The Lee Shore | Page 8

I am going to. A monthly publication
for the entertainment and edification of the Englishman in Venice. Lord
Evelyn Urquhart is financing it. You know he has taken up his
residence in Venice? A pleasant crank. Venice is his latest craze. He
buys glass. And, indeed, most other things. He shops all day. It's a
mania. When he was young I believe he had a very fine taste. It's dulled
now--a fearful life, as they say. Well, his last fancy is to run a magazine,
and I'm to edit it. It's to be called 'The Gem.' 'Gemm' Adriatica,' you
know, and all that; besides, it's more or less appropriate to the contents.
It's to be largely concerned with what Lord Evelyn calls 'charming
things.' Things the visiting Englishman likes to hear about, you know.
It aims at being the Complete Tourist's Guide. I have to get hold of
people who'll write articles on the Duomo mosaics, and the galleries
and churches and palaces and so on, and glass and lace and anything
else that occurs to them, in a way calculated to appeal to the cultivated
British resident or visitor. I detest the breed, I needn't say. Pampered
hotel Philistines pretending to culture and profaning the sanctuaries,
Ruskin in hand. Ruskin. Really, you know.... Well, anyhow, my
mission in life for the present is to minister to their insatiable appetite
for rhapsodising over what they feel it incumbent on them to admire."
"Rather fascinating," Peter said. It was a pity that Hilary always so
disliked any work he had to do. Work--a terrific, insatiable god,
demanding its hideous human sacrifices from the dawn of the world till
twilight--so Hilary saw it. The idea of being horrible, all the concrete
details into which it was translated were horrible too.
"If it was me," said Peter, "I should minister to my own appetite, no
one else's. Bother the cultivated resident. He'd jolly well have to take
what I gave him. And glass and mosaic and lace--what glorious things
to write about.... I rather love Lord Evelyn, don't you."
Peter remembered him at Astleys, in Berkshire--Urquhart's uncle, tall
and slim and exquisite, with beautiful waistcoats and white, attractive,
nervous hands, that played with a monocle, and a high-pitched voice,

and a whimsical, prematurely worn-out face, and a habit of screwing up
short-sighted eyes and saying, with his queer, closed enunciation,
"Quate charming. Quate." He had always liked Peter, who had been a
gentle and amused boy and had reminded him of Sylvia Hope, lacking
her beauty, but with a funny touch of her charm. Peter had loved the
things he loved, too--the precious and admirable things he had
collected round him through a recklessly extravagant life. Peter at
fifteen, in the first hour of his first visit to Astleys, had been caught out
of the incredible romance of being in Urquhart's home into a new
marvel, and stood breathless before a Bow rose bowl of soft and
mellow paste, ornamented with old Japan May flowers in red and gold
and green, and dated "New Canton, 1750."
"Lake it?" a high voice had asked behind his shoulder. "Lake the sort of
thing?" and there was the tall, funny man swaying on his heels and
screwing his glass into his eye and looking down on Peter with
whimsical interest. Little Peter had said shyly that he did.
"Prefer chaney to cricket?" asked Urquhart's uncle, with his agreeable
laugh that was too attractive to be described as a titter, a name that its
high, light quality might have suggested. But to that Peter said "No."
He had been asked to Astleys for the cricket week; he was going to
play for Urquhart's team. Not that he was any good; but to scrape
through without disgrace (of course he didn't) was at the moment the
goal of life.
Lord Evelyn had seemed disappointed. "If I could get you away from
Denis," he said, "I'll be bound cricket wouldn't be in the 'also rans.'"
And at that moment Denis had sauntered up, and Peter's worshipping
regard had turned from Lord Evelyn's rose bowl to his nephew, and it
was Bow china that was not among the also rans. At that too Lord
Evelyn had laughed, with his queer, closed mirth.
"Keep that till you fall in love," he had inwardly admonished Peter's
back as the two walked away together. "I daresay she won't deserve it
any better--but that's a law of nature, and this is sheer squandering. My
word, how that boy does lake things--and people!" After all, it was

hardly for any Urquhart to condemn squandering.
That was Lord Evelyn, as he lived in Peter's memory--a generous,
whimsical, pleasant crank, touched with his nephew's glamour of
charm.
When Peter said, "I rather love him, don't you," Hilary replied, "He's