The Lee Shore | Page 4

long time ago," he added,
again anxious to save embarrassment.
"Yes--oh yes." Urquhart, from his manner, might or might not have
known.
"I live with my uncle," Peter further told him, thus delicately and
unobstrusively supplying the information that Mr. Margerison too was
dead. He omitted to mention the date of this bereavement, having
always a delicate sense of what did and did not concern his hearers.
The decease of the lady who had for a brief period been Lady Hugh
Urquhart, might be supposed to be of a certain interest to her stepson;
that of her second husband was a private family affair of the
Margerisons.
(The Urquhart-Margerison connection, which may possibly appear

complicated, was really very simple, and also of exceedingly little
importance to anyone but Peter; but in case anyone feels a desire to
have these things elucidated, it may here be mentioned that Peter's
mother had made two marriages, the first being with Urquhart's father,
Urquhart being already in existence at the time; the second with Mr.
Margerison, a clergyman, who was also already father of one son, and
became Peter's father later. Put so, it sounds a little difficult, chiefly
because they were all married so frequently and so rapidly, but really is
simplicity itself.)
"I live with my uncle too," Urquhart said, and the fact formed a
shadowy bond. But Peter's tone had struck a note of flatness that faintly
indicated a lack of enthusiasm as to the ménage. This note was, to
Peter's delicately attuned ears, absent from Urquhart's voice. Peter
wondered if Lord Hugh's brother (supposing it to be a paternal uncle)
resembled Lord Hugh. To resemble Lord Hugh, Peter had always
understood (till three years ago, when his mother had fallen into silence
on that and all other topics) was to be of a charm.... One spoke of it
with a faint sigh. And yet of a charm that somehow had lacked
something, the intuitive Peter had divined; perhaps it had been too
splendid, too fortunate, for a lady who had loved all small, weak,
unlucky things. Anyhow, not long after Lord Hugh's death (he was
killed out hunting) she had married Mr. Margerison, the poorest
clergyman she could find, and the most devoted to the tending of the
unprosperous.
Peter remembered her--compassionate, delicate, lovely, full of laughter,
with something in the dance of her vivid dark-blue eyes that hinted at
radiant and sad memories. She had loved Lord Hugh for a glorious and
brief space of time. The love had perhaps descended, a hereditary
bequest, with the deep blue eyes, to her son. Peter would have
understood the love; the thing he would not have understood was the
feeling that had flung her on the tide of reaction at Mr. Margerison's
feet. Mr. Margerison was a hard liver and a tremendous giver. Both
these things had come to mean a great deal to Sylvia Urquhart--much
more than they had meant to the girl Sylvia Hope.

And hence Peter, who lay and looked at Lord Hugh Urquhart's son with
wide, bright eyes. With just such eyes--only holding, let us hope, an
adoration more masked--Sylvia Hope had long ago looked at Lord
Hugh, seeing him beautiful, delicately featured, pale, and fair of skin,
built with a strong fineness, and smiling with pleasant eyes. Lord
Hugh's beauty of person and charm of manner had possibly (not
certainly) meant more to Sylvia Hope than his son's meant to her son;
and his prowess at football (if he had any) had almost certainly meant
less. But, apart from the glamour of physical skill and strength and the
official glory of captainship, the same charm worked on mother and
son. The soft, quick, unemphasised voice, with the break of a laugh in
it, had precisely the same disturbing effect on both.
"Well," Urquhart was saying, "when will they let you play again? You
must buck up and get all right quickly.... I shouldn't wonder if you
made a pretty decent three-quarter sometime.... You ought to use your
arm as soon as you can, you know, or it gets stiff, and then you can't,
and that's an awful bore.... Hurt like anything when I hauled it in, didn't
it? But it was much better to do it at once."
"Oh, much," Peter agreed.
"How does it feel now?"
"Oh, all right. I don't feel it much. I say, do you think I ought to use it
at once, in case it gets stiff?" Peter's eyes were a little anxious; he didn't
much want to use it at once.
But Urquhart opined that this would be over-great haste. He departed,
and his last words were, "You must come to breakfast with me when
you're up again."
Peter lay, glorified, and thought it all over. Urquhart knew, then; he had
known