THE HOPES
It was rather fun shopping for Leslie. Leslie was a stout, quiet,
ponderous person between thirty and forty, and he really did not bound
at all; Urquhart had done him less than justice in his description. There
was about him the pathos of the very rich. He was generous in the
extreme, and Peter's job proved lucrative as well as pleasant. He grew
curiously fond of Leslie; his attitude towards him was one of respect
touched with protectiveness. No one should any more "do" Leslie, if he
could help it.
"He's let me," Peter told his cousin Lucy, "get rid of all his horrible
Lowestoft forgeries; awful things they were, with the blue hardly dry on
them. Frightful cheek, selling him things like that; it's so insulting.
Leslie's awfully sweet-tempered about being gulled, though. He's very
kind to me; he lets me buy anything I like for him. And he recommends me
to his friends, too. It's a splendid profession; I'm so glad I thought
of it. If I hadn't I should have had to go into a dye shop, or be a
weaver or something. It wouldn't have been good form; it wouldn't even
have been clean. I should have had a day-before-yesterday's handkerchief
and Rodney would have liked me more, but Denis would probably have cut
me. As it is I'm quite good form and quite clean, and I move in the best
circles. I love the Ignorant Rich; they're so amusing. I know such
a nice lady. She buys potato rings. She likes them to be Dublin
hall-marked and clearly dated seventeen hundred and something--so,
naturally, they always were till I began to buy them for her. I've
persuaded her to give away the most blatant forgeries to her god-children
at their baptisms. Babies like them, sham or genuine."
Peter was having tea with his cousin Lucy and Urquhart in the White City.
Peter and Lucy were very fond of the White City. Peter's cousin Lucy was
something like a small, gay spring flower, with wide, solemn grey eyes
that brimmed with sudden laughters, and a funny, infectious gurgle of a
laugh. She was a year younger than Peter, and they had all their lives
gone shares in their possessions, from guinea-pigs to ideas. They admired
the same china and the same people, with unquestioning unanimity. Lucy
lived in Chelsea, with an elder sister and a father who ran at his own
expense a revolutionary journal that didn't pay, because those who would
have liked to buy it couldn't, for the most part, afford to, and because
those who could have afforded to didn't want to, and because, in short,
journals run by nice people never do pay.
Lucy played the 'cello, the instrument usually selected by the small
in stature. In the intervals of this pursuit, she went about the world
open-eyed to all new-burnished joys that came within her vision, and
lived by admiration, hope and love, and played with Peter at any game,
wise or foolish, that turned up. Often Urquhart played with them, and
they were a happy party of three. Peter and Lucy shared, among other
things, an admiration of Urquhart.
Peter was finding the world delightful just now. This first winter in
London was probably the happiest time he ever had. He hardly missed
Cambridge; he certainly didn't miss the money that the Robinsons had.
His profession was to touch and handle the things he loved; the Ignorant
Rich were delightful; the things he bought for them were beyond all
words; the sales he attended were revels of joy; it was all extremely
entertaining, and Leslie a dear, and everyone very kind. The affection
that always found its way to Peter through his disabilities spoke for
something in him that must, it would seem, be there; possibly it was
merely his friendly smile. He was anyhow of the genus comedian, that
readily endears itself.
He and Urquhart and Lucy all knew how to live. They made good use of
most of the happy resources that London offers to its inhabitants. They
went in steamers to and fro between Putney and Greenwich, listening to
concertinas and other instruments of music. They looked at many sorts of
pictures, talked to many sorts of people, and attended many sorts of
plays. Urquhart and Peter had even become associates of the Y.M.C.A.
(representing themselves as agnostics seeking for light) on account of
the swimming-baths. As Peter remarked, "Christian Young Men do not
bathe very much, and it seems a pity no one should." On the day when they
had tea at the White City, they had all had lunch at a very recherché
café in Soho, where the Smart Set like to meet Bohemians, and you can
only get in by being one or the other, so Peter and Lucy went as the
Smart Set, and Urquhart as a Bohemian, and they liked to meet each other
very much.
The only drawback to Peter's life was the bronchitis that sprang at him
out of the fogs and temporarily stopped work. He had just recovered from
an attack of it on the day when he was having tea at the White City, and
he looked a weak and washed-out rag, with sunken blue eyes smiling out of
a very white face.
"You would think, to look at him," Urquhart said to Lucy, "that he had
been going in extensively for the flip-flap this afternoon. It's a pity
Stephen can't see you, Margery; you look starved enough to satisfy even
him. You never come across Stephen now, I suppose? You wouldn't, of
course. He has no opinion of the Ignorant Rich. Nor even of the
well-informed rich, like me. He's blindly prejudiced in favour of the
Ignorant Poor."
Lucy nodded. "I know. He's nice to me always. I go and play my 'cello to
his friends."
"I always keep him in mind," said Peter, "for the day when my patrons get
tired of me. I know Rodney will be kind to me directly I take to street
peddling or any other thoroughly ill-bred profession. The kind he
despises most, I suppose, are my dear Ignorant Rich--the ill-bred but by
no means breadless. (That's my own and not very funny, by the way.) Did
I tell you, Denis, that Leslie is going to begin educating the People in
Appreciation of Objects of Art? Isn't it a nice idea? I'm to help.
Leslie's a visionary, you know. I believe plutocrats often are. They've
so much money and are so comfortable that they stop wanting material
things and begin dreaming dreams. I should dream dreams if I was a
plutocrat. As it is my mind is earthly. I don't want to educate anyone.
Well, anyhow we're going to Italy in the spring, to pick things up, as
Leslie puts it. That always sounds so much as if we didn't pay for them.
Then we shall bring them home and have free exhibits for the Ignorant
Poor, and I shall give free and instructive lectures. Isn't it a pleasant
plan? We're going to Venice. There's a Berovieri goblet that some
Venetian count has, that Leslie's set his heart on. We are to acquire
it, regardless of expense, if it turns out to be all that is rumoured."
Urquhart scoffed here.
"Nice to be infallible, isn't it. You and your goblets and your Ignorant
Rich. And your brother Hilary and my uncle Evelyn. Your great gifts seem
to run in the family. My uncle, I hear, is ruining himself with buying
the things your brother admires. My poor uncle, Miss Hope, is getting so
weak-sighted that he can't judge for himself as he used, so he follows
the advice of Margery's brother. It keeps him very happy and amused,
though he'll soon be bankrupt, no doubt."
Lucy, as usual, laughed at the Urquhart family and the Margerison family
and the world at large. When she laughed, she opened her grey eyes wide,
while they twinkled with dancing light.
Then she said, "Oh, I want to go on the flip-flap. Peter mustn't come,
because it always makes him sick; so will you?"
Urquhart said he would, so they did, and Peter watched them, hoping
Urquhart didn't mind much. Urquhart never seemed to mind being ordered
about by Lucy. And Lucy, of course, had accepted him as an intimate
friend from the first, because Peter had said she was to, and because, as
she remarked, he was so astonishingly nice to look at and to listen to.
Among the visitors who frequented Lucy's home, people whom she considered
astonishingly pleasant to look at and to listen to did not abound; so
Lucy enjoyed the change all the more.
The first time Peter took Urquhart down to Chelsea to call on his Hope
uncle and cousins, one Sunday afternoon, he gave him a succinct account
of the sort of people they would probably meet there.
"They have oddities in, you know--and particularly on Sunday afternoons.
They usually have one or two staying in the house, too. They keep open
house for wastrels. A lot of them are aliens--Polish refugees, Russian
anarchists, oppressed Finns, massacred Armenians who do embroidery;
violinists who can't earn a living, decayed chimney-sweeps and so forth.
'Disillusioned (or still illusioned) geniuses, would-bes, theorists,
artistic natures, failed reformers, knaves and fools incompetent or
over-old, broken evangelists and debauchees, inebriates, criminals,
cowards, virtual slaves' ... Anyhow it's a home for Lost Hopes. (Do you
see that?) My uncle is keen on anyone who tries to revolt against
anything--governments, Russians, proprieties, or anything else--and
Felicity is keen on anyone who fails."
"And your other cousin--what is she keen on?"
"Oh, Lucy's too young for the Oddities, like me. She and I sit in a
corner and look on. It's my uncle and Felicity they like to talk to. They
talk about Liberty to them, you know. My uncle is great on Liberty. And
they give them lemon in their tea, and say how wicked Russians are, and
how stupid Royal Academicians are, and buy the Armenians' embroidery,
and so forth. Lucy and I don't do that well. I disapprove of liberty for
most people, I think, and certainly for them; and I don't like lemon in
my tea, and though I'm sure Russians are wicked, I believe oppressed
Poles are as bad--at least their hair is as bushy and their nails as
long--and I prefer the embroidery I do myself; I do it quite nicely, I
think. And I don't consider that Celtic poets or Armenian Christians wash
their hands often enough.... They nearly all asked me the time last
Sunday. I was sorry about it."
"You feared they were finding their afternoon tedious?"
"No; but I think their watches were up the spout, you see. So I was
sorry. I never feel so sorry for myself as when mine is. I'm really
awfully grateful to Leslie; if it wasn't for him I should never be able
to tell anyone the time. By the way, Leslie's awfully fond of Felicity.
He writes her enormous cheques for her clubs and vagabonds and so on. But
of course she'll never look at him; he's much too well-off. It's not low
to tell you that, because he makes it so awfully obvious. He'll probably
be there this afternoon. Oh, here we are."
They found the Hopes' small drawing-room filled much as Peter had
predicted. Dermot Hope was a tall, wasted-looking man of fifty-five, with
brilliant eyes giving significance to a vague face. He had very little
money, and spent that little on "Progress," whose readers were few and
ardent, and whose contributors were very cosmopolitan, and full of zeal
and fire; several of them were here this afternoon. Dermot Hope himself
was most unconquerably full of fire. He could be delightful, and
exceedingly disagreeable, full of genial sympathy and appreciation, and
of a biting irony. He looked at Urquhart, whom he met for the first time,
with a touch of sarcasm in his smile. He said, "You're exactly like your
father. How do you do," and seemed to take no further interest in him.
He had certainly never taken much in Lord Hugh, during the brief year of
their brotherhood.
For Peter his glance was indulgent. Peter, not being himself a reformer,
or an idealist, or a lover of progress, or even, according to himself, of
liberty, but an acceptor of things as they are and a lover of the good
things of this world, was not particularly interesting to his uncle, of
course; but, being rather an endearing boy, and the son of a beloved
sister, he was loved; and, even had he been a stranger, his position
would have been regarded as more respectable than Urquhart's, since he
had so far failed to secure many good things.
Felicity, a gracious and lovely person of twenty-nine, gave Peter and
Urquhart a smile out of her violet eyes and murmured "Lucy's in the
corner over there," and resumed the conversation she was trying to divide
between Joseph Leslie and a young English professor who was having a
holiday from stirring up revolutions at a Polish university. The division
was not altogether easy, even to a person of Felicity's extraordinary
tact, particularly as they both happened to be in love with her. Felicity
had a great deal of listening to do always, because everyone told her
about themselves, and she always heard them gladly; if she hastened the
end a little sometimes, gently, they never knew it. She, in fact, wanted
to hear about them as much--really as much, though the desire in these
proportions is so rare as to seem incredible--as they wanted to let her
hear. Her wish to hear was a temptation to egotism; those who disliked
egotism in themselves had to fight the temptation, and seldom won.
She did not believe--no one but a fool (and she was not that) could have
believed--all the many things that were told her; the many things that
must always, while pity and the need to be pitied endure, be told to the
pitiful; but she seldom said so. She merely looked at the teller with her
long and lovely violet eyes, that took in so much and gave out such
continual friendship, and saw how, behind the lies, the need dwelt
pleading. Then she gave, not necessarily what the lies asked for, but
what, in her opinion, pity owed to that which pleaded. She certainly
gave, as a rule, quite too much, in whatever coin she paid. That was
inevitable.
"You give from the emotions," Joseph Leslie told her, "instead of
from reason. How bad for you: how bad for them. And worse when it is
friendship than when it is coin that you can count and set a limit to.
Yes. Abominably bad for everyone concerned."
"Should one," wondered Felicity, "give friendship, as one is supposed to
give money, on C.O.S. principles? Perhaps so; I must think about it."
But her thinking always brought her back to the same conclusion as
before. Consequently her circle of friends grew and grew. She even
included in it a few of the rich and prosperous, not wishing her chain
of fellowship, whose links she kept in careful repair, to fail anywhere.
But it showed strain there. It was forged and flung by the rich and
prosperous, and merely accepted by Felicity.
Leslie, though rich and prosperous, stepped into the linked circle led
by Peter, who was neither. Having money, and a desire to make himself
conscious of the fact by using it, he consulted Miss Hope as to how
best to be philanthropic. He wanted, it seemed, to be a philanthropist as
well as a collector, and felt incapable of being either otherwise than
through agents. His personal share in both enterprises had to be limited
to the backing capital.
Miss Hope said, "Start a settlement," and he had said, "I can't unless
you'll work it for me. Will you?" So he started a settlement, and she
worked it for him, and he came about the place and got in the way and
wrote heavy cheques and adored Felicity and suggested at suitable
intervals that she should marry him.
Felicity had no intention of marrying him. She called him a rest. No one
likes being called a rest when they desire to be a stimulant, or even a
gentle excitement. Felicity was an immense excitement to Mr. Leslie
(though he concealed it laboriously under a heavy and matter-of-fact
exterior) and it is of course pleasanter when these things are
reciprocal. But Mr. Leslie perceived that she took much more interest
even in her young cousin Peter than in him. "Do you find him a useful
little boy?" she asked him this afternoon, before Peter and Urquhart
arrived.
Leslie nodded. "Useful boy--very. And pleasant company, you know. I don't
know much about these things, but he seems to have a splendid eye for a
good thing. Funny thing is, it works all round--in all departments.
Native genius, not training. He sees a horse between a pair of shafts in
a country lane; looks at it; says 'That's good. That would have a fair
chance for the Grand National'--Urquhart buys it for fifty pounds
straight away--and it _does_ win the Grand National. And he knows nothing
special about horses, either. That's what I call genius. It's the same
eye that makes him spot a dusty old bit of good china on a back shelf of
a shop among a crowd of forged rubbish. I've none of that sort of sense;
I'm hopeless. But I like good things, and I can pay for them, and I give
that boy a free rein. He's furnishing my house well for me. It seems to
amuse him rather."
"He loves it," said Felicity. "His love of pleasant things is what he
lives by. Including among them Denis Urquhart, of course."
"Yes." Leslie pursed thoughtful lips over Denis Urquhart. He was perhaps
slightly touched with jealousy there. He was himself rather drawn towards
that tranquil young man, but he knew very well that the drawing was
one-sided; Urquhart was patently undrawn.
"Rather a flash lot, the Urquharts, aren't they?" he said; and Peter, who
liked him, would have had to admit that the remark was perilously near to
a bound. "Seem to have a sort of knack of dazzling people."
"He's an attractive person, of course," Miss Hope replied; and she didn't
say it distantly; she was so sorry for people who bounded, and so many of
her friends did. "It's pleasing to see, isn't it--such whole-souled
devotion?"
Mr. Leslie grunted. "I won't say pearls before swine--because Urquhart
isn't a swine, but a very pleasant, ordinary young fellow. But worship
like that can't be deserved, you know; not by anyone, however
beautifully he motors through life. Margerison's too--well, too nice,
to put it simply--to give himself to another person, body and soul, like
that. It's squandering."
"And irritates you," she reflected, but merely said, "Is squandering
always a bad thing, I wonder?"
It was at this point that Peter and Urquhart came in. Directed by
Felicity to Lucy in an obscure corner, they found her being talked to by
one of the Oddities; he looked rather like an oppressed Finn. He was
talking and she was listening, wide-eyed and ingenuous, her small hands
clasped on her lap. Peter and Urquhart sat down by her, and the oppressed
Finn presently wandered away to talk to Lucy's father.
Lucy gave a little sigh of relief.
"_Wish_ they wouldn't come and talk to me," she said. "I'm no good to
them; I don't understand; and I hate people to be unhappy. I'm dreadfully
sorry they are. I don't want to have to think about them. Why can't they
be happy? There are so many nice things all about. 'Tis such _waste_."
She looked up at Urquhart, and her eyes laughed because he was happy and
clean, and shone like a new pin.
"It's nicest," she said, "to be happy and clean. And it's not bad to be
happy and dirty; or _very_ bad to be unhappy and clean; but ..." She shut
her lips with a funny distaste on the remaining alternative. "And I'm
horribly afraid Felicity's going to get engaged to Mr. Malyon, that young
one talking to her, do you see? He helps with conspiracies in Poland."
"But he's quite clean," said Urquhart, looking at him.
Lucy admitted that. "But he'll get sent to Siberia soon, don't you see,
and Felicity will go too, I know."
Peter said, "If I was Felicity I'd marry Leslie; I wouldn't hesitate for
a moment. I wish it was me he loved so. Fancy marrying into all those
lovely things I'm getting for him. Only I hope she won't, because then
she'd take over the shopping department, and I should be left unemployed.
Oh, Lucy, he's let me buy him the heavenliest pair of Chelsea
_jardinières_, shaped like orange-tubs, with Cupids painted on blue
panels. You must come and see them soon."
Lucy's eyes, seeing the delightful things, widened and danced. She loved
the things Peter bought.
Suddenly Peter, who had a conscience somewhere, felt a pang in it, and,
to ease it, regretfully left the corner and wandered about among his
uncle's friends, being pleasant and telling them the time. He did that
till the last of them had departed. Urquhart then had to depart also, and
Peter was alone with his relatives. It was only after Urquhart had gone
that Peter realised fully what a very curious and incongruous element he
had been in the room. Realising it suddenly, he laughed, and Lucy laughed
too. Felicity looked at them indulgently.
"Babies. What's the matter now?"
"Only Denis," explained Peter.
"That young man," commented Dermot Hope, without approbation, "is
remarkably well-fed, well-bred, and well-dressed. Why do you take him
about with you?"
"That's just why, isn't it, Peter," put in Lucy. "Peter and I _like_
people to be well-fed and well-bred and well-dressed."
Felicity touched her chin, with her indulgent smile.
"Baby again. You like no such thing. You'd get tired of it in a week."
"Oh, well," said Lucy, "a week's a long time."
"He's got no fire in all his soul and body," complained Dermot Hope.
"He's a symbol of prosperous content--of all we're fighting. It's people
like him who are the real obstructionists; the people who don't see, not
because they're blind, but because they're too pleased with their own
conditions to look beyond them. It's people like him who are pouring
water on the fires as they are lit, because fires are such bad form,
and might burn up their precious chattels if allowed to get out of hand.
Take life placidly; don't get excited, it's so vulgar; that's their
religion. They've neither enthusiasm nor imagination in them. And so ..."
And so forth, just as it came out in "Progress" once a month. Peter
didn't read "Progress," because he wasn't interested in the future, being
essentially a child of to-day. Besides, he too hated conflagrations,
thinking the precious chattels they would burn up much too precious for
that. Peter was no lover either of destruction or construction; perhaps
he too was an obstructionist; though not without imagination. His uncle
knew he had a regrettable tendency to put things in the foreground and
keep ideas very much in the background, and called him therefore a
phenomenalist. Lucy shared this tendency, being a good deal of an artist
and nothing at all of a philosopher.