"What does he say?"
"Oh, what does he say?" asked Betty. But the question was asked mentally, because little Mrs. Guthrie was happy and must not be made jealous.
Putting on her gla.s.ses with great deliberation, Mrs. Guthrie picked up a book, and with a smile of pride and excitement hunted through its pages and eventually produced the cable form, which she had used as a marker.
"_Do_ hurry, mother, _dear_!" cried Belle. News from Peter meant news from Nicholas.
"Now please don"t fl.u.s.ter me, Belle. Of course I would unfold it the wrong side up, wouldn"t I? Well, this is what he says: "Expect to dock day after to-morrow, dearest Mum. All my love.""
"Is that all he says? Is there nothing about his--his friend?"
Ethel gave a quiet chuckle, of which Belle coldly took no notice.
"There are a few more words," replied Mrs. Guthrie, "and I expect they were very expensive."
"Oh, mother, darling; _do_ go on!"
"Let me see, now. Oh, yes. "And to Betty.""
"Oh, thank you," said Betty. "Oh, Peter, my Peter!" she cried in her heart.
This time Ethel laughed. But no one noticed it. It was rather disappointing.
"At last I shall see Nicholas again," thought Belle,--"at last!"
And the little mother folded up the cable very carefully and slipped it back into the book. Peter had sent it to her,--to her.
And then Belle turned her attention to her little sister, who not only looked most interesting, but knew that she did. "I think you condescended to be amused, Grandmamma," she said, in the most good-natured spirit of chaff. Like everybody else in the family she was really rather proud of this very finished production of an ultra-modern and fashionable school.
"I seem to have missed a lot of fun by not going to Europe," replied Ethel. "It would have been very entertaining to watch you and Betty fall in love."
"I guess so," said Belle. "The only thing is that you would have been very much odd man out. They draw the line at little school-girls at Oxford."
"Now don"t begin to quarrel, girls," said Mrs. Guthrie. "I"m very sorry Ethel wasn"t with us. The trip would have widened her view and given her much to think about. But never mind. She shall go with us next time."
Ethel stifled a yawn. "Thank you, mamma, dear. But when I go to England I may elect to stay there. I think it"s very probable that I shall marry an Englishman and settle down to country life, doing London in the season."
Belle"s laugh rang out. "That"s the sort of thing we have to put up with, Betty," she said. "You"re going to marry a Duke, aren"t you, Baby, and be a Lady in Waiting at Court, with a full-page photograph every week in the _Tatler_? When Peter comes home he"ll find you a constant source of joy. My descriptions of the way in which you"ve come on while he"s been away always made him laugh."
Ethel rose languidly from the sofa, at the side of which a little nourishment had been served. Mrs. Guthrie, who had been busily at work knitting a scarf for Graham--a thing that he would certainly never wear--went quickly to give her a hand. "Are you going to your room now, darling?" she asked.
Ethel caught Belle"s rather sceptical eye and, with exquisite coolness, entirely ignored its suggestion that she was shamming. "Yes, mamma, dear. I shall go to bed almost at once. There"s nothing like sleep for anaemia. Of course I shall have to read for a little while, because insomnia goes with my complaint, but I shall fall off as soon as I can.
Please don"t come in to-night, in case you disturb me. I"ll tell Ellen to put my hot milk in a thermos."
Belle burst into another laugh. "You beat the band," she said. "Any one would think that your school was for the daughters of royalty. I know exactly what Nicholas Kenyon will call you."
Ethel turned towards her sister with raised eyebrows. With her rather retrousse nose, fine, wide-apart eyes and soft round chin she looked very pretty and amazingly self-composed. Her poise was that of a woman who had been a leader of society for years. "Yes? And what will that be?"
"The queen of the Flappers," said Belle.
Ethel picked up her book, carefully placing the marker. "Oxford slang leaves me cold," she said, loftily.
"I certainly hope that he"ll call her nothing of the sort," said Mrs.
Guthrie. ""Flapper." What a terrible word! What does it mean?"
"It means girls under seventeen who have discovered all the secrets of life, the value of a pair of pretty ankles and exactly how to get everybody else to do things for them. It"s the best word I heard in England."
"Nicholas Kenyon sounds to me rather a precocious boy," said Ethel.
"Boy! Nicholas Kenyon a boy--! Well!" Belle acknowledged herself beaten.
She could find no other words.
The little mother put her arm, with great affection, around the shoulders of her youngest child, of whom she was extremely proud and a little frightened. "Never mind, darling," she said. "Belle doesn"t mean anything. It"s only her fun."
"Oh, that"s all right, mamma. I make full allowance for Belle. She"s a little crude yet, but she"ll improve in time."
Belle gave a scream of joy. Her sense of the ridiculous, always extremely keen, made her delight in her little sister and the perfectly placid way in which she sailed through existence with the lofty superiority of her type--a type that is the peculiar result of supercivilization and the deferential treatment of fashionable schoolmistresses who bow to wealth as before a G.o.d.
"Run in and say good-night to father. He won"t mind being disturbed for a moment by you."
"I don"t think I will," said Ethel. "The sight of his laboratory may give me a nightmare. I really must be careful about myself just now.
Good night, mamma dear. Don"t sit up too late. Good night, Belle. I should advise you to go to bed at once. Your complexion is beginning to show the effects of late hours already."
"Oh, you funny little thing," said Belle. "You give me a pain. Trot off to bed; and instead of reading Wells, Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw, try a course of Louisa Alcott and a dose of Swiss Family Robinson. That"ll do you much more good and make you a little more human."
But even this plain sisterly speaking had no apparent effect. Ethel gave Betty, who had been watching and listening to the little bout with the surprise of an only child, a small peck on the cheek. "Good night, dear Betty," she said. "I"m glad that you"re going to be my sister-in-law.
Unless Peter has changed very much since he"s been away he"ll make a good husband."
And then, with quiet grace, she left the room. No one, not even Belle, whose high spirits and love of life had led her into many perfectly harmless adventures when she was the same age, suspected that Ethel was up to anything. They were wrong. The self-const.i.tuted invalid had invented anaemia for two very good reasons. First, because she was not going to be deprived of welcoming her big brother when he returned home for good, school or no school, and second because she had struck up a surrept.i.tious acquaintance with the good-looking boy next door. At present it had gone no further than the daily exchange of letters and telephone calls. The adventure was in the course, however, of speedy development. The boy was going to pay her a visit that evening, by way of the roof. No wonder Ethel didn"t want to be disturbed.
With an unwonted burst of extravagance Betty took a taxi home as soon after dinner as she could get away. "Is there a letter for me? Is there a letter for me?" she asked the moon and all the stars in the clear sky as her rackety cab bowled swiftly downtown.
She let herself in and the first thing that caught her eyes was the welcome sight of a thick envelope addressed in Peter"s big round, honest, unaffected hand.
"Peter, oh, my Peter!" she whispered, pressing the letter to her lips.
Within five minutes she was sitting on her bed, in the seclusion of her own room, and what Peter had to say for himself was this:
Carlton Hotel, London, September 28, 1913.
My dearest Betty: Gee! but I was mighty glad to find a letter from you this afternoon when I got in, so glad that I dashed out of this Hotel, went across the street to the White Star offices and asked them to exchange my bookings to a boat sailing a week earlier, because I just can"t stand being away from you any longer. I don"t know what Nick will say, and don"t much care.
He"s at Newmarket staying with a man who trains horses. I"ve just sent him a telegram to say what I"ve done, and as he"s very keen to see New York and is only killing time, I don"t think he"ll kick up a row. I would have sailed on the _Olympic_, which left the day after I said good-bye to Thrapstone-Wynyates, if I hadn"t promised father to go up to Scotland and see the place where his ancestors lived. I couldn"t back out of that, especially as goodness only knows when I shall come to Europe again,--perhaps not until I bring you over on a honeymoon, my baby, and we go back to Oxford together to see how the fairy ring is getting on. We must do that some day. You don"t know how I love that little open s.p.a.ce where the trees haven"t grown so that the moon may spill itself in a big patch for all our friends to dance in on fine nights.
I"ve read your letter a dozen times and know it by heart, like all the others you"ve written to me. You write the most wonderful letters, darling. I wish I knew how to send you something worth reading, though I"m quite sure you don"t mind my clumsy way of putting things down, because you know how much I love you and because everything I say comes straight out of my heart.
My last letter was written in Scotland, Cupar Fife. I shall always remember that quiet little place where the red-headed Guthries,--they must have been red-headed from eating so much porridge,--tilled the earth and brought up sheep in the way they should go. The village seems as much cut off from the rest of the world as though it were surrounded by sea, and every small thing that happens excites it. The man who kept the Inn that I stayed in (feeling frightfully lonely, though really very much interested) had words with his good woman one night and the rights and wrongs of the perfectly private matter have since divided all the inhabitants. Best friends don"t speak and the minister is going to preach about the affair next Sunday. I saw the house the old Guthries lived in and was taken all over it by a kind old soul to whom father gave more money than she thought existed when he was there. Gee! but my great-grandfather must have had precious little ambition to live his whole life in a little hole like that. In most of the rooms the beds were in small alcoves and needed climbing up to like bunks. Mrs. McAlister, who lives there now with her married daughter and her seven children, sleeps in one of these fug-holes in the kitchen. Think of it! And she said that the floor swarms with beetles--she can hear them crackling about in the night. All the same, by Jove! this primitive living makes men. I can see from whom father got his grit and determination.
I was glad to find myself in London. I"ve only been here for a night or two at various times and it"s a wilderness to me. I lose myself every time I go out and have to ask Bobbies how to get back. Topping chaps, these Bobbies. They mostly look like gentlemen and are awfully glad to get a laugh. To hear them talk about the "Aymarket, Piccadilly Surcuss, Wart"loo Plaice and Westminister Habbey first of all puzzles one and then fills one with joy. As to the Abbey,--oh, Gee! but isn"t it away beyond words! I spent a whole day wandering about among the graves of its mighty dead, and finally when I got to the end of the cloister and came upon that small, square, open s.p.a.ce where the gra.s.s grows so green and sparrows play about, I was glad there was n.o.body to see me except the maid-servant of one of the minor Canons who was taking in the milk for afternoon tea.
There are one or two vacant niches among the shrines of men who have done things and moved things on, in which I should like to stand (not looking a bit like myself in stone) when I have done my job, and if I were an Englishman I should work for it. As it is, I shall work for you and all you mean to me, my baby, and that"s even a higher privilege.