Peter Part 6

Jack's foot was now ready to mount the lower step of the stairs. Corinne bit her lip.

"You never do anything to please me!" she snapped back. She knew she was fibbing, but something must be done to check this new form of independence--and then, now that Garry couldn't come, she really needed him. "You don't want to come, that's it--" She facing him now, her little nose high in the air, her cheeks flaming with anger.

"You must not say that, Corinne," he answered in a slightly indignant tone.

Corinne drew herself up to her full height--toes included; not very high, but all she could do--and said in a voice pitched to a high key, her finger within a few inches of his nose:

"It's true, and I will say it!"

The rustle of silk was heard overhead, and a plump, tightly laced woman in voluminous furs, her head crowned by a picture hat piled high with plumes, was making her way down the stairs. Jack looked up and waved his hand to his aunt, and then stood at mock attention, like a corporal on guard, one hand raised to salute her as she pa.s.sed. The boy, with the thought of Peter coming, was very happy this afternoon.

"What are you two quarrelling about?" came the voice. Rather a soft voice with a thread of laziness running through it.

"Jack's too mean for anything, mother. He knows we haven't men enough without him for a cotillion, now that Garry has dropped out, and he's been just stupid enough to invite some old man to come and see him this evening."

The furs and picture hat swept down and on, Jack standing at attention, hands clasping an imaginary musket his face drawn down to its severest lines, his cheeks puffed out to make him look the more solemn. When the wren got "real mad" he would often say she was the funniest thing alive.

"I'm a pig, I know, aunty" (here Jack completed his salute with a great flourish), "but Corinne does not really want me, and she knows it. She only wants to have her own way. They don't dance cotillions when they come here--at least they didn't last time, and I don't believe they will to-night. They sit around with each other in the corners and waltz with the fellows they've picked out--and it's all arranged between them, and has been for a week--ever since they heard Corinne was going to give a dance." The boy spoke with earnestness and a certain tone of conviction in his voice, although his face was still radiant.

"Well, can't you sit around, too, Jack?" remarked his aunt, pausing in her onward movement for an instant. "I'm sure there will be some lovely girls."

"Yes, but they don't want me. I've tried it too often, aunty--they've all got their own set."

"It's because you don't want to be polite to any of them," snapped Corinne with a twist of her body, so as to face him again.

"Now, Corinne, that isn't fair; I am never impolite to anybody in this house, but I'm tired of--"

"Well, Garry isn't tired." This last shot was fired at random.

Again the aunt poured oil: "Come, children, come! Don't let's talk any more about it. If Jack has made an engagement it can't be helped, I suppose, but don't spoil your party, my dear. Find Parkins, Jack, and send him to me.... Ah, Parkins--if any one calls say I'll be out until six o'clock."

"Yes, my Lady." Parkins knew on which side his bread was b.u.t.tered. She had reproved him at first, but his excuse was that she was so like his former mistress, Lady Colchester, that he sometimes forgot himself.

And again "my Lady" swept on, this time out of the door and into her waiting carriage.

CHAPTER VI

Jack's impatience increased as the hour for Peter's visit approached.

Quarter of nine found him leaning over the banisters outside his small suite of rooms, peering down between the hand-rails watching the top of every head that crossed the s.p.a.cious hall three flights below--he dare not go down to welcome his guest, fearing some of the girls, many of whom had already arrived, would know he was in the house. Fifteen minutes later the flash of a bald head, glistening in the glare of the lower hall lantern, told him that the finest old gentleman in the world had arrived, and on the very minute. Parkins's special instructions, repeated for the third time, were to bring Mr. Peter Grayson--it was wonderful what an impressive note was in the boy's voice when he rolled out the syllables--up at once, surtout, straight-brimmed hat, overshoes (if he wore any), umbrella and all, and the four foot-falls--two cat-like and wabbly, as befitted the obsequious flunky, and two firm and decided, as befitted a grenadier crossing a bridge--could now be heard mounting the stairs.

"So here you are!" cried Peter, holding out both hands to the overjoyed boy--"'way up near the sky. One flight less than my own. Let me get my breath, my boy, before I say another word. No, don't worry, only Anno Domini--you'll come to it some day. How delightfully you are settled!"

They had entered the cosey sitting-room and Jack was helping with his coat; Parkins, with his nose in the air (he had heard his master's criticism), having already placed his hat on a side table and the umbrella in the corner.

"Where will you sit--in the big chair by the fire or in this long straw one?" cried the boy, Peter's coat still in his hand.

"Nowhere yet; let me look around a little." One of Peter's tests of a man was the things he lived with. "Ah! books?" and he peered at a row on the mantel. "Macaulay, I see, and here's Poe: Good, very good--why, certainly it is--Where did you get this Morland?" and again Peter's gla.s.ses went up. "Through that door is your bedroom--yes, and the bath.

Very charming, I must say. You ought to live very happily here; few young fellows I know have half your comforts."

Jack had interrupted him to say that the Morland print was one that he had brought from his father's home, and that the books had come from the same source, but Peter kept on in his tour around the room. Suddenly he stopped and looked steadily at a portrait over the mantel.

"Yes--your father--"

"You knew!" cried Jack.

"Knew! How could any one make a mistake? Fine head. About fifty I should say. No question about his firmness or his kindness. Yes--fine head--and a gentleman, that is best of all. When you come to marry always hunt up the grandfather--saves such a lot of trouble in after life," and one of Peter's infectious laughs filled the room.

"Do you think he looks anything like Uncle Arthur? You have seen him, I think you said."

Peter scanned the portrait. "Not a trace. That may also be a question of grandfathers--" and another laugh rippled out. "But just be thankful you bear his name. It isn't always necessary to have a long line of gentlemen behind you, and if you haven't any, or can't trace them, a man, if he has pluck and grit, can get along without them; but it's very comforting to know they once existed. Now let me sit down and listen to you," added Peter, whose random talk had been inspired by the look of boyish embarra.s.sment on Jack's face. He had purposely struck many notes in order to see which one would echo in the lad's heart, so that his host might find himself, just as he had done when Jack with generous impulse had sprang from his chair to carry Minott the ring.

The two seated themselves--Peter in the easy chair and Jack opposite.

The boy's eyes roamed from the portrait, with its round, grave face, to Peter's head resting on the cus.h.i.+oned back, illumined by the light of the lamp, throwing into relief the clear-cut lips, little gray side-whiskers and the tightly drawn skin covering his scalp, smooth as polished ivory.

"Am I like him?" asked Peter. He had caught the boy's glances and had read his thoughts.

"No--and yes. I can't see it in the portrait, but I do in the way you move your hands and in the way you bow. I keep thinking of him when I am with you. It may, as you say, be a good thing to have a gentleman for a father, sir, but it is a dreadful thing, all the same, to lose him just as you need him most. I wouldn't hate so many of the things about me if I had him to go to now and then."

"Tell me about him and your early life," cried Peter, crossing one leg over the other. He knew the key had been struck; the boy might now play on as he chose.

"There is very little to tell. I lived in the old home with an aunt after my father's death. And went to school and then to college at Hagerstown--quite a small college--where uncle looked after me--he paid the expenses really--and then I was clerk in a law office for a while, and at my aunt's death about a year ago the old place was sold and I had no home, and Uncle Arthur sent for me to come here."

"Very decent in him, and you should never forget him for it," and again Peter's eyes roamed around the perfectly appointed room.

"I know it, sir, and at first the very newness and strangeness of everything delighted me. Then I began to meet the people. They were so different from those in my part of the country, especially the young fellows--Garry is not so bad, because he really loves his work and is bound to succeed--everybody says he has a genius for architecture--but the others--and the way they treat the young girls, and what is more unaccountable to me is the way the young girls put up with it."

Peter had settled himself deeper in his chair, his eyes shaded with one hand and looked intently at the boy.

"Uncle Arthur is kind to me, but the life smothers me. I can't breathe sometimes. Nothing my father taught me is considered worth while here.

People care for other things."

"What, for instance?" Peter's hand never moved, nor did his body.

"Why stocks and bonds and money, for instance," laughed Jack, beginning to be annoyed at his own tirade--half ashamed of it in fact. "Stocks are good enough in their way, but you don't want to live with them from ten o'clock in the morning till four o'clock in the afternoon, and then hear nothing else talked about until you go to bed. That's why that dinner last night made such an impression on me. n.o.body said money once."

"But every one of those men had his own hobby--"

"Yes, but in my uncle's world they all ride one and the same horse.

I don't want to be a pessimist, Mr. Grayson, and I want you to set me straight if I am wrong, but Mr. Morris and every one of those men about him were the first men I've seen in New York who appear to me to be doing the things that will live after them. What are we doing down-town?

Gambling the most of us."

"But your life here isn't confined to your uncle and his stock-gambling friends. Surely these lovely young girls--two of them came in with me--"

and Peter smiled, "must make your life delightful."

Jack's eyes sought the floor, then he answered slowly: