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THE LEE SHORE
by
R. MACAULAY
1912
TO P.R.
That division, the division of those who have and those who have not,
runs so deep as almost to run to the bottom.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
A Hereditary Bequest
CHAPTER II
The Choice of a Career
CHAPTER III
The Hopes
CHAPTER IV
The Complete Shopper
CHAPTER V
The Splendid Morning
CHAPTER VI
Hilary, Peggy, and the Boarders
CHAPTER VII
Diana, Actæon, and Lord Evelyn
CHAPTER VIII
Peter Understands
CHAPTER IX
The Fat in the Fire
CHAPTER X
The Loss of a Profession
CHAPTER XI
The Loss of an Idea
CHAPTER XII
The Loss of a Goblet and Other Things
CHAPTER XIII
The Loss of the Single State
CHAPTER XIV
Peter, Rhoda, and Lucy
CHAPTER XV
The Loss of a Wife
CHAPTER XVI
A Long Way
CHAPTER XVII
Mischances in the Rain
CHAPTER XVIII
The Breaking-Point
CHAPTER XIX
The New Life
CHAPTER XX
The Last Loss
CHAPTER XXI
On the Shore
THE LEE SHORE
CHAPTER I
A HEREDITARY BEQUEST
During the first week of Peter Margerison's first term at school,
Urquhart suddenly stepped, a radiant figure on the heroic scale, out of
the kaleidoscopic maze of bemusing lights and colours that was Peter's
vision of his new life.
Peter, seeing Urquhart in authority on the football field, asked, "Who is
it?" and was told, "Urquhart, of course," with the implication "Who else
could it be?"
"Oh," Peter said, and blushed. Then he was told, "Standing right in
Urquhart's way like that! Urquhart doesn't want to be stared at by all
the silly little kids in the lower-fourth." But Urquhart was, as a
matter of fact, probably used to it.
So that was Urquhart. Peter Margerison hugged secretly his two pieces of
knowledge; so secret they were, and so enormous, that he swelled visibly
with them; there seemed some danger that they might even burst him. That
great man was Urquhart. Urquhart was that great man. Put so, the two
pieces of knowledge may seem to have a certain similarity; there was in
effect a delicate discrimination between them. If not wholly distinct one
from the other, they were anyhow two separate aspects of the same
startling and rather magnificent fact.
Then there was another aspect: did Urquhart know that he, Margerison, was
in fact Margerison? He showed no sign of such knowledge; but then it was
naturally not part of his business to concern himself with silly little
kids in the lower-fourth. Peter never expected it.
But a few days after that, Peter came into the lavatories and
found Urquhart there, and Urquhart looked round and said, "I say,
you--Margerison. Just cut down to the field and bring my cap. You'll find
it by the far goal, Smithson's ground. You can bring it to the lavatories
and hang it on my peg. Cut along quick, or you'll be late."
Peter cut along quick, and found the velvet tasselled thing and brought
it and hung it up with the care due to a thing so precious as a fifteen
cap. The school bell had clanged while he was down on the field, and he
was late and had lines. That didn't matter. The thing that had emerged
was, Urquhart knew he was Margerison.
After that, Urquhart did not have occasion to honour Margerison with his
notice for some weeks. It was, of course, a disaster of Peter's that
brought them into personal relations. Throughout his life, Peter's
relations were apt to be based on some misfortune or other; he always had
such bad luck. Vainly on Litany Sundays he put up his petition to be
delivered "from lightning and tempest, from plague, pestilence, and
famine, from battle and murder, and from sudden death." Disasters seemed
to crowd the roads on which he walked; so frequent were they and so
tragic that life could scarcely be lived in sober earnest; it was, for
Peter the comedian, a tragi-comic farce. Circumstances provided the
tragedy, and temperament the farce.
Anyhow, one day Peter tumbled on to the point of his right shoulder and
lay on his face, his arm crooked curiously at his side, remarking that he
didn't think he was hurt, only his arm felt funny and he didn't think he
would move it just yet. People pressed about him; suggested carrying him
off the field; asked if he thought it was broken; asked him how he felt
now; asked him all manner of things, none of which Peter felt competent
to answer. His only remark, delivered in a rather weak and quavering
voice, was to the effect that he would walk directly, only he would like
to stay where he was a little longer, please. He said it very politely.
It was characteristic of Peter Margerison that misfortune always made him
very polite and pleasant in his manners, as if he was saying, "I am sorry
to be so tiresome and feeble: do go on with your own businesses, you more
fortunate and capable people, and never mind me."
As they stood in uncertainty about him, someone said, "There's Urquhart
coming," and Urquhart came. He had been playing on another ground. He
said, "What is it?" and they told him it was Margerison, his arm or his
shoulder or something, and he didn't want to be moved. Urquhart pushed
through the crowd that made way for him, and bent over Margerison and
felt his arm from the shoulder to the wrist, and Margerison bit at the
short grass that was against his face.
"That's all right," said Urquhart. "I wanted to see if it was sprained or
broken anywhere. It's not; it's just a put-out shoulder. I did that once,
and they put it in on the field; it was quite easy. It ought to be done
at once, before it gets stiff." He turned Peter over on his back, and
they saw that he was pale, and his forehead was muddy where it had
pressed on the ground, and wet where perspiration stood on it. Urquhart
was unlacing his own boot.
"I'm going to haul it in for you," he told Peter. "It's quite easy. It'll
hurt a bit, of course, but less now than if it's left. It'll slip in
quite easily, because you haven't much muscle," he added, looking at the
frail, thin, crooked arm. Then he put his stockinged foot beneath Peter's
arm-pit, and took the arm by the wrist and straightened it out. The other
thin arm was thrown over Peter's pale face and working mouth. The muddy
forehead could be seen getting visibly wetter. Urquhart threw himself
back and pulled, with a long and strong pull. Sharp gasps came from
beneath the flung-up left arm, through teeth that were clenched over a
white jersey sleeve. The thin legs writhed a little. Urquhart desisted,
breathing deeply.
"Sorry," he said; "one more'll do it." The one more was longer and
stronger, and turned the gasps into semi-groans. But as Urquhart had
predicted, it did it.
"There," said Urquhart, resting and looking pleased, as he always did
when he had accomplished something neatly. "Heard the click, didn't
you? It's in all right. Sorry to hurt you, Margerison; you were jolly
sporting, though. Now I'm going to tie it up before we go in, or it'll
be out again."
So he tied Peter's arm to Peter's body with his neck scarf. Then he took
up the small light figure in his arms and carried it from the field.
"Hurt much now?" he asked, and Peter shook an untruthful head and grinned
an untruthful and painful grin. Urquhart was being so inordinately decent
to him, and he felt, even in his pain, so extremely flattered and exalted
by such decency, that not for the world would he have revealed the fact
that there had been a second faint click while his arm was being bound
to his side, and an excruciating jar that made him suspect the abominable
thing to be out again. He didn't know how the mechanism worked, but he
was sure that the thing Urquhart had with such labour hauled in had
slipped out and was disporting itself at large in unlawful territory. He
said nothing, a little because he really didn't think he could quite make
up his mind to another long and strong pull, but chiefly because of
Urquhart and his immense decency. Success was Urquhart's rôle; one did
not willingly imagine him failing. If heroes fail, one must not let them
know it. Peter shut his eyes, and, through his rather sick vision of
trespassing rabbits popping in and out through holes in a fence, knew
that Urquhart's arms were carrying him very strongly and easily and
gently. He hoped he wasn't too heavy. He would have said that he could
walk, only he was rather afraid that if he said anything he might be
sick. Besides, he didn't really want to walk; his shoulder was hurting
him very much. He was so white about the cheeks and lips that Urquhart
thought he had fainted.
After a little while, Urquhart was justified in his supposition; it was
characteristic of Peter to convert, as promptly as was feasible, any
slight error of Urquhart's into truth. So Peter knew nothing when
Urquhart carried him indoors and delivered him into other hands. He
opened his eyes next on the doctor, who was untying his arm and cutting
his sleeve and saying cheerfully, "All right, young man, all right."
The next thing he said was, "I was told it had been put in."
"Yes," said Peter languidly. "But it came out again, I think."
"So it seems. Didn't they discover that down there?"
Peter moved his head limply, meaning "No."
"But you did, did you? Well, why didn't you say so? Didn't want to have
it hauled at again, I suppose? Well, we'll have it in directly. You won't
feel it much."
So the business was gone through again, and this time Peter not only half
but quite groaned, because it didn't matter now.
When the thing was done, and Peter rigid and swathed in bed, the doctor
was recalled from the door by a faint voice saying, "Will you please not
tell anyone it came out again?"
"Why not?" The doctor was puzzled.
"Don't know," said Peter, after finding that he couldn't think of a
reason. But then he gave the true one.
"Urquhart thought he'd got it in all right, that's all."
"Oh." The doctor was puzzled still. "But that's Urquhart's business, not
yours. It wasn't your fault, you know."
"Please," said Peter from the bed. "Do you mind?"
The doctor looked and saw feverish blue lamps alight in a pale face, and
soothingly said he did not mind. "Your shoulder, no one else's, isn't
it?" he admitted. "Now you'd better go to sleep; you'll be all right
directly, if you're careful not to move it or lie on it or anything."
Peter said he would be careful. He didn't at all want to move it or lie
on it or anything. He lay and had waking visions of the popping rabbits.
But they might pop as they liked; Peter hid a better thing in his inmost
soul. Urquhart had said, "Sorry to hurt you, Margerison. You were jolly
sporting, though." In the night it seemed incredible that Urquhart had
stooped from Valhalla thus far; that Urquhart had pulled in his arm with
his own hands and called him sporting to his face. The words, and the
echo of the soft, pleasant, casual voice, with its unemphasised
intonations, spread lifting wings for him, and bore him above the aching
pain that stayed with him through the night.
Next morning, when Peter was wishing that the crumbs of breakfast that
got between one's back and one's pyjamas were less sharp-cornered, and
wondering why a dislocated shoulder should give one an aching bar of pain
across the forehead, and feeling very sad because a letter from home had
just informed him that his favourite guinea-pig had been trodden on by
the gardener, Urquhart came to see him.
Urquhart said, "Hullo, Margerison. How are you this morning?" and Peter
said he was very nearly all right now, thanks very much. He added,
"Thanks awfully, Urquhart, for putting it in, and seeing after me and
everything."
"Oh, that's all right." Urquhart's smile had the same pleasant quality as
his voice. He had never smiled at Peter before. Peter lay and looked at
him, the blue lamps very bright in his pale face, and thought what a
jolly voice and face Urquhart had. Urquhart stood by the bed, his hands
in his pockets, and looked rather pleasantly down at the thin, childish
figure in pink striped pyjamas. Peter was fourteen, and looked less,
being delicate to frailness. Urquhart had been rather shocked by his
extreme lightness. He had also been pleased by his pluck; hence the
pleasant expression of his eyes. He was a little touched, too, by the
unmistakable admiration in the over-bright blue regard. Urquhart was not
unused to admiration; but here was something very whole-hearted and
rather pleasing. Margerison seemed rather a nice little kid.
Then, quite suddenly, and still in his pleasant, soft, casual tones,
Urquhart dragged Peter's immense secret into the light of day.
"How are your people?" he said.
Peter stammered that they were quite well.
"Of course," Urquhart went on, "I don't remember your mother; I was only
a baby when my father died. But I've always heard a lot about her. Is
she..."
"She's dead, you know," broke in Peter hastily, lest Urquhart should make
a mistake embarrassing to himself. "A long time ago," he added, again
anxious to save embarrassment.
"Yes--oh yes." Urquhart, from his manner, might or might not have known.
"I live with my uncle," Peter further told him, thus delicately and
unobstrusively supplying the information that Mr. Margerison too was
dead. He omitted to mention the date of this bereavement, having always
a delicate sense of what did and did not concern his hearers. The decease
of the lady who had for a brief period been Lady Hugh Urquhart, might be
supposed to be of a certain interest to her stepson; that of her second
husband was a private family affair of the Margerisons.
(The Urquhart-Margerison connection, which may possibly appear
complicated, was really very simple, and also of exceedingly little
importance to anyone but Peter; but in case anyone feels a desire to have
these things elucidated, it may here be mentioned that Peter's mother had
made two marriages, the first being with Urquhart's father, Urquhart
being already in existence at the time; the second with Mr. Margerison, a
clergyman, who was also already father of one son, and became Peter's
father later. Put so, it sounds a little difficult, chiefly because they
were all married so frequently and so rapidly, but really is simplicity
itself.)
"I live with my uncle too," Urquhart said, and the fact formed a shadowy
bond. But Peter's tone had struck a note of flatness that faintly
indicated a lack of enthusiasm as to the ménage. This note was, to
Peter's delicately attuned ears, absent from Urquhart's voice. Peter
wondered if Lord Hugh's brother (supposing it to be a paternal uncle)
resembled Lord Hugh. To resemble Lord Hugh, Peter had always understood
(till three years ago, when his mother had fallen into silence on that
and all other topics) was to be of a charm.... One spoke of it with a
faint sigh. And yet of a charm that somehow had lacked something, the
intuitive Peter had divined; perhaps it had been too splendid, too
fortunate, for a lady who had loved all small, weak, unlucky things.
Anyhow, not long after Lord Hugh's death (he was killed out hunting) she
had married Mr. Margerison, the poorest clergyman she could find, and the
most devoted to the tending of the unprosperous.
Peter remembered her--compassionate, delicate, lovely, full of laughter,
with something in the dance of her vivid dark-blue eyes that hinted at
radiant and sad memories. She had loved Lord Hugh for a glorious and
brief space of time. The love had perhaps descended, a hereditary
bequest, with the deep blue eyes, to her son. Peter would have understood
the love; the thing he would not have understood was the feeling that
had flung her on the tide of reaction at Mr. Margerison's feet. Mr.
Margerison was a hard liver and a tremendous giver. Both these things
had come to mean a great deal to Sylvia Urquhart--much more than they
had meant to the girl Sylvia Hope.
And hence Peter, who lay and looked at Lord Hugh Urquhart's son with
wide, bright eyes. With just such eyes--only holding, let us hope, an
adoration more masked--Sylvia Hope had long ago looked at Lord Hugh,
seeing him beautiful, delicately featured, pale, and fair of skin, built
with a strong fineness, and smiling with pleasant eyes. Lord Hugh's
beauty of person and charm of manner had possibly (not certainly) meant
more to Sylvia Hope than his son's meant to her son; and his prowess at
football (if he had any) had almost certainly meant less. But, apart from
the glamour of physical skill and strength and the official glory of
captainship, the same charm worked on mother and son. The soft, quick,
unemphasised voice, with the break of a laugh in it, had precisely the
same disturbing effect on both.
"Well," Urquhart was saying, "when will they let you play again? You must
buck up and get all right quickly.... I shouldn't wonder if you made a
pretty decent three-quarter sometime.... You ought to use your arm as
soon as you can, you know, or it gets stiff, and then you can't, and
that's an awful bore.... Hurt like anything when I hauled it in, didn't
it? But it was much better to do it at once."
"Oh, much," Peter agreed.
"How does it feel now?"
"Oh, all right. I don't feel it much. I say, do you think I ought to use
it at once, in case it gets stiff?" Peter's eyes were a little anxious;
he didn't much want to use it at once.
But Urquhart opined that this would be over-great haste. He departed, and
his last words were, "You must come to breakfast with me when you're up
again."
Peter lay, glorified, and thought it all over. Urquhart knew, then; he
had known from the first. He had known when he said, "I say, you,
Margerison, just cut down to the field ..."
Not for a moment did it seem at all strange to Peter that Urquhart should
have had this knowledge and given no sign till now. What, after all, was
it to a hero that the family circle of an obscure individual such as he
should have momentarily intersected the hero's own orbit? School has this
distinction--families take a back place; one is judged on one's own
individual merits. Peter would much rather think that Urquhart had come
to see him because he had put his arm out and Urquhart had put it in
(really though, only temporarily in) than because his mother had once
been Urquhart's stepmother.
Peter's arm did not recover so soon as Urquhart's sanguineness had
predicted. Perhaps he began taking precautions against stiffness too
soon; anyhow he did not that term make a decent three-quarter, or any
sort of a three-quarter at all. It always took Peter a long time to get
well of things; he was easy to break and hard to mend--made in Germany,
as he was frequently told. So cheaply made was he that he could perform
nothing. Defeated dreams lived in his eyes; but to light them there
burned perpetually the blue and luminous lamps of undefeated mirth, and
also an immense friendliness for life and mankind and the delightful
world. Like the young knight Agenore, Peter the unlucky was of a mind
having no limits of hope. Over the blue and friendly eyes that lit the
small pale face, the half wistful brows were cocked with a kind of
whimsical and gentle humour, the same humour that twitched constantly
at the corners of his wide and flexible mouth. Peter was not a beautiful
person, but one liked, somehow, to look at him and to meet his
half-enquiring, half-amused, wholly friendly and sympathetic regard.
By the end of his first term at school, he found himself unaccountably
popular. Already he was called "Margery" and seldom seen by himself. He
enjoyed life, because he liked people and they liked him, and things in
general were rather jolly and very funny, even with a dislocated
shoulder. Also the great Urquhart would, when he remembered, take a
little notice of Peter--enough to inflate the young gentleman's spirit
like a blown-out balloon and send him soaring skywards, to float gently
down again at his leisure.
Towards the end of the term, Peter's half-brother Hilary came to visit
him. Hilary was tall and slim and dark and rather beautiful, and he lived
abroad and painted, and he told Peter that he was going to be married to
a woman called Peggy Callaghan. Peter, who had always admired Hilary from
afar, was rather sorry. The woman Peggy Callaghan would, he vaguely
believed, come between Hilary and his family; and already there were more
than enough of such obstacles to intercourse. But at tea-time he saw the
woman, and she was large and fair and laughing, and called him, in her
rich, amused voice "little brother dear," and he did not mind at all,
but liked her and her laugh and her mirthful, lazy eyes.
Peter was a large-minded person; he did not mind that Hilary wore no
collar and a floppy tie. He did not mind this even when they met Urquhart
in the street. Peter whispered as he passed, "_That's_ Urquhart," and
Hilary suddenly stopped and held out his hand, and said pleasantly, "I am
glad to meet you." Peter blushed at that, naturally (for Hilary's cheek,
not for his tie), and hoped that Urquhart wasn't much offended, but that
he understood what half-brothers who lived abroad and painted were, and
didn't think it was Peter's fault. Urquhart shook hands quite pleasantly,
and when Hilary added, "We shared a stepmother, you and I; I'm Peter's
half-brother, you know," he amiably agreed. Peter hoped he didn't think
that the Urquhart-Margerison connection was being strained beyond due
bounds. Hilary said further, "You've been very good to my young brother,
I know," and it was characteristic of Peter that, even while he listened
to this embarrassing remark, he was free enough from self-consciousness
to be thinking with a keen though undefined pleasure how extraordinarily
nice to look at both Hilary and Urquhart, in their different ways, were.
(Peter's love of the beautiful matured with his growth, but in intensity
it could scarcely grow.) Urquhart was saying something about bad luck and
shoulders; it was decent of Urquhart to say that. In fact, things were
going really well till Hilary, after saying, "Good-bye, glad to have met
you," added to it the afterthought, "You must come and stay at my uncle's
place in Sussex some time. Mustn't he, Peter?" At the same time--fitting
accompaniment to the over-bold words--Peter saw a half-crown, a round,
solid, terrible _half-crown_, pressed into Urquhart's unsuspecting hand.
Oh, horror! Which was the worse, the invitation or the half-crown? Peter
could never determine. Which was the more flagrant indecency--that he,
young Margerison of the lower fourth, should, without any encouragement
whatever, have asked Urquhart of the sixth, captain of the fifteen, head
of his house, to come and stay with him; or that his near relative should
have pressed half-a-crown into the great Urquhart's hand as if he
expected him to go forthwith to the tuck-shop at the corner and buy
tarts? Peter wriggled, scarlet from his collar to his hair.
Urquhart was a polite person. He took the half-crown. He murmured
something about being very glad. He even smiled his pleasant smile. And
Peter, entirely unexpectedly to himself, did what he always did in the
crises of his singularly disastrous life--he exploded into a giggle. So,
some years later, he laughed helplessly and suddenly, standing among the
broken fragments of his social reputation and his professional career. He
could not help it. When the worst had happened, there was nothing else
one could do. One laughed from a sheer sense of the completeness of the
disaster. Peter had a funny, extremely amused laugh; hardly the laugh of
a prosperous person; rather that of the unhorsed knight who acknowledges
the utterness of his defeat and finds humour in the very fact. It was as
if misfortune--and this misfortune of the half-crown and the invitation
is not to be under-estimated--sharpened all the faculties, never blunt,
by which he apprehended humour. So he looked from Hilary to Urquhart,
and, mentally, from both to his cowering self, and exploded.
Urquhart had passed on. Hilary said, "What's the matter with _you_?" and
Peter recovered himself and said "Nothing." He might have cried, with
Miss Evelina Anvill, "Oh, my dear sir, I am shocked to death!" He did
not. He did not even say, "Why did you stamp us like that?" He would not
for the world have hurt Hilary's feelings, and vaguely he knew that this
splendid, unusual half-brother of his was in some ways a sensitive
person.
Hilary said, "The Urquharts ought to invite you to stay. The connection
is really close. I believe your mother was devoted to that boy as a baby.
You'd like to go and stay there, wouldn't you?"
Peter looked doubtful. He was nervous. Suppose Hilary met Urquhart
again.... Dire possibilities opened. Next time it might be "Peter must go
and stay at _your_ uncle's place in Berkshire." That would be worse. Yes,
the worst had not happened, after all. Urquhart might have met Peggy.
Peggy would in that case have said, "You nice kind boy, you've been such
a dear to this little brother of ours, and I hear you and these boys used
to share a mamma, so you're really brothers, and so, of course, _my_
brother too; and _what_ a nice face you've got!" There were in fact,
no limits to what Peggy might say. Peggy was outrageous. But it was
surprising how much one could bear from her. Presumably, Peter used to
reflect in after years, when he had to bear from her a very great deal
indeed, it was simply by virtue of her being Peggy. It was the same with
Hilary. They were Hilary and Peggy, and one took them as such. Indeed,
one had to, as there was certainly no altering them. And Peter loved both
of them very much indeed.
When Peter went home for the holidays, he found that Hilary's alliance
with the woman Peggy Callaghan was not smiled upon. But then none of
Hilary's projects were ever smiled upon by his uncle, who always said,
"Hilary must do as he likes. But he is acting with his usual lack of
judgment." For four years he had been saying so, and he said it again
now. To Hilary himself he further said, "You can't afford a wife at all.
You certainly can't afford Miss Callaghan. You have no right whatever to
marry until you are earning a settled livelihood. You are not of the
temperament to make any woman consistently happy. Miss Callaghan is the
daughter of an Irish doctor, and a Catholic."
"It is," said Hilary, "the most beautiful of all the religions. If
I could bring myself under the yoke of any creed at all ..."
"Just so," said his uncle, who was a disagreeable man; "but you can't,"
and Hilary tolerantly left it at that, merely adding, "There will be no
difficulty. We have arranged all that. Peggy is not a bigot. As to the
rest, I think we must judge for ourselves. I shall be earning more now,
I imagine."
Hilary always imagined that; imagination was his strong point. His
initial mistake was to imagine that he could paint. He did not think that
he had yet painted anything very good; but he knew that he was just about
to do so. He had really the artist's eye, and saw keenly the beauty that
was, though he did not know it, beyond his grasp. His uncle, who knew
nothing about art, could have told him that he would never be able to
paint, simply because he had never been, and would never be, able to
work. That gift he wholly lacked. Besides, like young Peter, he seemed
constitutionally incapable of success. A wide and quick receptiveness,
a considerable power of appreciation and assimilation, made such genius
as they had; the power of performance they desperately lacked; their
enterprises always let them through. Failure was the tragi-comic note
of their unprosperous careers.
However, Hilary succeeded in achieving marriage with the cheerful Peggy
Callaghan, and having done so they went abroad and lived an uneven and
rather exciting life of alternate squalor and luxury in one story of what
had once been a glorious roseate home of Venetian counts, and was now
crumbling to pieces and let in flats to the poor. Hilary and his wife
were most suitably domiciled therein, environed by a splendid dinginess
and squalor, pretentious, tawdry, grandiose, and superbly evading the
common. Peggy wrote to Peter in her large sprawling hand, "You dear
little brother, I wish you'd come and live with us. We have _such_
fun...." That was the best of Peggy. Always and everywhere she had such
fun. She added, "Give my sisterly regards to the splendid hero who shared
your mamma, and tell him we too live in a palace." That was so like
Peggy, that sudden and amused prodding into the most secret intimacies
of one's emotions. Peggy always discerned a great deal, and was blind
to a great deal more.