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THE SINS OF THE CHILDREN


    [Illustration: And over them both ... hung the moon and stars.]




    THE SINS OF THE CHILDREN

    _A NOVEL_

    BY
    COSMO HAMILTON


    WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
    GEORGE O. BAKER

    [Illustration]

    BOSTON
    LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
    1916


    _Copyright, 1916_,
    BY COSMO HAMILTON.

    _All rights reserved_


    Published, October, 1916


    THE COLONIAL PRESS
    C. H. SIMONDS CO., BOSTON, U. S. A.


    To

    MY WIFE




    CONTENTS


    PART ONE--YOUTH

    PART TWO--THE CITY

    PART THREE--LIFE




PART ONE

YOUTH


THE SINS OF THE CHILDREN


I

When Peter Guthrie laughed the rooks stirred on the old trees behind the
Bodleian and the bored cab-drivers who lolled in uncomfortable attitudes
on their cabs in St. Giles perked up their heads.

He threw open his door one morning and leaving one of these laughs of
his rolling round the quad of St. John's College found the recumbent
form of Nicholas Kenyon all among his cushions as usual, and as usual
smoking his cigarettes and reading his magazines. The words "as usual"
seemed to be stamped on his forehead.

"What d'you think?" cried Peter, filling the room like a thirty-mile
gale.

"You ought to know that I don't think. It's a form of exercise that I
never indulge in." Kenyon lit a fresh cigarette from the one which he
had half-smoked and with peculiar expertness flicked the end out of the
window into St. Giles Street, which ran past the great gates of the
college. He hoped that it might have fallen on somebody's head, but he
didn't get up to see.

"Well," said Peter, "I was coming down the High just now and an awful
pretty girl passed with a Univ. man. She looked at me--thereby very
nearly laying me flat on my face--and I heard her ask, 'Who's that?' It
was the man's answer that makes me laugh. He said: 'Oh, he's only a
Rhodes scholar!'" And off he went again.

Nicholas Kenyon raised his immaculate person a few inches and looked
round at his friend. The Harvard man, with his six-foot-one of excellent
muscles and sinews, his square shoulders and deep chest, and his fine,
honest, alert and healthy face, made most people ask who he was. "If I'd
been you," said Kenyon, "I should have made a mental note of that Univ.
blighter in order to land him one the next time you saw him, that he
wouldn't easily forget."

"Why? I liked it, from a man of his type. I've been 'only a damned
Rhodes scholar' to all the little pussy purr-purrs ever since I first
walked the High in my American-made clothes. I owe that fellow no
grudge; and if I meet that girl again--which I shall make a point of
doing--I bet you anything you like that his scoffing remark will lend a
touch of romance to me which will be worth a lot."

"Was she something out of the ordinary?"

"Quite," said Peter.

He hung his straw hat on the electric bulb, threw off his coat, rolled
up his sleeves and started to tidy up his rooms with more energy and
deftness than is possessed by the average housemaid. He flicked the
little pile of cigarette ash, which Kenyon had dropped on the floor,
into a corner. He gathered the weekly illustrated papers which Kenyon
had flung aside and put them on a back shelf, and then he picked up the
man Kenyon in his arms, deposited him in a wide arm-chair in front of
the fireplace and started punching all the cushions.

Kenyon looked ineffably bored. "Good God!" he said. "What's all this
energy? You shatter my nervous system."

"My dear chap," said Peter, "you seem to forget that this is Commem. and
that my people have come three thousand miles to see their little Peter
in his little rooms. I'm therefore polishing up the knocker of the big
front door. My mother has a tidy mind and I want my father to gain the
impression that I'm methodical and responsible. He has a quick eye. They
wired me from London last night to say that they'll be here at five
o'clock to tea. I dashed round to the Randolph early this morning to
book rooms for them. Gee, it's a big party, too! I can't make out why
they want so many rooms. It'll be like my sister to have brought over
one of her school friends. I guess I shall be darned glad to see them,
anyway."

There was a touch of excitement in the boy's voice, and his sun-tanned,
excellent face showed the delight that he felt. He had not seen his
mother, brother and sister for two years, having spent his vacations in
England.

Nicholas Kenyon got up slowly. He did everything slowly. "Well," he
said, "I thank God that my people don't bother me on these festive
occasions. To my way of thinking the influx of fathers and mothers into
Oxford makes the whole place provincial. However, I can understand your
childish glee. You are pretty badly dipped, I understand, and with the
true psychology of the rasping undergraduate you are first going to
throw the glamour of the city of spires over your untravelled parent and
then touch him for a fairly considerable cheque."

Peter gave a sort of laugh. "Touch my father!" he said. "Not much. I
shall put my case up to my mother. She's the one who does these little
things."

Kenyon was faintly interested. Being perennially impecunious himself and
unable to raise money even from the loan sharks, he looked to the advent
of Peter's parents to bring him at least fifty pounds. He always
borrowed from Peter.

"Oh, I see," he said. "It's the old lady who carries the money-bags, is
it?"

"No, it isn't," said Peter; "but as a matter of fact I never have gone
to my father for anything and I don't think I ever shall. I don't know
why it is, but none of us have ever been able to screw up courage to say
more than 'Good-morning' and 'Good-night' to the Governor, although of
course we all think he is a very wonderful person."

Kenyon yawned. "I see," he said. "Bad luck. I should hate to have such a
disagreeable devil for a father--one of the martinet type, who says
_don't_ all the time when he ought to say _do_, and makes home a sort of
pocket-hell for everybody."

Peter twisted round and spoke quickly and rather warmly. "So should I,"
he said, "but luckily I haven't. I didn't want to suggest that my father
was that type of man. He's one of the very best--one of the men who
count for something in my country. He's worked like a dog to give us a
chance in life and his generosity makes me personally sometimes feel
almost indecent. I mean that I feel that I have taken advantage of
him,--but--but, somehow or other,--oh, I don't know,--we don't seem to
know each other--that's all. He hasn't the knack of winning our
confidence--or something. So it comes to this: when we want anything we
ask mother and she gets it for us. That's all there's to it. And look
here, Nick, I want you to be frightfully nice to the Governor. Get out
of your ice-box and warm up to the old man. I can't, you see; but as he
has come all this way to look me up I want somebody to show some
appreciation."

With his eyes to the small relief which the visit of Dr. Hunter Guthrie,
of New York City, might bring him, Nicholas Kenyon nodded. "Rely on me,"
he said. "Butter shan't melt in my mouth; and before your father leaves
Oxford I'll make him feel that he's been created a Baronet and appointed
Physician in Ordinary to His Majesty the King. Well, so long, Peter! I'm
lunching with Lascelles at the House this morning. I'll drop in to tea
and hand cakes round to your beloved family."

"Right-o," said Peter. "That'll be great!" And when the door closed and
he found himself alone he arranged a certain number of silver cups which
he had won in athletics all along his mantel-piece, for his father to
see, gazed at them for a moment with a half-smile of rather
self-conscious pride, finished tidying his room, gazed affectionately
for a few moments at the familiar sight of Pusey House through the
leaf-crowded trees that lined the sunny street, and then sat down to his
piano and played a rag-time with all that perfect excellence and sense
of rhythm which had opened the most insular doors to him during his
first days as a fresher.


II

This fine big fellow, Peter Murray Guthrie, who had done immensely well
at Harvard in athletics and was by no means a fool intellectually, could
afford to be amused at the fact that he had been scoffingly referred to
as "only a Rhodes scholar." He had been born under a lucky star and he
had that wonderful gymnastic faculty of always falling on his feet. If
with all his suspicions aroused he had gone up to Oxford in the same
rather timid, self-conscious, on-the-defensive manner of the average
Rhodes scholar who expected to be treated as a creature quite different
from the English undergraduate, he would have found his way to the
American Club and stayed there more or less permanently, taking very
little part in the glorious multitudinous life of the freshmen of his
college, and remained a sort of pariah of his own making. Freshmen
themselves, the Lord knows, are forlorn enough. Everything is strange to
them, too,--society, rules, customs, unwritten laws and faces. They are
solitary creatures in the midst of a bustling crowd. If they do not come
from one of the great public schools and meet again the men they knew
there their chance of making friends is small and for many dull
disappointing weeks they must mope and look-on and envy and find their
feet alone, suffering, poor devils, from a hideous sheepishness and
wondering, with a sort of morbid self-consciousness, what others are
thinking of them. But Peter was unafraid. He stalked into Oxford
prepared to find it the finest place on earth--with his imagination
stirred at the sight of those old colleges whose quadrangles echoed with
the feet of the great dead and rang with those of the younger generation
to whom life was a great adventure and who might spring from those old
stones into everlasting fame. He strode through the gate of St. John's
with his chin high, prepared to serve her with all his strength and all
the best of his youth and leave her finally unsullied by his name. He
didn't give a single whoop for all this talk about the snobbishness and
insularity of English undergraduates. He didn't believe that he would
find a college divided and sub-divided into sets; and if the statement
proved to be true--well, he intended to break all the barriers down.

Therefore, with such a spirit added to his fine frank, manly
personality, irresistible laugh, great big friendly hand and the rumours
that came with him of his bull-like rushes on the football field, he
became at once a marked man. Second-year and even third-year men nudged
each other when he passed. "By Jove!" they said. "That's a useful
looking cove! We must get him down to the river." Or, "I wonder if that
American can be taught to play cricket?" As for the freshers--all as
frightened as a lot of rabbits far away from their warren--they gazed
with shy admiration and respect at Peter, who, expecting no rebuffs,
received none.

Finding that he could not live in college until he was a second-year
man, Peter had looked about him among the freshers for a likely person
with whom to share rooms. He had come up in the train with Nicholas
Kenyon, whose shell he had insisted upon opening. He, too, was entered
at St. John's and was very ready--being impecunious--to share lodgings
with the American whose allowance he might share and whose personality
was distinctly unusual. These two then gravitated to Beaumont Street,
captured a large sitting-room and two bed-rooms on the ground floor, and
from the first evening of their arrival were perfectly at home. Peter at
once hired a piano from a music shop in the High which he quickly
discovered, bought several bottles of whiskey and a thousand cigarettes,
besides several pounds of pipe tobacco, threw open his window, and as
soon as dinner was over started playing rag-times.

Kenyon had been interested and amused. He had not expected to find
himself "herding," as he put it, with a damned Rhodes scholar. He took
it for granted that these "foreigners" would live apart from the
ordinary undergraduate, as uncouth people should. He had been quick to
notice, however,--psychology being his principal stock in trade,--that
Peter had made an instant impression; and as he sat on the window-sill
listening with what he had to confess to himself was keen pleasure to
Peter's masterly manipulation of the piano and saw all the windows
within near range of their house open and heads poke out to listen, he
was able--without any propheticism--to say that Peter would quickly be
the centre of a set. He would certainly not be sulking in the American
Club.

Very quickly P. M. Guthrie, of St. John's, became "Peter" to the whole
college--and stroke in the freshers' boat. The other Rhodes scholars
owed everything that was good to him. He stood by them loyally, made his
rooms their headquarters, and all who wanted to know him were obliged to
know them. He introduced swipes at the first freshers' concert in the
Hall, with enormous success, selecting Forbes Nicholl, of Brasenose;
Watson Frick, of Wadham; Baldwin Colgate, of Worcester; and Madison
Smith, of Merton, all good Americans, for the purpose. Even Dons stayed
to listen on that epoch-making occasion and the fame of their curious
and delightful method of singing spread all over the university. It was
easy. There was nothing else like it.

Quite unconsciously Peter was for a little while the whole topic of
conversation at Dons' dinners. These hide-bound professors were really
quite surprised at the remarkable way in which, at one fell swoop, this
man Peter Guthrie had managed to weld together the English and American
undergraduates for the first time in their knowledge. Some of them put
it all down to his piano playing--and were very nearly right. Others
conceived his great laugh to be mainly responsible--and were not far
short of the mark. But it was Nicholas Kenyon, the psychologist, who put
his finger on the whole truth of this swift and unbelievable success. He
said that it was Peter's humanity which had conquered Oxford, and in so
doing proved--impecunious only son of an absolutely broke peer as he
was--that he would be able to make a very fair living in the future on
his wits. It may be said that he never intended to work.

It was part of Peter's honesty and simplicity to remain American. He
made no effort to ape the Oxford manner of speech. He would see himself
shot before he got into the rather effeminate clothes affected by the
Oxford man. He continued to be natural, to remain himself, and not to
take on the colors chameleon-wise of those about him. His Stetson hat
was the standing joke of St. John's. Nevertheless, there was not one man
in the college who would not have hit hard if any derogatory remarks had
been thrown at the head inside it. His padded shoulders, upholstered
ties and narrow belt were all frequently caricatured, but the sound of
Peter's laugh gathered men together like the music of the Pied Piper of
Hamelin. It was just that this man Peter Guthrie was a _man_ that made
him not only accepted in a place seething with quaint and foolish
habits, out-of-date shibboleths and curious unwritten laws, but loved
and respected. Here was one to whom merely to live was a joy. To the
despondent he came therefore as a tonic. He exuded breeziness filled
with ozone. His continuous high spirits infected even those foolish
boys who were encrusted with affectation and stuccoed with the petty
side and insolence of Eton. He worked hard and played hard and slept
like a dog, ate hearty and drank like a thirsty plant. Also he smoked
like a factory chimney. He had no crankish views--no tolerance for
"isms," and was not ashamed to stride into chapel and say his prayers
like a simple boy. In short, "unashamed" was his watchword, and he had
been endowed with the rare gift of saying "No," and sticking to it. And
to Nicholas Kenyon, who frequented the rooms of the so-called
intellectuals--those "little dreadful clever people" who parroted and
perverted other men's thoughts and possessed no originality of their
own--it was a stroke of genius on Peter's part to have nothing but the
photographs of his family all over his rooms. He must be a big man,
Nicholas said to himself, who could afford, among the very young, to
dispense with the female form divine in his frames--the nudes so
generally placed in them--in order to convey the impression of being
devilish wise and bad. Also it showed, according to this human merchant,
a peculiar strength of character on Peter's part to bolt his door
regularly one evening a week so that he might sit down uninterrupted and
write a tremendous screed to his mother. However, that was Peter the
man-boy--Peter the Rhodes scholar--Peter the Oxford man--who always
wound up his musical evenings with the "Star Spangled Banner." And there
was just one other side to this big, simple fellow's character which
puzzled and annoyed the bloodless, clever parasite who lived with him
and upon him,--women.

Now, Nicholas Kenyon--the Honourable Nicholas Augustus Fitzhugh
Kenyon--was a patron of the drama. That is to say, he had the right
somehow to enter the stage door of the Theatre Royal at all times, and
did so whenever the theatre was visited by a musical comedy company. He
was known to innumerable chorus girls as "Boy-dear," and made a point of
entertaining them at luncheon and supper during their visits to the
university town. He brought choice specimens of this breed to Beaumont
Street for tea and tittle-tattle and introduced them to Peter, who liked
them very much and would have staked his life upon their being angels.
But when it came to driving out to small unnoticeable inns, Peter
squared his shoulders and stayed at home.

"The devil take it!" said Nicholas one night, with frightful frankness
which was devoid of any intentional insolence. "What's this cursed
provincialism that hangs to you? I suppose it comes from the fact that
you were born in a shack to the tinkle of the trolley-car!"

Peter's howl of laughter made the piano play an immaculate tune.
"Wrong," he said. "Gee! but you're absolutely wrong. The whole thing
comes to this, Nick: One of these fine days I'm going to be married. The
girl I marry is going to be clean. I believe in fairness. _I'm_ going to
be clean. That's all there is to it."

So that, one way and another, Dr. Hunter G. Guthrie, of New York, as
well as St. John's College, Oxford, had several reasons to be rather
proud of this man Peter.


III

One o'clock that afternoon found Peter still hammering on his piano, not
only to the intense delight of three snub-nosed tradesmen's boys who
delayed delivery of mutton-chops and soles, which were only plaice, but
also of five people who had come quietly into the room. They stood
together watching and listening and waiting for him suddenly to discover
that he was not alone. One was a tall, rather angular, clean-shaven,
noticeably intellectual man whose thin hair was grey and who wore very
large glasses with tortoise-shell frames, through which he looked with
pale, short-sighted eyes. He held a grey hat in his thin hand and stood
watching the boy--who made his piano do the work of a full band--with a
smile of infinite pride on his lips. Another was a little lady, all soft
and sweet, with a bird-like face and a curious bird-like appearance. All
about her there was a sort of perennial youthfulness, and the goodness
of her kind heart gleamed so openly in her eyes that they asked beggars
and cripples, itinerant musicians, ragamuffins, street dogs and all
humbugs to come and be helped. At that moment they were full of tears,
although little lines of laughter were all about them. Another was a
slight, exceedingly good-looking young man whose hair went into a series
of small waves and was brushed away from his forehead. He was grinning
like a Cheshire cat and showing two rows of teeth which would make a
dentist both envious and annoyed. There was a slight air of precocity
about his clothes. Two girls made up the rest of the party. Both were
young and slim and of average height. Both were unmistakably American in
their fearless independence and cleanness of cut. One was dark, with
almost black eyebrows which just failed to meet in the middle. Her eyes
were amazing and as full of danger as a maxim,--large and blue--the most
astonishing blueness. They were framed with long, thick, black lashes.
Her lips were rather full and red, and her skin white. She might have
been an Italian or a Spaniard. The other girl was blonde and slim, with
large grey eyes set widely apart, a small patrician nose and a lovely
little mouth turning up at the corners.

How long all these people would have stayed watching and listening no
man can say. Suddenly, in the middle of a bar, Peter sprang up and
turned round. His cry of joy and the way in which he plunged forward and
picked up the little bird-like woman in his arms was very good to see.

"Mother!" he cried. "Mother! Oh, Gee! This is great!" and he kissed her
cheeks and her hands, and then her cheeks again, all the while making
strange, small, fond noises like a little boy who comes back home after
the holidays.

"Oh, dear, dear Peter!" said the little woman, between tears and
laughter. "How splendidly rough you are! You shake me to pieces! Where
_shall_ I be able to tidy my hair?"

Then, with a rather constrained air and a touch of nervous cordiality,
Peter turned to his father and took his hand. "How are you, father?" he
asked. "You look fine."

Dr. Hunter Guthrie swallowed something and gave a murmur which remained
incoherent. Before he could pull himself together, Peter was hugging his
sister, who squealed like a pig from the tightness of this man's mighty
grasp. And then the brother came in for it and winced with pain and
pleasure as his hand was taken in a vise-like grip.

"Hello, Graham!"

"Hello, Peter!"

And then everybody except Peter burst out laughing. He stood in front of
the fair girl, with his mouth wide open, and held out his hand and said:
"I was going to hunt the whole place for you,--I beg your pardon." It
was when he drew back, with his face and neck the color of a beet root,
that the laughter reached its climax.

Belle Guthrie was the first to find her voice. "Well, Peter," she said,
"that's going some. Is an introduction superfluous in Oxford? Where did
you meet Betty Townsend?"

"I haven't met her," said Peter. "I saw her this morning in the High for
a second--" He ran his finger round his collar and moved from one foot
to the other and shifted his great shoulders. No man on this earth had
ever looked so uncomfortable.

And then, with consummate coolness, Betty Townsend came to the rescue.
"Just after we arrived this morning," she said, "and you were all buying
picture post-cards, I passed Mr. Guthrie when I was walking along the
High Street with Graham's friend. I recognized him from the photographs
that you have at home, and I think he must have heard me ask, 'Who's
that?' I naturally gave him a friendly look. That's all."

"I didn't catch the friendly look," said Peter. But he did catch the
friendly tone and stored it up among his treasures. Then he suddenly
stirred himself, being host, picked up his mother and placed her on his
elaborate sofa; gave his best arm-chair to his father; waved his sister
into the window-seat with her friend, and tilted Graham into a deck
chair.

Standing in the middle of the room, beaming with pride, he said: "How in
thunder did you get here so soon? Your wire said that you were coming to
tea, and I was going to meet the train leaving Paddington at
three-thirty. Gee! This is the best thing that ever happened! Will you
lunch here?"

"Oh, no, dear!" said Mrs. Guthrie. "So many of us will worry your
landlady."

Then out came one of Peter's huge laughs. "Worry my landlady? One look
at Mrs. Brownstack would show you that she got over being worried before
the great wind. Why she's kept lodgings for undergraduates for twenty
years. It's the same thing as saying that she's spent the greater part
of her life sitting on the top of Vesuvius. I can give you beer, beef,
pickles, biscuits, cake, swipes they call coffee, some corking Nougat
and three brands of cigarettes."

"I think," said Dr. Guthrie, with a suggestion of haste, "it might be
better if you lunched with us at the hotel." Like all doctors, his first
thoughts were of digestion.

"Right-o!" said Peter, and he dived into his bedroom for a more
respectable coat. His brother followed him in and the two stood facing
each other for a moment, eye to eye. They had not met for two years.
Instinctively they grasped hands again and the minds of both were filled
with most affectionate things--a very flood of words--but one said "Old
man!" and the other "Peter!" And while Graham brushed his kinky hair
with a temporary suggestion of throatiness, Peter hauled out his best
coat and whistled to show how utterly unmoved he was.

They returned to the sitting-room together. Dr. Guthrie was examining
the conglomeration of books that loaded the shelves. The plays of
Bernard Shaw rubbed shoulders with "Masterton on Land Taxes."
Stevenson's "Treasure Island" leaned up against Webster's Dictionary.
"Tono-Bungay" had for a companion a slushy novel by Garvice--and on them
all was dust.

The little mother, all a-flutter like a thrush, was at the window
looking through the trees at the warm old buildings opposite. The two
girls were peering into a cupboard as into the "Blue Room," where they
found nothing but a few whiskey bottles, several packs of cards, a box
of chess-men, a couple of mortar-boards with all their corners gone,
and a large collection of white shoes in all grades of dilapidation.

"Are you all ready?" asked Dr. Guthrie, with a curious gayety. Among all
this youth even he felt young.

"Rather," said Peter. "I could eat an ox."

He opened the door, touched his mother's soft cheek with his finger as
she passed, tweaked his sister's hair, refrained from catching Betty
Townsend's eyes, winked at his brother and drew back for his father.

Once in the quad Mrs. Guthrie whispered to Graham and went quickly out
into St. Giles, beckoning to the two girls to follow. She was very
anxious that Peter should walk with his father, and this--rather pleased
with himself--Peter did. He would have taken his father's arm if he had
dared, he was so mighty glad to see him. Several times the Doctor seemed
about to do the same thing, but his hand hesitated and dropped. And so
these two fell in step and walked silently along towards the Randolph
Hotel, passed by men in twos or threes, many of whom, to the Doctor's
inward delight, cried out, "Hullo, Peter!" with tremendous cordiality.
It was not until they turned the corner that the Doctor spoke.

"It gives me real pleasure to see you again, Peter," he said, with a
quick self-conscious glance at the young giant at his elbow.

"Thank you, father," said Peter, looking straight ahead and getting as
red as a peony.


IV

Nicholas Kenyon more than lived up to his promise. In clothes into which
he seemed to have been poured in liquid form, he handed hot toast and
cakes to Peter's family at tea-time with that air of deferential
impertinence which was his peculiar property. He had the same effect on
the Doctor and Mrs. Guthrie and the two girls as he had on Peter when he
first saw him on the train. His complete self-control, his indolent
assurance, his greyhound look of thoroughbredness and the decorative way
in which he phrased his sentences all charmed and amused them. For
Peter's sake he came right out of his shell at once and behaved like a
man who had been a favorite in that family circle for years. In the most
subtle manner he implied to the Doctor that his fame as a bacteriologist
had spread all over Oxford, and even England. He refused to believe that
Mrs. Guthrie was the mother of her children and not her own eldest
daughter. He asked Graham almost at once to do him the favor of giving
him the name of his tailor, and told Betty that he had shot with her
father, Lord Townsend, many times, well-knowing that he was a portrait
painter in New York. With consummate ease and tact he put everybody on
the best of terms with one another and themselves, thereby winning still
more of Peter's admiration and liking. With great pleasure he accepted
the Doctor's invitation to dine at the Randolph Hotel, and in return
invited all present to be his guests at the Open Air Performance of
"Twelfth Night," later in the week, by the O.U.D.S., in the beautiful
gardens of Worcester. In a word, he played with these people as a cat
plays with a mouse and as he had always played with Peter. He used all
his brain not only to win their confidence and friendship but to make an
impression which might afterwards be of use to himself.

Nicholas Kenyon was one of those men who are born and not made. He
opened his eyes to find himself in an atmosphere of aristocratic
roguery. The beautiful old house in which his father lived was mortgaged
to the very tops of the chimneys. It was maintained on money borrowed
from the loan sharks at an exorbitant interest. It was filled with men
and women who, like his own parents, were clever and intellectual enough
to work for their livelihood, but who preferred to live on their wits
and cling to society by the skin of their teeth. In this
atmosphere of expert parasites--an atmosphere as false as it was
light-hearted--Nicholas was brought up. He was a complete man of the
world at fourteen. Even at that age he gambled, raced and borrowed
money; and in order to provide himself with the necessities of life he
ran a roulette table in secret at Eton and made a book for the racing
bets of the little boys of his own kidney. Highly gifted and endowed
with a most likable personality, with the art of eluding punishment for
misdeeds brought to a masterly completeness, he could have been shaped,
under different circumstances, into a man whose name would stand high in
his country. With the proper training and discipline and the right
sense of duty which is given to those lucky lads whose parents are
responsible and honorable he had it in his power to become a famous
diplomat. As it was, he entered Oxford as a parasite and would leave the
university for the world in the same capacity. He was entirely
unscrupulous. He had no code of honor. He quietly used the men about him
to provide him with amusement, money, hospitality, and to insure him
against having to work. He turned his personality into a sort of
business asset--a kind of limited liability company--which brought him
in regular dividends. His breeding and good form, his well-known name
and his inherent ability to slide comfortably into any set or society,
made him wholly irresistible. No one suspected him, because his
frankness disarmed suspicion. His knowledge of human nature told him
that the paradox of his being poor lent him a sort of romance, and he
always began by telling new acquaintances that he was broke to the wide.
In this way he struck the honest note of the men who disdain to convey
false impressions. He was poor, but proud, and made himself so
attractive and companionable that men were delighted to be put to great
expense in order to entertain him,--and he wanted everything of the very
best. His clothes were immaculate. His cigarettes were freshly rolled.
When he drove a car it had to be of the best known make. He was a most
fastidious reader and had once read a paper on modern poetry which had
startled the Dons of his college. He contributed short satirical
articles to the Isis from time to time which tickled the intellect of
the more discriminating; and as a fresher had given a performance of
Puck in one of the productions of the O.U.D.S., over which undergraduate
critics went raving mad. Even in his dealings with his friends, the
chorus girls, there was a certain touch of humour which made it
impossible even for the most straightlaced to say hard things of him.

In a word, Nicholas Kenyon was a very dangerous man. His influence was
as subtly bad and pernicious as a beautifully made cigarette heavily
charged with dope; and he would at any time if necessary have stolen his
mother's toilet set in order to provide himself with caviar, plover's
eggs and a small bottle of champagne.

And this was the man who had shared rooms with Peter Guthrie during his
terms at Oxford, and of whom the Doctor spoke that first night of his
stay at the Randolph Hotel as an unusually charming person whom it was a
pleasure to meet.

In fact, he was the sole topic of conversation in all the bedrooms of
Peter's family party before the lights were turned out. Mrs. Guthrie
said, as she sat in front of the dressing-table combing her hair: "How
lucky it is, dear, that Peter has found such a wonderful friend here! He
is so English and so refined--in every sense of the word a gentleman."
The Doctor thoroughly agreed with her and made a mental note to invite
Kenyon to his house in New York in the autumn.

Belle Guthrie took her brushes into Betty's room, which was next to her
own, and looking extremely attractive in a pale pink kimono, with her
dark hair all about her shoulders and her naked feet in pink, heel-less
slippers, gave a ripple of excited laughter and confided to her friend
that she was going to have a more bully time even than she had hoped. "I
love St. John's College," she said, "and these wonderful old streets and
all the church bells which strike so frequently--but I'm perfectly crazy
about Nicholas Kenyon. He is so,--so different--so witty--says such
perfectly wonderful things--and oh, my dear! _did_ you see the way he
looked at me when he said 'good-night'?"

Betty shook her head--her little golden head--her rather wise little
head. "I didn't look," she said. "The light was shining on Peter's face,
and that was good enough for me."

What Graham thought of Kenyon came out in Peter's rooms, to which he had
gone back with his brother when the family were left at the hotel after
their return from a jaunt on the river in the moonlight after
dinner,--the quiet, soothing, narrow stream on which they had floated in
punts all among cushions and listened with keen appreciation to the
throbbing song of the nightingale and the deep voice of an undergraduate
singing "Annie Laurie" in the back water to the thrumming accompaniment
of a mandolin.

Kenyon himself had gone round to the rooms of some friends of his to
play bridge, so the two brothers were able to talk undisturbed. The
night was deliciously warm and Peter's old windows, with their numerous
leaded panes, were wide open. It was eleven o'clock and the life of the
town had almost ceased, although from time to time little parties of
undergraduates passed along St. Giles and their high-spirited laughter
drifted up.

After having put cigarettes in front of his brother, Peter flung himself
full stretch upon his sofa, with a pipe between his teeth. "Now for your
news, old man!" he said. "I'm glad you like Nick. He certainly is one of
the best. What seems perfectly amazing to me is that while I'm still a
sort of schoolboy, rowing and reading, you're a full-blown man earning
your living. I'd give something to see you buzzing about Wall Street
with your head full of stocks and shares and the rise and fall of
prices. How do you do it?"

Graham ran his hand rather nervously over his mouth. "It's great!" he
said excitedly. "That's what I call life. Gee! You've no idea how
fascinating it is to gamble on the tape and get a thrill every time you
hear it tick. It's like living among earthquakes. I love it!"

"Gamble!" Peter echoed the word with a touch of fright. "Good Lord; but
you don't gamble surely? I thought you were a broker and looked after
other people's concerns!"

Graham shot out a short laugh. "Other people's concerns? Why, yes; but
we're not in Wall Street for other people. I've had the luck of the
devil lately though,--everything I've touched has gone wrong. However,
don't let's talk about that. I'm here for a holiday and a rest, and I
need 'em. I believe I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown before I
came away. When I get back I shall have to straighten things out. At the
present moment I'm out about twenty thousand dollars."

It was his young brother who said these things--the boy who two years
ago was only just out of Harvard. Peter sat up--in two senses. "You?
Twenty thousand dollars! Have you told father?"

"My God, no!" said Graham. "I shall get it all back of course;
otherwise,--Phut! As to telling father,--well--well, do you ever tell
father anything? I'd rather face electrocution than go into father's
room with such a tale. Once before--about six months ago--when I had to
meet a bill for five thousand dollars, I had a little talk with mother,
and after she had a fit she gave me a handful of her jewels to pawn. She
was afraid of father, too. Within two months I got them out again. Steel
did me very well that time; and mother,--bless her dear heart!--called
me a very clever boy, and said: 'What a brain you have, darling, but
please don't do it again!' Oh, my God, Peter! You don't know what Wall
Street means. It's hell! It's marvellous! It's life! One of these days
when a real good chance comes I'll go some plunge, and then you'll see
me living quietly in the country breeding ponies or dogs or chickens or
something, and I'll marry and settle down."

Peter got up, re-loaded his pipe, and said: "Just think of it! You're
two years younger than I am. I've not begun to live and you're in the
whirl of money and risk. In the meantime there's father so busy
experimenting with microbes that he hasn't one idea of what his boys
are doing, or are likely to do--absolutely content to let them find
their feet unaided! Well, I suppose he knows what he's doing,--but what
you've just told me makes me wonder whether it wouldn't be wise for him
to experiment a little bit with us for a change. What d'you think?"

Graham shrugged his shoulders. With the light on his face he looked
older than his brother, and there was something in his eyes which showed
that he had already gazed at life very much more closely than the big
healthy fellow who was his host. "Oh, well," he said--pouring himself
out a rather stiff whiskey--"we've never known quite what it was to have
a father,--I mean except as a sort of aloof institution, a vague person
who educated us and placed us out. I should resent his butting in now.
There's someone coming up your stairs, isn't there?"

There was. It was Kenyon, who rattled money in his trousers pocket with
a little smile at the corners of his sophisticated mouth.


V

Peter put in the time of his life during the next few days, and like the
great big simple fellow that he was, revelled in being the little hero
of his family.

From morning until night he kept them on the move, taking them to all
his favorite haunts in the town and out in the country, introducing to
them whole flocks of his friends, with whom they had tea and lunch;
guiding them into the strange quiet chapels that were filled with the
aroma of dead years like a bowl of dry rose-leaves; going with them into
the sweet, quiet, sacred, stately seclusion of New College Garden and
into the echoing cloisters of Magdalen. They were good days, memorable
days, giving them all mental pictures that even time would not blur nor
age rub out. To Peter the best of all the afternoons was the one when he
looked up at the St. John's barge as he paddled out into the river in
the College Eight and caught the eager and excited eyes of all the
people who meant so much to him, and especially those of Betty. He rowed
that afternoon as he had never rowed before, carrying with him all along
the stream the raucous shouts of the members of his college who tore
along the tow-path almost demented with enthusiasm, firing pistols,
turning rattles and screaming "St. John's! St. John's! Give her ten!
Give her ten! Up! Up!" And finally, when he staggered out of the boat
almost sick from exertion, his knees shaking under him, the thought that
came to him as he heard the incessant cries of "Good old Peter!" was
"Thank God for this! The Governor will get something back for all he has
done for me." He just waved his hand to his people, felt his way into
the barge, laid himself flat on the floor and underwent the soothing
process of being rubbed and sponged down--and all the while he smiled
and was very happy.

He didn't catch the look of maternal agony in his mother's eyes nor her
remarks--which was perhaps just as well. Seeing her great big boy
crumpled up over his oar before he was assisted out of the boat, seeing
him stand rocking like a drunken man with his great chest heaving and
his face the color of a green apple, she leaned over the rail and cried
out: "Oh, my dear, what _have_ they done to you? Oh, Hunter, you must
_not_ let him do these things, he'll kill himself! Oh, Peter, Peter!"

As a matter of fact, no one heard her. There was too much good solid
roar going on. Every lusty-throated St. John's man was shouting at the
full capacity of his lungs. Oh, but it was a good scene! And for the
quiet, studious Doctor who had sat day after day for the greater part of
his life watching bacteriological experiments, with the most intense
interest, it was one that caused his blood to move almost dangerously
through his veins and make him shout for the first time in his life.

It had a different effect upon temperamental Belle, who danced with
excitement and kept on saying, in a sort of refrain, "Oh, I'm crazy
about all this--simply crazy!" As for Graham, even the thrill of Wall
Street seemed poor to him in comparison with this stirring scene,--the
wild rush of men, the rhythmetic plunge of oars, the glorious muscular
effort and the frenzied outburst.

Betty merely smiled, clasped her hands together and held her breath. It
seemed to her that in Peter all the heroes of her youth,--Brian de Bois
Guilbert, Ivanhoe and the rest,--were epitomized in the form, the
splendid young giant form of her fellow-countryman. Above all things in
the world she wanted to lean over and put a wreath of laurels on the man
who stroked the St. John's boat to victory. As it was, she cried a
little, quietly and simply, not caring who saw her tears; and in her
heart, for a reason which she herself found unexplainable, she sang "My
Country 'tis of Thee." She had never in her life been so deeply stirred,
and who can wonder at that? There is indeed something full of
inspiration about these undergraduates' struggles on the water and the
fervent partisanship of the colleges. It is unique and splendid and
sends young men out into the world with good and beautiful memories and
with the love and loyalty for their alma mater which makes them better
able to serve the women who need them and the country to which they
belong.

And when, having changed his shorts and got once more into his flannels,
Peter went up to the roof of the barge, stinging with health and glowing
with very natural pride and satisfaction, it was the Doctor whose hand
he first took, and the Doctor who said: "My son, my dear son!" It was an
extraordinary moment for Peter, who had never in his life before felt
the indescribable barrier which existed between his father and himself
so near to crumbling.

That night, while his father and mother and Graham were taken to the
theatre by three of his fellow Rhodes scholars, to see a performance of
one of Gilbert and Sullivan's plays, Peter and Nicholas Kenyon took
Betty and Belle to the Worcester Ball, the two girls being under the
wing of the wife of one of the Dons.

It was one of those warm, clear, silver nights which the fickle climate
of England sometimes produces apparently to show what it can do when it
likes. The moon was full and the sky was bespattered with stars. The
trees on the smooth lawn round the old college flung their shadows as
though in sunlight and it was to a seat under one of these that Peter
led Betty just before midnight, having very nearly danced her off her
feet. They sat down panting a little, and laughing for no reason, and
listened for a moment to the strains of the band which drifted through
the open windows of the hall.

It was not in Peter to do anything by halves. He worked and played like
a Trojan and put his back into everything that he took up. He knew by
this time, short as it was, that he was wholly and completely in love
with the little girl, the first sight of whom had made him catch his
breath. With a peculiar kind of grimness he had made up his mind that
she was for him if he could win her, and all the previous night he had
dreamed of her as his future wife, as the girl who would stand by his
side, helpmate and everlasting lover, and for whom he would work well
and live well and carry her with him rung by rung to the top of the
ladder. He told himself when he awoke that he was a presumptuous ass
even to dream that she would care for him. What was there in him for
such a girl to care about? All the same, he set his teeth and from that
moment laid all his future plans and his hopes and ambitions and all the
best of his nature, at her little feet--and knew perfectly well that if
Betty could not love him eventually he would walk alone through life.

Odd, romantic or foolish as it may seem, when youth falls in and out of
love so easily, this was true. Peter had, with a sort of unrealized
solemnity, kept his heart free and pure. He was no trifler--he had never
philandered. Like the boy who, perhaps unduly imaginative, believes that
he will find the place where the rainbow ends, Peter said to himself:
"One day I shall find my girl. I want to go to her heart-whole and
complete."

There was nothing of sentimentality about this. It was simply the
outcome of the effect of the mother-influence upon the boy which had
become a very concrete thing. Somehow, ever since he was old enough to
remember and to think, he had looked upon his mother as his sweetheart,
and when she bent over his cot at night and asked God to bless him and
left the touch of her soft lips upon his forehead she had impressed upon
him the unconscious ambition to make another such woman the centre of
his own home. The numerous tender services, the exquisite maternal
thoughtfulness of this little mother-woman, had been built up by him
into a protection and a lode-star. Betty came--a girl in whom he
recognized at once another mother--and she just touched his heart with
her finger and walked straight in, fitting into the place which had been
kept for her like a diamond into its setting.

Poor dear old Peter! No one would have thought, who looked at him
sitting there in his big awkwardness and incoherence, that he was a man
in love, although a psychologist or even an ordinarily observant girl
could very easily have told how Betty felt.

"Topping, isn't it?" he said.

"Simply wonderful," she replied.

"Tired?"

"Not a bit."

"Pretty good floor, eh?"

"Perfectly splendid."

"Gee! I shall miss this place."

"Why, of course you will."

"All the same, I shall be mighty keen to get at things,--and begin."

"Yes, of course you will."

"How do you know?"

"Oh, that's easy."

"Is it? How?"

"Well, don't I know you?"

"Do you? I wish you did."

Up in the branches something stirred. It may have been Cupid--probably
it was.

But silence followed this conversational effort--a silence broken by a
great heaving sigh, mostly of excitement, and the strains of the band
which drifted out of the windows of the College Hall.

And over them both, as over all other men and women, young and old, at
the beginning and at the end, hung the moon and the stars.

How good it is to be young and in love!


VI

Unnoticed by Mrs. Guthrie and her two boys, there was something more
than a little pathetic in the Doctor's eager, wistful attitude toward
the rather thoughtless, high-spirited, seething youth in the middle of
which he found himself for the first time.

This man had never been young. The atmosphere of the farm on which he
had been born killed youth as foul air kills a caged bird. Poverty,
sordidness and the grim, constant struggle to live made his childhood
and early days utterly devoid of the good sweet things. His mother, worn
out and dispirited, died in giving him birth, and his father, bitter,
lonely and filled with the irony that comes from a long and unprofitable
hand-to-hand fight with mother-earth, let him bring himself up. He was
turned out to work at a time when most lads are sent to school. He had
to trudge daily into the straggling, one-eyed town, at an early hour, to
report at the chemist's store where he obtained employment as an errand
boy. Most of the small wages he earned were required by his father. From
almost the very beginning life was to him a sort of whirling stream into
which he had been flung before having been taught to swim. Mere
self-preservation demanded that he should keep himself afloat. He picked
up education as a stray dog picks up an occasional bone. There was,
however, great grit in this boy and deep down in his soul an ambition to
become something better than his father, whose daily wrestle with
nature--the most relentless of task-mistresses--had warped his character
and stultified his soul. Young Hunter shuddered at the thought of living
always on the farm, of grubbing in the earth, of planting and hoeing and
reaping, of facing the almost inevitable tragedy of spoiled crops and
ruined hopes, and the yearly set-backs of advancing freights and higher
wages. He looked with growing horror and detestation at the farm
implements among which his father spent his life; and while he ran his
errands, carrying medicines and soda syphons, he nursed a dream in his
little cold heart, which grew out of the smell of medicines and the talk
of illness that was all about him in the chemist store. It was to become
a doctor and tend the needs of humanity and, if it was in his power, to
save to other children the mothers who brought them into being.

No wonder Dr. Hunter Guthrie wore strong glasses over his short-sighted
eyes. At all times, with a sort of greed and an almost terrible
eagerness, he read every medical book on which he could lay his
hands,--in bed by the light of one candle, in the cubby-hole at the back
of the store under the glare of the unshaded electric bulb, in
trolley-cars and trains, and on the stoop of the shabby farmhouse so
long as the light lasted. Later, after his day's work, he attended night
classes, and even as he walked from the farm to the town he read.
Spending sleepless nights and living laborious days he followed the
example of many other brave and determined boys whose names gleam like
beacons in the history of their country. He worked his way through the
necessary stages until finally, after a struggle so relentless that it
nearly broke his health, he became a qualified doctor. In order to earn
the money for his courses he was at different times bell-boy in a
country hotel, an advertisement writer in a manufacturer's office, a
clerk for a real-estate man and a traveling salesman for safety razors.
His vacations were more arduous than his terms, and during these he
earned the money with which to pay his college expenses. Every step up
the ladder of innumerable rungs--which sometimes seemed to him
impossible to climb--was painful and difficult. So much concentration
was needed from the very beginning--so much condensed determination and
energy required--that at the age of twenty-five he seemed to have lived
twice that number of years. No wonder then that the all-conquering
youthfulness of all the undergraduates amongst whom he found himself at
Oxford awoke a sort of envy in his heart and startled him who had never
been young. There was no meanness, jealousy or sense of martyrism in his
feelings as he watched the kaleidoscopic picture of university
life--only a sort of wonder and amazement that there were men in the
world so lucky--so indescribably fortunate as to be able to carry
boyhood and all its joys forward to an age when he had forgotten that
such a period existed. Many times during those interesting and stirring
days he stopped suddenly and thanked his God that he had been able to do
for his own boys those things which no one had ever done for him, and
give them such a chance in life as he had never had. Actually to see
Peter, his eldest boy, proving his muscular strength and his mental
ability and moving among his fellows with such splendid popularity,
filled him with pride and gladness. Here indeed was a very concrete
evidence of his reward for that long, arduous struggle.

Like most men who have concentrated upon one thing, Dr. Guthrie was a
child when it came to others. Athleticism, of which he knew nothing,
filled him with admiration. The knack of conversation amazed him. Even
to his wife he found it difficult to talk. To force himself to confide
was almost impossible--it was like blasting a rock. One afternoon
however he got nearer to an intimate expression of his feelings than
ever before--perhaps because he was still under the influence of the
intoxication of the youthfulness all about him.

Kenyon had driven them out after tea to Shotover Hill. All the young
people had gone on to Cuddesden, leaving the doctor and his wife to sit
and look down into the valley far below in which nestled the town and
all its colleges and spires. It had been a golden day and the sun was
setting with all the dignity and pomp of early summer, making the thin
line of the Thames shine like a winding silver ribbon. There was
something of exultation over the earth that evening and of
untranslatable beauty, and the evening song of the birds was like that
of choristers in a great cathedral.

Unusual words seethed in the doctor's head. He was moved and thrilled.
The rest and the relief of leaving his work, all the bustle and stir of
the new life in which he was a temporary figure, seemed to take him
back to his own early days when, with the little woman who sat by his
side, he had stood with her in their first house, newly married.

He took his hat off, put his arm round the shoulders of that faithful
woman and kissed her cheek with a touch of passion and gratitude. "My
darling," he said, "I wish I could say properly some of the things that
I feel about you and my children and the goodness of God. There are
tears in my heart, and strange feelings. I feel oddly young and strong.
I want to laugh and cry. I'd like to pick wild flowers and make a little
crown for your head. Don't laugh at me--please don't laugh."

The little woman took his thin hand and pressed it to her cheek. "I
laugh because that is how I feel, too," she said,--"young and glad and
very happy to see my big Peter doing such wonderful things, and still a
boy. Dear old man, we have much to be thankful for! I know how you've
worked and striven,--and how fine it is to see some of the results of
it. I was a little afraid before we came here that we might find Peter
different--altered--perhaps older--but he's just the same. He's exactly
like you."

The Doctor shook his head and a sudden pain twisted his thin, studious
face. "Oh no, no," he said, "I was never like that. I wish to God I had
been. But it was to make Peter what he is that I've worked night and
day. He's my idea of a man. He's doing all the things that I'd like to
have done. He's me as I might have been if I'd had any luck--any sort
of a chance. Do I regret it? Am I jealous? No; because if I hadn't
lived such an opposite life I mightn't have desired to give my boy all
this." He waved his hand towards the spires that rose in all their
significance out of the town away below. And then, with intense
eagerness and a ring of wistfulness in his voice that brought tears to
his wife's eyes, he bent towards her. "Do you think he realizes this,
Mary? Does Graham ever stop to think how hard I've worked to put him in
Wall Street? Does Belle ever wonder what it's cost me in youth and
health to give her so much more than she needs? I'm--I'm a queer,
wordless, foolishly shy man. Old since the time they all three began to
think and use their eyes,--necessarily concentrated and aloof away in
that laboratory of mine, and--and sometimes I wonder whether my children
know me and understand and make allowances. Do they, Mary, my dear one?
Do they?"

"Yes, my man, my brave and splendid man," she replied, "they do, they
do!" And in saying this she deliberately lied,--out of her great and
steadfast love for this man of hers she lied.

No one knew so well as she did that the father of her children might
almost as well be a mere distant relation who lived in their home for
reasons of convenience and allotted money to their requirements at the
proper time. No one knew so well as she did that Hunter Guthrie's tragic
lack of childhood had dried out of his nature the power of understanding
children. Never having been a child in any sense of the word--never
having known the inexpressible joy of a mother's love--remembering
nothing but a father who was either working hard or tired out--he was
unable to conceive what his own children needed in addition to all that
they got hourly from his wife and from his own work. It had always
seemed to him that in the possession of a mother they had everything
good that God could give them. It seemed to him that his own part was
performed by providing for their needs. No man desired to be the father
of sons and daughters more than he did. No man was prouder in the
possession of them than he was and had always been. To hear the patter
of their little feet about his house sent him to his work with that
sense of religion of which Carlyle wrote. To watch them shaping from
childhood into youth was the most satisfactory and beautiful thing in
his life. To be able, year after year, to do better and still better for
them was his best and biggest reward--far greater and more glorious than
the distinction he earned for himself and the international reputation
that increased with each of his discoveries. And when, six months after
Peter had left home to go to Oxford with a Rhodes scholarship, he found
himself unexpectedly endowed to the extent of over three million dollars
under the will of a late wealthy patient, so that he might, in the old
man's own words, "devote himself, without the fret and fever of earning
a livelihood as a practitioner, to the noble and limitless work of a
bacteriologist for the benefit of suffering humanity all over the
world," it was for the sake of his children that he offered up thanks.
With what immense pride he notified the authorities at Harvard that his
son was independent of the scholarship, which was free to send another
man to Oxford. With what keen pleasure he was able to buy Graham a seat
on the Stock Exchange, bring Belle out as a débutante and send his
little Ethel to the best possible school. These things he could do, and
did, but he could not and had never been able to do for them a better
thing than all these,--win their confidence, their deep affection and
their friendship. That gift had been killed in him. It could not be
acquired, taught or purchased, and he had always been as much out of
touch with his boys and girls as though he were divided from them by a
great stone wall. It had always been with them, "Look out! Here's
father!" instead of "Hello! Here's Dad!" His entrance into their
playroom was the signal for silence. The sight of his studious face and
short-sighted eyes and distrait, shy manner chilled them and reduced
them to quietude and self-consciousness and suspicion. If he had treated
them always as human beings, played with them, sat on the floor and
built houses with their bricks, thrown open the door of his study to
them, if only for half an hour every day, so that there might be no
possibility of its becoming a Blue Room; if he had, as they grew into
the habit of thinking and observing and remembering, told them about
himself and his own boyhood and in this way inculcated a mutual
interest, a desire to respond and open out; if, before the two boys had
gone to college he had had the courage to act on the earnest advice of a
friend and speak to them on the vital question of sex, give them the
truth as he so well knew it and warn them bravely and rightly of the
inevitable pitfalls that lined their youthful path, no brick wall would
have existed and he would have been their pal as well as their
father,--a combination altogether irresistible.

As it was Hunter Guthrie's wife, who loved him deeply and devotedly and
recognized in him a great man as well as a most unselfish father, was
obliged to lie in reply to his questions. She would rather have died,
then and there, than hurt him and bring down his house about his ears.
The sad and tragic part of it all was that she knew utterly that no
good, no change could be brought about by telling the truth. It was too
late.


VII

Belle had told Betty that she was "crazy" about Nicholas Kenyon. There
is usually a wildness of exaggeration about this expression which
renders it almost harmless. The exuberant type of girl who uses it
applies it with equal thoughtlessness to a new hat, a new play or a new
set of furs. She will be crazy about a tenor and a pomeranian, a
so-called joke in a comic paper and the sermon of a fashionable
preacher. In regard to Kenyon, however, Belle was really and truly crazy
in its most accurate dictionary sense. After the Worcester Ball, during
which she gave him nearly every dance,--to the flustered concern of the
Don's wife who was her chaperon,--she went to no trouble to conceal from
Kenyon the fact that she found him vastly attractive. Kenyon was not
surprised. Already he was a complete expert in the art of making himself
loved by women. He knew exactly what they liked him to say and he said
it with a touch of insolence which took their breath away and a
following touch of deference which gave them back their self-respect.
Belle was very much to his liking. Her rather Latin beauty, which was
rendered unexplainable by the sight of her parents--her incessant high
spirits and love of life--her naïve assumption that she was the mistress
of all the secrets of this world, amused, interested and tickled his
fancy. Her beauty, freshness and youth pleased him as an epicure, and he
went out of his way to be with her as much as he could. He had no
intention whatever of falling in love with her,--first of all because it
was all against his creed to fall in love with anyone but himself;
secondly, because his way of living demanded that he should have no
partner in his business,--all that he could win by his wits he would
need. Nevertheless, he was quite as ready as usual to take everything
that was given to him, and give nothing in return except flattery,
well-rounded sentences and a good deal of his personal attention.

During the week that passed so quickly he had only been able to see
Belle with her people, and when he found that this bored her as much as
it bored him, he set his brain to work to devise some plan by which he
could escape with her from the party for a few hours. Needless to say he
succeeded.

On the night before the party were to leave Oxford he arranged another
evening trip on the river, maneuvered Peter into one punt with his
father and mother, Graham and Betty, and got into another with Belle.
For some little time he poled along closely behind them, but as the
river was full of similar parties he found it easy to drop behind and
dodge deftly into a back water. Here he tied up to a branch, set himself
down on the cushions at Belle's side and lit a cigarette.

"How's that?" he asked.

Belle laughed a little excitedly. "Very clever," she said. "I wondered
how you were going to do it."

He didn't find it necessary to tell her that he had performed a similar
trick a hundred times. "Under the right sort of inspiration," he said,
"even I can develop genius. Tell me something about New York, and what
you find to do there."

"I should have to talk from now until to-morrow morning even to begin to
tell you," she said. "I only came out last winter, but the history of it
would fill a book. New York is some town and I guess a girl has a better
time there than anywhere else in the world. Why don't you come and see
something of it for yourself?"

Kenyon leaned lightly against the girl's soft shoulder. "That's
precisely what I'm going to do," he said. "Your father has given me a
cordial invitation to stay at his house, and I shall go over with Peter
in October."

"Oh, isn't that fine!" cried Belle. "You'll love the place--it's so
different."

"I'm not worrying about the place," said Kenyon. "I'm simply going for
the chance of dancing with you to the band which really does know how to
play rag-time. It'll be worth crossing three thousand miles of
unnecessary water to achieve that alone."

"I don't believe you," said Belle; but all her teeth gleamed in the
moonlight and her heart pumped a little. How wonderful it would be to
become the wife of the Honourable Nicholas Kenyon, who seemed to her to
be everything that was desirable.

Kenyon picked up her hand and just touched it with his lips. "You don't
believe it? Well, we'll see." He knew very well that if he had chosen to
do so he could have kissed her lips, but his policy was to go slow. His
epicurianism was so complete that he liked to take his enjoyment in sips
and not empty his glass at a gulp. This girl whose imagined worldliness
was so childlike was well worth all his attention. He looked forward
with absolute certainty to the hour when he should place her on his
little list of achievements; but like all collectors and connoisseurs he
added to his pleasure by winning his point gradually, step by step, with
a sort of cold-blooded passion.

Belle was accustomed to men who were a little crude in their naturalness
and who immediately voiced their admiration and their liking with boyish
spontaneity. She had strings of beaux of all ages who immediately sent
her flowers and presents and dogged her heels from dance to dance and
rang her up constantly on the telephone and generally showed their
eagerness with that lack of control which was characteristic of a
nation which had deliberately placed women in the position of queens.

Perhaps it was because this man's methods were so different that she
found him so attractive. He fed her vanity and piqued it at the same
time. He said more by saying nothing than any man had ever ventured to
do, and he retired so quickly after an amazing advance that he left her
assuming more than if he had never advanced at all. It was perfectly
natural, although she had already dipped into the fastest New York set,
that she should believe that at the end of every man's intention there
was a marriage and a sort of throne in his house. She little knew
Nicholas Kenyon. She had had the good fortune to meet men in New York,
and not collectors.

"What are your father's plans when he leaves Oxford?" asked Kenyon,
leaning a little more closely against the girl's soft shoulder.

"Why, we're going to Shakespeare's country, to the English lakes and
then to Scotland, where father's ancestors lived; and then in August we
shall go to London for a week, and go home on the _Olympic_. Why don't
you go over with us?"

"I should like nothing better," said Kenyon, "but as a matter of fact I
shall wait until Peter has got through his various engagements. He rows
at Henley in July, you know,--the boat is entered for the Lady's
Plate,--and then he comes home with me. He wants to shoot my father's
birds in August and see a little of English country life before he
settles down to his law work in America."

Belle was silent for a few moments. She wished that this wonderful week
could be extended over the whole of her holidays. She knew, and was
really a little frightened at knowing, that when she left Oxford the
next day she would leave behind her a heart that had hitherto been quite
untouched. She was amazed and even a little annoyed to find that a mere
week had brought about such a revolution in all her feelings and in her
whole outlook on life. She had meant to have a perfectly wonderful time
before falling in love.

"I suppose," she said, "that we shan't hear anything of you until we see
you again, unless,--unless you write sometimes to mother and tell her
how you are and what Peter is doing."

Kenyon didn't even smile. "Peter will write to your mother once a week,
as usual--he's very consistent--and I'll get him to put in a postscript
about me, if you like. I shall have some difficulty in preventing myself
from writing to you from time to time, although I'm a child in the art
of letter-writing."

"Why should you prevent it? I should simply love to have your letters."

"But isn't your mother a little old-fashioned?"

"Maybe," said Belle, "but does that matter? You've not met any American
girls before--that's easy to see. We do just what we like, and if our
mothers don't agree they don't dare to say so. Shall I tell you why?
Because it wouldn't make any difference if they did."

"Then I shall write," said Kenyon, "and give you brief but eloquent
descriptions of English weather, English politics and the condition of
my liver,--that is to say, the three inevitable topics of this country."

Belle laughed. "Then it will be perfectly safe for me to leave your
letters about," she said.

"Perfectly,--always supposing that you censor the postscripts."

"I'm crazy about you!" said Belle; and this time her laugh awoke the
echoes of the river and filled a nightingale near by with a pathetic
ambition to emulate its music.

And then they heard Peter's great voice shouting, "N-i-c-k!" Whereupon
Kenyon gathered himself together, not unpleased at being disturbed,
stood up gracefully and pulled back into the main stream. "The call of
duty," he said--"such is life." It was consistent with his policy to
conduct this most pleasant affair by instalments.

When he saw the other punt he asked Peter, with a touch of beautiful
petulance, why he had deliberately lost them, and turned a deaf ear to
Graham's idiotic chuckle.

The landing stage was in the shadow, which was just as well. When Kenyon
gave his hand to Belle to help her out of the punt, he drew her close
against him and with a touch of passion as unexpected as the sudden
flash of a searchlight across a dark sky left a kiss on her lips that
took her breath away.

All the way back to the hotel she hung on Peter's arm and dared not
trust herself to speak. For the first time in her young life she had
caught a glimpse of its meaning. It left her strangely moved and
thrilled.

Little Mrs. Guthrie walked back with Kenyon, very proud of the fact that
he was Peter's friend.

Poor little mother!


VIII

On the steps of the Randolph Hotel, Mrs. Guthrie turned to Kenyon and
asked him, with one of her most motherly smiles, to have some supper
with them. Telegraphing quickly to Peter and Graham that they were not
to accept the invitation, Kenyon said: "Nothing would give me greater
pleasure--absolutely nothing. Unfortunately Peter and I have already
accepted an invitation from two of our Dons and we cannot possibly get
out of this dull but profitable hour."

"How very disappointing!" said Mrs. Guthrie.

"How silly!" said Belle.

Betty merely said, "Oh!" but the rest of her sentence was condensed into
one quick look at Peter.

Peter, utterly without guile, turned round to Nicholas Kenyon in blank
amazement. "It's the first I've heard of it," he said. "What on earth do
you mean? Two of the Dons? Who are they?"

But Kenyon was an artist and a strategist, and therefore a liar. "My
dear old boy! What would you do without me? I'm your diary, your
secretary, your guide, philosopher and friend. If you've forgotten the
engagement I certainly haven't." And he shot at Peter a swift and
subtle wink, in which he included Graham.

Scenting adventure and gathering that the two Dons were in all
probability coming from the chorus of "The Pirates of Penzance," Graham
joined in quickly. "I suppose I can't come and listen humbly to the
learned conversation of these two professors?"

"But why not?" said Kenyon. "No doubt you can tell them more about Wall
Street in five minutes than they would ever learn in their lives.
Therefore, dear Mrs. Guthrie, I'm afraid we must all say 'good-night.'
We'll rejoin you in the morning for breakfast as arranged, and wind up
what's been the pleasantest week of my life, by driving out to Woodstock
for lunch."

It was all done in the most masterly manner, and when the three men left
the hotel arm in arm they were not guided by Kenyon toward St. Giles,
but to the theatre, where the curtain was just about to fall with the
last act.

"What's all this?" asked Peter, impatiently. "Mother had set her heart
upon having us to supper."

"Mother has had us all day," replied Kenyon. "Bear in mind the fact that
there are other women in the world to whom we owe a little gallantry.
You and Graham are going to eat Welsh Rabbit at the somewhat humble
rooms of my little friends, Lottie Lawrence and Billy Seymour."

"I'll see you damned first!" said Peter. "I've no use for these people.
Come on, Graham, let's go back."

Kenyon's face was wreathed in smiles. "It can't be done, dear lad," he
said. "Your mother would be the last person on earth to permit you to be
discourteous to our two distinguished Dons, and by this time in all
human probability Betty will be preparing for bed."

Peter had been building all his hopes on another hour with Betty. She
was leaving Oxford with his people the next afternoon and he wanted
above all things, however incoherently, to let her know something of the
state of his feelings. He had never been so angry with Kenyon before.
"Curse you!" he said. "You've spoiled everything. If you must play about
with these chorus girls why can't you do it alone? Why drag me in?"

Kenyon's eyes narrowed. "Only the angels die young, Peter, my friend,"
he said. "As I've been obliged to tell you before, you stand a pretty
good chance of an early demise. Have you ever heard the word 'priggish'?
For a whole week I've played the game by you and devoted myself, lock,
stock and barrel, to your family. Mere sportsmanship demands that you
make some slight return to me by joining my little party to-night. Don't
you agree with me, Graham?"

Graham's vanity was vastly appealed to by the fact that this perfect man
of the world had taken him into his intimacy. Hitherto he hadn't met
English chorus girls. He rather liked the idea. "Why," he said, "I can't
see why we shouldn't go. I'm with you, anyway. Come on, Peter. Be a
sport."

But Peter held his ground. He had all the more reason for so doing
because he had met Betty. "All right!" he said. "You two can do what you
jolly well like. Cut me out of it. I shall turn in. If that's being
priggish--fine. Good-night!"

He wheeled round and marched off, and as he passed beneath the windows
of the Randolph Hotel he drew up short for a moment and with a touch of
knightliness which was quite unself-conscious he bared his head beneath
the window of the room in which he believed that Betty was to sleep, but
which, as a matter of fact, harboured a short, fat, wheezy Anglo-Indian
with a head as bald as a billiard ball.

Kenyon disguised his annoyance under an air of characteristic
imperturbability. "Well, that's our Peter to the life," he said, taking
Graham's eager arm. "He's a sort of Don Quixote--a very pure and perfect
person. One of these days he's likely to come an unholy cropper, and
that's to my way of thinking what he most needs. I don't agree with a
man's being a total abstainer in anything. It narrows him and makes him
provincial. Then, too, a man who fancies himself as better than his
fellows is apt to wear a halo under his hat, and that disgusting trick
ruins friendship and leads to a hasty and ill-considered marriage with
the first good actress who catches him on the hop and makes use of his
lamentable ignorance. Come along, brother, we'll see life together."

"Fine!" said Graham. "Me for life all the time."

So these two,--the one curiously old and the other dangerously
young,--made their way to the stage door of the Theatre Royal and
waited among the little crowd of undergraduates for the moment when the
ladies of the chorus should have retouched their make-up and be ready
for further theatricalisms.

Lottie Lawrence and Billy Seymour were the first out. The latter's
greeting was exuberant. "What-ho, Nick! Where's the blooming giant you
said you were going to bring?"

"Otherwise engaged, dear Billy; but permit me to introduce to you a
financial magnate from the golden city of New York."

Billy was young and slim and so tight-skirted that her walk was almost
like that of a Chinese Princess. Even under the modest light of the
stage door-keeper's box her lips gleamed crimsonly and her long
eyelashes stuck out separately in black surprise. Her small round face
was plastered thickly with powder. She was very alluring to the very
young. Her friend had come from an exactly similar mould and might have
been a twin but for her manner, which was that of the violet--the modest
violet--on a river's brim.

Kenyon hailed a cab, gave the man the address in Wellington Square and
sat himself between the two girls, with an arm round each.

Billy Seymour had taken in Graham with one expert glance of minute
examination. "Graham Guthrie, eh?" she said. "It smacks of Caledonia,
bag-pipes and the braes and banks o' bonnie Doon. I take it your
ancestors went over on the S. S. Mayflower, of the White Star Line--that
gigantic vessel which followed the beckoning finger of Columbus--and
started the race which invented sky-scrapers and the cuspidors."

Graham let out a howl of laughter and told himself that he was in for a
good evening, especially as the ladies' knees were very friendly.

Lottie Lawrence placed her head on Kenyon's shoulder, sighed a little
and said: "Oh, I'm so tired and so hungry; and I've a thirst I wouldn't
sell for a tenner."

Kenyon tightened his hold. "All those things shall be remedied, little
one," he said. "Have no fear."

The first things which met their eyes when they entered the sitting-room
of the sordid little house in which a series of theatricals had lodged
from time immemorial, were a half-dozen bottles of champagne--sent in by
Nick's order. The two girls showed their appreciation for his
tactfulness in different ways. Billy fell upon one of the bottles as
though it were her long-lost sister, pressed it to her bosom and placed
a passionate kiss upon its label; while Lottie, with an eloquent
gesture, immediately handed Graham a rather battered corkscrew. "Help me
to the bubbly, boy," she said. "My throat is like a limekiln."

       *       *       *       *       *

All the clocks of the City of Spires were striking three as Kenyon and
Graham supported each other out into the quiet and deserted street.
There was much powder on Graham's coat and a patch of crimson on
Kenyon's left cheek.

"Life with a big L, Graham, my boy," said Kenyon a little thickly.

"A hell of a big L," said Graham, with a very much too loud laugh at his
feeble joke. "You certainly do know your way about."

"And most of the short cuts," said Kenyon dryly. "Presently I shall
scale the wall of St. John's, climb through the window of one of our
fellows who's about to take holy orders, and wind up the night in the
hospitable arms of Morpheus." This eventually Graham watched him do,
with infinite delight, and was still wearing a smile of
self-congratulation as he passed the door of his mother's bedroom in the
hotel and entered his own.

His father heard the heavy footsteps as they went along the passage, but
imagined that they were those of the night watchman on his rounds.

Fate is the master of irony.


IX

The following morning at eight o'clock Peter, as fit as a fiddle,
stalked into Kenyon's bedroom and flung up the blind. The sun poured in
through the open window. Innumerable sparrows twittered among the trees
in the gardens and scouts were moving energetically about the quad. From
the other windows the sounds of renewed life were coming. The great
beehive of a college was about to begin a new and strenuous day.

Kenyon was sleeping heavily with a blanket drawn about his ears. His
clothes were all over the floor and a tumbler one-fourth filled with
whiskey stood on the dressing-table among a large collection of
ivory-backed brushes, links, studs, tie-pins and other paraphernalia
which belong to men of Kenyon's type,--the bloods of Oxford. With a
chuckle, Peter dipped a large sponge in the water of the hip-bath which
had been placed ready on the floor, and throwing back the blanket
squeezed its contents all over Kenyon's well-cut face.

The effect was instantaneous. The sleeper awoke, and cursed. Peter's
howl of laughter at the sight of this pale blinking man with his
delicate blue silk pajamas all wet round the neck advertised the fact to
the whole college that he was up and about.

Kenyon got slowly out of bed. "There are fools--damned fools--and Peter
Guthrie," he said quietly. "What's the time?"

"Time for you to get up, shave and bathe, if you want to breakfast at
the Randolph. How late were you last night?"

"Haven't a notion," said Kenyon. "The first faint touch of dawn was
coming over the horizon, so far as I remember, when your little brother
watched me climb through the window of the man Rivers, upon whose
'tummie' I planted my foot. For a man who's about to enter the Church he
has an astounding vocabulary of gutter English. You look abominably fit,
old boy--the simple life, eh? Heigh-ho!--Manipulate this machine for me
while I'm doing my hair." He picked up the small black case of his
safety-razor and threw it at Peter, who caught it. Then he got into a
very beautiful silk dressing-gown, stuck his feet into a pair of
heelless red morocco slippers, and with infinite pains and accuracy made
a centre parting in his fair hair, in which there was a slight natural
curl.

From his comfortable position on the foot of the bed Peter watched his
friend shave,--a performance through which he went with characteristic
neatness. It was a very different performance from the one through which
Peter was in the habit of going. Soap flew all round this untidy man,
giving the scout much extra work in his cleaning-up process.

Kenyon didn't intend to enter into any details as to the orgy of the
night before. He knew from previous experience that Peter's sympathy was
not with him. For many reasons he desired to stand well with his friend,
especially looking to the fact that he needed an immediate loan. One or
two of his numerous creditors were pressing for part payment. So he let
the matter drop and took the opportunity to talk like a father to Peter
on another point which had grown out of the visit of his people. "Tell
me," he said, "what is precisely the state of your feelings in regard to
your sister's friend? It seems to me that you're getting a bit sloppy in
that direction. Am I right?"

"No," said Peter, "'sloppy' isn't the word."

"Oh! Well, then, what is the word? I may be able to advise you."

"I don't want your advice," said Peter. "My mind is made up."

Kenyon turned round. "Is that so? Quick work."

Peter nodded. "It's always quick when it's inevitable."

"Oho! What have we here--romance?"

"Yes; I think so," said Peter quietly.

"Who'd have thought it? Our friend Peter has met his soul-mate! Out of
the great crowd he has chosen the mother of his children. It is to
laugh!"

"Think so?" said Peter. "I don't."

Kenyon put down his razor and stood in front of the man with whom he had
lived for several years and who had now apparently come up against a big
moment in his life. It didn't suit him that Peter should be seriously in
love yet. He looked to his friend to provide him with a certain amount
of leisure in the future. His plans would all go wrong if he had to
share him with someone else. He had imagined that his friend was only
temporarily gone on this little girl whose brief entry into Oxford had
helped to make Eight's week very pleasant. It was his duty to find out
exactly how Peter stood.

"Do you mean to tell me," he asked, "that you've proposed to Betty
Townsend?"

"Not yet," said Peter, "but I'm going to this morning--that is if I have
the pluck."

"My dear fellow," said Kenyon, with a genuine earnestness, "don't do it.
I've no doubt she'll jump at you, being under the influence of this
place and seeing you as a small hero here; but take the advice of a man
who knows and bring caution to your rescue. What'll happen if you tie
yourself up to this girl? After all, you can't possibly be in love with
her--that's silly. You're under the influence of a few silver nights,
and that most dangerous of all things--propinquity. Dally with her of
course, kiss her and write her letters in which you quote the soft stuff
of the poets. That'll provide you with much quiet amusement and assist
you in the acquisition of a literary style; but, for God's sake, don't
be serious. You're too young. You've not sown your wild oats. What's the
use of taking a load of responsibility on your shoulders before you're
obliged to do so? I'm talking to you like a father, old man, and I've
the right."

"Oh yes," said Peter, "you've the right--no man better--but you and I
look at things differently. I want the responsibility of this girl. I
want someone to work for,--an impetus--an ultimate end. It may seem
idiotic to you that I know the right girl directly I see her, but all
the same it's a fact. You see my undergraduate days are almost over.
When I go home in the fall I shall start earning my living. What am I
going to work for? A home, of course, and a wife and all that that
means. If that's what you call romance, thank you, it's exactly what I
want. Do you get me?"

Kenyon shrugged his shoulders. "Then I don't see that there's anything
more to be said. Does all this mean that you're going to chuck me?
Supposing Betty accepts you? Are you going to dog her footsteps for the
rest of the summer and leave me in the cart?"

"Oh Lord, no!" said Peter.

"Thank God for small mercies! And now if you'll give me a little
elbow-room I'll have my bath."

"Right-o!" said Peter. "Buck up! Breakfast at nine o'clock."

He went out, not singing as usual but with a curious quietness and a
strange light dancing in his eyes.

Kenyon was left the sole master of that little bedroom. As he finished
dressing he marshalled his thoughts and into them entered the figure of
a certain very beautiful person who lived in a cottage on the borders of
his father's estate. Before now she had twisted young men, quite as
romantic as Peter, out of their engagements to simple little girls. He
would see that she worked her wiles on Peter. He didn't intend that his
friend should devote himself to any person except Nicholas Kenyon so
long as he could prevent it.


X

It was a rather curious meal,--this final breakfast at the Randolph
Hotel. There were several under-currents of feeling which seemed to
disturb the atmosphere like cross winds. The Doctor and Mrs. Guthrie
were genuinely sorry that the week had come to an end. It was one which
would be filled with memories. Graham would very willingly have remained
at Oxford as long as Kenyon did. He had fallen a complete victim to the
attractions of this master of psychology. He regarded him as the very
last word in expert worldliness. He paid him the highest tribute that he
considered it was possible for one man to pay another, by calling him "a
good sport," and he looked forward with enormous pleasure to the time
when he would be able to show Kenyon the night side of New York, with
which he had himself begun to be well acquainted.

As to the two girls, wonderful things had happened to both of them
during that emotional, stirring, picturesque and altogether "different"
week. It seemed almost incredible to them they had been in that old town
for so short a time, during which, however, their little plans--their
girlish point of view--had undergone absolute revolution. The
high-spirited Belle, who had hitherto gone through life with a
consistent exuberance and rather thoughtless joy, was rendered
uncharacteristically serious at the knowledge that she would not see
Nicholas Kenyon again for some months. Not for a moment did she regret
the fact that she had fallen badly in love with him. It was a new
sensation for her, and young as she was, it was the new thing that
counted. Her mind was filled with dreams. In imagination she walked from
one series of pictures into another and all were touched with
excitement, exhilaration and a sense of having won something, the
possession of which all her friends would envy her.

In going over in her mind all that Kenyon had said to her, she could
not put her finger on any actual declaration on his part; but his subtle
assumption of possession, the way in which he touched her hand and
looked at her over other people's heads with eyes which seemed to
embrace her, seemed to her to be far more satisfactory than any
conventional set of words ordinary under such circumstances. Then, too,
there was that wonderful and sudden kiss on the landing stage in the
shadow. Why, there was no doubt about it. She had, like Cæsar, come and
seen and conquered. She was to be the Hon. Mrs. Nicholas Kenyon,
daughter-in-law of Lord Shropshire, of Thrapstone-Wynyates. What a
delightful surprise for father and mother, and how proud they would be
of her!

Betty knew that Peter intended to make her his wife. She knew it and was
happy. His very incoherence had been more eloquent to her than the
well-rounded sentences of all the heroes of her favorite novels, and if
he never said another word before she left, she would be satisfied. In
her heart there was the sensation of one who had come to the end of a
long road and now stood in a great wide open space on which the sun fell
warmly and with great beauty.

Not much was said by anyone, and the question of the afternoon train
which was to leave at four-thirty was consistently avoided by them all.

Breakfast over, the whole party followed Kenyon into the street, where
two cars were waiting for the trip to Woodstock. They were to lunch at
the old inn which stood beneath the gnarled branches of the oaks that
had sheltered the Round Heads and Royalists. The first car was Kenyon's
roadster, in which he placed Mrs. Guthrie, the Doctor and Graham. He had
intended that Betty should sit by his side as he drove, and that Peter
should take Belle in his two-seater. But Master Peter was too quick for
him this time. He had touched Betty on the arm and said: "You're coming
with me." And before Kenyon could frame a sentence to break up this
arrangement these two were off together with the complete disregard for
speed limits which was peculiar to the Oxford undergraduate. Kenyon had
the honesty to say about this to himself that it was well done, but all
the same he was immensely annoyed. As he drove off with Belle on the
front seat he was not, for at least a mile, a very talkative companion.
Belle put his silence down to the fact that she was going away that
afternoon.

Along St. Giles, past the burial ground, the Roman Catholic Church,
Somerville, and into the Woodstock road as far as the Radcliffe
Infirmary, Peter kept the lead, and then the big car overtook him and
left him behind. Graham waved his hand and shouted something which Peter
didn't catch. It was probably facetious. As far as Wolvercote Peter kept
in touch with the car in front, when he began to fall gradually behind.
He had a plan in the back of his head.

The morning seemed to suit all that he had to say, if he found himself
able to say it. The earth was warm with the sun. The hedges and trees
were still in the first fresh vigor of early summer. Everywhere birds
sang and were busy with their young.

Peter pulled up short at the edge of a spinney. "Let's get out of
here," he said, "I want to show you a corking little bit of country."
And Betty obeyed without a word. She rather liked being ordered about by
this big square-shouldered person.

They didn't go far,--hardly, in fact, fifty yards from the car,--and
when they came to a small opening among the beeches where bracken grew
and "bread and cheese" covered the soft turf with their little yellow
heads, Peter said: "Sit down; I want to speak to you."

And again Betty obeyed without a word. It was coming--she knew that it
was coming--and the only thing she was afraid about was that Peter would
hear the quick beat of her heart.

He laid himself full stretch at her feet, threw off his cap and ran his
fingers through his hair. "You know this place," he said.

"I? No, I've never been here before."

"Yes, you have. You've been here with your friends. They come out every
night from the first of May until the first of October. Can't you see
the marks their feet have made as they danced here in the ring? It's
awfully queer. This is the first place I came to after I got to
Oxford--all the leaves were red--and I sat here one afternoon alone and
wondered how long it would be before I should look up and see you. I've
often come here since, winter and summer, and listened for sticks to
crackle as you came along through the trees to find me. Why don't you
laugh?"

"Why should I?"

"I knew you wouldn't. If you had it wouldn't have been you."

He turned himself round on to his elbows and looked up at her, and
remained looking and looking. And Betty looked back. Her heart was
beating so loudly that it seemed to her that someone was whacking a
carpet somewhere with a stick. She wondered whether she would be able to
hear Peter when he spoke again,--if ever he did.

And Peter said: "I'm going to begin to be a man exactly five months from
to-day. That is to say, I'm going into a law office in New York to make
a beginning. I'm going to work like the dickens. Do you know why?"

Betty shook her head and then nodded. He was a long time coming to the
point. If he wasn't quick she'd simply have to scream. Her heart was up
in her throat--it was most uncomfortable.

Peter went on. Somehow words came easy to him. The earth was so friendly
and so motherly and so very kind, and after all this was his spot and
she was there at last. "I forget the number of the house," he said, "but
up on the eighth floor of it, facing south, there's a most corking
apartment. The rooms are large and can be filled with big furniture and
enormous book-cases. I'm going to work to get that. I don't know how
long it'll take, but I'm going to ask you to help me to get it. Will
you?"

Betty nodded again. Someone was beating the carpet in a most violent
manner.

Peter, without another word, sprang up, put two large strong hands
under Betty's elbows and set her on her feet. She came up to the top
button of his coat and he held her there tight and it hurt her cheek.
But oh, how fine and broad the chest was behind it and how good it was
to nestle there. She heard him say much that she forgot then, but
remembered afterwards--simple boyish things expressed with deep
sincerity and a sort of throb--outpourings of pent-up feelings--not in
the very least incoherent, but all definite and very good. And there
they stayed for what appeared to be a long time. The man with the carpet
had gone away, but without looking up Betty knew that there were
hundreds of little people dancing around them in the ring and the little
clearing full of the yellow heads of wild flowers seemed to have become
that great open space and out of it, between an avenue of old trees,
stretched the wide road which led to,--the word was the only one in the
song that filled her brain,--motherhood! Motherhood!

A rabbit ran past them frightened, and Betty sprang away. "Peter! What
will the others say?"

Peter shook himself and his great laugh awoke the echoes of the woods.
"I don't care what anybody says," he answered. "Do you?"

"Yes. Let's go. We shall be late for lunch."

And Peter picked her up, carried her to the car, kissed her, put her in,
and drove away.


XI

Peter and Kenyon left the station arm in arm. They had watched the train
round the corner and disappear. Many hands had waved to the crowd of
undergraduates who had come to see their people and friends off. Peter
had stood bareheaded with his hand still tingling with the touch of
Betty's.

They walked slowly back to college, each busy with his thoughts.
Exultation filled Peter's mind. Kenyon was wondering how much he could
touch Peter for. In the procession of returning undergraduates they made
their way under the railway bridge and along the sun-bathed but rather
slummy cobblestone road over which the tram-cars ran. They passed the
row of little red brick houses--most of which were shops--and the
factory, stammering smoke, and turned into the back way which led by a
short cut to Worcester.

Oxford had resumed her normal atmosphere. Fathers and mothers, uncles,
guardians, brothers, sisters and cousins, who had all descended upon the
town, had departed. No longer were the old winding streets set alight by
the many colored frocks of pretty girls, nor were they any longer
stirred into a temporary bustle by the great influx of motor-cars.
Undergraduates held possession once more and with their peculiar
adaptability were making hasty preparations for the long vacation.

Peter led the way to his sitter, loaded his inevitable pipe, and sat in
the sun on the sill of the open window. With fastidious care Kenyon
stuck a cigarette into a long meerschaum holder and laid himself down on
the settee. He had worked very hard during the week and had very much
more than carried out his promise to Peter to make himself pleasant. The
moment had come when he might certainly lead the way up to his reward.

Peter took the words out of his friend's mouth. "What d'you think?" he
said. "When I was saying good-bye to the Governor on the platform he
took me aside and gave me a cheque. He did it in his curious apologetic
way which always makes me feel that he's someone else's father, and
said: 'I think this will see you through for a month or two.' Gee! It's
some cheque, Nick! I don't think I shall have to touch the old man down
for another bob until I have to book my passage. His generosity leaves
me wordless. I wish to God I'd been able to say something nice. As it
was, I had to tell mother to thank him for me." He went over to his
desk, fished out a cheque-book, sat down and made one out in his large
round boyish handwriting.

Kenyon watched him intently. He hoped that it might be for himself and
for fifty sovereigns. That amount, carefully split up, would keep some
of his more pressing tradesmen quiet for a short time.

"Is this any good to you, old man?" said Peter. He dropped the cheque on
to Kenyon's immaculate waistcoat. It was for a hundred pounds.

The master parasite was taken by surprise almost for the first time in
his life and he was sincerely touched by this generosity. "My dear old
Peter! This is really devilish kind of you! I'm exceedingly grateful. My
exit from Oxford can now be made with a certain amount of dignity. I'll
add this amount to your other advances, and you must trust in God and my
luck at cards to get it back."

"Oh, that's all right," said Peter. "You'd have done the same for me.
What's the good of friendship anyway if a man can't share his bonuses
with a pal? Well, well! There goes another Commem:--the last of them for
us. Everything seems awfully flat here without,--without my people. What
d'you think of the Governor?"

Kenyon folded the cheque neatly and slipped it into a small leather case
upon which his crest was embossed in gold. It was one of the numerous
nice things for which he owed. "Your father," he said, "is a very
considerable man. I made a careful study of him and I've come to the
conclusion that all he needs from you and Graham is human treatment. If
he were my father I should buy a metaphorical chisel and an easily
manipulated hammer and chip off all his shyness bit by bit as though it
were concrete. Properly managed there's enough in Dr. Guthrie to keep
you in comfort for the rest of your life without doing a stroke of work.
What age is he--somewhere about fifty-three I suppose? In all human
probability he is good--barring accidents--for another fifteen years or
so. Then, duly mourned, and, I take it, considerably paragraphed in your
newspapers, he will go to his long rest and you will come into your
own. With even quite ordinary diplomacy you can use those fifteen years
to considerable advantage to yourself,--dallying gently with life and
adding considerably to your experience, making your headquarters at his
house. You can do the semblance of work in order to satisfy his rather
puritanical notion,--but I can't see that there'll be any need for you
to sweat. For instance, become a poet--that's easy. There are stacks of
sonneteers whom you could imitate. Or you could call yourself a literary
man and do nothing more than establish a sanctum-sanctorum in which to
keep a neat pile of well-bound manuscript books and acquire a library.
If I were you I should adopt the latter course--it sounds well. It'll
satisfy the old man and all the while you're not writing the great book
he'll pat himself on the back and congratulate himself on having had you
properly educated. During all this time you can draw from him a very
nice yearly income, and then make your splash when nature has laid her
relentless hand upon the old man's shoulder."

There was a moment's pause, during which Peter looked very curiously at
the graceful indolent man who lay upon his settee. "If I didn't know
that you were talking for effect," he said, "I should take you by the
scruff of your neck and the seat of your breeches and hurl you
down-stairs. I know you better than to believe that you are the
cold-blooded brute that you make yourself out to be. Anyhow, we'll not
discuss the matter. The one useful thing you have said--and on which I
shall try to act--is that Graham and I must try to be more human with
the Governor. He deserves it. What's the program?"

"For me," said Kenyon, "dinner with Lascelles and bridge to the early
hours. With good cards and a fairly good partner I shall hope to make a
bit. What are you going to do?"

"I shall dine in Hall," said Peter, "and then go out for a walk."

"I see." Kenyon got up, filled his cigarette case from Peter's box and
stood with his back to the mantel-piece. "You proposed to Betty to-day,
didn't you?"

"How the deuce did you know that?"

Kenyon laughed. "My dear fellow," he said, "everybody knows that. You
exuded romance when you arrived late at the Inn. The very waiter guessed
it, and was so stirred, being Swiss, that he very nearly poured the soup
down your mother's neck. And when your mother looked at you I saw
something come into her eyes which showed me that she knew she had lost
you. I wouldn't be a mother if you paid me!" And then he held out his
hand with that charm of which he was past-master. "'Friend that sticketh
closer than a brother,' three years; dashed bit of a slip of a girl, one
week,--and where's your friend? Well, good luck, Peter! She's a nice
little thing. Dream your dreams, old boy, but don't altogether forget
the man who's been through Oxford with you."

Peter grasped the hand warmly. "Don't be an ass!" he said. "Go and brush
your back hair. It's all sticking up."

And when he was alone, except for a golden patch of evening sun which
had found its way through his window and had spilt itself on his carpet,
Peter pulled out a little white glove from his pocket and kissed it.

"O God!" he said. "Help me to become a man."


XII

No one knew, because no one was told, of the many hours of grief which
little Mrs. Guthrie endured after she left Oxford. There were two
reasons for this grief. One, the inevitable realization that the time
had come for some other woman to take her place with her son. She
remained his mother, but she was no longer first. The other, that Peter
had not told her about Betty at once and had left it for her to find
out, as the others did. And this hurt badly. He had always been in the
habit of telling her everything,--first at her knee, then as he stood on
a level with her, and finally when he looked down upon her from his
great height. Every one of his numerous letters written while he was so
far away from home contained the outpourings of his soul--his troubles,
difficulties, triumphs, wonderings and short incoherent cries for help.
As Kenyon said, she had only to look at him once when he marched into
the Old Inn at Woodstock with Betty to know that she had lost him. She
waited for him that afternoon to tell her,--but he never spoke. Even as
he put her into the train she hoped that he would remember, but he
didn't. That wasn't like her Peter, she told herself again and again.
What was she to think but that it only needed one short week and a very
pretty face to make him forget all the long years of her love and
tenderness. It was very, very hard.

It is true that for the remainder of their holiday, during which, with
her husband, Graham, Belle, and Betty, Mrs. Guthrie went from one
charming place to another, seeing shrines and looking down from famous
heights on garden-like valleys of English country, Peter's letters came
as regularly as usual. They were no shorter and no less intimate; and in
the first one that she received, the day after leaving Oxford, he told
her his great news,--but he hadn't spoken of it--he hadn't come to her
at once, and she felt with a great shock of pain that she was deposed.
Also she was well aware of the fact that the same posts which brought
her letters brought letters to Betty--and she was jealous.

Uttering no word of complaint, even to the Doctor, little Mrs. Guthrie
nursed her sorrow and went out of her way to be very nice to Betty. Her
mother-instinct told her that she must win this girl; otherwise there
was a chance that she might in the future see very little of Peter. In
all this she had one small triumph, of which she made the most. Her
letters from Peter contained more news than those written to Betty, and
thus she was able to score a little over the girl. With an air of great
superiority, very natural under the circumstances, she told Betty and
the others the manner in which Peter had gone down from Oxford; of the
dinner that was given to him by the American Club,--a great evening,
during which he was presented with a silver cigarette box covered with
signatures,--of the farewell luncheon with his professors and the
delightful things that they said to him there; of his strenuous doings
at Henley, the stern training, the race itself in which his boat was
beaten; of the wild night on the Vanderbilt barge; of the few cheery
days spent in London with a bunch of the Rhodesmen; and finally his
preparations for his visit to Thrapstone-Wynyates, in Shropshire, the
famous old Tudor House of Kenyon's father.

Three times during these pleasant weeks Peter ran down to see,--not her,
but Betty, and went out with her with his face alight and then hurried
back to his engagements, having given her, his mother, who loved him so,
several hugs and a few incoherent words. It was the way of life, youth
to youth, but it was very hard.

On the afternoon of the fifth of August, when the party crossed the
gangplank at Southampton to go aboard the _Olympic_, little Mrs. Guthrie
told herself that in a few minutes she would see Peter's great form
elbowing through the crowd, although he had not said that he would be
there to say good-bye. She almost hoped that something might prevent him
from being in time, because she knew that he would not come solely to
hold her in his arms, but for another reason. Nothing, however, did
prevent him. He followed them almost instantly on board; and although he
never left her side, he surreptitiously held Betty's hand all the time.

A smile of unusual bitterness crept all about the little woman's heart.
It was very hard. He was her boy--her son--her first-born and the apple
of her eye. She had come up for the first time to one of the rudest
awakenings that a mother can ever know. And presently when the cry, "All
ashore that's going ashore!" went up and Peter put both his big arms
about her and said, "Good-bye, mummie, darling, I shall come home soon,"
she broke into such a fit of weeping and kissed him with a passion so
great that the boy was startled and a little frightened. There was no
time to think or ask questions. There was his father's hand to shake,
and Graham's, and Belle to kiss. There was also Betty, and she was
suddenly hugged before them all.

As the big liner sent out its raucous note of departure and moved away
from the dock the little mother was unable to see the bare head of her
boy above the heads of the great crowd. Her eyes were blinded. "He
doesn't understand," she said to herself. "He doesn't understand."

Poor little mother! It was very hard.


XIII

The cottage on the borders of Lord Shropshire's park was just as pretty
and just as small as the little lady who lived there. It was
appropriately called "The Nest," although there was no male bird in it
and it was devoid of young ones; but Mrs. Randolph Lennox was so like a
bird, with her trilly soprano voice, her quick dartings here and there
and the peculiar way she had of getting all a-flutter when people
called, that the name of her charming little place--first given by
Kenyon--stuck, and was generally used.

It was perched up on high ground overlooking the gardens of the old
Tudor House,--those wonderful Italian gardens in which Charles II had
dallied with his mistresses on his return from his long, heart-breaking
and hungry exile. It was tree-surrounded and creepers grew up its old
walls to its thickly thatched roof. For many years it had been occupied
by the agent of the estate, until--so it was said--it was won by Mrs.
Lennox from the present Lord Shropshire as the result of a bet.

No one had ever seen Randolph Lennox and many people didn't believe that
he was anything more than a myth; but the little woman gave herself out
as the widow of this man and was accepted as such. Her income was small,
but not so small as to preclude her from playing bridge for fairly large
stakes, dressing exquisitely, riding to the hounds and keeping an
extremely efficient menage, consisting of two maid servants and an
elderly gardener. It enabled her also to spend May and June in London
yearly at a little hotel in Half Moon Street, Piccadilly, from which
utterly correct little house she was taken nightly to dinner and to the
theatre by one or other of the numerous young men who formed her
entourage. Never taken actually into the heart of London society, she
managed with quiet skill to attach herself to its rather long limbs,
and her name was frequently to be found in the columns of society papers
as having been seen in a creation by Paquin or Macinka at Ranalagh or
Hurlingham, the opera, or lunching at the Ritz.

At one time the tongue of rumor had been very busy about Mrs. Randolph
Lennox,--"Baby" Lennox as she was commonly called. It was said that she
had been lifted out of the chorus of the Gaiety at the age of nineteen
by His Serene Highness, the Prince of Booch-Kehah; that she had passed
under the control of Captain Harry Waterloo, and eventually, before
disappearing for a time, figured in the Divorce Court as a
correspondent. The tongue of rumor is, however, in the mouth of Ananias,
and as Baby Lennox never spoke of herself except, a little sadly, as a
woman whose brief married life was an unfortunate memory, her past
remained a mystery and people were obliged to accept her for her present
and her future. She was so small--so golden-haired--so large eyed--so
fresh and young and dainty--so consistently charming and birdlike--that
she was the Mecca of very young men. With the beautiful trustfulness of
the male young they believed in her, and over and over again she could
have changed her name to others which were equally euphonious and which,
unlike her own, could be discovered in the Red Book. But as there was no
money attached to them she continued to remain a young and interesting
widow and to live in the little cottage on the hill and to pop in and
out of the Shropshire house as the most popular member of its
kaleidoscopic parties.

Whether there was any truth in the story that the present Lord
Shropshire was related to her in a fatherly way no one will ever know,
except perhaps Nicholas Kenyon, who in his treatment of her was
uncharacteristically brotherly. These two, at any rate, had no secrets
from each other and both regarded life from the same peculiar angle. As
parasites they had everything in common and they assisted each other and
played into each other's hands with a loyalty that was praiseworthy even
under these circumstances.

Nicholas Kenyon's mother--a very large, handsome woman with brilliant
teeth and amazing good-nature, who, even when in the best of health,
never finished dressing till four o'clock in the afternoon and then
never put much on--was undergoing a rest-cure in the west wing of
Thrapstone-Wynyates when the boys arrived for the shooting. For nearly a
year she had been playing auction every night until the very small hours
and had, while in a nervous condition, stumbled across an emotional
pamphlet written by a Welsh revivalist, which sent her straight to bed.
She was really greatly shaken by it and perhaps a little bit frightened.
It did not mince words about the future of women of her type, and she
was shocked. Heaven seemed to her to be a place into which she had the
same inherited right to walk as the Royal Enclosure at Ascot; but this
vehement little book put a widely different point of view before her.
Therefore it happened that the first woman to whom Peter was introduced
was the little widow, "Baby" Lennox, who was acting as hostess.

Two evenings before she met Peter she had received a letter from Kenyon,
which ran as follows:

    Carlton Hotel,
    Dear Old Girl:
     I shall turn up at home on Thursday in time for tea. I hear
     that mother is enjoying herself in the throes of some very
     pleasant imaginary complaint of sorts and has retired to the
     solitude of the west wing. After a busy season she no doubt
     wishes to read Wells' new novel of socialism and seduction and
     the latest Masefield poems, which always remind me of the
     ramblings of rum-soaked sailors in a Portsmouth pub. I, for
     one, shall miss her florid and inaccurate presence and the
     deliciously flagrant way in which she cheats at Bridge; but if
     father has gathered round him an August house-party on his
     usual lines, I look forward to a cheery time,--dog eating dog,
     if I may put it like that. I am bringing with me the man with
     whom I have shared rooms at Oxford,--Peter Guthrie. He's the
     American of whom I have spoken to you before. I am especially
     anxious for him to meet you, because, while under the hypnotic
     influence of Oxford in all the beauty of late spring, he has
     been fool enough to get himself engaged. Now, not only is
     Guthrie very useful to me, having a wealthy father and being
     himself a generous soul, but I am going to New York with him in
     October to see if that city can be made to render up some of
     its unlimited dollars, and I don't want him to be hanging,
     booby-eyed, at the heels of a girl until such time as I have
     found my feet. You have a wonderful way with the very young and
     unsophisticated and I shall really be enormously obliged if you
     will work your never-failing wiles on my most useful friend and
     draw his at present infatuated mind away from the nice,
     harmless little girl who has just sailed. Fasten on him, my
     dear, and make him attach himself to you for the remainder of
     our holiday. Go as far as you dare or care,--the farther the
     better for my sake and eventually for his own. He is one of
     those admirable, simple, big, virgin men to whom women are a
     wonderful mystery. At present he has refused even to look
     through a glass, darkly, at that pleasant and compensating side
     of life, and he needs to be brought down from his self-made
     pedestal. It will do him good and me a service. Honestly, I
     find it more than a little trying to be in such close
     association with an Archangel. Turn your innocent blue eyes on
     him, Baby dear, and teach him things and, above all, get him
     out of this silly, sentimental tangle of his. Incidentally, he
     has money and can procure more and I feel sure that you will
     not find him a waste of your good efforts. He is a splendid
     specimen of what my particular Don was wont to call 'young
     manhood,' and when he plays ragtime he puts the Savoy, or, for
     the matter of that, any other English orchestra into a little
     round hole.
                                                 Yours ever,
                                                           N. K.

Quite unconscious of this scheme, Peter fell into the light-heartedness
of this beautiful old house with his usual gusto. To his unsuspicious
eyes Baby Lennox was quite the most charming woman he had ever met.

He was delighted, a little surprised and even a little jealous at the
relations which existed between Kenyon and his father. He was quick to
notice that they treated each other more like pals or brothers, than
father and son, were entirely open and frank with each other, walked
about arm in arm, played tennis and billiards together and often spent
hours in each other's society, laughing and talking. He noticed, too,
that Kenyon always called his father "Tops," a name which had grown into
daily use from the time when, as a tiny lad just able to talk, the
things that most caught his fancy were Lord Shropshire's riding-boots,
in which he seemed to live, being mostly on horseback. "Nicko" was what
his father called Kenyon,--that and old man or old boy. He wished most
deeply that he and his own father were on such good terms.

If Peter had heard the sort of things these two talked about and
confided to each other, his surprise would have elaborated into
amazement. The elder man took infinite pleasure in telling the one who
was so complete a chip off the same block the most minute details of his
love affairs during the time that he was at Sandhurst for his army
training, while he was in a crack Cavalry regiment and while he knocked
about London and Paris and Vienna before and after his marriage. Also he
revelled in relating his racing and gambling experiences, describing the
more shady episodes with witty phrases and a touch of satire that was
highly entertaining to the younger man. They both agreed, with a
paradoxical sort of honesty, deliberately and inherently, that they were
not straight and accepted each other as such, and the father used
frequently to speculate from which of his dull, responsible and worthy
ancestors he acquired the tendency. It was certainly not from the late
Lord Shropshire, whose brilliant work as a Cabinet Minister in several
Governments and as one of the most valued advisers of Queen Victoria
had placed his name permanently in the annals of his country. "We get it
from one of the women of the family, I suspect, Nicko," he had a way of
saying, after a more than usually excellent dinner. "A dear, pretty
creature who lived a double life with delightful finesse--the great lady
and the human woman by turns. What d'you think, old boy? At any rate,
you and I make no pretences and, 'pon my soul! I don't know which of us
is the better exponent in the delicate and difficult art of sleight of
hand. I wish I were going to America with you. I fancy that we should
make in double harness enough to enable us to retire from the game and
live like little gentlemen. As it is, you'll do very well, I've no
doubt. From what I hear, the country reeks with wealthy young men
waiting to be touched by an expert such as you are. Do some good work,
old fellow, and when you come back you shall lend me a portion of your
earnings, eh?"

They were a strange couple, these two, capable, outwardly charming and
cut out for a very different way of life but for the regrettable
possession of a kink which caused them to become harpies and turn the
weaknesses of unsuspicion of human nature to their own advantage. Some
psychologists might have gone out of their way to find excuses for these
men and endeavor to prove that they would both have run straight but for
the fact that they were always pushed for money. They would, however,
have been wrong. Just as some men are born orators, some with mechanical
and creative genius and some with the gift of leadership, these two men
were born crooked, and under no conditions, even the most favorable,
could they have played any game according to the rules.

The men of the party were all excellent sportsmen and good fellows, and
the women more than usually delightful representatives of English
society. As a matter of fact, the men were all,--like Kenyon's
father,--living on their wits and just avoiding criminal prosecution by
the eighth of an inch. They called themselves racing men, which,
translated into cold English, means that they were people of no
ostensible means of livelihood, who attended every race meeting and
backed horses on credit, taking their winnings and owing their losses
until chased by crook solicitors. They all bore names well known in
English history. They had all passed through the best schools and either
Oxford, Cambridge or Sandhurst. One or two of them were still in the
army. One had been requested to resign from the navy, the King having no
further use for his services, and one was a Member of Parliament, having
previously been hammered in the other house,--that is to say the Stock
Exchange. The women of the party were either wives of these men or not,
as the case may be. At any rate they were good to look at, amusing to
talk to, and apparently without a care in the world. And if Lord
Shropshire, in welcoming Peter to his famous house, had said, like the
spider to the fly, "Come into my parlor so that whatever you have about
you may be sucked dry by us," he would have been strictly truthful.
Several other such men as Peter had gone into that web sound and whole,
but they had come out again with many things to regret and forget.

Who could say whether Peter would escape?


XIV

Peter had, as he duly reported to his mother and to Betty, a corking
time at Thrapstone-Wynyates.

Although an open-air man, an athlete, whose reading had always been
confined to those books only that were necessary to his work,--dry law
books for the most part,--Peter was far from being insensible to the
mellow beauty of the house, and his imagination, uncultivated so far as
any training in art or architecture went, was subconsciously stirred by
the knowledge that its floors and stone walks and galleries were worn by
the feet of a long line of men and women whose loves and passions and
hatreds had been worked out there and whose ghostly forms in all the
picturesque trappings of several centuries haunted its echoing Hall and
looked down from its walls, from their places in gold frames, upon its
present occupants.

The atmosphere of Oxford, and especially of his own college, had often
spun his thoughts from rowing and other strenuous, splendid, vital
things, to the great silent army of dead men whose shouts had rung
through the quad and whose rushing feet had gone under the old gate. But
this house, standing bravely and with an indescribable sense of
responsibility as one of the few rear-guards of those great days of
chivalry and gallant fighting for heroic causes, moved him differently.
Here women had been and their perfume seemed to hang to the tapestries,
and the influence of their hands that could no longer touch was
everywhere apparent. Often Peter drew up short, on his way up the wide
staircase, to listen for the click of high heels, the tinkle of a spinet
and the rattle of dice. Everywhere he went he had a queer but not
unpleasant sense of never being alone, just as most men have who walk
along the cloisters of a cathedral whose vast array of empty prie-dieus
have felt the knees of many generations and in whose lofty roof there is
collected the voices of an unnumberable choir.

Up early enough to find the dew still wet on flowers and turf he enjoyed
a swim every morning in the Italian bathing pool beneath the Cedar trees
with Baby Lennox. Then he either went for a gallop, before breakfast, on
one of Lord Shropshire's ponies--again with Baby Lennox--or had a round
of golf with her on the workmanlike nine-hole course which had been laid
out in the park. She played a neat game, driving straight, approaching
deftly and putting like a book,--frequently beating him.

The picture of this very pretty little person as she stood on the edge
of the bathing pool that first morning was, as she intended it to be,
indescribably attractive. She came from her room in a white kimono
worked with the beautiful designs which only the Chinese can achieve.
Her golden hair was closely covered by a tight-fitting bathing cap of
geranium red, most becoming to her white skin. "Mr. Peter!" she called
out. "I can't swim a bit, so you must look after me like--like a
brother." And then, as though to show how silly that word was, she flung
off the wrap and stood, all slim and sweet, in blue silk tights cut low
at the neck and high above her little round white knees. Peter thought,
with a kind of boyish gasp, that she looked like a most alluring drawing
on the cover of a magazine. With an irresistible simplicity and utter
lack of self-consciousness she stood, balanced on the edge of the pool,
with the sun embracing her, in a diving attitude, in no hurry to take
her dip. And when Peter, suddenly seized with the notion that he might
be looking at her too intently, dived in, she gave a little cry of joy
and dismay and jumped in after him. "You must hold me, you must hold me,
or I shall go under!" she cried, and he swam with her to the steps. In
reality she swam like a frog, but her beautiful assumption of inability
and her pluck in jumping into deep water again and again to be taken
possession of by him, filled him with admiration at her courage. With
her tights wet and clinging and the water glistening on her white flesh
she assured herself that she deserved admiration, having carefully
calculated her effect. Practice makes perfect, and the very young are
always alike.

The first morning on which she appeared in riding kit she again made a
charming picture. She always rode astride, but few women would have
ventured to wear such thin and such close-fitting white breeches. Her
coat, cut like a man's, was of white drill. Her stock was white and her
hat, with a wide flat brim was of white straw, but her boots were as
black and shiny as the back of a crow. "Your hand, Mr. Peter," she said,
raising her little foot for the spring,--it was "Mr. Peter"
still,--"what a gorgeous morning for a gallop." And for a moment she
leaned warmly against his shoulder. Yes, she was quite pleased with the
effect. Peter's face was flushed as they started off together.

When they golfed she had a delightful way of making her conversation
from green to green into a sort of serial. With her head hatless, her
short Irish homespun skirt displaying much blue stocking which exactly
matched her silk sweater and her large befringed eyes, she made a
fascinating opponent and companion. "No wonder you loved Oxford and all
that it gave you. Quite a little tee, please. Thanks. To a man with any
imagination--" A settle, a swing, a nice straight ball and silence while
Peter beat his ball pressing for all he was worth; the picking up of the
two bags and on side by side. "A man with any imagination must feel the
beauty and underlying meaning of that inspiring atmosphere,--as of
course you did. You, I can see, are highly susceptible to everything
that is beautiful. You, I think, of all men, you who have managed to
remain,--I'm sure I don't know how!--so unspoiled, will always remember
and feel the influence of your college. A cleek, I think, don't you? No?
A brassie? Just as you say." And so she would continue chatting merrily
away all round, but always keen on her game and doing her best to do it
credit, letting out nice little bits of flattery with so naïve an air
and with such frankly appreciative glances, that poor old Peter's
vanity, hitherto absolutely dormant, began to bud, like new leaves in
April.

It must be remembered that Peter was a rowing man. Always, except when
out with the guns, he was with Baby Lennox. They were inseparable from
the first day of his visit. Even in the evening they hunted in couples,
because she was sick of Bridge, she said, and he gave out that he knew
nothing at all about any card games and had no desire to learn. After
being frequently pressed to cut in by Courthope, Pulsford, Fountain and
the other men who could not bear to see him with an unscathed
cheque-book, and tempted again and again by their well-groomed and
delightfully friendly wives to try a hand, Peter was left alone. They
were annoyed and irritated but they found that when Peter said "No" he
didn't mean "Yes," like so many of the other young men whose weakness
formed the greater part of these people's income; and so they very
quickly gave him up to Baby Lennox, were obliged to be satisfied with
his jovial piano-playing and make up for lost time with the inevitable
members of the _nouveau riches_ who lived near by and were only too glad
to pay for the privilege of dining at Thrapstone-Wynyates in the odour
of titles.

The nights being warm and windless, Peter sat out on the moon-bathed
terrace with Baby Lennox listening to her girlish prattle and thinking
how particularly charming she looked with the soft light on her golden
hair and white arms and dainty foot. Sometimes, suddenly, her merry
words would give place to sad ones, and Peter's simple, honest heart
would be touched by her artistic and mythical glimpses of the unhappy
side of her life.

"Oh, Peter, Peter!" she said one night, unconsciously showing almost a
yard of leg in a black lace stocking patterned with butterflies. "I
wish, oh, how I wish that I'd been born like you, under a lucky star!
I've always been in a smart and rather careless set and I've never
really had time to see visions and walk in the garden of my soul." She
spoke in capital letters. "If I'd met you when I was a little young
thing you might have become my gardener to pluck the weeds out of my
paths, and train the flowers of my mind. You might have planted seeds so
sweet that in my best and most devout hours their blooms would have
filled my thoughts with scent. Oh dear me, the might have beens,--how
sad they are! But, in one thing at least I can take joy,--I'm all the
better for knowing you, dear big Peter."

But these graver interludes never lasted long. Mrs. Lennox was far too
clever for that. She would break the monotony of conversation by walking
with her little hand on the boy's strong arm, or by dancing with him to
the music of a gramophone placed in the open window of the morning room.
How close she clung to him then and how sweet she was to hold!

And then, she would say, with a wonderful throb in her voice. "Oh,
Peter, Peter! Isn't life wonderful--isn't it just the most wonderful and
thrilling thing that is given to us? Listen to the stars--there's love
in their song! Listen to the nightingale--love, all love! Listen to the
whisper of the breeze! Can't you hear it tell us to love and touch and
taste all the sweets that are given us to enjoy? Oh, Peter, Peter!
Listen, listen,--and live!"

In her picturesque and slangy way she announced to Kenyon, as soon as
three days after the commencement of the house-party, that she "had got
Peter well hooked." It was not, however, an accurate statement. It is
true that Peter's vanity had been appealed to. Whose wouldn't have been?
This attractive young thing was hostess. She was far and away prettier,
younger, more alluring and more complex than any other woman in the
party. And yet she had made a favorite of Peter at once and showed a
frank pleasure in being with him at all possible times. He had hardly
spoken for longer than an hour with her before she had said, in the
middle of his description of the Henley week, "I _must_ call you Mr.
Peter, I _must_. May I?" She sent him little notes, too, charming,
spontaneous little notes, to say "Good-night," and how greatly she had
enjoyed the evening, or the swim, or the round of golf, beginning "Dear
Big Man" and ending,--at first without a signature, and eventually with
"Baby." At the beginning they were brought in by the man, or placed on
the dressing-table against a bowl of flowers. Then they were thrust
under his door by her after he had gone up to his room, or thrown
through his open window from the narrow balcony that ran round the
house. Her room was next to his. She had seen to that. In a hundred
unexpected and appealing ways she had set out to prove to him that they
were indeed, as she had said they were, "very, very close friends."

Now, Peter had never been a woman's man. To him women and their ways
were new and wonderful. He suspected nothing. Why should he? He accepted
Mrs. Randolph Lennox on her face value, which was priceless, as so many
other excellent and unsophisticated young men had done. He believed in
her and her stories and was very sorry that she had been unhappy. He
believed that she was sincere and good and clean and that she liked him
and was his friend.

Kenyon, who watched all this, called Peter an easy mark. He was. What
else could he be in the expert and cunning hands of such a woman?

As for Mrs. Lennox, her performance,--it was rather in the nature of a
performance,--was all the more brilliant and effective because Peter
appealed to her more than any man she had ever met. His height and
strength and squareness, his fearless honesty, his unself-conscious
pride and boyish love of life,--she liked them all. She liked his
clean-cut healthy face and thick hair and amazing laugh. But, above
everything, she liked him for being untilled soil, virgin earth. It was
this that piqued her seriously and set alight in her a desire which grew
and grew, to test her charms upon him, to taste him, to stir him into a
first great passion. And this was the real reason that she gave him so
much of her time and company. The gratification of this desire was the
thing for which she was working, upon which she had set her mind. Hers
was not a record of failures. Peter stood a very poor chance of getting
out whole.


XV

Nicholas Kenyon has promised himself that, one of these days, when
abject poverty forces him to work, he will write a whole book about
Peter and Baby Lennox, and call it "Another Temptation of St. Anthony."

Not only did Kenyon watch this, to him, rather extraordinary incident,
with keen interest, but so also did the members of his father's
house-party, who came to regard Peter as a kind of freak. They all
knew,--because they were all psychologists,--that Mrs. Lennox was badly
smitten, as they put it, on this young American. They all knew,--because
one of the women made it her business to spy,--that their temporary
hostess was going through all the tricks of her trade to seduce this
unconscious boy.

The incident provided Lord Shropshire and his friends with endless
amusement, and bets were made as to how long Peter would hold out. Every
morning something new was reported to them by the lady who had appointed
herself to watch. One day it was that Baby had taken Peter to see her
cottage after dinner and had had a little fainting fit in her bedroom
while showing him the view from the window. Another that she had twisted
her ankle on the eighth hole and had been obliged to ask to be carried
back to the house. There was, however, no evidence, not even of a
circumstantial nature, to prove that Baby had succeeded. It was
presently agreed that either Peter was a fool or an angel.

There was one incident, however, which escaped unnoticed,--one of which
even Kenyon knew nothing. It took place three nights before the party
broke up.

After a gorgeous day of hard exercise and splendid fresh air, an hour at
the piano after dinner and his usual talk to Baby under the moon, Peter
went up to bed at eleven o'clock. He was very sleepy and meant to be up
earlier than ever in the morning. He didn't say good-night to Kenyon or
his satirical father. They were, like the others, very seriously at work
making what money they could. There had been a fairly large dinner-party
drawn from the surrounding houses, and there were eight bridge tables
occupied in the large drawing-room. He left Mrs. Lennox in the hall
looking more delicious than ever and went up to his room to smoke a
final pipe and look over an illustrated paper before turning in.

His room was large and square and wainscotted, with dull grilled
ceiling, and an oak floor so old that here and there it slanted badly.
His bed was a four-poster, deeply carved at the back with the Kenyon
arms, the motto underneath rather sarcastically being "For God and
Honour." In front of the fireplace, with its sprawling iron dogs and oak
setting, there was a long, narrow sofa filled with cushions, and at its
side a small writing-table on which stood two tall silver candlesticks.
These gave the room its only light and added to the Rembrandtesque
atmosphere of it. It was a room which reeked with history and episodes
of historical romance, love and sudden death. The windows which led to
the balcony were open and the warm air of a wonderful night puffed in,
causing the candle flames to move with a gentle rhythmic dignity to and
fro.

Peter read and smoked for half an hour in his dressing-gown, while
Quixotic moths flung themselves passionately into the candle-light one
after another to die for some unexplainable ideal. From the drawing-room
below a woman's throbbing voice drifted up, singing an Indian love song,
and when it ceased the whole night was set a quiver by a nightingale's
outburst of appeal. These things, and the silver wonder of the moon and
stars, the touch of Mrs. Lennox's soft hand on his lips and the feeling
and almost psychic undercurrent of strange emotion in that room in which
so much had taken place, all stirred and thrilled the boy and sent his
blood racing in his veins.

He stayed up longer than he intended, listening and wondering and
wishing, for the first time in his life, that he had read poetry, so
that he could fit some immortal lines to his mood and his surroundings.
It was this, to him, curious thought which set him laughing and broke
some of the spell. "Gee!" he said to himself, "can you see me spouting
Shakespeare or mouthing Byron?" He shied his dressing-gown into the
sofa, put both flames out with one huge blow and leaped into bed.

Almost instantly he heard his name urgently called. He sat up. Was he
dreaming? Who should call at that time of night? Could it be Baby? He
heard the call again. It was nearer. A little shadow fell suddenly upon
the floor of his room. And then, in the window, with the shaft of
moonlight all about her, stood Mrs. Lennox.

Peter caught his breath and clambered out of his bed. "What is it?" he
asked. "What's the matter?"

The woman ran in with a glad cry. "Oh, Peter! I thought you had gone out
of your room," she whispered, "and I didn't know what to do. I saw a
hideous figure walk through my wall just after I had put out my light,
and when it came towards me with long, bony fingers, I rushed out and
came to you. Oh, hold me, Peter, hold me! I'm terrified and as cold as a
frog!"

She slipped into his arms, all young and sweet and incoherent, trembling
like a little bird in a thunder-storm. It was a most calculated piece of
perfect acting.

Peter's heart seemed to jump into his mouth. The flowing hair of the
little head that lay on his chest was full of the most intoxicating
scent.

"I'll--I'll go and see what it is," he said abruptly.

"No, no! Don't go. I can't let you go, Peter. Stay with me!"

"But, if there's a man in your room----"

"It wasn't a man. It was the ghost that belongs to the family. It always
comes before some dreadful accident. Oh, darling, stay with me! Take
care of me! I'm terrified!"

She clung to him in a very ecstasy of fright and the closeness and
warmth of her body sent Peter's brain whirling. He tried to speak, to
think of something to say, but all his thoughts were in the swirl of a
mill-stream, and he held her tighter and put his face against her hair,
while his heart pumped and every preconceived idea, every
hard-fought-for ideal went crash.

"I love you. I love you, Peter. My Peter!" she whispered. "Who but you
should shelter me and hold me and keep me in your arms! Keep me with you
always, night and day. Look into my eyes and see how much you mean to
me, my man."

She raised her head and stood on tiptoe. The jealous moon had laid its
light upon her face and her eyes were shining and her lips were parted,
and the slight silk covering had fallen from her shoulder. The whiteness
of it dazzled.

"Oh, my God!" said Peter, but as he bent to kiss her mouth, momentarily
drunk with the touch and scent of her, someone shouted his name and
thumped on his door, and Mrs. Lennox tore herself away and ran through
the window like a moon-woman.

The door was flung open. Fountain came in, his voice a little thick. "I
say, Guthrie, are you getting up early in the morning? 'Cause, if so,
I'll take you on for nine holes before breakfast. What d'yer say? Goin'
to get healthy, d'yer see? What?"

Peter found his voice. "All right!" he said.

"Will you? Good man. Give me a call at six, will you? We'll bathe in the
pool before coming in. So long then." And out he went again, lurching a
little and banging the door behind him.

For several queer minutes Peter stood swaying, with his breath nearly
gone as though he had been rowing, and one big hand on his throbbing
head. And as he stood there the posts of the bed seemed to turn into
trees and its cover into soft grass all alive with the yellow heads of
"bread and cheese," and among them sat Betty, with her eyes full of
love, confidence and implicit faith,--Betty, for whom he had saved
himself.

And then he started walking about the room. Up and down he went--up and
down--cursing himself and his weakness which had nearly smashed his
dream and put his loyalty into the dust.

And when,--she also had cursed,--Mrs. Lennox stole back, as sweet and
alluring as ever, and even more determined, she found that Peter had
re-lit his candles, got into his dressing-gown again and was sitting at
the table writing.

"Peter! Peter!" she called.

But he didn't hear.

"Peter!" she whispered, and went nearer and nearer until her body rested
against his shoulder.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," he said, rising. "Is it all right now? That's
fine. It's just a touch cold. Don't you think you'd better be in bed?"

Baby Lennox had seen the beginning of the letter, "My own Betty." She
nodded, drew back her upper lip in a queer smile and turned and went.
She was clever enough to know that she had lost.

And then Peter bent again over his letter, and in writing to the little
girl whom he adored with all his heart, he was safe.




PART TWO

THE CITY


I

"Mother took the car to Lord & Taylor's," said Belle, looking herself
over in the long glass with a scrutiny that was eventually entirely
favorable. "I guess it'll do us good to walk."

"I'd simply love to," said Betty. "But I must just run in and tell
father I'm going to have dinner with you. I won't be a minute."

"All right, my dear. Time's cheap. Don't hurry on my account."

Belle went over to the dressing-table. She had only recently powdered
her nose from the elaborate apparatus from which she rarely permitted
herself to be separated, but a little more would do no harm. She burst
into involuntary song as she performed a trick which she might so well
have afforded to leave to those ladies of doubtful summers to whose Anno
Domini complexions the thick disguise of powder may perhaps be useful.
Tucked into her blouse there was a letter from Kenyon which had come a
week ago. It was only a matter of days before she was to see him again.

And Betty ran out of her bedroom and along a passage which led to the
studio. A stretch of cloudless sky could be seen through a recess
window, and the far-below flat roofs of the old buildings on the corner
of Gramercy Park. She knocked and waited. There was a grunt, and she
went in.

Into the large lofty room--a cross between a barn and an attic--a hard
north light was falling with cruel accuracy. It showed up stacks of
unframed canvasses with their faces turned to the dark wall and the
imperfections of several massive pieces of oak, the worn appearance of
the stained floor, the age of the Persian rugs and of a florid woman who
sat with studied grace and an anxious expression of pleasant thought on
the dais, with one indecently beringed hand resting with strained
nonchalance on the arm of her chair and the other about an ineffably
bored Pekingese.

Ranken Townsend, the successful portrait painter, had backed away from
his almost life-size canvas, and with his fine untidy head on one side
and irritation in his red-grey beard was glaring at it with savage
antagonism.

The lady on the dais had crow's-feet round her made-up eyes, and a chin
that could not be made anything but double however high she held it.
Also--as the north light seemed to take a hideous delight in
proving--her figure was irreclaimably dumpy and plump. The lady on the
canvas, however,--such is Art that runs an expensive studio, good wines
and well-preserved Coronas,--was slight and lovely and patrician, and
should she stand up, at least six feet tall. No wonder Townsend grunted
and glared at the commercial fraud in front of him, at which, in his
good, idealistic, hungry Paris days he would have slung wet brushes and
the honest curses of the Place Pigalle. He was selling his gift once
more for five thousand dollars. His wife dressed at Bendels.

Anger and irritation went out of the painter's eyes when he saw the
sweet face that peeked in. "Hello, sweetheart!" he sang out. "Come in
and bring a touch of sun. Mrs. Vandervelde, I'd like you to meet my
little girl."

Without turning her head or breaking a pose that she considered to have
become, after many serious attempts, extremely effective, the
much-paragraphed lady, whose lizard-covered mansion in Fifth Avenue was
always one of the objects touched upon by the megaphone men in
rubber-neck wagons, murmured a few words. "How d'you do, child? How well
you look."

Betty smothered a laugh. Mrs. Vandervelde had acquired the habit of
looking through her ears. "I'm going home with Belle, father, and I
shall stay to dinner. But I'll be back before ten."

"Will you? All right." He tilted up her face and kissed it. "I'm dining
at the National Arts Club to-night, and I guess I shall be late." He
pointed his brush at the canvas and made the grimace of a man who's
obliged to swallow a big dose of evil-smelling physic. So Betty, who
understood and was sorry, put his hand to her lips, bowed to the
indifferent lady and slipped away. The room was perceptibly colder when
she left. The picture was already four thousand two hundred dollars
toward completion, and Betty was just as much relieved as her father,
who returned angrily to work to paint in the diamonds. He was sick of
that smile.

While waiting for the elevator, Belle gave a rather self-conscious
laugh and lifted her tight skirt quickly. "Seen the latest, Betty?" She
showed a tiny square watch edged with diamonds worn as a garter.
"Cunning, isn't it?"

"Why, I should just think it was! Where did you buy it?"

"Buy it? My dear, can you see me paying three hundred dollars for
something that doesn't show? Harry Spearman gave it to me last night,
and put it on in his car on the way to the Pierrot Club."

"Put it on?"

Belle threw back her beautiful head and burst out laughing. "You said
that just like the Quaker girl in the play at the Hudson. Why shouldn't
he put it on? It amused him and didn't hurt me. He's a sculptor, and
like the bus-conductor, 'legs is no treat to him,' anyway."

They entered the elevator, dropped nine floors to the wide foyer of the
palatial apartment house, and went out into the street. It was a typical
New York October afternoon--the sky blue and clear, the sun warm and the
air alive with that pinch of ozone of which no other city in the world
can boast. The girls instinctively made their way towards Fifth Avenue,
warily dodging the amazing traffic, the struggling wagons and plunging
horses going in and out of buildings in course of ear-splitting
construction, and coal-chutes in the middle of the sidewalks.

"But you were not at the opening of the Pierrot Club last night," said
Betty. "I heard you tell Mrs. Guthrie that you were dining with the
Delanos and going to their theatre party."

"I know. But Harry Spearman sent round a note in the afternoon asking me
to have dinner with him at Delmonico's and go on to the Club to dance. I
had such a severe headache that I rang up Mrs. Delano and reluctantly
begged to be excused. To quote Nicholas, theatre parties with elderly
people bore me stiff. As it was, I had a perfectly corking time till one
o'clock and danced every dance."

"Did you tell Mrs. Guthrie?"

"For Heaven's sake, Betty, what _do_ you take me for? Mother isn't my
school-teacher and I don't have to ask her for permission to live. I
have my latch-key and dear little mother is perfectly happy. As she
never knows what I do she never has to worry about me; and, as she
always says, I can only be young once." A curious little smile played
round her very red lips. "It's true that Harry Spearman is rather
unmanageable when he gets one alone in a car after several hours of
champagne and ragtime, but--oh, well, I guess I can take care of myself.
Do you know, I don't think the Pierrot Club's going to be as good this
winter. It's a year old, you see. Everybody's going to the new room at
the Plaza--that is, everybody back from the country. It's rather a pity,
I think. I like the Club, but the motto of New York is 'Follow the
Crowd' and so the Plaza's for me."

Betty's admiration for her school-fellow and closest friend was
invincible and her loyalty very true. It made her therefore a little
uneasy to notice about her a growing artificiality which was neither
attractive nor characteristic. She knew better than anyone that Belle
was a remarkable girl. She had a kind heart. She possessed that rarest
of gifts, a sense of gratitude, and if her talent for writing had been
properly developed she might eventually have made her mark. She had a
quick perception--sympathy and imagination not often found in so young a
girl--an uncanny ear for the right word--and if she chose to exercise
it, quite an unusual power of concentration. It seemed to Betty to be
such a pity that, just at the moment when Belle left school with her
mind filled with ideals and the ambition to make something of herself
and do things, the Doctor found himself a rich man. The incentive to
work which the constant need for economy had awakened in her went out
like a snuffed candle. From having before been in the habit of saying,
with eager enthusiasm, "I'm _going_ to do such and such a thing,
whatever the odds," she immediately began to say: "Oh, my dear, what's
the use?" Everything for which she had intended to work became now hers
for the asking. Her father gave her a free hand in the matter of
entertaining her young friends. She could order what books she wished to
read from Brentano's, and she had a generous allowance on which to
dress. Like a chameleon she quickly changed the rather dull colors of
her former surroundings for those bright ones which the sudden accession
to wealth made it easy to acquire. Her outlook was no longer that of the
daughter of an overworked general practitioner whose income had to be
carefully managed in order to live not too far up-town and educate a
family of four, but of a débutante whose parents entertained
distinguished men and women in a fashionable street and whose friends
were equally well off. Her inherited and cultivated energy was, of
course, obliged to find vent in some direction, since it was not
employed in the development of her talent; and it was now burnt up in a
restless search of enjoyment, a constant series of engagements to lunch
and dine, and do the theatre and dance,--especially dance. The ordinary
healthy, high-spirited young man, who had not much to say for himself,
quickly bored her. Her wits required to be kept sharp, her latent
intelligence needed something on which to feed. It was therefore natural
that she should throw her smiles at men much older and far more
experienced than herself and who, from the fact that they did not intend
to give anything for nothing, exercised her ingenuity and native wit to
keep them in order. In a word, she found that playing with fire and
avoiding being burned kept that side of her in good condition which, in
her old circumstances, would have been devoted to work. And so with a
sort of conscious superficiality she had allowed herself to flit from
one unmeaning incident to another and entered into a series of
artificial flirtations with men who had no scruples and one passion
simply in order to kill time. Her carelessness led her into episodes,
the merest hint of which would have thrown dear little Mrs. Guthrie into
a panic, and her coolness permitted her to escape from them with perhaps
more ingenuity than dignity. Even upon her return from England with her
heart full of Nicholas Kenyon, and with a desire to see him again that
kept her awake at night, she frittered away her superfluous energy with
this Harry Spearman, whom no woman with any respect for her daughter
would willingly allow within a mile of her, even if properly chaperoned.

Betty, being one of those girls who had never been suspected of any
talent, but who nevertheless had it in her to perform a far more womanly
and beautiful thing than to write books or plays--to be in fact a good
wife to the man she loved and a good mother to his children--looked at
Belle's way of living with growing anxiety. She was not a prude or a
prig. She had not been allowed out in the world with eyes all curious to
see the truth of things through a veil of false modesty. Her father, a
wise and humane man, had seen to that. She delighted in enjoyment, went
to the theatre whenever she had the opportunity and danced herself out
of shoes. But, not being ambitious to shine, she was content to apply
her energy to the ordinary work that came to her to do,--the practical,
everyday, undramatic, domestic things that cropped up hourly in the
strange house where the father was an artist and the mother suffered
from individualism and was a leader of new movements. Leaving school to
find a home in a constant state of chaos, her father rarely out of his
studio, her mother always in the throes of committee meetings and
speech-making,--she knuckled down to set it in order, to clear out an
extravagant cook with an appetite for hysterics, and a sloppy Irish
waitress whose hairpins fell everywhere and whose loose hand dropped
things of value almost before it touched them. This done she found
others and appointed herself housekeeper, and the duties of this
position kept her both busy and happy,--the one being hyphenated to the
other. But even if her father had been, like Dr. Guthrie, a rich man
instead of one who lived up to every penny that he earned and generally
several thousand dollars beyond, she had nothing in her character that,
however little she was occupied, would have allowed her to look at life
from the modern standpoint of Belle and her other friends. She was--and
rejoiced in the fact--old-fashioned. Most of her ideas were what is now
scoffingly called "early Victorian," because they were not loose and
careless, and the many things that Belle and others found "fearfully
amusing" were, to her, impossible. She didn't, for instance, leave her
petticoat in the cloak-room when she went to dances, so that her
partners might find her better fun. She didn't go to tea alone with mere
acquaintances in bachelor apartments, or for taxi rides with her partner
between dances. She never made herself cheap, and went out of her way to
avoid men whose eyes ran calculatingly over her figure. These things and
many others merely appealed to her as the perquisite of those girls who
did not place a very high value upon self-respect.

The Guthries lived at 55 East Fifty-second Street. It was the house
which the man whom Dr. Guthrie called his benefactor had built for
himself and left to the doctor whom he was proud to endow. The architect
who had been employed had been given a free hand. He had not been
required to mix his styles or perform extraordinary architectural
gymnastics of any kind. The result of his efforts was good. It was a
house such as one sees in one of the numerous old London squares within
sound of the mellow clock of St. James's Palace. Addison might have
lived in it, or Walpole or Pepys. Its face was scrupulously plain and
its doorway was modelled on those of the Adams period. Standing between
two very florid examples of modern architecture it made one think of the
portrait of a charming early Victorian gentle-woman between the
photographs of two present-day chorus ladies in hoopskirts and a cloud
of chiffon. The rooms were large and lofty and were all furnished with
great simplicity and taste. There was nothing in them except old
furniture which had been collected in England by its late owner, piece
by piece, and its oak chests, armoires and secretaries, china closets,
corner pieces and Chippendale chairs were very good to look at and live
with. So also were the pictures,--Cattermoles, Bartalozzi engravings,
colored prints and a half-dozen priceless oil paintings by old
masters,--which made the small, cunning, unscrupulous, eager mouths of
the numerous art collectors of New York water with desire. The library,
too, out of which led the Doctor's laboratory, was almost unique, and
contained first editions and specimens of rare and beautiful
book-binding which filled the Doctor's heart with constant pleasure and
delight. It was nearly a year before the man who had struggled so hard
to lift himself out of his father's small farm could believe that he
wasn't walking in his sleep when he passed through these beautiful
rooms, and often he was obliged to pinch himself to make sure that he
was not dreaming.

There was however one room in this house which would have given its late
owner many shudders to enter. This was the little mother's own
particular room, the windows of which looked out upon that row of small,
red, bandbox-like houses opposite which had managed to remain standing
in spite of the rapacious hands of reconstruction companies which are
never so happy as when destroying old landmarks and tearing down old
buildings. Into this room Mrs. Guthrie had placed all the furniture of
her first sitting-room,--cheap, late Victorian stuff of which she had
been so inordinately and properly proud when she started housekeeping
with the young doctor. From these things Mrs. Guthrie could not be
parted. They were all redolent with good and tender memories and were to
her mind far more valuable and more beautiful than all the priceless old
oak pieces put together.

Curiously enough--or perhaps not curiously at all--this was Peter's
favorite room, too, and he never entered it without renewing his vows to
climb to the top of his own tree, as his father had done. Belle, Graham
and Ethel all laughed at the little mother for clinging to this
"rubbish," as they called it, which was so out of keeping with the rest
of the house. But Peter sympathized with her and never failed while
sitting there in the evening, in close and intimate conversation with
the dear little woman who meant so much to him, to get from it a new
desire to emulate his father and make his own way in the same brave
spirit.

When Belle and Betty arrived at East Fifty-second Street--a little tired
after their walk--they found Graham in the hall. "Oh, hello!" said he.
"Been shopping?"

"No," answered Belle, "nothing tempted us. We've walked all the way home
from Gramercy Park,--some walk! Everything I've got on is sticking to
me. Aren't you home early, Graham?"

Graham nodded. "Nothing doing," he said. "Besides, I'm dining early." He
turned to Belle with a rather curious smile. "I thought you were to be
with the Delanos last night."

Belle tilted her chin. "I was. I dined there, went to the Winter Garden
and then danced at Bustanoby's."

"I caught sight of you in Spearman's car somewhere about one o'clock in
the morning. Did he drive you home?"

"I guess he did, dear boy," said Belle, blandly, "and by the way, we saw
you, going in to supper somewhere with a girl with a Vogue face and an
open-air back!"

Graham laughed. "That's different," he said. "Spearman isn't the sort of
man I care to see my sister going about with alone. I advise you to be a
little more fastidious."

"Thank you, Graham darling," said Belle, quite un-moved, "but I'm old
enough to choose my own friends without your butting in. Just for fun,
would you tell me what _you_ know about the word fastidious?"

"That's different," said Graham again. And he went up-stairs to his own
room with rather heavy feet.

Belle looked at Betty and a little smile curled up the corners of her
beautiful red mouth. "I don't see anything wrong with Harry Spearman,
and he's an old friend of the Delanos. My word, but isn't Graham a good
sport?"

Presently when they went into the drawing-room they found little Mrs.
Guthrie sitting in front of the table with a more than usually happy
smile, and Ethel lying on the sofa looking the very epitome of an
interesting invalid. With a slightly critical frown on her pretty face
she was reading Wells's latest novel,--a full-blooded effort well
calculated to improve the condition of a girl of fifteen who had not
gone back to school on account of anæmia.

With quick intuition, and one glance at her mother's face, Belle knew
she had heard from Peter. "Any news?" she asked eagerly.

"Yes, darling,--the very best of news. A Marconi from my boy," said Mrs.
Guthrie.

"What does he say?"

"Oh, what does he say?" asked Betty. But the question was asked
mentally, because little Mrs. Guthrie was happy and must not be made
jealous.

Putting on her glasses with great deliberation, Mrs. Guthrie picked up a
book, and with a smile of pride and excitement hunted through its pages
and eventually produced the cable form, which she had used as a marker.

"_Do_ hurry, mother, _dear_!" cried Belle. News from Peter meant news
from Nicholas.

"Now please don't fluster me, Belle. Of course I would unfold it the
wrong side up, wouldn't I? Well, this is what he says: 'Expect to dock
day after to-morrow, dearest Mum. All my love.'"

"Is that all he says? Is there nothing about his--his friend?"

Ethel gave a quiet chuckle, of which Belle coldly took no notice.

"There are a few more words," replied Mrs. Guthrie, "and I expect they
were very expensive."

"Oh, mother, darling; _do_ go on!"

"Let me see, now. Oh, yes. 'And to Betty.'"

"Oh, thank you," said Betty. "Oh, Peter, my Peter!" she cried in her
heart.

This time Ethel laughed. But no one noticed it. It was rather
disappointing.

"At last I shall see Nicholas again," thought Belle,--"at last!"

And the little mother folded up the cable very carefully and slipped it
back into the book. Peter had sent it to her,--to her.

And then Belle turned her attention to her little sister, who not only
looked most interesting, but knew that she did. "I think you
condescended to be amused, Grandmamma," she said, in the most
good-natured spirit of chaff. Like everybody else in the family she was
really rather proud of this very finished production of an ultra-modern
and fashionable school.

"I seem to have missed a lot of fun by not going to Europe," replied
Ethel. "It would have been very entertaining to watch you and Betty fall
in love."

"I guess so," said Belle. "The only thing is that you would have been
very much odd man out. They draw the line at little school-girls at
Oxford."

"Now don't begin to quarrel, girls," said Mrs. Guthrie. "I'm very sorry
Ethel wasn't with us. The trip would have widened her view and given her
much to think about. But never mind. She shall go with us next time."

Ethel stifled a yawn. "Thank you, mamma, dear. But when I go to England
I may elect to stay there. I think it's very probable that I shall marry
an Englishman and settle down to country life, doing London in the
season."

Belle's laugh rang out. "That's the sort of thing we have to put up
with, Betty," she said. "You're going to marry a Duke, aren't you, Baby,
and be a Lady in Waiting at Court, with a full-page photograph every
week in the _Tatler_? When Peter comes home he'll find you a constant
source of joy. My descriptions of the way in which you've come on while
he's been away always made him laugh."

Ethel rose languidly from the sofa, at the side of which a little
nourishment had been served. Mrs. Guthrie, who had been busily at work
knitting a scarf for Graham--a thing that he would certainly never
wear--went quickly to give her a hand. "Are you going to your room now,
darling?" she asked.

Ethel caught Belle's rather sceptical eye and, with exquisite coolness,
entirely ignored its suggestion that she was shamming. "Yes, mamma,
dear. I shall go to bed almost at once. There's nothing like sleep for
anæmia. Of course I shall have to read for a little while, because
insomnia goes with my complaint, but I shall fall off as soon as I can.
Please don't come in to-night, in case you disturb me. I'll tell Ellen
to put my hot milk in a thermos."

Belle burst into another laugh. "You beat the band," she said. "Any one
would think that your school was for the daughters of royalty. I know
exactly what Nicholas Kenyon will call you."

Ethel turned towards her sister with raised eyebrows. With her rather
retroussé nose, fine, wide-apart eyes and soft round chin she looked
very pretty and amazingly self-composed. Her poise was that of a woman
who had been a leader of society for years. "Yes? And what will that
be?"

"The queen of the Flappers," said Belle.

Ethel picked up her book, carefully placing the marker. "Oxford slang
leaves me cold," she said, loftily.

"I certainly hope that he'll call her nothing of the sort," said Mrs.
Guthrie. "'Flapper.' What a terrible word! What does it mean?"

"It means girls under seventeen who have discovered all the secrets of
life, the value of a pair of pretty ankles and exactly how to get
everybody else to do things for them. It's the best word I heard in
England."

"Nicholas Kenyon sounds to me rather a precocious boy," said Ethel.

"Boy! Nicholas Kenyon a boy--! Well!" Belle acknowledged herself beaten.
She could find no other words.

The little mother put her arm, with great affection, around the
shoulders of her youngest child, of whom she was extremely proud and a
little frightened. "Never mind, darling," she said. "Belle doesn't mean
anything. It's only her fun."

"Oh, that's all right, mamma. I make full allowance for Belle. She's a
little crude yet, but she'll improve in time."

Belle gave a scream of joy. Her sense of the ridiculous, always
extremely keen, made her delight in her little sister and the perfectly
placid way in which she sailed through existence with the lofty
superiority of her type--a type that is the peculiar result of
supercivilization and the deferential treatment of fashionable
schoolmistresses who bow to wealth as before a god.

"Run in and say good-night to father. He won't mind being disturbed for
a moment by you."

"I don't think I will," said Ethel. "The sight of his laboratory may
give me a nightmare. I really must be careful about myself just now.
Good night, mamma dear. Don't sit up too late. Good night, Belle. I
should advise you to go to bed at once. Your complexion is beginning to
show the effects of late hours already."

"Oh, you funny little thing," said Belle. "You give me a pain. Trot off
to bed; and instead of reading Wells, Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw, try
a course of Louisa Alcott and a dose of Swiss Family Robinson. That'll
do you much more good and make you a little more human."

But even this plain sisterly speaking had no apparent effect. Ethel gave
Betty, who had been watching and listening to the little bout with the
surprise of an only child, a small peck on the cheek. "Good night, dear
Betty," she said. "I'm glad that you're going to be my sister-in-law.
Unless Peter has changed very much since he's been away he'll make a
good husband."

And then, with quiet grace, she left the room. No one, not even Belle,
whose high spirits and love of life had led her into many perfectly
harmless adventures when she was the same age, suspected that Ethel was
up to anything. They were wrong. The self-constituted invalid had
invented anæmia for two very good reasons. First, because she was not
going to be deprived of welcoming her big brother when he returned home
for good, school or no school, and second because she had struck up a
surreptitious acquaintance with the good-looking boy next door. At
present it had gone no further than the daily exchange of letters and
telephone calls. The adventure was in the course, however, of speedy
development. The boy was going to pay her a visit that evening, by way
of the roof. No wonder Ethel didn't want to be disturbed.

With an unwonted burst of extravagance Betty took a taxi home as soon
after dinner as she could get away. "Is there a letter for me? Is there
a letter for me?" she asked the moon and all the stars in the clear sky
as her rackety cab bowled swiftly downtown.

She let herself in and the first thing that caught her eyes was the
welcome sight of a thick envelope addressed in Peter's big round,
honest, unaffected hand.

"Peter, oh, my Peter!" she whispered, pressing the letter to her lips.

Within five minutes she was sitting on her bed, in the seclusion of her
own room, and what Peter had to say for himself was this:

    Carlton Hotel, London,
    September 28, 1913.

    My dearest Betty:
     Gee! but I was mighty glad to find a letter from you this
     afternoon when I got in, so glad that I dashed out of this
     Hotel, went across the street to the White Star offices and
     asked them to exchange my bookings to a boat sailing a week
     earlier, because I just can't stand being away from you any
     longer. I don't know what Nick will say, and don't much care.
     He's at Newmarket staying with a man who trains horses. I've
     just sent him a telegram to say what I've done, and as he's
     very keen to see New York and is only killing time, I don't
     think he'll kick up a row. I would have sailed on the
     _Olympic_, which left the day after I said good-bye to
     Thrapstone-Wynyates, if I hadn't promised father to go up to
     Scotland and see the place where his ancestors lived. I
     couldn't back out of that, especially as goodness only knows
     when I shall come to Europe again,--perhaps not until I bring
     you over on a honeymoon, my baby, and we go back to Oxford
     together to see how the fairy ring is getting on. We must do
     that some day. You don't know how I love that little open space
     where the trees haven't grown so that the moon may spill itself
     in a big patch for all our friends to dance in on fine nights.
     I've read your letter a dozen times and know it by heart, like
     all the others you've written to me. You write the most
     wonderful letters, darling. I wish I knew how to send you
     something worth reading, though I'm quite sure you don't mind
     my clumsy way of putting things down, because you know how much
     I love you and because everything I say comes straight out of
     my heart.

     My last letter was written in Scotland, Cupar Fife. I shall
     always remember that quiet little place where the red-headed
     Guthries,--they must have been red-headed from eating so much
     porridge,--tilled the earth and brought up sheep in the way
     they should go. The village seems as much cut off from the rest
     of the world as though it were surrounded by sea, and every
     small thing that happens excites it. The man who kept the Inn
     that I stayed in (feeling frightfully lonely, though really
     very much interested) had words with his good woman one night
     and the rights and wrongs of the perfectly private matter have
     since divided all the inhabitants. Best friends don't speak and
     the minister is going to preach about the affair next Sunday. I
     saw the house the old Guthries lived in and was taken all over
     it by a kind old soul to whom father gave more money than
     she thought existed when he was there. Gee! but my
     great-grandfather must have had precious little ambition to
     live his whole life in a little hole like that. In most of the
     rooms the beds were in small alcoves and needed climbing up to
     like bunks. Mrs. McAlister, who lives there now with her
     married daughter and her seven children, sleeps in one of these
     fug-holes in the kitchen. Think of it! And she said that the
     floor swarms with beetles--she can hear them crackling about in
     the night. All the same, by Jove! this primitive living makes
     men. I can see from whom father got his grit and determination.

     I was glad to find myself in London. I've only been here for a
     night or two at various times and it's a wilderness to me. I
     lose myself every time I go out and have to ask Bobbies how to
     get back. Topping chaps, these Bobbies. They mostly look like
     gentlemen and are awfully glad to get a laugh. To hear them
     talk about the 'Aymarket, Piccadilly Surcuss, Wart'loo Plaice
     and Westminister Habbey first of all puzzles one and then fills
     one with joy. As to the Abbey,--oh, Gee! but isn't it away
     beyond words! I spent a whole day wandering about among the
     graves of its mighty dead, and finally when I got to the end of
     the cloister and came upon that small, square, open space where
     the grass grows so green and sparrows play about, I was glad
     there was nobody to see me except the maid-servant of one of
     the minor Canons who was taking in the milk for afternoon tea.
     There are one or two vacant niches among the shrines of men who
     have done things and moved things on, in which I should like to
     stand (not looking a bit like myself in stone) when I have done
     my job, and if I were an Englishman I should work for it. As it
     is, I shall work for you and all you mean to me, my baby, and
     that's even a higher privilege.

     I went to a theatre last night,--Wyndham's. I thought the play
     was corking, but the leading actor--an ugly good-looking
     fellow--wasn't trying a yard, and let it away down every time
     he was on. Also he spent his time making jokes under his breath
     to the other people to dry them up. No wonder the theatres are
     in a bad way in London. There's no snap and ginger about the
     shows except the ones of the variety theatres, where they
     really do take off their coats for business. It's fine to hear
     rag-times at these places, although they're as stale on our
     side as if they had been played away back before the great
     wind. By the way, I'm a bit anxious about Graham. His letters
     have a queer undercurrent in them.

     I'm going to the National Gallery, the British Museum and South
     Kensington to-morrow, and in the evening I'm dining at the
     Trocadero with eight men who were up at St. John's with me.
     They're all working in London and hate it, after Oxford. It
     seems odd to me not to be there myself and I miss it mighty
     badly sometimes. All the same it's great to feel that one's a
     man at last, with real work to do and that apartment waiting
     for us to win. This is the last mail that I can catch before
     sailing and so I just have to tell you once again, in case you
     forget it, that I adore you and that if I don't see you on the
     landing in little old New York among the crowd I shall sink
     away like an India-rubber balloon with a pin in it. So long, my
     dearest girl. All, all my love, now and forever.
                                                      PETER.

     P. S. Do you think your father can be brought to like me
     somehow or other?

     Kiss this exact spot.


II

A good sport! Oh, yes, Graham answered admirably to that
description,--according to its present-day use. Graham, like Belle, was
suffering from the fact that everything was too easy. His father's
so-called benefactor had taken all the sting of life for that boy.
Fundamentally he had inherited a considerable amount of his father's
grit. He needed the impetus of struggle to use up that sense of
adventure which was deep-rooted in his nature. He was a throw-back. He
had all the stuff in him that was in his ancestors,--those early
pioneers who were momentarily up against the grim facts of life. He was
not cut out for civilization. He needed action, the physical strain and
stress of hunting for his food among primeval surroundings and the
constant exercise of his strength in dangerous positions. He would have
made a fine sailor, a reckless soldier or an excellent flying man. He
was as much out of his element in Wall Street as a sporting dog which is
doomed to pass away its life sitting beside a chauffeur in an elaborate
motor-car. The daring recklessness which would have been an asset to him
as a hunter of big game or a man who attached himself to dangerous
expeditions, found vent, in the heart of civilization, in gambling and
running wild. It was a pity to see such a lad so utterly misplaced and
going to the devil with an alacrity that alarmed even some of his very
loose friends. If his father had continued to be a hard-working doctor
whose income was barely large enough to cover his yearly expenses,
Graham could have used up his superabundant energies in climbing, rung
by rung, any ladder at the bottom of which he had been placed. As it
was, he found himself, through his father's sudden accession to wealth,
beginning where most men leave off, with nothing to fight for--nothing
to put his teeth into--nothing for which to take off his coat. It was
all wrong. He made money and lost it with equal ease--although he lost
more than he won. He was surrounded with luxuries when he should have
been faced daily with the splendid difficulties which go to form
character and mental strength. Somehow or other his innate desire for
adventure had to be used up. With no one to exercise any discipline over
him, with no steady hand to guide him and control, he flung himself
headlong into the vortex of the night life of the great city and was an
easy prey for its rastaquores. At the age of twenty-four he already knew
what it was to be haunted by money-lenders. Already he was up to the
innumerable dodges of the men who borrow from Peter to pay Paul. He was
a well-known figure in gambling clubs and the houses in the red-light
district, and he numbered among his friends men and women who made a
specialty of dealing with boys of his type and who laid their nets with
consummate knowledge of humanity and with the most dastardly
callousness. He was indeed, in the usual inaccurate conception of the
word, a good "sport," and stood every chance of paying for the privilege
with his health, his self-respect and the whole of his future life.

To have seen the nervous way in which he dressed for dinner the next
evening, throwing tie after tie away with irritable cursing, would have
convinced the most casual observer of the fact that he stood in need of
a strong hand. His very appearance,--the dark lines round his eyes, the
unsteadiness of his hand,--denoted plainly enough the sort of life that
he was leading, but the short-sighted eyes of the Doctor in whose house
he lived missed all this, and there was no one except the little mother
to cry "halt" to this poor lad and, in her experience, of what avail was
she?

He drove--after having dined with three other Wall Street men at
Sherry's--to an apartment house on West Fortieth Street, little
imagining that fate had determined to put him to the test. Kenyon had
recommended him to try it. He had heard of it from Captain Fountain's
brother, who had called it "very hot stuff" in one of his letters,--the
headquarters of a so-called "Bohemian" set in which Art and gambling
were combined. It was run by a woman whose name was Russian, whose
instincts were cosmopolitan, and who had been shifted out of most of the
great European cities by the police. "The Papowsky," as she was called,
spoke several languages equally fluently. She was something of a judge
of art. She had an uncanny way of being able to predict success or
failure to new plays. She knew musicians when she saw them and only had
to smell a book to know whether it had excellence or not. Her short,
thin body and yellow skin, her black hair cut in a fringe over her eyes
and short all round like that of a Shakesperian page, her long, dark,
Oriental eyes and her long artistic hands were in themselves far from
attractive. It was her wit and sarcasm however and the brilliant way in
which she summed up people and things which made her the leader of those
odd people--to be found in every great city--who delight in being
unconventional and find excitement in a game of chance.

The apartment in which she held her "receptions" and entertainments was
unique. The principal room was a large and lofty studio, arranged like a
grotto with rocks and curious lights and secluded places where there
were divans. Here there was a dais, at the back of which there was an
organ, and a grand piano stood upon it in a French frame all over
cupids, and it was here that the most extraordinary exhibitions of
dancing were given by the Papowsky hand-maidens and others.

The other people who lived in this apartment house had already begun to
talk about it in whispers, and its reputation had gone out into the
city. One or two feeble complaints had been made to the police, but
without any avail. At the moment when Graham had first entered it, it
was in its second year and was flourishing like the proverbial Bay Tree.
The magnets which drew him to this house of Arabian Nights were the
roulette table in a secluded room at the end of the passage, and one of
the hand-maidens of the Papowsky, whose large, gazelle-like eyes and
soft caressing hands drew him from other haunts, and followed him into
his dreams.


III

Graham's hat and coat were taken by a Japanese servant, whose little
eyes twinkled a welcome.

The long, brilliantly lighted passage which led to the studio was hung
with nudes, some of them painted in oils with a sure touch, some highly
finished in black-and-white, and the rest dashed off in chalks,--rough
impressionist things which might have been drawn by art students under
the influence of drink. Between them in narrow black frames there was a
collection of diabolically clever caricatures of well-known singers,
actors, authors, painters and politicians, each one bringing out the
weaknesses of the victims with peculiar impishness and insight. The
floor of the passage was covered with a thick black pile carpet, which
smothered all noise.

As Graham entered the studio several strange minor chords were struck on
the piano and a woman's deep contralto voice filled the large studio
like winter wind moaning through an old chimney.

The Papowsky, who was giving an evening for young artists, and was
half-covered in a more than usually grotesque garment, slid out of the
shadow and gave Graham her left hand, murmuring a welcome. Exuding a
curious pungent aroma, she placed a long finger on her red, thin lips
and slipped away again. For some minutes Graham remained where she left
him, trying to accustom his eyes to the dim--though far from
religious--light. He made out men in dress clothes sitting here and
there and the glint of nymph-like forms passing from place to place,
springily. The scent of cigarette smoke mixed with that of some queer
intoxicating perfume. The sound of water plashing from a fountain came
to his ears.

On his way to find a seat, Graham's arm was suddenly seized, he was
pulled into a corner and found himself, gladly enough, alone with the
girl who called herself Ita Strabosck. There was one blue light in this
alcove and by it he could see that the girl was dressed like an Apache
in black suit with trousers which belled out over her little ankles and
fitted her tightly everywhere else. She retained her close grip and
began to whisper eagerly to him. Her foreign accent was more marked than
usual, owing to the emotion under which she obviously labored. Her heart
hammered against his arm.

"You have come to zee me?"

Graham whispered back. "Don't I always come to see you?"

"You like me?"

Graham bent forward and kissed her mouth.

"You love me?"

The boy laughed.

"S-s-s-h! Eef you love me, eef you really and truly love me, I vill
to-night ask you to prove eet."

"I've been waiting," said Graham, with a sudden touch of passion.

"Zen take me avay from this 'ell. I 'ave a soul. Eet ees killing me. I
'ave a longing for God's air. Take me back to eet. The Papowsky ees a
vile woman. She lure me 'ere and I am a prisoner. You do not know the
'orrors of zis place. I am young. I am almost a child. I was good and I
can be good again. At once, when you come 'ere, I saw in you one who
might rescue me from zis. I love you. You say you love me. I beseech you
to take me away."

Graham was stirred by this emotional appeal whispered in his ear, by the
young arms that were flung round his neck, and by the little body that
was all soft against him. His sense of chivalry and his innate desire
for adventure were instantly set ablaze. At the same time, what could he
do with this strange little girl? Where could he put her?

He began to whisper back something of his inability to help, but a hand
was quickly placed over his mouth.

"Eef you believe in God, take me away. I do not care what you do with
me. I do not care eef you make me work for my bread. You are not like ze
rest. You too are young and you are a man, and I love you. I will be
your servant--your slave. I will kiss your feet. I will give you myself.
I will wait on you 'and and foot. Give me a little room near ze sky and
see me once a day, but take me out of this evil place--I am being
poisoned. Vill you do zis? Vill you?" She slipped down on her knees and
clasped her hands together.

In the faint blue light Graham could see the large eyes of the girl
looking up at him through tears, as though to a saviour. Her whole
attitude was one of great appeal. Her young, slim body trembled and the
throbbing of her voice with its curious foreign accent moved him to an
overwhelming pity. Here then was something that he could do--was a way
in which he could exercise his bottled up sense of adventure which had
hitherto only been kept in some sort of control by gambling and running
risks.

"Do you mean that you're forced to remain here,--that you can't get out
if you want to?"

"Yes, yes, yes! I tell you I was caught like a wild bird and zis ees my
cage. Ze door ees guarded."

A great excitement seized the boy. He lifted Ita up and put his mouth to
her ear. "You've come to the right man. I'll get you out of this. I
always loathed to see you here,--but how's it to be done? She has eyes
in the back of her head, and those damned Japanese servants are
everywhere."

"Eeet ees for you to sink," said the girl. "You are a man."

"I see," said Graham. "Right. Leave it to me."

He liked being made responsible. He liked the utter trust which this
girl placed in him. He liked the feeling of danger. The whole episode
and its uncanny romance caught hold of him. It was not every day that in
the middle of civilization the chance came to do something which smacked
of mediævalism--which had in it something of the high adventure of
Ivanhoe.

He said: "Get away quick and put your clothes on. Don't pack
anything--just dress. There won't be any one in the roulette room until
after twelve. Go in there and hide behind the curtains and wait for me.
Quick, now!"

Once more the girl flung her arms about him and put her lips to his
mouth.

For several minutes Graham remained alone in the alcove, with his blood
running swiftly through his veins--his brain hard at work. The woman on
the dais was still singing. In the vague, uncertain light he could see
the Papowsky curled up on a divan near by, smoking a cigarette. Other
people had come in and made groups among the foolish rockery. Then he
got up quietly, went out into the passage and looked about. He had never
before explored the place, he only knew the studio and the roulette
room. It dawned upon him that this apartment was just beneath the roof
of the building. Somewhere or other there was likely to be an outlet to
the fire-escape. That was the idea. He had it. The girl had said that it
would be impossible to take her away by the main door. Those Japanese
servants were evidently watch-dogs. Even as he stood there, wondering,
he saw that he was eyed by a small, square-shouldered Japanese whose
head seemed to be too large for his body and whose oily deferential grin
was not to be trusted. He lit a cigarette, and putting on what he
considered to be an air of extreme nonchalance, strolled along until he
came to the roulette room. No one was there. The candelabra were only
partially alight. He darted quickly to the window and flung it up. The
iron steps of the fire-escape ran past it to the roof. "Fine!" he said
to himself. "Now I know what to do."

He shut the window quickly and turned round just as the man who had been
watching him came in. "Say!" he said. "Just go and get me a high-ball.
Bring it here." He followed the man to the door and into the passage and
watched him waddle away. He had not been there more than a moment when
the door opposite opened bit by bit, and the girl's face, with large
frightened eyes, peeped round the corner. In a little black hat and a
plain frock with a very tight skirt she looked younger and prettier and
more in need of help than ever. Without a word, Graham caught hold of
her hand, drew her into the passage, shut her door, ran her into the
roulette room and placed her behind the curtains, making sure that her
feet were hidden. Whistling softly to himself he sat down and waited.
The man seemed to have been gone half an hour. It was really only a few
minutes before he waddled back on his heels. Graham took the drink. "How
soon do you think they'll begin to play to-night?" he asked, keeping his
voice steady with a huge effort.

The Japanese shrugged his shoulders. "As usual, sir," he said, smiling
from ear to ear and rubbing his hands together as though he were washing
them. "Any time after twelve, sir--any time, sir."

"All right!" said Graham. "I shall wait here."

He kept up the air of boredom until he imagined that the small,
black-haired, olive-tinted man had had time to get well away. Then he
sprang to the door, saw that the passage was empty, darted back into
the room and over to the window.

"Come on!" he said. "Quick's the word!" and climbed out, giving the girl
his hand. For a moment they stood together on the ledge of the
fire-escape, the stairs of which seemed to run endlessly down. With a
chuckle of triumph Graham shut the window, as the girl gave a little cry
of dismay.

She had called that place hell, but from the height on which they stood
it seemed as though they were climbing down from the sky.


IV

"Uptown," said Graham to the taxi driver. "I'll tell you where when I
know myself."

A knowing and sympathetic grin covered the big Irish face and a raucous
yell came from the hard-used engine, and the taxi went forward with a
huge jerk.

The little girl turned her large eyes on Graham. "You do not know vhere
you take me?" she asked.

"No, by thunder, I don't. I can't drive you like this to a hotel, you've
got no baggage. Most of my friends live in bachelor apartments, and the
women I know,--well, I would like to see their faces if I turned up with
you--and _this_ story."

The girl's foreign gesture was eloquent of despair. She heaved a deep
sigh and drew into the corner of the cab. The passing lights shone
intermittently on her little white face. How small and pitiful and
helpless she looked.

The sight of her set Graham's brain working again. In getting her out of
the Papowsky's poisonous place and leading her step by step down the
winding fire-escape and, when it ceased abruptly in mid-air, into the
window of a restaurant, he had been brought to the end of one line of
thought,--that of getting the girl safely out of her prison. He now
started on another, while the cab rocked along the trolley lines beneath
the elevated railway, sometimes swerving dangerously out and round the
iron supports.

Suddenly Graham was seized with an idea. He put his head out of the cab
window and shouted to the driver: "Fifty-five East Fifty-second Street."

The girl turned to him hopefully. "What ees zat?" she asked.

"My home."

"Your 'ome? You take me to your 'ome?"

"Why no, not exactly. I'm going in to get a bag for you. It won't have
much in it except a brush and comb and a pair of my pajamas, but with
them we can drive to any quiet hotel and I'll get a room for you. In the
morning I'll find a little furnished apartment and you can go out and
buy some clothes and the other things that you need. How's that?"

Ita caught up his hand and held it against her heart. "But you are not
going to leave me?"

"Yes, I must," said Graham. "I shall have to register you as my sister.
You've just come off the train and I've met you at the station. Oh,
don't cry! It's the best I can do. It's only just for one night. I'll
fix things to-morrow and you'll be very happy in a little apartment of
your own, won't you? I'll see you every day there."

With a sudden and almost painfully touching abandon of gratitude the
girl flung herself on the floor of the cab and put her head on Graham's
knees, calling on God to bless him. Something came into the boy's
throat.

The taxi crossed Fifth Avenue behind a motor-car that was also going
towards Madison Avenue. It looked very familiar to Graham. Supposing it
was his father returning from one of his medical meetings! He put his
head out again, sharply: "Stop at the first house on East Fifty-second
Street!" he shouted. Almost before the cab had stopped he leaped out.
"Wait for me here," he added.

"Sure an' I will." The driver threw a glance at his taxi-meter. Not for
him to care how long he waited.

Graham darted along the street and up the steps of Number fifty-five,
and just as he had the key in the door he heard his father's voice.

"No, no. Let my car take you home. Yes, a wonderful evening. Most
inspiring. Good night! Let's meet again soon!"

Graham made up his mind what to do. He held the door open for the Doctor
and stood waiting for him, with the bored look of one who has had a
rather dull evening. "Oh, thank you, Graham," said Dr. Guthrie. "Have
you just got back?"

"Yes; I thought I'd get to bed early to-night."

"You look as though you needed sleep," said the Doctor. "But--but don't
go up at once. Please come and have a cigarette in my room. I've--I've
been speaking at the Academy of Medicine,--explaining a new discovery. A
great triumph, Graham, a great triumph. I would like to tell one of my
sons about it. Won't you come?"

There was an unwonted look of excitement on his father's thin face and a
ring in his voice which made it almost youthful. It was the first time
that Graham had ever received such an invitation. He was surprised, and
if he had not been so desperately anxious to slip up-stairs, lay quick
hands on the bag and get away again he would have accepted it gladly.
For a reason that he could not explain he felt at that instant an almost
unbearable desire to find his father, to get in touch with him, to give
something and receive something that he seemed to yearn for and need
more urgently than at any other moment in his life. As it was, he was
obliged to back out. "I'm frightfully tired to-night," he said, yawning.

"Oh, are you? I'm sorry," said the Doctor apologetically. "Some other
night perhaps--some other night."

The two men stood facing each other uncomfortably. Exhilaration had for
a moment broken down the Doctor's shyness. It all came back to him when
he found his son's eyes upon him like those of a stranger. He took off
his coat and hat, said "Good-night" nervously and went quickly across
the hall and into his library.

He was deeply hurt. He stood among those priceless books with a curious
pain running through his veins. "What's the matter with me?" he asked
himself. "Why do I chill my children and make them draw back?"

Graham shut the door, and then as quickly as an eel ran up-stairs to his
bedroom, turned on the light, opened the door of the closet and pulled
out a large suit-case. Then he began to hunt among the drawers of his
wardrobe for some pajamas. He threw these in. From his bathroom he
caught up a brush and comb and some bedroom slippers. These followed the
pajamas. Then he shut the case, picked it up, crept quietly down-stairs,
across the hall and out into the street, shutting the door softly behind
him. He gave the taxi-driver the name of a small hotel frequented by
actors, and jumped into the cab.

Ita Strabosck welcomed him as though he had been gone a week. "'Ow good
you are to me!" she cried. "Eef you never do anysing else een your life,
zis that you 'ave done for me vill be written down by zee angels een
your book."

Graham laughed. "The angels--I wonder."

All the same he was a little proud of himself. Not many men would have
perfected the rescue of this little girl so neatly from a house in which
her body and soul were in jeopardy. It had been an episode in his
sophisticated life which was all to his credit. He felt that,--with
pleasure liked the idea of being responsible for this poor little soul,
of having some one dependent entirely upon his generosity and who
presently would wait for his step with a fluttering heart and run to
meet him when he came in tired. He liked also the thought that this girl
would be a little secret of his own,--some one personal to himself, to
whom he could take his worries--and he had many--and get sympathy and
even advice.

The cab drew up. Graham released himself from the girl's arms and led
her into the small and rather fuggy foyer of the hotel, which was a
stone's throw from Broadway. A colored porter pounced upon the bag and
an alert clerk looked up from the mail that he was sorting.

"I want a room for my sister," said Graham, "with bath. Got one?"

"Fifth floor," said the clerk, after gazing fixedly for a moment at
something at the back of the screen. He then pushed the book towards
Graham.

Without a moment's hesitation, Graham wrote "Miss Nancy Robertson,
Buffalo," and took the key that was extended to him. "Come on, Nancy,"
he said, and led the way to the elevator, in which was waiting a tall,
florid woman carrying a small bulldog in her arms. She had obviously not
taken very great pains to remove the make-up from her face which had
been necessary to her small part. Graham recognized her as an actress
whom he had seen some nights before in an English play at the
Thirty-ninth Street Theatre, and he thought how queer life was and what
odd tricks it played. Not a foot away from each other stood two women,
the one just back from a place in which she had been aping a human being
in a piece utterly artificial and untrue, the other who had played a
part in a tragedy of grim and horrible reality, out of which she had
been carried before the inevitable climax.

The colored boy, with a hospitable grin on his face, led the way along a
narrow, shabby passage whose wall-paper was much the worse for wear, and
finally opened the door of a small bedroom, switching on the light.

"I'll undo the case," said Graham quickly.

The boy drew back. "Sure."

"And say! If you'll see that my sister gets what she rings for I'll give
you five dollars."

"You bet your life, sah." There was a dazzling glint of white teeth.

"Thanks."

"You welcome."

The cry of joy and relief which made the whole room quiver, as soon as
the porter had gone, went straight to Graham's heart. "I guess it's not
much of a room," he said, a little huskily, "but we'll change all this
to-morrow."

The girl ran her hand over the pillow and the bed-cover. "Oh, but eet
ees zo sweet and clean," she said, between tears and laughter, "and no
one can come. Eet ees mine. You are zo, _zo_ good to me."

Graham undid the case and spilt the meagre contents on the bed. Then he
put his hands on Ita's shoulders and kissed her. "Good-night, you poor
little thing," he said. "Sleep well, order anything that you want, and
don't leave this room until I come and fetch you. Your troubles are
over."

She clung to him. "But you vill stay a leetle--just a leetle?"

"No, I'm going now."

There was nowhere in Graham's mind the remotest desire to stay. A new
and strange chivalry had taken the place of the passion that had swept
over him earlier in the evening when the blue light had fallen on her
slim body.

She looked into his face, nodded and put her lips to his cheek. "Good
night, zen," she said. "You 'ave taken me out of hell. You are very
good."

And as Graham walked home under the gleaming moon and the
star-bespattered sky, there was a little queer song in his rather lonely
heart.

Poor, simple, sophisticated lad! How easy it had been for that cunning
little creature whose one ambition was to be the mistress of an
apartment in business for herself, to take advantage of his unfed sense
of adventure. She, and fate, had certainly played him a very impish
trick.


V

The _Oceanic_ had been timed to dock at four-thirty, but the thick mist
at the mouth of the Hudson had caused some delay and her mail had been
heavy. The consequence was that she was edged in to her dock
considerably more than an hour late, to be welcomed by an outburst of
long-expectant handkerchiefs.

During the period of waiting--by no means unpleasant, because the sun
fell warmly upon the wonderful river--several brief, emotional
conversations took place between the people who had come to greet Peter.
The Guthries were there in a body,--even Ethel had pulled herself
together and had come to be among the first to greet her favorite
brother. Graham wouldn't have missed the occasion for anything on earth.
His love for Peter was deep and true. And it was good to see the
excitement of them all and of the little mother, who was in a state of
verging between tears and laughter all the time. Her big boy was coming
home again and once more she would have the ineffable joy of tucking him
up at night sometimes, and asking God to bless him before she drew the
clothes about his ears as she had done so often. Even the Doctor found
it necessary to take off his glasses several times and rub them clear of
the moisture that prevented him from seeing the approaching vessel which
seemed to have given herself up to the bullying of the small but
energetic tugs whose blunt noses butted into her.

Betty brought her father; and these two, with a delicacy of feeling
characteristic of them, placed themselves among the crowd away from the
Guthrie family. Intuitively, Betty knew that much as Mrs. Guthrie liked
her, she would rather resent her presence there at such a moment.
Belle's quick eyes very soon discovered them, however, and presently
they permitted themselves to be drawn into the family group.

It was a curious moment for Ranken Townsend and his feelings were not
unlike those of little Mrs. Guthrie. "My God!" he said to himself as he
stood looking out at the wide river, its marvellous and strenuous life
and the amazing sky-line of the buildings on the opposite bank; "has the
time arrived already for me to lose my little girl? Am I so old that I
have a young thing ripe enough for marriage and to bring into the world
young things of her own?"

The artist had only met the elder Guthries once before, although Belle
was a particular friend of his, having been frequently brought to his
studio by Betty. He knew Peter only from having seen him in the
treasured snapshots which his little daughter brought home with her from
Oxford. He had to confess to himself--although his natural jealousy made
him unwilling to do so--that Peter looked just the sort of man whom he
would like his daughter to marry when her time came. And so he singled
out Mrs. Guthrie almost at once and drew her aside. The breeze blew
through his Viking beard, and a fellow-feeling brought into his eyes an
expression of sympathy which immediately warmed Mrs. Guthrie's heart
towards him. "I didn't want to come this afternoon, Mrs. Guthrie," he
said. "Shall I explain why?"

"No," said the little mother. "I quite understand."

"Your boy and my girl are following the inevitable laws of nature, and
it's rather hard luck for us both, isn't it?"

Mrs. Guthrie put her handkerchief up to her mouth and nodded.

"Betty's a good girl and I've only to look at you to know that the man
to whom she's given her heart is a fine fellow. Well, it brings us up to
another milestone, doesn't it?--one that I wish was still some years
ahead. However, let's face it with pluck and with unselfishness, and be
friends. Shall we?"

"Please," said the little mother, giving him her hand.

Ranken Townsend bared his head.

And then Dr. Guthrie came up and peered at the man who was talking to
his wife. He vaguely remembered the artist's picturesque appearance and
fine open face, but he had forgotten his name.

Mrs. Guthrie hurried to the rescue. "You remember Mr. Townsend, of
course, Hunter," she said. "Betty's father, you know."

"I beg your pardon," said the Doctor. "Of course I remember you, and I'm
very delighted to see you again. You have friends coming on the
_Oceanic_ too, then?"

Townsend laughed. "No, I don't know anybody on her--not a soul. All the
same I've come to meet your son."

"Indeed! It's very kind of you, I'm sure." And then the Doctor suddenly
remembered that sooner or later he'd be obliged to share Peter with the
man who stood before him, and just for a moment he--like his wife and
like the other father--felt the inevitable stab of jealousy. He covered
it with a cordial smile. "What am I thinking about? Betty brought you,
naturally. We must meet more often now, Mr. Townsend."

"I should like nothing better. I don't know your boy yet except through
his photographs and my having met his mother, but I'm very proud to know
that my little girl is to bear a name that will always be honoured in
this country."

Dr. Guthrie blushed and bowed, and put his hand up to his tie nervously.

It was a curious little meeting, this. All three parents were
self-conscious and uncomfortable. They would have been antagonistic but
for the very true human note that each recognized. They were all
reminded of the unpleasant fact that they were in sight of a new and
wide cross-road in their lives, along which they were presently to see
two of their young people walking away together hand in hand. Parenthood
has in it everything that is beautiful, but much that is disappointing
and inevitable--much that brings pain and a sudden sense of loneliness.

There was a very different ring in the conversation of Betty and Belle,
who stood a few yards away surrounded by people of all the strange
conglomerate nationalities which go to make up the population of the
United States. Good-tempered, affectionate and excitable Hebrews were
already shouting welcomes to their friends on the _Oceanic_, as the
vessel drew slowly nearer. Temperamental Irish were alternately waving
handkerchiefs and daubing their eyes with them, and others--of French,
German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian and English extraction--were
trying to discern the faces of those who were near and dear to them
among the passengers who were leaning over the rails of the vessel. It
was an animated and moving scene, very much more cheery than the ones
which take place on the same spot when the great trans-Atlantic Liners
slip out into the river.

"Look!" cried Belle. "There's Nicholas. Isn't he absolutely and
wonderfully English?"

"And there's Peter!" said Betty, with a catch in her voice. "And isn't
he splendidly American?"

"Oh, I'm so excited I can hardly stand still. I've dreamed of this every
night ever since we came home."

"So have I. But this is better than dreams. Look! Peter has seen us.
He's waving his hat. Even his hair seems to be sunburnt."

Belle laughed, though her eyes were full of tears. "I can almost smell
the violet stuff that Nicholas puts on his."

Then there was the usual rush as the liner slid into her berth, and as
Mrs. Guthrie was swept away with it, holding tight to Graham's arm, she
said to herself: "He waved to Betty first. O God, make me brave!"

All the same, it was the little mother to whom Peter went first as he
came ashore, and he held her very tight, so that she could hardly
breathe, and said: "Darling mum! How good to see you!" and there was
something in that.

The Doctor took his boy's big hand with less self-consciousness than
usual. He wished that he might have had the pluck to kiss him on both
cheeks and thus follow the excellent example of a little fat Frenchman
who had nearly thrown him off his balance in his eagerness to welcome a
thin, dark boy.

"Hello, Belle! Hello, Graham! Hello, Ethel!" And then Peter stood in
front of Betty, to whom he said nothing, but the kiss that he gave her
meant more than the whole of a dictionary. "Oh, my Peter!" she
whispered.

Nicholas Kenyon followed with his most winning smile, and was cordially
welcomed. He had charming things to say to everyone, especially to
Belle. After close scrutiny, Ethel's inward criticism of him was that he
had "escaped being Oxford."

And then Ranken Townsend held out his hand. "But for me, Peter Guthrie,"
he said, "you wouldn't have had a sweetheart. Shake!"

A wave of color spread all over Peter's brown face. He grasped the
outstretched hand. "I'm awfully glad to see you," he said.

"And I'm awfully glad to see you." The artist measured the boy up. Yes,
he was well satisfied. Here stood a man in whose clean eyes he
recognized the spirit of a boy. Betty had chosen well. "Do you smoke a
pipe?"

"Well, rather."

"I thought so. Bring it along to my studio as soon as your mother can
spare you and we'll talk about life and love and the great hereafter. Is
that a bet?"

"That's a bet," said Peter. And he added, putting his mouth close to
Betty's ear: "Darling, he's a corker! He likes me. Gee, that's fine!"
Then he turned to his mother, ran his arm round her shoulder, walked her
over to the place in the great echoing, bustling shed over which a huge
"G" hung, and sat down with her on somebody else's trunk which had just
been flung there, to wait with unapproving patience for that blessed
time when one of the officialdom's chewing gods, having forced a prying
hand among his shirts and underclothing, should mark his baggage with a
magic cross and so permit him to reconnect himself with life.

Nicholas Kenyon, as immaculate as though he had just emerged from a
bandbox, slipped his hand surreptitiously into Belle's. "Are you glad to
see me?" he asked, under his breath.

Belle said nothing in reply, but the look that she gave him instead set
that expert's blood racing through his veins and gave him something to
look forward to that alone made it worth crossing a waste of unnecessary
water.


VI

"A very pleasant domestic evening," said Kenyon, standing with his back
to the fireplace of the library. "The bosom of this family is certainly
very warm. Peter, my dear old boy, I had no idea that you were going to
bring me to a house in which a Prime Minister or the President of the
Royal Academy might be very proud to dwell. Also, may I congratulate
you upon your little sister? She's a humorist. I found myself
furbishing up all my epigrams when I spoke to her. By Jove, she's like a
Baliol blood with his hair in a braid."

A quiet chuckle came from Graham, who was sitting on the arm of a big
deep chair, looking up at Kenyon with the sort of admiration that is
paid by a student to his master. "I don't know anything about Baliol
bloods," he said, "but Ethel takes a lot of beating. When she quoted
Bernard Shaw, at dinner, father nearly swallowed his fork."

Peter was sitting on the table, swinging his legs.

"Oh, she'll be all right when she gets away from her school. She'll grow
younger every day then. What awful places they are--these American girl
schools. They seem to inject into their victims a sort of liquid
artificiality. It takes a lot of living down. Upon my soul, I hardly
knew the kid! Two years have made a most tremendous difference in her. I
thought I should throw a fit when she looked at me just now in the
drawing-room and said: 'The childish influence of Oxford has left you
almost unspoiled, Peter, dear.'"

Kenyon laughed. "Excellent!" he said. "I know the English flapper pretty
well. It'll give me extreme delight to play Columbus among the American
variety of the species." He looked round the beautiful room with an
approving eye. "That must have been a very civilized old gentleman who
made this collection. I wonder if he bought some of the books from
Thrapstone-Wynyates! My father was forced to sell some of them shortly
after he succeeded to the title. As the long arm of coincidence
frequently stretches across the Atlantic, I should like to think that
some of the first editions in which my grandfather took so high a pride
have found their way into an atmosphere so entirely pleasant as this.
One of these fine days, Peter, they may raise a little necessary bullion
for you."

"I hope not," said Peter.

Graham got up. "It's only eleven o'clock. Suppose we get out and see
something. Everybody's gone to bed, we shan't be missed."

"A very brainy notion," said Kenyon, "but what's there to do?"

"Oodles of things," said Graham.

"Well, lead the way. I'm with you. The dull monotony of life aboard a
liner has given me a thirst for twinkling ankles, the clash of cymbals
and the glare of the lime-light. You with us, Peter?"

"Yes, unless--one second." He went over to the telephone that stood on a
small table in a far corner of the room, looked up a number in the book,
asked for it and hung on.

Kenyon shot a wink at Graham. "Get your hat, old boy," he said. "Peter
would a-wooing go. He's the most desperately thorough person." And he
added inwardly: "Hang that girl."

"Can I speak to Mr. Townsend? Oh, is that you, Mr. Townsend? Peter
Guthrie, yes. May I come round and have a jaw--? Thanks, awfully! I'll
get a taxi right away." He turned back to the other two men. "Great
work," he said. "You two will have to go alone to-night. However, we've
a thousand years in front of us. See you at breakfast. So long!"

"Wait a second," said Graham. "I'll ring up a taxi and we'll all ride
down together."

"Right-o!" said Peter. "I'll rush up to my room and get a pipe."

When he came down again he found Kenyon and Graham waiting at the open
door. A taxicab was chugging on the curbstone. Kenyon got in first, with
his long cigarette holder between his teeth and a rakish-looking opera
hat balanced over his left eye. He carried a thin black overcoat. All
about him there was the very essence of Piccadilly. Peter sat beside him
and Graham opposite. The cab turned round, crossed Madison into Fifth
Avenue and went quickly downtown. The great wide street, as shiny as
that of the Champs Élysée, was comparatively clear of traffic. Peter
looked at the passing houses with the intense and affectionate interest
of the man who comes home again. At the corner of West Forty-second
Street Graham stopped the cab. "It's only a short walk to the best of
the cabarets," he said; "we'll let Peter go straight on. Come on,
Nicholas, bundle out."

"Where are we going?" asked Kenyon, making a graceful exit.

"Louis Martin's, old boy," said Graham.

"Pretty hot stuff, I hope. Au revoir, Peter. Do your best to make the
bearded paint merchant like you. You'll have some difficulty." And with
that parting shot, contradicted by one of the winning smiles which he
had inherited from his delightful but unscrupulous father, Nicholas
Kenyon took Graham's arm and these two walked away in high spirits.

When the cab stopped at the high building on the corner of Gramercy
Park, its door was opened by Ranken Townsend. "I timed you to arrive
about now, my lad," he said cordially. "I took the opportunity of
getting some air. It's mighty good to-night. Come right up." He
continued to talk in the elevator, which had a long way to go. "Betty
has gone to a party. You may meet her mother, I'm not sure. She's out at
one of her meetings--she spends her life at meetings--and if she comes
in tired, as she generally does, she probably won't come into the
studio. However, that need only be a pleasure deferred. Do you speak? If
so, she'll nail you for one of her platforms."

"I,--speak?" said Peter, with a shudder. "I'd rather be shot."

Townsend laughed, led the way into his apartment and into the studio. In
the dim light of one reading lamp which stood on a small table at the
side of a low divan, the room looked larger than it was. It reeked with
the good ripe smell of pipe tobacco and seemed to be pervaded with the
personality of the man who spent most of his life in it. One of the top
windows was open and through it came the refreshing air that blew up
from the Hudson. Peter caught a glimpse of the sky, which was alive with
stars. It was a good place. He liked it. Work was done there. It
inspired him.

The artist took Peter's hat and coat and hung them in the alcove. Then
he went across the room and turned up the light that hung over a canvas.
"How d'you like it?" he asked.

Peter gave an involuntary cry. There sat Betty with her hands folded in
her lap. To Peter she seemed to have been caught at the very moment when
from his place at her feet he looked up at her just before he held her
in his arms for the first time. Her face was alight and her eyes full of
tenderness. It was an exquisite piece of work.

Townsend turned out the light. He was well pleased with its effect.
Peter's face was far better than several columns of printed eulogy. "Now
come and sit down," he said. "Try this mixture. It took me five years to
discover it, but since then I've used no other." He threw himself on the
settee and settled his untidy head among the cushions.

The light shone on Peter's strong profile, and when Townsend looked at
it he saw there all that he hoped to see, and something else. There was
a little smile round the boy's mouth and a look in his eyes that showed
all the warmth of his heart.

"And so you love my little girl as much as that? Well, she deserves it,
but please don't take her away from me yet. I can't spare her. She and
my work are all I've got, and I'm not lying when I say that she comes
first. Generally when a man reaches my age he has lived down his
dependence on other people for happiness and his work has become his
mistress, his wife and his children. In my case that isn't so, and my
little girl is the best I have. She keeps me young, Peter. She renders
my disappointments almost null and void, and she encourages me not
wholly to sacrifice myself to the filthy dollar--an easy temptation I
can assure you. So don't be in too great a hurry to take my little bird
away and build a nest for her in another tree. Does that sound very
selfish to you?"

"No," said Peter; "I understand. Besides--good Lord!--I've got to work
before I can make a place good enough for her. I've come back to begin."

"I see! Fine! I thought perhaps that Oxford might have taken some of the
good American grit out of you. It just occurred to me that you might be
going to let your father keep you while you continue to remain an
undergraduate out here in life. A good many of our young men with
wealthy fathers play that game, believe me."

"Yes, I know," said Peter, "but there's something in my blood,--I think
it's porridge,--that urges me to do things for myself. Besides, I
believe that there's a feeling of gratitude somewhere about me that
makes me want to pay back my father for all that he's done. I'm most
awfully keen to do that, Mr. Townsend! His money has come by accident.
I'm not going to take advantage of it. I'm going to start in just as if
he were the same hard-working doctor that he used to be when he sent me
to Harvard, skinning himself to do so. I think he'll like that. Anyway,
that's my plan. And as to Oxford,--well, I should have to be a pretty
rotten sort of a dog if I didn't gain something there--that wonderful
place out of which men have gone, for centuries, all the better for
having rushed over its quads and churned up the water of its little old
river and stood humbly in its chapels. Don't you think so?"

"I do indeed, my dear lad; but somehow or other the younger generation
doesn't seem to take advantage of those things, and the sight of the
young men of the present day and their callous acceptance of their
fathers' efforts make me thank God that I never had a boy. I should be
afraid. Think of that! What are you going to do, Peter? What is your
line of work?"

"The law."

"The law? Well, I guess that's a queer sort of maze to put yourself
into. An honest man in the law is like a rabbit in a dog kennel. Is that
your definite decision?"

"Absolutely," said Peter. "I chose the law for that reason. I think that
honesty is badly needed in it. I've got a dream that one of these days I
shall be a judge and make things a bit easier for all the poor devils
who have made mistakes."

"God help you!"

"I shall ask him to," said Peter.

The artist looked up quickly. In his further keen and rather wistful
scrutiny of the great big square-shouldered man with the strong, clean
jaw-line and the firm mouth there was a little astonishment. "Do you
mean to tell me that in the middle of these queer undisciplined,
individualistic times you believe in God?"

The room remained in silence for a moment, until Peter leaned forward
and knocked out his pipe. "If I didn't believe in God," he replied
quietly, "would you be quite so ready to trust Betty to me?"

At that moment the door was swung open and a tall, stout, hard-bosomed
woman with a mass of white hair and the carriage of a battleship sailed
in. Her evening clothes glistened with sequins and many large beads
rattled as she came forward. She wore a string of pearls and several
diamond rings. Unable to fight any longer against advancing years and
preserve what had evidently been quite remarkable good looks, she had
cultivated a presence and developed distinction. In any meeting of women
she was inevitably voted to the chair, and in the natural order of
things became president of all the Societies to which she attached
herself, except one. In this isolated case the woman who supplanted her,
for the time being, was even taller, stouter and harder of bosom,--in
fact, a born president.

The two men rose.

"Ah, Ranken, still up, then! I half-expected to find the studio in
darkness. You'll be glad to hear that we passed a unanimous resolution
to-night condemning this country as a republic and asking that it shall
become a monarchy forthwith."

Townsend refrained from looking at Peter. "Indeed!" he said gravely. "An
evening well spent. But I want you to know Peter Guthrie, Dr. Hunter
Guthrie's eldest son, just home from Oxford."

Mrs. Townsend extended a large well-formed hand. "Let me see! What do I
know about you? You're the young man who--Oh, now I remember. You're
engaged to Betty. But before I forget it, and as you are just out of
Oxford, I'll put you down to speak at the annual meeting next Tuesday at
the Waldorf, of the Society for the Reconstruction of University
Systems. Your subject will be 'Oxford as a Menace to the Younger
Generation.' There will be no fee--I beg your pardon?"

Peter's face was a study in conflicting emotions. He looked like a
lonely man being run away with in a car that he was wholly unable to
drive. Townsend turned a burst of laughter into a rasping cough. "You're
awfully kind," said Peter, almost stammering. "But I believe in Oxford."

"Ah! Then you shall say so to the Society for the Encouragement of
Universities, on Thursday at eight sharp, at the St. Mary's Public
School Building, Brooklyn."

"As a matter of fact, I don't speak," said Peter. "I--I never speak."

"Why, then, you shall be one of the chief thinkers at the bi-monthly
meeting of the Californian Cogitators. I'm not going to let you off, so
make up your mind to that. And now I'm going to bed. I'm as tired as a
dog. Good-bye, Paul,--I mean Peter. Expect me to call you up one day
soon. There's so much to do with this world chaos that we must all put
our hands to the wheel." And with a wave of her hand, Mrs. Townsend
sailed majestically away.

Peter gasped for breath and the artist subsided into the divan and gave
way to an attack--a very spasm--of laughter, which left him limp and
weak.

"Never allow Betty to get bitten by the meeting-bug, son," he said, when
he had recovered. "It isn't any fun to be married to a bunch of
pamphlets. What! Are you off now?"

"I'm afraid I've kept you up, as it is, Mr. Townsend. I--I want to thank
you for your immense kindness to me. I shall always remember it. Good
night!"

Rankin Townsend got up, stood in front of Peter for a moment and looked
straight at him. He was serious again. "Good night, my dear lad," he
said. "I feel that I can trust Betty to you and that takes a load off my
mind. Come often and stay later."

Peter walked all the way home along Madison Avenue. That part, at any
rate, of the great sleepless city was resting and quiet, and the boy's
quick footsteps echoed through the empty street. He was glad to be back
again in New York--glad and thankful. Somewhere, in one of her big
buildings, was his love-girl--the woman who was to be his wife--the
reason of his having been born into the world. No wonder he believed in
God.


VII

The following afternoon Peter was to call at the apartment-house on
Gramercy Park at half-past-four. He had arranged to take Betty for a
walk,--a good long tramp. There were heaps of things that he wanted to
tell her and hear, and several points on which he wanted to ask her
advice. He was not merely punctual, as becomes a man who is head over
heels in love--he was ten minutes before his time. All the same, he
found Betty waiting for him in the hall, talking to a big burly Irishman
who condescended to act as hall-porter and who looked not unlike a
brigadier-general in his rather over-smart uniform. This man had known
Betty for many years and watched her grow up; had received many
kindnesses from her and had seen her bend by the hour over the cot of
his own little girl when she was ill. His face was a study when he saw
Peter bound into the place, catch sight of Betty and take her in his
arms, and without a single touch of self-consciousness pour out a burst
of incoherent joy at being with her once more.

Catching his expression, in which surprise, resentment and a sort of
jealousy were all mixed, Betty said, when she got a chance: "Peter, this
is a friend of mine, Mr. O'Grady."

Peter turned and held out his hand. "How are you? All Miss Townsend's
friends have got to be my friends now."

The Irishman's vanity was greatly appealed to by the simple manliness
of Peter's greeting, his cheery smile and his utter lack of side. He
smiled back and, having given the hand a warm grip, drew himself up and
saluted. At one time he had served in the British Army, and he wanted
Peter to know it. He would have told him the story of his life then and
there with, very likely, a few picturesque additions, but before he
could arrange his opening sentence the two young people were out in the
street. He watched them go off together, the one so broad and big, the
other so slight and sweet, and said to himself, rolling a new quid of
tobacco between his fingers: "Ah, thin; it's love's young dream once
more! And it's a man he is. God bless both of them!"

"Are you feeling strong to-day, darling?" asked Peter.

"Strong as a lion," said Betty. "Why?"

"Because I'm going to walk you up the Avenue and into the Park and about
six times round the reservoir. Can you stand it?"

Betty laughed. "Try me, and if I faint from exhaustion you can carry me
into the street and call a taxicab. I'm not afraid of anything with
you."

"That's fine! This is the first time we've been really alone since I
came back. It'll take from now until the middle of next week to tell you
even half the things I've got to say. First of all, I love you."

"_Darling_ Peter."

"I love you more than I ever did, much more--a hundred times more--and I
don't care who hears me say so." That was true. He made this statement,
not in a whisper, but in his natural voice, and it was overheard by
several passers-by who turned their heads,--and being women, smiled
sympathetically and went on their way with the deep thrill of the young
giant's voice ringing in their ears like music.

They stood for a moment on the curbstone trying to find an opportunity
to cross the street. Betty gave herself up to the masterly person at her
side without a qualm. She adored being led by the arm through traffic
which she wouldn't have dared to dodge had she been alone. It gave her a
new and splendid sense of security and dependence.

The rain had begun to fall softly. It gathered strength as they turned
into Fifth Avenue, and came down smartly. Betty didn't intend to say a
word about the fact that she was wearing a new hat. It had escaped
Peter's notice. Her face was all he saw. He wasn't even aware that it
was raining until he took her arm and found her sleeve was wet.

"Good Lord!" he said. "This won't do. Dash this rain, it's going to
spoil our walk. Where can we go? I know." A line of taxis was standing
on a stand. He opened the door of the first one. "Pop in, baby," he
said. "We'll drive to the Ritz and have tea. I can't have you getting
wet."

Betty popped in, not really so profoundly sorry to escape that strenuous
walk as Peter was.

Being a wise man he took full advantage of the taxicab, and for all the
fact that it was broad daylight and that anybody who chose could watch
him, he gave Betty a series of kisses which did something to make up
for lost time and a long separation. The new hat suffered rather in the
process, but what did that matter? This was love. Hats could be
replaced--such a love as his, never.

"Your father is a great chap," said Peter. "We had a good yarn last
night. By Jove! I wish my father had something of his friendly way. I
felt that there was nothing I couldn't tell him--nothing that he
wouldn't understand. Well, well; there it is. Graham and I will have to
worry along as best we may. Everything'll come out all right, I hope."

"How did you like mother?" asked Betty.

"Well," said Peter, considering his answer with the greatest care,
"she's undoubtedly a wonderful woman, but she scares me to death. The
very first thing she did was to ask me to speak at one of her meetings."

Betty burst out laughing. "What--? Already? When are you speaking? What
are you going to say?"

"Good Lord! What can I say? I can recite the Jabberwocky or the alphabet
in English, French and American, but that finishes my repertory. Can you
see me standing on a platform as white as a sheet trying to stammer out
a few idiotic sentences to a room full of women? Look here! You've got
to get it out of her head that I can be of the slightest use to her.
Tell her I stutter, or that I've got no roof to my mouth--anything you
like--but, for goodness sake, have my name taken off her list. Will you
promise that? Already I wake up in the middle of the night in an
absolute panic."

"Don't worry," said Betty, "Mother's a very strong-minded woman, but
she's awfully easy to manage. And now I want you to promise me
something."

"Anything in the world," said Peter.

"Well, then, don't mistake the Ritz for that dear little open place
where the fairies dance, and suddenly kiss me in front of the band and
all the people having tea."

"Hard luck," said Peter. "I'll do the best I can. But you're such an
angel and you look so frightfully nice that I shall have all I can do to
keep sane."

The cab drew up and they got out, went through the silly swinging doors
which separate a man from his girl for a precious moment and into the
Palm Court where the band was playing. Peter gave his hat and stick to a
disgruntled waiter, who would have told him to check them outside but
for his height and width.

The place was extraordinarily full for the time of year. Everywhere
there were women, and every one of them was wearing some sort of erect
feather in her hat. It gave the place the appearance of a large chicken
run after a prolonged fracas. The band was playing the emotional music
of _La Bohème_. It was in its best form. The waiter led them to a little
table under a mimic window-sill which was crowded with plants. Many
heads turned after them as they adventured between the chattering
groups. It was so easy to see that their impending marriage had been
arranged in Heaven.

"What sort of tea do you like?" asked Peter. "Anything hot and wet, or
have you a choice? Really, I don't know the difference between one and
another."

But Betty did. Hadn't she kept house for her father? "Orange Pekoe tea,"
she said, "and buttered toast."

Peter made it so, and in sitting down nearly knocked over the table. He
was too big for such places and his legs got in the way of everything.
At the other end of the room Kenyon was sitting with Belle. Betty had
seen them at once, but she held her peace. For the first time in her
life she appreciated the fact that two is company. Both men were too
occupied to recognize anybody.

Peter was very happy and full of enthusiasm about everything, and Betty
was an eager listener as he talked about her and himself and the future,
while she poured out the tea. It was all very delightful and domestic
and new and exhilarating, and it didn't require much imagination on the
part of either of them to believe that they were sitting in their own
house, far away from people, and that Peter had just come home after a
long day's work, and that the band was their new Victrola performing in
the corner. Only one thing made Betty aware of the fact that they were
in the Ritz Hotel, and that was the pattern of the teacups. She never
would have chosen such things, and if they had been given to her as a
wedding present she would have packed them away in some far-off
cupboard. She had already made up her mind that their first tea service
was going to be blue-and-white, because it would go with her
drawing-room,--the drawing-room which she had furnished in her dreams.

"I don't think you'd better do that, Peter," whispered Betty suddenly.

"Do what, darling?" Butter wouldn't have melted in his mouth.

"Why, hold my hand. Everybody can see."

"Not if you put it behind this end of the tablecloth. Besides, what if
they can? I'm not ashamed of being in love. Are you?"

"No; I glory in it. But----"

"But what?" He held it tighter.

"I think you'd better give it back to me. There's an old lady frowning."

"Oh, she's only a poor benighted spinster. And anyhow she's not
frowning. She put her eyebrows on in the dark."

"Very well, Peter. I suppose you know best." And Betty made no further
attempts to rescue her hand.

She had two good reasons for leaving it there,--the first, that she
liked it, and the second that she couldn't take it away. But she made
sure that it was hidden by the tablecloth.

"Won't you smoke, Peter?"

"Oh, thanks. May I?"

"All the other men are."

Peter took out his case and his cigarette holder. It was very easy to
take out a cigarette with one hand, but for the life of him he couldn't
manoeuvre it into the tube. Was he so keen to smoke that he would let
her hand go?

He gave it up and broke into a smile that almost made Betty bend forward
and plant a resounding kiss on his square chin. "Well, I'm dashed," he
said. "I believe you asked me to smoke on purpose to get free."

"I did," she said. "Peter, you're--you're just a darling."

And that was why he upset the glass of water.

Presently he said, when peace was restored: "What d'you think I've done
to-day? I've fixed up a seat in the law office of two friends of mine.
They were at Harvard with me--corkers both. I intend to start work next
week. Isn't that fine? We're going to mop up all the work in the city.
Darling, that apartment of ours is getting nearer and nearer. I shall be
a tired business man soon and shall want a home to go to, with a little
wife waiting for me."

And Betty said: "How soon do you think that'll be?"

Before Peter could answer, Belle's ringing voice broke in. She and
Kenyon had come up unnoticed. "The turtle doves," she said. "Isn't it
beautiful, Nick?"

"Well, rather!"

And the spell was broken. They little knew, these two who were so happy,
that in the fertile brain of the man who stood smiling at them was the
germ of a plan which would break their engagement and bring a black
cloud over the scene.


VIII

The family dined early that evening. Graham had taken a box at the
Maxine Elliott Theatre. He and Kenyon and Peter were to take Belle and
Betty there to see a play by Edward Sheldon, about which everybody was
talking. Little Mrs. Guthrie, who was to have been one of the party, had
decided to stay at home, because the Doctor was not feeling very well,
and so she was going to sit with him in the library and see that he went
to bed early, and give him a dose of one of those old-fashioned cures in
which she was a great believer.

Naturally enough, although he was not an ardent play-goer, Peter was
looking forward with keen pleasure to the evening because he would be
able to sit close to Betty and from time to time whisper in her ear.
During dinner, however, which was a very merry meal, with Kenyon keeping
everyone in fits of laughter, Peter caught something in his mother's
eyes which made him revolutionize his plans. The little mother laughed
as frequently as the rest of them,--to the casual observer she was merry
and bright, with nothing on her mind except the slight indisposition of
the Doctor. But Peter, who possessed an intuitive eye which had a knack
of seeing underneath the surface of things and whose keen sympathy for
those he loved was very easily stirred, became aware of the fact that
his mother was only simulating light-heartedness and stood in need of
something from him.

He threw his mind back quickly, and in a moment knew what was wrong.
During the short time that he had been back in the city he had forgotten
to give his little mother anything of himself. That was wrong and
ungrateful and extremely selfish, and must be remedied at once.

Without a moment's hesitation he decided to cut two acts of the play and
do everything that he could to prove to the little mother who meant so
much to him that, although he was engaged to be married, she still
retained her place in his heart.

Dinner over, he went quickly to the door and opened it, and as his
mother passed out he put his arm round her shoulders and whispered,
"Mummie, dear, slip up to your room and wait there for me. I want to
talk to you." The look of gratitude that he received from the dear
little woman was an immense reward for his unselfishness. Then he went
up to Graham and said: "Look here, old boy, I find I shan't be able to
go along with you now, but I'll join you for the last act."

"Oh, rot!" said Graham. "What's up? Betty'll be awfully upset."

"No, she won't," said Peter. "I'm going to send her a note." And while
the others were getting ready, he dashed off a few lines to the girl
who, like himself, understood the family feeling. It contained only a
few lines, but they were characteristically Peterish and were calculated
to make Betty add one more brick to the beautiful construction of her
love for him, because they showed that he understood women and their
sensitiveness and realized their urgent need of tenderness and
appreciation.

As soon as the party had driven away, Peter collected a pipe and a tin
of tobacco and went quickly up the wide staircase. He rushed into his
mother's own particular room with all his old impetuosity and found her
sitting at a table by the side of a great work-basket in which he saw a
large collection of the socks that he had brought home with him and
which stood badly in need of motherly attention. No man in this world
made so many or such quick holes in the toes of his socks as Peter did,
and he knew that she had ransacked the drawers to find them. He drew up
a chair, thrust his long legs out in front of him and made himself
completely comfortable.

This little room was unlike any other in the house. In it his mother had
placed all the pet pieces of inexpensive furniture which had been in the
sitting-room of the little house in which she and the Doctor had settled
down when they were first married. It was unpretentious stuff, bought in
a cheap store in a small town,--what is called "Mission"
furniture,--curious, uncomfortable-looking chairs which creaked with
every movement, odd little sideboards, which would have brought a grin
either of pain or amusement to the face of the former owner of the
beautifully furnished house which had been left to the Doctor. The
walls were covered with photographs of the family in all stages,--Peter
as a chubby baby with a great curl on top of his head--Belle in a
perambulator smiling widely at a colored nurse--Graham in his first
sailor-suit--Ethel bravely arrayed in a party frock, "Thinking of
Mother"--and over the mantel-piece one--an enlargement--of the Doctor
taken when he was a young man, with an unlined face and thick, straight
hair, his jaws set with that grim determination which had carried him
over so many obstacles. It was a room at which Graham, Belle and Ethel
frequently laughed. But Peter liked it and respected it. He felt more at
home there than anywhere else in the house. It reminded him of the early
struggles of his father and mother and touched every responsive note in
his nature.

"I'm sorry you're not going to the theatre, dear," said Mrs. Guthrie.

"No, you're not," said Peter.

"Oh, indeed I am. I like you to enjoy yourself with the others, and
Betty'll be there. Only stay a few minutes; and, as the curtain always
goes up late, you'll be in time to see the whole of the play."

"Blow the play!" said Peter. "I'm going to talk to you just as long as I
like. I can go to the theatre any night of the week."

Mrs. Guthrie dropped her work, bent forward and put her cheek against
Peter's. "You're a dear, dear boy," she said. "You're my very own Peter,
and even if I were a poet I couldn't find words to tell you how happy
you make me; but I did my best not to let you see that I was just a wee
bit hurt because you haven't had time to spare me a few moments since
you came home. After all, I'm only a little old mother now, and I must
try to remember that."

"Oh, don't," said Peter. "I'm awfully sorry I've been such a thoughtless
brute. But, no one--no, no one--can ever take your place, and you know
it." He went down on his knees at her side and wrapped his strong arms
round her and put his head upon her breast as he used to do when he was
a little chap, and remained there for a while perfectly happy.

He couldn't see the Madonna look which came into the eyes of the little
mother, whose pillow had frequently been wet with tears at the thought
that she had lost her boy. Nor did he see the expression of extreme
gratitude which spread rather pathetically over her face. But he felt
these things and held her tightly just to show how well he understood,
and to eliminate from her heart that feeling of pain which he knew had
crept into it because he had found that other little mother who was to
be his wife and have sons of her own.

Presently he returned to his chair and to his pipe, and began to talk.
"By gad!" he said, "it's good to be home again. I find myself looking at
everything differently now--quite time, too. I should have been at work
years ago. Universities are great places and I shall never regret
Oxford, but they take a long time to prepare a fellow to become a man."
Then he laughed one of his great and big laughs, and his chair creaked
and one or two of the old pieces of furniture seemed to rattle. "I hid
those socks, but I knew you'd find them. What a mother you are, mother!
I'll make a bet with you."

"I never bet," said Mrs. Guthrie, who was all smiles.

"I'll bet you a hundred dollars you never mend Graham's socks. Now then
tell the truth."

"Well, no, I don't. He doesn't like socks that have been mended; and,
anyway, he isn't my first-born. You see that makes a lot of difference."

"There you are," said Peter. "Pay up and smile. Oh, say; I'm sorry
father's seedy. He sticks too closely to those microbes of his. I shall
try to screw up courage and take him on a bust now and then. It'll do
him good. Think he'll go?"

Mrs. Guthrie looked up eagerly. "Try," she said. "Please do try. Now
that you've come home for good I want you to do everything you can to
get closer to your father. He's a splendid man and he's always thinking
about you and the others, but I know that he'll never make the first
move. He doesn't seem to understand how to do it. But he deserves
everything you can give him. If only you could break down his shyness
and diffidence,--because that's what it is,--you'd make him very happy."

"Yes, that's what I think," said Peter. "I've been thinking it over,
especially since I saw the way in which Kenyon's father treats him. I
shall pluck up courage one of these nights, beard him in his den and
have it out, and put things straight. I want him much more than he wants
me; and, d'you know, I think that Graham wants him too."

"I'm sure he does," said Mrs. Guthrie. "Graham's a good boy, but he's
very reckless and thinks that he's older than he is. He comes to me
sometimes with his troubles, but how can I help him? I wish, Peter, I do
wish that he'd go sometimes to his father!"

"Well, I'm going to try to alter all that," said Peter. "It's got to be
done somehow. Father's always been afraid of us, and we've always been
afraid of father. It's silly. What d'you think of Nicholas? Isn't he a
corker?"

Mrs. Guthrie smiled. "He improves on acquaintance," she said. "He's
certainly one of the most charming men I've ever met. Do you think"--she
lowered her voice a little--"do you think there's anything between him
and Belle?"

"Good Lord!" said Peter. "I never thought of that. Is there?"

"Well," said Mrs. Guthrie, "I've noticed one or two little things. He's
been writing to her, you know."

"Has he? By Jove! Well, then, there must be something in it. He's a lazy
beggar and I don't believe I've ever seen him write a letter in his
life. Gee, I shall be awfully glad to have him for a brother-in-law!
That topping place in Shropshire! Belle would make an absolutely perfect
mistress of it, although there's plenty of life in the old man yet. By
Jove, it was good to see the relationship between Nick and his father.
It staggered me. Why, they were as good as friends. They go about arm in
arm and tell each other everything. It used to make me feel quite sick
sometimes. Think of my going about arm in arm with father!"

"Think of Belle becoming the Countess of Shropshire! I should like that.
It would be another feather in your father's cap,--your father who used
to carry siphons in a basket."

"More power to his elbow," said Peter. "It might have been better for me
if I'd carried siphons in a basket. After all, I'm inclined to believe
that there's no university in the world like the streets. Think of all
the men who've graduated from windy corners and muddy gutters--It'd be a
fine thing for Ethel, too, if Belle marries Nick. Isn't she an
extraordinary kid? Upon my word, she takes my breath away. She's older
at sixteen than most women are at thirty. By the way, what's the matter
with her? What's anæmia, anyhow? She looks as fit as a fiddle."

"Oh, she'll soon get over that," said Mrs. Guthrie. "I think they bend
too much over books at her school. You know the modern girl isn't like
the girls of my generation. I didn't have to learn geometry or piano
playing. I didn't think it was necessary to know Euclid or a smattering
of the classics. We learned how to make bread and cook a good steak and
iron clothes. You know husbands don't come home to hear Mozart on a Baby
Grand and enter into discussions about writers with crack-jaw names."

"I know,--Ibsen, Schopenhauer, Hauptmann and Tolstoy. No; they don't
fill a hungry tummie, do they?"

"No, indeed they don't," said Mrs. Guthrie. "And that reminds me that I
must go and give your father his little dose. When a doctor isn't well
he never knows how to look after himself." She got up and put down her
work, and then bent over Peter. "Thank you for coming up to-night, my
dearest boy. I've had a queer little pain in my heart for a long time,
but you've taken it all away. Now run along and see your Betty, and
don't worry about your little mother any longer."

Peter got up and put his hands on his mother's shoulders. "Listen!" he
said. "I love you. I shall always love you. No woman shall ever come
between me and you." And he caught her in his arms and kissed her.

And then she bustled down-stairs to the library, where the Doctor was
taking it easy for once and dipping into one of the numerous books that
surrounded him. There was a smile on Mrs. Guthrie's face which was like
the sun on an autumn morning.

On the way to his bedroom Peter passed the door of Ethel's room, and
drew up short. He had heard her say she was going to bed early. He
hadn't had many words with her since he got back. So he decided to go in
and wipe off that debt, too. When he tried to open the door he found
that it was locked. He started a devil's tattoo with his knuckles. "Are
you there, Kid?" he shouted out.

The answer was "Yes."

"Well, then, open the door. I want to come in."

After a moment the door was opened and Ethel stood there in a very
becoming peignoir. She looked extremely disconcerted and did her best
to block the way into the room.

But that wouldn't do for Peter. "What's all this?" he asked. "We lock
our door now, do we?"

"Yes, sometimes," said Ethel. "Why aren't you at the theatre?" She shot
a surreptitious glance towards the window, which was open.

"I've been having a talk with mother," said Peter. "Hello! I see you've
been trigging up your room. Frightfully swagger now, isn't it. New art,
eh? You're coming on, my dear, there's no mistake about that. I'm afraid
you find us all appallingly provincial, don't you?"

The broad grin on Peter's face was no new thing to Ethel. He had always
pulled her leg and treated her as though she were a sort of freak. All
the same, she liked his coming in and was flattered to know that he
thought it worth while to bother about her. But she began to edge him to
the door. He had come at a most unpropitious moment.

"Oh ho!" said Peter. "So this's what higher education does for you? A
nice mixture--cigarettes and candies--I must say. Now I know why you
locked your door. With a marshmallow in one hand and an Egyptian Beauty
in the other you lie on your sofa in the latest thing in peignoirs and
see life through the pages of,--what?" He picked up a book from the
table. "Good Lord!" he added; "you don't mean to say you stuff this
piffle into you?" It was a collection of plays by Strindberg.

"Oh, go to the theatre!" said Ethel. "You're being horridly Oxford now
and I hate it."

"You'll get a lot more of it before I've done with you," said Peter.
"All the same, you look very nice, my dear. I'm very proud of you, and I
hope you will do me the honour to be seen about with me sometimes. But
how about taking some of that powder off your nose? If you begin trying
to hide it at sixteen it'll be lost altogether at twenty." He made a
sudden pounce at her and holding both her hands so that she could not
scratch, rubbed all the powder away from her little proud nose and made
for the door, just missing the cushion which came flying after him, and
took himself and his big laugh along the passage.

Immensely relieved at being left alone, Ethel locked the door again and
went over to her dressing-table, where she repaired damage with quick,
deft fingers. With another glance at the window,--a glance in which
there was some impatience,--she arranged herself on the settee to wait.


IX

No wonder Peter had made remarks about this room. It was deliciously
characteristic of its owner. Large and airy; all its furniture was white
and its hangings were of creamy cretonne covered with little rosebuds.
The narrow bed was tucked away in a corner so that the writing-desk, the
sofa and the revolving book-stand--on which stood a bowl of mammoth
chrysanthemums--might dominate the room. Several mezzotints of Watts'
pictures hung on the walls and a collection of framed illustrations of
the Arabian Nights, by Dulac. The whole effect was one of naïve
sophistication.

Through the open window the various sounds of the city's activity
floated rather pleasantly. There was even a note of cheerfulness in the
insistent bells of the trolley-cars on Madison Avenue and the chugging
of a taxicab on the other side of the street. Before many minutes had
gone by a rope ladder dangled outside the window, and this was followed
immediately afterwards by the lithe and wiry figure of a boy. Wearing a
rather sheepish expression he remained sitting on the sill, swinging his
legs. "Hello!" said he. "How are you feeling?"

"There's some improvement to-night," said Ethel. "Won't you come in?
Were you waiting for a signal?"

"You bet!"

He was a nice boy, with a frank, honest face, a blunt nose and a
laughing mouth. His hair was dark and thick, and his shoulders square.
He was eighteen and he looked every day of it. He lived next door and
was the son of a man who owned a line of steamships and a French mother,
who was not on speaking terms with Mrs. Guthrie, owing to the fact that
the Doctor had been obliged to remonstrate about her parrot. This
expensive prodigy gave the most lifelike and frequent imitations of
cats, trolley-cars, newsboys, sirens and other superfluous and
distressing disturbances on the window-sill of the room which was next
to his laboratory. So this boy and girl--unconsciously playing all over
again the story of the Montagues and Capulets--met surreptitiously night
after night, the boy coming over the roof and using the rope
ladder--which had played its part in all the great romances. Was there
any harm in him? Well, he was eighteen.

"What'll you have first?" asked Ethel, in her best hostess
manner--"candies or cigarettes?"

"Both," said the boy; and with a lump in his cheek and an expression of
admiration in both eyes he started a cigarette. He was about to sit on
the settee at Ethel's feet, but she pointed to a chair and into this he
subsided, crossing one leg over the other and hitching his trousers
rather high so that he might display to full advantage a pair of very
smart socks, newly purchased.

"I hope you locked your bedroom door," said Ethel, "and please don't
forget to whisper. There's no chance of our being caught, but we may as
well be careful."

The boy nodded and made a little face. "If father found out about this,"
he said; "oh, Gee! What did you do with Ellen after she bounced in last
night?"

"Oh, I gave her one of my hats. I told her that if she kept quiet there
was a frock waiting for her. She's safe. Now, amuse me!"

For some minutes the boy remained silent, worrying his brain as to how
to comply with the girl's rather difficult and peremptory request. He
knew that she was not easy to amuse. He was a little frightened at the
books she read and looked up to her with a certain amount of awe. He
liked her best when she said nothing and was content to sit quite quiet
and look pretty. After deep and steady thought he took a chance. "Do you
know this one?" he asked, and started whistling a new ragtime through
his teeth.

It was new to Ethel. She liked it. Its rhythm set her feet moving. "Oh,
that's fine," she said. "What are the words?"

The boy was a gentleman. He shook his head, thereby stimulating her
curiosity a hundred-fold.

"Oh don't be silly. I shall know them sooner or later, whatever they
are--besides, I'm not a child."

The boy lied chivalrously. "Well, honestly, I don't know
them,--something about 'Row, row, row'--I don't know the rest."

She knew that he did know. She liked him for not telling her the truth,
but she made a mental note to order the song the following morning.

And so, for about an hour, these two young things who imagined that this
was life carried on a desultory conversation, while the boy gradually
filled the room with cigarette smoke, and remained reluctantly a whole
yard away from the sofa. It was all very childish and simple, but to
them it was romance with a very big R. They were making believe that
they had thrown the world back about a hundred years or so. He was a
knight and she a lady in an enemy's castle; and, although their mothers
didn't speak, they liked to ignore the fact that Mrs. Guthrie would have
had no objection to his coming to tea as often as he desired and taking
Ethel for walks in broad daylight whenever he wished for a little mild
exercise. But,--he was eighteen, and so presently, repulsed by her
tongue but enticed by her eyes, he left his chair and found himself
sitting on the settee at Ethel's feet, holding her hand, which thrilled
him very much. She was kinder than usual that night, sweeter and more
girlish. Her stockings were awfully pretty, too, and her hair went into
more than usually delicious ripples round her face.

"You're a darling," he said suddenly. "I love to come here like this. I
hope you'll be ill for a month." And he slid forward with gymnastic
clumsiness and put his arm round her shoulder. He was just going to kiss
her and so satisfy an overwhelming craving when there was a soft knock
on the door and Dr. Guthrie's voice followed it. "Are you awake, Ethel?"

The boy sprang to his feet, stood for a moment with a look of peculiar
shame on his face, turned on his heels, made for the window, went
through it like a rabbit and up the troubadour ladder, which disappeared
after him.

Ethel held her breath and remained transfixed. Again the knock came and
the question was repeated. But she made no answer, and presently, when
the sound of footsteps died away, she got up--a little peevish and more
than a little irritable--kicked a small pile of cigarette ash which the
boy had dropped upon her carpet, and said to herself: "_Just_ as he was
going to kiss me! Goodness, how _annoying_ father is!"


X

The following morning Belle took Nicholas Kenyon for a walk. Dressed in
a suit of blue flannel with white bone buttons, with a pair of white
spats gleaming over patent leather shoes and a grey hat stuck at an
angle of forty-five, Kenyon looked as fresh and as dapper as though he
had been to bed the night before at ten o'clock. He had, as a matter of
fact, come home with the milk; but he was one of those men who possess
the enviable gift of looking healthy and untired after the sort of
nights which make the ordinary man turn to chemistry and vibro-massage.

Belle had sported a new hat for the occasion.

This fact Kenyon realized with that queer touch of intuition which was
characteristic of him. "By Jove!" he said. "That's something like a hat,
Belle. Hearty congratulations. You suit it to perfection."

Belle beamed upon him. "But you would say that anyhow, wouldn't you?"

"Perfectly true; but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred I shouldn't
mean it."

They turned into Madison Avenue. It was an exquisite morning. The whole
city was bathed in sun, but the refreshing tang of late autumn was in
the air. Most of the large houses were still closed, their owners
lingering in the country or abroad. All the same there was the
inevitable amount of traffic in the streets and apparently the usual
number of passers-by. The city can be--according to the strange little
creatures who write society news--"utterly deserted" and yet contain
all its teeming millions.

"And what may that be?" asked Kenyon, pointing to the heavy white
buttresses of a church which backed on the street.

"Oh, that's the Roman Catholic Cathedral."

"Roman Catholic, eh? I noticed churches everywhere as we drove up from
the docks,--more churches than pubs apparently, and yet I suppose it
would be quite absurd to imagine that New Yorkers imbibe their alcohol
entirely in the form of religion."

"Quite," said Belle, dryly. "Although we have a hundred religions and
only five cocktails."

"I see you also go in for antique furniture."

Belle laughed. "You have a quick eye," she said. "There's so much
genuine Old English stuff in this city that if it were sent to England
there wouldn't be room for it on shore. Tell me; what are your plans?"

"Well," said Kenyon, "I'm going to accept your father's perfectly
charming hospitality for a fortnight and then take rooms in a bachelor
apartment-house, of which Graham has told me, for the winter."

"You're going to settle down here?" cried Belle.

"Rather,--for six months. I'm here to study the conditions, make myself
familiar with the characteristics and draw from both what I hope will be
the foundations of much usefulness." Kenyon considered that he had
enveloped his true mission--which was to lighten the pockets of all
unwary young men--with a satirical verbiage that did him credit.

"I thought that perhaps you'd come for some other reason," said Belle,
whose whole face showed her disappointment.

Kenyon shot a quick glance at her. How naïve she was--how very much too
easy--but, nevertheless, how very young and desirable. "That goes
without saying, you delicious thing," he replied, closing his hand
warmly round her arm for a moment and so bringing the light back to her
eyes. "By the way," he continued, "what's the matter with Graham?"

"I don't know that anything's the matter with Graham."

"I think so. I notice a worried look about him that he didn't have at
Oxford; that he seems to be always on the verge of telling me something,
and drawing back at the last minute. I must make a point of finding out
what his trouble is. Peter and I were discussing it this morning after
breakfast. We're both a bit anxious about him. Do you know if your
father has noticed it?"

"Father? Oh, he doesn't notice anything. He believes that Graham is
working very hard and doing well. He knows less about what goes on in
our house than the people who live next door."

"That's rather a pity. I'm all for complete confidence between father
and son. However, I shall play father to Graham for a bit and see what
can be done for him. He puzzles me. There's a mystery somewhere."

Something of this mystery was disclosed to Kenyon and Peter that night.
After dining them both at the Harvard Club--a place which filled Kenyon
with admiration and surprise--Graham suddenly suggested, with a queer
touch of excitement, that they should go with him to his apartment.

"Your apartment?" said Peter. "What on earth do you mean?"

"Well, come and see," said Graham.

The two elder men looked at each other in amazement. Kenyon's quick mind
ran ahead, but Peter, the unsophisticated, was quite unable to
understand what in the world Graham wanted an apartment for when he
lived at home. They all three left West Forty-fourth Street in silence
and walked arm in arm down Fifth Avenue as far as Twenty-eighth Street.
Here they turned westward and followed Graham, who was wearing an air of
rather sheepish pride, up the steps of an old brown stone house with
rather a shabby portico.

"Dismal looking hole," said Peter.

"Wait!" said Graham, and he put his finger on a bell. The door opened
automatically and he led the way into a scantily furnished hall and up
three flights of stairs, whose red carpet was in the autumn of its days.
Drawing up in front of a door on the left of the passage he rang again,
and after a lengthy pause was admitted to a small apartment by a colored
maid, who gave a wide grin of recognition.

"Come right in," said Graham. "Lily, take our hats and coats. Don't
leave them about in the hall. Hang them up and then go and get some
drinks."

Kenyon looked about him curiously. He could see that the place was
newly furnished and that everything had been chosen by a man. He glanced
into the dining-room. The pictures were sporting and the furniture
mission. He detected no sign of a woman's hand anywhere. He began to be
puzzled. He had expected to find something quite different. But when
Graham opened the door of the sitting-room and said: "Well, here we are,
Ita!" and he saw a small, dark, olive-skinned girl rise up from a settee
and run forward to Graham with a little cry of welcome, he knew that his
deduction of the situation had been a right one. So this was the
mystery.

Still with the same air of sheepish pride, Graham said: "Peter, this is
Miss Ita Strabosck. My brother, Ita. And this is Nicholas Kenyon, who's
a great friend of mine. They've just come over from England, and so of
course I've brought them to see you."

The little girl held out a very shy hand, and said: "I am so glad. Eet
ees very good of you to come."

In a curiously plain tight frock of some soft black material, cut square
across her tiny breasts, and leaving her arms bare almost to the
shoulders, she stood, with one knee bent, looking from one man to the
other with a sort of wistful eagerness to be treated kindly. She held a
tiny black Teddy bear with red eyes against her cheek, like a child.

Peter, for a reason which he was unable to explain to himself, felt a
wave of sympathy go over him. He not only accepted the girl on her face
value, but somehow or other believed her to be younger and more
romantic than she looked. She seemed to him to have stepped out of the
pages of some Arabian book--to be a little exotic whom Graham must have
discovered far away from her native hot-house. He liked the way in which
her thick hair was arranged round her face, and he would have sworn that
she was without guile.

Not so Kenyon. "Great Scott!" he said to himself. "Here's a little devil
for you. Our young friend Graham has had his leg pulled. I've seen
mosquitoes before, but the poison of this one will take all the
ingenuity of an expert to counteract."

He sat down and watched the girl, who threw one quick antagonistic
glance at him and attached herself to Peter, to whom she talked in
monosyllables. She might only very recently have left a Convent School,
except that her dog-like worship of Graham seemed to prove that she owed
him a deep debt of gratitude for some great service.

Graham watched her, too, and his expression showed Kenyon that even if
he didn't love her he believed in her and was proud of himself.


XI

By a sort of mutual consent the three men left the apartment in
Twenty-eighth Street early. They did not desire to finish the evening at
any cabaret or club. They called the first passing taxicab and drove
home. By mutual consent also they never once referred to Ita Strabosck,
but discussed everything else under the sun. Kenyon had never been so
useful. With consummate tact--but all the while with the picture in his
mind of the cunning little actress whom they had just left--he led the
conversation from dancing to baseball and from country clubs to women's
clothes. Whenever the cab passed a strong light Graham made a quick,
examining glance at Peter's face. He knew old Peter as well as Peter
knew his piano, and he was quite well aware of the fact that although
his brother laughed a good deal at Kenyon's quaint turn of phrase he was
upset at what he had seen.

It was just after eleven o'clock when they went into the smoking-room of
the house in Fifty-second Street. Mrs. Guthrie and Ethel had gone to
bed. Belle had not returned from a theatre party. The Doctor was at work
in his laboratory. He heard the boys come in. The sound of their voices
made him raise his head eagerly. He even half-rose from his chair in a
desire to join them and hear them talk, and laugh with them and get from
them some of that sense of youth which they exuded so pleasantly, but
his terrible shyness got the better of him once more and he returned to
his experiments. How ironical it was that with complete unconsciousness
he was leaving it to such a man as Nicholas Kenyon to play father to his
second son, who had never in his short life needed a real father so
badly.

For some little time--smoking a good cigar with complete
appreciation--Kenyon continued to give forth his impressions of New
York so far as he knew it. He was especially amusing in his description
of the effect upon him of the first sight of the Great White Way. Then,
all of a sudden, there came one of those strange pauses. It was Peter
who broke the silence. "Graham, old boy," he said, "tell us about it.
What does it all mean? Good Lord! you're only twenty-four. Are you
married?"

Before Graham could reply, Kenyon sent out a scoffing laugh. "Married!
Is he married?" he cried. "My good old grandfather's ghost, Peter! But
how indescribably green you are. Hang me if you're not like a sort of
Peter Pan! You've passed through Harvard and Oxford with a skin over
your eyes. It's all very beautiful, very commendable--and what Belle
would call 'very dear' of you--and all that sort of thing, but somehow
you make me feel that I've got to go through life with you in the
capacity of the sort of guide one hires in Paris--the human Baedeker."

"But if Graham hasn't married that poor girl," said Peter, bluntly,
"what's he doing with her?"

Graham sprang to his feet and began to walk about the room. All about
his tall, slight, well-built figure there was a curious nervousness and
excitement. Even in the carefully subdued light of the room it was plain
to see that his face was rather haggard and drawn. The boy looked years
older than Peter. "I'll start off," he said, "by giving you fellows my
word of honor that what I'm going to tell you is the truth. I have to
begin like this because if either of you were to tell me this story I
don't think I should be able to believe it. Some time ago I was taken--I
forget by whom--to a pestilential but rather amusing place in Fortieth
Street. It's a huge studio run by a woman who calls herself Papowsky.
It's what you, Nick, would call the last word in supereffeteness. Ita
Strabosck was one of the girls. I liked her at once. I didn't fall in
love with her, but she appealed to me and it was simply to see her that
I went there several times. I knew the place was pretty rotten and I
didn't cotton on to the people who were there or the things they did. I
even knew that the police had their eyes on it, but I liked it all the
more because of that. It gave it a sort of zest, like absinthe in
whiskey."

"Quite!" said Kenyon. "Fire away!"

"The last time I went there, Ita took me into a corner, told me that she
was never allowed out of the place and was a sort of White Slave, and
begged me to take her away. I don't think I shall ever forget the sight
of that poor little wretch trembling and shaking. It was pretty bad.
Well, I took her away. I got her out by a fire-escape when nobody was
watching us. Dodged through a window of a restaurant on the first floor,
and so out into the street. It was very tricky work. The day after I
took the apartment that you came to to-night, furnished it, and there
Ita has been ever since. I go there nearly every night until the small
hours. She's happy now and safe and I don't regret it. She hated the
place and the things she had been forced to do and nothing will make me
believe that she was bad. She was just a victim--that's all. And if I
have to go without things I don't care so long as she has all she needs.
That's the story. What d'you think of it?"

Peter got up, went over to his brother and held out his hand silently.
With a rather pathetic expression of gratitude in his eyes, Graham took
it and held it tight. "That's like you, Peter," he said, a little
huskily.

Kenyon made no movement. He looked with a pitying smile at the two boys
as they stood eye to eye. The whole thing sounded to him like a fairy
tale and for a moment he wondered whether Graham was not endeavoring to
obtain their sympathy under false pretences. Then he made up his mind
that Graham--like the man with whom he had lived at Oxford--was green
also, for all that he had knocked about in New York for two years. Not
from any kindness of heart, but simply because he wanted to use Graham
as a means of introducing him to the young male wealthy set of the city,
he determined to get him out somehow or other of this disastrous
entanglement. He would however go to work tactfully without allowing
Graham to think that he had made a complete fool of himself. He knew
that if he wounded this boy's vanity and brought him down from his
heroic pedestal he would set his teeth, put his back to the wall and
refuse to be assisted. With keen insight he could see that this incident
was likely to injure the usefulness of his visit to America.

"Um!" he said. "It's a pitiful story, Graham. You behaved devilish well,
old boy. Not many men would have acted so quickly and so unselfishly.
Now, sit down and tell me a few things."

Gladly enough Graham did so, heaving a great sigh. He was glad that he
had made a clear breast of all this. He was too young to keep it a
secret. He wanted sympathy urgently and a little human help. Peter
loaded and lit a pipe and drew his chair into the group.

"This girl Ita What's-her-name loves you, of course?"

Graham nodded.

"Anyone could see that," said Peter.

"But she'd been in that studio some time before you came along, I take
it,--I mean she'd been anybody's property for the asking?"

Graham shuddered. "I hate to think so," he said.

Peter kicked the leg of the nearest chair.

"How d'you feel?" asked Kenyon.

"Awfully sorry for her," said Graham.

"Yes, of course. What I mean is, are you all right?"

Graham looked puzzled. "I find it rather difficult to pay for
everything," he said, "especially as I've been damned unlucky lately."

The man of the world involuntarily raised his eyebrows. "Good Lord!" he
said to himself. "And this boy is the son of a specialist.
Blind--blind!" Then he spoke aloud, passing on to another point. "How
long do you think it is incumbent upon you to make yourself the guardian
of this girl?"

Graham shrugged his shoulders. "She comes from Poland. Her father and
mother are dead and she has no one to look after her."

"I'll help you," said Peter.

That was exactly what Kenyon didn't want. He got up, went over to the
table and mixed a drink. "Potter off to bed, Graham, old boy," he said.
"Get a good night's rest. You need it. We'll go further into the matter
in a day or two. It requires serious consideration. Anyway, I
congratulate you. You're a bit of a knight, and you've my complete
admiration." He led the boy to the door, patted him on the shoulder and
got rid of him. Then he returned to Peter, whose face showed that he was
laboring under many conflicting emotions.

"Nick," he said, "he's only twenty-four--just making a beginning. He did
the only thing he could do under the circumstances, but,--but what would
father say?"

"I don't think it's a question as to what your father would say," said
Kenyon. "If I know anything, the way to put it is what can your father
do? Of all men in the city he's the one who could be most useful in this
peculiar mess-up--Peter, you and I have got to get that boy out of this,
otherwise----"

"Otherwise what?"

"Otherwise--quite shortly--the police are likely to fish out of the
river the dead body of a promising lad of twenty-four, and there'll be
great grief in this house."

"What d'you mean?"

"Exactly what I say. That girl's a liar, a cheat and a fraud."

"I don't believe you."

"I don't care whether you believe me or not. She's rotten from head to
foot. She's as easy to read as an advertisement. She's taking advantage
of a fellow who's as unsuspicious as you are. You're both green,--green,
I tell you,--as green as grass."

"I'd rather be green," cried Peter, hotly, "than go through life with
your rotten skepticism."

"Would you? You talk like an infant. Graham will want to marry some
day,--and then what? Good Heavens! Hasn't anybody taken the trouble to
tell you two any of the facts of life? You are neither of you fit to be
allowed out in the streets without a nurse. It's appalling. Skeptical,
you call me. You're blind, I tell you. Blind! So's the old man in the
next room. There's an ugly shadow over this house, Peter, as sure as
you're alive. Don't stand there glaring at me. I'm talking facts. If
you've got any regard for your brother and his health and his future; if
you want to save your mother from unutterable suffering and your father
from a hideous awakening, don't talk any further drivel to me, but make
up your mind that the girl, Ita Strasbosck, has it in her power to turn
Graham into a suicide. She's a liar--a liar and a trickster and a
menace--and I'll make it my business to prove it to you and Graham."

"You can't."

"Can't I? We'll see about that. And you've got to help me. We've got to
make Graham see that he must shake her off at once,--at once, I tell
you. The alternative you know."

Peter got up and strode about the room. He was worried and anxious. He
didn't, unfortunately, fully appreciate the gravity of this affair,
because, as Kenyon had said so tauntingly, he was a child in such
matters. But what he did appreciate was that his only brother had done
something, however sympathetic the motive, which might have far-reaching
consequences and which did away with the possibility of his going, as it
was Peter's determination to go, clean and straight to a good girl.

He turned to Kenyon, who had made himself comfortable. "I'll help you
for all I'm worth, Nick," he said.

"Right," said Kenyon. "I'll think out a line of action and let you know
to-morrow. There's no time to be lost."


XII

Kenyon got rid of Peter, too.

Apart from the fact that he was going to wait up for Belle, he wanted to
be alone. He was angry. It was just like his bad luck to come all the
way to America and find that the two men who had it in their power to be
of substantial use to him were both fully occupied,--one being
hopelessly in love, the other in money trouble and in what he recognized
as a difficult and even dangerous position. With characteristic
selfishness he resented these things. They made it necessary for him to
exercise his brain,--not for himself--which was his idea of the whole
art of living--but for others. There were other things that he resented
also. One was the fact that Peter was what he called a damned child. He
had no admiration whatever for his friend's absolute determination to
look only at the clean things of life. A thousand times since they had
shared the same rooms he had cursed Peter because of his sweeping
refusal to discuss a question which he knew to be of vital and
far-reaching importance. At these times Peter had always said something
like this: "My dear Nick, I'm not going to be a doctor, a woman-hunter,
or a sloppy man about town. I don't want to know any details whatever of
the things which stir up other men's curiosity. I've no room in my brain
for them. They don't amuse me or interest me. I'm jolly well going to
remain a damned child, whether you like it or not, so you may chuck
trying to drag me into these midnight discussions of yours with the men
who hang nudes all over their walls and gloat over filthy little French
books."

And then there was Graham. He, like untold hundreds of his type, had a
certain amount of precocity, but no knowledge. He had merely peeked at
the truth of things through a chink. He had looked at life with the
salacious eyes of a Peeping Tom. And what was the result? Worse than
total ignorance. Deep down in whatever soul he had, Nicholas Kenyon
honestly and truly believed in friendship between father and son. He
knew--none better--because it was his business to observe, that a young
man was frightfully and terribly handicapped who went out into the world
unwarned, unadvised and uninitiated. He had often come across men like
Peter and Graham whose lives had been absolutely ruined at the very
outset for the reason that their fathers had either been too cowardly or
too indifferent to give them the benefit of their own experience and
early troubles. In fact, most of the men he knew--and he knew a great
many--had been left to discover the essential truths and facts for
themselves. The inevitable end of it was that they made their
discoveries too late.

Fate certainly must have had a very grim amusement in watching Nicholas
Kenyon as he walked up and down the library of Dr. Hunter Guthrie's
house that night, blazing at the delinquencies of fathers. Nevertheless,
Kenyon had the right to be indignant, whether his reasons for being so
sprang out of his selfishness or not. His own father was an
unscrupulous, unserious man, that was true, but at any rate he had given
his son a human chance. He could take it or leave it as he liked. And
when Kenyon, piecing together all that he had heard of Dr. Guthrie from
Peter, from Graham and from Belle, added all that to the very obvious
fact that these two boys were out in the world with blind eyes, he burst
into a scoffing laugh. In his mind's eye he could see the excellent and
distinguished Doctor rounding his back over experiments for the benefit
of humanity, while he utterly neglected to give two of the human beings
for whom he was responsible the few words of advice which would render
it unnecessary for them to become his patients.

If Kenyon had been a more generous man--if in his nature there had been
one small grain of unselfishness--he would have gone at that very
moment, then and there, to the door of the Doctor's laboratory--into
that wonderful room--sat down opposite the man who spent his life in it
with such noble concentration and begged him to desert his microbes and
turn his attention to his sons. As it was he neglected to take an
opportunity which would have enabled the recording angel to make one
very good entry on the blank credit side of his account, and
concentrated upon a way in which he could use Peter and Graham for his
own material ends. He was immediately faced therefore with two "jobs,"
as he called them,--one to queer Peter's engagement with Betty, in order
that he might achieve his friend's whole attention, the other to lift
Graham out of his ghastly entanglement, for the same purpose. Bringing
himself up to that point and relying upon his ingenuity with complete
confidence, Kenyon mixed himself another high-ball and listened with a
certain amount of eagerness for Belle's light step.

He hadn't long to wait. He had just gone into the dimly lighted hall
with the intention of getting some air on the front doorstep, when the
door opened and Belle let herself in.

"You keep nice hours," he said.

Belle had been dancing. Her cheeks were glowing and her eyes bright. She
had never looked so all-conqueringly youthful or so imbued with the joy
of life. She came across to him like a young goddess of the forest, with
the wild beauty and that suggestion of unrestraint which always made
Kenyon's blood run quickly.

"Have you waited for me?" she asked. "How perfectly adorable of you."

"What have you been doing?"

"Oh, the usual things--dinner, theatre, dancing."

Kenyon went nearer and put his hands on her arms, hotly. "Curse those
men!" he said.

"What men?"

"The men who've been holding you to-night. Why have I come over? Can't
you scratch these engagements and wait for me? I'm not going to share
you with every Tom, Dick and Harry in this place."

A feeling of triumph came to Belle--a new feeling--because hitherto this
man's attitude had been that of master. "You're jealous!" she cried.

Kenyon turned away sharply. For once he was not playing with this girl
for the sport of the thing, just to see what she would say and do in
order to pass away the time. The whole evening had tended to upset his
calculations and plans. He had found himself thrown suddenly into a
position of responsibility,--a state that he avoided with rare and
consummate agility. And now came Belle, radiant and high-spirited, from
an evening spent with other men,--more beautiful and desirable than he
had ever seen her look.

Belle turned him back. "You _are_ jealous, you _are_."

"Oh, good Lord, no," said Kenyon, with his most bored drawl. "Why should
I be? After all it isn't for me to care what you do, is it? It's a large
world and there's plenty of room for both of us--what?"

He walked away.

Triumph blazed in Belle's heart. She saw in Kenyon's eyes that he was
saying the very opposite of the thoughts that were in his mind. She
almost shouted with joy. She had longed to see into the heart of this
man who was under such complete and aggravating self-control,--even to
hurt him to obtain a big, spontaneous outburst of emotion from him. She
loved him desperately, indiscreetly--far too well for her peace of
mind--and she urgently needed some answering sparks of fire.

She didn't move. She stood with her cloak thrown back, her chin held
high and the light falling on her dark hair and white flesh. This was
her moment. She would seize it.

"Yes, there _is_ plenty of room for us both," she said, "and the fact
that I shall go on dancing with other men needn't inconvenience you in
the least. I don't suppose that we shall even see each other in the
crowd. There are many men who'll give their ears to dance with me,--I
mean men who can dance, not bored Englishmen."

She drew blood. Kenyon went across to her quickly. "How dare you talk to
me like that! Curse these men and their ears. Who's brought me to this
country? You know I came for you,--you know it. I _am_ jealous--as
jealous as the devil. And if ever you let another man put his arms round
you I'll smash his face." He put out his hot hands to catch her.

But, with a little teasing laugh, Belle dodged and flitted into the
library. The spirit of coquettishness was awake in her. _She_ had the
upper hand now and a small account to render for missed mails, and an
appearance of being too sure. She threw off her cloak and stood with her
back to the fireplace, looking like one of Romney's pictures of Lady
Hamilton come to life.

Kenyon strode in after her, all stirred by her beauty. "In future," he
said, "you dance with me. You understand?"

Belle raised her eyebrows and then bowed profoundly. "As you say, O my
master!" And then she held out her arms with a sudden delicious abandon.
"Take me, then. Let's dance all the way through life."

Kenyon caught her, and all about the room these two went, moving
together in perfect unison, cheek to cheek, until almost breathless
Belle broke into a little laugh, stopped singing, and said: "The band's
tired." But Kenyon held her tighter and closer and kissed her lips again
and again and again.

With a little touch of warning in its tone the clock on the mantel-piece
presently struck two, and Belle freed herself and straightened her hair
with a rather uncertain hand. "I must go now," she said breathlessly.
"Father may be working late. Supposing he came through this room?"

"Serve him right," said Kenyon.

They went upstairs together on tip-toe, and halted for a moment on the
threshold of Belle's bed-room. Through the half-open door Kenyon saw the
glow of yellow light on the dressing-table, and the corner of a virginal
bed. Once more he kissed her and then, breathing hard, went to his own
room, stood in the darkness for a moment, and thanked his lucky star for
the gift of Belle.


XIII

The following afternoon, Peter, Kenyon and Belle went to see Ranken
Townsend's pictures and to have tea with Betty. The little party was a
great success. Peter and the artist got on splendidly together, which
filled Betty with joy and gladness, and Kenyon had added to the general
smoothness and pleasantness by offering extremely intelligent and
enthusiastic criticism of the canvasses that were shown to him, drawing
subtle comparisons between them and those of Reynolds and Gainsborough.
Like all true artists, Townsend was a humble man and unsuspicious. He
believed, in the manner of all good workers, that he had yet to find
himself, although he had met with uncommon success. He was, therefore,
much heartened and warmed by the remarks of one who, although young,
evidently knew of what he was talking and proved himself to be something
of a judge. When Kenyon received a cordial invitation to come again to
the studio he solidified the good impression that he had made by saying
that he would be honoured and delighted.

There had been a sharp shower during tea, but the sky had cleared when
they left Gramercy Park, taking Betty with them, and so they started out
to walk home.

Belle and Betty went on in front, arm in arm, and the two friends
followed. This suited Kenyon exactly. He had laid his plan and had
something to say to Peter.

Belle was very happy, and she showed it. She looked round at Betty with
her eyes dancing. "I can see that you're dying to ask me something," she
said. "But don't. You and I don't have to ask each other questions.
We've always told each other everything, and we always will."

"Belle, you're en-ga----"

"S-s-s-h! Don't mention the word."

"Why?"

"Well, we've been talking this afternoon and Nicholas says, and I think
he's right--though I wish he weren't--that he doesn't want to go to
father until he's been here longer and has made up his mind what he's
going to do. You see, he's not well off. He's got to work,--although I
can't fancy Nicholas working,--and so we're not going to be really
engaged for a few months. Meantime, he's going to look round and find
something to do. That'll be easy. You don't know how clever he is,--not
merely clever--a monkey can be clever, or a conjurer--the word I meant
to use was 'able.' Aren't you glad? Isn't it splendid?"

"Oh, my dear," said Betty, "wouldn't it be perfectly wonderful if we
could be married on the same day? Of course I've seen it coming----"

Belle laughed. "I knew you'd say that. Personally I didn't see it
coming. After we'd left Oxford I began to think that Nicholas had only
been flirting with me. He wrote such curious, aloof little letters and
very few of them. They might have been written by an epigramist to his
maiden aunt; but last night,--well, last night made everything
different, and this afternoon we've had a long talk. Of course I wish we
were going to be openly and properly engaged, but I'm very happy and so
I don't grumble."

"As the future Countess of Shropshire, I wonder whether you will ever
give a little back room in your beautiful English place to the young
American lawyer and his wife!"

"Betty, I swear to you that I don't care a dime about all that now,--I
mean the title and the place. It's just Nicholas that I want--Nicholas,
and no one else. I wouldn't care if he were what he calls a 'bounder' or
a 'townee.' My dear, I'm mad about him--just mad."

"Isn't everything as right as Truth?" said Betty. "The more I see Peter
the more I love him. He's,--well, he's a man, and he's mine. He's mine
for another reason, and that's because he's always going to be a boy,
and I'm here to look after him. He'll need me. And I must have him need
me, too, because I need to be needed. Do you understand?"

Belle nodded. "You're the born mother, my dear," she said, "whereas,
I'm,--well, not. I want love--just love. I'll give everything I've got
in the world for that--everything. Love and excitement and movement,--to
go from place to place meeting new people, hearing new languages, seeing
new types, living bigly and broadly, being consulted by a man who's
brilliant and far-seeing,--_that's_ what I need. That's _my_ idea of
life. Ah-h!" She shot out a deep breath and threw her chin up as though
to challenge argument.

Betty watched her with admiration. She had never looked so unusual, so
exhilarated, so fine. All about her there was the very essence of youth
and courage and health. There was a glow in her white skin that was the
mere reflection of the fire that was alight in her heart. Given
happiness this girl would burst into the most fragrant blossoming and
gleam among her sisters like a rose in a pansy bed. Given pain and
disillusion she had it in her to fling rules, observances, caution,
common sense and even self-respect to the four winds and go with all
possible speed to the devil.

"What would have happened to us both if we hadn't gone to Oxford?" asked
Betty, with an almost comical touch of gravity. "Think! I should be
doomed to be a little old maid, with nothing but an even smaller dog to
keep in order, and as for you----"

"I? Don't let's talk about it. I should have gone top-pace through
several years and then, with thirty looming ahead, married a nice safe
man with oodles of money who would spend his life following me round.
Thank Heaven, I shall never be the centre of that ghastly picture!"

And so they went on, these two young things, opening up their hearts to
each other as they walked home and flying off at all manner of feminine
tangents.

Kenyon, perfectly satisfied with his talk to Belle, whom he had secured
without binding himself to anything definite, was wearing white spats,
and so he picked his way across the wet streets like a cat on hot
bricks. For several blocks he permitted Peter to talk about Betty. His
affectation of interest and sympathy was not so well done as usual. He
had determined, with a sort of professional jealousy, not to allow Ita
Strabosck to trade on Graham's credulity any longer. All his thoughts
were concentrated on his plan to smash up that burlesque arrangement, as
he inwardly called it. If anyone were to make use of Graham he intended
to be that one. The girl, at present a humble member of the great army
of parasites in which he held a commission, must be cleared out. She was
inconveniently in the way.

When Peter was obliged to stop for breath, Kenyon jumped in. "Look
here!" he said. "You're coming with me to the shrine of the pernicious
Papowsky to-night."

"You mean on Graham's business?" asked Peter. "Is it absolutely
necessary to go to that place?"

"Absolutely. You'll see why, if everything works as I think it will,
when we get there."

"Right. And how about Graham?"

"You and Graham are going to have dinner with me at Sherry's. I shall
have to see that he has half a bottle too much champagne. That'll make
him careless and put a bit of devil into him, and when I suggest that he
shall take us to Papowsky's, he will jump at the notion, He's awful keen
to show us what a blood he is. Once he gets us inside the rest will
follow."

"I see. By Jove, I shall be thundering glad when Graham's plucked out of
this wretched mess. The only thing is I'm booked to dine with Mr.
Townsend at his club to-night."

"It can't be done," said Kenyon. "Directly you get home you must
telephone. Say that an urgent matter has just cropped up and beg to be
excused. Call it business--call it anything you like--but get out of
it."

"All right!" said Peter. "I'm heart and soul with you, old boy. I'm very
grateful for all the trouble you're taking. You always were a good
chap."

"My dear Peter, add to my possession of the ordinary number of senses
one that is almost as rare as the Dodo,--the sense of gratitude. Hello!
Here's some of the family in the car!"

They had halted on the steps of the Doctor's house as Mrs. Guthrie and
Ethel were driven up. Kenyon sprang forward, opened the door and handed
the ladies out with an air that Raleigh himself would have found
commendable.

"Blood tells," said Belle, who watched from the top step, with a proud
smile.

"Yes," said Betty, "but I prefer muscle. Look!"

The pavement was uneven in front of the house and the rain had made a
little pool. So Peter picked his mother up, as though she were as light
as a bunch of feathers, and carried her into the house.

"My dearest big boy!" she said.

"Darling little Mum!" said Peter.


XIV

Kenyon, turned out as excellently as usual, led the way into the
dining-room at Sherry's. It was a quarter to eight. Every other table
was occupied. The large room was too warm and was filled with the
conglomerate aromas of food. Peter sat on the right of his host and
Graham on the left. Both men were quiet and distrait,--Peter because he
was anxious, Graham for the reason that he had not been able to leave
behind him the carking worries that now fell daily to his lot. Kenyon,
on the contrary, was in his best form, and even a little excited. Apart
from the fact that he rather liked having something to do that would
prove his knowledge of life and the accuracy of his powers of
psychology, he was looking forward to be amused with what went on in the
studio-apartment of the Papowsky.

"By Jove!" he said, looking around and arranging his tie over the
points of his collar with expert fingers,--a thing which Graham
immediately proceeded to do also,--"this place has a quite distinct
atmosphere. Don't you think so, Peter?"

"Has it?"

"One would, I see, choose it for a trying and dull-bright dinner with a
prospective mother-in-law or with some dear thing, safely married, with
whom one had once rashly imagined one's self to be in love. Waiter, the
wine list!"

Graham laughed.

Kenyon, scoring his first point, continued airily. "For my part, I shall
make a point of dining here one night with an alluring young thing fresh
from the romantic quietude of a Convent School. I feel that these
discreet lights and reserved colours will give a certain amount of
weight and even solemnity to my careful flattery--A large bottle of
Perrier Jouet '02, and be sparing with the ice. Peter, I think you'll
find that this caviare gives many points to the tired stuff that used to
be palmed off on us at Buol's and other undergraduate places of puerile
riotousness."

The dinner, which Kenyon had ordered with becoming care, would have
satisfied the epicureanism of a Russian aristocrat. During all its
courses the host kept up a running fire of anecdote which quickly made
the table a merry one. He also saw to it that Graham's glass was never
empty. They sat laughing, smoking and drinking Crême Yvette until they
were the last people in the room except for an old bloated man and a
very young Hebrew girl. The band, which had mixed ragtime
indiscriminately with Italian opera and Austrian waltzes, and played
them all equally well, went off to acquire the second wind and the
relaxed muscles necessary for a later performance, and the waiters had
long since rearranged the table for supper before Kenyon suggested
adjourning to a club for a game of billiards which would amuse them
until it was time to begin the business of the evening. So they walked
round to the Harvard Club, and here Peter--the only one of the party who
was completely his own master--became host.

They played until a little short of twelve o'clock. By this time, having
been additionally primed up with one or two Scotch whiskeys, Graham was
ready for anything, and it was then that Kenyon suggested that he should
take them to the famous studio. Graham jumped at the idea, falling, as
Kenyon knew that he would, into the little trap set for him. "We're
children in your hands, Graham," he said, with a subtle touch of
flattery. "Lead us into the vortex of art with the lid off. I'm most
frightfully keen to see this place and it'll be great fun for you, duly
protected, to find out whether the Papowsky has discovered whether you
were the Knight Errant who rescued one of her victims. Romance, old
boy--romance with a big R." And so Graham, more than a little unsteady
and with uproarious laughter, led the way.

When they arrived at the studio-apartment in Fortieth Street they found
the hall filled with people. It happened that Papowsky was giving an
Egyptian night and nearly all of the habitués were in appropriate
costumes. With the cunning of her species this woman knew very well that
few things appeal so strongly to a certain type of men and women as
dressing up,--which generally means undressing. The Japanese servant who
took their hats and coats welcomed Graham with oily and deferential
cordiality. "We are having a big night, sir," he said, with the peculiar
sibilation of his kind and with his broad, flat hands clasped together.
"It is Madame's birthday, sir. Yes, sir. You and the gentlemen will
enjoy it very much."

Peter and Kenyon followed Graham into the studio. Their curiosity,
already stirred by the sight of the men and women in the hall, was added
to by the Rembrandt effect of the high, wide room, whose darkness was
only touched here and there by curious faint lights. The buzz of voices
everywhere and little bursts of laughter proved that there were many
people present. As they went in, a powerful lime-light was suddenly
focused on the centre of the room and into this slid a string of young,
small-breasted, round-limbed girls. Led by one who contorted herself in
what was supposedly the Egyptian manner, they moved to and fro with bent
knees and angular gestures, and rigid profiles. Music came out of the
darkness,--the music of a string band with cymbals.

"Good Lord!" said Kenyon. "What an amazing mixture of exotic stinks!"

"Look out for your money," said Peter, with a touch of blunt
materialism.

Graham made for an unoccupied alcove, in which there was a flabby
divan. On this they all three sat down and began to peer about. A few
yards away from them they presently made out an astonishing group of
young men dressed as Egyptians. They were sitting in affectionate
closeness, simpering and tittering together. On the other side they
gradually discerned an overwhelmingly fat, elderly woman holding a kind
of Court. She was almost enveloped in pearls. Otherwise she was scantily
hidden. Her feet were in sandals. Several mere boys had arranged
themselves in picturesque attitudes about her and half a dozen maidens
were grouped round her chair. One was fanning her with a large yellow
leaf. The blue light under which Graham had sat listening to the
whispered appeal of Ita Strabosck fell softly and erotically upon them.

"Circe come to life," said Kenyon.

"Ugh! I don't quite know how I'm going to prevent myself from being
sick," said Peter.

"Ah! but wait a bit," said Graham. "The show hasn't begun yet."

It made a fairly good beginning as he spoke. The girls in the circle of
light brought their attitudinizing to an end and their places were
instantly taken by two painted men in coloured loin-cloths. To a
screaming outburst of wild and incoherent music they gave what seemed to
Kenyon to be a perfect imitation of civet-cats at play. They crawled
along on all-fours, sprang high into the air, crouched, bounded, whirled
round each other and finally, amid a roar of applause, rolled out of
view wrapped in each other's arms.

"Um!" said Kenyon. "After just such an exhibition as that Rome burst
into flames."

There was insistent demand for an encore. The performance was repeated
with the same gusto and relish. The three men saw nothing of it. Just as
the band burst forth again, Kenyon made a long arm, caught the skimpy
covering of a girl who was passing and drew her into the alcove.

"Come and cheer us up, Minutia," he said. "We feel like lost souls
here."

The girl was willing enough. It was her business to cheer. She stood in
front of them for a moment so that the blue light should show her
charms. She looked very young and tiny. Fair hair was twisted round her
head. She wore nothing but a thin, loose Egyptian smock, but her small
snub nose and impudent mouth placed her, whatever might be her costume,
on Broadway. "Say! Why are you muts dressed like men?" she asked with
eager interest.

"Oh, well," said Kenyon, "we happen to be men; but I swear that we won't
advertise the fact."

The girl greatly enjoyed the remark, but her scream of laughter was
drowned by the band. Then she caught sight of Graham. "Oh, hello, Kid!
So you've come back."

Graham made room for her. He rather liked being recognized. Kenyon would
see that he knew his way about. "Yes, here I am again. It's difficult to
get the Papowsky dope out of the system."

"Don't see why you should try. It's pretty good dope, I guess." She
snuggled herself in between Graham and Kenyon, putting an arm round
each. She bent across Kenyon to examine Peter and gave an exaggeratedly
dramatic cry of surprise and admiration. "My God! It's a giant! Say,
dearie, you'd be the King of all the pussies, in a skin. All them dinky
little love-birds would hop round your feet and chirp. Oh, gosh, you'd
make some hit among the artists, sure!"

"Think so?" said Peter. He would have given a great deal for a pipe at
that moment, so that he could puff out great clouds of smoke as a
disinfectant.

"A gala night," said Graham.

"Sure. If the police were to make a raid to-night,--gee, there'd be a
fine list of names in to-morrer's papers!"

"Think they will?" asked Kenyon. "By Jove! I wish they would. Think of
seeing these people scuffling like frightened rabbits. It would be
epoch-making."

The girl turned a keenly interested eye on Kenyon and looked him over
with unabashable deliberation. "You've got a funny kind of accent," she
said. "What is it? English?"

It was the first time that Kenyon had ever been accused of speaking with
an accent. He was delighted. It appealed to his alert sense of humour.
He laughed and nodded.

"The giant ain't English, is he? Are you, dearie?"

"No," said Peter.

"That's fine. I guess I don't like the English much. They always strike
me as being like Americans, trying hard to be different."

"You don't dislike me, I hope? That would be a very bitter blow," said
Kenyon, tweeking her ear.

"Oh, you're a comic," she said. "You're all right. Is this your first
visit?"

"Yes. Have you been here long?" Kenyon asked the question carelessly, as
though to keep the ball moving. It was, as a matter of fact, the
beginning of his plan to disillusion Graham.

"Oh, I've been in the business ever since it started. Ask the kid, he
knows. Don't you, kid?"

"Rather," said Graham.

"I used to be in the chorus, but this is ther life."

"I suppose so," said Kenyon. "Variety, gaiety, art,--what more can any
girl desire?"

"Dollars," she said dryly. "And I make more here, by a long way."

"That's good. But,--but don't you get a little fed up? I mean it must be
hopelessly monotonous to be shut up in one place all the time."

"Don't know whatcher mean. Translate that, won't you?"

"He means never getting out," said Graham.

"Never getting out! I don't get you, Steve. Me and my sister get away
after the show, same as any other."

"What!" Graham was incredulous. It struck him that the girl was lying
for reasons of loyalty to her employer. He knew better.

"Oh, I see!" said Kenyon, leading her on carefully. "You don't live
here, then?"

"Live here? Of course I don't. I come about ten o'clock every night and
leave anywhere between three and four in the morning. Earlier if there's
nothing doing."

"Oh, I thought that the girls here are,--well, held up, kept here all
the time,--prisoners, so to speak."

A shrill amused laugh rang out. "Oh, cut it out! What's all this dope?
Say! you've been reading White Slave books. You're bug-house--dippy.
Why, this is a respectable place, this is. This is the house of Art.
We're models, that's what we are. We're only here for local colour. If
we choose to make a bit extra on our own, we can." She laughed again. It
was a good joke. The best that she had heard for years.

Kenyon threw a quick glance at Graham's face. He could just see it in
the dim light. The boy was listening intently--incredulously. So also
was Peter, who had drawn himself into a corner and was hunched up
uncomfortably.

Kenyon began to feel excited. Everything was going almost unbelievably
well. The girl was so frank, so open and obviously spontaneous. It was
excellent. "Of course you tell us these things," he said, voicing what
he knew was going silently through Graham's mind. "But we know better.
We know that you, like that poor little girl, Ita Strabosck, are watched
and not allowed to get away under any circumstances. Now, why not tell
us the truth? We may be able to help you escape, too."

Again she laughed. "Oh, say!" she said. "What are you anyway? Reporters
on the trail of a story? I'm telling you the truth. Why not? As for
Ita,--Oh, ho! She put it all over a boob, she did. She's ambitious, she
is. She was out to find a mut who'd keep her, that was her game. She
told us so from the first. We used to watch her trying one after another
of the soft ones. But they were wise, they were. But at last some little
feller fell for her foreign accent and little sobs. She had a fine tale
all ready. Oh, she's clever. She ought to be on the stage playing parts.
Most of us go round to her place in the daytime and have a good time
with some of her men friends. I've not been yet. But from what my sister
says, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if she gets her man to marry her.
From what she says, he's a sentimental Alick, and, O Gosh! won't she
lead him some dance!"

At last Graham broke forth, his face white, his eyes blazing and his
whole body shaking as though he had ague. "You're lying!" he shouted.
"Every word you've said's a lie!"

The girl, entirely unoffended at this involuntary outburst, bent forward
and looked at Graham with a new gleam of intelligence, amusement and
curiosity. "My word, I believe you're Mr. Strabosck. I believe you're
the boob. Oh, say! come into the light. I guess I must have a look at
you."

Graham got up, stood swaying for a moment as though he had received a
blow between the eyes, and staggered across the room and out into the
passage.

"Now he knows," said Kenyon. "Come on, Peter. We shall have our work cut
to hold him in. There was blood in his eyes." Utterly ignoring the girl,
Kenyon made for the door, forced his way through new arrivals and found
Graham utterly sober, but with his mouth set dangerously, standing in
front of the Japanese. "My hat and coat, quick!" he was saying, "or I'll
break the place up."

"Steady, steady," said Kenyon. "We don't want a scene here."

"Scene be damned. I tell you something's got to break."

The Japanese ducked into the coat-room.

"Where's Peter?" Graham looked back expecting to see his brother's head
and shoulders above the crowd. There was no sign of him.

By accident the lime-light which had been suddenly turned on for a new
performance fell on Peter as he was marching towards the door of the
studio. Instantly he found himself surrounded by half a dozen
good-natured men who had all taken a little too much to drink. They,
like the other people present, were in Egyptian clothes and obviously
glad to see in Peter a healthy normal specimen of humanity.

"Oh, hello, brother, where are you off to?" asked one.

"Out!" said Peter shortly.

"I'll be darned if you are. Come and have a drink!"

"No, thanks, I've other things to do."

"Oh, rot! Be a sport and stay and help us to stir things up. Come on,
now!"

Peter tried to push his way through. "Please get out of the way," he
said.

But a jovial red-headed fellow got into it. "You're staying, if I have
to make you."

Something snapped in Peter's brain. Before he could control himself he
bent down and picked up the man by the scruff of his neck and the cloth
that was wound round his middle and heaved him over the heads of the
crowd into a divan, and then hitting out right and left cleared a path
to the door, leaving chaos and bleeding noses behind him. Without
waiting to get his hat and coat he made a dash for the elevator, caught
it just as it was about to descend and went down to the main floor
dishevelled and panting.

Out in the street he saw Kenyon trying to put Graham into a taxicab.
Kenyon saw him and called out. "Come on, or Papowsky will make it hot
for us."

On his way home from a late evening at one of his clubs, Ranken Townsend
caught the name Papowsky, whose evil reputation had come to his ears. He
threw a quick glance at the men who were leaving her place and saw that
one of them was Peter. He drew up and stood in front of the man in whom
he thought he had recognized cleanness and excellence and told himself
that he was utterly mistaken.

"So this was your precious business engagement," he said, with icy
contempt. "Well, I don't give my daughter to a man who shares her with
women like Papowsky, so you may consider yourself free. Good night."

And the smile that turned up the corners of Kenyon's mouth had in it the
epitome of triumph. All along the line he had won. All along the line.

Peter watched the tall disappearing figure. He felt as though he had
been kicked in the mouth.




PART THREE

LIFE


I

That night was one of the most extraordinary that Peter ever spent.
Although he was smarting under the terrible injustice of Ranken
Townsend's few, but very definite words, and felt like a man who had
suddenly come up to an abyss, he took Graham in hand and devoted
himself, with all the tenderness of a woman, to this poor boy.

All the way home in the cab Graham had been more or less held down by
Kenyon and his brother. His brain was in a wild chaos. The realization
that he had been tricked and made a fool of hit him hard. In his first
great flush of anger he was filled with an overwhelming desire to go to
the apartment in which he had placed Ita Strabosck and smash it up. He
wanted to have the satisfaction of breaking and ripping apart every
piece of furniture that he had bought to make her comfortable and happy,
and make an absolute shambles of the place. He wanted also to order that
girl out into the street. At that moment he no longer cared what
happened to her or where she went. His vanity had received its first
rude shock. All the way home he shouted at the top of his voice and
struggled to get away from the men who were looking after him. It took
all Peter's strength to hold him tight. It was by no means a good sight
to see this young man, who only half an hour before had been
exhilarated by champagne and the feeling that he was really of some
account as a man of the world, reduced to a condition of utter weariness
by his violent outbursts. At first he absolutely refused to enter the
house and insisted upon walking up and down the street. Finally, by
making an appeal to his brother's affection, Peter persuaded him to go
in quietly and up to his own room. There, pale and exhausted and
entirely out of spirits, Graham turned quickly on his brother. "Keep
Kenyon out," he said. "For God's sake, keep Kenyon out! I want _you_."

Kenyon heard these words and smiled to himself, nodded to Peter, and
went downstairs again to make himself comfortable in the library and
have a final cigarette before going to bed. He had every reason for
self-congratulation. Graham was free,--there was no doubt about
that,--and it looked as though Peter also would now be able to be made
useful again. Luck certainly had been on his side that night.

It was not much after one o'clock when Peter shut the door of Graham's
bed-room. From then onwards he turned himself into a sort of nurse,
doing his best to concentrate all his thoughts on his brother's trouble
and keep his own until such time as he could deal with it; and, while
Graham poured out his heart--going over his story of the Ita Strabosck
rescue again and again--Peter quietly undressed him, bit by bit. "Yes,
old man," he kept saying, "I quite understand; but what you've got to do
now is to get to bed and to sleep. Let me take off your coat. That's
right. Now sit down for a second. Now let me undo your shoes. It's a
jolly good thing I came home. You bet your life I'll stand by you and
see you through--you bet your life I will!"

"And you swear you'll not say anything about this to mother or Belle,
and especially father--even if I'm ill,--in fact to any one? You swear
it?"

"Of course," said Peter.

There was something comical as well as pathetic in the sight of this big
fellow playing the woman to this distraught boy,--undoing his tie,
taking off his collar and gradually getting him ready for bed. It was a
long and difficult process and needed consummate tact, tender firmness
and quiet determination. A hundred times Graham would spring to his feet
and--with one shoe on and one shoe off, minus coat and waistcoat, tie
and collar--pace the room from end to end, gesticulating wildly, sending
out a torrent of words in a hoarse whisper--sometimes almost on the
verge of tears. He was only twenty-four--not much more than a boy. It
was very hard luck that he should be up against so sordid a slice of
life at a time when he stood at the beginning of everything.

But Peter knew intuitively that it was absolutely necessary for Graham
to rid his system of this Strabosck poison and empty out his heart and
soul before he could be put to sleep, like a tired child. And so, with
the utmost patience, he subjected himself to play the part of a mental
as well as a physical nurse. Better than that, he mothered his brother,
smoothed him down, sympathized with him, assured him again and again
that he had done the only possible thing; and finally as the first touch
of dawn crept into the room had the infinite satisfaction of putting the
clothes about his brother's shoulders and seeing his dark head buried in
his pillow. Even then he was not wholly satisfied. Creeping upon tip-toe
about the room he laid hands on Graham's razors and put them in his
pocket. He was possessed with a sort of terror that the boy might wake
up and, acting under a strong revulsion of feeling, cut his throat. It
must be remembered that he had watched a human being under the strain
and stress of a very strong and terrible emotion and he was naturally
afraid. He knew his brother's excitable temperament. He had heard him
confess that the girl had exercised over him something more than mere
physical attraction, and although he was no psychologist it was easy for
him to see that, for a time at any rate, Graham was just as ready to
hurt himself as to hurt the girl. Some one had to be paid out for his
suffering and it was Peter's business to see that his brother, at any
rate, escaped punishment. Not content with having got Graham to bed and
to sleep and secured the razors which might be used in a moment of
impetuousness, Peter stayed on, sat down near the bed and listened to
one after another of the sounds of the great city's awakening. It was
then that he permitted himself to think back. He didn't remember the
fracas in the studio apartment or the unpleasantness of the place with
the unhealthy, unpleasant creatures who had been there. He repeated to
himself over and over again the words--the cold, cruel words of Ranken
Townsend,--"So this was your precious business engagement. Well, I don't
give my daughter to a man who shares her with women like Papowsky, so
you may consider yourself free." In his mind's eye he could see the tall
artist march away. He felt again as though he had been kicked in the
mouth.


II

Ranken Townsend had arranged a sitting with Madame Mascheri, the famous
opera singer, at eleven o'clock. He entered his studio at ten, and the
first thing he did was to ring up one of his best friends and get into a
quarrel with him. He had already so surprised his old servant at
breakfast that she had retired to the kitchen in tears. He was angry and
sore and there was likely to be a nice clash in the studio when he said
sharp things to the spoiled lady who considered that all men were in
their proper places only when they were at her feet.

Ranken Townsend was more than angry. He was disappointed--mentally
sick--completely out of gear. He had seen Peter Guthrie--and there was
no argument about the fact--come out of a notorious house, dishevelled
and apparently drunk. It was a sad blow to him. A bad shock. The effects
of it had kept him awake nearly all night. Betty was the apple of his
eye. He was going to protect her at all costs, and he knew that in doing
so he must bring great unhappiness into her life. He had believed in
Peter Guthrie. He had seemed to him to be a big, strong, clean, honest,
simple, true fellow who had gone straight and who meant to continue to
go straight. It meant a tremendous amount, an altogether incalculable
amount to him as a father to have found that his estimate was wrong. He
realized perfectly well that his words had been harsh the night before.
He detested to have been obliged to say them; but, for the sake of his
little girl, he was not going back on them. The evidence was too strong.

The telephone bell rang. He stalked across to it. "Well?" he said.
"What's that? Who did you say? Send him up at once." And then, with his
jaw set and his hands thrust deep into his pockets, he took up a stand
in the middle of the studio and waited.

It was Peter. He came in quietly and looked very tired. "Good morning,
Mr. Townsend," he said.

The answer was sharp and antagonistic. "I don't agree with you."

Peter put down his hat and stick, went up to the artist and stood in
front of him squarely and without fear. "You're going to withdraw what
you said last night."

"You think so?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because it was unjust and no man is hanged in these times before he's
given a chance to defend himself."

"No one is going to hang you, Peter Guthrie. You've hanged yourself."

"No, no," said Peter, "that won't do. It isn't like you to adopt this
attitude and I must ask you to treat me properly."

Townsend shot out a short laugh. "There's no need for you to ask me to
do that. My treatment of you is going to be so proper that this is going
to be the last time you'll come into this studio. I've done with you. So
far as I'm concerned you're over. Betty isn't going to see you or hear
from you again. I consider that it was a mighty good accident that took
me into Fortieth Street last night. That's all I have to say."

Peter didn't budge. He just squared his shoulders and tilted his chin a
little more. "I don't think that's all you've got to say," he said. "I
quite understand that you had a bad shock when you saw me coming out of
that place last night. If I were in your shoes I should say just what
you're saying now."

"It's something to win your approval," said Townsend, sarcastically,
"and I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you for coming down town to give
me your praise."

"Oh, don't talk like that," said Peter. "It doesn't do any good and it
doesn't help to clear things up."

"You can't clear things up. Neither of us can. You began by lying to me
when you said you had a business engagement, and you wound up by coming
out drunk of the rottenest house in this city. And, see here! I don't
like your tone. I'm not standing here to be reproved by you for my
attitude in this matter. I might be more inclined to give you a chance
if you made a clean breast of it."

"I wish I could," said Peter, "but I can't. All I can tell you is that I
had to go to that place last night for a very good reason. I'd never
been there before and I shall never go there again. I hadn't even heard
of the place until a few days ago. You've got to accept my word of
honour that I went there with a friend of mine to get a man who means a
very great deal to me out of bad trouble."

"It's taken you sometime to think that out," said Townsend, brutally.

Peter winced as if he had been struck. He had gone to the studio under
the belief that everything would be quite easy. He was honest. His
conscience was clear. He was not a liar. Surely his word would be
accepted. Whatever happened he wasn't going to be disloyal to his
brother. Apart from the fact that he had sworn not to give Graham away,
he wasn't the kind that blabbed. He tried again, still keeping himself
well under control, although he was unable to hide the fact that Ranken
Townsend's utter disbelief in him hurt deeply.

"Mr. Townsend," he said, "I don't want to do anything to make you more
angry than you are. It's perfectly simple for you to say that you won't
have me marry Betty. But remember this: I've only got to go to Betty and
ask her to marry me, with or without your consent, and she will. If you
don't believe me, you don't know Betty."

"Ah! but that's exactly where you make your mistake," said Townsend. "I
_do_ know Betty. And let me tell you this, Peter Guthrie: My girl has
been brought up. She hasn't been dragged up or allowed to bring herself
up. The consequence is that she's not among the army of present-day
girls who look upon their fathers and mothers as any old trash to be
swept aside and over-ridden whenever it suits them to do so. I'm the man
to whom she owes all the happiness and comfort that she's known. I'm the
man who's proud to be responsible for her, to whom she belongs and who
knows a wide stretch more of life and its troubles than she does,--and,
not being an empty-headed, individualistic, precocious little fool, she
knows it too. She belongs to a past decade--to an old-fashioned family.
Therefore, what I say goes; and if I tell her that, for a very good
reason, I don't want her to have anything to do with you, she will be
desperately unhappy, but she'll not question my authority or my right to
say so. These are facts, however absurd and strange they may appear to
you. I think it would be a damned good thing if other fathers took the
trouble to get on the same footing with their daughters. There'd be less
unhappiness and fewer grave mistakes if they did." He was almost on the
verge of adding, "Look at your sister Belle if you don't believe me."

Peter had nothing to say.

The two men stood facing one another, gravely, in silence. They were
both moved and stirred. And then Peter nodded. "I'm glad you're Betty's
father," he said at last. "She owes you more than she can ever pay
back. I give you my word that I shan't attempt to dispute your
authority. I respect you, Mr. Townsend, and when I marry Betty I want to
have your consent and approval. I also give you my word that it was
absolutely necessary for me to go to Papowsky's last night, without any
explanation whatever. Are you going to take it?"

"No," said Townsend; "I'm not. Even if I'd known you for years what you
ask is too much for me to swallow. Good Lord, man! can't you see that
I'm protecting my daughter--the one person I love in this world--the one
person whose happiness means more to me than anything on earth? Why
should I believe that you're different from other young men,--the
average young man whom I see every day, who no more cares about going
clean to the woman he is going to marry than he does for running
straight afterwards? I don't know you and hitherto I've accepted you on
your face value. When it comes to the question of a man's trusting his
daughter to the first person who comes and asks him for her, he's got to
be pretty sure of what he's doing. In any case, I don't hold with the
old saying that 'young men will be young men.' You may sow your wild
oats if you like, but they're not going to blossom in the garden of a
little girl who belongs to me. In that respect I'm as narrow-minded as a
Quaker. And let me tell you this finally: I know the sort of place that
Papowsky's is. I know what goes on there and the sort of people who
frequent it. To my mind any man who's seen coming out of it does for
himself as the future husband of any good girl. If you have, as you say,
a good reason for going there, tell it to me. If not, get out."

The artist had said these things with intense feeling. Hard as they
were, Peter had to acknowledge that they were right. Just for one
instant he wavered. He was on the point of giving the whole story away.
Then his loyalty to his brother came back to him. He would rather be
shot than go back on the man who had trusted him and with whom he had
grown up with such deep affection. "Very well," he said, "that settles
it. I've nothing more to say. But one of these days I'll prove that my
word of honor was worth taking. In the meantime, you can't stop me from
loving Betty and you'll never be able to stop Betty from loving me."

He turned on his heel, took up his hat and stick and went out.


III

Graham was sitting up in bed when Peter returned to his room. He was
looking about him with an expression of queer surprise,--puzzled
apparently to find himself in his room.

"Oh, hello, old man!" said Peter. "How d'you feel?"

Graham put his hand up to his head. "I don't know yet. Have I been
asleep? I thought I'd been in a railway accident. I was looking about
for the broken girders and the ghastly signs of a smash."

He got slowly out of bed, put on his slippers and walked up and down for
a few minutes with a heavy frown on his face. The emotion of the night
before had left its marks. He stopped in front of a chair on the back of
which his evening clothes were hanging neatly. He remembered that he had
thrown them off. He noticed--at first with irritation--that the things
on his dressing-table had been re-arranged--tampered with. It didn't
look as he liked it to look. Something had been taken away. It dawned on
him that all his razors had been removed. "Removed,"--the word sent a
sort of electric shock through his brain as it passed through. He went
over to the window and looked out into the street. The sun glorified
everything with its wonderful touch. Good God! To think that he might be
standing at that very moment on the other side of the great veil.

"I don't know--I don't know what to say to you for all this, Peter," he
said.

Peter sat down, thrust his hands into his pockets and his long legs out
in front of him. Reaction had set in. He felt depressed and wretched.
"One of these days," he said, "I may ask you to do the same thing for
me."

Something in his tone made Graham turn round sharply. "What's wrong?"

"Everything's wrong," said Peter. "But I'll tell you some other time.
Your affair has got to be settled first."

"No; tell me now," said Graham. He dreaded to feel that he was the cause
somehow or other of bringing trouble upon his brother. Never before in
all his life had he seen Peter looking like that.

"Mr. Townsend happened to be passing Papowsky's last night and saw me
coming out. I'd had a scrap up in the studio with a bunch of men who
were half drunk. I must have looked like it. He told me that he wouldn't
have me marry Betty, and he repeated it this morning. I've just come
away from his place. That's what's the matter with me."

"Oh, curse me!" cried Graham. "Curse me for a fool!"

Peter sprang to his feet. "Don't start worrying about me. And look here;
don't let's waste time in trying to scrape up spilt milk. I'm going to
marry Betty, that's a dead certainty, and sooner or later Mr. Townsend
will withdraw the brutal things he said to me. And you're going to wipe
your slate clean, right away. So buck up and get busy, old man. Have
your bath and get dressed as soon as you can. I'm going to help you to
fix your affair as soon as you're ready."

"How?" asked Graham.

"I don't know quite. I think I'll ask Kenyon."

"No, don't. Let's do it together. I don't want Kenyon to see,--I mean
I'd rather Kenyon was out of it. I'd rather that you were the only one
to look on at the remainder of my humiliation,--that's the word. He
knows quite enough as it is."

"All right!" said Peter. "Hurry up, then. We'll go round to the
apartment and see Ita Strabosck. I cashed a cheque on the way back from
Mr. Townsend's. We can't let her go out into the street with nothing in
her pocket,--that's impossible."

Graham nodded. He couldn't find words to say what he felt about it all.
There was a look of acute pain on his pale face as he went into the
bath-room.

And then Peter sat down at his brother's table and wrote a little note
to Betty:

     My own dearest Baby:

     Something has happened and your father--who's a fine fellow and
     well worthy of you--believes that I'm such a rotter that he's
     told me to consider myself scratched. I'm going to play the
     game by him for your sake as well as his. Don't worry about it.
     Leave everything to me. I won't ask you to go on loving me and
     believing in me, because that you must do, just as I shall go
     on loving you and believing in you. _It has to be._ I've got to
     think things over to see what can be done.

     In the meantime, and as long as I live,
                                                   Your PETER.

He addressed the letter and put the envelope in his pocket. Then he went
to the bath-room and called out: "Old man, shall I have some breakfast
sent up for you?" The answer was, "No; the sight of food would make me
sick."

Graham dressed quickly and nothing more was said by either of the
brothers until they went out into the street together.

"We'll get a cab," said Peter.

"No; I'm too broke. Let's walk."

And so they walked hard, arm in arm. It seemed rather an insult to
Graham that the day was so fine, the sky so blue and equable and that
all the passers-by seemed to be going on their way untroubled. He'd have
been better pleased if the day had been dark and ugly and if everybody
had been hurrying through rain and sleet. His own mind was disturbed by
a storm of the most unpleasant thoughts. The girl whom they were on
their way to see had exercised a strong physical fascination over him.
He had believed in her absolutely. She had meant a great deal to him.
Her deceit and cunning selfishness brought pessimism into his soul. It
was a bad feeling.

As they came up to the house with its shabby door, a man well-past
middle age,--a flabby, vulgar person, with thick awkward legs,--left it
rather quickly and walked in the opposite direction. The two boys went
in and Peter led the way up the dark staircase. The door was open and
Lily, the colored maid, was holding a shrill argument with a man with a
basket full of empty siphons on his arm. Her face broke into an odd and
knowing smile when she saw Graham. They passed her without a word and
went along the passage into the sitting-room. It was empty, but in a
hideous state of disorder. There was about it all that last night look
which is so unpleasant and insalubrious. The windows had not been opened
and the room reeked with stale tobacco smoke and beer. Cigar stumps lay
like dead snails on the carpet. Empty bottles were everywhere and dirty
glasses. Through the half-open door which led into the bed-room they
heard a flutey, uncertain soprano voice singing a curious foreign song.

After a moment of weakness and indecision, Graham pulled himself
together and called out: "Ita! Ita!" sharply.

The song ceased abruptly. There was a cry of well-simulated joy and the
girl, with her hair frowzled and a thin dressing-gown over her
night-dress, ran into the room with naked feet. She drew up short when
she saw the expression on Graham's face and Peter's square shoulders
behind him. "Somesing ees ze matter," she said. "Oh, tell me!" Second
nature and constant practice made the girl begin to act. This was
obviously an opportunity for being dramatic.

With a huge effort Graham controlled himself. "I'm giving up this
apartment to-day," he said.

"You are giving up----?"

"I said so."

"And what ees to become of me? You take me somewhere else?"

"No. I hope I shall never see you again--never!"

The girl burst forth. How well he knew that piteous gesture--that
pleading voice--the tears that came into those large almond eyes,--all
those tricks which had made him what he had been called the night before
at Papowsky's--"a boob". "What 'ave I done? Do you not love me any more?
I love you. I will die for you. You are everysing to me. Do not leave me
to ze mercy of ze world. Graham! Graham! My saviour! I love you zo!"

Graham shook her off. "Please don't," he said. "Just pack your things
and dress yourself. All I've got to say to you is that I've found you
out. Perhaps you'd better go back to Papowsky's. You're very
clever,--they all say so there. Find another damned young fool--that'll
be easy."

The girl suddenly threw back her head and broke into an amazing laugh.
The sound of it,--so merry--so full of a sort of elfin amusement,--was
as startling to the two boys as though a bomb had been dropped into the
room. "I could not find such a damned fool as you," she said loudly and
coarsely, "eef I 'unted the earth. Eef you 'ad waited to come until
to-night you would 'ave found zis little nest empty and ze bird flown.
There ees a better boob zan you. Perhaps you met 'im going out. 'E
marries me to-morrow. I vas to keep zat for a leetle surprise. Oh, yes,
I am clever, and eet kills me with laughing to zee you stand there like
a school teacher. You turn over a new leaf now, eh? Zat ees good. Zo do
I. To-morrow I am a wife. I marry a man. My time with babies ees over."

She picked up a glass that was half-full of beer and with a gesture of
supreme contempt jerked it into Graham's face. Then, with the quickness
of an eel, she returned to her bedroom and slammed the door. They heard
her laughing uncontrollably.

Graham wiped his face with his handkerchief, and dropped it on the floor
with a shiver. "I shan't want to borrow any money from you, Peter," he
said in a low voice. "Let's go."

And they went out into the street together--into the sun, and took a
long breath of relief--a long, clean breath, untainted by stale tobacco
smoke and beer and the pungent scent of Ita Strabosck.

Peter made no attempt to put into words his intense sympathy, but he
took his brother's arm and held it tight, and Graham was very grateful.
Right out of the very bottom of his heart two tears welled up into his
eyes as he walked away.

After all, he was only twenty-four.


IV

On her way up to her room that night, Ethel drew up short outside
Graham's bedroom door. She knew that he was in, which was in itself
unusual. She thought there must be something the matter, because she had
seen Graham leave the house in the morning long after his usual time.
She had also watched his face at dinner and had seen in it something
that frightened her. It was true that Peter was her favorite brother,
but she was very fond of and had great admiration for Graham. Also she,
herself, was in trouble. Trouble seemed to be an epidemic in that
family. Her Knight Errant next door, in spite of her signalling and the
fact that she had laid out as usual the cigarettes and the candies, had
deserted her. In order to receive his visits and feed herself on the
excitement with which they provided her, she was still maintaining her
pretence of invalidism, and the worst of it was she now knew that she
had grown to be very fond of the boy, who at first had only been a
source of amusement.

So, with a fellow-feeling for Graham, she listened outside his door. She
wanted very badly to slip in and give her sympathy to her brother and
receive some of it from him. She didn't feel quite as individualistic as
usual. The artificiality of the flapper left her for the time being and
she felt as young as she really was and rather helpless, and awfully
lonely.

Hearing nothing, she tapped gently on the door, opened it and went in.
Graham was sitting in an arm-chair with his elbows on his knees and his
head between his hands. He made a picture of wretchedness which would
have melted the heart of a sphinx. Ethel went over to him and put her
hand on his shoulder. "Is anything the matter, Hammie?" she asked, using
the nickname that she had given him as a child.

Graham didn't look up. "Oh, Lord, no!" he said, with a touch of
impatience. "What should be the matter?" But he was very glad to feel
that touch of friendliness on his shoulders.

"Can I do anything for you?"

"Oh, no. I'm all right--as right as rain."

Ethel knew better. She knew also that she would have said those very
things to Belle if she had been caught in a similar state of depression.
So she sat down on the arm of Graham's chair and put her hand against
his cheek. "I've got about a hundred and seventy-five dollars, if that's
any good to you," she said.

Graham gave a scoffing laugh, but all the same he was very grateful for
the offer. "My dear kid," he said, "a hundred and seventy-five
dollars--that's no better than a dry bone to a hungry man."

"Is it as bad as all that, Hammie?"

"Yes, and then some."

Ethel thought deeply for a few minutes. Her characteristic selfishness,
which had been almost tenderly encouraged at school, had given way
temporarily before her own disappointment. "Well," she said finally,
"I've got four brooches and five rings, a watch and a dressing-case. You
can sell them all if you like."

Then Graham turned round, gave his little sister one short, affectionate
look and put his head down on her shoulder. "Don't say anything,
please," he said. "Just let me stay here for a minute. It does me good."

And he stayed there for many minutes, and the two sat silently and
quietly, getting from each other in their mutual trouble the necessary
help which both needed so much. A strange, new feeling of motherliness
stole over the girl. It surprised her. It was almost like being in
church on Christmas Eve, or listening to the most beautiful melody.

It was a long time since these two had taken the trouble to meet each
other half-way. The thoughts of both went back to those good hours when
Graham had put his little sister on a sled in front of him and pushed
her, laughing merrily, over the hard snow in the park. He had never even
dreamed in those days of money and the fever that it brings, or women
and the pain they make.

And then Graham got up, just a little ashamed of himself,--after all, he
was now a man of the world,--and saw that Ethel's cheeks were wet with
tears. It was his turn to try and help. "Good Lord!" he said. "You don't
mean to say that you're worried about anything. What is it?"

She shook her head and turned her face away. "Oh, nothing--nothing at
all."

All the same she felt much, ever so much better for the kiss that he
gave her, and went along to her own room half-determined to be honest
with herself and go back to school the next day. She was rather startled
to find the smell of cigarette smoke in her bedroom, which was in
darkness. She turned up the nearest light and almost gave a cry of joy
when she found the boy from next door sitting on the window-sill.

"Jack!" she cried. "I thought you were--I thought you had----"

Jack threw his cigarette out of the window and got up awkwardly. "I got
your note just now," he said, "and so I've come."

Ethel went to the door and locked it. All the clouds had rolled away.
She was very happy. She had evidently made a mistake. He must have been
prevented from coming. She wished he'd given her time to powder her nose
and arrange the curls about her ears. As it was, she opened the box of
cigarettes and held out the candies to him.

"No, thanks," said Jack. "I'm off chocolates and I've knocked off
smoking to a great extent."

With a womanly touch which she and all women have inherited from Eve,
who never forgot to stand with her back to the sun and took care, if
possible, to remain in the woods until after breakfast, Ethel turned on
a shaded light and switched off the strong overhead glare which made her
look every day of her fifteen years. Then she sat down with the light
over her left shoulder. She was quite herself again. All was well with
the world.

"Where have you been?" she asked, a little imperiously.

"Nowhere," said Jack.

"Then why haven't you been to see me? I have signalled every night. I
can't understand it."

"I know you can't. That's why I've stayed away."

Ethel was puzzled at the boy's solemn tone. "Of course, if you don't
want to come, please don't. I wouldn't drag you here against your will
for anything."

"Yes, but I _do_ want to come. I stay away for your sake, and I'm not
coming again after this evening."

That was exactly what Ethel wanted to hear. She'd been afraid that Jack
had found some one else. Now she knew differently. "Don't be silly," she
said. "Have a cigarette. Come and sit on the sofa and don't let's waste
time."

But Jack didn't move. He had gone back to the window-sill and remained
hunched up on the narrow ledge, holding on with both hands. "I'm off in
a minute," he said. "I'm just going to tell you one or two things
before I go. Would you like to hear them?"

"If they're pleasant," she said.

"Well, they're not pleasant."

"Well, then, tell me."

For a moment or two Jack remained silent. Perhaps he was trying to find
careful words into which to put his thoughts. When finally he spoke it
was with a suppressed emotion that sent a quiver through the quiet room.
"I can't stand coming here," he said. "I can't stand it. I don't know
what you are--whether you're a mere baby who knows nothing, or an
absolute little rotter. You tell me I can say what I think, so I'm going
to." He got up and went a little nearer to the sofa. "What d'you think
I'm made of? Look at yourself in the glass and then see whether you're
the sort of a girl who can let a man into her bedroom night after night
for nothing. I tell you I can't stand it. I stayed away, not because I
wanted to, but because I didn't want to do you any harm. I was a fool
for coming here at all. If I didn't believe that you are simply a silly
girl I'd stay to-night and come every night as I used to do, but I'm
going to give you the benefit of the doubt. Next time you signal to a
man take care to find out what he's made of and be a bit more careful.
There, now you've got it. Good night and good-bye. I've a darned good
mind to put the note you sent me to-night in an envelope and address it
to your mother. It would save some other fellow from a good deal of
unnecessary discomfort. I'm frightfully sorry to be so brutal, but I
don't believe you know what you're doing. Perhaps this'll be a lesson to
you."

He turned quickly, swung himself out, went up the rope ladder hand over
hand and drew it up after him.

Ethel closed her eyes and sat rigid. The boy might have planted his fist
in her face.


V

Kenyon had taken Mrs. Guthrie and Belle to the Thirty-ninth Street
Theatre that night. A quiet little romantic play, quite unpretentiously
written, had found its way to that theatre either by accident or as a
stop-gap. The manager who put it there had arranged, even before the
opening performance, to replace it at the end of the week with something
which had a punch,--a coarse, vulgar, artificial piece of mechanism such
as he had been in the habit of producing all of his managerial life. His
intention to do this was strengthened by the press notices, which all
agreed that the new piece was a very little play about nothing in
particular and which made too great a demand upon the imagination of its
audience. That last remark of the critics was worth a million dollars to
the play's author. The theatre remained almost empty until the Friday
night of its first--and if the manager had anything to do with it--only
week. The scenery for the new production was already stacked on the
stage. But to the amazement of all concerned, except the author, the
theatre did business. The house was almost full and the box office was
so busy that the young man who looked after it,--a past-master in
rudeness,--became quite querulous. On Saturday night there was a full
house and the booking was so big for the following week that the notices
of withdrawal were taken down and the play with a punch had to find
another home. The manager, greatly put out, watched this little play
sail into a big, steady success, and whenever his numerous
acquaintances--he had no friends--caught him in an unbusy moment, he
would say: "I can't make it out. It beats me. Look at the notices. I
couldn't understand a word of the thing when I read it. I only put it
into the theatre to keep it warm. My word, I don't know what the public
wants." He didn't, and he never would. But the author knew. He had made
a play which appealed to the imagination of his audience.

Peter had watched the party go to the theatre after an early dinner; had
seen Graham go up to his room and his father drive away to a meeting at
the Academy of Medicine; and then, anxious to be alone and think things
over, he too left the house for a long, hard tramp. He went into the
park and walked round and round the reservoir. The night was fine and
clear, and up in the sky, which was pitted with stars, a young moon lay
on her back. From all sides the music of traffic came to his ears in a
never-ceasing refrain, and high up he could see the numerous electric
signs which came and went with steady precision and monotony. Every now
and then he caught sight of the Plaza, whose windows all seemed to be
alight. It gave a peculiar touch of fantasy to that side of the Park.

Peter found himself thinking of some of the things which Ranken Townsend
had said to him. Without bitterness, and certainly without anger, he
began to see something in the artist's bluntness which gradually made
him long, with a sort of boyish anguish, to go in to his own father. The
more he thought about this the more it seemed to him right and necessary
and urgent to beard the Doctor in his den and break down the curious
barrier which shyness had erected between him and his children. He
realized at that moment that he stood desperately in need of a father's
help and advice. It was quite obvious to him also that Graham needed
these things even more than he did. If only they could both go to that
wise and good man who stood aloof and get something more from him than
the mere money with which he was so generous. He knew--no one
better--that he always received from his mother the most tender
sympathy, but how could he discuss with her some of the things with
which he was faced since the Ita Strabosck episode had come into his
life? Kenyon had done much to make it plain to him that it was not good
to continue to walk in blank ignorance of the vital facts with which his
father dealt daily. He was a man and he had to live in the world. His
boyish days among boys were over. They belonged to the past.

It was borne in upon him as he went round and round the wide stretch of
placid water in which was reflected the moon and stars, that his father
should know all about Graham. Certain things that Kenyon had said stuck
to his mind like burrs. If he could persuade Graham to make a clean
breast of it to the Doctor, the brother who meant so much to him might
be saved from a disaster which would not merely affect himself, but
others,--a wife and children perhaps. Kenyon had hinted at this and the
hint was growing in Peter's mind like an abscess. It was time that he
and his brother faced facts and knew them. Who could initiate them
better than the distinguished doctor whose life had been devoted to such
serious questions?

Having brought himself up to this point and being also tremendously
anxious to tell his father of the position in which he stood with Mr.
Townsend, Peter determined to strike while the iron was hot--to go home
and see his father at once. He left the park quickly, and when finally
he let himself into the house was astonished to see how late it was. The
servant told him that his mother and sister had come back from the
theatre and had gone to bed. "Mr. Kenyon," he added, "came back, but
went out again at once. Mr. Graham went to bed early and the Doctor has
not returned yet."

"Good!" thought Peter. "Then I'll wait for him." He gave up his hat and
stick, went through the quiet, dimly lit library, and after a moment's
hesitation opened the door of the Blue Room,--that room in which he had
been so seldom, hitherto only under protest. He had opened the door
quietly and was astonished to see Graham sitting at his father's desk
with the light from a reading lamp shining on his dark head. "By Jove,
Graham!" he said. "You must have been thinking my thoughts. This is
extraordinary."

Graham looked up with a start and thrust something under the
blotting-pad. His face went as white as a sheet and he stammered a few
incoherent words.

Quite unconscious of his brother's curious embarrassment, Peter sat on
the corner of the desk. "I've had it out with myself to-night," he said,
going, as he always did, straight to the point. "I've made up my mind to
make father into a father from now onwards. I can't stand this detached
business any longer. Let's both wait for him and have it out."

"What d'you mean?" asked Graham. "I don't get you." He put his hand out
surreptitiously and scrunched up one of the sheets of note paper on
which he had been writing.

"Listen!" said Peter, with intense earnestness. "I've got to know
things. So have you. I've got to have advice. I've got to be treated as
a human being. What's the good of our having a father at all if we don't
get something from him? I don't mean money and a roof, clothes and
things to eat. I mean help. I'm in a hole about Betty. I want to talk
about my work--about my future. Graham, let's give father a chance. Many
times he seems to me to have fumbled and been on the point of asking us
to meet him half-way. Well, I'm going to do so. Stay here and let's both
see it through. Have the pluck to tell him about your trouble and throw
the whole responsibility on him. It's his and he ought to have it. Wait
a second. Listen! If Ranken Townsend had been your father you never
would have gone near Papowsky. You wouldn't have come within a thousand
miles of Ita Strabosck--that's a certainty."

Graham got up quickly, but kept his hand heavily on the blotting-pad.
"No," he said almost hysterically. "Count me out. I'm not in this. It's
no good our trying to alter father at this time of day--it's too late.
He's microbe mad. He knows nothing whatever about sons and daughters. I
could no more tell him about the mess I'm in than fly over the moon.
He'd turn and curse me--that's all he'd do. He'd get up and preach, or
something. He doesn't understand anything about life. I'd a jolly sight
rather go to mother, only I know it would hurt her so, and anyway my
story isn't fit for her ears. No; cut me out, I tell you. I'm not in
this."

Peter got up and put his hands strongly on his brother's shoulders. He
didn't notice then how near he was to a breakdown. "Graham, old man,
you've _got_ to be--you've just _got_ to be. What Kenyon said is true.
You and I are blind and are damned children wandering about--stumbling
about. We need--we absolutely need a father more than ever we did in our
lives. So do Belle and Ethel. We all think that we can go alone, and we
can't. I know I'm right--I just know it--so you've got to stay."

A puff of wind came through the open window. Several pieces of paper
fluttered off the desk and fell softly on the floor. Peter stooped and
picked them up. On them the words "Hunter G. Guthrie" had been written
over and over again.

He laughed as he looked at them. "What on earth has father been writing
his name all over these sheets for? How funny! What a strange old chap
he seems to be. It's a sort of undergraduate trick, this,--practising a
signature before writing a first cheque."

"Give 'em to me!" said Graham sharply, and he tried to snatch them away.
His voice was hoarse and his hand shook.

Peter looked at him in great surprise. It was impossible for him not to
be aware of the fact that something was dreadfully wrong. As he stood
and looked into his brother's guilty face the fact which stood out most
clearly was that Graham had himself been writing his father's signature
all over those sheets of paper. Why? A man did a thing of that sort for
one reason only.

He seized Graham's hand which was pressed on the blotting-pad, jerked it
up, pushed the blotting-pad aside and picked up the cheque-book that
laid beneath it.

"Don't touch that," cried Graham, "for God's sake! Let me have it! I'll
tear out the cheque. I think I was mad. Oh, God! I'm so worried I didn't
know what I was doing!"

There was a struggle, quick and sharp, and in an instant Graham found
himself staggering across the room backwards.

With his heart standing still, Peter opened the thin, narrow,
brown-covered book. A cheque for three thousand dollars had been made
out to Graham Guthrie. The signature had been forged.

"You've done this," he said. "You've actually--"

Graham was up on his feet. His lips were trembling. He put out a shaking
hand. "My God!" he whispered. "Father's in the library."

The sound of the Doctor's thin, clear voice came through the half-open
door. Frozen with fear, Graham seemed to be unable to move. His very
lips had lost their colour.

With an overwhelming anxiety to hide his brother's frightful fall from
honesty and sanity, Peter pounced on the little book, thrust it into
Graham's pocket, snatched up the give-away slips of paper, tore them
into small pieces and threw them in the basket.

"Don't give me away. Don't let him know. If you do, I swear to God
you'll never see me again!"

There was still something to be done, and Peter did it. He took his
brother up in his arms, realizing that he was, in a way, paralyzed,
carried him to a chair that was out of the ring of light and sat him
down. "Get yourself in hand, quick," he whispered. "Quick, now!"

And Graham, strengthened by his brother's vitality, forced himself into
some sort of control.

Striding to the fireplace, Peter stood there waiting for his father,
with a strange pain going through his body. He felt just as though he
had been told that Graham, his best pal and dear brother, had had an
appalling accident and might not live.

The Doctor's voice, as he gave directions to a servant, came nearer and
nearer.


VI

With his hand on the handle of the door, the Doctor paused. "I want you
to call me to-morrow at half-past-seven, Alfred. Don't forget. I have a
busy day. Good-night."

The two boys watched him come into the room. His head was high and there
was a little smile round his usually straight mouth. He walked with a
sort of sprightliness, as though moving to music. He looked
extraordinarily young and exhilarated.

He saw what was to him a most unusual sight in that quiet, lonely
work-room. He was surprised into an exclamation of great pleasure, and
he quickened his pace until he stood between his sons. Graham got up and
put on a nervous, polite smile. "This's what I most wanted," said the
Doctor,--"my two boys waiting for me here in this room. I can't tell
you--I can't tell you, Peter, and Graham, how often, how strongly, how
eagerly I've wished to see you where you are now. I can't tell you how
I've longed to have you here after my meetings, to tell you how I'm
getting on, moving things forward, and to ask you share in my successes.
My dear Peter--my dear Graham."

It was pitiful. The strange, almost incoherent outbreak of the shy man
nearly made Peter burst into tears. He would almost rather his father
had treated them coldly and with raised eyebrows. His present
attitude--his unhidden joy--his eager, and even wistful welcome, had in
it something of tragedy, because it showed all the waste of years during
which the sympathy and the complete, necessary and beautiful
understanding of these three might have been welded into one great,
insurmountable rock.

The Doctor, with an obvious desire to play host,--an intuition which
again touched Peter deeply,--went quickly to a little chest which stood
in a corner of the room. "What will you have?" he asked anxiously. "I've
got a very good cigar here, or cigarettes if you would like them better.
Let me see! What do you smoke, Peter?"

"He doesn't even know what I smoke," thought Peter. "A pipe," he said.

"Oh, yes, yes! Well, this is generally said to be a very good mixture.
Try some." He gave a jar of tobacco to Peter. "These are nice, though
perhaps they are a little too dry." And he extended a box of cigars to
Graham.

The boy helped himself, trying to keep his hand steady. "Thank you," he
said.

"And now," said the Doctor, "let's sit down and have a long yarn. Shall
we? I would like to tell you about to-night. The meeting was of vital
interest and importance." He drew his chair forward so that it might be
between those of the two boys. He looked from Peter's face to Graham's
as though afraid that he was asking too great a favour. "You--you'll
forgive my talking about myself, I'm sure--at least I hope you will. I
so seldom have the opportunity,--with those I love, I mean--with those
for whom I'm working. To see you here like this, at last, makes me very
happy." He slipped his large glasses off and wiped them openly without
attempting to hide the fact that they had become suddenly useless to
him.

A short silence followed--a silence in which the emotion with which the
room was charged could almost be heard. Peter threw a quick glance round
it, almost as though he expected to see the curious experimental tubes
turn and point accusingly at his brother. The laboratory was filled with
such tubes and other curious instruments,--all of them silent witnesses
of Graham's act of madness.

The Doctor re-lit his cigar, put his glasses on again and clasped his
long, capable hands over one thin knee. "I wish I could even suggest to
you," he said--more naturally and with keen enthusiasm--"the intense
excitement that we bacteriologists are all beginning to feel. For years
and years we've been experimenting, and little by little our work is
coming to a definite head. Every time we meet we find that we've moved a
step further on the road to discoveries. It makes me laugh to think that
my early theories, which, only a few years ago, were scoffed at and
looked upon as dreams, are taking shape. It's been a long, uphill fight.
Science is beginning to win. It's all very wonderful." He noticed that
Graham's cigar had gone out. With extreme politeness, such as a man
would use to very welcome guests, he held out a box of matches.

The boy took it. "I don't feel like smoking," he said, with a catch in
his voice.

Something in his tone made the Doctor peer closely at him. "You look
pale, my dear lad," he said, "pale and tired. Aren't you well?"

"Oh, yes; he's perfectly all right," said Peter hurriedly, trying to
steer his father to another subject.

Graham threw his cigar away. "I'm not!" he cried, with a sudden,
uncontrollable outburst. "I feel as rotten as I am. I can't sit here and
listen to you, father. Don't be kind to me, I can't stand it." He put
his head down between his hands and burst out crying like a boy.

The Doctor was startled. He got up quickly and stood hesitatingly. He
wanted to put his hands on the boy's shoulders, but the sudden breakdown
brought back his shyness. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Peter, do you
know?"

Peter nodded. He then made up his mind to let things take their course.
"Let him tell you," he said. "This may be the turning point for all
three of us."

Graham drew the cheque-book out of his pocket, opened it and threw it on
the desk under the reading lamp. "Look!" he said. "That's what I've come
to."

For some moments the Doctor saw nothing but a cheque drawn by himself in
favor of his second son for three thousand dollars. The fact that he
didn't remember having made it out, and the fact that it was for so
large a sum made at first no impression upon him. He was so puzzled and
so taken back at the sudden outburst of emotion which had broken up what
he hoped was going to be a charming reunion that the sight of this
cheque conveyed nothing to him. Both his sons watched him closely, not
knowing what he would say or do. He was such a stranger to them--his
feelings and characteristics were so unknown to them that they found
themselves speculating as to the manner in which he would take this
dreadful piece of dishonesty. A great surprise was in store for them.

When the Doctor realized what had been done,--that the signature on the
cheque was not his own, although it was very cleverly copied,--they saw
him wince and shut his eyes. After a moment of peculiar hesitation he
drew his chair up to the desk and sat down. Holding his breath, Peter
watched him tear the cheque out and quietly make out another for
precisely the same amount. Then the Doctor got up and stood in front of
Graham with the new cheque in his hand. All the sprightliness and
exhilaration with which he had entered the room had left him. He looked
old and thin and humble. His shoulders stooped a little and the cheque
trembled in his hand.

"Am I such an ogre that my children are afraid to bring their troubles
to me?" he said, in a broken voice. "What have I ever done to deserve
this, Graham? You'd only to come to me and say that you needed money and
I'd have given it to you. Who am I working for? For whom have I always
worked?" He held out the cheque. "Take it, and if that isn't enough ask
me for more. I'd like to know why it is that you need it, if you'll be
good enough to tell me; but, for God's sake, don't hurt me like this
again."

Without a word--without, indeed, being able to find a word,--infinitely
more crushed by this kindness than he would have been by an outburst of
anger and reproach,--Graham took the cheque, turned on his heel and left
the room, walking like a drunken man.

Peter watched him go. There was a feeling of great relief in his heart.
Nothing that he could have done or said--nothing that Kenyon could have
said in his most forcible manner, with all the weight of sophistication
behind it, could have pulled Graham up and set him on a new path so well
as the unexpected generosity of his father and the few pathetic words
with which he underlined it.

But when Peter turned round to his father with the intention of taking
him, for the first time, into his confidence and treating him as he
would have treated Ranken Townsend under the same circumstances, he saw
that the Doctor was crumpled up in his chair with his hands over his
face and his shoulders shaking with sobs, and so he held his peace; and
instead of obtaining the help that he needed so much he put his strong
arm round his father in a strange protective way, as though he were the
stronger man.

"Oh, don't, father," he said. "Please don't."


VII

There was a good reason why Kenyon didn't stay out his fortnight at Dr.
Guthrie's house. He had already begun to know several young men whose
very good feathers were waiting to be plucked. It was obviously
impossible for him to invite them to East Fifty-second Street, and it
became necessary, therefore, that he should take a bachelor-apartment in
which to set up business. There he could play cards until any hour that
suited him and settle down seriously to make his winter in New York a
success. Also, he confessed to himself, the atmosphere of the Doctor's
house was not conducive to his peace of mind or to his rigidly selfish
way of life. He hadn't come over to the United States in order to play
the fairy godmother, or even the family adviser to the young Guthries.
He had worked hard to clear the one thing out of Graham's life which had
rendered him useless, and he had had the satisfaction of seeing Peter's
engagement broken, for which admirable accident he was profoundly
grateful, because Peter also would now be free. In fact, these two
brothers could now easily be brought to concentrate upon Kenyon's
deserving case and take round to his apartment any friends of theirs who
enjoyed gambling and could pay when they lost.

Kenyon possessed a neat and tidy brain. It was run on the same principle
as a well-organized business office. It had its metaphorical card
indexes, letter-files and such like; so that when he made up his mind
to go into his own quarters he gave the matter the closest and most
careful consideration. He paid several visits to the well-known bachelor
apartment-houses in and around West Forty-fourth Street. They would have
been very suitable but for the existence of irksome rules and
regulations as to ladies. He went further afield and, with Graham's
assistance, examined several apartments in private houses. What he
wanted was a place somewhere on the map where his breakfast would be
cooked especially for him at any hour he desired, and which would be
free of elevator boys, clerks, and the watchful eye of a manager.
Finally he discovered exactly such a place on the second floor of a
fairly large old-fashioned house in West Forty-eighth Street. In this
the elderly lady who, as Kenyon at once saw, was blessed with the
faculty of being able to look at things with a Nelsonian eye,--having,
poor soul, to earn her living,--lived in the basement with her parrot
and her Manx cat. Two young business men shared rooms on the first floor
and a retired professor--who spent the greater part of his time in the
country--rented the third floor. The servants slept in the attic.

Into this house Kenyon moved,--much against the wishes of all the
Guthries, especially Belle,--the day after Peter's attempt to get in
touch with his father came to such an utter failure. He was very well
pleased with his quarters. They gave him elbow-room and freedom from the
responsibility of looking after another man's sons. The sitting-room,
arched in the middle, ran from the front to the back of the house and
it was well and discreetly furnished. There was a particularly nice old
Colonial mirror over the mantel-piece, and what prints there were
hanging on the walls were very pleasant. The bedroom across the passage
would have been equally large had it not been broken up to provide a
bath-room and a slip-room for baggage.

Fate, however, with its characteristic impishness, interfered with
Kenyon's well-laid scheme. At the very hour when he was arranging his
personal photographs a cable addressed to him was delivered at Dr.
Guthrie's house. It so happened that Peter was in the hall when the
servant took it in, and he started off at once to take it round to his
friend. He was glad enough to seize any excuse to see Kenyon again. He
felt horribly at a loose end. Graham's affairs had completely upset him
and disarranged his plans. He was longing to see Betty, but was not
going back on his agreement with Ranken Townsend until such time as he
could make the artist eat his words; and, as to his father and his
endeavor to break down that apparently insurmountable barrier, he was
utterly disheartened and depressed. He was shown into Kenyon's rooms at
the moment when he was standing in front of a very charming photograph
of Baby Lennox which he had placed on the sideboard. It showed her in a
little simple frock, with a wide-brimmed garden hat, standing among her
roses with a smile on her face. She looked very young, pretty and
flower-like.

"Hello, Peter!"

"I've brought this cable round. Otherwise I wouldn't have rushed in on
you quite so soon."

"My dear old boy," said Kenyon, "you know very well that you have the
complete run of whatever place I may be living in, at all hours of the
day and night. A cable for me, eh? What the devil--? I was jolly careful
to give my address here to very few people in England. Too many are
anxious to serve me with summonses. Baby Lennox is going to be married,
perhaps, and sends me the glad tidings. By Jove, I wonder who she's
nabbed!" He shot out a laugh and tore open the envelope. "Oh, my God!"

"What is it?" asked Peter, anxiously.

Kenyon held out the cablegram and remained standing rigid, with his
mouth open and his eyes shut, and his face as white as a stone.

It was from Baby Lennox. "Your father died last night. A heart attack.
Come home at once."

"Oh, my dear Nick!" said Peter. "My dear old boy! I can't tell you
how----"

"No," said Kenyon; "don't say anything. Just sit down and wait for me.
Whatever you do, don't go." And he went out of the room and across the
passage to his bedroom, and shut himself in.

Peter waited. The few cold, definite and even brutal words contained in
the cablegram would have hit him much harder and rendered his sympathy
for his friend very much more real if he could have felt what it would
have been to him to hear of the death of his own father. While he
waited, mechanically holding that slip of paper between his fingers, his
respect for his friend's grief widened into an odd and powerful feeling
of envy. The man who was dead had been infinitely more than a father. He
had been a friend and a brother as well. It made him sick and cold to
feel that the receipt of such a cablegram bringing to him the news of
the death of his own father would have moved him only to extreme
sympathy for his mother. He was ashamed and humiliated to realize that
no actual grief would touch him, because his father was nothing more
than a sort of kind but illusive guardian or a good-natured
step-father--altogether unused to children--who effaced himself as much
as he could and threw all responsibility upon his wife.

It was an hour before Kenyon reappeared, and during that time--which
seemed to Peter no more than a few minutes--he went over again in his
mind the scene which had taken place in the Doctor's laboratory, out of
which he had gone stultified and thrown back upon himself. He was as
grateful as Graham had been for the Doctor's generosity, but appalled at
the thought that he had utterly failed to realize not only the gravity
of Graham's act, but the long years of parental neglect which made such
an act possible. It seemed to him that the way in which his father had
taken that deplorable incident was all wrong. He should not have written
another cheque. He should have had Graham up in front of him, strongly
and firmly, and tried him as a judge would have tried him if his act had
been discovered and dealt with by law. He should have gone into all the
circumstances which led up to the forgery and thereby have cleared the
way for a new understanding. As it was, his acceptance of it was so
weak that it gave Peter and Graham a feeling almost of contempt for that
too kind man to whom children were obviously without significance, and
the unmistakable knowledge that he was unable to understand his grave
responsibility and the fact that he, alone among men, must take the
blame for all their misdeeds and mistakes, because they had been allowed
to enter life unwarned, unguided and unhelped. The outcome to Peter of
this hour's bitter thought was finally this: That if news were brought
to him at that moment of his father's death the only sorrow that he
could feel would be at the fact that he felt no sorrow.

When Kenyon came back into the room it was with his usual
imperturbability. He might merely have left it to answer the telephone
or interview the man who had come to collect his clothes to be ironed.
But his eyes were red. In his own peculiar way he had loved his father
and admired him. It was the first time that he had wept since he had
been a child.

"Thanks, so much, for waiting, old boy," he said. "I hope you've been
smoking, or something."

"No," said Peter; "I have things to think about too."

Kenyon looked about, with a queer little smile. "I was just settling
down," he said. "Very decent room, this, isn't it? Well, well, there it
is. You never know your luck, eh?"

"When will you sail, Nick?"

"The first possible boat. Do you know anything about the sailings? Ah,
this paper will have it. I detest the sea and its everlasting monotony
and blandness, and the dull-bright propinquity that it forces upon one."
He opened the paper and searched among its endless columns for the
Shipping News. "Here we are. 'Trans-Atlantic Sailings.' I have a wide
choice, I see. There's a White Star and a Cunarder leaving to-morrow at
twelve-thirty. The _Olympic_, I see! That's good enough,--if she's not
full up. I'll see to it this afternoon. There's sure to be a cabin
somewhere at this time of year."

"I shall miss you badly," said Peter.

"Thanks, old man. I know you will. And I shall hate going. Well, well!"

Peter picked up a book and put it down again; opened and shut a box of
cigarettes and pushed a bowl of flowers nearer the middle of the table.
"Do you want any--I mean, can I----?"

Kenyon laid his hand on his friend's square shoulder. "Not this time,
Peter, old son. Thanks, awfully. I've had one or two good nights and my
pockets are full of dollars. They'll see me home with perfect comfort.
Well, here ends my visit to the United States. To-morrow night I shall
have left the hospitable Statue of Liberty behind me. But she'll see me
again. I'll dash round in the morning and thank your people for their
extreme kindness to me. You'll see me off, won't you?"

"Yes," said Peter; "of course."

"Of course. We won't dine to-night. I--I don't feel like it."

"I understand, old man," said Peter.

"So long, then."

"So long," said Peter.

"The Earl is dead!" said Kenyon, with a sudden break in his voice. "Long
live the Earl!" And he raised his hand above his head.


VIII

Not for the first time in his comparatively short life, Nicholas Kenyon
was able to put to the test his often boasted power of self-control. It
was his creed to accept everything that might happen to him, whether
good or bad, with equanimity. It was part of his training to allow
nothing to interfere with the routine of his day and the particular
scheme that he had worked out for himself. He was, however, utterly
unprepared for his father's death. Only the day before he had received a
very cheerful and amusing letter from the Earl of Shropshire which had
provided him with many quiet chuckles. When the blow came in that sudden
fashion it knocked him down and for an hour reduced him to the level of
an ordinary human being--of a man who had not specialized in
individualism and who did not set the earth revolving round himself as
its hub. Shut up in his bedroom he gave way to his real and best
emotions, the genuineness of which surprised him. He was a master
egotist--a superindividualist--the very acme of selfishness. Therefore,
odd as it may seem, he was somewhat ashamed of his deep feeling, because
it proved to him that one of the links of his carefully forged chain of
philosophy was weak. He defined the word philosopher as one who is
profoundly versed in the science of looking after himself.

As soon as Peter had left Kenyon's rooms, the new Earl of Shropshire
took himself in hand and "carried on" as they do in the Navy after
casualties, accidents and the issue of new orders. He continued to
arrange his photographs round the room. He considered that he might as
well make himself completely comfortable until the time came for him to
pack up again and leave the country. He called up Belle on the telephone
and had a little talk with her. He told her of his father's death and of
the fact that he would have to sail within the next twenty-four hours.
He listened with satisfaction to her cry of anguish, and arranged with
her to come to see him that evening. It appeared that she was engaged to
dine with some friends and go with them to hear Alfred Noyes read his
poems at the Æolian Hall. He insisted upon her keeping her engagement
and begged that she would come round to his rooms alone at eleven
o'clock.

He didn't intend to leave the United States, even under such
circumstances, without adding Belle to his little list of conquests. The
cold-bloodedness of such an intention was peculiarly characteristic of
the man. "No weakness," he said to himself--"no weakness. No matter what
happens, what had happened, is happening or may happen, you must carry
on. You've built up a creed, stick to it." And then, very
quietly--having changed his tie to a black one--he went forth to
discover the offices of the White Star Steamship Company,--having
obtained the proper directions from his landlady. He took the subway to
the Battery, interviewed a clerk of Number One Broadway, had the good
fortune to find that there was a state-room vacant on the boat deck of
the _Olympic_; wrote his cheque for it; pocketed a bundle of labels;
paid Graham a brief visit in his office on Wall Street and walked all
the way home again, endeavoring to count the German names all along the
most amazing street in the world, and giving up his temporary hobby in
despair. On the way home he sent off a cable to Baby Lennox, giving her
the name of the ship on which he was to sail. By this time he was tired
and a little dazed at the amazing stir and bustle of Broadway, with its
never-ceasing lines of cable-cars and its whir and rush of human
traffic. He was glad of a cup of tea, and presently arranged himself for
a quiet nap on the sofa in his sitting-room.

Later, with his mind concentrated solely on Belle's impending visit and
what he intended to achieve, he dined alone at the Ritz, dropped in to
see a turn or two at the Palace, and strolled back to Forty-eighth
Street at half-past-ten. As he went into the house he heard the landlady
talking to the two young business men who lived on the first floor. She
was asking them to be good enough not to play the piano that evening, as
the Professor had come back from the country and was very unwell. She
had sent for the doctor, and he would be more comfortable if the house
were as silent as it could be made.

Knowing that Belle would be punctual that night, of all nights, he went
down just before eleven o'clock and waited for her at the front door. It
was his intention to get her into the house unobserved, more for his own
sake than for hers. The night was clear, but half a gale was blowing,
carrying before it all the dust of the city and sending odd pieces of
paper swirling into the air and making the hanging signs outside shops
and small restaurants creak and groan. In its strong, vibrating song
there was a note of wild passion that fitted exquisitely into Kenyon's
frame of mind.

Belle drove up in a taxicab a few minutes after eleven. "Not a word
until we get upstairs," said Kenyon, as he helped her out. And then when
she stood in his sitting-room, with all her emotions in a state of
upheaval, nothing was said for many minutes. He took her in his arms and
kissed her, delighting in her young beauty and freshness with all the
appreciation of a connoisseur.

There seemed to Belle to be no indiscretion in this visit. Was she not
engaged to be married to this man?

As a matter of fact, she was not. Kenyon had been playing with her; and
now that he had succeeded to his father's title he had even less
intention of dealing seriously by her than ever before. Marriage was not
in his thoughts or plans. The title was his and the old house that went
with it, but he was no better off than he had been as Nicholas Kenyon,
the Oxford undergraduate. On the contrary he now had responsibilities of
which he had hitherto been free and he must look out for some one who
could buy his name for a substantial sum. If Belle had read into his
vague and indefinite remarks a proposal of marriage it only showed that
she possessed a very lively imagination. He was not going at that point
to undeceive her. He was merely going to take from her everything that
she was gracious enough to give. His trip to New York had provided him
with very little in actual substance. He was determined that it should
not be altogether empty, and that Belle should furnish him with a
charming memento.

He broke into Belle's preliminary remarks of conventional condolence by
saying, "Thank you; but please don't say a word about my father. Let's
talk about ourselves. We're alive. The next few hours are our property.
Let's make them memorable. Let's give each other something that we can
never forget." And he took her cloak and led her to a chair as though
she were a queen, and stood looking at her with very greedy eyes.

But Belle's temperament was Latin. Ever since Kenyon had spoken to her
over the telephone she had been unable to control her feelings. She
loved this man overwhelmingly. She had given him all her heart, which
had never been touched before. To her it seemed amazingly cruel that
fate had come along with its usual lack of sympathy and circumspection
and put a sudden end to all the delightful hours to which she had been
looking forward. The death of a man whom she didn't know meant very
little to her. She was young, and to the young what is death but a vague
mystery, an inconvenient accident which seems to affect every one but
themselves? Indeed, she rather resented the fact that Kenyon's father,
in dying, was to take so suddenly out of her life the one human being
about whom her entire happiness revolved.

"Oh, Nicholas, Nicholas! Must you go? Must you leave me? Let me go with
you. I have the right. I shall be miserable and unhappy without you."
And she clung to him with all the unreasonableness of a child.

Kenyon was not in the least touched by this appeal--only extremely
pleased, because it showed him that Belle was in the right mood to be
won. He put his hand on her round, white shoulder. "You must be brave,"
he said. "I know how you feel, but you must help me. Don't make things
more difficult than they are. I may be able to come back quite
soon,--who can tell?"

"I believe you're glad to go!" cried Belle.

Kenyon drew back. He wanted to make her feel that she had hurt him. He
succeeded.

In an instant, full of self-reproach, Belle was on her feet and in his
arms again. "What am I going to do without you? I almost wish you'd
never come into my life. I've been looking forward to your being here
the whole winter. How am I going to get through the days alone?"

A motor-car drew up at the house. Neither of them heard Dr. Guthrie's
voice giving a quick order to the chauffeur or recognized his step as he
passed upstairs on the way to see his friend, the Professor, on the
floor above, to whom he had been called by the landlady.

Presently, having turned out all the lights except a shaded lamp on the
table, Kenyon began to let himself go. He threw aside his characteristic
calmness and became the lover--the passionate, adoring man who was about
to be separated, under tragic circumstances, from the girl who was
equally in love. He threw aside his first intention of finessing Belle
into his bedroom on the plea of asking her to help him to pack. He
remembered that the old man above was ill and that the landlady and
others would be passing to and fro. This was distinctly annoying. He
was, however, a past-master in the art that he was at present pursuing
and set the whole of his mind on his opportunity. Belle was, naturally
enough, as putty in his hands and her despair at losing him made her
weak and pliable.

He sat down on the sofa and held Belle in his arms and kissed her again
and again. "I love you! I love you! I don't know--I can't think what I
shall be like without you," he said, bringing all his elaborate cunning
to play upon her feelings. "More like a man who's lost his arms than
anything; and we were to have come nearer and nearer this winter,
finding out all the best of each other and all the joy that it is to
love wholly and completely."

"Oh, don't go, don't go!" cried Belle, making a pathetic and almost
child-like refrain of the words, "I love you so! I love you so!"

Kenyon bent down with her until her head was pillowed on the cushions,
and kissed her lips and eyes. "You must love me, sweetheart, you must.
It's the only thing that I can turn to and count on now. Go on loving
me every minute that I'm away. I shall need it,--and before I go let me
have the precious proof of your love to store up in my heart. Give me
the priceless gift that is the only thing to keep me living till I come
back."

"Nicholas, Nicholas!" she whispered, with her young breasts heaving
against him. "I love you so! I love you so!"

The moment of his triumph had almost been reached when the Doctor, on
his way down, saw something glistening in the passage outside Kenyon's
sitting-room. He stooped and picked it up. He was puzzled to see that it
was a little brooch that he had given to Belle on one of her birthdays.
Her initials had been worked on it in diamonds. For several moments he
held it in his hand, wondering how it could have been dropped in that
place. He was utterly unaware of the fact that Kenyon lived in the house
which he knew to be given up to bachelors. Then the blood rushed into
his head. Almost for the first time in his life the Doctor acted on the
spur of the moment. He was filled with a sudden sense of fear before
which his inherent shyness and hesitancy were swept completely away. He
tried to open the door. It was locked. He hammered upon it, shouting:
"Let me in! Let me in!"

Kenyon, cursing inwardly, sprang up from the sofa. "It's your father,"
he said. "Go and sit by the table, quick, and pretend to be arranging
these photographs." He could have ignored that knocking, but the result
would be that the Doctor would go down to the landlady and there would
be a scandal. How in the name of thunder did he know that Belle was in
the room? He dashed over to the mantel-piece, collected a handful of his
pictures and threw them on the table in front of Belle, who, with a
touch of panic, tried to smooth her hair. Then he went to the door and
opened it.

"Good evening, Doctor," he said quietly. "This is very kind of you.
Belle is here helping me to pack, and Peter should have been here, but I
expect something has detained him. Do come in." He saw the brooch in the
Doctor's hand and cursed Belle's carelessness.

As Dr. Guthrie entered the room the blood slowly left his head. A
feeling of intense relief pervaded him. He saw Belle sitting at the
table with the utmost composure putting one photograph on top of
another. At his side stood the man who had recently been his honored
guest and who was the best friend of his eldest son,--the man of whose
sad loss he had heard that afternoon from his wife. He thanked God that
everything was well and hastened to accept Kenyon's suggestion that he
had come there for the purpose of saying good-bye to him. It saved him
from the appearance of having lost his head and made a fool of himself.
"I--I'm indeed grieved to hear of your father's death, my dear Mr.
Kenyon," he said, stammering a little. "I was called to see an old
friend of mine who lives in this house, who isn't at all well, and I
thought I'd take the opportunity on my way down----"

"I'm deeply obliged to you," said Kenyon, giving the weak, nervous man
before him the credit of having seized the hint so quickly. "It helps me
very much to have so many good friends. I sail to-morrow at two-thirty.
This is a good opportunity for me to thank you very much for your
delightful hospitality. Will you wait for Peter?"

"No; I think not, thanks," said the Doctor. "It's getting late and, as
you say, Peter has in all probability been detained. Belle, dear, I
think you'd better come with me, now."

Kenyon was still quite placid and courteous and undaunted. "Oh, but
mayn't she stay until Peter turns up?"

"I think not," replied the Doctor, astonished at his own firmness. "It's
very late."

"Curse it! Curse it!" cried Kenyon, inwardly. But with a little smile he
went over to Belle and gave her his hand. "You've helped me a lot," he
said. "I can easily finish packing now. Good night and good-bye."

Choking back her sobs and full of resentment at her father's clumsiness
and interference, Belle rose and allowed Kenyon to help her into her
cloak.

By a strange accident she, like Graham, had been saved from a disaster
which might have followed her into the future. God's hand must have been
stretched out to help that man, who, by his unconscious neglect, had
made it possible for these two children of his to stand on the brink of
irreparable misfortune.

Kenyon, keeping up a quiet flow of conventional remarks, followed them
down-stairs and out into the street. He could have drawn Belle back into
the hall while the Doctor went out to the car, and kissed her once
again. But,--it was over, what was the use. He watched her fling herself
into the motor-car and sit all hunched up with her hands over her face,
and then he took the Doctor's hand and shook it warmly. All the angels
in Heaven must have shuddered as he did so, and cried, "Judas! Judas!"

"Good-bye again, then," said the Doctor. "I'm deeply sorry for the
reason that takes you away from us. I hope we may see you again soon."

"I hope so, too," said Kenyon.

Standing in that quiet street he watched the automobile drive away, and
cursed. His mind was filled with impotent rage. He felt as he did when
he was a child and some one had hurt him. He wanted to find the thing
which that some one treasured most and break it all to pieces, and stamp
on it. Then he returned to his rooms, switched on all the lights, and
with a gesture almost animalish in its baffled passion, swept all the
photographs from the table.

He was kicking them savagely, one after another, when he heard the
whistle which he and Peter had used at Oxford to attract each other's
attention. He ran to the window and opened it. There stood Peter with a
glint of moonlight on his great square shoulders.

"Come up!" said Kenyon. "By God, my luck's come back! Now I can make
that old fool pay for ruining my evening!"


IX

With a fiendish scheme in the back of his head and with a most
unpleasant smile on his face, Kenyon went over to the sideboard. He
brought out two glasses. In one he mixed a whiskey high-ball and in the
other he poured a concoction of neat whiskey and brandy, adding
everything else that his bottles contained,--a mixture calculated to
dull the senses even of the most hardened drinker. Then he waited--still
with this unpleasant smile upon his face.

When Peter came in he looked tired and pale. His boots were covered with
dust and there were beads of perspiration on his forehead. "I saw that
you were up," he said, "so I whistled. If you hadn't called out I should
have gone home. Hope you don't mind."

"Mind!" cried Kenyon. "I never was so glad to see anybody in my life.
You look like a tramp. Where've you been?"

Peter threw his hat on the sofa and sat down heavily. "I wasn't in the
mood to go home to dinner. I've been walking hard ever since I saw you.
God knows where I've been. At one time I stood under the apartment-house
in Gramercy Park. It's a wonder I didn't go up and have it out again
with Ranken Townsend. But it wouldn't have been any use."

"Not the smallest," said Kenyon. "You'd only have given him the
satisfaction of standing on his hind-legs and preaching to you. Will you
have something to eat?"

Peter shook his head.

"Well, then, have a drink." And he put the poison in front of Peter. "I
was going to drink to myself,--a rather dull proceeding alone. Now you
can join me. On your feet, Peter, old man, and with no heel-taps, I give
you 'the new Peer! The most decorative member of England's
aristocracy,--Nicholas Augustus Fitzhugh Kenyon, Eighth Earl of
Shropshire, master of Thrapstone-Wynyates--the man without a shilling!'
Let it go!"

Peter stood up, clinked his friend's glass with his own, emptied it and
set it down. "Good Lord!" he said, with a frightful grimace. "What in
thunder was that?"

Kenyon burst into a derisive laugh. "'Some drink,' as you say over here.
Away goes your water-wagon, Master Peter. Off you come from your self
made pedestal. Drunk and incapable will be the words that will presently
be very fitly applied to you, my immaculate friend." And he laughed
again, as though it were a great joke. It would do him good to see Peter
"human," as he called it, for once, to satisfy his sense of revenge--to
pay out Dr. Guthrie for his cursed interference.

Peter was glad to get back to his chair. "I don't care what happens to
me," he said. "What does it matter? I've got nothing to live for--a
father who doesn't care a damn what becomes of me, and a girl who's
given me up without a struggle."

He had had nothing to eat since the middle of the day. He was mentally
and physically weary. Although he was unaware of the fact, he had
caught a severe chill. It was not surprising that the horrible
concoction which Kenyon had deliberately mixed went straight to his
head.

Everything vile lying at the bottom of Kenyon's nature had been stirred
up. At that moment he cared nothing for his friend's repeated
generosity, his consistent loyalty and his golden friendship. With a
sort of diabolical desire to amuse himself and see humiliated in front
of him the man who had stuck to his principles so grimly, he filled his
glass again, to make certainty doubly certain. "This time," he cried,
"I'll give you another toast. Come on, now. On your feet again, and
drink to 'that most charming family, the Guthries, and in particular to
the eldest son--to the dear, good boy who has run straight and never
been drunk, and has treated women with such noble chivalry. In a word,
to Peter, the virgin man.'" He raised his glass, and so did Peter. This
time the stuff almost choked him and he set his glass down only half
empty. But he put on a brave front and sat up straight, laughing a
little. "Nice rooms, these," he said. "Large and airy. Bit nicer than
our first rooms at Oxford, eh?" How different this hideous poison made
him look. Already he was like a fine building blurred by mist.

"It's extraordinary what you dry heroes can do when you try," said
Kenyon. "All I hope is that you'll come face to face with your fond
parent presently when you fumble your way into your beautiful home." He
bent down and picked up his photographs and went on talking as though to
himself. "Yes, there's some satisfaction in making others pay. I've
tried it before, and know. I remember that plebeian little hunx at
Oxford who was going into the Church. His name was Jones,--or something
of the sort. I think he was a damned Welshman. He once called me a 'card
sharp.' I didn't forget it. The first night he turned up in his Parson's
clothes I doped him and he woke up next morning in the gutter. I loved
it. Now, then, Peter, give me a hand with these things and bring them
across the passage to my bedroom." He pointed to some books and left the
room with his photographs.

Peter got up unsteadily and rocked to and fro. He picked up the books as
he was directed and staggered after his friend. He lurched into the
bedroom and stood in the doorway, supporting himself. "I'm--I'm drunk,"
he said, thickly. "Hopelessly drunk. Wha--what the devil have you done
to me?"

Kenyon burst out laughing. Many times he had threatened to do this for
his friend, whose attitude of consistent healthiness and simplicity had
always irritated him. He delighted at that moment in seeing Peter all
befogged and helpless and as wholly unable to look after himself as
though he were a baby.

"Now you'd better go," he said sharply. He was tired with the episode.
"I'm sick of the Guthries! Go home and cling to your bed while it chases
round the room. I'll have mercy on you however to this extent. I'll put
you in a taxi. There's sure to be one outside the hotel down the street.
Come on, you hulking ex-Oxford man. Lean on me. Rather a paradox, isn't
it? Hitherto I've always leaned on you." He got his visitor's hat and
jammed it on his head, all cock-eyed. And then, still talking and
jibeing and sneering, he led the uncertain Peter down-stairs.

There were two taxicabs drawn up outside the hotel to which Kenyon had
referred. He shouted and waved his hand. A chauffeur mounted his box,
manoeuvred the car around and drove up, glad to get a fare.

As he did so, a night butterfly flitted past, on her way home. She had
had apparently an unsuccessful evening, for she stopped at the sight of
these two men. Her rather pretty, thin, painted face wore an eager,
anxious look. "Hello, dearie!" she said, and touched Kenyon on the arm.

"By Jove!" said Kenyon to himself. "By Jove!"

He was struck with a new inspiration. He had made his friend drunk.
Good! Now he would send him off with a woman of the streets. That would
complete his evening's work in the most artistic fashion, and render
Peter human at last. And who could tell? It might hit the Doctor fair
and square,--"the tactless, witless, provincial fool."

"Wait a second," he said to the girl, and with the able assistance of
the driver put the almost inanimate and poisoned Peter into the cab.
Then he turned. The night bird was eyeing him with a curious
wistfulness. She was too smartly dressed and the white tops of her high
boots gleamed sarcastically. "Well, dearie?"

"There's a customer for you," said Kenyon, jerking his finger towards
the cab. "Take him home. He has money in his pocket. Help yourself."

The girl gave the driver her address--which was somewhere in the
Sixties--and then, with a little chuckle, jumped in and drew the door to
behind her with a bang that echoed through the sleeping street.

The cab drove away, and Kenyon's laugh went after it.

He was revenged.


X

But for the chauffeur, a burly and obliging Irishman, Nellie Pope's
unwilling and unconscious customer would never have reached her rooms.
They were on the top floor of a brown-stone house which had no elevator.
The struggle to earn his own daily bread made the chauffeur sympathetic.
So he got Peter over his shoulder, as though he were a huge sack, and
carried him step by step up the narrow, ill-lit, echoing staircase. On
the top landing he waited, breathing hard, while the girl opened the
door with her latch-key.

"Where'll I put him?"

"Bring 'im into the bedroom," said the girl. "I'm sure I'm obliged to
you for the trouble you've taken, mister. You'll 'ave a glass of beer
before you go down, won't you?"

"Sure!"

He lumped Peter on to the bed with an exclamation of relief. It groaned
beneath his dead weight. Mopping his brow and running his fingers
through a shock of thick, dry hair, the Irishman looked down at the
great body of his own customer's evening catch. "I guess I've seen a
good many drunks before," he said, "but this feller's fairly paralyzed.
It's a barrel he must have had, or perhaps he's shot himself with one of
them needle things. Anyway, he's a fine-looking chap."

Nellie Pope, who had heard these remarks as she was pouring out a bottle
of beer,--it was one of those apartments in which every sound carries
from room to room and in which when you are seated in the kitchen it is
possible to hear a person cleaning his teeth in the bathroom,--went in
and stood at the elbow of the chauffeur. Switching on a light over the
bed she peered into Peter's face. Her own lost most of its prettiness
under the glare. There were hollows and sharpnesses here and there, the
roots of the hair round her temples were darker than the too-bright gold
of the rest of it. There was, however, something kind, and even a little
sweet about her English cockney face and shrewd eyes. "Yes 'e's a fine
looking chap, isn't 'e,--a bit of a giant, too, and looks like a
gentleman. Poor boy, I wonder what that feller did to 'im!" She put her
hand on Peter's head and drew it back quickly. "'E's got a fever, I
should think. It looks as if I should 'ave to play nurse to-night. Oh, I
beg pardon, mister, 'ere's your beer."

The Irishman took the glass, held it up against the light, made a
curious Kaffir-like click with his tongue and threw back his head. "I
guess that went down fine," said he. "One dollar and ten cents from
you, Miss, and I'll make no charge for extras." He held out a great
horny hand.

Nellie Pope opened her imitation gold bag. "Bin out o' luck lately," she
said. "Don't know whether I've got--No, I 'aven't. Oh, I know!" With a
little laugh she bent over Peter again and hunted him over for some
money. Finding a small leather case she opened it. It contained a wad of
bills. With a rather comical air of haughty unconcern she handed the
chauffeur two dollars. "Keep the change," she said.

He laughed, pocketed the money, handed back the glass and went off,
shutting the door behind him.

Miss Pope, who had a tidy mind as well as an economical nature, took the
glass into the kitchen and finished the bottle herself. And then,
without removing her hat and gloves she sat down and counted the money
that was contained in the case. "One hundred and twenty-five dollars,"
she said. "Some little hevening!"

She put the case into her bag, where it lay among a handkerchief,
steeped in a too-pungent scent, a small, round box of powder, a stick of
lip salve, and a few promiscuous dimes. Then she took off her hat--a
curious net-like thing round which was wound two bright feathers--her
coat and her gloves. The latter she blew out tenderly, almost with
deference. They were white kid. All these she put very carefully on a
scrupulously clean dresser. Singing a little song she arranged a meal
for herself on the table,--having first laid a cloth. Bread, butter and
sardines made their appearance, with the remains of a chocolate cake
which had been greatly to the taste of her last night's customer, who
had not been, however, a very generous person. Extremely hungry, she sat
down and, with the knowledge that her purse was full, laid on the butter
with a more careless hand than usual. While she ate she enjoyed the
bright dialogue of Robert Chambers in a magazine which, having first
broken its back in order to keep it open, she propped up against a bowl.
Half way through the meal, she jumped up suddenly. "'Ere!" she said.
"You can't leave that poor boy like that, you careless cat, and 'im
lying with a fever!" She went swiftly into the bedroom, and once more
stood looking down at the inert form of poor old Peter. Then she laughed
at the difficulty of taking off his clothes, and with a shrug of her
shoulders started pluckily at his boots. She hung the coat and waistcoat
over the back of one of the chairs,--there were only two,--and having
folded the trousers with great care, returned to her supper. It was
after two o'clock when finally she crept quietly into bed.


XI

A little over twenty-four years before, Nellie Pope had been born to two
honest, hard-working country folk. They lived in a village of about two
dozen cottages a stone's throw from the great cross cut by the Romans on
the chalky side of Chiltern Hills, in England. Her parents' quiver had
already been a full one and there was indeed very little room in it for
the new arrival. Eight other boys and girls had preceded her with a
rapidity which must have surprised nature herself, bounteous as she is.
The father, a deep-chested, brown-bearded, very ignorant, but
good-natured man, worked all the year round on a farm. His wages were
fourteen shillings a week. The wife, who had been a domestic servant,
added to the family pot by taking in washing and, if able, helping at
the big house when guests were there. Neither of them had ever been
farther away from their native village than the town which lay in the
saucer of the valley, the steeple of whose church could be seen glinting
in the sun away below.

Little Nellai, as she was called, was thrown on her own resources from
the moment that she could crawl out of the narrow kitchen door into the
patch of garden where potatoes grew and eager chickens played the
scavenger for odd morsels of food. Her eldest sister was her real
mother, and it was she who daily led her little brood of dirty-faced
children out into the beech forest which stood in strange silence behind
the cottage. The monotonous years slipped by one after another,
enlivened only by a death or a birth or a fight, or a very occasional
jaunt to the town in one of the farm wagons, perched up on a load of hay
or wedged in between sacks of potatoes. Little Nellai's pretty face and
fair hair very soon made her a pet of the lady at the big house, and it
was from this kind, but mistaken person, from whom she obtained the
seeds of discontent which at the early age of sixteen sent her into the
town as a "help" in the kitchen of a man who kept a garage. It was from
this place, on the main road to London, that Nellie Pope saw life for
the first time and became aware of the fact that the world was a larger
place than the little village perched up so near the sky, and caught the
fever of discovery from the white dust that was left behind by the cars
which sped to London one way, and to Oxford the other.

During this first year among shops and country louts, Nellie became
aware of the fact that her pretty face and fair hair were very valuable
assets. They procured her candies and many other little presents. They
enabled her to make a choice among the young men with whom to walk out.
They won smiles and pleasant words not only from the chauffeurs of the
cars which came into her master's garage to be attended to, but also
from their owners. Eventually it was one of these--more unscrupulous
than most--who, staying for a few days at the "Red Lion," carried Nellie
away with him to London, after several surreptitious meetings in the
shady lane at the back of the churchyard. There it was that she saw life
with very naked eyes, passed quickly from one so-called protector to
another, was taken to the United States by one of a troupe of gymnasts,
and then deserted. For two years she had been numbered among the night
birds who flit out after dark--a member of the oldest profession in the
world. There were, however, no moments in her life--hard, terrible and
sordid as it was--when she looked back with anything like regret at
those heavily thatched cottages which stood among their little gardens
on the side of the hills. She could put up with the fatigue, brutality
and uncertainty, the gross actuality of her present life, with courage,
cheerfulness and even optimism, but the mere thought of the deadly
monotony of that peaceful village, where summer followed winter with
inexorable routine, made her shudder. The first pretty frock which had
been given her by the lady of the big house had begun the work. The
candies and the little presents from the country louts had completed it;
and here she was, still very young, with a heart still kind and with a
nature not yet warped and brutalized,--a danger to any community in
which she lived, the deliberate spreader of something so frightful that
science and civilization stood abashed in her presence.

Vanity has much to answer for, and out of nature spring many plants
whose tempting berries are filled with poison.

It was in the bed of this wretched little woman that the unconscious
Peter slept that night.

It was ten o'clock in the morning when the weary girl faced another day.
She didn't grumble at the fact that she had been frequently disturbed
and had watched many of the hours go by while she attended to Peter with
something of the spirit of a Magdalen. She kept repeating to herself:
"Poor boy! Poor boy! I wonder what his mother would say if she saw him
like this."

She bathed his head, listened with astonishment to his babbling, and
tried to piece together his incoherent pleading with Ranken Townsend and
his declarations to Betty of his everlasting love. She listened with
acute interest to the broken sentences which showed her that this great
big man-boy was endeavoring to stir up his father to do something which
seemed to him to be urgent and vital, and she wondered who Graham was,
and Nicholas.

The first thing that she did when she was dressed and had put the kettle
on her gas stove to boil, was to hunt through Peter's pockets to find
out who he was. It was obvious to her that he was not so much a customer
as a patient. She was a little afraid of accepting the whole
responsibility of his case. The only letter she found was one signed
"Graham," headed with the address of an office in Wall Street. In the
corner of it was printed a telephone number. Graham, it was plain to
her, was a Christian name. She could find no suggestion of the surname
of the writer or of the man who lay so heavily in the next room.

"I dunno," she said to herself. "Something has got to be done. That
boy's in a bad way. 'E's as 'ot as a pancake and I shouldn't think 'e's
used to drink by the way 'e takes it. Suppose hanything should 'appen to
'im 'ere. I should look funny. What 'ad I better do?"

What she did was to have breakfast. During this hasty meal she thought
things over--all her hard-won practicality at work in her brain. Then
she put on her befeathered hat and her white gloves, a second-best pair
of shoes, and went out and along the street, and into the nearest drug
store. Here she entered the telephone booth and asked for the number
that was printed on Graham's note. By that time it was just after nine
o'clock. Having complied with the sharp request to slip the necessary
nickel into the slot, an impatient voice recited the name of the firm.
"I want to speak to Mr. Graham," she said. "No such name--? Well, keep
your 'air on, Mister. I may be a client--a millionaire's wife--for all
you know. I'm asking for Mr. Graham and as 'e's a friend of mine, and
probably your boss, I'm not bothering about his surname. You know that
as well as I do--Do I mean Mr. Graham Guthrie? Well, yes. Who else
should I mean?" She gave a chuckle of triumph. "All right! I'll 'old
on."

In a moment or two there was another voice on the telephone. "How d'you
do?" she said. "I'm holding a letter signed by you, to 'Dear
Peter,'--Ah! I thought that would make you jump--It doesn't matter what
my name is. What's that--? Yes, I _do_ know where he is. I've been
looking after 'im all night. Come up to my place right away and I'll be
there to meet you. Dear Peter is far from well." She gave her address,
and feeling immensely relieved left the box. But before she left the
store she treated herself to a large box of talcum powder and a
medium-sized bottle of her favorite scent, paying the bill with Peter's
money. She considered herself to be fully justified.

On the way home she dropped into a delicatessen shop and bought some
sausages, a bottle of pickles, a queer German salad of raw herring
chopped up with carrots and onions, and carried these away with her. On
her way up-stairs--the bald, hard stairs--she was greeted by a
half-dressed person whose hair was in curl-papers and who had opened her
door to pick up a daily paper which lay outside. "Hello, Miss Pope!
Anything doing?" "Yes," said Nellie Pope, "the market's improving," and
she laughed and went on.

Peter was still lying inert when she bent over him once more. She felt
his head again, put the covers about his shoulders, pulled the blind
more closely over the window, and after having put the food away
returned to make up her face. She wasn't going to be caught looking what
she called "second-rate" by this Mr. Graham Guthrie when he came.

There being no need to practice rigid economy at that moment, she gave
herself a glass of beer and sat down to pass the time with her magazine,
in which life was regarded through very rosy spectacles.

When finally she opened the door, in response to a loud and insistent
ring, her answer to Graham's abrupt question: "Is my brother _here_?"
was "Yes; why shouldn't he be?" She didn't like the tone. The word
"here" was underlined in an unnecessarily unpleasant manner.


XII

"What's my brother doing here?" asked Graham.

"What d'you s'pose? Better go and ask 'im yourself."

"Where is he?"

"In bed, if you must know." The girl answered sharply. She found her
caller supercilious. She followed him into the bedroom, telling herself
that this was a nice way to be treated for all the trouble that she had
taken.

Graham bent over the bed. "Good God!" he said. "What's the matter with
him?"

"Drink!" said the girl drily.

"Drink! He never drinks."

"Then 'e must 'ave fallen off the water-wagon into a barrel of alcohol
and opened 'is mouth too wide. Also 'e's got a fever."

Graham turned on the girl. "How did he get here?"

"In a cab. You don't s'pose I carried 'im, d'you?"

"Where'd you find him?"

"I didn't find 'im. Some one gave 'im to me as a present--a nice
present, I must say."

"Don't lie to me!" cried Graham. "And don't be impudent."

"Impudent!" cried Nellie Pope, shrilly. "Here, you'd better watch what
you're saying. I don't stand any cheek, I don't, neither from you nor
anybody else, and I'm not in the habit of lying. I tell you I was made a
present of 'im. I was told to take 'im 'ome by a young fellow on
Forty-eighth Street, who 'ad called up a cab."

"Forty-eighth Street,--are you sure?"

"Well, if I don't know the streets, who does? The young fellow was a
gent. He didn't talk, he gave orders. He was tall and slight and he 'ad
kinky hair. Quite a nut. English, he was, any one could tell that."

"Good God!" thought Graham--"Kenyon." He sat down on the bed as though
he had received a blow in the middle of his back. Only an hour before he
had telephoned to Kenyon to say good-bye and wish him a pleasant
crossing, and all that he said about Peter was that they had seen each
other the night before. "No doubt he's all right," he had said, in
answer to Graham's anxious question. What did it all mean? What foul
thing had Kenyon done?

Graham had been up all night waiting for his brother. He had good news
for him. He had pulled himself together and gone to see Ranken Townsend
during the time that Peter had been walking the streets. To the artist
he had made a clean breast of everything, so that he might, once for
all, set Peter right in the eyes of his future father-in-law. That was
the least that he could do. He had carried away from the studio in his
pocket a short, generous and impulsive letter from the artist, asking
Peter's forgiveness for not having accepted his word of honor. Armed
with this, Graham had waited while hour after hour slipped by, growing
more and more anxious as Peter did not appear. At breakfast he told his
mother--in case she should discover that Peter had not returned--that he
had stayed the night in Kenyon's rooms, as they had much to talk about
and one or two things to arrange. He had been in the house when Kenyon
had rung up, apologizing for being unable to come round, and thanking
Mrs. Guthrie for her kindness and hospitality.

And there lay Peter inanimate and stupefied. In the name of all that was
horrible, what had happened? Graham got up and faced the girl again.
"You mustn't mind my being abrupt and rude," he said. "I'm awfully
sorry. But this is my brother, my best pal, and I've been terribly
anxious about him, and you don't know--nobody knows--what it means to me
to see him like this."

"Ah! Now you're talking," said Nellie Pope. "Treat me nicely and there's
nothing I won't do for you. If you ask me--and if I don't know a bit
more about life than you do I ought to--I have a shrewd idea that your
brother was made drunk,--that is, _doped_. 'E was quite gone when 'e was
put into the cab, and from the way that kinky-headed chap laughed as we
drove off together,--I mean me and your brother,--I should think that 'e
'ad it in for him, but of course I don't know hanything about that.
Perhaps you do."

Graham shook his head. "No," he said; "I don't know anything about it
either. But what are we going to do with him, that's the point? He's
ill, that's obvious, and a doctor ought to see him at once."

"That's what I think," said the girl, "and I don't think 'e ought to be
moved, 'e's so frightfully 'ot. 'E might catch pneumonia, or something.
What I think you'd better do is to call up a doctor at once, get him to
give your brother a dose and give me directions as to what to do. 'E
can stay 'ere until 'e's all right again, and I'll nurse 'im."

"Yes, but why should you----?"

"Oh, bless you, that's all right. I'm glad to have something to do. Time
hangs heavy. Besides, the poor boy is just like a baby. I like 'im and
you needn't be afraid that I shall try to get anything out of 'im,
because I shan't."

Graham snatched eagerly at the proffered assistance. He was intensely
grateful. "Have you a telephone here?" he asked.

Nellie Pope laughed. "What d'you take me for?" she said. "I'm not a
chorus lady. When I want to use the 'phone I pop round to the drug store
and have a nickel's worth. That's how I got on to you."

Graham caught up his hat and left the apartment quickly. One of his
college friends was a doctor and had just started to practice. He would
ask him to come and see Peter. He agreed with the girl that it would be
running a great risk to move Peter, and he was all against taking him
home in his present condition. It would only lead to more lies and would
certainly throw his mother into a dreadful state of anxiety.

While he was gone, Nellie Pope set to work to tidy up the bedroom. She
put her boots away in a closet, got out a clean bedspread, rubbed the
powder off her mirror and arranged her dressing-table. This doctor,
whoever he was, should find her apartment as tidy as she could make it.
It was a matter of pride with her. She still had some of that left. One
thing, however, she was determined about. The doctor must not be
allowed to look too closely at her.


XIII

Graham came out of the telephone box in the drug store. Dr. Harding was
unable, he said, to leave his office for an hour and a half, when he
would drive to Nellie Pope's address and meet Graham in her apartment.

But as he was hurrying back to Peter's bedside, Graham drew up suddenly.
The rage that had entered into his soul when he had gathered that Kenyon
was responsible for his brother's condition broke into a blaze. Almost
before he knew what he was doing or what he was going to do when he got
there, he hailed a passing taxi and told the man to drive to Kenyon's
apartment. He remembered that the liner was not due to leave until
two-thirty. Kenyon would therefore be at home for some time yet. He told
himself that he _must_ see him--he must. He owed it to Peter first, and
then to himself as Peter's brother and pal, to make Kenyon answer for
this dirty and disloyal trick. Yes, that was it, he told himself as the
cab bowled quickly to its destination. Kenyon must be made to answer,
or, at any rate, to offer some extenuating explanation if he could. It
would be something that would make him wake up in the middle of the
night and curse himself if he let the opportunity slip out of his hands
to face Kenyon up before he went immaculately, unquestioned and perhaps
unpunished out of their lives. How could he face Peter when he was well
again? How could he look at his own reflection in the looking-glass if,
for reasons of his personal admiration of Kenyon and disinclination to
force things to an issue, he let him escape without finding out the
truth?

The cab stopped. Graham sprang out, paid the man, ran up the flight of
stone steps and rang the bell. None too quickly it was answered by a
girl with a mass of black hair and a pair of Irish eyes which had been
put in with a dirty finger.

"Is Mr. Kenyon in?"

"Yes."

The hall was filled with baggage. A very distinct "K" was on all the
baggage tabs.

"All right!" said Graham. "I know my way up."

Rather sharply Kenyon called out "Come in!" when Graham knocked on the
door of the sitting-room.

In a much-waisted suit of brown clothes, a brown tie and a pair of brown
shoes which were so highly polished as to look almost hot, Kenyon was
standing with the telephone receiver to his ear. He was saying
"Good-bye" to one of the men to whom Graham had been proud to introduce
him and whose pockets he had already lightened by a fairly considerable
sum. He finished speaking before turning to see who had entered, and
hung up the receiver.

"Oh, hello, my dear fellow!" he said. "I didn't expect to see you. How
extremely and peculiarly pleasant!"

Graham wondered if he would think so by the time that he had done with
him. But, with a strong effort of will, he kept his self-control. He
intended to let Kenyon give himself away. That seemed to be the best
plan.

Kenyon gave him no chance to speak. "Not satisfied with wishing me 'bon
voyage' over the wire, eh? By Jove, this is most friendly of you. You'll
help kill the boring time before I drive off to the docks with all my
duly and laboriously labelled luggage. Make yourself at home, old boy,
and give me your news."

He took his hat and stick and yellow gloves out of the one comfortable
chair and waved his hand toward it.

Graham remained standing. Having seen Peter lying in such a bed, inert
and humiliated,--Peter, of all men,--he resented Kenyon's suave
cordiality and glib complacency. "I've just come from Peter," he said.

Kenyon burst out laughing. "Oh, do tell me! How does he look? Is his
head as big as the dome of St. Paul's this morning? It ought to be. I
gave him the sort of mixture that would blow most men skyhigh. It's
never been known to fail."

"It hasn't?" said Graham. "So you _did_ give it to him!" he added
inwardly. "Good! You'll pay for _that_."

"I was amazed to see the thirsty way our abstemious Peter lapped it
down. I've a sneaking notion that he liked it. It was on an empty
stomach, too. He seems to have been in an emotional mood
yesterday--tramping the streets. Ye gods, how these sentimentalists go
to pieces under the influence of a bit of a girl! He came up here fairly
late, just after Belle--I mean, just after----"

"Belle? Was Belle here last night, then?" Graham's voice rang out
sharply.

"Yes," said Kenyon, with a curious smile. After all, what did it matter
now who knew? He was on the verge of sailing and he hoped that he might
never see this family of Guthries again. "Yes, Belle was here."

There was a look in the corners of Kenyon's eyes that sent a spasm of
fear all through Graham's body. What was this man not capable of doing
since he had deliberately turned Peter, his friend, over to a
street-walker, having first rendered him senseless? "Then I'm here for
Belle, as well," he said to himself, "and whatever you did you'll pay
for that too."

There was an empty cardboard collar-box on the floor. Kenyon gave it a
spiteful kick. "Yes, Belle and I had,--what shall I call it?--a rather
tender parting scene here last night,--quite tender, in fact. All very
amusing in the sum total of things, eh? I was peculiarly ready for Peter
when he dropped in. And, by the way, how on earth did you find out where
he spent the night, learning, I trust, to shake off some of his Quaker
notions?"

"She rang me up," said Graham, whose fists were clenched so tightly
that every finger contained a pulse. He was almost ready to hit--almost.
He was only waiting for one other proof of this dirty dog's treachery.

"Oh, did she? Found your name and address in Peter's pocket, I suppose.
Well, she came along last night at the exact psychological moment. The
alacrity with which she took dear old drunken Peter off my hands at the
merest hint had a certain amount of pathos about it. _He's_ off his
immaculate perch now, eh? _He's_ left his tuppenny halo on a pretty
sordid hat-peg, at last, eh? He'll thank me for having done it for him
one of these days, I'll be bound."

Graham went slowly over to him. "Not one of these days," he said with
extreme distinctness. "Through me, thank God, to-day--now."

Kenyon darted a quick look at the man who had always caused him a
considerable amount of inward laughter, whom he had labelled as a
precocious provincial. He saw that his face had gone as white as a
stone--that his nostrils were all distended and that his eyes seemed to
have become bloodshot. No coward, Kenyon had an inherent detestation of
a fracas, especially when he was dressed for the street. He decided to
avert a row with a touch of autocratic authority. It had worked before.

"Let there be no vulgar display of pugilism here," he said, sharply. "If
you don't like my methods, get out!"

Everything in Graham's nature seemed to have become concentrated in one
big ball of desire to hit and hit, and hit again--to hear the heavy
thud of his blows on that man's body--to see him lying squirming and
broken on the carpet with a receipt in full upon his face for all that
he had done.

"Put up your fist," he said, "or I shall have to hit you cold."

"Curse you, get out!" cried Kenyon, catching Graham one on the mouth
before he was ready.

Graham laughed. He needed that. By jove, he needed that. He let out his
left. "That's for Peter," he said.

Kenyon staggered. His left eye seemed to fill. With a yell of pain he
jumped in and hit wildly.

Graham waited a second chance and got it. "And that's for Belle," he
said. And his knuckles bled with the contact of teeth.

Kenyon went in again. Chairs fell over and the table was pushed aside.
And all the time that he failed to reach Graham's face he screamed like
a horse whose stable is in flames.

But Graham, cold, icy cold, and cooler than he had ever been in his
life, played with him. He had never been so much a man in his life. He
warded and guarded and waited hoping that he might once more feel the
sting of pain that would make his last blow unforgettable--epoch-making.

He got it,--but with Kenyon's foot.

And again Graham laughed,--for joy--for very joy. Now he could hit, and
hit honestly.

"You little gentleman!" he said. "You perfect little gentleman--I've
paid you for Peter, and for Belle. Here's my debt, with a hundred per
cent, interest and then some."

The blow, hard and firm from the full shoulder, caught Kenyon on the
point of the jaw, lifted him off his feet and laid him out full stretch
on the broad of his back.

For several moments, breathing hard, Graham stood over him, looking down
at the dishevelled, unconscious dandy, with his bad blood all over his
face and clothes. His collar had sprung, his beautiful brown tie had
gone round under his ear, his shirt cuffs were dabbled with red, one eye
was bunged up and his mouth was all swollen.

Then Graham rang the bell, and while waiting tidied himself up in front
of the glass in which he now felt that he could look.

The girl came in and gave a shrill cry.

"Just see to that man, please. Cold water at once will be the best
thing."

He caught up his hat, went out, shut the door, ran down-stairs, let
himself into the street and was out of sight and into a taxicab before
the girl had recovered herself.

"Paid in full," he said breathlessly to himself, as he bound up his
knuckles--"in full."


XIV

With wide-eyed anxiety, Graham, having driven straight back, waited for
the doctor's verdict. The two young men stood alone in the little
sitting-room. With a touch of delicacy, which they were quick to notice,
Nellie Pope made no attempt to follow them in.

"Um!" said Dr. Harding. "A very close shave from pneumonia. He can't be
moved yet, unless, of course, you'd like me to send for an ambulance.
That's up to you."

Graham shook his head. "No," he said. "I don't want that. I think he'd
better be--I mean I don't want my father--Oh, well, I dare say you
understand."

"Yes," said Dr. Harding, "I'm afraid I do. God knows what the percentage
of disaster is from men having soused themselves like that. It seems to
me that your brother, who had obviously caught a severe chill, must have
set out deliberately to make himself drunk, and mixed everything in
sight."

Graham held his peace. But his blood tingled at the knowledge that he
had given Kenyon something that he would never forget and which would
make it necessary for him to remain in the seclusion of his state-room
for some days at least.

The young doctor sat down and wrote a prescription and went on quickly
to tell Graham what to do. Finally he rose. "I'll look in again this
evening," he said. "You'll be here, won't you? Of course we shall get
him all right in a couple of days or so,--that is, right enough to go
home,--but----"

"But what?" asked Graham.

"Well," said Dr. Harding, "I may have to leave the rest of the treatment
to your father." He shook his head several times on his way to the
door. He had taken one or two close, examining looks of Nellie Pope.

"Mr. Guthrie, you're wanted."

Graham turned sharply. Nellie Pope, waiting until the doctor had gone,
put her head in at the door. "Come on in," she said. "Come on in!"

Graham followed her into the bedroom and bent over Peter. Opening his
eyes with some difficulty, as though they hurt him, Peter looked about.
The room was strange. The face of the girl was strange. The whole thing
seemed to belong to a dream. Then he recognized his brother. "You got
away, then," he said.

"Got away?"

"Yes. By Jove, what a blaze! The last time I saw you, you were carrying
mother along the passage. I could hardly see you for smoke. I got Betty
out into the street and dived back into the house. Father was the only
one left. Good God, what awful flames! The library was red hot. I got
into the middle of it, choking and yelling for father, when something
fell on my head. Is he--dead?"

"No," said Graham. "He's all right."

A little smile broke out on Peter's face and he sighed and turned over
and went to sleep again.

Nellie Pope made a comical grimace. "I don't wonder that 'e's been
dreaming about a fire," she whispered. She arranged the covers over
Peter's shoulder with a deft and sympathetic hand, and then took
Graham's arm and led him out into the passage. "You've got your work.
Push off. I'll see to the medicine when it comes. Don't you worry. Get
back as soon as you can, and while you're away I'll look after 'im like
a sister. I like 'im, poor boy! My goodness! why don't somebody put the
lid on all the distilleries? Half the troubles in the world 'ud be
prevented that way!"

Very reluctantly Graham acted on the girl's suggestion that he should
return to his office. He was in the middle of very important work. He
held out his hand. "You're a damned good little sort," he said, "and I'm
intensely grateful."

Nellie Pope's eyes filled with tears. It had been a long time since she
had been treated so humanly or had her hand so warmly clasped. But she
screwed out a laugh and waved her hand to Graham as he let himself out.

She spent the rest of the day in and out of the bedroom. With her eyes
continually on her clock, she devoted herself untiringly and with the
utmost efficiency to looking after her patient. To the very instant she
gave him his medicine and said cheery, pleasant things to him every time
she had to wake him up to administer it. It was an odd and wonderful day
for her, as well as for Peter,--filled with many touches of curious
comedy, the comedy of life--and many moments of queer pathos. Once she
had to listen to a little outburst of incoherent love, when Peter
insisted on telling her what an angel Betty was. Once she was obliged to
hear what Peter had to say about his father, from which she gathered
that this man was responsible for the burning house from which this boy
had only just been able to escape alive, having saved his family. The
obsession of fire remained with Peter until the evening, when he woke up
with a clear brain, and having taken his medicine, looked at her with
new eyes.

"What's all this?" he asked quietly. "Where am I, and who are you?"

"Oh, that's all right," said Nellie Pope.

"Is it? Are you a nurse?"

"Yes," she said.

"Is this a hospital?"

"Yes,--that is, a nursing home," she said.

"Oh!" said Peter. "Where's Kenyon?"

"I don't know, dearie."

"What on earth was that filth that he gave me to drink? I carried the
books into his room, and then I'm hanged if I can remember--I've got a
most frightful headache. Every time I move my head seems to split in
half. How long have I been here? Was I poisoned, or what?"

"Now don't you talk or you'll get me into trouble. You go off to sleep
like a good boy. You'll be all right in the morning."

"Shall I? That's good." And he heaved a big sigh and obeyed. It was
extraordinary how sleep came to his rescue.

He was still asleep when Graham came back at six o'clock. Nellie Pope
opened the door to him. "'E's getting on fine," she said. "You can take
that line out of your forehead. 'E's been talking quite sensibly to me.
What I don't know about your father and your family isn't worth
knowing."

Graham tiptoed into the bedroom, drew a chair up to the side of the bed
and sat down. And while he waited for the time to arrive for Peter's
next dose many strange things ran through his brain,--his own
precocity--his own desire to be smart and become a man of the world--his
own evening in the little shabby theatrical lodgings in Oxford with
Kenyon--his dealings with Ita Strabosck--the night he had spent in his
bed-room when Peter took his razors away--that awful hour when he
sneaked into his father's laboratory and under the pressure of great
trouble forged his name. The only thing that gave him any sense of
pleasure out of all this was the fact that he carried in his pocket a
warm and spontaneous letter from Ranken Townsend, which he knew would be
better to Peter than pints of medicine.

And while he sat watching, Nellie Pope ate her sausage in the kitchen
and finished the instalment of the love story in her magazine.

What a world, O my masters!


XV

It was late when Graham let himself into his father's house that night.
He had done many things that day. He had also been through much anxiety.
He felt that he deserved the right to turn in at once and sleep the
sleep of the just. But Kenyon had said that Belle had been alone in his
rooms the night before and the queer expression that had come into his
eyes as he made the remark lived most uneasily in Graham's memory. He
now knew Nicholas Kenyon to be a skunk--an unscrupulous individualist
devoid of loyalty, incapable of feeling true friendship and in every way
unfit to have any dealings, unwatched, with a girl unless she was in his
own set or belonged to the same class as the two chorus girls for whom
he had waited outside the stage door of the Oxford Theatre.

He was well aware of the fact that Belle had been something more than
merely attracted by Kenyon. He had even hoped that she might be engaged
to be married to him, being very proud to believe that some day soon she
might become the wife of the man under whose spell he, like all the rest
of the family, had fallen. Now, however, in the light of Kenyon's
hideous treatment of Peter, he saw his one-time hero with eyes from
which all the glamour of his appearance had disappeared and he was
filled with an overwhelming desire to see Belle at once and make it
clear to her, bluntly and finally, that she must clear Kenyon out of her
mind as a house is rid of vermin. Belle was, as he well knew, a
high-spirited, amazingly imperious, independent girl, with strong
emotions. She was not one who would be turned lightly, or even driven,
out of a line of thought. She was, on the contrary, as difficult to
treat as an unbroken filly and could only be managed with the lightest
of hands. If she really and truly loved Kenyon and still believed in
him, he knew that he could not say anything that would prejudice him in
her estimation, even by telling her what he had done to Peter. She would
be able to produce reasons, however far-fetched, to make that incident
seem less ugly. There was, however, the chance--just the chance--that
she would be open to conviction. After much inward argument and
hesitation he decided to go up to Belle's room, and if she were not
asleep, to have a little talk with her and find out how the land lay,
and if he could see any possibility of adding to his punishment of
Kenyon to do so by putting him in his true colour before Belle.

It took him some time to come to this decision and screw up his courage
to face Belle. For nearly an hour he paced up and down the quiet
library, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Belle was likely to tell him
to go and hang himself if she considered that he was butting into her
private affairs. He knew this,--no one better. He had often done so
before. He decided, however, to run this risk and, in the hope that she
might still be up, went upstairs and stood for a moment listening
outside her door. He could hear no sound in her room, no movement, no
creak of a drawer being opened or shut. He knocked softly and
waited,--was just going to knock again when the door was opened.

With her beautiful black hair done for the night and a pink kimono over
her night-dress, Belle stood in the doorway with an expression of
surprised inquiry in her eyes. These two had not taken the trouble to be
very good friends for some years.

"Oh, it's you, Graham," she said, but made no move.

"It's awfully late, I know; but, if you're not too tired, may I come
in?" Graham hated himself for being self-conscious. It seemed absurd
with his own sister. He wished then that he had not been quite so
selfish and self-contained since he had considered himself to be a man,
and had gone out of his way to keep up his old boyish relations with
Belle.

He was a little surprised when she said, "Come in, dear," and made way
for him. He noticed quickly as soon as she stood under the light that
her eyes were red and swollen, and that there was a most unusual air
about her of gentleness and dejection. He noticed, too, with immense
relief, that a large photograph of Kenyon in hunting-kit which he had
seen standing on her dressing-table had been taken away. A good sign!

The room was very different from Ethel's. It had nothing of that rather
anæmic ultra-modern air so carefully cultivated by the younger girl. On
the contrary, everything in it was characteristic of Belle. It was full
of ripe colours and solid comfort. A mass of silver things jostled each
other untidily on the dressing-table. A collection of monthly fashion
papers with vivid decorative covers lay on a heap on a chair, and a
novel, open in the middle, had been flung, face down, on the sofa. There
was no attempt at carefully shaded lights. They were all turned on and
were reflected from the long glasses in a large mahogany wardrobe. The
carpet all round the dressing-table was bespattered with white powder.

"I was reading when I heard your knock," she said,--"at least I was
pretending to read. Sleep was miles away."

Graham sat down, hanging a pair of stockings over the arm of the chair.
"Why?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know, I've been thinking,--for a change. It's such a new
thing for me that it knocked sleep out of my head. Not nice thoughts,
either."

She seemed glad to talk, Graham thought. "Anything the matter, Bee?" he
asked.

"I guess it's nearly a century since you called me Bee," she said with a
queer little laugh. "Would you say that anything was the matter if you
had just picked yourself out of the ruins of a house that had fallen
about your ears?"

Graham got up suddenly, sat on the sofa at Belle's side and put his arms
round her shoulder. "Don't dodge behind phrases, old girl," he said.
"Just tell me in plain English. Let me help you if I can."

But Belle shook him off,--not angry with him so much as with herself.
She detested weakness. This unexpected kindness on Graham's part made
her feel like crying again. In her heart she longed for some one to whom
she could pour out her soul, and Graham's affection almost caught her
before she could stop herself. Not to him, she told herself, nor to any
member of her family, was she going to confess the sort of thoughts that
had choked her brain ever since that hour alone with Kenyon. Not even to
Betty, to whom she told most things, was she going to lay bare the fact
that, in the cold light of day, she found herself deeply hurt and
deeply humiliated at Kenyon's treatment of her. In fact, she had herself
only that night begun to realize the state of her feelings and was still
suffering under the discovery.

Graham, whose nature and character were as much like those of Belle as
though they were twins, caught her mental attitude as she stood
struggling between pride and a desire to tell the truth. It was as plain
to him as though she had already confessed that Kenyon had done
something which had shaken her belief in him. His photograph, which had
dominated her room, had been put away. Her eyes were red and swollen.
All his sympathy was stirred. At the same time he rejoiced in the eager
thought that he had it in his power to clear Kenyon finally out of her
mind.

He set to work quietly. "I'm going to tell you about Peter," he said.

She turned quickly. "Peter? There's nothing wrong with Peter, is there?"

"God knows how much wrong there is. I'm going to tell you all I know.
We're all in this,--through Kenyon, and because we've been thoughtless
fools running amuck through life."

The idea of there being anything wrong with Peter brought Belle quickly
out of self-analysis and the self-indulgence of her own pain. "Don't
beat about the bush," she said. "Please tell me. You told mother this
morning that he had stayed with Nicholas last night."

"That was a lie. This is what happened. After a rotten day worrying
about an upset with Betty, he went to see Kenyon late last night. He'd
had nothing to eat. I believe because Kenyon had been disappointed about
something earlier in the evening,--but I only make a guess at that from
the way he looked when I saw him to-day,--he deliberately took it out on
Peter."

"On Peter? How?" Belle understood this disappointment only too well.

"He made him drunk."

"Drunk!--Peter!"

"Dead drunk,--by doping him with a fearful mixture of all the drinks he
had. He had always threatened to do it, and this time he caught Peter
napping. That was a foul enough thing to do anyway, but it didn't
satisfy him. He got him into the street and instead of putting him into
a cab and sending him home he called a passing woman----"

"Oh, no!" cried Belle.

"Yes,--and gave Peter over to her and there he's been, in her bed, in a
little hole of an apartment, ill and poisoned, ever since."

"Oh, my God!" cried Belle.

"The woman rang me up early this morning and I got Ralph Harding to go
and see what he could do. I've been there most of the day,--except for
ten minutes with Kenyon--the best ten minutes I ever put in--ever."

He got up and stood looking at Belle with a gleam of such intense
satisfaction in his eyes that she guessed what he had done.

"That's our admirable friend Kenyon," he added. "That's the man who
shared rooms with Peter--whose charm of manner got us all at Oxford, and
who was made one of the family by father and mother when he came to this
country. I hit him for Peter, for you and for myself in that glorious
ten minutes to-day. I left him lying on the floor in his rooms all over
his own black blood, and if ever I meet him again, in any part of the
world, at any time of my life, I'll give him another dose of the same
sort--for Peter, for you and for me--That's what I came to tell you,
Bee."

He bent forward and kissed her, turned round and left the room.

That was Kenyon, Graham had said.

Standing where he had left her, with this story of utter and incredible
treachery in her ears, Belle added another count to Graham's
indictment,--that of trying to seduce her without even the promise of
marriage, when her grief at parting with him made her weak.

For a moment she stood chilled and stunned. That was Kenyon--All along
she had been fooled--all along he had been playing with her as though
she amounted merely to a light creature with whom men passed the time.
It was due to her father,--of all men, her father,--that she stood there
that night, humiliated but unharmed, with her pride all slashed and
bleeding, her self-respect at a discount, but with nothing on her
conscience that would make her face the passing days with fear and
horror.

She suddenly flamed into action. "Yes; that's Kenyon!" she thought, and
making a sort of blazing pounce on the middle drawer of her
dressing-table she pulled it open, took out the large photograph of a
man in hunting-kit, and with queer, choking cries of rage and scorn,
tore it into shreds and stamped upon the pieces.


XVI

Belle got very little sleep that night. Having finally decided, on top
of her talk with Graham, that Kenyon had intended to treat her much in
the same way as he had treated Peter, she endeavored to look back
honestly and squarely at the whole time during which that
super-individualist had occupied her thoughts. She saw herself as a very
foolish, naïve girl, without balance, without reserve and without the
necessary caution in her treatment of men which should come from proper
training and proper advice.

She laid no blame upon her mother,--that excellent little woman whose
God-sent optimism made her believe that all her children were without
flaw and that the world was full of people with good hearts and good
intentions. She blamed only herself, and saw plainly enough that she had
allowed her head to be turned by her father's sudden acquisition of
wealth which made it unnecessary for her to be anything more than a sort
of butterfly skimming lightly through life without any duties to
perform--without any work to occupy her attention--without any hobbies
to fill her mind and give her ambition. She felt like some one who had
just escaped from being run over in the streets, or who, by some divine
accident, had been turned back from the very edge of an abyss. It was
indeed a night that she could never forget in all her life. She lay in
bed in the dark room with her eyes wide open, hearing all the hours
strike one by one, watching herself with a sort of terror and amazement
passing through Oxford. All the incidents that had been crowded into
that short and what had appeared to be glorious week, came up in front
of her again, especially the incident in the back-water with Kenyon and
the night of the ball at Wadham College. These were followed in her mind
by the scene in the library in her father's house, and finally that
dangerous hour in Kenyon's rooms when, but for the intervention of that
man who seemed of so little account, she might have been placed among
those unfortunate girls of whom the world talks very harshly and who pay
a terrible price for their foolishness and ignorance. And when finally
she got up, tired-eyed but saner than she had been since those good,
strenuous days of hers at her college when she had intended to make art
her mission in life, she told herself with a characteristic touch of
humour that the reformed criminal was a very good hand at preaching, and
made up her mind to go along to Ethel and improve the occasion. It was
very obvious to her that if she did not do this nobody would, and she
was eager to give a sort of proof of the fact that she was grateful for
her own escape by giving her young sister the benefit of her suffering.
And so she put on her dressing-gown and went to her sister's room--the
little sister of whom she was so fond and proud.

Ethel was sitting at her dressing-table doing her hair. There was a
petulant and discontented expression on her face. Still shamming
illness, she had not yet recovered from the smart of what she called
Jack's impertinence. There was a surprise in store for her,--she who
believed that she had managed so successfully to play the ostrich.

"Why, Belle!" she said. "What's the matter? You look as though you had
been in a railway accident."

Belle sat down, not quite sure how she would begin or of the sort of
reception that she would receive. She always felt rather uncouth in the
presence of this calm, self-assured, highly finished little sister of
hers. "Well," she said, "I have been through a sort of railway accident
and a good many of my bones seem to have been broken,--that's why I'm
here. I want to stop you, if I can, from going into the same train."

"I don't think I quite understand you."

"I don't suppose you do, my dear, but you shall--believe me." And then,
in the plainest English she gave Ethel the story of her relations with
Kenyon, without in any way sparing herself. And when she came to the
parting scene in Kenyon's rooms she painted a picture that was so strong
and vivid--so appalling in its proof of foolishness, that she made even
Ethel forget her complacency and sit with large, frightened eyes.

Then she got up and began to walk about. "I'm not a fool," she said,
"and this thing is going to teach me something. Also, I'm not a coward
and I've told you all this for a reason. You think that you're a very
wise little person, kiddie, but in reality you're no better than I am,
and just as sentimental and every bit as unwatched and as resentful of
guidance. Why are you here instead of being at school? You think no one
knows that. Well, I do. You're playing ducks and drakes with mother and
father and your education in order to have what we call a 'good time.'
You have shammed sickness so that you could have an adventure with the
boy next door."

"How d'you know that?" cried Ethel.

"Easily enough, my dear. I was told by the girl who used to bring your
thermos up to this room and who had caught you with the boy. Two days
ago she left to be married, but before she went she blurted out the
whole story. It wasn't for me to interfere then. I didn't much care, to
tell the truth,--in fact, I thought it was rather a good joke. I rather
admired you for the cunning way in which you had arranged everything. I
thought you were a good sport. I don't know how far it has gone, but I
hope to Heaven that you've not been quite so insane as I was. I'm not
going to tell mother or do the elder sister stunt, or anything of that
sort. I'm just going to ask you to chuck it all and go back to school
and play the game for a change, and to try to bear in mind that you owe
father and mother something,--a thing we all seem to have
forgotten,--and when you do go back, just remember--and always
remember--what I've told you about myself. We're very much alone, you
and I,--like two girls who are staying in a house with somebody else's
father and mother,--and so let's help each other and get a little
honesty and self-respect and see things straight. What d'you say, dear
little sister?"

Ethel got up, and with a complete breakdown of all the artificiality so
carefully instilled into her by her fashionable school, slipped into her
sister's arms and burst out crying.


XVII

It was not until the next afternoon that Peter was allowed to get up.
His superb constitution had stood, rock-like, against the chill which
the doctor's medicine had helped to throw off. He had done full justice
to a broiled chicken which Nellie Pope had cooked for him; but when,
having put on his clothes, he stood in front of the looking-glass, he
felt as though he had been under a steam-roller and flattened out.

"Good Lord!" he said, when he saw his pale, unshaven face. "Good Lord!"
But he was very happy. He had read and re-read Ranken Townsend's
generous apology. Betty was waiting for him--thank God for that.

And then he began to look round. Was this a nursing home? The
dressing-table, with its tins of powder and a large dilapidated puff,
its red stuff for lips, its shabby little brushes and a comb with
several of its teeth gone, looked as though it belonged to a
woman,--poor and struggling. The door of the closet, which gaped a
little, showed dresses hanging and a pair of very high-heeled boots with
white uppers. He opened a drawer in the dressing-table. It was full of
soiled white gloves, several veils neatly rolled up, and a collection of
small handkerchiefs. A strong, pungent scent rose up from them.

An ugly suspicion crept slowly into his mind. He looked at the bed with
its frilled pillows, at the flower papered bare walls, at the rather
worn blue carpet, at the flimsy wrap hanging limply on a peg on the door
of the bath-room, at the little bed-room slippers tucked away beneath
one of the white, painted chairs----

He turned and called out: "Nurse! Nurse!"

Something in his tone brought Nellie Pope in quickly.

He was standing with his hand on the big brass knob of the bed. "You
told me that this was a nursing home," he said.

The girl laughed. How should she know what Peter had done with his
life--of the ideal that he kept so steadily in front of him? She only
knew the other kind of men. "So it is," she said. "It's _my_ home and
I've had to be your nurse. Pretty well put, I think. Don't you? 'Ow
d'you feel, dearie? A bit groggy on your pins?"

The girl's cockney accent, her made-up face, her cheap, smart clothes
were noticed by him for the first time. Her insinuating, cheerful manner
and that sort of hail-fellow-well-met intimacy that was all about her,
came to him with a new and appalling meaning. He had been spoken to by
just such women in London after dark, and on Broadway and its side
streets as he passed. They belonged to the night life of all great
cities. They were the moths who came out attracted by the glare of
electric light. Good God! What was he doing in that place?

The keen remembrance of this woman's inestimable kindness, the supreme
lack of selfishness which had inspired her to bend so frequently over
his bed, the charity of her treatment of him as he lay ill and helpless,
made him anxious above everything else not to hurt her feelings. But
there were things that he must know at once,--urgent, vital things which
might affect all the rest of his life. There was Betty his
love-girl--the girl who was to be his wife--who was waiting for him with
the most exquisite and whole-hearted trust----

"I want you to tell me how I came here," he said.

Nellie Pope went over to the dressing-table. "That's easy," she replied
lightly, adding a new coat of color to her lips. "The night before last,
not having 'ad any luck, I was 'aving a last look round and 'appened to
be in Forty-eighth Street just as you staggered out of a 'ouse on the
arm of a young gent. I reckoned 'e didn't 'ave any use for me, being
outside 'is own place, but I passed 'im the usual greetin' from force of
'abit, just as 'e 'ad called up a taxi. With a funny look on 'is
face,--a curly smile I called it to meself,--'e suddenly gave me orders,
lumped you into the cab, blind to the wide, and told me to get in and
take you 'ome, and 'elp meself to any money you 'ad on you. Well, I did,
and the next instalment of the serial you know as well as I do. Feeling
weak, old dear?"

Peter sat heavily on the foot of the bed.

Nellie Pope went on,--simply and naturally, like one who is glad to
talk, glad to hear her own voice, indescribably, pathetically glad to be
in the company of a man who asked for nothing, who was not a guest, but
a friend--a fellow-creature down on his luck. "Me and Graham," she
said,--"and, I say, what a good-looking boy that is, and fairly devoted
to you, dearie,--well, 'im and me think that you must 'ave done
something to get the goat of this young feller. 'E doped you, that's
certain, and then passed you off on me. Enjoyed the joke, as it were,
too, according to what I noticed. Is that likely?"

Peter didn't answer. The joke--? Back into his mind came the many things
that Kenyon had said to him at Oxford: "You need humanizing, old boy.
You want to be hauled off that self-made pedestal of yours. One of these
days you'll come to an unholy crash--" Back into his mind also came
Kenyon's taunts made to him as he stood with his back to the fireplace
in the library the night after they had returned from having seen Ita
Strabosck: "You're blind! Blind! I tell you, and in that room sits a man
whose patients you may become."

Utterly ignorant of the feeling of revenge which had surged through
Kenyon's brain after Belle had been saved by the Doctor, it was borne
in on Peter, as he sat on the bed of this poor little night-bird, that
Kenyon had set out on purpose--with calculated deliberation--to make him
human, as he called it, before he returned to England. He had made him
drunk in order to carry out the joke. He had given him something to
render him insensible, well knowing that in no other way could this
fiendish desire be fulfilled.

"What time is my brother coming?" he asked.

Nellie Pope was busy daubing powder on her face. "Not until about nine
o'clock," she said. "'E and me talked it over this morning. The idea is
that you're coming in on the train that arrives at the Grand Central at
eight-forty-five. Now don't forget this. You stayed the night in your
friend's apartment, but you couldn't see 'im off the next morning
because you'd taken on a bit of business for 'im which meant going out
of town. Your brother is going to meet you at the station. That's the
story. And you're going 'ome together. 'E went back to get one of your
bags. 'E will sneak it out of the 'ouse and bring it round here. Oh, I
think we're pretty good stage managers, 'im and me. You see, the notion
is that Ma mustn't be upset. Poor little Ma!"

"What's to-day?" asked Peter, whose whole body seemed suddenly to have
been frozen.

"Sunday, dearie."

"Then I've been here two nights?"

"That's so," said the girl.

Peter was consumed with a desire to explore the apartment. He wanted to
discover whether there was another bedroom. "Are you comfortable here?"
he asked, a little clumsily.

Nellie Pope was rather flattered at his interest and so genuinely
delighted to see this great big man-boy on his feet again that she could
have broken into a dance. "Come and 'ave a look at my suite," she said,
laughing at the word she chose. "You know the bedroom,--I don't think
you'll forget that in a 'urry. On the right I 'ave the sitting-room
which I only use for my customers, preferring to sit in the kitchen,
which we now come to." She led him into it, with her hand on his
arm--she was apeing the manner and the phraseology of the guide. "In
this bright little apartment, beautifully furnished with a gas stove and
dresser--not exactly Jacobean--a plain, but serviceable Deal table and a
nice piece of linoleum which 'as worn very well, the sometimes popular
Miss Nellie Pope passes most of 'er leisure. 'Ere she cooks her own
meals and washes up after 'erself,--she's a very neat little thing,--and
before going out on the long trail in all weathers, reads about life
with a big L in the magazines, in which 'eroes with curly 'air, who
stand about six-feet-six, make 'onest love to blondes with 'eads like
birds' nests, who are nearly always about six-feet-one, and never fail
to wear silk stockings,--and there you 'ave it. A charming suite for a
single lady who earns 'er own living. The only drawback to it is that
the rent 'as to be paid monthly in advance, and the blighter who
collects it gives no grace. This is the sort of thing: 'Say! Got that
rent?' 'Well--' 'Come on now, ain't got no time to waste here. Pay up
or get out--' I tell you what it is, dearie, there's a little Florida in
Hell for them men who let out apartments to us girls, and the heat there
is something intense." She laughed, but there was a curious quiver to
it.

Behind all her badinage and cheery pluck Peter could see a vein of
terror which touched his sympathies. Poor little painted, unfortunate
thing! Was there no other way in which she could live and keep her head
above water? He sat down and leaned on the table with his elbows. "Will
you tell me," he said, "what brought you to this?"

"Brought me to it?" Nellie Pope shot out a laugh. "You dear, funny old
thing!" she said. "Nothing brought me it. I chose it."

"Chose it! Chose _this_?"

"Yes, this! A great many of us choose it. It's the easiest way. That
shocks yer, doesn't it,--you who come from a comfortable home and whose
sisters 'ave everything they want. But, you listen to this and don't be
too fast to pass judgment. I was one of a big brood of unnecessary kids.
My father earned fourteen shillings a week by grubbing in the earth from
daybreak till sundown and my mother took in washing. We lived perched up
on a 'ill among a dozen dirty little cottages. What was the outlook for
me? Being dragged up with meat once a week and as a maid-of-all-work
down in the town, being ordered about by a drab of a tradesman's wife,
with not enough wages to buy a new 'at and a little bit of finery for
Sundays, and then be married to a lout who got drunk regularly every
Saturday night and made me what mother was,--a dragged, anæmic, dull
animal woman, working up to the time I 'ad a baby and working directly
afterwards,--no colour, no lights, no rush and bustle, no decent clothes
to put on, no independence. Yes, I chose it, and if I 'ad my time over
again I should choose it again. See! It's the easiest way. Oh, yes, we
die young and nobody knows where we're buried, but we've 'ad our day,
and it's the day that every woman fights for, the same as every man. Oh,
by the way, 'ere's your purse!" She pushed it over to Peter.

"My purse?" he said.

"Yes; don't you recognize it? It hasn't got so much in it as it 'ad,
because I was told to 'elp meself, and I did. I 'ave jotted down what I
'ave taken; 'ere's the account." She held out a piece of paper on which
Peter could see a list of spendings, which included a taxicab fare and a
nickel for telephoning. At the end of it there was an item entitled
"Fee, thirty dollars."

Peter shuddered. He pushed the remainder of the money back to her across
the table. "Please keep it," he said.

Nellie Pope laughed again. She was full of laughter. "I hoped you'd say
that," she said. "It'll come in mighty useful."

Peter felt in his pocket and took out his cheque-book. He looked about
and saw a bottle of ink and a pen on the dresser, with a piece of
dilapidated blue blotting-paper. Watched with peculiar interest and
excitement by Nellie Pope, he got up, went over to the dresser and
wrote a cheque. "Will you accept this?" he asked. "I wish I could make
it larger. But if it was ten times the amount it couldn't possibly cover
my gratitude to you. You've been awfully kind to me. Thank you, Nellie."
He held it out.

The girl took it and gave a little cry. "Five hundred dollars! Oh, Gawd!
I didn't know that there was so much money in the world." She burst into
tears, but went on talking. "Mostly I can't afford to cry, because it
washes the paint off my face, and it's very expensive. But what do I
care, with this blooming cheque in my 'and? I shall be able to take a
little 'oliday from business and, my word, that's a treat. God makes one
or two gentlemen from time to time, 'pon my soul he does. Put it there,
Peter." She held out her hand with immense cordiality and gratitude, and
Peter took it warmly.

But he had discovered what he wanted to know. There was only one bed in
that apartment, and back into his mind came Kenyon's words. "Blind!
Blind!--both of you--and in that room sits a man whose patients you may
become."


XVIII

Graham was before his time. He hurried in, as anxious to get Peter out
of that apartment as Peter was to go. He found his brother sitting on
one side of the kitchen table and Nellie Pope on the other. Both had
magazines. The girl tore herself out of the marble house of the
heroine's father with reluctance. Peter had been holding his magazine
upside down for an hour. He had been looking right through it and into
his father's laboratory. There was not even the remote suggestion of a
smile on his pale face when Graham threw open the door.

"Come on, old man," urged Graham. "The taxi's waiting."

Peter got up. "Well, good-bye, Nellie," he said. "I'll come and see you
soon."

The girl darted a quick look at him. She saw that she was mistaken. "Oh,
yes, that'll be very kind of you. I 'aven't got any friends."

"Yes you have," said Graham,--"two."

Nellie Pope led the way into the narrow passage, stood on tiptoe, made a
long arm and got Peter's hat off the peg. Then she stood in front of him
and her lips trembled, although her well-practised smile curled up the
corners of her mouth. "Not good-bye, but orevoy, eh? Well, good luck and
God bless you. I shall miss you both most awfully. It's been a fair
treat to 'ave you 'ere."

Peter waved his hand and went down the bare stairs. His knees felt weak
and shaky and his eyes seemed to be at the back of his head. He drew
back to let a woman pass. She cocked her golden head at him with an
enquiring eye and a flash of teeth and pushed open the half-closed door
of an apartment. Her high-pitched metallic voice rang out. "Say, Kid,
there goes Nellie Pope's boarder. By Gosh, don't yer think some one
oughter stop her?"

The two boys drove home in silence. They had both caught the meaning of
those significant words.

Graham, the self-imagined man of the world, who had picked up a large
collection of half-facts--as all the precocious do--but who, for all
that, or in spite of that, had walked into the trap set by Ita Strabosck
without the faintest perception of his danger, threw those words aside.
Everything would be right, he told himself, and if _he_ had been coming
out of Nellie Pope's apartment in the ordinary way and had overheard her
rival's loud comment, he would simply have shrugged his shoulders, like
the rest of the young men of his type and spirit, and knowing only the
tail end of the truth, told himself that all men take "chances" and that
the odds were largely in his favor. And what would this attitude of
puerile bravado have proved? That he and all the men like him were just
as much a menace to society from knowing the half-facts which did
nothing more for them than allow them to take "chances," as the men who
were wholly ignorant and so blundered blindly into tragedy.

To Peter, the words of the painted woman came as a finishing blow. In
his crass and culpable ignorance, into which Kenyon had flung one most
terrific fact, he came away from Nellie Pope not knowing whether he was
immune--not able to assure himself that he was safe. Think of it! Big
and strong as he was, he remained a mere child in the matter of plain,
necessary and urgent truths, and if ever a man knew himself for a fool
he was Peter Guthrie, as he drove home.

No less grateful to God than ever for having been assisted to go
through Harvard and Oxford clean and straight, he cursed himself for not
having sought out the facts of life,--not from grinning and salacious
arguments of half-informed young men, but from a proper source,--since
his father had not conceived it to be his duty to give them to him early
in his life. If Kenyon had not opened out a new and awful vista of
thought the night that he talked about Graham and Ita Strabosck, Peter's
ignorance, so jealously and mistakenly preserved, would have remained so
colossal that he would have gone home humiliated, but unworried. As it
was, this one thing at any rate--this one most awful thing--had sunk
into his mind, making him dangerously less ignorant but without proper
knowledge. He arrived home a prey, therefore, to the most hideous fear.

Luckily there were people dining with his father and mother. Belle had
gone out of town for several days, suffering from the shock of finding
out the truth about Kenyon, and Ethel had returned to school. Peter was
able to go up to his own room unnoticed.

Graham, whose loyalty and concern had been good to see, went up with him
and threw the suit-case into a corner.

"Gee!" he said, with a touch of emotion that he made no attempt to hide,
"but I'm glad you're home, Petey." It was many years since he had called
Peter by the name that he had gone by in the nursery. He seemed to have
come so close to his big brother during those recent hours.

Peter did a surprising thing. He turned quickly, strode over to Graham,
put his arm round his shoulder and kissed his cheek. For just those few
moments both men had gone back through the years and were little boys
again.

Two things happened to Graham. He blushed to the roots of his hair, and
swallowed something that threatened to choke him.

"You said you had something on, didn't you,--supper, or something?" said
Peter.

"Yes; but I'll cut it out if you want me to."

"No, don't. Why should you? I feel pretty rotten and I shall turn in
right away. Don't bother about me any more, old man."

"I'd rather stay with you."

"Yes, I know you would, old boy, but you push off and have a good time.
As a matter of fact, I rather want to--to be alone for a bit. D'you
see?"

"All right, then." And to show that he had become a man again and his
own master, Graham went off whistling the latest tango.

And by letting his brother go at that moment, Peter did a very unwise
thing. He was still weak and ill. His brain, which had not recovered
itself from the effects of Kenyon's poisonous mixture, was in no
condition to be tortured by solitary thought. He needed to be kept away
from self-analysis--to be set to work on the ordinary commonplaces of
everyday life. Most of all, his thoughts required to be put to rest by
sleep.

Left to himself, Peter sat down, almost in the dark, with his arms
folded, his legs stuck out and his chin buried in his chest, and
thrashed the tired machinery of his brain into action. All that had
happened in the last forty-eight hours coming on top of the suffering
that he had undergone through having been separated from Betty and
having failed to bring about the new relationship with his father, upon
which he had set his heart, gradually became distorted. He began to look
at everything through an enormous magnifying glass and to see himself,
not as one whose loyal, simple and unsuspicious nature had been taken
advantage of by Kenyon, but as a common drunken creature who had had to
be lifted into a cab and who had spent two nights in the apartment of a
woman of the street. He began to look at himself with so deep a
humiliation and disgust that the mere thought of his ever again holding
Betty in his arms seemed outrageous. And having by stages, made
conceivable by the condition of his health and the strain that had been
put upon him by all the things that had happened since his return from
England, come up to this morbid and hyperconscientious point in his
self-condemnation, he stood up suddenly, obsessed by a new and appalling
thought. He said to himself: "I'm not only unworthy of Betty, I'm
unclean, and so unfit to live." And having seized at that with the
avidity and even triumph that comes with a sudden disorder of the
understanding, he began to dramatize his death--to ask himself how to
make it most effective. And then his father entered his thoughts. "Ah!"
he cried inwardly. "Father--it's _father_ who is responsible--it's
_father_ who must be made to pay! I'm his eldest son. He's very proud of
me. He shall come into the room to-night in which he spends all his
time for the benefit of other men's sons and find the one he neglected
lying dead on the floor. That's it! Now I've got it! There's a hideous
irony about this that'll sink even into his curious mind. I'd like to be
able to see his face when he finds me. There'd be just a little
satisfaction in that."

If only Graham could have come back at that moment, or the little mother
to put her arms round that poor, big, over-sensitive, uninitiated lad
and bring him out of his mental dejection with her love and warmth!

There was a revolver somewhere among his things. He had bought it when
he went camping during one of his vacations from Harvard. He hadn't seen
it for several years. With feverish haste he instituted a search, going
through one drawer after another, flinging his collars and socks and all
his personal things aside, talking in a half-whisper to himself, until,
with a little cry of glee, he found it with a box of cartridges. And
then, with the most scrupulous care he loaded it, slipped it into his
pocket and crept out of the room and downstairs. The door of the
drawing-room was ajar. He heard laughter and the intermingling of
voices, heard some one say "Good-bye." He dodged quickly past, through
the library and into the room in which he had last stood with his hand
on the shaking shoulders of his father. _He_ would give him something to
weep about this time,--yes, by jove, he would! _He_ would make him wake
up at last to the fact that his sons were human beings and needed to be
treated as such!

He welcomed the fact that away in the distance a storm had broken with
the deep artillery of thunder, and that already heavy rain was swishing
down on the city. It fitted into his half-maddened mood.

He shut the door. He walked quickly about the room, speculating as to
the most effective place to be found outstretched. He had a decision and
then, so that there might be no loop-hole for his father, sat down to
write a final indictment.

Time fled away. He covered page after page of note paper, pouring out
all his soul, making a great appeal for the right treatment of Graham
and his sisters, and finally signed his name, having scrawled in his
large round writing, "This is my protest."

The storm had come nearer. Outbursts of thunder rolled over the house
followed by stabs of lightning.

He then deliberately placed himself on the chosen spot, cocked the
trigger and put the cold barrel of the revolver to his temple.

There was a sort of scream.

Peter swung round, with his nerves jangling like a wire struck suddenly
with a stick.

There stood his father, unable to form a sentence, his face grey, his
eyes distended and his arms thrown out in front of him.


XIX

Peter was angry, like a child disturbed just at the moment when he was
planning a surprise.

"Why couldn't you have come in five minutes later?" he cried out, with
queer petulance.

The Doctor tottered forward and peered into his son's face. "Why were
you going to do that? Tell me, tell me!"

"You'd have found it all there," said Peter, pointing to the pages which
he had left on the desk. "Not very nice reading, I can assure you. But
if you want me to tell you instead, I will. And then you can see how a
man dies, instead of finding him dead. Perhaps this is the best way,
after all."

He went to the door and locked it, still holding the revolver. The sight
of his father did not stir any pity or sympathy in his heart. On the
contrary, it added to the fever that had attacked his brain and acted as
an irritant. He went back and stood in front of the grey man. There was
an expression of contempt on his altered face. The pattering of heavy
rain against the windows seemed to please him. Nature, like himself,
seemed to have burst into open protest.

"Sit down," he said.

The Doctor obeyed. The blaze in his son's eyes contradicted his
unnatural calmness. He had to deal with temporary madness. He could see
that, and he was chilled with a sense of impending danger in which the
most poignant solicitude was mixed.

"Now," said Peter, weighing his words with odd deliberation, "you're
going to hear something that'll shake you out of your smug
self-complacency and your pitiful belief that everything is all right in
this house--You're a good man, a better man than the average father.
There's nothing in your life that isn't to your credit. Even since you
had children you've worked like a dog to give them a better education
than you had, and you've gone without things to provide us with money
and make things easy. We all know that and we're grateful. We all know
that we ought to be proud of you as a doctor--as a man who has made
discoveries and added to the scientific knowledge of your profession.
Well, we _are_ proud of you. But in the last words that you'll hear me
speak I'm going to tell you what you've failed to do and why, in spite
of all your kindness and unselfishness, not one of your children
respects you or loves you, and why I, your eldest son, have got to put
an end to myself because of your neglect."

Dr. Guthrie sprang to his feet. The calculated cruelty of this
indictment was more than he could endure. "What does this mean? If you
don't respect and love me, the others do. In what way have I neglected
you?" He stood up to Peter like a man, whipped into sudden anger.

Peter liked that. It meant that he could hit out and put facts into
naked words without feeling that he was ill-treating a weakling. "That's
what I'm going to tell you," he said. "But there's lots of time and I'm
not going to leave anything out. What makes you think the others respect
and love you? Do they ever tell you so? Do they ever tell you anything?
Do they ever go out of their way to come in here for a little talk? And
if they did come in would you get out of your shell far enough for them
to see that you're a human being? Would you meet them half-way in their
desire to get something besides your money from you? Have you ever once
in your life been sufficiently inspired with a sense of your
responsibility as to make you get up and leave your work and come among
us to play with our toys and get known? Have you ever once in all the
years that we've been growing up been courageous or wise enough to take
Graham or me for a walk and tell us _any one_ thing that we ought to
know? In what way have you ever neglected us? In the most vital way of
all. We could have done without your money and the education that you've
been so delighted to give us. We could have done without comfort and
servants and good food and easy times. They mean nothing in the sum
total of things that count. Most men never have them at the beginning.
They make them. What you've never given us is _yourself_. And we
_needed_ you. What you've never given us is common sense. You've been a
good father in every inessential way, but no father at all in all that
goes to make us men. You've lived in a fool's paradise. You've let us
find our own way. You've not given us one human talk--one simple
fact--one word of warning. You've utterly neglected us because you're a
coward and you've hoped and trusted that others might tell us what
you've been afraid to say. Afraid,--to your own flesh and blood,--think
of it!" The Doctor cried out again. He realized much of the truth of all
this. He had confessed himself to be painfully shy to his wife many
times and had spent God knew how many anxious hours wondering how he
could get to know his boys. But it was too much to stand and be whipped
by his son.

"There are thousands of fathers who hold my views and act as I have
acted," he said.

"And there are so many thousands of sons who have to pay for those views
that you and men like you spend your lives in trying to save them."

The Doctor drew in his breath. "Wh--what d'you mean?" he stammered.

"Ah! that gets you, doesn't it? Now you're beginning to see what I'm
driving at, don't you? Put your mind back to the night you found Graham
here with me. You saved him from forging your name, and that was good.
But what led him up to that? Did you ask yourself? Did you go to Graham
and gain his confidence? Did you wonder whether there was a woman behind
it all who would never have come into his life if you had dealt by him
like a man and a father,--the sort of woman who has made necessary these
things round your laboratory and caused you to bend over your
experiments for years and years?"

"Good God! What do you mean?"

Peter raised his voice. "Why should your sons be immune? What have _you_
ever done to render them so? Why am I now standing here with this
revolver in my hand? Look at me! A few hours ago I had health and
everything in the world that makes life worth living, except a father.
At this moment, because I've never had a father, I'm so terrified that I
should be a criminal if I married the girl I love that I'm going to kill
myself."

"Why? What have you done?"

"I've been two nights in the bed of the sort of woman whose work you are
trying to undo."

The Doctor staggered, and then rose up in his wrath. "_You_ have? You,
_my_ son,--with such a mother--with such home influence! You mean to
tell me that you've descended to such depths of immorality that you've
gone back on everything that your education has made of you? It's
unthinkable--unbelievable. You must be a mere animal to have done such a
thing."

What else he would have said in his emotion and horror no one can say.

A cry of pain and rage rang out. The injustice of his father's narrow,
inhuman point of view, his inability to show him, even by his impending
death, that he must wake up to his duty and stand by Graham and his
sisters, sent the blood into Peter's fevered brain.

"My God!" he cried. "You dare to talk like that to me? You dare to kick
me in the face after I've told you that I'm ignorant--without listening
to my explanation as to how I got into that woman's apartment. All
right, then, I'm not going to be the only one to pay. You shall take
your share of it. The sins of the children are brought about by the
neglect of the fathers, and we'll go and stand together before the Judge
to-night for a verdict on that count."

He raised the revolver, aimed it at his father's head, put his finger on
the trigger----

There was a blinding flash of lightning. A yellow quivering flame
seemed to cut the room in half between the two angry men----

An instant later the Doctor saw Peter standing with both hands over his
face. The unfired revolver lay on the table in all its ugliness. And
presently, when he had realized what had happened, he went nearer. "God
didn't intend that you should do that," he said. And then his voice
broke and he went forward to put his arms round Peter's shoulders. "Give
me another chance, my dearest boy!" he cried. "Give me another chance!"

But before he could reach his son the great big hurt boy crumpled and
fell in a heap at his feet.


XX

For three weeks Peter's bedroom was the one room in the house to which
the eyes of all the family were wholly turned. There, in the dark, he
lay a victim to an attack of brain fever. Never in a condition of great
danger, poor old Peter was ill and the Doctor, who, better than the
rest, knew that death has many doors through which life goes out, eyed
the specialist who had been called in with pathetic eagerness.

The little mother and Belle were joined at once by Betty, and the three
women sat very close together, speaking and even thinking in whispers
during the first two days. To the one whose first child he was and the
one who waited to be his wife, Peter meant everything good that life had
for them, and in their terror that he might be taken away their
imaginations ran ahead, as they always do in moments of such poignant
anxiety, and they were afraid to look out of the window in case they
should see Death, the black camel, kneeling at the gate.

While the shadow seemed to rest on his house, Dr. Guthrie did many
things. First of all he went over all the terrible words that Peter had
said to him that bad and unforgettable night. With great humbleness and
deep emotion he accepted them as the truth. He sat for hours at his desk
with his hands over his face and tears leaking through his fingers.
Metaphorically he placed his old hard-working, concentrated self in the
criminal stand and his new startled, humbled and ashamed self in the
Judge's seat and summed up his life as a father. It was very plain that
he had failed in his duty to his boys. He had made no great effort to
conquer that queer shyness which had affected him from the beginning. He
had allowed his children to grow up to regard him as Bluebeard. He had
thrown upon his wife's slight shoulders all the onus of the
responsibility for the human development of their characters, and
because she had succeeded while they were young he had, like a coward,
neglected to step in and take upon himself his obvious duty when they
had grown old enough to need more--much more--than the soft guiding hand
of a mother. He had allowed them to make an early start,--the girls, as
well as the boys,--without understanding the vital necessity of duty and
discipline which he alone could inspire in them, because no man or woman
in all the country, in any school or college, gave a single thought to
either. He had hidden behind a hundred weak and foolish excuses in order
to avoid the so-called difficulties of speaking manfully to these two
embryo men. He had permitted them to grow out of boyhood without giving
them the benefit of his own uninitiated struggles, or the simple
warnings and facts which take the glamour away from temptation and make
straight ways easy. He "took chances," and hoped that some one else
might by accident give them the facts of sex or that they would find
them out themselves, as other young men were obliged to do,--never mind
how.

Remorse and regret made Hell for this man in those honest hours,--this
good, exemplary, distinguished, self-made man whose name would live by
his professional efforts and scientific discoveries and who had
succeeded in everything except as a father.

And then he called Graham into his room, and sitting knee to knee with
his second son, was brave enough to tell him wherein he now knew that he
had failed and asked of him, as he had asked of Peter, for another
chance. It was a pathetic and emotional talk that these two had, during
which both told the truth, hiding nothing, reserving nothing. The
outcome of it was good for them both, as well as for Peter. They went
together to see Nellie Pope and heard from her lips, to the Doctor's
unspeakable thankfulness, that Peter was in no danger from her. From
that time onwards that little, kind, wretched girl became one of the
Doctor's patients in the proper hospital, eventually to be placed by
him at work which rendered the need for her following her chosen
profession unnecessary.

And finally the day came when Peter was able to receive visitors, and a
very good day it was. The little mother went in first--she had the
right. Peter was sitting in his dressing-gown by the window. To his
intense relief he had just passed through the hands of a barber, whom he
had asked to make him look a little less like a poet. He turned his head
quickly towards the door as his mother went in. His old high spirits had
returned. The sun was shining and life looked very good. His imagination
made him as well aware of the fact that his mother had been through some
of the most anxious hours of her life as though he had seen her sitting
in her room below with a drawn white face and her hands clasped
together. He got up and went to meet her. He took her in his arms and
held her very tight. What they said to each other was far too sacred to
put into cold print. They spoke in undertone, because the trained nurse
kept a jealous eye upon her patient and moved in and out of the
dressing-room adjoining. The interview was not allowed to be a long one.
The last thing that Peter said to his mother made her very happy. "I
think that the Governor and I are pals," he said. "I think we've found
each other at last. Isn't that just about the best thing you ever
heard?"

In the afternoon Belle was allowed in. To his great relief she told him
in her characteristic, concise way, how she felt about Kenyon. He caught
her young, she said--marvellously young, "and if he should ever come
back to New York all he'll get from me will be two fingers. I've quite
recovered. So you may take that line out of your forehead, old boy. One
of these days when you're out and about again we'll walk about four
times round the reservoir and I'll tell you something of what's been
going through my mind while you've been ill. In fact, we'll have a very
substantial pow-wow about Nicholas Kenyon, and I don't think we shall
leave him quite as immaculate as he usually is by the time we've
finished, do you?"

"No," said Peter, "I don't. All the same, I'm grateful to him for one
thing. He has brought father out of his shell,--that's about the best
thing he ever did in his life."

There was something amusing as well as touching in the way in which the
two brothers met again. It was the next morning early. Peter was still
in bed, with his hair all frowzled and the remains of sleep still in the
corners of his eyes. Graham had ten minutes before he was obliged to
leave the house to go downtown.

"Hello, old sport!" said Graham.

"Hello, sonnie! Rather a hot thing in ties, that, eh?"

Graham cleared his throat and put his hand rather self-consciously to
the black-and-white effect newly designed by his pet firm of
haberdashers. "I think it'll make the senior partner blink all right,"
he said. "How d'you feel this morning?"

Peter showed his teeth. "I'm sitting up and taking nourishment. Probably
before the end of the week you'll see me in shorts and a zephyr
sprinting round the park before breakfast."

"I'd like to," said Graham, and he held out his hand.

Peter took it and gave it a scrunch which had in it nothing of the
invalid. "Give my love to the subway," he said, "and my kind regards to
Wall Street."

Graham grinned, waved his hand and left the room. He found it necessary
to blow his nose rather hard on his way down-stairs. "Oh, Gee!" he said
to himself. "Oh, Gee! Only think if Peter had--" He didn't allow himself
to finish the thought.

And then came Betty, and the way in which she and Peter came
together--the way in which they stood only a step or two from the door,
inarticulate in their love and thankfulness, was too much even for the
trained nurse, to whom love and death and the great hereafter were mere
commonplaces. She withdrew to the dressing-room and stayed there for a
whole solid quarter-of-an-hour, eliminating herself with a tactfulness
for which Peter blessed her and Betty became her friend for all time.

"My baby!" said Peter. "We shall have to begin all over again. We're
almost strangers."

But Betty shook her head. "No," she said. "No. There hasn't been one
moment during all this time that I haven't been with you."

And Peter nodded. "That's dead true," he said.

And then they sat down very close together and the things they said to
each other are lost to the world, because we joined the nurse in the
next room and shut the door.


XXI

It happened that the anniversary of Doctor and Mrs. Guthrie's wedding
day,--they had been married twenty-eight years,--fell on a Sunday that
year.

The night before, at dinner, the little mother, thankful and happy at
having Peter back again at the table, asked a favour. In having to ask
it, instead of simply saying that she desired her children to go with
her to church the next morning, she proved her knowledge of the fact
that she had joined the ranks of mothers whose children have outgrown
them.

Mrs. Guthrie was, however, one of those rather rare women who had grown
old gracefully. The hand of time, whose natural treatment she had made
no sort of endeavor to combat, had added to her beauty. Optimism, a
steady faith in God and His goodness, and the usual gift of accepting
whatever came to her without kicking against the pricks, had mellowed
her. It was without any of the spirit of martyrdom that cakes the nature
of those women who have not been able to acquire the best sort of
philosophy that she frankly made this very natural and easily fulfilled
desire a favour. Peter was well again and she wanted to kneel before the
altar of the Great Father and give thanks, surrounded by her children,
on the anniversary of the day that made her a wife.

The family had grown out of the habit of going to church,--Belle was
tired, as a rule, after a late Saturday night, Graham was an inveterate
week-ender, Ethel was a modernist, and Peter played golf,--and so, when
they all agreed without any argument the little mother was almost as
surprised as she was delighted.

The conspiracy of silence which the family had tacitly agreed upon
during their recent trouble, in order to spare her from unhappiness,
left Mrs. Guthrie wholly without any knowledge of the fact that they
were all glad of an excuse to join her in church, because they all felt
a curious eagerness to listen to the simple, beautiful service with
which they had grown up and to kneel once more--more humbly and
sincerely than ever before--in the house of the God who had been
instrumental in their various escapes.

It would have been better if Mrs. Guthrie had not been so carefully
shielded--if she had been made to share with the Doctor the blame,--at
any rate for the mistakes which the two girls had made,--from the fact
that she had let go the reins of duty and discipline with which she had
held them in their early years and given them their heads--if she had
been strong enough and wise enough to maintain over Belle and Ethel,
without autocratically putting a stop to their having "a good time," the
authority of respect, won by love and the exercise of sympathy and
common sense--if, in short, she had not been content to slip into a
position that allowed these high-spirited girls to say to themselves
quite so early in their lives, "Oh, poor, dear little mother doesn't
understand. She doesn't know anything that modern girls have to go
through." She was shielded because it was understood that she was a sort
of sleeping partner--not an active member of the firm. She was regarded
as being so sweet and soft and old-fashioned that she couldn't possibly
appreciate the conditions of the times in which the girls lived. Their
early positions had become reversed. It was the girls who mothered their
mother.

It was a strangely silent party that returned home that Sunday morning,
headed by the Doctor and the little mother. Betty had been invited by
Mrs. Guthrie to join them and was to stay to lunch. It was while they
were in the hall, and just as Betty had gone upstairs with Mrs. Guthrie,
that the Doctor turned quickly. "I want you all to come to my room," he
said. "I won't keep you more than a few moments," and led the way.

Wondering what was going to happen, but taking trouble to avoid catching
each other's eyes, Peter, Graham, Belle and Ethel followed their father
across the library into the room which, for the two boys, had
associations that they were never likely to forget, and for the two
girls had hitherto been a place to avoid.

As soon as they were in the room the Doctor shut the door and, from
force of habit, went over to his desk. With one thin hand on it, and
with a shaft of winter sun on a face that was very lined and pale he
stood there for a moment in silence. His lips trembled a little, but
there was a look in his eyes behind those strong glasses that his
children had never seen before.

"Peter, Graham, Belle and my little Ethel," he said brokenly, "I'm going
to ask you all, on a day that means a great deal to your mother and to
me, and so to you, to forgive me for not having been all that I ought to
have been to you I know that I've failed in my duty as a father. You
have always been my most precious possessions and it is for you that
I've worked so hard and so closely, but because of all that I went
through as a child and because I never struggled as I ought to have done
to overcome a foolish shyness that has made me self-conscious, you and I
have never been friends--have never understood each other. I take all
the blame for whatever you have done that has made you suffer and of
which you are ashamed. Very humbly, I stand before you now and ask you,
as I asked Peter, here, in this room, to give me another chance. Let's
make a new beginning from to-day, with the knowledge that I love you
better than anything in the world. I want you all to meet me half-way in
future, to look upon me no longer as the shy, unsympathetic,
unapproachable man who, by accident, is your father, but as your closest
and most intimate friend whose best and dearest wish is to help you and
listen to your worries and give you all the advice in his power. I want
this room to be the place to which you'll always come with the certain
knowledge that you'll be welcomed by me with the greatest eagerness and
delight. Don't let there be anything from to-day onwards that you can't
tell me. Promise me that. I--I've told myself two or three times that
it's too late for me to be of any use to you--that having failed I could
never repair my mistake or ever hope to win your confidence and
friendship."

His voice broke so badly that he was unable to speak, and the
painfulness of this strange little scene was almost more than those
young people could bear. It hurt them enough to stand facing a man who
opened his soul for them to gaze into, especially when that man was
their father. It was dreadful to see him blinded by tears in the middle
of an appeal which they all realized called for such extreme courage and
strength of character to make.

They all wanted to do something to help him and force him out of a
humbleness that made them horribly self-conscious. It was Peter who did
it. With two strides he stood at the Doctor's side and put his arms
round his shoulder.

The Doctor looked up into the face of the great big, tender fellow,
whose eyes were eloquent, and smiled. Then he found his voice again and
forced himself to the bitter end of what he had determined to say.
"Something in the way you've all treated me since Peter has been ill,"
he said, "has given me hope. That's why I put myself in your hands, my
dears. Shall we make a new beginning? Will you take me into your
friendship? Will you all give me another chance?"

With a little cry from her heart Belle went forward and put her arms
round her father's neck, and Ethel, with hot tears running down her
face, crept up to him and put one of his hands to her lips. Graham bent
over the other, which he held tight, and Peter, who had longed for this
moment through all his illness, didn't give a curse who heard his voice
break, patted the Doctor on the back, and said: "Dear old man, my dear
old father!" over and over again.

                              THE END


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End of Project Gutenberg's The Sins of the Children, by Cosmo Hamilton