“I expect she does. But, as I say, we’re educating her. She’s young yet.... Jane is good for her. So are Miss Hogan, and the two Le Moines, and I. We should also be good for you, if you could spare us some of your valuable time between two Sunday school classes. Good night. I’m going home now, because it makes me rather sad to be here.”
He went home.
The clergy of St. Gregory’s thought him (respectively) an ill-mannered and irritating young man, probably clever enough to learn better some day; an infidel, very likely too proud ever to learn better at all, this side the grave; a dilettante slacker, for whom the world hadn’t much use; and a conceited crank, for whom James Peters had no use at all. But they didn’t like to tell Eddy so.
James Peters, a transparent youth, threw only a thin veil over his opinions, however, when he talked to Eddy about his cousin Sally. He was, apparently, anxious about Sally. Eddy had met her at children’s clubs, and thought her a cheery young person, and admired the amber gold of her hair, and her cornflower-blue eyes, and her power of always thinking of a fresh game at the right moment.
“I’m supposed to be keeping an eye upon her,” James said. “She has to earn her living, you know, so she binds books and lives in a room off the Blackfriars Road with another girl.... I’m not sure I care about the way they live, to say the truth. They have such queer people in, to supper and so on. Men, you know, of all sorts. I believe Denison goes. They sit on a bed that’s meant to look like a sofa and doesn’t. And they’re only girls—Miss Dawn’s older than Sally, but not very old—and they’ve no one to look after them; it doesn’t seem right. And they do know the most extraordinary people. Miss Dawn’s rather a queer girl herself, I think; unlike other people, somehow. Very—very detached, if you understand; and doesn’t care a rap for the conventions, I should say. That’s all very well in its way, and she’s a very quiet-mannered person—can’t think how she and Sally made friends—but it’s a dangerous plan for most people. And some of their friends are ... well, rather rotters, you know. Look like artists, or Fabians, without collars, and so on.... Oh, I forgot—you’re a Fabian, aren’t you?... Well, anyhow, I should guess that some of them are without morals either; in my experience the two things are jolly apt to go together. There are the Le Moines, now. Have you ever come across either of them?”
“I’ve just met Cecil Le Moine. He’s rather charming, isn’t he?”
“The sort of person,” said James Peters, “for whom I have no use whatever. No, he doesn’t appear to me charming. An effeminate ass, I call him. Oh, I know he calls himself frightfully clever and all that, and I suppose he thinks he’s good-looking ... but as selfish as sin. Anyhow, he and his wife couldn’t live together, so they parted before their first year was over. Her music worried him or something, and prevented him concentrating his precious brain on his literary efforts; and I suppose he got on her nerves, too. I believe they agreed quite pleasantly to separate, and are quite pleased to meet each other about the place, and are rather good friends. But I call it pretty beastly, looking at marriage like that. If they’d hated each other there’d have been more excuse. And she’s a great friend of Miss Dawn’s, and Sally’s developed what I consider an inordinate affection for her; and she and Miss Dawn between them have simply got hold of her—Sally, I mean—and are upsetting her and giving her all kinds of silly new points of view. She doesn’t come half as often to the clubs as she used. And she was tremendously keen on the Church, and—and really religious, you know—and she’s getting quite different. I feel sort of responsible, and it’s worrying me rather.”
He puffed discontentedly at his pipe.
“Pity to get less keen on anything,” Eddy mused. “New points of view seem to me all to the good; it’s losing hold of the old that’s a mistake. Why let anything go, ever?”
“She’s getting to think it doesn’t matter,” James complained; “Church, and all that. I know she’s given up things she used to do. And really, the more she’s surrounded by influences such as Mrs. Le Moine’s, the more she needs the Church to pull her through, if only she’d see it. Mrs. Le Moine’s a wonderful musician, I suppose, but she has queer ideas, rather; I shouldn’t trust her. She and Hugh Datcherd—the editor of Further, you know—are hand and glove. And considering he has a wife and she a husband ... well, it seems pretty futile, doesn’t it?”