"Perfectly true; but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred I shouldn't
mean it."
They turned into Madison Avenue. It was an exquisite morning. The whole
city was bathed in sun, but the refreshing tang of late autumn was in
the air. Most of the large houses were still closed, their owners
lingering in the country or abroad. All the same there was the
inevitable amount of traffic in the streets and apparently the usual
number of passers-by. The city can be--according to the strange little
creatures who write society news--"utterly deserted" and yet contain
all its teeming millions.
"And what may that be?" asked Kenyon, pointing to the heavy white
buttresses of a church which backed on the street.
"Oh, that's the Roman Catholic Cathedral."
"Roman Catholic, eh? I noticed churches everywhere as we drove up from
the docks,--more churches than pubs apparently, and yet I suppose it
would be quite absurd to imagine that New Yorkers imbibe their alcohol
entirely in the form of religion."
"Quite," said Belle, dryly. "Although we have a hundred religions and
only five cocktails."
"I see you also go in for antique furniture."
Belle laughed. "You have a quick eye," she said. "There's so much
genuine Old English stuff in this city that if it were sent to England
there wouldn't be room for it on shore. Tell me; what are your plans?"
"Well," said Kenyon, "I'm going to accept your father's perfectly
charming hospitality for a fortnight and then take rooms in a bachelor
apartment-house, of which Graham has told me, for the winter."
"You're going to settle down here?" cried Belle.
"Rather,--for six months. I'm here to study the conditions, make myself
familiar with the characteristics and draw from both what I hope will be
the foundations of much usefulness." Kenyon considered that he had
enveloped his true mission--which was to lighten the pockets of all
unwary young men--with a satirical verbiage that did him credit.
"I thought that perhaps you'd come for some other reason," said Belle,
whose whole face showed her disappointment.
Kenyon shot a quick glance at her. How naive she was--how very much too
easy--but, nevertheless, how very young and desirable. "That goes
without saying, you delicious thing," he replied, closing his hand
warmly round her arm for a moment and so bringing the light back to her
eyes. "By the way," he continued, "what's the matter with Graham?"
"I don't know that anything's the matter with Graham."
"I think so. I notice a worried look about him that he didn't have at
Oxford; that he seems to be always on the verge of telling me something,
and drawing back at the last minute. I must make a point of finding out
what his trouble is. Peter and I were discussing it this morning after
breakfast. We're both a bit anxious about him. Do you know if your
father has noticed it?"
"Father? Oh, he doesn't notice anything. He believes that Graham is
working very hard and doing well. He knows less about what goes on in
our house than the people who live next door."
"That's rather a pity. I'm all for complete confidence between father
and son. However, I shall play father to Graham for a bit and see what
can be done for him. He puzzles me. There's a mystery somewhere."
Something of this mystery was disclosed to Kenyon and Peter that night.
After dining them both at the Harvard Club--a place which filled Kenyon
with admiration and surprise--Graham suddenly suggested, with a queer
touch of excitement, that they should go with him to his apartment.
"Your apartment?" said Peter. "What on earth do you mean?"
"Well, come and see," said Graham.
The two elder men looked at each other in amazement. Kenyon's quick mind
ran ahead, but Peter, the unsophisticated, was quite unable to
understand what in the world Graham wanted an apartment for when he
lived at home. They all three left West Forty-fourth Street in silence
and walked arm in arm down Fifth Avenue as far as Twenty-eighth Street.
Here they turned westward and followed Graham, who was wearing an air of
rather sheepish pride, up the steps of an old brown stone house with
rather a shabby portico.
"Dismal looking hole," said Peter.
"Wait!" said Graham, and he put his finger on a bell. The door opened
automatically and he led the way into a scantily furnished hall and up
three flights of stairs, whose red carpet was in the autumn of its days.
Drawing up in front of a door on the left of the passage he rang again,
and after a lengthy pause was admitted to a small apartment by a colored
maid, who gave a wide grin of recognition.
"Come right in," said Graham. "Lily, take our hats and coats. Don't
leave them about in the hall. Hang them up and then go and get some
drinks."
Kenyon looked about him curiously. He could see that the place was
newly furnished and that everything had been chosen by a man. He glanced
into the dining-room. The pictures were sporting and the furniture
mission. He detected no sign of a woman's hand anywhere. He began to be
puzzled. He had expected to find something quite different. But when
Graham opened the door of the sitting-room and said: "Well, here we are,
Ita!" and he saw a small, dark, olive-skinned girl rise up from a settee
and run forward to Graham with a little cry of welcome, he knew that his
deduction of the situation had been a right one. So this was the
mystery.
Still with the same air of sheepish pride, Graham said: "Peter, this is
Miss Ita Strabosck. My brother, Ita. And this is Nicholas Kenyon, who's
a great friend of mine. They've just come over from England, and so of
course I've brought them to see you."
The little girl held out a very shy hand, and said: "I am so glad. Eet
ees very good of you to come."
In a curiously plain tight frock of some soft black material, cut square
across her tiny breasts, and leaving her arms bare almost to the
shoulders, she stood, with one knee bent, looking from one man to the
other with a sort of wistful eagerness to be treated kindly. She held a
tiny black Teddy bear with red eyes against her cheek, like a child.
Peter, for a reason which he was unable to explain to himself, felt a
wave of sympathy go over him. He not only accepted the girl on her face
value, but somehow or other believed her to be younger and more
romantic than she looked. She seemed to him to have stepped out of the
pages of some Arabian book--to be a little exotic whom Graham must have
discovered far away from her native hot-house. He liked the way in which
her thick hair was arranged round her face, and he would have sworn that
she was without guile.
Not so Kenyon. "Great Scott!" he said to himself. "Here's a little devil
for you. Our young friend Graham has had his leg pulled. I've seen
mosquitoes before, but the poison of this one will take all the
ingenuity of an expert to counteract."
He sat down and watched the girl, who threw one quick antagonistic
glance at him and attached herself to Peter, to whom she talked in
monosyllables. She might only very recently have left a Convent School,
except that her dog-like worship of Graham seemed to prove that she owed
him a deep debt of gratitude for some great service.
Graham watched her, too, and his expression showed Kenyon that even if
he didn't love her he believed in her and was proud of himself.