BY THE SAME AUTHOR
PANTOMIME
SEE-SAW
TWOS AND THREES
BY
G. B. STERN
London
NISBET & CO. LTD.
22 BERNERS STREET, W.
_First Published in 1916_
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER PAGE
I. “--TO BONDAGE OF GREAT DEEDS” 1
II. A CHOICE OF HEROES 15
III. PLAYING AT GOD 29
IV. THE SHAPE OF THREE 47
V. DIAMONDS ARE TRUMPS 67
VI. MERLE 75
VII. PETER 84
VIII. STUART GOES A-STUNTING 93
IX. A PERFECT PIRATICAL PLAYROOM 104
X. CARN TREWOOFA 113
XI. TWO--AND ONE OVER 129
XII. THE CASKET LINED WITH PINK 147
PART II
I. HAIRPIN VISION 153
II. A PRODIGAL FATHER 162
III. “WE TRAVEL LIGHT” 173
IV. WILD DUCK 192
V. THE WORLD WASHED CLEAN 206
VI. THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE ORANGE 219
VII. FORTUNATUS 229
PART III
I. “FOR HE HAD GREAT POSSESSIONS” 237
II. FOLLOW-MY-LEADER! 247
III. “RUN ON BOHEMIAN LINES!” 271
IV. IL TROVATORE 289
V. WORSHIPPERS ALL 313
VI. “TO TEST HER LOVE” 327
VII. JOHNSONESE 348
VIII. THE DISCIPLE 363
IX. THE MASTER 378
TWOS AND THREES
PART I
CHAPTER I
“--TO BONDAGE OF GREAT DEEDS”
“That’s a dangerous fellow, Stuart,” remarked Baldwin Carr, who had
unperceived entered the library, and, over his nephew’s shoulder, read
the title: “Thus Spake Zarathustra.”
Stuart Heron laid down the ponderous volume of Nietzsche, and smiled up
lazily at his juvenile uncle-by-marriage: “Oh, we’re a depraved family!
Not half an hour ago I caught Babs behind the drawing-room screen,
reading Ella Wheeler Wilcox.”
Baldwin looked startled. “Isn’t that all right? I myself gave it to the
child; the complete edition, bound in white vellum.”
“We’ll send old Nietzsche to be bound in white vellum, and rob him of
his sting.”
“And this man is just as bad”; Baldwin ignored his nephew’s flippancy,
and discontentedly flicked over the pages of Bernard Shaw’s “Getting
Married,” which he had picked up from the floor beside the arm-chair.
“They’re both mad, stark staring mad, master and disciple.”
“‘Enter Nietzsche mad in white satin, Bernard Shaw mad in white
linen!’” misquoted Stuart; “yes, we must decidedly send them to the
binder’s.”
Baldwin Carr had come that evening to Carlton House Terrace, to discuss
a business problem with Stuart, who for three years had been a partner
in the firm of Heron, Heron & Carr, Diamond Merchants. But, worried
by the young man’s pernicious choice of literature, he determined to
let diamonds stand over for the moment, and, instead, make an attempt
to “talk Stuart out of Nietzsche.” In view of which intention, it
was a pity that Babs had torn from her confession album the page on
which Stuart had made shameful reply to the query: “Your Favourite
Occupation?” with: “Pulling the leg of my youngest uncle.” A glimpse
at this might have disillusioned Baldwin of his belief that, near to
Stuart in years, he was also near in understanding.
“You see, my boy,” he began now, “these clever chaps, these would-be
philosophers, they put ideas into your head.”
“Yes,” replied Stuart gently, “I think that is what they’re after, the
rogues!”
“Well, but philosophy is all very well if you don’t take it seriously;
just mug it up for Greats at Oxford, and so forth. But you seem
inclined--you mustn’t be offended, Stuart; we’re talking as man to man,
you know,--you seem inclined to apply it to everyday existence.”
“Quite.” Stuart offered the other a cigarette, and lit one himself; “I
can’t conceive of a greater insult to philosophy than to accept its
logic, and refuse its practical utility.”
“But, my dear lad, you surely wouldn’t dream of setting up Nietzsche,
of all people, as a standard for your actions. Why, if a nation did
that, we’d have the world in pieces.”
“I differ slightly from Nietzsche,” quoth Stuart Heron; “he advocates
the ruthlessness of the Overman towards the mob; I agree with the
Overman theory, but I consider that his supremest ruthlessness ought to
be directed towards himself. Nietzsche misses the value of asceticism.”
Baldwin said after a pause: “You’ll get yourself, or other people, into
a fine mess before you’ve done with all this. Why, wasn’t it something
of the kind that you were spouting when it was a question of your
career?”
Stuart laughed:
“Yes. Something of the kind....”
His uncle paced the room uneasily; he could not forget that he had
grave responsibilities of guardianship to discharge towards this young
son of Graham Heron. Graham Heron, whose death had occurred when Stuart
was a boy of fifteen, had founded the great diamond business, on
which had been built up the family’s immense fortune; had taken into
partnership his elder and younger brothers, Derwent and Arthur, not so
brilliant as himself; later, had admitted Baldwin Carr to the firm.
Graham owned a personality which established him in general regard as
head of the family, and his only son succeeded naturally to the same
central position; more especially as Derwent’s progeny were all girls,
and Arthur elected to remain a bachelor. And when school and college
reported one brilliant success after another for Graham’s son, then
Graham’s brothers and Graham’s widow foresaw a triumphant future in
whatsoever public career the lad chose to follow up. Consideration of
money there need never be; a steady flow of good luck continued to
attend the firm of Heron and Carr; it seemed that the trio of diamond
merchants could do no wrong. Stuart, struck by the Arabian-Nights’-like
quality of their glittering trade, had nicknamed them: the Khalif,
the Vizier, and the One-eyed Calendar; the last-named, unblessed by a
sense of humour, was never clear why he should thus be linked to such
eccentricities as almanacks and defective optics; but Stuart, even in
his insolent schoolboy days, went idolized and uncensured.
* * * * *
When he finally came down from Oxford, three years previously, it was
to find his future stretching before his feet, a veritable slope of
roses. He had been reading for the Bar, and Mrs. Heron already visioned
him as the Lord Chief Justice.
“But I’m going to chuck the law,” said Stuart.
His Uncle Derwent reminded him that strings had already been pulled,
enabling him to devil for Sir Blair Tomlinson, foremost barrister of
the day; and that a more promising start could be assured to no man.
“Quite so,” Stuart agreed. And: “I’m going to chuck the law.”
The next few weeks proved but repetitions of this incident, under
various guises. Stuart had but to mention a profession--army, navy,
political, diplomatic; and Uncle Derwent or Uncle Arthur or Uncle
Baldwin was able speedily to procure such influence in that particular
quarter, as to ensure their nephew a clear path to the very summit of
ambition. And Uncle Derwent or Uncle Arthur or Uncle Baldwin had but
to mention such influence procured, and Stuart speedily abandoned all
idea of that particular career. The climax was reached when, by way of
a test, the young man averred longings for stage laurels; and Uncle
Baldwin, two evenings later, strolled into the billiard-room in Carlton
House Terrace, with the triumphant tidings that London’s leading
actor-manager, Sir Michael Forrest--“I used to know him very well”--had
avowed himself delighted to give Mr. Stuart Heron a part in the next
big autumn production, and the under-study of juvenile lead.
“I told him what they said about your Greek performance in the
O.U.D.S.,” finished Baldwin Carr.
“Exactly.” Stuart paused in the act of pocketing off the red. “And if
I wanted to be a sandwich-man, you, or one of you, would get me an
introduction to the very person who owned the identical pitch I had set
my heart on perambulating.” Changing his tactics, he pocketed the red,
viciously.
“Well, but----” Uncle Baldwin liked to be literal, “what’s that
got to do with it? You don’t want to be a sandwich-man, do you?”
apprehensively.
“As much as anything else. Why not? It’s fatal to specialize.”
Derwent Heron laid his cue in the rack. “What’s amiss, my boy? Let us
probe to the root of the matter, since we happen to be assembled in
full force. Babs, my dear,” to his flapper daughter, marking for the
players, “run away to your Aunt Elizabeth.”
Reluctantly Barbara obeyed, flinging Stuart a look of worship as she
passed: “Lord, I am here an thou wantest me!” Youngest of a quartette,
her sisters had carefully bred her in the Heron traditions.
He caught at her long russet plait: “Between ourselves, Babs,” in a
whisper; “how much unearned increment have you been placing to my
account?”
She flushed crimson: “Oh, Stuart, it isn’t cheating, is it? when it’s
not for oneself.”
“I’ll consider the plea. How much?”
“Only ... seven.”
He laughed and released her. Then, strolling to the board, slid back
his disc the requisite number. “Even in this,” he muttered.
“Out with it, Stuart,” from Uncle Arthur, erect on the hearthrug.
Arthur Heron, junior to the late Graham Heron, remained something of
an enigma to the world at large, inasmuch as he very rarely spoke, but
preferred to stand with his back to fireplaces; his head a little on
one side, after the fashion of a benign canary; a huge cigar cocked
from the left-hand corner of his mouth. When he occasionally did give
vent to speech, his voice crackled thinly, like charred paper raked
from the grate, so that strangers unfairly suspected him of laughing at
them. In appearance he resembled a small-sized orange-pip that had lain
too long in the sun, and burnt red instead of yellow.
Derwent Heron, eldest of three brothers, was best summed up by the
adjective “elaborate.” Perhaps to that, one might add “punctilious.”
His speech was elaborate, and so was his neck-gear; and he was
punctilious in his appointments, and in his manners, and the discharge
of obligations. His tastes were certainly elaborate, particularly in
entrées. Born punctiliously, he would probably die elaborately. He
was a fine-looking old gentleman, upright, white-haired, kind-eyed;
distinctive by the small pointed imperial he elected to wear.
Remained Uncle Baldwin, who actually and in point of birth was not a
Heron at all, and therefore far more Heron than the Herons ever aspired
to be. He had, indeed, been continually obliged to remind them of their
Herondom and all it entailed, since nine years before, he had entered
the family by his marriage with Eunice, only sister of Derwent, Graham
and Arthur, and very much their junior.
Eunice had died eleven months after; thus forming so slight a link
between her husband and the Herons, that the latter family were left
vaguely wondering how they had come to be nourishing in their bosom
this well-bred personage with instincts as sleek and groomed as his own
head; in short, how he had happened!
Baldwin dwelt at Sonning; hibernated from September to May; and during
the summer months found his vocation in following up river regattas
in the umpire’s boat; whence, with the aid of field-glasses, he
adjudicated in a fashion sufficiently impartial to fill Pallas herself
with envy. He felt occasional qualms of uneasiness respecting his young
nephew’s ability to keep intact the prestige of the name. Deep down
in the heart of Baldwin may have lain buried a conviction that safer
on his head than on Stuart’s would have been poised the Heron crown;
deeper still, perhaps, the unacknowledged and pardonable longing once
and for all to kick the cub and put him in his proper place. But all of
this, Baldwin was well aware, must be loyally suppressed.
“It seems to me, Stuart,” he remarked, wounded at the reception of his
intercession with Sir Michael Forrest, “that you have some ambition of
which you haven’t told us. If you were to own up, we would naturally
give you all the assistance in our power.”
“I know you would,” Stuart interrupted, frowning heavily in the
endeavour to express his meaning. “And that’s just it. You’ve got too
much assistance in your power. I want to achieve--and you bring me the
achievement upon a golden salver. Whatever I mention, it’s the same
thing; influence, money, friends--and I’m lifted over all the rough
places and deposited on the very summit of desire. What’s left to me
after that? Khalif, what’s left?”
Derwent Heron made no reply to this direct appeal. He was looking over
the double-sliding doors, at an arresting portrait of his brother
Graham, to whom he owed everything; and who, strangely enough, had been
wont to hold forth in just such an incomprehensible fashion. Was it not
his, Derwent’s, business to do all he could for the advancement and
prosperity of Graham’s son? unheeding any freaks and phases which the
lad might have brought along from Oxford. He wished Arthur would speak.
But then, Arthur never spoke. That came from being a bachelor, Derwent
reflected unreasonably.
“Well,” suggested Baldwin, filling up the pause, “if you’re really
keen on adventure, hardship, the philosophic-tramp business which is
now the fashionable cult, there’s no harm that I can see if you roughed
it for a year or two.”
--“Dressed in a suit of rags from Clarkson’s, along Broad Highways
carefully laid with red carpet?” Stuart grinned. For a moment the
leprechaun spirit bade him give up the attempt to lay bare the twists
and turns of his mental asceticism; and instead, draw exquisite
enjoyment from Baldwin’s conception of a Walt Whitman-esque existence.
Then the metaphysician rejected this outlet as cheap and easy;
argued that there must be means whereby three grown men of moderate
intellect could be convinced of anything, if sufficient trouble be
taken. The metaphysician was always inclined to be very severe with
the leprechaun; but in this case the leprechaun had the last word,
whispering that it would be a glorious stunt if Khalif, Vizier and
One-eyed Calendar, could indeed be forced to understanding by dint of
sheer brilliant reasoning. And since Stuart was above all things a
Stuntorian, he forthwith tackled the task.
“Read Kipling, any of you?”
They had all read Kipling. That is to say, Uncle Arthur had chuckled in
secret over “Stalky and Co.”; Uncle Derwent had seen and appreciated
Forbes Robertson in the “Light that Failed,” and Uncle Baldwin
remembered, at the time of the Boer war, giving a guinea to a pretty
girl who had declaimed the “Absent-minded Beggar.”
“D’you know ‘Diego Valdez’? It’s in the ‘Five Nations.’”
“No,” from Derwent and Arthur. Baldwin, idly chalking cues for want of
better employment, said that he might recognize it if he heard it.
Without preamble or apology, Stuart abruptly flung at them the bitter
complaint of the Spanish Admiral:
“The God of fair beginnings
Hath prospered here my hand ...”
--Fair beginnings, indeed, for the son of the house of Heron. The
oak-panelled walls, the expensive full-sized billiard-table, the scent
of good cigars, the attentive faces of his three listeners, all seemed
to shout this fact aloud.
“To me my king’s much honour,
To me my people’s love----”
The folding-doors slid open, admitting Mrs. Heron and Babs. Baldwin
raised a quick hand of warning:
“Hush. Don’t make a noise. Stuart’s reciting.”
“Damn it, Baldwin!” roared his nephew; “do you take this for a board
school prize-giving?”
Softly Mrs. Heron withdrew, gliding the doors behind her, with infinite
precautions not to jar them in the contact.
Stuart went on; bent slightly forward from his careless seat on the
edge of the billiard-table; hands clasped between his knees; the
green-shaded quadrangle of strong lights just above, biting out his
features with uncompromising clarity. His tones were low and tight with
the infinity of pain that underlay the next verses: Valdez recalling
his old adventure days, when unknown, unfettered, he sailed in happy
comradeship on the South Seas:
“I dreamt to wait my pleasure
Unchanged my Spring would bide;
Wherefore, to wait my pleasure,
I put my Spring aside.
Till first in face of fortune,
And last in mazed disdain,
I made Diego Valdez
High Admiral of Spain.”
And a faint mockery twitched the young man’s lips, as if drawing some
secret analogy with the curse of good fortune following the Spaniard’s
every movement.
“Then walked no wind ’neath Heaven
Nor surge that did not aid----”
Baldwin flicked a fine powder of chalk from his coat-sleeve, and fixed
Stuart with the super-concentrated glare of one whose attention has
wandered. It was difficult to tell what was the effect of the poem on
the other two men, standing with faces in deepest shadow, well above
the zone of illumination.
“They wrought a deeper treason,
Led seas that served my needs;
They sold Diego Valdez
To bondage of great deeds.”
By a curious power he possessed of projection into the future, Stuart
was able to glimpse himself, victim of a self-made great career,
striving passionately to escape its easeful heaviness; regain the
careless freedom, the stimulating longings of non-achievement. And
he saw, too, with unerring clarity, how, step by step, he, even he,
another Diego Valdez, might be spurred by inspiring eloquence, noble
example, to such inevitable bondage.
“His will can loose ten thousand,
To seek their loves again--
But not Diego Valdez
High Admiral of Spain!”
Baldwin thought, relieved, that the ensuing pause marked the signal for
opinions to be delivered:
“I must say, I don’t see that the fellow, Diego What’s-his-name, had
much to grumble at.”
Stuart looked towards Derwent, who said, rather elaborately:
“It seems to me, my dear boy, that I detect an inconsistency, if I
may be permitted to make the remark. With one breath you assure us
that you desire to fight your battles without assistance to detract
from the joy of victory; while in the verses you so--er--ah, yes, so
effectively repeated, I take it that you were voicing a distaste for
the responsibilities of high office consequent on victory?”
“It does sound as if there were a flaw,” Stuart admitted, overjoyed at
having evoked a point sufficiently strong to put him on the defensive:
“You might reconcile it this way, Khalif: I want to do; I don’t want to
become.”
Derwent enquired: “Then what are your plans? It strikes me as somewhat
preposterous that you should be let work out your destiny from the very
bottom of the ladder, like so many millions who have no alternative.”
“It wouldn’t do, either.” Stuart sprang from the table; and hands
plunged deep in his pockets, head bent, paced moodily the length of
the room. “Without the actual necessity, that would simply label me
as a freak: the eccentric young millionaire who elects to work with
the masses. However far I wrenched myself from your powerful wealth
and influence, the mere fact of it would still prevent my struggles
from being genuine. They’d be theatrical, neither more nor less. I’m
damnably placed, Khalif,--and I want to be a Commissioner of Oaths!”
This last for Baldwin’s benefit, remarking with concern that his
youngest uncle’s immaculately trousered leg had remained for a full
twenty minutes unpulled.
“A--what?” Baldwin responded instantly. “Really, Stuart!”
“I’ve never been told the exact duties of a Commissioner of Oaths, but
the title is alluring in its possibilities, in the red robust rakish
twang of it. Think of being forever surrounded by an atmosphere of
oaths; thundering oaths, villainous oaths, subtle sanguinary oaths,”
Stuart raised eyes of sky-exalted innocence to meet Baldwin’s uneasy
glare. “Hellish oaths,” he finished, gently as a child.
“Really, Stuart----” Mr. Carr had much to do to remember his
allegiance. And Derwent Heron, noting signs of disturbance, hastily
broke in with the subject of his meditations, before it was as ripe as
he could have wished it.
“If you will permit me,” without which preamble he rarely opened
speech, “I have a suggestion to offer; one which I never before
submitted to you, my boy, as I assumed you were set on gaining laurels
in some profession. Your many triumphs at Oxford accounting for this
mistake on my part. Since it is not to be, how do you view the idea
of a partnership in the business?” Impressive pause. And then the old
man resumed in faintly ironic voice: “It would give you plenty to
do, nothing to become,--unless it be Lord Mayor of London. And that
evil can be circumvented with a little discretion and a sufficient
stinginess on charity lists.”
A flicker of surprised amusement in Stuart’s eyes. “A diamond
merchant,” he murmured, ... “why not? Khalif, Vizier and One-eyed
Calendar--and now behold Camaralzaman! A bit fantastic, that’s all
there is against it.”
Derwent heard. “If I may venture to prognosticate, you won’t find much
that is fantastic about the offices in Holborn. However, you needn’t
decide all at once; think the matter over. I need hardly say,” with a
glance that gathered in his partners, “that your father’s son will be
more than welcome; though I, for one, am disappointed, yes, certainly
disappointed, that you have renounced burdens of a more glorious
nature.”
“After all,” quoth Baldwin, “if we all shirked responsibility in that
fashion, where would the world be?”
To which Arthur Heron, speaking for the first time: “To every Admiral
his Spain. Baldwin’s thinking of the regatta season.”
“Uncle Arthur,” Stuart cried exuberantly, “your scalp at least is mine,
to nail at my belt!” with which expression of gratitude to the sole
convert of his evening’s eloquence, he crashed asunder the doors, and
made an effective exit.
* * * * *
Baldwin was thinking of this scene, in the silence following his
vain effort to turn Stuart from a discipleship of Nietzsche. From
recognition of the fact that, in spite of philosophy, his nephew
had not, after all, made such a bad diamond merchant, he suddenly
remembered the object of his visit that evening:
“Look here, Stuart, what do you think of this Antoine Gobert business?”
“I think Antoine Gobert is a clever fraud.”
“Sir Fergus Macpherson seems inclined to believe there may be something
in it.”
“What--that this fellow can actually manufacture diamonds
indistinguishable from the real stone?”
“He thinks there may be something in it.”
“A Scotchman has no right to believe in miracles,” said Stuart
carelessly; but a hard line had crept between his eyes; he had been
buying stock heavily of late; and if this upstart foreigner should
prove after all to be genuine in his avowals--
“Derwent spoke to Grey, and to Rupert Rosenstein. There seems to be an
idea of paying Gobert a lump sum to keep him quiet, and then finance
his experiments.”
“Experiments! I tell you, Baldwin, the man’s a swindler.”
“Swindler or not, there’ll be a big drop in the market if rumours get
about.”
“We can hold on.”
Baldwin Carr looked doubtful, as he rose to go:
“I’m dining with Derwent, and I’ll tell him what you say, but....”
Stuart accompanied him downstairs. The dinner-gong was drowning the
house in sound, and the postman had just thundered at the door. The
butler stepped forward with a letter on a salver. When Baldwin had
gone, Stuart slit the envelope, and drew forth a dance invitation:
“‘Madame Marcel des Essarts’--Mother, who’s Madame Marcel des Essarts?”
as Mrs. Heron, on the arm of her brother-in-law, Arthur Heron, came out
of the drawing-room.
“Oh, don’t you remember, Stuart? She used to visit me quite often when
you were a schoolboy; a white-haired aristocratic old lady. And once or
twice she brought her little granddaughter; such a pretty child, and so
beautifully dressed, like a French doll, black hair and red lips and a
waxen face----”
“And she wasn’t allowed to play with the tortoise for fear it should
get ferocious and spring at her! Yes, I remember. She’s evidently
sufficiently grown-up for the ball-room now.”
“Merle des Essarts must be about twenty,” remarked Mrs. Heron, helping
herself to olives; “she has been abroad a great deal, I believe. If she
is half as lovely as she promised to be, she ought to make a brilliant
match.”
Stuart smiled.
“What do you think of our wizard in diamonds, Arthur?”