The first morning on which she appeared in riding kit she again made a charming picture. She always rode astride, but few women would have ventured to wear such thin and such close-fitting white breeches. Her coat, cut like a man"s, was of white drill. Her stock was white and her hat, with a wide flat brim was of white straw, but her boots were as black and shiny as the back of a crow. "Your hand, Mr. Peter," she said, raising her little foot for the spring,--it was "Mr. Peter"
still,--"what a gorgeous morning for a gallop." And for a moment she leaned warmly against his shoulder. Yes, she was quite pleased with the effect. Peter"s face was flushed as they started off together.
When they golfed she had a delightful way of making her conversation from green to green into a sort of serial. With her head hatless, her short Irish homespun skirt displaying much blue stocking which exactly matched her silk sweater and her large befringed eyes, she made a fascinating opponent and companion. "No wonder you loved Oxford and all that it gave you. Quite a little tee, please. Thanks. To a man with any imagination--" A settle, a swing, a nice straight ball and silence while Peter beat his ball pressing for all he was worth; the picking up of the two bags and on side by side. "A man with any imagination must feel the beauty and underlying meaning of that inspiring atmosphere,--as of course you did. You, I can see, are highly susceptible to everything that is beautiful. You, I think, of all men, you who have managed to remain,--I"m sure I don"t know how!--so unspoiled, will always remember and feel the influence of your college. A cleek, I think, don"t you? No?
A bra.s.sie? Just as you say." And so she would continue chatting merrily away all round, but always keen on her game and doing her best to do it credit, letting out nice little bits of flattery with so nave an air and with such frankly appreciative glances, that poor old Peter"s vanity, hitherto absolutely dormant, began to bud, like new leaves in April.
It must be remembered that Peter was a rowing man. Always, except when out with the guns, he was with Baby Lennox. They were inseparable from the first day of his visit. Even in the evening they hunted in couples, because she was sick of Bridge, she said, and he gave out that he knew nothing at all about any card games and had no desire to learn. After being frequently pressed to cut in by Courthope, Pulsford, Fountain and the other men who could not bear to see him with an unscathed cheque-book, and tempted again and again by their well-groomed and delightfully friendly wives to try a hand, Peter was left alone. They were annoyed and irritated but they found that when Peter said "No" he didn"t mean "Yes," like so many of the other young men whose weakness formed the greater part of these people"s income; and so they very quickly gave him up to Baby Lennox, were obliged to be satisfied with his jovial piano-playing and make up for lost time with the inevitable members of the _nouveau riches_ who lived near by and were only too glad to pay for the privilege of dining at Thrapstone-Wynyates in the odour of t.i.tles.
The nights being warm and windless, Peter sat out on the moon-bathed terrace with Baby Lennox listening to her girlish prattle and thinking how particularly charming she looked with the soft light on her golden hair and white arms and dainty foot. Sometimes, suddenly, her merry words would give place to sad ones, and Peter"s simple, honest heart would be touched by her artistic and mythical glimpses of the unhappy side of her life.
"Oh, Peter, Peter!" she said one night, unconsciously showing almost a yard of leg in a black lace stocking patterned with b.u.t.terflies. "I wish, oh, how I wish that I"d been born like you, under a lucky star!
I"ve always been in a smart and rather careless set and I"ve never really had time to see visions and walk in the garden of my soul." She spoke in capital letters. "If I"d met you when I was a little young thing you might have become my gardener to pluck the weeds out of my paths, and train the flowers of my mind. You might have planted seeds so sweet that in my best and most devout hours their blooms would have filled my thoughts with scent. Oh dear me, the might have beens,--how sad they are! But, in one thing at least I can take joy,--I"m all the better for knowing you, dear big Peter."
But these graver interludes never lasted long. Mrs. Lennox was far too clever for that. She would break the monotony of conversation by walking with her little hand on the boy"s strong arm, or by dancing with him to the music of a gramophone placed in the open window of the morning room.
How close she clung to him then and how sweet she was to hold!
And then, she would say, with a wonderful throb in her voice. "Oh, Peter, Peter! Isn"t life wonderful--isn"t it just the most wonderful and thrilling thing that is given to us? Listen to the stars--there"s love in their song! Listen to the nightingale--love, all love! Listen to the whisper of the breeze! Can"t you hear it tell us to love and touch and taste all the sweets that are given us to enjoy? Oh, Peter, Peter!
Listen, listen,--and live!"
In her picturesque and slangy way she announced to Kenyon, as soon as three days after the commencement of the house-party, that she "had got Peter well hooked." It was not, however, an accurate statement. It is true that Peter"s vanity had been appealed to. Whose wouldn"t have been?
This attractive young thing was hostess. She was far and away prettier, younger, more alluring and more complex than any other woman in the party. And yet she had made a favorite of Peter at once and showed a frank pleasure in being with him at all possible times. He had hardly spoken for longer than an hour with her before she had said, in the middle of his description of the Henley week, "I _must_ call you Mr.
Peter, I _must_. May I?" She sent him little notes, too, charming, spontaneous little notes, to say "Good-night," and how greatly she had enjoyed the evening, or the swim, or the round of golf, beginning "Dear Big Man" and ending,--at first without a signature, and eventually with "Baby." At the beginning they were brought in by the man, or placed on the dressing-table against a bowl of flowers. Then they were thrust under his door by her after he had gone up to his room, or thrown through his open window from the narrow balcony that ran round the house. Her room was next to his. She had seen to that. In a hundred unexpected and appealing ways she had set out to prove to him that they were indeed, as she had said they were, "very, very close friends."
Now, Peter had never been a woman"s man. To him women and their ways were new and wonderful. He suspected nothing. Why should he? He accepted Mrs. Randolph Lennox on her face value, which was priceless, as so many other excellent and unsophisticated young men had done. He believed in her and her stories and was very sorry that she had been unhappy. He believed that she was sincere and good and clean and that she liked him and was his friend.
Kenyon, who watched all this, called Peter an easy mark. He was. What else could he be in the expert and cunning hands of such a woman?
As for Mrs. Lennox, her performance,--it was rather in the nature of a performance,--was all the more brilliant and effective because Peter appealed to her more than any man she had ever met. His height and strength and squareness, his fearless honesty, his unself-conscious pride and boyish love of life,--she liked them all. She liked his clean-cut healthy face and thick hair and amazing laugh. But, above everything, she liked him for being untilled soil, virgin earth. It was this that piqued her seriously and set alight in her a desire which grew and grew, to test her charms upon him, to taste him, to stir him into a first great pa.s.sion. And this was the real reason that she gave him so much of her time and company. The gratification of this desire was the thing for which she was working, upon which she had set her mind. Hers was not a record of failures. Peter stood a very poor chance of getting out whole.
XV
Nicholas Kenyon has promised himself that, one of these days, when abject poverty forces him to work, he will write a whole book about Peter and Baby Lennox, and call it "Another Temptation of St. Anthony."
Not only did Kenyon watch this, to him, rather extraordinary incident, with keen interest, but so also did the members of his father"s house-party, who came to regard Peter as a kind of freak. They all knew,--because they were all psychologists,--that Mrs. Lennox was badly smitten, as they put it, on this young American. They all knew,--because one of the women made it her business to spy,--that their temporary hostess was going through all the tricks of her trade to seduce this unconscious boy.
The incident provided Lord Shropshire and his friends with endless amus.e.m.e.nt, and bets were made as to how long Peter would hold out. Every morning something new was reported to them by the lady who had appointed herself to watch. One day it was that Baby had taken Peter to see her cottage after dinner and had had a little fainting fit in her bedroom while showing him the view from the window. Another that she had twisted her ankle on the eighth hole and had been obliged to ask to be carried back to the house. There was, however, no evidence, not even of a circ.u.mstantial nature, to prove that Baby had succeeded. It was presently agreed that either Peter was a fool or an angel.
There was one incident, however, which escaped unnoticed,--one of which even Kenyon knew nothing. It took place three nights before the party broke up.
After a gorgeous day of hard exercise and splendid fresh air, an hour at the piano after dinner and his usual talk to Baby under the moon, Peter went up to bed at eleven o"clock. He was very sleepy and meant to be up earlier than ever in the morning. He didn"t say good-night to Kenyon or his satirical father. They were, like the others, very seriously at work making what money they could. There had been a fairly large dinner-party drawn from the surrounding houses, and there were eight bridge tables occupied in the large drawing-room. He left Mrs. Lennox in the hall looking more delicious than ever and went up to his room to smoke a final pipe and look over an ill.u.s.trated paper before turning in.
His room was large and square and wainscotted, with dull grilled ceiling, and an oak floor so old that here and there it slanted badly.
His bed was a four-poster, deeply carved at the back with the Kenyon arms, the motto underneath rather sarcastically being "For G.o.d and Honour." In front of the fireplace, with its sprawling iron dogs and oak setting, there was a long, narrow sofa filled with cushions, and at its side a small writing-table on which stood two tall silver candlesticks.
These gave the room its only light and added to the Rembrandtesque atmosphere of it. It was a room which reeked with history and episodes of historical romance, love and sudden death. The windows which led to the balcony were open and the warm air of a wonderful night puffed in, causing the candle flames to move with a gentle rhythmic dignity to and fro.
Peter read and smoked for half an hour in his dressing-gown, while Quixotic moths flung themselves pa.s.sionately into the candle-light one after another to die for some unexplainable ideal. From the drawing-room below a woman"s throbbing voice drifted up, singing an Indian love song, and when it ceased the whole night was set a quiver by a nightingale"s outburst of appeal. These things, and the silver wonder of the moon and stars, the touch of Mrs. Lennox"s soft hand on his lips and the feeling and almost psychic undercurrent of strange emotion in that room in which so much had taken place, all stirred and thrilled the boy and sent his blood racing in his veins.
He stayed up longer than he intended, listening and wondering and wishing, for the first time in his life, that he had read poetry, so that he could fit some immortal lines to his mood and his surroundings.
It was this, to him, curious thought which set him laughing and broke some of the spell. "Gee!" he said to himself, "can you see me spouting Shakespeare or mouthing Byron?" He shied his dressing-gown into the sofa, put both flames out with one huge blow and leaped into bed.
Almost instantly he heard his name urgently called. He sat up. Was he dreaming? Who should call at that time of night? Could it be Baby? He heard the call again. It was nearer. A little shadow fell suddenly upon the floor of his room. And then, in the window, with the shaft of moonlight all about her, stood Mrs. Lennox.
Peter caught his breath and clambered out of his bed. "What is it?" he asked. "What"s the matter?"
The woman ran in with a glad cry. "Oh, Peter! I thought you had gone out of your room," she whispered, "and I didn"t know what to do. I saw a hideous figure walk through my wall just after I had put out my light, and when it came towards me with long, bony fingers, I rushed out and came to you. Oh, hold me, Peter, hold me! I"m terrified and as cold as a frog!"
She slipped into his arms, all young and sweet and incoherent, trembling like a little bird in a thunder-storm. It was a most calculated piece of perfect acting.
Peter"s heart seemed to jump into his mouth. The flowing hair of the little head that lay on his chest was full of the most intoxicating scent.
"I"ll--I"ll go and see what it is," he said abruptly.
"No, no! Don"t go. I can"t let you go, Peter. Stay with me!"
"But, if there"s a man in your room----"
"It wasn"t a man. It was the ghost that belongs to the family. It always comes before some dreadful accident. Oh, darling, stay with me! Take care of me! I"m terrified!"
She clung to him in a very ecstasy of fright and the closeness and warmth of her body sent Peter"s brain whirling. He tried to speak, to think of something to say, but all his thoughts were in the swirl of a mill-stream, and he held her tighter and put his face against her hair, while his heart pumped and every preconceived idea, every hard-fought-for ideal went crash.
"I love you. I love you, Peter. My Peter!" she whispered. "Who but you should shelter me and hold me and keep me in your arms! Keep me with you always, night and day. Look into my eyes and see how much you mean to me, my man."
She raised her head and stood on tiptoe. The jealous moon had laid its light upon her face and her eyes were shining and her lips were parted, and the slight silk covering had fallen from her shoulder. The whiteness of it dazzled.
"Oh, my G.o.d!" said Peter, but as he bent to kiss her mouth, momentarily drunk with the touch and scent of her, someone shouted his name and thumped on his door, and Mrs. Lennox tore herself away and ran through the window like a moon-woman.
The door was flung open. Fountain came in, his voice a little thick. "I say, Guthrie, are you getting up early in the morning? "Cause, if so, I"ll take you on for nine holes before breakfast. What d"yer say? Goin"
to get healthy, d"yer see? What?"
Peter found his voice. "All right!" he said.
"Will you? Good man. Give me a call at six, will you? We"ll bathe in the pool before coming in. So long then." And out he went again, lurching a little and banging the door behind him.
For several queer minutes Peter stood swaying, with his breath nearly gone as though he had been rowing, and one big hand on his throbbing head. And as he stood there the posts of the bed seemed to turn into trees and its cover into soft gra.s.s all alive with the yellow heads of "bread and cheese," and among them sat Betty, with her eyes full of love, confidence and implicit faith,--Betty, for whom he had saved himself.
And then he started walking about the room. Up and down he went--up and down--cursing himself and his weakness which had nearly smashed his dream and put his loyalty into the dust.
And when,--she also had cursed,--Mrs. Lennox stole back, as sweet and alluring as ever, and even more determined, she found that Peter had re-lit his candles, got into his dressing-gown again and was sitting at the table writing.
"Peter! Peter!" she called.
But he didn"t hear.
"Peter!" she whispered, and went nearer and nearer until her body rested against his shoulder.
"Oh, I beg your pardon," he said, rising. "Is it all right now? That"s fine. It"s just a touch cold. Don"t you think you"d better be in bed?"
Baby Lennox had seen the beginning of the letter, "My own Betty." She nodded, drew back her upper lip in a queer smile and turned and went.
She was clever enough to know that she had lost.