The Sins of the Children Part 24

But Jack didn't move. He had gone back to the window-sill and remained hunched up on the narrow ledge, holding on with both hands. "I'm off in a minute," he said. "I'm just going to tell you one or two things before I go. Would you like to hear them?"

"If they're pleasant," she said.

"Well, they're not pleasant."

"Well, then, tell me."

For a moment or two Jack remained silent. Perhaps he was trying to find careful words into which to put his thoughts. When finally he spoke it was with a suppressed emotion that sent a quiver through the quiet room.

"I can't stand coming here," he said. "I can't stand it. I don't know what you are--whether you're a mere baby who knows nothing, or an absolute little rotter. You tell me I can say what I think, so I'm going to." He got up and went a little nearer to the sofa. "What d'you think I'm made of? Look at yourself in the gla.s.s and then see whether you're the sort of a girl who can let a man into her bedroom night after night for nothing. I tell you I can't stand it. I stayed away, not because I wanted to, but because I didn't want to do you any harm. I was a fool for coming here at all. If I didn't believe that you are simply a silly girl I'd stay to-night and come every night as I used to do, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. Next time you signal to a man take care to find out what he's made of and be a bit more careful.

There, now you've got it. Good night and good-bye. I've a darned good mind to put the note you sent me to-night in an envelope and address it to your mother. It would save some other fellow from a good deal of unnecessary discomfort. I'm frightfully sorry to be so brutal, but I don't believe you know what you're doing. Perhaps this'll be a lesson to you."

He turned quickly, swung himself out, went up the rope ladder hand over hand and drew it up after him.

Ethel closed her eyes and sat rigid. The boy might have planted his fist in her face.

V

Kenyon had taken Mrs. Guthrie and Belle to the Thirty-ninth Street Theatre that night. A quiet little romantic play, quite unpretentiously written, had found its way to that theatre either by accident or as a stop-gap. The manager who put it there had arranged, even before the opening performance, to replace it at the end of the week with something which had a punch,--a coa.r.s.e, vulgar, artificial piece of mechanism such as he had been in the habit of producing all of his managerial life. His intention to do this was strengthened by the press notices, which all agreed that the new piece was a very little play about nothing in particular and which made too great a demand upon the imagination of its audience. That last remark of the critics was worth a million dollars to the play's author. The theatre remained almost empty until the Friday night of its first--and if the manager had anything to do with it--only week. The scenery for the new production was already stacked on the stage. But to the amazement of all concerned, except the author, the theatre did business. The house was almost full and the box office was so busy that the young man who looked after it,--a past-master in rudeness,--became quite querulous. On Sat.u.r.day night there was a full house and the booking was so big for the following week that the notices of withdrawal were taken down and the play with a punch had to find another home. The manager, greatly put out, watched this little play sail into a big, steady success, and whenever his numerous acquaintances--he had no friends--caught him in an unbusy moment, he would say: "I can't make it out. It beats me. Look at the notices. I couldn't understand a word of the thing when I read it. I only put it into the theatre to keep it warm. My word, I don't know what the public wants." He didn't, and he never would. But the author knew. He had made a play which appealed to the imagination of his audience.

Peter had watched the party go to the theatre after an early dinner; had seen Graham go up to his room and his father drive away to a meeting at the Academy of Medicine; and then, anxious to be alone and think things over, he too left the house for a long, hard tramp. He went into the park and walked round and round the reservoir. 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 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. Without bitterness, and certainly without anger, he began to see something in the artist's bluntness which gradually made him long, with a sort of boyish anguish, to go in to his own father. The more he thought about this the more it seemed to him right and necessary and urgent to beard the Doctor in his den and break down the curious barrier which shyness had erected between him and his children. He realized at that moment that he stood desperately in need of a father's help and advice. It was quite obvious to him also that Graham needed these things even more than he did. If only they could both go to that wise and good man who stood aloof and get something more from him than the mere money with which he was so generous. He knew--no one better--that he always received from his mother the most tender sympathy, but how could he discuss with her some of the things with which he was faced since the Ita Strabosck episode had come into his life? Kenyon had done much to make it plain to him that it was not good to continue to walk in blank ignorance of the vital facts with which his father dealt daily. He was a man and he had to live in the world. His boyish days among boys were over. They belonged to the past.

It was borne in upon him as he went round and round the wide stretch of placid water in which was reflected the moon and stars, that his father should know all about Graham. Certain things that Kenyon had said stuck to his mind like burrs. If he could persuade Graham to make a clean breast of it to the Doctor, the brother who meant so much to him might be saved from a disaster which would not merely affect himself, but others,--a wife and children perhaps. Kenyon had hinted at this and the hint was growing in Peter's mind like an abscess. It was time that he and his brother faced facts and knew them. Who could initiate them better than the distinguished doctor whose life had been devoted to such serious questions?

Having brought himself up to this point and being also tremendously anxious to tell his father of the position in which he stood with Mr.

Townsend, Peter determined to strike while the iron was hot--to go home and see his father at once. He left the park quickly, and when finally he let himself into the house was astonished to see how late it was. The servant told him that his mother and sister had come back from the theatre and had gone to bed. "Mr. Kenyon," he added, "came back, but went out again at once. Mr. Graham went to bed early and the Doctor has not returned yet."

"Good!" thought Peter. "Then I'll wait for him." He gave up his hat and stick, went through the quiet, dimly lit library, and after a moment's hesitation opened the door of the Blue Room,--that room in which he had been so seldom, hitherto only under protest. He had opened the door quietly and was astonished to see Graham sitting at his father's desk with the light from a reading lamp s.h.i.+ning on his dark head. "By Jove, Graham!" he said. "You must have been thinking my thoughts. This is extraordinary."

Graham looked up with a start and thrust something under the blotting-pad. His face went as white as a sheet and he stammered a few incoherent words.

Quite unconscious of his brother's curious embarra.s.sment, Peter sat on the corner of the desk. "I've had it out with myself to-night," he said, going, as he always did, straight to the point. "I've made up my mind to make father into a father from now onwards. I can't stand this detached business any longer. Let's both wait for him and have it out."

"What d'you mean?" asked Graham. "I don't get you." He put his hand out surrept.i.tiously and scrunched up one of the sheets of note paper on which he had been writing.

"Listen!" said Peter, with intense earnestness. "I've got to know things. So have you. I've got to have advice. I've got to be treated as a human being. What's the good of our having a father at all if we don't get something from him? I don't mean money and a roof, clothes and things to eat. I mean help. I'm in a hole about Betty. I want to talk about my work--about my future. Graham, let's give father a chance. Many times he seems to me to have fumbled and been on the point of asking us to meet him half-way. Well, I'm going to do so. Stay here and let's both see it through. Have the pluck to tell him about your trouble and throw the whole responsibility on him. It's his and he ought to have it. Wait a second. Listen! If Ranken Townsend had been your father you never would have gone near Papowsky. You wouldn't have come within a thousand miles of Ita Strabosck--that's a certainty."

Graham got up quickly, but kept his hand heavily on the blotting-pad.

"No," he said almost hysterically. "Count me out. I'm not in this. It's no good our trying to alter father at this time of day--it's too late.

He's microbe mad. He knows nothing whatever about sons and daughters. I could no more tell him about the mess I'm in than fly over the moon.

He'd turn and curse me--that's all he'd do. He'd get up and preach, or something. He doesn't understand anything about life. I'd a jolly sight rather go to mother, only I know it would hurt her so, and anyway my story isn't fit for her ears. No; cut me out, I tell you. I'm not in this."

Peter got up and put his hands strongly on his brother's shoulders. He didn't notice then how near he was to a breakdown. "Graham, old man, you've _got_ to be--you've just _got_ to be. What Kenyon said is true.

You and I are blind and are d.a.m.ned children wandering about--stumbling about. We need--we absolutely need a father more than ever we did in our lives. So do Belle and Ethel. We all think that we can go alone, and we can't. I know I'm right--I just know it--so you've got to stay."

A puff of wind came through the open window. Several pieces of paper fluttered off the desk and fell softly on the floor. Peter stooped and picked them up. On them the words "Hunter G. Guthrie" had been written over and over again.

He laughed as he looked at them. "What on earth has father been writing his name all over these sheets for? How funny! What a strange old chap he seems to be. It's a sort of undergraduate trick, this,--practising a signature before writing a first cheque."

"Give 'em to me!" said Graham sharply, and he tried to s.n.a.t.c.h them away.

His voice was hoa.r.s.e and his hand shook.

Peter looked at him in great surprise. It was impossible for him not to be aware of the fact that something was dreadfully wrong. As he stood and looked into his brother's guilty face the fact which stood out most clearly was that Graham had himself been writing his father's signature all over those sheets of paper. Why? A man did a thing of that sort for one reason only.

He seized Graham's hand which was pressed on the blotting-pad, jerked it up, pushed the blotting-pad aside and picked up the cheque-book that laid beneath it.

"Don't touch that," cried Graham, "for G.o.d's sake! Let me have it! I'll tear out the cheque. I think I was mad. Oh, G.o.d! I'm so worried I didn't know what I was doing!"

There was a struggle, quick and sharp, and in an instant Graham found himself staggering across the room backwards.

With his heart standing still, Peter opened the thin, narrow, brown-covered book. A cheque for three thousand dollars had been made out to Graham Guthrie. The signature had been forged.

"You've done this," he said. "You've actually--"

Graham was up on his feet. His lips were trembling. He put out a shaking hand. "My G.o.d!" he whispered. "Father's in the library."

The sound of the Doctor's thin, clear voice came through the half-open door. Frozen with fear, Graham seemed to be unable to move. His very lips had lost their colour.

With an overwhelming anxiety to hide his brother's frightful fall from honesty and sanity, Peter pounced on the little book, thrust it into Graham's pocket, s.n.a.t.c.hed up the give-away slips of paper, tore them into small pieces and threw them in the basket.

"Don't give me away. Don't let him know. If you do, I swear to G.o.d you'll never see me again!"

There was still something to be done, and Peter did it. He took his brother up in his arms, realizing that he was, in a way, paralyzed, carried him to a chair that was out of the ring of light and sat him down. "Get yourself in hand, quick," he whispered. "Quick, now!"

And Graham, strengthened by his brother's vitality, forced himself into some sort of control.

Striding to the fireplace, Peter stood there waiting for his father, with a strange pain going through his body. He felt just as though he had been told that Graham, his best pal and dear brother, had had an appalling accident and might not live.

The Doctor's voice, as he gave directions to a servant, came nearer and nearer.

VI

With his hand on the handle of the door, the Doctor paused. "I want you to call me to-morrow at half-past-seven, Alfred. Don't forget. I have a busy day. Good-night."

The two boys watched him come into the room. His head was high and there was a little smile round his usually straight mouth. He walked with a sort of sprightliness, as though moving to music. He looked extraordinarily young and exhilarated.

He saw what was to him a most unusual sight in that quiet, lonely work-room. He was surprised into an exclamation of great pleasure, and he quickened his pace until he stood between his sons. Graham got up and put on a nervous, polite smile. "This's what I most wanted," said the Doctor,--"my two boys waiting for me here in this room. I can't tell you--I can't tell you, Peter, and Graham, how often, how strongly, how eagerly I've wished to see you where you are now. I can't tell you how I've longed to have you here after my meetings, to tell you how I'm getting on, moving things forward, and to ask you share in my successes.

My dear Peter--my dear Graham."

It was pitiful. The strange, almost incoherent outbreak of the shy man nearly made Peter burst into tears. He would almost rather his father had treated them coldly and with raised eyebrows. His present att.i.tude--his unhidden joy--his eager, and even wistful welcome, had in it something of tragedy, because it showed all the waste of years during which the sympathy and the complete, necessary and beautiful understanding of these three might have been welded into one great, insurmountable rock.

The Doctor, with an obvious desire to play host,--an intuition which again touched Peter deeply,--went quickly to a little chest which stood in a corner of the room. "What will you have?" he asked anxiously. "I've got a very good cigar here, or cigarettes if you would like them better.

Let me see! What do you smoke, Peter?"

"He doesn't even know what I smoke," thought Peter. "A pipe," he said.