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!