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.”
CHAPTER IV
THE SHAPE OF THREE
The shape began to assert itself already on the way to the Cecil. Merle, Peter and Stuart discovered that their three-cornered talk flashed forth with uncommon swiftness and brilliancy, as if drawing inspiration one from the other; that a spirit and being came alive that belonged not to any two of them, nor yet to any one, but could only be borne of just that conjunction of three. So that they were palpitating with eagerness to continue exploration in the kingdom which their magical number had thrown open to them, when Mark St. Quentin, symbol of a world without meanings, met them, as arranged, in the ballroom.
As far as St. Quentin was concerned, the evening proved a failure, strongly reminding him of a phase in his rather lonely childhood, when elder brothers and sisters used to glory in the flaunting of their “secrets.” Though of just what these miraculous “secrets” consisted he could never discover. Nor could he discover now what was the curious excitement that seemed to quiver in his alternate partners; and he was certainly baffled by the bewildering fashion of their talk. As well he might be; for Peter and Merle, dizzied by the constant change and interchange of male involved by quartette, occasionally allowed their separate manners to overlap, with merely amusing results when Stuart received the St. Quentin dregs, but absolutely fatal when St. Quentin was by mistake driven to cope with some startling turn of phrase that should have been Stuart’s portion.
They were being shockingly ill-bred, the three; not a doubt of it. But a hardness of heart and an oblivion of manners descends upon those who, on Tom Tiddler’s Ground, are picking up gold and silver, towards those incapable of perceiving the alluring glitter; and St. Quentin was finally reduced to concentrate his hopes upon supper, which meal he fondly anticipated might “draw them all together a bit.” Also, a man of little imagination, he ascribed the dreary void within him on contemplating the Tiddlerites, as due to hunger. So that when Stuart announced carelessly after the eighth dance: “Had about enough now, haven’t we?” he so far forgot himself as to expostulate with some fervour:
“Oh, I say. But I thought we were stopping on for supper, anyway.”
“So did I,” replied Stuart. “But my partners seem rather anxious to get home.”—Merle looked astonished, but understood that she was expected to play up to some dark sub-current of intention.
“Grandmaman did beg me not to be late,” demurely. Which happened to be true.