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.