THE LOSS OF AN IDEA
Peter's room was the smallest and highest in the boarding-house. It was
extremely small and high, and just above the bed was a ceiling that got
hot through and through like a warming-pan, so that the room in summer
was like a little oven below. What air there was came in came through a
small skylight above the wash-stand; through this also came the rain when
it rained; the dirtiest rain Peter had ever seen.
It was not raining this morning, when Peter, after passing a very warm
night, heard the bells beginning. A great many bells begin on Sunday
mornings in this part of London, no doubt in any part of London, but
here they seem particularly loud. The boarding-house was in a small
street close to a large English church and a small Roman church; and the
English church had its first Mass at seven, and the Roman church at six,
and each had another an hour later, and bells rang for all. So Peter lay
and listened.
Sometimes he went with Hilary and Peggy to the Roman Mass. That pleased
Peggy, who had hopes of some day converting him. And occasionally he went
alone to the English Mass, and he liked that better, on the whole,
because the little Roman church was rather ugly. Peter didn't think he
would ever join the Roman church, even to please Peggy. It certainly
seemed to him in some ways the most finely expressive of the churches;
but equally certainly it often expressed the wrong things, and (like
all other churches) left whole worlds unexpressed. And so much of its
expression had a crudity.... It kept saying too little and too much,
and jarring.
Anyhow, this morning Peter, who had a headache after his warm night,
lay and heard the bells and thought what a nice day Sunday was, with
no office to go to. Instead, he would take Rhoda on the river in the
morning, and go and see Lucy in the afternoon, and probably have tea
there. When Peter went to see Lucy he always had a faint hope that
Urquhart would perhaps walk in, and that they would all be friendly
and happy together in the old way, for one afternoon. It hadn't happened
yet. Peter hadn't seen Urquhart since they had left Venice, two months
ago. Sunday was his day for going to see Lucy, and it wasn't Urquhart's
day, perhaps because Urquhart was so often away for week-ends; though
last Sunday, indeed, he had just left the Hopes' house when Peter
arrived.
Lucy, when Peter had told her his tale of dishonour two months ago, had
said, half laughing at him, "How _stupid_ of all of you!" She hadn't
realised quite how much it mattered. Lucy judged everything by a queer,
withdrawn standard of her own.
Peter had agreed that it had been exceedingly stupid of all of them.
Once, since then, when he heard that Urquhart had returned and had seen
Lucy, he had asked her, "Does he dislike us all very much? Is he quite
too disgusted to want to see me again?"
Lucy had wrinkled her forehead over it.
"He's not angry," she had said. "You can fancy, can't you?
Merely--merely ..."
"Detached," said Peter, who had more words, and always expressed what
Lucy meant; and she nodded. "Just that, you know." She had looked at him
wistfully, hoping he wasn't minding too horribly much.
"It's _stupid_ of him," she had said, using her favourite adjective, and
had added, dubiously, "Come and meet him sometime. You can't go on like
this; it's too silly."
Peter had shaken his head. "I won't till he wants to. I don't want to
bother him, you see."
"He does want to," Lucy had told him. "Of course he does. Only he thinks
_you_ don't. That's what's so silly."
They had left it there for the present. Some day Peter meant to walk into
Denis's rooms and say, "Don't be stupid. This can't go on." But the day
hadn't come yet. If it had been Denis who had done the shady thing and
was in penury and dishonour thereby, it would have been so simple. But
that was inconceivable; such things didn't happen to Denis; and as it was
it was not simple.
Peter got out of his hot bed on to his hot floor, and made for the
bathroom. There was only one bathroom in the boarding-house, but there
was no great competition for it, so Peter had his bath in peace, and
sang a tune in it as was his custom, and came back to his hot room and
put on his hot clothes (his less tidy clothes, because it was the day of
joy), and came down to breakfast at 9:25.
Most of the other boarders had got there before him. It was a mixed
boarding-house, and contained at the moment two gentlemen besides Hilary
and Peter, and five ladies besides Peggy and Rhoda. They were on
the whole a happy and even gay society, and particularly on Sundays.
Peggy, looking up from the tea-cups, gave Peter a broad smile, and Rhoda
gave him a little subdued one, and Peter looked pleased to see everyone;
he always did, even on Mondays.
"I'm sure your brother hasn't a care in the world," an envious lady
boarder had once said to Peggy; "he's always so happy-looking."
This was the lady who was saying, as Peter entered, "And my mother's last
words were, 'Find Elizabeth Dean's grave.' Elizabeth Dean was an author,
you know--oh, very well known, I believe. She treated my mother and me
none too well; didn't stand by us when she should have--but we won't say
anything about that now. Anyhow, it was a costly funeral--forty pounds
and eight horses--and my mother hadn't an idea where she was laid. So she
said, 'Find Elizabeth Dean's grave,' just like that. And the strange
thing was that in the first churchyard I walked into, in a little village
down in Sussex, there was a tombstone, 'Elizabeth Dean, 65. The Lord gave
and the Lord hath taken away.' Wasn't that queer, now? So I went straight
and...."
"The woman's a fool," muttered the gentleman next Peter, a cynical-faced
commercial traveller. Peter had heard the remark from him frequently
before, and did not feel called upon to reply to it.
But the tale of Elizabeth Dean was interrupted by a lady of a speculative
habit of mind.
"Now I want to ask you all, _should_ one put up a tombstone to the
departed? I've been having quite a kick-up with my sisters about it
lately. Hadn't one better spend the money on the living? What do _you_
think, Miss Matthews?"
Miss Matthews said she liked to see a handsome headstone.
"After all, one honours them that way. It's all one can do for them,
isn't it."
"Oh, Miss Matthews, _all_?" Several ladies were shocked. "What about
one's prayers for the dead?"
"I don't pray for the dead," said Miss Matthews, who was a protestant,
and did not attend the large church in the next street. "I do not belong
to the Romish religion. I'm not saying anything against those who do, but
I consider that those who do _not_ should confine their prayers to those
who may require them in this troubled world, and not waste them upon
those whose fate we have every reason to believe is settled once and for
all."
The lady who always quarrelled with her on this subject rose to
the occasion. Peggy, soothing them down, said mechanically, "There
now.... Three lumps, Peter?... Micky, one doesn't suck napkin rings;
naughty."
Peter was appealed to by his neighbour, who knew that he occasionally
attended St. Austin's church. People were always drawing him into
theological discussions, which he knew nothing at all about.
"Mr. Peter, isn't that against all reason, to stop praying for our
friends merely because they've passed through the veil?"
"Yes," Peter agreed. "I should have thought so." But all he really
thought was that beyond the veil was such darkness that he never looked
into it, and that it was a pity people should argue on a holiday.
"Now," said someone else, wishing to be a peace-maker, "I'm afraid you'll
all say I'm very naughty, but _I_ attend the early Mass at St. Austin's,
high Mass at the Roman church"--she nodded at Peggy--"and the City Temple
in the evening"--she smiled at the commercial traveller, who was believed
to be a New Theologian. "Aren't I naughty, now?"
Mademoiselle, the French governess, came down at this point, saying she
had had a dream about a hat with pink roses. The peace-making lady said,
"Bad little thing, she's quite frisky this morning." Hilary, to whom
Mademoiselle was the last straw, left the room.
Rhoda followed his example. She had sat very silent, as usual, over
breakfast, eating little. Peter came out with her, and followed her into
the sitting-room, where she stood listlessly playing with the tassel of
the blind. Rhoda was thinner than ever, and floppier, and took even less
pains to be neat. She had left off her beads, but had not replaced them
by a collar.
Peter said, "Are you coming out with me this morning?"
She replied, listless and uncaring, "If you like."
"We might go," said Peter, "and see if the New English Art Club is open
on Sunday mornings. And then we'll go on the river. Shall we?"
She assented again. "Very well."
A moment later she sighed, and said wearily, "How it does go on, day
after day, doesn't it!"
Peter said it did.
"On and on," said Rhoda. "Same stupid people saying the same stupid old
things. I do wonder they don't get tired. They don't _know_ anything, do
they?"
Rhoda's hankering was still after Great Minds.
"They're funny sometimes," suggested Peter tentatively; but she was blind
to that.
"They don't know a thing. And they talk and talk, so stupidly. About
religion--as if one religion was different from another. And about dead
people, as if they knew all about them and what they were doing. They
seem to make sure souls go on--Miss Matthews and Miss Baker were both
sure of that. But how can they tell? Some people that know lots more
than them don't think so, but say ... say it's nothingness."
Peter recognised Guy Vyvian's word. Rhoda would have said "nothing to
follow."
"People say," he agreed, "quite different things, and none of them know
anything about it, of course. One needn't worry, though."
"_You_ never worry," she accused him, half fretfully. "But," she added,
"you don't preach, either. You don't say things are so when you can't
know.... Do you _think_ anything about that, Peter--about going on? I
don't believe you do."
Peter reflected. "No," he said. "I don't believe I do. I can't look
beyond what I can see and touch; I don't try. I expect I'm a materialist.
The colours and shapes of things matter so awfully much; I can't imagine
anything of them going on when those are dead. I rather wish I could.
Some people that know lots more than me do, and I think it's splendid
of them and for them. They're very likely right, too, you know."
Rhoda shook her head. "_I_ believe it's nothingness."
Peter felt it a dreary subject, and changed it.
"Well, let's come and look at pictures. And I can't imagine nothingness,
can you? We might have lunch out somewhere, if you don't mind."
So they went out and looked at pictures, and went up the river in a
steamer, and had lunch out somewhere, and Rhoda grew very gentle and more
cheerful, and said, "I didn't mean to be cross to _you_, Peter. You're
ever so good to me," and winked away tears, and the gentle Peter, who
hated no one, wished that some catastrophe would wipe Guy Vyvian off the
face of the earth and choke his memory with dust. Whenever one thought
Rhoda was getting rather better, the image of Vyvian, who knew such a lot
more than most people, came up between her and the world she ought to
have been enjoying, and she had a relapse.
Peter and Rhoda came home together, and Rhoda said, "Thank you ever so
much for taking me. I've liked it ever so," and went up to her room to
read poetry. Rhoda read a good deal of the work of our lesser
contemporary poets; Vyvian had instilled that taste into her.
Peter, about tea-time, went to see Lucy. He went by the Piccadilly tube,
from Holborn to South Kensington--(he was being recklessly extravagant
to-day, but it was a holiday after all, and very hot).
Peter climbed the stairs to the Hopes' drawing-room and opened the door,
and what he had often dreamed of had come about, for Denis was there,
only in a strange, undreamed-of way that made him giddy, so he stood
quite still for a moment and looked.
He would have turned away and gone before they saw him; but they had seen
him, and Lucy said, "Oh, Peter--come in," and Denis said, "Oh ... hullo,"
and held out his hand.
Peter, who was dizzily readjusting certain rather deeply-rooted ideas,
said, "How do you do? I've come ... I've come to tea, you know."
"'Course you have," said Lucy. Then she looked up into Peter's face and
smiled, and slipped her hand into his. "How nice; we're three again."
"Yes," said Peter.
"But I must go," said Urquhart. "I'm awfully sorry, but I've got to meet
a man.... I shall see you some time, shan't I, Margery? Why don't you
ever come and see me, you slacker? Well, good-bye. Good-bye, Lucy. Lunch
to-morrow; don't forget."
He was gone.
Peter sat on the coal-scuttle, and Lucy gave him tea, with three lumps in
it.
"Thank you," said Peter.
Lucy looked at him. "You _did_ know, didn't you? All this time, I mean?
I didn't tell you, because I never tell you things, of course. You always
know them. And this particularly. You _did_ know it, Peter? But when you
came in you looked ... you looked as if you didn't."
"I was stupid," said Peter. "I ought to have known."
Looking back, he saw that he certainly ought. He certainly must have,
only that his vision had been blocked by a certain deeply-rooted idea,
that was as old as his growth. He had assumed, without words. He had
thought that she too had assumed; neither had ever required words to
elucidate their ideas one to the other; they had kept words for the other
things, the jolly, delightful things of the foreground.
"How long?" asked Peter, drinking his tea to warm him, for, though it was
so hot outside, he felt very cold in here.
She told him. "Oh, since the beginning, I think. I thought you knew,
Peter.... We didn't say anything about it till quite lately. Only we both
knew."
She came and sat on the rug by his side, and slipped her hand into his.
"Are you glad, Peter? Please, Peter, be glad."
"I will presently," said Peter, with one of his fainter smiles. "Let me
just get used to it, and I will."
She whispered, stroking his hand, "We've always had such fun, Peter, we
three. Haven't we? Let's go on having it."
"Yes," said Peter. "Let's."
He was vague still, and a little dizzy, but he could smile at her now.
After all, wasn't it splendid? Denis and Lucy--the two people he loved
best in the world; so immeasurably best that beside them everyone else
was no class at all.
He sat very still on the coal-scuttle, making a fresh discovery about
himself. He had known before that he had a selfish disposition, though he
had never thought about it particularly; but he hadn't known that it was
in him to grudge Denis anything--Denis, who was consciously more to him
than anyone else in the world. Lucy was different; she was rooted in the
very fibre of his being; it wasn't so much that he consciously loved her
as that she was his other self. Well, hadn't he long since given to
Denis, to use as he would, all the self he had?
But the wrench made him wince, and left him chilly and grown old.
"It's perfectly splendid for both of you," said Peter, himself again
at last. "And it was extraordinarily stupid of me not to see it
before.... Do you think Denis really meant I could go and see him?
I think I will."
"'Course he did. 'Course you will. Go to-morrow. But now it's going to
be just you and me and tea. And honey sandwiches--oh, Peter!" Her eyes
danced at him, because it was such a nice world. He came off the
coal-scuttle and made himself comfortable in a low chair near the
honey sandwiches.
"Will you and Denis try always to have them when I come to tea with you?
I do love them so. Have you arranged when it is to be, by the way?"
"No. Father won't want it to be for ages--he won't like it to be at all,
of course, because Denis isn't poor or miserable or revolutionary. But
Felicity has done so nicely for him in that way (Lawrence is getting into
horrid rows in Poland, you know) that I think I've a _right_ to someone
happy and clean, don't you?... And Denis wants it to be soon. So I
suppose it will be soon."
"Sure to be," Peter agreed.
The room was full of roses; their sweetness was exuberant, intoxicating;
not like Lucy, who usually had small, pale, faint flowers.
"Isn't it funny," she said, "how one thinks one can't be any happier, and
then suddenly something happens inside one, and one sees everything new.
I used to think things couldn't be brighter and shine more--but now they
glitter like the sun, all new."
"I expect so," said Peter.
Then she had a little stab of remorse; for Peter had been turned out of
the place of glittering things, and moved in a grey and dusty world among
things no one could like.
"'Tis so _stupid_ that your work is like that," she said, with puckered
forehead. "I wish you could find something nice to do, Peter dear."
"Oh, I'm all right," said Peter. "And there are all the nice things which
aren't work, just the same. Rhoda and I went a ride in a steamer this
morning. And the sun was shining on the water--rather nice, it was. Even
Rhoda grew a little brighter to see it. Poor Rhoda; the boarders do worry
her so. I'm sorry about it; they don't worry me; I rather like them.
Some day soon I want you to come and see Rhoda; it would cheer her up.
I wish she liked things more. She's left off her bead necklace, you know.
And she gets worried because people discuss the condition of 'the
departed' (that's what we call them in the boarding-house). Rhoda is sure
they are in nothingness. I told her it was impossible for me to speculate
on such things. How can one, you know? People have so much imagination.
Mine always sticks at a certain point and won't move on. Could you do it
if someone asked you to imagine Denis, say, without his body?"
She wrinkled her forehead, trying to.
"Denis's body matters a lot," was her conclusion. "I suppose it's because
it's such a nice one."
"Exactly," said Peter. "People's bodies are nice. And when they're not I
don't believe their minds are very nice either, so I'd rather not think
about them. Now I must go home."
It was very hot going home. London was a baked place, full of used
air--Peter's bedroom on a large scale. Peter tried walking back, but
found he was rather giddy, so got into a bus that took him the wrong
way, a thing he often did. Riding across London on the top of a bus is,
of course, the greatest fun, even if it is the wrong bus. It makes up for
almost any misfortune.
A few days later, after office hours, Peter took Urquhart at his word
and went to his rooms. Urquhart wasn't there, but would be in some time,
he was told, so he sat and waited for him. It was a pleasant change after
the boarding-house rooms. Urquhart's things were nice to look at, without
being particularly artistic. There was nothing dingy, or messy, or
second-rate, or cheap. A graceful, careless expensiveness was the
dominant note. An aroma of good tobacco hung about. Peter liked to smell
good tobacco, though he smoked none, good or bad.
Urquhart came in at seven o'clock. He was going to dine somewhere at
eight, so he hadn't much time.
"Glad to see you, Margery. Quite time you came."
Peter thought it nice of him to speak so pleasantly, seeming to ignore
the last time Peter had come to see him. He had been restrained and
embarrassed then; now he was friendly, in the old casual, unemphasised
way.
"How splendid about you and Lucy," said Peter. "A very suitable alliance,
I call it."
"So do I," said Denis, lighting a cigarette. "She's so much the nicest
person I know. I perceived that the day you introduced us."
"Of course," said Peter. "You would."
"Do you mind," said Denis, "if I dress? We can talk meanwhile. Rotten
luck that I'm booked for dinner, or we could have had it together. You
must come another day."
While he dressed he told Peter that he was going to stand at the next
elections. Peter had known before that Denis was ultimately destined to
assist in the government of his country, and now it appeared that the
moment had arrived.
"Do you _really_ take a side?" Peter enquired. "Or is it just a funny
game?"
"Oh, of course it's a game too; most things are. But, of course, one's
a Conservative and all that, if one's a person of sense. It's the only
thing to be, you know."
"I rather like both sides," said Peter. "They're both so keen, and so
sure they're right. But I expect Conservatives are the rightest, because
they want to keep things. I hate people who want to make a mess and break
things up and throw them away. Besides, I suppose one couldn't really be
on the same side as what's his name--that man everyone dislikes so--could
one? or any of those violent people."
Urquhart said one certainly couldn't. Besides, there were Free Trade
and Home Rule, and dozens of other things to be considered. Obviously
Conservatives were right.
"I ought to get in," he said, "unless anything upsets it. The Unionist
majority last time was two hundred and fifty."
Peter laughed. It was rather nice to hear Denis talking like a real
candidate.
When Denis was ready, he said, "I'm dining in Norfolk Street. Can you
walk with me part of the way?"
Peter said it was on the way to Brook Street, where he lived. Denis
displayed no interest in Brook Street. As far as he intended to cultivate
Peter's acquaintance, it was to be as a unit, detached from his
disgraceful relatives. Peter understood that. As he hadn't much expected
to be cultivated again at all, he was in good spirits as he walked with
Denis to Norfolk Street. No word passed between them as to Peter's past
disgrace or present employment; Denis had an easy way of sliding lightly
over embarrassing subjects.
They parted, and Denis dined in Norfolk Street with a parliamentary
secretary, and Peter supped in Brook Street with the other boarders.