THE LOSS OF THE SINGLE STATE
The man Vyvian came. He came again and again, but not to dinner. Perhaps
he suspected about the potatoes, and thought that they would not even be
compensated for by the pleasure of sneering at the boarders. He came in
the evenings and sat in the sitting-room and drank coffee (the only thing
that was well cooked in Peggy's household), and talked to Hilary, and
looked at Rhoda. Rhoda, embroidering apple-boughs on a green dress-front,
shivered and trembled under his eyes.
"Now I know," thought Peter, seeing Vyvian look, "what villains in books
are really like. Vyvian is just like one; specially about the eyes." He
was sitting near Rhoda, playing that sort of patience called calcul,
distinguished from other patiences by the fact that it comes out; that
was why Peter liked it. He had refused to-night to join in the game the
others were playing, which was animal grab, though usually he enjoyed
it very much. Peter liked games, though he seldom won them. But this
evening he played patience by himself and sat by Rhoda and consulted her
at crucial moments, and babbled of many things and knew whenever Vyvian
looked and Rhoda shook. At half-past nine Vyvian stopped talking to
Hilary and crossed the room and took the arm-chair on Rhoda's other side.
"Enthralling evenings you spend here," he remarked, including in his
glance Rhoda's embroidery, Peter's patience, and the animal grab table,
from which cheerfully matter-of-fact farmyard and jungle cries proceeded
with spirit.
Rhoda said nothing. Her head was bent over her work. The next moment she
pricked her finger violently, and started. Before she could get her
handkerchief out, Vyvian had his, and was enveloping her small hand in
it.
"Too bad," he said, in a voice so low that the farmyard cries drowned it
as far as Peter was concerned. "Poor little finger." He held it and the
handkerchief closely in his two hands.
Rhoda, her colour flooding and ebbing over her thin face and thin neck
down to the insertion yoke of her evening blouse, trembled like a
captured bird. Her eyes fell from his look; a bold, bad look Peter
thought, finding literary terminology appropriate.
The next moment the little table on which Peter was playing toppled over
onto the floor with a small crash, and all his cards were scattered on
the carpet.
Rhoda started and looked round, pulling her hand away as if a spell was
broken.
"Dear me," said Peter regretfully, "it was just on coming out, too. I
shan't try again to-night; it's not my night, obviously." He was picking
up the cards. Rhoda watched him silently.
"Do you know calcul, Mr. Vyvian?" Peter enquired, collecting scattered
portions of the pack from under the arm-chair.
Mr. Vyvian stared at Peter's back, which was the part of him most visible
at the moment.
"I really can't say I have the pleasure; no." (That, Peter felt certain,
was an insolent drawl.)
"Would you like to learn it?" said Peter politely. "Are you fond of
patience?"
"I can't say I am," said Mr. Vyvian.
"Oh! Then you _would_ like calcul. People who are really fond of other
patiences don't; they despise it because it comes out. I don't like any
other sort of patience; I'm not clever enough; so I like this. Let me
teach you, may I?"
Vyvian got up.
"Thanks; you're quite too kind. On the whole, I think I can conduct my
life without any form of patience, even one which comes out."
"You have a turn, then, Miss Johnson," said Peter, arranging the cards.
"Perhaps it'll come out for you, though it won't for me to-night."
"Since you are all so profitably occupied," said Vyvian, "I think I will
say good night."
Peter said, "Oh, must you?... Good night, then. We play calcul most
nights, so you can learn it some other time if you'd like to."
"A delightful prospect," Vyvian murmured, his glance again
comprehensively wandering round the room. "A happy family party you seem
here.... Good night." He bent over Rhoda with his ironic politeness.
"I was going to ask you if you would come out with me to-morrow evening
to a theatre.... But since your evenings seem to be so pleasantly filled
otherwise...."
She looked up at him a moment, wavered, met his dark eyes, was caught by
the old domination, and swept off her feet as of old.
"Oh, ... I should like to come...." She was a little breathless.
"Good! I will call for you then, at seven, and we will dine together. Au
revoir."
"He swept her a mocking bow and was gone," Peter murmured to himself.
Then he looked at Rhoda, and found her eyes upon his face, wide,
frightened, bewildered, and knew in a flash that she had never meant
to consent to go out with Vyvian, that she had been caught by the old
power he had over her and swept off her feet. That knowledge gave him
confidence, and he could say, "You don't want to go, do you? Let me go
after him and tell him."
"Oh," she pressed her hands together in front of her. "But I must go--I
said I would."
Peter was on his feet and out of the door in a second. He saw Vyvian in
the passage downstairs, putting on his coat. He spoke from half-way down
the stairs:
"Oh, Miss Johnson asks me to say she is sorry she can't go with you
to-morrow night after all; she finds she has another engagement."
Vyvian turned and looked up at him, a slight smile lifting his lip.
"Really?" was all he said. "All the same, I think I will call at seven
and try to persuade her to change her mind again. Good night."
As plainly as possible he had said to Peter, "I believe you to be lying."
Peter had no particular objection to his believing that; he was not
proud; but he did object to his calling at seven and trying to persuade
Rhoda to change her mind again, for he believed that that would be a task
easy of achievement.
He went back into the sitting-room. Rhoda was sitting still, her hands
twisted together on the green serge on her lap. Peter sat down by her and
said, "Will you come out with me instead to-morrow evening?" and she
looked at him, her teeth clenched over her lower lip as if to steady it,
and said after a moment, forlornly, "If you like."
It was so much less exciting than going with Vyvian would have been, that
Peter felt compunction.
"You shall choose the play," he said. "'Peter Pan,' do you think? Or
something funny--'The Sins of Society,' or something?"
Rhoda whispered "Anything," nearly on the edge of tears. A vividness had
flashed again into her grey life, and she was trying to quench it. She
had heroically, though as an afterthought, flung an extinguishing douche
of water at it; but now that she had done so she was melting into
unheroic self-pity.
"I want to go to bed," she said shakily, and did so, feeling for her
pocket-handkerchief as she crossed the room.
At a quarter to seven the next evening Peter looked for Rhoda, thinking
it well that they should be out of the house by seven o'clock, but
couldn't find her, till Miss Clegson said she had met her "going into
church" as she herself came out. Peter went to the church to find her.
Rhoda didn't as a rule frequent churches, not believing in the creeds
they taught; but even to the unbelieving a church is often a refuge.
Peter, coming into the great dim place out of the wet fog, found it
again, as he had long since known it to be, a refuge from fogs and other
ills of living. Far up, the seven lamps that never go out burned dimly
through the blurred air. It was a gaudy place, no doubt; over-decorated;
a church for the poor, who love gaudiness. Perhaps Peter too loved
gaudiness. Anyhow, he loved this place and its seven lamps and its
shrines and statued saints.
Surely, whatever one believed of the mysterious world and of all the
other mysterious worlds that might be floating behind the veils, surely
here was a very present help in trouble, a luminous brightness shining in
a fog-choked world.
Peter, sitting by the door, sank into a great peace. Half-way up the
church he saw Rhoda sitting very still. She too was looking up the church
towards the lamps and the altar beyond them.
Presently a cassocked sacristan came and lit the vesper lights, for
evensong was to be at seven, and the altar blazed out, an unearthly
brilliance in the dim place. The low murmur of voices (a patient priest
had been hearing confessions for an hour) ceased, and people began coming
in one by one for service. Rhoda shivered a little, and got up and came
down the church. Peter joined her at the door, and they passed shivering
into the fog together.
"I was looking for you," said Peter, when they were out in the alley that
led to the church door.
"It's time we went, isn't it," she said apathetically.
Then she added, inconsequently, "The church seems the only place where
one can find a bit of peace. I can't think why, when probably it's all
a fairy-tale."
"I suppose that's why," said Peter. "Fairyland is the most peaceful
country there is."
"You can't get peace out of what's not true," Rhoda insisted querulously.
"Oh, I don't know.... Besides, fairy-tales aren't necessarily untrue,
do you think? I don't mean that, when I call what churches teach a
fairy-tale. I mean it's beautiful and romantic and full of light and
colour and wonderful things happening. And it's probably the truer for
that."
"D'you _believe_ it all?" queried Rhoda; but he couldn't answer her as to
that.
"I don't know. I never do know exactly what I believe. I can't think how
anyone does. But yes, I think I like to believe in those things; they're
too beautiful not to be true."
"It's the ugly things that are true," she said, coughing in the fog.
"Why, yes, the ugly things and the beautiful; God and the devil, if one
puts it like that. Oh, yes, I believe very much in the devil; I can't
believe that any street of houses could look quite like this without the
help of someone utterly given over to evil thinking. _We_ aren't, you
see; none of us are ugly enough in our minds to have thought out some
of the things one sees; so there must be a devil."
Rhoda was silent. He thought she was crying. He said gently, "I say,
would you like to come out to-night, or would you rather be quiet at
home?" It would be safe to return home by half-past seven, he thought.
She said, in a small muffled voice, that she didn't care.
A tall figure passed by them in the narrow alley, looming through the
fog. Rhoda started, and shrank back against the brick wall, clutching
Peter's arm. The next moment the figure passed into the circle of light
thrown down by a high lamp that glimmered over a Robbia-esque plaque
shrine let into the wall, and they saw that it was a cassocked priest
from the clergy-house going into church. Rhoda let out her breath faintly
in a sigh, and her fingers fell from Peter's coat-sleeve.
"Oh," she whispered, "I'm frightened.... Let's stay close to the church;
just outside the door, where we can see the light and hear the music. I
don't want to go out into the streets to-night, Peter, I want to stay
here. I'm ... so frightened."
"Come inside," suggested Peter, as they turned back to the church. "It
would be warmer."
But she shook her head. "No. I'd rather be outside. I don't belong in
there."
Peter said, "Why not?" and she told him, "Because for me it's the ugly
things that are true."
So together they stood in the porch, outside the great oak door, and
heard the sound of singing stealing out, fog-softened, and smelt the
smell of incense (it was the festal service of some saint) that pierced
the thick air with its pungent sweetness.
They sat down on the seat in the porch, and Rhoda shivered, not with
cold, and Peter waited by her very patiently, knowing that she needed him
as she had never needed him before.
She told him so. "You don't _mind_ staying, Peter? I feel safer with you
than with anyone else.... You see, I'm afraid.... Oh, I can't tell you
how it is I feel. When he looks at me it's as if he was drawing me and
dragging me, and I feel I must get up and follow him wherever he goes.
It's always been like that, since first I met him, more than a year ago.
He made me care; he made me worship the ground he walked on; if he'd
thrown me down and kicked me, I'd have let him. But he never cared
himself; I know that now. I've known it a long time. And I've vowed to
myself, and I vowed to mother when she lay dying, that I wouldn't let him
have anything more to do with me. He frightens me, because he can twist
me round his finger and make me care so ... and it hurts.... And he's
just playing; he'll never really care. But for all I know that, I know
he can get me whenever he wants me. And he's come back again to amuse
himself seeing me worship him ... and he'll make me follow him about,
and all the time he'll be thinking me a little fool, and I shall know
it ... but I can't help it, Peter, I can't help it.... I've nothing to
hold on to, to save me. If I could be religious, if I could pray, like
the people in there ... but he says there's nothing in that; he's made me
believe like him, and I sometimes think he only believes in himself, and
that's why I can only believe in him too. So I've got nothing in the
world to hold on to, and I shall be carried away and drowned...."
She was crying with strangled sobbings, her face in her thin hands.
Peter's arm was put gently about her shoulders, comforting her.
"No, you won't, Rhoda. Rhoda dear, you won't be carried away, because
I shall be here, holding you. Is that any help at all?"
He felt her relax beneath his arm and lean back against him; he heard
her whisper, "Yes; oh, yes. If I can hold onto you, Peter, I shall feel
safe."
"Hold on, then," said Peter, "as tight as you like."
She looked up at him with wet eyes and he felt the claim and the appeal
of her piercing straight into his heart.
"I could care ..." she whispered. "Are you sure, Peter?"
His arm tightened about her. He hadn't meant precisely what she had
understood him to mean; at least, he hadn't translated his purpose to
help her to the uttermost into a specified relation, as she was doing;
but if the purpose, to be fulfilled, had to be so translated, he was
ready for that too. So he said, "Quite sure, Rhoda. I want to be the most
to you that you'll let me be," and her face was hidden against his coat,
and her tension relaxed utterly, and she murmured, "Oh, I can be safe
like that."
So they sat in silence together, between the lit sanctuary and the
desolate night, and heard, as from a long way off, the sound of
chanting:--
"Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace: according to thy
word;
"For mine eyes have seen ..."
Later on, Rhoda said, quiet and happy now, "I've thought you cared,
Peter, for some time. And last night, when I saw you hated Guy to be near
me, I felt sure. But I feel I've so little to give you. So much of me is
burnt away and spoilt. But it'll come back, Peter, I think, if you love
me. I do love you, very much; you've been such a dear to me always, from
the very first night at the Palazzo, when you spoke to me and smiled.
Only I couldn't think of anyone but Guy then. But lately I've been
thinking, 'Peter's worth a hundred Guys, and if only I could care for
him, I should feel safe.' And I do care, ever so much; and if it's a
different sort of caring from what I've felt for Guy, it's a better sort.
That's a bad, black sort, that hurts; I never want any more of that.
Caring for you will keep me from that, Peter."
"It's dear of you to care for me at all," said Peter. "And we won't let
Guy come near us, now or ever."
"You hate him, don't you?" said Rhoda. "I know you do."
"Oh, well, I don't know that it's as bad as all that. He's more funny
than anything else, it seems to me. He might have walked straight out of
a novel; he does all the things they do in books, you know, and that one
never thinks people really do outside them. He sneers insolently. I watch
him sometimes, to see how it's done. He curls his upper lip, too, when
he's feeling contemptuous; that's another nice trick that I should like
to acquire. Oh, he's quite an interesting study really. You've taken him
wrong, you know. You've taken him seriously. He's not meant for that."
"Oh," said Rhoda, vaguely uncomprehending. "You _are_ a funny boy, Peter.
You do talk so.... I never know if you mean half you say."
"About two-thirds, I think," said Peter. "The rest is lies. We all lie
in my family, and not well either, because we're rather weak in the
intellect.... Now do you feel like supper, because I do? Let's come home
and have it, shall we?"
They went home through the fog, Rhoda clinging to Peter's arm as to an
anchor in a sweeping sea. A great peace and security possessed her; she
no longer started at the tall figures that loomed by.
They let themselves into 51 Brook Street, and blinked at one another
in the lamp-lit, linoleumed little hall. Rhoda looked at herself in
the glass, and said, "What a fright I am!" seeing her tear-stained
countenance and straggling fog-wet locks. The dinner-bell rang, and she
ran upstairs to tidy herself. Peter and she came into the dining-room
together, during the soup.
"Let's tell them at once, Peter," whispered Rhoda; so Peter obediently
said, as he sat down by Peggy, "Rhoda and I have just settled to marry."
"_Marry_?" Hilary queried, from the end of the table. "Marry whom?" And
Rhoda, blushing, laughed for the first time for some days.
Peggy said, "Don't be silly, Hilary. Each other, of course, the darlings
mean. Well, well, and to think I never guessed that all this time!"
"Oh," said Miss Clegson, "I did, Mrs. Margerison; I had a very shrewd
suspicion, I assure you. And this evening, when Mr. Peter asked me where
Miss Johnson was gone, and I told him into church, and he followed her
straight away, I said to myself, 'Well, _that_ looks like something we
all know about very well!' I didn't say it to anyone else; I wouldn't
breathe a word till all was settled; I knew you asked me in confidence,
Mr. Peter; but I thought the more. I was always one to see things; they
used to tell me I could see through a stone wall. Well, I'm sure I offer
my congratulations to both of you."
"And I too, with all my heart," said Miss Matthews, the lady who did not
attend ritualistic churches. "Do I understand that the happy arrangement
was made _in church_, Miss Johnson? I gather from Miss Clegson that Mr.
Peter followed you there."
"Oh, not inside, Miss Matthews," said Rhoda, blushing again, and looking
rather pretty. "In the porch, we were."
Miss Matthews sniffed faintly. Such goings-on might, she conveyed, be
expected in the porch of St. Austin's, with all that incense coming
through the door, and all that confessing going on inside.
"Well," said Mr. Bridger, "we ought to have some champagne to drink
success to the happy event. Short of that, let us fill the festive
bumpers with the flowing lemonade. Pass the jug down. Here's _to_ you,
Miss Rhoda; here's _to_ you, Mr. Peter Margerison. May you both be as
happy as you deserve. No one will want me to wish you anything better
than that, I'm sure."
"Here's luck, you dears," said Peggy, drinking. Engagements in general
delighted her, and Peter's in particular. And poor little Rhoda was
looking so bright and happy at last. Peggy wouldn't have taken it upon
herself to call it a remarkably suitable alliance had she been asked; but
then she hadn't been asked, and Peter was such a sweet-natured, loving,
lovable dear that he would get on with anyone, and Rhoda, though
sometimes a silly and sometimes fractious, was a dear little girl too.
The two facts that would have occurred to some sisters-in-law, that they
had extremely few pennies between them, and that Rhoda wasn't precisely
of Peter's gentle extraction, didn't bother Peggy at all.
They occurred, however, to Hilary. It occurred to him that Peter would
now require all his slender earnings for himself and wife, which was
awkward; also that Peter really needn't have looked down to the lower
middle classes for a wife. Hilary believed in gentle birth; through all
his vicissitudes a pathetic pride of breeding clung to him. One might be
down at heels; one might be reduced to sordid means of livelihood, even
to shady schemes for enlarging one's income; but once a gentleman always
so, and one was not to be ranked with the bounders, the Vyvians, the
wealthy Leslies even.
Hilary looked resigned and weary. Why should Peter want to marry a
commonplace and penniless little nobody, and not so very pretty either,
though she looked nice and bright when she was animated, as now.
"Well," he said, "when is it to be?"
Peter looked across at Rhoda.
"I should hope very soon," he said. It was obviously safer, and safety
was the object, to have it very soon.
"How soon can one get married? There have to be banns and so on, don't
there? The third time of asking--that brings it to the eighteenth of
December. What about the nineteenth, Rhoda? That's a Monday."
"Really, Peter ..." Rhoda blushed more than ever. "That seems awfully
soon."
"Well," said Peter, blind to the unusualness of such a discussion at the
dinner-table, "the sooner the better, don't you think? There's nothing to
wait for. I don't suppose we shall ever have more money to do it on than
we have now. I know of a man who waited years and years because he
thought he hadn't got quite enough, and he got a little more each year,
and at the end of six years he thought to double his fortune by putting
it all on a winner, because he was getting so impatient. And the horse
came in last. So the girl broke it off and married someone else, and the
man's heart broke and he took to drink."
"Well?" enquired Miss Matthews, who thought Peter habitually irrelevant
in his remarks.
"Well--so let's be married on December the nineteenth."
"I'm sure," said Rhoda, "we're quite embarrassing everybody, being so
public. Let's settle it afterwards, Peter, when we're alone."
But she too meant to have it as soon as might be after the third time of
asking; it was safer, much safer, so.
"Well," said Miss Clegson, as the ladies rose from the table, "now we're
going to carry Miss Johnson away to tell us all about it; and we'll leave
Mr. Peter to tell you gentlemen _his_ secrets. And after that we'll have
a good round game; but two of the present company can be left out if they
like better to sit in the window-seat!"
But when the other gentlemen repaired to the drawing-room for the good
round game, Peter stayed behind, with Hilary. He didn't want to talk or
be talked to, only to stay where he was and not to have to sit in the
window-seat.
"The insufferable vulgarity of this class of person on this subject is
really the limit," Hilary remarked plaintively, as if it had jarred him
beyond endurance.
"They're awfully kind, aren't they," said Peter, who looked tired. Then
he laughed to himself. Hilary looked at him enquiringly.
"I suppose you know your own business, Peter. But I must confess I am
surprised. I had literally no idea you had such a step in mind."
"I hadn't any idea either," Peter admitted frankly. "I thought of it
quite suddenly. But I think it is a good plan, you know. Of course," he
added, wording what he read in Hilary's face, "I know my life will cost
me more. But I think it is worth while."
"It's quite entirely your own business," Hilary said again, throwing
responsibility from him with a gesture of the hands. Then he leant back
and shut his eyes.
Peter looked at him as he lay in the arm-chair and smoked; his eyes
rested on the jaded, still beautiful face, the dark lock of hair falling
a little over the tired forehead, the brown velvet smoking coat and large
red silk tie. He knew that he had hurt and puzzled Hilary. And he knew
that Hilary wouldn't understand if he were to explain what he couldn't
ever explain. At the most he would say, "It is Peter all over," and
shrug his shoulders at Peter and Peter's vagaries.
A great desire to smooth Hilary's difficult road, as far as might be,
caught and held Peter. Poor old Hilary! He was so frightfully tired of
life and its struggles; tired of being a Have-Not.
To help the other Have-Nots, to put pleasant things into their hands as
far as might be, seemed to Peter at this moment the thing for which one
existed. It is obviously the business of the Have-Nots to do that for one
another; for the Haves do not know or understand. It is the Have-Nots who
must give and give and give, with emptying hands; for from him that hath
not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
Peter went upstairs to the drawing-room to play animal grab.