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.