I
"Mother took the car to Lord & Taylor's," said Belle, looking herself
over in the long glass with a scrutiny that was eventually entirely
favorable. "I guess it'll do us good to walk."
"I'd simply love to," said Betty. "But I must just run in and tell
father I'm going to have dinner with you. I won't be a minute."
"All right, my dear. Time's cheap. Don't hurry on my account."
Belle went over to the dressing-table. She had only recently powdered
her nose from the elaborate apparatus from which she rarely permitted
herself to be separated, but a little more would do no harm. She burst
into involuntary song as she performed a trick which she might so well
have afforded to leave to those ladies of doubtful summers to whose Anno
Domini complexions the thick disguise of powder may perhaps be useful.
Tucked into her blouse there was a letter from Kenyon which had come a
week ago. It was only a matter of days before she was to see him again.
And Betty ran out of her bedroom and along a passage which led to the
studio. A stretch of cloudless sky could be seen through a recess
window, and the far-below flat roofs of the old buildings on the corner
of Gramercy Park. She knocked and waited. There was a grunt, and she
went in.
Into the large lofty room--a cross between a barn and an attic--a hard
north light was falling with cruel accuracy. It showed up stacks of
unframed canvasses with their faces turned to the dark wall and the
imperfections of several massive pieces of oak, the worn appearance of
the stained floor, the age of the Persian rugs and of a florid woman who
sat with studied grace and an anxious expression of pleasant thought on
the dais, with one indecently beringed hand resting with strained
nonchalance on the arm of her chair and the other about an ineffably
bored Pekingese.
Ranken Townsend, the successful portrait painter, had backed away from
his almost life-size canvas, and with his fine untidy head on one side
and irritation in his red-grey beard was glaring at it with savage
antagonism.
The lady on the dais had crow's-feet round her made-up eyes, and a chin
that could not be made anything but double however high she held it.
Also--as the north light seemed to take a hideous delight in
proving--her figure was irreclaimably dumpy and plump. The lady on the
canvas, however,--such is Art that runs an expensive studio, good wines
and well-preserved Coronas,--was slight and lovely and patrician, and
should she stand up, at least six feet tall. No wonder Townsend grunted
and glared at the commercial fraud in front of him, at which, in his
good, idealistic, hungry Paris days he would have slung wet brushes and
the honest curses of the Place Pigalle. He was selling his gift once
more for five thousand dollars. His wife dressed at Bendels.
Anger and irritation went out of the painter's eyes when he saw the
sweet face that peeked in. "Hello, sweetheart!" he sang out. "Come in
and bring a touch of sun. Mrs. Vandervelde, I'd like you to meet my
little girl."
Without turning her head or breaking a pose that she considered to have
become, after many serious attempts, extremely effective, the
much-paragraphed lady, whose lizard-covered mansion in Fifth Avenue was
always one of the objects touched upon by the megaphone men in
rubber-neck wagons, murmured a few words. "How d'you do, child? How well
you look."
Betty smothered a laugh. Mrs. Vandervelde had acquired the habit of
looking through her ears. "I'm going home with Belle, father, and I
shall stay to dinner. But I'll be back before ten."
"Will you? All right." He tilted up her face and kissed it. "I'm dining
at the National Arts Club to-night, and I guess I shall be late." He
pointed his brush at the canvas and made the grimace of a man who's
obliged to swallow a big dose of evil-smelling physic. So Betty, who
understood and was sorry, put his hand to her lips, bowed to the
indifferent lady and slipped away. The room was perceptibly colder when
she left. The picture was already four thousand two hundred dollars
toward completion, and Betty was just as much relieved as her father,
who returned angrily to work to paint in the diamonds. He was sick of
that smile.
While waiting for the elevator, Belle gave a rather self-conscious
laugh and lifted her tight skirt quickly. "Seen the latest, Betty?" She
showed a tiny square watch edged with diamonds worn as a garter.
"Cunning, isn't it?"
"Why, I should just think it was! Where did you buy it?"
"Buy it? My dear, can you see me paying three hundred dollars for
something that doesn't show? Harry Spearman gave it to me last night,
and put it on in his car on the way to the Pierrot Club."
"Put it on?"
Belle threw back her beautiful head and burst out laughing. "You said
that just like the Quaker girl in the play at the Hudson. Why shouldn't
he put it on? It amused him and didn't hurt me. He's a sculptor, and
like the bus-conductor, 'legs is no treat to him,' anyway."
They entered the elevator, dropped nine floors to the wide foyer of the
palatial apartment house, and went out into the street. It was a typical
New York October afternoon--the sky blue and clear, the sun warm and the
air alive with that pinch of ozone of which no other city in the world
can boast. The girls instinctively made their way towards Fifth Avenue,
warily dodging the amazing traffic, the struggling wagons and plunging
horses going in and out of buildings in course of ear-splitting
construction, and coal-chutes in the middle of the sidewalks.
"But you were not at the opening of the Pierrot Club last night," said
Betty. "I heard you tell Mrs. Guthrie that you were dining with the
Delanos and going to their theatre party."
"I know. But Harry Spearman sent round a note in the afternoon asking me
to have dinner with him at Delmonico's and go on to the Club to dance. I
had such a severe headache that I rang up Mrs. Delano and reluctantly
begged to be excused. To quote Nicholas, theatre parties with elderly
people bore me stiff. As it was, I had a perfectly corking time till one
o'clock and danced every dance."
"Did you tell Mrs. Guthrie?"
"For Heaven's sake, Betty, what _do_ you take me for? Mother isn't my
school-teacher and I don't have to ask her for permission to live. I
have my latch-key and dear little mother is perfectly happy. As she
never knows what I do she never has to worry about me; and, as she
always says, I can only be young once." A curious little smile played
round her very red lips. "It's true that Harry Spearman is rather
unmanageable when he gets one alone in a car after several hours of
champagne and ragtime, but--oh, well, I guess I can take care of myself.
Do you know, I don't think the Pierrot Club's going to be as good this
winter. It's a year old, you see. Everybody's going to the new room at
the Plaza--that is, everybody back from the country. It's rather a pity,
I think. I like the Club, but the motto of New York is 'Follow the
Crowd' and so the Plaza's for me."
Betty's admiration for her school-fellow and closest friend was
invincible and her loyalty very true. It made her therefore a little
uneasy to notice about her a growing artificiality which was neither
attractive nor characteristic. She knew better than anyone that Belle
was a remarkable girl. She had a kind heart. She possessed that rarest
of gifts, a sense of gratitude, and if her talent for writing had been
properly developed she might eventually have made her mark. She had a
quick perception--sympathy and imagination not often found in so young a
girl--an uncanny ear for the right word--and if she chose to exercise
it, quite an unusual power of concentration. It seemed to Betty to be
such a pity that, just at the moment when Belle left school with her
mind filled with ideals and the ambition to make something of herself
and do things, the Doctor found himself a rich man. The incentive to
work which the constant need for economy had awakened in her went out
like a snuffed candle. From having before been in the habit of saying,
with eager enthusiasm, "I'm _going_ to do such and such a thing,
whatever the odds," she immediately began to say: "Oh, my dear, what's
the use?" Everything for which she had intended to work became now hers
for the asking. Her father gave her a free hand in the matter of
entertaining her young friends. She could order what books she wished to
read from Brentano's, and she had a generous allowance on which to
dress. Like a chameleon she quickly changed the rather dull colors of
her former surroundings for those bright ones which the sudden accession
to wealth made it easy to acquire. Her outlook was no longer that of the
daughter of an overworked general practitioner whose income had to be
carefully managed in order to live not too far up-town and educate a
family of four, but of a debutante whose parents entertained
distinguished men and women in a fashionable street and whose friends
were equally well off. Her inherited and cultivated energy was, of
course, obliged to find vent in some direction, since it was not
employed in the development of her talent; and it was now burnt up in a
restless search of enjoyment, a constant series of engagements to lunch
and dine, and do the theatre and dance,--especially dance. The ordinary
healthy, high-spirited young man, who had not much to say for himself,
quickly bored her. Her wits required to be kept sharp, her latent
intelligence needed something on which to feed. It was therefore natural
that she should throw her smiles at men much older and far more
experienced than herself and who, from the fact that they did not intend
to give anything for nothing, exercised her ingenuity and native wit to
keep them in order. In a word, she found that playing with fire and
avoiding being burned kept that side of her in good condition which, in
her old circumstances, would have been devoted to work. And so with a
sort of conscious superficiality she had allowed herself to flit from
one unmeaning incident to another and entered into a series of
artificial flirtations with men who had no scruples and one passion
simply in order to kill time. Her carelessness led her into episodes,
the merest hint of which would have thrown dear little Mrs. Guthrie into
a panic, and her coolness permitted her to escape from them with perhaps
more ingenuity than dignity. Even upon her return from England with her
heart full of Nicholas Kenyon, and with a desire to see him again that
kept her awake at night, she frittered away her superfluous energy with
this Harry Spearman, whom no woman with any respect for her daughter
would willingly allow within a mile of her, even if properly chaperoned.
Betty, being one of those girls who had never been suspected of any
talent, but who nevertheless had it in her to perform a far more womanly
and beautiful thing than to write books or plays--to be in fact a good
wife to the man she loved and a good mother to his children--looked at
Belle's way of living with growing anxiety. She was not a prude or a
prig. She had not been allowed out in the world with eyes all curious to
see the truth of things through a veil of false modesty. Her father, a
wise and humane man, had seen to that. She delighted in enjoyment, went
to the theatre whenever she had the opportunity and danced herself out
of shoes. But, not being ambitious to shine, she was content to apply
her energy to the ordinary work that came to her to do,--the practical,
everyday, undramatic, domestic things that cropped up hourly in the
strange house where the father was an artist and the mother suffered
from individualism and was a leader of new movements. Leaving school to
find a home in a constant state of chaos, her father rarely out of his
studio, her mother always in the throes of committee meetings and
speech-making,--she knuckled down to set it in order, to clear out an
extravagant cook with an appetite for hysterics, and a sloppy Irish
waitress whose hairpins fell everywhere and whose loose hand dropped
things of value almost before it touched them. This done she found
others and appointed herself housekeeper, and the duties of this
position kept her both busy and happy,--the one being hyphenated to the
other. But even if her father had been, like Dr. Guthrie, a rich man
instead of one who lived up to every penny that he earned and generally
several thousand dollars beyond, she had nothing in her character that,
however little she was occupied, would have allowed her to look at life
from the modern standpoint of Belle and her other friends. She was--and
rejoiced in the fact--old-fashioned. Most of her ideas were what is now
scoffingly called "early Victorian," because they were not loose and
careless, and the many things that Belle and others found "fearfully
amusing" were, to her, impossible. She didn't, for instance, leave her
petticoat in the cloak-room when she went to dances, so that her
partners might find her better fun. She didn't go to tea alone with mere
acquaintances in bachelor apartments, or for taxi rides with her partner
between dances. She never made herself cheap, and went out of her way to
avoid men whose eyes ran calculatingly over her figure. These things and
many others merely appealed to her as the perquisite of those girls who
did not place a very high value upon self-respect.
The Guthries lived at 55 East Fifty-second Street. It was the house
which the man whom Dr. Guthrie called his benefactor had built for
himself and left to the doctor whom he was proud to endow. The architect
who had been employed had been given a free hand. He had not been
required to mix his styles or perform extraordinary architectural
gymnastics of any kind. The result of his efforts was good. It was a
house such as one sees in one of the numerous old London squares within
sound of the mellow clock of St. James's Palace. Addison might have
lived in it, or Walpole or Pepys. Its face was scrupulously plain and
its doorway was modelled on those of the Adams period. Standing between
two very florid examples of modern architecture it made one think of the
portrait of a charming early Victorian gentle-woman between the
photographs of two present-day chorus ladies in hoopskirts and a cloud
of chiffon. The rooms were large and lofty and were all furnished with
great simplicity and taste. There was nothing in them except old
furniture which had been collected in England by its late owner, piece
by piece, and its oak chests, armoires and secretaries, china closets,
corner pieces and Chippendale chairs were very good to look at and live
with. So also were the pictures,--Cattermoles, Bartalozzi engravings,
colored prints and a half-dozen priceless oil paintings by old
masters,--which made the small, cunning, unscrupulous, eager mouths of
the numerous art collectors of New York water with desire. The library,
too, out of which led the Doctor's laboratory, was almost unique, and
contained first editions and specimens of rare and beautiful
book-binding which filled the Doctor's heart with constant pleasure and
delight. It was nearly a year before the man who had struggled so hard
to lift himself out of his father's small farm could believe that he
wasn't walking in his sleep when he passed through these beautiful
rooms, and often he was obliged to pinch himself to make sure that he
was not dreaming.
There was however one room in this house which would have given its late
owner many shudders to enter. This was the little mother's own
particular room, the windows of which looked out upon that row of small,
red, bandbox-like houses opposite which had managed to remain standing
in spite of the rapacious hands of reconstruction companies which are
never so happy as when destroying old landmarks and tearing down old
buildings. Into this room Mrs. Guthrie had placed all the furniture of
her first sitting-room,--cheap, late Victorian stuff of which she had
been so inordinately and properly proud when she started housekeeping
with the young doctor. From these things Mrs. Guthrie could not be
parted. They were all redolent with good and tender memories and were to
her mind far more valuable and more beautiful than all the priceless old
oak pieces put together.
Curiously enough--or perhaps not curiously at all--this was Peter's
favorite room, too, and he never entered it without renewing his vows to
climb to the top of his own tree, as his father had done. Belle, Graham
and Ethel all laughed at the little mother for clinging to this
"rubbish," as they called it, which was so out of keeping with the rest
of the house. But Peter sympathized with her and never failed while
sitting there in the evening, in close and intimate conversation with
the dear little woman who meant so much to him, to get from it a new
desire to emulate his father and make his own way in the same brave
spirit.
When Belle and Betty arrived at East Fifty-second Street--a little tired
after their walk--they found Graham in the hall. "Oh, hello!" said he.
"Been shopping?"
"No," answered Belle, "nothing tempted us. We've walked all the way home
from Gramercy Park,--some walk! Everything I've got on is sticking to
me. Aren't you home early, Graham?"
Graham nodded. "Nothing doing," he said. "Besides, I'm dining early." He
turned to Belle with a rather curious smile. "I thought you were to be
with the Delanos last night."
Belle tilted her chin. "I was. I dined there, went to the Winter Garden
and then danced at Bustanoby's."
"I caught sight of you in Spearman's car somewhere about one o'clock in
the morning. Did he drive you home?"
"I guess he did, dear boy," said Belle, blandly, "and by the way, we saw
you, going in to supper somewhere with a girl with a Vogue face and an
open-air back!"
Graham laughed. "That's different," he said. "Spearman isn't the sort of
man I care to see my sister going about with alone. I advise you to be a
little more fastidious."
"Thank you, Graham darling," said Belle, quite un-moved, "but I'm old
enough to choose my own friends without your butting in. Just for fun,
would you tell me what _you_ know about the word fastidious?"
"That's different," said Graham again. And he went up-stairs to his own
room with rather heavy feet.
Belle looked at Betty and a little smile curled up the corners of her
beautiful red mouth. "I don't see anything wrong with Harry Spearman,
and he's an old friend of the Delanos. My word, but isn't Graham a good
sport?"
Presently when they went into the drawing-room they found little Mrs.
Guthrie sitting in front of the table with a more than usually happy
smile, and Ethel lying on the sofa looking the very epitome of an
interesting invalid. With a slightly critical frown on her pretty face
she was reading Wells's latest novel,--a full-blooded effort well
calculated to improve the condition of a girl of fifteen who had not
gone back to school on account of anaemia.
With quick intuition, and one glance at her mother's face, Belle knew
she had heard from Peter. "Any news?" she asked eagerly.
"Yes, darling,--the very best of news. A Marconi from my boy," said Mrs.
Guthrie.
"What does he say?"
"Oh, what does he say?" asked Betty. But the question was asked
mentally, because little Mrs. Guthrie was happy and must not be made
jealous.
Putting on her glasses with great deliberation, Mrs. Guthrie picked up a
book, and with a smile of pride and excitement hunted through its pages
and eventually produced the cable form, which she had used as a marker.
"_Do_ hurry, mother, _dear_!" cried Belle. News from Peter meant news
from Nicholas.
"Now please don't fluster me, Belle. Of course I would unfold it the
wrong side up, wouldn't I? Well, this is what he says: 'Expect to dock
day after to-morrow, dearest Mum. All my love.'"
"Is that all he says? Is there nothing about his--his friend?"
Ethel gave a quiet chuckle, of which Belle coldly took no notice.
"There are a few more words," replied Mrs. Guthrie, "and I expect they
were very expensive."
"Oh, mother, darling; _do_ go on!"
"Let me see, now. Oh, yes. 'And to Betty.'"
"Oh, thank you," said Betty. "Oh, Peter, my Peter!" she cried in her
heart.
This time Ethel laughed. But no one noticed it. It was rather
disappointing.
"At last I shall see Nicholas again," thought Belle,--"at last!"
And the little mother folded up the cable very carefully and slipped it
back into the book. Peter had sent it to her,--to her.
And then Belle turned her attention to her little sister, who not only
looked most interesting, but knew that she did. "I think you
condescended to be amused, Grandmamma," she said, in the most
good-natured spirit of chaff. Like everybody else in the family she was
really rather proud of this very finished production of an ultra-modern
and fashionable school.
"I seem to have missed a lot of fun by not going to Europe," replied
Ethel. "It would have been very entertaining to watch you and Betty fall
in love."
"I guess so," said Belle. "The only thing is that you would have been
very much odd man out. They draw the line at little school-girls at
Oxford."
"Now don't begin to quarrel, girls," said Mrs. Guthrie. "I'm very sorry
Ethel wasn't with us. The trip would have widened her view and given her
much to think about. But never mind. She shall go with us next time."
Ethel stifled a yawn. "Thank you, mamma, dear. But when I go to England
I may elect to stay there. I think it's very probable that I shall marry
an Englishman and settle down to country life, doing London in the
season."
Belle's laugh rang out. "That's the sort of thing we have to put up
with, Betty," she said. "You're going to marry a Duke, aren't you, Baby,
and be a Lady in Waiting at Court, with a full-page photograph every
week in the _Tatler_? When Peter comes home he'll find you a constant
source of joy. My descriptions of the way in which you've come on while
he's been away always made him laugh."
Ethel rose languidly from the sofa, at the side of which a little
nourishment had been served. Mrs. Guthrie, who had been busily at work
knitting a scarf for Graham--a thing that he would certainly never
wear--went quickly to give her a hand. "Are you going to your room now,
darling?" she asked.
Ethel caught Belle's rather sceptical eye and, with exquisite coolness,
entirely ignored its suggestion that she was shamming. "Yes, mamma,
dear. I shall go to bed almost at once. There's nothing like sleep for
anaemia. Of course I shall have to read for a little while, because
insomnia goes with my complaint, but I shall fall off as soon as I can.
Please don't come in to-night, in case you disturb me. I'll tell Ellen
to put my hot milk in a thermos."
Belle burst into another laugh. "You beat the band," she said. "Any one
would think that your school was for the daughters of royalty. I know
exactly what Nicholas Kenyon will call you."
Ethel turned towards her sister with raised eyebrows. With her rather
retrousse nose, fine, wide-apart eyes and soft round chin she looked
very pretty and amazingly self-composed. Her poise was that of a woman
who had been a leader of society for years. "Yes? And what will that
be?"
"The queen of the Flappers," said Belle.
Ethel picked up her book, carefully placing the marker. "Oxford slang
leaves me cold," she said, loftily.
"I certainly hope that he'll call her nothing of the sort," said Mrs.
Guthrie. "'Flapper.' What a terrible word! What does it mean?"
"It means girls under seventeen who have discovered all the secrets of
life, the value of a pair of pretty ankles and exactly how to get
everybody else to do things for them. It's the best word I heard in
England."
"Nicholas Kenyon sounds to me rather a precocious boy," said Ethel.
"Boy! Nicholas Kenyon a boy--! Well!" Belle acknowledged herself beaten.
She could find no other words.
The little mother put her arm, with great affection, around the
shoulders of her youngest child, of whom she was extremely proud and a
little frightened. "Never mind, darling," she said. "Belle doesn't mean
anything. It's only her fun."
"Oh, that's all right, mamma. I make full allowance for Belle. She's a
little crude yet, but she'll improve in time."
Belle gave a scream of joy. Her sense of the ridiculous, always
extremely keen, made her delight in her little sister and the perfectly
placid way in which she sailed through existence with the lofty
superiority of her type--a type that is the peculiar result of
supercivilization and the deferential treatment of fashionable
schoolmistresses who bow to wealth as before a god.
"Run in and say good-night to father. He won't mind being disturbed for
a moment by you."
"I don't think I will," said Ethel. "The sight of his laboratory may
give me a nightmare. I really must be careful about myself just now.
Good night, mamma dear. Don't sit up too late. Good night, Belle. I
should advise you to go to bed at once. Your complexion is beginning to
show the effects of late hours already."
"Oh, you funny little thing," said Belle. "You give me a pain. Trot off
to bed; and instead of reading Wells, Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw, try
a course of Louisa Alcott and a dose of Swiss Family Robinson. That'll
do you much more good and make you a little more human."
But even this plain sisterly speaking had no apparent effect. Ethel gave
Betty, who had been watching and listening to the little bout with the
surprise of an only child, a small peck on the cheek. "Good night, dear
Betty," she said. "I'm glad that you're going to be my sister-in-law.
Unless Peter has changed very much since he's been away he'll make a
good husband."
And then, with quiet grace, she left the room. No one, not even Belle,
whose high spirits and love of life had led her into many perfectly
harmless adventures when she was the same age, suspected that Ethel was
up to anything. They were wrong. The self-constituted invalid had
invented anaemia for two very good reasons. First, because she was not
going to be deprived of welcoming her big brother when he returned home
for good, school or no school, and second because she had struck up a
surreptitious acquaintance with the good-looking boy next door. At
present it had gone no further than the daily exchange of letters and
telephone calls. The adventure was in the course, however, of speedy
development. The boy was going to pay her a visit that evening, by way
of the roof. No wonder Ethel didn't want to be disturbed.
With an unwonted burst of extravagance Betty took a taxi home as soon
after dinner as she could get away. "Is there a letter for me? Is there
a letter for me?" she asked the moon and all the stars in the clear sky
as her rackety cab bowled swiftly downtown.
She let herself in and the first thing that caught her eyes was the
welcome sight of a thick envelope addressed in Peter's big round,
honest, unaffected hand.
"Peter, oh, my Peter!" she whispered, pressing the letter to her lips.
Within five minutes she was sitting on her bed, in the seclusion of her
own room, and what Peter had to say for himself was this:
Carlton Hotel, London,
September 28, 1913.
My dearest Betty:
Gee! but I was mighty glad to find a letter from you this
afternoon when I got in, so glad that I dashed out of this
Hotel, went across the street to the White Star offices and
asked them to exchange my bookings to a boat sailing a week
earlier, because I just can't stand being away from you any
longer. I don't know what Nick will say, and don't much care.
He's at Newmarket staying with a man who trains horses. I've
just sent him a telegram to say what I've done, and as he's
very keen to see New York and is only killing time, I don't
think he'll kick up a row. I would have sailed on the
_Olympic_, which left the day after I said good-bye to
Thrapstone-Wynyates, if I hadn't promised father to go up to
Scotland and see the place where his ancestors lived. I
couldn't back out of that, especially as goodness only knows
when I shall come to Europe again,--perhaps not until I bring
you over on a honeymoon, my baby, and we go back to Oxford
together to see how the fairy ring is getting on. We must do
that some day. You don't know how I love that little open space
where the trees haven't grown so that the moon may spill itself
in a big patch for all our friends to dance in on fine nights.
I've read your letter a dozen times and know it by heart, like
all the others you've written to me. You write the most
wonderful letters, darling. I wish I knew how to send you
something worth reading, though I'm quite sure you don't mind
my clumsy way of putting things down, because you know how much
I love you and because everything I say comes straight out of
my heart.
My last letter was written in Scotland, Cupar Fife. I shall
always remember that quiet little place where the red-headed
Guthries,--they must have been red-headed from eating so much
porridge,--tilled the earth and brought up sheep in the way
they should go. The village seems as much cut off from the rest
of the world as though it were surrounded by sea, and every
small thing that happens excites it. The man who kept the Inn
that I stayed in (feeling frightfully lonely, though really
very much interested) had words with his good woman one night
and the rights and wrongs of the perfectly private matter have
since divided all the inhabitants. Best friends don't speak and
the minister is going to preach about the affair next Sunday. I
saw the house the old Guthries lived in and was taken all over
it by a kind old soul to whom father gave more money than
she thought existed when he was there. Gee! but my
great-grandfather must have had precious little ambition to
live his whole life in a little hole like that. In most of the
rooms the beds were in small alcoves and needed climbing up to
like bunks. Mrs. McAlister, who lives there now with her
married daughter and her seven children, sleeps in one of these
fug-holes in the kitchen. Think of it! And she said that the
floor swarms with beetles--she can hear them crackling about in
the night. All the same, by Jove! this primitive living makes
men. I can see from whom father got his grit and determination.
I was glad to find myself in London. I've only been here for a
night or two at various times and it's a wilderness to me. I
lose myself every time I go out and have to ask Bobbies how to
get back. Topping chaps, these Bobbies. They mostly look like
gentlemen and are awfully glad to get a laugh. To hear them
talk about the 'Aymarket, Piccadilly Surcuss, Wart'loo Plaice
and Westminister Habbey first of all puzzles one and then fills
one with joy. As to the Abbey,--oh, Gee! but isn't it away
beyond words! I spent a whole day wandering about among the
graves of its mighty dead, and finally when I got to the end of
the cloister and came upon that small, square, open space where
the grass grows so green and sparrows play about, I was glad
there was nobody to see me except the maid-servant of one of
the minor Canons who was taking in the milk for afternoon tea.
There are one or two vacant niches among the shrines of men who
have done things and moved things on, in which I should like to
stand (not looking a bit like myself in stone) when I have done
my job, and if I were an Englishman I should work for it. As it
is, I shall work for you and all you mean to me, my baby, and
that's even a higher privilege.
I went to a theatre last night,--Wyndham's. I thought the play
was corking, but the leading actor--an ugly good-looking
fellow--wasn't trying a yard, and let it away down every time
he was on. Also he spent his time making jokes under his breath
to the other people to dry them up. No wonder the theatres are
in a bad way in London. There's no snap and ginger about the
shows except the ones of the variety theatres, where they
really do take off their coats for business. It's fine to hear
rag-times at these places, although they're as stale on our
side as if they had been played away back before the great
wind. By the way, I'm a bit anxious about Graham. His letters
have a queer undercurrent in them.
I'm going to the National Gallery, the British Museum and South
Kensington to-morrow, and in the evening I'm dining at the
Trocadero with eight men who were up at St. John's with me.
They're all working in London and hate it, after Oxford. It
seems odd to me not to be there myself and I miss it mighty
badly sometimes. All the same it's great to feel that one's a
man at last, with real work to do and that apartment waiting
for us to win. This is the last mail that I can catch before
sailing and so I just have to tell you once again, in case you
forget it, that I adore you and that if I don't see you on the
landing in little old New York among the crowd I shall sink
away like an India-rubber balloon with a pin in it. So long, my
dearest girl. All, all my love, now and forever.
PETER.
P. S. Do you think your father can be brought to like me
somehow or other?
Kiss this exact spot.