Читать книгу The Sins of the Children - Cosmo Hamilton - Страница 6

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One o'clock that afternoon found Peter still hammering on his piano, not only to the intense delight of three snub-nosed tradesmen's boys who delayed delivery of mutton-chops and soles, which were only plaice, but also of five people who had come quietly into the room. They stood together watching and listening and waiting for him suddenly to discover that he was not alone. One was a tall, rather angular, clean-shaven, noticeably intellectual man whose thin hair was grey and who wore very large glasses with tortoise-shell frames, through which he looked with pale, short-sighted eyes. He held a grey hat in his thin hand and stood watching the boy—who made his piano do the work of a full band—with a smile of infinite pride on his lips. Another was a little lady, all soft and sweet, with a bird-like face and a curious bird-like appearance. All about her there was a sort of perennial youthfulness, and the goodness of her kind heart gleamed so openly in her eyes that they asked beggars and cripples, itinerant musicians, ragamuffins, street dogs and all humbugs to come and be helped. At that moment they were full of tears, although little lines of laughter were all about them. Another was a slight, exceedingly good-looking young man whose hair went into a series of small waves and was brushed away from his forehead. He was grinning like a Cheshire cat and showing two rows of teeth which would make a dentist both envious and annoyed. There was a slight air of precocity about his clothes. Two girls made up the rest of the party. Both were young and slim and of average height. Both were unmistakably American in their fearless independence and cleanness of cut. One was dark, with almost black eyebrows which just failed to meet in the middle. Her eyes were amazing and as full of danger as a maxim,—large and blue—the most astonishing blueness. They were framed with long, thick, black lashes. Her lips were rather full and red, and her skin white. She might have been an Italian or a Spaniard. The other girl was blonde and slim, with large grey eyes set widely apart, a small patrician nose and a lovely little mouth turning up at the corners.

How long all these people would have stayed watching and listening no man can say. Suddenly, in the middle of a bar, Peter sprang up and turned round. His cry of joy and the way in which he plunged forward and picked up the little bird-like woman in his arms was very good to see.

"Mother!" he cried. "Mother! Oh, Gee! This is great!" and he kissed her cheeks and her hands, and then her cheeks again, all the while making strange, small, fond noises like a little boy who comes back home after the holidays.

"Oh, dear, dear Peter!" said the little woman, between tears and laughter. "How splendidly rough you are! You shake me to pieces! Where shall I be able to tidy my hair?"

Then, with a rather constrained air and a touch of nervous cordiality, Peter turned to his father and took his hand. "How are you, father?" he asked. "You look fine."

Dr. Hunter Guthrie swallowed something and gave a murmur which remained incoherent. Before he could pull himself together, Peter was hugging his sister, who squealed like a pig from the tightness of this man's mighty grasp. And then the brother came in for it and winced with pain and pleasure as his hand was taken in a vise-like grip.

"Hello, Graham!"

"Hello, Peter!"

And then everybody except Peter burst out laughing. He stood in front of the fair girl, with his mouth wide open, and held out his hand and said: "I was going to hunt the whole place for you,—I beg your pardon." It was when he drew back, with his face and neck the color of a beet root, that the laughter reached its climax.

Belle Guthrie was the first to find her voice. "Well, Peter," she said, "that's going some. Is an introduction superfluous in Oxford? Where did you meet Betty Townsend?"

"I haven't met her," said Peter. "I saw her this morning in the High for a second—" He ran his finger round his collar and moved from one foot to the other and shifted his great shoulders. No man on this earth had ever looked so uncomfortable.

And then, with consummate coolness, Betty Townsend came to the rescue. "Just after we arrived this morning," she said, "and you were all buying picture post-cards, I passed Mr. Guthrie when I was walking along the High Street with Graham's friend. I recognized him from the photographs that you have at home, and I think he must have heard me ask, 'Who's that?' I naturally gave him a friendly look. That's all."

"I didn't catch the friendly look," said Peter. But he did catch the friendly tone and stored it up among his treasures. Then he suddenly stirred himself, being host, picked up his mother and placed her on his elaborate sofa; gave his best arm-chair to his father; waved his sister into the window-seat with her friend, and tilted Graham into a deck chair.

Standing in the middle of the room, beaming with pride, he said: "How in thunder did you get here so soon? Your wire said that you were coming to tea, and I was going to meet the train leaving Paddington at three-thirty. Gee! This is the best thing that ever happened! Will you lunch here?"

"Oh, no, dear!" said Mrs. Guthrie. "So many of us will worry your landlady."

Then out came one of Peter's huge laughs. "Worry my landlady? One look at Mrs. Brownstack would show you that she got over being worried before the great wind. Why she's kept lodgings for undergraduates for twenty years. It's the same thing as saying that she's spent the greater part of her life sitting on the top of Vesuvius. I can give you beer, beef, pickles, biscuits, cake, swipes they call coffee, some corking Nougat and three brands of cigarettes."

"I think," said Dr. Guthrie, with a suggestion of haste, "it might be better if you lunched with us at the hotel." Like all doctors, his first thoughts were of digestion.

"Right-o!" said Peter, and he dived into his bedroom for a more respectable coat. His brother followed him in and the two stood facing each other for a moment, eye to eye. They had not met for two years. Instinctively they grasped hands again and the minds of both were filled with most affectionate things—a very flood of words—but one said "Old man!" and the other "Peter!" And while Graham brushed his kinky hair with a temporary suggestion of throatiness, Peter hauled out his best coat and whistled to show how utterly unmoved he was.

They returned to the sitting-room together. Dr. Guthrie was examining the conglomeration of books that loaded the shelves. The plays of Bernard Shaw rubbed shoulders with "Masterton on Land Taxes." Stevenson's "Treasure Island" leaned up against Webster's Dictionary. "Tono-Bungay" had for a companion a slushy novel by Garvice—and on them all was dust.

The little mother, all a-flutter like a thrush, was at the window looking through the trees at the warm old buildings opposite. The two girls were peering into a cupboard as into the "Blue Room," where they found nothing but a few whiskey bottles, several packs of cards, a box of chess-men, a couple of mortar-boards with all their corners gone, and a large collection of white shoes in all grades of dilapidation.

"Are you all ready?" asked Dr. Guthrie, with a curious gayety. Among all this youth even he felt young.

"Rather," said Peter. "I could eat an ox."

He opened the door, touched his mother's soft cheek with his finger as she passed, tweaked his sister's hair, refrained from catching Betty Townsend's eyes, winked at his brother and drew back for his father.

Once in the quad Mrs. Guthrie whispered to Graham and went quickly out into St. Giles, beckoning to the two girls to follow. She was very anxious that Peter should walk with his father, and this—rather pleased with himself—Peter did. He would have taken his father's arm if he had dared, he was so mighty glad to see him. Several times the Doctor seemed about to do the same thing, but his hand hesitated and dropped. And so these two fell in step and walked silently along towards the Randolph Hotel, passed by men in twos or threes, many of whom, to the Doctor's inward delight, cried out, "Hullo, Peter!" with tremendous cordiality. It was not until they turned the corner that the Doctor spoke.

"It gives me real pleasure to see you again, Peter," he said, with a quick self-conscious glance at the young giant at his elbow.

"Thank you, father," said Peter, looking straight ahead and getting as red as a peony.