He was still asleep when Graham came back at six o'clock. Nellie Pope opened the door to him. "'E's getting on fine," she said. "You can take that line out of your forehead. 'E's been talking quite sensibly to me. What I don't know about your father and your family isn't worth knowing."
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. The only thing that gave him any sense of pleasure out of all this was the fact that he carried in his pocket a warm and spontaneous letter from Ranken Townsend, which he knew would be better to Peter than pints of medicine.
And while he sat watching, Nellie Pope ate her sausage in the kitchen and finished the instalment of the love story in her magazine.
What a world, O my masters!
XV
It was late when Graham let himself into his father's house that night. He had done many things that day. He had also been through much anxiety. He felt that he deserved the right to turn in at once and sleep the sleep of the just. But Kenyon had said that Belle had been alone in his rooms the night before and the queer expression that had come into his eyes as he made the remark lived most uneasily in Graham's memory. He now knew Nicholas Kenyon to be a skunk—an unscrupulous individualist devoid of loyalty, incapable of feeling true friendship and in every way unfit to have any dealings, unwatched, with a girl unless she was in his own set or belonged to the same class as the two chorus girls for whom he had waited outside the stage door of the Oxford Theatre.
He was well aware of the fact that Belle had been something more than merely attracted by Kenyon. He had even hoped that she might be engaged to be married to him, being very proud to believe that some day soon she might become the wife of the man under whose spell he, like all the rest of the family, had fallen. Now, however, in the light of Kenyon's hideous treatment of Peter, he saw his one-time hero with eyes from which all the glamour of his appearance had disappeared and he was filled with an overwhelming desire to see Belle at once and make it clear to her, bluntly and finally, that she must clear Kenyon out of her mind as a house is rid of vermin. Belle was, as he well knew, a high-spirited, amazingly imperious, independent girl, with strong emotions. She was not one who would be turned lightly, or even driven, out of a line of thought. She was, on the contrary, as difficult to treat as an unbroken filly and could only be managed with the lightest of hands. If she really and truly loved Kenyon and still believed in him, he knew that he could not say anything that would prejudice him in her estimation, even by telling her what he had done to Peter. She would be able to produce reasons, however far-fetched, to make that incident seem less ugly. There was, however, the chance—just the chance—that she would be open to conviction. After much inward argument and hesitation he decided to go up to Belle's room, and if she were not asleep, to have a little talk with her and find out how the land lay, and if he could see any possibility of adding to his punishment of Kenyon to do so by putting him in his true colour before Belle.
It took him some time to come to this decision and screw up his courage to face Belle. For nearly an hour he paced up and down the quiet library, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Belle was likely to tell him to go and hang himself if she considered that he was butting into her private affairs. He knew this,—no one better. He had often done so before. He decided, however, to run this risk and, in the hope that she might still be up, went upstairs and stood for a moment listening outside her door. He could hear no sound in her room, no movement, no creak of a drawer being opened or shut. He knocked softly and waited,—was just going to knock again when the door was opened.
With her beautiful black hair done for the night and a pink kimono over her night-dress, Belle stood in the doorway with an expression of surprised inquiry in her eyes. These two had not taken the trouble to be very good friends for some years.