Peter, with Thomas over his shoulder, stepped out of the little station into a radiant April world. Between green, budding hedges, between ditches where blue violets and joyous-eyed primroses1 peered up out of wet grass, a brown road ran, gleaming with puddles2 that glinted up at the blue sky and the white clouds that raced before a merry wind.
Peter said, "Do you like it, old man? Do you?" but Thomas's heart was too full for speech. He was seeing the radiant wonderland he had heard of; it crowded upon him, a vivid, many-splendoured thing, and took his breath away. There were golden ducklings by the grassy3 roadside, and lambs crying to him from the fields, and cows, eating (one hoped) sweet grass, with their little calves4 beside them. A glorious scene. The gay wind caught Peter by the throat and brought sudden tears to his eyes, so long used to looking on grey streets.
He climbed over a stile in the hedge and took a field path that ran up to a wood—the wood way, as he remembered, to Astleys. Peter had stayed at Astleys more than once in old days, with Denis. He remembered the keen, damp fragrance5 of the wood in April; the smooth stems of the beeches6, standing7 up out of the mossy ground, and the way the primroses glimmered8, moon-like, among the tangled9 ground-ivy10; and the way the birds made every budding bough11 rock with their clamorous12 delight. It was a happy wood, full of small creatures and eager happenings and adventurous13 quests; a fit road to take questers after happiness to their goal. In itself it seemed almost the goal already, so alive was it and full of joy. Was there need to travel further? Very vividly14 the impression was borne in on Peter (possibly on Thomas too) that there was no need; that here, perhaps round the next twist of the little brown path, was not the way but the achievement.
And, rounding the next bend, they knew it to be so; for above the path, sitting at a beech-tree's foot among creeping ivy, with head thrown back against the smooth grey stem, and gathered primroses in either hand, was Lucy.
Looking round at the sound of feet on the path, she saw them, and smiled a little, not as if surprised, nor as if she had to change the direction of her thought, but taking them into her vision of the spring woods as if they were natural dwellers15 in it.
Peter stood still on the path and looked up at her and smiled too. He said, "Oh, Lucy, Thomas and I have come."
She bent16 down towards them, and reached out her hands, dropping the primroses, for Thomas. Peter gave her Thomas, and she laid him on her lap, cradled on her two arms, and smiled, still silently.
Peter sat down on the sloping ground just below her, his back against another tree.
"We've come to see you and Denis. You won't come to see us, so we had to take it into our own hands. We decided17, Thomas and I, two days ago, that we weren't going on any longer in this absurd way. We're going to have a good time. So we went out and got things—lots of lovely things. And I've chucked my horrible work. And we've come to see you. Will Denis mind? I can't help it if he does; we've got to do it."
Lucy nodded, understanding. "I know. In thinking about you lately, I've known it was coming to this, rather soon. I didn't quite know when. But I knew you must have a good time."
After a little while she went on, and her clear voice fell strange and tranquil18 on the soft wood silence:
"What I didn't quite know was whether you would come and take it—the good time—or whether I should have to come and bring it to you. I was going to have come, you know. I had quite settled that. It's taken me a long time to know that I must: but I do know it now."
"You didn't come," said Peter suddenly, and his hands clenched19 sharply over the ivy trails and tore them out of the earth, and his face whitened to the lips. "All this time ... you didn't come ... you kept away...." The memory of that black emptiness shook him. He hadn't realised till it was nearly over quite how bad it had been, that emptiness.
The two pale faces, so like, were quivering with the same pain, the same keen recognition of it.
"No," Lucy whispered. "I didn't come ... I kept away."
Peter said, steadying his voice, "But now you will. Now I may come to you. Oh, I know why you kept away. You thought it would be less hard for me if I didn't see you. But don't again. It isn't less hard. It's—it's impossible. First Denis, then you. I can't bear it. I only want to see you sometimes; just to feel you're there. I won't be grasping, Lucy."
"Yes," said Lucy calmly, "you will. You're going to be grasping in future. You're going to take and have.... Peter, my dear, haven't you reached the place I've reached yet? Don't you know that between you and me it's got to be all or nothing? I've learnt that now. So I tried nothing. But that won't do. So now it's going to be all.... I'm coming to Thomas and you. We three together will find nice things for one another."
Peter's forehead was on his drawn-up knees. He felt her hand touch his head, and shivered a little.
"Denis," he whispered.
She answered, "Denis has everything. Denis won't miss me among so much. Denis is the luckiest, the most prosperous, the most succeeding person I know. Peter, let me try and tell you about Denis and me."
She paused for a moment, leaning her head back against the beech-tree and looking up wide-eyed at the singing roof overhead.
"You know how it was, I expect," she said, with the confidence they always had in each other's knowledge, that saved so many words. "How Denis came among us, among you and me and father and Felicity and our unprosperous, dingy20 friends, and how he was all bright and shining and beautiful, and I loved him, partly because he was so bright and beautiful, and a great deal because you did, and you and I have always loved the same things. And so I married him; and at the time, and oh, for ever so long, I didn't understand how it was; how it was all wrong, and how he and I didn't really belong to each other a bit, because he's in one lot of people, and I'm in another. He's in the top lot, that gets things, and I'm in the under lot, with you and father and all the poorer people who don't get things, and have to find life nice in spite of it. I'd deserted21 really; and father and Felicity knew I had; only I didn't know, or I'd never have done it. I only got to understand gradjully" (Lucy's long words were apt to be a blur22, like a child's), "when I saw what a lot of good things Denis and his friends had, and how I had to have them too, 'cause I couldn't get away from them; and oh, Peter, I've felt smothered23 beneath them! They're so heavy and so rich, and shut people out from the rest of the world that hasn't got them, so that they can't hear or see each other. It's like living in a palace in the middle of dreadful slums, and never caring. Because you can't care, however much you try, in the palace, the same as you can if you're down in the middle of the poorness and the emptiness. Wasn't it Christ who said how hardly rich men shall enter into the kingdom of heaven? And it's harder still for them to enter into the other kingdoms, which aren't heaven at all. It's hard for them to step out from where they are and enter anywhere else. Peter, can anyone ever leave their world and go into another. I have failed, you see. Denis would never even begin to try; he wouldn't see any object. I don't believe it can be done. Except perhaps by very great people. And we're not that. People like you and me and Denis belong where we're born and brought up. Even for the ones who try, to change, it's hard. And most of us don't try at all, or care ... Denis hardly cares, really. He's generous with money; he lets me give away as much as I like; but he doesn't care himself. Unhappiness and bad luck and disgrace don't touch him; he doesn't want to have anything to do with them; he doesn't like them. Even his friends, the people he likes, he gets tired of directly they begin to go under. You know that. And it's dreadful, Peter. I hate it, being comfortable up there and not seeing and not hearing and not caring. Seems to me we just live to have a good time. Well, of course, people ought to do that, it's the thing to live for, and I usen't to mind before I was rich, and father and Felicity and you and I had a good time together. But when you're rich and among rich people, and have a good time not because you make it for yourself out of all the common things that everyone shares—the sunshine and the river and the nice things in the streets—but have a special corner of good things marked off for you, then it gets dreadful. 'Tisn't that one thinks one ought to be doing more for other people; I don't think I've that sort of conscience much; only that I don't belong. I can't help thinking of all the down-below people, the disreputable, unlucky people, who fail and don't get things, and I know that's where I really belong. It's like being born in one family and going and living in another. You never fit in really; your proper family is calling out to you all the time. Oh, not only because they aren't rich and lucky, but because they really suit you best, in little ways as well as big ways. You understand them, and they understand you. All the butlers and footmen and lady's-maids frighten me so; I don't like telling them to do things; they're so—so solemn and respectable. And I don't like creatures to be killed, and I don't like eating them afterwards. But Denis and his friends and the servants and everyone thinks it's idiotic24 to be a vegetarian25. Denis says vegetarians26 are nearly all cranks and bounders, and long-haired men or short-haired women. Well, I can't help it; I s'pose that shows where I really and truly belong, though I don't like short-haired women; it's so ugly, and they talk so loud very often. And there it is again; I dislike short hair 'cause of that, but Denis dislikes it 'cause it isn't done. That's so often his reason; and he means not done by his partic'lar lot of top-room people.... So you see, Peter, I don't belong there, do I? I don't belong any more than you do."
Peter shook his head. "I never supposed you did, of course."
"Well," she said next, "what you're thinking now is that Denis wants me. He doesn't—not much. He's not awf'ly fond of me, Peter; I think he's rather tired of me, 'cause I often want to do tiresome27 things, that aren't done. I think he knows I don't belong. He's very kind and pleasant always; but he'd be as happy without me, and much happier with another wife who fitted in more. He only took m............