Nicholas Kenyon has promised himself that, one of these days, when abject poverty forces him to work, he will write a whole book about Peter and Baby Lennox, and call it "Another Temptation of St. Anthony."
Not only did Kenyon watch this, to him, rather extraordinary incident, with keen interest, but so also did the members of his father's house-party, who came to regard Peter as a kind of freak. They all knew,—because they were all psychologists,—that Mrs. Lennox was badly smitten, as they put it, on this young American. They all knew,—because one of the women made it her business to spy,—that their temporary hostess was going through all the tricks of her trade to seduce this unconscious boy.
The incident provided Lord Shropshire and his friends with endless amusement, and bets were made as to how long Peter would hold out. Every morning something new was reported to them by the lady who had appointed herself to watch. One day it was that Baby had taken Peter to see her cottage after dinner and had had a little fainting fit in her bedroom while showing him the view from the window. Another that she had twisted her ankle on the eighth hole and had been obliged to ask to be carried back to the house. There was, however, no evidence, not even of a circumstantial nature, to prove that Baby had succeeded. It was presently agreed that either Peter was a fool or an angel.
There was one incident, however, which escaped unnoticed,—one of which even Kenyon knew nothing. It took place three nights before the party broke up.
After a gorgeous day of hard exercise and splendid fresh air, an hour at the piano after dinner and his usual talk to Baby under the moon, Peter went up to bed at eleven o'clock. He was very sleepy and meant to be up earlier than ever in the morning. He didn't say good-night to Kenyon or his satirical father. They were, like the others, very seriously at work making what money they could. There had been a fairly large dinner-party drawn from the surrounding houses, and there were eight bridge tables occupied in the large drawing-room. He left Mrs. Lennox in the hall looking more delicious than ever and went up to his room to smoke a final pipe and look over an illustrated paper before turning in.
His room was large and square and wainscotted, with dull grilled ceiling, and an oak floor so old that here and there it slanted badly. His bed was a four-poster, deeply carved at the back with the Kenyon arms, the motto underneath rather sarcastically being "For God and Honour." In front of the fireplace, with its sprawling iron dogs and oak setting, there was a long, narrow sofa filled with cushions, and at its side a small writing-table on which stood two tall silver candlesticks. These gave the room its only light and added to the Rembrandtesque atmosphere of it. It was a room which reeked with history and episodes of historical romance, love and sudden death. The windows which led to the balcony were open and the warmair of a wonderful night puffed in, causing the candle flames to move with a gentle rhythmic dignity to and fro.
Peter read and smoked for half an hour in his dressing-gown, while Quixotic moths flung themselves passionately into the candle-light one after another to die for some unexplainable ideal. From the drawing-room below a woman's throbbing voice drifted up, singing an Indian love song, and when it ceased the whole night was set a quiver by a nightingale's outburst of appeal. These things, and the silver wonder of the moon and stars, the touch of Mrs. Lennox's soft hand on his lips and the feeling and almost psychic undercurrent of strange emotion in that room in which so much had taken place, all stirred and thrilled the boy and sent his blood racing in his veins.
He stayed up longer than he intended, listening and wondering and wishing, for the first time in his life, that he had read poetry, so that he could fit some immortal lines to his mood and his surroundings. It was this, to him, curious thought which set him laughing and broke some of the spell. "Gee!" he said to himself, "can you see me spouting Shakespeare or mouthing Byron?" He shied his dressing-gown into the sofa, put both flames out with one huge blow and leaped into bed.
Almost instantly he heard his name urgently called. He sat up. Was he dreaming? Who should call at that time of night? Could it be Baby? He heard the call again. It was nearer. A little shadow fell suddenly upon the floor of his room. And then, in thewindow, with the shaft of moonlight all about her, stood Mrs. Lennox.
Peter caught his breath and clambered out of his bed. "What is it?" he asked. "What's the matter?"
The woman ran in with a glad cry. "Oh, Peter! I thought you had gone out of your room," she whispered, "and I didn't know what to do. I saw a hideous figure walk through my wall just after I had put out my light, and when it came towards me with long, bony fingers, I rushed out and came to you. Oh, hold me, Peter, hold me! I'm terrified and as cold as a frog!"
She slipped into his arms, all young and sweet and incoherent, trembling like a little bird in a thunder-storm. It was a most calculated piece of perfect acting.
Peter's heart seemed to jump into his mouth. The flowing hair of the little head that lay on his chest was full of the most intoxicating scent.
"I'll—I'll go and see what it is," he said abruptly.
"No, no! Don't go. I can't let you go, Peter. Stay with me!"
"But, if there's a man in your room——"
"It wasn't a man. It was the ghost that belongs to the family. It always comes before some dreadful accident. Oh, darling, stay with me! Take care of me! I'm terrified!"
She clung to him in a very ecstasy of fright and the closeness and warmth of her body sent Peter's brain whirling. He tried to speak, to think of somethingto say, but all his thoughts were in the swirl of a mill-stream, and he held her tighter and put his face against her hair, while his heart pumped and every preconceived idea, every hard-fought-for ideal went crash.
"I love you. I love you, Peter. My Peter!" she whispered. "Who but you should shelter me and hold me and keep me in your arms! Keep me with you always, night and day. Look into my eyes and see how much you mean to me, my man."
She raised her head and stood on tiptoe. The jealous moon had laid its light upon her face and her eyes were shining and her lips were parted, and the slight silk covering had fallen from her shoulder. The whiteness of it dazzled.
"Oh, my God!" said Peter, but as he bent to kiss her mouth, momentarily drunk with the touch and scent of her, someone shouted his name and thumped on his door, and Mrs. Lennox tore herself away and ran through the window like a moon-woman.
The door was flung open. Fountain came in, his voice a little thick. "I say, Guthrie, are you getting up early in the morning? 'Cause, if so, I'll take you on for nine holes before breakfast. What d'yer say? Goin' to get healthy, d'yer see? What?"
Peter found his voice. "All right!" he said.
"Will you? Good man. Give me a call at six, will you? We'll bathe in the pool before coming in. So long then." And out he went again, lurching a little and banging the door behind him.
For several queer minutes Peter stood swaying, withhis breath nearly gone as though he had been rowing, and one big hand on his throbbing head. And as he stood there the posts of the bed seemed to turn into trees and its cover into soft grass all alive with the yellow heads of "bread and cheese," and among them sat Betty, with her eyes full of love, confidence and implicit faith,—Betty, for whom he had saved himself.
And then he started walking about the room. Up and down he went—up and down—cursing himself and his weakness which had nearly smashed his dream and put his loyalty into the dust.
And when,—she also had cursed,—Mrs. Lennox stole back, as sweet and alluring as ever, and even more determined, she found that Peter had re-lit his candles, got into his dressing-gown again and was sitting at the table writing.
"Peter! Peter!" she called.
But he didn't hear.
"Peter!" she whispered, and went nearer and nearer until her body rested against his shoulder.
"Oh, I beg your pardon," he said, rising. "Is it all right now? That's fine. It's just a touch cold. Don't you think you'd better be in bed?"
Baby Lennox had seen the beginning of the letter, "My own Betty." She nodded, drew back her upper lip in a queer smile and turned and went. She was clever enough to know that she had lost.
And then Peter bent again over his letter, and in writing to the little girl whom he adored with all his heart, he was safe.
PART TWO
"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 ratherself-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, whatdoyou 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 hera 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'mgoingto 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 inorder to live not too far up-town and educate a family of four, but of a débutante 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 fromEngland 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 everywhereand 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 afree 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 believethat 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 conversationwith 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 friendswithout your butting in. Just for fun, would you tell me whatyouknow 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 anæmia.
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 eventuallyproduced the cable form, which she had used as a marker.
"Dohurry, 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;dogo 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 thefamily 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 theTatler? 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 scarffor 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 anæmia. 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 retroussé 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 prettyankles 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 anæmia 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 wayof 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 theOlympic, 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 therooms 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 letit 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.
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 theOlympic, 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 therooms 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 letit 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.
A good sport! Oh, yes, Graham answered admirably to that description,—according to its present-dayuse. Graham, like Belle, was suffering from the fact that everything was too easy. His father's so-called benefactor had taken all the sting of life for that boy. Fundamentally he had inherited a considerable amount of his father's grit. He needed the impetus of struggle to use up that sense of adventure which was deep-rooted in his nature. He was a throw-back. He had all the stuff in him that was in his ancestors,—those early pioneers who were momentarily up against the grim facts of life. He was not cut out for civilization. He needed action, the physical strain and stress of hunting for his food among primeval surroundings and the constant exercise of his strength in dangerous positions. He would have made a fine sailor, a reckless soldier or an excellent flying man. He was as much out of his element in Wall Street as a sporting dog which is doomed to pass away its life sitting beside a chauffeur in an elaborate motor-car. The daring recklessness which would have been an asset to him as a hunter of big game or a man who attached himself to dangerous expeditions, found vent, in the heart of civilization, in gambling and running wild. It was a pity to see such a lad so utterly misplaced and going to the devil with an alacrity that alarmed even some of his very loose friends. If his father had continued to be a hard-working doctor whose income was barely large enough to cover his yearly expenses, Graham could have used up his superabundant energies in climbing, rung by rung, any ladder at the bottom of which he had been placed. As it was, he found himself, through his father's sudden accessionto wealth, beginning where most men leave off, with nothing to fight for—nothing to put his teeth into—nothing for which to take off his coat. It was all wrong. He made money and lost it with equal ease—although he lost more than he won. He was surrounded with luxuries when he should have been faced daily with the splendid difficulties which go to form character and mental strength. Somehow or other his innate desire for adventure had to be used up. With no one to exercise any discipline over him, with no steady hand to guide him and control, he flung himself headlong into the vortex of the night life of the great city and was an easy prey for its rastaquores. At the age of twenty-four he already knew what it was to be haunted by money-lenders. Already he was up to the innumerable dodges of the men who borrow from Peter to pay Paul. He was a well-known figure in gambling clubs and the houses in the red-light district, and he numbered among his friends men and women who made a specialty of dealing with boys of his type and who laid their nets with consummate knowledge of humanity and with the most dastardly callousness. He was indeed, in the usual inaccurate conception of the word, a good "sport," and stood every chance of paying for the privilege with his health, his self-respect and the whole of his future life.
To have seen the nervous way in which he dressed for dinner the next evening, throwing tie after tie away with irritable cursing, would have convinced the most casual observer of the fact that he stood in needof a strong hand. His very appearance,—the dark lines round his eyes, the unsteadiness of his hand,—denoted plainly enough the sort of life that he was leading, but the short-sighted eyes of the Doctor in whose house he lived missed all this, and there was no one except the little mother to cry "halt" to this poor lad and, in her experience, of what avail was she?
He drove—after having dined with three other Wall Street men at Sherry's—to an apartment house on West Fortieth Street, little imagining that fate had determined to put him to the test. Kenyon had recommended him to try it. He had heard of it from Captain Fountain's brother, who had called it "very hot stuff" in one of his letters,—the headquarters of a so-called "Bohemian" set in which Art and gambling were combined. It was run by a woman whose name was Russian, whose instincts were cosmopolitan, and who had been shifted out of most of the great European cities by the police. "The Papowsky," as she was called, spoke several languages equally fluently. She was something of a judge of art. She had an uncanny way of being able to predict success or failure to new plays. She knew musicians when she saw them and only had to smell a book to know whether it had excellence or not. Her short, thin body and yellow skin, her black hair cut in a fringe over her eyes and short all round like that of a Shakesperian page, her long, dark, Oriental eyes and her long artistic hands were in themselves far from attractive. It was her wit and sarcasm howeverand the brilliant way in which she summed up people and things which made her the leader of those odd people—to be found in every great city—who delight in being unconventional and find excitement in a game of chance.
The apartment in which she held her "receptions" and entertainments was unique. The principal room was a large and lofty studio, arranged like a grotto with rocks and curious lights and secluded places where there were divans. Here there was a dais, at the back of which there was an organ, and a grand piano stood upon it in a French frame all over cupids, and it was here that the most extraordinary exhibitions of dancing were given by the Papowsky hand-maidens and others.
The other people who lived in this apartment house had already begun to talk about it in whispers, and its reputation had gone out into the city. One or two feeble complaints had been made to the police, but without any avail. At the moment when Graham had first entered it, it was in its second year and was flourishing like the proverbial Bay Tree. The magnets which drew him to this house of Arabian Nights were the roulette table in a secluded room at the end of the passage, and one of the hand-maidens of the Papowsky, whose large, gazelle-like eyes and soft caressing hands drew him from other haunts, and followed him into his dreams.
Graham's hat and coat were taken by a Japanese servant, whose little eyes twinkled a welcome.
The long, brilliantly lighted passage which led to the studio was hung with nudes, some of them painted in oils with a sure touch, some highly finished in black-and-white, and the rest dashed off in chalks,—rough impressionist things which might have been drawn by art students under the influence of drink. Between them in narrow black frames there was a collection of diabolically clever caricatures of well-known singers, actors, authors, painters and politicians, each one bringing out the weaknesses of the victims with peculiar impishness and insight. The floor of the passage was covered with a thick black pile carpet, which smothered all noise.
As Graham entered the studio several strange minor chords were struck on the piano and a woman's deep contralto voice filled the large studio like winter wind moaning through an old chimney.
The Papowsky, who was giving an evening for young artists, and was half-covered in a more than usually grotesque garment, slid out of the shadow and gave Graham her left hand, murmuring a welcome. Exuding a curious pungent aroma, she placed a long finger on her red, thin lips and slipped away again. For some minutes Graham remained where she left him, trying to accustom his eyes to the dim—though far from religious—light. He made out men indress clothes sitting here and there and the glint of nymph-like forms passing from place to place, springily. The scent of cigarette smoke mixed with that of some queer intoxicating perfume. The sound of water plashing from a fountain came to his ears.
On his way to find a seat, Graham's arm was suddenly seized, he was pulled into a corner and found himself, gladly enough, alone with the girl who called herself Ita Strabosck. There was one blue light in this alcove and by it he could see that the girl was dressed like an Apache in black suit with trousers which belled out over her little ankles and fitted her tightly everywhere else. She retained her close grip and began to whisper eagerly to him. Her foreign accent was more marked than usual, owing to the emotion under which she obviously labored. Her heart hammered against his arm.
"You have come to zee me?"
Graham whispered back. "Don't I always come to see you?"
"You like me?"
Graham bent forward and kissed her mouth.
"You love me?"
The boy laughed.
"S-s-s-h! Eef you love me, eef you really and truly love me, I vill to-night ask you to prove eet."
"I've been waiting," said Graham, with a sudden touch of passion.
"Zen take me avay from this 'ell. I 'ave a soul. Eet ees killing me. I 'ave a longing for God's air.Take me back to eet. The Papowsky ees a vile woman. She lure me 'ere and I am a prisoner. You do not know the 'orrors of zis place. I am young. I am almost a child. I was good and I can be good again. At once, when you come 'ere, I saw in you one who might rescue me from zis. I love you. You say you love me. I beseech you to take me away."
Graham was stirred by this emotional appeal whispered in his ear, by the young arms that were flung round his neck, and by the little body that was all soft against him. His sense of chivalry and his innate desire for adventure were instantly set ablaze. At the same time, what could he do with this strange little girl? Where could he put her?
He began to whisper back something of his inability to help, but a hand was quickly placed over his mouth.
"Eef you believe in God, take me away. I do not care what you do with me. I do not care eef you make me work for my bread. You are not like ze rest. You too are young and you are a man, and I love you. I will be your servant—your slave. I will kiss your feet. I will give you myself. I will wait on you 'and and foot. Give me a little room near ze sky and see me once a day, but take me out of this evil place—I am being poisoned. Vill you do zis? Vill you?" She slipped down on her knees and clasped her hands together.
In the faint blue light Graham could see the large eyes of the girl looking up at him through tears, as though to a saviour. Her whole attitude was one ofgreat appeal. Her young, slim body trembled and the throbbing of her voice with its curious foreign accent moved him to an overwhelming pity. Here then was something that he could do—was a way in which he could exercise his bottled up sense of adventure which had hitherto only been kept in some sort of control by gambling and running risks.
"Do you mean that you're forced to remain here,—that you can't get out if you want to?"
"Yes, yes, yes! I tell you I was caught like a wild bird and zis ees my cage. Ze door ees guarded."
A great excitement seized the boy. He lifted Ita up and put his mouth to her ear. "You've come to the right man. I'll get you out of this. I always loathed to see you here,—but how's it to be done? She has eyes in the back of her head, and those damned Japanese servants are everywhere."
"Eeet ees for you to sink," said the girl. "You are a man."
"I see," said Graham. "Right. Leave it to me."
He liked being made responsible. He liked the utter trust which this girl placed in him. He liked the feeling of danger. The whole episode and its uncanny romance caught hold of him. It was not every day that in the middle of civilization the chance came to do something which smacked of mediævalism—which had in it something of the high adventure of Ivanhoe.
He said: "Get away quick and put your clothes on. Don't pack anything—just dress. There won'tbe any one in the roulette room until after twelve. Go in there and hide behind the curtains and wait for me. Quick, now!"
Once more the girl flung her arms about him and put her lips to his mouth.
For several minutes Graham remained alone in the alcove, with his blood running swiftly through his veins—his brain hard at work. The woman on the dais was still singing. In the vague, uncertain light he could see the Papowsky curled up on a divan near by, smoking a cigarette. Other people had come in and made groups among the foolish rockery. Then he got up quietly, went out into the passage and looked about. He had never before explored the place, he only knew the studio and the roulette room. It dawned upon him that this apartment was just beneath the roof of the building. Somewhere or other there was likely to be an outlet to the fire-escape. That was the idea. He had it. The girl had said that it would be impossible to take her away by the main door. Those Japanese servants were evidently watch-dogs. Even as he stood there, wondering, he saw that he was eyed by a small, square-shouldered Japanese whose head seemed to be too large for his body and whose oily deferential grin was not to be trusted. He lit a cigarette, and putting on what he considered to be an air of extreme nonchalance, strolled along until he came to the roulette room. No one was there. The candelabra were only partially alight. He darted quickly to the window and flung it up. The iron steps of the fire-escape ran past itto the roof. "Fine!" he said to himself. "Now I know what to do."
He shut the window quickly and turned round just as the man who had been watching him came in. "Say!" he said. "Just go and get me a high-ball. Bring it here." He followed the man to the door and into the passage and watched him waddle away. He had not been there more than a moment when the door opposite opened bit by bit, and the girl's face, with large frightened eyes, peeped round the corner. In a little black hat and a plain frock with a very tight skirt she looked younger and prettier and more in need of help than ever. Without a word, Graham caught hold of her hand, drew her into the passage, shut her door, ran her into the roulette room and placed her behind the curtains, making sure that her feet were hidden. Whistling softly to himself he sat down and waited. The man seemed to have been gone half an hour. It was really only a few minutes before he waddled back on his heels. Graham took the drink. "How soon do you think they'll begin to play to-night?" he asked, keeping his voice steady with a huge effort.
The Japanese shrugged his shoulders. "As usual, sir," he said, smiling from ear to ear and rubbing his hands together as though he were washing them. "Any time after twelve, sir—any time, sir."
"All right!" said Graham. "I shall wait here."
He kept up the air of boredom until he imagined that the small, black-haired, olive-tinted man had had time to get well away. Then he sprang to the door,saw that the passage was empty, darted back into the room and over to the window.
"Come on!" he said. "Quick's the word!" and climbed out, giving the girl his hand. For a moment they stood together on the ledge of the fire-escape, the stairs of which seemed to run endlessly down. With a chuckle of triumph Graham shut the window, as the girl gave a little cry of dismay.
She had called that place hell, but from the height on which they stood it seemed as though they were climbing down from the sky.
"Uptown," said Graham to the taxi driver. "I'll tell you where when I know myself."
A knowing and sympathetic grin covered the big Irish face and a raucous yell came from the hard-used engine, and the taxi went forward with a huge jerk.
The little girl turned her large eyes on Graham. "You do not know vhere you take me?" she asked.
"No, by thunder, I don't. I can't drive you like this to a hotel, you've got no baggage. Most of my friends live in bachelor apartments, and the women I know,—well, I would like to see their faces if I turned up with you—andthisstory."
The girl's foreign gesture was eloquent of despair. She heaved a deep sigh and drew into the corner ofthe cab. The passing lights shone intermittently on her little white face. How small and pitiful and helpless she looked.
The sight of her set Graham's brain working again. In getting her out of the Papowsky's poisonous place and leading her step by step down the winding fire-escape and, when it ceased abruptly in mid-air, into the window of a restaurant, he had been brought to the end of one line of thought,—that of getting the girl safely out of her prison. He now started on another, while the cab rocked along the trolley lines beneath the elevated railway, sometimes swerving dangerously out and round the iron supports.
Suddenly Graham was seized with an idea. He put his head out of the cab window and shouted to the driver: "Fifty-five East Fifty-second Street."
The girl turned to him hopefully. "What ees zat?" she asked.
"My home."
"Your 'ome? You take me to your 'ome?"
"Why no, not exactly. I'm going in to get a bag for you. It won't have much in it except a brush and comb and a pair of my pajamas, but with them we can drive to any quiet hotel and I'll get a room for you. In the morning I'll find a little furnished apartment and you can go out and buy some clothes and the other things that you need. How's that?"
Ita caught up his hand and held it against her heart. "But you are not going to leave me?"
"Yes, I must," said Graham. "I shall have to register you as my sister. You've just come off thetrain and I've met you at the station. Oh, don't cry! It's the best I can do. It's only just for one night. I'll fix things to-morrow and you'll be very happy in a little apartment of your own, won't you? I'll see you every day there."
With a sudden and almost painfully touching abandon of gratitude the girl flung herself on the floor of the cab and put her head on Graham's knees, calling on God to bless him. Something came into the boy's throat.
The taxi crossed Fifth Avenue behind a motor-car that was also going towards Madison Avenue. It looked very familiar to Graham. Supposing it was his father returning from one of his medical meetings! He put his head out again, sharply: "Stop at the first house on East Fifty-second Street!" he shouted. Almost before the cab had stopped he leaped out. "Wait for me here," he added.
"Sure an' I will." The driver threw a glance at his taxi-meter. Not for him to care how long he waited.
Graham darted along the street and up the steps of Number fifty-five, and just as he had the key in the door he heard his father's voice.
"No, no. Let my car take you home. Yes, a wonderful evening. Most inspiring. Good night! Let's meet again soon!"
Graham made up his mind what to do. He held the door open for the Doctor and stood waiting for him, with the bored look of one who has had a rather dull evening."Oh, thank you, Graham," said Dr. Guthrie. "Have you just got back?"
"Yes; I thought I'd get to bed early to-night."
"You look as though you needed sleep," said the Doctor. "But—but don't go up at once. Please come and have a cigarette in my room. I've—I've been speaking at the Academy of Medicine,—explaining a new discovery. A great triumph, Graham, a great triumph. I would like to tell one of my sons about it. Won't you come?"
There was an unwonted look of excitement on his father's thin face and a ring in his voice which made it almost youthful. It was the first time that Graham had ever received such an invitation. He was surprised, and if he had not been so desperately anxious to slip up-stairs, lay quick hands on the bag and get away again he would have accepted it gladly. For a reason that he could not explain he felt at that instant an almost unbearable desire to find his father, to get in touch with him, to give something and receive something that he seemed to yearn for and need more urgently than at any other moment in his life. As it was, he was obliged to back out. "I'm frightfully tired to-night," he said, yawning.
"Oh, are you? I'm sorry," said the Doctor apologetically. "Some other night perhaps—some other night."
The two men stood facing each other uncomfortably. Exhilaration had for a moment broken down the Doctor's shyness. It all came back to him when he found his son's eyes upon him like those of astranger. He took off his coat and hat, said "Good-night" nervously and went quickly across the hall and into his library.
He was deeply hurt. He stood among those priceless books with a curious pain running through his veins. "What's the matter with me?" he asked himself. "Why do I chill my children and make them draw back?"
Graham shut the door, and then as quickly as an eel ran up-stairs to his bedroom, turned on the light, opened the door of the closet and pulled out a large suit-case. Then he began to hunt among the drawers of his wardrobe for some pajamas. He threw these in. From his bathroom he caught up a brush and comb and some bedroom slippers. These followed the pajamas. Then he shut the case, picked it up, crept quietly down-stairs, across the hall and out into the street, shutting the door softly behind him. He gave the taxi-driver the name of a small hotel frequented by actors, and jumped into the cab.
Ita Strabosck welcomed him as though he had been gone a week. "'Ow good you are to me!" she cried. "Eef you never do anysing else een your life, zis that you 'ave done for me vill be written down by zee angels een your book."
Graham laughed. "The angels—I wonder."
All the same he was a little proud of himself. Not many men would have perfected the rescue of this little girl so neatly from a house in which her body and soul were in jeopardy. It had been an episode in his sophisticated life which was all to his credit.He felt that,—with pleasure liked the idea of being responsible for this poor little soul, of having some one dependent entirely upon his generosity and who presently would wait for his step with a fluttering heart and run to meet him when he came in tired. He liked also the thought that this girl would be a little secret of his own,—some one personal to himself, to whom he could take his worries—and he had many—and get sympathy and even advice.
The cab drew up. Graham released himself from the girl's arms and led her into the small and rather fuggy foyer of the hotel, which was a stone's throw from Broadway. A colored porter pounced upon the bag and an alert clerk looked up from the mail that he was sorting.
"I want a room for my sister," said Graham, "with bath. Got one?"
"Fifth floor," said the clerk, after gazing fixedly for a moment at something at the back of the screen. He then pushed the book towards Graham.
Without a moment's hesitation, Graham wrote "Miss Nancy Robertson, Buffalo," and took the key that was extended to him. "Come on, Nancy," he said, and led the way to the elevator, in which was waiting a tall, florid woman carrying a small bulldog in her arms. She had obviously not taken very great pains to remove the make-up from her face which had been necessary to her small part. Graham recognized her as an actress whom he had seen some nights before in an English play at the Thirty-ninth Street Theatre, and he thought how queer life was and whatodd tricks it played. Not a foot away from each other stood two women, the one just back from a place in which she had been aping a human being in a piece utterly artificial and untrue, the other who had played a part in a tragedy of grim and horrible reality, out of which she had been carried before the inevitable climax.
The colored boy, with a hospitable grin on his face, led the way along a narrow, shabby passage whose wall-paper was much the worse for wear, and finally opened the door of a small bedroom, switching on the light.
"I'll undo the case," said Graham quickly.
The boy drew back. "Sure."
"And say! If you'll see that my sister gets what she rings for I'll give you five dollars."
"You bet your life, sah." There was a dazzling glint of white teeth.
"Thanks."
"You welcome."
The cry of joy and relief which made the whole room quiver, as soon as the porter had gone, went straight to Graham's heart. "I guess it's not much of a room," he said, a little huskily, "but we'll change all this to-morrow."
The girl ran her hand over the pillow and the bed-cover. "Oh, but eet ees zo sweet and clean," she said, between tears and laughter, "and no one can come. Eet ees mine. You are zo,zogood to me."
Graham undid the case and spilt the meagre contents on the bed. Then he put his hands on Ita'sshoulders and kissed her. "Good-night, you poor little thing," he said. "Sleep well, order anything that you want, and don't leave this room until I come and fetch you. Your troubles are over."
She clung to him. "But you vill stay a leetle—just a leetle?"
"No, I'm going now."
There was nowhere in Graham's mind the remotest desire to stay. A new and strange chivalry had taken the place of the passion that had swept over him earlier in the evening when the blue light had fallen on her slim body.
She looked into his face, nodded and put her lips to his cheek. "Good night, zen," she said. "You 'ave taken me out of hell. You are very good."
And as Graham walked home under the gleaming moon and the star-bespattered sky, there was a little queer song in his rather lonely heart.
Poor, simple, sophisticated lad! How easy it had been for that cunning little creature whose one ambition was to be the mistress of an apartment in business for herself, to take advantage of his unfed sense of adventure. She, and fate, had certainly played him a very impish trick.