Through stained glass Part 14

"How do!" she cried gaily to Leighton, and held out her hand. She did not rise.

"H lne," said Leighton, "your room's so cursedly feminine that it's like an a.s.sault for a man to enter it."

"I can't give you credit for that, Glen," said the lady, laughing.

"You've had a year to think it up. Where have you been? That's right.

Sit down, light up, and talk."

Leighton nodded over his shoulder at Lewis.

"Been fetching him."

"So this is the boy, is it?" The bright eyes stopped smiling. For an instant they became shrewd. They swept Lewis from head to foot and back again. Lewis bowed, and then stood very straight. He felt the color mounting in his cheeks. The smile came back to the lady's eyes.

"Sit down, boy," she said.

For an hour Lewis sat on the edge of a chair and listened to a stream of questions and chatter. The chatter was Greek to him. It skimmed over the surface of things like a swift skater over thin ice. It never broke into deep waters, but somehow you knew the deep waters were there.

At last Leighton arose.

"Boy," he said, "come here. This lady is my pal. There are times when a man has to tell things to a woman. That's what women are for. When you feel you've got to tell things to a woman, you come and tell them to H lne. Don't be afraid of that peac.o.c.k of a doorman; push him over.

He's so stiff he'll topple easy."

"Oh, please don't ever!" cried the lady, turning to Lewis. "I'll give you money to tip him." She turned back to Leighton. "They're so hard to get with legs, Glen."

"Legs be hanged!" said Leighton. "Our age is trading civility for legs.

The face that welcomes you to a house should be benign----"

"There you go," broke in the lady. "If you'd think a minute, you would realize that we don't charter doormen to welcome people, but to keep them out." She turned to Lewis. "But not you, boy. You may come any time except between nine and ten. That's when I have my bath. What's your name? I can't call you boy forever."

"Lewis."

"Well, Lew, you may call me H lne, like your father. It'll make me feel even younger than I am."

"H lne is a pretty name," said Lewis.

"None of that, young man," said Leighton. "You'll call H lne my Lady."

"That's a pretty name, too," said Lewis.

"Yes," said the lady, rising and holding out her hand, "call me that--at the door."

"Dad," said Lewis as they walked back to the flat, "does she live all alone in that big house?"

Leighton came out of a reverie.

"That lady, Lew, is Lady H lne Derl. She is the wife of Lord Derl. You won't see much of Lord Derl, because he spends most of his time in a sort of home for incurables. His hobby is faunal research. In other words, he's a drunkard. Bah! We won't talk any more about _that_."

CHAPTER XVIII

A few months later, when Lewis had very much modified his ideas of London, he was walking with his father in the park at the hour which the general English fitness of things a.s.signs to the initiated. A very little breaking in and a great deal of tailoring had gone a long way with Lewis. Men looked at father and son as though they thought they ought to recognize them even if they didn't. Women turned kindly eyes upon them.

The morning after Lady Derl took Lewis into her carriage in the park she received three separate notes from female friends demanding that she "divvy up." Knowing women in general and the three in special, she prepared to comply. Often Lewis and his father had been summoned by a scribbled note for pot-luck with Lady Derl; but this time it was a formal invitation, engraved.

Lewis read his card casually. His face lighted up. Leighton read his with deeper perception, and frowned.

"Already!" he grunted. Then he said: "When you've finished breakfast, come to my den. I want to talk to you."

Lewis found his father sitting like a judge on the bench, behind a great oak desk he rarely used. An envelope, addressed, lay before him. He rang for Nelton and sent it out.

"Sit down," he said to Lewis. "Where did you get your education? By education I don't mean a knowledge of knives, forks, and fish-eaters.

That's from Ann Leighton, of course. Nor do I mean the power of adding two to two or reciting A B C D, etc. By education a gentleman means skill in handling life."

"And have I got it?" asked Lewis, smiling.

"You meet life with a calmness and deftness unusual in a boy," said Leighton, gravely.

"I--I don't know," began Lewis. "I've never been educated. By the time I was nine I knew how to read and write and figure a little. After that--you know--I just sat on the hills for years with the goats. I read the Reverend Orme's books, of course."

"What were the books?"

"There weren't many," said Lewis. "There was the Bible, of course. There was a little set of Shakspere in awfully fine print and a set of Walter Scott."

Leighton nodded. "The Bible is essential but not educative until you learn to depolarize it. Shakspere--you'll begin to read Shakspere in about ten years. Walter Scott. Scott--well--Scott is just a bright ax for the neck of time. What else did you read?"

"I read 'The City of G.o.d' but not very often."

For a second Leighton stared; then he burst into laughter. He checked himself suddenly.

"Boy," he said, "don't misunderstand. I'm not laughing at the book; I'm laughing at your reading St. Augustine even 'not very often!'"

"Why shouldn't you laugh?" asked Lewis, simply. "I laughed sometimes. I remember I always laughed at the heading to the twenty-first book."

"Did you?" said Leighton, a look of wonder in his face. "What is it? I don't quite recollect the headings that far."

"'Of the eternal punishment of the wicked in h.e.l.l, and of the various objections urged against it,'" quoted Lewis, smiling.

Leighton grinned his appreciation.

"There is a flavor about unconscious humor," he said, "that's like the bouquet to a fine wine: only the initiated catch it. I'm afraid you were an educated person even before you read St. Augustine. Did he put up a good case for torment? You see, you've found me out. I've never read him."

"His case was weak in spots," said Lewis. "His examples from nature, for instance, proving that bodies may remain unconsumed and alive in fire."

"Yes?" said Leighton.

"He starts out, 'if, therefore the salamander lives in fire, as naturalists have recorded----' I looked up salamander in the dictionary."