The Lee Shore | Page 7

point. His
initial mistake was to imagine that he could paint. He did not think that
he had yet painted anything very good; but he knew that he was just
about to do so. He had really the artist's eye, and saw keenly the beauty
that was, though he did not know it, beyond his grasp. His uncle, who

knew nothing about art, could have told him that he would never be
able to paint, simply because he had never been, and would never be,
able to work. That gift he wholly lacked. Besides, like young Peter, he
seemed constitutionally incapable of success. A wide and quick
receptiveness, a considerable power of appreciation and assimilation,
made such genius as they had; the power of performance they
desperately lacked; their enterprises always let them through. Failure
was the tragi-comic note of their unprosperous careers.
However, Hilary succeeded in achieving marriage with the cheerful
Peggy Callaghan, and having done so they went abroad and lived an
uneven and rather exciting life of alternate squalor and luxury in one
story of what had once been a glorious roseate home of Venetian
counts, and was now crumbling to pieces and let in flats to the poor.
Hilary and his wife were most suitably domiciled therein, environed by
a splendid dinginess and squalor, pretentious, tawdry, grandiose, and
superbly evading the common. Peggy wrote to Peter in her large
sprawling hand, "You dear little brother, I wish you'd come and live
with us. We have such fun...." That was the best of Peggy. Always and
everywhere she had such fun. She added, "Give my sisterly regards to
the splendid hero who shared your mamma, and tell him we too live in
a palace." That was so like Peggy, that sudden and amused prodding
into the most secret intimacies of one's emotions. Peggy always
discerned a great deal, and was blind to a great deal more.
CHAPTER II
THE CHOICE OF A CAREER
Hilary, stretching his slender length wearily in Peter's fat arm-chair,
was saying in his high, sweet voice:
"It's the merest pittance, Peter, yours and mine. The Robinsons have it
practically all. The Robinsons. Really, you know ..."
The sweet voice had a characteristic, vibrating break of contempt.
Hilary had always hated the Robinsons, who now had it practically all.
Hilary looked pale and tired; he had been settling his dead uncle's

affairs for the last week. The Margerisons' uncle had not been a lovable
man; Hilary could not pretend that he had loved him. Peter had, as far
as he had been permitted to do so; Peter found it possible to be attached
to most of the people he came across; he was a person of catholic
sympathies and gregarious instincts. Even when he heard how the
Robinsons had it practically all, he bore no resentment either against
his uncle or the Robinsons. Such was life. And of course he and Hilary
did not make wise use of money; that they had always been told.
"You'll have to leave Cambridge," Hilary told him. "You haven't
enough to keep you here. I'm sorry, Peter; I'm afraid you'll have to
begin and try to earn a living. But I can't imagine how, can you? Has
any paying line of life ever occurred to you as possible?"
"Never," Peter assured him. "But I've not had time to think it over yet,
of course. I supposed I should be up here for two years more, you see."
At Hilary's "You'll have to leave Cambridge," his face had changed
sharply. Here was tragedy indeed. Bother the Robinsons.... But after a
moment's pause for recovery he answered Hilary lightly enough. Such,
again, was life. A marvellous two terms and a half, and then the
familiar barred gate. It was an old story.
Hilary's thoughts turned to his own situation. They never, to tell the
truth, dwelt very long on anybody else's.
"We," he said, "are destitute--absolutely. It's simply frightful, the wear
and strain of it. Peggy, of course," he added plaintively, "is not a good
manager. She likes spending, you know--and there's so seldom
anything to spend, poor Peggy. So life is disappointing for her. The
babies, I needn't say, are growing up little vagabonds. And they will
bathe in the canals, which isn't respectable, of course; though one is
relieved in a way that they should bathe anywhere."
"If he was selling any pictures," Peter reflected, "he would tell me," so
he did not enquire. Peter had tact as to his questions. One rather needed
it with Hilary. But he wondered vaguely what the babies had, at the
moment, to grow up upon, even as little vagabonds. Presently Hilary

enlightened him.
"I edit a magazine," he said, and Peter perceived that he was both proud
and ashamed of the fact. "At least