The Sins of the Children Part 31

"I guess it's nearly a century since you called me Bee," she said with a queer little laugh. "Would you say that anything was the matter if you had just picked yourself out of the ruins of a house that had fallen about your ears?"

Graham got up suddenly, sat on the sofa at Belle's side and put his arms round her shoulder. "Don't dodge behind phrases, old girl," he said.

"Just tell me in plain English. Let me help you if I can."

But Belle shook him off,--not angry with him so much as with herself.

She detested weakness. This unexpected kindness on Graham's part made her feel like crying again. In her heart she longed for some one to whom she could pour out her soul, and Graham's affection almost caught her before she could stop herself. Not to him, she told herself, nor to any member of her family, was she going to confess the sort of thoughts that had choked her brain ever since that hour alone with Kenyon. Not even to Betty, to whom she told most things, was she going to lay bare the fact that, in the cold light of day, she found herself deeply hurt and deeply humiliated at Kenyon's treatment of her. In fact, she had herself only that night begun to realize the state of her feelings and was still suffering under the discovery.

Graham, whose nature and character were as much like those of Belle as though they were twins, caught her mental att.i.tude as she stood struggling between pride and a desire to tell the truth. It was as plain to him as though she had already confessed that Kenyon had done something which had shaken her belief in him. His photograph, which had dominated her room, had been put away. Her eyes were red and swollen.

All his sympathy was stirred. At the same time he rejoiced in the eager thought that he had it in his power to clear Kenyon finally out of her mind.

He set to work quietly. "I'm going to tell you about Peter," he said.

She turned quickly. "Peter? There's nothing wrong with Peter, is there?"

"G.o.d knows how much wrong there is. I'm going to tell you all I know.

We're all in this,--through Kenyon, and because we've been thoughtless fools running amuck through life."

The idea of there being anything wrong with Peter brought Belle quickly out of self-a.n.a.lysis and the self-indulgence of her own pain. "Don't beat about the bush," she said. "Please tell me. You told mother this morning that he had stayed with Nicholas last night."

"That was a lie. This is what happened. After a rotten day worrying about an upset with Betty, he went to see Kenyon late last night. He'd had nothing to eat. I believe because Kenyon had been disappointed about something earlier in the evening,--but I only make a guess at that from the way he looked when I saw him to-day,--he deliberately took it out on Peter."

"On Peter? How?" Belle understood this disappointment only too well.

"He made him drunk."

"Drunk!--Peter!"

"Dead drunk,--by doping him with a fearful mixture of all the drinks he had. He had always threatened to do it, and this time he caught Peter napping. That was a foul enough thing to do anyway, but it didn't satisfy him. He got him into the street and instead of putting him into a cab and sending him home he called a pa.s.sing woman----"

"Oh, no!" cried Belle.

"Yes,--and gave Peter over to her and there he's been, in her bed, in a little hole of an apartment, ill and poisoned, ever since."

"Oh, my G.o.d!" cried Belle.

"The woman rang me up early this morning and I got Ralph Harding to go and see what he could do. I've been there most of the day,--except for ten minutes with Kenyon--the best ten minutes I ever put in--ever."

He got up and stood looking at Belle with a gleam of such intense satisfaction in his eyes that she guessed what he had done.

"That's our admirable friend Kenyon," he added. "That's the man who shared rooms with Peter--whose charm of manner got us all at Oxford, and who was made one of the family by father and mother when he came to this country. I hit him for Peter, for you and for myself in that glorious ten minutes to-day. I left him lying on the floor in his rooms all over his own black blood, and if ever I meet him again, in any part of the world, at any time of my life, I'll give him another dose of the same sort--for Peter, for you and for me--That's what I came to tell you, Bee."

He bent forward and kissed her, turned round and left the room.

That was Kenyon, Graham had said.

Standing where he had left her, with this story of utter and incredible treachery in her ears, Belle added another count to Graham's indictment,--that of trying to seduce her without even the promise of marriage, when her grief at parting with him made her weak.

For a moment she stood chilled and stunned. That was Kenyon--All along she had been fooled--all along he had been playing with her as though she amounted merely to a light creature with whom men pa.s.sed the time.

It was due to her father,--of all men, her father,--that she stood there that night, humiliated but unharmed, with her pride all slashed and bleeding, her self-respect at a discount, but with nothing on her conscience that would make her face the pa.s.sing days with fear and horror.

She suddenly flamed into action. "Yes; that's Kenyon!" she thought, and making a sort of blazing pounce on the middle drawer of her dressing-table she pulled it open, took out the large photograph of a man in hunting-kit, and with queer, choking cries of rage and scorn, tore it into shreds and stamped upon the pieces.

XVI

Belle got very little sleep that night. Having finally decided, on top of her talk with Graham, that Kenyon had intended to treat her much in the same way as he had treated Peter, she endeavored to look back honestly and squarely at the whole time during which that super-individualist had occupied her thoughts. She saw herself as a very foolish, nave girl, without balance, without reserve and without the necessary caution in her treatment of men which should come from proper training and proper advice.

She laid no blame upon her mother,--that excellent little woman whose G.o.d-sent optimism made her believe that all her children were without flaw and that the world was full of people with good hearts and good intentions. She blamed only herself, and saw plainly enough that she had allowed her head to be turned by her father's sudden acquisition of wealth which made it unnecessary for her to be anything more than a sort of b.u.t.terfly skimming lightly through life without any duties to perform--without any work to occupy her attention--without any hobbies to fill her mind and give her ambition. She felt like some one who had just escaped from being run over in the streets, or who, by some divine accident, had been turned back from the very edge of an abyss. It was indeed a night that she could never forget in all her life. She lay in bed in the dark room with her eyes wide open, hearing all the hours strike one by one, watching herself with a sort of terror and amazement pa.s.sing through Oxford. All the incidents that had been crowded into that short and what had appeared to be glorious week, came up in front of her again, especially the incident in the back-water with Kenyon and the night of the ball at Wadham College. These were followed in her mind by the scene in the library in her father's house, and finally that dangerous hour in Kenyon's rooms when, but for the intervention of that man who seemed of so little account, she might have been placed among those unfortunate girls of whom the world talks very harshly and who pay a terrible price for their foolishness and ignorance. And when finally she got up, tired-eyed but saner than she had been since those good, strenuous days of hers at her college when she had intended to make art her mission in life, she told herself with a characteristic touch of humour that the reformed criminal was a very good hand at preaching, and made up her mind to go along to Ethel and improve the occasion. It was very obvious to her that if she did not do this n.o.body would, and she was eager to give a sort of proof of the fact that she was grateful for her own escape by giving her young sister the benefit of her suffering.

And so she put on her dressing-gown and went to her sister's room--the little sister of whom she was so fond and proud.

Ethel was sitting at her dressing-table doing her hair. There was a petulant and discontented expression on her face. Still shamming illness, she had not yet recovered from the smart of what she called Jack's impertinence. There was a surprise in store for her,--she who believed that she had managed so successfully to play the ostrich.

"Why, Belle!" she said. "What's the matter? You look as though you had been in a railway accident."

Belle sat down, not quite sure how she would begin or of the sort of reception that she would receive. She always felt rather uncouth in the presence of this calm, self-a.s.sured, highly finished little sister of hers. "Well," she said, "I have been through a sort of railway accident and a good many of my bones seem to have been broken,--that's why I'm here. I want to stop you, if I can, from going into the same train."

"I don't think I quite understand you."

"I don't suppose you do, my dear, but you shall--believe me." And then, in the plainest English she gave Ethel the story of her relations with Kenyon, without in any way sparing herself. And when she came to the parting scene in Kenyon's rooms she painted a picture that was so strong and vivid--so appalling in its proof of foolishness, that she made even Ethel forget her complacency and sit with large, frightened eyes.

Then she got up and began to walk about. "I'm not a fool," she said, "and this thing is going to teach me something. Also, I'm not a coward and I've told you all this for a reason. You think that you're a very wise little person, kiddie, but in reality you're no better than I am, and just as sentimental and every bit as unwatched and as resentful of guidance. Why are you here instead of being at school? You think no one knows that. Well, I do. You're playing ducks and drakes with mother and father and your education in order to have what we call a 'good time.'

You have shammed sickness so that you could have an adventure with the boy next door."

"How d'you know that?" cried Ethel.

"Easily enough, my dear. I was told by the girl who used to bring your thermos up to this room and who had caught you with the boy. Two days ago she left to be married, but before she went she blurted out the whole story. It wasn't for me to interfere then. I didn't much care, to tell the truth,--in fact, I thought it was rather a good joke. I rather admired you for the cunning way in which you had arranged everything. I thought you were a good sport. I don't know how far it has gone, but I hope to Heaven that you've not been quite so insane as I was. I'm not going to tell mother or do the elder sister stunt, or anything of that sort. I'm just going to ask you to chuck it all and go back to school and play the game for a change, and to try to bear in mind that you owe father and mother something,--a thing we all seem to have forgotten,--and when you do go back, just remember--and always remember--what I've told you about myself. We're very much alone, you and I,--like two girls who are staying in a house with somebody else's father and mother,--and so let's help each other and get a little honesty and self-respect and see things straight. What d'you say, dear little sister?"

Ethel got up, and with a complete breakdown of all the artificiality so carefully instilled into her by her fashionable school, slipped into her sister's arms and burst out crying.

XVII

It was not until the next afternoon that Peter was allowed to get up.

His superb const.i.tution had stood, rock-like, against the chill which the doctor's medicine had helped to throw off. He had done full justice to a broiled chicken which Nellie Pope had cooked for him; but when, having put on his clothes, he stood in front of the looking-gla.s.s, he felt as though he had been under a steam-roller and flattened out.

"Good Lord!" he said, when he saw his pale, unshaven face. "Good Lord!"

But he was very happy. He had read and re-read Ranken Townsend's generous apology. Betty was waiting for him--thank G.o.d for that.

And then he began to look round. Was this a nursing home? The dressing-table, with its tins of powder and a large dilapidated puff, its red stuff for lips, its shabby little brushes and a comb with several of its teeth gone, looked as though it belonged to a woman,--poor and struggling. The door of the closet, which gaped a little, showed dresses hanging and a pair of very high-heeled boots with white uppers. He opened a drawer in the dressing-table. It was full of soiled white gloves, several veils neatly rolled up, and a collection of small handkerchiefs. A strong, pungent scent rose up from them.

An ugly suspicion crept slowly into his mind. He looked at the bed with its frilled pillows, at the flower papered bare walls, at the rather worn blue carpet, at the flimsy wrap hanging limply on a peg on the door of the bath-room, at the little bed-room slippers tucked away beneath one of the white, painted chairs----

He turned and called out: "Nurse! Nurse!"

Something in his tone brought Nellie Pope in quickly.

He was standing with his hand on the big bra.s.s k.n.o.b of the bed. "You told me that this was a nursing home," he said.