THE LOSS OF A GOBLET AND OTHER THINGS
Denis and Lucy were married at the end of September. They went motoring
in Italy for a month, and by the beginning of November were settled at
Astleys. Astleys was in Berkshire, and was Urquhart's home. It was rather
beautiful, as homes go, with a careless, prosperous grace about it at
which Lucy laughed because it was so Urquhartesque.
Almost at once they asked some people to stay there to help with the
elections and the pheasant shooting. The elections were hoped for in
December. Urquhart did not propose to bother much about them; he was a
good deal more interested in the pheasants; but he had, of course, every
intention of doing the usual and suitable things, and carrying the
business through well. Lucy only laughed; to want to get into Parliament
was so funny, looked at from the point of view she had always been used
to. Denis, being used by inheritance and upbringing to another point of
view, did not see that it was so funny; to him it was a very natural
profession for a man to go into; his family had always provided a supply
of members for both houses. Lucy and Peter, socially more obscure,
laughed childishly together over it. "Fancy being a Liberal or a
Conservative out of all the things there are in the world to be!" as
Peter had once commented.
But it was delightfully Urquhart-like, this lordly assumption of a share
in the government of a country. No doubt it was worth having, because all
the things Urquhart wanted and obtained were that; he had an eye for good
things, like Peter, only he gained possession of them, and Peter could
only admire from afar.
They were talking about the election prospects at dinner on the evening
of the fifteenth of November. They were a young and merry party. At one
end of the table was Denis, looking rather pale after a hard day's
hunting, and very much amused with life; at the other Lucy, in a white
frock, small and open-eyed like a flower, and very much amused too; and
between them were the people, young mostly, and gay, who were staying
with them. Lucy, who had been brought up in a secluded Bohemianism, found
it very funny and nice having a house-party, and so many servants to see
after them all that one needn't bother to run round and make sure
everyone had soap, and so on.
One person, not young, who was staying there, was Lord Evelyn Urquhart.
Lucy loved him. He loved her, and told funny stories. Sometimes, between
the stories, she would catch his near-sighted, screwed up eyes scanning
her face with a queer expression that might have been wistfulness; he
seemed at times to be looking for something in her face, and finding it.
Particularly when she laughed, in her chuckling, gurgling way, he looked
like this, and would grow grave suddenly. They had talked together about
all manner of things, being excellent friends, but only once so far about
Lucy's cousin Peter. Once had been too much, Lucy had found. The
Margerisons were a tabooed subject with Lord Evelyn Urquhart.
Denis shrugged his shoulders over it. "They did him brown, you see," he
explained, in his light, casual way. "Uncle Evelyn can't forgive that.
And it's because he was so awfully fond of Peter that he's so bitter
against him now. I never mention him; it's best not.... You know, you
keep giving the poor dear shocks by looking like Peter, and laughing like
him, and using his words. You _are_ rather like, you know."
"I know," said Lucy. "It's not only looking and laughing and words; we
think alike too. So perhaps if he gets fond of me he'll forgive Peter
sometime."
"He's an implacable old beggar," Denis said. "It's stupid of him. It
never seems to me worth while to get huffy; it's so uncomfortable. He
expects too much of people, and when they disappoint him he--"
"Takes umbradge," Lucy filled in for him. That was another of Peter's
expressions; they shared together a number of such stilted, high-sounding
phrases, mostly culled either out of Adelphi melodrama or the fiction of
a by-gone age.
To-night, when the cloth had been removed that they might eat fruit,
Denis was informed that there was a gentleman waiting to see him. The
gentleman had not vouchsafed either his name or business, so he could
obviously wait a little longer, till Denis had finished his own business.
In twenty minutes Denis went to the library, and there found Hilary
Margerison, sitting by the fire in a great coat and muffler and looking
cold. When he rose and faced him, Denis saw that he also looked paler
than of old, and thinner, and less perfectly shaved, and his hair was
longer. He might have been called seedy-looking; he might have been
Sidney Carton in "The Only Way"; he had always that touch of the dramatic
about him that suggested a stage character. He had a bad cough.
"Oh," said Urquhart, polite and feeling embarrassed; "how do you do? I'm
sorry to have kept you waiting; they didn't tell me who it was. Sit down,
won't you?"
Hilary said thanks, he thought not. He had a keen sense of the fit. So
he refused the cigarette Urquhart offered him, and stood by the fire,
looking at the floor. Urquhart stood opposite him, and thought how ill
and how little reputable he looked.
Hilary said, in his high, sweet, husky voice, "It is no use beating about
the bush. I want help. We are in need; we are horribly hard up, to put it
baldly. That has passed between your family and mine which makes you the
last person I should wish to appeal to as a beggar. I propose a business
transaction." He paused to cough.
Urquhart, feeling impatient at the prospect of a provoking interview when
he wanted to be playing bridge, said "Yes?" politely.
"You," said Hilary, "are intending to stand as a candidate for this
constituency. You require for that, I fancy, a reputation wholly
untarnished; the least breath dimming it would be for you a disastrous
calamity. I have some information which, if sent to the local Liberal
paper, would seriously tell against you in the public mind. It is here."
He took it out of his breast pocket and handed it to Urquhart--a
type-written sheet of paper. He must certainly have been to a provincial
theatre lately; he had hit its manners and methods to a nicety, the silly
ass.
Urquhart took the paper gingerly and did not look at it.
"Thanks; but ... I don't know that I am interested, do you know. Isn't
this all rather silly, Mr. Margerison?"
"If you will oblige me by reading it," said Mr. Margerison.
So Urquhart obliged him. It was all about him, as was to be expected;
enough to make a column of the Berkshire Press.
"Well?" said Hilary, when he had done.
"Well," said Urquhart, folding up the paper and returning it, "thank
you for showing it me. But again I must say that I am not particularly
interested. Of course you will send anything you like to any paper you
like; it is no business of mine. There's the libel law, as of course
you know; newspapers are as a rule rather careful about that. No
respectable paper, I needn't say, would care to use such copy as this
of yours.... Well, good night.... Oh, by the way, I suppose your brother
told you all that?"
Hilary said, "I had it from various reliable sources." He stood
uncertain, with wavering eyes, despair killing hope. "You will do
nothing at all to save your reputation, then?"
Urquhart laughed, unamused, with hard eyes. He was intensely irritated.
"Do you think it likely? I don't care what you get printed in any dirty
rag about me, man. Why on earth should I?"
The gulf between them yawned; it was unbridgeable. From Hilary's world
insults might be shrieked and howled, dirt thrown with all the strength
of hate, and neither shrieks nor dirt would reach across the gulf to
Urquhart's. They simply didn't matter. Hilary, realising this, grew
slowly, dully red, with the bitterness of mortified expectation.
Urquhart's look at him, supercilious, contemptuous, aloof, slightly
disgusted, hurt his vanity. He caught at the only weapon he had which
could hurt back.
"I must go and tell Peter, then, that his information has been of no
use."
Urquhart said merely, "Peter won't be surprised. It's no good your trying
to make me think that Peter is joining in this absurdity. He has too much
sense of the ridiculous. He seems to have talked to you pretty freely of
my concerns, which I certainly fancied he would keep to himself; I
suppose he did that by way of providing entertaining conversation; Peter
was always a chatterbox"--it was as well that Peter was not there to hear
the edge in the soft, indifferent voice--"but he isn't quite such a fool
as to have countenanced this rather stagey proceeding of yours. He knows
me--used to know me--pretty well, you see.... Good night. You have plenty
of time to catch your train, I think."
Hilary stopped to say, "Is that all you have to say? You won't let your
connexion with our family--with Peter--induce you to help us in our
need?... I've done an unpleasant thing to-night, you know; I've put
my pride in my pocket and stooped to the methods of the cad, for the sake
of my wife and little children. I admit I have made a mistake, both of
taste and judgment; I have behaved unworthily; you may say like a fool.
But are you prepared to see us go under--to drive by and leave us lying
in the road, as you did to that old Tuscan peasant? Does it in no way
affect your feelings towards us that you are now Peter's cousin by
marriage--besides being practically, his half-brother?"
"I am not practically, or in any other way, Peter's half-brother," said
Urquhart casually. "But that is neither here nor there. Peter and I
are--have been--friends, as you know. I should naturally give him help if
he asked me for it. He has not done so; all that has happened is that you
have tried to blackmail me.... I really see no use in prolonging this
interview, Mr. Margerison. Good night." Urquhart was bored and impatient
with the absurd scene.
Into the middle of it walked Peter, pale and breathless. He stood by the
door and looked at them, dazed and blinking at the light; looked at
Urquhart, who stood leaning his shoulder against the chimney-piece,
his hands in his pockets, the light full on his fair, tranquil, bored
face, and at Hilary, pale and tragic, with wavering, unhappy eyes. So
they stood for a type and a symbol and a sign that never, as long as the
world endures, shall Margerisons get the better of Urquharts.
They both looked at Peter, and Urquhart's brows rose a little, as if to
say, "More Margerisons yet?"
Hilary said, "What's the matter, Peter? Why have _you_ come?"
Peter said, rather faintly, "I meant to stop you before you saw Denis. I
suppose I'm too late.... I made Peggy tell me. I found a paper, you see;
and I asked Peggy, and she said you'd come down here to use it. _Have_
you?"
"He has already done his worst," Denis's ironic voice answered for him.
"Sprung the awful threat upon me."
Peter leant back against the door, feeling rather sick. He had run all
the way from the station; and, as always, he was too late.
Then he laughed a little. The contrast of Hilary's tragedian air and
Urquhart's tranquil boredom was upsetting to him.
Urquhart didn't laugh, but looked at him enquiringly.
"It's certainly funny rather," he said quietly. "You must have got a good
deal of quiet fun out of compiling that column."
"Oh," said Peter. "But I didn't, you know."
"I gather you helped--supplied much of the information. That story of
the old man I brutally slew and then callously left uncared for on the
road--you seem to have coloured that rather highly in passing it
on.... I suppose it was stupid of me to fancy that you weren't intending
to make that public property. Not that I particularly mind: there was
nothing to be ashamed of in that business; but it somehow never happened
to occur to me that you were relating it."
"I didn't," said Peter. "I have never told anyone."
Urquhart said nothing; his silence was expressive.
Peter stammered into speech incoherently.
"At least--at least--yes, I believe I did tell Peggy the story, months
ago, in Venice--but I didn't say it was you. I merely said, if someone
had done that ... what would she think? I wanted to know if she thought
we ought to have found the old man's people and told them."
"I see," said Urquhart. "And did she?"
"No. She thought it was all right." Peter had known beforehand that Peggy
would think it was all right; that was why he had asked her, to be
reassured, to have the vague trouble in his mind quieted.
And she, apparently, had seen through his futile pretence, had known it
was Urquhart he spoke of, needed reassuring about (Peter didn't realise
that even less shrewd observers than Peggy might easily know when it was
Urquhart he spoke of) and had gone and told Hilary. And Hilary, in his
need, had twisted it into this disgusting story, and had typed it and
brought it down to Astleys to-night, with other twisted stories.
"I suppose the rest too," said Urquhart, "you related to your
sister-in-law to see what she would think."
Peter stammered, "I don't think so. No, I don't believe anything else
came from me. Did it, Hilary?"
Hilary shrugged his shoulders, and made no other answer.
"It really doesn't particularly matter," said Urquhart, "whether the
informant was you or some other of my acquaintances. I daresay my gyp is
responsible for the story of the actresses I brought down to the St.
Gabriel's dance; he knew about it at the time, I believe. I am not in the
least ashamed of that either; the 'Berkshire Press' is extremely welcome
to it, if it can find space for it.... Well, now, will you both stay the
night with me, or must you get back? The last good train goes at 10.5, I
think."
Peter said, "Come along, Hilary."
Urquhart stood and watched them go.
As they turned away, he said, in his gentle, inexpressive voice, that
hadn't been raised in anger once, "Can I lend you any money, Peter?"
Peter shook his head, though he felt Hilary start.
"No, thank you. It is very good of you.... Good night."
"Good night."
Going out of the room, they came face to face with Lord Evelyn Urquhart
coming in. He saw them; he stiffened a little, repressing a start; he
stood elaborately aside to let them pass, bowing slightly.
Neither Margerison said anything. Hilary's bow was the stage copy of his
own; Peter didn't look at him at all, but hurried by.
The servant let them out, and shut the hall door behind them.
Lord Evelyn said to his nephew in the library, swinging his eye-glass
restlessly to and fro, "Why do you let those people into your house,
Denis? I thought we had done with them."
"They came to call," said Denis, who did not seem disposed to be
communicative. "I can't say why they chose this particular hour."
Lord Evelyn paced up the room, restless, nervous, petulant.
"It's monstrous," he said querulously. "Perfectly monstrous. Shameless.
How dare they show their faces in this house?... I suppose they wanted
something out of you, did they?"
Denis merely said, "After all, Peter is my cousin by marriage, you must
remember. And I have never broken with him."
Lord Evelyn returned, "The more shame to you. He's as great a swindler as
his precious brother; they're a pair, you can't deny that."
Denis didn't attempt to deny it; probably he was feeling a little tired
of the Margerisons to-night.
"I'm not defending Peter, or his brother either. I only said that he's
Lucy's cousin, and she's very fond of him, and I'm not keen on actually
breaking with him. As to the brother, he's so much more of an ass than
anything else that to call him a swindler is more than he deserves. He
simply came here to-night to play the fool; he's no more sense than a
silly ass out of a play."
That was what Peter was telling Hilary on the way to the station. Hilary
defended himself rather feebly.
"My good Peter, we must have money. We are in positive want. Of course, I
never meant to proceed to extremities; I thought the mere mention of such
a threat would be enough to make him see that we really were desperately
hard up, and that he might as well help us. But he doesn't care. Like all
rich people, he is utterly callous and selfish.... Do you think Lucy
would possibly give us any help, if you asked her?"
"I shan't ask her," said Peter. "Don't, please, Hilary," he added
miserably. "Can't you _see_...."
"See what? I see that we get a little more destitute every day: that
the boarders are melting away; that I am reduced to unthinkably sordid
hackwork, and you to the grind of uncongenial toil; that Peggy can't
afford to keep a cook who can boil a potato respectably (they were like
walnuts to-day) that she and the children go about with their clothes
dropping off them. I see that; and I see these Urquharts, closely
connected with our family, rolling in unearned riches, spending and
squandering and wasting and never giving away. I see the Robinsons, our
own relations, fattening on the money that ought to have come to us, and
now and then throwing us a loan as you throw a dog a bone. I see your
friend Leslie taking himself off to the antipodes to spend his millions,
that he may be out of the reach of disturbing appeals. I see a world
constituted so that you would think the devils in hell must cry shame on
it." His cough, made worse by the fog, choked his relation of his vision.
Peter had nothing to say to it: he could only sigh over it. The Haves and
the Have-Nots--there they are, and there is no getting round the ugly
fact.
"Denis," said Peter, "would lend me money if I asked him. You heard him
offer. But I am not going to ask him. We are none of us going to ask him.
If I find that you have, and that he has given it you, I shall pay it
straight back.... You know, Hilary, we're really not so badly off as all
that; we get along pretty well, I think; better than most other people."
The other Have-Nots; they made no difference, in Hilary's eyes, to the
fact that of course the Margerisons should have been among the Haves.
Hilary said, "You are absolutely impervious, Peter, to other people's
troubles," and turned up his coat-collar and sank down on a seat in the
waiting-room. (Of course, they had missed the 10.5, the last good train,
and were now waiting for the 11.2, the slow one.)
Peter walked up and down the platform, feeling very cold. He had come
away, in his excitement, without his overcoat. The chill of the foggy
night seemed to sink deep into his innermost being.
Hilary's words rang in his ears. "I see that we get a little more
destitute every day." It was true. Every day the Margerisons seemed to
lose something more. To-night Peter had lost something he could ill
afford to part with--another degree of Denis Urquhart's regard. That
seemed to be falling from him bit by bit; perhaps that was why he felt so
cold. However desperately he clung to the remnants, as he had clung since
that last interview in Venice, he could not think to keep them much
longer at this rate.
As he walked up and down the platform, his cold hands thrust deep into
his pockets, he was contemplating another loss--one that would hurt
absurdly much.
If Hilary felt that he needed more money so badly, he must have it. There
were certain things Peter declined to do. He wouldn't borrow from the
Urquharts; but he would sell his last treasured possession to soothe
Hilary for a little while. The Berovieri goblet had been bought for a
lot of money, and could at any moment be sold for a lot of money. The
Berovieri goblet must go.
That evening, in the tiny attic room, Peter took the adorable thing out
of the box where it lay hid, and set it on the chest of drawers, in front
of the candle, so that the flame shone through the blue transparency like
the setting sun through a stained-glass window.
It was very, very beautiful. Peter sat on the bed and looked at it, as
a devotee before a shrine. In itself it was very beautiful, a magic thing
of blue colour and deep light and pure shadow and clear, lovely form.
Peter loved it for itself, and for its symbolic character. For it was a
symbol of the world of great loveliness that did, he knew, exist. When he
had been turned out of that world into a grey and dusty place, he had
kept that one thing, to link him with loveliness and light. Peter was
a materialist: he loved things, their shapes and colours, with a passion
that blinded him to the beauty of the colourless, the formless, the
super-sensuous.
He slipped his fingers up the chalice's slim stem and round its cool
bowl, and smiled for pleasure that such a thing existed--had existed for
four hundred years--to gladden the world.
"Well, anyone would have thought I should have smashed you before now,"
he remarked, apostrophising it proudly. "But I haven't. I shall take you
to Christie's myself to-morrow, as whole as you were the day Leslie gave
you me."
It was fortunate that Leslie was out of reach, and would not hear of the
transaction. If he had been in England, Peter would have felt bound to
offer him the goblet, and he would have paid for it too enormous a price
to be endured. Leslie's generosity was sometimes rather overwhelming.
When Peter took Hilary and Peggy the cheque he had received, and told
them what he had received it for, Hilary said, "I suppose these things
must be. It was fortunate you did not ask my advice, Peter; I should have
hesitated what to say. It is uncommonly like bartering one's soul for
guineas. To what we are reduced!"
He was an artist, and cared for beautiful goblets. He would much rather
have borrowed the money, or had it given him.
Peggy, who was not an artist, said, "Oh, Peter darling, how sweet of you!
Now I really _can_ pay the butcher; I've had to hide from him the last
few mornings, in the coal-hole. You dear child, I hope you won't miss
that nice cup too much. When our ship comes in you shall have another."
"_When_," sighed Hilary, who was feeling over-worked that evening. (He
did advertisement pictures for a weekly paper; a sordid and degrading
pursuit.)
"Well," said Peggy hopefully, "the boarders we have now really do pay
their rent the way they never did in Venice. That's such a comfort. If
only Larry's cough gets off his chest without turning to bronchitis,
I will be quite happy. But these loathsome fogs! And that odious man
coming round wanting to know why aren't the children attending school!
'I'm sure,' I said to him, 'I wish they were; the house would be the
quieter missing them; but their father insists on educating them himself,
because he won't let them mix up with the common children in the school;
they're by way of being little gentry, do you see,' I said, 'though
indeed you mightn't think it to look at them.' Oh dear me, he was so
impolite; he wouldn't believe that Hilary was doing his duty by them,
though I assured him that he read them all the 'Ancient Mariner'
yesterday morning while they watched him dress, and that I was teaching
them the alphabet whenever I had a spare minute. But nothing would
satisfy him; and off the two eldest must go to the Catholic school next
week to be destroyed by the fog and to pick up with all the ragamuffins
in the district."
"An abominable, cast-iron system," Hilary murmured mechanically. "Of a
piece with all the other institutions of an iniquitous state."
"And what do you think," added Peggy, who was busy putting a patch in
Silvio's knickerbockers, "Guy Vyvian turned up out of nowhere and called
this afternoon, bad manners to him for a waster. When he found you were
out, Hilary, he asked where was Rhoda; he'd no notion of sitting down to
listen to _me_ talking. Rhoda was out at work too, of course; I told him
it wasn't most of us could afford to play round in the afternoons the way
he did. I suppose he'll come again, bothering and upsetting the child
just when she's settling down a bit. I've thought her seeming brighter
lately; she likes going about with you, Peter. But there'll be pretty
doings again when that man comes exciting her."
"Vyvian is a cad and a low fellow," Hilary said, "and I always regretted
being forced into partnership with him; but I suppose one can't kick
one's past acquaintances from the door. I, at least, cannot. Some people
can and do; they may reconcile it with their standards of decency if they
choose; but I cannot. Vyvian must come if he likes, and we must be
hospitable to him. We must ask him to dinner if he comes again."
"Yes," sniffed Peggy, "I can see him! Sticking his fork into the potatoes
and pretending he can't get it through! Oh, have him to dinner if you
like; he must just make the best of what he gets if he comes. He'll be
awfully rude to the rest, too, but I'll apologise for him beforehand."
"Though a cad," Hilary observed, "Vyvian is less of a vacuous fool than
most of the members of our present delightful house-party. He at least
knows _something_ of art and literature, and can converse without jarring
one's taste violently by his every word. He is not, after all, a Miss
Matthews or a Mr. Bridger. Apologies, therefore, are scarcely called for,
perhaps."
Peggy said, "What a solemn face, Peter. Is it the Vyvian man, or the
beautiful cup, that we've never half thanked you for getting rid of yet?"
Peter said, "It's the Vyvian man. He makes me feel solemn. You see, I
promised Mrs. Johnson faithfully to keep Rhoda out of his clutches, if
I could."
"Darling, what a silly promise. Oh, of course, we'll all do our best; but
if he wants to clutch her, the silly little bird, he'll surely do it. Not
that I'm saying he does want to; I daresay he only wants to upset her and
make her his slave and then run away again to his own place, the Judas."
"But I don't want him to do that. Rhoda will be unhappier than ever
again."
"Oh, well, I wouldn't wonder if, when Rhoda sees him again now, she sees
what a poor creature it is, after all. It may be a turning-point with
her, and who knows will she perhaps settle down afterwards and be a
reasonable girl and darn her stockings and wear a collar?"
"If one _is_ to talk of stockings," began Hilary, "I noticed Caterina's
to-day, and really, you know...."
Peggy bit off her cotton and murmured, "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, what's
to become of us all?"