Part 4 (1/2)

Kenyon's face was wreathed in smiles. ”It can't be done, dear lad,” he said. ”Your mother would be the last person on earth to permit you to be discourteous to our two distinguished Dons, and by this time in all human probability Betty will be preparing for bed.”

Peter had been building all his hopes on another hour with Betty. She was leaving Oxford with his people the next afternoon and he wanted above all things, however incoherently, to let her know something of the state of his feelings. He had never been so angry with Kenyon before.

”Curse you!” he said. ”You've spoiled everything. If you must play about with these chorus girls why can't you do it alone? Why drag me in?”

Kenyon's eyes narrowed. ”Only the angels die young, Peter, my friend,”

he said. ”As I've been obliged to tell you before, you stand a pretty good chance of an early demise. Have you ever heard the word 'priggish'?

For a whole week I've played the game by you and devoted myself, lock, stock and barrel, to your family. Mere sportsmans.h.i.+p demands that you make some slight return to me by joining my little party to-night. Don't you agree with me, Graham?”

Graham's vanity was vastly appealed to by the fact that this perfect man of the world had taken him into his intimacy. Hitherto he hadn't met English chorus girls. He rather liked the idea. ”Why,” he said, ”I can't see why we shouldn't go. I'm with you, anyway. Come on, Peter. Be a sport.”

But Peter held his ground. He had all the more reason for so doing because he had met Betty. ”All right!” he said. ”You two can do what you jolly well like. Cut me out of it. I shall turn in. If that's being priggish--fine. Good-night!”

He wheeled round and marched off, and as he pa.s.sed beneath the windows of the Randolph Hotel he drew up short for a moment and with a touch of knightliness which was quite unself-conscious he bared his head beneath the window of the room in which he believed that Betty was to sleep, but which, as a matter of fact, harboured a short, fat, wheezy Anglo-Indian with a head as bald as a billiard ball.

Kenyon disguised his annoyance under an air of characteristic imperturbability. ”Well, that's our Peter to the life,” he said, taking Graham's eager arm. ”He's a sort of Don Quixote--a very pure and perfect person. One of these days he's likely to come an unholy cropper, and that's to my way of thinking what he most needs. I don't agree with a man's being a total abstainer in anything. It narrows him and makes him provincial. Then, too, a man who fancies himself as better than his fellows is apt to wear a halo under his hat, and that disgusting trick ruins friends.h.i.+p and leads to a hasty and ill-considered marriage with the first good actress who catches him on the hop and makes use of his lamentable ignorance. Come along, brother, we'll see life together.”

”Fine!” said Graham. ”Me for life all the time.”

So these two,--the one curiously old and the other dangerously young,--made their way to the stage door of the Theatre Royal and waited among the little crowd of undergraduates for the moment when the ladies of the chorus should have retouched their make-up and be ready for further theatricalisms.

Lottie Lawrence and Billy Seymour were the first out. The latter's greeting was exuberant. ”What-ho, Nick! Where's the blooming giant you said you were going to bring?”

”Otherwise engaged, dear Billy; but permit me to introduce to you a financial magnate from the golden city of New York.”

Billy was young and slim and so tight-skirted that her walk was almost like that of a Chinese Princess. Even under the modest light of the stage door-keeper's box her lips gleamed crimsonly and her long eyelashes stuck out separately in black surprise. Her small round face was plastered thickly with powder. She was very alluring to the very young. Her friend had come from an exactly similar mould and might have been a twin but for her manner, which was that of the violet--the modest violet--on a river's brim.

Kenyon hailed a cab, gave the man the address in Wellington Square and sat himself between the two girls, with an arm round each.

Billy Seymour had taken in Graham with one expert glance of minute examination. ”Graham Guthrie, eh?” she said. ”It smacks of Caledonia, bag-pipes and the braes and banks o' bonnie Doon. I take it your ancestors went over on the S. S. Mayflower, of the White Star Line--that gigantic vessel which followed the beckoning finger of Columbus--and started the race which invented sky-sc.r.a.pers and the cuspidors.”

Graham let out a howl of laughter and told himself that he was in for a good evening, especially as the ladies' knees were very friendly.

Lottie Lawrence placed her head on Kenyon's shoulder, sighed a little and said: ”Oh, I'm so tired and so hungry; and I've a thirst I wouldn't sell for a tenner.”

Kenyon tightened his hold. ”All those things shall be remedied, little one,” he said. ”Have no fear.”

The first things which met their eyes when they entered the sitting-room of the sordid little house in which a series of theatricals had lodged from time immemorial, were a half-dozen bottles of champagne--sent in by Nick's order. The two girls showed their appreciation for his tactfulness in different ways. Billy fell upon one of the bottles as though it were her long-lost sister, pressed it to her bosom and placed a pa.s.sionate kiss upon its label; while Lottie, with an eloquent gesture, immediately handed Graham a rather battered corkscrew. ”Help me to the bubbly, boy,” she said. ”My throat is like a limekiln.”

All the clocks of the City of Spires were striking three as Kenyon and Graham supported each other out into the quiet and deserted street.

There was much powder on Graham's coat and a patch of crimson on Kenyon's left cheek.

”Life with a big L, Graham, my boy,” said Kenyon a little thickly.

”A h.e.l.l of a big L,” said Graham, with a very much too loud laugh at his feeble joke. ”You certainly do know your way about.”

”And most of the short cuts,” said Kenyon dryly. ”Presently I shall scale the wall of St. John's, climb through the window of one of our fellows who's about to take holy orders, and wind up the night in the hospitable arms of Morpheus.” This eventually Graham watched him do, with infinite delight, and was still wearing a smile of self-congratulation as he pa.s.sed the door of his mother's bedroom in the hotel and entered his own.