Читать книгу Twos and Threes - G. B. Stern - Страница 8

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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: