Three times during these pleasant weeks Peter ran down to see,—not her, but Betty, and went out with her with his face alight and then hurried back to his engagements, having given her, his mother, who loved him so, several hugs and a few incoherent words. It was the way of life, youth to youth, but it was very hard.
On the afternoon of the fifth of August, when the party crossed the gangplank at Southampton to go aboard the Olympic, little Mrs. Guthrie told herself that in a few minutes she would see Peter's great form elbowing through the crowd, although he had not said that he would be there to say good-bye. She almost hoped that something might prevent him from being in time, because she knew that he would not come solely to hold her in his arms, but for another reason. Nothing, however, did prevent him. He followed them almost instantly on board; and although he never left her side, he surreptitiously held Betty's hand all the time.
A smile of unusual bitterness crept all about the little woman's heart. It was very hard. He was her boy—her son—her first-born and the apple of her eye. She had come up for the first time to one of the rudest awakenings that a mother can ever know. And presently when the cry, "All ashore that's going ashore!" went up and Peter put both his big arms about her and said, "Good-bye, mummie, darling, I shall come home soon," she broke into such a fit of weeping and kissed him with a passion so great that the boy was startled and a little frightened. There was no time to think or ask questions. There was his father's hand to shake, and Graham's, and Belle to kiss. There was also Betty, and she was suddenly hugged before them all.
As the big liner sent out its raucous note of departure and moved away from the dock the little mother was unable to see the bare head of her boy above the heads of the great crowd. Her eyes were blinded. "He doesn't understand," she said to herself. "He doesn't understand."
Poor little mother! It was very hard.
XIII
The cottage on the borders of Lord Shropshire's park was just as pretty and just as small as the little lady who lived there. It was appropriately called "The Nest," although there was no male bird in it and it was devoid of young ones; but Mrs. Randolph Lennox was so like a bird, with her trilly soprano voice, her quick dartings here and there and the peculiar way she had of getting all a-flutter when people called, that the name of her charming little place—first given by Kenyon—stuck, and was generally used.
It was perched up on high ground overlooking the gardens of the old Tudor House,—those wonderful Italian gardens in which Charles II had dallied with his mistresses on his return from his long, heart-breaking and hungry exile. It was tree-surrounded and creepers grew up its old walls to its thickly thatched roof. For many years it had been occupied by the agent of the estate, until—so it was said—it was won by Mrs. Lennox from the present Lord Shropshire as the result of a bet.
No one had ever seen Randolph Lennox and many people didn't believe that he was anything more than a myth; but the little woman gave herself out as the widow of this man and was accepted as such. Her income was small, but not so small as to preclude her from playing bridge for fairly large stakes, dressing exquisitely, riding to the hounds and keeping an extremely efficient menage, consisting of two maid servants and an elderly gardener. It enabled her also to spend May and June in London yearly at a little hotel in Half Moon Street, Piccadilly, from which utterly correct little house she was taken nightly to dinner and to the theatre by one or other of the numerous young men who formed her entourage. Never taken actually into the heart of London society, she managed with quiet skill to attach herself to its rather long limbs, and her name was frequently to be found in the columns of society papers as having been seen in a creation by Paquin or Macinka at Ranalagh or Hurlingham, the opera, or lunching at the Ritz.