Cosmo Hamilton

“ You have always been my most precious possessions and it is for you that I've worked so hard and so closely, but because of all that I went through as a child and because I never struggled as I ought to have done to overcome a foolish shyness that has made me self-conscious, you and I have never been friends—have never understood each other. I take all the blame for whatever you have done that has made you suffer and of which you are ashamed. Very humbly, I stand before you now and ask you, as I asked Peter, here, in this room, to give me another chance. ”

“ It hurt them enough to stand facing a man who opened his soul for them to gaze into, especially when that man was their father. It was dreadful to see him blinded by tears in the middle of an appeal which they all realized called for such extreme courage and strength of character to make.
They all wanted to do something to help him and force him out of a humbleness that made them horribly self-conscious. It was Peter who did it. With two strides he stood at the Doctor's side and put his arms round his shoulder. ”

“ She had a quick perception—sympathy and imagination not often found in so young a girl—an uncanny ear for the right word—and if she chose to exercise it, quite an unusual power of concentration. It seemed to Betty to be such a pity that, just at the moment when Belle left school with her mind filled with ideals and the ambition to make something of herself and do things, the Doctor found himself a rich man. The incentive to work which the constant need for economy had awakened in her went out like a snuffed candle. ”

“ Kenyon was not surprised. Already he was a complete expert in the art of making himself loved by women. He knew exactly what they liked him to say and he said it with a touch of insolence which took their breath away and a following touch of deference which gave them back their self-respect. Belle was very much to his liking. Her rather Latin beauty, which was rendered unexplainable by the sight of her parents—her incessant high spirits and love of life—her naïve assumption that she was the mistress of all the secrets of this world, amused, interested and tickled his fancy. ”

“ Like most men who have concentrated upon one thing, Dr. Guthrie was a child when it came to others. Athleticism, of which he knew nothing, filled him with admiration. The knack of conversation amazed him. Even to his wife he found it difficult to talk. To force himself to confide was almost impossible—it was like blasting a rock. One afternoon however he got nearer to an intimate expression of his feelings than ever before—perhaps because he was still under the influence of the intoxication of the youthfulness all about him.
Kenyon had driven them out after tea to Shotover Hill. ”

“ To Peter, the words of the painted woman came as a finishing blow. In his crass and culpable ignorance, into which Kenyon had flung one most terrific fact, he came away from Nellie Pope not knowing whether he was immune—not able to assure himself that he was safe. Think of it! Big and strong as he was, he remained a mere child in the matter of plain, necessary and urgent truths, and if ever a man knew himself for a fool he was Peter Guthrie, as he drove home. ”

“ I love you! I don't know—I can't think what I shall be like without you," he said, bringing all his elaborate cunning to play upon her feelings. "More like a man who's lost his arms than anything; and we were to have come nearer and nearer this winter, finding out all the best of each other and all the joy that it is to love wholly and completely."
"Oh, don't go, don't go!" cried Belle, making a pathetic and almost child-like refrain of the words, "I love you so! I love you so!"
Kenyon bent down with her until her head was pillowed on the cushions, and kissed her lips and eyes. ”

“ No wonder then that the all-conquering youthfulness of all the undergraduates amongst whom he found himself at Oxford awoke a sort of envy in his heart and startled him who had never been young. There was no meanness, jealousy or sense of martyrism in his feelings as he watched the kaleidoscopic picture of university life—only a sort of wonder and amazement that there were men in the world so lucky—so indescribably fortunate as to be able to carry boyhood and all its joys forward to an age when he had forgotten that such a period existed. ”

“ At these times Peter had always said something like this: "My dear Nick, I'm not going to be a doctor, a woman-hunter, or a sloppy man about town. I don't want to know any details whatever of the things which stir up other men's curiosity. I've no room in my brain for them. They don't amuse me or interest me. I'm jolly well going to remain a damned child, whether you like it or not, so you may chuck trying to drag me into these midnight discussions of yours with the men who hang nudes all over their walls and gloat over filthy little French books."
And then there was Graham. ”

“ If Kenyon had been a more generous man—if in his nature there had been one small grain of unselfishness—he would have gone at that very moment, then and there, to the door of the Doctor's laboratory—into that wonderful room—sat down opposite the man who spent his life in it with such noble concentration and begged him to desert his microbes and turn his attention to his sons. ”

“ He let out his left. "That's for Peter," he said.
Kenyon staggered. His left eye seemed to fill. With a yell of pain he jumped in and hit wildly.
Graham waited a second chance and got it. "And that's for Belle," he said. And his knuckles bled with the contact of teeth.
Kenyon went in again. Chairs fell over and the table was pushed aside. And all the time that he failed to reach Graham's face he screamed like a horse whose stable is in flames.
But Graham, cold, icy cold, and cooler than he had ever been in his life, played with him. He had never been so much a man in his life. ”

“ And to Nicholas Kenyon, who frequented the rooms of the so-called intellectuals—those "little dreadful clever people" who parroted and perverted other men's thoughts and possessed no originality of their own—it was a stroke of genius on Peter's part to have nothing but the photographs of his family all over his rooms. He must be a big man, Nicholas said to himself, who could afford, among the very young, to dispense with the female form divine in his frames—the nudes so generally placed in them—in order to convey the impression of being devilish wise and bad. ”

“ The night was fine and clear, and up in the sky, which was pitted with stars, a young moon lay on her back. From all sides the music of traffic came to his ears in a never-ceasing refrain, and high up he could see the numerous electric signs which came and went with steady precision and monotony. Every now and then he caught sight of the Plaza, whose windows all seemed to be alight. It gave a [248] peculiar touch of fantasy to that side of the Park.
Peter found himself thinking of some of the things which Ranken Townsend had said to him. ”

“ Often Peter drew up short, on his way up the wide staircase, to listen for the click of high heels, the tinkle of a spinet and the rattle of dice. Everywhere he went he had a queer but not unpleasant sense of never being alone, just as most men have who walk along the cloisters of a cathedral whose vast array of empty prie-dieus have felt the knees of many generations and in whose lofty roof there is collected the voices of an unnumberable choir. ”

“ They make them. What you've never given us is yourself. And we needed you. What you've never given us is common sense. You've been a good father in every inessential way, but no father at all in all that goes to make us men. You've lived in a fool's paradise. You've let us find our own way. You've not given us one human talk—one simple fact—one word of warning. You've utterly neglected us because you're a coward and you've hoped and trusted that others might tell us what you've been afraid to say. Afraid,—to your own flesh and blood,—think of it!" The Doctor cried out again. ”

“ Does Graham ever stop to think how hard I've worked to put him in Wall Street? Does Belle ever wonder what it's cost me in youth and health to give her so much more than she needs? I'm—I'm a queer, wordless, foolishly shy man. Old since the time they all three began to think and use their eyes,—necessarily concentrated and aloof away in that laboratory of mine, and—and sometimes I wonder whether my children know me and understand and make allowances. ”

“ I wouldn't care if he were what he calls a 'bounder' or a 'townee.' My dear, I'm mad about him—just mad."
"Isn't everything as right as Truth?" said Betty. "The more I see Peter the more I love him. He's,—well, he's a man, and he's mine. He's mine for another reason, and that's because he's always going to be a boy, and I'm here to look after him. He'll need [204] me. And I must have him need me, too, because I need to be needed. Do you understand?"
Belle nodded. "You're the born mother, my dear," she said, "whereas, I'm,—well, not. I want love—just love. ”

“ Peter was angry, like a child disturbed just at the moment when he was planning a surprise. [336]
"Why couldn't you have come in five minutes later?" he cried out, with queer petulance.
The Doctor tottered forward and peered into his son's face. "Why were you going to do that? Tell me, tell me!"
"You'd have found it all there," said Peter, pointing to the pages which he had left on the desk. "Not very nice reading, I can assure you. But if you want me to tell you instead, I will. And then you can see how a man dies, instead of finding him dead. Perhaps this is the best way, after all." ”

“ The Doctor obeyed. The blaze in his son's eyes contradicted his unnatural calmness. He had to deal with temporary madness. He could see that, and he was chilled with a sense of impending danger in which the most poignant solicitude was mixed.
"Now," said Peter, weighing his words with odd deliberation, "you're going to hear something that'll shake you out of your smug self-complacency and your pitiful belief that everything is all right in this house—You're a good man, a better man than the average [337] father. There's nothing in your life that isn't to your credit. ”

“ As soon as the party had driven away, Peter collected a pipe and a tin of tobacco and went quickly up the wide staircase. He rushed into his mother's own particular room with all his old impetuosity and found her sitting at a table by the side of a great work-basket in which he saw a large collection of the socks that he had brought home with him and which stood badly in need of motherly attention. No man in this world made so many or such quick holes in the toes of his socks as Peter did, and he knew that she had ransacked the drawers to find them. ”

“ He was a complete man of the world at fourteen. Even at that age he gambled, raced and borrowed money; and in order to provide himself with the necessities of life he ran a roulette table in secret at Eton and made a book for the racing bets of the little boys of his own kidney. Highly gifted and endowed with a most likable personality, with the art of eluding punishment for misdeeds brought to a masterly completeness, he could have been shaped, under different circumstances, into a man whose name would stand high in his country. ”

“ And then came Betty, and the way in which she and Peter came together—the way in which they stood only a step or two from the door, inarticulate in their love and thankfulness, was too much even for the trained nurse, to whom love and death and the great hereafter were mere commonplaces. She withdrew to the dressing-room and stayed there for a whole solid quarter-of-an-hour, eliminating herself with a tactfulness for which Peter blessed her and Betty became her friend for all time.
"My baby!" said Peter. "We shall have to begin all over again. We're almost strangers." ”

“ Guthrie. "My God!" he said to himself as he stood looking out at the wide river, its marvellous and strenuous life and the amazing sky-line of the buildings on the opposite bank; "has the time arrived already for me to lose my little girl? Am I so old that I have a young thing ripe enough for marriage and to bring into the world young things of her own?"
The artist had only met the elder Guthries once before, although Belle was a particular friend of his, having been frequently brought to his studio by Betty. ”

“ 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, [91] 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." ”

“ The men of the party were all excellent sportsmen and good fellows, and the women more than usually delightful representatives of English society. As a matter of fact, the men were all,—like Kenyon's father,—living on their wits and just avoiding criminal prosecution by the eighth of an inch. They called themselves racing men, which, translated into cold English, means that they were people of no ostensible means of livelihood, who attended every race meeting and backed horses on credit, taking their winnings and owing their losses until chased by crook solicitors. ”

“ Graham tiptoed into the bedroom, drew a chair up to the side of the bed and sat down. And while he waited for the time to arrive for Peter's next dose many strange things ran through his brain,—his own precocity—his own desire to be smart and become a man of the world—his own evening in the little shabby theatrical lodgings in Oxford with Kenyon—his dealings with Ita Strabosck—the night he had spent in his bed-room when Peter took his razors away—that awful hour when he sneaked into his father's laboratory and under the pressure of great trouble forged his name. ”

“ Have you ever once in your life been sufficiently inspired with a sense of your responsibility as to make you get up and leave your work and come among us to play with our toys and get known? Have you ever once in all the years that we've been growing up been courageous or wise enough to take Graham or me for a walk and tell us any one thing that we ought to know? ”

“ In fact, most of the men he knew—and he knew a great many—had been left to discover the essential truths and facts for themselves. The inevitable end of it was that they made their discoveries too late.
Fate certainly must have had a very grim amusement in watching Nicholas Kenyon as he walked up and down the library of Dr. Hunter Guthrie's house that night, blazing at the delinquencies of fathers. Nevertheless, Kenyon had the right to be indignant, whether his reasons for being so sprang out of his selfishness or not. ”

“ On your feet, Peter, old man, and with no heel-taps, I give you 'the new Peer! The most decorative member of England's aristocracy,—Nicholas Augustus Fitzhugh Kenyon, Eighth Earl of Shropshire, master of Thrapstone-Wynyates—the man without a shilling!' Let it go!"
Peter stood up, clinked his friend's glass with his own, emptied it and set it down. "Good Lord!" he said, with a frightful grimace. "What in thunder was that?"
Kenyon burst into a derisive laugh. "'Some drink,' as you say over here. Away goes your water-wagon, Master Peter. Off you come from your self made pedestal. ”

“ I wish, Peter, I do wish that he'd go sometimes to his father!"
"Well, I'm going to try to alter all that," said Peter. "It's got to be done somehow. Father's always been afraid of us, and we've always been afraid of father. It's silly. What d'you think of Nicholas? Isn't he a corker?"
Mrs. Guthrie smiled. "He improves on acquaintance," she said. "He's certainly one of the most charming men I've ever met. Do you think"—she lowered her voice a little—"do you think there's anything between him and Belle?"
"Good Lord!" said Peter. ”

“ He was as much out of his element in Wall Street as a sporting dog which is doomed to pass away its life sitting beside a chauffeur in an elaborate motor-car. The daring recklessness which would have been an asset to him as a hunter of big game or a man who attached himself to dangerous expeditions, found vent, in the heart of civilization, in gambling and running wild. ”

“ Worse than total ignorance. Deep down in whatever soul he had, Nicholas Kenyon honestly and truly believed in friendship between father and son. He knew—none better—because it was his [196] business to observe, that a young man was frightfully and terribly handicapped who went out into the world unwarned, unadvised and uninitiated. He had often come across men like Peter and Graham whose lives had been absolutely ruined at the very outset for the reason that their fathers had either been too cowardly or too indifferent to give them the benefit of their own experience and early troubles. ”

“ He had fallen a complete victim to the attractions of this master of psychology. He regarded him as the very last word in expert worldliness. He paid him the highest tribute that he considered it was possible for one man to pay another, by calling him "a good sport," and he looked forward with enormous pleasure to the time when he would be able to show Kenyon the night side of New York, with which he had himself begun to be well acquainted. ”