On the stone steps, they came face to face with a little shrivelled man, head cocked to one side; Arthur Heron, had they known it; rat about to rejoin the sinking ship.
Out in the push and clamour of Holborn, Merle drew a long breath, put both hands up to her hot face: “I wonder if I shall ever grow cool again,” she said, rather tremulously. And: “I suppose we’ve made rather fools of ourselves.”
“Don’t!” gasped Peter. Every time she recalled the blank look which had received her first eager speeches it was as if someone had dealt her a blow in the face. Oh, the stinging ignominy which lay in the remembrance of Merle and herself, two blushing incoherent little—idiots, intruding with froth and futility into the world of real things, solid things, things that matter, world of men. And Stuart could so easily have averted humiliation from their heads: one look, one word, to prove his recollection of the thousand intimacies that had lain between them.—“A day in the country ... I’m sorry—Sorry!” She ejaculated the word aloud in accents of such furious scorn, that Merle looked round startled. He should be sorrier still, soon! His fault, every bit; not for ejecting them, but for ever having dared invite them—to meet with that.
With a sense of rawness that cried out for solitude, Peter suddenly bade Merle good-bye:
“I’m going home. Do you mind?”
And sorrowful for the mood of April so rudely shattered, Merle shook her head and passed on.
CHAPTER VI
MERLE
Thus Merle’s evening at Lancaster Gate was doomed to be a solitary one. For Madame des Essarts had sallied forth, in diamonds and dignity, to a banquet celebrating the arrival in office of a new Greek minister. The handsome old lady, with her social talents, her knowledge of foreign languages, her dainty pointed wit, the aura of martyrdom which clung to her enforced exile from the hated Republic of France—to which she could return whenever she pleased—was of the type that had, in ruffled and beruffled days, swayed kings and unmade ministers. Perhaps the secret of her lost art lay in the fact that she never for one moment forgot she was dealing with men, nor let them forget that she regarded them as such, lords and puppets. Not for Antoinette des Essarts the cheery comradeship, the quick sexless sympathy, the contempt of cajolery and intrigue, which distinguished the generation among which she now moved. And perhaps from her had come that ultra-feminine streak in Merle that expressed itself in the girl’s attitude towards Stuart; something which held out an involuntary hand for support, yet shrank, at once disdainful and startled, from too rough-and-ready an intimacy; even though, with Peter, she might rejoice at what she deemed the whole-hearted freedom of the trio.
In her soft gown of eau-de-nil—for who, argues Madame des Essarts, who of the noblesse would appear by evening light save in silk attire and satin slipper?—she dined in lonely state; seated at one end of vast acres of dinner-table, with ever at her elbow a silent personage bearing the chef’s latest inspiration. Peter should by invitation have been keeping her company this night, and making exceeding merry over the ceremonial repast. And, it may be for the fiftieth time in the past two years, Merle des Essarts breathed devout thanks to the laughing young adventuress, who had brought her from regarding as unalterable essentials eau-de-nil and a French chef, Watteau and ambassadors, all the incidentals of Merle’s quaintly formal setting, to the point of view that these were mere delightful ingredients in an ever-changing game of play; one costume, vastly becoming indeed, among a million in masquerade.