Читать книгу The Sins of the Children - Cosmo Hamilton - Страница 8

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Peter put in the time of his life during the next few days, and like the great big simple fellow that he was, revelled in being the little hero of his family.

From morning until night he kept them on the move, taking them to all his favorite haunts in the town and out in the country, introducing to them whole flocks of his friends, with whom they had tea and lunch; guiding them into the strange quiet chapels that were filled with the aroma of dead years like a bowl of dry rose-leaves; going with them into the sweet, quiet, sacred, stately seclusion of New College Garden and into the echoing cloisters of Magdalen. They were good days, memorable days, giving them all mental pictures that even time would not blur nor age rub out. To Peter the best of all the afternoons was the one when he looked up at the St. John's barge as he paddled out into the river in the College Eight and caught the eager and excited eyes of all the people who meant so much to him, and especially those of Betty. He rowed that afternoon as he had never rowed before, carrying with him all along the stream the raucous shouts of the members of his college who tore along the tow-path almost demented with enthusiasm, firing pistols, turning rattles and screaming "St. John's! St. John's! Give her ten! Give her ten! Up! Up!" And finally, when he staggered out of the boat almost sick from exertion, his knees shaking under him, the thought that came to him as he heard the incessant cries of "Good old Peter!" was "Thank God for this! The Governor will get something back for all he has done for me." He just waved his hand to his people, felt his way into the barge, laid himself flat on the floor and underwent the soothing process of being rubbed and sponged down—and all the while he smiled and was very happy.

He didn't catch the look of maternal agony in his mother's eyes nor her remarks—which was perhaps just as well. Seeing her great big boy crumpled up over his oar before he was assisted out of the boat, seeing him stand rocking like a drunken man with his great chest heaving and his face the color of a green apple, she leaned over the rail and cried out: "Oh, my dear, what have they done to you? Oh, Hunter, you must not let him do these things, he'll kill himself! Oh, Peter, Peter!"

As a matter of fact, no one heard her. There was too much good solid roar going on. Every lusty-throated St. John's man was shouting at the full capacity of his lungs. Oh, but it was a good scene! And for the quiet, studious Doctor who had sat day after day for the greater part of his life watching bacteriological experiments, with the most intense interest, it was one that caused his blood to move almost dangerously through his veins and make him shout for the first time in his life.

It had a different effect upon temperamental Belle, who danced with excitement and kept on saying, in a sort of refrain, "Oh, I'm crazy about all this—simply crazy!" As for Graham, even the thrill of Wall Street seemed poor to him in comparison with this stirring scene,—the wild rush of men, the rhythmetic plunge of oars, the glorious muscular effort and the frenzied outburst.

Betty merely smiled, clasped her hands together and held her breath. It seemed to her that in Peter all the heroes of her youth,—Brian de Bois Guilbert, Ivanhoe and the rest,—were epitomized in the form, the splendid young giant form of her fellow-countryman. Above all things in the world she wanted to lean over and put a wreath of laurels on the man who stroked the St. John's boat to victory. As it was, she cried a little, quietly and simply, not caring who saw her tears; and in her heart, for a reason which she herself found unexplainable, she sang "My Country 'tis of Thee." She had never in her life been so deeply stirred, and who can wonder at that? There is indeed something full of inspiration about these undergraduates' struggles on the water and the fervent partisanship of the colleges. It is unique and splendid and sends young men out into the world with good and beautiful memories and with the love and loyalty for their alma mater which makes them better able to serve the women who need them and the country to which they belong.

And when, having changed his shorts and got once more into his flannels, Peter went up to the roof of the barge, stinging with health and glowing with very natural pride and satisfaction, it was the Doctor whose hand he first took, and the Doctor who said: "My son, my dear son!" It was an extraordinary moment for Peter, who had never in his life before felt the indescribable barrier which existed between his father and himself so near to crumbling.

That night, while his father and mother and Graham were taken to the theatre by three of his fellow Rhodes scholars, to see a performance of one of Gilbert and Sullivan's plays, Peter and Nicholas Kenyon took Betty and Belle to the Worcester Ball, the two girls being under the wing of the wife of one of the Dons.

It was one of those warm, clear, silver nights which the fickle climate of England sometimes produces apparently to show what it can do when it likes. The moon was full and the sky was bespattered with stars. The trees on the smooth lawn round the old college flung their shadows as though in sunlight and it was to a seat under one of these that Peter led Betty just before midnight, having very nearly danced her off her feet. They sat down panting a little, and laughing for no reason, and listened for a moment to the strains of the band which drifted through the open windows of the hall.

It was not in Peter to do anything by halves. He worked and played like a Trojan and put his back into everything that he took up. He knew by this time, short as it was, that he was wholly and completely in love with the little girl, the first sight of whom had made him catch his breath. With a peculiar kind of grimness he had made up his mind that she was for him if he could win her, and all the previous night he had dreamed of her as his future wife, as the girl who would stand by his side, helpmate and everlasting lover, and for whom he would work well and live well and carry her with him rung by rung to the top of the ladder. He told himself when he awoke that he was a presumptuous ass even to dream that she would care for him. What was there in him for such a girl to care about? All the same, he set his teeth and from that moment laid all his future plans and his hopes and ambitions and all the best of his nature, at her little feet—and knew perfectly well that if Betty could not love him eventually he would walk alone through life.

Odd, romantic or foolish as it may seem, when youth falls in and out of love so easily, this was true. Peter had, with a sort of unrealized solemnity, kept his heart free and pure. He was no trifler—he had never philandered. Like the boy who, perhaps unduly imaginative, believes that he will find the place where the rainbow ends, Peter said to himself: "One day I shall find my girl. I want to go to her heart-whole and complete."

There was nothing of sentimentality about this. It was simply the outcome of the effect of the mother-influence upon the boy which had become a very concrete thing. Somehow, ever since he was old enough to remember and to think, he had looked upon his mother as his sweetheart, and when she bent over his cot at night and asked God to bless him and left the touch of her soft lips upon his forehead she had impressed upon him the unconscious ambition to make another such woman the centre of his own home. The numerous tender services, the exquisite maternal thoughtfulness of this little mother-woman, had been built up by him into a protection and a lode-star. Betty came—a girl in whom he recognized at once another mother—and she just touched his heart with her finger and walked straight in, fitting into the place which had been kept for her like a diamond into its setting.

Poor dear old Peter! No one would have thought, who looked at him sitting there in his big awkwardness and incoherence, that he was a man in love, although a psychologist or even an ordinarily observant girl could very easily have told how Betty felt.

"Topping, isn't it?" he said.

"Simply wonderful," she replied.

"Tired?"

"Not a bit."

"Pretty good floor, eh?"

"Perfectly splendid."

"Gee! I shall miss this place."

"Why, of course you will."

"All the same, I shall be mighty keen to get at things,—and begin."

"Yes, of course you will."

"How do you know?"

"Oh, that's easy."

"Is it? How?"

"Well, don't I know you?"

"Do you? I wish you did."

Up in the branches something stirred. It may have been Cupid—probably it was.

But silence followed this conversational effort—a silence broken by a great heaving sigh, mostly of excitement, and the strains of the band which drifted out of the windows of the College Hall.

And over them both, as over all other men and women, young and old, at the beginning and at the end, hung the moon and the stars.

How good it is to be young and in love!