Chapter III: Part ONE: Youth (3)

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 naive 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.