The Lee Shore | Page 5

from the first. He had known when he said, "I say, you,
Margerison, just cut down to the field ..."
Not for a moment did it seem at all strange to Peter that Urquhart
should have had this knowledge and given no sign till now. What, after

all, was it to a hero that the family circle of an obscure individual such
as he should have momentarily intersected the hero's own orbit? School
has this distinction--families take a back place; one is judged on one's
own individual merits. Peter would much rather think that Urquhart had
come to see him because he had put his arm out and Urquhart had put it
in (really though, only temporarily in) than because his mother had
once been Urquhart's stepmother.
Peter's arm did not recover so soon as Urquhart's sanguineness had
predicted. Perhaps he began taking precautions against stiffness too
soon; anyhow he did not that term make a decent three-quarter, or any
sort of a three-quarter at all. It always took Peter a long time to get well
of things; he was easy to break and hard to mend--made in Germany, as
he was frequently told. So cheaply made was he that he could perform
nothing. Defeated dreams lived in his eyes; but to light them there
burned perpetually the blue and luminous lamps of undefeated mirth,
and also an immense friendliness for life and mankind and the
delightful world. Like the young knight Agenore, Peter the unlucky
was of a mind having no limits of hope. Over the blue and friendly eyes
that lit the small pale face, the half wistful brows were cocked with a
kind of whimsical and gentle humour, the same humour that twitched
constantly at the corners of his wide and flexible mouth. Peter was not
a beautiful person, but one liked, somehow, to look at him and to meet
his half-enquiring, half-amused, wholly friendly and sympathetic
regard. By the end of his first term at school, he found himself
unaccountably popular. Already he was called "Margery" and seldom
seen by himself. He enjoyed life, because he liked people and they
liked him, and things in general were rather jolly and very funny, even
with a dislocated shoulder. Also the great Urquhart would, when he
remembered, take a little notice of Peter--enough to inflate the young
gentleman's spirit like a blown-out balloon and send him soaring
skywards, to float gently down again at his leisure.
Towards the end of the term, Peter's half-brother Hilary came to visit
him. Hilary was tall and slim and dark and rather beautiful, and he
lived abroad and painted, and he told Peter that he was going to be
married to a woman called Peggy Callaghan. Peter, who had always

admired Hilary from afar, was rather sorry. The woman Peggy
Callaghan would, he vaguely believed, come between Hilary and his
family; and already there were more than enough of such obstacles to
intercourse. But at tea-time he saw the woman, and she was large and
fair and laughing, and called him, in her rich, amused voice "little
brother dear," and he did not mind at all, but liked her and her laugh
and her mirthful, lazy eyes.
Peter was a large-minded person; he did not mind that Hilary wore no
collar and a floppy tie. He did not mind this even when they met
Urquhart in the street. Peter whispered as he passed, "That's Urquhart,"
and Hilary suddenly stopped and held out his hand, and said pleasantly,
"I am glad to meet you." Peter blushed at that, naturally (for Hilary's
cheek, not for his tie), and hoped that Urquhart wasn't much offended,
but that he understood what half-brothers who lived abroad and painted
were, and didn't think it was Peter's fault. Urquhart shook hands quite
pleasantly, and when Hilary added, "We shared a stepmother, you and I;
I'm Peter's half-brother, you know," he amiably agreed. Peter hoped he
didn't think that the Urquhart-Margerison connection was being
strained beyond due bounds. Hilary said further, "You've been very
good to my young brother, I know," and it was characteristic of Peter
that, even while he listened to this embarrassing remark, he was free
enough from self-consciousness to be thinking with a keen though
undefined pleasure how extraordinarily nice to look at both Hilary and
Urquhart, in their different ways, were. (Peter's love of the beautiful
matured with his growth, but in intensity it could scarcely grow.)
Urquhart was saying something about bad luck and shoulders; it was
decent of Urquhart to say that. In fact, things were going really well till
Hilary, after saying, "Good-bye, glad to have met you," added to it the
afterthought, "You must come and stay at my uncle's place in Sussex
some time. Mustn't he, Peter?" At the same time--fitting
accompaniment