellie's sense, seemed to 
 make himself spokesman for the house : he thrilled 
 to every slyness, however subtle, and he advertised, 
 on behalf of the rest of the audience, his appreciation. 
 His resonant laugh proclaimed the gorgeousness of 
 the less abstruse humours, as when the heroine, being 
 asked to give her lover a kiss, wore a face of horror
 
 104 
 
 Peter 
 
 and said, "Eh, on the Sawbath ! " His giggling 
 and his slapping of his great big thigh gave the cue 
 for more recondite deliciousnesses ; he exclaimed 
 "Bravd! Bravd!" at the end of a long speech; he 
 blew his nose loudly at the blare of the Highland 
 Vox Humana, and bestowed one splendid sob on his 
 handkerchief when the author really let himself go 
 and opened all the sluices of sentimentality. Mr. 
 Mainwaring had to recover with gulps and hiccups 
 from that, but he pulled himself together like a man, 
 and ran his fingers through his hair to make it stand 
 out from his interesting head. 
 
 Though these convulsions were resonant only just 
 behind her, Nellie gave them no more attention than 
 she would to raindrops on the window : and the 
 doings of the stage occupied her as little, and as 
 little the presence next her of the perfect organizer. 
 
 ... A certain antagonism had grown up, had seeded 
 itself and was rapidly propagating. A vigorous 
 seedling was the fact of Peter's being where he was. 
 It was no business of hers, so she told herself, with 
 whom Peter went to the play, and she tried to divert 
 her mind by ironical comment. Peter, poor and 
 parasitic, would always dance a graceful attendance 
 on anyone who would give him dinner and a seat in 
 the box. Peter was like that, and for his grace and 
 politeness there was due reward. He had a trick of 
 sympathetic listening, of intelligent interrogation that 
 made his companion feel herself interesting. You 
 could put him next the most crashing bore, and he 
 would wreathe himself in smiles until the crashing 
 bore felt herself to be the wittiest of sirens. And then 
 suddenly the stupidity of her comments and their 
 irrelevance failed to divert Nellie altogether.
 
 Peter 105 
 
 There was the antagonism, hugely grown by now. 
 Peter, so she made out, was as conscious of it as she, 
 and had certainly during the last w-eek or two con- 
 tributed to its growth. He had answered Nellie's 
 formalities with similar politeness : he had watered 
 where she had sown, and she wondered whether he 
 contemplated with the dismay of which she was 
 conscious, the lively crop of their combined 
 husbandry. 
 
 It was the fashion, as she had once said to Silvia, 
 to be devoted to Peter, and Silvia seemed to have 
 "picked up " the fashion with the same ease as she 
 had exhibited all along her social pilgrimage. She 
 welcomed all that came up with a frolic, boy-like 
 enjoyment, but there was, as Nellie perfectly well 
 knew, a real Silvia, a serious Silvia, somebody with 
 a heart and the shy treasures of it, a personality 
 curiously ungirl-like, something eager and hungry 
 and wholesome. She knew in advance what her way 
 of love would be, and her feet, firm and unstumbling 
 — Silvia would never stumble — were on the high road. 
 Of all the saunterers that she might meet there, would 
 she not, by the mere instinct of divination, choose 
 the complement to her own unusual personality ? The 
 complement certainly was someone feminine but not 
 effeminate, indeterminate in desire, somebody, in 
 fact, extraordinarily like Nellie herself. In the way 
 of a girl, Silvia had already quite succumbed to a 
 charm that Nellie had not troubled to exercise : she 
 had recognized and surrendered to it w^ith that vic- 
 torious white-flag abandonment. With what ring- 
 ing of bells would she not march out to the mildest 
 call for capitulation when a boy of that type blew his 
 lazy horn ? 
 
 Long before the act was over Nellie had known
 
 io6 Peter 
 
 that she would present herself in the interval at Mrs. 
 Wardour's box. She would, in anticipation, have 
 much to say to Silvia : there would be plans for the 
 next day, or regrets over the dreadful occupations 
 that made plans impossible. There would be some 
 flat steady compliment about diamonds and parties 
 for Mrs. Wardour, and — there would be nothing at 
 all for Peter. She wanted, as far as she was aware, 
 just to take him in in the new situation which was 
 surely forming, as clouds form on a chilly windless 
 day. She wanted to get used to it, she wanted — or did 
 she not want ? — to put the weed-killer of familiarity 
 on the crop of antagonism which was certainly pros- 
 pering in a manner wholly unlooked for. And then, 
 much quieted and reassured, she would return to 
 Philip, and feel for his hand when the lights went 
 down again. He had a good hand, cool and secure 
 and efficient : there was the sense of safety about it, 
 of correctness : it was all that a hand should be. 
 Then, still secure, and vastly more content than she 
 was now, he would take her back to her mother's 
 flat, and perhaps drop in for a half-hour. She 
 would say, quite correctly, "Come upstairs and 
 talk to mother and me for a few minutes." She 
 would work the lift herself, and he would be sur- 
 prised at her mastery of it. Then, when they were 
 vomited forth at the fifth floor, she would remember 
 that her mother had gone to a bridge-party and would 
 certainly not be home before twelve. That would give 
 them their half-hour alone. 
 
 Nellie was not prepared for the companionship 
 in her expedition with which Mr. Mainwaring 
 decorated her. Standing in the middle of the gang- 
 way, he made her a sonorous and embellished little
 
 Peter 107 
 
 speech when, rather rashly, she revealed her destina- 
 tion at the end of this interminable first act. 
 
 "Peter's friends, my Peter's friends, are mine," 
 he magnificently observed, "and I feel it my duty to 
 pay my respects to them. Oblige me, Miss Heaton, 
 by accepting my escort to the box that glitters with 
 the combined distinction of diamonds and Peter's 
 presence. My wife — will you not, Maria mia? — will 
 prefer to remain precisely where she is. Chocolates, 
 my beloved? A cup of coffee ? I will leave my purse 
 with you. Refresh yourself!" 
 
 Mrs. Mainwaring declined refreshment, except in 
 so far as it was ministered to by some advertisements 
 of Brighton hotels which appeared on the back of 
 the programme. There was one there which she had 
 not previously heard of and which seemed very 
 reasonable. 
 
 Her husband offered the sleeve of a velveteen-clad 
 arm to Nellie, and they proceeded upstairs with pomp 
 and the slight odour of turpentine, which was all that 
 was left of a dab of paint which had dropped from 
 his brush on to the skirt of his coat as a profound 
 inspiration seized him after he had dressed for dinner. 
 Philip gave a slightly iced negative to Nellie's inquiry 
 whether he was to join this pilgrimage. 
 
 Mr. Mainwaring did all the usual things. He 
 clapped his hand on Peter's shoulder when the intro- 
 ductions had been made, and hoped, with a stately 
 bow, that his boy had been behaving himself. He 
 waved his hand when Mrs. Wardour pronounced the 
 first act "very interesting," and recognized a fellow 
 artist. Before ten minutes were over Mrs. Wardour 
 was committed to look in next afternoon and see "his 
 few poor efforts." Then he became more confidential 
 and whispery.
 
 io8 Peter 
 
 "A marvellous, an incomparable type ! " he said, 
 looking at Silvia, and back again at her mother. 
 "Who has had the felicity, the difficult felicity, of 
 painting that glorious head? No one? I am 
 astonished. I would be shocked if I were capable 
 of so bourgeois an emotion. H'm ! " 
 
 Beyond a visit to the private view of the Royal 
 Academy, Mrs. Wardour had not penetrated into 
 pictorial circles, and faintly, through the impression, 
 volubly audible, of Silvia and Nellie talking together, 
 Peter heard his father leading up to the series of war- 
 cartoons suitable for mural decoration. As regards 
 that, he went walking in the wet woods, as aloof 
 from his father as from any other magnificent self- 
 advertiser. He had heard Mrs. Wardour's promise 
 to go to the studio next day and to bring Silvia, and 
 he thought that very probably the relations of Great 
 Britain with foreign countries might struggle through 
 a free hour without his co-operation. Meantime 
 Nellie seemed to be talking secrets to Silvia, and he 
 sat, nursing his knee, a little aloof from either group. 
 Presently Nellie would go back to her seat in the 
 stalls, and his father would do the same, and then 
 he would hitch his chair a little forward again. . . . 
 
 People began to troop back into the stalls; 
 obviously a bell had rung announcing the imminence 
 of the second act. Nellie recognized that, and got 
 up. As yet she had barely spoken to him. 
 
 "I must get back to my Philip," she said very 
 properly. "Good night, darling Silvia." 
 
 Peter had gone to open the door for them. 
 
 "Come to the flat, Peter," she said, without turn- 
 ing her head, as she passed him. " I shall go straight 
 home." 
 
 The words were just dropped from her, as if by
 
 Peter 109 
 
 accident or inadvertence, but the moment she had 
 spoken them she knew that this had been in the main 
 the object of her visit to the box : it was this which 
 she had primarily wanted. The merest hint of an 
 affirmative nod on Peter's part was sufficient answer. 
 
 The play came to its happy concluding treacli- 
 ness, and they went out. Philip and Nellie, of course, 
 were among the first into the vestibule, where he 
 instantly caught his footman's eye. The Wardour 
 group must have left their box slightly before the 
 end, for Peter was seeing them into their motor, 
 thanking Mrs. Wardour for "such an awfully nice 
 evening " and excusing himself from being given a 
 lift, as after a day in the office he liked walking home 
 — yes, all the way to South Kensington. How nice 
 it would be to see Mrs. Wardour at his father's house 
 next day. . . . He lingered a moment on the pave- 
 ment, and as Nellie passed him on her way to the 
 motor, just nodded again, without seeming to see her. 
 
 Philip's first concern, as they slid off into the 
 traffic, was that there should be air, but no draught 
 for Nellie. Perhaps if he put her window quite up 
 and his half down. . . . Was that comfortable ? And 
 a match for her cigarette? After which he slipped 
 her hand into his, and after a moment's delay she 
 returned the pressure. 
 
 In a flash of general, comprehensive consciousness 
 NelHe was aware how comfortable and well-ordered 
 the whole evening had been, and realized that all 
 days, evenings and mornings and afternoons alike, 
 would to the end of life, owing to the very ample 
 "settlements" which she understood to have been 
 made, be padded and cushioned like this. She was 
 conscious at the same moment that her appreciation 
 of that lacked acuteness; she would just as soon, to 
 
 H
 
 no 
 
 Peter 
 
 take an example, be walking with Peter along the 
 pavements, where nobody cared if she felt a draught 
 or not, as be having it all her own way in unjostled 
 progress. . . . The flash of this perception was in- 
 stantaneous, measured only by that moment's delay 
 in response to Philip's hand, for he instantly began 
 to tick again, as she put it to herself, a pleasant 
 tick, a good, reliable, firm tick. 
 
 "A charming play, was it not, dear?" said he. 
 "And that delicious humour of his." 
 
 Well, if Nellie w^as going to be comfortable all her 
 life, it was only fair that she should contribute, should 
 put her penny into the placid bag. 
 
 "Delicious," she said. "I am sure it will have a 
 great success. And how interesting to be there on 
 the first night." 
 
 She broke ofif suddenly, and clasped Philip's arm. 
 
 "Ah— we nearly ran over that man," she cried. 
 
 Philip remained quite calm. He would obviously 
 be an admirable companion in a shipwreck or a 
 thunderstorm or a railway accident. This was, 
 delightfully, a new point about him, and Nellie 
 found, on the discovery of it, that she must have been 
 collecting his good points, for with the collector's 
 zeal she hastened to net it and add it to her specimens. 
 
 He pressed the hand that she had laid on his arm, 
 and looked out of the window which he had opened 
 on his side of the motor. 
 
 "My dear, there is nothing to be alarmed about," 
 he said. "The man is quite safe, and has not for- 
 gotten his usual vocabulary. You need never be 
 afraid with Logan ; he is the most careful of drivers, 
 and has an extraordinary command of the brakes." 
 
 Nellie collected this new genus Philip ; sub-species 
 Logan. It added a little bit to the completeness.
 
 Peter m 
 
 "Logan is quite trustworthy," he went on; "you 
 need never have a moment's qualm when he is on the 
 box. We w^ere discussing the play. I should like 
 to see it again. Does not that strike you as the true 
 criterion as to whether you have essentially enjoyed 
 a play? If there is only mere glitter, one does not 
 want to repeat the experience. But there was gold, 
 I thought, this evening." 
 
 He was silent a moment, patting her hand, and 
 Nellie divined his mind with a rather terrible dis- 
 tinctness. She had been very considerably agitated 
 for that moment, and he assumed (how wisely and 
 how consciously) a complete oblivion of that. The 
 best method of reassuring her after the little testi- 
 monial to Logan was to be unaware of any fluttering 
 incident. A manly calm was the efficient medicine 
 for feminine alarm. He went on talking aboijt the 
 play as if nothing agitating had occurred. . . . 
 
 Swiftly as the car slid down Piccadilly Nellie's 
 brain was just a little in advance of it, and before 
 it slowed up at the house of flats she was mentally 
 on the doorstep. Earlier in the evening she had con- 
 templated Philip's admiring ascent with her in the 
 lift, her own surprised recollection, on their emer- 
 gence, that her mother would not yet be in. But 
 now that picture had been whisked off the screen 
 altogether; there would be no ascent with Philip, 
 no sudden remembrance of her mother's absence. A 
 subsequent engagement, not so conventional, had 
 been proposed by her and assented to with a nod 
 so imperceptible that it had been repeated. 
 
 Philip had so often spent a final half-hour like 
 this, that, as the motor stopped, he almost assumed it. 
 
 "And may I come up for a few minutes?" he 
 asked.
 
 112 
 
 Peter 
 
 She laid her hand on his shoulder as if to press 
 him back on to his seat. 
 
 "Don't find it horrid of me, dear," she said, "if 
 I say * no.' I am a little tired, do you think? But 
 what a lovely evening we have had. You come and 
 fetch me in the morning, don't you? Good night, 
 my dear." 
 
 The most ardent of lovers could hardly have 
 insisted, after this little collection of sentences, each 
 unmistakably clinking with some sort of final "ring," 
 and it was out of the question for Philip to repeat a 
 request which, in any case, had habit rather than 
 craving to back it. He would certainly have liked 
 to sit with Nellie and her mother — so he supposed — 
 for a quarter of an hour, discuss the play a little 
 more, quietly sun himself, contentedly basking in 
 Nellie's presence, and consider himself a very for- 
 tunate fellow; but if she was a little tired, it would 
 have been unthinkably intrusive to beg her to take 
 a part and let him take a part in a seance that she 
 had no wish for. But she lingered a moment yet 
 in order to give no impression of being in any hurry; 
 then, forbidding him to get out of the motor, she 
 disappeared, with a final gesture as of but a short 
 separation, into the house. 
 
 Her mother, as Nellie knew would be the case, 
 had not yet returned from her card-party, nor would 
 she be likely to do so for a full hour yet, and her 
 absence, in relation to the visitor she now expected, 
 took for itself a totally different aspect. She had 
 limitless opportunities and facilities for a tete-a-tete 
 with Philip, and her mother's absence, if it had been 
 he who had come admiringly up with her as she 
 managed the lift, would in no way have been a
 
 Peter 113 
 
 special, even a desirable, condition. She and Philip 
 were so often alone together, and, before many 
 days were passed, would be so exclusively alone 
 together, that the gain of another such hour was, 
 frankly, quite imponderable. But for the last fort- 
 night she had scarcely had a private word with Peter, 
 and whatever it was that she had to say to him in 
 this visit she had bidden him to, and whatever he had 
 to say to her (that he had something to say was 
 probable from his reiterated acceptance of her request), 
 it was quite certain that these things could not be 
 satisfactorily said, even, perhaps, be said at all, before 
 any audience whatever. 
 
 Nellie had no definite know-ledge, in any detail, 
 of even her own contribution to the coming inter- 
 view; all that she knew was that when, half an hour 
 later or an hour later, she would click the door on 
 his departure, she must somehow have looked 
 minutely, with his eyes to help her, at the antagonism 
 which had so odiously flourished. She intensely 
 hoped that it could be rooted up altogether and put 
 on to the rubbish heap of mistakes and misappre- 
 hensions; but whether her hope had much of the 
 luminosity of faith about it was not so certain. Too 
 much depended on what he had to tell her, and she 
 did not fall into the error of forecasting the upshot 
 before she knew what contribution he was to make 
 towards the preliminary process. . . . Then, with an 
 internal vibration — partly of suspense, partly, she 
 admitted, of eager anticipation — she heard the faint 
 tingle of the electric bell. The servants, no doubt, 
 had gone to bed, and she went to the door herself. 
 
 "Hullo! " said Peter. 
 
 He stood there a moment, after the door was 
 opened, without moving, his eyes agleam, and a
 
 114 
 
 Peter 
 
 smile hovering over his mouth. Often and often had 
 they met in precisely similar fashion, he, as he 
 passed the door on his way home, giving one discreet 
 little ring, which Nellie would answer if she felt 
 disposed to see him. Sometimes her mother would 
 be in ; but oftener, if in, she had gone to bed, and the 
 two would sit over the fire, or, on hot nights, seek 
 the window-seat and spend an hour of desultory in- 
 timacy, as two boys might, or two girls. But to- 
 night there was some little effervescent quality added 
 to the meeting ; the spice that a combined manoeuvre, 
 however innocent, brought with it. Both realized, 
 too, that a talk, which must attempt to readjust their 
 old relations or fit them into the changed conditions, 
 lay ahead, and, for the moment, each brought gaiety 
 and goodwill to the task. The best evidence for that 
 was the assumption of the old relations pending the 
 readjustment. . . . 
 
 "Peter ! How lovely of you ! " she said. "Come 
 
 in." 
 
 "Is she in?" he asked, putting down his coat 
 and hat. 
 
 "Mother? No; she's at a harpy party. Four 
 women rooking each other at bridge. They'll all be 
 trembling and being frightfully polite by this time. 
 Peter, bring your hat and coat in with you. If mother 
 sees them there she will think Philip's here and 
 will come in to sit with us." 
 
 "And if she thought they were mine " 
 
 "She would come in twice. But if there are no 
 signs of anybody she will probably go to bed and 
 not interrupt us." 
 
 The night was hot, with a thundery, overcast sky, 
 and they sat together again in the window-seat. A 
 hundred feet below the street was roaring and rolling
 
 Peter 
 
 115 
 
 along, thick with the discharge from theatres and 
 music halls. 
 
 "The clever one ! And how did you get rid of 
 Philip ? " asked Peter. 
 
 "Lied, darling," said Nellie, succinctly. 
 "Did you, indeed? Nellie, I don't think you're 
 getting on very well with your determination to be 
 conventional." 
 
 Nellie blew reproach at him in the shape of a 
 ragged smoke-ring. 
 
 "I never heard anything so unjust," she said. 
 "Oh, Peter, it was just here we sat when I told you 
 I was going to be quite conventional. Wasn't it? 
 Don't say you don't remember. Well, I'm being the 
 model of conventionality." 
 
 "Pleasant, is it? " asked Peter, in a wonderfully 
 neutral voice. He did not yet quite know why Nellie 
 had summoned him here, and he was greatly aloof 
 still. 
 
 "Don't make slightly acid comments," said she, 
 "about conventionality. It's a fortnight, more than 
 a fortnight, since I saw you last. Oh, I don't count 
 balls and that sort of thing. Your friends are in- 
 visible at balls. You can only see your acquaint- 
 ances. What's the use of just seeing a friend? 
 You've got to be alone with a friend in order to see 
 him." 
 
 Nellie was still unaware of what course she was 
 really meaning to steer. It was to be a safe course, 
 anyhow, avoiding shoals and avoiding icebergs. Just 
 at present Peter was making himself an iceberg. She 
 went on, talking rapidly and quite naturally, with a 
 view to bringing Peter out of his frozen aloofness. 
 
 "But my scheme for conventionality never went 
 so far as to exclude my seeing my friends altogether,"
 
 ii6 Peter 
 
 she said. "And if, in order to see a particular friend, 
 I have to tell lies to one person and — and tell the 
 other not to leave his coat in the hall, that's not my 
 fault. It's mother's fault for not having gone to bed 
 yet; it's Philip's fault for proposing to drop in." 
 
 Peter's smile hovered over his face again, not 
 quite breaking through. 
 
 "Brutes," he said. "Perfect brutes." 
 
 "I'm not sure that you aren't the worst of them 
 all," remarked Nellie. 
 
 His smile broke through at that, and he laughed. 
 
 "You may be quite sure I'm not a brute," he 
 said. "But I should like to know why you think so." 
 
 Nellie was sincere enough in her desire to re- 
 establish a genuine, friendly relationship with him 
 again. At present their grip on eacli other was 
 clogged and rusted. If this rather unconventional 
 meeting was to be of any use (what use she did not 
 clearly define), the first essential was to wipe the 
 wheels clean. 
 
 "You know perfectly well," she said. "Ever 
 since my engagement you have taken yourself com- 
 pletely away. You have shut yourself up. You have 
 bolted your windows and barred your doors to me. 
 Haven't you ? " 
 
 Peter weighed this accusation. It might possibly 
 be true; but it contained an arguable point, which 
 was easy to state. 
 
 "I never bolted the windows and barred the 
 doors," he said. "It was you who did that. I didn't 
 arrange that you should marry Philip. That's what 
 shut me up, if you choose to put it like that. I told 
 you at the time that our relations must be changed." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "No relations that ever existed between us need
 
 Peter 117 
 
 have been changed," she said. "You speak as if we 
 had been in love with each other." 
 
 "Not at all. We never were in love with each 
 other; that we both know. But " 
 
 "What then? " she asked. 
 
 "I'll take your simile," he said. " My windows 
 and doors were open to you. I might easily have 
 fallen in love with you, or, for that matter, you with 
 me. Our relationship, and the possibilities it held, 
 were just those of open doors and windows. Then 
 you came round and shut me up. And Philip drew 
 the curtains." 
 
 She took this in and turned it about before she 
 answered. 
 
 "By which'you mean," she said, "that whatever 
 our relationship might have ripened into, I nipped 
 it off— like a frost." 
 
 "Yes," said he. "A latish frost." 
 
 She got up and moved about the room, patting a 
 cushion here and setting a chair straight there. Peter 
 did not move; he did not even turn his head; but he 
 was quite aware of her pondering restlessness. He 
 was aware, too, that so long as he held his tongue he 
 had the whip-hand. The evidence for that was soon 
 apparent. 
 
 "I didn't know that my engagement would have 
 that effect," she said. "I think it is unreasonable 
 that it should have that effect. If you had been in 
 love with me it would have been different ; in that 
 case I could have understood it. But, as it was, why 
 should it have made any change in our friendship? " 
 
 "What's the use of asking me? " said Peter, with 
 a sudden touch of irritation. "I can't tell you why. 
 I don't know the ' why ' of anything under the sun. 
 But put it the other way about. Suppose that it had
 
 ii8 Peter 
 
 been I who had got engaged to some girl, wouldn't 
 that have made any change in your sense of our 
 friendship ? " 
 
 Peter had spread himself a little over the window- 
 seat when she got up. Now when she came back to 
 her old seat she pushed his encroaching knee aside. 
 
 "That's not the same thing," she said. "A girl 
 can't be a very intimate friend of a married man in 
 the same way that a man can be a very intimate friend 
 of a married woman." 
 
 "I won't ask why," said Peter gently, "because 
 I'm aware that you don't know." 
 
 "What I say is perfectly true, though." 
 
 "Not in the instance of you and me. You knew 
 quite well that I wasn't going to give myself a free 
 rein to fall in love with you after you had settled 
 to marry someone else. Besides, if you come to 
 think of it, a man dangling after a married woman 
 is just as ridiculous as a girl dangling after a married 
 man. I don't see why a man shouldn't be allowed 
 to retain his self-respect as much as a woman." 
 
 Though, as far as the spoken word went, they had 
 arrived at no agreement, no compromise even on 
 which agreement could be based, they both felt that 
 somehow in the region of unspoken treaties the 
 ground had been cleared. Though the wheels did 
 not yet revolve again, rust had been wiped off them. 
 And in Peter's next speech the scouring of the wash- 
 leather was busy. 
 
 "You mustn't think that I don't regret what we're 
 suffering under, Nellie," he said. "I regret it most 
 awfully. I've been saying, and I stick to it still, 
 that you are responsible for it. It was you who closed 
 my windows and bolted my doors. It would be 
 simply silly of me to pretend that I was broken-
 
 Peter 119 
 
 hearted about it, for that would imply that I had been 
 or was in love with you. But that doesn't prevent 
 my being sorry, or my missing, which I acutely do, 
 our old relationship. I don't know if it's any use 
 trying to recapture it. 'Trying,' probably, hasn't 
 much effect on what you feel. It's no use ' trying ' 
 to feel hot if you happen to feel cold, or trying to feel 
 ill when you do feel well " 
 
 "My dear, it makes the whole difference," said 
 Nellie quickly. "Will you try to — to feel yourself back 
 in your relationship with me? I want it, too, Peter." 
 
 She pulled back his encroaching knee which just 
 now she had pushed away and kept her hand on it. 
 The very fact that this triviality was so instinctive 
 constituted the significance of it. 
 
 "I hadn't reckoned with losing you," she went 
 on. "No, I don't excuse myself or account for my- 
 self. Probably I should have done just the same if 
 I had reckoned with it. Probably, if it was all to do 
 again now, I should do the same. Don't let us labour 
 the point; if you'll try, that's all I ask. I'll try, too, 
 if that wall be of any use. I put my nose in the air 
 just as much as you did, as if my nose wasn't sufii- 
 ciently in the air already. But it always turns up at 
 the end." 
 
 "Not to matter; don't mention it," said Peter. 
 
 "That's the old style, Peter," she said. "Keep 
 it up; run with it till it works on its own account. 
 Motor-cycle, you know." 
 
 They were looking at each other now with some- 
 thing of the alert unconsciousness of two old friends 
 alone together. But certainly the machine required 
 running with at present. 
 
 "They're heavy things to push when they won't 
 get going," said he.
 
 120 
 
 Peter 
 
 "How odious you are ! " 
 
 " Hurrah for that word ! " said Peter. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "I wonder how often we have told each other we 
 were odious." 
 
 NelHe was silent, and in that moment's pause 
 Peter was conscious that, real, no doubt, as had 
 been her desire to uproot the antagonism that had 
 grown up between them, that process had been no 
 more than preliminary to something- that should 
 follow. The ground had to be cleared first, but the 
 clearing of the ground was not her ultimate objective. 
 The moment he perceived that at all, he saw how 
 obvious it was; how her appearance suddenly in Mrs. 
 Wardour's box that evening gave a clue to the nature 
 of the further development. Then, quick as an echo, 
 she began to reproduce the thought in his mind. 
 
 "Let's pick up the thread again," she said. "I 
 can give you my weavings very simply. Trousseau, 
 Philip; Philip, trousseau. How lucky men are I 
 When a man is going to be married he doesn't have 
 to spend his days in buying things. He doesn't have 
 to buy anything." 
 
 "Wedding-ring," said Peter, in parenthesis. 
 
 "Yes; but you can't have occupied yourself with 
 that unless you have had a private marriage behind 
 the locked doors and curtained windows. We were 
 telling each other what we had been doing in this 
 long interval. It was your turn." 
 
 "Oh, usual things," said he. "Foreign Office, 
 dinner; breakfast. Foreign Office." 
 
 "And how's May Trentham ? " asked Nellie, 
 wheeling in smaller circles round this objective. 
 "You've left her out; she wouldn't like that." 
 
 "She left me out to-night," said Peter. "She had
 
 Peter 121 
 
 that immense box for the play and never asked me 
 to it." 
 
 Nellie folded her wings and dropped. 
 
 "But you got there all right/' she said. "She 
 saw you, too, sitting with Mrs. Wardour, who hasn't 
 asked her to the party for the Russian ballet. Blood, 
 my dear; there'll be blood over that. Do you know, 
 I think Silvia is one of the most attractive girls I 
 have ever seen." 
 
 As she spoke there came from outside the tingle 
 of the front door bell. Nellie got up with a finger 
 on her lip. 
 
 "Who on earth can that be ? " she whispered. 
 
 "It may be anybody," said Peter, very prudently. 
 "You can't tell till you go and see. Perhaps it's 
 Philip; we may have got hold of each other's hats 
 by mistake, and he's come here " 
 
 Nellie suppressed a laugh. 
 
 "Probably mother," she said. "She forgets her 
 latchkey when she thinks she'll be late home. I 
 shan't say you're here, or she'd come in and spoil 
 our talk." 
 
 "Oh, what a tangled " began Peter. 
 
 Nellie took the additional precaution of turning 
 out the lights in the room where they were sitting 
 and leaving the door open. Close outside was the 
 entrance door from the stairs into the flat, and Peter, 
 sitting in the window-seat, heard with an amusement 
 that dimpled his cheeks Nellie's unhesitating account 
 of herself. It appeared that she had just come in 
 and was just going to bed; she had already put out 
 the lights in the sitting-room. There followed a 
 triumphant announcement of her mother's winnings, 
 an affectionate good night, and the closing of a door
 
 122 
 
 Peter 
 
 down the passage. Sitting there in the dark Peter 
 drew the conclusion that NeUie put a high premium 
 on the pursuit of the conversation in which, as he 
 infallibly conjectured, she had just got down to the 
 bone. She would scarcely, for the aesthetic delight in 
 tortuosity, have concealed the fact that he had 
 dropped in, as he had done a hundred times before, 
 for a few minutes' chat on his way home. She wanted 
 to talk about Silvia. For his part he was perfectly 
 ready to talk about Silvia. 
 
 Just before the closing of the door, which must 
 certainly be that of Mrs. Heaton's bedroom, Nellie 
 had said : "I'll put out the lights; good night, dear. 
 What a lovely last rubber," and Peter, feeling his 
 way, so to speak, into Nellie's mind by the analogy 
 of his own, knew exactly what she was doing. In a 
 moment now there would be the click of the extin- 
 guished light in the hall, and she would very softly 
 rustle back in the dark into the room where he was 
 sitting, close the door of that, and then, perhaps, 
 turn on the light inside again, or, as likely as not, 
 shuffle back into the window-seat. So often had they 
 sat there talking in the dark. 
 
 And as he waited for those five or ten seconds to 
 pass, he was invaded by a sense ot passionate re- 
 bellion against himself. There was the girl, whom 
 for the last two years he had been interested in, 
 fond of to the practical exclusion of anyone else, and 
 now, at this moment she, engaged to a man whom 
 she did not ever so remotely love, was presently 
 stealing back, on the eve of her marriage, to spend 
 a more than midnight hour with him. He ought to 
 have been a balloon, rising into some stratum of 
 sunlight high above the twi-lit earth, and instead he 
 was bumping heavily over uneven ground, quite
 
 Peter 123 
 
 unable to get into the air. No matter what the ballast 
 of worldly consideration he threw out, he could not 
 feel himself lifting, and Nellie, when she came back, 
 would only add to the weight. 
 
 His expectations were ruthlessly, even ruefully, 
 fulfilled. She stole in, invisible in the darkened 
 oblong of the doorway, closed it, and without turning 
 up the light, established herself in the window-seat 
 again. 
 
 "Mother's gone to her room," she said. "I did 
 it so cleverly, Peter. I said I had just come in " 
 
 "I know; I heard," said Peter. "Brilliant." 
 
 "Wasn't it? Now we can talk without any fear 
 of interruption. Where had we got to? Oh, I know. 
 I think Silvia is perfectly fascinating. Don't you ? " 
 
 Here was the bumping process, the added weight. 
 Eager though Nellie had been to re-establish old 
 relations between herself and him, there was a livelier 
 eagerness to ascertain anything about new relations 
 between himself and Silvia. If Nellie, as he had 
 affirmed, had shut his windows and bolted his doors 
 for him, he now made a <our of the secure premises 
 to see that she had don^ her work thoroughly. 
 
 "I don't know if I snould say perfectly fascina- 
 ting," he said. 
 
 "But you like her, don't you? " 
 
 "Extremely, but " 
 
 Nellie waited to hear the qualification. She liked 
 the fact that there was a qualification, though at 
 present she did not know what it was. As nothing, 
 further came, she spoke again, quite in the old style. 
 
 "Oh, it's so rude to say ' but,' and then not go 
 on," she said. 
 
 Peter jerked back his head. 
 
 "Let me be polite, then," he said. "One can
 
 124 
 
 Peter 
 
 always observe the small decencies of life. What I 
 nearly said was : ' But I'm not in love with her.' I 
 stopped myself, Nellie, if you want to know, because 
 it seemed to me very vividly that it wasn't your 
 business." 
 
 There was an illumination cast on to her face from 
 the street lamps from below. To his intense surprise 
 he saw that her eyes, wide and unfocused, grew 
 suddenly dim. 
 
 "That's just what I, too, am beginning to 
 realize," she said. "Whatever you do now is none 
 of my business. I've got a separate establishment. 
 I'm bound to say that you have quite realized that. 
 You haven't asked me a single question about what 
 goes on in mine. It doesn't concern you any more; 
 therefore, you don't care. I shall learn to respect 
 your privacy, too, Peter. Another snub or so will 
 teach me." 
 
 "That's nonsense ! " he said quickly. 
 
 "It isn't nonsense. You treat me like a stranger 
 because I happen to be marrying someone else. If 
 you had been in love with me " 
 
 "We've had that already," said Peter. 
 
 "Then listen to it this time. You've absolutely 
 been turning your back on me. You are piqued — 
 horrid word — because I don't want to remain an 
 old maid for your sake. Mayn't I feel interested in 
 you without your resenting it? You object to my 
 marrying Philip when you could have made it per- 
 fectly clear " 
 
 "What could I have made clear? " he asked. 
 
 "You could have made yourself indispensable to 
 me," she said. "A single further turn of the 
 screw " 
 
 Again she broke off.
 
 Peter 125 
 
 "No, I'm wronging you," she said. "That final 
 turn of the screw must be made mutually. It never 
 came to us, though I was there, wasn't I, with my 
 screwdriver, and you with yours? It just didn't 
 happen. Let's make the best of what remains. A 
 good deal remains after all. We have everything 
 that is of value between us, except that final turn 
 of the screw. Good heavens, Peter, how I wish I 
 adored you ! I do all but that. And you do the same 
 for me, darling, when all is said and done. If only 
 you were masterful and masculine, or if only I were, 
 the thing would be solved. As it is, we are like two 
 oysters in the flow of the tide, just gaping at each 
 other." 
 
 Nellie's ultimate objective, unless Peter had com- 
 pletely misunderstood her, had sunk out of sight for 
 him. 
 
 "And all the time the tide is flowing," he said; 
 "that's so maddening of it. I mean that the days and 
 weeks and months are passing, and one doesn't even 
 think, still less does one feel ; one only exists. I am 
 an oyster, it's quite true. But I don't make pearls. 
 Pearls, I believe, are only pieces of grit which the 
 clever oyster covers up with iridescent stuff'. All that 
 stuff comes from the oyster's inside, somehow. I 
 can't make ; I can't manufacture like that. The clever 
 oyster does it, or the normal oyster, somewhere in 
 the South Seas. I suppose I'm a northern oyster — 
 only meant to be eaten. Just to be eaten. I really 
 want somebody to come along and gobble me up. 
 I'm nothing but a small piece of food." 
 
 Nellie found herself hugely interested in this. It 
 gave her what she wanted to know — namely, Peter's 
 own personal estimate as to how he stood to Silvia. 
 He had defined it negatively when he told her ihat
 
 126 Peter 
 
 he was not in love with her ; but here was a more in- 
 timate revelation — namely, that of his willingness to 
 be absorbed. There, too, was the difference, vital 
 and essential, between herself and him, for she never 
 contemplated the possibility of being, absorbed by 
 Philip. There would certainly be no absorption there 
 on either side ; he, so she judged, was as little likely 
 to make that surrender as she. 
 
 For a moment she thought over what he had said, 
 instantly finding herself unable to accept it. 
 
 "I can imagine your being very indigestible," 
 she remarked. "I don't really think, nor, perhaps, 
 do you, that you will allow yourself to be assimilated. 
 I can't imagine you giving up your wet woods." 
 
 "I shall always remain selfish, you mean," said 
 he. "Self-centred; whatever you like to call it." 
 She frowned over this. 
 
 "What I suppose I really mean is that I don't 
 understand you," she said. And, getting up, she 
 fumbled for the switch of the light by the door. 
 "Let's throw some light on you." 
 He got up, too. 
 
 "I must go to bed," he said. "It's any hour of 
 the night." 
 
 She stood in front of him, stretching her arms, 
 which were a little cramped with leaning on the 
 window-sill, and looked at him gravely. 
 
 "You're going to ask Silvia to marry you, then ? " 
 she said. 
 
 "I am, as soon as I think she will accept me." 
 Nellie received this point-blank. She had fully 
 expected it, and now, when it came, there was nothing 
 in her that ever so faintly winced. Then she took 
 two steps forward, put her hands on his shoulders 
 and kissed him.
 
 Peter 127 
 
 "Peter, darling, what good friends we've been," 
 she said, "and we'll carry all that forward into the 
 future. There's no one like you. That's just what 
 I meant by kissing you, that, and to wish you all 
 good luck. Perhaps your son will marry my 
 daughter; wouldn't that be nice; and then we can 
 envy them both, and be wildly jealous. As for asking 
 Silvia — well, what about to-morrow ? Perhaps it's 
 rather late to ask her to-night." 
 
 He tiptoed his way out, and Nellie closed the door 
 very cautiously behind him. At that moment, when 
 she kissed him, she had given him all of the very 
 best of her. She exulted in having done it, but 
 assuredly virtue had gone out of her. Restless and 
 unquiet in her bed, she thought over what was left 
 for her.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 John Mainwaring had prepared his studio for the 
 visit of Mrs. Wardour and Silvia next day with the 
 utmost dramatic completeness, employing for their 
 reception the scenery and the setting which suggested 
 Itself as being most likely to impress and astound. 
 With this end in view he had littered the room with 
 all possible properties, bringing down from the attics 
 stacks of his own pictures, which he disposed in care- 
 less profusion round the walls. Sketch books and 
 paint boxes littered the tables, lay figures peeped from 
 behind easels, robes trailed over sofa-backs, and he, 
 when his visitors were announced, had designed that 
 he himself should be found, in his oldest velveteen 
 coat and morocco slippers, at the top of the step- 
 ladder which he had put into position again in front 
 of the great canvas representing Satan odiously whis- 
 pering to the German Emperor. There, absorbed in 
 his inspired labours, he was to be giving the last, the 
 crowning, the positively final terrific touch to it as his 
 visitors (and, as he hoped, his victims) entered. 
 
 Since the work had actually been finished at least 
 a month ago, and on that occasion had been toasted 
 in glasses of port wine by himself, his wife and Peter, 
 he had thought it prudent to inform her that more 
 last touches were to be applied to it again to-day. 
 Visitors, he had added, were dropping in that after- 
 noon, and she would, no doubt, be sitting upstairs 
 in the drawing-room when they arrived, with tea 
 prepared for their refreshment. When the time came 
 
 128
 
 Peter 129 
 
 he would yodel for her, and she would come dow^n, 
 be presented to Mrs. Wardour and her daughter, 
 and would scold him for keeping these ladies looking 
 at his stupid pictures instead of bringing them up to 
 tea. . . . 
 
 Such was the general idea of the opening of a 
 manoeuvre from w^hich he, with a quite incurable 
 optimism, expected very gratifying results. Peter 
 had already alluded to the surprising dawn of Mrs. 
 Wardour on the town, and he himself, at the play the 
 night before, had paved the way for a commission to 
 execute a portrait of Silvia. He had no idea whether 
 or not Mrs. Wardour inserted any of these golden 
 tentacles with w^hich, like an octopus, she appeared 
 to be enveloping London, into the domain of art, 
 but it was worth while hoping that her sense of com- 
 pletion would not be satisfied unless she had Silvia's 
 portrait painted. That, so he had ascertained, had 
 not been done, and he had, so to speak, left a card 
 "soliciting the favour of a call." The call certainly 
 was to be made that afternoon, and his imagination 
 now, bit in teeth and wildly galloping, foresaw 
 another possible commission in the portrait of Mrs. 
 Wardour herself. Perhaps — here was the rosiest of 
 the summits yet in view — he might profitably dispose 
 of that great cartoon which Mrs. Wardour would so 
 soon be privileged to see receiving its finishing 
 touches. Farther than that his vision did not 
 definitely project itself, but in sunlit and shining 
 mists he could vaguely see himself working for all 
 he was worth (and for much of what Mrs. Wardour 
 was worth) at more of these stupendous canvases, and 
 berthing each, as soon as possible, in the same 
 remunerative harbourage. 
 
 The ring at the bell of the street door warned him
 
 130 Peter 
 
 to scamper up his step-ladder, and absorb himself in 
 finishing touches at the top of the thundercloud of 
 war. In due time the studio door opened and 
 Burrows, announcing his visitors, had to raise her 
 voice to the pitch of a vendor of street-wares and 
 recite the names again before she was so fortunate 
 as to attract his attention. Then Mr. Maimvaring 
 turned slowly round with a dazed expression and, 
 shading his eyes, perceived the expected presences. 
 Then with brush in one hand and palette in the other, 
 he gave an ecstatic cry of welcome (not to be con- 
 fused with the yodelling summons for his wife), and 
 came bounding down the step-ladder. Divesting 
 himself of his palette and brush, he held out both 
 hands. 
 
 " Ah, my dear friends," he said, " but this is charm- 
 ing. I am ashamed of myself to be found in such 
 dishevelment, but — well, we artists are like that, silly 
 donkeys as we are, and I had forgotten, for the 
 moment I had forgotten the advent of my delightful 
 visitors." 
 
 He held a hand of each of them for a moment, 
 with pressure and expression, and then withdrew his 
 left hand, holding it to his forehead. 
 
 "A finishing touch," he said. "I was at that very 
 moment putting the last touch of paint on to my 
 canvas. Let me forget that : give me a moment to 
 forget it. You are here, that is the great point." 
 
 He made a splendid obeisance, and as he recovered 
 thrust back his hair, and embarked on a period. 
 
 "You find me, dear Mrs. Wardour," he said, "in 
 a moment of triumph, of jubilation even. Little as 
 that can possibly mean to others, this is one of my 
 red letter days. A moment ago my brush touched 
 my canvas for the last time. My picture is done,
 
 Peter 131 
 
 all but for the obscure initials, which, in vermilion, 
 I shall humbly inscribe in the corner. Would it, 
 by chance, be of the smallest interest to you to see 
 that little rite performed? I take my brush then, 
 I squeeze out a morsel of paint, I trace those obscure 
 initials." 
 
 No inspiration could have been happier. Mrs. 
 Wardour's eye was already travelling over the huge 
 canvas with rapture and astonishment, and it was 
 thrilling that she should have come just in time to 
 see the artist testify in vermilion that this great thing 
 was of his own creation. Naturally she could not be 
 expected to know that if she had arrived half an 
 hour ago, or had not arrived for half an hour to come, 
 she would have been just in time for this ceremony. 
 She turned to Silvia. 
 
 "Well, if that isn't interesting, Silvia," she said 
 (as if Silvia had denied it). "Weren't we saying 
 to each other as we came along that perhaps we should 
 find Mr. Mainwaring painting? And what a work 
 of art too I My ! " 
 
 John Mainwaring having recorded himself as 
 creator, became showman and spectator in one, and 
 moved the step-ladder aside so that he should both 
 get and give an uninterrupted view. Then, losing 
 himself once more as spectator, he propped his chin 
 on his hand and gazed at the work. 
 
 "Finished! Finished!" he said with a magni- 
 ficent detachment. "Now let us see what we think 
 of it." 
 
 Mrs. Wardour gazed too, and the more she gazed 
 the more powerful — that was exactly the word she 
 would have used — appeared the significance of this 
 tremendous presentment. She had no great taste 
 for pictures, but if you were in pursuit of pictures
 
 132 
 
 Peter 
 
 (and pictures had certainly been the objective of 
 this expedition), here was what she meant by a 
 picture. Not long before his death her husband had 
 bought what he called "a picture or two," destined 
 to adorn the walls of the gallery which was so great 
 a feature in the castellated residence which he had 
 built on the ridge of Ashdown Forest. It ran the 
 whole length of the house, and when complete as to 
 embellishment, was to be a lane of pictures from end 
 to end hung on red Spanish brocade. To her mind, 
 no less than his, real pictures, true pictures, pictures 
 worth looking at, were brightly (or sombrely) coloured 
 illustrations of famous personages, of well-known 
 places, or told a story ; best of all were those that told 
 a story. A few such had already been plucked and 
 gathered there; there was a very splendid record of 
 the coronation of Queen Victoria, the rock of Gib- 
 raltar, with a P. and O. steamer to the left and a 
 sunset to the right, an execution of Mary, Queen of 
 wScots, and, in lighter mood, a delicious immensity 
 called "Knights of the Bath," in which a small boy 
 and a large puppy shared a sponging-tin. Here 
 then and now the image of the walls of the great 
 picture-gallery, at present insufficiently clad, and cry- 
 ing out for covering, like a bather who has lost his 
 clothes, flashed into her mind. The image was not 
 sufficiently clearly realized to admit of a definite asso- 
 ciation of ideas between it and the allegory at which 
 they were all gazing, but certainly as she looked at 
 the size — particularly the size — of Mr. Mainwaring's 
 masterpiece, the gallery at Howes occurred to her. 
 If there were to be pictures, here or elsewhere, she 
 liked to know what such pictures were "about," and 
 she instantly perceived what this one was about. Now 
 that the war was won, and the German Emperor, for
 
 Peter 133 
 
 all practical purposes, annihilated (he had served his 
 turn because the destruction of ships by his sub- 
 marines had brought her so excessive a fortune), she 
 could, perceiving the message of the picture, un- 
 reservedly gloat over the realism of it. 
 
 "If that isn't the German Emperor," she loudly 
 enunciated, "and if that isn't Satan whispering to 
 him about the war. Satan's saying that he would 
 help, and, to be sure, he tried to. I do call that a 
 picture. And there's the war coming up behind, 
 like a thunderstorm. There's a subject for a picture, 
 and how beautifully you've done it, Mr. Main- 
 waring." 
 
 He leaned his chin still more heavily against his 
 hand. 
 
 "Ah, you think so? " he asked. " I wish I thought 
 so!" 
 
 "But what is there to want? " asked Mrs. War- 
 dour. "It's all as clear as day. We saw nothing 
 so striking at the Royal Academy, did we, Silvia, 
 even at the Private View." 
 
 "The Academy? The Academy?" murmured 
 Mr. Mainwaring, as if he wondered whether he had 
 heard that name before. Then he shook his head 
 gently, as if abandoning the attempt to remember 
 what the Academy was. 
 
 "And I see lots of guns and bayonets underneath 
 the thundercloud," said Mrs. Wardour unerringly. 
 "They're coming up." 
 
 The artist still gazed, and, smoothing his chin 
 with his hand, he repeated : 
 
 "Yes; they're coming up, coming up." . . . 
 
 He gave a great start, and seemed to shake him- 
 self like a big retriever emerging from the water, 
 where he had brought some thrown token to land.
 
 134 
 
 Peter 
 
 He did not know of the great gallery at Howes, which 
 starved for decoration ; but even if he had, he would 
 have bounded out of the water just like that. 
 
 "Basta! Basta!" he cried. "I am boring you, 
 dear ladies, I am wearying you, I am making myself 
 a most unutterable tedium for you. Where is my 
 wife ? Why is she not here to tap me on the shoulder 
 and say ' Tea ' ? " 
 
 He gave the preconcerted signal of a yodel, and 
 opening the door of the studio, repeated it. A faint 
 cry from upstairs answered him, and on the heels of 
 that cry Mrs. Mainwaring came downstairs. The 
 introductions were floridly effected, and she shook 
 her finger at her husband, and explained her reproof 
 to her visitors. 
 
 "I always tell him that when he is at his painting 
 he never knows the time," she said. "John, it is 
 very wrong of you to have kept Mrs. Wardour and 
 Miss Wardour down here." 
 
 She turned to Mrs. Wardour, as her husband 
 vented himself in contrition and apology to Silvia. 
 
 "Of course I'm no judge," she said, "for I always 
 think that everything my husband does is so striking. 
 But is not that a wonderful thing? The Emperor, 
 Satan. Yes. Such expressive faces ! Now I must 
 insist on your coming to have a cup of tea. I always 
 have to drive my husband away from his easel. Look 
 at him in his old coat, too. John, I'm ashamed of 
 you ! Go and put on something more tidy." 
 
 Silvia felt somehow, as Mrs. Mainwaring gave 
 this skilful rendering of the general hints that she 
 had received, as if she was listening to some auto- 
 maton wound up to emit through a mask-like face 
 certain words, certain sentences that formed its 
 accomplishment. That was the immediate effect, but
 
 Peter 135 
 
 immediately afterwards followed the conjecture that it 
 was not a mere automaton that spoke. It said, so 
 she seemed to gather, what it had been told (or 
 thereabouts) to say, but probably Mrs. Mainwaring 
 was capable of saying and doing things for herself. 
 Though she had been pulled through the funnel of 
 Mr. Mainwaring's personality, she had not lost her 
 own individual self. But what that individual self 
 was she could form no conjecture. It was as if a 
 voice came from inside a window over which a blind 
 had been completely drawn. She could arrive at no 
 perception of who it was who talked behind the blind, 
 nor was the room lit within so that, at the least, 
 there came a shadow on the blind, suggesting 
 features. All this was no more than the details of 
 the first impression made by a new acquaintance, her 
 instinctive valuation of her hostess, something to 
 work upon provisionally. Mrs. ]\Iain waring was 
 only repeating her lessons, which she seemed to know 
 so excellently well ; she gave at present no indication 
 of what she was like when her lessons were over. 
 But that she existed Silvia had no doubt whatever. 
 There were people like that, people who had an 
 aloof, sequestered life of their own. Then, without 
 being conscious of the transition, she knew that she 
 was thinking of Mrs. Mainwaring no longer, but of 
 Peter. 
 
 More yodelling proclaimed that the artist had put 
 on his tidy coat, and he pranced back, and led the way 
 upstairs with Mrs. Wardour, saying that he was 
 as hungry as a hunter, and hoping that his wife had 
 provided them with a good tea. Mrs. Mainwaring, 
 on the other hand, seemed a little to be detaining 
 Silvia; she pointed out other of the works of art that 
 so plentifully bestrewed the room, and this struck
 
 136 Peter 
 
 the girl, somehow, as being part of a manoeuvre in 
 no way connected with the lesson she had so fault- 
 lessly repeated. The blind had been ever so slightly 
 pushed aside ; someone was looking out. 
 
 "Yes, there's a picture my husband painted of 
 my son last year," she said. "I think you've met 
 Peter, haven't you, Miss Wardour? That was con- 
 sidered to be very like him. I hope he will be home 
 for tea; he said he thought he could get away from 
 the Foreign Office early to-day. Very interesting 
 for him to be in the Foreign Office." 
 
 Silvia said something amiable about the portrait, 
 which was quite recognizable. 
 
 "So pleased you think it like," continued Mrs. 
 Mainwaring. "Yes, Peter is at the Foreign Office 
 all day, and he is generally out in the evening. I 
 do not go out very much. I sit at home mostly in 
 the evening and read." 
 
 Silvia welcomed a new topic. Though the blind 
 had been distinctly twitched aside she could not see 
 in ; she was only conscious of being observed. But 
 this seemed an encouraging opportunity of getting 
 a glimpse. 
 
 " What do you read most ? " she asked. " Novels ? 
 Memoirs ? " 
 
 "No, what I like reading about is places I have 
 never been to," said Mrs. Mainwaring. "I wonder, 
 when I read, what life is like in those places, and 
 how I should enjoy it." 
 
 If that was a glimpse for the girl it was a very 
 momentary one, lit, so to speak, not by any clear 
 illumination, but rather by some vague dim phos- 
 phorescence. vSilvia, by some whimsical association 
 of ideas, found herself thinking of a phosphorescent 
 match-box; if you felt for it in the dark, you might
 
 Peter 137 
 
 find matches there which would produce something 
 more illuminating. 
 
 "Ah, I, too, love new places," she said. "I love 
 waking in a new place, where I have arrived after 
 dark, and wondering what it is going to be like." 
 
 The glimpse grew a little more definite. 
 
 "I should like that, too," said Mrs. Mainwaring. 
 "But my husband's work keeps him in London, and 
 I do not get away very often. Shall we go upstairs 
 to tea ? " " 
 
 As they turned, Mrs. Mainwaring cast one glance 
 at the great cartoon. For the moment, infinitesimal 
 in duration, her neat smooth porcelain face grew 
 hostile and malevolent. 
 
 No sooner did Silvia appear in the doorway of 
 the little drawing-room facing the street, than Mr. 
 Mainwaring, to her immense surprise, bounded from 
 his seat, chasseed across the room to her, and fell on 
 his knees before her. 
 
 "Behold me in an attitude of abject entreaty ! " 
 he said. " Your mother, subject to your acquiescence, 
 dear Miss Silvia, has asked me to attempt to use my 
 best endeavours, feeble as they may be, to render 
 you the eager homage of an artist's skill. She has 
 asked me, subject to your consent, I repeat, to paint 
 your portrait for her." 
 
 Even as he spoke there came the quick light step 
 on the stairs, the identity of which Silvia, seldom 
 as she had heard it, knew with a certainty that sur- 
 prised her, and Peter came in. 
 
 "Kneel, Peter, my dear," said his father, enjoying 
 himself tremendously and puttmg up hands of sup- 
 plication. "Maria, my angel, I beseech you to kneel 
 too. We are entreating Miss Silvia; we are urging 
 the sacred claims of Art."
 
 138 Peter 
 
 Silvia gave a laugh of sheer amusement at this 
 ludicrous situation. Amusement" was the only 
 possible solvent for it. 
 
 "Oh please, let nobody kneel ! " she said. "And 
 you, Mr. Mainwaring, please get up. Yes, of course, 
 if my mother wishes it, and if Mr. Mainwaring will 
 be very patient and tell me what to do " 
 
 He bounded up again, ecstatic at the granting of 
 his petition. 
 
 "To do?" he asked. "Dear young lady, you 
 have only got to be. Be ! Be just as you are now." 
 
 Again he supported his head on his hand, as 
 when he gazed at the cartoon, and with the other 
 shaded his eyes, staring at her in an embarrassing 
 manner. He gave a gay yodelling cry. 
 
 "I see it — I see it ! " he announced. "My superb 
 picture is already flaming in my brain. Madam " — 
 he turned to Mrs. Wardour — "you shall have a 
 masterpiece, and I, John Mainwaring, will have 
 created it." 
 
 He took his hand from his forehead, and made 
 a movement as if to cast something away. 
 
 "Enough!" he said. "Let us descend to earth 
 again. My angel, give us our tea. We are ex- 
 hausted by our adventures." 
 
 Peter, so Silvia noticed, was lookmg at his father 
 with eyebrows ever so little raised, as if in contem- 
 plation of some phenomenon that, however familiar, 
 was still remarkable, and his lips were faintly smil- 
 ing. When he turned to Silvia, as he now did, that 
 expression still remained there, and she felt that, 
 wordlessly, he had somehow taken her into his con- 
 fidence. Certainly his father amused him ; his raised 
 eyebrows and half-smiling mouth told her that. And 
 was there a touch of indulgent contempt in it?
 
 Peter 139 
 
 John Mainwaring continued to claim the atten- 
 tion of the little party in a boisterous rollicking 
 fashion; it was like being out in a high wind, where 
 shouting was the only means of communication. He 
 assuaged the hunger which he confessed was pro- 
 digious, with incredible quantities of tea-cakes; he 
 ate cherries backwards, beginning with the stem. 
 He roared with laughter at his own jokes, he apolo- 
 gized for his boyishness, and whispered to Mrs. 
 Wardour that he was "in for" a scolding afterwards 
 from his wife for making such a noise. . . . And 
 there, all the time, far more potently vital was Peter 
 blowing off no steam like his father, but quietly, self- 
 containedly reserving it. There was something 
 inscrutable about that smooth handsome face, though 
 now and then, as their eyes casually met, Silvia 
 felt that she was looking into clear dark beckoning 
 water, and if her eyes could not fathom it, that was 
 no fault of his transparence, but only of her own 
 purblind penetration. . . . 
 
 Mr. Mainwaring was, just now, launched on a 
 story, the very recollection of which made him laugh 
 in anticipation of what was coming, and Silvia could 
 let her eyes roam at will. She looked at her mother, 
 at the narrator, at Mrs. Mainwaring, all in turn, in 
 order, for the purposes of strict impartiality, to look 
 at Peter as well. Mrs. Mainwaring with wifely and 
 domestic devotion had managed to attach to her face 
 some faint semblance of interest in the story, as if it 
 were new to her. Then came Peter's turn, and that 
 handsome inscrutability suddenly seemed to Silvia 
 to be like a reflecting surface, which, when you looked 
 at it, showed you not itself, but presented your own 
 image. She saw not at all how he stood to her, but 
 how she stood to him. Her own subjective relation,
 
 140 Peter 
 
 the image of herself regarding him was flashed back 
 at her. Looking at him, in some mysterious way, 
 she saw herself. His dark clear water gave back to 
 her her own soul. . . . She whisked her eyes away, 
 forgetting the impartiality of her rotation, and found 
 herself met by Mrs. Mainwaring. And there, so it 
 seemed, she found comprehension of this bewildering 
 impression. As regards Mrs. Mainwaring herself, 
 the blind was still drawn, but from behind the blind 
 Silvia heard inwardly and unmistakably that quiet, 
 precise voice saying, "The girl's in love with my 
 Peter." Mrs. Mainwaring, by some divination as 
 mysterious as herself, was in possession of that; she 
 and Silvia shared the secret knowledge. And then, 
 before the girl's eyes could shift themselves to Mr. 
 Mainwaring, who, it seemed clear, from his thumping 
 with his fist on the tea-table, was now at the climax 
 of his narrative, there peeped out from his wife's face 
 that same secret malevolence, with which, as they 
 left the studio, she had looked at the great work 
 of art that hung there, while she admitted that her 
 husband's work kept him and her in London. 
 
 The point of Mr. Mainwaring's story entailed the 
 use of the falsetto voice, and Peter at its conclusion 
 got up on the pretext of handing cigarettes, and 
 reseated himself next Silvia. 
 
 "It is good of you," he said. 
 
 That was fragmentary enough, undetached from 
 any context, but Silvia found herself understanding 
 him perfectly. 
 
 "My mother and Mr. Mainwaring arranged it," 
 she said. "I couldn't very well say no, could I? 
 Not that I wanted to; I don't mean that." 
 
 "My father's delighted," said Peter, 
 
 He paused a moment.
 
 Peter 141 
 
 "He's in great form," he added. "You've de- 
 lighted him. Aren't we a weird family? " 
 
 There seemed no direct reply possible to this. 
 Silvia could not imagine herself assenting, and it 
 seemed banal as well as untrue to say, "No, you're 
 quite ordinary." But she found herself not wanting 
 and not even needing to reply at all. She wanted, 
 and for that matter she needed no more than to have 
 Peter there and be wonderfully happy. He shifted 
 himself a little in his very low chair as he turned to 
 get a match for his cigarette, and she again just found 
 herself noticing little things about him. His fingers 
 were very long and smooth, the nails very neatly 
 sheathed in the skin that held them : they grew beau- 
 tifully. Best of all was the short, closely-clipped 
 hair which, when he bent his head forward towards 
 the match, stopped just above his collar. 
 
 "You needn't answer that," he said. "Tell me, 
 instead, what you thought of the play last night. Are 
 people sentimental — girls particularly — like that when 
 they are really moved? I should have thought that 
 emotion killed sentimentality. But it may be dif- 
 ferent in Scotland." 
 
 Peter, at the conclusion of this ridiculous speech, 
 suddenly found himself in the dilemma of talking 
 nonsense without the co-operation and backing of 
 the person whom he was talking nonsense to. Silvia, 
 at any rate, did not contribute any soap-bubbles of 
 her own, and, quick to perceive that, he turned to 
 his mother. 
 
 "What sort of hotels are there in Scotland, 
 mother?" he asked. "Oh, I must explain to Miss 
 Wardour. My mother loves reading the advertise- 
 ments of hotels in Bradshaw. It gives her the sense 
 of (ravel, doesn't it, mother?" 
 
 J
 
 142 
 
 Peter 
 
 He paused no more than infinitesimally and went 
 on again in the same breath. 
 
 "I love the sense of travel, too, and I got it by 
 going to the Foreign Office. Guatemala has been my 
 apres-midi." 
 
 Silvia triumphantly applauded his quickness. She 
 had seen on Mrs. Mainwaring's face a protest at 
 the invasion of her privacy ; but Peter had done more 
 than merely see it, he had slammed the door again 
 with allusions to himself and Guatemala. That, some- 
 how, a perception as quick as intuition, seemed to her 
 extraordinarily characteristic of him. There was no 
 stumbling, no hesitation, where she would have drawn 
 attention to a similar mistake by a bungling silence. 
 His mind was like the hair on his neck — abrupt and 
 crisp. 
 
 The ball was with Peter again. 
 
 "I nearly fell asleep over Guatemala," he said. 
 "Surely Guatemala is very remote; there are many 
 things more immediately interesting. Nellie's wed- 
 ding, by the way. It's less than a week ahead, and 
 every young man I know is buying new pocket- 
 handkerchiefs to weep into. I've bought an extremely 
 large one. There'll be room for you to cry into one 
 half of it, Miss Silvia, while I cry into the other. 
 They promised to send it round on a hand trolley, 
 like a sack of coals." 
 
 Silvia laughed. 
 
 "Ah, I shall want some of that handkerchief," she 
 said, "but not to cry into, only to wave. She is going 
 to be tremendously happy, isn't she? What's he 
 like? I hardly know him." 
 
 Peter considered this. 
 
 "He's like — he's like a very tidy room," he said 
 "Solid furniture and not a speck of dust."
 
 Peter 143 
 
 "And the person who sits in it? " asked the girl. 
 
 "Nobody sits in it. At least I never found any- 
 one there. Philip is the room. There's The Times 
 warmed and folded; there's letter-paper, big and 
 little, and envelopes, big and little. Perhaps Nellie 
 has found someone there. Philip may get under the 
 sofa when anybody else comes in." 
 
 "And she's very much in love with him? " asked 
 Silvia. 
 
 "You ought to know. She takes you out to Rich- 
 mond Park and sits on the grass with you all 
 afternoon." 
 
 Silvia wrinkled up her eyes as if she were focusing 
 that afternoon. 
 
 " Nellie dazzles me," she said. " She's like the sun 
 on water. I expect she'll make his room, that tidy 
 room, look lovely. But I shall never understand 
 what Nellie does. I shall only understand the effect 
 of what she has done. She has a spell. She makes 
 you see what she has seen." 
 
 She was conscious now of receiving from Peter 
 a more direct answer of eyes than she had ever done 
 before. She knew they were talking about the same 
 things now. They might, each of them, though they 
 were talking of Nellie (superficially the same thing), 
 have been regarding her, have been framing their 
 remarks about her from different angles. Given that, 
 as Silvia had said, she was a dazzle of sunlight as 
 well, one of them, owing to the prismatic process, 
 might have been seeing blue, another seeing yellow. 
 But Peter's answer convinced her that they were 
 both seeing Nellie from the same standpoint. 
 
 "That's hit her," he said. "Nellie says and does 
 nothing trivial; one is continually discovering that. 
 She waves her fingers, and she mutters, and then,
 
 144 
 
 Peter 
 
 afterwards, you find she has been making a spell. 
 Isn't she uncanny ? Or she tells you something about 
 yourself that you didn't know, or scarcely knew, and 
 you find that it is quite solidly true. Is she a witch, 
 do you think ? " 
 
 Silvia leaned forward towards him. It was im- 
 possible not to "close up" with this. 
 
 "That's just what I said to her once," she said. 
 "I said that she was a witch. She told me something 
 about myself that I never had known. It was true* 
 it had been true all the time. But, literally, I had 
 never had the smallest notion of it till she told me." 
 
 Indeed, as Silvia acknowledged to herself, the 
 truth of what Nellie had said on that occasion was 
 receiving a firm endorsement at this moment. Etched 
 and bitten-in to her consciousness from the moment of 
 that prophetic babbling had been the image of her- 
 self in love, singing, so Nellie had said, in a boy's 
 key ; eager to be allowed to give homage rather than 
 receive it ; eager to be allowed to love rather than per- 
 mitting love with whatever ardency of welcome. And 
 here was Peter repeating on general grounds exactly 
 what she had found, and in especial was finding 
 now, to be magically true. 
 
 "Since we both agree she is a witch," said he, 
 "we ought surely to collect evidence against her. 
 What was it she said to you, that something unknown 
 to you, which you found to be true when she said it? 
 I have evidence also; she said something to me last 
 night which I didn't know, but which " 
 
 What went through his brain at that moment, 
 with the sureness of a surgeon's incision, was just 
 that which Nellie had said when he told her that he 
 was intending to ask Silvia to marry him. He had 
 hedged that with the reservation that he would do so
 
 Peter 145 
 
 when he thought that he had a chance of success, and 
 witch-Hke, with swift incontinent prophecy, she had 
 told him that it was rather late already as regards 
 to-night. The prophecy had been encouraging at the 
 time, but not convincing. Now he suddenly felt him- 
 self convinced. Why or how — their conversation had 
 only been about Nellie — he did not know. But it 
 seemed that Nellie had penetrated where he had 
 not. . . . 
 
 There was his father sitting on the sofa beside 
 Mrs. Wardour; there was his mother veiled and 
 shrouded from him as she had ever been, do- 
 ing something with a teapot, doing something 
 with crumbs left on plates, for which she made 
 some concoction, placed in the balcony outside, for 
 birds. . . . Had he been alone with Silvia, he would 
 have proposed to her, fortified with Nellie's encour- 
 agement, fortified even more by his present sense of 
 its reliability, then and there. But unless he knelt 
 on the floor to her, as he had found his father doing 
 when he came in . . . 
 
 "Oh, what did Nellie say to you last night?" 
 asked the girl. "Let's collect evidence, as you 
 say." 
 
 "And have her burned outside St. Margaret's, in- 
 stead of letting her marry Philip inside ? " suggested 
 Peter. 
 
 Silvia gave a parenthetic gasp. 
 
 "I suggested that she ought to be burned, too," 
 she said. "More evidence, please." 
 
 Peter found her entrancing at that moment. There 
 was some keen boyish kind of frank enthusiasm about 
 her that attacked and challenged instead of merely 
 provoking. She asked for no effort : you only had 
 to allow yourself to be caught up.
 
 146 Peter 
 
 "But it's your turn," he said. "You first sug- 
 gested that Nellie told you things you didn't know." 
 
 "No; it was you who said that." 
 
 " It may have been ; but it was you who suggested 
 the witch-like quality. You said that she makes you 
 see what she has seen. You know you did." 
 
 Silvia, ever so slightly, withdrew herself. 
 
 "Did I?" she asked. 
 
 "Of course you did. Now do be fair. You be- 
 gan, and therefore it's your turn to bring out the first 
 piece of evidence. It w^as in Richmond Park, you 
 know, and she told you something about yourself 
 which you didn't know." 
 
 Peter put his hand in some judicial manner 
 through that short crisp hair above his neck. 
 
 "I am prepared to hear your evidence," he said. 
 "You're on oath. Get on. Miss Silvia. Don't keep 
 the court waiting." 
 
 Silvia shot a chance arrow. 
 
 "If I promise to tell you," she said, "will you 
 promise to tell me your evidence ? " 
 
 Peter laughed. 
 
 "I think we're both better at cross-examination 
 than at confession," he remarked. 
 
 "Oh, but that's no answer," she said. 
 
 "I know it isn't. It wasn't meant to be." 
 
 "Then be serious. Will you tell me your evidence 
 against Nellie in her character of a witch?" 
 
 Peter, quite clearly, let his eyes rest on the other 
 occupants of the room. One by one he looked at 
 them. 
 
 "No ! " he said. "I supose the trial is adjourned 
 owing to the inexplicable coyness of the witnesses. 
 So there we are. Nellie will marry her Philip without 
 a stain on her blessed character."
 
 Peter 147 
 
 In his glance round the room Peter had observed 
 that Mrs. Wardour was trying to catch Silvia's eyes. 
 She would certainly succeed in doing so before long, 
 and then, as her custom was, she would make some 
 faint little clucking noises, like a hen that mildly 
 wants to be let out. She was incapable of going 
 away, however much she wanted to do so, unless 
 Silvia took the initiative. She clucked, and then 
 Silvia said that it was time to go. . . . 
 
 But Peter did not want Silvia to go just yet; on 
 the other hand, if they were all to sit here until the 
 clucking became perceptible to Silvia, their visitors 
 might just as well, for any practical purpose, go 
 away at once. Besides, it was impossible to forget 
 that Nellie last night had prophesied, and it had 
 struck another as well as himself, that she was a 
 reliable seer. 
 
 He got up rather slowly, rather tentatively, and 
 fixed in his mind was the idea that Silvia would make 
 some sort of initial step. It seemed to him that they 
 were both hand in hand : it was just a question of 
 who lifted a foot first. . . . 
 
 Silvia did not turn her head to look at her mother. 
 If she had, she would have been bound to attend to 
 the duckings; but what she wanted, more precisely 
 what she needed, was to get away from a masked fire 
 of elderly eyes and, with Peter of course, just to be 
 natural. There was smouldering in this room some 
 ember of supervision ; she felt herself (and him) under 
 a magnifying glass being looked at, being noted, be- 
 ing examined. It would answer her need perfectly 
 well to go with him on to the balcony outside the 
 room, to see if the evening was likely to be fine, to 
 be sure that the motor was waiting. . . . Here, there 
 was Mr. Mainwaring visualizing her portrait; worse
 
 148 Peter 
 
 than that, here was the more gimlet-hke attention of 
 his wife, who, ostensibly, was making a sloppy saucer 
 of food for the London sparrows. Certainly she 
 would sooner go out on the balcony alone than remain 
 here, but when she thought of that it did not in the 
 least satisfy her. After all, she did not want to "sit 
 out " alone. What girl would want that? But she 
 wanted to sit out. . . . There was no sort of em- 
 barrassment in her voice when she spoke to Peter. 
 
 " May we go down to your father's studio again ? " 
 she asked. "I haven't seen all I wanted to." 
 
 Surely his glance met hers with a comprehension 
 that seemed immeasurably marvellous. 
 
 "Yes; do come down," he said 
 
 The clucking became inarticulate. 
 
 "We ought to be going, Silvia," said her mother. 
 
 Peter took this up. 
 
 "Oh, you must give Miss Silvia five minutes, Mrs. 
 Wardour," he said. "It's only fair that she should 
 know the sort of thing that father's going to make of 
 her." 
 
 Mr. Mainwaring gave a great shout of laughter. 
 
 "The impertinence of youth ! " he cried. "Peter, I 
 disown you. I would cut you off with a shilling if I 
 had one ! " 
 
 The two went down the stairs in silence. In 
 silence also they came into the studio. The huge 
 cartoon filled up one end of it; on the other three 
 sides was the stacked debris from the attics; land- 
 scapes and portraits and sketches littered the tables. 
 
 "That's rather jolly," said Peter, pointing to one 
 at random. "And, O Lord, my father has brought 
 out a thing he did of me last year. Rather like a 
 hair-dresser." 
 
 " Not a bit," said Silvia. "But it's very like you."
 
 Peter 149 
 
 Peter wheeled about and faced her. 
 
 " Evidence ! " he said. " Do you know what NelHe 
 said to me last night? Of course you don't, but I'll 
 tell you now. We were talking about you. She said 
 — she encouraged me to think I had a chance " 
 
 Silvia stood stock still, every fibre of her stiff and 
 arrested. 
 
 "About you. A chance," said Peter again. "Is 
 it true ? Was she right ? Was she being a watch ? " 
 
 Silvia had been looking at him when this spell of 
 stillness struck her. Now her eyelids fluttered and 
 drooped, then once more she looked at him as steadily 
 as before. 
 
 "All true," she said. "And Nellie told me some- 
 thing. She said that when I loved anybody, I — I 
 should love just as I love now. Just as I love now, 
 Peter."
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Silvia was sitting in Mr. Mainwaring's studio one 
 Saturday afternoon, waiting, without impatience, for 
 the arrival from the Foreign Office of Peter, with 
 whom she was motoring down to Howes, there to 
 spend the Sunday. Silvia was perfectly capable of 
 humour with regard to Howes, for she called it "the 
 family seat." This indeed it was, since her father had 
 bought the Norman ruin some twenty years ago, and 
 quite unmistakably it belonged to the Wardours. 
 He had made it habitable while Silvia was still a 
 child, and during the war, when he became quite fabu- 
 lously rich, he made it abominable also. To that 
 period belonged the great picture gallery. 
 
 The gathering there for the week-end was, though 
 small, a rather crucial one. It was to introduce to 
 each other the families which would be brought into 
 alliance over her wedding. Henry Wardour, Silvia's 
 uncle on her father's side, was to be ponderously 
 there, and his wife elegantly so. Then there was to 
 be Aunt Joanna Darley, Mrs. Wardour's sister, and 
 her husband. He, Sir Abel Darley, was a round pink 
 profiteer, who in recognition of the considerable for- 
 tune he had made for himself by overcharging the 
 Government for millions of yards of khaki, had been 
 made a baronet, presumably in order to stop his mouth 
 if he felt inclined to brag over the gullible Govern- 
 ment. Then there was Mr. Mainwaring to represent 
 Peter's side of the connection, but he was to sustain 
 his part alone, since Mrs. Mainwaring, with an im- 
 
 150
 
 Peter 151 
 
 pregnable quietness of negation, had absolutely 
 refused to take part in this reunion of families. 
 
 "You'll be eight without me, Silvia," she had said, 
 "and eight's a very good number. I shall stop 
 quietly in London and think of you all enjoying your- 
 selves." 
 
 Silvia's sense of humour prevented her from form- 
 ing any tragic anticipations about this party, though, 
 as she would have been perfectly willing to confess, 
 she did not suppose that the meeting of the clans 
 would lead to any instinctive blood-brotherhood. But 
 Peter would be there, and she would ba there, and 
 however outrageous and incompatible the rest of them 
 proved themselves, they would be like the heathen 
 "furiously raging together," but unable to disturb 
 seriously the foundation fact of that. She trusted to 
 her own sense of humour and to Peter's, to enable 
 them both to be indifferent to what happened outside 
 their own charmed corner. Uncle Henry and Uncle 
 Abe, and Mr. Mainwaring and Peter would form a 
 very curious company after dinner that night, when 
 she and her mother and Aunt Joanna and Aunt 
 Eleanor had left them to "punish " — as Uncle Henry 
 would undoubtedly say — the 1870 port of which he 
 was so inordinately fond, while the ladies would form 
 an equally inconceivable committee upstairs. But 
 since these things were to be, there was no use in 
 imagining impossible situations. Somehow she con- 
 jectured that Mr. Mainwaring would impress himself 
 more strongly on the circle downstairs than either of 
 the uncles; he had more exuberance. 
 
 If Silvia had been set down to construct an in- 
 congruous party of eight, she could not by any 
 fantastic selection have bettered this gathering. 
 Aunt Joanna, for instance, nourished an ineradicable
 
 152 
 
 Peter 
 
 hatred towards her sister for havnig married Silvia's 
 father, and for being- so much richer than Sir Abe, and 
 even Sir Abe's rank and her own were powerless to 
 compensate her for this. Rich, immensely rich, Sir 
 Abe certainly was, but she could not bear that her 
 sister should be so much richer. Aunt Eleanor, on 
 the other hand, Mrs. Wardour's sister-in-law, had 
 only reverence for Mrs. Wardour's wealth, but what 
 she thoroughly despised her for was her truckling (so 
 Aunt Eleanor put it) to the smart world. Aunt 
 Eleanor had been present at the great party, where the 
 Russian ballet entertained the guests, and the 
 presence of so many distinguished people made her 
 feel perfectly sick. The true diagnosis of her indis- 
 position, however, was that since she had tried to do 
 for years without a particle of success what Mrs. War- 
 dour had so brilliantly accomplished in a few weeks, 
 it was only reasonable that she should have a violent 
 reaction against that sort of thing. If, instead of 
 marrying Peter, Silvia had been about to wed a peer, 
 or somebody of that kind, Aunt Eleanor would cer- 
 tainly have felt it her duty never to speak to either her 
 or her mother again. Indeed, she would never have 
 accepted Mrs. Wardour's invitation at all, so she had 
 made quite plain, unless she had felt it her duty to 
 take an interest in her husband's relations. 
 
 Silvia was conscious of a vein of caricature in this 
 flitting survey, but ridiculous people made caricatures 
 of themselves without the collusion of the observer. 
 Mr. Mainwaring was a caricature too : she could not 
 think of him quite seriously. Probably most people, 
 if you regarded them from a strictly individual stand- 
 point, had a touch of caricature about them, for if 
 you rated yourself as a normal person, everybody else 
 must be a little out of drawing. But she looked at the
 
 Peter 153 
 
 caricatures with the friendliest amusement; she loved 
 them (and here in particular was her mother included) 
 for being so entirely different from her — for being, in 
 fact, precisely what they were. Humorous observa- 
 tion was, with her, less a critical than an appreciative 
 process, and now, as she waited for Peter, she wanted 
 definitely to include Mrs. Mainwaring in her fascinat- 
 ing gallery. But for this last fortnight, since her 
 engagement to Peter, she had found herself increas- 
 ingly unable to give her this genial amused observa- 
 tion. More and more did Mrs. Mainwaring baffle 
 and elude her. There was, so far as Silvia could 
 notice, nothing humanly ridiculous about her, and, 
 what was even more disconcerting, the girl found 
 herself ever more incapable of attaching herself 
 to her. To attempt to do that resembled, in some 
 uncomfortable manner, the notion of attaching your- 
 self in the dark to a hard smooth surface ; you 
 could nowhere get hold of her or find projection or 
 crevice in which to crook or to insert a finger tip. 
 The more closely Silvia looked at her, the more 
 strenuously she attempted to get into any sort of 
 psychical contact w^ith Mrs. Mainwaring, the more 
 directly was she baffled. She could not, for herself, 
 give up as insoluble the mystery of that lady's mental 
 and spiritual processes; there must be, if you could 
 only lay your hands on it in the dark, some key to 
 her future mother-in-law, something that explained, 
 for instance, her unwearied study of the advertise- 
 ments of hotels. No one could be as completely tran- 
 quil and emotionless all through as Mrs. Mainwar- 
 ing appeared to be. Twice only had her mind slipped 
 for a definite instant into the open, like a lizard 
 emerging into the sunlight and flicking back again; 
 once when, on the first visit that Silvia and her
 
 154 
 
 Peter 
 
 mother had paid to the house, Mrs. Mainwaring un- 
 veiled a glance of malicious hostility in the direction 
 of the great cartoon. Less definite, but like in kind, 
 was the habitual, though veiled, hostility with which 
 Silvia felt that Mrs. Mainwaring regarded herself. It 
 did not flame, but she knew that she was right in 
 conjecturing that it incessantly smouldered. And that 
 enmity, to Silvia's sense, was of the same quality, 
 though smouldering, as that which had leaped in that 
 swift little tongue of flame towards the cartoon : what 
 puzzled her was the kinship between the two. From 
 the context of that moment in the studio, it seemed to 
 be Mr. Mainwaring's work which kept him in London 
 (and her therefore with him) that had kindled that 
 odd swift spark. Or was the origin of it a little deeper 
 down than that ? Did some shut furnace of im- 
 patience at her husband, so floridly symbolized there, 
 some deep-seated core of incompatibility suddenly 
 flame out then ? If so, what was the kindred nature 
 of her hostility to the girl ? Was it that she was 
 taking Peter away from the home which his presence 
 there just rendered tolerable ? But apart from those 
 two "escapes," so to speak, of genuine feeling, the 
 origin of which, after all, was only a matter of con- 
 jecture, Silvia had no clue to Mrs. Mainwaring at all ; 
 she was practically featureless and even without out- 
 line. She could not sketch her at all, or delineate from 
 her as model, one of those genial caricatures, such as 
 her friends so freely supplied her with material for. 
 Such features and such outline as she could perceive 
 were tinged with bitter suggestions. . . . 
 
 Silvia did not find the waiting for Peter in anv way 
 tedious; there was plenty in the studio to furnish a 
 larder for thought, though what most occupied her 
 was her alert attention for the sound of his light
 
 Peter 155 
 
 footstep coming- down the passage. But apart from 
 that food for reflection was abundant. To-day the 
 end of the studio where the cartoon had hung was 
 empty, so that if Mrs. Mainwaring's resentment was 
 inspired purely by that work of art, she mighi now 
 regain her tranquillity again. Silvia would see it 
 this evening, for her mother, following up the idea 
 with which it had first fired her in connection with the 
 empty walls of the picture gallery at Howes, had a 
 few days ago made a purchase of it. 
 
 Mr. Mainwaring had been very glorious on this 
 occasion ; at first he had hysterically refused to part 
 with it. It was his chef-d'ceuvre, and while he had a 
 couple of pennies in his pocket, he was, though poor, 
 too proud to think of selling it. Then, lest that refusal 
 should be taken too seriously, he almost immediately 
 declared that it should be his wedding present to 
 Silvia. He let himself be hunted out of so untenable 
 a magnificence, and finally he so far humiliated him- 
 self as to accept a fancy price for it. As Mrs. War- 
 dour knew (he reminded her, to make certain) that 
 it was the first of a series of six, upon which he was 
 contented to stand or fall in the verdict of posterity, 
 it seemed probable that, at some future time, the walls 
 of the picture gallery at Howes would be far less 
 empty than they were to-day. 
 
 On an easel near where Silvia sat was the portrait 
 of herself now approaching completion. To her there 
 was something uncanny and arresting about it, for, 
 by accident or design, the artist had caught some 
 aspect of her which secretly she recognized as a piece 
 of intimate revelation. She herself inclined to an acci- 
 dental derivation, for certainly in all but one point it 
 was a flamboyant and uninspired performance, a 
 chronicle of a green "jumper " and a scarlet skirt, a
 
 156 Peter 
 
 haystack of dyed hair, and a rouged, simpering mouth. 
 Her head was turned full to the spectator, looking 
 over the shoulder, in precisely the same pose (a 
 favourite trick of the artist's) as that in which the 
 German Emperor listened to Satanic counsels. But 
 in the eyes, in the badly drawn outstretched hand, 
 clumsily posed, Silvia saw some unconscious render- 
 ing of the "boy's key." She acquitted Mr. Main- 
 waring of all intention and of all inspiration ; he had 
 certainly not meant that. He had, through faulty 
 drawing, given a certain brisk violence to her hand, a 
 certain domination to her eyes. 
 
 And then she heard the click of the street door, 
 and the quick light footstep for which she had been 
 waiting. She wondered if she could ever get used 
 to the mere fact of Peter's return from however short 
 an absence. 
 
 He kissed her, holding her hand for a moment. 
 
 "It's too bad of me to have kept you waiting," he 
 said. "I couldn't help myself. There was a mes- 
 senger starting for Rome. Haven't they brought you 
 tea ? " 
 
 "No; I thought I would wait and have it with 
 you." 
 
 Peter rang the bell. 
 
 "And my father's gone? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes ; mother called for him and drove him down. 
 Pve brought my little Cording car for us." 
 
 "Just you and me? That'll be lovely," said 
 Peter. "Do I quite trust your driving, though?" 
 
 "You may drive yourself, if you like," said she. 
 
 "No, thanks; I trust that far less. I must see if 
 my bag is packed. Tell Burrows we want tea at 
 
 once." 
 
 "Can't I help you to pack it, if it isn't done?"
 
 Peter 157 
 
 asked Silvia. . . . Somehow she would have liked to 
 do that, to fold his clothes, to squeeze out his sponge. 
 
 "No; it's so sordid," said Peter. "Besides, it's 
 probably done already." 
 
 "If it isn't, call me," said she. "No man has any 
 idea of how to pack." 
 
 "And you want to teach me ? " asked Peter, linger- 
 ing on the stairs. 
 
 Silvia hesitated only for a moment. 
 
 "No, you darling," she said. "I don't want to 
 teach you anything. I just want to do it." 
 
 "Why?" asked he. 
 
 She came closer, raising her face towards him, as 
 he leaned over the banisters. 
 
 "Your things," she said. "Your sponge, your 
 coat. . . ." 
 
 That pleasure was denied her, for Burrows had 
 already bestowed Peter's requirements in his bag, and 
 he came downstairs again. Silvia had given his 
 father a sitting for the portrait this morning, and he 
 stood frowning in front of it. 
 
 "Trash! Rubbish! " he said at length. "And 
 the worst of it is that he has got into it some infernal 
 resemblance to you. It's a caricature." 
 
 "Oh, we're all caricatures to each other," said she. 
 "with just a few exceptions." 
 
 "What a heathenish doctrine. Why am I a 
 caricature, for instance ? " 
 
 "You aren't. You're one of the exceptions. But 
 tell me what your father has caricatured of me in 
 that? " 
 
 Peter looked from her to the portrait and back 
 again. 
 
 "All of you," he said. "The reality of you : the 
 rest is quite unlike. You haven't got mouth and 
 
 K
 
 158 Peter 
 
 nose and forehead and hair and chin the least like 
 that. But the person inside is horribly like you." 
 
 Silvia put her arm through his. 
 
 "Horribly? " she said. "Thanks so much." 
 
 "I didn't say — just then — that you were horrible," 
 said he. " I said horribly like you, your parody, your 
 caricature. I wonder how I dared ask such a master- 
 ful young woman to marry me." 
 
 "You knew it would be good for you," said Silvia. 
 "It was far more daring of me to accept you." 
 
 "There's just time for you to remedy your mis- 
 take," said he. "Positively the last chance." 
 
 This frank kind of chaffing talk, as between friends 
 rather than lovers, had grown to be characteristic of 
 their privacy. Silvia delighted in it : it had the 
 charm of some cipher about it; the blunt common- 
 place words held for her a secret meaning known to 
 the two utterers of them, which was only to be ex- 
 pressed by these symbols. When she feigned to mis- 
 understand Peter, and thanked him for calling her 
 horrible, there lay below her foolish words a treasure 
 which w^ords were quite powerless to express. Or 
 when he just now wondered that he had dared to ask 
 her to marry him, she felt that he conveyed something 
 which no amount of impassioned speech could have 
 indicated so well. From the hilltops there flashed the 
 signal that no voice could convey. Then sometimes, 
 as now, she had to use another symbol, which again 
 was only a symbol, and with her hands tremblingly, 
 eagerly, shyly clasping him round the neck, she drew 
 his head down towards her, not kissing him, but 
 simply looking close into his eyes. 
 
 "Positively the last chance!" she said. "Oh, 
 Peter, what a fool I am about you. Doesn't it bore 
 you frightfully ? "
 
 Peter 159 
 
 "Frightfully," said Peter, keeping to the first code 
 of symbols. 
 
 "You bear it beautifully, darling," she said. "Oh, 
 shall I ever get used to you ? I hope so : I mustn't 
 go on being such a donkey all my days. No; I 
 don't think I do hope so. Being a donkey is good 
 enough for me. Hee haw ! Oh, let go : here's 
 Burrows coming with the tea. She'll think it so 
 undignified." 
 
 It was, as a matter of fact, she who had to "let 
 go," as Burrows entered, followed by Mrs. Main- 
 waring. Silvia had before now tried to call her 
 "mother," but the experiment somehow had not suc- 
 ceeded. Mrs. Mainwaring answered to it quite 
 readily, but she received it, so the girl thought, 
 much as she might have received an unsolicited 
 nickname. 
 
 "Why, Mrs. Mainwaring ! " she said. "I didn't 
 know you were in." 
 
 Mrs. Mainwaring paused just long enough to let 
 it be inferred that if Silvia had made any inquiries as 
 to that, she would have obtained the information she 
 sought. 
 
 "Yes, dear, I have been reading upstairs since 
 lunch time," she said. "I came to have a cup of tea 
 with you before you started. I hope you will have 
 a pleasant drive." 
 
 Silvia tried to approach. 
 
 "Ah, do come too," she said. "Change your 
 mind, and come with me. Heaps of room." 
 
 "Thank you, dear, I think I will keep to my 
 original plan," said she. "I like a quiet Sunday 
 sometimes. I shall go to church, and perhaps in the 
 afternoon hear a concert at the Queen's Hall. The 
 time will pass very pleasantly."
 
 i6o Peter 
 
 There was an aura of correct armed neutrality 
 about this, accompanied as it was by that cold 
 sheathed glance, furtive and hostile, that caused some 
 half-comic, half-impatient despair in the girl at her 
 aloofness. Mrs. Mainwaring, so it seemed to her, 
 wanted nobody except herself; she wanted just to be 
 let alone. 
 
 "Father went off all right?" asked Peter. 
 
 "Yes; Mrs. Wardour kindly called for him after 
 lunch. A beautiful car; so roomy. There was 
 another lady and gentleman there : I think Mrs. 
 Wardour said it was her sister and her husband. 
 Your father insisted on going in the box seat with 
 the driver. He made a great noise with the motor 
 horn, which sounded like a bugle. He was in very 
 high spirits." 
 
 The neutrality exhibited in this speech was almost 
 too correct to be credible. Nobody could have been 
 so neutral. Even Mrs. Mainwaring could not quite 
 keep it up, and something very far from neutral lay, 
 ever so little below the surface, in her announcement 
 of her husband's high spirits. Her neutrality to- 
 wards Silvia was not so deadly as that towards her 
 husband. ... 
 
 Peter laughed. There was neutrality there too, 
 but it was more contemptuous than deadly, and quite 
 good humoured in its contempt. 
 
 "Oh, they'll have a noisy drive," he said. "And 
 if Mrs. Wardour drives him back on Monday, you'll 
 be aware of their approach, mother, while they're 
 still a mile or two away." 
 
 Mrs. Mainwaring had one of those fine-lipped 
 mouths (very neat and finished at the outer corners), 
 about which it is impossible to say whether they are 
 smiling or not without consulting the conditions pre- 
 
 i
 
 Peter i6i 
 
 vailing round the eyes. But as Peter spoke she very 
 definitely ceased to smile. 
 
 " Monday ? " she said. " I thought Mrs. Wardour 
 was so kind as to ask him to stop till Tuesday." 
 
 Peter got up : he noticed nothing about his 
 mother, having long ago given up any attempt to 
 comprehend her. 
 
 "Tuesdav, is it?" he said. "I'm back on Mon- 
 day, anyhow : otherwise what would happen to our 
 foreign relations? Shall we sLart, Silvia? Pm ready 
 when you are." 
 
 Mrs. Mainwaring rose too. 
 
 "Yes, indeed, you had better be off," she said. 
 "You won't have too much time. Then I shall 
 expect you on Monday, Peter. Tell your father " 
 
 She stopped. 
 
 "That you don't expect him till Tuesday? " asked 
 he, without the slightest indication of any mental 
 comment. 
 
 "Yes, I think Mrs. Wardour quite took for 
 granted that he was stopping till then." 
 
 Silvia made one further attempt to evoke a touch 
 of cordiality. 
 
 "Mother will be delighted," she said. "But it's 
 horrid for you being all alone." 
 
 "No, dear, I shall be very happy," said Mrs. 
 Mainwaring with quiet decision. 
 
 Howes stood, of course, in a park of considerable 
 acreage, surrounded by a massive brick wall, and 
 reflected its colossal self in the lake that lay below its 
 terraced garden. This lake had been artificially made 
 by the damming up of the stream that had previously 
 wasted itself unornamentally, and the road that had 
 dipped into the shallow valley now ran along the
 
 i62 Peter 
 
 causeway that formed the farther margin of the lake, 
 and gave the visitor his first complete and stupendous 
 view of the house. The wings and galleries that had 
 been built out rendered the original Norman core 
 comparatively insignificant, and the whole resembled 
 an apotheosis of a station hotel combined with a 
 fortress, for the character of the older part was borne 
 out in the battlemented walls that spread so amply to 
 right and left of it. An avenue of monkey-puzzlers led 
 up to the long fa9ade, and the gardens overlooking the 
 lake were like some glorified arboretum, where you 
 might expect tin labels, asking visitors to keep off the 
 grass and not touch the flowers. At intervals along the 
 edge of its immense lawns were aloes in square green 
 tubs, and below the house was a riband border of 
 geraniums, calceolarias and lobelias. Inside, the 
 expectations aroused by this sumptuous exterior were 
 fully justified, for the high panelled hall was peopled 
 with suits of armour, each with its numbered label, so 
 that a glance at the catalogue would put you into 
 possession of interesting information about it. 
 Armour had long been a hobby of the late Mr. 
 Wardour, and he had, very quaintly, installed elec- 
 tric light in the gauntleted hands. There was a 
 passenger lift in one corner, a groined roof, and the 
 famous malachite table. Heads and antlers of stags 
 hung in the panels. 
 
 Silvia had rather dreaded this moment. The whole 
 place with its monkey-puzzlers and malachite, its 
 aloes and its awfulness, had been left by her father 
 to her absolutely, and Peter knew (and she knew he 
 knew) that he was making his first acquaintance with 
 what would be "home" to him. She had not seen 
 it herself since the day of her father's funeral, two 
 vears ago, and it seemed to her — and how would it 
 
 II
 
 Peter 163 
 
 strike Peter? — that, though it had the traditional 
 quaUty of home, in that there was no place, as far 
 as she was aware, in the least like it, its unique ful- 
 filment of that definition was its only merit. 
 
 Wfth a sideways glance now and again she had 
 observed Peter's growing awe, from the time they 
 had crossed the causeway (the pride of it !) to their 
 approach through the monkey-puzzlers, and to the 
 final revelation of the malachite table. And there 
 was much more to follow — ever so much more ; the 
 Gothic staircase, the blue drawing-room, the pink 
 drawing-room, the picture-gallery, the swimming 
 bath. And it was not inanimate magnificence alone 
 that was to assail him, for there was Uncle Henry and 
 Uncle Abe and Aunts Joanna and Eleanor, She 
 ought to have brought him down quietly and alone 
 for his first sight of Howes. . . . 
 
 Peter had been gazing in a fascinated manner at 
 the malachite table, and even while Silvia was won- 
 dering how to convey to him her sympathy and en- 
 couragement, he, with one of the flashes of intuition 
 which she adored in him, showed that he had com- 
 prehended with unerring accuracy what she was 
 feeling about him. 
 
 "But you're going to be here," he said, just 
 as if she had spoken out all that she was puzzling 
 over. 
 
 She took his arm. 
 
 "Oh, my dear, I promise you that," she said. 
 "And I've got to get used to it, too. But 
 then you'll be here ! Shall we butter each other's 
 paws, Peter, until we feel at home? Let's have 
 some more tea, in fact, and find where the rest of 
 them are." 
 
 The picture-gallery seemed a likely kind of place,
 
 i64 Peter 
 
 and there, indeed, the six representatives of the 
 famiHes proved to be, and when kissing ceremonies 
 were over for herself and the rite of introduction for 
 Peter, Silvia found herself thinking that it was really 
 all for the best that they should have burst on Peter 
 in one comprehensive revelation rather than that he 
 should have been subjected to a series of shocks and 
 surprises. Already staggered by Uncle Henry, Peter 
 might have been quite thrown off his balance — so 
 flashed the alternative comedy through her head — 
 by Uncle Abe ; or what if, reeling from Aunt Eleanor, 
 he ran into Aunt Joanna just round the corner? 
 Silvia had not the smallest inclination or intention to 
 be ashamed of her relations, but it would have shown 
 the joylessness of a Puritan not to be amused at the 
 blandness and the blankness on so many faces (Peter's 
 included) as he was taken to each in turn ; it would 
 have shown too an almost dangerous rigidity that 
 her voice should not betray a tremor of suppressed 
 hilariousness. 
 
 Aunt Eleanor came first : she looked like a hand- 
 some seal with adenoidal breathing. She bowed to 
 Peter with freezing propriety, but when he was moved 
 on to Aunt Joanna her curiosity got the better of her, 
 and she instantly put up her glasses to get a better 
 look at him. Aunt Joanna, large and marvellously 
 bedizened, with flowers in her hat and her bosom and 
 her hand, irresistibly suggested a van going to Covent 
 Garden in the early mornmg : she, too, had her 
 notions of propriety, and these expressed themselves 
 in a cordiality as warm as Aunt Eleanor's was cold. 
 Then came Uncle Abe, who was so like a fish that 
 it really seemed dangerous for him to be sitting so 
 near Aunt Eleanor. He held out a hand, and took a 
 cigar out of his mouth, which remained open in the
 
 Peter 165 
 
 precise shape of the cigar : and finally came Uncle 
 Henry, who was busy with "a drop of brandy," be- 
 cause tea, as he instantly proceeded to inform Peter, 
 ofave him heartburn. Then all four of them stared 
 at Peter to see how he was going to comport 
 himself. 
 
 Peter was never more grateful to his father than 
 when at this embarrassing moment Mr. Mainwaring, 
 who had been mysteriously employed at the far end 
 of the picture-gallery with a cord and a sheet and 
 a step-ladder and three bewildered footmen, gave a 
 loud yodel, set to some words like mio jiglio, to an- 
 nounce his perception of his son's arrival, and the 
 accomplishment of that on which he had been so 
 busily engaged. "JSen arrivato " was the concluding 
 stave of his melody, and he came running up the 
 gallery (there was quite enough space to enable him to 
 get a good speed up), and after holding Peter for a 
 moment in a joint embrace with Silvia, he cast himself 
 down for a moment on a white bear skin at Mrs. 
 Wardour's feet. 
 
 "Ecco!" he said. "Ladies and gentlemen, when 
 you will distinguish me with the gift of a moment of 
 your leisure, I shall have the honour to show you 
 the first of my completed labours. The picture, the 
 poor suppliant's picture, is on the wall : masked by a 
 fair linen sheet, which, so I fondly hope, is in control 
 of a cord, just a cord, which, when you are ready, 
 I will, in fact, pull. Unless the mechanism which 
 I have been contriving is sadly at fault, there 
 will then be revealed to you that which the sheet, 
 at the moment, is so discreetly veiling. Valour, 
 perhaps, my valour, is but the worse part of 
 discretion" — Peter had heard this before — "but for 
 the moment I am less discreet than valorous. I will
 
 166 Peter 
 
 show you, complete and materialized, the vision that 
 since August, 1914, has obsessed and dominated my 
 life. I pray you, gentle sirs and madams, to indulge 
 your humble servant, and to take your places, exactly 
 where I shall have the honour to indicate, opposite 
 the discretionary linen which, when removed, will 
 unbare my valour." 
 
 He rose from his reclining posture, and after a 
 superb obeisance, placed himself at the head of the 
 procession. Already, as Silvia had foreseen, he was 
 in a position of dominance : Uncle Abe and Uncle 
 Henry obeyed his orders; Aunt Joanna and Aunt 
 Eleanor clearly "perked up " at this ingratiating sup- 
 pliance. For himself he took Mrs. Wardour's hand, 
 holding it high, as in a minuet, and led the way. 
 He grouped them ; he requested them all, with humble 
 apologies, to have the goodness to move a step 
 backwards; he set chairs for them; he put his 
 finger on his lips, and on tiptoe advanced to the 
 dangling end of the cord and pulled it. Up flew 
 the sheet, waving wildly, but eventually festooning 
 itself clear of the cartoon. Then, swiftly retreating, 
 he magnificently posed himself, and gazed at the 
 picture. 
 
 For the moment there was dead silence : then 
 vague clickings and murmurs began to grow articu- 
 late. The uncles and aunts vied with each other in 
 perception. 
 
 "The Emperor," said Uncle Henry. "Good 
 likeness, eh ? " 
 
 "August, 1914," exclaimed Lady Darley. "Terri- 
 ble ! Wonderful ! " And she drew in her breath 
 with a hissing sound. The perception of the date 
 was not so clever, as it was largely inscribed on the 
 frame, and Aunt Eleanor smiled indulgently.
 
 Peter 167 
 
 '*Yes, dear Joanna," she said, "we all see that. 
 But look at Satan whispering to the Emperor ! " 
 
 "And the hosts of hell," said Joanna swiftly. 
 
 Uncle Abe turned to Uncle Henry. 
 
 "A marvellous thing," he said. "Tells its own 
 story. I call that a picture." 
 
 Mrs. Wardour merely wore the pleased air of 
 proprietorship. She had seen it all before, and she 
 could see it again as many times as she chose. Mr. 
 Mainwaring, chin in hand, just contemplated while 
 these appreciations were in progress, but now he 
 seemed to wake out of a swoon, and passed his hands 
 over his eyes. 
 
 "Was it I who painted that?" he muttered. "I 
 didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know till 
 this moment, when at last I see my work properly dis- 
 played, with no discordant note to mar it, what I had 
 done. Does it terrify you, dear ladies and gentle- 
 men? Does it put you in possession of August, 
 1914? Does it — ah, Dio miol " He covered his face 
 with his hands and shuddered. Then advancing to 
 the picture again, he violently shook the cord, and 
 the two linen sheets (double bed) rolled back into their 
 original places. 
 
 "Enough, enough!" he cried. "We will con- 
 template it more calmly when we have recovered from 
 the first shock of our bleeding hearts. Let us con- 
 verse, let us smile and laugh again. Let us remember 
 that the war is over. But it is laid on me by destiny 
 to execute five more such pictures, not less terrible. 
 If I live, they shall be done. Yes, yes; I do not 
 falter ! But, for a while, let me forget, let me 
 forget." 
 
 Mrs. Wardour spaced out the wall with a pleased 
 eye.
 
 i68 Peter 
 
 "They will just fill the length of the gallery," she 
 said, "if we do not crowd them. Silvia, my dear, 
 you must persuade Mr. Mainwaring. . . . Well, 
 I'm sure, if that isn't the dressing bell." 
 
 A vindictive purpose was weaving itself below the 
 embowering flowers of Lady Darley's hat, and ac- 
 celerating the heart-beat below the nosegay on her 
 bosom, so that the gardenias were all of a tremble. 
 Lucy might be rich (indeed, it was quite certain that 
 she was horribly rich), but comparative paupers such 
 as herself were not to be altogether trampled upon, 
 and other people beside Lucy had picture-galleries. 
 Apparently the series of these tremendous allegories 
 was not yet painted, was not yet either definitely 
 "bespoken " by her sister, and Joanna, as she waded 
 through the thick Kidderminster rugs that carpeted 
 the Gothic staircase on the way to her room, felt that 
 the only thing in life that was w^orth living for at this 
 moment was to order a replica of the first, and secure 
 (with an embargo on replicas) the remainder of this 
 series. 
 
 Never in her life had she been so artistically over- 
 whelmed as by that prodigious canvas, and if all the 
 rest were going to be "up to sample" she could, as 
 their possessor, scoff at the art treasures of the world. 
 Sir Abe had dabbled in pictures already : he had a 
 Turner sunset which hung in the dining-room, at 
 which he often pointed over his shoulder as a "pooty 
 little thing" ; he had a Rembrandt of a very puckered- 
 looking old woman which had aroused the envy of 
 those who were permitted to see it and to be told that 
 it came out of the Marquis of Brentford's collection. 
 These were desirable possessions, but they were 
 jejune compared to Mr. Mainwaring's masterpiece
 
 Peter 169 
 
 and the masterpieces that were to follow. The war ! 
 That was something to paint pictures about. . . . 
 
 Her envy of her sister rose to the austerity of a 
 passion when she contemplated the equipment of her 
 bedroom, and that of her husband next door. There 
 was a bathroom attached to each, both fitted with the 
 most amazing taps and squirts, and a little sitting- 
 room attached to each, and a lift of which Mrs. War- 
 dour (showing her her room, and hoping she would 
 be comfortable) explained the working. You pressed 
 a button and were wafted. . . . The same lift served 
 Aunt Eleanor's rooms, but Lucy and Peter and Silvia 
 used another one. . . . The lift clinched her reso- 
 lution, and she conjugally conferred with Sir Abe. 
 He, to her delight, was as much impressed with 
 the passion for "scoring off" Lucy as with the 
 merits of the cartoon, but his business habits had to 
 make hesitations and conditions, not "do a deal" 
 blindly. 
 
 "Well, my lady," he said, "you shall have the 
 pictures if they're to be obtained reasonably. What 
 shall I offer, now? Most striking that one was, and 
 that and similar are worth paying a pretty penny for. 
 What did your sister give for that one ? Then, if 
 reasonable, I don't mind if I add twenty-five per cent, 
 more, and secure the lot. They'll be something to 
 point at. Get along and let me have my bath. You 
 try to find out what your sister paid, and then we'll 
 know where we are, my lady." 
 
 She noted with pleasure that he relapsed into a 
 cockney accent and a slight uncertainty about as- 
 pirates as he spoke. That was a good sign : it showed 
 he was in earnest and interested, for in dalHance of 
 light conversation Sir Abe was "as good at his h's" 
 as anybody
 
 170 
 
 Peter 
 
 It was not to be expected that the cartoon and the 
 magnificence of its introduction should have no effect 
 on Aunt Eleanor, or that (her general animosity to- 
 wards Mrs. Wardour being of the same fine order as 
 Aunt Joanna's) she should not have been kindled 
 with ambition to bring off some similar vindictive 
 stroke. But for her the acquisition of these immense 
 decorations was out of the question, for her husband 
 would certainly not pay such a price as she felt sure 
 would be necessary to secure them, and even if he did 
 his house did not contain sufficient uninterrupted wall 
 space, so that to hang them at all she would have to 
 cut them up into sections and paper several different 
 rooms with them. But Mr. Mainwaring had said 
 something about the original sketches for them, which 
 had suggested an idea that took her fancy at once. 
 The sketches were, after all, the "originals," the 
 significant buds from which these over-blown blos- 
 soms had developed, and the sketches would be far 
 more manageable, both from point of view of hang- 
 ing, and from that of purchase. There was a 
 subtlety, a refinement in possessing "originals" that 
 these acreages of paint could not compete with. Her 
 powerful imagination pictured herself exhibiting them 
 to envious friends. 
 
 "Yes, my sister-in-law, I believe, has copies, on 
 a large scale," she would say, "of my series. These, 
 of course, are the originals. Such freshness, such 
 power, all quite lost in the later and larger version." 
 And she held her seal-like head very high, and snorted 
 through her nostrils as she sailed into the pink draw- 
 ing-room just before the dinner bell rang. She was 
 the first to come down, and had time to examine with 
 pain and disgust the photograph of a royal personage, 
 with a crown on its frame, that stood very con-
 
 Peter 171 
 
 spicuously alone on the table by the sofa where she 
 seated herself. 
 
 Mr. Mainwaring's star continued to be violently 
 ascendant all evening. His harangues, his humour, 
 his habit of pausing in the middle of one of his inter- 
 minable stories, until complete silence had been 
 established round the table, dominated dinner, and 
 when the ladies rose to leave the gentlemen to their 
 cigars and wine, Mrs. Wardour addressed him 
 directly and laid upon him not to permit them too 
 long a sitting. This gave him the rank of host, 
 and developed his social horse-power to so high an 
 efficiency that on rejoining the ladies he sang the 
 Toreador's song out of Carmen. Then after that 
 had been repeated he permitted the uncles and aunts 
 to indulge themselves with bridge, and since wives 
 partnered their own husbands, this gave scope for 
 some pleasant family revilings, in which the ladies 
 came off far the best. Having thus arranged for their 
 pleasure, Mr. Mainwaring grouped himself with his 
 hostess, Silvia and Peter, and grew patriarchal and 
 full of sentiment over the charming family party of 
 parents and children. On Mrs. Wardour 's going to 
 bed, leaving the bridge-party jealously over-calling 
 their hands, he conducted her once more to pay 
 homage to the cartoon, and remained there in 
 meditation. 
 
 Silvia and Peter had wandered out on to the dusky 
 terrace. A twilight of stars lit the still night, and 
 she drew long breaths of restoration from the ex- 
 haustion of these stupendous hours. Once clear of 
 the house, and leaning over the balustrade above the 
 lake, she gave way to hopeless laughter. 
 
 "Peter, darling, are my relations more than you
 
 172 Peter 
 
 ought to be asked to stand?" she said. "Did you 
 know there were such people as Uncle Abe ? " 
 
 "Did you know there were such people as my 
 father? " said Peter. 
 
 "Oh, but he's your father," said Silvia quickly. 
 "You mustn't bring him in." 
 
 "Why not? After all, it's he who brings himself 
 in. There's only one word for him. Bounder. 
 Uncle Abe isn't a bounder exactly. Uncle Henry 
 isn't a bounder." 
 
 "No, he's just a cad," said Silvia enthusiastically. 
 "I love people being themselves, whatever they 
 happen to he. I should enjoy them much more, 
 though, if you weren't here." 
 
 "I can go to-morrow morning," said Peter. 
 
 For one moment she thought that he spoke 
 seriously : the next she laughed at herself for having 
 been hoaxed by his assumed sincerity of voice : 
 "assumed " it just had to be. 
 
 "Ah, you said that beautifully," she announced; 
 "and all the evening, do you know, you've been say- 
 ing things beautifully, with your mask on, too, your 
 best and smartest mask. Pve been listening to you, 
 and never for a moment could I catch a word or a 
 silence on your part to show that you weren't 
 thoroughly amused and interested by the aunts. You 
 behaved as if they were just the sort of people you 
 were accustomed to meet, but rather more charming. 
 You have been convincing, and you were con- 
 vincing just now when you suggested going away 
 to-morrow." 
 
 Peter had not, of course, meant to convey that he 
 really could go away to-morrow, but it had been quite 
 easy for him to render his seriousness plausible, since, 
 though impossible, this was a most agreeable project.
 
 Peter 173 
 
 But what rendered that project so attractive was the 
 escape not from the aunts and uncles, with whom he 
 was quite as wilHng to be diverted as their niece, but 
 from his father. His father, in this milieu, with his 
 bounce and his bounding, his general "make-up" of 
 the large-souled, childlike artist, now humbly be- 
 speaking the indulgence of his patrons, and imme- 
 diately afterwards behaving as if he was Michael 
 Angelo, was intolerable. His gaiety, his sing- 
 ing, his family grouping, with himself as aged and 
 contemplative parent, while the moment before he 
 had been twirling his moustaches and bellowing out 
 the song of the toreador, were indecencies for a son's 
 eye. If only he had been slighdy fuzzy and intoxi- 
 cated with many liqueur brandies like Uncle Henry, 
 that would have been a palliative : as it was he was 
 onlv intoxicated with himself. . . . 
 
 Peter recalled himself from these impious medita- 
 tions to the needs of or (if not the needs) the appro- 
 priateness for the immediate occasion. Silvia and he 
 had contrived a lovers' interlude under the stars. 
 
 " Will you always be as charitable to me as you 
 are to my father? " he asked. "When I am absurd 
 and annoying, will you just be amused? " 
 
 The question seemed to him well framed : it led 
 him and her away from all these nonsensicalities into 
 the region where the simple things abided. He 
 expected some pressure on his arm, some little depre- 
 cation of his silliness, some whisper to inform him 
 that he was a goose or an idiot. Instead, Silvia's 
 hand slackened in the crook of his arm and withdrew 
 itself. 
 
 " Oh, Peter, what a thing to ask I " she said. " As 
 if I could be ' charitable ' to you as long as you loved 
 me, or as if I could find you annoying so long as I 
 I4
 
 174 
 
 Peter 
 
 loved you. You're pretending not to understand. 
 Don't pretend like that any more." 
 
 Peter's quick brain was alert on the scent. He 
 had meant his words to be construed into a lover-like 
 speech, and had completely thought that they could 
 be interpreted thus. But her answer convinced 
 him that to her they were not construable at all, but 
 only gibberish. Before he could emend himself, 
 or even quite follow her, she flashed out her full 
 meaning. 
 
 "Anybody else in the world except you can be 
 annoying," she said, **and I hope I can be charitable 
 to anybody else in the world except you. But how 
 can I be charitable to you ? Or how can you be try- 
 ing to me? Don't you know that I am you? For 
 a month I've ceased to be myself at all. There isn't 
 any ' me.' It isn't ' me ' you think you are in love 
 with ; it's — it's just the completion of your own won- 
 derfulness. And as for their being any ' you,' why, 
 you've ceased long ago. I've absorbed you. I've — 
 I've drowned you in myself and in my adoration. 
 I'm round you. I crush you and I worship you " 
 
 Silvia broke off suddenly as there appeared at the 
 drawing-room window a black tall silhouette yodelling 
 and crying, "Coo-ee. Children! " 
 
 "Oh, damn that man," said she. "Sorry, Peter, 
 but, well, there it is."
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Peter was sitting (so superbly that it might have been 
 called lying) on a long dream-provoking chair set 
 outside the south facade at Howes. For the moment 
 he was alone, and he surprised himself with the un- 
 bidden thought of how seldom he had been alone 
 during the last fortnight — since the day of the wed- 
 ding, which had taken place in the unfashionable 
 early days of September. This constant companion- 
 ship of Silvia, their motor drives, their golf, their 
 fishing in the lake, their long sittings with books or 
 newspapers of which but little was read, had seemed 
 to him as he looked back on them (conglomerated and 
 coagulated, like little drops of mercury running to- 
 gether to form a globular brightness) to have been 
 wholly delightful and satisfying. These days had 
 been for him, in fact, a soft luminous revelation of 
 how completely pleasant days could be. Without a 
 touch of complacency he could not help knowing how 
 every word and every whim of his had seemed ador- 
 able to Silvia, and he knew that, search as he might 
 (he did not propose to search at all), he would be able 
 to find no movement or mood of hers that he could 
 have corrected or rectified. She had taken possession 
 of him tenderly, and, as if with held breath, watched, 
 beautifully bright-eyed, to discover and anticipate the 
 moods of his desires; and in answer he had given her 
 not acquiescence alone, but the eager consent of every 
 fibre of his being. It seemed perfect that she should 
 be like that. 
 
 175
 
 176 Peter 
 
 Silvia had just left him to meet her mother, who, 
 at the expiration of their uninterrupted fortnight, was 
 coming down to Howes that day ; and Peter, alone 
 for an hour on this September afternoon, let the hot 
 sunshine, fructifying and caressing, melt the marrow 
 of his bones, the impressed records on his brain, into 
 definite consciousness. The bees humming over the 
 flower-beds, the red-admiral butterflies opening and 
 shutting their vermilion streaked wings, the swallows 
 not yet gathering for their autumn departure, all con- 
 duced to leisurely summer-like meditation, and he 
 found himself in possession of propositions and con- 
 clusions which he had scarcely known were his. This 
 supreme sense of content came first; that, like a wash 
 of warm colour, underlay the details that now began 
 with a finer brushwork to outline themselves, and each 
 of them appeared equally admirable, equally germane 
 to the values of the emerging picture. 
 
 Mrs. Wardour's arrival was an important touch ; 
 it might almost be called a fresh wash of colour. Out 
 of numerous reflections, considerations, weighings of 
 this and that, each of them at the time too liquid and 
 inconclusive to call a plan, a plan now had certainly 
 crystallized. They, the three contributory contrivers 
 of it, had, so to speak, pooled the London house and 
 this, making two houses for the three of them. Peter 
 would be returning to his work in Whitehall next 
 day, and since no sane being would wish to remain in 
 London in these mellow radiances of September and 
 October for longer than was absolutely necessary, he 
 would, as a rule, flow up in the swiftest of cars in the 
 morning, and stream back again in the late afternoon. 
 For one reason or another, again, he might find 
 himself wanting or being obliged to spend a night in 
 town ; he would be away all day, anyhow, and what
 
 Peter 177 
 
 could be more convenient tlian Mrs. Wardour's per- 
 fect willingness to establish herself for the present at 
 Howes, where she would supply companionship for 
 Silvia, and find it herself? Silvia again might want 
 to spend a day or two in town, and her mother could 
 please herself as to whether she joined her or not. 
 From such a germ the idea of keeping both houses 
 pooled and permanently open for any or all of them 
 had easily developed. Headquarters for the present 
 would be in the country, and London, to Mrs. War- 
 dour's notion, would be something of a picnic, with 
 the house half shut up. But with four or five servants 
 there, there would, she hoped, be no angles of real 
 discomfort. 
 
 Mrs. Wardour then, to all intents and purposes, 
 was to live with them ; but Peter, so ran the deed, 
 was "master" at Howes; while in London he and 
 Silvia would have the wide licence of guests pecu- 
 liarly privileged, at liberty to ask friends there when- 
 ever they wished. The crystallization of it, the defi- 
 nite statement and treaty, after infinite probings and 
 testings on her part into Peter's most intimate feel- 
 ings on the subject, had been entirely Silvia's. It 
 had been she who had finally suggested it, with the 
 proviso that anybody — by which she undoubtedly 
 meant her husband — was to tear up the treaty with- 
 out any possibility of offence, if he found it unwork- 
 able or unsatisfactory; but, as he thought over it 
 now, he was frankly surprised at himself to find how 
 eminently satisfactory a fulfilment of it he augured. 
 Silvia had suggested it (there was the great point), 
 and though he felt that he could not himself have 
 conceivably presented a treaty like tJiat to her 
 for her signature, he applauded her insight in so 
 doing. A man could hardly have suggested that to
 
 178 Peter 
 
 the girl he had but lately married; it would have 
 savoured, would it not, of his considering that the 
 ideal arrangement did not procure for them their 
 own undiluted companionship ? But she had known 
 that he would not put such a construction on her 
 proposition. She did not, in fact, let an attitude 
 which would have been typically feminine deter her 
 from adopting this more sensible and more manly 
 pose. But that was Silvia all through : there was a 
 robust quality about her, an impotence to harbour 
 littlenesses. . . . 
 
 They expected another visitor that day in the 
 person of Peter's father, who had, in a letter which 
 was no less than a bouquet of flowering eloquence, 
 indicated that for the due, the supreme, the sublime 
 execution of the second cartoon, it was necessary for 
 the artist to soak himself once more in the contempla- 
 tion of the first, so as (this was rather involved) to 
 catch to the fraction of a tone the key in which it was 
 pitched. There had to be a gradual crescendo, a 
 deliberate tuning up and up, a continual ascent 
 throughout the series. . . . Shorn of the mixture of 
 metaphor, he wanted to study the first cartoon before 
 plunging, with the aid of his sketches, into the re- 
 mainder. These sketches, he added, were, as soon 
 as he had finished with their use, to pass out of his 
 possession, for the charming Mrs. Henry Wardour 
 had induced him to let her purchase them at a figure 
 which convinced him that they would find an ap- 
 preciative home. . . . Then the letter became slightly 
 mysterious. The projected series of cartoons, he had 
 reason to know, was exciting stupendous interest in 
 artistic circles. Flattering — perhaps a man who was 
 proud of his work ought not to say flattering — 
 evidence of that was to hand, evidence substantial and
 
 Peter 179 
 
 conclusive. He had not made — this was lucky, since 
 he would not have dreamed of going back on his 
 bargain — he had not made any contract with Mrs. 
 Wardour — to whom all salutations — about the rest of 
 the series, and thought himself fortunate in not part- 
 ing with them for a comparative pittance. He did not 
 (mark you, my Peter) complain of the price she had 
 paid him for the first of them, and he was quite sure 
 that, with Peter's assistance, everything, would be 
 arranged quite satisfactorily. 
 
 Peter had read this letter, which he must talk over 
 with Silvia on her return, with the detachment of 
 which he was so terribly capable, and had come to the 
 conclusion that his father had somehow^ induced a 
 deluded Croesus of some sort to oflfer a higher price 
 per cartoon for his future perpetrations than that 
 which his mother-in-law had, no doubt, already given 
 him for the first. For this deduction he had the most 
 cordial welcome. As long as his father was dumping 
 his "beastly " goods — so Peter was now at liberty to 
 think — on the picture-gallery at Howes for fancy, if 
 not fantastic prices, he could not in mere pious 
 decency put it to Mrs. Wardour that she was paying, 
 as he supposed, heavily, for colossal rubbish. 
 But his father's letter, maturely considered, made 
 it quite certain that somebody was willing to pay more 
 for rubbish than Mrs. Wardour. Already the general 
 question had received his attention : Mrs. Wardour 
 was, so he supposed, under contract to buy those 
 melodramatic daubs for the decoration of a house that 
 belonged to Silvia, and of which he, by attested treaty, 
 was master. So long as his father could profitably 
 dispose of this rubbish here, Peter was filially pro- 
 hibited from any protest, but when once his fadier 
 announced that he was receiving a mere pittance.
 
 i8o Peter 
 
 though without complaint, for what he would in 
 another market receive a less despicable dole, his son, 
 surely, was free to welcome his taking his wares else- 
 where. His son, in any case, was heart and soul 
 allied to the new enterprise, for already Peter had 
 experienced a vivid distaste of the fact that he coun- 
 tenanced, by mere acquiescence, this further decora- 
 tion of Howes. He knew that if the artist had not 
 been his father he must have already protested against 
 the bargain which perhaps was not yet complete on 
 either side. His acquiescence, in fact, had brought 
 home to him that his father was profiting by his 
 marriage. . . . 
 
 Then, so swiftly and involuntarily that he had not 
 time to stop the thought on the threshold, there burst 
 into the door of his mind the inquiry as to whether he, 
 too, as well as his father, was not unloading rubbish 
 at a high price. And the price that he, Peter, was 
 receiving for his rubbish was infinitely the higher. 
 His father received, no doubt, a substantial cheque; 
 he himself received, as far as the material considera- 
 tion went, an immunity from the meaning of cheques, 
 and, in a standard immeasurably higher, some sort of 
 blank cheque which, as Silvia told him one night (or 
 was in the middle of telling him when his father made 
 that fiamboyant interruption), would be honoured by 
 her to any figure he chose to fill in, and yet leave 
 her richer, in such standard, than ever. There, in 
 that immortal bank, he divined then, and knew now 
 her illimitable credit. Whatever she paid out, by 
 that, in the royal mathematics of love, was she the 
 richer. 
 
 The impression made by that unsolicited thought 
 was to him like having seen some pass-book of the 
 soul which was hers. It had blown open in front of his
 
 Peter iSi 
 
 eyes, and before he had, so to speak, time to close 
 it, he had caught a ghmpse of sums so vast that they 
 exceeded his powers of realization. His eye, in that 
 involuntary survey, had received no impression of his 
 payments into her account; the credit side was but a 
 catalogue of her own inconceivable affluence. Every 
 moment, it seemed, she was giving, and every 
 moment her bounty flowed back to her. It was with 
 some kind of sceptical envy that, in that glimpse, he 
 realized this omnipotent finance. It was not so mar- 
 vellous that love should be stronger than death ; the 
 miracle was that it could be so much stronger than 
 life. 
 
 It was at this moment in Peter's reflections, a 
 moment that, only half realized, he was glad to get 
 away from, that an interruption, reasonably claiming 
 his attention, occurred in the shape of a little old 
 butler, who had been drafted down here from London 
 in view of Mrs. Wardour's advent. He was black- 
 eyed and grey-headed, and "perky " in movement to 
 an extent that fully justified Peter's exclamation of 
 "The Jackdaw," when he had quitted the scene last 
 night, and now the Jackdaw's immediate mission was 
 to hand Peter a couple of letters on an immense silver 
 salver, and inquire where Mr. Mainwaring, who, so 
 the Jackdaw understood, was to arrive that evening, 
 should be "put." He should be "put " clearly, in 
 the place that would please him most, for this was 
 Peter's undevlating creed when self-sacrifice was not 
 involved, and beyond doubt the state-rooms, so 
 called, would please his father inordinately. 
 
 The state-rooms had been insisted on in the re- 
 building of the house by his father-in-law, in a rich 
 vision, so Silvia had half piously, half humorously 
 intimated, of royal personages being sumptuously
 
 i82 Peter 
 
 housed there. There was a tremendous tapestried 
 bedroom, en suite with a second bedroom, a breakfast- 
 room, a sitting-room, all tapestry and oak mantel- 
 pieces and silver sconces. Yes, the state-rooms for 
 Mr. Mainwaring. Silvia (they w^ere on humorous 
 terms now about Peter's father) would enjoy that 
 
 immensely. 
 
 Peter took his letters from the Jackdaw, as the 
 latter gave a pleasant sort of croak in answer to this 
 order, and remembered how Nellie had once said 
 that wealth was not an accident, but an attribute, a 
 quality. He had been disposed to dispute that at the 
 time, but somehow his own allocation of the state- 
 rooms to his father confirmed the suspicion that she 
 was right. He himself, for instance, was clearly a 
 different person in the eyes of his father now, when he 
 could gloriously endow him with state-rooms, from 
 what he had been when he, as on that same occasion he 
 told Nellie, only lived in the beastly little house off the 
 Brompton Road because free meals and free lodging 
 were a consideration to his exiguous purse. You were 
 different — Nellie was right— when you could dispense 
 material magnificence instead of accepting a tolerable 
 shelter, where, though the rain was kept out, the 
 odour of dinner, with that careless Burrows, could 
 not be kept in. 
 
 Still fingering his letters, and trying to insert a 
 thumb into a too honestly adhesive envelope flap, 
 Peter slightly amplified by corrobative illustration this 
 thesis. How often had he, so to speak, "sung for 
 his dinner," accepting and welcoming such invita- 
 tions as Mrs. Trentham extended to him, by which, 
 for the pleasure of comfortable, decent food, he had 
 gladly spent an insincere and boring evening ! It 
 had not quite been greed combined with moderate
 
 Peter 183 
 
 penuriousness which had enjoined that : it was the 
 natural thing to do, if you were young and poor; to 
 dine, that is to say, comfortably, and by way of 
 acknowledging your indebtedness, to be towed about 
 for the rest of the evening by a foolish, married, 
 middle-aged woman who, for some inscrutable reason 
 of her own, wanted to present her unblemished repu- 
 tation in some sort of compromising limelight. But 
 now, on this opulent sunny afternoon, Peter tried in 
 vain to recapture the mood, once habitual to him, of 
 accepting any invitation merely because it implied a 
 good dinner and perhaps a good supper, with a 
 boring opera in between. Certainly it had been easy 
 for him to fulfil his part of the bargain in these even- 
 ings : it was natural and also habitual for him to 
 make himself pleasant, to look handsome, to tell Mrs. 
 Trentham that she had never been so marvellous, so 
 chic, so smart, so entrancing generally. But now the 
 mere notion of such an evening seemed foreign. If 
 he wanted to dine at the Ritz and go to the opera and 
 have some supper, he could do it, and secure as guests 
 just those with whom it was pleasant to spend an 
 evening. Henceforth if he wanted to do that he 
 could, vulgarly speaking, "pick and choose" the re- 
 cipients of his bounty. . . . Stated like that the 
 whole thing sounded rather sordid, but it seemed to 
 him that, for himself, he had got rid of that sordid- 
 ness, the "court-fool-touch" which compelled you to 
 make jokes in payment for your dinner, or (which was 
 worse) to talk to your hostess in the serious, wistful 
 note of an adorer, or at any rate of a dazzled and de- 
 lighted guest. To be host, to pay the bill, provided 
 you had plenty of money, was far the easier part. 
 
 There it was then : he had no longer to be asked 
 to dine at the Ritz, and to go to the theatre or what not
 
 i84 Peter 
 
 afterwards. He could bid to his feasts, and no more 
 consider the expense than in the old days he would 
 have considered whether he could afford a bus 
 fare. Whatever enjoyments of that kind the world 
 had to offer were his for the mere formation of his 
 inclination to enjoy them. . . . And then, suddenly 
 as a blink of distant lightning, and, so it seemed, 
 w^hoUy independent of his own brain, there came the 
 question as to what he had paid for these privileges. 
 And remote as drowsy thunder, the question supplied 
 its own indubitable answer. He had somehow — the 
 thing was done — convinced Silvia that he loved her. 
 He had, at any rate, given her the signal of response 
 that had ecstatically, rapturously contented her, 
 when, below her breath, as she accepted him as 
 her lover, she had whispered, "Ah, just let me love 
 you, all I want is to love you, to be allowed to love 
 you." . . . He had known quite well what that 
 "allow " really implied. He had to be on the same 
 plane of emotion as she ; else, to her understanding of 
 it all, they could never have arrived at this. 
 
 All the time (he knew that then, and knew it in- 
 finitely better now) her level shone in sunlight like 
 some peak far above the clouds, compared with his little 
 wooded hill that drowsed in the grey day below them. 
 Round him there was no gleam of that ethereal bright- 
 ness in which she walked, or, at the most, through 
 some rent in the clouds, he caught a glimpse of her. 
 She, at present, so it appeared to him, was so encom- 
 passed with brightness that, dazzled, she took for 
 granted that he was with her, and indeed, by some 
 device of desire and of cleverness on his part, he could 
 convince her that through the clasp of their hands 
 there throbbed the sweet entanglement of the soul. She 
 interpreted his lightest action, his words, his glances,
 
 Peter 185 
 
 by some magic of her own ; but already he knew that 
 he, though with consummate care, was "keeping it 
 up." There was no element of difficulty about it, any 
 more than there had been any difficulty about behaving 
 to the complete satisfaction of Mrs. Trentham at her 
 Ritz-Opera entertainments. But in both roles, as 
 guest at the Ritz and as "master " of Howes, there 
 was an inherent falsity. In both he was dressed up for 
 the part. The difference between the two situations 
 was that in the one Mrs. Trentham was dressed up 
 too, and in the other Silvia was not. 
 
 Peter was quite ruthless in tearing off the motley 
 from himself, and contemplating with the candidness 
 of a true egoist the revealed deformities. He never 
 cultivated illusions about himself, nor strove to soften 
 down his own uncomeliness. There he was; that 
 was he, to make the best or the worst of. He did not, 
 on the other hand, try to depreciate his assets; he 
 tried, in fact, to make the most of them and use them 
 to the utmost possible advantage. He was, and knew 
 it, a marvellous physical type, handsome as the 
 young Hermes, and crowned with the glory and 
 flower of adolescence. He surrendered to Silvia all 
 that physical perfection ; he gave her the wit and 
 charm of his mind ; and he was aware that with these 
 he dazzled her much in the same way as Nellie had 
 dazzled her. The use and the enjoyment of them, 
 utterly at her service, was responsible for the splendid 
 success of this solitary fortnight. 
 
 In spite of the divine conditions of these golden 
 country days, he knew that he was not sorry to be 
 enjoying the last of them. To-morrow he had to get 
 back to his work, and this sword of his, body and 
 mind, would be sheathed for intervals of absence. 
 And then, with the sure certainty of apprehension
 
 i86 Peter 
 
 that had stamped out these conclusions, he knew that 
 it was not for these alone, or even for these at all, that 
 Silvia had loved him. At the most they were for her 
 the bright-plumaged lure, to which her attention had 
 been originally attracted. But even in the first 
 moments of this attention she had divined something 
 in him, below the feathers and the fur, which she 
 sought. Her quest had gone deeper than skin and 
 conversation, than glances and smiles and level 
 shoulders and firm neck, and quick response, and 
 humour and all the lures of the male for the female. 
 She had claimed and clasped him for something other 
 than what certainly appeared to her as mere appurten- 
 ances. And what on his side had he looked for in 
 her? Nothing, so he branded it on himself, except 
 her mere physical attraction, her mere mental charm 
 and freshness and her wealth. 
 
 But the admission of this was a branding : the hot 
 iron hurt him, and, not liking to be hurt, he recol- 
 lected the letters which, a few minutes ago, the Jack- 
 daw had presented to him, and which— the first of 
 them, upside down in his hand — was so honestly 
 gummed that he could make no insertion into its 
 flap. 
 
 He turned it over and saw the handwriting of the 
 address. He managed then to open it. 
 
 "Isn't it delightful to be married? " wrote Nellie. 
 "I didn't write to you at first, Peter, because you 
 wouldn't have enjoyed anything that came from out- 
 side. But after a fortnight, you ought to be able to 
 be congratulated. Before that it would have been 
 merely impertinent (and probably is now) ; but your 
 friends have to take up the threads again some time. 
 All we blissful people, in fact, must remember that we
 
 Peter 187 
 
 are human beings, after all, and break ourselves into 
 'behavin' according' (Mrs. Gamp, isn't it? No, I 
 don't think it is). Anyhow, we shall all meet again, 
 shan't we, and buzz about in London, and ask each 
 other to our lovely country houses. We've got to go 
 on, Peter; the world has got to go on. Hasn't it? " 
 
 Peter turned a page, and began to be quite ab- 
 sorbed in this new but familiar atmosphere. He 
 slipped out of his present environment under some 
 spell which lurked in these trivialities. 
 
 "I'm getting on beautifully," so began the second 
 page, "for Philip and I understand each other so well, 
 and it's tremendously comfortable. We seem to want 
 just the same sort of thing. He's awfully keen about 
 birds, for instance, and I am becoming so. We go 
 out with field-glasses, and see willow-wrens, and yes- 
 terday we saw a marsh-warbler. Then I like golf — 
 you always hated it, I remember — so Philip is learn- 
 ing to like it too. He nearly lost his temper yester- 
 day when he missed a short putt, and that's always a 
 good sign. We don't quite agree about motoring, 
 because I always want to go as fast as the machine 
 can manage, and he always wants to slow down when 
 there's a cross-road. He talks to the chauffeur through 
 a beastly little tube, and it's like a funeral. 
 
 "Peter darling, what rot I am writing. Fancy my 
 writing such rot to you. It's the wrong sort of rot, 
 isn't it? There are rots and rots. You and I always 
 used to talk rot, but it wasn't about birds and golf. 
 (I'm having a new sort of mashie.) But, bar rot, 
 when are we going to meet again ? Isn't the country 
 a sleepy place? Do come up to town soon, and 
 Philip and I will come up, too. (You and Silvia, I 
 mean, of course.) I want to be in the silly old thick 
 of it again. Because when you're in the thick of it
 
 i88 Peter 
 
 you can make privacies, but when you're in the 
 privacy of the country you can't make a thick, except 
 when you have a great house-party, as we're going, to 
 have next week, and that isn't really a ' thick ' : it's 
 only partridges. The men go out in the morning, 
 and the women join them for lunch, and then the men 
 come home in the evening, and the morning and even- 
 ing are the first day. But it's all extremely comfort- 
 able — that's the word I come back to. Mother has 
 been here for the last three weeks, and she's almost 
 ceased saying that she must go away the day after 
 to-morrow. I suppose that's because she's tired of 
 hearing either Philip or me murmur something about 
 its being such a short visit. P. and I really both like 
 her being with us : it isn't half a bad plan, and I 
 expect she'll stop till we go back to town again. 
 
 " I want you and Silvia to come over here on 
 November loth for the week-end. There will be hosts 
 of rather nice people here : so many, in fact, that you 
 and I can steal away without being, noticed, and have 
 a scamper through the wet woods (they are sure to 
 be wet in November) and wave our tails and con- 
 gratulate ourselves on being settled for life. We've 
 both of us got somebody to take care of us (Yes, I 
 mean that), and if you're as pleased with the arrange- 
 ment as I am, why, we're very lucky people. You 
 and I, you know, if things had been utterly and com- 
 pletely different, would have quarrelled so frightfully. 
 ... I saw two cats yesterday sitting with their faces 
 within an inch of each other, scowling and screeching 
 at each other in a perfect tempest of irritation. 
 
 "Here's Philip come to take me out. He will sit 
 in the chair there waiting quite placidly till I have 
 finished this letter, not reading the paper or doing 
 anything at all, but just waiting. He knows where
 
 Peter 189 
 
 there are a pair of golden crested wrens. Isn't that 
 exciting? . . . Oh, I can't go on with him sitting 
 there. Good-bye, my dear. Mind you and Silvia 
 come on the loth." 
 
 As Peter read, he heard, by some internal audi- 
 tion, Nellie's voice enunciating, the sentences with that 
 familiar intonation of light staccato mockery. The 
 written words were but like a prompter's copy which 
 he held and glanced at ; it was Nellie who stood there 
 and said the lines. He would have liked to argue a 
 point or two with her, but he knew that there was 
 between them that deep fundamental agreement and 
 comprehension without which argument develops into 
 mere contradiction. . . . 
 
 Peter thrust the letter into his pocket as steps 
 sounded on the gravel just behind him. 
 
 "Been sitting here ever since I left you? " asked 
 Silvia. "Oh, Peter, without your hat in this hot 
 sun ! " She picked it up and perched it on his head. 
 
 "There! Oh, dear, what a nuisance it is that 
 this is your last day here. But what a last day. Any 
 letters ? " 
 
 Peter's hand fingered Nellie's letter. 
 
 "Yes: one from Nellie," he said. "She wants 
 you and me to go there for the week-end on November 
 loth. Shall we?" 
 
 "Oh, how unkind of her! What are we to do? 
 Shall we say that mother will be here for that Sun- 
 day ? It will be quite true in its way, though it won't 
 mean precisely what she thinks it means." 
 
 Peter looked at her below the rim of his straw hat. 
 She had placed it rather forward over his forehead, 
 and as she stood beside his chair he had to incline his 
 head sharply back, so that the muscles at the side of 
 
 M
 
 igo Peter 
 
 his neck stood out below the sun-browned skin. She 
 came a step closer and held his throat between thumb 
 
 and fingers. 
 
 "What shall we tell her? " she asked. "Speak, 
 
 or I'll strangle you." 
 
 "Strangle away ! " he said. 
 
 "I would sooner you spoke," she said. "I don't 
 want to murder you just yet. So unpleasant for 
 
 mother." , 
 
 "Whether it's unpleasant for me or not doesn t 
 seem to matter," said Peter throatily, for Silvia in- 
 creased the pressure of her hand. 
 
 "Not a bit, darling," said she. "I shall squeeze 
 tighter and tighter until you tell me what we shall say 
 
 to Nellie." 
 
 " Brute 1" said Peter. "Don't do it, Silvia. 
 You're hurting me frightfully." 
 
 He wrinkled up his forehead and drew in his 
 breath quickly, as if in great pain. Instantly Silvia 
 took her hand away. 
 
 "Oh, my dear, I haven't really hurt you?" she 
 asked with compunction. 
 
 "Once upon a time," said Peter, "there was a 
 woman who believed every word that her husband 
 said." 
 
 Silvia sat down on the edge of the long chair. 
 
 "Was? There is one," she said. "If you told 
 me you hated me, I should believe you." 
 
 "I hate you," said Peter promptly. 
 
 "You didn't say that," said she. "Your mouth 
 said it. What are we to tell Nellie? Seriously, I 
 mean. It will be nearly our last Sunday here, if we 
 go to London in December." 
 
 Peter made a short calculation. 
 
 "Dear Nellie," he said, "we are so sorry we can't
 
 Peter 191 
 
 come, because November loth will be our last evening 
 but twenty-one alone here, as we go up to town the 
 next month.' Will that do ? " 
 
 "It sounds perfectly sensible," said Silvia. "She'll 
 understand : it wasn't so long ago that she was mar- 
 ried. Then you'll write that, will you ? " she added 
 hopefully. 
 
 "I will if you really wish it," said he; "but it's 
 not very sane. You see . . . well, some time we've 
 got to begin behaving like ordinary human beings 
 again. And, after all, Nellie is a very old friend of 
 mine, and a very intimate one of yours. She'll think 
 it rather odd." 
 
 Silvia sighed. 
 
 "A whole Saturday to Monday," she said. "How 
 selfish Nellie is ! I never knew that before. But 
 perhaps we had better go. Shall I answer it for 
 you ? " 
 
 Peter got up. 
 
 "No; I must write to her in any case," he said. 
 
 "What else does she say? " asked Silvia. "No 
 message for me ? " 
 
 Peter could not definitely remember any, but there 
 was sure to have been such. 
 
 "Of course: all sorts of things. Come for a 
 stroll, Silvia. I'm getting chilly in the shade of my 
 straw hat. There's another thing I want to talk over 
 with you. Let's go down by the lake I " 
 
 "Hurrah! I love being consulted. What is it?" 
 
 "It's about my father. Oh, by the way, the Jack- 
 daw asked me where he should be put, and I said the 
 state-rooms. Is that all right ? " 
 
 Silvia pinched his arm. 
 
 "When are you going to understand that you are 
 the master? " she said. "Oh, Peter, it will be lovely
 
 192 Peter 
 
 for him having the state-rooms. He'll like it tre- 
 mendously. Won't he? I wish I had thought of it. 
 It wasn't that, I hope, that you wanted to consult me 
 about." 
 
 "No. Now, before I consult you, I want to ask 
 you a question or two, which you must promise to 
 answer not tactfully, but truly." 
 
 "Not even a little tact, if I find it necessary?" 
 she asked. 
 
 "Not an atom. Do you like that cartoon of his? " 
 
 Silvia glanced sideways at him. 
 
 "Well— I don't find I go and look at it for 
 pleasure," she said. "Not often at least, not every 
 day. Do you like it? " 
 
 "I think it's the largest piece of rubbish I ever 
 saw. Now try again to express your opinion." 
 
 Silvia gave a sigh of relief. 
 
 "Oh, I do agree!" she said. "It's the most 
 appalling. Now, isn't it?" 
 
 "Question number two," said Peter. "Do you 
 think you will like the others any better ? Do you, 
 in fact, look forward to seeing the whole wall of the 
 gallery covered with allegorical Mainwarings ? " 
 
 "Not in the very smallest degree. But we've got 
 to have them, haven't we? " 
 
 " I don't think so," said he. " In fact, from a letter 
 I have received from my father, I gather that he 
 doesn't consider he made a contract for them at all. 
 It's clear from what he says that somebody else wants 
 to buy them at a higher rate, considerably higher, 
 than your mother paid for the first. In fact, he 
 alludes to the price she paid for it as a pittance. By 
 the way, what did she pay for it ? " 
 
 Silvia looked sideways at him again. 
 
 " Do you really want me to tell you ? " she asked.
 
 Peter 193 
 
 "If you don't mind." 
 
 "Well, she gave him a thousand guineas for it, 
 Peter. I rather wish he hadn't called it a pittance; 
 it makes mother seem mean. He was quite willing 
 to accept it. And I don't suppose— do you ? — that he 
 sells much at that sort of price ? " 
 
 "And the rest of the unspeakable six at the same 
 price ? " asked Peter. 
 
 "I suppose so. Mother understood so," said she. 
 
 "And does she want to have them ?" asked Peter. 
 
 "No. I don't think she does, very much," said 
 Silvia. "She spoke to-day of ' my cartoons ' — wasn't 
 that darling of her? — when I said your father was 
 coming this evening. But I think 1 could explain 
 to her that she needn't have them; if I do it the 
 right way, she won't think she wants them. But 
 what about the one we've got ? " 
 
 "Sell it back to him at the price she gave for it,'* 
 said Peter. 
 
 Silvia seemed to consider this simple proposition 
 rather intently. 
 
 "Yes, perhaps she would do that,'* she said, with- 
 out much conviction as to its probability. "Oh, 
 Peter, haven't we got rather odd parents? " 
 
 "I have; but why have you, except in so far that 
 it was odd to give a thousand guineas for that 
 monstrosity? I'm delighted at the prospect of get- 
 ting rid of it, not only, and not chiefly, because it's 
 an atrocious object, but because I hate the idea of 
 my father imposing upon your mother and then talk- 
 ing about a pittance. He would have jumped at 
 selling it in an auction room for a quarter of what she 
 paid. I wonder who can have offered him more for 
 it. Oh, by the way. Aunt Eleanor has bought his 
 sketches for the cartoons."
 
 194 Peter 
 
 Silvia burst out laughing. 
 
 "Then Aunt Joanna has bought the cartoons them- 
 selves," she said. " But don't suggest that to mother. 
 Or rather, if you want me to talk about it all to her, 
 I won't. Aunt Joanna, you see, wants to, what they 
 call wipe mother's eye. I'm quite certain of it. And 
 if mother got wind of it, she wouldn't part with that 
 wretched picture for a million." 
 
 "But how odd " 
 
 "Yes; that's her oddness. I said we had got odd 
 parents. And I doubt — at least, there's no doubt 
 about it at all — whether she will let your father have 
 back the one cartoon that she has got for what she 
 paid for it. She doesn't want any money, and she's 
 as generous as she can be, bless her, but she won't 
 be ' done.' The picture is hers, and she won't let 
 him have it back at a penny less than he is going to 
 receive for it. Oh, let's talk about something more 
 interesting. Anyhow, you and I don't want the car- 
 toon we've got, or any more like it. But people are 
 so queer, and I love their queernesses : they are 
 part of them. After all, the queernesses in people are 
 exactly what makes their individuality. You're queer, 
 I'm queer." 
 
 "Why am I queer?" demanded Peter. 
 
 "I've told you so often," said she. 
 
 Peter guessed at that what his imputed queerness 
 was. It was true that she had told him often, but it 
 was true also that there was a thing which a lover 
 was never tired of repeating. 
 
 "Never : never once," said he. 
 
 "As if I wasn't doing it all day," she said. 
 "Taking advantage, I mean, of your queerness — not 
 merely telling you about it directly, but being so much 
 more direct than just telling you. What's your queer-
 
 Peter 195 
 
 ness, indeed, if it isn't that you allow me to be queer, 
 just because you are ? " 
 
 "You've changed the subject," said he. "You're 
 talking- about your queerness now." 
 
 "It's all the same queerness," she said. 
 
 Peter could squint more atrociously than most 
 people, and now, looking at Silvia, he allowed him- 
 self to contemplate the end of his nose. Silvia coufdn't 
 stand this trick, and a nonsensical ritual had built 
 itself up upon it. 
 
 "Oh, Peter, put your eyes back ! " she cried. 
 
 "I can't. They've stuck. Push them back for 
 me. 
 
 He shut his eyes, and Silvia stroked the lids from 
 the nose outwards. 
 
 "They will stick some day," she said, "and then 
 I shall divorce you." 
 
 Peter looked at her straight again. 
 
 "Go on about the queerness," he said. 
 
 "Yours or mine? " she asked. 
 
 "You said they were the same." 
 
 "They are in a way. But your queerness is much 
 the queerest. For it was I whom you loved. What 
 I did wasn't queer; anything else would have been 
 not queer, but imbecile. . . . Peter, don't ever be 
 tired of knowing how awfully I love you. If you're 
 not there, the thought of it frightens me; there's 
 something crushing about it. But when you are with 
 me, the only thing that frightens me is the thought 
 that it shouldn't be so. But why on earth you're like 
 that — like me, I mean — that's what is so incompre- 
 hensible. Me, you know : this bit of nothing at all." 
 
 Peter became aware, more consciously than 
 through the hints he had previously been cognizant 
 of, how, though Silvia's level was some sun-basked
 
 10 Peter 
 
 plateau far above him, he welcomed and spread him- 
 self in the gleams that came to him. There was a 
 splendour in being loved like that, and at this moment 
 the inherent falsity of his position was just burned out 
 by that consuming ray. Her love, not in the least 
 masculine, was yet male in its adoring self-surrender; 
 his, as regards her, though not in the least feminine, 
 was female in its reception of it. There was an ecstasy 
 in being adored by so magnificent a lover. Even as 
 in material ways, she showered herself on the Danae 
 for whom, in their drama, he was cast, so in the 
 subtler and splendid beauty of the soul, she poured 
 herself out in a love that passed the love of woman. 
 And that very quality, here triumphantly shining, 
 drew out the essential fragrance of his. 
 
 "More," he said, "more nothing at all." 
 
 She seemed to step from her height at that, diving 
 down to him, entrancingly tender. 
 
 "That's all there is, my darling," she said. "If 
 you want more than I've got, you must teach it me. 
 Now I won't be absurd any longer. Look, there's a 
 moorhen ! " 
 
 This was quite in the habitual manner. Like a 
 lark, she sang for so long as she was in the air, then 
 folded her wings and dropped to her nest. The sing- 
 ing was over, and it left her panting with the ecstasy 
 of it. But Peter, to continue that metaphor, received 
 something of a shock; he had not known she would 
 so swiftly come to ground. Yet that sudden dip was 
 equally characteristic of him ; he probably had shown 
 her the trick of it, for often he had done just that. 
 The sky, after all, extended to the actual ground : 
 there was no intermediate element. 
 
 "It's a coot," he said. 
 
 "I don't care. I only hope it's happy," said she.
 
 Peter i97 
 
 "Oh, my dear, there's the bell for lunch, and we're 
 half a mile from the house. The Jackdaw will peck 
 us for being late." 
 
 "Not our fault. The lake shouldn't have been so 
 
 long." 
 
 "We might fill some of it up," said she. "Let's 
 talk sensibly. What were we saying before you began 
 to talk nonsense? Oh, yes, pictures, pittance " 
 
 "Papa," said he. 
 
 "Peter. ... I can't think of any more." 
 
 "Peter's papa purchases the picture he sold for 
 a pittance," said he. "American headlines. Make 
 another." 
 
 This sort of monkey-gymnastics of the mind, at 
 which Peter and Nellie and all the rest of them so 
 fluently excelled, was always productive in Silvia of 
 an intense gravity ; she made her contributions with 
 effort, struggle and bewilderment, amazed at how 
 quickly everybody else — everybody else was so clever 
 — made words out of words, and reeled off the names 
 of eminent men which began with an X. . . . 
 
 "Something about mother," said she with knitted 
 brows. " I must manage — oh, Peter, isn't that good? 
 — I must manage to make mother " 
 
 Peter giggled. 
 
 "That's not the right form," he said. "You must 
 get the right form. Let's see. 'Millionaire mother 
 manages to make — to make — oh, yes — money on Mr. 
 Mainwaring's monstrosity,' " he finished up in a great 
 hurrv. 
 
 "Oh, Peter, how lovely! " said she. "How do 
 you do it? And why can't I ?" 
 
 Mr. Mainwaring rose magnificently to his tenancy 
 of the state-rooms, feeling that it had been a very
 
 198 Peter 
 
 proper arrangement to put him there. Here was the 
 father of the master of Howes paying a visit to his 
 son ; here, too, in the same earthly vesture, was the 
 creator of the great cartoons which, among all the futile 
 crosses and cenotaphs and hysterical verse and prose, 
 were not unworthy of the heroic history which they 
 commemorated. With the same abandoned thorough- 
 ness with which he could be, when suitable, the 
 rollicking, jovial boy, hungry for his tea, or the 
 robust-throated Toreador, so now he saw in the 
 assignation of the state-rooms to his occupancy 
 a very proper and touching homage on the part of 
 Peter or Silvia, or Mrs. Wardour (or more probably 
 on their joint acclamation) to the sovereignty of his 
 Art. These pleasant reflections that accompanied the 
 appreciative exploration of his territory suggested that 
 there was, so to speak, a little state business to be 
 done, the nature of which he believed he had 
 adequately indicated to Peter. Peter, good lad, 
 would no doubt have attended to it, and it would be 
 well for him to give his report. 
 
 Probably it was as much the desire of having this 
 conversation with Peter secure from interruption as 
 anything else that caused him to send a message to 
 his son that Mr. Mainwaring would be much obliged 
 if he would spare him a few minutes in the state- 
 rooms before dressing time; but it certainly fitted in 
 pleasantly with his sovereignty that Peter should be 
 requested to present himself, and that Mr. Main- 
 waring should be set on a throne of Spanish brocade. 
 
 He waved Peter to a seat. Peter seemed to prefer 
 to perch himself on the tall steel fireguard. He 
 divined with sufficient accuracy his father's pose, and 
 was partly amused, partly irritated. Silvia would 
 have been wholly amused.
 
 Peter 199 
 
 "Hope you'll be comfortable here, father," he 
 
 said. 
 
 Mr. Mainwaring glanced round him. 
 
 "Yes, indeed," he said. "I shall do very well. 
 Ah, by the way, before we get to business, I have a 
 letter from your mother which she asked me to give 
 you. Perhaps you would hand me my despatch case. 
 . . . Here it is." 
 
 Peter was lighting a cigarette, and spoke between 
 the puffs. 
 
 "Right. I'll take it when I go," he said. 
 
 His father looked at the tapestried walls. 
 
 "My dear boy," he said, "I don't know if I am 
 right to allow you to smoke here." 
 
 Peter dropped his match on the carpet. He did 
 that on purpose. 
 
 "Oh, don't bother about that," he said. "I allow 
 myself. Now I suppose you want to talk to me about 
 that cartoon ? " 
 
 " You got my letter ? You have arranged what I 
 indicated ? " 
 
 Peter felt his irritation gaining on him. 
 
 "Well, your letter was rather — rather involved, 
 rather vague and magnificent," he said. "What 
 Silvia and I made out of it was that you had been 
 offered a higher price for work that Mrs. Wardour 
 had commissioned you to do for her, and wanted to 
 call it off. That seemed to be the general drift of it." 
 
 "No; there was no definite commission," said he. 
 "I mentioned that." 
 
 "Mrs. Wardour was under the impression that 
 there was. But that, I think, can be arranged, for the 
 series was intended — commissioned or not doesn't 
 matter — to hang in the gallery here. This is Silvia's 
 house, you see, and in a way mine, so that if we con-
 
 200 
 
 Peter 
 
 sent there will be — under certain conditions — no diffi- 
 culty with my mother-in-law. Silvia has talked to 
 her about it. We cordially consent, father. We are 
 both quite willing that you should paint the rest of the 
 series for somebody else." 
 
 Mr. Mainwaring could find no fault with the sub- 
 stance of the speech; indeed, it gave him precisely 
 what he was wanting. But, in spite of Peter's neu- 
 trality of statement, he found it dealing some dastardly 
 wound to his vanity. 
 
 "Ha! You and Silvia, it appears, don't want 
 the great series," he remarked. 
 
 "But apparently somebody else does," said Peter. 
 "And you said in your letter that they were exciting 
 a stupendous interest in artistic circles. That's all 
 right, then; we are very glad." 
 
 "Yes, glad to get rid of them," said the insatiable 
 one. 
 
 Peter practically never lost his temper. He used it 
 as a stored-up force. But certainly the sight of his 
 father on the Spanish throne, looking like Zeus, did 
 not predispose him to exert his habitual pleasantness. 
 
 "You are, of course, at liberty to make any com- 
 ments you choose," he said. "You are vexed with 
 me because I give you your way quite willingly 
 instead of reluctantly. By the way, don't tell me, and 
 in particular don't tell Mrs. Wardour, whether the 
 * artistic circles ' is another expression for Lady 
 Darley. If it is, I think it highly probable that she 
 would refuse to let you have back the first cartoon, 
 if that is part of your plan. You would, in that case, 
 I suppose, have to copy it if she allowed you to." 
 
 Mr. Mainwaring rose to a splendour of pomposity. 
 
 "Copy? " he said. "And could I copy the fiery 
 execution of it ? You speak of pictures, my Peter, as
 
 Peter 201 
 
 if they could be produced like boots or hats. The in- 
 tending purchaser — I do not say whether or no I refer 
 to Lady Darley— wants no cold replica. She insists 
 on the one that came hot and terrible from the furnace 
 of my imagination." 
 
 "Then on certain conditions," said Peter, "Lady 
 Darley — I mean the purchaser — may have it." 
 
 "Name them," said his father, looking like a 
 captive king. 
 
 "The first is that you completely withdraw, and 
 if possible regret, the use of the expression ' pittance,' 
 in connection with the price you received for it. 
 There's an implication of meanness about it with 
 regard to Mrs. Wardour." 
 
 Mr. Mainwaring clicked his thumb and finger as 
 if to say, " That for what I sold it for.'^ 
 
 "I make no such implication," he said. "Mrs. 
 Wardour or anybody else is well within her rights 
 in acquiring fine work at such prices as the artist is 
 obliged from straitened circumstances to accept." 
 
 "The point is," said Peter, "that you hadn't often, 
 if ever, been obliged to accept a thousand guineas 
 before for any picture." 
 
 "And may not an artist, after years of unremitting 
 endeavour, be allowed to come into his own and enjoy 
 the appreciation he has long merited ? " asked Mr. 
 Mainwaring. 
 
 "Certainly he may: we are all delighted. But 
 when he does — when, that is to say, you at length 
 receive a high price for a picture, you shouldn't, 
 because you are offered immediately afterwards a 
 higher price, talk of a pittance as applied to the first. 
 You thought yourself, father," continued Peter pleas- 
 antly and inexorably, "remarkably fortunate to get a 
 thousand guineas."
 
 202 
 
 Peter 
 
 Mr. Mainwaring, at this, displayed the versa- 
 tility of a quick-change artist. It was pretty well 
 demonstrated that Peter was not impressed by the 
 majestic attitude, and he yodelled and burst into a 
 
 laugh. 
 
 "Well, well, my Peter," he said, "you shall have 
 it your own way. It was no pittance. I ought not 
 to have called it a pittance— mea culpa, mea maxima 
 culpa. Pittance it is— let us distinguish, my dear— 
 when I contrast it with the subsequent offer that has 
 reached me, but at the time a thousand guineas 
 seemed to me a very fair remuneration. I had been 
 too modest about my value, it appears now. Ah, yes, 
 but recognition is pleasant enough, and when the 
 brush slips from my hand, and my spirit flies " (he 
 made a circular motion of his arms as if swimming) 
 "to join the mightier dead, the Mainwaring estate will 
 be found not too inconsiderable to place beside the 
 fortunes of the Wardours. But that will not, I hope, 
 be for a long time yet," he added, as the notion of 
 picturing himself in front of some great canvas with 
 the brush slipping from his nerveless hands, sup- 
 ported by Silvia and Peter, occurred to him with an 
 almost ominous vividness. 
 
 "Quite," said Peter in general acknowledgment of 
 this magnificence. "There remains then one thing 
 to settle, and that is the price at which you re- 
 purchase the cartoon of which Mrs. Wardour is the 
 present possessor." 
 
 Mr. Mainwaring did not for the moment see the 
 bearing of this, and remained splendid. 
 
 "I should not dream of repaying her one penny 
 less than what I received for it," he said. "The full 
 price, Peter : assure her of that." 
 
 Peter thought it better to let another aspect of the
 
 Peter 203 
 
 case strike his father, without suggesting it, and was 
 silent till Mr. Mainwaring spoke again. 
 
 "H'm. I see what you mean," he said. 
 
 "I hoped you would, because really there doesn't 
 seem to be any reason why she should let you have 
 for a thousand guineas a thing which is now indubit- 
 ably hers, and which you will immediately sell for 
 a considerably higher sum." 
 
 Mr. Mainwaring began to regret that he had said 
 quite so much about the utter impossibility of re- 
 capturing the fire of the original in a copy. 
 
 "You would be offering her, you must remember," 
 Peter added, "a pittance for her picture." 
 
 "You think 1 ought to give her what I shall receive 
 for it?" asked Mr. Mainwaring. 
 
 Peter kept steadily before him his distaste of his 
 father "scoring off " Mrs. Wardour. The whole 
 thing, though humorous, was rather sordid; but he 
 knew that he rather liked himself in the part he was 
 playing in it. 
 
 "I think the justice of that view will appeal to 
 you," he said. "You couldn't very well do other- 
 wise." 
 
 Mr. Mainwaring was silent a moment, and then 
 decided to be completely superb. 
 
 "I have no experience in business or in bargain- 
 ing," he said. "If you tell me that is right and fair 
 and proper, I yield." 
 
 "I think it's your only means of getting the pic- 
 ture," said Peter. "So that's settled, is it? Oh, the 
 letter from my mother. Thanks. Dinner at half- 
 past eight."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Peter, as he strolled down the corridor, knew that 
 he had been rather signorial — if that was the word — 
 and designedly so, in this interview. In spite of Mr. 
 Mainwaring's magnificent occupation of the state- 
 rooms, for which, after all, he had his son to thank, 
 Peter was pleased to feel that he had been putting his 
 father in his place. It had certainly been with this 
 object in view that he had smoked his cigarette, and 
 dropped the expired match on the carpet, not exactly 
 calling attention to his position, but casually assum- 
 ing it. Again, in the matter of the picture, he had, 
 ever so quietly, ever so indulgently, just hinted at the 
 right course, and like a lamb — a great vain rococo, 
 farcical lamb — his father had bleated his way into the 
 proper fold. 
 
 Peter confessed to himself — he seldom confessed to 
 anybody else — that the motive which inspired these 
 manoeuvres was an unamiable one. He might easily 
 have obtained the results that he now, together v;ith 
 his mother's unopened letter, carried away from this 
 interview, by tact, by pleasantness, by the general 
 small change of sympathy. Hitherto he had been 
 accustomed to use such lubrications to make the 
 wheels of life run smoothly in domestic dealings; but 
 now that no further domestic lubrication was neces- 
 sary on his part (his father, it is true, might have to 
 flourish the oil-can with desperate agility, if he was to 
 ensure smooth working) Peter knew that he had just 
 driven ahead and let the wheels, if so they felt dis- 
 posed, squeak and squeal, and grind and grumble. 
 
 204
 
 Peter 205 
 
 While that small, smelly house off the Brompton 
 Road had been his home, it had paid to make the 
 bearings run easily ; but now, when he thought with 
 incredulous wonder that he could have "stuck" all 
 that small stuffiness so long, he detachedly admired 
 his own past deftness and patience in dealing with 
 the daily situation there. He saw in the mirror of his 
 own vanity the incomparable crudeness of his father's, 
 and discovered, almost with a sense of shock, how 
 cordially he disliked him. 
 
 For the present his sense of humour with regard 
 to him was in total eclipse; the type of quality which 
 Silvia hugged as being the lovable queerness which 
 makes for individuality, he saw only as tiresome and 
 contemptible eccentricity, a thing to be contemplated 
 baldly without comment, whenever contemplation of 
 it was necessary, and to be dealt with summarily^. 
 The vexing affair was that Peter caught some broken 
 image of himself in all this. One glimpse of himself 
 in especial was irritating; that, namely, in which he 
 looked with great distaste on his father's profiting by 
 the wealth of the Wardours without giving a due 
 return for his depredations on it. 
 
 It was natural that when, as now, he was so acutely 
 aware of his father's unique capability for rubbing 
 him up the wrong way, he should wonder afresh at 
 the placid, unruffled tolerance that had enabled his 
 mother to spend a quarter of a century with him. 
 Women, of course, so ran his reflections, have a 
 greater gift of patience with men than a man can be 
 expected to have. Sex, no doubt, had something to 
 do with it, for on the other hand men were more 
 tolerant of a tiresome woman than other women. Yet 
 that could not wholly explain his mother; she was 
 quite inexplicable, for Silvia even, gifted as Peter ever 
 
 N
 
 2o6 Peter 
 
 so cordially recognized with the power of putting her- 
 self into the position and realizing the identity of other 
 people, had fallen back like a spent wave from the 
 hard, smooth impenetrability of his mother. She had 
 confessed herself baffled, had no idea whether there 
 was something, somebody, hermetically sealed up be- 
 hind that neat porcelain face by the inexorable will of 
 its occupant, or if there was nothing beyond that blank 
 imperturbability that cared only whether the door at 
 the head of the kitchen stairs was "quite shut " and 
 had no desire except to be left alone and allowed to 
 read advertisements of hotels in railway guides. Had 
 his mother been driven into that small, but apparently 
 impregnable fortress by his father's colossal and ludi- 
 crous personality, or was there indeed no one there 
 at all, no beleaguered garrison grimly holding out? 
 
 Peter wandered on to the terrace for a minute ot 
 composing dusk and quietness. He half expected to 
 find Silvia there, and felt a little ill-used that she was 
 not. She knew what was the nature of his interview 
 with his father, and Peter would have welcomed the 
 warmth of her applause at his masterly conduct of it. 
 But in her absence he could read the certainly placid 
 communication from his mother. She would hope he 
 was well, she would hope Silvia was well, she would 
 let it be assumed that she was well. She would cer- 
 tainly also say that she was so sorry she could not 
 come to Howes with his father, but that she hoped 
 to do so some time during the autumn. She would 
 undoubtedly wind up by saying that it was nearly 
 post time, and that she had other letters. . . . 
 Peter drew the letter from his pocket, and prepared to 
 let his eyes slide smoothly over the lines of it. She 
 wrote a wonderfully clear hand : you could take a 
 whole sentence in at a glance.
 
 Peter 207 
 
 "My dearest Peter, — I am sending this letter to 
 you by your father, because I want it to reach you 
 without fail. Letters by post go wrong sometimes, 
 and I don't want this to go wrong. When I have 
 finished it, I shall put it into his despatch-box myself. 
 
 "When your father comes back from his visit to 
 you and Silvia, he will not find me here. It is no use 
 mincing words, so I will tell you straight out that I 
 can't stand him any longer. It would not have 
 answered my purpose just to go away from him for a 
 month, for I should have felt all the time that at the 
 end of a month I should have to come back; I 
 should have been on the end of the string still. As 
 it is, I shall stop away just as long as I choose. I 
 shall be free. I want a holiday without any tie what- 
 ever. When I mean to come back (if I do) I shall 
 write to him and ask him if he will take me back. 
 I don't know how long it will be before I want to. 
 It might be a fortnight, or it might be a year, or it 
 might be never. I shall simply stay away from him, 
 at some pleasant place which I have selected, until I 
 feel better. 
 
 "While you were living with your father and me 
 I could just get along; but since you have gone I 
 can't get along at all. We weren't much to each 
 other, for all my individuality — isn't that what they 
 call it? — had long ago been hammered back into me. 
 I was like a small person in a large suit of armour. 
 But somehow you were a part of me, and while you 
 were there I couldn't go away. 
 
 "I ask you, my dear, not to make any attempt to 
 find me, and I want you to persuade your father not 
 to. I shall be quite comfortable, and as I am never 
 ill I don't see why I should begin to be so now. I 
 shall go to a nice hotel, where I shan't have to order
 
 2o8 Peter 
 
 lunch and dinner or add up bills. It is astonishing 
 how many nice hotels there are, quite moderate in 
 price, which will just suit me. 
 
 "Now this may seem unkind, but the fact is that 
 I don't want to hear a word from either you or your 
 father. You and I have nothing in common ; in fact, 
 I have nothing in common with anybody, and I only 
 want to be left alone in peace, and not to be reminded 
 of the last twenty-five years of my life at all. I want 
 not to be bothered with anybody. I want to get up 
 and go to bed when I choose, and go for my walk, 
 and read my book, and play patience. You and I 
 have never loved each other at all, so there's no use 
 in pretending to be pathetic over that now. Before 
 you were old enough to understand, I hadn't got any 
 feeling left in me, or, at least, it was hammered right 
 inside me. If any time during these last ten years 
 I had died, you wouldn't have missed me, though if 
 you had died I should have missed you to the extent, 
 anyhow, of your absence making my life with your 
 father quite intolerable. I don't bear him the slightest 
 ill will, and I hope he'll bear me none. He has 
 excellent servants, and they will make him quite com- 
 fortable, which is all he wants. But I've got too 
 much sense to remain with him any longer. 
 
 "He has been saying great things lately about the 
 immense sums of money he will get for his series of 
 cartoons, so that I have no scruple in withdrawing 
 from him the ^600 a year which is my own income. 
 I can't be certain, of course, whether he has not been 
 multiplying everything by ten, in order to glorify 
 himself, but I suppose there is some truth in it all. 
 Anyhow, he has got a cheque from Mrs. Wardour for 
 a thousand guineas, because he showed me that. He 
 was in great spirits that night, dancing round the
 
 Peter 209 
 
 table and singing and drinking quantities of port. 
 And that, it appears, is nothing to what he is about 
 to get for the rest of his great series." 
 
 Peter took his eyes off the neatly written sheets for 
 a moment and gave a great gasp. The figure of his 
 mother, as he was accustomed to behold it, veiled and 
 still, and sitting in shadow and never giving a sign 
 of individual life, had suddenly cast off its conceal- 
 ment and tranquillities, and stood out violently illu- 
 minated. That smooth, polished object which had 
 lain inert so long in the midst of railway guides, had 
 proved itself to be a live shell which, without any 
 warning or preliminary sizzling, had exploded. He 
 himself was unhurt, though immeasurably astonished 
 and startled, and he exulted in the fact that the thing 
 had been alive after all, carrying within it such store 
 of devastating energy. His own marriage, his depar- 
 ture from home, had set off the fuse ; he had been, all 
 unconsciously, the controlling agent. 
 
 He dived again into this most lucid report of the 
 explosion, observing with regret that there were but 
 a couple of pages more. At the moment Silvia ap- 
 peared at the door from the terrace into the drawing- 
 room close behind where he sat. 
 
 " Peter, is that you ? " she asked. 
 
 "Yes; one minute. Or come here, Silvia. Take 
 these sheets and read them without saying anything 
 till Pve finished. It's a letter from my mother." 
 
 He buried himself in the remainder of the letter, 
 hardly hearing Silvia's gasp of surprise as she came 
 to the second paragraph. 
 
 "Now I want you," the narrative continued, "to 
 consider this before you pass any judgment on what I
 
 aio Peter 
 
 have done. I am injuring nothing and nobody, 
 except your father's vanity, and I have no doubt he 
 will find some explanation of my leaving him which 
 will quite satisfy him. He will not be the least less 
 happy without me, nor will you. I have got no 
 friends, for I am not the sort of person who can make 
 friends or wants them ; I have been hammered, as I 
 have said, into myself, and I break no ties the sever- 
 ance of which is painful for others any more than 
 for me. I see so few people, and those so very occa- 
 sionally, that there need be no scandal of any kind; 
 your father will only have to say, about once a month, 
 that I am on a visit in the country, which is quite true. 
 
 "My solicitor knows where I am, and from time 
 to time he will let you have a note from me, saying 
 how I am. As for news, I shall have none; I shall 
 take my walk, and read my book, and entertain my- 
 self very well, and I shall be very happy, because 
 I shall be free. I rather believe that you are suffi- 
 ciently like me to understand that, for you have always 
 kept yourself independent of everybody. 
 
 "Finally, I leave it to you (no doubt you will con- 
 sult Silvia) as to whether you let your father find out 
 that I have gone when he returns home, or whether 
 you tell him. I think personally that it would be 
 wiser to tell him, because when he got home and 
 found the few lines (not like this long letter) which 
 I have left for him there, just to say I have gone, he 
 might make some dreadful scene and upset every- 
 body. But that I leave entirely to you. 
 
 "All the wages and books were paid up to the end 
 of last week. The bills, with their receipts, are in 
 their place in the third drawer of my knee-hole table. 
 "Your affectionate mother, 
 
 "Maria Mainwaring."
 
 Peter 
 
 211 
 
 Peter thrust the remaining pages into Silvia's 
 hand, and waited till she had come to the end. Then 
 they looked at each other in silence. 
 
 "I'm going to laugh," said Peter at length. 
 
 "No, please don't," said Silvia. "If you do I 
 shall cry." 
 
 Peter tapped the sheets that lay in her hand. 
 
 "But it's gorgeous," he said. "I should laugh, 
 if I did, not from amusement — though there are amus- 
 ing things — but from pleasure. Every word in that 
 letter is true ; that's something to be pleased about, 
 and, what's more, every word in it is right. But the 
 surprise, the wonder of it ! There's a splendour 
 about it ! " 
 
 Silvia shuffled the sheets together, and, giving 
 them back to him, leaned her forehead on her hands. 
 
 "Ah, haven't you got any tenderness? " she said. 
 " Don't you see the bitter pathos of it ? Your mother, 
 you know ! " 
 
 "But she says there is nothing pathetic about it," 
 said he. 
 
 "And that's just the most pathetic thing of all ! " 
 Silvia said. 
 
 Peter puzzled over this a moment. He understood 
 Silvia's feeling w^ell enough, but he understood 
 equally well, and with greater sympathy, the answer 
 (the retort almost) to it. 
 
 "But if she sees nothing pathetic in the situation, 
 and I quite agree with her, what's the use of trying 
 to introduce pathos?" he asked. "Pathos painted 
 on— like a varnish — ceases to be pathos at all; it be- 
 comes simply sentimentality." 
 
 Silvia turned to him like some patient affectionate 
 teacher to a child who pretends only not to know his 
 lessons.
 
 212 
 
 Peter 
 
 "If the absence of love in relationships like these 
 isn't pathetic," she said, "love itself is only senti- 
 mentality." 
 
 Peter again saw precisely what she meant; he 
 knew, too, that what she said was true. But he knew 
 that he, for himself, did not realize it with conviction, 
 with a sense of illumination. . . . The statement of 
 it was just an instance the more of Silvia's shining 
 there aloft of his confining cloudland. The thought 
 of that dealt him a stab of envy, and under the hurt 
 of it his spirit snapped and snarled, and retired, so 
 to speak, into its kennel, leaving his mind outside to 
 manage the situation. 
 
 "Well, then, it's pathetic," he said, "but it has 
 been pathetic so long that one has got used to it. I 
 know you're right, but what you say hasn't any prac- 
 tical bearing " 
 
 "Ah, my dear, but it has," said she. "It has all 
 the practical bearing. It is up to you, practically, to 
 handle it in hardness in — in a sort of ruthlessness, or 
 you can, recognizing what I say, deal with it 
 tenderly." 
 
 "By all means; but the facts aren't new. Leave 
 me out : let's consider my father and mother only. 
 There's the practical side of it. He's got to be told — 
 at least, I suppose so. There's no new pathos there. 
 They've both been aware of lovelessness for years. 
 If my father takes the wounded, the pathetic pose, it 
 will — it will just be a pose. Frankly, I'm all on my 
 mother's side. By one big gesture she has explained 
 herself; she has made a living comprehensible reality 
 of herself. The Bradshaws, the railway guide adver- 
 tisements — good Lord, we know what it has all been 
 about now ! There's flesh and blood in it ! I always 
 respect flesh and blood ! "
 
 Peter 213 
 
 "But her way of doing it is an outrage," said 
 Silvia. "She's your father's wife, after all : she's 
 your mother. Take your mother's side by all means 
 —we've all got to take sides in everything : nobody 
 can be neutral— but take his side in her manner of 
 doing what she has done. Sympathize with him in 
 that ! That letter, too — will you show him the letter ? 
 The hostility of it, the resentment ! " 
 
 Peter sat still a moment fingering the leaves of the 
 letter. 
 
 "It's not so much resentment," he said, "as re- 
 pression. She has been hammered back into herself 
 all these years. Oh, I understand her better than 
 you. It had to happen this way. What else was she 
 to do? Could she go to my father and say, ' If you 
 can't put some curb on your egoism and vanity, if 
 you continue to be such a bounder (that's what 
 bounders are) I really shall have to leave you ' ? " 
 
 " You want to score off him, Peter," said she. 
 "That's the hardness, the ruthlessness. And you 
 aren't hard, my darling. Who knows that better 
 than I ? " 
 
 "Are you sure I'm not? " he said. 
 
 She did not answer this directly. 
 
 "You've got to be gentle," she said. 
 
 Peter's fingers closed on the letter, hesitated, and 
 then tore the sheets in half. He tore them across yet 
 again. "Well, he shan't see the letter," he said, "It 
 was written to me and I've destroyed it. But if, when 
 I tell him, he becomes melodramatic how can I help 
 being what you call ruthless? He's so vain: you 
 don't know how vain he is. This will be a brutal 
 outrage, an attempted assassination of his vanity. 
 But it won't injure it. The dastardly blow will glance 
 aside, and he'll put an extra bodyguard round his
 
 214 Peter 
 
 vanity for the future. He's a ridiculous person, 
 Silvia," said Peter in a loud, firm voice. 
 
 Silvia gave a sigh. 
 
 "Ah, that's better," she said, "for you've torn the 
 letter up, anyhow, and when you said he was ridicu- 
 lous, you said it, my dear, as if you were justifying 
 yourself rather than accusing him. Oh, you said it 
 firmly and loudly, but — will you mind if I say this 
 too? — you didn't say it so spitefully. Now, let's be 
 practical. You always used to be practical, Peter. 
 When are you going to tell him ?" 
 
 Peter looked at his watch. 
 
 "That means that if I say that I haven't made up 
 my mind," he said, "you will certainly let me know 
 that there is plenty of time to tell him before dinner. 
 You want me to tell him now : that's where we are. 
 You call me practical : who was ever so practical as 
 you, when it comes to the point? " 
 
 She did not challenge that, but rather proceeded 
 to justify Peter's opinion for him. 
 
 "My dear, you can put off pleasant things if you 
 like," she said, "because you enjoy the anticipation of 
 them. But where — where is the use of putting off 
 unpleasant things? That only lengthens a beastly 
 anticipation." 
 
 "He'll make a scene," said Peter. "I hate scenes." 
 
 There was nothing to reply to this : it all came 
 under the advisability, which she had already ex- 
 pressed, of not putting off unpleasantnesses. So she 
 made no reply, and soon, for the face of her continued 
 to push him, he got up, still wondering if she would 
 prefer to tell his father herself. How strongly she 
 wanted to do that, and how, more strongly, she re- 
 frained from doing it, he had no idea. Her inclina- 
 tion, that which she combated, was simply to go
 
 Peter 215 
 
 straight to those voluptuous state-rooms; but her will, 
 her convinced sense of what was right, of what was 
 Peter's own duty and development, kept her silent. 
 
 "Oh, I am sorry for you," she said at length, as he 
 turned to go into the house. "But don't forget to be 
 sorry for him, Peter." 
 
 His only answer to that was a just perceptible 
 shrug of his shoulders (comment on the futility of her 
 sympathy), and he walked away across the crackling 
 gravel. 
 
 Silvia knew how Peter's mere presence stifled her 
 power of judgment with regard to him. Often and 
 often she had to cling, desperately, to a mental in- 
 tegrity of her own, in order not to be washed away 
 by the mere tide of her devotion to him. Her desire, 
 not only the flesh and the blood of her, but her very 
 spirit, would always have surrendered to him, would 
 have given up herself, whole and complete, to what 
 pleased him, to what made him comfortable, content 
 and happy. But somewhere between these two apexes 
 of physical and spiritual longing there came another 
 peak, a mental and judicial apex, so she framed it to 
 herself, a thing solid and reliable, a kind of bleak 
 umpire that gave inexorable decisions. 
 
 Already in their fortnight of married life it had 
 several times asserted itself — it was her will, she sup- 
 posed, clear-eyed and unbribable, which was as dis- 
 tinct from the blindness of love as it was from the 
 abandonment of physical desire. Peter had sug- 
 gested, for instance, that he should "chuck " his work 
 in the Foreign Office (this was the most notable ot 
 these instances) and live, just live, now at Howes, 
 now in London, always with her. They would travel, 
 they would entertain, they would have plenty of inter- 
 ests to keep him busy enough. He had urged, he
 
 2i6 Peter 
 
 had argued, he had appealed to her for her mere 
 acquiescence, willing or not, and she had steadily 
 and unshakably refused to give it. Here, to-night, 
 was another test for this umpire of the mind. It 
 would have been infinitely easier for her to tell Mr. 
 Mainwaring herself, and she knew quite convincedly 
 that she would have proved a far more sympathetic 
 breaker of shocking tidings than Peter would be. 
 Peter would now, on his way to the state-rooms, be 
 framing adroit sentences, be schooling his anticipatory 
 impatience at a melodramatic reception of that news 
 by his father into tolerance and gentleness. But she 
 had as little temptation to be intolerant or ungentle, 
 as he had to be the reverse; she would naturally have 
 stood in an attitude which Peter would find it gym- 
 nastically difficult to maintain. But he had got to do 
 his best, not to let her do so infinitely better. 
 
 It took but a moment's stiffening of herself to 
 baffle any inclination to follow Peter and shoulder his 
 mission for him, and her thoughts went back to Mrs. 
 Mainwaring's letter and its startling effect (or want 
 of effect) on Peter. That had produced, so she found 
 now when she was no longer under the spell of his 
 presence, a certain incredulous dismay. "You aren't 
 like that," she had assured him, but now she found 
 herself saying, "He can't be like that ! " He appeared 
 to have received this intelligence with a savage, or, 
 if not a savage a wholly unpitiful comment. He 
 had seemed, and indeed seemed now, to have 
 applauded this tragic sequel to years of resentful 
 companionship. He had confessed to a desire to 
 laugh (this was the ruthlessness). It might be 
 that the logical result of such years was that Mrs. 
 Mainwaring, given that she retained any inde- 
 pendent identity of her own, should have been goaded
 
 Peter 217 
 
 into this assertion of it. It might, in the ultimate 
 weighing of souls, be better that she should have cut 
 the knot like this, rather than have been strangled 
 by it. It was all very well for Peter to take her side, 
 but to take her side competently included an apprecia- 
 tion of what she had suffered, and what she had failed 
 in. Anyone could form a fair idea of what she, as 
 exhibited now, had suffered by the smallest recogni- 
 tion of what it must have been to be tied to the present 
 occupant of the state-rooms, and the same exhibition 
 showed exactly her tragic failure in allowing herself 
 to be driven into this hermetical compartment, where 
 all that reached her was the contemplation of her 
 escape, as shown by her study of hotels. But Peter 
 turned over all this, which was the root of the matter, 
 as he might turn over the leaves of a dull book, and 
 only saw a dramatic comedy in it, deserving of 
 applause for its fitness, of an exclamation, "Serve him 
 right ! " or a laughing, "Well done, mother ! " . . . 
 You couldn't deal with people like that; at that rate 
 the whole world would become a relentless machine, 
 always grinding, always seeing others ground, always 
 being diverted at the pitiless revolution of the wheels. 
 Compassion, tenderness, these were the qualities that 
 just saved and redeemed the world from hell, or at 
 least from being a wounding comedy, at which no 
 human person could laugh for fear of crying instead. 
 Silvia got up from the seat where she and Peter 
 had read his mother's letter, definitely desiring to 
 avoid the conclusion to which her thoughts were lead- 
 ing her. He had wanted to laugh — that was certain, 
 but she must forget that. Probably he had not meant 
 it; it was only incongruousness and surprise (like 
 funny things in church, which would not be in the 
 least funny elsewhere) which had made a spasm. . . .
 
 2i8 Peter 
 
 Peter assuredly was not like that really, and the 
 loyalty of love derided her for supposing it. He was 
 (her heart insisted on that) all that her love adored 
 him for being. 
 
 The dressing bell had already sumptuously 
 sounded from the central turret, and, still quite 
 ignorant of what had been the result of the disclosure, 
 but conscious of a yearning anxiety to know, she 
 went up to her bedroom. She was not so much 
 anxious to know how Mr. Mainwaring was "taking 
 it " (how he "took it " seemed to matter very little), 
 but how Peter had done his part. Between his 
 dressing-room and her bedroom were a couple of 
 bathrooms, and she heard, with a certain clinging to 
 the usualness of life, splashings and hissings of water 
 coming from one of these. Whatever had happened, 
 there was Peter having his bath, and soon, most 
 likely, he would tap at her door, barefooted (he never 
 would wear slippers as he paddled about between his 
 room and hers) with the blue silk dressing-gown tied 
 with a tasselled cord about his waist. Peter had a 
 wondrous ritual for his bath : he had to immerse 
 himself first of all, and then stand on the mat while 
 he soaped himself from head to foot. Then, still slip- 
 pery and soapy, in order to get cold and heighten 
 the enjoyment of the next immersion, he turned on 
 more hot taps, and put spoonful after spoonful of 
 verbena salts into the water. Then he got in again, 
 and stewed himself in this fragrant soup. When 
 he was too hot to bear it any longer, he retired into a 
 small waterproof castle at the end of the bath, and 
 turned on all the cold water douches and squirts and 
 syringes. Then, without drying himself at all, he 
 put on the famous blue silk dressing-gown, which had 
 a hood to it, lit a cigarette, and tapped at her door,
 
 Peter 219 
 
 to ascertain whether he could sit and finish his cigar- 
 ette there. Silvia, by this time, knew precisely the 
 interpretation of these splashings and hissings of 
 water, and she would hurry up her own dressing, or 
 slow it down, so that she could admit him. Fresh 
 from his scrubbings and soapings, with the glow of 
 the cold water on his skin, he was paganly sensuous 
 in his enjoyment of the physical conditions of the 
 moment, and, sitting by her dressing-table, talked the 
 most amazing nonsense. He dried his feet on the 
 tail of his dressing-gown, he rubbed his hair on the 
 hood of it ; there was the scent of soap and verbena 
 and cigarette, and more piercing to her sense than 
 these his firm, smooth skin, the cleansedness and the 
 freshness of him. ... At such chattering undress 
 seances she was most of all conscious of him to the 
 exclusion of herself ; for whereas his kiss, his caress, 
 united her with him, and she had part in it, when he 
 came in thus, rough-haired, bare-legged, wet-footed, 
 with a smooth shoulder emerging from his dressing- 
 gown, while, enveloped in it, he rubbed himself dry, 
 she felt herself merely a spectator of this beautiful 
 animal. 
 
 But if he came in now — he might or might not — 
 she knew that to-night she would be involved, so to 
 speak, with him ; his character, the essence of him, 
 as exhibited in such account as he might give her of 
 the interview with his father, would come like a cloud 
 or a brightness that w^ould obstruct this purely spec- 
 tator-like view of him. He would not only be the 
 clean, lithe animal, which, for these few minutes, she 
 could look at without passion, without love, without 
 friendship even, and be absorbed in the mere joy that 
 there should be in this world so young and wild and 
 perfect a creature. . . .
 
 220 
 
 Peter 
 
 There came his knock, and the usual inquiry, and 
 he entered while her maid, with chaste, averted face, 
 rustled out, not waiting to be dismissed, through the 
 other door. He sat down in the big low chair by her 
 dressing-table. 
 
 "Oh, the simplest pleasures are so much the best," 
 he said. "Just washing, you know, just being hungry 
 and sleepy. I never enjoy a play or a book or a joke 
 nearly so much as a bath and food and getting my 
 head well down into the pillow. But 1 hate sponges. 
 Why should I scrub my nose with a piece of dead sea- 
 weed?" 
 
 Listen as she might, with all the delicacy of divina- 
 tion that love had given to her ear, she could find in 
 his voice no inflection, no hesitation, nor, on the other 
 hand, any glibness (as of a lesson learned and fault- 
 lessly repeated) that showed that he was speaking 
 otherwise than completely naturally. The topics of 
 bath and dinner and bed came to his lips with quite 
 spontaneous fluency, as if he had not in this last hour 
 been the bearer to his father of a tragic situation- 
 one that, at least, must wound the vanity which was 
 so predominant a passion in him. Or had ]\Ir. Main- 
 waring taken it with the same ruthlessness, the same 
 cynical amusement as Peter had appeared to ? Silvia 
 could not believe that : he must have been hurt, been 
 astounded. But why, in pity's name, did not Peter 
 tell her about that interview ? He must have known 
 how she longed to be told, whether there was good or 
 bad to tell. . . . 
 
 "A revolving brush covered with wash-leather," 
 continued Peter, "like a small boxing-glove. You 
 would cover it with soap and work it with your foot. 
 But a sponge ! Odious in texture, dull in colour, and 
 full of horrible dark holes which probably contain the
 
 Peter 
 
 221 
 
 pincers of defunct crabs and the fins of dead fish. 
 . . . Oh, by the way, I quite forgot ! I did really, 
 darling; I was thinking so much about substitutes for 
 sponges." 
 
 Silvia could not doubt the sincerity of this : he 
 had been thinking about sponges; there was the full 
 statement of the case. And with his acknowledgment 
 of that, his mere physical presence, the mere glamour 
 of his radiant animalism, which, after all, was part 
 of his essence and his charm, captured her again, 
 whisking away for the moment all possibility of 
 criticism, or of wishing that he could be other than he 
 was. She knew that her misgivings — they amounted 
 to that — would come flooding back, but just for the 
 moment they were like some remote line of the low 
 tide, lying miles away across shining levels. 
 
 "Oh, Peter," she cried, "if you can design a small 
 revolving wash-leather boxing-glove to use for a 
 sponge, I'll promise to have it made for you. But 
 you must explain just how it's to work. . . ." 
 She broke off. 
 
 "And about your father?" she said. 
 "Yes, I was just going to tell you when you inter- 
 rupted about the sponge-plan," said he. "By the 
 way, I'll draw you the revolving boxing-glove. A 
 foot-pedal below — below, mind — the water, so that 
 your foot doesn't get cold. And, of course, you hold 
 the socket of the boxing-glove— the wrist, so to speak 
 — in your hand, and it goes buzzing round as you 
 work with your foot, and you apply it, well soaped, 
 to your face. No more dead seaweed and lobster 
 claws ! My father now ! " 
 
 Peter gathered up his knees in his arms, and sat 
 there nursing them. His dressing-gown had fallen 
 off his shoulder; he looked like somp domesticated 
 o
 
 222 
 
 Peter 
 
 Satyr, wild with the knowledge of the woodland, but 
 tamed to this sojourn — enforced or voluntary — in 
 human habitations. 
 
 "I went to him, as you told me to do," he began. 
 
 Silvia interrupted him. She wanted him to do 
 himself justice. 
 
 "No, my dear; you went quite of your own 
 accord," she said. "I never urged you." 
 
 Peter's eyelids hovered and fell and raised them- 
 selves again. Often and often had Silvia noticed that 
 shade of gesture on Nellie's face; but never, so it 
 struck her, had she seen a man do just that. The 
 gesture seemed to imply acquiescence without consent. 
 
 "Well, I went anyhow," he said. "I tapped on 
 his door, and as there was no answer I went in. He 
 was standing in front of that big Italian mirror in — 
 well, in an attitude. He is intending to paint his 
 own portrait, when he has finished that daub of 
 you." 
 
 Silvia leaned forward towards him. 
 
 "Oh, don't talk like that ! " she said. "Don't be 
 ironical — not that quite : don't feel ironical." 
 
 Peter turned on her a face of mild, injured inno- 
 cence. " I was telling you the bald facts," he said. 
 
 "The balder the better," said she. 
 
 " 1 told him I had read my mother's letter," he con- 
 tinued, "and that there was news in it which he had 
 better know at once. I got him to sit down, and I got 
 hold of his hand. And then I told him just the fact 
 that she had gone away." 
 
 Peter shifted himself a little further back in his 
 chair and drew his legs more closely towards him, so 
 that his chin rested on the plateau of his knees. 
 
 "I am not being ironical," he said. "I am trying 
 to tell you precisely what happened. He made a
 
 Peter 223 
 
 noise— a gurgle, I think I should call it — and he asked 
 who the damned villain was with whom she had gone. 
 And, to be quite bald, that seemed to me to be unreal. 
 I said that there wasn't any damned villain, and that 
 she had gone just because she felt she must be free. 
 He wanted to see the letter, and I told him that I had 
 torn it up. Then he began throwing his hair-brushes 
 and dress-clothes into a bag, in order to start off and 
 look for her, and asked me where she was. When I 
 told him that I hadn't the slightest idea, he accused 
 me of collusion with her. I merely denied that, and 
 said that her letter was as great a surprise to me as it 
 was to him." 
 
 Peter threw away the end of his cigarette. 
 
 "Then he began to guess why she had gone. Now 
 the point of my tearing up my mother's letter was 
 that he shouldn't know, wasn't it, darling?" 
 
 Silvia heard herself assent. There was a sickness 
 of the heart coming over her, something too subtle for 
 her to diagnose as yet. 
 
 "So he began to guess," continued Peter, "and as 
 he tried to guess I was sorry for him — really sorry, 
 you understand? " 
 
 Silvia's heart began to thrive again. 
 
 "Yes, yes; 1 knew you would be ! " she cried. 
 
 "He soon hit on the reason," said Peter quietly. 
 "There could only have been one reason, so he 
 thought, and it filled him with the utmost remorse. 
 He had been too big for her, that was what it came to 
 ' — too great. He had not, in the exaltation of his art 
 —this is quite what he said — remembered the limita- 
 tions of — of the rest of us. She had fainted before 
 the furnace of his genius. It was all his fault : he 
 hadn't made allowance for the prodigious strain on 
 her — for the effects, cumulative no doubt, of the higii
 
 224 
 
 Peter 
 
 pressure. He strode about the room, he knocked over 
 a chair " 
 
 Some fierce antagonism to his narrative blazed up 
 in Silvia. She had wanted the facts, and here they 
 were, but she had not allowed for the baldness of their 
 presentation, though she had asked for it. 
 
 "Ah, don't talk like that, Peter," she said. 
 "You're not a newspaper reporter." 
 
 Peter gave no reply at all. There he sat with his 
 chin on his knees, quite silent. ... If Silvia chose to 
 speak to him like that it was clear that she must either 
 go on or draw back ; anyhow, the next word was with 
 her. But all the time that he thus tacitly insisted on 
 his rights, resenting what she had said, there was 
 within him some little focus of light breaking through 
 from her sunlit altitudes that illumined and justified 
 her protest. Good Lord, wasn't she right? Wasn't 
 his sentiment towards his father immeasurably ignoble 
 compared to the comprehension of her love ? And 
 that very fact — his own unavowable condemnation of 
 himself, that is to say — irritated him. If she was like 
 that there was no use in his continuing his story. 
 
 Silvia spoke first. Humanly, she could not bear 
 this silence in which Peter seemed to mock her, but 
 divinely she must be ever so humble. . . . Humble ? 
 How love sanctified humility and transformed it into 
 an ineffable pride. She pushed back her chair and 
 knelt by his. She longed to unclasp the brown lean 
 hands that enclosed him in himself and make them 
 embrace her also. But that might annoy Peter : there 
 was a suggestion of "claiming " him about it. She 
 did not want to claim him. 
 
 "I don't know why I spoke like that," she said. 
 "I asked you what happened, and you are telling me. 
 Will you forgive me and go on?"
 
 Peter 225 
 
 Peter had never seemed so remote from her as then. 
 In the frantic telegraphy of her spirit, which seemed 
 to be sending all the love that the waves of ether would 
 bear, there came no response from him, in spite of his 
 answer. *'I never heard such nonsense," he said. 
 "We should be a pretty pair if we had to forgive. 
 How silly — you know it — to ask me to forgive you." 
 
 "Show you do, by going on," she said. 
 
 It was clear to him that what she wanted was to 
 know not his father's part in this interview, but his 
 own. Whether she liked it or not, he was going to 
 be perfectly honest about it. 
 
 "When he knocked over a chair and strode about," 
 he repeated, "and found out the reason for my 
 mother's going away, I began to be less sorry for him. 
 He enjoyed himself : it was all a tribute to his im- 
 possible greatness. From then onwards I acted, be- 
 cause he was acting. The alternative was to tell him 
 that my mother simply found his egoism intolerable. 
 That wouldn't have done any good, so I agreed with 
 him : that was the best thing to do. He is in despair, 
 a rather luxurious despair. I had either to explode 
 that or let him enjoy it. So it was no use being sorry 
 for him any longer." 
 
 Silvia broke out again ; it was her love for Peter 
 that spoke. 
 
 "My dear, you ought to have been a million times 
 sorrier," she cried. "If he had been just simply 
 broken-hearted about it, it would have been so much 
 better. Can't you see that? Can you help feeling 
 it ? " She was shedding the gleam on him. 
 
 "I know what you mean," he said. "But I'm tell- 
 ing you what happened. I was less sorry for him 
 when he began to console himself. 1 suppose I'm 
 made like that."
 
 226 Peter 
 
 Silvia bit her lip. 
 
 " Indeed you are not," she said. "You're making 
 yourself out to be hard and unloving." 
 
 At the moment the clang of the dinner-bell from 
 the turret just above Silvia's room broke in. . . . 
 The whole neighbourhood must know when the family 
 at Howes were warned that it was time to dress, and 
 that three-quarters of an hour later it was time to dine. 
 Peter, on the first evenings he had spent here with 
 Silvia, had asked whether, like a Court Circular, such 
 publicity need be given to their domestic affairs; but 
 Silvia, confessing herself sentimental, had told him 
 that her father had delighted in the installation of that 
 sonorous announcement. The brazen proclamation 
 "hurt" nobody, and "Daddy liked it/' . . . Cer- 
 tainly it served a purpose now, and Peter jumped up. 
 
 "Lord, there's dinner ! " he said. "And I haven't 
 begun to dress. My father, by the way, wants to dine 
 upstairs. Will you tell them, as you are so much 
 more advanced than I, to send up his dinner ? I must 
 fly." Peter stood for a moment looking at her. If a 
 situation between them had not actually laid hold of 
 them, it had thrown a shadow over them, and he 
 wanted to get out into sunlight again. 
 
 "Ah, you darling ! " he said with a blend of envy 
 and of admiration somewhere gushing up. Envy at 
 her immense nobility—he could think of no other word 
 for it— and admiration at that shrine of love which 
 rose from the ground of her heart. It was so beauti- 
 ful an edifice : he despaired of being worthy of it, 
 and at times, so he confessed to himself, he wearied of 
 its white stainless purity. . . . Somehow this evening 
 there seemed to have opened a little crack on its soar- 
 ing vault, which he must mend somehow. 
 
 "Give me a kiss, then," he said.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Peter, though he often hung a veil over the real work- 
 ings and processes of his mind for the benefit and 
 admiration of others, before whom he was anxious to 
 present a charming appearance, was honest with him- 
 self, and found, during the next fortnight, without 
 any desire to dissimulate, that he was distinctly grate- 
 ful to Silvia's insistence that he should not resign 
 his place in the Foreign Office, for, in the present con- 
 ditions and environments at Howes, it was certainly 
 preferable to spend the solidity of the day in London 
 rather than enjoy uninterrupted leisure at home. Even 
 then the evenings were full of crashes and crises and 
 intolerable ludicrousness. . . . 
 
 His father, who still majestically occupied the state- 
 rooms (and showed no indications of vacating them), 
 moved along peaks and summits of the ridiculous, 
 which his son really believed had never before been 
 trodden by foot of man. That he was enjoying him- 
 self immensely Peter made no doubt whatever, living 
 as he did on the heights of egoism, and free to in- 
 dulge in the most extravagant exhibition of it. His 
 standard (victoriously raised), his principle, his deter- 
 mination (announced with magnificent gestures once 
 if not more, during the evening) was that he would 
 remain rock-like and immovable, fulfilling the destiny 
 of his own supreme will, whatever bombs Fate might 
 choose to drop on him. That his whole soul was 
 bitter with remorse for his failings and failures he 
 did not deny. He should not have isolated himself, 
 
 227
 
 228 Peter 
 
 as he had done, in the supernal realms of Art; he 
 should have remembered that he was a man as 
 well as an artist, and had a wife as well as the 
 celestial mistress of his soul. He ought to have been 
 kinder, more tender, more indulgent to the frailty 
 and the weakness of his Carissima. But remorse (so 
 waved his standard), if it was the genuine article, 
 must express itself not in idle repinings, but in 
 a manful facing of the consequences of past error. 
 His remorse (the right kind of remorse) did not 
 weaken, but strengthened a man to go forward. He 
 must not lose touch with the joy of life ; he must 
 not get from the severe spanking that remorse gave 
 him only a smarting and a humiliation of the flesh. 
 He must draw the lesson from his punishment, and 
 proceed more tenderly but not less sublimely than 
 before. . . . 
 
 It must not be supposed that Mr. Mainwaring used 
 such expressions as "spanking" in actual speech, or 
 that the ironical account of his sublimity, as given 
 above, was verbally his. But such, anyhow, was the 
 manner in which these great tirades, delivered to 
 Peter when he went up to see his father on his daily 
 arrival at Howes an hour or so before dinner, im- 
 pressed themselves on his mind. Usually there was 
 a note for him on the table in the hall, which ran 
 something like this : 
 
 "My Peter,— I am very low and despondent to- 
 night, and I do not know if I can face a sociable even- 
 ing. Come up to see me, my dear, for you are the 
 only link which is left to me of those happy — far too 
 happy — years, and see if your sweet spirit will not, 
 like David playing before Saul, exorcise the demons 
 of remorse and regret which shriek and gibber round
 
 Peter 229 
 
 the head of your unhappy father. I have tried so 
 hard— ah, so hard — all day not to make myself a 
 burden and a shadow to your dear ones, but I fear I 
 have acquitted myself very ill. Come and cheer me 
 up, Peter." 
 
 Peter, to do him justice, always went, and in the 
 majesty of egoism, his father, without any encourage- 
 ment at all, would talk himself into a splendid 
 courage. At whatever cost to himself, at whatever 
 effort from worn and debilitated nerve-strings, he 
 would show that there was some music yet left in his. 
 He would twang his mental guitar, and if the frayed 
 string snapped— well, his lawyer would know that his 
 affairs were in order. . . . Then, sooner or later, to 
 Peter's great relief, the sonorous dressing-bell would 
 ring, and he could go and have his bath. As likely 
 as not, before he definitely quitted the room, his father 
 would allude to the magnificent 1896 port which 
 formed so admirable a feature in the cellars of 
 Howes. 
 
 Usually after the bath he went in to see Silvia, 
 but, for some reason or other, the spontaneous non- 
 sense of these interviews had wilted and withered. 
 Silvia, so it seemed to him, held herself in reserve, 
 waiting for something from him. Peter would give 
 an account of his day, of his talk with his father, 
 and still Silvia seemed to wait. She was overbrim- 
 ming with all that she ever iiad for him, but, to his 
 perception, what she waited for was for him to turn 
 the winch of the sluice. 
 
 Once there had been a really outrageous scene 
 wilii his father, in which, after tears, Mr. Mainwaring 
 had slid from his chair with a groan, and lay, an 
 ignoble heap, upon the floor. Peter on this occasion
 
 230 Peter 
 
 had given Silvia a perfectly colourless precis of the 
 degrading exhibition, and had endorsed it, brought 
 collateral evidence to bear on its nature by the pro- 
 duction of one of the notes which usually awaited 
 him on his return from town. He had done that in 
 some sort of self-justification : Silvia could not fail 
 to realize how trying, from their very unreality, such 
 scenes were for him, and he gave her also every even- 
 ing a very respectable specimen of his patience with 
 his father. And yet he felt that Silvia was not 
 waiting for that; it was not how he behaved, how 
 patient and cordial he schooled himself to be, that she 
 waited for. He was patient, he was cordial, and 
 though she often gave him a little sympathetic and 
 appreciative word for his reward, it was no more than 
 a sugar-plum to a child, something to keep it quiet. 
 What she wanted, what she longed for the evidence 
 of, was an internal loving driving force which turned 
 the wheels of the machinery of his impeccable con- 
 duct, and that he had not got for her. He spun the 
 wheels with a clever finger from outside. 
 
 But usually these wheels went round merrily 
 enough. He reported his father's despondence; he, 
 ever so lightly, alluded to the fact that he had cheered 
 him up, and his estimate was justified, for Mr. Main- 
 waring, on the crashing of the dinner-bell in the turret, 
 would sometimes announce his progress from the 
 state-rooms by a jubilant yodelling, and would remain 
 for the greater part of dinner in a state of high elation. 
 True, he would have a spasm now and then : if he hap- 
 pened to have his attention called to Mrs. Wardour's 
 pearls, he might for a brief dramatic moment cover 
 his eyes and say in a choked voice : "My Carissima 
 had some wonderful pearls"; but then, true to his 
 manly determination, he would dismiss the
 
 Peter 231 
 
 miserable association and become master of his 
 soul again. 
 
 Peter usually had a second dose of his father's 
 Promethean attitude later in the evening, after Silvia 
 and her mother had gone upstairs. 
 
 "Your treasure, your pearl of great price, your 
 angel! " he would ejaculate. "Her sweet pity, her 
 divine compassion ! It is she — she and you — who 
 reconcile me to life. But I must not bask too long in 
 that healing effulgence. I must get back to Lonilon ; 
 I must reinstate myself in my desolate house, and face 
 it all, face it all. I must stand on my own feet again, 
 poor sordid cripple that I am." Then perhaps, if 
 quite overcome, he would bury his face in his hands, 
 but much more usually he would stand up, throw out 
 his chest, breathe deeply, and draw himself up to the 
 last half-inch of his considerable stature. 
 
 "Work ! " he said. "Work is the tonic that God 
 puts in the reach of all of us. Remember that, my 
 Peter, if grief and sorrow ever visit you. But then 
 you have by your side the sweetest, the most sym- 
 pathetic woman ever sent to enlighten the gloom of 
 this transitory world. So had I, by God, so had I, 
 and I did not recognize her preciousness and her 
 fragility. . . . Enough ! Silvia ! Did you notice 
 her exquisite love towards me at dinner to-day, when 
 for a moment the sight of Mrs. Wardour's pearls un- 
 manned me ?" 
 
 Peter on this occasion was lashed to the extremity 
 of irritation. 
 
 "I don't think I did," he said. "I only remember 
 that she instantly asked you if you would have some 
 more j^heasant." 
 
 He tried to do better than that. Certainly there 
 was no use in saying that sort of thing.
 
 232 
 
 Peter 
 
 "But she looked at you, father," he added hastily. 
 "You felt what she was feeling. Was that it? " 
 
 His father clasped his hands. 
 
 "A divine beam came to me," he said. "A 
 message of consolation. It made me live again. 
 Surely you saw its effect on me ? " 
 
 Peter, at such moments, longed for his wet woods. 
 He wanted to be by himself, or, at any rate, with 
 someone who could understand and enjoy this stupen- 
 dous farce. If only Nellie, for instance, had been 
 sitting there with him, how would their eyes have 
 telegraphed their mental ecstasy. Silvia, at this same 
 moment, would not have served the purpose; she might 
 see how ridiculous his father was being, but below 
 her perception of that, which might easily have made 
 her telegraph and smile to him, there would have 
 been that huge, unspeakable tenderness which, when 
 you wanted an answering perception of farce, would 
 have spoiled it all. That universal embracing 
 compassion required salting. Before now she had 
 seen, and communicated to him, her sense of his 
 father's absurdities, but now, when he turned trouble 
 into an empty arena for his posturing, her sense of 
 comedy completely failed her. Or, if she still 
 possessed it, Peter could not get at it. With a 
 flare of intuition he guessed that it might be un- 
 locked to him, if only he could use the right key 
 to it. But the key was compassion, and it was 
 he for whom she waited to thrust it into the wards. 
 If only he loved they could laugh at anything to- 
 gether; without that the gate was locked. 
 
 Well, if it was locked, he would enjoy his im- 
 perfect vision of what lay within. 
 
 "Yes, I saw its effect on you," he said, trying 
 to imagine that Nellie was here, enthralled and wide- 
 
 1
 
 Peter 233 
 
 eyed. "You amused us all very much immediately 
 afterwards by making that lovely sea-sick passenger 
 out of an orange. Perfectly screaming ! " 
 
 His father thrust his hands through his hair; it 
 stood up like some glorious grey mane. 
 
 "Yes, yes," he said, "I made an effort. I won't, 
 no, my Peter, I will not lose sight of the dear 
 gaieties of life. God knows what it costs me ! 
 Even after a little thing like that I was more than 
 ever plunged in the gulf of despondency. I know 
 how wrong I am. I must never relax my efforts; I 
 mustn't give myself time to think. Work and 
 laughter — those divine twins." 
 
 He poured himself out a glass of whisky and 
 soda, and chose a cigar with proper care. 
 
 "A word or two on practical affairs," he said, 
 "before I go to my lonely and wakeful bed. You 
 will be here, I understand, till early in December. 
 By then I trust (I insist, indeed, on thus trusting) 
 that I shall have schooled myself to face the desola- 
 tion of my home (what once was home) again. May 
 I, do you think, ask to remain here till then ? I 
 look upon your beautiful Howes as my hospital. 
 Soon, still maimed, still limping, still in the blue 
 uniform of pain, I know that I must, indeed I insist 
 on it, face the world again and make the best of 
 my shattered existence. But till then ? Silvia, 
 whom I consulted with regard to this matter, told me 
 that you were the master of Howes, and suggested 
 my speaking to you about it." 
 
 Peter saw an opportunity. His father, it is true, 
 was an odious infliction of an evening, but there was 
 something to be gained by his own eager tolerance 
 of that, which quite outweighed the inconvenience. 
 But he must do more than tolerate; he must welcome;
 
 234 
 
 Peter 
 
 and Silvia — here was the point — must know how 
 splendidly he had risen to it. Before he answered 
 he made himself remember what the intonation of 
 cordiality sounded like. 
 
 "But that is perfectly charming of you," he said. 
 "It's lovely that the suggestion came from your- 
 self. She and I may be away for a day or two in 
 November " 
 
 Peter did not quite know what arrangement he 
 was to suggest about such days when he and Silvia 
 would be away, for instance, on their visit to Nellie. 
 He was spared the trouble of formulating one by his 
 father, who gave a great gesticulation, admirably 
 expressive of courage. 
 
 "I will go home — home for those days," he said. 
 " I will, with set teeth and firm mouth, begin to 
 grow accustomed to my desolation and loneliness. 
 I will learn to bear it, taking in long draughts the 
 inestimable tonic of work. Peter, Peter " — and the 
 voice shook — "when will my Carissima come back 
 tome?" 
 
 He was unmanned only for a moment, and his 
 mastery of himself returned to him. 
 
 "Was ever a stricken man so blessed by the 
 love of his children?" he exclaimed. "God bless 
 you, my Peter. You are going to bed ? " 
 
 The abruiDlness of this benediction convinced 
 Peter that his father had got what he wanted and 
 had no more use for him that night, and he went 
 along the corridor to his room and Silvia's. His 
 first impulse was to tell her how cordially, for his 
 part, he had welcomed his father's suggestion; the 
 second and wiser one was to say nothing about it. 
 Mr. Mainwaring was sure to make the most of it 
 to her; he might even attribute to it that force from
 
 Peter 235 
 
 inside which turned the wheels. Yes, Silvia should 
 learn about it like that. 
 
 He let himself very quietly into liis room, and 
 undressed and went to bed without going in to say 
 good night to her. If he went in to see her, it 
 was more than likely that she would ask him whether 
 his father had alluded to the question of his remain- 
 ing with them, and he wanted the information con- 
 cerning that to be conveyed to her by one who would 
 give him, Peter felt sure, a florid testimonial for 
 cordiality. He had passed, moreover, a monotonous 
 and fatiguing evening, and wanted not to talk at 
 all, but to sleep. His father had been slightly more 
 dreadful than usual, Mrs. Wardour had more than 
 ever been non-existent, and Silvia, so it struck him, 
 had been waiting, had been watching him, not, it 
 need hardly be said, with fixed eye or stealthy 
 glances, but with some steady psychical alertness 
 that was incessantly poised on him. Without look- 
 ing at him, without any talking to him or talking 
 at him, he had felt all evening — this, perhaps, had 
 been the most fatiguing part of it — that she had 
 scarcely been conscious of anyone else but him. 
 Though her eyes were on the cards, and she ruefully 
 bemoaned that the goddess of piquet, whom she 
 jointly invoked with Peter's father, had been so 
 niggardly in her favours towards herself, it had been 
 no more than an automaton that was thus victimized 
 to the extent of three lost games, including a rubicon. 
 
 Peter, as he curled himself up in bed, let his 
 mind stray drowsily over such details of the evening, 
 coming back always to this impression of Silvia's 
 watching him. Whenever he spoke to her of his 
 father she watched him — seldom with her eyes — m 
 just that manner. By aid of his quick perception.
 
 236 Peter 
 
 that felt rather than reasoned, Peter had, he was 
 sure, arrived at what she watched for then. She 
 watched for some token, she listened for some in- 
 flection that indicated tenderness, sympathy, affection 
 towards his father. She could not have been watching 
 for any such token as that for herself, for he gave her 
 those ; she knew they were hers. But he had never 
 felt more certain about anything in these dim, vague 
 regions of sentiment and desire than that she wanted 
 something more than that which he gave her, and 
 a certain impatience gained on him. What, after 
 all, had been her own first words to him when he 
 asked her to marry him ? Had not her face flamed 
 with the light of the beacon that welcomed him as 
 she whispered that all she asked was to be allowed 
 to love him ? At the time that had seemed to him 
 a divine intuition, one that, in a word, precisely de- 
 fined her way of love and his. 
 
 There came at that door of his bedroom which 
 led to her room the lightest, most barely audible of 
 touches; he was scarcely sure whether he had heard 
 it or not. But he did not reply, for either it was 
 imaginary, and needed no answer, or it was Silvia 
 come to see whether he was in his room yet. In 
 that case, even more, an answer must be withheld, 
 for after this evening of strain and high pressure 
 all he wanted was to be let alone and to go to sleep. 
 But underneath his eyelids, not quite closed, he 
 watched the door which was opposite his bed and 
 was dimly visible in the glimmer of starshine that 
 came in through the open and uncurtained window. 
 
 Round the edge of the door, though he had heard 
 no click of a turned handle, there came a thin "L " 
 of light, which broadened until, in the shaft of it, 
 appeared Silvia. She held a lighted candle, which
 
 Peter 237 
 
 she screened from his bed with her hand, the fingers 
 of which, close to the flame, were of a warm trans- 
 parent crimson. Apparently his clothes, tumbled 
 together on a chair, first caught her notice, and from 
 them she looked straight towards the bed. Her face 
 was vividly illuminated, and when she saw him 
 lying there with shut eyes, some radiant, ineffable 
 tenderness came like dawn over it. Never had he 
 seen so selfless and wonderful a beam; she might 
 have been some discarnate spirit permitted to look 
 upon him who had been the love of her earthly heart. 
 That, then, was how she regarded him when she 
 thought she was unobserved by him ; he meant that 
 to her. Next moment, round the half-open door, the 
 light narrowed and disappeared, and he was left 
 again in the glimmering dusk. Never had he seen 
 with half such certainty and directness what Silvia 
 was. She had thought he was asleep, and so she 
 could let free her very soul. Neither by day nor 
 night had she come to him quite like that; all other 
 emotions, amusement, interest, sympathy, desire, 
 passion even, had concealed rather than revealed her. 
 They had been webs and veils across the sanctuary, 
 illumined, indeed, by the light that burned there, 
 but still hiding it. Now for one moment Peter had 
 seen her with those veils drawn aside, the holy place 
 of her, and her love was the light of it. 
 
 He was sitting next afternoon in his room at 
 the Foreign Office, rather harassed by the necessity 
 of being polite to everybody. The clerk senior to 
 him in his department was on leave, and it happened 
 that an extra King's messenger had to be sent off 
 to Rome, carrying a new cipher. That was a per- 
 fectly usual incident in Peter's routine, but this 
 
 p
 
 238 Peter 
 
 messenger was fresh to his job, and had been in 
 and out of the office all day, fussy and pompous, 
 wishing to be assured that he had got reserved com- 
 partments and a private cabin. There was a strike 
 on the French railways going on, and Peter had 
 told him that it might be impossible to secure a 
 compartment farther than Paris, but all that could 
 be done had been done, and, anyhow, he would find 
 a seat reserved for him. Usually Peter rather en- 
 joyed applying soothing ointments to agitated people, 
 and his skill as a manipulator of pompous and fussy 
 persons was so effective that by common consent (he 
 quite agreeing) tiresome officials were often turned 
 on to him for emollient manipulation. But to-day 
 the telephonings and the interruptions and the pom- 
 posity and the prime necessity of remaining dulcetly 
 apologetic for inconveniences which were wholly out 
 of his control had got on his nerves, and when 
 finally, in answer to inquiries, it had been deter- 
 mined that the King's messenger had better, in 
 order to secure a journey probably unvexed by strikes, 
 go round by Southampton and Havre, Peter had 
 been treated to some very acid talk. Of course, the 
 man was an ass, no one knew that better than he, 
 and it was ludicrous to be infuriated by an ass. 
 
 About six then, that afternoon, Peter had done all 
 that patience and polite inquiries from French station- 
 masters could do for the ass, and with undiminished 
 civility he had wished him a pleasant journey. In 
 half an hour, or, if he chose, now, since there was 
 nothing more that could detain him, he could tele- 
 phone for his car and slide down to Howes. He 
 did not in the least look forward to his evening there; 
 it would assuredly be an evening of as high a pressure 
 as the day had been. His father would certainly
 
 Peter 239 
 
 be voluble with blessings and gratitude, and Peter 
 hated the prospect of these benedictions. Installed 
 as Mr. Mainwaring now was for a couple of 
 months more, he would surely develop the idea 
 which he had before now outlined, when he assured 
 Peter that during his daily absences in London he 
 himself would act as his vice-regent. He had already 
 caused the luncheon hour to be changed in order 
 that he might get an extra half-hour of work into the 
 morning; already he had got the estate carpenter to 
 "knock him up " an immense frame in which he 
 could see his second cartoon, now dismally ap- 
 proaching completion, more satisfactorily displayed. 
 And then Peter thought of that short candle-lit 
 glimpse last night, when Silvia had looked into his 
 room. 
 
 For one moment the remembrance of that 
 magnetically beckoned him; the next, as by some 
 inexplicable reversal, the needle of that true com- 
 pass swung round and pointed in the opposite 
 direction. It no longer gave him his course back 
 to Howes; it steadily pointed away from Howes. 
 But even as he told himself how inexplicable that 
 was, his subconscious self gave a convincing ex- 
 planation of it. To hurry back to Silvia and her 
 watch of love, to feel that there were veils which 
 only he could draw aside, but which, when drawn 
 aside by God knew what aspirations towards a light 
 he did not comprehend, would reveal to him again 
 the glory of her sanctuary, was a task for saints and 
 lovers. He would rise to it in time, he would learn 
 to be worthy of an ideal that somehow, in spite of 
 its white heat, had the chill of asceticism frosting 
 it; but just now he longed for ordinary, unreflective, 
 unstruggling human gaiety. She — Silvia — lived
 
 240 
 
 Peter 
 
 naturally on those heights, just as his father lived 
 in the cloud — or the shroud, maybe — of his own 
 inimitable egoism. 
 
 He was tidying his table, intending to ring 
 up very soon for his motor to take him back to 
 Howes. If he started in half an hour he would 
 have time to see his father before dressing, and to 
 talk to Silvia between bath and dinner. Then he 
 changed his mind and determined not to ring for 
 his motor at all. Instead he would walk back across 
 the park — no, not across the park, but up Whitehall, 
 and so by streets all the way to Piccadilly. He 
 would have time to get a cup of tea at home and 
 start from there immediately afterwards. The rather 
 longer route by the streets was infinitely preferable. 
 There would be crowds of ordinary human beings 
 all the way, people not monstrous on the one hand, 
 so far as he knew, from swollen egoism, nor 
 irradiated by idealisms which made you pant in a 
 rarefied atmosphere. There would be just masses 
 of people, people gay, people sulky, ugly people, 
 pretty people, but above all ordinary people. 
 
 At the moment when his tidying was complete, 
 and his table ready for his next day's work, the 
 telephone on his table tinkled. He resigned him- 
 self to more inquiries from the incomparable ass, 
 but they could not last long, for his train left 
 Waterloo within a manageable number of minutes. 
 But in answer to his intimation that it was indeed 
 he who waited at the end of the wire, there did not 
 come the voice which he had listened to so often that 
 day, but one quite other and equally recognizable. 
 
 "Nellie?" he said. 
 
 "Yes, my dear. How lucky I am to catch you. 
 You're in town, then ? "
 
 Peter 241 
 
 "At the moment," said he. "I'm going back 
 to Howes in half an hour." 
 
 "Oh, what a pity! You won't be in town to- 
 night, then? " 
 
 "Why?" asked Peter. 
 
 "Only that Philip and I were going to the play, 
 and Philip's got a cold and thinks it wiser not to 
 go out. I thought perhaps — just a lovely off- 
 chance— that you might come instead. Oh, do, 
 Peter." 
 
 "Hold on. Wait half a minute," said he. 
 
 He put the receiver down on the table, seating 
 himself on the edge of it. Here in excelsis was 
 precisely what he longed for. Dinner, a theatre, a 
 talk, all with Nellie, who represented to him (though 
 in excelsis) the ideal epitome of the world of 
 humanity. He had thought a moment before, with 
 the sense of anticipating a "break," the mere walk 
 through crowded streets. She would in this pro- 
 gramme give him all that intimately, she would give 
 also the sense of intimate friendship without effort. 
 They would jabber and enjoy 
 
 He took up the receiver again. 
 
 "Yes, all quite easy," he said. "It's late already, 
 and when it's late and I can't get down there, I 
 can always sleep in town. Silvia and I settled that 
 when I began work again in this doleful office." 
 
 Nellie appeared to laugh at that. 
 
 "Silvia evidently spoils you," she said. "But 
 it's too lovely to catch you like this. Will you 
 dine with me at the Ritz? Seven? The play — can't 
 remember what it is — begins at eight. vSo we shan't 
 have to hurry, and can sit with our elbows on the 
 table for a bit and talk." 
 
 "Sit with what?" asked he.
 
 242 
 
 Peter 
 
 "Elbows on the table," said Nellie with elaborate 
 distinctness. "No hurry — talk." 
 
 This time he laughed. 
 
 "Oh, don't let's go to the Ritz," he said. "Come 
 and have elbows at my great house. I'll go back 
 there now and order dinner. It'll probably be beastly, 
 but it's more private. Shall we do that ? " 
 
 "Much nicer," said Nellie. "How are you, 
 Peter? Oh, I can ask that afterwards. Seven, then. 
 Wardour House." 
 
 "Yes. Give condolences to Philip. Not con- 
 gratulations, mind." 
 
 Peter hung up the receiver, and then took it 
 off again at once in order not to give himself 
 time to think. There would be clamour and argu- 
 ment if he thought, and he wanted nothing of that 
 sort. Ten minutes afterwards he left the office, 
 having telephoned to the Jackdaw that he was de- 
 tained here and would be obliged to sleep in 
 London. 
 
 Two months had passed since Nellie and he had 
 met, but whatever frontier-change of limitation or 
 expansion had been decreed for each severally 
 since then, their meeting to-night had the power to 
 put such aside, and they hailed each other with- 
 out the embarrascnient of altered circumstances. 
 Their compasses were rigidly in accord, and as the 
 excellent impromptu meal proceeded the talk sailed 
 towards northern lights, in the direction of their 
 steadfast needles. Soon they were sitting (at the 
 elbow stage) with their coffee and cigar':ittes, with a 
 quiet quarter of an hour in front of them before thev 
 need start. 
 
 "Motor at ten minutes to eight," said Peter to
 
 Peter 
 
 243 
 
 the servant, glancing at the clock. "Tell me when 
 it comes round." 
 
 He shifted his chair a little sideways towards her. 
 
 "Oh, this is jolly," he said, "for we've gone on 
 
 just where we left off. You're just the same. It's 
 
 two months, you know, since I set eyes on you. Do 
 
 say you've missed me." 
 
 "What else did you expect?" said she. "Mar- 
 riage isn't Oh, Peter, what's the name of that 
 
 river ? " 
 
 "Thames? " asked Peter. 
 
 "No, the forgetting one — Lethe. Because I'm 
 married to Philip I don't forget — other people. But 
 tell me, has Silvia been giving you Lethe to drink 
 instead of early morning tea?" 
 
 "Not a drop. She's given me everything else in 
 the world." 
 
 Nellie still had that habit of plaiting her fingers 
 together. 
 
 "You ought to be very grateful to me," she said. 
 "It was I, after all, one night at mv mother's flat, do 
 you remember ? " 
 
 "I was Jacob that night," remarked Peter. 
 Nellie frowned. 
 
 "Don't tell me how," she said. "I want to see if 
 we think side by side still. Ah, I've got it ! Philip 
 was Esau — isn't that clever? — and I told him I was 
 tired, and so you supplanted him." 
 "Right. Get on," said Peter, 
 "Yes, about your gratitude. It was that night 
 that I told you to ask Silvia to marry you. Didn't 
 I?" 
 
 "Yes. Thank you, dear Mrs. Beaumont," said 
 Peter effusively. "So good of you to tell me." 
 "It was a good idea, wasn't it?"
 
 244 
 
 Peter 
 
 Nellie's mind stiffened itself to "attention " at that 
 moment. Before, it had been standing very much at 
 ease. 
 
 "The best idea in the world," he said. 
 
 "I'm awfully glad," said she. "What you say, 
 too, makes it all the more delightful of you to stop 
 up in town to-night, instead of going back to her." 
 
 Though up till now they had fitted into each other 
 with all the old familiar smoothness, it appeared now, 
 when they got near, in their conversation, to what 
 had happened to each of them (not, so he still felt, 
 altering them, but putting them into new cases) that 
 there w^as fresh ground to be broken ; hitherto they 
 had only picked their way over the old ground. Nellie 
 felt this even more imperatively than he. They had 
 got to run the plough (so why not at once on this 
 admirable opportunity ?) through the unturned land. 
 . . . Peter's servant had already appeared in the 
 doorway, announcing the motor, and she had noticed 
 that, but Peter had not. She concluded from that, 
 that he, easy as their intercourse had up till now been, 
 was feeling, some pre-occupation. His hesitation in 
 answering her last acknowledgment of his amiability 
 in remaining in town instead of going back to Howes, 
 confirmed that impression. Then, before the pause 
 was unduly prolonged, so as to amount to embarrass- 
 ment, she put her word in again. 
 
 "I appreciate that," she said, "because it shows 
 that the new ties haven't demolished the old. And on 
 my side I admit, far more definitely than you, that 
 if my poor Philip must have a cold, I am glad — ever 
 so glad — it visited him to-night, so as to give me an 
 evening with you." 
 
 She swept her plate and coffee-cup aside, to make 
 room for an advance of the elbows.
 
 Peter 245 
 
 "Oh, my dear, I have missed you," she said. 
 "Naturally, however perfectly Philip is himself, he 
 couldn't be you. My mind— perhaps you haven't 
 noticed it — has wonderfully improved these last 
 months — I am learning Italian, and we read Dante — 
 but it needs just a little holiday. And I've found out 
 such a lot of things about Philip, and all of them are 
 
 good, worse luck." 
 
 Peter looked up at her with that liquid seriousness 
 of eye which to her meant that he was walking in the 
 wet woods. 
 
 "Oh, poor thing," he said. 
 
 For some reason which she did not choose to in- 
 vestigate, Nellie found that remark immensely encour- 
 aging. Certainly, a few minutes ago, she had tried 
 to provoke him to talk — really talk, but the ironical 
 perfection of his condolence, which, so she felt, saw 
 all round what she was saying, made her more than 
 acquiesce in his listening instead of talking. She felt 
 sure that this beloved Peter understood 
 
 "I knew you would sympathize," she said; "but 
 there's my tragic prosperity. My Philip isn't lazy 
 or spiteful and inconsiderate or selfish, or bad- 
 tempered or greedy or — or anything at all, except that 
 he knows so much about birds. He has taught me a 
 lot, and he's quite absolutely devoted to me. He 
 never liked anybody so much as me. But do you 
 know, darling, to a woman, at any rate, having a 
 good, nice man quite devoted to her, as far as his 
 affections go, gives her, once in a way, a little sense 
 of strain. She has to find her hymn-book and sing." 
 
 "I'll lend you mine," said Peter, speaking without 
 thought, but only by instinct. 
 
 "Tiianks. When will you wanl it back? No; I 
 won't borrow it. But the fact is, thai an undilutedly
 
 246 Peter 
 
 good man wants something to make him fizz. You 
 must have humour or a vile temper or cynicism or 
 greediness, or something to make you drinkable. 
 . . . My dear, what am I saying? " 
 
 The clock on the mantelpiece struck the hour at 
 which the curtain of their play rose; but the chimes, 
 eight sonorous thumps, preceded by the quarters, 
 penetrated Peter's brain no more than the announce- 
 ment of the motor ten minutes ago had done. 
 
 "You're talking awfully good sense," he said. "At 
 any rate, you're talking a language I can understand. 
 You always did ; we quarrelled and wrangled, but 
 we were on the same plane." 
 
 "So we are now, thank heaven," said she. "It's 
 time you gave me some news, you know." 
 
 Whatever pre-occupation it was that held Peter, 
 he seemed to shake himself free of it. 
 
 "Yes, I've got news all right," he said. "Domes- 
 tic tragedy." 
 
 "Oh, my dear, what?" asked she. "Nothing 
 awful ? " 
 
 He seemed to know for certain that she was figur- 
 ing in her mind something about himself and Silvia. 
 So, in the upshot, the sequel, the development, he 
 was. But he tested her, so to speak, over the domestic 
 tragedy itself. 
 
 "My mother has run away from home," he began. 
 
 Nellie did not laugh. She only bit her tongue 
 with firm purpose. 
 
 "Dear Peter! " she said, when she released it. 
 
 "She has simply gone," he said. "Round about 
 ten days ago, when father arrived to study his first 
 cartoon, with a view to the rest of the series — Mrs. 
 Wardour bought it, by the way — gracious me, what a 
 lot we have got to talk about."
 
 Peter 247 
 
 "Never mind the cartoon," said Nellie with 
 thrilled interest. "Get on with the tragedy." 
 
 Quite uncontrollably Peter's mouth began to 
 lengthen itself. He did not quite smile, but the 
 promise of a smile was there. 
 
 "Tragedy, then," he said. "My mother sent me 
 a long— oh, such a priceless letter, to say that when 
 my father came home again — his home, I mean — he 
 would find she had gone." 
 
 The Dryad, the gay conscienceless Nellie, could 
 not, in spite of her improved mind, quite contain 
 herself. 
 
 "But your mother? " she asked. "At her age? 
 How absolutely wonderful of her ! Do you know 
 who he is ? " 
 
 Peter tried not to laugh, and completely failed in 
 that dutiful endeavour. She could but follow his 
 lead, and the two, drawing psychically nearer to each 
 other every moment, abandoned themselves, just for 
 natural relief, to this irrepressible mirth. 
 
 "You are such a damned fool, Nellie," he said at 
 length. "Do listen: don't be funny. It's quite 
 different." 
 
 "'Pologies," said she, rather shakily. 
 
 "It wasn't anything so romantic, but it was just 
 as human," said Peter. "You know how my mother 
 was hammered into herself — that phrase came in her 
 letter, by the way : it's not original." 
 
 "But I never guessed there was anything to 
 hammer," said Nellie. 
 
 "Nor did I; at least, I only half guessed. But 
 there was. A breaking point came, and she couldn't 
 stick my father any longer. She has just gone away. 
 Do you remember how she used always to be looking 
 up hotels in railway guides?"
 
 248 Peter 
 
 " 1 remember that most of all," said she. "Well ? " 
 
 "She's gone to one of them. She's just gone away 
 to be free, not to lead somebody else's life any more. 
 When she has got a good breath of air, she may, 
 apparently, come back. But she doesn't promise." 
 
 Nellie had grown quite serious again. 
 
 "That's even more wonderful of her," she said. 
 "She just went away because she wanted to be her- 
 self. My dear, what a mother ! And waiting till 
 you were married ! And your father? Go on." 
 
 This time Peter's mouth strayed beyond the limits 
 of mere reflective meditation, and smiled broadly. 
 
 "He has discovered, to his complete satisfaction, 
 why she left him," he said. "He knows — as if 
 Gabriel had told him — that his tremendous person- 
 ality, his devotion to Art, all that sort of thing, was 
 too much for h^r. He reproaches himself bitterly — 
 and oh, my dear, how he enjoys it — with having failed 
 to realize the frailty — not moral — the weakness, the 
 ordinariness of other people. She was scorched in 
 his magnificent flames, and escaped from that furnace 
 with her life." 
 
 "But how lovely for him ! " said Nellie. "Lovely 
 for her, too. But why tragedy ? You said it was a 
 tragedy ? " 
 
 His whole body gave a jubilant jerk. If he had 
 been standing up he must have jumped. 
 
 "Ah, you do see that, don't you ? " he cried. "I 
 just rejoice in her ! At least, I would " 
 
 Nellie divined perfectly well that "if Silvia under- 
 stood" really completed the sentence. But if Peter 
 wished, for the present anyhow, to leave that un- 
 spoken, loyalty to their comradeship prevented her 
 from suggesting it. Another motive, not less potent 
 than that, dictated her silence on the point, for she
 
 Peter 
 
 249 
 
 infinitely preferred that he should volunteer some 
 such information concerning himself and Silvia than 
 that she should give away her knowledge of it. Cer- 
 tainly she longed to know in what real relation he and 
 Silvia stood to each other, but it would be a tactical 
 error (tactical was too businesslike) to let him know 
 that his incomplete sentence gave her so certain a 
 hint. 
 
 "I see," she said quickly. "You would rejoice 
 in her if it wasn't for your father." 
 
 Until the two ultimate words of that were spoken 
 Peter's eyes had been bright and expectant. He 
 evidently waited for the termination which she had 
 refused to utter. When her sentence was complete 
 she saw, unmistakably again, that his eyes accepted 
 and acquiesced in her conclusion. 
 
 "Quite," he said in a level voice. "So for the 
 present my father is consumed with remorse, and 
 is occupying the state-rooms — you've never seen 
 them ; gorgeous tapestry and Lincrusta Walton 
 ceilings — till we come up to town. He is painting 
 away at the series of cartoons." 
 
 Peter poured himself out a second cup of coffee 
 from the tray that had been left between them half 
 an hour or more before. 
 
 "Aunt Joanna!" he said. "You never heard 
 such a plot or saw such a person. She's my mother- 
 in-law's sister, you know. She's * got at ' my 
 father, there's no doubt of it, and she's secured all 
 the cartoons by bribery and corruption, instead of 
 their being painted for the gallery — the Art Gallery, 
 1 should say — at Howes. Aunt Eleanor — she's my 
 father-in-law's brother's wife — has secured the 
 sketches for the cartoons. They've been to Howes 
 once, but my father quite dominated them. That
 
 250 Peter 
 
 was before the crash, so you may judge how much 
 more, with that added string of tragedy to his bow, 
 he would dominate them now. They are more price- 
 less than words can say. There will be a family 
 gathering at Christmas, I understand. Nellie, do 
 come. We would have such a gorgeous time if you 
 were there. We would sit quiet and notice and 
 drink in, and then we would sit over the fire together 
 when Uncle John and Uncle Abe " 
 
 "Uncle Abe? " asked Nellie in an awed voice. 
 
 "Yes. Sir Abel Darley, K.B.E., husband to 
 Aunt Joanna. Don't interrupt. When Uncle John 
 and Uncle Abe and Aunt Eleanor and Aunt Joanna 
 have gone, not staggering at all, but * full up,' to 
 bed, we would have such holy convocations about 
 them." 
 
 Nellie had inferred a little more information about 
 Silvia by this time, but what occupied her most was 
 not what she was inferring about anybody. It was 
 quite enough for her to realize that for the duration, 
 anyhow, of the first act of the play which they had 
 meant to see she was in the old full enjoyment of 
 Peter again. They had stepped back into the candour 
 and closeness of their friendship, and though he 
 had not, as she had, confessed that he was having 
 a holiday, it was transparently clear that this was 
 the case. But just there the candour was clouded; 
 she guessed that, even as she was having a holiday 
 from Philip (God bless him), so Peter was having 
 a holiday from Silvia. Only — here was the differ- 
 ence — he did not or would not own up to that. Even 
 in the projected scheme of Christmas-hilariousness 
 at the uncles and aunts, Silvia did not appear as ever 
 so faintly ridiculous, or as ever so faintly partaking 
 in the midnight merriment. Throughout their talk
 
 Peter 251 
 
 Peter had kept her hermetically apart. Once or 
 twice, Nellie conjectured, he had pointedly enough 
 refrained from introducing her. She could visualize 
 the rest of them down at Howes, but the part that 
 to Peter Silvia played was mysteriously shrouded. 
 When you were laughing at everybody all round, 
 why should you except one person from the compli- 
 ment of amused criticism ? It was clear that Silvia 
 had no applause for the comedy of Peter's parents, 
 for he had so cordially welcomed her — Nellie's — 
 appreciation of it. What, then, was Silvia's line, 
 what was her relation, above all, to Peter? 
 
 She decided not to burn all her boats, but to set 
 fire to just a little one. 
 
 "Won't Silvia enjoy them too? " she asked. 
 
 "Can't tell," said Peter. 
 
 If there was a lapse of loyalty there, if, in a 
 minor degree, there was a sense conveyed of dis- 
 appointment, though of accepting that disappoint- 
 ment without comment, Nellie decided that Peter 
 was not intending to enlarge on it. She still (after 
 that small burned boat) clung to the chance of Peter's 
 volunteering information, but clearly she would not 
 get that just now; and another heavy booming of 
 quarters from the clock gave her an excellent oppor- 
 tunity of abandoning that which, after all, had never 
 been a discussion on her own initiative. 
 
 "Good gracious, it's a quarter to nine," she said. 
 "You wretch, Peter! We've missed one act, if not 
 two." 
 
 "Let's miss them all," he said, "and have an 
 evening." 
 
 That made her pause, but only for a moment. 
 Peter had consistently shied away from that one topic 
 she wanted to hear about, and a break of some sort
 
 252 
 
 Peter 
 
 was much more likely to produce in him the pressure 
 that would eventually "go pop" than if they re- 
 mained just sizzling here. 
 
 "But we absolutely must go," she said. "Philip 
 will ask me about the play, and I couldn't tell him 
 that you and I simply sat talking till it was over." 
 
 "Why not? " said Peter. 
 
 "Because it isn't done. My dear, you and I 
 have signed on to the conventionalities of life. Come 
 along. A bore, but there it is. Besides, how would 
 you account for your evening to Silvia? Dining 
 at seven, you know. That requires a theatrical ex- 
 planation." 
 
 "Oh, don't be vulgar," said Peter. "As if Silvia 
 wouldn't delight in my spending an evening with 
 you." 
 
 "I know that," said she. "Don't lose your sense 
 of humour, Peter. It was a mild kind of joke." 
 
 "Come on, then," he said. "And as for its being 
 my fault that we're so late " 
 
 The second act was drawing to an end when 
 they stole into their box. On the stage there was 
 proceeding the most elementary of muddles, to which 
 it was not in the least worth while to devote any 
 ingenuity. It was clear at the first glance that these 
 people who pretended to be servants were really 
 landed gentry, and that just before the end the Earl 
 (who had taken the house) would propose to the cook 
 and be violently accepted. Psychologically they pre- 
 sented no point of interest. Far more engrossing 
 to Nellie was the fact that she had got Peter with 
 her, and the pleasure of that and the general problem 
 it propounded was far more absorbing. Marriage had 
 certainly quickened her emotional perceptions, and
 
 Peter 253 
 
 she inferred, from the extraordinary delight that it 
 was to be with him again, how much in the interval 
 she had missed him. She had no reason to com- 
 plain, either, of the welcome he had given her, but 
 it was manifest (how she could not definitely have 
 said) that the quality of that was different from hers 
 to him. To his sense, as he had openly stated, they 
 had taken up the old attitude, the old intimacy, 
 without break, but as she thought over that in the 
 few minutes that elapsed before the act was finished, 
 she found that, for her part, she did not altogether 
 endorse his view. Certainly the old intimacy was 
 there, firm and unshaken, but somehow, hovering 
 over it, like a mist which to her eyes seemed to be 
 luminous with tears, there was some new atmospheric 
 condition, sunny and tremulous. 
 
 Peter turned to her as the house sprang into light 
 again. 
 
 "Oh, what a waste of time," he said. "We 
 should have done much better to have left our elbows 
 on the table. We're always doing it too. Do you 
 remember the last play at which we met ? That 
 time you were with Philip and I with Silvia and 
 Mrs. Wardour. Then we had our talk afterwards; 
 to-night we had it first. I like the other plan 
 best." 
 
 Though Peter had here stated several things with 
 which she was in cordial agreement, his tone was not 
 in tune with the old footing, the old intimacy. Not 
 many minutes ago it had been she who, in opposition 
 to his inclination, had insisted on breaking their 
 tete-d-tete ; now, with all possible lightness of touch, 
 she suggested its resumption. 
 
 "I've seen enough," she said. "I can tell Philip 
 all about it. Let's go back, my dear, and have half 
 
 Q
 
 254 Peter 
 
 an hour's more talk. It was my fault that we broke 
 up; but how could I have told that the play would 
 have been as silly as this? We shall talk more 
 sense in five minutes than they'll put into the whole 
 of the next act." 
 
 Peter's eyes were wandering round the house. 
 At this moment they were attracted by a feather fan 
 violently signalling from a box directly opposite, and 
 the general buzz of the theatre was quite distinctly 
 pierced with a shrill scream of laughter which came 
 from precisely the same direction as the gesticulating 
 fan. It was hardly necessary to put up his glasses to 
 ascertain the authorship of these phenomena. 
 
 "Mrs. Trentham," he said unerringly, "with the 
 usual myrmidons. She has seen us, Nellie. Come 
 round and be conventional." 
 
 "Oh, why? " said she. "If she wants to see us 
 she can come here, can't she? But she doesn't want 
 to see us :' she only wants to be seen." 
 
 She felt that at that moment she was becoming, to 
 Peter, part of the general foreground, a prominent 
 object in it, but still only part of it. His next words 
 confirmed the impression. 
 
 "Oh, come along," he said. "Let's embark on the 
 ordinary ridiculous evening. Let's all go back to 
 supper with me. Or perhaps there's a dance going 
 on. Come round and forage, Nellie. I've been in 
 the country for a month, you know. Besides " 
 
 She knew perfectly well what he had left unsaid, 
 and answered it. 
 
 "But what does it matter how much she talks? " 
 she asked. 
 
 Peter gave her a glance of brilliant surprise. 
 
 "How did you know that that was what I didn't 
 say?" he demanded.
 
 Peter 255 
 
 "Because it's you, of course. Or, if you like, be- 
 cause it's me." 
 
 The fan waved more vehemently than ever. 
 
 "We'd better go," said he. 
 
 Nellie got up. In the old days she would almost 
 certainly have been able to superimpose her wish over 
 his. Now it was the other way about. She seemed 
 to be in the grip of some internal necessity of doing 
 what he wanted. He had to have his way, not be- 
 cause he had become stronger of will, but because she 
 had lost her power of self-assertion with regard to 
 him. It was not any general debility of will on her 
 part ; she had her way with Philip, for instance, with 
 an effortless ease. But then she was not part only 
 of the foreground to Philip, nor to her was Peter part 
 only of the foreground. . . .
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Peter managed to get away from the Foreign Office 
 next day, in the absence of anything to detain him, 
 an hour or so before his usual time, and arriving at 
 the gilded gates of the battlemented lodge of Howes 
 while the warm October twilight still lingered in the 
 sky, he got out to walk across the mile of park that 
 separated him from the house. His truant evening 
 in town last night, the plunge into the froth and noise 
 and chatter, had quieted some sort of restlessness, had 
 assuaged some sort of hunger, and he was still licking 
 the chops of memory, content in a few minutes now 
 to "wipe his mouth and go his journey " again. He 
 just had the sense of having enjoyed an evening 
 out, of having lolled in the old familiar tap-room, 
 with the usual habitues, over a pot of beer, while a 
 friendly barmaid (this was Mrs. Trentham) made the 
 usual jokes over the counter as she served him. Some 
 of these seemed to have sounded better by electric 
 light, so to speak, than did the timbre of their memory 
 in the dusky crimson of the dying day, and he recalled 
 the welcome of screams and shrieks she had given to 
 Nellie and himself when, at his insistence, they had 
 visited her in the box opposite. She threatened when 
 she learned they had already dined alone (appearing 
 so very late at the play) to send anonymous letters to 
 Silvia and Philip. There was a judge in the divorce 
 court, she added, who was much devoted to her, and 
 would no doubt give her admission for the two cases 
 when they came on. The robust wit of Lord Poole 
 had ably seconded her. 
 
 256
 
 Peter 257 
 
 Then, with the exception of Nellie, who had to go 
 home to put an end to Philip's solitary evening, they 
 had all gone back to Wardour House, where Peter 
 promised some sort of scratch supper, and Nellie, 
 finding that her husband had already gone to bed, 
 joined them again. It had been altogether a pleasant 
 ridiculous evening which had made itself in this im- 
 promptu and accidental manner an ordinary human 
 evening. Just twice there had for Peter been a slight 
 check, a signal momentarily against him — once when 
 he found that Nellie had left again, very soon after 
 her reappearance at supper, without a word to him ; 
 once when, without warning, it had entered his mind 
 that at just about this time, the night before, he had 
 seen his bedroom door open, and Silvia's face look 
 in on him as he lay with closed eyelids, feigning 
 sleep. That was rather a dreadful thing to have 
 done. . . . 
 
 He paused a moment on the bridge that crossed 
 the lake, looking at the image of the house duskily 
 reflected on its far margin. There was someone 
 coming towards him along the path that led by the 
 edge of the lake, and joined the road here, and before 
 his eyes had time to tell him who it was, she waved 
 a hand at him, without the screams, without the 
 violent gesticulations by which Mrs. Trentham the 
 night before had made herself known. She quickened 
 her pace as he answered her signal, and in three 
 minutes more he had joined her. 
 
 "The chauffeur told me you had walked from the 
 lodge," she said, "so I came to meet you. You're 
 early." 
 
 Peter kissed her. 
 
 "I'll go away again, shall I ? " he said. 
 
 "No; as you've come, you can stop," she said.
 
 258 Peter 
 
 " And what did you do with yourself last night ? Not 
 all alone, I hope : you found somebody ? " 
 
 Peter smiled at her. 
 
 "Somebody? " he said. "Crow^ds! First of all, 
 Nellie rang up at the F.O., saying that she had been 
 going to the play with Philip, but that he had a cold. 
 So would I ? We dined at home, and talked so long 
 with elbows on the table that we didn't get to the play 
 till towards the end of the second act." 
 
 "Ah, that was luck to find Nellie," said Silvia. "I 
 was afraid you might have a horrid lonely evening. 
 And then?" 
 
 "Then just one act of Downstairs. But one act 
 was better than four. There had been railway 
 whistles and flags waving from the box opposite." 
 
 "That was Mrs. Trentham," said Silvia. 
 
 "It was. So we swept in her lot — the usual one 
 — with Lord Poole, who told me to kiss you for him, 
 and they all came to supper at home. Really, that 
 plan of keeping the house open was an admirable one. 
 It's awful fun ; we talked and smoked and laughed 
 until everyone melted away." 
 
 She saw (and loved to see) the brightness and 
 briskness of him ; she heard (and loved to hear) his 
 cheerfulness and alacrity. 
 
 "Oh, I am glad you had a nice evening," she 
 said. "I nearly telephoned to say I was coming up 
 to keep you company. But then I thought I had 
 better stop and — and try to make myself disagreeable 
 at home." 
 
 "Did you succeed, darling? " asked Peter. 
 
 Exactly then it struck Silvia that if Peter had 
 dined, had sat "so long " with elbows on the table, 
 and had got to the theatre in time for anything at all, 
 he could not have been detained very late at the
 
 Peter 259 
 
 Foreign Office. She instantly drew down, with a 
 rush and a rattle, some mental blind in front of that. 
 She shut it out : she did not choose to see it. 
 
 " Yes, pretty well," she said. " Mother went to bed 
 at ten, anyhow, which is early for her, so I must have 
 been fairly successful." 
 
 "Not proved," said Peter. "She may have been 
 sleepy. It's a sleepy place, you know." 
 
 "I know," she said. "Two nights ago I came and 
 looked into your room, as I had not heard you come 
 to bed, and there you were, fast asleep." 
 
 "Snoring, I suppose you'll tell me?" said he. 
 
 This point about detention at the Foreign Office, 
 with time yet to dine and confabulate and go to the 
 theatre, had struck him too. He had meant it to be 
 assumed that he had telephoned to signify the know- 
 ledge that he would be detained, and now by this 
 stupid inadvertence in giving the account of his even- 
 ing, he had shown, for all who cared to think, that 
 he had not been detained. But Silvia apparently had 
 quite missed that, or she would surely have said some- 
 thing to that effect ; as it was, she had passed it by : 
 it was out of sight by now, behind another — well, 
 another misunderstanding. 
 
 She proceeded to put a further corner between her 
 consciousness and it. 
 
 "No, I don't say snoring," she said. "Oh, Peter, 
 your father has told me how delightful, how angelic 
 you were to him, about his stopping on here till we 
 go back to London. It touched him very much." 
 
 She took his arm. "It touched me too, dear," she 
 said, " and I must tell you that it furnished a reason 
 — one out of several — why I came to meet you. I've 
 got a confession " 
 
 Peter guessed what this reason was and what the
 
 26o Peter 
 
 confession. When he made a plan he was quite 
 accustomed to find it work itself out as he had meant. 
 But now in the very apex of its success he felt 
 ashamed of it. If it came to confessions he could 
 make his contribution. He interrupted her. 
 
 "I don't care about that reason," he said. "Tell 
 me the other ones instead." 
 
 "The other ones will come afterwards," she said, 
 "if you want to hear them then. This has got to 
 come first, so don't interrupt, darling. I will tell 
 you : it's an affair of conscience." 
 
 "And I'm a conscientious objector," said he. As 
 it became more and more certain in his mind what 
 Silvia's confession was, the less he wanted to hear 
 it, though he himself, patting his own back for his 
 cleverness, had contrived the plan of which this was 
 the logical sequel. But when he did that he had not 
 yet pretended to be asleep one night nor, on another, 
 telephoned his detention in town. 
 
 Silvia went on with a gentle but perfectly deter- 
 mined firmness. 
 
 "I've misjudged you altogether, Peter," she said, 
 "and I've got to confess. For days now — more days 
 than I like to number — I have been watching you, 
 looking for something I missed in you. I thought 
 you were unkind and sarcastic and cynical about your 
 father, and what he told me of the manner in which 
 you welcomed his proposal to stop on here convinced 
 me how utterly I had been wronging you. It was 
 owlishly stupid of me to suppose you could be like 
 that, and, what was worse, it was brutally unloving." 
 
 Peter laughed. 
 
 "Any more big words coming?" he asked. 
 "Owlish, stupid, brutal, unloving? That's you all 
 over. Have you murdered anybody? "
 
 Peter 261 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "It's no use makhig Hght of it," she said. "It 
 was stupid, it was unloving of me. I thought that 
 because you saw certain absurdities and unrealities 
 about your father, you saw nothing but them, and 
 were impatient and untender with him. Do you for- 
 give me for being such a fool ? " 
 
 Peter tried to imagine himself telling her that she 
 had been perfectly right throughout : that only a 
 piece of trickery on his part, in getting his father to 
 give an account of the welcome his proposition had 
 met with, had deluded her into thinking she was 
 wrong. But his vanity, the thought of the sorry 
 figure he would present, made it quite impossible to 
 contemplate so fundamental an honesty. Short of 
 being honest, he had better be superb. 
 
 He stopped, facing her, knowing well the effect 
 his physical presence had on her. 
 
 "You darling, there's one thing I don't forgive 
 you for," he said, "and that is for being such a fool 
 as to think there was anything for me to forgive." 
 
 Even as he made this neat phrase, the truth of it 
 came home to him. There was indeed nothing for 
 him to forgive. She gave a long sigh. 
 
 "Oh, you must teach me to be generous," she said. 
 
 Peter felt himself unutterably mean at that 
 moment. But the thing, was done; he had been 
 superb as well as dishonest, and if honesty had been 
 too high for his vanity to attain to, it was just as 
 incapable of demolishing the golden image of him- 
 self that he had set up for Silvia. Then there was 
 the point concerning his apparent slumber two nights 
 ago; there was the point concerning his telephone 
 last night. . . . He wished intensely that she hadn't 
 asked him to teach her generosity.
 
 262 Peter 
 
 " Now for the other reasons why you came to meet 
 me," he said. There would be balsam and food for 
 his vanity here. He had the grace to recognize that 
 even while he asked it. 
 
 "Because I wanted to see you," said she. 
 
 "I like that reason. Have you any more of that 
 brand?" 
 
 He knew that the word which took lightly what 
 was so immense would, after her confession, cause 
 her to smile. It was of the species which she had 
 thought cynical, and which she now knew was just 
 the everyday garb in which affection and tenderness 
 clothed themselves. 
 
 "Because it seemed so long since I saw you," she 
 said. "Oh, Peter, there's only one reason really 
 which matters. Because I love you." 
 
 . . . And that brought home to him a meanness, 
 a dishonesty against which all the rest was but 
 feathers in a scale weighted on the other side with the 
 world itself. Often before now he had known how 
 unintelligibly great that was; now for the first time 
 he was irritated at himself for his want of comprehen- 
 sion with regard to it. He was accustomed to under- 
 stand things to which he gave his mind, but here his 
 mind was brought to a dead stop by this great shining 
 wall that was unscalable and impenetrable. But, to 
 be honest, was his irritation quite confined to himself, 
 or did that shining wall from its very incomprehensi- 
 bility provoke a portion of it ? 
 
 Silvia seemed to herself to miss something in his 
 silence, but with Peter there, nothing could really be 
 missing. . . . 
 
 "How often I say that," she whispered; "but how 
 often I feel that there's nothing else worth saying." 
 
 "More of that brand," said he.
 
 Peter 263 
 
 "Not a drop. We must go in. You haven't 
 seen your father yet, and after that you must have 
 your bath." 
 
 "And after that you must send your maid away, 
 so that we can get a few minutes' sensible conversa- 
 tion," said Peter. 
 
 "I'll begin it now," said she. "Sometimes, you 
 know, your bath goes to your head, and you're not 
 quite as serious as you might be." 
 
 "Say I'm drunk and have done with it," suggested 
 he. 
 
 "Very well; sometimes your bath makes you 
 tipsy. But while you're sober, I want you to promise 
 me something." 
 
 "Shall I like it?" asked Peter prudently. "It 
 isn't to spend a week with Uncle Abe or anything of 
 that kind?" 
 
 " Nothing of that kind. Poor Uncle Abe ! You'll 
 like it. At least, you'll find you'll like it; you'll 
 know it does you good." 
 
 "That's not the same thing," objected he. "It 
 does me good to get up bright and early, so as to 
 start for town without hurrying, but I hate it." 
 
 Silvia laughed. 
 
 "It will relieve you of that to some extent," she 
 said. "Oh, do be quick and promise instead of 
 making such a fuss ! " 
 
 "Right. But if you've deceived me, I'll never 
 trust you again. I promise." 
 
 "Well, for as long as we are here I want you to 
 spend at least one night in the week in town." 
 
 "I shall do nothing of the kind," said he. "I 
 don't care an atom about my promise. Pish for my 
 promise 1 And how will it relieve me? Oh, I see. 
 But I shan't — unless you come too, that's to say."
 
 264 Peter 
 
 Silvia stopped. 
 
 "Now listen to me," she said. "You enjoyed last 
 night immensely. It's perfectly natural that you 
 should have. I should think you were ill if you 
 hadn't." 
 
 "How do you know I enjoyed it? I never said 
 so," said he. 
 
 "You did better than that. You beamed all over 
 your atrocious countenance when you told me about 
 it. You were obliged to stop in town, and being 
 obliged you found, and you know it perfectly well, 
 that it was a sort of night out. You saw your 
 friends : you had a beano." 
 
 Silvia kept her finger on the cord of the blind she 
 had chosen to pull down in her mind. She refused 
 with a sublime intellectual dishonesty to look at the 
 fact that Peter certainly could have come down here 
 by dinner time if he had time to dine early in town; 
 she would not see it. Already, so she told herself, 
 she had once fallen into an owlishly stupid error and 
 worse, by doubting him, by watching him ; now at 
 least she coulci repair that to some extent by the 
 supreme honesty of trusting him without question. 
 Something had happened to keep him in town, and 
 it was no business of hers to think of that at all. He 
 had said he was detained at the Foreign Office, and, 
 for her, he was detained there. She held her eyes 
 open to the intensest light of all, which was that of 
 her own love, and the more it blinded her to every- 
 thing else the better. It was only creatures like bats 
 (and owls), things of the night, that were blinded 
 by the dayspring. 
 
 "You enjoyed it: you had a beano," she re- 
 peated. "Why not say so?" 
 
 Peter hesitated, but for a reason that she had
 
 Peter 265 
 
 refused to entertain the existence of. The fact, now 
 shiningly clear, that Silvia had never so remotely 
 seen that he could easily have got down here in time 
 for dinner, made it unintelligibly and unreasonably 
 needful for him to tell her so. There was something 
 sordid in not doing so. Had she shown the smallest 
 suspicion of it, he would probably have explained it 
 away in some ingenious manner. 
 
 "Yes, I enjoyed it," he said. "That was why I 
 did it. I could easily have got down here in time for 
 dinner." 
 
 Up went the blind at that with a snap and a whirr, 
 and Silvia's face, beaming and delighted, smiled out 
 at him. 
 
 "Oh, Peter, how lovely of you to tell me," she 
 cried. "Of course, I guessed, only I wouldn't guess. 
 There's just the joy of it all." 
 
 That came from her like the stroke of a bird's 
 wing, that bore it through the sunny air. »With 
 another stroke she returned to him. 
 
 "Now you've got no excuse for refusing my beau- 
 tiful plan," she said. "And it was nice of you not to 
 tell me at once : you knew you had to some time, 
 and it was all the better for keeping. My dear, there's 
 the dressing bell. Just go and see your father for a 
 minute : you can talk to him in the smoking-room 
 after mother and I have gone to bed." 
 
 As Silvia heard through her bedroom door the 
 splashings and the rinsings and the gurglings which 
 regulated her own speed of dressing, she was absorbed 
 in the perception of the one thing that was great, and 
 its myriad manifestations. Up the trunk of the tree 
 and through the branches and to the remotest ends of 
 the twigs flowed the sap, and all — the firmness of the 
 trunk, the vigour of the branches, the elasticity of the
 
 266 Peter 
 
 twigs, the decoration of flower and leaf and fruit, 
 which made the tree lovely — were manifestations and 
 embodiments of the sap. If there was a wound in its 
 bark, the sap healed it; if there was a nest among its 
 boughs, an external loveliness of life which visited it, 
 it was still the sap which had fashioned its anchorage. 
 The remotest leaf of that tower of forest greenery was 
 nurtured by it, and all the being and the beauty 
 sprang from it. . . . There was nothing big or little, 
 if you looked at it in that way, though just now she 
 had decided that only one thing was big and all the 
 rest was little. . . . 
 
 Then came a rare, an unusual splash. Occasion- 
 ally when Peter began to stand up in his bath after 
 the hot soaking, he fell down ; his foot slipped 
 on the smooth surface, and this made the rare and 
 enormous splash. This always caused her a certain 
 anxiety : he might hit his head against the edge of 
 the bath. . . . 
 
 "Just tap at the bathroom door, Wilton," she 
 said, "and ask if Mr. Mainwaring is all right." . . . 
 But before the chaste Wilton could get as far as the 
 door, a new splashing began. "It doesn't matter, 
 Wilton," she said. 
 
 "Your pearls, ma'am? " asked Wilton. 
 
 Then came the tap at the door, and Wilton slid 
 out of the picture. 
 
 "I fell down," said Peter. "I might have hurt 
 myself, but I didn't. I wish you weren't so wonder- 
 ful." 
 
 "I can't help that," said she. "You should have 
 thought of it before." 
 
 Peter began drying his toes. 
 
 "I've had quite a long talk with my father," he 
 said, "and all about you. He thinks you're wonder-
 
 Peter 267 
 
 ful, too. He adores you : they all adore you, particu- 
 larly Lord Poole." 
 
 "Peter, don't be tipsy," said she. 
 
 ♦' I shall be as tipsy as I like. I want to know one 
 thing. Why weren't you annoyed with me for say- 
 ing that I couldn't get back last night? " 
 
 Silvia held out the pearls for him to clasp round 
 her neck. 
 
 "If you don't understand that, you must be 
 tipsy," she said. 
 
 "And if I do?" he asked. 
 
 She leaned her head a little back. 
 
 "Why, then you understand it all," she said. 
 "You understand, for instance, why I insist on your 
 having a night in town every week." 
 
 "Yes, I see. Just that you shall get rid of me 
 now and then," he said. 
 
 "Quite right. You're as sober as — as a com- 
 moner, I suppose." 
 
 She moved in her chair, and one end of her neck- 
 lace slipped from his fingers. 
 
 "Am I putting them on for dinner," he asked, "or 
 am I taking them off for bedtime? " 
 
 "Whatever you're doing, you are being wonder- 
 fully clumsy," said she, as his fingers, warm and 
 soft from his bath, touched the back of her neck. 
 
 She was down before him next morning to give 
 him his breakfast, and, waiting for him, strolled out 
 on to the terrace. There had been one of those ex- 
 quisite early October frosts, and in the air was that 
 ineffable fragrance derived from absence of smell, the 
 odourless odour of frosted dew. The sun was already 
 warm with promise of a hot, cloudless day; but as 
 yet the heat had not set in motion the weaving of the
 
 268 Peter 
 
 scents of earth and grass and flowers which would 
 soon decorate and veil the virginal beauty of 
 the morning. Last night, when she and Peter had 
 lingered here in the end of the twilight, the air was 
 not less clear and windless, but it had been charged 
 with all the myriad scents distilled by the hot hours 
 of autumn sun. Now there was a precision, a crys- 
 talline quality. . . . Some such sort of clear sparkle 
 bathed her spirit also : her love basked in some 
 such virginal beauty of young day, flamelike and 
 scentless. 
 
 All the evening before, from the time when she 
 met Peter by the lake, she, body and soul and spirit, 
 had been rising towards some new peak of passion, 
 and the true topmost summit seemed to her now to 
 be where she stood in this cool brightness, able to see 
 that the upward path which led here was below her. 
 They had dined after Peter had clasped her necklace 
 for her; there had been the usual piquet for her 
 and Mr. Mainwaring, and for the latter a triumphant 
 psean of achievement over some effect of lightning in 
 the second cartoon, which positively, as he stood 
 aside as artist and became spectator, appalled him, 
 and before they settled down to their cards he must 
 needs conduct them to the masterpiece in question, 
 and let them also feel the cold clutch of fear. 
 
 But whatever Mr. Mainwaring did or said, what- 
 ever her mother, it was Peter whom, in this rising 
 tide of flame and self-surrender, Silvia watched, no 
 longer looking for those signs of tenderness and aff'ec- 
 tion which (owlish) she had missed, but in the rap- 
 turous contemplation of them. Often she had seen 
 him charming to her mother and to his own father; 
 but always, so she had thought, she could detect in 
 him politeness and amenity, the controlling hand of
 
 Peter 269 
 
 breeding, the practice of pleasant behaviour. But 
 this evening there had been no "behaviour" about 
 him at all, he had been radiant with them both, 
 divinely natural. ... He had sat next Mrs. War- 
 dour on the sofa, as the piquet was in progress, and 
 entertained her with ludicrous but hopelessly recog- 
 nizable caricatures of her and his father over their 
 cards ; he had held a skein of her wool, he had mixed 
 her hot water and lemon juice for her. All these things 
 he had often done before, and they were all trivial 
 enough. . . . He was the same with his father, look- 
 ing over his hand when so bidden, dutifully observing 
 exactly how to play that puzzling game ; eager to 
 anticipate his wants, chaffing him sometimes, behav- 
 ing to him — this again was the wrong word — being to 
 him, rather, all that his own sonship implied, ful- 
 filling in every word and gesture the welcome which 
 he had given to the suggestion of his remaining with 
 them till they went to London. And all that was 
 "the world's side" which anyone might see, and be- 
 hind it in "lights and darks undreamed of " was that 
 other aspect and reality of him, which was hers alone. 
 . . . She was already in bed when she heard him, after 
 his smoking-room chat with his father, come into 
 his room, and presently, after tapping on her door, 
 he looked in, coatless and shoeless. She pretended 
 — in parody of what happened two nights before — to 
 be asleep, and between her eyelids, nearly closed, she 
 saw a broad smile overspread his face. 
 
 "I don't believe a single word of it," he remarked. 
 
 All this — all it was and all it meant — Silvia now, 
 as she waited for him, looked at, looked down on even 
 from this crowning pinnacle, as on upward, ultimate 
 slopes. Even, as in the cool scentless air of the 
 
 R
 
 270 A ctcr 
 
 morning, the miracle of the sunshine on the windless 
 world was more itself than when its beams had drawn 
 that response of fragrance from all living things, so 
 shone for her, untroubled with passion and desire, 
 the essence itself of love in its own crystal globe. ^ Not 
 less precious, now that it was conveyed to her in no 
 material manifestation, would be the bodily presence 
 of him through whom that essence was conveyed to 
 her, who embodied love to her mortal sense, but for 
 ever far more precious was it now that she, in this 
 pause of content that crowned passion with a royal 
 diadem, could for the moment see that in loving him 
 she loved not him alone, but Love itself that "moved 
 the sun and the other stars," and being all, gave 
 
 all. ... 
 
 The duration of the moment in which Silvia 
 reached that point, not theoretically, but as a felt and 
 experienced reality, was infinitesimal, just as in sig- 
 nificance it was infinite. ... At the sound of Peter's 
 step on the bare boards of the dining-room just 
 within, the atmosphere of the summit where she stood 
 grew laden and fragrant with the scents of the world. 
 She did not come down from it : it did not rise up 
 above her. She was there still, but she was there in 
 body as well as in spirit, the fragrance of material 
 sweetness was near her, even as when now she stepped 
 back into the dining-room, a waft of rose-scent from 
 the sun-warmed wall smothered her nostrils. 
 
 Peter was poking about among dishes on the side 
 table, and gave her a grunt, neither more nor less, in 
 answer to her salutation. He held that to be in good 
 spirits at breakfast-time was a symptom that could 
 not be taken too seriously. By that test there was 
 nothing wrong with him this morning.
 
 Peter 271 
 
 He sat down with an ill-used sigh. 
 
 "I've got a headache," he remarked. 
 
 "Oh, I'm sorry," said she. "Where?" 
 
 "In my left ankle, of course," said he. 
 
 Silvia, passing behind him, just tweaked the 
 short hair at the back of his neck. 
 
 "Oh, don't finger me," said Peter angrily. 
 
 He gave her so quick a glance that she could 
 scarcely tell whether he had actually looked at her 
 or not, and went on without pause and without 
 hurry, clinking out his words like newly-minted 
 coins, separate and crisply cut and hot. 
 
 "Just let me alone sometimes," he said. "You 
 know how I hate dabbing and pressing and grasp- 
 ing. You're the limit, you know." 
 
 He had got her stiff and staring, and still with- 
 out pause and in precisely the same voice he went on : 
 
 "Don't let me have to speak to you like that 
 again," he said. "And don't be so owlish, but con- 
 fess that you've fallen into that trap." 
 
 Still she stood staring, and he took one step 
 towards her and flung his arms close round her neck, 
 pressing her face to his, and then, more directly, 
 finding and claiming her mouth. 
 
 "You utterly divine girl," he said. "I never 
 dreamed I should take you in. I did. Kiss me 
 three times to signify ' Yes,' and three times more 
 to signify that you are a darling, and once more to — 
 well, once more." 
 
 " Peter, I thought you were cross with me," said 
 she, when she could say anything. 
 
 "How perfectly splendid! That joke did come 
 off, didn't it?" 
 
 She could smile again. 
 
 "You brute!" she said. "But never take me
 
 272 
 
 Peter 
 
 in over that again, darling. Anything else; not 
 that." 
 
 Once more before his motor came round they 
 strolled on the terrace outside. It was thick now 
 with the web of scents, for the sun's weaving was 
 busy. The late roses gave their fragrance, and the 
 verbena and the mignonette, but these were but 
 strung like beads on to the smell of the damp, fruitful 
 earth. By now Silvia could laugh at herself about 
 that fierce phantom moment, for never had Peter 
 seemed more utterly hers. Usually in these early 
 half-hours he was rather silent, rather morose; 
 to-day, penitent perhaps, or consolatory for the 
 fright — it was no less — that he had unwittingly given 
 her, there was something of the bath-intoxication 
 about him. 
 
 "If you were in any sense a devoted wife," he 
 said, "you would drive up with me, deposit me at 
 the F.O., and then wait three hours for me in the 
 motor till lunch time. I could give you an hour 
 then, after which you would wait four hours more 
 and drive back with me. Therefore shall a woman 
 leave her father and her mother and cleave to her 
 husband." 
 
 "Yes, of course I'll come," said she, " if you 
 want me to. You must just say you really want 
 me. 
 
 He took hold of her elbows from behind and ran 
 her along the terrace. 
 
 "Motor-bike," he observed. "I'm pushing you 
 till you get your sense of humour working on its 
 own account." 
 
 "It's working — I swear it's working," shrieked 
 Silvia. "Don't be such a bully."
 
 Peter 273 
 
 A seat on the balustrade of the terrace seemed 
 indicated after this violent exercise. 
 
 "There's another thing," said Peter. "My mental 
 power of association of ideas is decaying, which 
 is a sign of softening of the brain. Aren't you 
 sorry ? " 
 
 "Is that the brain in your head? " asked she. 
 
 "No; in the same place that ached when I had 
 a headache. Left ankle. Don't interrupt. But 
 there's something in this house front, and I believe 
 it's the cornice, or whatever they call it, which runs 
 all along there underneath the windows' on the first 
 floor, which — that's the cornice — reminds me of some 
 other house." 
 
 Peter pointed to the broad frieze-like band which 
 projected some foot or so from the wall of the house. 
 It was of Portland stone, amazingly carved with 
 masks at intervals, and ran, as he had said, just 
 below the first floor windows from end to end of 
 the fa9ade. Then he gave a yodel which, consciously 
 or not, was a hoarse and surprising parody of his 
 father's favourite method of indicating a general 
 sumptuousness of sensation. 
 
 "That's done it," he said. "Just speaking of 
 it has reminded me what it was. And there's 
 the motor, bother and blight it, confound and 
 curse it." 
 
 "And what is the house it reminds you of? " she 
 asked. 
 
 "The flat belonging to Nellie's mother. Just 
 below the windows there ran a band like that. I 
 noticed it one day last summer. She had said some- 
 thing about it, but at that point there's softening 
 of the brain again. All I said about the motor holds, 
 though."
 
 274 
 
 Peter 
 
 "Send it away. Walk up to town instead," 
 suggested Silvia. 
 
 "Likely, with that headache in my ankle. But 
 I would so much sooner sit here with you than do 
 either." 
 
 Silvia waved to him as he drove off, and waiting, 
 waved again as he crossed the bridge over the lake. 
 The air was thick with earthy fragrances now, and 
 her mind with fragrant memories, and among them 
 there was some new scent, not quite strange to her, 
 but one from which she had always, whenever it pre- 
 sented itself, turned her head. Now it insisted on 
 being analysed, on being recognized. 
 
 When, half an hour ago, she had just tweaked 
 his hair as she passed him, his remonstrance, to her 
 ears, had been wholly instinctive and sincere; he 
 objected to being "fingered." He had piled that up, 
 so she seemed to see, making of it a joke against 
 her, until the joke grew preposterous. Then, ever 
 so convincingly, he had smothered her with kisses. 
 Yesterday evening, too, how convincing had been, 
 on some other plane, his "dearness " — that word must 
 serve — with her mother and Mr. Mainwaring. On 
 one side were bright tokens of affection, and to her 
 of so much more than affection ; on the other that 
 one little hot coin that clinked with a true ring before, 
 with admirable mimicry of himself, he had showered 
 out a whole flood of such. 
 
 Which was the more real ? And where, in these 
 mists, was that austere and shining summit?
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Just before Christmas, after three weeks in London, 
 Silvia was driving down alone to Howes, in prepara- 
 tion for the party which was to arrive next day. Peter 
 would come then : he had got a devastating cold, and 
 it was far wiser, in this grim inclemency of weather, 
 that he should not come down with her to-day, only 
 to come up again for his work next morning. 
 It was much more sensible — Silvia had suggested 
 it — that he should nurse his cold that evening, and, 
 well wrapped up, make a single instead of a double 
 journey to-morrow. But that piece of good sense was 
 subsidiary to the fact that she did not want, just for 
 this evening, to be alone with him ; even if his cold 
 had not supplied an excellent argument in favour 
 of this plan, she would have suggested her own 
 solitary departure. 
 
 Wilton, the correct virginal Wilton, sat opposite 
 her on the front seat. Wilton had, at the start, depo- 
 sited herself next the chauffeur, but Silvia had made 
 her come inside. But there was little use, so thought 
 Wilton, in coming inside, if her mistress still kept 
 both windows open. 
 
 The sleet had turned to uncompromising snow, 
 and wSilvia seemed to notice it no more than if she 
 were a Polar bear. Eventually, as the car flowed up 
 the long hill through Putney, Wilton had been able 
 to stand the draught no longer. 
 
 "You'll be catching a worse cold than Mr. Main- 
 waring's, ma'am," she said, "if you sit in that 
 
 275
 
 276 Peter 
 
 draught." . . . That made it more comfortable. 
 Silvia roused herself for a moment. 
 
 "His man doesn't take such care of him as you 
 do of me, Wilton," she said. 
 
 "And so much pneumonia about, ma'am," ob- 
 served Wilton encouragingly. 
 
 Silvia began to think consecutively, starting not 
 from far back, but from the immediate past. Nellie 
 had lunched with her alone, just before she started, 
 for Mrs. Wardour had been out, and Nellie had hailed 
 this tete-a-tete as the most delightful thing that could 
 have happened. Nellie had been at Wardour House, 
 too, the night before for a concert ; during this month 
 of December, hardly yet three weeks old, she had been 
 there half a dozen times, for Mrs. Wardour, resuming 
 her social activities with extraordinary vigour after 
 four months in the country, had, without the aid of 
 any godmother, turned December into June. 
 
 "You know the real name of this delicious house, 
 darling," Nellie had said. "Everyone calls it the 
 New Jerusalem, because its gates are never shut day 
 or night. Your mother brings light into the darkest 
 homes of the upper classes. There's such dreadful 
 discontent among them : if it wasn't for people — 
 angels — like your mother, they would all go and live 
 in converted garages or in country cottages, and pre- 
 tend to be the proletariat. It's being amused and 
 entertained that keeps the upper class together ; other- 
 wise they would be the leaders of Bolshevism. The 
 Order of the British Empire now ! Why isn't she the 
 only Dame in it ? The stability of the upper class 
 depends on her, and the King depends on the upper 
 class, and the Empire, in fact, if you see what I mean. 
 I'm not quite sure that I do, but I do mean something.
 
 Peter 277 
 
 We should all have groaned and grumbled if your 
 mother hadn't set such a brilliant example." 
 
 With Nellie's brilliant presence and charm to help 
 out this engaging nonsense, it was a cheerful scin- 
 tillation. Last June, so Silvia told herself, she would 
 vastly have enjoyed such a month as she had just 
 spent, and Nellie's resume of it made her wonder 
 whether she — only she — had been dull and unappre- 
 ciative. . . . 
 
 The snow was driven against the glass which 
 Wilton had put up : she could hear it softly tap at 
 the window. . . . 
 
 "And Peter!" Nellie had said. "What have 
 you done to him, darling, or rather what haven't you 
 done to him ? Everybody — I think I told you so once 
 — used to be devoted to Peter : we used all to be in 
 love with him, for he was so priceless, so marvellous, 
 in not caring one atom for anybody. How long did 
 it take you, do tell me, to discover his heart? Did 
 you mine for it, and dredge for it, and blow up all the 
 rocks round it ? Or did you get an aeroplane and fly 
 up to it. Perhaps, after all, it was in the sky— so 
 tremendously remote that nobody ever thought of 
 looking for it there. You and Peter, up in the blue 
 like the queen bee and her lover ! How wildly ro- 
 mantic ! Or were you there, and did he fly up to you ? 
 You met in the blue, anyhow, and left us all staring 
 up after you till our eyes watered with the glare." 
 
 Silvia, as the car hooted its way through King- 
 ston, did not concern herself to recall with what small 
 accompaniment she had sustained those arpeggios. 
 She must have said something, for Nellie had gone 
 on talking, talking. . . . Silvia had blinked before 
 that brilliant vitality, which so decorated all that lay 
 under its beams; but for the first time, when she
 
 278 Peter 
 
 spoke like that about herself and Peter, the light hurt 
 her. It dazzled rather than illuminated, and when it 
 fell on certain dark places it did not illuminate them, 
 it only showed up their blackness. She, with Nellie's 
 light, Nellie's impressions, to help her, peered into 
 them. Such glimpses as she caught between the 
 dazzle and the darkness made her turn away with pro- 
 test against this bull's-eye that now seemed to intrude 
 on privacy. What, after all, had her relations with 
 Peter to do with Nellie ? 
 
 The streets were slippery with the newly-fallen 
 snow, and at some corner, while they were still pass- 
 ing through houses, there was a furious hooting of 
 the horn outside, which to Silvia at that moment was 
 not so much a warning of danger ahead on the road, 
 as of danger lying somewhere deep within herself. 
 They came to a dead stop, which made Wilton scream 
 faintly and clutch the jewel-case, and for a yard or 
 two they slid backwards. All that, too, seemed in- 
 stantly translated in her mind into interior action, 
 and, keeping pace with it, she slid a little farther back 
 in her journey of thought. 
 
 She brought out from the locked cupboard of 
 her very soul, where she had turned the key on it, 
 one particular moment. It was yesterday that she 
 had put it there. She was in a room of a house in 
 Welbeck Street, and at the end of the consultation 
 the great man, jovial and kindly, had got up from his 
 chair, and smoothed the pillow of a sofa on which she 
 had lain just before. 
 
 "Be quite active," Dr. Symes summed up, "with- 
 out overtiring yourself. Appetite good? That's all 
 right. Just go on with your ordinary life. What ? 
 No : no doubt of any kind. Your husband well ? A 
 cold? Everyone's got a cold."
 
 Peter 279 
 
 Silvia paused over that while a wheel of her car 
 slipped and skidded. Soon it hit the ground again. 
 But in that pause she faced the fact that she had not 
 told Peter. She meant to last night, but — but ... He 
 had bewailed his cold; he had accepted her proposal 
 that he should stop in London to-night. He had 
 waved his hand at her and left her, not kissing her 
 for fear of giving her his cold. But that was not the 
 reason — it was only the excuse — for not telling him. 
 She had welcomed it, at the time, as an adequate ex- 
 cuse ; but if she had not found any such, she would 
 have done without it. 
 
 For a second or two her thought paused, merely 
 contemplating this fact as if looking at some picture. 
 It seemed quite incredible that she had not gone 
 straight to him with her news, blurted it, whispered 
 it, kissed him with it. Yet if he had been sitting here 
 now instead of Wilton, in this privacy of snow and 
 twilight-travel, she knew that she would again be 
 struggling, and in vain, to tell him. 
 
 From that point she swept back to one morning 
 in October. It was then that some seed of knowledge 
 which had previously lain dormant in her soul began 
 to sprout. For two months now she had been con- 
 scious of its growth, and for two months she had 
 steadily refused to acknowledge it. Her relations 
 with him had been of the most normal and friendly, 
 but the fact, as she saw now, of his content and tran- 
 quillity was sunshine and rain to the growth of it. 
 Then, at the news Dr. Symes had given her, it burst 
 into bitter blossom, and she could ignore it no longer. 
 
 Peter had never loved her : he had never, in find- 
 ing her, lost himself. Mentally and sympathetically 
 she knew that he liked her — liked her, she was pre- 
 pared to say, immensely; physically she attracted
 
 28o Peter 
 
 and satisfied him. To think that he had married her 
 "for " her money would be an exaggerated and hys- 
 terical estimate ; her wealth had not been a counter- 
 weight that overcame some opposing disadvantage, 
 but it was, so she now believed, a determining factor. 
 Without it he would not have sought her. 
 
 It seemed odd to herself how little that mattered. 
 Her wealth was an advantage — so, too, was her 
 beauty; and even if he had married her "for" her 
 wealth, that would have seemed to her no worse than 
 if he had married her "for" her beauty, or "for" 
 (had she been witty) her wit, or "for" any quality 
 whatsoever of mind or body. All these were advan- 
 tages, pleasant circumstances; but all of them, singly 
 or together, compared with love, were no more than 
 the bright shells on the seashore compared with the 
 sea. 
 
 It was just here that she blamed him with a bitter- 
 ness that appalled her; it was this that had made it 
 possible for her to accept any excuse (or if neces- 
 sary to have done without one) for not telling him 
 what she had learned yesterday. He had bidden 
 her shut her eyes, and picking up a shell had held it 
 to her ear, and had told her that what she heard there 
 was the sea. . . . He had looked, he had spoken, he 
 had acted as if he brought close to her that splendid 
 shining vastness. She had trusted him, and had 
 listened with all the rapture of love to that murmur- 
 ing. Therein he had cheated her, passed off on her 
 a "fake " which, had she not been blinded by his hand 
 over her eyes, he knew she must have recognized as 
 such. 
 
 There was just one excuse for him ; she hesitated 
 to adopt it, because while it excused him, it far more 
 terribly accused him. It was that he did not know
 
 Peter 281 
 
 what love meant. From the very first, from the day 
 when he had asked her to marry him, he had not 
 known. She had told him that all she wanted in the 
 world was to be allowed to love him, and he had 
 never seen that her surrender presupposed his own. 
 He could not burn in her love without being alight 
 himself. There was the root of it all, his ignorance. 
 
 At that, compassion deep as love itself inundated 
 her bitterness, not diluting it, but from its very nature 
 neutralizing it. Sorrow was there, but "without 
 sorrow " (who had said that?) "none liveth in love." 
 Not as by one drop out of the whole ocean was her 
 love for him diminished; but, while he did not under- 
 stand, he ploughed his way in drought and desert : 
 he could not reach her. 
 
 It was through his constant affection for her and 
 his gentleness, rather than through any failure in 
 these, that the realization of this had come to her. 
 She did not believe that she wearied him ; she knew 
 that she attracted him physically, that he was faithful 
 to her not on principle, but by inclination, and yet all 
 this was nothing. He had not begun (say for a 
 minute or two) by loving her, and then dropped into 
 mere affection, mere desire : simply he had never 
 loved her at all as she understood loving. He did 
 not love anybody else, and Silvia, so far from being 
 consoled by that thought, found herself passionately 
 wishing that he did. He might love Nellie, or that 
 fool of a woman who screamed ; for then, at any rate, 
 he would know what love meant, and they would have 
 common ground to meet on, though that very ground 
 parted them. That might ruin her own life, which 
 already she had given into his cool, careful hands; 
 and if only, by smashing it to atoms, he could find his 
 soul's salvation 1
 
 282 Peter 
 
 There were problems ahead, and how they should 
 be solved she did not know : she only knew what the 
 upshot must be. Inconceivably dear as the mere 
 touch of his hand was to her, she knew that never 
 again, unless he learned what love was, or she forgot 
 it, could hand clasp hand and mouth meet mouth. 
 Not again could she give him those symbols of the 
 infinite as the playthings for enjoyment. All that she 
 had or was, was his, except just that; unless he loved 
 her, the banners of her love must stay unfurled. 
 Somehow she must let him know that, just as, some- 
 how and soon, she must let him know about what 
 she learned yesterday. 
 
 As the car turned in through the park gates the 
 snow beat in from the other window. It fell unheeded 
 on her face and hands, till Wilton, encouraged to 
 take care of her, drew up the sash. 
 
 Peter's head on her shoulder, his breath coming 
 soft and slow through his mouth. . . . Peter's eyes 
 close to hers, so that if he winked his eyelashes 
 brushed her cheek. . . . Peter's arm lying languid 
 and relaxed across her bosom. . . . She would give 
 her body to be burned for him, but not with such 
 burning as this. Anyone, not she alone, could supply 
 such need as his; none could supply hers but he, 
 and he only if he loved her. Loving him as she did, 
 she could not (so the leaping firelight in her bedroom 
 that night illuminated it for her), she could not shut 
 out her ideal in some burning chamber of its own, and 
 take the rest of her, in ordinary human manner, to 
 him, nor could she take from him, even though it 
 was the highest he could give, anything that made 
 its approach on some other plane. He must want her 
 as she wanted him, surrendered and lost, and found
 
 Peter 283 
 
 again in a new completeness, before they could come 
 together as lovers. She conjectured that she was 
 singular, exceptional in this : most men, most women 
 gave what they could and got what they could. But 
 there was no compromise possible for her that could 
 produce this easily negotiable felicity. She could not, 
 and if she could she would not, have accepted that in 
 exchange for this drawn sword that lay between Peter 
 and her. She had to tell him that. . . . She had to 
 tell him also that the fruit of love on the one side, of 
 affection on the other, was ripening. She must wait 
 her occasion for that; some moment must be seized 
 upon when he was most himself, most nearly, that is 
 to say, what she had once thought him. 
 
 She had nothing of her own ; all was his. That 
 was her one inestimable possession, that she had 
 given him all. Whatever happened, her utter penury 
 was the one thing she must cling to. 
 
 Peter had rung up Dr. Symes before he left the 
 Foreign Office that evening, asking for five minutes 
 of his time at any hour of morning or afternoon 
 next day. Perhaps it was rather fussy to consult 
 a physician over a cold, but really there never had 
 been such a cold. Dr. Symes gave you a cabalistic 
 slip of paper which, being duly interpreted, proved 
 to be some marvellous tonic stuff, or, when he had 
 felt a pulse, and looked at a tongue, and tapped you 
 on a stomach or made your knee jump in a curious 
 manner, he even more probably told you that you 
 had the constitution of an armadillo, and roared 
 you out of his room for wasting his time. With 
 a week of uncles and aunts ahead, even though Nellie 
 was to partake in the secret joys of them, Peter 
 felt he would like some robust reassurance of that
 
 284 Peter 
 
 sort. Or, on the other hand, since there never was 
 such a cold 
 
 These speculations, as he drove to Welbeck Street 
 next morning, were cut short by his arrival and his 
 internment in a waiting-room. There were several 
 persons there, reading illustrated papers with sad 
 faces, who looked up when he entered, and there- 
 after regarded him with evident suspicion, fearing, 
 so Peter figured it, that he might, though the latest 
 arrival, be summoned before those who had waited 
 longer. This, in fact, happened, and to the accom- 
 paniment of sour looks he was conducted down a 
 long passage into the consulting room. As he went 
 he considered whether he slept well, and whether he 
 had a feeling of oppression on his chest, or a pain 
 in his right side. 
 
 "How-de-do? " said Dr. Symes. "I've managed 
 to squeeze you in between two of my patients, and 
 I can give you just a couple of minutes, which will 
 be quite enough. Naturally you wanted to see me. 
 Well, there's nothing that should give you a 
 moment's anxiety at present. Don't think about it 
 at all, and don't let your wife think you're thinking 
 about it." 
 
 He turned backwards over the leaves of his en- 
 gagement book. 
 
 "Yes, as you know, I saw her the day before 
 yesterday," he said. "All healthy and normal. But 
 don't be fussed yourself, and certainly spare her all 
 fuss. Of course, as I told her, there's no doubt 
 at all. Let her — if she doesn't want to, make her — 
 'ead an ordinary active, normal life." 
 
 Peter had arrived by this time. 
 
 "My wife?" he asked. 
 
 Dr. Symes gave his great rollicking laugh.
 
 Peter 285 
 
 "Yes, and your grandmother, too, for that matter," 
 he said. "Don't let her confuse child-bearing with 
 invalidism. They're radically opposed. Mind you, 
 the way she spends these months is important. 
 Make her go out, make her busy and employed. 
 Don't let her get fancies into her head that she must 
 coddle herself; there's no greater mistake." 
 
 "I see," said Peter. 
 
 "Just use your common sense," said the doctor. 
 "She's got to bear a healthy child, and so she's got 
 to be just as fit as we can make her. But take care 
 of her too. What's her age now ? Twenty-two, I 
 suppose. Well, regard her as a woman of forty in 
 robust health. Make her behave like an older woman 
 than she is," 
 
 He rang a bell that stood on his table. 
 
 "I've told you everything," he said. "You look 
 fit enough, anyway, though you've got a bit of a 
 cold, haven't you? Getting down into the country 
 for Christmas, eh ? Change of air. I wish I was 
 going to get some." 
 
 He looked at his table of appointments. 
 
 "Ask Mrs. Lucas to step this way," he said to 
 the maid. "Good-bye. Good luck." 
 
 As Peter drove down to Whitehall he kept de- 
 tached, as by some dexterous jerk, such part of his 
 mind as dealed in emotion, and contemplated with 
 the same isolation, as through his closed car-window 
 he looked out on the snow-slushy street, what he 
 had just learned. He wanted to assimilate it before 
 in any sense he studied it, and to do that he had 
 first to wipe off his sheer surprise, which stood like 
 condensed vapour on the glass of this astounding 
 picture which had just been presented to him. Again 
 and again he had to wipe that away before he could 
 
 s
 
 286 Peter 
 
 get any clear vision of the fact itself, that Silvia 
 knew that she was with child and had not told him. 
 When he had assimilated that he could perhaps arrive 
 at what it meant. 
 
 The glass was clear now; he had got it, and 
 the enigma of it all stared him in the face; and the 
 more he contemplated it the greater grew his be- 
 wilderment as to the meaning of it. How often, 
 with the hesitation of an intensity that choked utter- 
 ance, had she said a word or two, given him a glance, 
 a smile that conveyed better than any stamped symbol 
 of speech, what the incarnation of their union, his 
 and hers, would be to her. She had wondered how, 
 just how, she would tell him ; no one knew into what 
 shapes such joy would crystallize. And now it had 
 come and she had not told him at all. Except for 
 a trivial visit of his own, a superficial, unnecessary 
 visit, he would still be ignorant. She had chosen 
 to leave him in ignorance of what he had learned 
 by accident. 
 
 Nellie had often told him that he went walking 
 in the wet woods and telling nobody, and Silvia, 
 in some frank chafifing discussion, had affirmed that 
 she knew precisely what Nellie meant. Certainly, 
 thought Peter now, it was likely enough she did 
 know. Had anyone ever gone solitary so far into 
 the wet woods as Silvia? Had anyone ever so im- 
 measurably told nobody ? 
 
 He searched back through his impressions and 
 memories of these last two months to see if he could 
 discover any clue that should lead him to an inter- 
 pretation. As far as he knew, their relations had 
 been uniformly harmonious, without hitch or check; 
 there had been no sign, no warning of any sort on 
 her part of an emotional change. As for himself
 
 Peter 287 
 
 Yes, there had been a change. A change was 
 here, and as it was not in her it must be in him. 
 Some psychical pigment, grain after grain, had been 
 dropping, continually dropping, into his clean cup of 
 life, each sinking down into it quietly, lying there at 
 the bottom. Now it seemed that the astonishment 
 of this morning's discovery had violently stirred up 
 the whole, and the whole, so he saw, was tinged with 
 the colour of that which had been dissolving in the 
 cool depths. For often and often, increasingly and 
 ever more vividly — here was the dropping of those 
 grains of colour — he had had the image of Silvia 
 moving splendidly on sunny heights, the rays from 
 which shone down on him through rent clouds and 
 patches of blue. There those grains had settled, 
 dissolving perhaps, but only locally tinging minute 
 remote areas of his consciousness : they had not 
 affected the full contents of the cup, that clear, cool, 
 untroubled self of his. Now with this rough shaking 
 and stirring, he was suffused with the colour of them. 
 There, high above, was Silvia and her .splendour, 
 felt now, not only recognized. He had scrambled 
 to his feet (was that it?), stung into standing, finger 
 on mouth, instead of remotely contemplating. The 
 ray that had merely shone on him now shone in him, 
 and its light pierced the fogs of his egoism. It was 
 the news itself, beyond doubt, not Silvia's withhold- 
 ing of it, which gave him that enlightenment, for to 
 his feminine nature the fact of his impending father- 
 hood struck more intimately than it would have done 
 on one more virile. It evoked, too, a dormant 
 virility; his fatherhood was the sequel of another re- 
 lationship. Clearer shone the ray; he must climb, he 
 must go to her, he must give. . . . 
 
 Close on the heels of that, and swiftly as reflection
 
 288 Peter 
 
 answers light, came the remembrance, lost for that 
 moment, that Silvia had withheld the knowledge from 
 him. He could guess now with a conjecture that 
 verged on certainty what the reason for that was, and 
 his egoism, his deep-rooted vanity, returned and rein- 
 forced, cried out against the outrage of it. She from 
 those heights, shining no longer, but merely superior, 
 looked down on him, and judged him unworthy to 
 share that white joy which crowned and enveloped her 
 love. All his pride stiffened at the thought. He 
 knew how to walk in the wet woods, sufficient unto 
 himself. 
 
 Of intention Peter had started from London rather 
 late, so that he should find the little party already 
 assembled. His father, he rested assured, would have 
 taken on himself the mantle of host, and would be 
 wearing it far more superbly than he. That he found 
 to be the case : John Mainwaring had complete pos- 
 session of the place and all the members of what was, 
 with the exception of Nellie and her husband, the 
 same unique little family gathering which had pre- 
 ceded Peter's marriage. There was Aunt Eleanor, 
 stout and seal-like, there was a column of locomotive 
 floral decoration around Aunt Joanna, there was Uncle 
 Abe, now possessor of three monstrous cartoons, and 
 Uncle Henry, the possessor of a nice stiff brandy and 
 soda, for tea still continued to burn his heart. The 
 cartoons, in fact, and the original sketches were the 
 subject, as Peter entered, of debate between the aunts, 
 to the glory and honour of their creator, who sat in 
 clouds of incense. Mrs. Wardour had already got 
 reconciled to the fact that her sister had been the 
 purchaser, and bore it well. 
 
 "Lovely they look," said Aunt Joanna; "all three
 
 Peter 289 
 
 in a row, with the rest to come opposite. Many a 
 half-hour do I spend at my buhl writing-table there, 
 not getting along at all with my correspondence by 
 reason of looking at them. I'm sure I don't know 
 which I like best." 
 
 "Tea, Peter?" asked Silvia. She had looked up 
 at his entry; now she kept her eyes on her tray. 
 
 "Yes, indeed," said Aunt Eleanor, "I'm sure they 
 look very fine, Joanna. Three already finished! 
 That's wonderful. I suppose, Mr. Mainwaring, 
 you'll be soon wanting to borrow the fourth of my 
 sketches ? " 
 
 "Dear lady, I hesitate. I positively hesitate to 
 ask you," said he, "for I know how you will hate 
 parting with it even for a week or two. But without 
 it I can never paint the larger version. The inspira- 
 tion, the first rapture, is there ; I must study it again." 
 
 Aunt Eleanor turned triumphantly to Nellie. 
 
 "You must positively come to see those sketches, 
 Mrs. Beaumont," she said. "I have all the original 
 sketches of Mr. Mainwaring's great cartoons. Such 
 a treat ! " 
 
 "I'm. sure they're charming," said Nellie. 
 
 "Charming indeed! Masterpieces! Such fire! 
 Such inspiration as never could be realized again." 
 
 "The three great cartoons," said Aunt Joanna 
 firmly, while the floral decorations trembled, "fill up 
 the whole side of Sir Abe's last addition to our house. 
 A new wing, I may call it, with bedrooms above." 
 
 "My sweet little sitting-room," said Aunt Eleanor 
 absently. "All the sketches : the fire. . . ." 
 
 "Yes, dear, and as I was telling you, the great 
 cartoons," said Aunt Joanna. "That was what I was 
 telling you." 
 
 Uncle Henry made a diversion. He liked peace
 
 290 Peter 
 
 and plenty. "Capital good brandy this," he said. 
 "You should try my plan, Abe. Have a drop of 
 brandy and leave the tea alone. A'most a pity to 
 put soda into it." 
 
 (He had not put much.) 
 
 "Well, I don't say you're not right, Henry," said 
 Uncle Abe. "But to my mind what's given me at 
 my dinner, if it's a drop of something good, tastes 
 
 all the better if I haven't had There's some old 
 
 dry Petiot now. There's a wine ! You must get on 
 the right side of Peter for that." 
 
 Silvia handed Peter his cup. 
 
 "And your cold's better ? " she asked. 
 
 "'Bout the same, thanks." 
 
 Nellie more than once had tried to catch Peter's 
 eye in order to telegraph to him her rapt appreciation 
 of the family. But though Peter had met her glance, 
 he had nothing to send in reply. 
 
 "I see the whole history of the war in my 
 sketches," proclaimed Aunt Eleanor. "News from 
 headquarters, I call them. Such insight! And the 
 fourth, dear Joanna, the submarine, you know. Ah, 
 no, you haven't seen that yet, but if Mr. Main- 
 waring's cartoon from it comes up to the sketch, 
 there'll be something for you to look at." 
 
 "Capital good brandy," said Uncle Henry. 
 Something had to be said. 
 
 Peter drifted away from the tea-table and 
 established himself next Nellie. 
 
 "So you got down all right," he said. 
 
 She let a circular sweeping glance pause in- 
 finitesimally four times, once for each of the aunts and 
 uncles. 
 
 "Yes, and what a delicious room," she said. 
 "You hadn't told me half."
 
 Peter 
 
 291 
 
 Peter was surely rather distrait, she thought. 
 Even now he didn't catch the point of her appre- 
 ciation. 
 
 "It's good panelHng," he said. "There's more of 
 it in my sitting-room next door. We'll go there 
 after tea." 
 
 She held out her cup. "Silvia, darling, one inch 
 more tea, please," she said. "An inch. Pure greed." 
 
 Silvia had an absent smile for her but no speech, 
 and took the cup from Peter's hand without looking 
 at him till he had turned again towards Nellie with 
 the desired inch. She then followed him, quick as 
 a lizard, with one glance of mute raised eyebrows. 
 Nellie got that, too; plucked it off, put it in her book. 
 She felt that she was surrounded by interests : there 
 were the priceless uncles and aunts; there was also 
 something else gomg on, not so farcical, not farcical 
 at all, perhaps, but quite as interesting. 
 
 "My dear, you have got a cold," she said to Peter. 
 
 "I thought I had," said he wheezily. 
 
 "I rather like having a cold," she went on. "It's 
 an excuse for going to a doctor and being told that 
 one has a brilliant constitution. That's Dr. Symes's 
 cure. You're a Symite, aren't you?" 
 
 Peter looked right and left, then for a single second 
 straight in front of him, where Silvia sat. 
 
 "Rather," he said. "We're all Symites." 
 
 He paused a moment. 
 
 "What a pity I didn't go to see him this morning," 
 he said very deliberately, "before I left London. I 
 might have been well by this time." 
 
 Silvia did not look up : she turned away to Mr. 
 Main waring, who was on her right. Some jerked 
 movement of her hand caused a teaspoon to clatter 
 from its saucer and fall on the floor.
 
 292 Peter 
 
 His father gave a little yodel, adapted to the 
 drawing-room. 
 
 "Let me have a word with you sometime, my 
 Peter," he said. 
 
 "Yes. I'll come to see you before I dress. Just 
 now Nellie and I are going to have a talk. Will that 
 do? Come, Nellie." 
 
 Peter drew two chairs up to the fire. 
 
 "That's nice," he said. "Priceless, aren't they? 
 Aunt Eleanor is really the most wonderful. Can you 
 bear it for three days, do you think ? They go day 
 after Christmas." 
 
 He lit a cigarette and threw it away again. 
 
 "Muck ! " he said. "By the way, Nellie, do stop 
 till we go up to town." 
 
 "Oh, my dear, I wish I could," said she. "But 
 I know Philip's got some county business on the 
 twenty-eighth that obliges him to go home. Some- 
 thing ridiculous about forbidding people to shoot 
 golden orioles, of which there aren't any." 
 
 "Can't you let him go alone ? " asked Peter. 
 
 "Well; yes, I think I might. I'll get my mother 
 to go down. Mother will always go anywhere for 
 board and lodging." 
 
 "Don't I remember that feeling!" said Peter. 
 "So do stop. I heard Silvia ask my father." 
 
 Nellie produced an admirable mimicry of Aunt 
 Eleanor's views on art, which, however, elicited from 
 Peter onlv : 
 
 "Very funny: yes, very like her," and he sub- 
 sided into silence and fire-gazing again. 
 
 "Silvia seemed rather silent," said Nellie at length. 
 
 Peter roused himself. 
 
 " Did she ? " he said. " The aunts were talking so
 
 Peter 293 
 
 much that I didn't notice it. This is the panelling 
 I spoke to you of, by the way." 
 
 "Charming. Just the same as in the drawing- 
 room, isn't it? " 
 
 "The green drawing-room, please," said Peter. 
 
 "I beg its pardon," she said. 
 
 "Granted, I'm sure," said he without a smile. 
 
 Nellie tried a handful of other topics, and her 
 curiosity to know what was the matter vastly in- 
 creased. She had narrowed down the field of her 
 conjectures to a certainty that, whatever it was, it 
 concerned her host and hostess. Yesterday at lunch, 
 when she had been alone with Silvia, she had the 
 first impression of it, yet she had seen Peter that same 
 evening in town (by way of nursing his cold he had 
 come to the theatre with her), and he, in spite of that 
 affliction, had been immensely cheerful, chuckling 
 with prophetic delight at the feast that the uncles and 
 aunts would spread for them. And he had not seen 
 Silvia since (for she had already left London) until 
 his entry into the green drawing-room half an hour 
 ago. 
 
 She would much have preferred, as on that even- 
 ing a month ago, when they dined alone together in 
 London and he had been so pointedly reticent on the 
 subject of Silvia, that he should volunteer a state- 
 ment, but his reticence then seemed of totally different 
 quality from what it was now. . . . She tried one 
 more topic. 
 
 "Peter, dear, isn't it lovely?" she said. "I'm 
 going to have a baby." 
 
 Peter jerked himself upright in his chair. 
 "Really?" he said. "And here are you telling 
 me that ! " 
 
 He broke of!.
 
 294 
 
 Peter 
 
 "What's the matter, my dear?" she said. 
 "There's something wrong." 
 
 He got up and drove with his foot into the log 
 fire. 
 
 "It's really screamingly funny that you should 
 tell me that," he said. 
 
 Nellie felt that they were getting near it now. 
 
 " Funny ? " she asked. 
 
 "Oh, Lord, I said funny, didn't I?" said he. 
 
 She got up too, laying a hand on his shoulder. 
 
 "My dear, we're very old friends," she said. 
 
 He turned round to her with some unspoken 
 bitterness souring in his eyes. 
 
 "Then I'll let you have the joke," he said. "You 
 tell me that, and yet my wife, who knows the same 
 thing about herself, has not told me." 
 
 He paused a moment. 
 
 " I found it out by accident this morning," he said. 
 "I went to see Dr. Symes about my cold — odd that 
 you should have spoken of him — and before I told 
 him an3^thing he began telling me, and that was what 
 he told me. Of course, he assumed I knew; thought 
 that I had come to him for some general directions, 
 which he gave me. Silvia had been to him two days 
 before. She hasn't said a word to me. Not a word." 
 
 Nellie heard herself give some ejaculation. 
 
 "Now you're fond of psychological problems," he 
 said. "Also you're a woman, and know how women 
 feel. Under what circumstances, feeling how, in 
 fact, would a woman do that? Interesting point, 
 isn't it? It's beyond me." 
 
 "No quarrel? No misunderstanding? Nothing 
 of that sort ? " 
 
 "None. I've felt she was watching me some- 
 times. I've "
 
 Peter 295 
 
 "Well? Can you describe that?" she asked. 
 
 "I've only thought of that this minute," he said, 
 "and now I don't really see any connexion. But when 
 my father knew my mother had gone, and was posing 
 and posturing as a lost and stricken man, Silvia was 
 watching me to see, I think, if I had real sympathy, 
 real pity for him. I did feel then as if I was 
 being tested. But I made that all right. I did 
 it cleverly. I gave the most cordial welcome to 
 his stopping on here — Lord, what evenings they 
 were ! — for endless weeks, and left him to tell her 
 about it." 
 
 "Are you quite sure you made it all right?" she 
 asked. 
 
 "She told me she had been wrong; she told me she 
 had misjudged me, when she thought me feelingless," 
 he said. "But even if she made a reservation, or 
 reconsidered it, what then ? " 
 
 Nellie's hand still rested, now with pressure, on 
 his shoulder. 
 
 "xVnd what if Silvia put herself, so to speak, in 
 your father's place ? " she said. "What if it occurred 
 to her that you had been charming with her, and 
 clever with her? Mind, that's only a guess." 
 
 Again Peter thrust the logs together. 
 
 "She trusts me too much," he said at length. "She 
 loves me too much." 
 
 This time Nellie was silent. 
 
 "Well? " said he at length. 
 
 "She thinks you've been clever with her and 
 charming with her," she said. "That's it. I think 
 that she was quite wrong in keeping this news 
 from you, but that's why. Silvia isn't like us, you 
 must remember. We may be complicated and clever 
 in our way, but she's not like that. There's some-
 
 296 Peter 
 
 thing tremendous about vSilvia. A simplicity, a 
 splendour." 
 
 "And just when I was beginning to realize that, 
 to adore it, she does this. I can't forgive it," 
 said he. 
 
 She felt then, as perhaps never before, the charm 
 of his egoism : it really was such a charming fellow 
 he was egoistic about. 
 
 "My dear, it's jusL because you, as you say, are 
 beginning, to realize that and to adore it, that you 
 feel you can't forgive it. You would forgive it easily 
 enough if you didn't care. But put yourself in her 
 place. Assume, as I feel sure we're right in assum- 
 ing, that we have got at the reason for her not telling 
 you ; it is exactly what a woman of that simplicity 
 and splendour would do. With all there is of her, 
 she loves you." 
 
 "A charming w-ay of show'ing it," said Peter. 
 
 "You're hurt; you're smarting," she said. 
 "Otherwise you wouldn't say that." 
 
 "She has spoiled everything," exclaimed Peter. 
 "Just when " 
 
 All through their talk Nellie had been conscious 
 of a dual stirring, not only in him — that was clear 
 enough — but in herself. Not many weeks ago she 
 would certainly have had her whole sympathies en- 
 listed on his side. She would have fanned, secretly 
 and stealthily no doubt, the flame of his resentment 
 against Silvia, and with the same hidden action have 
 insinuated into his mind that there was somebody who 
 was eager to console, to help him to forget — one who 
 gave him a welcome. . . . Even now some breath of 
 woodland irresponsibility, the morality of Dryads and 
 Satyrs, swept over her, with the whispering of wild 
 things and the stirrings in the bushes. Like sought
 
 Peter 297 
 
 like there, deriding the consequences to others. 
 Should she twang that string, let the wind blow on 
 that harp in the trees, she knew well that something 
 would answer it. He was hurt and sore; there were 
 woodland balms. . . . 
 
 Something within her again jerked back the finger 
 that hovered over the string, ready to pluck it, and 
 turned her hand into a shield instead, that prevented 
 the wind from making the harp vibrate. Silvia had 
 her harp, too, and he had begun, ever so faintly, to 
 vibrate in answer to Silvia's harp, and not to hers. 
 ... In this second impulse there was compassion for 
 Silvia, there was motherhood. She made her choice. 
 
 •'You can't say that she spoiled it, my dear," she 
 said. ** You know how she loved you when you asked 
 her to marry you." 
 
 Peter had a frown for this. 
 
 "I thought " he began. 
 
 "I know what you thought. Silvia very likely 
 told you that she wanted just to be allowed " 
 
 "I never told you that," said he quickly. 
 
 "Of course you didn't. But wasn't it clear that 
 before you married, she loved you as a boy loves, with 
 some tempestuous desire of possession ? " 
 
 "But she's got me," said he. "Tt isn't as if there 
 were anyone else." 
 
 "I know that, and she knows that for certain. It's 
 nothing, of that kind that revolts her." 
 
 "Revolts? " asked he. 
 
 "Oh, my dear, short of that, wouldn't she have 
 told you what she has known for two days, and sus- 
 pected long before ? But you w^ould be quite wrong 
 to think that she loves you any less. What you don't 
 see, especially, beyond that, is that Silvia has become 
 a perfectly changed person. She keeps her splendour.
 
 298 Peter 
 
 Keeps it? Good heavens! I should think she did. 
 But what she learned the other day quite changes 
 her. She has become a woman, and she must have 
 not just a man to love, but a man to love her. You've 
 hinted that she's on the way to get one. That's the 
 sum of the consolation I've got for you." 
 
 Nellie, having determined, having chosen, was be- 
 ing magnificent just then, and all the time the Dryad 
 within her scolded and derided her. 
 
 "You fool, you conventionalist," the Dryad 
 shrieked. "He might be yours; he's as weak as 
 water, and vain, vain ! You want him : wait a few 
 months and see how you want him ! Idiot ! " 
 
 Nellie heard all that as plainly as she heard the 
 whistle of the wind in the chimney. 
 
 " It won't be easy," she said. "You've got to get 
 out of yourself, Peter, a thing, by the way, that I've 
 never succeeded in doing. And when you've got out 
 of yourself you've got to convince her that you've got 
 into herself. I wouldn't bet on your chance." 
 
 "Have I been a brute? " asked he. 
 
 Nellie hesitated : she had never yet realized how 
 close to love had been her intimacy with Peter, or 
 how far from love her own marriage-bond. And now, 
 when, bitterly resenting what Silvia had done, he 
 turned to her. . . . 
 
 Peter, in her silence, repeated his question. 
 
 "A brute? " he asked, and now his voice shook. 
 
 She took her hand briskly off his shoulder. They 
 had stood there like that, comrades and friends, for 
 ten minutes now, and her fingers had dwelt on his 
 shoulder, the bone and the muscle of it. 
 
 "Not a brute at all," she said. "You couldn't be 
 a brute, you darling. But a liar and a cheat." 
 
 "Ha .'"said Peter.
 
 Peter 299 
 
 He walked round the room after this, with a 
 whistle for her and him, and a kick for a footstool 
 that got in his Avay. 
 
 "You don't help me," he said. "What's to be 
 done ? " 
 
 Somehow, at his absence of resentment at what 
 she had said, and at his appeal to her for help, the 
 old delightful level of comradeship smoothed itself 
 out. 
 
 " Tell her that you know," suggested Nellie. " Do 
 it nicely." 
 
 "I couldn't possibly do it nicely. Confound it 
 all " 
 
 She considered this. 
 
 "If you can't do it nicely, it will only make it 
 worse," she conceded. 
 
 "What then?" 
 
 "Wait." 
 
 "For her to tell me? " demanded Peter. 
 
 "Yes, or for you just to know. It won't come to 
 that. Oh, you absurd people ! Shall I tell her that 
 you know ? " 
 
 Peter thought over this. 
 
 "It's becoming comic," he said presently. 
 "That's the silliest thing you've said yet." 
 
 "Perhaps. But it isn't comic, my dear." 
 
 "I know it isn't. That's my ferocious flippancy. 
 Gravediggers." 
 
 "And it isn't comic for Silvia," she added. 
 
 The spasm of the woodland died away again. 
 
 "She hasn't told me," said Peter hopelessly. "I 
 can't get over that." 
 
 "You've got to get over that. Otherwise there's 
 nothing ahead. She's got to get over more than 
 that."
 
 300 
 
 Peter 
 
 All the worst of him returned. 
 
 "You speak as if I hadn't given her all I had got," 
 he said. 
 
 "You're getting more, my dear. Keep on getting 
 it, and keep on giving it." 
 
 Peter looked at the clock. 
 
 "Here endeth the first lesson," he said. "Not 
 even out of the prophets. I must go and see my 
 father. More acting. Necessary, you know." 
 
 He flung his arms out. 
 
 " I daren't be real," he said. " No one knows what 
 an abomination I am." 
 
 Quite unexpectedly Nellie felt weary and done 
 for. She pulled herself together for a final encour- 
 agement. 
 
 "Ah, what a hopeful sign ! " she said. 
 
 He lingered a moment. 
 
 "Quarter to eight," he said. "We dine at half- 
 past. Think of the old quarter-to-eights ! Ritz, 
 opera, Mrs. Trentham ! Charlie and Bobby and 
 Tommy and me and you, and Sophy and Ella and 
 any fool you like to mention. Lord Poole, now " 
 
 "No, that won't do," said she. "He was real. I 
 grant you the rest weren't. But he was real : he 
 completely enjoyed himself — does still, bless him ! " 
 
 "Wish I did," said Peter. "I used to. And I 
 don't." 
 
 "You won't as long as you think about it." 
 
 There was the woodland touch to finish with. 
 
 "You're only ninety, are you?" she said. "Or is 
 it ninety-one? " 
 
 "Ninety," said Peter, grinning.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The grin soon cleared off. His father rose from the 
 sofa on which he had been so eleg^antly resting, as 
 Peter entered, and clasped his hand, though he had 
 seen him at tea a couple of hours before. 
 
 "Have you heard from your mother? " he asked. 
 "My loved and lost one?" He smoothed his vel- 
 veteen coat as he spoke. 
 
 My loved and lost one ! The velveteen coat ! . . . 
 The little demons swarmed into Peter's soul — the 
 demons of ridicule and cynicism and contempt and 
 all the host of such. But rebel and ridicule as he 
 might, he knew that he had been sham and charlatan 
 on an immeasurably greater scale than his father. 
 
 "I had a report of her a couple of days ago," he 
 said. "Just a message through her solicitors." 
 
 Mr. Mainwaring put the tips of his fingers in a 
 neat row into his mouth, as if, in his suspense, to 
 gnaw the nails of them. But he committed no such 
 feat of violence. He merely sucked them, and took 
 them out again. 
 
 "Tell me," he said. 
 
 Peter tried to evoke any sort of kindliness or sym- 
 pathy from his mind, and failed. 
 
 "She is quite well apparently," he said, "and 
 she " 
 
 "She asked after me?" suggested his father. 
 
 "Yes, she asked after you. She hoped you were 
 —comfortable, I think she said." 
 
 "Comfortable! My God ! Comfortable!" 
 
 T 301
 
 302 
 
 Peter 
 
 Peter waited till this paroxysm of irony was spent. 
 "I ought to have written to her to-day," he said, 
 "but I didn't. I shall write to-morrow. What 
 shall I tell her about you ? " 
 
 "What your heart bids you," said he. "Tell her 
 about me, as I am. Miserable, homeless, except for 
 the charity of my children. I count Silvia as a child," 
 he explained. 
 
 Peter felt absolutely relentless. 
 "So you long for her to come back to you," he 
 said. "I will tell her." 
 
 He recrarded Peter with his chin in the hollow of 
 his hand. 
 
 "You don't understand, my dear, the depth " 
 
 he began. 
 
 "Explain it to me, then, father," said he. 
 "Take your own case, then. Supposing Silvia — 
 I use your case for the absurdity of it — supposing 
 Silvia left your house. What would you do ? Would 
 you not give her complete freedom to return or not 
 to return ? Would not your heart say, ' My love for 
 her wants only what she wants ' ? " 
 
 "Then I won't say that you long for her to come 
 back to you," said Peter. " I only want to know your 
 wishes. I will transmit them. But — but why not 
 do it yourself ? You know her solicitors. Anything 
 you send them will be forwarded to her." 
 "The scoundrels ! " cried Mr. Mainwaring. 
 "Oh, I don't see that," said Peter. He stifled a 
 yawn : it was all too stupid. 
 
 "Scoundrels! " cried Mr. Mainwaring. "Aren't 
 
 they " He appeared unable to say exactly what 
 
 they were, and Peter got up. 
 
 "I'll convey any message you like, father," he 
 said. "I only suggest that you might just as well
 
 Peter 303 
 
 send it yourself. There are two things you can do. 
 You can summon my mother back, and, if you choose, 
 divorce her if she doesn't come, on the grounds of 
 desertion. The other is to acquiesce in her stopping 
 away as long as she chooses. I don't see why you 
 put a hypothetical case about Silvia and me. You 
 want her to come back, or you don't." 
 
 This point of view necessitated some more strid- 
 ings on the part of Mr. Mainwaring. 
 
 "My angel, your angel, your Silvia," he said, 
 "has asked me if I would not like to spend the rest 
 of the winter on the Riviera. A little sun for me, 
 she said only to-night, a little change, a little chance 
 of the healing of my wound. She offers me two 
 months on the Riviera. Should not I be wrong if I 
 did not accept her sweet charity ? " 
 
 "Leave it over, you mean, about my mother," 
 asked Peter, "till you get back ? Get a little sun first, 
 and that sort of thing. I think that would be a very 
 sensible arrangement. That was a charming idea of 
 Silvia's." 
 
 He laid his hand on Peter's shoulder, and his voice 
 broke. 
 
 "Make Silvia happier than I have made my 
 Maria," he said. "The love of a good woman ! My 
 God ! What brutes we men are ! No, not brutes : 
 heaven forbid that I should call you, or indeed my- 
 self, a brute. But more tenderness, my Peter, more 
 making of allowances. Experto crede." 
 
 He paused a moment in a fine attitude. 
 
 " Abe Darley ! " he said. " Henry Wardour ! They 
 and their wives ! Their pleasant chaff : their gentle 
 fun ! Yes, when you begin to step down from the 
 tableland of life you want to find such hands as those 
 in yours. A brilliant woman, too, is Joanna Darley.
 
 304 
 
 Peter 
 
 How she appreciates the cartoons. And your Aunt 
 Eleanor ! Eleanor, as she suggested that I should 
 call her. We are John and Eleanor. She has com- 
 missioned me to do her portrait before I attack the 
 fourth, the tremendous cartoon. Submarines: you 
 remember my sketch for it." 
 
 Peter went down the corridor to his room and 
 Silvia's with the gravity that attaches to the conclu- 
 sion of a comic interlude. The tragic burden, all the 
 worse for its temporary suspension, must be taken up 
 again, and the interlude had hardened rather than 
 softened him. He despised his father for being a 
 "fake," and that contempt stung him also, as with the 
 back-stroke of his own lash. Smarting from that his 
 mind went back to what Silvia had withheld from 
 him, and there was the shrewdest hurt of all. . . . 
 
 His bath was ready for him, and as he soaked and 
 sprayed himself some tautness of physical vigour 
 pictured the usual sequence to his bath, the dressing- 
 gowned and drying seance in the chair close to 
 Silvia's toilet table. He would sink his resentment; 
 he would tap at her door and go in to her with a flood 
 of normal nonsense. Then, if she told him now, as 
 she must surely do, the news she had withheld, he 
 would receive it as news hitherto unknown to him. 
 
 He arrived at this stage of resolution, finished his 
 bath and came out. And at that moment, even as his 
 knuckles were raised to inquire at her door, his re- 
 sentment against her, seizing upon some new pretext 
 of bitterness, poured over him again. His hand 
 dropped as he turned and went into his own room. 
 He was late also — that served for an excuse — for at 
 the moment the sonorous bell in the turret above 
 Silvia's room made its proclamation to the listening 
 earth that dinner was served at Howes.
 
 Peter 305 
 
 On the other side of the door Silvia, fully dressed 
 and following the familiar sounds, was waiting for 
 him to enter. How often had she waited like that, 
 longing for him ! She longed for him now, though 
 dreading his coming, and so intertwined were these 
 two that she could not disentangle the one from the 
 other. She would tell him just what she had deter- 
 mined that he must know, she would ask his pardon 
 for not having told him of the news before. She had 
 used up, so it seemed to her, all the emotion of which 
 she was mistress; what lay immediately in front of 
 her covered like some hard integument the longing 
 and dread with which she waited for him, though it 
 left her superficial perceptions alert. The clink of 
 the coals in the grate, the flapping of the flame there, 
 were more vivid to her senses than anything else. 
 There was the beating of rain on her windows, for 
 the snow had ceased, and a wind from the south-west 
 was beginning to bluster outside. . . . Then she 
 heard Peter come out of his bathroom, and 
 presently the door of his bedroom shut. Already 
 the bell sounded sonorously above her : she must 
 tell him then that night, when he came up to 
 bed. There was relief in that. For an hour or two 
 more the only barrier between him and her was in 
 her own knowledge : it was not formally erected. 
 She was conscious now that her heart had been beat- 
 ing fast in the anticipation of his coming, and she 
 sat down for a few minutes (Peter would be late also) 
 to recover her poise before she went downstairs. 
 There was to be a jollification that night for tenants 
 and servants : a dance for the elders, a Christmas tree 
 for the children. 
 
 The wind which just now she had heard flinging 
 the rain against her windows rose to a scream, and
 
 3o6 Peter 
 
 Peter, hurrying on with his dressing next door, saw 
 a cloud of smoke driven out from his grate, followed 
 by another and yet another, till in a few minutes the 
 room was thick with its pungency. He remembered 
 then that the Jackdaw had told him that something 
 had gone wrong with the cowl of the chimney, and 
 no doubt this change of wind caused this regurgita- 
 tion . . , these things always happened just before 
 Christmas or bank holidays, when the British work- 
 man became even more deliberate than usual. Open- 
 ing the window seemed only to make things worse, 
 w-nd, heavy with his cold, he had no intention on this 
 chill and bitter night of sleeping fireless. As with 
 choking throat and streaming eyes he redoubled the 
 speed of his dressing, he rang his bell and told his 
 servant to transfer the necessaries for sleep and toilet 
 to some other room. The uncles and aunts occupied 
 the next suites, but farther along, beyond the head of 
 the main stairs, was an unoccupied bedroom and 
 dressing room, and he ordered that a fire should be 
 lit there, and the change made during dinner, so that 
 he would find the room ready for his tenancy that 
 night. As he came out from that mephitic fog on to 
 the corridor Silvia also emerged from her room. 
 
 "My chimney's smoking like the devil," he said. 
 " I remember now that the Jackdaw told me there was 
 somethmg wrong with it. It's quite impossible to 
 sleep there. I'm having my room changed." 
 
 He finished buttoning a shirt-link as he spoke, not 
 looking at her. Somehow this set a key of coolness, 
 of casualness. 
 
 "How tiresome for you," she said. "Where"— 
 she stumbled over the question — "where have you 
 gone ? " 
 
 "Oh, somewhere down the passage," said Peter.
 
 Peter 307 
 
 Just now, if he had come in to talk to her after 
 his bath, she would have told him what he had to 
 know. Now her resolution had a little cooled : it was 
 not hot enough to enable her to ask him to come and 
 talk to her when he came upstairs that night, nor yet 
 to ask him more definitely where his room was. Be- 
 sides, with the entertainment for the servants they 
 would all be very late, and to-morrow would furnish 
 a more convenient occasion. Or if not then, and not 
 spontaneously on her part, he would come to her some 
 night, seeking her, and then she would tell him. . . . 
 In the interval there was the family farce of jollity 
 to be kept up : it would only add to the difficulty of 
 that if from her communication to him something 
 unconjecturably critical arose. She had no idea how 
 Peter would take it : there could be no mortal wound, 
 for that implied that she was to him all that she 
 missed being. But his pride, his vanity; how she 
 longed to kill it, and how she hated to hurt it. 
 
 On his side, as they went down the broad stairs, 
 resentment at what he knew she had withheld out- 
 shouted all the counsel Nellie had given him, out- 
 shouted, too, the authentic whisper of his own heart. 
 He had but to listen to that, to act when action came, 
 and always to think and to feel and to be without 
 forethought, just blindly following its suggestions. 
 But for that small voice to be heard he must unstopper 
 his ears from that cotton-wool of vanity which shut 
 out from his hearing all but the complaints and self- 
 justifications which trickled through it. It had been 
 and it was her business to tell him. . . . 
 
 "My father says you have treated him to a month 
 or two in the South," he said. "That is very good 
 of you : he will enjoy it." 
 
 There was the ring as of a duty discharged in this
 
 3o8 Peter 
 
 that robbed it of spontaneousness, and it gave to her 
 its own woodenness. Peter had not meant it like 
 that : he wanted to thank her for her kindness, to 
 let her know that he appreciated it. But all that 
 passed now had to travel through the falsity of that 
 situation between them, as through some mould which 
 made it take a shape not truly its own, and come out 
 at the end grimed and distorted. 
 
 "January and February are delightful on the 
 Riviera," she said. "A change will do him good." 
 
 To him that seemed to double-lock the wards of 
 the gate that should have stood open. They looked at 
 each other through its bars : the very attempt on both 
 sides to meet the conventional needs of the moment 
 —the friendly word or two on the stairs — had but 
 served to sever them. The femininity of his nature, 
 already resentful at what had been withheld from 
 him, construed her reply into a further withdrawal of 
 herself, overlooking the fact that it was his own re- 
 sentment that had led him into conventionalities of 
 speech. His pride choked him : was it nothing to 
 her that she was ripening with his fatherhood? Had 
 she no inkling that not his head only but his heart 
 was, as in some belated dawn, beginning to glow with 
 her splendour? The male element in him was awak- 
 ing, like Adam from the sleep which the Lord God 
 had laid on him, and was beginning to find, to 
 realize that what he expunged and expelled from him- 
 self became the living glory and the complement of 
 him. All such perception was still clouded with the 
 blanketing vapours of his own resentment and egoism, 
 but through the rifts, from high above Silvia 
 shone. . . . 
 
 His pride choked him. What choked her was her 
 love, that could not breathe but in its own high air.
 
 Peter 309 
 
 Uncle Henry, on the occasion of his first visit to 
 Howes, just before Silvia's marriage, had found (and 
 deplored) a certain "standoffishness," so he expressed 
 it, in his new nephew. His wife had not agreed with 
 him; she found Peter to be "very refined." But 
 during the three days that now followed Uncle Henry 
 quite scrapped his previous verdict. There could not 
 have been a more seasonable host : Peter was full of 
 fun, and indeed Aunt Eleanor was almost disposed 
 to follow her husband's example and reconsider her 
 favourable opinion of Peter's refinement. It was 
 really naughty of him to put up that bit of mistletoe 
 without warning her of it, and Mr. Mainwaring's 
 chaste salute had come as a great surprise to her, 
 before she realized the public temptation she was mak- 
 ing of herself by standing so squarely and indubitably 
 just below it. But there was no harm in a good old- 
 fashioned Christmas, and if Peter would insist on 
 having a bowl of wassail to usher in the midnight, 
 after all, he was the host, and it would have been 
 mere churlishness to refuse to drink that second (or 
 was it third?) glass that he filled up for her when she 
 was not looking. There were foolish games on these 
 evenings, and when the ladies went to bed roars of 
 laughter ascended from the billiard-room, where the 
 men "kept it up " till any hour. There was no harm 
 in being young, so she and Aunt Joanna agreed, 
 melted into unwilling cordiality over this riotous 
 hospitality. 
 
 Indeed, if there was any "standofiishness " to be 
 detected, it was Silvia who must be impeached. Yet 
 "standoffishness," even to Uncle Henry's limited 
 power of analysis, did not quite express Silvia's 
 quality. "Just a bit under the mark, not up to 
 romps," was the definition that he and Uncle Abe
 
 310 
 
 Peter 
 
 arrived at, as, after waving their fat hands from the 
 window of the motor that took them to the station at 
 the conclusion of their visit, they lit the first cigars 
 of Peter's Christmas present to them. Naturally 
 they had not begun on them when they were staying 
 with him, for there was always a box open in the 
 smoking-room. 
 
 "Come on wonderful, has Peter," said Uncle 
 Henry. "A jolly boy. Handsome, too. Not much 
 wrong with that marriage." 
 
 Uncle Abe had a short attack of what he called 
 his "morning cough." Joanna, who was in the other 
 motor, called it "smoke and drink." 
 
 "Shouldn't wonder if you're right, Henry," he 
 said when he recovered. "I had the same idea." 
 
 "Well, I must say it occurred to me," said Henry. 
 "She seemed a bit thoughtful. And that would 
 account for Peter's high spirits. Amazing ! " 
 
 Uncle Abe put up his window. 
 
 "I've a bit of a cough this morning," he said. 
 "And there's a pretty fortune for any child to come 
 
 into." 
 
 Peter was sitting over the fire in his bedroom that 
 night w'atching it, and trying to determine that when 
 a certain coal ceased flaring with its spray of bubbling 
 gas he would go to Silvia's room, and, one way or 
 another, make an end of an intolerable situation. He 
 had no idea (so much depended on her) what his 
 "line " would be. Certainly he would tell her that he 
 knew what she, all these days, had kept from him ; 
 but, beyond that, he could not, in the vaguest manner 
 even, forecast the development of the situation. 
 During these four days she had shown him nothing 
 that he could construe into a signal ; not once had he
 
 Peter 311 
 
 seen her privately, and, when in public, he had kept 
 up his role of the rollicking host. He had no idea, 
 for instance, whether she knew into what lodging his 
 surly chimney, not yet coaxed into proper behaviour, 
 had driven him. She had asked no further question 
 since that general inquiry on the stairs, and he had 
 volunteered no information. Equally had he avoided 
 any private conference with Nellie; sometimes in a 
 casual meeting of their eyes he had conjectured an 
 unspoken communication; but he knew her views, as 
 the situation concerned himself and Silvia, and there 
 was no use in hammering at that any further. 
 Nothing else, comparatively, concerned him. 
 
 There had been a general air of fatigued reaction 
 abroad this evening. Mrs. Wardour, Silvia, and 
 Nellie had gone to bed within a couple of hours of 
 the termination of dinner, and he and his father had 
 had but a short seance in the billiard-room before 
 parting. Peter had an excuse for this early dispersal, 
 for he must be at Whitehall by ten o'clock to-morrow 
 morning, to deal with accumulations. 
 
 Yes; when that lump of coal collapsed he would 
 go to Silvia. Sleepily he watched it, trying in some 
 ill-defined manner to abstract himself from agitating 
 thought, to give himself a rest before he plunged into 
 some sort of breaking waves. He drowsed for a little, 
 and, still looking at his fire between half-closed lids, 
 he fell fast asleep. 
 
 The fire had gone out except for a glimmer of 
 dying embers, and for the moment of bewildered 
 awakening before he realized that he was still in his 
 armchair in front of the grate he thought that he was 
 back in his old room, and that the chimney was 
 smoking. As he came to himself, he realized where 
 he was, and even more keenly realized why his mind
 
 312 
 
 Peter 
 
 had caught hold of that idea of the smoking chimney. 
 There was a strong smell of smoke in the room, and, 
 jumping up, he turned on the switch of the electric 
 light, which was close to his hand. He heard it 
 click, but there was no illumination in answer. He 
 had matches in his pocket, and, lighting one, kindled 
 one of the candles that stood on the mantelpiece. 
 Wide awake now, he was more than ever conscious 
 of that smell of burning, and going to the door he 
 opened it. A great swirl of smoke came in, bellying 
 up from the main staircase on the left. Through it 
 there came the noise of crackling wood, and a shoot of 
 veiled flame. 
 
 Peter gripped his own mind. On his right, close 
 at hand, were the rooms where his father and Nellie 
 slept. Farther along to the right was a second stair- 
 case, communicating with the ground floor, and com- 
 municating also with the servants' wing. Half shut- 
 ting his eyes against the sting of the smoke, he 
 groped his way first to Nellie's door. 
 
 "Nellie," he cried, throwing it open, "get up at 
 once : there's a fire in the house." 
 
 He never felt more completely himself; all his 
 brain was tinglingly awake, and behind his brain 
 something else. . . . 
 
 " Don't wait a moment," he said. " Get along the 
 passage and down the stairs. I'll send my father to 
 you." 
 
 He saw her on her way and plunged into his 
 father's room. 
 
 "House on fire, father," he said. "Go straight 
 through to your right into the servants' wing, and 
 bang on every door. Wake Mrs. Wardour, two doors 
 away. Then join Nellie downstairs. Don't wait : I 
 don't know how serious it is."
 
 Peter 313 
 
 Away to the left, beyond that column of smoke 
 now pouring up the main staircase, was the baize 
 door behind which were the rooms that he and 
 Silvia had occupied, and where now she was alone. 
 He tried to dash along the corridor to reach them, 
 but the heat drove him back. Already tongues 
 of flame licked through the banisters of the main 
 staircase, past w'hich he had to go in order to get to 
 her. He was cut off from that access. 
 
 Suddenly and serenely he remembered another 
 access. Along the front of the house below the win- 
 dows of the room he at present occupied and those 
 rooms behind the baize door beyond the flaming stair- 
 case, there ran externally the coping which had re- 
 minded him of that which ran along the flat belonging 
 to Nellie's mother in London. He remembered in the 
 same flash the discussion that Nellie and he had held : 
 how she had told him that, if he ever loved, he would 
 be forced to make the passage of such a road at the 
 bidding of that divine compulsion. It would not con- 
 cern him, so she had said, that he incurred a mortal 
 and a useless risk. He might not be able to rescue 
 (here was the thesis) the beloved of his soul : any 
 thought of rescue was outside the question. But, so 
 she argued, he would not be able, if he loved, to resist 
 the imperishable impulse. 
 
 Through the thick scorching air, with his candle 
 guttering in the heat, he groped his way back to his 
 room, and shutting the door against that burning 
 blast, he went to the window. The gleam of the 
 white stone coping was just visible, and taking ofT his 
 coat and waistcoat, so as to be able to get closer to the 
 wall, and kicking off his shoes, so as to secure a better 
 grip, he let himself down on to it. There it was some 
 ten or twelve inches in width ; by standing very
 
 314 Peter 
 
 straight up, with his arms flat out against the wall of 
 the house, he had his balance well below him. 
 
 He moved his left foot first and brought the 
 right foot up to it. He rocked at this first 
 movement, and recovered himself. . . . And then 
 when once he had started on his perilous way, the 
 dawn and morning of it all broke on him. Cautiously 
 and clingingly he advanced, but the caution — there 
 was the sunlight of it — was no longer for himself, but 
 for her whom he sought. For himself it seemed to 
 matter not at all whether an unnerved step terminated 
 his expedition : the object of it, the necessity, sheer 
 as the drop below him, of reaching Silvia was 
 utterly dominant. He could hear a dim roaring 
 inside the house, but it neither delayed nor hastened 
 him. 
 
 He had come to the window of her room, and now 
 he could lean an elbow on the sill of it, while he 
 rattled at the sash and tapped at the glass. Through 
 her blind he saw her room spring into light, and 
 found himself recording the fact that this electric cir- 
 cuit was still working. Immediately he heard her 
 voice : 
 
 " Who is it ? " she cried. " What is it ? " 
 
 "Peter," he said. "Open the window quickly." 
 
 The sash flew up, and she was there, close to him. 
 
 "Give me a hand, darling," he said. "Just pull 
 me in. Don't ask any questions." 
 
 The window-sill was high above the coping, but 
 with her hands, firm and strong as a boy's, on his 
 arm, he scrambled into the room. 
 
 "The house is on fire," he said. "We're cut off. 
 The main staircase is blazing. But it will be all 
 right : don't be frightened. My father will have 
 roused the servants by now."
 
 Peter 315 
 
 He paused, panting from some retarded terror of 
 his climb, unfelt while he made it. 
 
 "Silvia! " he said. 
 
 She stared at him a moment. 
 
 "But you were safe, Peter," she said. "What 
 good was it that you came ? Along that coping, did 
 you come, all the way from your room ? " 
 
 "I'm here anyhow; good, broad coping," he said. 
 "Now, can we do anything more? Let's be prac- 
 tical : let's think." 
 
 For an immortal second she held him close. 
 
 "The big bell in the turret! " she said. "The 
 rope goes through the corner of the little lobby out- 
 side my bathroom." 
 
 "Oh, good thought," said he. "Come and help 
 me to pull it. We'll talk afterwards, when we've done 
 all we can." 
 
 The sound of that reached the little town a mile 
 away ; the glare on the sky endorsed the signal. Out- 
 side on the terrace, facing the lake, and now vividly 
 illuminated, were the other occupants from the house, 
 busy with rescuings, and presently, shouted up to 
 ^he two through the open window by which Peter had 
 climbed in, came the news, conveyed here by tele- 
 phone, that the fire-engines were on their way. A 
 ladder was being fetched from the stable. . . . Had 
 they no rope? . . . Then, as the conflagration spread, 
 the electric light snapped itself out. 
 
 They had gone back, when the bell had done its 
 work, to Silvia's room. The angry glare from out- 
 side shone in through the window, and smoke drifted 
 in from below the baize door that shut them off from 
 the burning corridor. Already the fog of it obscured 
 the glare. 
 
 "That's all we can do," said Peter. "Come
 
 3i6 Peter 
 
 close, my dear. You mustn't be afraid. There's no 
 need. . . . We " 
 
 She was cHnging to him now. 
 
 "I have something to tell you," she said. 
 
 "You needn't," said he quickly. "I know it." 
 
 "You can't," said Silvia. 
 
 "But I do: your baby you mean, bless you." 
 
 Suddenly her mouth began to quiver. 
 
 "Oh, my God! why did you come here?" she 
 said. "You were safe." 
 
 Outside beyond the baize door there was a crash 
 of something falling, and she shrank into him. 
 
 "Why did you come? " she repeated. 
 
 "Because I couldn't help myself. It wasn't my 
 fault. You don't understand " 
 
 "You had to, do you mean? " she asked. 
 
 He made no reply to this : his presence answered 
 for him. 
 
 "Oh, go back," she cried. "You can go back 
 still. If you love me " 
 
 He took her close into one great enfoldment. 
 
 The roaring of the burning house, the glare of its 
 great beacon, grew momently more vivid. Then from 
 outside came a yell of voices, and they went to the 
 window. 
 
 "They've come," said Peter quietly. 
 
 A grinding of the gravel below, shouted orders, a 
 raising of a ladder. . . . 
 
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