Nor did his nephew seek to explain the real goad which had driven him forth to pace the streets from five o’clock that April afternoon.
Baldwin set down his glass: “Good night——” he paused. Something like emotion shook his voice. “We’ve pulled through,” he said. And Stuart, knowing the other was only recalled from adding: “we Herons,” by a consideration of facts, composed his face to lines befitting the occasion, and solemnly grasped the extended hand. Baldwin’s pulling may have been of a negative order, but of his pride in firm and family, no man could remain in doubt.
Stuart fell asleep that night lulled by memory of a sweet tremulous mouth, and dark eyes, deeply tender; of a blur of eau-de-nil in a setting of pale primrose and dim grey; of cool fingers quelling to peace all the hot turbulence that tormented him; of a soft voice saying: “We can’t do without you, Stuart....”
He awoke next day to the same memory, lashing him with whips of shame. The deadly panic which had resulted from his conduct of the preceding morning, panic of clogging with moral and mental fat, his vision of worlds beyond and his capacity for play, was as nothing compared to the revolt with which he now viewed his breakdown of the evening: the brimming to the surface of weak sentiment, to find solace in a girl’s caresses. Twice—twice in twelve hours to have lost control of himself; to have taken his hand from the tiller twice; to have twice resigned stage management to an unseen power, which derided, even while it swung him from “a sense of business responsibility” to an extreme of maudlin hysteria. Stuart did not spare himself in terms of abuse. And Merle had encouraged him to make an exhibition of himself; Merle had lent a sympathetic ear to his woes; asked no questions; flooded him with rosy forgiveness. Merle had made it easy for him—easy and comfortable; dried his coat.... Stuart smouldered and chafed, seeing the incident pictured in bright colours: “A Little Mother,” and framed on the nursery wall, valued supplement to a Xmas number.
Why, in Heaven’s name, hadn’t she met him with conflict of some sort; mockery that might have braced him to action; instead of just allowing him to—slop. Verb which to Stuart expressed the apex of abomination.
A sense of justice reasserted itself. Merle was charming, no doubt of it; her response to his appeal a very idyll of fragrance and simplicity. As for his curt behaviour when the two girls had called on him in the office, well, Stuart was hardly sorry any more; save when the leprechaun recognized a glorious opportunity missed: to have proved himself able to cope with both situations in the appropriate spirit; with the light-hearted “come out to play,” in the midst of the almost unbearable tension consequent on the danger threatening the affairs of Heron and Carr.
—“Couldn’t have devised it better myself,” mused Stuart regretfully, as he gave Peter’s number to the telephone clerk.
Peter sprang out of bed, hearing the postman’s knock; and pattering barefoot downstairs, she drew from the box, Merle’s letter, in company of an oblong bill, and an envelope bearing St. Quentin’s by now familiar handwriting. Then, returning to her room, she seated herself on the edge of the bed; and, a pale-haired gleaner in the early sunshine, proceeded to examine her harvest.
The bill contained an intimation to the effect that Mr. Lazarus, tailor, was amazed that Miss Kyndersley should have ignored his repeated applications for payment, and could only suppose they had slipped her memory, as otherwise doubtless, etc.
“I call that a delicate way of putting it,” reflected Peter, with thoughts all of sunny kindness towards Mr. Lazarus. “He’s trying to spare my feelings, bless him. He shall have free tickets for dad’s next pier concert.”