“Do, for pity’s sake, tell me some tales of Orson Manor, for the edification of grandmaman.”
“What’s the good?” from Peter; “you know that the very first time I come to lunch, I shall put my hoof in it up to the hilt.”
Stuart repeated puzzled: “Do hoofs have hilts? do hilts have hoofs—hooves—hilts—I say, that’s not a bad pub., the ‘Hoof and Hilt.’ Shall we put it in the Room, Merle?”
“We have seven already,” she reminded him reproachfully.
... Grown-ups, grown-ups both of them! And what was the good of forcing the play? To allow love to happen, just like other grown-ups—Merle’s lip curled. Not a man or woman in the assembled crowd but had at some time of their lives succumbed to this most ordinary passion. But the trio had boasted of their difference!... Grown-ups.
Stuart began to spin a marvellous tissue of absurdities relative to their supposed stay with his sister Dorothy in Devon. The Spanish waiter came and went with dishes. In the gleaming mirror, three marionettes talked and laughed and gesticulated, faithfully mimicking the originals at their side. At the side of thegleaming mirror, three pairs of eyes watched the marionettes, and marvelled at their likeness to life. At the table and in the mirror, three ghosts were chanting a dirge for the playtime that was over. But Merle alone heard them.
... “It was such a grotesque nightmare,” Peter was saying; “I was one side of the moon, and a cow the other. And every time the cow jumped over the moon, as cows will, I jumped as well, so as always to be on the other side of the moon to the cow. I’m not partial to cows. But it was a fearful strain, watching its face, and trying to guess from the expression exactly when it intended to jump.”
“I should have thought the double motion would become mechanical at last, like the Flip-Flap. Did you know that Mrs. Trenner asked for my address before I left, that she might send me a lobster fresh from its native soil? And can you imagine my mother when it turns up? and the butler? I haven’t the remotest notion how to account for it; Orson Manor is miles from the sea, and Dorothyneversends us lobsters.”
Suddenly, from being especially flushed and talkative and brilliant, Peter dropped to a queer moodiness; mouth sullen; feet swinging rebelliously against the leg of the table. She wanted to be alone with Stuart—wanted it—wanted it. Merle’s presence filled her with an intense exasperation. She tried at first to control these sensations; the knowledge that they were shared by Stuart would have gone far towards soothing them. But Stuart betrayed nothing of his point of view that night; from the mask of his features, he might have been totally unaware of aught unusual in the atmosphere. His manner to both girls was equally charming ... a skilled juggler, he tossed his ivory balls.
“I only succeeded once in drawing a salt into conversation,” said Merle gravely; “I couldn’t understand a word of what he was talking about, except that it related mainly to whales. So I prattled intelligently in reply, of harpoons and blubber—oh, quite professional. Peter told me afterwards that he was referring to his summer holiday at Llandudno.”
... “For God’s sake, be quiet!” prayed Peter inaudibly. All these inanities—when she and Stuart might already be embarking on the perilous seas of their double adventure. Would this ghastly meal never be over? And then what lay in store? Would he contrive somehow to snatch a moment alone with her? Surely ... somehow.
Merle was also curious to see how they would rid themselves of her superfluous company. She was disliking Stuart just a little more than Peter. Her anger against the latter was mixed with a curious sympathy; if they ever came dispassionately to talk it over, she knew that each would prove perfectly familiar with the other’s exact state of mind. But Stuart’s acting, if it were indeed acting, was a shade more perfect than either of theirs.
“Have you a train to catch, Peter?” he asked nonchalantly. Her heart drummed thickly.
“Yes. The 9.40 from Euston.”
He drew out his watch: “9.10. We’ve just time for liqueurs.”
The girls drank their pale Chartreuse in silence, too tired, after the long tense day in the train, to make any further effort. Peter felt thankfully that the time of her deliverance was at hand.
“We’ll take Peter to Euston, and then I’ll see you home, Merle,” this in the porch, while they waited for the page-boy to summon a taxi.
Sharply Peter drew in her breath. What game washe playing? Merle ... fragile little fool! Surely for once she could be trusted to look after herself.
“Do you think we can’t see through that?” shouted Merle’s pride to Stuart’s courtesy. But she choked down the longing to make a scene; her good breeding, put to the test, was proving itself no mere surface quality.
At Euston, he dashed off into the labyrinth to reclaim the suit-case and take Peter’s ticket. Nine-thirty-eight by the clock over the portals.
And now all of Peter was concentrated in the one consuming longing for a moment alone with him, before the nine-forty whirled her off to Thatch Lane. She had forgotten even what she wanted from him, what she expected the coveted moment to yield her. Only knew of a frantic desire to be quit of the third voice, the third presence....
Trio?... Peter hated the Trio.
—“Come along, quick. You’ll miss your train.” He hurried them down the stairs and through the gangway—then up again—past the barrier—on to the platform—in time to see the nine-forty steam slowly away.
Peter let escape a long quivering sigh. Reprieved for a while. There was still a chance.
“When’s the next to Thatch Lane?”
“Ten-thirteen, sir. Express. Number four platform.”
They crossed to number four. And if Peter dragged behind, Merle likewise dragged. And if Peter swung ahead—there was Merle still beside her. Or so it seemed to Peter’s overwrought fancy. And after about five minutes’ aimless waiting, she could bear it no longer, but strolled off by herself, down the dark lonely platform, till it sloped away to meet a gleaming maze of rails.
Footsteps in her wake. She mastered herself sufficiently not to turn, but triumph clamoured within her.He had understood, and followed, as she intended he should. The footsteps drew level. It was Merle.
Merle had not noticed the direction Peter had taken; but discovering the accidental proximity, she tried as naturally as possible to break an awkward silence: “This was where we broke the egg, wasn’t it?”
For beyond anger and beyond pain, lurked within her an unspoken wish that Peter would not so far give herself away; fastidious recoil of girlhood from which the bloom had—not been brushed.
She received merely a look in response to her remark. Then, without speaking, they turned and walked back to Stuart, who, absorbed in a study of the ownerless motor-cars that eccentrically bestrew Euston, had apparently not noticed their absence.
Peter said: “You and Merle had better not wait. My train won’t be in for another twenty minutes.”
“Oh, very well. You’ll be all right, won’t you? I expect Merle is fagged; she’s looking awfully white. Good night. It’s been rather a successful evening, hasn’t it?”
The two girls allowed their eyes to meet in a brief flash of understanding, sympathy even. Then Peter’s hardened again to antagonism.
“Good night, Stuart. Good night, Merle.”
“Good night.”
She was alone. And Euston was in a forbidding mood; one of those vast black moods which tend to shrink the individual to the size of a thimble.
Ten—fifteen minutes. The express thundered in. Peter stepped into a vacant compartment and sat staring dully at the framed views on the wall opposite.... So it had never really happened, their fight with the wind, and the rain-blurred letter afterwards. Never really happened, or he would have made one sign to show he remembered. She dreaded the blank journey, and dreaded the blank night to follow, wondering forwhat length of time her nerves would continue to throb, throb and pant like the engine of the ten-thirteen. And now a shudder in the wheels beneath her, and the train began to move ... faster and faster....
Someone ran alongside, leapt on to the footboard, tore at the handle of the door. And:
“I told the man to drive like Hell!” said Stuart.
“Oh, Lord!” reflected Stuart the following morning; “I believe I was dramatic.”
Not alone this, but having perpetrated the abominable crime of a “dramatic moment,” he now planned no deliberate attempt to destroy it. Which was significant.
“Oh Lord!” reflected Peter the following morning; “I believe I was neurotic.”
She was now perfectly normal and serenely happy. The sky streamed sunshine, and she wanted to pick daffodils. Also her recollections of the evening before were extremely hazy, beyond a disgusted impression that she had behaved rather badly.
“What on earth could have been the matter with me?” she splashed herself with cold water, and put on her best shoes and stockings, by way of signalling her change of mood. Then came to the comfortable conclusion that perhaps Merle had noticed nothing. Why, it was the child’s birthday to-day. They would have a celebration; perhaps Stuart——
Mature consideration decided that, on the whole, trios had better be suspended for a while, since their effect upon her temperament was so demoralizing. No matter! she and Merle would foot it happily in their two-world; that was still intact. She would not give up Merle, nor yet Stuart, nor yet anybody. One-world, two-world, three-world; and the Room and playtimeand friendship and tigers and daffodils—she would keep them all. Why not?
Thus Peter in the train which took her that afternoon to Euston, and on the ’bus which bore her down Oxford Street.
... And she was very sorry she had been cross last night, and Merle must forgive her, and be radiantly happy as well. Why not? Who could fail to rejoice, when the earth was thrilling and teeming and bursting with the knowledge that she and Stuart were going to be in love. And they would go on going to be, till the fateful day of have-been. The actual state of love Peter determined to skip; it was too smug and settled; too lacking in divine discontent. Thus Peter on the doorstep of the house in Lancaster Gate. And she startled Madame des Essarts by singing the Pirate’s Chorus the whole way up the broad and decorous staircase:
“Come, sail with me ercross ther sea,Ercross ther dork Lergoon——”
“Come, sail with me ercross ther sea,Ercross ther dork Lergoon——”
She knocked at Merle’s door.
“Come in.”
“Hullo!” cried Peter in buoyant voice.
Merle, doing nothing in particular, was standing at the dressing-table, heaped high with dainty expensive presents, and notes, and telegrams; tokens whereby might be gathered that Mademoiselle des Essarts was twenty-two.
Mademoiselle des Essarts did not return her friend’s greeting.
“Hullo!” The repetition in a somewhat more subdued tone.
“Did Stuart catch the train?”
“How did you know?” Peter queried, astonished.
“I heard him tell the driver to hurry, the instant he had deposited me on my doorstep. ‘Drive like Hell!’ was his exact expression, I think.”
“Yes ... he just turned up in time;” a distinctly subdued voice now. There was something ominous about Merle’s lovely little face; and Peter was not quite so sure about keeping the two-world intact.
“I say—Merle—was I a beast yesterday?”
“Dear me, no; you were delightful.” It might have been the grandmother speaking in those tones of frozen hauteur. Then suddenly: “You’re in love with each other, aren’t you?”
Peter tossed off her hat and coat. “Don’t be—crude.”
“Crude!” the other blazed forth; “perhaps you think you weren’t crude—last night.”
“Last night was a mood; and I apologize. I’m quite normal again.”
“Naturally. He caught the train.”
“Merle,” Peter’s eyes were deep and troubled; “you mustn’t say that sort of thing. You. You said it as if you meant it; asif——”
“As if what?”
“As if you were jealous,” Peter blurted out.
“I am. Oh—not of Stuart; he doesn’t count in this, except that I dislike him for daring to interfere, after all we’ve been to each other.”
The speech seemed to awake an echo in the room. Peter was faintly conscious of just such another scene as this, though when and where she could not remember.
“Need he interfere?” she said at last, haltingly. Then: “I say, we’re not quarrelling, are we?”
Merle smiled: “Yes, I believe we are.” Then her look shadowed once more. “Do you think I’m going through again what I sat through at that horrible supper? The knowledge of being in the way; unwanted; seeing between you two that secret current of understanding, and all the while having to pretend I was unaware of it. The trio is dead—dead—dead. And it’snot I who have killed it. It’s you and Stuart. We found the most wonderful playtime that ever was—but you had to drag in love, like any other two people of opposite sex.”
Peter crossed to the window, her back to the room: “It might equally well have been Stuart and you.”
“For me, the point lies in the fact that it wasn’t.”
“You’d have acted the same. A man and two girls—what else could we expect, admitting him?”
In the dignified street below, a long line of lights sprang into a sudden curve of brilliance athwart the dusk. With one hand, Peter held aside the tapestried hangings ... and the touch brought with it great floods of memory. Echoes?—she had traced back the echoes now. This quarrel had been rehearsed. The Inevitable had recoiled with ironic effect on those who had dared mock it with burlesque.
She wondered at what point Merle would remember the pretence drama they had perpetrated of jealousy and farewell, when the question was first raised of admitting a third to their union. But Merle was blinded by a royal rage, would see nothing clearly till she had delivered herself of the pent-up storm of emotion:
“We were to have been so different; we three. Oh, how could you spoil it? I’ve seen thousands look at each other as you looked at one another last night—but where am I to find the games and the nursery again? Real children can’t play as we did ... and you and Stuart have fallen in love!” Her delicate features quivered with scorn for the two who could not keep it up; who had dropped from the kingdom of magic strange and new, to an old, old kingdom of magic; old as the hills and the seas and the oldest road.
Peter said never a word. She was afraid to speak, for fear of again treading on the heels of that former occasion. It was too absurd that they should thus berepeating themselves, in the very same setting, and neither able to laugh at it.
“And we knew.” Merle went on, in performance of just that which Peter dreaded; “if we hadn’t known beforehand—but we knew, and courted the danger; we did itourselves——”
“Don’t!” from Peter ... and she walked sharply away from that—that damnable window.
Then it struck Merle. “Oh, I see. Yes, it is rather funny.” She laughed drearily. “The scene ought to go well, considering we’ve played it before. A pity the parts are reversed. You preferred the rôle of Unwanted Woman, as giving more scope to your histrionic powers.”
“Look here,” pleaded Peter; and, hands outspread against the toilet-table behind her, she faced Merle squarely; “this sort of sparring isn’t worthy of us. For Heaven’s sake, let’s try and get a sane grip of the business.”
“In exactly that position?” murmured Merle, who had not slept as well as Peter, and was inclined to be relentless.
Desperately Peter dropped her hands; and wondered if there were one place in the whole room that she had not by farce made untenable.
“Can’t we throw him out even now?” but while she spoke, she knew it impossible.
“Pleasant companion you’d be under those circumstances,” remarked the half-bitter, half-mocking accents that sounded so strange from Merle. As if weary of conflict, she seated herself on the edge of the bed; the tapestried canopy casting a deep shadow on the pale cameo of her face.
“All over, Peter.” She held out her hand, with a gesture almost friendly. “You can’t keep the two of us, my dear, so stop thinking you can. Stuart can give you all that I give you, and his manhood into the bargain. So you’re all right. But if I did consent tostay in, I’d be aware all the while of a great chunk in your life that you were keeping hidden from me. And we’d be constantly hitting on allusions, and backing away from them, and being tactful,—and it would all be very feverish and very uncomfortable. What we’ve had has been too complete to spoil by compromise. It’s over, Peter.”
“It isn’t over,” Peter retorted fiercely. “I won’t have it over!” And she pushed hard at the Inevitable.
“Can you give up Stuart?”
“No,” softly.
“Peter, that wonderful type of friendship doesn’t exist, where the one left out rejoices at the good fortune of the other. IfIhad tumbled into Paradise with some man, could you have listened to my exuberant confidences, and been noble about them?”
And again Peter said softly, “No.”
Merle lay back among the pillows, hands clasped behind her head.... At any moment she might cry: “Pax, Peter,pax!”...
“I can’t bear to be the one who lags, for whom allowances must be made, passion suppressed. There’s nothing to be done, Peter; we’ve quarrelled, and we’re going to part for ever. Humiliating, isn’t it? I wonder just how we got here.”
“Playing at God,” muttered Peter savagely; and slung her cloak around her shoulders, rammed her hat on to her head. She felt she could not stand much more. Every bit of her was aching to throw strong arms about the slight figure lying on the elaborate brocade bedspread; hold her tight, in defiance of the ridiculous notion that anything could possibly arise between them, with which their boyish brains and sense of humour and glorious intimacy would be unable to cope.—And then arose memories of last night ... one must pay for these little primitive displays. With fatal clarity, she saw Merle’s point of view. Not for the victor to insult bygenerosity, to dictate terms of peace; according to their code, Peter, as top-dog, was powerless to make overtures; she must simply acquiesce.
“If—when ... the other thing is done with——?” she began.
“Not even then. It would never look the same....”
(Peter bit her lip, anticipating with sickening exactitude the end of the sentence.)
... “Even after mending,” finished Merle. And a spasm of anger shook the other girl from head to foot: Merle must be selecting these particular phrases on purpose!
But it was this same nightmare sense of stepping again in her own footprints, that took Peter draggingly to the door. And: “I shall want to come back and talk about it when I get to the foot of the stairs,” she said, obedient to phantom promptings.
Merle made reply: “Of course. So will I.”
The ghost of a sham farewell had completed its subtle revenge. There was no more to be said. So Peter went.
On the steps of the house at Lancaster Gate, the knowledge returned, like the flutter of banners in the sunshine, that for her the world still contained Stuart.
... Quite irrelevantly, it also struck her that she had omitted to wish Merle many happy returns of the day.
It was such a very large room. And the child left over wanted badly to cry, because her toys had all been broken, because it was her birthday, because Peter had gone. But who could possibly cry in such a very large room, that unwound itself and escaped at the corners, whenever she tried to seek comfort in tucking the walls close about her like an eiderdown quilt. She could have cried in a little room, quite easily; but this regal apartment was Second Empire—somebody important had slept here once.
Nicole knocked and entered: “It is time for Mademoiselle to dress. Is Mademoiselle completely rested?” beaming, she exhibited an elaborate bouquet, white lilac and lilies of the valley, that had just been sent by a middle-aged admirer from the Legation.
Madame des Essarts trailed in, to discuss in what costume Merle would shine to the best advantage, at the dinner-party given in her honour that evening.
“The apricot ninon? What do you think, Nicole?”
Nicole was in favour of a quaint old-rose brocade, which suited Mademoiselleà merveille. Merle was invited to take part in the discussion. She could have indicated a startling preference for a sea-faded jersey and cap ... but she said that she preferred the brocade. Her grandmother laid cool fingers, heavily beringed, upon her head.
“Mignonne, we must call ince bonDocteur Dufour again; you are slightly feverish. The excitement of your fête, is that it?”
Merle smiled. A doll had returned to its elaborate wrappings; a bon-bon was replaced in its satin casket; a jewel laid back in its nest of cotton-wool. Merle smiled: Yes, she was excited because it was her birthday. Nice things always happened on one’s birthday, was it not so? And murmuring benignly an epigram onla jeunesse, Madame departed to put herself in the hands of the coiffeur.
Merle lay back among the pillows, and watched Nicole laying out silk stockings and embroidered shoes; soft underwear; a string of pearls; a handkerchief edged in fine old lace; Nicole, drawing the curtains, fetching hot water.... “Good Heavens! that I should own a friend who owns a maid. You know it’s quite easy to pull on your stockings, once you’ve learnt the way”—How long would the memory of Peter’s mischievous remarks entangle themselves like alien threads through the dainty artificial pattern that must henceforth be woven only in dim pastels and misted silver?
“Mademoiselle is now ready for me to arrange her hair?” Ablutions performed, Merle slipped around her a silk kimono. The monogrammed tortoise-shell hair-brushes stood at hand on the panelled dressing-table; the room was deliciously warm, and fragrant with the scent of white lilac. Merle had enjoyed with all her heart this parade of luxury and ceremonial when it had stood as contrast to her secret life of adventure with Peter; their stolen days, their long tramps—oh, it had been fun, while roughing it, to remember Nicole and the waiting casket lined with pink.
But now the casket stood for all there was; the tortoise-shell toilet-service had to be taken seriously; and Merle’s eyes, looking back at her from the oval mirror, were wide and frightened with the knowledge that one could not laugh alone.
Mademoiselle des Essarts, in old-rose brocade andpearls, stands beside Madame in the Louis salon, and, with charming self-possession, helps to receive the entering guests. And now they have all arrived: well-known figures in foreign ministerial circles; courteous and urbane old gentlemen wearing decorations; brilliant and polished young gentlemen from the various embassies; the two daughters of the new Consul (invited because they were of Merle’s age); the elegant wives of numerous consuls; the white-haired Marchese di Salvador, whose rule it is never to make a remark that is not unpleasant; finally, a middle-aged member of the Legation, tall, kindly, and distinguished, his head already beflecked with grey: Jean Raoul Théodore, Comte de Cler, who so admires Mademoiselle des Essarts, and is enchanted to find that he is to lead her down to dinner.
General conversation round the table is mostly of a political nature, and carried on in foreign languages, the assembled company slipping with ease from one tongue to another. Merle’s partner considerately leaves her alone, remarking with instinctive delicacy that the charming child beside him is troubled, and not in a mood to talk. But presently le Vicomte d’Alençon turns from a spirited contest with the Marchese, to Merle on his other side, and enquires if she has received many gifts in celebration of the day which seventeen years ago was responsible for such a beautiful and talented addition to the world. His tone is sugary and indulgent, as to a petted child. She blushes and deprecates, correcting his mistake—“Twenty-two?Ma non è possibile!”—and watches him return with unmistakable relief to his argument with the Marchese.... “I agree with you,mon ami, he should never have been put in responsible office; I will see what can be done....”
Undoubtedly fascinating to insiders, this game of diplomacy. Merle would not be averse to be admitted as equal to the intricacies of wire-pulling, instead ofbeing tossed an occasional sugar-plum to keep her quiet; but she realizes that these people are justified in thrusting her outside of their world—why is she not in her own? The universe is a series of cosy cubicles, but dreary for the strays who wander beyond the drawn curtains.... She sends a swift thought to the Room, the Perfect Piratical Playroom. Will it be sub-let, now that two of its owners are grown-up? And she imagines a grave discussion with Peter and Stuart on the subject of a suitable tenant, who would be kind to the giraffe, and keep on Squeith as included in the inventory, and....
—Twinkling the pear-shaped emeralds in her ears, the wife of the new Consul asks deferentially of her hostess if her little granddaughter will be allowed to spend a week-end at their country-seat: “My two girls here are of her age, I believe; and they would be so delighted,chèreMadame.”
Madame is also delighted, and vouches enthusiastically for Merle’s delight. And the two daughters murmur their double delight, and wish Merle were not so beautiful, and continue to coquette with the young gentlemen from the embassies.
“But lately one never seescette méchante petite,” shrills the widowed sister-in-law of Madame; “she neglectsla vieille tanteshamefully.”
“Merle is so much with her special friend,” Madame explains in apology; “Peter Kyndersley—a sweet girl; they are inseparable. Even now they have but just returned from a visit to Devonshire.”
“Ah, she must indeed have enjoyed that,”—they are talkingatMerle, not to her—“And how well she is looking.”
“The fresh air,” says Madame; and turns the subject. Youth has received sufficient attention for the moment.
... Dancing before Merle’s eyes, a sudden vision ofa tea-party of nice young girls, to celebrate her last year’s natal day, and the arrival of Peter in the rôle of Inseparable Friend, bearing the present of a particularly hideous work-basket: “DearestMerle,somany happy returns of the day. Just alittleremembrance for your birthday; oh, a mere nothing, but I always say it’s thespiritand not thegiftthat matters!” A murmur of approbation here from grandmother, aunts, and visitors—and Merle, meeting the wicked twinkle in Peter’s eye, controls herself with difficulty.
—Last year.
And again: “We can’t quarrel really,” laughed Peter, “because of your grandmother. One would hear nothing but: ‘You never ask that charming Peter Kyndersley to tea,chèrie, and you were once so fond of her.’...”
Well, that will have to be gone through as well.
The table is one blaze and glitter; the light falling on the Salviati vases; wine trembling and reflecting in the long-stemmed glasses; vivid splashes of fruit and flowers; flash of epigram from one lip to another. The Marchese is in great form to-night.... “Oh,là là!” and peals oflaughter—
... Peter ... Peter....
The other two will not miss the games so intensely; they had played because it was their nature to play, as now they loved because it was their nature to love. But Merle had played for all her wasted years of Château and Convent; played for the prim little maiden with her toes turned out, who hung in a frame on the wall of the boudoir; played for all the children of all the world who had not the chance to play enough....
“But you are grown-up. Grown-ups cannot play.”
“We did! we did!”
“Are you sure? Weretheyplaying—all the time?”
Had they indeed ever played, all three of them together? Yes; Merle saw clearly now when the change had occurred; when the pendulum, vibrating equallybetween herself and Peter, had swung completely over. It was after the April night when Stuart had come to her in his trouble, and she had given him comfort.
“But he asked for it—I only gave him what he asked for.”
Just so, my dear. Just so.
—“Merle!chèrie!”
Merle starts guiltily from her absorption; becomes aware of Monsieur le Vicomte d’Alençon, as the oldest present, making a few appropriate remarks in her honour. He tugs his white imperial; bows gracefully in the direction of the so charming granddaughter of their so delightfulhostess—
And now they are all clinking and drinking to the good health and good fortune of Mademoiselle des Essarts!
“It’s Merle’s birthday,” said Peter, facing Stuart over their particular table at the Billet-doux.
“Then we’ll drink to Merle’s good health,” Stuart replied.
Glasses raised—eyes meeting steadily over the rims—meeting steadily—kindling toflame—
By the time the circular stems again touch the table-cloth, Merle is forgotten.
END OF PART I
Stuart said: “Everything’s worth dying for, or else nothing would be worth living for.”
“You mean,” Peter queried, “that dying and living are of equal unimportance?”
“Equal importance.”
They were seated side by side upon a luggage-truck, in a deserted vaulty corner on the outskirts of Euston. In front of them were ranged battalions of empty luggage-trucks, standing stiffly at attention. From far away rolled in waves the hollow reverberating echoes that are part of a great terminus. All about them, enormous stone pillars stood sentinel, their tops presumably lost in a murky infinity; but robbed of majesty by the absurd fretwork of vine-leaves that encircled their base.
The occupants of this draughty suburb were not so much waiting for a train to convey Peter to Thatch Lane, as awaiting the moment they themselves should be seized by desire for a train; when, strolling forth to investigate, they usually found the very article just about to leave the platform. Such was the never-waning influence of Stuart’s star, in which, by dint of her proximity, Peter had assumed a share, with the same ease as she would have displayed coming under another’s umbrella.
—“Of equal importance,” Stuart maintained, reverting to their argument; “if death be essential for the completion of a moment, no person ought to let their rubbishy life stand in the way. The moment’s the thing. To walk about attaching such a tremendous weight to the value of the-breath-in-my-body, and none at all to the fun which can be extracted from ignoring it, is the unbalanced attitude of all people who have no sense of form.”
Peter was straining to follow him; she could almost hear her brain creak with the effort.
“If by the hairpin vision, you glimpse an act as needing for completion the sacrifice of your life, you’d give it?”
“Every time. By way of proving the vital importance of the act. And if all were to throw themselves more recklessly into the impersonal spirit of formation, we’d be done with age and illness, with fears and frets and muddle and blind gropings. Hanging-on is the evil. I’d like to make a pool, a Greatest Common Factor, into which each man is ready at all times to chuck his life for the sake of living, snap the thread for the sake of the pattern.”
“H’m. It’s superb, but does it hold water? The gift of supremeselflessness——”
“Supreme priggishness! ’Tisn’t that. It’s to a fellow’s personal advantage to see just where he’s going, where to stop, where to snap. The vision demands certain sacrifice, of course.” Stuart chuckled. “I’m pleased with the notion of offering myself as a burnt-offering to myself,” he declared; “such a compliment!”
Peter chanted: “And they could not find an ox nor an ass, nor a signpost nor a manservant, nor diamonds nor decanters, nor pork nor porridge, worthy to be sacrificed to the supreme master of all, son of the house of Heron. Then himself uprose, and stripped him of his braces and other adornments of theflesh——”
But the metaphysician was again in the ascendant; leprechaun had but drummed an instant with shaggy heels, to make sure of not being forgotten.
“Peter, we must know when to cut, you and I. There’ll come the moment, inevitably; and if we don’t act in time, it will be done for us, and just too late.”
“When the last juice is out of the orange,” she quoted.
“And the taste of the skin is already bitter in the mouth.” He considered her steadfastly: “I wonder if you are up to it,” he mused; “it would be rather a magnificent stunt, really and truly to cheat the gods of their aftermath. Could you, Peter? You devil, I believe you could ... I’m not sure that I want you defiant enough for that.”
Thus Stuart to the conception of Peter which he had built from his own desire and from the cavalier tilt of her head. And seeing clearly his Portrait-of-a-Lady; battle-eager and brain-clear and courageous; glorying in freedom from all bondage; a lady with mockery on her lips, and sudden moods of tenderness in her soul, as of mist veiling softly a shining sword; swift in recovery after defeat; tempered at all times to fine adjustment of the spirit to circumstance and adventure; and withal a lady mysterious and unexpected, but of bodily hardihood like to a man’s; and, above everything, able to stand alone and without him;—seeing all this, and finding the portrait attractive, she had played up to it; at first for fun; then because it came as natural to do so as not; then for his sake; finally, because she could no more extricate herself.
One effort indeed she had made in the latter direction: “Stuart, has it ever struck you that you have mixed the oranges in your basket? and when you think to be employed with mine, it is your own you are busily sucking all the while.”
He laughed, not grasping the significance of what she said. “What of it?”
“Well—no wonder you approve of the flavour!”
“You’re a dentist, Peter!” he cried then, exasperated; “you bring forth the hidden molars of my mind, molars of which I myself am not even aware, and dangle them on your nasty little pincers, saying: ‘Look, this is yours!’ It’s a horrid, a most reprehensible trick.”
She abandoned the attempt at revelation; continued to respond to his conception of her: never to tell him when she was tired; never to own that she had need of him; never to let him see her afraid; never to ask his help in trouble. Herein lay the primary rules to be observed. And she had learnt from him actually to enjoy the utmost limits of strain; found exhilaration in the knowledge that after all, she was top-dog in the silent battle, since she had so successfully restrained her real nature from proclaiming to him its hidden wants and weaknesses. Top-dog—a pity that this superiority must be for ever kept secret, when one considered how he would be annoyed at the information.
Nevertheless, she doubted if her powers were capable of this final test, complete severance at the topmost summit of happiness, in avoidance of descent on the further side. This was super-girl he demanded now. Perversely, she experienced a hatred of his talk of evanescence and the separation to come; wished to hear the old foolish “for-ever-an’-ever” on his lips, the old mad belief in immortality of love, which her reason rejected so scornfully. Were they a pair of fools too clever for love? Peter questioned silently of the luggage-trucks. Beyond the fading rails, beyond the last red-eyed signal-box, a train-whistle hooted derisively.
“Stuart, if we went on without use of the shears, what do you see in store for us?”
Resting his chin on his hands, he gazed beyond the towering pillars, as if in the attempt to throw a loop around the future and pull it into his line of vision.
“Knowledge of each other, worst of all. Knowledgethat is bound to widen, and each day lick up a little more of the unknown territory, till none remains. I shall fight hard not to know you, Peter; not to anticipate your attitude, or expect your unexpectedness, or follow too confidently and without trepidation your mental twists and turns. But it’s a losing fight. And one day we shall experience a sensation of things commonplace, the tingle gone from them.”
“We won’t tell....”
“No, we won’t tell; we’ll try and whip up by artificial means. I might marry you in that mood—from a sort of desperation at having pushed beyond desire. There are no hills and no stars in the country that lies beyond desire. I think, seeing it, one of us will make a half-hearted attempt to break. But too late to glory in the break; it will merely be odious and necessary, with the past already spoiled, and the future rather bleak; a break complicated by entanglements and—oh, other people! So we shall drift together again, as a matter of habit, somewhat ashamed ofourselves——”
Peter was seeing it now: “You will begin to take me for granted, and not strain to please me. And I—I might possibly becomeexacting——”
“That phase would pass as well. We should grow older, more comfortable, wonder what the uneasiness had all been about, and the sense of loss. Impulse would slip away and topsy-turvydom and conceit”—Stuart waxed pathetic at the contemplated loss of his insufferable bumptiousness,—“and, sane together, we will wonder we could ever have been mad together. If I must age to sanity, damn it! I’ll face the process alone.”
“You won’t remember ... but I shall, on anniversaries. I hate dates, but I can’t break them of their meaning—that’s my sex coming through. Anniversaries ... when I shall have known you a year—two years—three—Stuart, I’m frightened of the years; I want to be meeting you again for the first time.”
“We haven’t come to that yet. But when we do—the world may label me a brute or you a jilt; they may expect you to cling, or me to reproach; they may talk of the steady affection which grows and subsists upon a durable basis of mutton-fat,—but when we touch top, Peter, as we two shall do simultaneously, because we are level, then it’s: ‘Thanks for what you’ve given me, and good-bye,’ proudly and cleanly. I never thought I should meet the genius of life who could do that.” And he repeated softly his tribute: “You are a genius of life, Peter....”
Then, fearful of an imposed descent from the clear heights, he gave a rapid exhibition of his own unprompted skill at banister-sliding: “Eleven times two is twenty-two!” he recited, awestruck, catching sight of figures roughly scrawled in white chalk on the pillars opposite; “eleven times three is thirty-three! O, far-reaching hand ofeducation——”
“Not so far,” laughed Peter, following him down with remarkable celerity; “eleven times eleven isnota hundred and eleven, well, not usually! and our unknown mathematician seems himself to have had doubts on the subject, for he has broken off at that juncture of reckoning.”
Stuart evoked a touching image of the Self-Improving Porter, hoping one day to be a County Councillor; and stealing away from his soulless burden of trundling, to practise his tables in stillness and solitude upon the props of Euston.
“Euston more than any other place will be a home of ghosts, after we have finally torn ourselves asunder,” remarked Peter, as they strolled through dim archways into the circular booking-hall. “You, of course, can avoid the building; but unless I contrive to alight always at Kilburn, which will be inconvenient, my raw wounds will be kept well salted.” She glanced down at the sprawling silent figures from which the woodenbenches were never free; phantom figures for ever waiting for some phantom train; never moving, never asking,—indissoluble adjuncts to the mystery of Euston. “I will not consent to have my feelings lacerated in chance fashion,” she declared; “I’m going to take you now, and solemnly lay you, as a hen lays eggs, in different portions of the building; so that in years to come I shall know exactly at what points to wince with a sudden pain. If we arrange our own exists, we will also premeditate our own agonies.”
Peter had not yet learnt to refrain from playing at God.
So thrice they sought to trespass in the gallery which, close up to the smoke-black ceiling, ringed the hall. And were twice ejected by a sympathetic stoker; and once by a policeman, who smiled not nor scowled when Stuart quoted to him art and Lucullus in argument against the law, but said simply and stolidly, “Maybe, sir, but them’s my orders,” which is the essential condition of mind for a policeman, and one to be encouraged, ranking him in excellence beside the Self-Improving Porter. And they sought for the elusive platform, from which trains are rumoured to depart on Sundays, but which on all other days lies beyond platform nine, and beyond the world, and beyond space; drifting formless platform to which the evil familiars of Euston occasionally lure a harmless passenger-train, then to chuckle at the bewildered victims of their devilry. And they found also the platform of a thousand milk-cans; and a model steamship in a glass case, reported to perform marvellous feats at the insertion of one penny, but which, clutching Stuart’s penny to its iron breast, stirred not from tranced sleep; thinking doubtless: he is a millionaire and can well spare it. And they planned to hold a Roman feast on a great scale, in the bathroom at Euston; weary sooty travellers to be lured inside and plunged forthwith into coolingfloods of water, and given stale sandwiches to eat, and a third-class ticket to Willesden, gratis with every bar of soap. Finally, they entered Euston through seven different portals, beheld it from seven different aspects, all fearsome with the clankings and throbbings of metal, and the oblique approach of red goblin eyes from the outside glooms.
And Peter said that her train was due, and that the premises were now quite sufficiently imbued with sad sweet memories hereafter as ghosts to haunt her.
“It would be rather funny if my aching heart should turn inartistic and refuse to perform.”
“Oh, if we can’t cheat Ladye Art, at our age!” he leant against the door of the carriage, and lit a cigarette; “she belongs to the first stages of consciousness. I put out my tongue at Art. A man with the artistic sense of things, would never again take you home by train to Thatch Lane, after having once done it so successfully; ‘for fear of spoiling things,’ he would say.”
The guard passed along the line of doors, his passage punctuated by heavy slams.
“But you——” she mocked.
“But I, Peter, can be artistic, and also cheat Art by being inartistic;” he placed a tentative foot upon the step, and she anticipated his evident intentions by a careless: “I don’t need you with me to-night.”
—“And then cheat myself by being re-artistic!” he ran alongside the moving train, and secured the door-handle by a deft turn of the wrist. “And I had no intention of coming with you, Peter. Good night!”
... Peter hated him. It struck her that the most poignant ghost of all, and one where she had no hand in the manufacture, would run for ever abreast of a moving train; leap on to the footboard: “I told the man to drive like Hell!”... leap from the footboard: “I had no intention of coming withyou——”
And here were the ends of Euston, where the trio hadchanted their triumphant ritual; where Peter had once taken her tiger a-walking, and Merle had followed her. Merle....
Blackness now, save for a few splashed lights among a dark huddle of roofs. Then open country.
Yes, she hated Stuart. He might have known that she did rather want him to come. Hehadknown——
Peter smiled. She was mentally framing a letter to him, of which this was the opening phrase: “If you had no intention of coming, why, oh why, did you hold in your handtwofirst-class tickets to Thatch Lane, when you returned from the booking-office?”
It was just as well, Peter decided, to keep cultivated and alert one’s powers of observation.
Alighting at the tiny station of Thatch Lane, she was immediately lapped around with a cool bath of air, refreshing as water after the dust and turmoil of a day in London. She walked quickly along the tree-lined road; each house a sleeping mystery divided from the next by a dimness of hedge and garden. Occasionally a light-pricked window; footfall of an invisible passer-by; long echoing shriek from the railway line, as the train in a rushing curve was seen cleaving the fields.
Peter halted beneath a solitary lamp-post, swung open a white gate on her left, passed up the neat gravel path of Bloemfontein, and, bringing forth her latchkey, was just about to let herself in, when she became aware of a blurred bundle, somewhat darker than the darkness, squatting on the steps.
“Hullo!”
“Hullo!” responded the bundle forlornly.
“Have you lost your way?”
“N-no, but there’s nobody to open to us.”
Peter had not looked upon the huddled form in the light of an evening caller: “I’m sorry, I thought you were a beggar—No, I don’t mean that—but it’s awfully dark, isn’t it?” with a quick attempt to retrieve her blunder. “But who are you?”
“Oh, please, I’m Chavvy!”
Came a heavy step upon the gravel. A looming figure returned from what had evidently been a tour of exploration round the back premises:
“No luck, my dear. All bolted, even the pantry window. We shall just have to wait.”
“Father!” exclaimed Peter, relieved from her equal fear of burglars or eccentric demigods, which latter she recollected were in the habit of occasionally week-ending with unsuspecting mortals.
“That you, Peter? Hooray, hooray! Can you let us into this infernal house? we’ve been knocking since half an hour,” Bertram Kyndersley sounded not a whit depressed by the occurrence.
“Aunt Esther is out. But cook had no right to leave the house alone.” Peter inserted the key, and opened to a square hall, blue-papered, with pleasant glimpses beyond of a gas-lit dining-room, its table spread with wine and fruit, with seed-cake and cress sandwiches.
“Aren’t you coming in, Chavvy?” the man spoke impatiently, of a sudden convinced that something was wrong with a universe that permitted to his daughter a latchkey, while himself was forced to nocturnal prowlings and pantry windows.
“May I—Pierrot?”
“Good God, yes!” he helped the bundle to its feet, and brought it into the hall. Peter, who from the high plaintive tones had expected to see a child, was astonished when Chavvy resolved itself into a girl some four or five years older than herself; though stunted in growth, and with dark hair scattered loosely about the shoulders. She wore an odd assortment of what looked like rags, but taken separately, proved a faded green jersey, a brown muffler, scanty red skirt, coloured stockings gaping with huge holes, shoes likewise ornamented, and a Neapolitan red fishing-cap that didn’t match the skirt.
Bertram too had a threadbare appearance, though his waist-line had considerably increased its girth of late, and his eye seemed to have melted more than was good for it. Nothing could detract, however, from acertain picturesqueness which clung about him like an aroma, and he met Peter’s mildly wondering gaze with his old jaunty smile.
“This is my wife, Peter!”—and waited to be cursed or blessed, as fortune decreed.
Chavvy took an impulsive step forward, both hands held out: “Please ... we are so tired and cold and hungry ... and—and I promise never to come between you and Pierrot!”
“Pierrot?” Peter felt that this sobriquet bestowed upon her slightly obese parent, added the last absurd touch of unreality to the situation:
Pierrot and Chavvy—the doorstep vigil—tired and cold and hungry—the prodigal and the play-actress—certainly a snowstorm was lacking, but Miss Esther on her return home might be trusted to supply this last essential.
Nevertheless, with all her artificial appeal, there was about poor little third-rate Chavvy something genuinely pathetic, though one felt instinctively that this was her favourite adjective and ought not to be encouraged; genuinely pathetic in the north-east, where she saw herself attractively pathetic in the south-west. Peter was irresistibly reminded of the touring road-companies she had known in her pre-Bloemfontein days; their jargon, their manners, and careless bonhomie. And in this spirit she bade her stepmother heartily welcome.
“Come in, both of you; cut all explanations, they don’t matter much, any old way! And help yourselves to whatever you want in the food line. I say, though, you’re shivering,—half a jiff, while I light a fire! Rather eccentric in June—Auntie’s hair will stand on end when she sees. Yes, that’s right, off with your jersey and cap, sling them anywhere ... what pretty hair you’ve got.” Peter talked very fast, concealing intense amusement at her father’s latest escapade, and uncaring that the trimly conventional dining-room wasbeing transformed as if by magic to a fair replica of cheap theatrical lodgings: Chavvy squatting on the hearthrug, her sharp white features lit by the wavering flames, the while she peeled a tangerine and carelessly littered the skin in the fender; jersey, cap and muffler tossed anyhow on the floor; firescreen (hand-painted with lilies) upset; Bertram lounging in an arm-chair, his boots half-way up the mantelpiece, and spilling wherever most convenient the ash of a particularly foul-smelling cigar; a glass of port streaming its contents across the white cloth, and dripping slowly from the table’s edge; crumbs on every plate; Peter herself astride the table, listening to irrelevant anecdotes of shoddy people whose names she did not even know, and delighting at the taint of vulgarity within her which woke so very naturally to the prevailing atmosphere.
—“By the way,” she interrupted a stirring narrative of how one Billy Devereux—such a dear boy—had been slung out of work because the leading lady—vain old beast—had bestowed his rôle and her affections upon a youth with longer eyelashes than Billy’s,—“by the way, dad, are you stopping?”
Bertram drew from his pocket a shilling, a threepenny bit and a halfpenny: