The first time Peter took Urquhart down to Chelsea to call on his Hope uncle and cousins, one Sunday afternoon, he gave him a succinct account of the sort of people they would probably meet there.
"They have oddities in, you know—and particularly on Sunday afternoons. They usually have one or two staying in the house, too. They keep open house for wastrels. A lot of them are aliens—Polish refugees, Russian anarchists, oppressed Finns, massacred Armenians who do embroidery; violinists who can't earn a living, decayed chimney-sweeps and so forth. 'Disillusioned (or still illusioned) geniuses, would-bes, theorists, artistic natures, failed reformers, knaves and fools incompetent or over-old, broken evangelists and debauchees, inebriates, criminals, cowards, virtual slaves' ... Anyhow it's a home for Lost Hopes. (Do you see that?) My uncle is keen on anyone who tries to revolt against anything—governments, Russians, proprieties, or anything else—and Felicity is keen on anyone who fails."
"And your other cousin—what is she keen on?"
"Oh, Lucy's too young for the Oddities, like me. She and I sit in a corner and look on. It's my uncle and Felicity they like to talk to. They talk about Liberty to them, you know. My uncle is great on Liberty. And they give them lemon in their tea, and say how wicked Russians are, and how stupid Royal Academicians are, and buy the Armenians' embroidery, and so forth. Lucy and I don't do that well. I disapprove of liberty for most people, I think, and certainly for them; and I don't like lemon in my tea, and though I'm sure Russians are wicked, I believe oppressed Poles are as bad—at least their hair is as bushy and their nails as long—and I prefer the embroidery I do myself; I do it quite nicely, I think. And I don't consider that Celtic poets or Armenian Christians wash their hands often enough.... They nearly all asked me the time last Sunday. I was sorry about it."
"You feared they were finding their afternoon tedious?"
"No; but I think their watches were up the spout, you see. So I was sorry. I never feel so sorry for myself as when mine is. I'm really awfully grateful to Leslie; if it wasn't for him I should never be able to tell anyone the time. By the way, Leslie's awfully fond of Felicity. He writes her enormous cheques for her clubs and vagabonds and so on. But of course she'll never look at him; he's much too well-off. It's not low to tell you that, because he makes it so awfully obvious. He'll probably be there this afternoon. Oh, here we are."
They found the Hopes' small drawing-room filled much as Peter had predicted. Dermot Hope was a tall, wasted-looking man of fifty-five, with brilliant eyes giving significance to a vague face. He had very little money, and spent that little on "Progress," whose readers were few and ardent, and whose contributors were very cosmopolitan, and full of zeal and fire; several of them were here this afternoon. Dermot Hope himself was most unconquerably full of fire. He could be delightful, and exceedingly disagreeable, full of genial sympathy and appreciation, and of a biting irony. He looked at Urquhart, whom he met for the first time, with a touch of sarcasm in his smile. He said, "You're exactly like your father. How do you do," and seemed to take no further interest in him. He had certainly never taken much in Lord Hugh, during the brief year of their brotherhood.
For Peter his glance was indulgent. Peter, not being himself a reformer, or an idealist, or a lover of progress, or even, according to himself, of liberty, but an acceptor of things as they are and a lover of the good things of this world, was not particularly interesting to his uncle, of course; but, being rather an endearing boy, and the son of a beloved sister, he was loved; and, even had he been a stranger, his position would have been regarded as more respectable than Urquhart's, since he had so far failed to secure many good things.
Felicity, a gracious and lovely person of twenty-nine, gave Peter and Urquhart a smile out of her violet eyes and murmured "Lucy's in the corner over there," and resumed the conversation she was trying to divide between Joseph Leslie and a young English professor who was having a holiday from stirring up revolutions at a Polish university. The division was not altogether easy, even to a person of Felicity's extraordinary tact, particularly as they both happened to be in love with her. Felicity had a great deal of listening to do always, because everyone told her about themselves, and she always heard them gladly; if she hastened the end a little sometimes, gently, they never knew it. She, in fact, wanted to hear about them as much—really as much, though the desire in these proportions is so rare as to seem incredible—as they wanted to let her hear. Her wish to hear was a temptation to egotism; those who disliked egotism in themselves had to fight the temptation, and seldom won. She did not believe—no one but a fool (and she was not that) could have believed—all the many things that were told her; the many things that must always, while pity and the need to be pitied endure, be told to the pitiful; but she seldom said so. She merely looked at the teller with her long and lovely violet eyes, that took in so much and gave out such continual friendship, and saw how, behind the lies, the need dwelt pleading. Then she gave, not necessarily what the lies asked for, but what, in her opinion, pity owed to that which pleaded. She certainly gave, as a rule, quite too much, in whatever coin she paid. That was inevitable.
"You give from the emotions," Joseph Leslie told her, "instead of from reason. How bad for you: how bad for them. And worse when it is friendship than when it is coin that you can count and set a limit to. Yes. Abominably bad for everyone concerned."