Читать книгу The Sins of the Children - Cosmo Hamilton - Страница 10

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Belle had told Betty that she was "crazy" about Nicholas Kenyon. There is usually a wildness of exaggeration about this expression which renders it almost harmless. The exuberant type of girl who uses it applies it with equal thoughtlessness to a new hat, a new play or a new set of furs. She will be crazy about a tenor and a pomeranian, a so-called joke in a comic paper and the sermon of a fashionable preacher. In regard to Kenyon, however, Belle was really and truly crazy in its most accurate dictionary sense. After the Worcester Ball, during which she gave him nearly every dance,—to the flustered concern of the Don's wife who was her chaperon,—she went to no trouble to conceal from Kenyon the fact that she found him vastly attractive. Kenyon was not surprised. Already he was a complete expert in the art of making himself loved by women. He knew exactly what they liked him to say and he said it with a touch of insolence which took their breath away and a following touch of deference which gave them back their self-respect. Belle was very much to his liking. Her rather Latin beauty, which was rendered unexplainable by the sight of her parents—her incessant high spirits and love of life—her naïve assumption that she was the mistress of all the secrets of this world, amused, interested and tickled his fancy. Her beauty, freshness and youth pleased him as an epicure, and he went out of his way to be with her as much as he could. He had no intention whatever of falling in love with her,—first of all because it was all against his creed to fall in love with anyone but himself; secondly, because his way of living demanded that he should have no partner in his business,—all that he could win by his wits he would need. Nevertheless, he was quite as ready as usual to take everything that was given to him, and give nothing in return except flattery, well-rounded sentences and a good deal of his personal attention.

During the week that passed so quickly he had only been able to see Belle with her people, and when he found that this bored her as much as it bored him, he set his brain to work to devise some plan by which he could escape with her from the party for a few hours. Needless to say he succeeded.

On the night before the party were to leave Oxford he arranged another evening trip on the river, maneuvered Peter into one punt with his father and mother, Graham and Betty, and got into another with Belle. For some little time he poled along closely behind them, but as the river was full of similar parties he found it easy to drop behind and dodge deftly into a back water. Here he tied up to a branch, set himself down on the cushions at Belle's side and lit a cigarette.

"How's that?" he asked.

Belle laughed a little excitedly. "Very clever," she said. "I wondered how you were going to do it."

He didn't find it necessary to tell her that he had performed a similar trick a hundred times. "Under the right sort of inspiration," he said, "even I can develop genius. Tell me something about New York, and what you find to do there."

"I should have to talk from now until to-morrow morning even to begin to tell you," she said. "I only came out last winter, but the history of it would fill a book. New York is some town and I guess a girl has a better time there than anywhere else in the world. Why don't you come and see something of it for yourself?"

Kenyon leaned lightly against the girl's soft shoulder. "That's precisely what I'm going to do," he said. "Your father has given me a cordial invitation to stay at his house, and I shall go over with Peter in October."

"Oh, isn't that fine!" cried Belle. "You'll love the place—it's so different."

"I'm not worrying about the place," said Kenyon. "I'm simply going for the chance of dancing with you to the band which really does know how to play rag-time. It'll be worth crossing three thousand miles of unnecessary water to achieve that alone."

"I don't believe you," said Belle; but all her teeth gleamed in the moonlight and her heart pumped a little. How wonderful it would be to become the wife of the Honourable Nicholas Kenyon, who seemed to her to be everything that was desirable.

Kenyon picked up her hand and just touched it with his lips. "You don't believe it? Well, we'll see." He knew very well that if he had chosen to do so he could have kissed her lips, but his policy was to go slow. His epicurianism was so complete that he liked to take his enjoyment in sips and not empty his glass at a gulp. This girl whose imagined worldliness was so childlike was well worth all his attention. He looked forward with absolute certainty to the hour when he should place her on his little list of achievements; but like all collectors and connoisseurs he added to his pleasure by winning his point gradually, step by step, with a sort of cold-blooded passion.

Belle was accustomed to men who were a little crude in their naturalness and who immediately voiced their admiration and their liking with boyish spontaneity. She had strings of beaux of all ages who immediately sent her flowers and presents and dogged her heels from dance to dance and rang her up constantly on the telephone and generally showed their eagerness with that lack of control which was characteristic of a nation which had deliberately placed women in the position of queens.

Perhaps it was because this man's methods were so different that she found him so attractive. He fed her vanity and piqued it at the same time. He said more by saying nothing than any man had ever ventured to do, and he retired so quickly after an amazing advance that he left her assuming more than if he had never advanced at all. It was perfectly natural, although she had already dipped into the fastest New York set, that she should believe that at the end of every man's intention there was a marriage and a sort of throne in his house. She little knew Nicholas Kenyon. She had had the good fortune to meet men in New York, and not collectors.

"What are your father's plans when he leaves Oxford?" asked Kenyon, leaning a little more closely against the girl's soft shoulder.