Twos and Threes

by G. B. Stern

Moreover, the Corsair had surrounded himself by a bewildering bevy of females, whom he called variously his wife, his cousin, his housekeeper, his secretary, and his manageress; but who were obviously delicious yieldings of his six-months’ piracy.

But the Ocean Hotel could produce no equally satisfactory solution to the problem of Merle, Peter, and Stuart; and the various possibilities in the way of marital, sentimental, immoral, or blood relationship, that their companionship entailed. Perceiving this, Stuart found gentle delight in preserving strict impartiality in the bestowal of his outward affections. The Spanish waiter at the Billet-doux would have known much in common with the Five Females of the Ocean Hotel. A climax was reached, when, under their assembled eyes, Peter entered the breakfast-room and handed a tobacco-pouch to her lord and master, reminding him in bell-like tones that he had left it in her room. Whereat a shudder passed from guest to guest, and a horrified voice remarked with more virtue than grammar, “Guessed it was her—I mean, one can always tell!”

Then enter Merle with a book and a box of matches and a green felt slipper: “You must have left them in my room, Stuart ...” and Stuart affected great embarrassment,—and they were all three very happy and contented.

But when the visitors at the hotel complained of people who go from table to table before meals; deliberately and in the sight of all, pouring cream from smaller vessels into one gigantic bowl, thereafter placed upon their own table; then the Five Females did so persistently harass and beset the Corsair, that he became quite melancholy, and would sit all day long in the porch, gazing seawards, without even the heart to nudge Peter in the ribs as she passed him by; a delicate attention she sorely missed. For he liked the trio, perhaps recognizing in them the germs of piracy, and was loth to give them notice to quit.

“You know, I really believe we shall be slung out before to-morrow,” laughed Stuart; “we’re not a bit popular.” They were at that moment topping for the first time the westward slope of moor. Not yet had they succeeded in finding their path to the sea. Peter had almost despaired of feeling the cool water swell and ebb about her ankles.

And then, suddenly, they saw Carn Trewoofa.

Carn Trewoofa lay tucked in a little cove, the green arm of the cliff flung protectingly around it, as who should say: “All right, dear; the nasty grim granite-land shan’t touch you then!” And the toy fishing-village believed this, and was at peace, drowsy and tumbled in the warm sunshine.

A toy fishing-village. Patched roofs; thatched roofs; roofs both patched and thatched; wild and abandoned young roofs, seemingly kept only in their places by heavy chains or great slabs of stone. Sturdy, ugly stone walls, defying the winds, that, despite protective arm, dealt sometimes roughly with toy villages. Dwellings of all shapes and sizes, impartial dwellings for lobster or fowl or human. Round windlass-tower, painted a startling white, presumably with what was left over from the coastguard stones. Wood and slate and tar. Overturned boats and baskets. Nets hung to dry; smocks dangling to dry; dogs and children spread to dry; and on a rough bench outside the lifeboat shed, a row of old salts, bearded and tough and stringy, and beyond the utmost limits of dryness, so that the sun could do to them no more.

A toy village, no doubt! The kind that one has longed to play with, ever since first meeting it in picture book. Nor did it beguile with false whispers, as had done the rest of the false land of Cornwall. For the coastguard’s path ran straight down the cliff-side to the very doors of the first fowl-house; and the rocks and pools of the Atlantic trespassed so far into the heart of the village, that it was difficult to disentangle them. A way to the sea at last.... Merle and Peter ran shouting down and on and out, the length of a baby stone lug that curved into the water, thinking in its infant delusion, that it broke the force of the waves. And there, at the very furthest end, they turned and surveyed Carn Trewoofa, spread in a glimmer of gold before them. And they remarked the multitude of boats strewn drunkenly on the cobbled slope from the shore to the first cluster of huts; remarked the fleet of boats that rocked and swung on the vivid green of the bay; green that beyond the lug deepened and glowed to shadowed ultramarine. And they received a hint that somewhere was an inn; and somewhere else the twisted fragments of an ancient wreck; and all about were seagulls, swooping and balancing and shrieking. And well-pleased with this latest and most complete piece of nursery-ware designed for their happiness, they turned their gaze outwards, there to be met by a rust-red sail passing swift as a dream over the broken white wave-crests; while a mile nearer to the horizon, a quaint clockwork lighthouse reared itself from a group of rocks, and made believe to guard the bay.

Then Merle rubbed her eyes, and turned to Peter, and asked if it were really all to be had for the price of two-and-eleven-pence-halfpenny? and might she please carry it home herself?