CHAPTER XVIII
THE BREAKING-POINT
The boarding-house suddenly ceased to be. Its long illness ended in natural death. There was a growing feeling among the boarders that no self-respecting person could remain with people whose financial affairs were in the precarious condition of the Margerisons'—people who couldn't pay the butcher, and lived on ill-founded expectations of subsidies. As two years ago the Margerisons had been thrown roughly out of the profession of artistic experts, so now the doors of the boarding-house world were shut upon them. Boarders are like that; intensely respectable.
All the loosed dogs of ill-fortune seemed to be yelping at the Margerisons' heels at once. Hilary, when he recovered from his influenza and went out to look for jobs, couldn't find one. Again and again he was curtly refused employment, by editors and others. Every night he came home a little more bitter than the day before. Peter too, while he lay mending of his breakages, received a letter from the place of business he adorned informing him that it would not trouble him further. He had never been much use to it; he had been taken on at Leslie's request and given a trial; but it could not last for ever, as Peter fair-mindedly admitted.
"Well," he commented, "I suppose one must do something else, eventually. But I shall put off reflecting on that till I can move about more easily."
Hilary said, "We are being hounded out of London as we were hounded out of Venice. It is unbearable. What remains?"
"Nothing, that I can see at the moment," said Peter, laughing weakly.
"Ireland," said Peggy suddenly. "Let's go there. Dublin's worth a dozen of this hideous old black dirty place. You could get work on 'The Nationalist,' Hilary, I do believe, for the sub-editorship's just been given to my cousin Larry Callaghan. Come along to the poor old country, and we'll try our luck again."
"Dublin I believe to be an unspeakable place to live in," said Hilary, but mainly from habit. "Still, I presume one must live somewhere, so ..."