"Oh, yes, you will," said Temple confidently. "I'm delighted you'll join us. And I'll be able to pay well, too. Old Dibden's ready to stump up any amount."
"That's a good thing," said Peter.
He remembered that Temple had not, with the best wish in the world, been always able in the past to fulfil all his promises. In short, Peter was touched and even excited. It was so long since anyone had come to him or wanted him. Then Temple had caught him at the right moment. He was out of a job; Robsart's flat was suffocating him; he himself was feeling something of this new air that was blowing through the world. He wondered whether after all it might not be that Temple and his friends would be given the power. They had youth, energy, a freedom from tradition....
He promised Temple that he would come to tea next day, and see some of his friends.
"The paper's to be called the Blue Moon," said Temple. "To-morrow, then, at five."
Peter found himself at five next day in a small room off Chancery Lane. Temple met him at the door, greeted him with that rather eager and timid air that was especially his, introduced him to a young man on a green sofa, and left him.
Peter was rather amused at his own excitement. He looked about him with eagerness. Here, at any rate, was a fine contrast to Robsart. No gold gods and precious Rodins in this place. The room was bare to shabbiness. The only picture on the ugly wall-paper was a copy of some post-impressionist picture stuck on to the paper with a pin.
It was a warm spring day, and the room was very close. Some half a dozen men and two girls were present; very much bad tobacco was being smoked. Somewhere near the untidy fire-place was a table with tea on it. "Perhaps," thought Peter, "these are the men who will make the new world.... At any rate, no false prosperity here. These men mean what they say." Looking about him, the first thing that he discovered was a strange family likeness that there seemed to be amongst the men. They all wore old, shabby, ill-fitting clothes. No hair was brushed, no collars were clean, all boots were dusty. "That's all right," thought Peter. "There's no time to waste thinking about clothes these days."
All the same he did like cleanliness, and what distressed him was that all the young men looked unwell. One of them, indeed, was fat. But it was an unhealthy stoutness, pale, blotchy, pimpled. Complexions were sallow, bodies undeveloped and uncared-for. It was not that they looked ill-fed—simply that they seemed to have been living in close atmospheres and taking no exercise.... Listening then to the talk he discovered that the tone of the voices was strangely the same. It was as though one man were speaking, as though the different bodies were vehicles for the same voice. The high, querulous, faint, scornful voice ran on. It seemed as though, did it cease, the room would cease with it—the room, the sofa, the wall-paper, the tea-table cease with it, and vanish. One of the pale young men was on the sofa stroking a tiny, ragged moustache with his rather dirty fingers. He raised sad, heavy eyes to Peter's face, then, with a kind of spiritual shudder as though he did not like what he had seen there, dropped them.
"It's rather close in here, isn't it?" said Peter at last.