The Lee Shore. Macaulay Rose
had set his trouser-leg on fire suddenly, and nearly, as he remarked, burnt him to death.) "But I go on. I expect the worst, but I am resigned. The hero is not he who feels no fear, for that were brutal and irrational."
"What do you do it for?" his friend had querulously and superfluously demanded.
"It's so frightfully funny," Peter had said, reflecting, "that I should be doing it. That's why, I suppose. It makes me laugh. You might take to the fiddle if you wanted a good laugh. I take to my motor-bicycle. It's the only way to cheer oneself up when life is disappointing, to go and do something entirely ridiculous. I used to stand on my head when I'd been rowed or sat upon, or when there was a beastly wind; it cheered me a lot. I've given that up now; so I motor-bicycle. Besides," he had added, "you said I must go in for something. You wouldn't like it if I did my embroidery all day."
But on the days when he had been motor-bicycling, Peter had to do a great deal of embroidery in the evenings, for the sake of the change.
"I don't wonder you need it," a friend of the more æsthetically cultured type remarked one evening, finding him doing it. "You've been playing round with the Urquhart-Fitzmaurice lot to-day, haven't you? Nice man, Fitzmaurice, isn't he? I like his tie-pins. You know, we almost lost him last summer. He hung in the balance, and our hearts were in our mouths. But he is still with us. You look as if he had been very much with you, Margery."
Peter looked meditative and stitched. "Old Fitz," he murmured, "is one of the best. A real sportsman. … Don't, Elmslie; I didn't think of that, I heard Childers say it. Childers also said, 'By Jove, old Fitz knocks spots out of 'em every time,' but I don't know what he meant. I'm trying to learn to talk like Childers. When I can do that, I shall buy a tie-pin like Fitzmaurice's, only mine will be paste. Streater's is paste; he's another nice man."
"He certainly is. In fact, Margery, you really are not particular enough about the company you keep. You shun neither the over-bred nor the under-bred. Personally I affect neither, because they don't amuse me. You embrace both."
"Yes," Peter mildly agreed. "But I don't embrace Streater, you know. I draw the line at Streater. Everyone draws the line at Streater; he's of the baser sort, like his tie-pins. Wouldn't it be vexing to have people always drawing lines at you. There'd be nothing you could well do, except to draw one at them, and they wouldn't notice yours, probably, if they'd got theirs in first. You could only sneer. One can always sneer. I sneered to-day."
"You can't sneer," Elmslie told him brutally; "and you can't draw lines; and what on earth you hang about with so many different sorts of idiots for I don't know. … I think, if circumstances absolutely compelled me to make bosom friends of either, I should choose the under-bred poor rather than the over-bred rich. That's the sort of man I've no use for. The sort of man with so much money that he has to chuck it all about the place to get rid of it. The sort of man who talks to you about beagles. The sort of man who has a different fancy waistcoat for each day of the week."
"Well," said Peter, "that's nice. I wish I had."
His friend turned a grave regard on him. "The sort of man who rides a motor-bicycle. … You really should, Margery," he went on, "learn to be more fastidious. You mustn't let yourself be either dazzled by fancy waistcoats or sympathetically moved by unclean collars. Neither is interesting."
"I never said they were," Peter said. "It's the people inside them. … "
Peter, in brief, was a lover of his kind, and the music life played to him was of a varied and complex nature. But, looking back, it was easy to see how there had been, running through all the variations, a dominant motive in the piece.
As Peter listened to the boiling of his egg, and thought how hard it would be when he took it off, the dominant motive came in and stood by the fire, and looked down on Peter. He jingled things in his pockets and swayed to and fro on his heels like his uncle Evelyn, and he was slim in build, and fair and pale and clear-cut of face, and gentle and rather indifferent in manner, and soft and casual in voice, and he was in his fourth year, and life went extremely well with him.
"It boils," he told Peter, of the egg.
Peter took it off and fished it out with a spoon, and began rummaging for an egg-cup and salt and marmalade and buns in the locker beneath his window seat. Having found these things, he composed himself in the fat arm-chair to dine, with a sigh of satisfaction.
"You slacker," Urquhart observed. "Well, can you come to-morrow? The drag starts at eleven."
"It's quite hard," said Peter, unreasonably disappointed in it. "Oh, yes, rather; I'll come." How short the time for doing things had suddenly become.
Urquhart remarked, looking at the carpet, "What a revolting mess. Why?"
"My self-filling bath," Peter explained. "I invented it myself. Well—it did fill itself. Quite suddenly and all at once, you know. It was a very beautiful sight. But rather unrestrained at present. I must improve it. … Oh, this is my last term."
"Sent down?" Urquhart sympathetically enquired. It was what one might expect to happen to Peter.
"Destitute," Peter told him. "The Robinsons have it practically all. Hilary told me to-day. I am thrown on the world. I shall have to work. Hilary is destitute too, and Peggy has nothing to spend, and the babies insist on bathing in the canals. Bad luck for us, isn't it. Oh, and Hilary is going to edit a magazine called 'The Gem,' for your uncle in Venice. That seems rather a nice plan. The question is, what am I to apply my great gifts to?"
Urquhart whistled softly. "As bad as all that, is it?"
"Quite as bad. Worse if anything. … The only thing in careers that I can fancy at the moment is art dealing—picking up nice things cheap and selling them dear, you know. Only I should always want to keep them, of course. If I don't do that I shall have to live by my needle. If they pass the Sweated Industries Bill, I suppose one will get quite a lot. It's the only Bill I've ever been interested in. My uncle was extremely struck by the intelligent way I took notice of it, when I had disappointed him so much about Tariff Reform and Education."
"You'd probably be among the unskilled millions whom the bill turns out of work."
"Then I shall be unemployed, and march with a flag. I shall rather like that. … Oh, I suppose somehow one manages to live, doesn't one, whether one has a degree or not. And personally I'd rather not have one, because it would be such a mortifying one. Besides," Peter added, after a luminous moment of reflection, "I don't believe a degree really matters much, in my profession. You didn't know I had a profession, I expect; I've just thought of it. I'm going to be a buyer for the Ignorant Rich. Make their houses liveable-in. They tell me what they want—I get hold of it for them. Turn them out an Italian drawing-room—Della Robbia mantel-piece, Florentine fire-irons, Renaissance ceiling, tapestries and so on. Things they haven't energy to find for themselves or intelligence to know when they see them. I love finding them, and I'm practised at cheating. One has to cheat if one's poor but eager. … A poor trade, but my own. I can grub about low shops all day, and go to sales at Christie's. What fun."
Urquhart said, "You'd better begin on Leslie. You're exactly what he wants."
"Who's Leslie?" Peter was eating buns and marmalade, in restored spirits.
"Leslie's an Ignorant Rich. He's a Hebrew. His parents weren't called Leslie, but never mind. Leslie rolls. He also bounds, but not aggressively high. One can quite stand him; in fact, he has his good points. He's rich but eager. Also he doesn't know a good thing when he sees it. He lacks your discerning eye, Margery. But such is his eagerness that he is determined to have good things, even though he doesn't know them when he sees them. He would like to be a connoisseur—a collector of world-wide fame. He would like to fill his house with things that would make people open their eyes and whistle. But at present he's got no guide but price and his own pure taste. Consequently he gets hopelessly let in, and people whistle, but not in the way he wants. He's quite frank; he told me all about it. What he wants is a man with a good eye, to do his shopping for him. It would be an ideal berth for a man with the desire but not the power to purchase; a unique partnership of talent with