“I don’t think I did,” he said. “I only remember that she instantly asked you if you would have some more pheasant.”
He tried to do better than that. Certainly there was no use in saying that sort of thing.
“But she looked at you, father,” he added hastily. “You felt what she was feeling. Was that it?”
His father clasped his hands.
“A divine beam came to me,” he said. “A message of consolation. It made me live again. Surely you saw its effect on me?”
Peter, at such moments, longed for his wet woods. He wanted to be by himself, or, at any rate, with someone who could understand and enjoy this stupendous farce. If only Nellie, for instance, had been sitting there with him, how would their eyes have telegraphed their mental ecstasy. Silvia, at this same moment, would not have served the purpose; she might see how ridiculous his father was being, but below her perception of that, which might easily have made her telegraph and smile to him, there would have been that huge, unspeakable tenderness which, when you wanted an answering perception of farce, would have spoiled it all. That universal embracing compassion required salting. Before now she had seen, and communicated to him, her sense of his father’s absurdities, but now, when he turned trouble into an empty arena for his posturing, her sense of comedy completely failed her. Or, if she still possessed it, Peter could not get at it. With a flare of intuition he guessed that it might be unlocked to him, if only he could use the right key to it. But the key was compassion, and it was he for whom she waited to thrust it into the wards. If only he loved they could laugh at anything together; without that the gate was locked.
Well, if it was locked, he would enjoy his imperfect vision of what lay within.
“Yes, I saw its effect on you,” he said, trying to imagine that Nellie was here, enthralled and wide-eyed, “You amused us all very much immediately afterwards by making that lovely sea-sick passenger out of an orange. Perfectly screaming!”
His father thrust his hands through his hair; it stood up like some glorious grey mane.
“Yes, yes,” he said, “I made an effort. I won’t, no, my Peter, I will not lose sight of the dear gaieties of life. God knows what it costs me! Even after a little thing like that I was more than ever plunged in the gulf of despondency. I know how wrong I am. I must never relax my efforts; I mustn’t give myself time to think. Work and laughter—those divine twins.”