PLAYING AT GOD
“I think it is going to be Logan Thane,” Peter decided, as she paused
for a moment in the pleasing process of dressing for the dance, to
stand bare-limbed before the fire, and feel its warmth run and leap and
shiver over her skin; one of those luxuries to which memories of chill
apartments and scrambled toilets now gave a zest and flavour. Peter
liked equally the action of slowly drawing a cigarette from its silver
case; the use of a bathroom, gleaming white tiles and silver taps and
mist-wreaths dimming the mirror on the wall. Things which Merle took as
a matter of course. Merle found her keenest enjoyment in escape for a
whole day to Thatch Lane, to trespass over barbed-wire fencing in dank
and thorny woods; discarding, for an old skirt and jersey of Peter’s,
the elaborately suitable-for-the-country raiment provided by Madame
des Essarts. Madame’s mental vision of these expeditions showed her
granddaughter reclining upon a cushioned chair, in a very clean field,
the while Miss Worthing’s footman (non-existent) asked if she took
sugar and milk, and Peter added solicitously: “You must put up with our
picnic teas, Merle, dearest. Will you have some Devonshire cream on
your home-baked bread?”
Ever since their conversation on the second-empire bedspread, a
fortnight before, the two girls were almost hypnotically persuaded
that the forthcoming ball was to furnish, as far as their scheme of
things was concerned, some startling issue. During their intercourse
of two and a half years, the male element in its more serious form had
been conspicuously and even unnaturally lacking. Peter was aware that
this state of things could not possibly continue, in the case of two
so magnetically alive. She had sought to forestall the Inevitable, by
herself weaving in the thread. To-night she would choose its colour.
To-night!... it was fun, playing at God.
Logan Thane fixed himself firmer and ever firmer in her imagination,
while she put on her gold stockings and shoes, her bronze
evening-dress, with its border of rich fur, and swathed gold sash. His
name held possibilities; and she was not averse to the background of
antlers and hothouse grapes, catalogued by Merle. She added to these,
roses, and a sweet white-haired mother; picturing agreeably how the
latter would describe Merle and herself as “quite at home in Thane
Manor; running in and out all day; dear girls, both of them!”--Logan at
this juncture tossed them an expressive smile from where he stood, as
per arrangement, smiting his boot with a riding-whip.
And if he should fall in love with one or the other of them....
“It would be rough luck on Merle,” mused Peter, drawing on her long
white kid gloves.
Certainly Peter was divinely human!
* * * * *
Someone knocking at the door:
“Are you ready?” cries Jinny, aged fourteen; “the Lesters are here, and
don’t I just wish I was going too!”
Peter is staying the week-end with some twice-removed cousins in a
Turnham Green boarding-house; a convenience of which she frequently
availed herself, when evening pleasure-seeking made it impossible for
her to catch the last train from Euston to Thatch Lane. The Lester
boys and their sister, friends of Merle, had offered to fetch her in
their car and bring her home again.
“And so if we don’t enjoy ourselves,” proposes Rose-Marie, a nervous
débutante, “we can keep to our own party....” The car moves slowly
forward in a long queue.
Peter is not enthusiastic. Both the Lester boys are under twenty,
and have pimples on their chins. She wishes--in the cloakroom now,
and in the approved fashion letting her wrap fall languidly from her
shoulders, to be caught by dexterous and silent attendants--that the
thought of Merle hostess of this magnificence, did not remove her so
very far from the Merle of their adventure days.
The staircase again, and conventional figures in black and white,
struggling with their glove-buttons. Which of them is Logan Thane?
“Wait for me,” pleads Rose-Marie, still busy with her powder-puff. A
burst of music from the ballroom, striking thrilling response from the
tuned-up senses. Events moving with the swift unreality of a cinema.
The ballroom swims forward and engulfs Peter with its hum of talk,
rising and falling like waves on a flat beach; its light mellowed by
blossoms; blossoms made translucent by light. Impression of a group
just within the doorway; Merle’s grandmother, from a mere solicitous
voice in Lancaster Gate: “Es-tu fatiguée, chérie?” knuckles that tapped
the door and a rustle that swept the staircase,--now materialized into
diamonds, and Point d’Alençon, and dignified, almost royal, reception
of the entering guests. Mademoiselle des Essarts, a little to her left,
beauty in faint old-rose and lilac, silver-threaded; a tiny moon-shaped
black patch below the lip; a bouquet of lilies of the valley.
Mademoiselle des Essarts--“Elle est exquise,” whisper the diplomats and
the ambassadors and the consuls, beribboned and bearded, who surround
Madame, and lend a contrast of French court circles to the assembly of
bostoning twentieth-century youth.
Mademoiselle des Essarts receives Miss Kyndersley with grave unsmiling
courtesy, and introduces: “Mr. Milligan.”
Is this the owner of a new motor-car, or a Designing Female?
Desperately Peter tries to collect her whirling thoughts, while Merle,
according to previous arrangement, detaches herself from other duties,
to present one partner after another; names that sound familiar: “the
son of a judge ... can imitate ducklings ... black waistcoat where
others elect to wear white,”--easily distinguishable, this last; “a
life-story ... serious intentions ... seven devils and a shoe-black”
... the descriptions on the list jostle each other, and form part of
the brilliant kaleidoscopic blur which goes to make Peter’s evening.
She is beginning to enjoy the keen sense of expectancy with which she
herself has infused the air. Light as the flutter of a peaseblossom,
Merle blows across the polished floor: “Peter, have you a dance left? I
want to introduce you----” no, the pink card is already scribbled over
from top to bottom.
“Never mind; you can cut--let me see!” coolly Mademoiselle scans the
names, and crosses off a harmless personage bearing the Oriental title
of Otto Mann. “He’s not important” ... and she presents Mr. Thane,
who looks rather astonished at these unceremonious proceedings, but
laughingly accepts number twenty-three, the last waltz but one.
“I believe you’ll do!” thinks Peter exultantly. But nevertheless, she
will give other unconscious candidates their chance. Her peculiar
talent for playing up, body and soul, to whatever part be thrust upon
her, can be exercised to its full in the swift coming and going, change
and interchange of companionship, that is ballroom custom.
The first waltz stirs the air. The first skilful probing of the
material with which she has to deal: cue given: “Don’t you find these
affairs leave an empty feeling behind them?”... so be it, then; the
Puritan maid--for ten minutes. And you, sir, what may be your demands?
Can’t be bothered with depths, or all that bally rot? Come then, we
will e’en butterfly together.... And the music strikes up for the next
one-step; Papillon bows and departs, and--who will come in his stead?
Walk up! walk up, gentlemen all! Here are a variety of goods in one
parcel: the Artistic Understanding; the Tantalizing Sphinx; Up-to-date
Woman of the World, with trick of shoe and eyelash and epigram--this
for the youth who will not be thought young; quickly alternating to
the Clear-eyed Delightful Child: her first dance, and it’s all such
splendid fun! Almost can Thirty-nine, cynical, weary, and grizzled at
the temples, be brought to say: “Little girl, you make the years fall
from me....”
Peter wriggles happily. Who can denounce her conduct as unfair? Who,
at a masquerade, music-led, rose-fragrant, expects to confront aught
but fellow-masqueraders?... Here comes another--Aha! I recognize
you, my friend; you are he who vibrates like a jelly in dancing,
and--apprehensively she glances down at her gold shoes in danger from
the kiss of Othello.
Take from Peter what you please, gentlemen all! not for your sakes,
believe me that. For Peter’s sake; for the glorification of her
talents, and for the fun of it, and because you may take from Peter
what you please, so it be not Peter. And she is safe enough, dodging
mischievously from one disguise to another, rather wishing--through all
the breathless shift and stir and glimmer--to meet for once her equal
in skill and tactics. But it will come with the twenty-third waltz of
the evening, promised to Antlers-and-Hothouse-Grapes; she has staged
her climax cunningly, to crown the end of masquerade.
Supper with Mark St. Quentin, who had two years previously sent her
a dozen handkerchiefs, in lieu of the gory one, tenderly retained;
thus making for the ministering angel a clear profit of seventeen
handkerchiefs, reckoning Merle’s half-dozen. He has spent this evening
in being to Peter the cement which knits loose bricks together;
watching her hungrily when she slides away in the embrace of another;
slipping into the gap when a partner chances to be late; taking the
first dance and the last dance and the supper-dance, and any extras
she cares to give, and all the numbers she wishes to cut. Quite
pleasant, the consciousness of Mark St. Quentin to fill with his
stolid and persistent personality the tiniest chink and crevice which
the intoxicating hours might otherwise have left empty. Nor is it
difficult to supply him with the goods he wants: a solicitous reference
to the episode of the thumb, and Peter is established as fragrant
sweet-natured woman, thank Heaven, still surviving in a century of
Suffragettes and kleptomaniacs--“And druggists,” adds Mark St. Quentin;
“Morphia, you know.”
After-supper hours, bringing with them the usual flushed dishevelment,
actual and spiritual. Blooms beginning to droop in the heat; prevailing
carelessness as to the hieroglyphics actually scrawled on the
programme; bold voices, mingling with the bandsmen’s deeper notes, as
they chorus to the popular encore, imperiously demanded. Lingerings
on the stairs, and where softly-lit seclusion is provided for those
who care to linger. Departure of the suave and elderly diplomats;
Madame des Essarts must perforce wait, royalty unattended, till
romping insatiable youth shall have drunk its fill. Her reflections on
modern dancing, its antics and exaggerations, are such as to preclude
description. She is pleased to note, however, that her granddaughter’s
burnished dark head is still unruffled, her complexion unheated. “Elle
est vraie des Essarts!”
Number twenty-one. Merle and Peter, skilfully guided where the throng
is thickest, smile at one another in passing, eager, in the midst
of enjoyment, for the mutual retrospection of the morrow. Comes the
interval between twenty-two and twenty-three. Armand Drélincourt, for
the third time in four hours, discourses with immense relish upon
his fatal temperament. Peter listens attentively, but springs to her
feet, interrupting the narrative at its most thrilling point, when the
far-off tinkle of a bell reaches her ear: “Hadn’t we better go down?”
Having settled on Logan Thane as a piratical playmate, she is frankly
excited at the prospect of number twenty-three.
He is not waiting near the door of the ballroom. Neither is he in the
stream descending the stairs. Peter waits impatiently till he shall
choose to end his flirtation behind some draped _portière_. Already the
dancers are in full swing. Rose-Marie approaches: “Shall we go home
now, Peter? Most people have left; it looks so bad to be among the
last.” And behold St. Quentin standing faithful as the painted sentinel
of Herculaneum: “May I have the pleasure, Miss Kyndersley?”
“I’m booked already,--where _is_ Logan Thane?”
“But your partner seems to have deserted you. Silly fellow; he doesn’t
know what he’s missing.”
Peter privately agrees. It takes still three minutes to convince her
that Logan Thane has undoubtedly cut his dances and gone home early;
and then she lets St. Quentin reap the reward of his tireless vigil: “I
shall be leaving after this one, so we may as well finish it instead of
the next.” She has flushed richly and her eyes are dark with annoyance.
Childishly, she wants Logan Thane to have a sense of all that might
have been his, had he not succumbed to weariness.
“Peter,” Rose-Marie’s voice, plaintive now; “the car has been waiting
over an hour already, and mother said----”
“All right.” Peter disengages herself from the infatuated St. Quentin,
murmurs her thanks to her hostess, looks around in vain for Merle, and
suffers herself to be led by Rose-Marie to the cloak-room.
Downstairs, a few stray couples, clinging still to the fringes of
pleasure, boston stormily to the strains of “Gipsy Love.” The massed
flowers on the walls hang heavier and heavier yet. Madame has yawned
twice, daintily, behind her Pompadour fan. As the last notes die away,
Merle dashes for the doorway, dragging her partner in her wake.
“Peter!--she hasn’t gone yet, has she, grandmaman?” She succeeds in
waylaying Peter, cloaked and reluctant, on her passage down the main
staircase.
“You mustn’t go. I want you to dance the next with Stuart.” Merle’s
tone conveys all she dares put into it of meaning and entreaty. Peter
shakes her head, indicating Rose-Marie, inclined to be fractious.
“Leave her to me. _Do_ go on, Peter.”
Peter wavers; the ballroom, after good-byes have been spoken and wraps
adjusted, becomes doubly a place of enchantment, if only because
etiquette debars from re-entering.
She looks at Stuart Heron.
And he, for his part, tries to trace the connection between a tall
girl in a bronze evening-cloak, and a picture which has forced itself
irrelevantly upon his mental vision: picture of a Cavalier emerging
from some dark doorway; backward-floating plume, and mantle carelessly
flung; swagger and smile expressive of all that lurked in his quest of
love and hazard, and peradventure of hazardous love....
“Go on, Peter,” urges Merle. “You’ll like him.”
Peter hesitates no longer; tosses aside her cloak; and permits Stuart
to escort her back to the regions of light whence she had thought
to be self-banished. The band is crashing out in true Bacchanalian
frenzy the last waltz of all, the waltz of their release. Twenty years
before, and it would have been: “After the ball is over,” with its
cloying suggestions of regret and sentiment; but modern youth requires
something at once more abandoned and more discordant.
Stuart speaks: “She said I was going to like you.”
“And she said I was going to like you.”
Then in earnest duet: “How we’re bound to hate each other!”
He is a little above medium height; their eyes are almost on a level.
He cannot rid himself of the impression that whatever he says now, is
likely to matter later on. And the entire contents of his brain have
wandered round the corner, and sitting there, mock his futility.
“No,” contradicting his own statement. “I don’t think we shall hate
each other; at least, not more than is necessary to preserve mutual
interest.” Why are they hurrying the time, those fool musicians? How
long can one decently sit out with a girl, after the last candle is
extinguished, and a lackey is holding her cloak in readiness? Seven
minutes, perhaps? He will have to give her in that seven minutes
lightning indications of all that is in him worth her knowing; whet her
curiosity, and at the same time satisfy his own. The undertaking is a
breathless one.
“Who are you?” Peter queries, having in vain tried to fit him with some
attributes of Merle’s catalogue. “I can’t place you at all, and----”
“And what?” he leaps in, for she has paused, and there is no time to
pause; two more couples have ceased to dance, and are busy encircling
Madame des Essarts with an aura of thanksgiving and farewell. “And
what?”
“And Merle introduced you as if you mattered.”
“Merle was quite right. I do matter.”
“Merle?”
“Why not? I’m a relic of her childhood.”
“It makes you sound like Stonehenge.”
“You strive rather after effect, don’t you?” He slings this at her,
himself striving after effect.
“Of course. Would you have me display at once all the domestic virtues?”
“You haven’t any,” tauntingly. “Not one. Other girls can cook nothing
but an omelette. You, I’m sure, can cook nothing at all. It must be a
proud boast. I hate talking while I dance, don’t you?”
In silence they finish the waltz. Then Stuart sweeps her through a pair
of velvet hangings, down two rooms, and to a sofa at the far end of a
third, before she is well aware of his intentions. She takes a sidelong
survey of his outward marks: features that vie for room with his
monocle and quickly-changing expression, giving an effect to his face
of overcrowding; a mouth corner-tilted and impish, such as is sometimes
perceived in a small street-arab, but mostly in a leprechaun, who can
only be met hammering shoes on moor and crag by moonlight. She notes
further that his jaw is lean, with the forward bent of a runner; and
his head, which by dint of hard brushing and grooming gives at first
an effect of conventional sleekness, is in reality a most rebellious
and intricate affair, no hair growing in precisely the same direction
as its fellow, but each insisting it will beat out like Bret Harte’s
pioneer, “a way of his own, a way of his own!”
From the distant ballroom, snatches of “God save the King” drift and
die and are re-born, with an effect of inexpressible melancholy.
And, sighing, Stuart relinquishes desire to show the girl all his
sides before dawn--philosophical, tender, childish, manly, sporting,
whimsical, or political,--resigns himself to proving merely that he is
original.
“You can never get away from your likeness to a Reynolds’ Angel,” à
propos of nothing; “because there are five of them, so that if the
expression should miss one, it will hit the next; I’m sorry for you, of
course, but there is nothing to be done about it. Do you live anywhere?
Forgive me for these astounding acrobatics, but I’m so afraid you will
be fetched by your nurse Rose-Marie; I heard you remark she was growing
fractious.”
“I live in Thatch Lane with an aunt. My mother is dead, and my father
unmentionable, to save you from the agonies of a tactless question.”
... The bandsmen are dimly visible, packing away their mute
instruments. A voice from the long-ago is calling faintly “Peter” ...
hastily she covers the sound: “_What_ are you? A stockbroker?”
“No,” he too has heard, and speaks rather breathlessly; “do I make love
like a stockbroker?”
“You haven’t.”
“I have, in my own subtle fashion. But I _can’t_ overleap the first
stages in this Post-impressionist preliminary scamper of ours.”
... “Pet-er! Pe-ter!” clearer now--and nearer.
“A stockbroker has but seven stages of love-making, and by these shall
ye know him,” laughs Peter.
“And I have a hundred and seven, and seven more after that, and by none
of these shall ye know me.”
“Do you always talk about yourself?”
“No,” desperately; “I can talk about ever so many things: Cathedrals,
and good form, and machinery, and how to make pins. Oh, and
metaphysics. Particularly metaphysics. I took a double first at Oxford.
I’ve no right to tell you, but I want you to know,” with the first
touch of boyishness that has as yet escaped the hard polished surface
of his manner.
... “I can’t think where she is,” Merle replies courteously, two rooms
off.
... “Pee-ee-eee-ter!”
--“Confound it! How can I be eloquent with that phantom female forever
squawking like the poor cat i’ the adage.”
Peter remarks, caring not a whit for Rose-Marie: “I’m sure that an
adage is a medieval Scotch pantry, and that the cat was stealing the
cream.”
“The ‘Cat and Adage’ wouldn’t be a bad public-house,” Stuart reflects;
“in case I shouldeverwanttobuilda--damn!” in an outburst of frenzied
and polysyllabic fury, as a little procession, consisting of Merle,
Rose-Marie, the two brothers of Rose-Marie, and Mark St. Quentin,
advance with triumphant shoutings towards the truants’ retreat.
His curses are overtopped by St. Quentin’s pæans of victory:
“I told you I’d seen them come this way. You’ve given us a rare hunt,
Miss Kyndersley.” And the eldest and most pimply of the Lester twins
shakes a playful finger:
“Bedtime, you know, Miss Peter. No good running away and hiding.”
“Good night,” Stuart turns abruptly away, not caring to form part of
the returning procession across three rooms. Nor does he express any
audible hopes of renewing an acquaintance so delightfully begun.
* * * * *
“Well?” Merle threw a world of mischievous expectancy into the
interrogation, when Peter paid her promised visit at tea-time the
following day.
Merle was lying on the couch, her back supported by many cushions,
a silken wrap thrown lightly over her feet. For Madame des Essarts
cherished the notion that constitutions of delicate birth were
necessarily also of delicate health, to attain which desirable
consummation, she kept a venerable and witty doctor in daily
attendance, and reduced Merle on the slightest provocation from the
vertical to the horizontal.
Peter tossed down her hat, and sank into a curly-legged arm-chair.
“I wish this weren’t such an impossible room,” she grumbled; “what
with gilt and tapestries and priceless china and painted ladies on the
ceiling, I can hardly hear myself speak. It’s the sort of room you
can’t take up and wrap round you. What we ought to do, Merle, is with
the aid of a ladder, a big apron, and a bottle of gum, cover the walls
ourselves in brown paper, like those brave bright Bohemian bachelor
girls in books.”
“Well?” quoth Merle again, disregarding the Bohemian girls.
“And then the supreme insult of a central heating system, when every
fibre of me yearns for firelight. How would it be to light a fire of
sticks on the carpet? Would your grandmother mind?”
“Shouldn’t think so,” murmured Merle. “It’s only Aubusson, and she’s
a reasonable woman, and you could always explain to her that you were
being the Swiss Family Robinson.”
“Or Robinson Crusoe. Why, do you suppose, are shipwrecked islanders
always called Robinson? Is it something wild and primitive that lies in
the name?”
“You know,” Merle suggested gently, “it’s not necessary to be quite so
garrulous, to convince me that you want to hear about Stuart Heron.”
Peter gave in: “Who is he?”
“A millionaire.”
“That’s a nuisance. Is he sensitive about it? No, he doesn’t give
me the impression of being sensitive about anything. He’s hard and
polished and invulnerable; Achilles without the heel.”
“Three months’ treatment, and you’ll be crying aloud that he’s all heel
and no Achilles.”
Nicole entered with the tea equipage, containing much of chased
silver; and conversation was for a moment suspended.
“Mademoiselle Peter should not have risen from bed to-day,” severely.
“She must surely be fatigued after so late an evening.”
“I was one of those who left early,” Peter mendaciously assured the old
woman, of whom she stood in distinct awe.
“Nicole, you’ve forgotten the cream, and Mdlle. Peter is here. You know
her love of cream is only equalled by her hatred of cows.”
Nicole looked respectfully incredulous: “Surely not, Mademoiselle. But
if it were not for the good kind cows, what would Mademoiselle put in
her tea?”
“I _don’t_ put cows in my tea,” Peter protested unhappily. And as
Nicole, with many chucklings, withdrew, “Merle, why do you hold me up
to scorn before your staff? And I want more about Stuart--Heron, did
you say?”
“Awfully Heron. They all are. And quite indecently rich. He
has a mother, and three uncles, and a married sister, and some
cousins--pretty girls. Family existing for the worship of Stuart,
sole son of the house of Heron. And all things bright and beautiful,
all things great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Herons
have them all. I don’t know much more about them, except presents;
they’re for ever giving each other presents; costly trifles, such as a
villa on the Riviera, or a Rolls-Royce motor, or a new hothouse, or a
sackful of pink diamonds. Whenever you go there, Mrs. Heron is sure to
say: ‘Oh, let me show you the chocolate-coloured page-boy that Stuart
gave me because he scored a goal at football’; or ‘do help me think of
a present for my brother-in-law, it’s the anniversary of his wife’s
death. Last time I gave him twenty-four pairs of silk pyjamas sewn with
seed-pearls; do you suppose he would like the Only Orinoco Orchid? I
hear you can get it for five hundred guineas.’”
“Don’t be ridiculous, and pass the cake,” laughed Peter. “Besides, all
this doesn’t explain Stuart.”
“I don’t know much about Stuart; of course I was taken there as a
child, but then----” Merle’s eyes grew large and wistful, “I wasn’t a
child; I was a French doll, in beautiful, expensive clothes, and not
allowed to romp with the other children. So I suppose Stuart despised
me. In fact, he told me as much last night; that since we’ve been
grown-up he has avoided me for fear I should break. He’s only three
years down from Oxford.”
“So young? I took him for about thirty.”
“Twenty-five, I believe.”
“He mentioned Oxford--isn’t Nicole going to bring that cream?--but I
doggedly refused to take notice. ’Varsity is the one subject I will not
discuss with the initiated; I pronounce Magdalen as God meant it to
be pronounced, mix up dons with proctors, and earn for myself undying
contempt. So it’s better left alone.”
Nicole entered with the cream, and the intimation that Monsieur Heron
desired to speak with Mademoiselle des Essarts on the telephone.
“The game commences in earnest,” laughed Merle. “But I don’t want to
get up. You answer it, Peter.”
Peter, nothing loath, ran downstairs to the boudoir, and replaced
Madame des Essarts at the mouthpiece: “Hello!”
“Hello--look here,” came Stuart’s unmistakable tones from the other
end; tones veiling with the typical Oxford accent a curious eagerness
as of a dog forever worrying and shaking a bone. “Look here, how’s my
mother?”
“I’m not good at arithmetic.”
“Your grandmother has asked me three times, and I feel I ought to have
known. I said ‘quite well, thanks,’ but now I come to think of it, she
isn’t. Would it be the right thing to ring off, and ring up again to
contradict the statement.”
“It would be easier on the whole to cure your mother, and get it right
that way.”
“I say, it isn’t Merle. It’s you.”
“Yes, it’s me. Merle’s lying down.”
A pause. Then a chuckle from the other end.
“I trust you have recovered from the fatigues of the dance, Peter. I
recollect that you were among the last to go.”
She assured him politely that she was suffering from no ill-effects,
and trusted he was the same. And she passed over the use of her
Christian name.
“What are you talking about, you two girls? Irish-stew of the night
before? Have I come in yet?”
“Perhaps you don’t come in.”
“I _am_ coming in,” something very like a threat in the assurance. “I’m
in already. Well in. Merle told me about the projected Triumvirate.”
Peter sped an indignant glance towards the absent Merle, for not
informing her of this breach of faith; and a look of defiance at
Stuart, who could not see it, for daring to laugh, which he wasn’t.
“I’m afraid I had a purpose in ’phoning,” he continued; “though it
would be splendid to say I’d rung up for no reason whatever. Will you
ask Merle if she’ll come with me to a dance at the Cecil, next Tuesday
evening, and bring her little friend.”
Peter refused to rise to such a palpable throw. “Tickets?”
“I’ve got them. Four. Can you provide another male of some sort?”
“I’ll ask Merle. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
She returned to find Merle being cherished by her grandmother, so that
a careful version of the foregoing invitation needed to be given:
“Mr. Heron is making up a party, and hopes we will join him; and at the
same time benefit a charity in which he is interested.”
Madame des Essarts gave the scheme her gracious acquiescence. “He
doubtless wishes to revenge himself for last night,” she mused
approvingly; “but it is a somewhat hurried courtesy.” For there existed
nothing in which she was so punctilious as in these social accounts
of give and take; accounts which Merle insisted were as carefully
noted and balanced as any butcher’s or baker’s. So much debit, so much
credit; a nice perception of how many teas given went to cancel one
luncheon taken. So now:
“If you are to invite another gentleman, _mon enfant_, it must be Mr.
St. Quentin; you remember he motored us to Ranelagh.” Madame touched
Peter’s cheek lightly with her hand, besought her not to tire Merle or
herself with too much conversation, and rustled away, leaving in her
train a faint swish and perfume. Whereupon Peter re-edited truthfully
the duologue.
--“Merle, why did you tell him about the trio, and--and all that rot?”
“Rot?”
“He thinks so. He probably thinks it--oh, girlish!”
“He’s going to count,” said Merle. “And ... Peter----”
“What?”
“Three is a funny shape,” the younger girl admitted slowly. “I think it
might mean two and one. And I think, Peter, we shall have to settle,
you and I, to be square with each other, in the triangle.”
“What a ghastly geometrical figure: If the square ABCD standing on the
base of the triangle XYZ----”
But Merle was not laughing. “We must agree to talk things out, and
always get them clear, even if it should mean disloyalty to Stuart.
Because I believe he’s the strongest.”
Peter considered this a moment, while she emptied the cream-jug into
her cup. “Yes,” she decided at length. “But we’ll tell him that you and
I are going to keep the path unblocked between us. It will be fairer;
and save him from blundering.”
“He won’t blunder,” Merle prophesied. “And I think, too, that he’s
capable of calling a taxi.”
Peter laughed:
“I’d forgotten the taxis; of course, they were the original means of
bringing him in. But I rather wonder what he hopes to find.”