CHAPTER III
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.