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.