Peter, in his course round the garden, came suddenly within earshot of cultured English voices, and heard some one laugh. Then a voice, soft in quality, with casual, pleasant, unemphasised cadence, said, "Considering these vile roads, she's running extraordinarily well. Really, something ought to be done about the roads, though; it's absolutely disgraceful. Blake says ..." one of the things that chauffeurs do say, and that Peter did not listen to.
Peter had stopped suddenly where he was when the speaker had laughed. Of the many personal attributes of man, some may become slurred out of all character, disguised and levelled down among the herd, blurred with time, robbed of individuality. Faces may be so lost and blurred, almost beyond the recognition of those who have loved them. But who ever forgot a friend's laugh, or lost the character of his own? If Ulysses had laughed when he came back to Ithaca, his dog would have missed his eternal distinction.
Soft, rather low, a thing not detached from the sentence it broke into, but rather breaking out of it, and merging then into words again—Peter had carried it in his ears for ten years. Was there ever any man but one who laughed quite so?
Looking down the garden, he saw them, sitting under a pergola, half-veiled by the purple drifts of the wistaria that hung in trails between them and him. Through its twilight screen he saw Denis in a dinner-jacket, leaning back in a cane chair, his elbow on its arm, a cigarette in his raised hand, speaking. The light from a big yellow lantern swinging above them lit his clear profile, gleamed on his fair hair. Opposite him was Lucy, in a white frock, her elbows on a little table, her chin in her two hands, her eyes wide and grey and full of the wonder of the twilight. And beyond her sat Lord Evelyn, leaning back with closed eyes, a cigar in his delicate white hand.
Peter stood and looked, and a little faint, doubtful smile twitched at his lips, as at a dear, familiar sight long unseen. Should he approach? Should he speak? For a moment he hung in doubt.
Then he turned away. He had no part with them, nor they with him. His part—Rodney had said it once—was to clear out.
Livio, close to him, was twanging his mandolin and singing some absurd melody:
"Ah, Signor!"
"Scusi, Signora?"
"È forae il mio marito,
Da molti anni smarrito?..."
Peter broke in softly, "Livio, I go. I have had enough."
Livio's eyebrows rose; he shrugged his shoulders, but continued his singing. He, anyhow, had not yet had enough of such a good-natured audience.