The drawing-room fire was the outcome of a brief skirmish which had once occurred between Peter and her aunt, when the former had carelessly announced her intention of taking Stuart up to her attic for the viewing of some book.
“My dear, with your bed in it!”
“Oh, I’ll lead him very carefully past the bed,” laughed Peter. “After all, it’s my den, as well as bedroom.”
Miss Esther stiffened: “Out of the question, Peter. Even if you placed a screen around it——” doubtfully.
Peter declared that the screen around the bed would add the same suggestion of immorality that Venus acquired by her fan.
So now Miss Esther emphasized warningly the drawing-room fire.
Stuart pushed back his chair, and sauntered from the room in Peter’s wake. He felt Chavvy’s eyes upon them, dark and wistful—“you two will be together when I shall be, oh, so alone,” the unspoken comment; and he believed Bertram to be smiling complacently upon the back of his son-in-law-to-be. And there he wronged Bertram, who muttered: “I don’t like the fellow; too damned superior!” and this in spite of the ten pounds.
Standing with his elbow on the drawing-room mantelpiece, Stuart surveyed Peter moodily; she looked content enough, content with the hideous prim room, with the fire, the cushions at her back, the approval floating up like incense from the dining-room below. And he was seeing her in contact with homely familiar things; had marked her press the bell for the maid to bring hot water; heard her answer Miss Esther’s enquiries about their walk—“Yes, thanks, very nice; where? oh, just roundabout——” Artemis linked to the trivial details of everyday; Artemis at Bloemfontein; she seemed leagues of distance away from him.
“What’s up?” queried Peter, lazily thrusting at the silence between them. She too was secretly irritated: why couldn’t he be restful, after their long wet tramp? why always that atmosphere of tautness? Merle had once said “Stuart has no firelight mood.”... For the first time since their quarrel, Peter regretted Merle; would gladly have had her there in place of Stuart, “Just to volupp,” thinking of the cottage at Carn Trewoofa, the rainfall, that last long dozing talk, broken by the entrance of the two letters....