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.
“But Miss Kyndersley,” St. Quentin turned with dying hopes to Peter;
“won’t you stay and have supper?”
“I’m afraid I can’t, if Merle doesn’t.” Peter, not in the mood as yet
to renounce gaiety, was inclined to be indignant with Stuart for his
ill-disguised anxiety to quit.
“A jolly little supper,” wailed the odd man out, seeing _pâté_ and
lobster slipping irrevocably through his fingers.
On the threshold of the hotel rose another slight discussion: “I’ll see
the ladies home; it’s on my way,” from Stuart.
“Oh, but----”
“It’s on my way,” firmly. And he had hailed a taxi, for which vehicles
he certainly possessed magnetic attractions, had helped in Merle and
Peter, and had given the address at Lancaster Gate, before St. Quentin
was allowed a chance to proffer services. As the latter stood beneath
the awninged steps, watching the swift departure, every line of face
and figure seemed to quiver forth in resentful unison: “A jolly little
supper....”
The car shot round the corner. Stuart let down the window and leant
out: “Drive to the Billet-doux,” he commanded curtly, giving the name
of a celebrated little French restaurant on the border-line between
fashion and Bohemia.
Peter laughed, understanding; and because his methods amused her. But
Merle gasped in some disturbance.
“Sorry,” said Stuart. “But it was essential to get rid of him, wasn’t
it? I don’t mean him personally, but any other existent fourth.”
“But he was of our party,” Merle rebuked him gravely, conscious of
being alone in her defence of good manners.
“I think not,” laughed Stuart; “merely a stage property.”
They drew up before the quaint white hostelry in Soho; set off by its
dark and murky surroundings, and proclaiming aloud its aloofness from
these, by the ostentatious guardianship of two commissionaires.
Passing through the swing doors, Merle was caught up by the tumult of
voices and ring of glass within; forgot to be prim and censorious; gave
herself over entirely to the joy of this unexpected, and--as far as
Madame des Essarts was concerned--forbidden truancy.
So they came for the first time to the Billet-doux, destined to prove
one of the permanent backgrounds to their triangular career. And the
austere and melancholy Spanish waiter who assisted them to uncloak,
did not for a moment guess how he was to be puzzled by the alternate
qualities and quantities of their future comings; merely noticed that
the party seemed in excellent spirits, and that the gentleman spent
commendably little time and breath in his selection of the supper. And
here again the girls silently approved.
Peter leant forward across the table: “There’s something to be settled
without further delay,” she announced, half in mockery, and withal
letting a tinge of earnest invade her tones. “It’s tactless to mention
it, but--you’re a millionaire, aren’t you?”
Stuart assented, very ashamed.
“We’ve agreed to forgive,” Peter went on, “on the condition that you
let us forget. No chucking about of gold purses to the populace, mark
you. As long as you never permit us to see more than two sovereigns at
a time, our three-ship shall endure. But the rest of your vast fortune,
and all your motor-cars and boot-trees, you must hide in mattresses and
banks. Is that understood?”
“Can’t you make it guineas,” he pleaded unhappily. And in consideration
of his quenched demeanour, they agreed to expand the limits by a florin.
“I suppose you had better know the worst,” he continued gloomily,
helping them to varieties of sardines that, like Diogenes, dwelt mainly
in tubs. “I’m a diamond-merchant.”
Merle burst out laughing. “Oh, Stuart, how comical! Do you wear a silk
hat?”
“_And_ a face to match. You must invade the offices one day, and see me
in the act.”
“You take it seriously, then?”
“Desperately. Notice the absorbed face of a small boy playing at
grown-ups; if he were laughing all the time, he wouldn’t be enjoying
the game.”
“But if we really do bear down upon you, will you give us a sign that
it’s all right? Because otherwise I’m terrified of the ‘business face.’”
“One sign ye shall have, and no more. After that I’ll expect you to
play also, and take proper interest in diamonds, and listen prettily to
the Khalif,--it doesn’t matter about the One-eyed Calendar.”
And here Merle demanded explanations, which were midway interrupted
by a wail of despair from Peter; she had somehow contrived to mix her
implements so that whichever way she worked it, the fish-knife would be
left for dessert. Stuart looked for enlightenment at Merle:
“Doesn’t she know? Has no one told her? Are we to pretend not to see?”
“She springs from the people,” Merle answered his aside. “The kind that
wear curl-papers and barrows. I’ll tell you all about it when we’re
alone.”
... Stuart and Merle, if only in jest; and Peter the outsider. Not for
one moment could the flexible triangle retain its form.
“Let it be clearly understood,” broke in Peter, defiantly holding out
the wrong glass, that wine might be poured into it, “that except for
the benefit of Fernand, I refuse to be: ‘and your little friend also.’”
“Who is Fernand?” from Stuart.
Merle owned to an elder brother who dwelt in Paris. “Peter and I were
once upon a time allowed to travel alone from England to the South of
France, to join Grandmaman in Nice. _En route_, I gave Peter a party
consisting of Fernand, and a first-class _wagon-lit_.”
“In juxtaposition?” murmured Stuart. Peter, for fear of Merle’s little
reserves, flashed him a glance of warning. The shape had altered
again.... Obviously it was impossible to keep intimacy of speech and
spirit moving between more than two points; the idea was to spin it so
swiftly from one to another and then on, as to give the appearance of
all three simultaneously involved.
Peter took up the narrative:
“Fernand Alfonso des Essarts, the essence of decorum and propriety, met
us at the Gare du Nord, and escorted us across Paris. He carried a big
box of chocolates for Merle, and a smaller one for her little friend
also. He conveyed to Merle the compliments of all her unknown relatives
in Paris; and she cast down her eyes, transformed to an embodiment of
the virginal _jeune fille_, convent-fresh and dewy, and conveyed to
him the compliments of all his unknown relatives in London. And they
thanked each other separately for each one. In this wise did they
continue to converse. He asked her if she were thirsty--‘And you also,
Mademoiselle, you are thirsty?’ ‘And I also, Monsieur, I am thirsty,’
sez I, likewise convent-fresh and dewy. He displayed polite interest in
her progress at the piano--‘And you also, Mademoiselle, you play the
piano?’ ‘And I also, Monsieur, I play the piano.’--I don’t, by the way,
Stuart; it’s quite all right. And Fernand surveyed his beautiful boots,
and probably thought of his beautiful grisette, neglected that evening
for the sake of these _embêtantes_ young English misses. And with an
inspiration he asked Merle if she had _mal-de-mer_ in crossing--‘And
you also, Mademoiselle, you had _mal-de-mer_ in crossing?’ ‘And I also,
Monsieur, I had _mal-de-mer_ in crossing. Very!’ The word too much did
it, and Fernand addressed me no more.”
“I hope the _wagon-lit_ proved a compensation for your temporary
effacement,” laughed Stuart.
He sat opposite them, as it were one pitted against two. And the
girls marvelled anew that aught with the looks and costume and
bearing of conventional man-about-town, eye-glass and knowledge of
the wine-list, should yet have caught the melody of their pipes, and
revealed in response his own nimble goat-legs. The proximity of the
mirror which enlarged their number to six, lent a grotesque flavour
to the scene, allowing each of the players the illusion of being at
the same time spectator; placing the table, with its shining napery
and silver, tumbled shimmer of whitebait, and dull red Burgundy in
the glasses, outside and apart from reality. Stuart, catching at one
moment the reflected eyes of his companions, toasted them silently in
phantom wine ... and it needed a curious effort, a tug of the will,
before they could recall their glances from the three puppets in
looking-glass-land, to meet, each of them, their two companions in the
flesh. The light and stir of the restaurant, the drifting brilliant
figures from one crowded room to another, the gay groups, talking,
laughing, were all, as it were, subordinated, like supers in a stage
set. So the solicitous waiter, hovering, might have been stolen from
some sinister Spanish masque of passion and hatred. From an outer
chamber, drifted wailing snatches of violin-play. The ghost of Mark St.
Quentin glided into the vacant seat to Peter’s right. “A jolly little
supper,” he murmured reproachfully....
“Three coffees, black,” Stuart ordered of the waiter; “And--green
Chartreuse, both of you? I think so; three green Chartreuses.” He
did not consult their tastes, hoping to gauge them accurately by
intuition, or else luck. He held a match to their cigarettes; and,
reverting to the topic of their journey, suggested that a _wagon-lit_
might be rather a nice domestic animal: “A tame red _wagon-lit_ with
trustful brown eyes. I wonder if my wife would let me keep one in the
back-garden, among the washing.”
Merle was overcome by a vision of the future wife of the
diamond-merchant hanging up the diamond-merchant’s pants on a
clothes-line, every Monday morning.
“Just fancy,” Stuart burst forth, “the indignity of having to ask
permission before one could keep a fox-terrier or a _wagon-lit_. I can
_not_ understand the state of mind which leads a man to marriage: the
eternal sucking of the same orange, when there are thousands for his
plucking.”
His tone was of the lightest, but Peter understood that it veiled a
warning. And she was conscious of a sudden rage that he should deem a
warning necessary.
“Prince of Orange,” she mocked him; “you probably waste your kingdom.”
But he boasted: “Not so. For I am aware of the exact instant just
before the juice is all spent and the skin will taste bitter in my
mouth. And then I cast away my orange and gather another. There are
so many in the grove that sometimes indeed I am tempted to leave one
half-sucked, to try the flavour of the next. But I don’t ... I don’t.”
Merle put in: “You are speaking symbolically.”
“I am,” smiling at her--his leprechaun smile.
“And what of the pips? do you swallow them in the process?”
“Rather than spit them, yes. I likewise suck silently, and with great
haste, greediness and appreciation.”
“I wonder,” mused Peter, into her curling smoke-wreaths, “if the orange
has any views on the subject....”
Stuart heard: “That depends on the thickness of its skin.”
“Their rejected skins shall go to make your pathway to Hell. And the
whole way ye shall slip ignominiously.”
“Rather say I shall slide gloriously.”
“And bump at the bottom?”
“There are great virtues, even in a bump at the bottom, to those who
understand the art of swift recovery.”
Peter mused on this, while remarking idly that the pale glint of
Chartreuse held much more of evil than the frank winking serpent-green
of _crême-de-menthe_.
“Are you never natural?” she queried suddenly, recalling the man to
joyous sparring, from his tender admiration of Merle’s side-face,
which, one among a thousand, really merited the higher appellation of
profile.
“No, I don’t think so. What am I, natural? or you, or anyone else?
something that sleeps and eats and walks, and never enquires. Not of
such stuff are born the Orange-Suckers, the Hairpin-Visionists.”
“Hairpin-Visionists?” chorus of attracted femininity.
He explained: “If, whatever you are doing, you are able to project
yourself into the future, and from that point look back again to the
present, you can get your outlines clear, see where each step is
leading you, obtain a sense of proportion and values on the incident.
And that mental process follows the curves of an ordinary hairpin,
starting at one of the points--then forward--and back again. D’you
see?” he traced the diagram with his fingers on the table-cloth.
“Then you always live your life backwards, from some imaginary spot
seven or eight months hence? What a grotesque looking-glass existence!”
“The Billet-doux is lowering its lights,” remarked Stuart. And called
for the bill. They had supped luxuriously, and drunken of wine that lay
cradled in straw, a white muffler about its slender neck. So that the
reckoning amounted to two pounds three and twopence. Stuart was about
to fling down three pieces of gold--when he remembered....
Here was a quandary indeed.
Leaning across to Merle, he murmured in confidential and embarrassed
tones: “I say, I’m rather short of cash; forgive the awful cheek--could
you lend me half a crown?”
Very gravely she produced the coin: “It’s quite all right; please don’t
bother about returning it.” The notion of a Heron short of cash was
truly delightful.
“Peter,” snuggling her head sleepily against the older girl’s shoulder,
when they had taken their seats in the home-bound taxi. “Peter, are we
going to like him? I believe we are.”
Peter looked at Stuart--and surprised a rather lorn and out-of-it
expression on his face. There had been unconscious cruelty, perhaps
even coquetry, in Merle’s gesture and appeal; emphasizing his position
on the opposite seat; their snug drowsy security in the fortress he was
attempting to storm from without.
“You realize that, don’t you?” said Peter, hammering upon the nail;
“that Merle and I talk to each other; really talk. And that we’ll allow
you no quarter.”
“Thank you for the danger-signal.” Stuart smiled, and ceased to
resemble the lonely millionaire of fiction. The triangle for the moment
was clearly isosceles: a short line connecting points X and Z at the
base, while Y lay infinitely remote at the apex.
“It is going to be difficult,” thought Y exultantly.
For Stuart was nauseated by the rose-path.
* * * * *
And the pride of them was like wind sweeping through the hair. Pride
of youth and good looks and active limb. Pride in their need of one
another, and their power to stand alone withal. Most of all, pride of
brain, that could leap from point to point, nor ever lose a foothold;
propound subtlety upon subtlety, each of the three eager to give the
corkscrew its final twist, till towards the seventh evolution they
would laughingly give up, and slowly unwind again. Brains that could be
adapted to any circumstances and any company; wring enjoyment from the
most unpromising material; brains that forgot not, so that reference
became a language, incomprehensible save to those who had invented the
cipher. Brains responsive, electric, in perfect working order. Pride of
brain, surely as splendid a thing as the more usual pride of body that
waits on youth.
The trio, definitely established, possessed a spirit of its own; its
actions were wilful and indeterminate, and none could know its soul
save by inspiration. It was built of cross-moods, cross-stimulations;
and it owned no leader nor follower, but changed its several parts from
moment to moment. A thing of fine complexity, the trio, that could
adjust itself to the shock of any outside problem or weariness,--in
fact, take unto and into itself these same problems and wearinesses,
and make of them part of the whole, subjugated to its domination. And
its god was the unknown, and its fear the Inevitable, and retrospect
its recreation, and in the Hairpin Vision lay its safety, and in sex
its slumbering danger.
The Spanish waiter, of a romantic disposition, took interest in the
Señor and two Señoritas who came so frequently to the Billet-doux;
and wondered when the former would begin to evince a preference. The
Spanish waiter, only human, went so far as to rejoice in the sight of
Peter and Stuart supping alone; since himself had begun to regard Merle
with a more than waiterly eye. He was both puzzled and furious, two
nights later, at the entrance of Stuart and Merle. And his bewilderment
knew no bounds, when, having at last decided the Señoritas were at
deadly enmity for their love of the capricious Señor, Peter and Merle
shattered this most plausible theory by lunching together in perfect
harmony of spirit. The Spanish waiter might stand as the first of a
collection of persons convinced of the madness of the trio: collection
of incidentals to their daily progress, such as railway-porters,
policemen, telephone operators, grocers, boatmen, parents, rustics and
Baldwin. Collection which Stuart proposed leaving to the Nation on
his death: “each individual to be labelled with date and circumstance
concurrent with his or her initiation to the belief of our complete
insanity.”
Peter found an instance: “Specimen 41: Respectable Old Gentleman. March
2nd, 1913. On accidentally catching sight of Trio solemnly smashing egg
at the end of Euston.”
“You know,” said Merle, “I don’t think he would have been so bewildered
if Stuart hadn’t explained to him that we always smash eggs at supreme
moments of our career; that we regard it as a religious ceremony; and
that our accompanying chant is taken from Scene I of Macbeth: “When
shall we three meet again?”--ending:
“Fare is fowl, and fowl is broke;
Take the white and leave for us the yolk.”
“It was an impromptu effort,” the author apologized. “And then he
didn’t see why the discovery of the End of Euston should be a supreme
moment, even in the life of a lunatic.”
Peter could best have enlightened the Respectable Old Gentleman, to
whom stations were stations, neither more nor less. Euston was her
terminus for Thatch Lane; and on the many occasions that Stuart had
accompanied her thither, they had taken to their hearts the grim
portals and endless echoing approach, the labyrinth of platform and
grey mystery of booking-hall, the infinite possibilities in its
stretching regions and sinister corners. Very much less than station,
when their whim was to treat it as a nursery of toys; and how much
more than station, when its oppressive personality foredoomed it as
a backcloth for the day when their mood should be of tragedy. Peter
and Stuart viewed Euston with respect; but regarded it nevertheless
as theirs by virtue of understanding, a kingdom into which even Merle
could not stray.
In the balancing whereof--for Stuart was careful to dole even kingdoms
and secrets with perfect equality and fairness--he and Merle were
both Insiders of society, permitting them likewise to be Truants from
society; a privilege Peter lacked, in that one cannot play truant
from a stage one has never entered. But society, rumour-fed that the
charming granddaughter of Madame des Essarts, and Heron, the fabulously
wealthy young diamond-merchant, were of late to be seen frequently in
company one of the other, society did approve of this most desirable
union; and, furthermore, did seek to forward it by a system known as
“throwing-together.” Merle and Stuart, meeting on the area-steps and by
the back-doors of society, had no desire whatsoever for propinquity of
the hall-portals and front drawing-room; so that Merle received with
polite indifference the tidings that Stuart was to be present at some
glittering function; and Stuart went so far as to refuse invitations
to dinner-parties, carefully prepared with a view to placing him at
Merle’s side during three solid hours of mastication.
Heron and des Essarts; riches and family; youth and beauty; it
was an alliance altogether too suitable, and the parties involved
felt it their bounden duty not to give it visible encouragement.
“I--will--not--have you made easy for me,” Stuart muttered in his most
clenched voice. Truants of society both, they enjoyed their truancy as
much for what they left behind, as for what they went to seek.
Peter smiled sometimes, as she reflected how little of sordid niggling
money worries, of harassing debts, of the snatching hour-to-hour
existence that went on in the Bohemian underworld, was known to those
who have a sufficiency of baths, and travel first-class as a matter of
course. Perversely enough, she hugged to herself the memory of the
few years she had spent on the border-line between respectability and
squalor; was glad they were hers alone, unshared by Merle or Stuart.
Her one-world! ... had they each a one-world, she mused, as well as
their two-world and their three-world?
She and Merle had not as yet succeeded in locating the heel of their
Achilles. Stuart was hard and ruthless, that they had agreed in their
many confabulations on the subject; quite without sympathy for weakness
or sentiment of any kind. But signs had betrayed a vulnerable spot in
him, tantalizingly indicated, vanished as soon as they attempted to
follow up the trail. Childish he certainly was at times. Childish in
the quick look he was wont to throw, angling for approbation, after the
successful performance of what they were pleased to term a “stunt.”
Childishly annoyed at any reference on their part to the kingdom as it
stood before he entered it. Childishly petulant on an occasion when
the girls took him adventuring in a part of the world unfamiliar to
him, so that initiative fell for once into their hands. Childishly
ill-mannered on another occasion, when Peter, partly in the spirit of
mischief, sought to make a quartette of trio by the introduction of
a new discovery in the male line. Then Stuart, even as he had done
previously with Mark St. Quentin, uprose mightily in his wrath, and
hurled the unoffending youth from the topmost battlements into the moat
of blackness. Whereat the girls gave their officious Prætorian clearly
to understand that with them alone lay the orders for entrance and
ejection:
“You were disgustingly rude. You were worse; you hurt his
feelings!----” A furiously indignant Merle, ivory burning to rose, eyes
storm-grey. “You hurt him,” she repeated.
“It’s not a serious wound,” thus the culprit, coolly. “You shall go and
put balm upon it, Merle. I believe you keep a balm factory for applying
relief to the endless victims of my ‘disgusting rudeness.’” He loved
to tease Merle, who was soft-hearted.
“It sounds like margarine,” she cried, in distasteful reference to the
balm. And the incident closed on a laugh.
But childishness was not weakness; nor could it account for those
moments when he seemed mutely to plead to them for something. And then
the memory would be swept away in a gale of swagger, loud crows of
self-approval,--accompanied always by a twinkle in the unwindowed eye,
that plainly betrayed amused knowledge of his own effrontery.
“Just where Stuart suffers,” remarked Peter to Merle, in a spasm of
illumination, “is that his wings of swank will always be attributed to
the uplifting effects of his money-bags, and condemned accordingly.
Whereas I’m perfectly certain that without a penny he would still
remain as magnificently and serenely confident. It’s in him, not in his
pockets. But he’ll never get a chance to prove it. And he wears himself
out in the invention of opportunities to wear himself out.”
“The qualities of a Stoic rotting in the bosom of a millionaire,”
reflected the other girl. “He’s rather a dear,” she added with sudden
inconsequence.
Peter surveyed her quizzically: “Quite sound as yet, are you? No bones
broken?”
Merle felt herself: “Heart all
right--thighs--ankles--shoulder-blades----Yes, thanks, I’m perfectly
sound and rather happy. How are you?” politely.
Thus theirs was the advantage, to be able to make of him a subject
for discussion. Stuart knew no such relief. His search for truth in
this double she-encounter had of necessity to be a solitary quest. Nor
did his previous she-encounters assist him one whit. He could rely on
Merle and Peter to be thoroughly loyal to one another, and unblushingly
disloyal towards him, which was baffling, by way of a beginning. They
showed far cleverer than the sirens who had previously essayed to
lure his boat to destruction, save when he sought to compare them
with females renownedly intellectual, when by sheer perversity, the
two would present themselves to his mental conception as capriciously
feminine, exasperating in their swift changes of mood, in their demands
upon him for the impossible, in their conscious and provoking mystery.
No space of time to analyse them individually as separate Sphinxes for
his unravelling. As yet they were still an undivided problem.
He knew they kept guarded and intact their innermost chambers of
all. Well--did he not also retain his one-world? A world in which
dwelt Stuart the metaphysician, who, stronger even than Stuart the
leprechaun, recognized with dismay an ability to slip out of the trio
and its pattern, its march-rhythm and its corkscrew wit; get glimpses
of himself as a bit of a fool; of the whole edifice they had raised,
as absurd, exaggerated; doubting whether such close comradeship with
two girls, save with the outlook and excuse of pure masculinity, did
not contain an element--yes, though he loathed the term, an element of
the fantastic? In fact, when he could add himself to the collection
that was to be left to the nation. But he limited these glimpses, as
being contrary to the rules of the game; would have denied them himself
altogether, had he not been convinced they added to the fun,--the fun
of scrambling back, aware he had been outside, a truant from truancy!
The metaphysician went in fear that the leprechaun would one day lose
his scrambling abilities; that the intellect would predominate over
the sense of worlds beyond the reach of facts. The metaphysician was
wistfully envious of the leprechaun, who continued to kick up his heels
in despite of disapproval.
There likewise dwelt in the one-world a Stuart Heron known to college
friends, such as Oliver Strachey, who remembered him as the finest
classical scholar of his year; and other men viewing him solely in the
light of a keen sportsman; a fellow good to knock about with; not much
of a talker; inclined to be a bit shattering and explosive at times,
but apologizing for these ebullitions by a great excess of heartiness
afterwards; excess indeed, for Stuart was apt to over-emphasize his
normality.
Remained Heron the diamond-merchant, who was perhaps
negligible--perhaps also not.
* * * * *
April this year had stolen some of June’s warm gold, so that devotees
of the river could for once pay homage to tender mist of green, and
mating bird-song. The trio had been afloat since early hours, before
the sun had yet drunk all the diamond dew from the cobwebs, and Peter
more than once apologized to Stuart for the continual reminders of his
trade that sparkled from every grass-blade, every opening leaf.
Their boat had pushed first into all the locks, and shot first out,
nose thrust between the slowly widening gates. They had discovered an
island above the broken glinting shoulder of a weir; and, annexing
it for their own, played Swiss Family Robinson thereon, with great
contentment, save for some slight argument concerning the parts:
“Little Franz for me,” Peter declared, “because of the rides. Whatever
wild animal they catch, be it ostrich or donkey or tortoise, Arab steed
or earwig, there’s always ‘just room for our little Franz upon its
back.’ Franz has an easy time of it. His father makes him a quiverful
of arrows, and ‘off he trots, looking like a Cupid,’ That’s me. Stuart,
you shall be the father.”
“I’ve no vocation for impromptu sermons on the goodness of Heaven in
permitting our pigs to find truffles,” retorted Stuart. “And I want to
be ‘my wilful headstrong Fritz.’ Merle shall be father--_and_ mother.”
Merle demurred. They always cast her for the “mother” parts, she
complained, simply because her hair chose to remain tidier than other
people’s. At which thrust, Peter renounced the entire game, and decided
she wanted to play at hounds-among-the-undergrowth. Her companions
looked puzzled.
“‘The Hound of the d’Urbervilles’? Sleuth-hounds? Hounds of Low?
of Ditch? Hounds of Heaven? Or just Faithful Hounds? Peter, please
specify, and I might even play at being just one tiny little puppy
bloodhound myself.”
In the end Stuart was the entire pack, and Master of the Hounds to
boot. And then they abandoned this new sport in favour of the Spanish
Armada; sailed ignited fireships down a backwater, and roused volumes
of sputtering and inarticulate wrath in the bosom of a mild man of
peace whose skiff they had almost set in flames.
Now, subdued to a more twilit mood, they lie dark against the quenched
amber and pearl of the sunset; and reviewing their April day, they
find it good. Stuart, in ostentatious proof that he needs no rest from
his Herculean labours with the pole, has allowed Peter to recline
full-length in the punt, her head upon his knees, the while she
lazily smokes a cigarette, and complains that his bones penetrate the
thickness of four cushions, and hurt the back of her neck.
“Which proves that you are a Princess by birth,” laughs Merle,
squatting, a graceful Dryad, on the adjoining bank. “You remember the
incident of the pea under the twelve mattresses?”
And now it is that Peter solemnly propounds the question, as to whether
(_a_) consciousness of swank and swagger, and (_b_) consciousness
of the irritation produced in others by swank and swagger, could or
could not be held as mitigating circumstances for aforesaid swank and
swagger?
“Mitigating circumstances? No, I think not,” thoughtfully Merle
raises a dusky purple grape to her crimson lips. The colour-scheme
thus presented might have been one of Dulac’s exotic harmonies:
blue-green shadow of the Quarry Woods behind; vivid blue jersey; bluish
lights in the dense black of her hair. “I should rather say that the
consciousness makes one accessory before the fact.”
Stuart joins in; “The form of the question might be altered to this:
does my personality justify my swank?” impishly he grins down on the
upturned face of Peter across his knees. He is very unlike a man at
these minutes; gnome, pixie or hobgoblin might claim him brother.
Peter retorts: “That’s a different thing altogether. And why limit the
problem to yourself? I was talking generally.”
“Deceive not thyself, my child. A long and careful study of the
differences between male and female intellect has finally convinced me
that the latter is incapable of generalities, of completely impersonal
discussion. Follow the wriggling rivers of her speech backwards to
their source, and you will discover the Subjective Sea. But do you
know,” with renewed earnestness; “I believe my personality _does_
justify my swank. Otherwise you wouldn’t put up with me as you do. And
if it justifies my swank, then my swank is non-existent. Swank is a
thing which proceeds from a misconception of one’s status.”
“Is his swank non-existent?” murmurs Merle to the swimming atoms in a
last slanting sunray; “Oh, I trow not.”
“‘Swagger’ is slightly different again.” Stuart is enjoying himself
immensely. “It is the outward and visible manifestation of the swank
that resides in the soul. The ‘agger’ in fact. But your question
respecting the mitigating circumstances of our consciousness thereof,
is rot, my dear Peter. Because swagger _is_ consciousness, to start
with. Shall we paddle her home, Merle?”
The haze of evening has crept up, white-footed, from the south. A Dryad
moves from the bank, seats herself beside a Faun. The rhythmic dip and
swirl of their paddles dies away into silence.
* * * * *
... And the pride of them was like wind sweeping through the hair;
pride in their ability to maintain without disaster this strangely
exhilarating friendship of one and two; flaunt it in the very face of
the Inevitable.