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.