The Sins of the Children Part 13

One of these fine days, Peter, they may raise a little necessary bullion for you."

"I hope not," said Peter.

Graham got up. "It's only eleven o'clock. Suppose we get out and see something. Everybody's gone to bed, we shan't be missed."

"A very brainy notion," said Kenyon, "but what's there to do?"

"Oodles of things," said Graham.

"Well, lead the way. I'm with you. The dull monotony of life aboard a liner has given me a thirst for twinkling ankles, the clash of cymbals and the glare of the lime-light. You with us, Peter?"

"Yes, unless--one second." He went over to the telephone that stood on a small table in a far corner of the room, looked up a number in the book, asked for it and hung on.

Kenyon shot a wink at Graham. "Get your hat, old boy," he said. "Peter would a-wooing go. He's the most desperately thorough person." And he added inwardly: "Hang that girl."

"Can I speak to Mr. Townsend? Oh, is that you, Mr. Townsend? Peter Guthrie, yes. May I come round and have a jaw--? Thanks, awfully! I'll get a taxi right away." He turned back to the other two men. "Great work," he said. "You two will have to go alone to-night. However, we've a thousand years in front of us. See you at breakfast. So long!"

"Wait a second," said Graham. "I'll ring up a taxi and we'll all ride down together."

"Right-o!" said Peter. "I'll rush up to my room and get a pipe."

When he came down again he found Kenyon and Graham waiting at the open door. A taxicab was chugging on the curbstone. Kenyon got in first, with his long cigarette holder between his teeth and a rakish-looking opera hat balanced over his left eye. He carried a thin black overcoat. All about him there was the very essence of Piccadilly. Peter sat beside him and Graham opposite. The cab turned round, crossed Madison into Fifth Avenue and went quickly downtown. The great wide street, as shiny as that of the Champs elysee, was comparatively clear of traffic. Peter looked at the pa.s.sing houses with the intense and affectionate interest of the man who comes home again. At the corner of West Forty-second Street Graham stopped the cab. "It's only a short walk to the best of the cabarets," he said; "we'll let Peter go straight on. Come on, Nicholas, bundle out."

"Where are we going?" asked Kenyon, making a graceful exit.

"Louis Martin's, old boy," said Graham.

"Pretty hot stuff, I hope. Au revoir, Peter. Do your best to make the bearded paint merchant like you. You'll have some difficulty." And with that parting shot, contradicted by one of the winning smiles which he had inherited from his delightful but unscrupulous father, Nicholas Kenyon took Graham's arm and these two walked away in high spirits.

When the cab stopped at the high building on the corner of Gramercy Park, its door was opened by Ranken Townsend. "I timed you to arrive about now, my lad," he said cordially. "I took the opportunity of getting some air. It's mighty good to-night. Come right up." He continued to talk in the elevator, which had a long way to go. "Betty has gone to a party. You may meet her mother, I'm not sure. She's out at one of her meetings--she spends her life at meetings--and if she comes in tired, as she generally does, she probably won't come into the studio. However, that need only be a pleasure deferred. Do you speak? If so, she'll nail you for one of her platforms."

"I,--speak?" said Peter, with a shudder. "I'd rather be shot."

Townsend laughed, led the way into his apartment and into the studio. In the dim light of one reading lamp which stood on a small table at the side of a low divan, the room looked larger than it was. It reeked with the good ripe smell of pipe tobacco and seemed to be pervaded with the personality of the man who spent most of his life in it. One of the top windows was open and through it came the refreshing air that blew up from the Hudson. Peter caught a glimpse of the sky, which was alive with stars. It was a good place. He liked it. Work was done there. It inspired him.

The artist took Peter's hat and coat and hung them in the alcove. Then he went across the room and turned up the light that hung over a canvas.

"How d'you like it?" he asked.

Peter gave an involuntary cry. There sat Betty with her hands folded in her lap. To Peter she seemed to have been caught at the very moment when from his place at her feet he looked up at her just before he held her in his arms for the first time. Her face was alight and her eyes full of tenderness. It was an exquisite piece of work.

Townsend turned out the light. He was well pleased with its effect.

Peter's face was far better than several columns of printed eulogy. "Now come and sit down," he said. "Try this mixture. It took me five years to discover it, but since then I've used no other." He threw himself on the settee and settled his untidy head among the cushions.

The light shone on Peter's strong profile, and when Townsend looked at it he saw there all that he hoped to see, and something else. There was a little smile round the boy's mouth and a look in his eyes that showed all the warmth of his heart.

"And so you love my little girl as much as that? Well, she deserves it, but please don't take her away from me yet. I can't spare her. She and my work are all I've got, and I'm not lying when I say that she comes first. Generally when a man reaches my age he has lived down his dependence on other people for happiness and his work has become his mistress, his wife and his children. In my case that isn't so, and my little girl is the best I have. She keeps me young, Peter. She renders my disappointments almost null and void, and she encourages me not wholly to sacrifice myself to the filthy dollar--an easy temptation I can a.s.sure you. So don't be in too great a hurry to take my little bird away and build a nest for her in another tree. Does that sound very selfish to you?"

"No," said Peter; "I understand. Besides--good Lord!--I've got to work before I can make a place good enough for her. I've come back to begin."

"I see! Fine! I thought perhaps that Oxford might have taken some of the good American grit out of you. It just occurred to me that you might be going to let your father keep you while you continue to remain an undergraduate out here in life. A good many of our young men with wealthy fathers play that game, believe me."

"Yes, I know," said Peter, "but there's something in my blood,--I think it's porridge,--that urges me to do things for myself. Besides, I believe that there's a feeling of grat.i.tude somewhere about me that makes me want to pay back my father for all that he's done. I'm most awfully keen to do that, Mr. Townsend! His money has come by accident.

I'm not going to take advantage of it. I'm going to start in just as if he were the same hard-working doctor that he used to be when he sent me to Harvard, skinning himself to do so. I think he'll like that. Anyway, that's my plan. And as to Oxford,--well, I should have to be a pretty rotten sort of a dog if I didn't gain something there--that wonderful place out of which men have gone, for centuries, all the better for having rushed over its quads and churned up the water of its little old river and stood humbly in its chapels. Don't you think so?"

"I do indeed, my dear lad; but somehow or other the younger generation doesn't seem to take advantage of those things, and the sight of the young men of the present day and their callous acceptance of their fathers' efforts make me thank G.o.d that I never had a boy. I should be afraid. Think of that! What are you going to do, Peter? What is your line of work?"

"The law."

"The law? Well, I guess that's a queer sort of maze to put yourself into. An honest man in the law is like a rabbit in a dog kennel. Is that your definite decision?"

"Absolutely," said Peter. "I chose the law for that reason. I think that honesty is badly needed in it. I've got a dream that one of these days I shall be a judge and make things a bit easier for all the poor devils who have made mistakes."

"G.o.d help you!"

"I shall ask him to," said Peter.

The artist looked up quickly. In his further keen and rather wistful scrutiny of the great big square-shouldered man with the strong, clean jaw-line and the firm mouth there was a little astonishment. "Do you mean to tell me that in the middle of these queer undisciplined, individualistic times you believe in G.o.d?"

The room remained in silence for a moment, until Peter leaned forward and knocked out his pipe. "If I didn't believe in G.o.d," he replied quietly, "would you be quite so ready to trust Betty to me?"

At that moment the door was swung open and a tall, stout, hard-bosomed woman with a ma.s.s of white hair and the carriage of a battleship sailed in. Her evening clothes glistened with sequins and many large beads rattled as she came forward. She wore a string of pearls and several diamond rings. Unable to fight any longer against advancing years and preserve what had evidently been quite remarkable good looks, she had cultivated a presence and developed distinction. In any meeting of women she was inevitably voted to the chair, and in the natural order of things became president of all the Societies to which she attached herself, except one. In this isolated case the woman who supplanted her, for the time being, was even taller, stouter and harder of bosom,--in fact, a born president.

The two men rose.

"Ah, Ranken, still up, then! I half-expected to find the studio in darkness. You'll be glad to hear that we pa.s.sed a unanimous resolution to-night condemning this country as a republic and asking that it shall become a monarchy forthwith."

Townsend refrained from looking at Peter. "Indeed!" he said gravely. "An evening well spent. But I want you to know Peter Guthrie, Dr. Hunter Guthrie's eldest son, just home from Oxford."

Mrs. Townsend extended a large well-formed hand. "Let me see! What do I know about you? You're the young man who--Oh, now I remember. You're engaged to Betty. But before I forget it, and as you are just out of Oxford, I'll put you down to speak at the annual meeting next Tuesday at the Waldorf, of the Society for the Reconstruction of University Systems. Your subject will be 'Oxford as a Menace to the Younger Generation.' There will be no fee--I beg your pardon?"

Peter's face was a study in conflicting emotions. He looked like a lonely man being run away with in a car that he was wholly unable to drive. Townsend turned a burst of laughter into a rasping cough. "You're awfully kind," said Peter, almost stammering. "But I believe in Oxford."

"Ah! Then you shall say so to the Society for the Encouragement of Universities, on Thursday at eight sharp, at the St. Mary's Public School Building, Brooklyn."

"As a matter of fact, I don't speak," said Peter. "I--I never speak."

"Why, then, you shall be one of the chief thinkers at the bi-monthly meeting of the Californian Cogitators. I'm not going to let you off, so make up your mind to that. And now I'm going to bed. I'm as tired as a dog. Good-bye, Paul,--I mean Peter. Expect me to call you up one day soon. There's so much to do with this world chaos that we must all put our hands to the wheel." And with a wave of her hand, Mrs. Townsend sailed majestically away.

Peter gasped for breath and the artist subsided into the divan and gave way to an attack--a very spasm--of laughter, which left him limp and weak.

"Never allow Betty to get bitten by the meeting-bug, son," he said, when he had recovered. "It isn't any fun to be married to a bunch of pamphlets. What! Are you off now?"

"I'm afraid I've kept you up, as it is, Mr. Townsend. I--I want to thank you for your immense kindness to me. I shall always remember it. Good night!"

Rankin Townsend got up, stood in front of Peter for a moment and looked straight at him. He was serious again. "Good night, my dear lad," he said. "I feel that I can trust Betty to you and that takes a load off my mind. Come often and stay later."

Peter walked all the way home along Madison Avenue. That part, at any rate, of the great sleepless city was resting and quiet, and the boy's quick footsteps echoed through the empty street. He was glad to be back again in New York--glad and thankful. Somewhere, in one of her big buildings, was his love-girl--the woman who was to be his wife--the reason of his having been born into the world. No wonder he believed in G.o.d.