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Title: The Tower of Oblivion
Author: Oliver Onions
Release Date: December 19, 2010 [EBook #34703]
Language: English
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THE TOWER OF OBLIVION
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
The Tower of Oblivion
BY
OLIVER ONIONS
AUTHOR OF
"A CASE IN CAMERA," ETC.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1921
_All rights reserved_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
COPYRIGHT, 1921,
BY
OLIVER ONIONS
Set up and printed. Published November, 1921.
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.
To
NIGEL PLAYFAIR
and the Ladies and Gentlemen of
"THE BEGGAR'S OPERA COMPANY"
(Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, June 5th, 1920)
who were so constantly his
"pleasure and soft repose"
while the following pages were
writing, this book is dedicated
by
their friend and well-wisher
THE AUTHOR
Kensington 1921
Contents
England
Page
THE SIDE-SLIP 1
THE STERN CHASE 57
THE STRAPHANGER 91
THE DOUBLE CROSS 129
THE PIVOT 181
FRANCE
THE LONG SPLICE 207
THE EVEN KEEL 261
THE CUT-OUT 327
THE DESERT ISLAND 371
THE HOME STRETCH 407
ENGLAND
PART I
THE SIDESTEP
THE TOWER OF OBLIVION
I
I think it is Edgar Allan Poe who says that while a plain thing may on
occasion be told with a certain amount of elaboration of style, one that
is unusual in its very nature is best related in the simplest terms
possible. I shall adopt the second of these methods in telling this
story of my friend, Derwent Rose. And I will begin straight away with
that afternoon of the spring of last year when, with my own eyes, I
first saw, or fancied I saw, the beginning of the change in him.
The Lyonnesse Club meets in an electric-lighted basement-suite a little
way off the Strand, and as I descended the stairs I saw him in the
narrow passage. He was standing almost immediately under an incandescent
lamp that projected on its curved petiole from the wall. The light shone
brilliantly on his hair, where hardly a hint of grey or trace of
thinness yet showed, and his handsome brow and straight nose were in
full illumination and the rest of his face in sharp shadow. He wore a
dark blue suit with an exquisitely pinned soft white silk collar, to
which, as I watched, his fingers moved once; and he was examining with
deep attention a print that hung on the buff-washed wall.
I spoke behind him. "Hello, Derry! One doesn't often see your face
here."
Quietly as I spoke, he started. Ordinarily he had very straight and
steady grey-blue eyes, alert and receptive, but for some seconds they
looked from me to the print and from the print to me, irresolutely and
with equally divided attention. One would almost have thought that he
had heard his name called from a great distance. Then his eyes settled
finally on the print, and he repeated my last words over his shoulder.
"My face? Here?... No."
"What's the picture? Anything special?"
Still without moving his eyes from it he replied, "The picture? You
ought to know more about it than I--it's your Club, not mine----"
And he continued his absorbed scrutiny.
Now I had passed that picture scores of times before and had never found
it worth a glance. It was a common collotype reproduction of a stodgy
night-effect, a full moon in a black-leaded sky with reflections in
water to match--price perhaps five shillings. Then suddenly, looking
over his shoulder, I realised where his interest in it lay. He was not
looking at the picture at all. In the polished glass, that made an
excellent mirror in that concentrated light, I had seen his eyes
earnestly fixed on his own eyes, his cheeks, his hair, his chin....
Well, Derwent Rose had better reason than most men for looking at
himself in a picture-glass if he chose. Indeed it had already struck me
that that afternoon he looked even more than ordinarily fresh and
handsome. Let me, before we go any further, describe his personal
appearance to you.
He had, as I knew, passed his forty-fifth birthday in the preceding
January; but he would have been taken anywhere for at least ten
years younger. You will believe this when I tell you that at the
age of thirty-nine, that is to say in the year 1914, he had walked
into a recruiting-office, had given his age as twenty-eight,
received the compliments of the R.A.M.C. major who had examined him,
had joined an infantry battalion as a private, risen to the rank of
company-sergeant-major, and had hardly looked a day older when he had
come out again, with a herring-bone of chevrons on his cuff and a
captain's stars on his shoulder--not so much as scratched. He was just
over six feet high, with the shoulders of a paviour and the heart and
lung capacity of a diver. Had you not been told that he wrote novels
you would have thought that he ran a ranch. His frame was a perfectly
balanced combination of springiness and dead-lift power of muscle; and
to see those grey-blue eyes that looked into yours out of unwrinkled
lids was to wonder what secret he possessed that the cares and rubs and
disillusions of life should so have passed him by.
Yet he had had his share of these, and more. His looks might be smooth,
but wrinkles enough lay behind his writing. From those boyish eyes that
reminded you of a handler of boats or a breaker of horses there still
peeped out from time to time the qualities of his earlier, uneasy
books--the gay and mortal and inhuman irony of _The Vicarage of Bray_,
the vehement, unchecked passion of _An Ape in Hell_. If to the ordinary
bookstall-gazer these works were unknown--well, that was part of the
task that Derwent Rose had set himself. It is part of the task any
writer sets himself who refuses all standards but his own, and works on
the assumption that he is going to live for ever. Only his last
published book, _The Hands of Esau_, showed a fundamental urbanity, a
mellower restraint, and perhaps these were the securer the more hardly
they had been come by. I for one expected that his next book would rise
like a star above the vapours where we others let off our little
six-shilling crackers ... but his body seemed a mere flouting of the
years.
And here he stood under the corolla of an incandescent lamp, looking at
himself for wrinkles!
Then in the glass he caught my eye, and flushed a little to have been
caught attitudinising. He gave a covert glance round to see whether
anybody else had observed him. A few yards away, in the doorway, Madge
Aird was smilingly receiving the Club's guests, but for the moment Madge
was looking the other way. Then he spoke in a muffled voice.
"Well? Notice anything? How do I look? How do I strike you? No, I don't
want a compliment. I'm asking you a question. How do I look? I've a
special reason for wanting to know."
I laughed a little, not without envy.
"How do you look!" I said. "Another ten years will be time enough for
you to begin to worry about your looks, Derry. I know your age, of
course, but for all practical purposes you may consider yourself
thirty-five, my young friend."
Sadly, sadly now I remember the eagerness of his turn.
"How much?" he demanded.
"I said thirty-five or thereabouts, you Darling of the Gods. I'm fifty,
but you make me look sixty, and when you're a hundred your picture will
be in the papers with the O.M. round your neck. You'll probably have
picked up the Nobel Prize too, and a few other trifles on the way.
You've got a physique to match your brain, lucky fellow that you are,
and nothing but accident can stop you. Don't go out and get run over,
that's all. Well, are you coming in?"
But he hung back. And yet it was largely his own fault if in such places
as this Club he felt like a fish out of water. It might even have been
called a perverse and not very amiable vanity in him, and I had hoped he
had got over this shyness, arrogance, or both. We have to live in a
world, even if we are as gifted mentally and physically as was Derwent
Rose. But it was no good pressing him. I remembered him of old.
"Then if you're not coming in?" I ventured to hint; and again his hand
went to the soft collar.
"What have I come for, you mean? I want you to find out for me if
there's a Mrs Bassett here."
"I don't think I know her."
"Mrs Hugo Bassett. Ask somebody, will you?"
"What's she like to look at?"
"Can't say. Haven't seen her for years."
"Wait a bit. Is it somebody called Daphne Bassett?"
"Yes, yes--Daphne," he said quickly.
"Who published what's called a 'first novel' some little time ago?"
Instantly I saw that I had said something he didn't like. The blood
stirred in his cheeks. He spoke roughly, impolitely. And even up to
this point his manner had been curt enough.
"Why do you say it like that?" he demanded. "'First' novel, with a
sneer? She wrote a novel, if that's what you mean."
Yet, though he began by glaring at me, he ended by looking uneasily
away. You too may have wondered why publishers so eagerly insist that
some novel or other is a really-and-truly 'first' one. Your bootmaker
doesn't boast that the pair of boots he sells you is his 'first' pair,
and you wouldn't eat your cook's 'first' dinner if you could help it.
You may take it from me that in the ordinary course of things Derwent
Rose would have been far more likely to applaud the novel that ended an
ignominious career than the one that began it. Yet here he was,
apparently wishing to outface me about something or other, yet at the
same time unable to look me in the eye.
"There's got to be a first before there can be a second, hasn't there?"
he growled. "Jessica had to have a First Prayer, didn't she? And is
there such a devil of a lot of difference between one novel and another
when you come to think of it--yours or mine or anybody else's?"
It was at this point that I began to watch him attentively.
"Go on, Derry," I said.
"There isn't; you know there isn't; and I'm getting sick of this
superior attitude. Why must everybody do the Big Bow Wow all the time?
Can't somebody write something just for amuse--I mean must they always
be banging the George Coverham Big Drum? As long as it doesn't make any
pretence.... Have you read it?" he demanded suddenly.
"No."
"Then you don't know anything about it."
It was here that I became conscious of what I have called the Change.
Whatever had happened to put him out, this was not the Derry Rose I had
lately seen. Surely my remark about that "first" novel had been innocent
enough; but he had replied surlily, unamiably, unfamiliarly....
"Unfamiliar?" No, that is not the word. I should rather say remotely
familiar, recollected, brought forward again out of some time that was
past. Just as in his resplendent physical appearance he seemed to be
"too" well, if such a thing can be, so in his manner he seemed to be
too ... something; I gave it up. I only knew that the author of _The
Hands of Esau_ would not have spoken thus.
"Well, will you find out for me if she's here?" he said in a softer one.
I fancy that already he was sorry he had not spoken more quietly.
"Why not come in and see for yourself?"
"Oh--you know how I hate this sort of thing."
"Not long ago you spoke of joining the Lyonnesse."
"I know. I thought I would. But I've decided it's out of my line."
"Then at least come and be introduced to Mrs Aird. She'll know whether
Mrs Bassett's here or not."
The blue-grey eyes gave mine a quick and critical glance.
"Is that the Mrs Aird who writes those bright books about young women
and their new clothes and how right their instincts are if you only give
them plenty of pocket-money and leave 'em alone?"
I smiled. Perhaps it was a little like Madge. But I noticed his sharp
distinction between the novels of one woman and the "first" novel of
another. It began to look as if behind Mrs Hugo Bassett the novelist lay
Daphne Bassett the woman.
"Well," I sighed, "I'm to ask for Mrs Hugo Bassett. What's the title of
her book?"
"_The Parthian Arrow._"
"Mrs Hugo Bassett, author of _The Parthian Arrow_. Very well----"
I approached Madge, but before I could ask my question she had drawn me
inside the doorway.
"_Who_ is he?" she whispered ardently in my ear. Her plump ringed hand
clutched my sleeve, and there was the liveliest curiosity in the dark
eyes that looked up at me from under her nodding hat with black
_pleureuse_ feathers.
"Is there a Mrs Bassett here--Daphne Bassett?"
"No. But----"
"Has she been, and is she likely to come?"
"She hasn't been, and nobody'll come now. But George----"
"I'll see you presently; just let me get rid of my message," I said; and
I returned to Rose.
A glance at my face was enough for him. He may have muttered a
"Thank-you," but I didn't hear it; he had spun on his heel and in a
moment was half-way to the cloakroom. I hope he got his own hat, for he
was out again almost instantly. I had a glimpse of his magnificent back
as he hurried along the passage, then a flying heel at the turn of the
stairs and he was gone. Turning, I saw that Madge had watched his
departure with me. She almost ran to me.
"Quickly, George--who, _who_ is your Beautiful Bear, and why have you
been keeping a superb creature like that from me?" she demanded. "I knew
he was waiting for a woman. Every skirt that came in----" at the swing
of her head the feathers tossed like an inky weeping-elm in a gale.
"But," she added, "I confess I never saw a man admire himself _quite_ so
openly before."
My friend has scored off me often enough in the past. This time I scored
off her.
"Derwent Rose always was good-looking," I remarked.
She fell a step back.
"George!--_Derwent Rose!_ You don't mean to say that _that_ was Derwent
Rose?"
"I always thought you knew everybody in London."
"_That_ was Derwent Rose!" Then she added, with inexpressible conviction
and satisfaction, "_Ah!_"
I am always a little uneasy when Madge Aird says "Ah!" in that tone. She
was Madge Ruthven before she married Alec Aird, and I have often
wondered whether in the past any of her Scottish forbears had any
traffic with France. I am not now thinking of the air with which she
always wore her clothes, from whatever it was on her head to the always
irresistible shoes on her tiny feet. I mean the workings of her mind.
There is none of our northern softness and hesitation and mystery about
these. All she thinks and says has a logical completeness and finish
that somehow always seems just a little too good to be true. Few things
in this world are so neatly right as that. But wrong though her
conclusions may be, they are always dazzlingly effective, and you have
to swallow them or reject them whole.
"_Ah!_" she murmured again, with the intensest self-approval; and I
wondered what unreliable imperfection she was meditating now. You never
know with her. She sees so many people, goes to so many places, hears so
much. Often the mere mention of a name is enough to touch off that
instantaneous fuse of her memory that leads straight into the heart of
heaven knows what family history or hidden scandal.
"And what do you mean by 'Ah'?" I asked her.
"The gorgeous creature! I never dreamed--but this makes the situation
perfectly fascinating!"
"What situation?"
"Why, of him and Daphne Bassett. But poor old George, I keep forgetting
that you're the noblest Roman of them all and don't listen to our horrid
petty little scandal. And evidently you haven't read _The Parthian
Arrow_."
"I haven't. Tell me what it's about."
"But you've read _An Ape in Hell_?"
"Of course. Tell me what the other's about."
But at that moment she was claimed. Her next words came over her
shoulder as, with a wisk of her ribboned ankles and another gale in the
shake of feathers, she was off.
"Not now--another time. I shall be in fairly early this evening if
you're staying in town. It's quite an interesting situation. And if
you'll bring your Beautiful Bear to see me some time, I'll----"
I understood her to mean that in that case she would bring Mrs Hugo
Bassett also.
II
I live out in Surrey, my car happened to be in dock, and I had my train
to think of. As I walked slowly up the short street to the Strand I
puzzled over Madge's words. Evidently she found some connection between
that "first" novel, _The Parthian Arrow_, and Rose's own book, _An Ape
in Hell_. Well, my ignorance could soon be remedied. There was a
bookshop just round the corner, and I could be the possessor of a copy
of Mrs Bassett's book in five minutes.
But suddenly, on the point of hailing a taxi, I dropped the point of my
stick again. Somewhere at the back of my mind was the feeling that there
was some invitation or appointment I had overlooked. I knew that it
could be of no great importance, and, looking back on these events
since, I have thought that it was perhaps a mere disinclination to go
down to Surrey that night that gave me pause. I may say that I am
unmarried, and have got my housekeeper fairly well trained to my ways.
So, standing on the kerb, I brought a number of papers from my pocket
and began to turn them over in search of the forgotten appointment.
I found it. It was a lecture by a Fellow of a Learned Society, and it
was to take place at the rather unusual hour of six o'clock. No doubt
this was in order that the learned speaker might get his paper over by
half-past seven, leaving his learned listeners free to dine. A taxi
slowed down in front of me.
"Society of Arts," I said to the driver.
A minute later I was on my way to see Derwent Rose for the second time
that afternoon.
I will tell you in a moment the subject of that lecture I had so
suddenly decided to attend. First, a word as to my attitude at that time
towards new discoveries and new thought in general. I was enormously,
wistfully interested in them. Instinctively, at that time, I stretched
out my hands to them. I had lived long enough in the world to realise
that such events as Trafalgar and the French Revolution were mere
events of yesterday, and the possibilities of an equally near to-morrow
haunted me. I shrank from the thought that while the dead stones of the
Law Courts and Australia House would still be there after I had gone, I
should not at least be able to make a guess at the stream of Life,
uncradled yet, that would beat and press and flow along those channels
in so little a time, the new blood of London's old unchanging veins. One
begins to think of these things when one is fifty.
So, at a minute or so to six, my taxi set me down in the Adelphi, when I
might have been a happier man had it taken me straight to Waterloo.
And now for what that lecture was all about.
My meaning will perhaps be clearer if I give an extract from a leading
article in _The Times_ of slightly later date. On a subject of this kind
I would rather use an expert's words than risk the inaccuracies that
might creep into my own.
"Human beings," the article begins, "differ not only in the
knowledge they have acquired, but in their dower of intelligence
or natural ability. It has long been accepted that the former
property may continue to increase until the natural faculties
begin to abate, but that the latter has a maximum for each
individual, attained early in life.... Intelligence, as opposed
to knowledge, is fully developed before the age of schooling is
over. Sixteen years has usually been taken as the age at which,
even in those best endowed, the limit of intelligence has been
reached. Obviously the standard varies in different individuals;
the degree of intelligence passed through by the more fortunate
at the age of ten may be the final attainment of others, and all
intermediate stages occur.... Mr H. H. Goddard, an American
psychologist of international repute, classifies the intelligence
of his countrymen into seven grades, but believes that in
exceptional cases, amounting to four and a half per cent. of the
population, a superlative standard is reached at the age of
nineteen. On the other hand, seventy per cent. of the citizens of
the United States have to carry on their lives with the
intelligence of children of fourteen, and ten per cent. with that
of children of ten."
It was to hear these conclusions of Mr Goddard's expounded by a
fellow-savant that I had come that afternoon to the Society of Arts.
To tell the truth, a certain whimsical humour in the idea had attracted
me. When a man's books sell as well as mine do, and he is as
flatteringly thought of as I am, it is rather tickling to be told that
he is really an infant of sixteen or seventeen, telling fairy-stories to
a gigantic public nursery the average age of which is perhaps twelve.
Sir George Coverham, Knight, merely the top boy of a kindergarten of
adults!... It pleased me, and I rather hoped the lecturer would approach
his subject from that humorous angle.
The lights were being turned down as I entered the lecture chamber.
Quietly, not to make a disturbance, I tiptoed to the nearest seat. Then,
as with a preliminary hiss or two the shaft of light from the lantern
pierced the gloom, I was able dimly to distinguish that the subject of
the lecture had not attracted more than a couple of dozen people. These
barely filled the first two rows. The rest of the theatre appeared to be
empty. Of the speaker himself nothing could be seen but a glimpse of
white beard as he moved slightly at the reading-lamp.
He read from a typescript in a flat, monotonous voice, with once in a
while a halting explanatory remark that trailed, paused, and then
stopped altogether. I watched the acute angles his wand made with its
own shadow on the diagrams projected by the lantern.
Then I thought I heard an impatient movement and muttering somewhere
behind me. The speaker, after another long and painful pause, had just
said, "I hope I've made that clear, gentlemen"; and I was almost certain
that the muffled growl had taken the shape of the words "You don't know
a damned thing about it!"
Then, a few minutes later, the sound was repeated, this time accompanied
by an unmistakable groan.
"Sssh!" said somebody sharply from the front or second row.
The lecture dragged on.
But about the next and final outbreak there was no doubt whatever.
Neither was there about the sharp suffering of whoever was the cause of
it. Somebody a couple of rows behind me must be ill, I thought, and
evidently others thought so too, for the lecturer came definitely to a
stop, and my eyes, now accustomed to the gloom, saw the turning of
faces.
"Is anybody----?" a secretary or chairman called out, and I expected the
light to go up at any moment.
In the end, however, the lecture was finished without further incident.
The lights were switched on, the dingy classic painted panels on the
walls could be seen, and instantly every face, my own included, was
turned towards the back of a man who was seen to be hurriedly making his
way to the door.
I cannot tell you what happened at the Society of Arts after that. I was
already on my feet, hurrying after that back. It was the same back I had
seen, in the same haste, leaving the Lyonnesse Club less than two hours
ago.
He had got to the entrance hall before I caught him up. He accepted with
rather disturbing docility the arm I slipped into his. All the fight had
gone out of him; he might not have been the same man who had so recently
tried to outface me about first novels. I looked at his face as we stood
by the glass doors that opened on to John Street. It showed both fear
and pain.
"What's the matter, Derry? Can I be of any help?" I asked him anxiously.
He muttered, "Yes--yes--about time I called somebody in--just about
enough of it----"
"Do you want a doctor? Shall we call at a chemist's?"
He stared at me for a moment; then I vow he almost laughed.
"A doctor? No thanks. One dose a day's quite enough."
"One dose of what?"
"Words," he replied, with a jerk of his head in the direction of the
lecture chamber.
We passed out and into John Street, he accommodating his ordinary
London-to-Brighton pace to mine. He once told me that five miles an hour
was walking, six stepping out a bit, and anything over six and a half
really "going."
"Which way?" I asked at the end of the street.
"I suppose you'd better come round to my place," he replied; and we
crossed the Strand and struck north past Trafalgar Square.
He lived (I am not troubling you with the lobster we shared standing up
at a counter, during which repast we did not exchange one single
word)--he lived in Cambridge Circus, and I hope I have not given you the
impression that Derwent Rose was desperately poor. When I spoke of him
as having none too much either of money or success I meant as by
comparison with myself. Until, quite suddenly and by no means early in
life, my own reward came to me, I should have considered his quarters
luxurious--once you had got there. This you did by means of a narrow
staircase from the various landings of which branched off the offices of
variety-agents, film-brokers, furriers, jewellers and I don't know what
else. The double windows he had had fitted into his room subdued the
noises of the Circus outside, and if he cared to draw his thick brocade
curtains as well he could obtain almost dead silence. His black oak
furniture was brightly polished by some basement person or other, his
saddlebag chairs scrupulously beaten and brushed. The two or three
thousand books that completely filled two of his walls might have been
arranged by a librarian, so methodically and conveniently were they
disposed, with lettered and numbered tickets at intervals along the
edges of the shelves; and I knew that he had begun a catalogue of them.
All this portion of his room spoke of a man settling down into
meticulousness, whom disorderly habits and departures from routine begin
to irritate. In marked contrast with it was the topsy-turvy state of the
large oval table with the beaded edge. This was in an appalling state of
confusion. Newspapers had been tossed aside on to it, open books with
their faces downwards sprawled over it. Empty shells of brown paper
still kept something of the shape of the books they had contained, and
ends of packer's string with bits of sealing-wax twined among them. A
teacup lay on its side in a wet saucer, a large oval milk-can stood next
to it. And on the top of all were the snaky rubber cords of an exerciser
and a ten-pound, horsehair-stuffed medicine-ball.
I was about to hang up my hat in the neatly-curtained recess he had had
fitted up as a lobby when he exclaimed "Oh, chuck it anywhere," and set
me the example by throwing his own hat and stick on to the clutter. They
caught the medicine-ball, which rolled an inch or two, tottered, and
then fell with a soft dead thump to the floor. The next instant, as if
now that his own door was closed behind him there was no longer any need
to keep up appearances, he himself had fallen with a similar thud to the
sofa. He, this piece of physical perfection who called six miles an hour
"stepping out a bit," lay all limp and relaxed, with lids quivering
lightly over his closed eyes. He spoke with his eyes closed.
"Well, what did you think of it?" he said, breathing deeply.
I tried to keep my anxiety out of my tone.
"What did I think of the lecture?"
"Yes, the lecture if you like. That'll do to start with. No, I don't
want anything, thanks. Tell me what you thought of the lecture."
I began to say something, I hardly remember what, when, still with his
eyes closed and twitching, he interrupted me.
"All those silly charts--all those useless figures about the American
Army--that's all waste of time. Making work for work's sake. I could
have told him all that straight away."
I remembered those groans in the obscurity of the lecture-room. I spoke
quietly.
"Is that what you were going to tell him when you--interrupted a
little?"
I had to wait for his reply. When it did come I hardly heard it, so low
did he speak.
"I know what you mean; but I can only tell you that if you'd been
vivisected like that you'd have squirmed a bit too."
I couldn't help thinking he had taken that lecture in a curiously
personal sense, and I said so.
"Vivisected?" I exclaimed. "I was vivisected, as you call it, just as
much as you were--perhaps more in some ways. What on earth are you
talking about? It's a general question. It's human functions and
faculties at large he was vivisecting, not you or me. So," I concluded,
"we were all vivisected alike, and when everybody's vivisected--you
see----" I made a little gesture.
Then he opened his eyes, and there was an expression in them that
suddenly dried me up. It was an even more remarkable throw-back to a
remembered and earlier manner than that I had witnessed earlier in the
afternoon. In short, it was an expression of unconcealed contempt.
"Q.E.D.," he said. "Finis, Explicit, and the Upper Fourth next Term.
You'd have made a good schoolmaster.... I tell you that when I say 'I'
and 'myself'"--he positively glared with irascibility and impatience--"I
mean myself singly and specially, understand--the egregious and
indestructible ego--and not merely just as much or as little as anybody
else. Get that well into your head or I won't talk to you."
Had he not been so visibly suffering I shouldn't have stood the tone of
it for a moment, not even from him. And let me tell you at once the
surmise that had already flashed through my brain. I am a dependable
sort of person myself, one of the kind that nothing startlingly new is
ever likely to happen to; but I was not so sure about his kind. Brains
like his often fly off at queer tangents, and I wondered whether he had
been reading too much of this current cant about "multiple personality"
and had allowed it to run away with him. Every Tom, Dick and Harry seems
to rush to that for an explanation of everything nowadays. I had already
noticed, by the way, that one of the books that sprawled cover uppermost
on his table was a book on the thyroid gland. But suddenly he seemed to
guess at my thoughts. He spoke more quietly. Indeed he seemed to be
fully aware of these outbreaks of his, and to be trying to resist them
more and more strenuously as our conversation proceeded.
"Sorry, old fellow," he said contritely. "I'm very sorry. I oughtn't to
have spoken like that. But I'm not what they call 'disintegrating'; I'm
the last man to do that. When I say 'I' I mean the 'I' I've always been.
That's just the devil of it."
"Suppose you begin at the beginning," I suggested.
"There you are!" was his swift reply. He was sitting up on the sofa now,
and was facing it, whatever "it" was, with a calmer courage. "I _can't_
begin at the beginning. All I really _know_ yet's the end, and of course
that hasn't come.... It's a damn-all of a problem. Get yourself a drink
if you want one. No, I won't have one; I--I daren't. And you might draw
the curtains. When I hear the buses and taxis it makes me want to go
out."
I drew his curtains for him, but did not take the drink. He sat on the
sofa leaning a little forward, his great hands clasped between his knees
and working slightly and powerfully, as if he cracked walnuts in the
palms of them. The grey-blue eyes avoided mine. I have seen that same
avoiding glance in the eyes of a man who had something perfectly true to
tell, but so utterly improbable that he was self-convicted of lying even
in speaking of it.
"About what you were saying this afternoon in that Club place--my age,"
he began in a constrained voice. "You--you meant it, I suppose?"
"That you'd live to be a hundred and be world-famous? Yes, I meant it in
a way. I didn't mean you to take me too literally, of course."
"And you thought"--he hesitated for a moment and shivered slightly--"it
was something to be congratulated about?"
"Well--isn't it? Professionally you've staked out a magnificent course
for yourself in which time means practically everything, and so, if you
live long enough, as you look like doing----"
Yet I cannot tell you what premonition of calamity seemed already to
flow like an induced current from him to me. Ordinarily I am not
specially sensitised to receive impressions of this kind. I am just a
man who had had the luck to think as most other people think and to be
able to express their thoughts for them. The greater therefore must have
been that current's projecting force. Certainly the greater was my shock
when it did come.
"I shan't live to be a hundred," he said in a low voice.
I cannot remember what I said, or whether I said anything at all. All
that I do remember is his own next words, the swift and agonising
collapse of the whole man as he said them, and the feeling of my own
nape and spine.
"No, not a hundred. You're counting the wrong way. You got my age quite
right this afternoon. I'm thirty-five. And I shall live till I'm
sixteen."
III
Among the things that have contributed to the wordly success of Sir
George Coverham, Knight, has been that author's rigid exclusion from his
books of everything that does not commend itself to the average common
sense of his fellow-beings. The most he seeks in his modest writings--I
speak of him in the third person because, as Derry's head dropped over
his knees, it seemed impossible that this Sir George Coverham and I
could be one and the same person--the most he seeks is a line somewhere
between ordinary experience and the most, rather than the least,
attractive presentation of it. In a word, his books are polite,
debonair, and deliberately planned so as not to shock anybody.
Therefore in some ways he may be quite the wrong person to be writing
this story of Derwent Rose. For example: he had known Rose for some
fifteen years, and, not to mince matters, there had been many highly
impolite things in Rose's life during that time. More than once it had
seemed a very good thing indeed that he had had to work hard for his
money. The great mental concentration necessary for the writing of some
of his books must have kept him out of a good deal of mischief.
So I (I am allowing myself the man and Sir George Coverham the novelist
gradually to reunite, as they gradually reunited that evening)--I, his
friend, had already done what we all do when we are completely bowled
over. I had instinctively sought refuge from his lunatic announcement in
trifles--any trifle that lay nearest to hand. Suddenly I found myself
wondering why he was afraid to take a drink, and why I had had to draw
his curtains lest the sound of the buses and taxis should call him out
into the streets.
But presently he had recovered a little. He was even able to look at me
with the faint shadow of a smile.
"Well, that's the lot," he said. "I've given you the whole thing in a
nutshell. You heard that lecture and you know me. You can fill in the
rest for yourself."
Suddenly I looked at my watch. It was not yet half-past nine. I got on
to my feet.
"You'd better get your hat and come down to Haslemere with me," I said.
"We can catch the ten-ten. You're all on edge about something and you
want a change. Leave word here that you'll be back in a week, and come
along."
But he did not move, except to shake his head.
"I expected you'd say that. It's what anybody would say. It simply means
that you haven't taken it in yet. No, since we've started we'll go
on--unless you'd rather not. I warn you there's a good deal to be said
for not going on."
"Why not talk about it down at Haslemere?"
Once more there was the hint of irascibility.
"Do you want to hear or don't you?"
Slowly I sat down again, and he resumed his former attitude of cracking
nuts with his palms for nutcrackers.
"There's not an atom of doubt about what I'm going to tell you," he
began. "Not an atom. Unless I'm mistaken you saw for yourself this
afternoon--though of course you didn't know what you were seeing. You
simply thought I looked younger, didn't you?"
I waited in silence.
"And I fancy my manner got a bit on your nerves--does a bit now for that
matter?"
This also I let pass without remark.
"Well, let's start from that point. You said I looked thirty-five. Well,
it's just that that's getting on your nerves--the less amiable side of
my character when I was thirty-five, and--and--well, when you go you
might take that bottle of whisky with you and make me sign the pledge or
something. I'm trying--I'm honestly trying--to hang on, you see."
I sighed. "I wish you could make it a bit plainer," I said.
"I'm making it as plain as I can. Is _this_ plain--that something's
happened to me, I don't know what, and _I'm getting younger instead of
older?_"
"Derry----" I began, half rising; but he held up one heroically-moulded
hand.
"Let me finish. And if I happen to go to sleep suddenly you just walk
straight out, do you hear? Walk right out and shut the door. You're to
promise that. There are some things I won't ask even a pal to go
through.... So there it is. Instead of getting older like everybody else
I'm simply getting younger. I'm perfectly sober--I haven't had a drink
for five days--and I tell you I shall go on till I'm thirty, and then
twenty-five, and then twenty, and then, at sixteen or thereabouts--that
fellow wasn't very sound on his ages to-night--I shall die. _Now_ have
you got it?"
Even about human nature there are some things that you have to accept as
it were mathematically. I am no mathematician, but I do know (for
example) that the common phrase "mathematically certain" is a misnomer.
The whole essence of mathematics lies, not in its certainties, but in
its assumptions, its power to embrace any concept whatever and pin it
down in the form of a symbol. Once you have adopted the symbol you don't
trouble about what lies behind it. You merely proceed to reason on it.
It can only have been in some such way that I accepted Derwent Rose's
mad statement and was willing to see what superstructure he was prepared
to raise upon it. I was even able to speak in an almost calm and
ordinary voice.
"Tell me how you know all this," I said.
He was logical and prompt.
"By my knowledge of myself, and also by my memory. I know what I was at
thirty-five, and I know what I did; well, I simply know that I'm that
man again, and that I shall go on and re-do more or less what he's
already done. At some point in my life I must have got turned round, and
now I'm living it backwards again. And put multiple personality quite
out of your head. That's the whole point. I'm not anybody else, and I
shan't be anybody else. At this moment I'm Derwent Rose, as he always
was and always will be, but simply back at the mental and physical stage
when he wrote _An Ape in Hell_."
To-day, looking back, it gives me an indescribable ache at my heart to
remember the sudden and immense sense of relief his words gave me. I
breathed again, as if a window had been opened and a draught of cool
fresh air let in.
For if he only meant memory, then the thing wasn't so bad. The maniacal
idea that had sent that cold shiver up my spine was capable of an
ordinary explanation after all. For what else is memory but the illusion
that one is living backwards again in this sense? How many ancient
loves, hates, angers, can we not re-experience in any idle hour we
choose to give over to reverie? Beyond a doubt Rose had in some way been
abusing this mysterious faculty, and Surrey and the pine-woods was the
place for him.
"I see," I said at last. "I confess you frightened me for a moment.
Anyway that's all right. You only have what we all have more or less.
You merely bring greater powers than the rest of us to bear on an
ordinary phenomenon. I don't want to talk about your work, but it always
did seem to me that you went to rather appalling heights and fearsome
depths for the stuff of it. Personally I don't think either heaven or
hell is the safest place to go to for 'copy.' Too terrifying
altogether."
He seemed to consider this deeply. He was almost quiet again now. Again
he cracked invisible nuts, and his heels and toes rose and fell gently
and alternately on the carpet.
"That's rather a new idea you've given me, George," he said at last. "I
admit I hadn't thought of that. It might explain the beginning
anyway--the turn-round. I suppose you mean I've been too close to the
flames or the balm, and have got singed or the other thing, whatever you
call it. I see. Yes.... It's probably nothing to do with the thyroid
after all. I've been reading the wrong books. I never thought of the
writings of the Saints. Or the Devils.... By the way, some of the Saints
induced the stigmata on themselves by a sort of spiritual process,
didn't they?"
I frowned and moved uneasily in my chair. I wasn't anxious to hear
Derwent Rose either on ecstasy or blasphemy. But he went on.
"So that's useful as far as it goes. But--you'd hardly call _this_
spiritual, would you?"
I think I mentioned that he wore a soft white collar, pinned and tied
with exquisite neatness. A moment later he wore it no longer. Without
troubling about pin, studs or buttons, with a swift movement he had
ripped the collar, tie and half the shirt-band from his neck, and
showed, of an angry and recent purply-red, vivid on his magnificent
throat, two curved marks like these brackets--().
Now I am not more squeamish than most men. I am far from having lived
the whole of my life in cotton-wool. But it needed no course in medical
jurisprudence to tell me what those marks were--the marks of teeth, and
of a woman's teeth. I was deeply wounded. Rose's amusements in this sort
were no affair of mine, and I strongly resented this humiliation both of
himself and of me.
But his hand gripped my arm like a vice. Suddenly I saw a quite new pair
in his grey-blue eyes. It was a swift fear lest, instead of helping him,
I should turn against him.
"Good God, man!" he cried in a high voice. "Don't think _that_! Don't
think I'm such a cur as to--oh, my God, _that_ isn't the point! I'm not
bragging about my conquests!... The point is that _these marks are ten
years old and they weren't there last night_!"
I tried to free myself from his grip, but he wouldn't let me go. He ran
agitatedly on, repeating himself over and over again.
"There isn't much imagination about _that_, is there? _That_ isn't
fancy, is it? _That_ doesn't happen to any man any day, does it? A man
would be likely to remember _that_, wouldn't he? He wouldn't forget it,
if it was only for the shame of it! Is _that_ just ordinary memory? And
how would you feel when everything was healed over and forgotten, and
you'd settled decently down, and hoped everything was forgiven you--and
then you were to be dragged back over the ploughshares like that! I tell
you you've got to see it all crowding back on you again, before you
realise that forgetting's the greatest happiness in life!... I tell you
on my word of honour that that happened ten years ago, when I was
thirty-five before, and that it wasn't there last night! _Now_ tell me
I'm drunk or dreaming!"
Stupefied I stared at him. The issue was plain. Either he was telling
the truth, or he was not. Either those marks were as recent as they
looked or as old as he said. He was to be believed or disbelieved. There
was no middle way.
And my heart sank like a stone in my breast as suddenly I found myself
believing him. He saw that I did, and fumblingly sought to fasten the
collar again. But he had torn both buttonhole and band, and could only
cover up those shameful marks by turning up the collar of his dark blue
jacket. He sat with his collar turned up for the rest of our talk.
Presently I felt a little more master of myself. I had moved over to the
sofa and was sitting by his side. He, this youthful Hercules of
forty-five, who wrote books and made you think of boats and horses, was
weeping softly. He was weeping for misery and hate of what, apparently,
he must go through again. Stupidly my eyes rested on the carefully
lettered and numbered shelves of books, and then on the slovenly litter
of the table. The electric light gave the merest flicker--they were
doing something at the power-station--and then burned quietly on. It
shone on the black oak furniture and the saddlebag chairs, on our two
hats on the table, on the neatly curtained recess where the hats should
have been. It was impossible not to see that in its contrast of
orderliness and disorder the very room showed two sharp and distinct
phases. Almost with voices the inanimate things seemed to cry it aloud.
The man who had catalogued those bays of books had been the author of
_The Hands of Esau_. He who now threw everything down on to that
disgraceful table was he who had written _An Ape in Hell_.
He still wept quietly. I put my hand on his knee.
"All right, Derry," I said. "Try to pull yourself together. You say you
can't begin at the beginning. Very well, begin anywhere you like. I dare
say something can be done. It may turn out to be--oh, shellshock or
something."
But already my heart told me that it would turn out to be nothing of the
kind.
IV
I am not going to direct your attention specially to the more fantastic
part of what Derwent Rose told me in his rooms that night. I have found
no issue in that direction. Neither am I going into the metaphysics of
the thing; I know no more about that than he ever knew himself. But if
you care to read, in reverse, the progress of a man out of the sad
shadows of middle-age back into the light and beauty and belief that
once were his--always the same man, undeviating from the lines laid down
by his own nature, re-approaching each phase as he had formerly
approached it, but in times and circumstances so complex and altered
that nothing in the pilgrimage was constant but himself--if, I say, you
care to read that extraordinary intertwining of what he had done and
what he re-did, and are content with this, and will not pull me up every
time the mystery of the deeper cause confounds us both, then I am
content too and we can go ahead.
It had been going on (he told me) for six months past; but at the outset
I ought to warn you that he had two scales of time. Here I wish that we
were all mathematicians, and that I could write and you could read his
wondrous history in symbolised concepts. However, we will do the best we
can with words.
Broadly speaking, he went backwards, not at a uniform rate, but in a
series of irregular and unequal slips. That is to say, that though in
six months or so of actual time he had retrograded the ten years between
forty-five and thirty-five, it did not follow that he had gone back five
years in three months or two and a half in any given six weeks. I went
carefully into this point with him. I asked him, if the ratio was not a
steady twenty to one (or a hundred and twenty months of experienced time
as against six by the clock) what he estimated it at for shorter periods
of either. But to this he could give no clear answer. Being unable to
fix the precise turning-point, and hardly knowing when the indications
in himself had begun (since at first he had put the whole thing aside as
an absurdity), he had no datum. He had only become fully awake to the
phenomenon when it had not been possible to disregard it any longer.
"Well, as we've got to assume something let's assume that," I said.
"When was it that you first had no doubt at all?"
This he did more or less remember. I give his account in his own words.
"It was about two months ago," he said. "I'd no book on hand. I don't
mind admitting that I'd never felt so stale and empty and sick of
everything I'd ever done. In fact I'd got to the point you noticed this
afternoon."
"What point was that? Don't let's take anything for granted."
"When you rubbed me up about that first novel. I'd got to the point of
hardly seeing any difference worth mentioning between the worst stuff
and the best, Shakespeare included. Do you mind if I go into that rather
in detail?"
"Do."
"Here, I thought, is this creature man, this fellow called George
Coverham or Derwent Rose, brought naked into a world that marvellously
doesn't care a rap about him--but that he's got to contrive to make some
sort of an interpretation of, because it's where he's got to live. He
hasn't got too long to live there either--a strictly limited time--so
that there's just him and this wonderful uncaring universe for it. This
and nothing else is what happens every time a human being's brought into
the world. All this procreation and child-bearing are just for that--so
that somebody can make head or tail of the world.... Well, what do they
do to him? By and by they send him to school. That's the first step
towards taking him away from this universe he's trying to make something
of and telling him instead what some other naked being before him
thought about it all. That's all right as far as it goes. Just once in a
while, I suppose, two heads may be better than one. But"--he paused for
emphasis--"when a third begins to repeat what a second has already
repeated, and a fourth a third, and so on, by and by the universe begins
to drop right away into the background. The process goes on--it has gone
on--till not one in ten million dreams there's a universe at all. You
know what I mean--all talk about talk about talk about it. So, if you've
any sense of proportion at all, where does the difference between one
book and another come in?"
"Well--that's the state of mind you were in," I observed. Goodness knows
I wasn't trying to shut him up. If it did him good to talk I would
gladly have listened to him all night. As for sharing these Olympian
views of his, however, I have never had either the strength or the
audacity. It is because of my own indefatigability in talking about talk
about talk that they made me a Knight.
"I was only trying to explain how I felt," he answered apologetically.
"Let's start again. It was two months ago within a few days, and I know
it was a Monday morning, because Mrs Hyems doesn't come up on Sundays,
and she brought a parcel that had been overlooked from Saturday night.
It was half-past eight, and I was in there shaving"--he nodded in the
direction of his bedroom. "She wanted to call my attention to the parcel
because it was registered."
"Is this just to fix the date, or has the parcel anything to do with
it?"
"Both. I'm coming to the parcel in a minute. Well, as I was saying, I
was just about fed up with things in general. Books in particular. Nice
state of mind for an author with his living to earn to begin the week
in! I remember stopping shaving to have a good hard look at myself. I
remember saying to myself in the glass, 'You're young, you're a perfect
miracle of youth; you've got quite a good brain as brains go; and yet
instead of getting out of doors and living every minute of one of God's
good days you'll sit down there, and make scratches on bits of paper
that have got to be just like the scratches everybody else makes or you
won't sell 'em; isn't there something wrong somewhere?' I asked myself
that in the glass. And mind you, I was feeling extraordinarily fit
physically. That's important. I'd felt like that for days past. Who
wants to work when he feels like that?"
I sighed a little. Even I, with my modicum of health, have occasionally
felt too fit to work.
"So I finished dressing and came in here to breakfast, and I was
half-way through breakfast when that book caught my eye."
"What book?"
"The parcel I spoke of. It was a book. As a matter of fact it was Mrs
Bassett's book, _The Parthian Arrow_."
I glanced at him. "Registered?"
"Yes. You mean one doesn't usually register a common or garden novel
unless you want there to be no mistake about the person getting it?"
"Go on."
"So I opened it there and then and began to read it. I read it at a
single sitting. Then I tore it in two. Wait a bit, I'll show you. Pass
me a book, any one. They're all the same."
I passed him a book from the untidy table, an ordinary two-inch-thick
octavo volume in a cloth binding. Now read carefully. He didn't even
change his position on the sofa. Using his knees only as a support, with
his hands he tore the back into halves. Let me say it again. I don't
mean he tore it lengthwise along the stitching. He didn't separate the
pages into dozens or scores, nor bend or break it. He just tore it
across as I might have torn a postcard. I can still see the creeping and
fanning of the leaves under the dreadful pressure of his hands, the soft
whity-grey fur of paper as the gap widened relentlessly before my eyes,
hear the slightly harsher sound of the rending cloth and the little
"zip" at the end.
Then he tossed the two halves on to the table again.
"I used to do a bit of that sort of thing years ago," he remarked,
without even a quickening of his breath. "Half-crowns and packs of
cards, you know. But I'd had to drop it. Your muscles have changed by
the time you're forty-five. I'd tried to tear a pack of cards not long
before, but I could only make a mess of them and had to give it up."
I found not a word to say. As much as the feat itself the terrifying
ease with which he had done it made me gape.
"Yes, my strength came on me like Samson's that morning," he continued.
"I was scared of it myself. I didn't know what was happening, you see.
I'm simply trying to tell you the first time I knew there was no mistake
about it."
I found my voice.
"But why did you tear the book? I--I hope you weren't looking for the
author this afternoon to tear her too!" I laughed nervously.
He turned earnest eyes on me.
"I swear I never meant her, George--in that accursed _Ape_ book of mine,
I mean. Of course she must have thought I did, and--and--well, to be
perfectly honest, I'm not quite sure she didn't start me on the idea.
You've got to start somewhere. But I went over it a dozen times
afterwards. _Am_ I the man to take it out of a woman in print?" he
appealed piteously.
He was not, and I tried to reassure him; but he broke in anew.
"Why, I'd forgotten all about her before I'd written a couple of
chapters! You're a novelist; you understand. If only she'd.... But I
suppose I left something in--some damnable wounding oversight--but I
can't find it even yet"--he glared round the room as if in search of a
copy of his own book to submit to cross-examination all over again.
And then abruptly he seemed to put the book aside. His manner changed.
He lifted himself from the cushions and spoke in a strained voice.
"Look here, George," he said hurriedly, jumping from point to point,
"let's be getting on. I may be having to turn you out soon; this may be
no place for you. Where had we got to? Where I tore that book. You were
asking me when I first felt sure of all this. Well, it wasn't just the
book, it was what happened inside me as well. Something gave way. I was
afraid. I'm afraid now. You've known me a long time, George; known
scandalous things about me, I'm afraid. But a man can live a pretty
queer sort of life and yet manage to keep something safe from harm all
the time. It's that that I'm hanging on to now. You see, I've never had
any habits or customs. I've never been the millionth man--the fellow who
repeats what they've all said before him. Every morning of my life I've
tried to look at the universe as if I'd never seen it before--as if it
had never been seen by anybody before. Dashed risky way of living....
But I managed to keep something clean inside me ... thank God ... need
it ... badly ... no time to go into all that now...."
He muttered unintelligibly. He was not actually looking at his watch,
and yet he gave the impression of having his eye on the passage of time.
Suddenly he went on with a new spurt.
"Don't interrupt, please. I may have made a miscalculation. You see,
when I drop off to sleep.... About that book. I started it at breakfast,
sent Mrs Hyems away, and never moved from my chair till I'd finished it
in the afternoon. Then, when I ripped it in two, I seemed to rip
something in myself with it. I can't describe it any other way.
Something in me seemed to open and take me right back. Before breakfast
that morning I was what they call 'settling down in life.' I'd written
_Esau_ since the _Ape_, and had lots of things planned. I'd even got a
bit old-maidish about all this"--he indicated his tidy walls.
"Then--piff! All that stage of my development seemed to go like smoke.
No, no pain; no physical feeling of any kind except that sudden rush of
bodily strength. I just tore myself in two as I'd torn the book, and I
ran to my glass--the glass I'd shaved in only a few hours ago."
"And you saw----?" the words broke breathlessly from me.
Slowly he shook his head. "Nothing--that time. _I hadn't been to sleep,
you see. A sleep's got to come in between._ That's why you mustn't be
here if I go to sleep.... No, it was the next morning I saw it."
Faintly I asked him what it was he had seen the next morning.
But before he could reply there had come a sudden wicked glitter into
his grey-blue eyes. His hand had once more gone to his upturned coat
collar. And he chuckled--chuckled.
"Not _this_, if that's what you mean," he said with a jerk of his head.
"That was my last adventure; the one I'm telling you about now was two
before that." Then his chuckle dying away again, "You notice your face
when you shave, don't you?--the texture of your skin and so on? Well,
that was what I saw: just a few years younger, a few years softer, a few
years smoother. The corners of your eyebrows here; you know how the brow
gets thin at the sides and those sprouts of long hair begin to come?
Well, they'd gone. And I was scared at my strength coming back like
that.... I say, get me a drink, will you? No, no, blast it--not that
stuff--plain water."
I got him the water. He gulped it down. His fingertips were still
feeling his eyebrows. Then with another spurt:
"What's the time now? Never mind--but I keep a diary now, you see. Have
to. Memory isn't to be trusted in a matter of this kind. And speaking of
memory, it'll be hell's delight if that goes. You see, this isn't 1920
for me; it's 1910, and I shan't have written _The Hands of Esau_ for
another three years yet. Or you can call it both 1920 and 1910 if you
like. Bit mixing, isn't it? It's demoniac. I call it----" he called it
something rather too violent for me to set down, and I have omitted one
or two other strong expressions that had begun to creep into his speech.
"And just one other thing before I shove you out," he positively raced
on. "I said I should die at sixteen. If it comes to the worst I hope to
God I shall; none of your scarlet second childhoods for me! But how the
Erebus and Terror do I know when sixteen will come?... I say, where are
you sleeping to-night? Perhaps you'd better---- Have some whisky. If
only we had that damned datum point! Do have some whisky. Have the----
lot. Are those curtains drawn? Take my key and lock me in and give it to
Mrs Hyems downstairs. Where's that diary of mine?"
Then all in a moment he was on his feet. Without ceremony he had thrust
my hat into my hands. Comparatively gently, seeing what his strength
was, he was hustling me towards the door.
"Sorry, old man"--the words came thickly--"thanks awfully--I expect I
shall be all right--don't bother about me.... But I shall have to move
sooner or later--looks so dashed queer one man coming in and another
going out--too comic if they arrested me on a charge of making away with
myself.... See you soon--yourself out--quick, if you don't mind--go,
go!"
The next moment I was out on his landing. He had almost carried me out.
I heard the locking of his door, but after that, though I listened,
nothing.
V
Presently it occurred to me that there was nothing to be gained by
waiting. It did not seem to be an occasion for calling for help, and if
there was something he did not wish me to see it was hardly a friend's
part to stand there listening for it. Slowly I descended past the closed
offices of the cinema and variety agents and let myself out into the
street. Involuntarily my eyes went up to his window, but no light showed
there, and I remembered that I had drawn his curtains myself. Among a
knot of people who waited for omnibuses I stood on the kerb, lost in
thought.
It was after eleven o'clock, and Haslemere was now out of the question.
I could have got a bed at my Club, but I vaguely felt that there might
be something rather more to the purpose to do than that. For some
minutes I couldn't for the life of me think what it was. Four o'clock of
that afternoon seemed an age ago.... Then I remembered. Madge Aird might
at least be able to throw a little light on the Daphne Bassett aspect of
the affair. She had said she would be at home that evening, and I can
always have a bed at the Airds' for the asking.
I mounted a bus, descended at my Club, telephoned to Alec Aird, seized a
bag I kept ready packed in town, and by half-past eleven was on my way
to Empress Gate.
Alec himself opened the door to me. He was in his dinner-jacket, but had
thrust his feet into a comfortable pair of bedroom slippers and was
smoking his everlasting bulldog briar pipe. There were neither hats nor
coats on the hall table, and he had the air of having the house to
himself.
"Thought it would be you," he said. "Lost your train? Give me your
bag--I'm scared to death of asking a servant to do anything after dinner
these days. Come up."
"Isn't Madge in? She said she was going to be at home."
"Oh, Madge calls it being at home if she's in by midnight. She's only at
the Nobles. I don't think she's going on anywhere. Listen"--the click of
a key had sounded in the hall--"there she is, I expect."
It was Madge. She followed us up into the drawing-room a moment later,
gave me a glance that was half surprised and half amused, and proceeded
to unscarf herself. Alec was relighting his pipe with the long
twisted-paper poker. There was a question in the eye he cocked at her.
Alec is fond of home, and lives a good deal of his social life
vicariously, sending Madge to represent him and relying on her account
of the proceedings when she gets back. This is frequently lively.
"Oh, nobody much," she chattered. "The Tank Beverleys and the Hobsons,
and Connie Fairham and her escapade, and Jock Diver with Mrs Hatchett.
Washout of an evening; makes home seem quite nice, especially with
George here. Do give me a decent peg; they'd nothing but filthy cup."
Then, as Alec busied himself at a tray, she shot another amused glance
at me. "Brought the Beautiful Bear, George?"
"I've just left him. I want to talk to you."
"Alec," she said promptly, "go to bed. George and I want to talk."
"Dashed if I do without a tune," Alec grumbled. "Play something."
Madge crossed to the music-stool, set her whisky-and-soda on the sliding
rest, and began to play.
I waited in an extreme of impatience. The bus-ride to the Club, getting
my bag, coming on to Empress Gate, greeting Alec--I suppose these things
had occupied me just sufficiently to put away for half an hour the
weight that had been placed upon me; but now, as I frowned at Alec
Aird's tiles and cut steel fender, that weight began to reimpose itself.
Anxiously I wondered what might be happening at that very moment in that
other room with the drawn curtains, the orderly shelves and the
disreputable table.
A man who grew younger instead of older! A man who already was ten years
younger than he had been a few months ago! He had been quite right in
saying, when I had tried to take him down to Haslemere, that that only
meant that I had not yet taken it in. I was as far from being able to
take it in as ever. More and more it forced itself on me as menacing,
inimical, wild. What sane man could believe it? And yet, if it was not
to be believed, why could I not shake it off? Why did it lurk, as it
were, in the half-lighted corners of Madge's drawing-room, allowing me
all the time I wished in which to demonstrate it to be nonsense, and
then, when I had left not one aspect of it uncriticised and undenied,
reunite and face me again exactly as before?
It happened, he said, while he slept; and he had strictly enjoined on me
that if I saw him falling asleep I was to walk straight out of the
place. "There are some things I won't ask even a pal to go through."
That meant that during his sleep those tufts of his eyebrows disappeared
and that terrifying strength descended on him again. But what happened
_before_ then? Was the actual and physical change simultaneous with the
inner and mental one, or was it merely a confirmation that came
afterwards? _Had_ he changed in every respect but form and feature even
as I had talked to him? It frightened me to think that he had; but the
more I thought of it the more it looked like it.
For there had taken place a struggle within him that had but increased
in intensity as the minutes had passed. I remembered the gravity with
which he had pondered my suggestion that for the stuff of his novels he
had been too directly to heaven, too straight to hell. I don't pretend
to know any more about heaven and hell than anybody else, but I have the
ordinary man's conception of the difference between good and evil,
better and worse, and these principles, it seemed to me, had contended
in him. And he had striven to throw the weight of his personal will into
the worthier scale. There were things he did not wish to re-do, episodes
he did not wish to re-live. He had even wept that he must be dislodged
from that rock of his life to which his forty-five years had brought
him.... But what had followed? Suddenly a wicked chuckle. Violent
expressions had crept into his speech. A glitter had awakened in his
eyes, as if, since the thing must be gone through with, devilry and
defiance were a more manly part than weeping. "Well, if there's no help
for it, let's be thorough one way or the other," I could have imagined
him grimly saying....
And if this was so, what did it mean but that he _had_ actually grown
younger before my very eyes? I was merely shown, invisibly and a little
in advance, what the whole world would realise when his sleep had
smoothed out a few more wrinkles, given a newer gloss to his hair and an
added brightness to his eyes....
And in that case why had I come to see Madge Aird? What could Madge do?
What could anybody do? If the thing was true it was inescapable. He
_must_ go back. Not one single stage could be avoided. Beyond these
episodes which he dreaded lay others that perhaps he need not dread, and
others beyond those, and others beyond those ... until he attained
sixteen....
I continued to muse and Madge to play.
At last Alec got contentedly up. He straightened the creases from his
dinner-jacket.
"Thanks, old girl," he said. "Well, I'm going to turn in, and you two
can sit up and yarn about your royalties if you like. You look after
him, Madge, and see he doesn't get hold of _The Times_ before I do in
the morning. Night, George. You know where everything is----"
And, refilling his pipe as he went, he was off. Madge drew up a small
table between us, untied the ribbons of her cothurnes, rubbed the
creases from her ankles, and worked her toes inside their sheath of
silk.
"Well?" she said; and then with a little rapturous gush, "I can't get
the creature's beauty out of my head! That skin--that hair--and those
wonderful books! It isn't fair. It's too many gifts for one person. He
ought to be nationalised or something--turned over to the public like a
park."
"I want you to tell me who Mrs Bassett is," I said.
She bargained. "It's a swap, mind. If I tell you about her you tell me
about him."
"Tell me about her first."
"Well"--she settled herself comfortably--"I'm sorry to see you come down
to my own scandalmongering level. Do you want to put her into
_Nonentities I Have Known_? If so, I'll Who's-Who her for you. Here
goes. Bassett, Daphne, _née_ Daphne Wade. O.D. (only daughter, George)
of Horatio Wade, rector of somewhere in Sussex, I forget where, but
Julia Oliphant will tell you. He, the rector, M. (married) 1, Daphne's
mother, and was M.B. (married by) 2, the child's governess. He died in
the year of his Lord I forget exactly when, leaving Daphne a little
money, otherwise I can hardly see Bassett marrying her. But Hugo pulled
it off all right. My broker knows him. He's in the Oil Crush now, but he
was playing margins on a capital of twenty pounds when Daphne (excuse my
vulgarity) caught the last bus home."
"She's a friend of Miss Oliphant's, is she?"
"She was. She and Julia and Rose were children together. But I'm not
sure Julia speaks to her since _The Parthian Arrow_. She meant it for
him all right, whether he meant his for her or not. Life's full of quiet
humour, isn't it?"
I will abridge a little of my friend's liveliness. Indeed as she caught
as it were out of the air something of my own mood, she dropped much of
it herself. This was the substance of what she told me:
Derwent Rose had written a book called _An Ape in Hell_. I don't know,
Derry never knew, I don't think anybody knows to this day, the real
origin of the expression that formed its title; and if I were a syndic
of one of these New Dictionaries I think I should frankly confess as
much, instead of merely quoting other books as saying that "_A woman who
dies without bearing a child is said to lead an Ape in Hell_." Had I
written that book, and in my own way, I think the four corners of the
earth would have heard of it; as Derwent Rose had written it, in his
way, he had merely achieved a masterpiece for the reading of generations
to come. Our contemporary agglomeration (if Mr Goddard is right) of ten
and twelve years old intelligences had practically passed it over.
Briefly, the book had to do with the merciless economic pressure that
already, in 1910, made it difficult for people to marry in the freshness
of their youth, and practically suicidal to have children. I cannot
delay to say more of the book. I saw in it nothing but pity and beauty
and tenderness and a savage and generous anger, and how anybody could
have taken it in any other sense I could not imagine.
Yet one person had done so--a friend of his childhood, the author of
_The Parthian Arrow_.
"One moment," I said when Madge arrived at this point. "There's one
thing that isn't quite clear. His book came out in 1910. Hers only
appeared quite lately."
"That's so," she admitted.
"But nobody brings out a rejoinder ten years after the event."
"Well--she did. Read the book. Another thing: she started her book
immediately his appeared, in 1910."
"How do you know that?"
"Those sleeves her heroine wears went out in 1910," was her
characteristic reply. "She never even took the trouble to bring them up
to date."
So that the rancour, if there was any, was not only persistent, but
seemed to have a curiously desultory quality as well.
"Well--go on," I said.
But here she broke out suddenly: "But surely, George, even you can see
where the _Ape_ must have hurt her!"
"As I've neither seen the lady nor read her book----"
"But you know what his book's all about.... It was in her childlessness
that she felt it."
"_What!_" I cried. "Is anybody so stupid as to suppose that a man like
Derwent Rose would----"
"Wait a bit. Look at it as she sees it. She married at twenty-nine.
She's forty-one now. And nothing's happened, and nothing's likely to.
They were boy and girl together. Now suppose _I'd_ had an affair with
somebody in _my_ young days, and had married somebody else, and then
he'd gone and--rubbed it in. I don't think I should have written a
_Parthian Arrow_ even then, but I'm not going to drop dead when I hear
that another woman did."
"But--ten years!"
"Doesn't that just prove it?" she cried triumphantly. "If she'd had a
baby the first year she'd probably have forgotten all about her book.
But when the second year came, and the third, and the fourth--well,
thank God I've got my Jennie at school; but I can guess. These things
get worse for a woman instead of better as time goes on. And now she's
forty-one. I can't say I see very much mystery about those ten years."
"But," I said, "all this rests on the assumption that at one time they
were lovers. He certainly didn't speak as if that had been so."
"Ah, then he has spoken of her! What did he say?"
"Just what you'd expect him to say, of course--that he's awfully sick
he's upset her without intending to, and wants to explain."
She mused. Then, with the most disconcerting promptitude, she laughed
and threw her whole castle down to the ground.
"Well, I suppose I'm wrong. If that was really the colour of the Bear's
hide I don't suppose he'd be a friend of yours, and I certainly
shouldn't want to meet him. It's because I'm probably wrong that it's so
fascinating. I don't want to be right just yet. No, George, all I said
this afternoon was that it was an interesting situation, and I defy you
to say it isn't. Now tell me lots and lots about him."
But that was impossible. Once more every sane particle in me was
beginning to doubt whether I had been in Cambridge Circus that evening
at all. Moreover, one other thing had struck me with something of a
shock. This was those ten years during which Mrs Bassett had nursed her
anger against him. Those ten years, for him, did not exist, or existed
only with the most amazing qualifications. As mere time they did not
exist, but as experience they did. For him the _Arrow_ and the _Ape_
were both contemporaneous and not. In one sense ten years separated
them, but in another her retort had come back to him as it were by
return of post. Desperately I tried to envisage a situation so utterly
beyond reason. I tried to set it out in my mind in parallel columns:
He was thirty-five when he wrote She was thirty-one when she read
his _Ape_. it and began her rejoinder.
He was forty-five when he read She was forty-one at the time
the _Arrow_. that he read it.
But he was thirty-five again. She was still forty-one.
He was going on getting younger. She would get no younger.
He was convinced he would die at She----
sixteen.
But I had to give it up. It made my head ache. It shocked my sense of
the unities. And then fortunately there came a revulsion.
After all (I thought testily) Rose might consider himself a confoundedly
lucky fellow. What, after all, was he grumbling at? Because he was going
to have his precious, precious youth all over again? His health and
vigour and strength all over again, so that he could tear a book in two
as I might have torn a piece of paper? His clear skin and glossy hair
and the keen sight of his eyes once more? He was luckier than poor Madge
and myself! And what, if that American was right, was he risking?
Nothing that I could see, unless he should go beyond that age of the
maximum of his faculties, which he was persuaded he would not do. And in
addition to the approaching brilliance of his youth it was not
impossible that he would keep the whole of his accumulated experience as
well. Not for him that old and bitter cry that has so often been wrung
from the rest of us: "Oh for my life over again, knowing what I know
now!" So far, at any rate, he was having his life again, knowing all he
knew at the turning-point. And the fellow was grumbling!
"Now tell me about him," said Madge.
But she could not suppress a yawn as she said it. I knew that she, like
myself, was longing to slip out of her clothes and to get into bed.
"Another time," I said, wearily rising. "Which room are you putting me
in?"
As she rose I did not notice what it was that she caught up from a
side-table and put under her wrap. She preceded me upstairs. The room
into which she showed me was one I had occupied before, and only a minor
change or two had since been made. One of these caught my eye. It was a
leather-framed photograph of Miss Oliphant that stood with the
reading-lamp on the bedside table.
"Well, good night," Madge yawned. "They'll bring you tea up. Don't read
too long--bad for the eyes and the electric-light bill----"
Then it was that I noticed the book she had quietly slipped on to the
table. It was Mrs Bassett's book, _The Parthian Arrow_.
VI
Part of the fuss my numerous friends made about my Knighthood was this
desire of theirs that my portrait should be painted and hung up in the
Lyonnesse Club. Whether in fact I shall ever look down from those
buff-washed walls I am at present unable to say. That rests with Miss
Julia Oliphant. I myself merely have the feeling that if she doesn't
paint me I hardly wish to be painted.
Her name was not among those originally chosen by the Portrait Committee
and submitted to me. It was Madge who, by half-past twelve the following
day, had decided to include her. We were walking along together to
Gloucester Road Station. Madge was going out to lunch.
"Well, go and see her," she said.... "But they ought to have let you
sleep on, George. I wish I hadn't left you that book."
"Oh, I'm perfectly fit and fresh. The Boltons, you said? I shall go and
see her this afternoon."
"You say you don't know her well?"
"I've met her once."
We entered the station. I took my friend's ticket. I saw her to the gate
of her lift, and the attendant paused, his hand on the iron lattice.
"Well," she said, "I think you'll find that won't matter. Let me know
how you go on. Good-bye--and you can tell the Bear from me that no
decent person believes a word of it."
And with a wave of her hand across the grille she sank with the lift
into the ground.
I walked to my Club, lunched alone, and then, in a corner of the
smoking-room, busied myself with my rather scanty recollections of the
lady I was going to see that afternoon. Though I had only actually met
her upon one occasion, we had a sort of hearsay acquaintance in
addition. She and Derwent Rose had been children together, and one does
not begin quite at the beginning with the friends of one's friends.
Moreover, there are these people whom one may actually meet only at wide
intervals, but over whom absence does not seem to have its ordinary
power. Nothing seems to ice over, you come together again at the point
where you left off. Perhaps because you draw your nourishment from the
same elements, you are able to take the gaps for granted.
Nevertheless, of my own single personal meeting with Miss Oliphant I
could remember little but her eyes. I had been presented to her across a
small dinner-table, with rosy-shaded electric candles, that had turned
those great eyes pansy-black in the pinky gloom. I had guessed that in
the daylight they were of the deep brown kind that, alas, so frequently
means glasses for reading and distressing headaches; but what had struck
me at the time had been their quiet readiness and familiarity, as if
they said to me, "He's told me about you; I wonder what he's said to
you about me!"
And now those same eyes, photographed in a leather frame, had watched me
during the whole of the previous night. They had watched me as I had
read that awful book. Darkly watchful and expectant, they had seen my
first amazed incredulity, then my successive waves of anger. "But go
on," they had seemed ever to urge me; "there's much more to come!"
And under the bedside lamp they had been still watching me when the maid
had brought in tea and had flung the curtains aside, admitting the
bright sunshine.
Then, when the book had dropped from my hand to the floor, they had
said, "Don't you think it would be rather a good thing if you were to
come to see me?"
I am not going to advertise that hateful book of Mrs Bassett's. If I
could have torn it in two as Rose had torn it I should have done so. She
had hardly changed his name--for what was "Kendal Thorne" but Derwent
Rose? So I will merely say that to old memories she had added new and
malicious inventions, and had produced a ridiculous grotesque of a vain
and peevish childhood, an impossibly blatant youth, and a culmination
born of her own distorted imagination. It was for her, and not for
himself, that he had blushed. For her sake he would have torn up every
single copy of it if by that means it could never have been. He could
have scolded her, shaken her, smacked her, ashamed, angry and helpless
as one is before an ill-conditioned child who nevertheless has claims on
one. That there could ever have been any passage between them her book
put entirely out of the question. And so much for _The Parthian Arrow_.
At half-past three that afternoon I was at the Boltons, ringing Miss
Oliphant's bell. A tiny maid admitted me, and I was shown into a sort of
alcove with a good deal of tapestry and bric-à-brac and brass about, the
sort of things the artists of half a generation ago affected for the
sake of their "colour." Nor was the studio into which I was presently
shown much different from a hundred other studios I had seen. These
glass-roofed, indigo-blinded, north-lighted wells, I may say, always
depress me, and had I to live in one of them I should instantly have a
side-window cut, so that I might at least have a glimpse once in a while
of somebody who passed in the outer world.
But somehow the place suited Miss Oliphant. Perhaps it was the north
light. Artists choose the north light because it varies little, and
there was something about her that didn't vary very much either. She
came through a portière-hung door, and as she stood there for a moment,
not surprised (for I had telephoned that I was coming), but with that
familiarity and expectancy once more in her dark eyes, I was able to
check this cool and composed impression of her with my former one of
over-lustrous eyes in the pinky gloom of the shaded lamps of the
dinner-table.
Her hair, like her eyes, was dark; but she had a habit rather than a
style of dressing it. It was piled in a high mass over her white brow,
quite neatly, but rather as if to have it out of the way and done with
than as making the most of its rich glossy treasure. A dateless, but by
no means inappropriate tea-gown of filmy grey with a gold thread
somewhere in it showed her long harmonious lines of limb and allowed her
breasts to be guessed at; and the ripeness of her shoulders set off her
long and almost too slender neck. She had cool and beautiful hands,
sleeved to the wrist; but the daylight added to her years. At our former
meeting I should have said she was thirty-five. Now I saw that she could
hardly be less than forty.
She took my hand for a moment, smiled, but without speaking, and began
to busy herself at a Benares tray. She reinserted the plug of an
electric kettle, which immediately broke into a purr. She listened for a
moment with her ear at the kettle, and then suddenly filled the teapot.
She spoke, once more smiling, through the little cloudlet of steam.
"Do sit down," she said, indicating a "property" curule chair. "Well,
how's Derry? Have you seen him lately?"
I made a note of the name she too called him by, and said, Yes, I had
seen him yesterday. "I'm sorry to say he seemed worried," I added.
"Oh? What's worrying him?" she asked, withdrawing the plug from the wall
and popping a cosy over the pot. It was a French cosy, a dainty little
porcelain Marie Antoinette, with a sac and a padded and filigreed
petticoat, and I remember thinking that if Miss Oliphant ever went to
fancy-dress dances the costume of her cosy would have suited her very
well.
"Have you read that horrible woman's horrible book?" I asked her
point-blank.
"_The Parthian Arrow?_ Yes, I've read it," she said equably.
"Well, I should say that's one of the things that's worrying him," I
replied. "I've just read it, and the taste of it's in my mouth still."
She considered the teapot. "We'll give it two minutes and then take the
bag out," she remarked. Then, "Oh yes, I've read it. I don't think she
need have written it either. But it is written, and there's an end of
it. As for Derry, anybody who knows him knows that his whole life's been
one marvellous mistake after another. He dodges it somehow in his books,
but he knows nothing whatever about women in real life. Never did.
Sugar?"
This was hardly what Madge Aird had led me to expect. I had gathered
from her that Miss Oliphant and Mrs Bassett had more or less fallen out
about that book; in fact Madge had definitely said, "I'm not sure that
they speak now." But here was Miss Oliphant, Rose's friend, not only
quite inadequately angry on the one hand, but on the other talking about
Rose's ignorance of women almost as if he had been as much to blame as
Mrs Bassett herself.... Moreover, when a woman tells a man that another
man knows nothing about women, the man who is spoken to invariably tries
the words on himself to see whether he too is included in the
disparagement. My understanding of Miss Oliphant, such as it was,
suddenly failed me. I looked at her again to see whether, and if so
where, I had made a mistake.
She was doing a perfectly innocent little thing, one that at any other
time I might have found charming. Her long fingers were slyly lifting
the tops of sandwich after sandwich in search of the kind she wanted. A
child does the same thing with sweets--and sometimes goes beyond mere
peeping. But the infantility of the gesture jarred on me, and jarred no
less when, her eyes meeting mine, she laughed, pouted, and said: "Well,
after all, I cut them." I did not smile. Her coolness and unconcern when
a friend was savagely attacked disappointed me. As for the portrait that
was to have been the excuse for my call on her, I was glad now that it
hadn't been mentioned. I now doubted whether I should mention it. I had
supposed her to be a woman--not merely a female painter who gave a male
sitter tea in her studio.
"I don't understand you," I said, a little curtly I'm afraid. "You speak
as if that book was a mere point of view to which she's entitled."
Again she smiled at me, as if she liked me very much.
"Well, she has her point of view. It's evident that you don't know Mrs
Bassett."
"Her book's told me all about her that I ever want to know."
"So," she laughed, "you're just showing how cross you can be?"
At that moment there came a ring at the bell. She was on her feet
instantly, as if to forestall the little maid. With less tact than ever,
I thought, her fingertips touched my shoulder lightly as she passed by
me. It was only then that I noticed that the Benares tray held a third
cup and saucer.
The next moment she had shown Mrs Bassett herself in.
I am going to show Mrs Bassett in and out of this story again with all
possible speed. Only once have I set eyes on the lady since, and that
was in a moment when I was far too occupied with other matters to give
her more than a glance. She came in, a fluff of cendré hair, surmounted
by a hat made of a thousand brilliant tiny blue feathers. This was
intended to enhance the pallid blue of her eyes; as a matter of fact it
completely extinguished it. She was a Christmas-tree of silver stole and
silver muff, toy dog, and a pale blue padded and embroidered object that
I presently discovered to be the dog's quilt. I was presented to her,
bowed, and--suddenly found myself alone with her. Miss Oliphant had
picked up the teapot and was nowhere to be seen.
And this was the kind of arch ripple that proceeded from the author of
_The Parthian Arrow_:
"Oh, how d'you do, Sir George? Really a red-letter day. Sir George
Coverham and Julia Oliphant together. Quite a galaxy--or is galaxy wrong
and does it take more than two to make one, like the Milky Way?--_Oh,
Puppetty, my stole!_--You mustn't mind if I ask you thousands of
questions--I always do when I meet distinguished people--peep behind the
scenes, eh?--_Puppetty, I shall slap you!_"--a tap on the beast's
boot-button of a nose. "_So_ handsome, Julia is, don't you think? Not in
a picture-postcard sort of way, perhaps, but such character (don't you
call it?) and such a lovely figure! I know if I were a man I should fall
head over ears in love with her! Do you mind, Sir George?"
She meant, not did I mind falling in love with Miss Oliphant, but did I
mind taking the dog's cradle and quilt from her arms. I did so, made my
bow as Miss Oliphant appeared again, and moved quickly towards the
alcove where I had left my hat.
But it was Miss Oliphant herself who stopped me, and stopped me not so
much by her quietly-spoken words--"I want you to stay"--as by the sudden
command in her eyes. This was quite unmistakable. For the first time
since I had entered her studio I saw the woman I had expected to see.
That look was too imperious altogether to disobey. I sat down again.
I swear that Mrs Bassett wore that silver stole twenty different ways in
as many minutes. The air about her was ceaselessly in motion. If
Puppetty was in his quilted cradle she had him out; if he was out she
put him back again and tucked him in. She kissed and scolded the
wretched beast, and discussed Miss Oliphant's pictures and my own books.
Only her own book she never once mentioned. And I sat, saying as little
as possible, looking from one to the other of the two women.
Then, out of the very excess of the contrast between them, light began
to dawn on me. All at once I found myself saying to myself, "This can't
be what it appears to be. There's something behind it all. Look at them
sitting there, and believe if you can that the one who's pouring out tea
couldn't, for sheer womanliness, eat the other alive! Look at her! She's
a whole packed-full history behind her, and one that's by no means at an
end yet. It radiates from every particle of her. Of course Miss Oliphant
cares just as much as you do when her friend's attacked. She's a
different way of showing it, that's all. See if she isn't putting that
other one through her paces now, and for your benefit. She's not keeping
you here without a reason. Sit still and watch."
I repeat that I said this to myself.
And from that moment I knew I was on the right track.
At last Mrs Bassett rose to go. I assure you that I was on my feet
almost before she was, for I knew that my talk with Miss Oliphant was
not now to be resumed--it was to begin. The author of _The Parthian
Arrow_ was piled up with quilts, cradles and Puppetty again, and I need
say no more about the thickness of her skin than that she gave me her
telephone number and asked me to go and see her. I bowed, and Julia
Oliphant towered over her as she showed her out.
Seldom in my life have I held a door open for a woman with greater
pleasure.
The outer door closed, and Miss Oliphant reappeared and crossed slowly
to the settee. I now knew beyond all doubt that I was right. She seemed
suddenly exhausted. She passed her hand wearily over those too-lustrous
eyes. Listlessly she told me to smoke if I wanted to. Then she
continued to sit in silence.
At last she roused a little. She turned her eyes on me.
"Well--now you've seen the author of _The Parthian Arrow_."
I made no remark.
"And," she continued, "you did exactly as I expected--exactly what a man
would do."
"What was that?"
"You'd one look, and then you turned away."
"One look was enough."
"Oh, you all think you've got rid of a thing when you've turned your
backs on it. That's the way men quarrel. 'Oh, So-and-So's a bounder;
blackball him and have done with it.' And so long as he isn't in your
Club he doesn't exist for you."
I pondered, my eyes on her old-fashioned studio-trappings. "Well, say
that's a man's way of defending his friend. What's a woman's?"
Our eyes met once more, and I knew a very great deal about Miss Julia
Oliphant by the time she had uttered her next six words.
"A woman has her to tea," she replied.
Then, as if something within her would no longer be pent up, she broke
into rapid speech.
"Oh, _I_ know you men! You're all too, too kind! Forgive me if I say I
think you like the feeling. It pleases you, and you don't stop to think
that it puts all the more on us. You make your magnificent gesture, but
we have to go round picking up after you. Do you think I'd let that
woman out of my sight?... But I'm sorry I had to trick you a little."
"To trick me?"
"Yes, when you first came in. I saw you were puzzled and--disappointed
in me. You see, when a person's coming to tea and may be here any moment
you have to keep some sort of hand on yourself. It isn't the time to
indulge your real feelings. So I took no chances. I'm sorry if I threw
you off the track.... Well, you've seen her, and you've read her book.
Tell me where you think the toy dog comes in."
She was speaking vehemently enough now. She did not give me time to
reply.
"I'll tell you. You and Derry--all the decent men--a toy dog fetches you
every time. You're all so, _so_ kind! You see tragedies and empty
cradles and all the rest of it straight away. And perhaps once in a
while you're right. But you can take it from me you're wrong this time.
I've known her all my life, and I don't believe she ever for a single
moment wanted a child. She'd never have put up with the bother of one.
So Derry's worrying all about nothing. All that sticks in her throat is
that she imagines she's been pilloried as not being able to have one.
Her vanity was hurt, not her motherhood at all. Now that she's got rid
of that bookful of bile I think she's a perfectly happy woman. Her days
are just one succession of shopping and matinées and calls and
manicuring and Turkish baths and getting rid of Bassett's money. It was
just the same during the war--flag-days and driving convalescents about,
and bits of canteen-work and committees by the score.... Oh, Derry
needn't worry his head; tragedy's quite out of the picture! Let's have
the truth. No weeping Niobe--just scents and powders and Puppetty and an
imaginary grievance--that's her."
I think it is my own sex that is the merciful one, at any rate to woman.
Man has made radiant veils for her, has shut his eyes to this or that
stark aspect of her, because the world has to go on by his efforts and
he cannot afford to begin his scheme of things all over again every time
he sees the red light of the prime in a woman's eyes. Julia Oliphant had
spoken cruelly, ruthlessly, without decency; and I now knew why. No
woman cares that a wrong is done in the abstract. Her bitterness and
hate ever mean that someone dear to her has been subjected to indignity
and pain. And suddenly I rose from my seat, crossed to the settee, and,
sitting down by Julia Oliphant's side, did a thing I am not in the
habit of doing upon a short acquaintance. I took both her hands into
mine.
With as little hesitation as I had taken them her fingers closed on
mine. And I fancied the quick strong pressure answered the question I
was going to ask her before ever my lips spoke it. It had all been there
months before--all prepared and promised in that first steady intimate
look across the rosy-shaded candles of that dinner-table. I spoke quite
quietly.
"Isn't there something I'd better know--and hadn't you better tell me
now?" I said.
Again that firm cool pressure of the fingers. The tired eyes looked
gratefully into mine.
"I always knew you'd be like that if only----"
"Then tell me. Because when you've done I've something to tell you."
God knows what fires were instantly ablaze in the depths of the eyes.
"About him?" broke instantly from her lips.
"You tell me first."
The fires died down, and the voice dropped again.
"Tell you? I don't mind telling you.... Of course; all my life; ever
since we were children together. Not that he ever gave me a thought. But
that made no difference."
And having said it she had said all. I saw the beginning of the fires
again. She went straight on. "Now what were you going to tell me?"
Remember it was not yet eighteen hours since Derwent Rose had thrust me
out of his door, torn between an angel and a devil within himself. But
what are eighteen hours to a man who has two scales of time? To him they
might represent years of experience. He had clung desperately to his
better man, but--who knew?--already he might be less accessible to the
angelic. If I was not already too late, to catch him while he was of
that same mind and will was the important thing. If this woman who had
just told me with such touching simplicity that she had loved him all
her life was indeed his good angel, it seemed to me that here was her
work waiting for her. I saw her as none the less loving that she could
vehemently hate for the protection of her love. That she would fly to
him the moment her mind grasped his story I had not an instant's doubt.
Nor did I stop to consider that I might be betraying something he did
not wish known. It was no time for subtleties. Remembering his anguish,
I did not think he would refuse any help that was to be had. Here by my
side was his cure if cure there was to be found.
Still with her hands in mine, I took my plunge.
The first time she interrupted me was very much where I had interrupted
him. She wanted to know, apart from mere imaginary changes that might
have been due to variable health, what visible proofs there were of all
this. I wished to spare her those two ( )'s on Rose's neck, but she
smiled ever so faintly.
"Yes, you're all nice dears. But I know perfectly well the kind of thing
it might be. So don't let that trouble you. It's important, you know."
So I told her. She merely nodded. "He never did know anything about
women," she said. "Go on."
Her next interruption came when I spoke of his tearing the book, though
this was more of a confirmation than a true interruption.
"He was a perfectly glorious athlete," she remarked calmly, "but he
always hated pot-hunting, and later of course his books interfered with
his training a good deal. I remember once ... but never mind. I wonder
if we shall have all that over again?"
"Then you've managed to swallow the monstrous thing so far?" I said in
wonder.
"I told you his life had been one marvellous mistake after another. Go
on," she replied.
But as I proceeded her calm became less and less assured. I was
purposely omitting from my account such elements as might tend to
agitate her, but she seemed to divine this, and perhaps she thought I
suppressed more than I did. Suddenly she broke out:
"Never mind all that about ratios. I don't know anything about ratios.
The point is, when does he expect the next--attack?"
"I hardly know--I rather think----" I began, now quite violently holding
her hands, which she had tried to withdraw. She had also attempted to
rise.
"Soon? A month? A week? To-morrow?" she demanded.
"He's not sure himself, but I'm rather afraid----"
She allowed me to say no more. She plucked her hands from mine
and ran out of the studio. I heard the single faint "ting" of a
telephone-receiver being lifted from its fork, and a moment later, "Is
that the taxi-rank? The Boltons--Miss Oliphant--as quick as you can."
Three minutes later she reappeared. She had thrown a wrap over her
tea-gown, and was hurriedly tying a scarf under her chin.
"Isn't that taxi here yet? How long should it take from here to
Cambridge Circus?"
"Twenty or twenty-five minutes."
"You'd better come with me. You can tell me the rest on the way.... What
a time he is taking! Wouldn't it be quicker to pick one up outside?
Listen--no, that's only letters. Perhaps the man's waiting and hasn't
rung--let's wait at the street entrance--here's your hat----"
She opened the inner door, kicked aside the letters on the floor, and
sped along the corridor. The taxi glided up as we reached the entrance.
The next minute we were on our way.
The streets were full and our progress was slow. People were hurrying to
their homeward tubes, running along in knots of a dozen or a score at
the tails of the slowing-down omnibuses.
"Surely there ought to be a quicker way than along Oxford Street at this
hour!" she exclaimed petulantly. Then she threw herself back in the
corner. Apparently she had forgotten all about the rest of my story. One
idea and one only possessed her--haste, haste. I am perfectly sure that
had she been in the driver's seat not an uplifted blue and white cuff in
London would have stopped her.
And her restlessness communicated itself to me. I too felt that in
talking to Madge Aird the previous evening, in reading that wretched
book all night, in not having told Miss Oliphant straight away what I
had to say, I had lost precious time. Some step ought to have been taken
quicker--immediately----
"Damn!" I said as another extended arm stopped us; and Julia Oliphant
sank back, biting her lip.
Then an endless wait at the corner of Charing Cross Road....
But even that taxi-drive had to come to an end.
"It's just near here, isn't it?" she asked, her hand on the door; and I
sprang out. It would be quicker to walk the last few yards. These few
yards, however, nearly cost Miss Oliphant her life, for I only just
succeeded in dragging her out of the way of a newsboy's bicycle that
darted like a minnow from behind a heavy dray. We stood at Rose's door.
I pressed the button of his bell, which was the third of a little
vertical row of four; but even as I did so I noticed something unusual
about its appearance. The little brass slip that bore his name had gone.
I was unable to say whether it had been there on the previous evening,
as he himself had admitted me, but gone it was now, and from certain
indications it seemed not to have been unscrewed, but wrenched off. My
heart sank, but I was careful to conceal from Miss Oliphant the
foreboding I felt.
"He may be out," I muttered. "I'll ring for the housekeeper."
To fetch Mrs Hyems up from her basement took more time, but at last she
appeared, and a look of mingled perplexity and relief came into the eyes
that met mine.
"Mr Rose?" I said.
"Aren't you the gentleman as came last night, sir?" she said. "Didn't he
go out with you? I heard you come down; about eleven o'clock it would
be; and he didn't seem to be not a minute after you----"
"Hasn't he been back since?"
"I can't make it out, sir. He hasn't been to bed, and there was a note
for me on his table this morning. Paid all up he has, but not a word
about his milk nor his washing nor his letters nor when he's coming
back. And he left his door open, which that isn't his way. Perhaps you'd
like to come up, sir?"
We followed her up the stairs. His door still stood wide open, and as
far as I could see his room was exactly as I had left it last night. The
medicine-ball still lay where it had rolled on the floor, the cushions
of the sofa still bore the imprint of his body. I turned to the
caretaker.
"You say he's paid you, Mrs Hyems?"
"To the end of the week, sir, except for his washing and ceterer."
"And he's left no address?"
"No more than I tell you, sir."
"Then," I said briskly, "I should just tidy his room and close his door.
He'll probably be back to-night. If he isn't let me know. Here's my
address."
But as I said it I seemed to see again those marks where his name-plate
had been. Derry always carried, suspended in his trousers-pocket by a
little swivelled thong, one of those fearsome-looking compendium knives
that consist of half a dozen tools in one. The plate had not been
unscrewed; what he had done had been to thrust one of these blades
behind it and to rip it bodily from its bed. I pictured it all only too
clearly. Myself carefully watched out of the way--a cheque hurriedly
written--a gulp of whisky perhaps and the call of the streets--a dash
downstairs with his door left open behind him--a minute's feverish work
over the plate.... He had left his books, his papers, his furniture, his
medicine-ball. But his name he had taken away, and I did not think that
those rooms in Cambridge Circus would see Derwent Rose's face any more.
PART II
THE STERN CHASE
I
_Lost_: A man with a brass name-plate in his pocket, probably
bent in wrenching. Personal appearance difficult to describe,
because something has happened to him that does not happen to the
generality of people. When last seen appeared to be about
thirty-five, but may look younger. Was wearing dark blue suit and
shirt with torn neckband.
_Missing_: Derwent Rose, novelist, late of 120 _bis_, Cambridge
Circus, W.C. Age forty-five, tall and very strongly built, eyes
grey-blue, hair chestnut-brown, strikingly handsome features. In
possession of money, as his banking account was closed the
morning after his disappearance. Served with Second Battalion
Royal Firthshire Fusiliers. Is thought not to have left the
country.
_For Disposal_: Quantity of black oak furniture, comprising
Jacobean oval table with beaded edge (copy), six upright chairs,
tallboy, chest; also large brass bedstead, drawers, two pairs
heavy damask curtains, crockery, plate, etc., etc. Also several
thousand volumes, including small collection medical works, and
others Curious and Miscellaneous. The whole may be viewed at 120
_bis_, Cambridge Circus, W.C. Apply Caretaker.
So the announcements might have run had there been any; but there were
none. I saw to that. The police are excellent people, but I considered
this a little out of their line and did not call them in. As for the
furniture and effects, they remained for the present where they were, I
paying his rent and putting his key into my pocket. As for Derwent Rose,
novelist, aged forty-five, it might be months before anybody missed him,
and it would be supposed that he had gone into retirement to write a
book. As for the man with the torn neckband and the brass name-plate in
his pocket, a prudent person would be a little careful how he tried to
identify him. You see what I mean. Julia Oliphant and myself were in a
class apart; we should know him on sight, since we knew what had
happened to him and what we might expect. But nobody else knew, nobody
in the whole wide world. Therefore they would be wise to look at him
twice before accosting him. Nobody wants to be certified and locked up,
and that was what might conceivably happen if anybody insisted too much
on resemblance or identity in the case of a man who was obviously
fifteen or twenty years younger than he could be proved to be. Much
safer to call the fancied resemblance a coincidence and let it go at
that.
Therefore--exit Derwent Rose, novelist, aged forty-five.
And enter in his stead--who?
Exactly. That was the whole point. He had not entered. He was somewhere
on Life's stage, but behind, or in the wings, or up in the flies, or
down underneath the traps. He was his own understudy, but whatever lines
he spoke, whatever gestures he made, happened "off." The call-boy ran
hither and thither calling his name, but in vain. Oblivion had taken
him. It had taken him so completely that he needed to dress no part, to
alter himself with no make-up. He was as free to walk about in the
limelight as you or I. Freer--far freer----
For where was the birth certificate of this man who had lost ten years
in a few months and for all anybody knew might now have lost another
ten--twelve--twenty? Of what use was his _dossier_ in the Military
Records Office? Of what value was his name on the register, his will if
he had made one, his signed contracts, his insurance policy? Of what
validity was the photograph on his passport, or who could call him into
Court as a witness? What clergyman or Justice of the Peace could certify
that he had known him for a number of years? What musty and mendacious
file in Somerset House dare produce a record to show that a man who was
obviously so many years younger had been born in the year 1875? Free,
this Apollo for beauty and Ajax for strength? As far as documents were
concerned he was more than free. He had side-stepped them all, and was
the only completely free man alive.
But he was not free from Julia Oliphant and myself, for we knew all
about it. His own brother he might fool, had he had one; he might delude
the nurse who had rocked him as a child were she still alive; but us he
could not deceive. With us his unimaginable alibi would not serve nor
his unique anonymity go down. If he wished to know us, he could come up
to us (but to us only) with a proffered hand and an ordinary "How do you
do." But if he did not wish to know us he had us to fear. We knew his
secret.
But nobody else--nobody in the whole round world else.
II
That, in its essence, and speaking very roughly, was the position; but
it is worth examining a little more particularly. I will leave aside for
the moment such questions as why we wanted to find him, whether we ought
to try to find him, whether, if a man chose to expunge his identity like
that he had not a perfect right to do so. I will assume that he was to
be sought and found. On that assumption I reasoned as follows:
Here--somewhere--was a man of unknown age and uncertain personal
appearance. When last seen he was, and looked, thirty-five, but he may
now be, and look, any age up to, or rather down to, sixteen. That
depended entirely on the rate of those backward jerks of which he
himself had failed to find the ratio. But where begin to look for him?
At what Charing Cross or Clapham Junction, where all the world passes
sooner or later, wait for him? What tube station watch? Round what
street corner lurk? Examine it, I say, a little more closely.
And take first his two scales of time. As a matter of incontrovertible
fact he was living in the year 1920. In the year 1920 a big and
handsome and athletic man was living a daily life, presumably somewhere
in London. But for him that year was 1910, and continually, day by day
and hour by hour, he must be struggling to reconcile those two periods.
It could make no difference that he knew that he was living in both
years simultaneously. A hundred times a day he might say to himself, "I
quite understand; this is both 1910 and 1920; I've got them perfectly
clear and separate in my head." But the hundred-and-first time would
catch him tripping. He would stumble over some sudden and unexpected
trifle. Let me make this clear by means of a small incident that
happened to myself. Not long ago I walked into Charbonnel's for a cup of
tea, and was passing through the shop on the ground floor and about to
mount the stairs when I was politely fetched back. I was told, with a
smile that might have been given to a man just returned from Auckland or
Mesopotamia, that the upper room had been closed for some time. I had
not been in Charbonnel's since the early days of the war, and was
looking, in 1920, for a Charbonnel's that had ceased to exist.
So Derwent Rose, however much he was on his guard, would once in a while
find himself looking for something that no longer existed.
Next, there was the question of money--common money, and how much of it
he had got. Obviously, and supposing he was to be found, it was no good
looking for him in places where he could not possibly afford to be. He
would be found in a cheaper place or a more expensive one according to
the state of his purse. I had no means of knowing how much money he had
withdrawn from the bank. I had never known much about his finances
except that sometimes he had been hard-up, at others comparatively
"flush," but that he had never, as far as I knew, borrowed. Thus the
vulgarest of all considerations had an important bearing on our very
first step: Where to look for him?
Next there was to be considered a combination of these things--the
factor of money-plus-time. Say he had drawn one hundred pounds or five
hundred pounds from the bank--for all I knew it might have been either,
or more, or less. Well, we all know that a sum that was sufficient for a
man in 1910 does not go very far in 1920. There has been a war.... So
was he haunting expensive places, having (as might have been said of
anybody but him) "a short life and a gay one," or would he be found
spinning out his Bradburys as long as possible on a modester scale? Nay,
was he even living on his capital at all? Was it not possible that he
had found employment of some kind? If so, of what kind? They ask few
questions about identity at the dock-gates; was that it, and was he to
be looked for in a workman's early-morning tram? Or had he, a man
without a shred of paper to be his warranty, managed to talk somebody
into something bigger, and was he one of these ephemeral Business
Bubbles, lording it for a few months in somebody else's car and floating
the higher because of the hotness of the air inside him? I did not
think, by the way, that either of these last two things was very likely;
but nothing was more impossible than anything else, and I am merely
trying to show the size of the haystack in which we must hunt for our
needle.
The merest glance at the problem made it plain that the only starting
point was his last actually-known age--thirty-five. All else was the
blindest guesswork. And it was equally plain that the best likelihood of
finding him lay in the chance that he would more or less repeat (or seek
to repeat) his former experiences at that age. Past associations might
pull him, he might frequent some places rather than others, some persons
or class of persons rather than others. The question was, could his life
at thirty-five be so reconstructed that this hope should not be too
slender? That was my idea, and I began to ransack my memory in search of
indications that might further it.
But almost from the start I despaired. Sketched thus airily the thing
had a deluding look of logic and simplicity; but the first contact with
actuality scattered all to the winds again. For example, I have hinted
at an echo of an earlier wildness that had for some reason or other
overtaken him again at thirty-five; but when I came to examine it I
found that I knew almost nothing at all about it. He had always had the
decency to keep these things very much to himself. I had not the vaguest
idea of who his companions had been, what his haunts. Added to this was
the difficulty that I was approaching the question in reverse. He had
slept since I had last seen him, and, sleeping, had presumably once more
slipped back. But how far back? He might be (so to speak) at the crest
of the wave, farther back still at the beginning of it, or even past it
altogether--no longer the man of _An Ape in Hell_, but him of _The
Vicarage of Bray_. It was even not impossible that he was sixteen and
dead.... So all that I could do was to nail myself firmly down to
thirty-five and as much of him at that time as I could remember or
ascertain.
And instantly the question loomed up largely: "What about Julia
Oliphant? Hadn't she better be left out of this, at any rate for the
present?"
Now my position in the world practically forces the conventional
attitude on me. All things considered, I think I should adopt that
attitude in any case, for I have only to look at any other one and my
hesitation doesn't last long. But at the same time I do go to lectures
on such subjects as Relative and Absolute Age, and in other things, as I
have explained, I liked at that time to keep in step and abreast. I have
even made an attempt to understand the mystery that is called the
Thermionic Valve.
But neither valve nor age theory is newer or stranger to me than the
change that seems to have come over the sex-relationship during these
last years. I trust that on the whole I manage to maintain a happy
medium--it is the dickens of a thing to have sprung on one latish in
life--but I only know that I myself, old-fashioned as I am, sometimes
find myself discussing with the nicest women, and as freely as I should
discuss them with a man, the--may I say the "rummest" subjects? And as
for Julia Oliphant's attitude to all this newness, I will only say that
while she might have been ten years behind Madge Aird in matters of
dress, she was not ten minutes behind her in anything else.
But discussions "in the air" with her were one thing, but discussions of
an actual Derwent Rose at thirty-five quite another. "Oh, I know
perfectly well the sort of thing it _might_ have been, so don't let that
worry you," she had said, and for once, just once, I had had to be
precise. But once was enough. Call it the old fossil in me if you will,
but it makes a very great difference when a woman has said, as simply as
Julia had spoken, "Of course; all my life; not that he ever gave me a
thought, but that doesn't matter."
For those few words had placed us, instantly and beyond all recall, on a
footing of the last intimacy. They had revealed her once for all, and
the matter need never be referred to between us again. And as to a
swimmer the wavelet that slaps his face and fills his mouth with salt is
of more importance than all the immensities below, so we kept to the
level of the trifles of life. Often, at a word or a look, we were ready
to quarrel. Perhaps, in view of those still depths beneath, our
bickering was a necessity and a refuge.
III
That there was much of my search that I should have to conduct without
her was definitely brought home to me on the very first evening when I
took a stroll through the region of the West End theatres, still wearing
the suit I had worn all day. I ought to say that as I was paying his
rent for him I had allowed myself the use of his rooms, and for the
present 120 _bis_, Cambridge Circus, was one of my addresses. There was
always the chance that he might have forgotten something in 1920 of
which he had need in 1910, and that he might steal in, if only for a
moment, any dark night when things were quiet.
It was a beautiful London evening, not quite twilight. A tender
after-glow lay over the Circus, and, if jewels can grow, the lamps might
have been jewels a few moments after their birth. It was one of those
evenings when you delay even to dine, knowing that when you come out
again the glamour will have gone and you will have seen a loved and
familiar thing once more and once less. So I strolled, scanning faces,
sometimes remembering what I was scanning them for, sometimes forgetting
again. It might happen that I should find myself suddenly looking into
his face. Of course the chances were millions to one that I should not.
I walked as far as the Hippodrome, and then turned and crossed the road.
Even in those few minutes the sky was no longer the same. It was
mysteriously bluer, and the soft crocus-quality of the lamps had gone. I
found myself opposite a doorway with a coronet of lights over it and a
tall commissionaire beneath them. A man had just gone in. He was not in
the least like Rose, and there was no reason why I should have followed
him more than any other man; but I did follow him, not into the bright
and crowded and smoky ground-floor room of which I had a glimpse, but up
a staircase with brass-edged treads and the word "Lounge" at the bottom
of it. I found myself in an empty upper room with leather-covered sofas
set deeply into the walls, numerous little tables with green-tiled tops,
and a small quadrant of a bar in one corner. The man I had followed was
already at this bar, and the young woman behind it was preparing his
drink.
"Bit quiet, isn't it?" I heard him say. He had rather a pleasing sort of
face, of the kind that a year or two ago one associated with the brimmed
hat of an Australian trooper. "Say, is this the best London can do for a
man nowadays?"
"London nowadays!" the young woman declared with contempt. "_I_ should
say so! Where've _you_ been this long time? Where the bluebottles go to
in the winter I suppose. Don't you know this is a tea-room now?"
"Go on!"
"A tea-room, I tell you. Ladies not admitted after five. The new sign'll
be up to-morrow. Oh, you can bring your old grannie here now!"
"Bit different from Stiff Brown's time then!"
"Different!----"
The conversation continued, in the same sense. It was precisely my
Charbonnel's experience over again. Whatever notoriety the place might
once have possessed, it was now a perfectly reputable resort, a tea-room
in the afternoons, and in the evenings to all intents and purposes the
equivalent of my own Club. The woman behind the bar wore a wedding ring,
and I distinctly liked the look of her companion. And yet, with dramatic
suddenness, the whole prospect before me seemed to be all at once
illimitably enlarged.
For if a normal man like my friend at the counter was struck by the
changes of the past five years, how must they strike a man who had gone
through an experience so utterly abnormal as that of Derwent Rose?
Change is the normal condition of all things; the human mind is
marvellously able to adapt itself to altered circumstances in a week, a
day, an hour; memories lose their fresh edge, novelties amuse and give
way to newer novelties still. But all this is only for men who march
forward with their fellows. For the man who marches backwards all is
turned round. The memories stir and revive and bloom again, the
forgotten is re-remembered, laid ghosts begin to walk. The dulled brass
edges of staircases become bright again with the rubbing of light and
frail and vanished feet, recessed sofas in upper rooms thrill and rustle
with whispers and frou-frou and laughter again. Doubtless the living,
1920 successors of those ghosts were to be found elsewhere, but unless I
sought Derry in 1910 I knew not where to begin to look for him. Musingly
I descended the stairs and walked slowly back towards the Criterion
again. I no longer watched faces. The whole thing seemed hopeless. I had
about as much chance of finding Derwent Rose in London as I had of
catching one given drop of a summer shower.
And then, in that very moment, I saw him.
* * * * *
Or rather it was the hansom that I saw first. It had just started
forward with the release of the traffic opposite Drew's, at the top of
Lower Regent Street.
Now a hansom in Piccadilly Circus to-day is perhaps not the rarity that
a sedan-chair would be; nevertheless hansoms are comparatively few, and
therefore conspicuous. The padded leaves of this one were thrown back,
and before I saw him I had already seen a white-sheathed ankle and a
white satin slipper.
Then he leaned forward for a moment.
It was unmistakably he.
The hansom passed along with the stream.
Unmistakably he--and yet, mingled with the perfect familiarity, there
was a change that I could not immediately analyse. Then (I am telling
you what flashed instantaneously through my mind in that fraction of
time before I had dashed after him)--then I had it! Familiar, yet not
altogether familiar! Of course!----
_His beard!_
At one time in the past Derwent Rose had worn a beard, the softest
sprouting of curling golden-brown. In certain lights it had been little
more than a glint that had scarcely hid the contours beneath, and it had
made him the living image of Du Maurier's drawings of Peter Ibbetson. He
now had that young beard again, and he and it and the hansom with the
white satin slippers in it had disappeared behind a bus opposite Swan
and Edgar's.
I dashed across to the island and dodged in front of the nose of a
horse; but I could not see the hansom. There were four directions in
which it could have gone: up Regent Street, Glasshouse Street,
Shaftesbury Avenue, or east past the Pavilion. Then a taxi slowed down
immediately in front of me, and I found myself standing on the step of
it, holding the door open with one hand and with the other pointing past
the driver's head.
"That hansom in front--follow that hansom----"
We tried Regent Street first, for I remember seeing the revolving doors
of the Piccadilly; but no hansom was to be seen. I thrust my head out of
the window again.
"Quick--turn--try Shaftesbury Avenue," I cried.
He turned, but not quickly. It was a good two minutes before we reached
the Grill Room entrance of the Monico. Then I lost my temper.
"A _hansom_, man--damn it, a _hansom_! Can't you follow the only hansom
left in London? Ask that man on point-duty----"
But I got the impression that the police do not look with too much
favour on roving orders to follow other vehicles to unspecified
addresses. The constable was curt.
"There was a hansom a minute ago. If you've got his number try Scotland
Yard. Come along, you can't stop here----"
I sank back cursing. In the very moment when pure chance had given him
to me I had lost him again. By this time he was probably half a mile
away. There was nothing whatever to be done.
"Where to now?" grunted the driver.
Nothing to be done--nothing whatever.
"Cambridge Circus, 120," I said.
As well there as anywhere else. He might just possibly be on his way
there. He still had a key the duplicate of which was in my own pocket.
I descended at Cambridge Circus, let myself in and mounted to his rooms.
He was not there, for no light showed under the door. I switched on,
hung up my hat in his little recess, and sat down on his sofa. Then,
mortified, but trying to tell myself that I was not actually any worse
off, I sought to dissect that momentary impression of him that was all
that remained to me.
A hansom, and his beard again! That antiquated black-mutton-chop-shape
balanced on two spidery wheels, and that fair and tender sprouting! Both
were anachronistic, and yet there was a certain suitability about both.
Comparatively few young Englishmen have beards nowadays, but then
comparatively few young Englishmen are in their forties and their
thirties at the same time. He had always looked handsome in his beard,
rather like something from a Greek or Roman gallery come to life again,
and so he was right to have let it grow. As for the hansom, he might
have taken it merely because it was the last vehicle left on the rank,
refused by everybody, else, or there might have been a subtler reason
for his choice. A browny-gold beard and a hansom! Yes, both were "in the
picture."
But neither beard nor hansom helped me to what I most anxiously wanted
to know--how far back in years he had now gone. In the ordinary way a
beard may make a young man look older; but then Rose was paradoxically
younger than he was. He might now be twenty-five who looked thirty-five
because of the beard, or he might be thirty-five looking precisely that
age.
I would have given fifty pounds at that moment for one long, steady look
at him in a good light.
However, certain things were in their way reassuring. He was in London,
and apparently he was not avoiding its most central places. He had worn
a hat of soft grey velours that I had not seen before, and a
new-looking, well-cut jacket of grey cheviot. As he had disappeared in
navy-blue, he thus had money to spend on clothes. He had further looked
in magnificent health, and a man who has health, money, youth and a
pretty satin-slippered foot near his own has a number of very good
things indeed. I might therefore dismiss the workmen's-tram and
dock-gates side of the affair. If Derwent Rose was not having a good
time he ought to have been.
And yet at the same time I was uneasy. I will not put on any airs about
the reason for my uneasiness. White satin slippers in hansoms had very
little to do with it, and tearooms that had once been something else
even less. These are ordinary everyday things, and there must be
something wrong with the eyes of a man who does not see them at every
turn--I had almost added something wrong with the mind of a man who
magnifies these beyond their proper importance. But when you propose to
find a friend by a process of reconstruction of the past phases of his
life, you must be prepared for a shock or two; and what I did now begin
extraordinarily to resent, among these vulgar and everyday things, was
Rose's not being a vulgar everyday man.
For what had the author of _The Hands of Esau_ and _The Vicarage of
Bray_ to do with all this? True, he had been in it, whether of it or
not, as we can none of us shake off the trammels of the flesh until we
do so once for all; but the only Derwent Rose with whom properly I had
any concern was the man who, into whatever suspect place he had
penetrated, had kept something fair and secret and unsullied all the
time.
Yet here I was, proposing to look for what was precious and enduring in
him, yet prepared to set (as it were) my trap with the grossest possible
bait. I was going to catch the best of him by means of the worst, and
was deliberately and cold-bloodedly laying my plans to that end.
I flushed at the thought; and then I found myself growing angry with him
also. Suddenly I resented the fact that he was alive at all. Why,
instead of having contracted this nightmare of a thing that he had
contracted, couldn't he have died? Why couldn't he have got himself
killed in the war? We respect the decency of the dead; why must I
violate his, who had chosen this extraordinary alternative to death? Was
this the way to write a friend's epitaph? Must immortelles of this
common and saddening mortality be laid on his unlocated grave? Why not
write him off--treat him as dead--give up a search that honoured neither
him nor me--go back to Julia and tell her that the thing simply couldn't
be done?
It seems to me, knitting my brows there that night in his room, that I
could do nothing better than that.
But precisely there was the dickens of it. He was _not_ dead. How regard
a man as dead whom you have seen in the flesh not an hour before? Dead?
He was alive, well-dressed, driving a woman somewhere in a hansom, and
certainly looking as if he ate four square meals a day and enjoyed them.
_Had_ he been dead, well and good; but since he was about as alive as a
man could be, the tombstone virtues I was concocting to his memory
looked unpleasantly like a sentimental shirking of the whole question.
They reminded me of hypocrite mourning, with a drop of something warm
with sugar to take the edge off the grief. They looked as if I wanted to
have him off my mind, to feel luxuriously about him, to be able to say
to myself, "This friend of mine was a good and exemplary man"--and then
perhaps at any moment to hear his step behind me, that of a man not good
or exemplary in this sense at all. I seemed to hear him softly laughing
at me: "So _that's_ the yarn you're going to put about, is it: that I
was all barley-sugar and noble prose? But let me tell you that
Shakespeare and I hit on some of our best notions with a mug of beer in
our hands! Great stuff, beer; nearly as good as music.... Don't be a
humbug, George."
So it looked as if I was for seeking him only in the politer places,
knowing all the time that I should not find him there; and I reflected a
little bitterly that had the boot been on the other leg he would have
known where to look for me. He would have walked straight into the first
place where easygoing people take the softest way with one another, give
praise for praise, and by and by get knighthoods for it. He would have
looked for me there. And he would have had an excellent chance of
finding me.
I hope I have not wearied you with these quasi-heroics about friendship.
They were dispelled quickly enough. Suddenly there happened something
that arrested the beating of my heart.
I heard the sound of feet on the stairs outside. They were accompanied
by a woman's soft laugh and a man's deeper muttering.
My skin turned crisp with fright. I am afraid I lost my head as
completely as ever I lost it in my life. Friendship or no friendship, I
gave him the benefit of not one single doubt. If he was coming in there
was one thing to do and one only--to make a dash and get away out of it.
Again I heard the laugh. It came from the landing immediately below. A
step or two higher, and----
I sprang to the electric light and switched it off.
The little curtained hat-and-coat recess stood just within the door. I
made a tiptoe leap for it. As I did so I remembered with thankfulness
one of the recess's peculiarities. It abutted so close up to the
door-frame on the side where the lock and handle were that Rose had had
the switch moved to the other side. The opening door would therefore be
between him and the switch. That would be my moment. He would see my
things scattered about his room the moment he turned on the light, but
that could be explained later. To get away was the urgent thing.
Violently agitated, the curtains grasped in my hand, I stood prepared to
make my spring. The feet had stopped outside the door. I heard the
striking of a match. I waited for the touch of the key on the lock.
Then, "What, up again?" I heard the man's voice say....
The feet passed on to the floor above. I never knew who lived there.
Rose's bell was the third of four, counting from the bottom.
IV
I have not told you the foregoing because I am proud of it. At the best
I had behaved childishly, at the worst--but we will come to that
presently. Had it really been he I should probably not have had the
remotest chance of ever getting past him. He would have vaulted a
handrail in the dark, taken a flight in two bounds, and would have had
his hand--that hand that tore books in two--on my neck. Had he
recognised me he would have wanted to know what the devil I was doing in
his rooms. Had he failed to recognise me I should as likely as not have
gone through the window. One takes risks when one intrudes on the loves
of the giants.
At the same time, I will do myself the justice to say that physical
risks were not my first consideration. Vast as his strength was, it was
the part of him I least feared. What I did fear, what I was now
beginning to think I had not nearly sufficiently allowed for, was the
enormous spiritual and mental range of the man.
Up to that moment in his life when he had become so mysteriously turned
round, this very width and range had resulted in a state of balance, as
the tightrope-walker is balanced by the length of his pole. But to
consider either of his extremes separately was to have a cold shiver.
Often I had thought, "I'm thankful I haven't your burden of personality
to bear, my friend. Much better to be the millionth man and take
everything on trust. The way to be happy on this earth is to be just a
shell of useful and comfortable and middling habits. Stick to the
second-hand things of life and let the new ones alone. Any kind of
singularity is a curse, and your life is one dreadful yawning question.
You've no business to have the first dawn in your eyes and the last
trump in your ears like that. The world has no need of that kind of man.
What you need is another world somewhere else."
And he had marvellously contrived to find this other world, and had it
all, all to himself.
And here was I proposing to dig him out of it.
Can you guess now what it was that I had begun to fear more than his
physical strength? It was the whole ungauged pressure of his
personality. In behaving as foolishly as I had just behaved I had wished
to spare both myself and him the humiliation of an intrusion on a vulgar
amour. Now it occurred to be, Why a "vulgar" one at all? Vulgarity is
for us smaller people, who are vulgar enough to think that anything that
is created is vulgar. But Derwent Rose had so striven that every dawn
was the first dawn of creation for him. He had no habits, had daily
sought to see the world as if it had never been seen before. Abysses
must open for him every time he passed a huddle on a park bench,
protoplasmic re-beginnings stare out at him from every chance glance of
a street-walker's eyes.... Oh, I am far from envying him. I should
blench to have a mind like that. To no possession that I have do I cling
half so dearly as I do to my narrowness and to my prejudice. I _am_ the
millionth man, and I thank God on my knees for it. One of the other kind
has been my friend....
Suppose then that one day I should surprise him in some act, stupid and
meaningless to myself, but as fraught with tremendousness for him as was
that first command, "Let there be Light!" What would happen then? You
see what I am driving at. Up to now my idea had been, quite simply, to
find him. I had sought him much as I might have sought a truant
schoolboy, who would consent to be scolded and brought back to ordinary
life again. Small practical difficulties, mostly in connection with his
altered appearance, I had anticipated, but these I had intended to deal
with as they arose. In a word, I had assumed his willingness, his also,
to be the millionth man.
But how if he should refuse with scorn? What was the state of his
balance, not in my eyes, but in his? When I had last seen him he had
trembled in equilibrium, and to his fluctuations I had off-handedly
applied the terms "worse" and "better." But what were such terms to
him?... I will do as I did before--try to set it out in parallel
columns. Here was a missing man, a man of unusual range and powers, to
whose state of poise something had happened. It was this man's daily
endeavour to accept nothing at second-hand, to disregard all names,
labels, customs, tags, appearances, verdicts, records, precedents. His
life was one long probing into the essential nature of things. I might,
therefore, expect to find:
The Derwent Rose who _or_ The Derwent Rose who might have
had said, when I had replied, "Whisky? Well, it has
offered him the whisky, interesting effects sometimes.
"No, no--blast it, Somebody once called it a short
no--water!" cut to a psychic experience. If
a psychic experience is what
you are after, why take the
roundabout way? Let's try it."
The Derwent Rose who _or_ The Derwent Rose who might have
had torn off his collar, growled, "Well, what is there
but who had also cried, extraordinary about that?
"Good God, man, I'm Perhaps it isn't anything to
not bragging of my make a song about, but don't
conquests--don't think pretend you've never heard of
I'm not ashamed!" such a thing before. It happens
every night, you know."
The Derwent Rose who had _or_ The Derwent Rose who might
sat in a hansom with a have said, "Men are men and
white satin slipper as women are women. This is also
openly and innocently as Piccadilly Circus. Look round.
I might have sat to Can't _you_ find anything
Julia Oliphant for my better to do than to hunt for
portrait. a man who is--not at home to
anybody this evening?"
The Derwent Rose who _or_ The Derwent Rose who cared
loved beauty and hated nothing for the name of
ugliness. anything, destroyed stale and
outworn canons of beauty with
a laugh, and sought a fresher
loveliness in a world where
nothing is common or unclean.
But once more I had to give it up. That baffling down of golden beard
had obliterated every physical indication. He might be in a church--for
an assignation. He might be in a drinking-hell--lost in images of beauty
and sweetness and power.
And what kind of a _Salle des Pas Perdus_ is London in which to look for
a man like that? The whole thing became an illimitable phantasmagoria of
virtue and vice, nobility and degradation, expressed in terms of bricks
and stones and buildings and streets. Sitting brooding among his black
oak furniture, I tried to envisage even that merest fragment of it all
that was being enacted within a quarter of a mile at that moment.
Whitfield's Tabernacle--and for all I knew an opium den within a
biscuit's toss of it; the Synagogue--and the lady upstairs. I pictured
the tenements behind the Shaftesbury with their iron balconies and
emergency-ladders; and I saw young lovers in their stalls at the Palace.
I saw the bright Hampstead buses, and the masked covertness of the
flitting taxis. I heard the slap and thump of beer-pumps, children's
simple prayers. Images floated before me of the gloom of
cinema-interiors, the green-shaded glow-lamps of orchestras, the
rippling of incandescent advertisements, the blackness of the jam
factory yard. There were pockets with money in them, money to buy all
the world has to sell; and there were pockets empty of the price of a
cup of coffee at the back-street barrows. There were hearts with love in
them, love as boundless as heaven's blue, and there were hearts from
which love had passed, hearts as musty as the graves that waited for
them. All but Infinity itself was to be found within a few hundred yards
of where I sat.
And flitting uniquely through it all was this man whose privacy was so
public, whose publicness was so unutterably private. He might be met at
any step, and yet, of all the millions living, there was not one he
could call contemporary. For he was the only man in the world who was
growing younger instead of older. He of all men alone was passing from
experience to innocence, through the murk of his former sins to the
perfection of his own maximum and the unimpaired godhead of his prime.
* * * * *
"But you mightn't see him again for another twenty years!" Julia
protested, shaking out her napkin and laughing for the sheer
bewilderment of it.
I had chosen the small restaurant in Jermyn Street because it had no
band to distract us.
"I know all that," I retorted. "But if you think that just sitting there
loving him is going to produce him, your way may take even longer than
mine."
"Pooh!" she said, breaking her roll. "You're wasting your time."
"Don't be irritating, Julia." It irritated me because it was so true.
"It's my time anyway."
"No it isn't, not all of it. What about my sittings?" (There had not yet
been any, by the way.) "The canvas is ready as soon as you are."
"I'll grow a beard, and then you won't want to paint me," I replied.
Her eyes had sparkled when I had told her about Derry's beard; I had
thought she was going to clap her hands. Except for Derry's golden one
(she had said) she had never seen a beard that wasn't nasty. I myself
(she had informed me) should look a perfect horror in one, and unless I
remained clean-shaven she refused to be seen about with me.... So our
customary quarrel blew up. We wrangled about one trifle and another
half-way through dinner. It probably did us good, for underneath we were
both badly on edge. Then along the edge of the table she slid a bent
little finger. It was her way of making up. The finger rested in mine
for a moment.
"Well," I sighed, "I told you all I saw. I'm afraid that beard threw me
quite out of my reckoning."
She mused. "I once drew him with his beard, from memory. In armour. He
looked just like King Arthur come to life again. I've got it yet.... But
let's look at the thing reasonably, George. I admit there's something to
be said for having a _pied-à-terre_ in his rooms. He might just possibly
turn up there. It might also be--hm!--awkward if he did.... But the
rest, all this hunting for him, that's a wash-out. You know it is."
I was silent. Then again I saw in her eyes what I had seen before--the
beginning of a soft deep shining, as if some diver's lamp moved beneath
the waters at night.
"No, I prefer my way," she said, suddenly sitting straight up.
"Doing nothing at all?"
"Fiddlesticks! _I'm_ supposed to sit and listen respectfully when _you_
talk, but _you_ never listen to what _I've_ got to say. I told you what
my way was. I'll tell you again. I had tea at Daphne Bassett's flat this
afternoon."
"I hope you found Puppetty well," I remarked.
The kindling eyes were steadily on mine.
"Puppetty," she said slowly, "is in the greatest favour. Puppetty has
wing-portions for dinner and bovril to go to bed with. Puppetty's to
have a new quilt for being a good little doggles and protecting his
mummie----"
"What on earth----" I began.
Then I sat up as suddenly as if I had been galvanised.
"Julia! You don't mean----?"
She nodded, darkling devils of mischief under that cool smooth brow.
"What, that _he's_ still looking for _her_?"
"He's found her. He spoke to her a couple of days ago."
"And she recognised him?"
"I didn't say that."
"Didn't she recognise him?"
"Didn't know him from Adam."
"Then how do you know it was he?"
I cannot convey the lightness of her disdain. "How do I know!----"
I leaned back in my chair. To think that I had not thought of this, the
oldest of all stratagems! _Guettez la femme!_ Runaways are caught by it
every day, and always will be. They are released from custody and placed
under observation so that they may walk straight into the trap. That is
why the trick is old--it never fails. And I had not thought of it!
She wore her triumph with such present moderation that I knew I had not
heard the last of it.
"Yes," she continued, "she told me all about it. It was on Monday
evening, about seven o'clock, and she was coming up the little street by
St. James's Church, where the Post Office is. She fancied she'd noticed
a man following her, a very big handsome man with a golden beard."
"Is that her description of him?" I interrupted.
"Yes. That's why I wasn't much surprised when you told me about his
beard. Then outside the Post Office the outrage happened. He spoke to
her. Spoke to her, George. Try to realise it."
"Well, if she'd no idea who he was it wasn't a pleasant thing to have
happen."
She gave a soft laugh. "He's very good-looking," she said brazenly.
"Julia, if you were naturally a catty sort of woman----"
"Don't interrupt, George. I am artificially then. If you don't want to
hear go out and look for hansoms. And whatever else you're sententious
about don't be sententious about women. Now I've forgotten what I was
going to say."
"You said he spoke to her outside the Post Office."
"Behave yourself then. He did speak to her, and she set Puppetty at
him."
"_What!_" I cried.
"Quite so, dear George. _As_ you say. Fearfully pleased and excited
really. Quite a romance. And of course she'd have given anything _not_
to set Puppetty at him."
"Then why in the name of goodness did she?"
Julia gave an exhausted sigh. "If ever you marry, George, heaven help
Lady Coverham!... Why did she? Because she had to. She's that sort.
They've got to do certain things because that sort does, but they _do_
so wish they needn't! Virtue's a funny thing. If you don't want that ice
may I have it?"
"But look here," I said presently. "If he'd said straight out, as any
man in his position would have done, 'I say, I know this is a bit
unusual, but my name's Derwent Rose, and there's something I want to
explain'--and so on--you see what I mean. Then she'd have known who he
was."
"Well, I'm afraid I'm not responsible for what he didn't say."
"What exactly did he say?"
She gave a shrug. "What do men say? They don't stop _me_ outside post
offices. You never did; if all this hadn't happened I don't suppose I
should ever have known you one scrap better. I dare say he was a bit
rattled too. Anyway she didn't stop to think. She just set the dog at
him, legged it, and she's as pleased as Punch still."
"You're quite sure she didn't recognise him?"
"Oh, quite. She'd tell me in a minute. She'd love to be able to say
she'd had Derwent Rose at her feet."
"I suppose so," I sighed. "Did you ask her what aged man
this--marauder--looked?"
"What do you think? Of course I did. Doesn't everything turn on that?
But she could only tell me, 'Oh, about thirty-three or four--thirty-five
perhaps.' The very thing we want to know ... but she was in such a hurry
to be virtuous...."
Her brow was no longer smooth. Her voice rose a little and then dropped
again.
"You see how much turns on which it is--thirty-five or thirty-three. You
say he was struggling with himself that night, sweating with funk,
wanting to hang on. And yet the moment you turned your back he bolted,
and he's riding about with ladies in hansoms."
"Come, my dear!" I protested. "There's nothing in that! All men drive
about with women. For that matter I drove you part of the way here."
But she cut me impatiently short.
"Oh, I don't mean that at all! That's nothing to me! I don't care who he
takes in hansoms; I've nothing to gain and nothing to lose. I want him
to have just whatever he wants. But I told you he knew nothing about
women. He's never been in love in his life. Oh, I'm explaining badly,
but what I mean is that if you're going to find him by going through
London with a dustman's besom and scraper, that's as much as to say that
he isn't happy. That's what hurts me. He was miserable at thirty-five
before--miserable and ashamed. _But the moment he's thirty-three
again_----"
I watched the long white fingers that tapped softly for a minute on the
table before she resumed.
"_Then_ he's all right," she said in a low and moved voice. "He was
writing the _Vicarage_ then. I saw--oh, quite lots of him. He used to
'blow in,' as he called it, with a 'Hallo, Julia! I'm having rather a
devil of a good time these days; writing a book that will make some of
'em sit up and take notice; I've done a quarter of it in three weeks;
how's that for a little gentle occupation?' Yes, I saw quite a lot of
him at thirty-three. I had a studio near Cremorne Road. It wasn't really
a studio, but a sort of gutted top floor, big enough to have given a
dance in, and my bed was behind a curtain that was drawn right across
one end. I used to give him tea there--Patum Paperium sandwiches he
liked--and he was sweet. Once I'd an illustration to do for some stupid
story or other, about a sort of Sandow-and-Hackenschmidt all rolled into
one, and do you know what he did? He looked at my drawing, took it to
the window, and then laughed. 'I say, Julia, this will never do!' he
said. 'When a man lifts a heavy thing like that he does it _from the
earth_, you understand--you do everything that's worth doing from the
earth. So you've got to see his feet are right. Anybody likely to come
in here? No? Right; I don't mind you. Got anything heavy here? You get
your paper and pencil.' And he stripped to the belt and picked up my
sewing-machine and posed for me. He did...."
V
I seemed to see the scene in bright illumination, him in that upper room
with the curtains drawn across one end, his jacket and shirt tossed on
to a chair, his great torso stripped to the buff, the sewing-machine
held aloft. She would be at her board or easel, sketching--pretending to
sketch--I don't know what. He had merely said, "Anybody likely to come
in? No? Right! I don't mind you!"
It was true. He hadn't minded her. Otherwise he would never have
displayed himself so gloriously before her eyes.
"Did that illustration ever appear?" I asked without looking at her.
I knew without looking that she smiled as she shook her head.
"Not that one. You know it didn't. The first one was good enough for
them."
And she still had the King Arthur sketch too.
"And that was when he was thirty-three?"
Now that she was off there was no stopping her, even had I wished it.
"Yes. Did you know--will you believe--that he wrote his _Vicarage_ in
just over three months?"
"He was a furious worker."
"That's just where you're wrong, George," she said eagerly. "At that
time at any rate. He was as cool as this ice. He just digested those
gigantic masses of information, and then, except for the trouble of
writing it down, he never turned a hair. I'll tell you the things that
did make him furious; those were his rottenest short stories, the things
he used to have to do to pay his rent. He always knew they were the
wrong sort of rottenness. Any kind of rottenness won't do for the
public. You've got to be rotten in quite a specialised way."
"Thank you."
"But the bigger a thing was the easier he always found it. He used to
say that if a thing was hard work there was something wrong somewhere.
Why, he'd take whole days off when he was at his very busiest. He came
into my place one morning--the same place, Cremorne Road--before
half-past eight. I was just finishing breakfast; I hadn't done my hair;
if you must know, I was rather a sloven at that time. He was in his
breeches and cap and a soft collar. 'Down tools, Julia,' he said; 'we're
off into the country for the day.' 'But, Derry, your book!' I said,
rather aghast (he'd told me a day or two before that the _Vicarage_ was
a race against time or else bankruptcy for him in the autumn). 'Oh,
that's all right; it's finished as far as I'm concerned; the pen'll do
the rest; come along just as you are.' So I put my hair up, and we went
to Chalfont, and got horribly midge-bitten, and there was an old man
playing the harp outside a little public-house where we had tea, and I
remember Derry jumped over a five-barred gate with his stick in his hand
and his pipe in his mouth...."
She remembered every detail. I don't think she had ever once seen him
but she remembered what he had on, how he had looked, what he had talked
about. These were the still depths I spoke of, of which the rest was no
more than the salt spray surface. I might be hanging about Cambridge
Circus on the off-chance of his coming for a paper or a book or
something; but I believe that in her heart something was already
rekindling, and that she was even then waiting to receive him again in
that upper room off Cremorne Road.
"Well," she said at last, "this is all very well, but it isn't getting
us much forrader. Of course he may be thirty-five still. In that case I
suppose you'll carry on as you are doing. But let's suppose for a moment
he's back at thirty-three. I'm afraid that'll mean a good deal of work
for you, George. You've got to start on an entirely new set of places.
Let me see, what year would that be? Yes, 1908. Where was he mostly in
1908?"
"In your studio apparently."
"Oh, he was never there very much really. I dare say he only came at all
because it was near and he'd drawn a blank somewhere else; he lived in
Paulton's Square, you know. No, you'd have to look for him in the
British Museum Reading Room, or the lobby of the House of Commons, or
wherever the Blue Books are kept, or some other place where he'd be
digging out all that terrible _Vicarage_ stuff. Or if it happened to be
a Thursday night you might try the Eyre Arms; he used to go up there to
the Belsize Boxing Club. Cheer up, George. I'm only showing you what
you've let yourself in for."
"Well, it's no good looking for him in the fourth dimension. He's got to
be in some sort of a place. And I admit that I was a fool, and that you
found him simply by sitting in Mrs Bassett's pocket."
"I didn't do that at all," she remarked composedly.
"Then I'm afraid I haven't understood you."
"Then let me tell you. I didn't sit in Daphne Bassett's pocket. I sat in
Daphne Wade's."
I stared at her. Was she suggesting that while she herself had loved him
since childhood, he for his part had loved Daphne Wade?
"Surely you're wrong there. If there was ever anything between her and
him I'm no judge of men."
"There may not have 'been anything.' But there was everything for all
that," she replied.
"That's merely enigmatic. Never mind 'everything.' Tell me what thing."
"All his dreams and ideals when he was a boy," she answered promptly.
"Isn't that everything in a man like him--the everything he's on his way
back to?"
"But he never loved her in the least, nor she him, as far as I'm aware."
"That I shall _never_ forgive her.... Don't you know yet why he never
knew anything about real women? It was simply because he was too wrapped
up in his dreams. He was so full of them that he couldn't see anything
truly for them. And now I'm afraid I'm going to dispel one of your most
cherished illusions, George. Do you know why his dreams all settled on
Daphne Wade? Oh, it had nothing to do with loving her!... It was simply
because she had that coloured hair. It _was_ rather like an aureole when
she was a child. And her eyes _were_ blue. In fact she'd all the
conventional angelic appliances except the wings, and he supplied those.
She'd nothing whatever else--little fool."
I frowned. Certainly she was entitled to speak of those early days
towards which his face was once more set, since she had known him then,
and I had not.
"Have some more coffee," I said. "I want to think this over."
But she only laughed softly.
"Oh, you needn't. You'll save yourself a lot of trouble by simply taking
my word for it. In any case it's getting on for thirty years ago. Oh,
don't I just remember!... I was nine and he was fourteen; I was ten and
he was fifteen; I was eleven and he was sixteen. She's just a year older
than I am. Our pew was half-way down the church, but she sat up one of
the aisles, right under a stained-glass window there was. It used to
make that light on her hair. My hair was the wrong colour--I knew it
then--just a dark mop--but anyway it was full of life. It would still
have been dark, of course, even if I'd sat under the window instead of
her, but I've sometimes thought it might have made a difference. Then
there was all the rest; Dicksee's 'Harmony' sort of effect; all so cool
and dim and saintly; and the organ and the Psalms. _That's_ what filled
his head, and I honestly believe that unless women are just animals to
him he sees them like that still--just about as much flesh and blood as
that window was. All she had to do was to have that hair and those eyes
and to sit in the vicarage pew. Things are made very simple for some
women."
A long silence fell between us. Evidently she was back in that church,
an adoring wrong-coloured-haired girl of eleven, shifting in her seat to
see, past intervening bonnets and bald heads, Derry's browny-gold crown,
while he watched Daffy Wade and the window.
"But," I said at last, "aren't you rather anticipating? I thought we'd
settled he was thirty-five or thirty-three. That's making him sixteen
already."
She rose abruptly.
"George, do you realise that we're the last people here and that they've
turned half the lights out?" Then, drawing forward her furs from the
back of her chair, "It isn't making him anything of the sort. You're
more than thirty-five; but you sometimes _remember_ what you were at
sixteen, don't you?... Come and put me into my Tube and off you go to
bed. Who knows?--he might 'blow in' to Cambridge Circus----"
* * * * *
"_You sometimes remember what you were at sixteen!_"
I wondered, as I walked slowly up Shaftesbury Avenue that night, whether
she realised what she had said. I hoped not. I prayed not; because her
words seemed to me to murder her own cherished hope--that he was safely
past that turbulent phase and back at thirty-three again.
For that poignancy of remembrance, I am glad to think, is more
frequently a man's than a woman's. It is the man who, slipping away,
away from his youth and innocence, down, down, slip after slip into the
mire of life, lifts his red and weeping eyes to what he used to be. And
when does that vision shine most agonisingly fair? Not in the hours of
his philosophy, when nothing unduly elates him and nothing too much
casts him down, but when he is in the slough as deep as he can get. Oh,
I know it, for I have sinned myself, have myself wept, for that
impossible heart-break--to be as I once was. And if Julia was right, and
he was not seeking Mrs Bassett at all, nor even Daphne Wade, but merely
his remembered self at sixteen, then he was _not_ thirty-three at all.
He had _not_ yet passed beyond that phase he had dreaded to re-live. He
was still in the mud, to have had that tear-blurred vision; still a
sinful man of thirty-five who remembered the morning star.
Well, Julia must not know that. This dark corollary was for my
shouldering, not hers. And as I resolved to keep it from her I wondered
at the marvel her own inner life had been.
For nearly thirty years it had consisted of Derwent Rose and of nothing
whatever else! None would have guessed it, none but I knew it, nothing
but Derry's unprecedented adventure would have dragged it from her. She
was a busy painter, of but moderate talent, and with her living to earn.
She could purr when she was pleased, but had claws ready to scratch with
as well. And, deep and unguessed behind it all, lay the story of those
Sussex fields and lanes, of that dreaming and ecstatic and unheeding
boy, of that same boy, grown-up and still unheeding, who had stalked in
and out of her studio, borne her off to Chalfont, held aloft her
sewing-machine. It seemed to me that her case was little less
extraordinary than his. I saw her as a woman who had never grown. She
was as she had always been, her life stultified with beauty, a poised
and arrested development of love.
And, unless I was mistaken, she had hardly sought to conceal her joy
that, as it had been, so it was to be again.
For he was journeying back to a place that in this sense she had never
left; and so he was journeying back to her. What though he had never
loved her? At any rate she was now rid of her last living rival. That
had been put to the test when Daphne Bassett had failed to recognise the
man who had spoken to her outside the Post Office in St. James's. She
would recognise him less and less as time went on. As for him, he would
merely go deeper and deeper into the heart of his inconceivable
solitude, and there, in the last and the centre of it, he would find
Julia Oliphant waiting for him--waiting for her always loved and lordly
boy of sixteen.
But how much must happen before then! For the first time I envisaged it
in its heartbreaking beauty. Lovely, apparently inevitable the close ...
but the way there? What, steeling her heart, must she see before that
meeting?
She must see a man whose last kiss was his first one, who unlived a
thousand adventures to become virgin in the end. She must see a man
living so unutterably long that he lived to write his first poem again.
She would see a man who had fought through a war of flame and poison
puckering his smooth brows over his first percussion-cap pistol. She
would see the dust of his athletic laurels stir, reassemble, bloom anew.
She would see the miracle of youth synthesised, the grail of his purity
mystically reappear. Not even Joshua saw what those liquid and already
tired brown eyes of hers must see--the sun of a man's life pause at
noon, swing contrary to its orbit, and move back to set where it rose.
And all at once there came over me a whelming of passionate emotion for
this woman so singled out. It was the emotion one feels over an infant
whose eyes open for the first time on the world--compassion and ache and
hapless tenderness and hope for the best. Would she be able to bear her
destiny? Would she, had such a thing been possible, have elected never
to have been born rather than bear it? Could I help her? If things
should unfold as they were well in motion to unfold, could any power on
earth help her?
I began to suspect that, unless she renounced him once for all, and that
quickly, no power on earth would be able to help her.
* * * * *
I don't know why I did not pack up my things and go back to Haslemere. I
no longer pretended to be looking for Derwent Rose in London, and I had
not given one single sitting for my portrait. Yet, though I could not
help Julia, I felt myself unable to leave her. If I did not see her for
an evening I was disturbed, lost what to do with myself. Several of
these evenings came, and still I lingered on.
Then, I think on the fourth evening after I had given Julia dinner in
Jermyn Street, the history of Derwent Rose moved forward--or
backward--once more.
I had thought of looking up Madge Aird that evening, but at the last
moment had changed my mind. I did not feel up to Madge's liveliness. So
I hung round that now so-drearily-familiar neighbourhood instead--the
neighbourhood between Leicester Square Tube Station and Tottenham Court
Road. I walked till I was tired, and then, more for the sake of sitting
down than for any other reason, I entered a picture-house on the west
side of Shaftesbury Avenue. I did not choose that one in particular. It
was just like any other picture-house except that it had a small organ
built into the wall high up in one corner. This organ was ceasing to
play as I entered. The principal drama of the programme was just over.
As it chanced, I had arrived just in time for one of those rather
curious effects that are obtained when the film is put through the
machine extremely slowly. You know the kind I mean. A racehorse in full
career picks up and puts down his legs as if they were fronds of seaweed
moving lazily in water; a golf-ball trickles uncannily across the green,
rising and falling idly over each minute obstacle, and then floats
gently down into the hole. In spite of my languor I found myself
interested in these analyses of motion. It is curious to see
instantaneousness taking its time over a thing like that.
Then that series also finished, and I felt in my pocket for my cigarette
case. As I drew out a cigarette and struck a match somebody behind me
leaned forward and touched me lightly on the shoulder.
"I say, isn't your name Coverham?" a man's voice said.
The match was still in my fingers. I looked over my shoulder in the
light of it. Then I dropped the match.
I had not found him. He had found me. It was Derwent Rose.
PART III
THE STRAPHANGER
I
He was not far from the end of the row, and in reaching him I had not to
disturb more than three or four people. Though it is inadequate, I have
decided that the single word that best expresses the way in which he
spoke is the word "careful." He spoke slowly, and, it seemed to me, with
extreme care.
"Interesting idea that last, isn't it? Restful. Things go at such a
deuce of a rate nowadays that it's a comfort to see anything slow. Well,
how are you, George? I haven't seen you for--some little time."
It was precisely three weeks since he had last seen me, and I noted that
slight, that very slight hesitation before his last words.
"Do you often come here? I--I rather keep away from these places myself;
they put everything through much too quickly; but I rather like this one
because of the organ. Of course they only play 'effects'--'Ora Pro
Nobis' and the 'Wedding March'--but there's something about an
organ.... I say, George," he said a little uncomfortably, "I've a sort
of feeling I owe you an apology."
"Well, this is hardly the place for it. We can't talk here. If you've
seen all you want suppose we go outside?"
The thing I wanted first of all was to have a good look at him. Already
I could see that he no longer had a beard. But my surreptitious glance
at him as we passed out into the lighted vestibule and past the
box-office told me little. On the pavement of Shaftesbury Avenue he
slipped his arm into mine.
"Yes, I fancy I talked an awful lot of rubbish that night--bit of an ass
of myself--you remember----"
I did not reply. The important thing was, not whether I remembered, but
whether his memory was all that it should have been, for he was
forgetting something even as he spoke. He remembered that other night,
he had remembered my name; but if he remembered that he had rooms and
belongings in Cambridge Circus he was very deliberately turning down
Shaftesbury Avenue instead of up it. But I went where he led me. I was
resolved, however, that the moment his arm left mine, mine should go
into his. I was not going to let him disappear again.
The typical Soho mixture thronged the pavements: Hebrew physiognomies,
Italian, Greek; dark chins, bold eyes, bold noses; rings and scarfpins,
fancy socks, the double-heeled silk stockings of women. As I could not
very well scrutinise his face at that short range I did the next best
thing; I watched the faces that advanced towards us. As if he had been a
pretty woman, so heads turned as he passed. They turned as they turn for
Billy Wells. It was not so much his size and proportions as his whole
personal aura. He stood out among all that flashy cosmopolitanism as if
a special and inherent light attended him.
"Which way are we going? Where do you live?" I suddenly asked him. It
was not the question I was burning to ask him. That question was,
"_When_ do you live?" I felt the slight movement of the muscles under
his sleeve, but he answered steadily enough--carefully enough.
"Oh, I've been rather lucky about that," he said. "I happened to be in
the wine-bar of an hotel in Gloucester Road one night, and I got talking
to a fellow. I fancied I'd come across him somewhere in France--as a
matter of fact I had, though he didn't remember me. Anyway, we'd started
talking, and we went on. Rather an amusing crowd there, George. If I
were asked to put in one word the basic domestic factor of their lives,
do you know what it would be? A pint of methylated spirits. They don't
pay half a crown for it at the chemist's; they pay one-and-twopence at
the oilshop. To boil their kettles, of course. They all fought, they're
all gentlemen, and they're all doing damn-all to make a living. So they
take garrets and rooms over garages, and cook their breakfasts with
methylated spirits. This fellow was called Trenchard. Got all messed up
at the Brick Stacks, La Bassée way. He had to go out of town for a
month, and said I could have his place for the bare rent, twenty-five
bob a week, and the use of his furniture for nothing. So that's where I
am. This way----"
We turned into Leicester Square Tube Station.
In the train I sat opposite to him; and, now that he had taken his beard
off, I couldn't see that he had changed very remarkably in outward
appearance after all. Nevertheless I distrusted my own impression. I
knew that I was full of pre-conceptions about him, knew too much of his
astonishing case to observe impartially and reliably. There are some
things--some scents for example--that you have to make up your mind
immediately about or else to remain in indecision. The longer you delay
the less sure you become. So I found it with his face in the
electric-lighted Tube. It was, of course, astoundingly young for a man
in the middle forties; but call him thirty-five and much of the wonder
disappeared. The most that a casual acquaintance would have been likely
to remark was, "How the deuce does Rose manage to keep so
extraordinarily young-looking?" True, his friend Trenchard had failed to
recognise the man with whom he had fought at La Bassée, but that meant
little. There were millions of men in France, each the spit of the rest
for mud and momentariness of acquaintance. To-day, by mere association
of times and places and battles, these men are in fact resuming
acquaintances they have no recollection of ever having begun. "Oh, I've
a rotten memory for faces--seen So-and-so lately? And I say, do you know
anybody who wants to take a quiet place for a month?" That, no doubt,
had been the substance of that conversation in the Gloucester Road
wine-bar.... And there was another thing of which I shall have more to
say by and by. I began to suspect that whatever strange element in
Derwent Rose had brought him to this pass, that element reacted on those
of us who knew his secret. He probably became less extraordinary in our
eyes as contemplation of him made us not quite ordinary ourselves.
Julia Oliphant (it seemed to me) he had already influenced, constrained,
isolated. We were getting used to him. But I shall return to this.
In the meantime I was considerably cheered. He remembered that other
night; he wanted to apologise for the lunacy of it; he had given a
perfectly coherent account of his present whereabouts and how he came to
be there, and his summing-up of the fellows whose basic domestic factor
was a pint of methylated spirits had given me a clear and
straightforward picture. As for the rest--why he had left Cambridge
Circus, what it was that he found restful in those slowed-down films,
and especially the measured carefulness of his speech--for the present
these things could wait.
We left Gloucester Road Station, turned up towards Princes Gate, and
then crossed the road and entered a dark gardened Square. Three minutes
further walking brought us to a high stone archway with a heavily carved
and moulded entablature, beneath which a cobbled way sloped slightly
down into a mews. To right and left were garage-doors, some closed,
others open and flinging shafts of orange light across the way.
Somewhere an engine was being allowed to "race"; somewhere else a hose
was being turned on to the body of a car. High over the roofs of the
mews, as if suspended at random in the sky, the oblongs of light of the
South Kensington backs showed. One unshaded incandescent burned on a top
landing like a star.
"Let me go first; I've got a torch," said Derry, stopping at a narrow
side-door next to where the car was being washed. "You'll find the rope
on the right."
The moon of his electric torch shone on the broad treads of a
steep-pitched ladder that rose to a loft above. Up one side of it ran a
hand-rope. He preceded me, and on the upper landing lighted a wire-caged
gas-jet. Then I followed him into Trenchard's abode.
He had described the place admirably well when he had spoken of the
methylated spirits, adding that Trenchard was a gentleman. A few pieces
of furniture--notably a tall walnut hanging-cupboard and a handsome
lacquered cabinet--were evidently family possessions; the rest--his
cretonne curtains, floor-mats, the blue-and-white check tablecloth on
the thick-legged Victorian table and the glimpse into his
kitchen--probably represented the greater part of his gratuity-money.
Every ledge and angle and cheap bracket was crowded with photographs,
and there were trees in his long row of boots. His central incandescent
mantle was unshaded. Two deep basket chairs stood one on either side of
where the hearth should have been. The portable oil-burning stove was
tucked away in a corner.
"You soon get used to the noises," said Rose with a downward nod of his
head. "I scarcely hear 'em now.--Lemonade? It's bottled, but not bad;
tastes of lemons anyway. There's a siphon behind you there."
He put me into one of the basket chairs and himself took the other.
Then, without the least warning, but still with that marked effort at
steadiness and care, he said:
"Well, what price the world-political state, George? Not home-politics,
but the whole thing--democracy--civilisation if you like----"
If he had asked me what I thought of the theory of relativity I should
have been readier with an answer. As it was I looked askance at him and
asked him what made him so suddenly ask me that.
"Oh, same old reason," he replied. "I expect it's a subject I shall have
to tackle. In a book. I wonder if it's too big! It pulls me enormously.
I don't know whether we're in for a general smash-up or not. Sometimes
I've the feeling we are."
Something within me, I don't know what, warned me that here it might be
well to be as careful as he. The safest thing to do appeared to be to
let him run on, and I did so.
"Yes," he continued, his fine smooth brow gathered in thought, "I know
it's enormous; perhaps too staggering altogether for one man. But do you
know," he laughed a little as if at himself, "I wonder whether it _is_
so enormous after all! There might be quite a simple idea underlying it,
I mean. What's more enormous than human nature? Yet every wretched
little novelist tackles that every time he writes a book. It all depends
on how much you see in a thing. I'm not so sure that I wouldn't as soon
tackle one day of the whole world's life as one single hour of a human
being's heart."
I spoke warily. "You haven't tackled it yet?"
He hesitated. "N--o," he said slowly. Then, quickening a little, "The
fact is, George, a job like that would have to be rather specially
approached. I mean unless you were at the very top of your form you'd be
bound to come a cropper. No good starting a thing till you know your
tools are sharp--in this case your faculties. I'm--I'm sharpening myself
now, if you know what I mean."
At this point I became incautious. I ceased to listen to the voice that
warned me too to be careful.
"Well, that's what I want to ask you," I said. "I want to know what
you're doing here and why you left Cambridge Circus like that."
I was instantly sorry I had said it. Just as wrestlers on a mat lie
locked, with little apparent movement, yet in the fiercest intensity of
prolonged strain, so I felt that something struggled in him. I heard it
in his voice, I saw it in the boyish grey-blue eyes that sought mine.
"Don't, please, old fellow," he pleaded anxiously. "If you mean the rot
I talked that other night, I apologise now once for all. I've been
hoping for months and mon--for a long time, I mean, that I might run
across you. You're so magnificently steady. That other place stopped
being steady.... This is the place to write that book. I want to write
it. I've never wanted anything so much. It would be on _Vicarage_ lines,
I suppose, but oh--immensely bigger! Freedom, scope! The _Vicarage_ was
well enough in its way, but fussy and niggly and scratchy. I can do this
largely, grandly--I _know_ so much more, you see--and as long as I don't
take any risks----"
Then, in spite of his own last words, he swung suddenly round, and the
youthful grey-blue eyes were all a-sparkle. They sparkled with daring,
as if, though a risk was a risk, there was sometimes prudence in taking
it. The wicker of his chair began to creak under the working of his
hand.
"One little talk can't make much difference," he muttered. "Do me good
probably--magnificently steady----" Then he flashed brightly round on
me--an artist at the height of his power confronting a stupendous and
magnificent task.
"You see, don't you, George? You see how I'm placed, don't you?" he
demanded.
"Not very clearly."
"Then I'll tell you. I _want_ to write this book. I want to write it as
Cheops made his Pyramid, as Moses made his Decalogue--to last for ever.
If I can't write it no living man can. Why? Because no living man
combines in himself what I combine--the ripest and fullest store of
knowledge and experience and all the irresistible recklessness and
belief of youth at the same time. Here I stand, between the two, and if
I can only stay so I shall write--I shall write--oh, such a book as
never was dreamed of! So I've got to stand still just where I am now. I
haven't got to budge from thirty-three--that, as nearly as I can tell
from myself, is the age I am now. You see----"
Uneasily I began to wish myself elsewhere. I knew that I began to be
afraid in his presence; it is an eerie thing to hear a man deliberately
proposing to manipulate his age. The man down below continued to wash
the car; I heard the clank of his bucket, the rushing of his hose.
"Thirty-three," he continued, his eyes still glittering with the
excitement of it. "If I can only stay so for six months nothing matters
after that! God, just for six months!... But it's not so easy as it
sounds, George. You've got to be on the watch every moment. As long as
you're moving the thing's simple enough; it's when you try to stop that
it's like trying to stand still on a bicycle. Wait, I'll show you. Push
that table over. And if you don't mind I'll turn down the gas."
It was not the heavy-legged Victorian table he wanted me to push over,
but the one on which our glasses of lemonade stood, a flimsy affair of
bamboo and wicker, hardly more than eighteen inches square. He rose,
turned the yellow incandescent down to a glimmer, drew the table up
before us, and brought the electric torch from his pocket. He began to
speak with very much more volubility, very much less care.
"The line of that table-edge is what I want you to keep your mind on,"
he began. "Never mind any other dimension. You'll get the idea
presently. I want you to imagine that edge a scale of years, with the
higher numbers at your end and the lower ones at mine. You're to imagine
that, and then you're to imagine that this lamp's my mind, me, my
faculties, whatever you like to call it. You'll get on to it presently.
Now watch."
The torch was not of the stick-pattern, but of the flask type with a
wider angle. In the middle of the table's edge he made a minute notch
with his nail. A foot or so of the split-bamboo edge was illuminated,
with this notch in the middle of it.
"Now," he said. "You see that notch I've made. That's my present
age--thirty-three--dead in the middle of the lighted portion. Now let's
start. First of all I've got two memories. I've got one in each
direction. I'm the only man who has. And this part of the edge that the
torch lights up is my total range both ways. Now watch me move the
torch. If I move it your way"--he did so--"I get more of memory 'A' ('A'
for Age) and less of memory 'B' ('B' for Boyhood). And if I move it my
way"--he moved it his way--"I get less of 'A' and more of 'B.' See?"
I saw. I began to wish I didn't.
"Very well," he went on. "Obviously it's for me to decide where I want
to stop, and then--to do so if I can. And now the bother begins.
If--that--scale--could be numbered properly"--he divided the words as I
have divided them, and I felt cold at the intensity of his emphasis--"if
it could be divided as I want it divided, with thirty-three dead in the
middle--then forty-five would come _here_." He crossed his left hand
over the one that held the torch, as a pianist picks out a single treble
note, and dug another nick at my end of the illuminated portion. "Now,"
he continued, "let's see what the figure would be at my end. Forty-five
less thirty-three is twelve, and twelve from thirty-three's twenty-one.
It would be twenty-one." He registered another notch, this time at his
own end. "But"--swiftly he slid the torch his way--"twenty-one's no good
to me at all. No more good than a sick headache. I've got to be younger
than that. You see what I've got to do. I've got to combine the two
maximum phases of myself if I'm to write that book. But at the same time
I've got to write it when I _did_ write that kind of thing before. What
does that mean? Where's a bit of paper?"
He set the torch down on the table, where it made a vivid flat parabola
of light, and took an envelope from his pocket. In the semi-darkness he
began to jot down figures.
"Here you are. Just a few specimen numbers for trial and error. I'm
assuming that the scale's capable of regular division, which it isn't,
for many reasons; but let's take it in its simplest form.
16:33:50--21:33:45--30:33:36
We needn't bother about the last one; I only put it in to show that
thirty-three's got to come in the middle by hook or by crook. Now do you
see what I'm up against? I _must_ have sixteen at one end, I _must_ have
forty-five at the other, and I _must_ if possible have thirty-three in
the middle, because if I don't write this as I wrote _The Vicarage of
Bray_, only infinitely more so, I shan't write it at all. But
thirty-three's a false middle. Thirty's the true middle, and thirty's
perfectly useless to me. I was doing quite other things when I was
thirty before.... But as matters stand, if I'm thirty-three I can only
remember forty-five and twenty-one. If I'm thirty-three and remember
sixteen, which is what I'm after, then ... God knows what would happen
at your end; I should have to remember fifty, I suppose, and I've never
been fifty to remember. So something's wrong, and I'm trying to fake
it."
"Derry!" I choked. "For the love of God turn up that light!"
"Eh? Certainly. Then I can show you my diagrams. This is all elementary
stuff, but I thought it would give you a faint idea of the problem. Now
the most important factor of all----"
But I didn't want to see the hideous thing in diagram form. It even
added to my horror that he didn't seem to see it as hideous at all. He
was perplexed, impatient, angry even, but for the rest he had approached
his problem as methodically and dispassionately as if he had merely been
taking the reading of his gas-meter. Just so in the past he had
approached that sufficiently-enormous work, _The Vicarage of Bray_--and
in the intervals had taken Julia Oliphant to Chalfont, jumped
five-barred gates, and had posed for her, stripped to the waist with her
sewing-machine held above his head.
He had turned up the gas again, and was hunting in a corner--for his
diagrams, I supposed. Suddenly I rose, crossed over to him, and put my
hand on his shoulder.
"Leave it alone, old man," I said in a shocked voice. "I don't want to
see them. I won't look at them. I'm too afraid. Give that book up now.
We aren't meant to write books of that kind. Give it up, clear out of
here, and let's go away together somewhere."
I don't think I altered his resolution in the least. He merely patted my
shoulder, humouring me.
"Oh, we'll start it anyway, George. Once I get fairly going I don't mind
taking a day or two or a week off with you. I always enjoyed stealing a
few days when I was busiest. No, the thing's got hold of me, and it will
have to run its course, like measles. I may possibly be able to split
the difference between thirty and thirty-three. I'm doing my very
utmost."
"How?"
It seemed to me that he became evasive. "Oh--just little dodges----"
"Like watching slowed-down pictures?"
He became still more evasive. "If I hadn't spoken to you to-night you'd
never have seen me, you know," he reproached me.
"I've been looking for you though. And I did see you once."
"Where was that?" he asked quickly.
"In a hansom, in Piccadilly Circus."
He winced. "Don't, George," he begged me.
"And you weren't alone."
"George--I say, George--you see how I'm trying to keep steady. Must you
throw me all over the shop again like this?"
But somehow I was no longer afraid of him. It seemed to me that it might
be no ill thing to anger him. Anger was at least a more human feeling
than those hideous speculations of his.
"What have you been doing since you left Cambridge Circus?" I demanded.
My plan looked like working. He confronted me.
"And what's that got to do with you?" he said.
"I think I could tell you what you've been doing. Naturally I shan't."
He looked coldly down on me. "No," he said slowly, "I don't think I
would if I were you.... And if you've seen me, I've seen you too," he
added menacingly.
"Before to-night?"
"Yes, before to-night."
"Where was that?"
There was contempt in his tone. "Oh, nowhere discreditable. You're too
magnificently steady for that."
I cannot tell you why we were standing together in one corner of the
room, body to body, with all the rest of the room empty. I only know
that I was not afraid of him, and that my intention to provoke him was
now fixed. Quite apart from those inhuman figures and graphs, this book
that he was contemplating approached--I will risk saying it--the
impious.
"Well, where was it?" I asked again.
His eyes were unwinkingly on mine. "You were coming out of my place, if
you must know. And I imagine my place is still mine. Since we're
friends, I haven't asked you what you were doing there."
"Then I'll tell you without asking. I've been staying there, on the
chance of your coming back for something you'd forgotten. I've got your
key in my pocket now, and I'm going back there to-night."
He muttered, his eyes now removed from mine. "Damned good guess. I did
come back. But I saw you across the road and turned away again."
"What did you come back for?"
"That Gland book. But I got a copy somewhere else."
"I hope you found it useful."
Then, all in a moment, the thing for which I was longing happened. He
broke down completely. Instead of a man trying to maintain an insane
tight-rope-balance on an indeterminable moment of time, there pitched
against me, crushing me against the wall and bringing down a shower of
Trenchard's photographs, a man who could be met on common ground of
normal experience. His arms were folded over his face. I heard his groan
within them.
"Lord have mercy upon me!... I oughtn't to have talked--I oughtn't to
have talked ... all unsettled again ... but I _can't_ let sixteen go ...
perhaps it won't let me go...."
"For heaven's sake forget that nightmare!"
But he mumbled despairingly on. "Shall have to be thirty ... no way out
of it ... why did I let myself talk!... Give us a hand, there's a good
fellow----"
I got him into his chair again. I soothed him. I talked to him as if he
had been a child. I told him he should be whatever age he wished, should
write any kind of book he pleased, should come abroad with me. Then for
a minute or so he seemed to go to sleep. I watched him. The sounds of
car-washing had ceased, up the yard somebody whistled, and I heard a
voice call "Good night." Past Trenchard's cretonne curtains that star of
an incandescent on the upper landing went suddenly out. It must have
been half-past eleven. A more peaceful beauty stole over and possessed
his face.
But he was not asleep. He opened his eyes. He smiled faintly at me.
"Well, George----" he said with a heavy sigh.
Then he told me the history of his past three weeks.
II
Of his past three weeks or his past two or three years, whichever you
like; for it was both. And now that he was in comparative peace I wished
to spare him questions. That illustration with the flash-lamp on the
table's edge had scared me half out of my wits; and if the determination
of "ratios" or what not meant much of that kind of thing, for the
present we were as well without them.
He had gone back to the point where, returning that afternoon to
Cambridge Circus to fetch a book, he had seen me coming out of his house
and had turned tail again.
"The Gland book, you said?" I asked. "But I thought you'd decided that
that road led nowhere."
"So I had," he replied, "but in the meantime I'd seen a doctor."
"Ah! You've seen a doctor? When was that?"
"Not quite a fortnight ago. I'd been in here just two days; I've now
been fourteen in all; I've got every day and hour down in my diary; as
you may imagine, I've studied myself with the greatest care and tried
all sorts of things by way of experiment. I simply must know how much is
exact repetition, and if it isn't where the variations come in, you see.
But it all ends the same way. There's always an unaccountable 'x' that's
constantly shifting, I suppose," he sighed.
"But tell me about the doctor. I thought you'd decided that this was
quite out of their line."
"So I had, and so it is," he replied promptly. "I didn't go to a doctor
to ask him to cure me."
"Then why----?"
"Well, I'd several reasons. One was that I'd met this man just once
before, and for that reason alone he was part of my investigations. So
far I'd experimented on people who'd met me twice, or three or four
times before. I'm still experimenting, but at present the result seems
to be that the better people know me the less they recognise me, and
those who only knew me slightly take me for granted, I suppose."
"And did this doctor recognise you?"
"Well--there you are. I simply couldn't tell. I waited for him in the
full light of a window; I gave him every chance; but--well, I'd had to
send my name up, and he was expecting me, you see. He simply said 'How
d'you do, Mr Rose' and shook hands. Probably he never looked at me. He
knew that Mr Rose was waiting, and therefore the person who was waiting
must be Mr Rose."
"So that was a wash-out. What else did you want to see him about?"
"Next, I wanted to be thoroughly vetted--as a man of thirty-three, you
understand. It's all very well looking young, but you want to know
whether you're really as young inside as you look. So I told him some
sort of a yarn about an insurance policy and wanting to be overhauled
for my own satisfaction before going to the company's doctor. So he
asked me my age--thirty-three, I said--and ran all over me; and he was
good enough to say that I was a very fine man and needn't worry about
not being passed as a first-class life."
"And then?"
"Then I told him another cock-and-bull story. It was as an author that
he'd met me before, you see, so I told him I was writing some fantastic
sort of a book, and wanted one or two medical facts right. I had to go
rather carefully here, of course, but I gave him, as nearly as I dared,
an outline of what had happened, and asked him what about it."
"And what did he say?"
"He saw nothing very extraordinary in it," said Derwent Rose.
I jumped half out of my chair. "_What!_ What madman was this?"
Then I saw the faint flicker of his smile, and sat down again.
"Quite a distinguished madman, George; incidentally he's a Knight....
But I don't want to pull your leg, old fellow. He didn't put it quite
that way. What he actually did say was that the more a man studied these
things the less he would swear that anything was an impossibility. And
he's a remarkable man, mind you. I've not much use for the average
doctor, but this fellow's big enough to use plain English and when he
doesn't know a thing to say so. His knowledge isn't just how to conceal
his ignorance. And he might have been a novelist himself from the way he
instantly grasped what I wanted to know."
Not an impossibility!... I couldn't have spoken. I waited enthralled.
Derry continued.
"So he began to talk about the ductless glands. Not just the thyroid.
Everybody's got thyroid on the brain nowadays, but the thyroid's only
one of them. There are a dozen others. And then he told me that
practically nothing was known about them."
As I hadn't the faintest idea what a ductless gland was I continued
silent.
"'Well, Mr Rose,' he said at last, 'if you want something of that sort
to happen to one of your characters I should put him through the War and
let him get a bash over the pineal gland.'
"'Where's that situated?' I asked.
"'Here,' he said."
And Rose tapped the middle of the back of his head with his forefinger.
"'And what would the effect of that be?' I asked; and he laughed.
"'Heaven above knows. You can say whatever you like. It might be
anything.'
"'Would it account for actual morphological changes of tissue?' I
asked.
"'I wouldn't say it wouldn't; that would depend on the changes; but I
should be very pleased to look through those portions of your proofs, Mr
Rose,' he said....
"So that was that. I went straight off to Cambridge Circus to get the
Blair-Bell book, but, as I say, I saw you across the road, so I got the
book somewhere else."
"The pineal gland!" I murmured, dazed.
"Yes. One name for it's The Third Eye. Don't ask me to explain it. But
if I understand my doctor-man the idea's something like this: There are
these degenerated organs that man in his present stage of development
has outgrown. A lizard's got what they call The Third Eye, and so has a
lamprey, and lots of creatures. And the whole thing's the wildest
nightmare imaginable. Takes you right back to fecund mud and the first
seminal atom. One fellow, I forget his name, has a most hair-raising
theory. He says that what they call the 'ancestral type' lived in the
sea, rolling about like a log I suppose--anyway it doesn't seem to have
mattered whether he was upside-down or not. So its back and front were
both alike. But as time went on it was more often one way up than
another, and the creature began to adapt itself. It grew new eyes where
it found them most convenient and stopped using the old one. Very likely
the old one's the pineal gland. Or words to that effect.... So if you're
now a 'bilaterally symmetrical animal with forward progression,' and
your front's where you back used to be, and anything goes wrong, you're
a sort of Mr Facing-Both-Ways, with two memories like me and all the
rest of it.... And a whole philosophy's been built up on it. Roughly, a
man's spirit and matter interpenetrate throughout every particle of him
so that there's no dividing them--everywhere except in one place. There
they exist independently and side by side. All the mystery of life and
death's supposed to be located there. And that place is the pineal
gland."
Remember, please, that this conversation took place, not in Bedlam, but
in South Kensington. We were sitting in a commonplace loft over a
garage, on ordinary chairs, with two half-emptied glasses of everyday
lemonade before us. A gas-jet in an incandescent mantle hung from the
ceiling, and in the neighbouring houses average people were beginning to
think of their accustomed beds. They had pineal glands too, and might
"get a bash over them," or fall downstairs, or collide with something,
or meet with a street accident. Would they, respectable ratepayers of
South Kensington, revert to that dim time before the waters were divided
from the dry land, when they had rolled about like logs, slumbering and
amorphous and unspecialised types, creation's first blind gropings
towards the glory that at present is man? Would they develop an "A"
memory and a "B"? Would these "bilaterally symmetrical animals with
forward progression" resuscitate that degenerated Third Eye in the backs
of their heads and do this Widdershins-Walk back to their beginnings?
Rose's friend the doctor had said that nobody knew anything about these
things. Man was only on the verge of this knowledge. It belonged to
to-morrow and the days to come.
And for the first time in my life I found myself wondering whether I did
want to know so very much about those morrows after all.
At last I found my voice. "Then you accept that explanation?" I said.
"No," he replied.
"Thank God for something! Why not?"
"Oh, for various reasons. In the first place I only got it as a sort of
fiction-stunt, remember. He merely said that nobody could contradict
me."
"And in the second place?"
"In the second place, I still think yours is the better explanation--not
biology at all, but simple right and wrong, good and evil. Nothing of
that kind ever did happen to me in the War that I know of--I never got
any whack over the head--and there's one other thing that seems to me to
prove it."
"What's that?"
"That I do know the difference between the better and the worse, and
want the better all the time."
"In other words--God?"
"I think God comes before a gland," he replied.
* * * * *
Quite apart from his extraordinary interview with his doctor, the past
few weeks had been a series of the commonest everyday incidents mixed up
with sheer impossibilities in the most bewildering fashion. As I stoutly
refused to see his diagrams and the details of his diary (though I saw
them later), I could only touch the fringe of his experience at that
time. I gathered, however, that in those slowed-down pictures he had
found a certain relief, as also in some music, particularly organ-music;
and he had other alleviations of a similar nature. But I noticed that
obstinately (as it seemed to me) he chose to regard the interval of time
since I had last seen him, not as the three weeks it really was, but as
the fortnight he had spent in that loft over the garage. Of the first of
the three weeks he spoke not one single word. I need hardly mention the
reason. He was looking farther back still. As he had been at
thirty-five, so he had been in the twenties. Those "A" memories, so
recent, were "B" memories too.... But that was a long way off yet.
Yet among so much vagueness and fluctuation one thing was abundantly
clear. He had left behind him the last vestige of the man who had
written _An Ape in Hell_. At the very least he was now the man who had
written _The Vicarage of Bray_, and not impossibly he was an earlier man
still. And here I had better say a word or two about the _Vicarage_, not
as describing the book itself, but as isolating the stage he had reached
and differentiating between his former and his present experiences of
it.
It was, of course, the "Tite Barnacle" portions of the book that had
pleased the public, supposing the public to have been pleased at all.
Yet, witty as these were, they were the least essential parts of the
work. The book had to be classed as Political, Social, Economic, or some
welding of all three descriptions; and Rose was never the man to
approach a subject of this kind with his mind already made up. He
recognised frankly (for example) that the mere mechanism of a Ministry
or a Department is a gigantic thing, the men with the habit of running
it necessarily few, and that to give control to an unpractised hand
would be fatal. Thus his book was no mere slap at what it was the
fashion some little time ago to call The Old Gang. He refrained from the
common gibe that the surest qualification for success in one department
is to have failed in another. Instead, he examined, first the machine,
and then the man in charge of it. Between these two an accommodation has
always to be found. No system of government will prove altogether a
failure if it is in the hands of the right men, and equally none will
work if it is in the hands of the wrong ones. So he sought the
equilibrium between the two.
Not one reader in a million, laughing over that merciless and iridescent
book that Julia Oliphant said he had written in little more than three
months, had the faintest idea of the sheer burden of merely intellectual
work that lay behind it. Piece by piece he had dissected the whole of
our national economy before setting pen to paper at all. Bear with me
for a moment if I take one little piece only--Shipping. It will give an
idea of the scale, not so much of the _Vicarage_ only as of that far
vaster thing--the book he now projected and for the sake of which he
clung so desperately to his "false middle" of thirty-three.
Men (he argued) need ships; but, over and above those who actually
handle them, ships need men no less. From one standpoint ships exist in
order that men may be carried from one place to another; but from the
opposite standpoint a ship is merely a hungry belly that must be
constantly fed with its human food--passengers. Without its meal of
passengers it cannot live for a week. Thus, the Thing must move the Man
from one place to another whether he wishes it or not, whether in itself
it is desirable that he should be moved or not. The ships of one nation
snarl at those of another for this sustenance. Where then is the
balance? Where does blind force get the upper hand, and where wise
control? What happens if the power is usurped by a "Vicar" who can by no
means be dislodged?... I need say no more. You see the yawning
immensities of it.
And that was only Shipping. There were a hundred other things. He had
applied his brilliant intellect to them all in turn, and had (as I may
say) so "orchestrated" the whole that in the result it seemed the
easiest of improvisations.
And now think what his present plan was!
He contemplated, not an analysis of one system, _but a welding of
analyses of all systems_!
That was why he sought to juggle with his own years--that he might
combine the enthusiasm of sixteen with the grasp and certainty and power
of forty-five, and at the same time assure the coincidence between his
past and his present impulses to create.
Montesquieu had never dreamed of such a work--Moses' task had been
simpler.
Therefore I saw the position as follows:
He was thirty-three. But thirty-three was a falsemiddle.
He was in a rage to attempt a But the dazzling endeavour might
work for which no man had ever elude him at any moment.
been equipped as he was equipped.
He would make that python-meal But he might be thirty again
of material and produce a before he digested it.
super-_Vicarage_.
He was still hanging on, his But he was hanging on as a
enthusiasm at its keenest, straphanger hangs on--totteringly,
his experience at its richest. insecurely.
Once he had got going he would But not until he got going.
take a week off with me, a day
with Julia Oliphant.
One thing was clear. He would have to give it up. If necessary he would
have to be made to give it up. If I couldn't persuade him, Julia must.
But already I saw the cost to him. He was an artist, with a passionate
need to create. He was an artist so highly specialised that the creation
of a small thing merely irritated him. But see where he was placed! So
close to the dreamed splendour that he brushed it with his fingertips,
and then perhaps to see it recede, diminish, go out! To be conscious of
that inordinate power, and to have the agony of knowing that it could
not last long enough for the task to be completed! To be unique, as he
was unique, and yet to be forced to share the common bitterness and
humiliation and despair!... A few moments ago I risked the word
"impious." To my way of thinking it was impiety. If it was not impiety I
do not see why Prometheus was bound.
For what was this monstrous right that Derwent Rose claimed, to put all
the rest of us into the shadow of his own overweening and presumptuous
glory? Who was he, to seize on immortality like this? Not satin slippers
with poor little feet inside them that would soon, too soon be dust--not
this was the sin. It was this other that is not forgiven. And man is
forbidden to call his brother by the name that fitted Derwent Rose.
Poor Derry! Apparently he could do nothing right. As Julia had said, his
whole life had been one marvellous mistake after another.
Suddenly I introduced Julia's name.
He had not moved since his last words some minutes ago--that he thought
God was more than a gland. The mews outside had come to life again. Cars
were returning from suppers and the theatres; the glare of their
headlights played palely about the upper part of his window-frame. He
now turned his head and smiled.
"Good sort, Julia. But she's forgotten all about me long ago."
"What makes you think that?"
But instead of answering my question he went musingly on. "Funny, that.
Dashed funny. I forgot all about Julia when I was making those notes."
"What notes?"
"Why, of the way I strike people. Those who remember me and those who
don't. I remembered that doctor, who'd only seen me once, but Julia,
who's known me practically all my life, I go and forget all about. In
fact there's only about one other person who's known me as long as Julia
has, and she absolutely failed to recognise me when I spoke to her a
year or so ago."
My nerves became all jangled again. "Derry--_how_ long ago?"
"About a year.... As you were. What am I talking about? Must stick to
one scale of time, I suppose. I ought to have said about ten days ago."
"What was all this?" I asked, though I knew well enough; and he became
grave as he unfolded another aspect of his singular case to me.
"It's difficult to explain to you, George, because you know the whole
thing--though how you kept your reason when I told you I can't imagine;
magnificently steady!... As a matter of fact this other person I mean
was Mrs Bassett; you remember I'd been looking for her. Well, I met her
one day and spoke to her"--he coloured a little at the memory of the
details he suppressed; "and by Jove, it was a lesson to me! A perfectly
hideous risk! I was on the point of telling her who I was when I drew
back, just in time. God, how I sweated! I'm cold now when I think she
_might_ have recognised me.... Imagine the scene, George; woman
screaming and falling down in a fit in the street because she thinks a
ghost's spoken to her. And the ghost himself--this ghost"--he tapped his
solid chest--"a ghost marched off between a couple of policemen--if two
could hold me--I don't believe ten could--my strength's
immense--immense----"
"But--but--then haven't you even a _name_ to anybody who sees you more
than once or twice?"
Slowly he shook his head. "You see. You see as well as I do. It seems to
me that to everybody but you I'm simply dead. I can't go about giving
people fits like that. That was a lesson to me, speaking to Daphne
Bassett. I'll never do such a thing again.... So that cuts out Julia
Oliphant. Pity, because she was a good sort. Always the same to me; just
a pal. She used to give me expensive paste-sandwiches for tea when I
knew she couldn't afford it; I used sometimes to stop away on that
account. That was when she lived in Chelsea. Then I lost sight of her
for a bit, but I've thought a good deal of her lately. I never had a
sister.... Don't mind my running on like this, old fellow. I've nobody
but you to talk to, nobody at all. Funny sort of situation, isn't it--a
ghost like me mourning for living people? That's practically what it
amounts to."
At something in his tone I interposed abruptly.
"Derry," I said, "you haven't been thinking of putting an end to
yourself, have you?"
He stared at me for a moment.
"Eh?" he said. "Why not? Of course I have. One of the first things I did
think of. I've been pretty near it, and if I find I can't write that
book I shall be near it again. And"--he bent the grey-blue eyes solemnly
on mine--"shall I tell you what _would_ completely settle it? If anybody
should see that ghost and scream!... I've got a most fearful power,
George. A man who can make people scream as I could oughtn't to be at
large. Ghosts ought to get where they belong--off the map altogether. My
God, if it slipped out one day when I didn't mean it--just these three
words--'I'm Derwent Rose'----"
Then suddenly his voice shook pitiably. He spread out his hands.
"George, old fellow, you can't imagine what a joy it was to see you at
that place to-night! You haven't realised it yet--you don't know what I
went through before I plucked up courage to speak to you. You're the
only living creature I used to know that I _can_ know now--the only
one--the only one on earth. I know them, but I daren't--daren't--let
them know me. It gets very, very, very lonely sometimes----"
Lonely sometimes! My heart ached for him. It seemed to me that that
loneliness was a gulf that all the pity in the universe could not fill.
No, I had not realised. I had thought I had, but I hadn't. It now came
quite home to me that, while he was free to make a new acquaintance at
any moment he pleased, that acquaintance could hardly last longer than
the moment in which it was made. For say it lasted for three weeks. At
the end of those three weeks the hand he had taken would be three weeks
older, but his own hand might be a hundred weeks younger. And so it must
go on: hail--and farewell. He, beyond measure gifted, was denied this
gift. He could not stop by the way to make a single friend. For others
the calm and gentle progress to age, the greetings among themselves, the
accosting by the loved familiar name; but Derwent Rose had no name.
Without a name Daphne Bassett had set a dog on him; what would she have
set on him had he said "I'm Derwent Rose"? Lightning was safer to handle
than that name of his. It might miss--but it might hit, make mad, kill.
Sooner or later, I supposed, I should have to tell him that Julia
Oliphant knew as much about his state as I knew myself. I had had no
shadow of right to betray him to her thus. But in the meantime he was
resolved that he would not turn that voltage of his identity either on
to her or anybody else.
III
In its way, one of the most singular portions of our conversation
occurred when I asked him how he was placed as regards money. After all
he must have money. Even a man who lives his life backwards must eat and
have his boots soled, and pay twenty-five shillings a week for a loft
over a garage. At first he seemed reluctant to answer me.
"I'm afraid I ran through rather a lot just at first," he said
hesitatingly--his first admission that he had not inhabited Trenchard's
garret for the whole of the time since I had last seen him. "But that
will be all right. I can make lots of money."
"How?" ("Not by that book of yours," I said emphatically to myself.)
"Oh, you needn't worry about that. I assure you I can. I've thought it
all out most carefully."
"I wish you'd tell me."
Then, eagerly, jerkily, he unfolded his maddest idea yet.
"I told you you hadn't grasped it. Nobody grasps it till they've got to
live it. You see, it's all a question of time. Now look at it
carefully.... I'm not fixed. I'm a constantly moving quantity. For that
reason I can't take an ordinary job like anybody else. Oh, I could get
one all right. It would be the simplest thing in the world for me to
walk into one of these Sandow places, Ince's or Jones's or any of 'em,
and say, 'Just pass me a few of those two hundred pound weights,' and
scare 'em alive with what I could do. In fact that's the whole
situation--I _should_ scare 'em alive. You can't show pupils one man one
day and perhaps a different one altogether the next; it isn't decent.
Here's a nut for you to crack, George: I'm dead, a ghost. But my
appearance is one of the most conspicuous things you ever saw. A man
like me can't hide himself. The King or the Prince of Wales might walk
down Piccadilly unrecognised, but not an athletic phenomenon like me. So
as well as being the loneliest, I'm also one of the most public men
living."
"So you propose to make money out of athletics?"
"Steady; let's take it as it comes. I've thought it all out, and I don't
see a single flaw in it. Here's the problem: I want a large sum of
money, I want to make it honestly, and if possible instantaneously, that
is to say while I'm still stationary. Now how am I to do it?"
"You can't do it."
"Well, I say I can."
"How?"
You wouldn't guess in a hundred years what it was he proposed to do.
He intended to fight Carpentier.
"All in the fraction of a second, George," he said, appealing for my
approval. "Knock-out punch for one of these mammoth purses, fix yourself
up for life, and then disappear. It's absolutely sound reasoning."
"It's the craziest thing I ever heard."
"Why?" he asked, his eyes innocently on mine. "It's perfectly feasible."
"How would you get the match? Do you suppose any promoter would look at
you? Would any champion? Would his manager let him? Remember that
championship's a business. Champions make money as long as they're
champions and no longer. They take no risks. And part of their business
is to sidestep dangerous matches."
But he had an answer to that that evidently seemed to him conclusive.
His eyes sparkled.
"Exactly! That's the very reason I picked Carpentier. Carpentier, man,
Georges Carpentier! _He_ isn't a sidestepper! He's the most
thoroughgoing sportsman alive! Look at the way he gave that Yorkshire
lad his match! Sidestep, that Frenchman? Look here. You know I speak
French like a native. Well, I shouldn't in the least mind going straight
up to him and putting the whole proposition before him."
"That you were out after his championship and incidentally his living?"
"Yes, and I jolly well know what he'd do."
"So do I. He'd turn you over to Descamps and the negotiations would last
a couple of years. That isn't instantaneous."
"He'd do nothing of the sort. _That_ great fellow?... Kiss me. He'd kiss
me on both cheeks, shout '_C'est ça!_' and tell Descamps to fix it up
straight away. Of course I wouldn't hurt him."
I stared. "_Could_ you put Carpentier out?"
He laughed. A laugh was his reply.
"But suppose--an accident can always happen--suppose he put _you_ out?"
This time I had not even a laugh for a reply.
He was fast asleep.
Asleep, dead off, and in that moment of time! The instant before his
eyes had kindled at the thought of what a lark it would be to take on
that peerless Frenchman and put him out; now, between a question and an
answer, those eyes were closed and he slept profoundly.
With immense profundity. I bent over him and spoke his name in his ear.
I shook him by the shoulder. He was unconscious of either action. His
colour was blooming, his breathing deep and easy; else his sleep seemed
to have the immensity of death itself. Under the glaring incandescent
mantle he was theatrical in his beauty, superb in the relaxation of his
strength. I could not take my eyes off him. It was almost frightening to
see that complete annihilation of so much physical and mental power.
To write that book--and to fight Carpentier! He had worked it coolly and
impudently out. The analytical faculties he would have brought to the
one task he had merely applied to the other, and he had arrived at the
perfectly logical answer that the way to make the maximum of money as
nearly instantaneously as possible was to knock out Carpentier.
I could only gaze spellbound at him as he slept.
What to do now?
I was aware that this question had been waiting for an answer ever since
we had left that picture-house in Shaftesbury Avenue. I had now found
him, or he me; but what next? Let him go again? But apparently he did
not want to go; he clung to me pathetically, as to the single companion
he had in the world. Take him away somewhere? But he had refused to
come, had urged that monstrous book. Was I to stay here with him, to
stay all night, to stay till Trenchard's return? That was, to say the
least, inconvenient. Should I put him to bed? Somehow I hesitated to
disturb that vast unconsciousness. Poor fellow, he richly earned all the
rest he got.
I went into the bedroom, brought out Trenchard's quilt, and spread it
over him. I moved his head gently to the padded portion of the wicker
chair. I made him as comfortable as I could. Then once more I stood
irresolute.
It was now after one o'clock, and that powerful sleep had cut us clean
off in the middle of things. I had much, much more to ask him. I wanted
to know his intentions about his rooms in Cambridge Circus, whether he
thought of returning there, whether he wanted his furniture stored or
sold. If to myself and Trenchard and possibly a few others he was still
known as Derwent Rose, I wanted to know what his name was to the rest of
mankind. Merely as a means of communication with people he did not wish
to meet face to face, I wanted to know whether his handwriting had
changed, whether he used a typewriter, what his signature was like.
And above all I wanted to know what steps I must now take with regard to
Julia Oliphant.
Of course I intended to tell her everything, and to tell him that I had
done so. The worst I should risk would be his momentary anger that I had
betrayed him. He had wished to spare her a meeting with himself, but he
had not known that she was unsparable. More than that, she was
indissuadable. I should not be able to keep her from him. And, if he
clung so touchingly to me, found me so "magnificently steady," what
comfort would he not find in that unvarying constancy of hers? He might
break out on me for the moment, but he would bless me for it by and by.
I sat down in the other chair. I was very tired. I dozed.
In perhaps a quarter of an hour I opened my eyes again. He had not
moved. It was a mild night, the deep chair was not uncomfortable, and I
dozed again and again woke. Still he slept. I muttered a "Good night,
poor old chap." I was too drowsy even to get up and turn down the
incandescent light.
This time I slept as soundly as he.
Afterwards he blamed himself that he had not sent me away; but that
sleep had dropped on him like a falling beam. All his sleep, he
explained, was like that. Immeasurable chasms of time seemed to have
passed away between his closing his eyes and his opening them again.
So this is what came next:
A light creaking of his chair brought me suddenly wide awake and sitting
up. A peep of grey daylight showed in the upper portion of the
window-frame, but the incandescent mantle still glared yellowly above
his head. He had moved, but without waking. He turned his head and
slumbered on.
But the turn of his head had brought his face into the light....
He only shaved once a day, in the morning; and on the following morning
he shaved again. But it was his whole beard that he thus shaved off
daily, thirty days' growth in a night. He had had no set intention of
growing that beard that I had seen in the hansom. A few days before
coming to Trenchard's place he had woke up one morning, stroked his
face, and found it there.
There he slept--in his golden beard.
IV
"Most certainly he shall write his book," Julia declared.
"Not if I can prevent it," I replied.
"We'll see about that. You don't think he'll give us the slip again?"
"I don't think so--I mean he doesn't seem to want to at present."
"And he was all right when you left him? Is he comfortable there? Had he
a good breakfast? Was his bed made? Does anybody go in and clear up for
him? Had he any flowers?"
"He's quite all right there. He wants to see me as much as he can. He'd
ask me to stay with him, but he's determined to get ahead with that
book."
I did not tell her of any other reason why he might wish to be alone
when he woke up in the morning. I assumed that a man's shaving
operations could have no interest for her. But this is what had taken
place:
On seeing his first signs of stirring I had slipped quietly into his
bedroom. There, lying on his bed, I had pretended to be asleep. I had
heard his tiptoe approach, the slight creaking of the door as he had
peeped in, his stealthy crossing to the dressing-table, where his razors
were. Then he had stolen out again, and I had heard a kettle filled and
other preparations. A quarter of an hour later he had (as he supposed)
woke me. He stood there by the bedside with a cup of tea in his hand.
His chin was smooth. I wondered about that other morning when, passing
his hand over his face, he had first found the beard there. And I
wondered what his companion, if he had had one, had thought of it.
"But he shall write his book, poor darling," Julia repeated.
This was at half-past ten in the morning, in her studio, whither I had
walked straight from Derry's loft over the mews.
"He ought to be locked up for life if he does," I answered.
But she was very obstinate. Derry (she said) should do whatever he had a
mind to do. More than that (and a crafty light stole into her dark eyes
as she said it), she intended to help him.
"To write his book? And what do you know about writing books?"
"I didn't say to write his book. You say he's--what d'you call
it?--sharpening his tools, getting himself fit. Well, I can help him to
do that."
"How?"
"I'll leave the door open so you can hear."
She ran out of the studio to the little cabinet where her telephone was.
I heard the following, her side of the conversation that ensued.
"Is that 9199? Miss Oliphant would like to speak to Mrs Aird, please....
Is that you, Madge? Yes, this is my dinner-call.... Oh, like a top, and
I know your phone's by your bed. Madge, my dear, I want to know who that
learned person was I was talking to last night: yes, the bibliomaniac
person.... Who?" Then, with a jump of her voice, "What, he's staying
with you? He's in the house _now_? Do send for him immediately.... Of
course not, you goose, but you have an extension, haven't you?..."
And then this:
"Oh, good morning! Miss Oliphant speaking.... Ah, you've forgotten!...
Most frightfully excited about our conversation last night. Will you
tell me again the title of that book and whether I can see it in the
British Museum? Wait a minute, I want to write it down...."
Then, carefully and as it were a letter at a time:
"_Manuel--du--Répertoire--Bibliographique--Universel...._ Yes, I've got
that.... _Paris, 44, Rue de Rennes...._ Now the other book, please....
_Decimal Classification and Relative Index...._ Yes.... _Melvil
Dewey...._ Is that enough to identify them?"
Then a rapid perfunctory gush, a "Thank you _so_ much," the receiver
clapped on again, and re-enter Julia, her face ashine with triumph.
"Well, did you hear all that?" she said. "You can take me along to the
British Museum as soon as you like. You'll have to get me into the
reading-room, because I haven't a ticket. Then if I were you I should
trot away off to Haslemere."
"Who's that you were talking to?"
"A most fearful bore I met at the Airds' at dinner last night. At least
I thought he was a bore then. Now he's a duck and an angel and I could
kiss him all over his bald old head. Goodness is _always_ rewarded,
George, but not often the next morning like this." She clapped her
hands.
"You're less comprehensible than ever I knew you, which is saying a good
deal."
"Dear old George! When you're bald I'll kiss you too. And Derry _shall_
write his book."
"And fight Carpentier?"
"Poodledoodle!"
And she flitted out again, unfastening her painting-blouse at the back
as she went.
I knew enough of Miss Oliphant by this time to treat her apparent
irresponsibilities with respect. I had never heard of either of
the books of which she had spoken over the telephone, but I
risked a guess at their nature--_Bibliographique Universel_--_Decimal
Classification_--evidently the subject was indexing, and she had met
somebody at dinner the night before who had led her into these arid
fields. Naturally she had been bored. But now she was in a rapture of
plotting and machination. She intended to assist and encourage Derry in
that inordinate plan of his. She came in again, dressed for walking,
humming a blithe tune.
"Dear, dear Providence! There was I ready to snap Madge's head off for
seizing quite a nice man herself and giving me old Drybones, but now I'm
going to send her some flowers. See the idea, George?"
"What are these books?"
"The very latest thing in the way of indexing. It lasted nearly the
whole of dinner. Oh, I _love_ myself for being so good! He drooled
along, and I said 'How thrilling' and things like that, thinking of
something else all the time, and now _this_ gorgeous piece of luck!"
"A Universal Index?"
"Yes, of the whole of human knowledge. It's all done with decimals--or
do they call them semicolons? Dots anyway. You can turn up anything from
the solar system to a packet of pins at a moment's notice. If Derry
doesn't know about it he'll dance with joy.... But come along. I must
see those books. Let's go by bus. You can get me a reader's ticket,
can't you?"
She pushed me out in front of her and closed the door with a reckless
bang. All the way to the bus she talked as delightedly as if it had been
her birthday.
"So I shall mug up those decimals and things and then go and be his
secretary. I know more or less how he wrote his _Vicarage_. He used to
stride up and down my room, thinking aloud about it. And this will be
the same, only enormous! He says he wants to make it as Moses made his
Decalogue? He shall, bless his heart. Why shouldn't he? I don't see your
stuffy old objections, George."
"One of them is that Moses didn't 'make' the Decalogue. He went up into
Sinai for it."
"Well, leave Moses out then. Any other reason?"
"I've told you. If it isn't exactly blasphemous, it's getting on that
way."
"Why?" she said with heat. "Was the _Vicarage_ blasphemous? He's simply
going to do the _Vicarage_ again, but on a huger scale. If he can write
a gigantic book why should you say to him 'No, you mustn't write
that--write a littler one instead'? He's perfectly entitled to write the
biggest book he can. He's just as much entitled to it as you or any
other writer. You only call it those names because it's bigger than
yours."
She glowed with jealousy for his fame. He was her demi-god, and she
would have had all the world bow down before him. She would _not_ have
him second to Homer--she would _not_ have him second to Shakespeare. At
least so it struck me, and I could only shake my head again and again
and repeat that in my opinion it was not a legitimate ambition.
We had mounted to the top of a motor-bus, where we occupied a back seat.
For some minutes she did not speak. Then, as she still continued silent,
I looked at her face. At the same moment her face turned to mine.
What worlds away from the truth I was that clear look told me. His fame?
She didn't care twopence for his fame, except that it might amuse him.
His book? She didn't care whether he wrote his book or whether he
didn't. To her, fame and books were the vanities with which men so
incomprehensibly amuse themselves when they might be thinking of
something that mattered. It was enormously more than that that her eyes
told me on the top of that east-bound bus that morning.
For if he wished to remain thirty-three, she too as intensely wished and
willed it. He should write any book he wanted, do anything on earth he
liked, so long as that loft in a South Kensington mews became an upper
room in Cremorne Road all over again. She would flutter about,
pretending to be indexing the whole mass of human knowledge for him,
clipping and pasting and filing within sound of his voice; but what she
would really be doing would be to cut Patum Peperium sandwiches for him,
to see that he fed himself properly, opened his windows, made his bed,
had his washing and mending properly done. That former _Vicarage_ period
had been the summer of her life; she would now thrust herself in the way
of it once more. That she might do so with some sort of countenance she
was on her way to read those thorny books in the British Museum. The
latest thing in indexing was the bait with which she set the trap of her
adoration. She would humour, encourage, wheedle, praise. But she too
would have her summer twice.
We did not speak again until we descended in Tottenham Court Road and
walked along Great Russell Street. Then as we approached the Museum
railings she turned abruptly to me. She wanted her final confirmation of
the facts.
"You've told me all that he said about me?"
"Yes." (This was untrue. I had suppressed one thing. I had not told her
that he had sometimes stayed away from Cremorne Road because she bought
things for him she could not afford.)
"And he's no idea at all that I know anything whatever about it?"
"None whatever."
"Tell me again about his having sometimes thought of me lately."
I did so. "For all I know he might even have come to see you but for the
fear of giving you that shock."
"Well, you didn't die of the shock, so why should I? Come and get me my
ticket."
We passed through the glazed doors and along the Roman Gallery. I rang
at the closed door where the temporary tickets are obtained. There was
no difficulty, and slowly we walked past the double row of Cæsars and
Emperors again. I had taken her arm. Somehow I suddenly felt as though I
were about to lose her, perhaps for a long time, perhaps for an even
longer one. I spoke in a low voice.
"Do you think it will be--safe? Just to walk in on him, I mean. Wouldn't
it be better to prepare him first?"
"No, no--that's the one thing I _am_ sure of."
"Are you sure you can trust yourself?"
"I don't know. If I can't there's an end of everything, so I must."
"What about our going together?"
"No, nor that either." She flushed a little as she said it.
I think, though I am not sure, that there was jealousy in that flush. In
that unspeakable solitude of his Derry had so far only a single
friend--myself. She was prepared, if she could, to steal my share of
him, to have him all to herself.
"But I've got to see him to-day; I promised it," I said.
"Then off you go now, while I'm here. But you're not to say a word about
my coming. Then if I were you I should get off to Haslemere."
She meant I had better get out of the way altogether. I sighed....
"Well, come and get your books."
We sought the reading-room, and I put her into a seat and passed to the
catalogue counter. I took her slips to her for signature, dropped them
into the basket, and then returned to her. It was early, and few readers
had yet arrived. We were in the "N" bay, which we had to ourselves. I
saw her look up at the million books, dingy and misty in the pale light
of the high rotunda. I saw her dark eyes travel along the frieze of
names in tarnished gold--Carlyle, Tennyson, Browning. In the past I have
spent a good deal of time in the reading-room; now it is a place I get
out of as quickly as I can. It crushes me, annihilates my spirit with
the weight of the vanity of vanities. Of the makers, as well as of the
making of books, there is no end. They are born, they lisp, they spell,
they write; and then they die. The eager heart, the busy brain, are a
few tarnished letters on a frieze, a strip of paper gummed into the
casualty-list of a catalogue. We think, write, and to-morrow we die.
Only one man was not going to think, write, and die to-morrow. He was
going to be different from all men who had gone before him. Because of
something that had happened to him, he was going to blazon his name, not
in that circular cemetery of dead books, but across the whole width of
the heavens outside.
And this tired woman trifling with the tips of her long fingers against
the book-rest as she waited for her books was going to be his
accomplice. She was going, by means of something called love, to keep
him at that acme of his powers where innocence and wisdom met and in the
past he had thrown her a friendly word from time to time. She was going,
single-handed, to arrest that backward drift of his life. Whatever had
caused it should be thwarted in her. He should _not_ be thirty. He
_should_ remain, if she could compass it, thirty-three for as long as he
wanted--for the rest of his life and hers.
I wondered the dome did not fall on her.
Presently she turned her head and smiled in my eyes.
"Well, don't you wait, George. Thanks so much. Good-bye."
I left her sitting there, in that vast and brown-hued well, still
waiting for her books.
PART IV
THE DOUBLE CROSS
I
A conspicuous feature about my small house in Surrey is its lake--eighty
yards by forty of clear dark water among the oak and willows, spring-fed
and with trout in it. This lake lies immediately in front of the house,
where other houses have their lawns. It needs a good deal of attention,
for springtime sheddings that are charming on grass are messy on water,
and nothing but wind can sweep the glossy surface. But its infinite
variety of mood lights up the whole place like a smiling eye, and I am
very attached to it.
Not more than a quarter of an hour's bicycle-ride away is a preparatory
school for boys up to the age of fourteen.
Need I say that I have had to put up a diving-platform at one end of the
lake?
There are, of course, certain rules: bicycles to be left at the
potting-shed, diving from the punt not allowed, not more than four
bathers at one time, etc., etc. But within these limits the pond is as
much theirs as mine, and seldom a summer afternoon passes without a
bathing-party.
I had done Julia's bidding and had come back home again. It had been on
a Wednesday morning that I had left her waiting for her books in the
reading-room of the British Museum. It was now Friday, and I had not
heard a word either of her or Derry.
I had tried not to think of them. Finding that impossible, I had
wandered restlessly up and down, no good to myself or to anybody else.
On Thursday, and again on Friday, I had almost returned to London. I
could not shake off that picture of her, sitting alone in that dreary
rotunda of accumulated human knowledge. Had she started that
crack-brained index, he his terrifying book? Had she gone to him? What
had she said? What had he replied? I could neither guess nor forget
about it. As if he had infected me with something of his own calamity,
my mind too was in two places at the same time--among the Surrey oaks
and sweet-chestnut, and in that loft where he had lived over the South
Kensington mews.
My study is an upper room at the front of the house, with French windows
that open on to a wide verandah. I often drag out a table and work
outside. But work that morning was impossible. I was too unsettled even
to answer letters. So I walked out on to the verandah and leaned on the
ramblered rail. The oaks across the lake were turning from gold to
green, and the two big willows by the diving-stage were a ruffle of
silver-grey. Under the clear surface the trout were basking shadows. I
wished the afternoon were here. It would at least bring the boys to
bathe.
Suddenly I heard my housekeeper's step on the verandah behind me. She
always walks straight through the study if she gets no answer to her
knock.
"Miss Oliphant," she announced.
I nearly jumped out of my skin.
"Miss Oliphant! Where?"
"In the drawing-room, sir."
In five seconds I was through the study and half-way downstairs. The
drawing-room is a cool, low-ceilinged apartment at the farther end of
the house. It has windows on two of its sides, those to the north green
with brushing leaves and a ferny bank, the others glazed doors that that
morning stood wide open. As I entered I heard mingled laughter.
They both stood there.
They were silhouetted against the sunny opening, laughing like a couple
of children. Perhaps the joke was that Julia only had been announced. I
stood watching them for a moment; then I advanced.
"Good morning," I said.
Julia gave a swift turn. The next moment she had pushed Derry forward.
"You explain--I wash my hands of it," she laughed.
She wore thick shoes and a walking-costume, and on her head was a little
felt hat with a pheasant's feather. He had on an old tweed jacket and
grey flannel bags. He held out his hand.
"Hope we're not dragging you from your work, George," he laughed. "Do
you good anyway. I felt like a day off, so I dug out Julia. 'Down tools,
Julia,' I said; 'no work to-day. Where shall we go? Shall we give George
Coverham a surprise?' So here we are, to lunch, please. By Jove, there's
a kingfisher!"
He sprang out on to the terrace to see where the electric-blue flash had
whistled off to.
Swiftly I glanced at Julia. In her eyes was the old deep shining. But
Derry called over his shoulder:
"That was a young one, wasn't it? Is there a nest? How many hatched out?
Do they go for the fish?"
He seemed splendidly fit, perfectly happy. He seemed so happy that
suddenly I wondered what I had been making myself so miserable about. A
weight seemed to lift all at once from my mind. Too much London had
oppressed me, I supposed. Cambridge Circus is not the place for a
country-living man to stay too long in. It bred too many fancies. Much
better for the Circus-dweller to come into the country.
"It went over by that bank," Derry was saying, still peering after the
kingfisher; and I stepped out.
"Yes. The nest's right in the bank. Six of them hatched. You'll see
another in a minute."
But at that moment his eyes fell on the punt. Quickly he turned to
Julia.
"Years since I've had a punt-pole in my hand!" he exclaimed. "Is it in
working order, George? Come along----"
"You go, Julia," I said; and I returned into the house to see about
lunch.
What had happened? Had he really brought her out for the day on his own
account, as formerly he had used to do? Or was she allowing him to
think that he had? Was he repeating himself even textually, in those
words "Down tools, Julia, no work to-day"? I must know. It was essential
that I should know. Yet already something in his manner told me that I
should not learn it from him. He was here not to talk about himself, but
to enjoy, keenly and vividly, every moment of his day. Whatever my own
megrims had been, he showed none. Not he, but Julia, would have to
explain matters.
Suddenly I took a resolution. I pushed at a baize door.
"Mrs Moxon!" I called.
My housekeeper appeared.
"Would it be upsetting your arrangements if I asked my visitors to stay
for the week-end?" I asked.
She considered a moment; then she thought it could be managed. But she
seemed puzzled.
"It _is_ Mr Rose, isn't it?" she said.
Derry, I may say, had been to my house twice or thrice before.
"Of course."
"I thought it was, sir, but they told me only to say Miss Oliphant."
"Oh, that was their little surprise for me," I replied. "Very well, Mrs
Moxon. Lunch, and I'll ask them to stay for the week-end. My sister left
a few things, didn't she?"
"That'll be all right, sir. I'll see to Miss Oliphant."
I came out of the house again and sought the lake. They were out in the
middle of it, lying down in the punt together with their heads over the
side. They were watching the trout. I was on the point of hailing them
when I refrained. Something dramatic in their juxtaposition pulled me up
short.
Their heads were together, their laughter came across the water. She
_was_ having her summer again. But what would it cost her? Her
unchanging adoration--and his affectionate indifference! He had never
cared, he never would care. To-morrow he would have forgotten all about
it. But she would have still another day's memories to add to those
others when he had jumped five-barred gates with his pipe in his mouth
and his stick in his hand--memories of my punt and pond and the greening
oaks and the silvery willows.... Yet she was laughing as carelessly as
he. They were playing a game. A willow-leaf had floated like a fairy
shallop towards them, and he was blowing it her way, she blowing it back
again.
Then a dragonfly caught their attention, and they forgot the
willow-leaf, as instantly as children forget.
* * * * *
At lunch I sat with my back to the open windows, they where they could
look out. Apparently he had completely forgotten that night, only three
days ago, when he had told me that I was the only one of his old
acquaintances to whom he dared reveal himself. He called her Julia, she
him Derry, and to both of them I was George. We laughed, joked, said
anything that came into our heads; but beneath it all I was in an
extreme of curiosity. _How_ had they come together? _What_ had happened
that there was now a second person in the world to whom he could
pronounce his name?
Half-way through lunch I made my proposal that they should remain for a
couple of days. His brow suddenly clouded. I watched him carefully, and
I knew that Julia was watching him as carefully as I.
"Awfully good of you, George," he said in a suddenly altered voice, "but
I really don't think I can spare the time. I only downed tools for one
day, you know. I really must get back."
"But to-morrow's Saturday. I promise to let you go on Sunday evening if
you really must."
"I'm so fearfully busy, you see," he said uneasily.
Under the table I felt Julia's foot touch mine. She spoke.
"Fancy Derry talking like a minor novelist about being busy!" she
laughed. "Why, you always used to say that if it was as hard work as all
that something was wrong and ought to be seen to!"
His brow instantly cleared again. "That's so," he said. "Did I say that?
I'd forgotten. Busyness is all bunk, of course; made for duffers. A
thing either does itself or it doesn't.... Right, George, I'll stop if
Julia will. I hope you won't mind if I go to bed rather early though. I
really have been hard at it, and I need a lot of sleep."
"This air'll make you sleep," I assured him. I did not add that if he
wished to go to bed early lest he should sink into abysmal sleep in the
middle of a sentence he should have his wish. Razors and a spirit-lamp
were going to be put into his room. A little teapot and caddy would also
be placed there. I intended to tell Mrs Moxon that he was faddy about
his early-morning tea. He might then use his hot water for any purpose
he wished.
We took coffee outside, and then went for a stroll round my few acres.
In the kitchen-garden he had a new idea. Over a hedge at one end of it,
well out of the way, was a rather unsightly dump of old household
rubbish--tins, burst buckets, old zinc baths, broken utensils of every
kind. A few spadefuls of earth are thrown over these from time to time,
and a handful of nasturtium-seeds once in a while helps to mitigate the
eyesore.
"You want an incinerator, George," he announced. "Here's all your stuff
ready. Hammer this old junk out flat, get the blacksmith to cut a few
rods, a cartload of stones and a few barrowloads of clay, and there you
are. Lots of fine ash for your beds too, though I shouldn't think this
soil needed much. Got a pencil? I'll show you----"
He made rough sketches of the incinerator on the back of an envelope.
We strolled back to the pond and the punt again, and he threw off his
coat, turned up his sleeves, and poled us up and down. He glowed with
vitality and power. Both for strength and delicacy of touch he did
whatever he liked with the punt. One beautifully-finished little feat he
performed. A blossom of water-starwort floated on the pond some fifteen
yards away. Julia's hand was trailing lazily in the water.
"Keep your hand just as it is," he ordered her.
She had only to close her fingers on the blossom. With one perfect
stroke, one complicated thrust of the pole, that included I knew not
what components of opposite forces reconciled to one end, the flower
sped swiftly to her hand and rested there. There was no jar, only a
thrilling as of a sound-board as the punt fetched up still. He laughed
with pleasure at his skill.
Then at that moment I heard the sound of boys' voices. The bathing-party
had arrived. I turned to Julia.
"They come every afternoon. Would you like to go up to the house, or
will you stay here in the punt under the trees?"
"Oh, in the punt, please," she said; and Derry turned quickly.
"Bathing? Did you say boys were going to bathe? I say, that's rather an
idea! Got a spare costume, George?"
Across the lake a stripling figure stood on the diving-stage with a
towel about his shoulders. It was Du Pré Major. He dropped the towel,
stood poised, and then came the sound of a plunge. Derry's eyes shone.
In a moment he had put the punt in under the trees.
"That's done it," he laughed. "Can I ask your housekeeper for a towel?"
"You know my room. You'll find everything you want there."
"Right. I've nearly forgotten how to swim----"
He stepped from the punt and ran lightly round the pond.
Julia's wet fingers still held the flower. Her head hung a little down,
so that the light from the water was thrown softly up on to her face.
Her eyes, but her eyes only, moved as the sound of another plunge was
heard; but it was only the other Du Pré and Southby. I did not speak.
There would be time enough for talking after Derry had gone to
bed--early.
Then over by the house a gleam of white appeared. It was Derry with a
robe of towelling over his shoulders. He did not take the path to the
diving-board; instead, he dropped the towel on a grass border, looked
aloft for a moment, and then took a straight run at one of the willows.
It was a "cricket-bat" willow, and it overhung the diving-board at an
angle out of the vertical. How he managed the leap I do not know, but in
a moment he was up the tree like a squirrel, poised in the fork,
laughing down at the surprised boys on the stage below.
"Stand clear," he called.
His path through the air was a swallow's. There was a soft plunge, a
hissing effervescence as of black soda-water, and he shot to the surface
again like a javelin, a dozen yards away.
"Oh, ripping plunge, sir!" one of the boys called rapturously. "Jimmy!
Did you see it? Did you see that?"
"Come in--let's make a dog-fight of it!" Derry cried.
And one after another they tumbled in and splashed towards him.
I have been told that that Friday's four are still the envied of the
whole school. He was very wonderful with them. The dog-fight over he set
to work to coach them. They had never seen the stroke that consists of
turning the left leg from the knee downwards into a screw-propeller, so
that the swimmer travels forward, not in a series of impulses, but at a
uniform rate of progress. He showed them in the water, and then hoisted
himself to the diving-platform and showed them there. The stage became a
comical waggling of nubile white legs.
"No, no," his voice came to us, "from the knee--think of a screw--and
about a six-inch stroke with your left hand--it's worth learning--makes
swimming as easy as walking----"
"Show us a racing-stroke, sir----"
"Shut up, Jimmy. Is this right? It does catch your knee, though----"
"Do that dive again, sir----"
Then, when Derry judged they had had enough of it, he ordered them out.
He himself did a final dash of the whole eighty yards and back again,
while the water boiled behind him. Then he sought his wrap and
disappeared into the house.
"He's 'some' swimmer, isn't he?" said Julia softly. She had neither
spoken nor moved.
He was.
But even I could see that he knew nothing of women.
The bit of water-starwort was still in her hand. Suddenly with a little
laugh she tossed it over the side.
"Oughtn't he to have some tea?" she said....
I do not wish to labour the details of that afternoon. I may say that
already I had a very distinct and curious impression of them, namely,
that they _were_ details, isolated and without continuity; but I will
come to that presently. We sat rather a long time over tea, and Derry
talked. The only subject he seemed to avoid was that of his work.
Otherwise he was alert, keen, dead "on the spot." On athletics he was
extraordinarily illuminating. Granted that as an engine his body was
pretty near perfection; it was on the "fundamental brainwork" of the
subject that he laid the greatest stress. The modesty of the
demonstrations which he made on the verandah before our eyes was
altogether charming; he was as simple and earnest with us as he had been
with the boys. For such-and-such a performance (he showed) your balance
_must_ be thus and thus; for swiftness, a certain speed of movement
_must_ be the perfectly-synchronised sum-total of half a dozen different
speeds. I am no very remarkable athlete myself; I have always supposed
that I lacked some special gift; but Derry spoke almost as if, by the
mere taking of thought, he could add a cubit to his leap or plunge. He
took his sport and his writing in very much the same way. You "just
helped nature all you could."
Then he was back on the subject of the incinerator again.
Shortly after that it was an oak that ought to be lightened on one side
unless I wanted to have a hole torn in the bank of my pond.
Then, dinner over, he began to fidget. This was at a little after eight
o'clock. At twenty past he rose abruptly.
"It's that bathe I suppose," he yawned. "If you don't mind I think I'll
turn in. You said I might, you know----"
"I'll show you up," I said.
"Don't trouble," he replied, Julia's hand in his.
But I wanted to make sure that the tea-caddy was where I had told Mrs
Moxon to put it.
II
On the night when he had half scared me out of my wits with that
horrible demonstration with the electric torch on the edge of the bamboo
table, he had been careful to explain that he was putting the question
in its most elementary form. There were (he had said) other factors, and
more important ones. One of these had already occurred to me. Stated as
simply as possible, it was this:
As he had held the torch that night, with that notch that "had got to be
thirty-three" in the middle of the illuminated edge, about six inches on
either side of the notch had come within the lamp's beam. "Keep your eye
on that edge and never mind the other dimensions," he had said, and he
had proceeded to manipulate the lamp.
_But how had he determined the distance at which the lamp must be held
from the table's edge?_
You see the enormous importance of this. The lighted portion of the edge
was the extent of his memory, faculty or whatever one may call it. But
what about that memory's _quality_ as distinct from its extent? Suppose,
instead of holding the torch a foot away, he had held it three inches
away only? The nearer the shorter--but the brighter; the farther away
the longer--but the dimmer. Our childish recollections are intense, but
of small things; as we grow older we remember more, but more vaguely....
I find that I shall have to make use of the parallel columns again.
Indeed I begin to suspect that I shall have to do so throughout. Was
this then the position?
BY APPROACHING THE LAMP BY WITHDRAWING THE LAMP
He might re-live a given age The intensity would diminish
again with great intensity. but the scope of memory
would enlarge.
Emotion or passion might become He might become comparative,
predominant characteristics, critical, philosophic,
at the expense of but at the cost of intensity
intellectual comparisons. of emotional experience.
He certainly would not succeed He might be in danger of
in any task that demanded including so much that he
width of outlook first of all. would become diffuse and
pointless.
He might concentrate so brilliantly The speculative man might get
as to perform a momentary and the upper hand of the practical
sensational feat--say to one and he would fail in a
knockout Carpentier. supreme momentary effort--in
other words, Carpentier
would knock him out.
A summer's day in the country It would be merely a matter
might be almost unbearably of fresh air and exercise, to
beautiful to him. be set off against the working
hours lost and the cost
of two railway tickets.
I am anxious not to go beyond my brief. I knew that for the purpose of
his book he was attempting to manipulate himself, but what his success
had so far been I did not know. Nevertheless all the possibilities had
to be considered, and the more I thought of this one the more it
impressed me. For practical purposes, these differences of
memory-intensity might turn out to be the pivot on which all else
turned.
For suppose that he had no choice but to go back and reopen the closed
book of his life, and that nothing that Julia or I could do would stop
him. Whether in that case was the better: to live as it were day by day
and hour and hour, with joy and grief experienced at their highest
pitch, or to continue to possess to the full this unique and double
knowledge, of a past that had been a future and of a future that was
once more a past?
To put it in another form, since he must do this Widdershins Walk, was
it better for him to know he was doing it, or to do it knowing as little
as possible about it?
Or, in its simplest form of all, would he be happier with or without a
memory of any kind?
* * * * *
I said good night to him at the door of his room and closed it behind
me. I had not taken more than a couple of steps when I heard him softly
lock it. I went down to Julia in the drawing-room.
Even on a warm summer's evening, when the windows stand wide open, I
like a wood fire. Outside the heavens were a beauteous pink glow, with
one amber star. The trout were rising for their evening meal, and a
sedge-warbler sang short sweet phrases. From time to time a moorhen
scuttered along the surface of the pond, and the smell of
night-flowering tobacco floated into the quiet room. But Julia had no
wish to go out. Into a pair of my sister's slippers she had thrust her
worsted-clad feet, and she was toasting her toes and smiling into the
fire.
"Is that window too much for you?" I asked.
"No."
"Then put this shawl over your shoulders. You'll have hot milk to go to
bed with."
"Thank you, George."
"And now," I said, drawing up my chair opposite to her, "tell me what's
happened since Wednesday."
She mused. "Happened to him?"
"I want to know _all_ that you did. Did you go to him?"
"No. He turned up at the Boltons this morning and dragged me out,
exactly as he said."
"But----"
"Oh, I'd sent him a note."
"Ah! I wondered.... What did you say?"
"It was only a couple of lines. I forget what the exact words were. I
merely said that I shouldn't be in the least afraid of anything, and
that anyway I hadn't a dog to set at him. Just that. Nothing else. I
wrote it in the Museum after you'd gone."
"And that fetched him round?"
"Yes."
"Well, what did he say?"
She hesitated. "That's just it, George. He hasn't even referred to it."
"What, not in any way?"
"Not in any way."
"He just came into the Boltons as if nothing had happened, and he's
talked all day as if nothing had happened?"
"That's exactly it."
"He's not mentioned his book?"
"Only what you heard at lunch."
"He is writing it?"
"One would gather so. You know as much about it as I do."
I gazed into the fire. A louder splash came from the pond--one of the
three-pound rainbows. Julia resumed of her own accord.
"You see, when you left me in the Museum I really didn't know what to
do. After what you'd told me I didn't want to risk upsetting him by
simply walking in to his place unannounced. So I wrote that note, and
he'd get it last night. And he was round early this morning. But he
hasn't even mentioned the note. I suppose he got it, but things aren't
in the least like what you told me. You told me he was passionately
grateful at finding you. Well, that doesn't at all describe his manner
to me. He's jolly, keen, full of enjoyment and zest at everything that
comes along--and that's all. He _must_ have understood my note; that's
why I put in that bit about the dog; if he didn't understand he'd have
to ask what _that_ meant. But not one single word. What do you suppose
has happened?"
A little disingenuously I asked her what she meant by "happened."
"To him of course. I've told you all _I_ did. It must have been rather
heartrending between you two; so why this perfect composure now that
there are three of us?"
I didn't know. I was a little afraid to guess. But again I pondered that
distance of the torch from the table's edge.... Julia was still gazing
into the fire, her long hands between her knees, so that her
walking-skirt shaped them. Then suddenly she looked from the fire to me.
"How many things has he talked about to-day, since he's been here?" she
asked abruptly.
I moved uneasily. "Oh--how many things does one talk about in a day?
Hundreds," I replied.
"But--at such a _pitch_!" She threw the word at me with almost
accusatory energy. "Top-note all the time--birds' nests, punts,
athletics, incinerators, those boys bathing----"
Less and less at my ease, I could only urge that a holiday was a
holiday, and that Derry might as well have stayed at home as bring his
cares with him.
"You think it's just that?" she demanded, looking me full in the face.
"I should say so."
"Hm!"
But in spite of that rather critical "Hm!" she seemed reassured.
Suddenly she gave a soft chuckle.
"He was rather wonderful with those boys," she said.
"They're nice boys."
"What a games-master he'd make!" Then, with a sly and guilty look in her
eyes, "What shall we do to-morrow, George? Oh, it's ripping luck, being
here unexpectedly like this!"
"What would you like to do? There's the car if you want to go anywhere!"
"N--o," she said reflectively, as if running over in her mind a dozen
delectable plans. "I think just potter about here. Rushing about in
cars ... no, it's perfectly adorable here. I don't want to set foot out
of your grounds. George, you are a duck!" She hugged herself.
Whether he was living from moment to moment or not, there was no doubt
about her. She basked shamelessly. I am not making her out to be
anything she was not. She was a ready, practical creature, by no means
above what is called feminine littleness, not very young, but with her
own beauty. It was, too, her beauty's hour. Sitting there between the
firelight and the fairness of the evening outside, long-throated,
cool-browed, with the glow of the wood-flames richly in her eyes, her
body seemed an ivory lamp that guarded its light with sacred and jealous
care. And that flame was to all intents and purposes stolen. She now
intended, calculated, planned, contrived. Up to that moment I had
supposed her to be waiting (as it were) in that remembered Sussex
village, waiting at the centre of whatever mystery had happened to him,
waiting for him to come back to her. But now I knew that she was doing
nothing so passive. She was _not_ waiting. She was prepared to bring
events about. To the little that he had spared her on his forward
journey she was prepared to help herself immeasurably as he returned.
Like a footpad she watched his drawing-near. Sitting there by my fire,
with that day's memories still glowing about her, she was contriving
further ones for the morrow....
And suddenly the whole scope of her daring flashed upon me. At
twenty-eight she had failed to get him. Now, at forty, she would not
scruple to make use of whatever arts she had since acquired.
_She would, if she could, marry Derwent Rose._
I cannot tell you my stupefaction at my own discovery. It was wellnigh
with awe that I looked at her. For in that case her adventure was hardly
less tremendous than his own. That is what I meant when I said that he
began to constrain us and to draw us into the wheel of his own destiny.
To marry a man of diminishing age! To marry a man who had lately been
forty-five, was now at some unknown point in the neighbourhood of the
thirties, and would presently miraculously re-attain adolescence! What
unheard-of marriage was this?
As if she enumerated something to herself, one slender finger-tip was on
another. "First I shall go with him to the blacksmith's about those
rods," she said softly.
I avoided her gaze. "I don't know," I said, "that I want an incinerator
built."
"But Derry wants to build it," she answered, as if that settled the
question.
"He may have forgotten all about it to-morrow."
Swiftly she turned on me. "What do you mean by that?"
"The plain meaning of the words--he may have forgotten."
"Do you mean something about his memory?"
"Which memory? He's two of them--so far."
"Tch!... You just this moment said that he was deliberately putting
things away from him because this was a holiday. Did you say that just
to keep me quiet? Don't you believe it yourself?"
"I neither believe nor disbelieve. I simply don't know."
"Oh, you're tiresome!... In plain English, then: are you suggesting that
when he came to me this morning, the only reason he didn't mention my
note was that he had forgotten all about it in the night?"
I shrugged my shoulders. It all happened in the night. That was why he
went to bed early. That was why I had given him a spirit-kettle for
tea--or shaving. Something might have happened during the night of which
she spoke. Something might be happening in my house at that very moment.
"_Do_ you mean his memory's cracking up?" she demanded.
"I think we could find out."
"How?"
"By getting him to talk about his book. To write that book he must draw
on both his memories, experiences, or whatever you like to call it.
That's his whole equipment for it--two conscious experiences, with
himself balanced in the middle making the most of both. We might find
out that way."
"Oh, there's a shorter way than that," she said.
"What?"
"To ask him."
I shrugged my shoulders again. "Yes...."
And then I took her entirely off her guard. Outside the pink had turned
to peach, and the amber star had become a diamond. Suddenly, as they do,
the trout had ceased to rise, and a single short squawk came from the
moorhens' nest. I rose and stood before her.
"Julia," I said without warning, "_would_ you marry him?"
She might not have heard. I thought she was never going to reply. She
drew the shawl a little more closely about her shoulders, and I crossed
the room and closed the windows. Then I returned to my place in front of
her.
At last she spoke.
"I suppose you may ask that," she said. "The answer is--Yes."
"You've considered it?"
"Yes."
"Everything it would mean?"
"Yes."
"And you think you've--the right?"
She stared at me. "The right?"
"Yes, the right. Look at it this way. There's no doubt at all about one
thing; he isn't the same man to-day, or at any rate he isn't in the same
mood, that he was two days ago. He may be just deliberately putting his
work aside for a day, or--he may be the other thing. He may be going on
with his book on Monday morning--or he may be quite past it already. It
makes a good deal of difference to you which of these two men he is."
"It makes no difference."
"Oh yes it does. In the one case you'd be simply his secretary, and
things would be more or less as they were before. But for the other he
wouldn't want a secretary. That mad book would be all over and done
with. You saw him as he was to-day: one quick brilliant impression after
another. That man might write a few vivid short stories, but never that
appalling book.... Look here, Julia, I didn't want to tell you, because
the whole idea gives me a shudder; but this is the way he explained it
himself."
And without any more ado I told her of his demonstration with the
electric torch and of my own additions thereto.
She was not afraid of much, that woman. I had almost written that she
took it perfectly calmly, but that was just what she did not do. But it
was no fear of immensity and the blackness of Infinity that she showed.
Rather she seemed to see an opportunity to be snatched at. That face
that I have likened to the ivory of a lamp betrayed the soft radiance
that she tried to, but could not hide.
"Yes, that gives it," she breathed.
"So you see what I mean by 'having the right.' You'd be there, the
nearest, the brightest, vivider than everything else.... _Have_ you the
right?"
She laughed softly. "You mean I'm a baby-snatcher?" she said.
I did not reply.
For that was about the size of it. Did he remain in that mood, there she
would be in the punt with him, or holding iron rods for him as he set
out the plan of the incinerator, or hunting with him for the
kingfishers' nest, or watching him as he bathed with to-morrow's batch
of boys. He would blow little boats of willow-leaves to her, bring
water-blossoms gliding into her hand. To-morrow evening they would watch
that amber star together, stroll along my winding paths as the
glow-worms came out. That was to be her theft--to press herself home in
the glamorous irresistible moment, let what would afterwards befall. My
modest little estate was to be her antechamber to paradise, and
unwittingly I had set open the gates of it for her myself.
And she was laughing at me for it--openly laughing at me.
"Well--the portrait for the Lyonnesse Club's getting along very nicely,
George," she laughed.
"Dear, dear Julia----" I began.
"That earnest expression's rather good. What a pity I didn't bring my
painting-tools--we might have got a good day's work done to-morrow."
"My dear----"
Then, suddenly, "How long have you actually known Derry, George?" she
demanded.
"About fifteen years."
"Not longer? Then you don't know what's coming next?"
I don't like to be smiled at as she was smiling. I jumped up.
"Yes I do," I said with a flush. "What's coming next is that you're not
going to do this. You're going to promise me not to. Be his secretary,
his nurse, his housekeeper, anything else you like, but you're not to do
this. It it's nothing else it's----"
"Taking a mean advantage, you mean?" she supplied the words for me. "But
he never did know anything about women. Why shouldn't he learn, poor
dear?"
"Julia, you _can't_ have thought! A man without an age! A man, except
for you and me, without even a name a week together! A man who says of
himself that he's to all intents and purposes a ghost haunting anybody
who happens to know anything about him!... Anyway you shan't."
"Shan't I, George?" she asked with a long deep look into my eyes.
"That you shall not."
She too rose and stood before me, one elbow on the mantelpiece. She drew
up the walking-skirt an inch or two and pushed at a log with her foot.
"Of course it isn't as if you and I could ever quarrel, George," she
said. "There, I'm burning your sister's slipper. I say we can't quarrel,
because we're ever so far beyond that. Therefore we can talk quite
plainly about anything on earth, or under it, or above it. So now tell
me why I mustn't marry Derry."
I thought of the man upstairs, of the spirit-kettle on his table, of
why he must be alone when he woke in the morning.
"There are physical reasons, if there weren't any others."
"Of course. He'll get younger. He'll be sixteen. Well, I can be his
mother then. But I shall have _been_ his wife."
"For how long?"
She lifted her beautiful shoulders. "What does that matter? I said his
wife. Does any bride on her wedding-day ask herself how long it's for?
There have been widows who've never even taken breakfast with their
husbands."
"But they married men like other men."
"Pooh! Tell that to any woman in love! They're all Derrys as long as it
lasts, and he's Derry as long as it lasts."
"But his memory?"
"We don't know that anything's the matter with it. Really you're very
hard to please, George. First you complain that he's got too much memory
and he's writing what you call a wicked book with it. Now you seem
afraid he hasn't enough to get married with. If he's happier without a
memory at all, what's the odds?"
"But yourself?"
"Oh, I can look after myself--now! And anyway you needn't worry about
_my_ memory!"
Yet that was what I was worrying about. How gorgeously she had enriched
her memories that very day I had seen for myself. Openly she exulted in
her treasures. But what was to be the end of it all? By marriage did she
mean one last wild lovely memory more and after that--nothing? If so,
was ever degree so inconceivably prohibited? A dark-haired child in the
wrong seat in a village church--a few odd hours in the country that it
might have been a mercy to spare her--that day in my own house and
grounds--to-morrow with whatever it might bring--perhaps another day or
two unless he overtook another milestone before then ... and then the
relative and inevitable sequence: his bride, his elder sister, his
mother, aunt, elderly adviser and friend, and so on to the close. This
was the prospect she was deliberately embracing. Here she espied her
joy....
And should there be a child?...
She had sat down again. That appearance of a quarrel between two people
who could never quarrel was at an end. I lifted the logs, arranged her
shawl again, and then also sat down. Mrs Moxon brought in a tray, with
hot milk and biscuits for her and whisky for myself. She set a small
table between us. Julia's slender fingers played as it were a tune as
she moved the too-hot glass from one position to another. Mrs Moxon gave
a final glance round, wished us good night, and went out again. I mixed
myself a peg, and then turned to Julia.
"I think you were going to tell me, when I interrupted you, what
happened before I knew Derry," I said.
Little pistol-like cracks began to break from the green-oak logs I had
moved. A thin pouring of amethyst streamed up the chimney-back, and the
heart of the fire was intense pink and salmon. The glow from the ceiling
made semi-transparent the rich shadows of the farther recesses of the
room. It was true that as against my fifteen years she had known him for
more than thirty. My own personal knowledge of his history was now on
the point of failing. Only to her could I look for an anticipation of
what might next be expected.
"Yes," she said musingly. "Anyway I'm prepared for it."
"What was it?"
"You don't know?"
"Only in a general way that at some time or other he must have travelled
a good deal."
She nodded. "That's it. His Wanderjahre. He walked mostly--Italy,
Germany, France, racketed about all over the place. Broke hearts
wherever he went too I expect. It was then that he picked up his
wonderful French."
"Then do you think that that phase is--falling due again?"
She shook her head slowly. How could she tell? "I only had occasional
letters from him at that time. Usually to smuggle him out some tobacco
or see about a letter of credit or something. I had one from Siena, and
one from Trieste, and another from Nîmes.... But," she added briskly,
"if I married him of course I should go with him. That would solve
everything."
"Would it!"
"I mean if his appearance changed much. You say yourself he can't stop
in one place for long. He can't even take an ordinary job. And you seem
to think that's a reason why I shouldn't marry him. But to my mind it's
the very reason why I should. He shan't be left to tramp the world all
alone, poor boy. I'm quite a good walker."
But for the shawl round her shoulders, the glass of hot milk and my
sister's slippers, she seemed ready to start immediately.
"Julia, are you well off?" I suddenly asked her.
She smiled. "The sooner I'm paid for that portrait of you the better,
George," she said.
"Because," I continued, "his royalties won't keep his boots soled, and
as for that mad idea of fighting Carpentier----"
She made an indifferent gesture within the shawl and sipped her milk.
"And now," I pursued her, "I want you to notice how you've changed your
mind this last half-hour or so. As you sit there now you haven't the
least intention of becoming his secretary. In fact you're calmly
planning how you can murder that book of his."
"How do you know that, George?"
"You are. Remember the flash-lamp. _He_ wants to light up his time-scale
from sixteen to forty or thereabouts. _You_ want it like a
burning-glass, all concentrated in one brilliant spot--yourself. In
other words you're planning a mental assault on him."
She laughed delightedly. "Before committing a physical one? George, you
shock me! I hope you're not going to lock me into my room!"
"Further than that. You don't intend to lose a moment of time, because
those Wanderjahre may be drawing very near."
Her mouth was prim. "It's a difficult position, George."
"Do you intend to ask him outright to marry you?"
"It's a very difficult position," she repeated demurely. "Suppose he
accepted me one day and forgot all about it the next. I should have to
propose to him daily, shouldn't I?"
"I don't think you need joke about it."
Her daring eyes positively fondled my face. She showed all her teeth in
a wide smile.
"Why not?" she asked. "What else is there to do? You wouldn't have me
take it seriously, would you? How can it be taken seriously?"
And she added, stretching her long hands to the fire, "Why, it would be
the least serious marriage there ever was!"
III
By breakfast-time the next morning I had taken a resolve. I had slept
little for thinking of it. I intended, if I could, to make Derry talk
about his book.
For while I abhorred the very idea of that book, there was one thing I
abhorred more. This was the thought of the collapse of his memory. If
anything happened to that the situation was horribly simple. A man who,
from having had two memories, passes to not having one at all,
is--gently but without any further pother--locked up. And had that been
the end of it I don't think I should have had the heart to write Derry's
tale.
He came down, shaven, radiant, hungry. I had heard his plunge into the
lake three quarters of an hour before. Julia too was fresh as the dew,
and ate heartily. So, over coffee and kidneys and bacon, with such
offhandedness as I could assume, I asked him point-blank how his book
was getting on.
A wave of thankfulness passed over me at his very first words.
"I say, George," he protested, "this is a holiday, you know. Must we
talk shop? By sheer strength of will I've put it all on one side for a
couple of days, and here you are trying to shove my nose back on to the
grindstone again! Bit of a nigger-driver you are.... Well, just for the
length of one pipe; after that shop's taboo for the rest of the day.
What is it you want to know about it?"
"Oh, just how it's shaping."
He told me. His account of it as far as it had gone, his projection of
the continuing portion, were perfectly lucid, reasoned, logical. He
brought all his faculties to bear, was completely master of himself. His
memory was as clear in both directions as it had been. I tested this by
means of one or two questions that otherwise are of no importance here.
All was well. My most dreaded fear was removed. Indeed it was I who, at
the end of our pipe, had to change the subject.
One awkward, rather shamefaced explanation, however, he did make. This
was both to Julia and to myself.
"I ought to say one thing while I'm about it," he said in a halting and
embarrassed voice. "I got your note, Julia. I know what you mean. How
you tumbled to it I don't know, and I needn't say it's an unspeakable
comfort having the two of you. I'm not going to look a gift-horse like
that in the mouth, so if you don't mind we won't talk about it. I
suppose George told you, though?"
"Yes."
"Then that's all right. Of course he won't tell anybody else. If he'd
asked me first I might have kicked a bit, but it's turned out all right,
so that's all we need worry about.... Now what are we going to do
to-day? Those trout at all muddy, George? Give me a mayfly and let's
have a try at one of 'em----"
I got him a rod and warned him against the telephone-wire that has to
cross one end of the pond. I left him and Julia mounting the cast on the
verandah.
I went up to my study. I went there from a motive not unlike gratitude
to God. An embodied ghost Derry might be to the rest of the world, but
our little private triumvirate had still a normal basis. He understood
the whole situation, and so to us was no ghost. Nor was even the
prospect of his Wanderjahre now quite so intimidating. The terror would
have been to think of him as an _ignis fatuus_, unconscious of himself,
flitting hither and thither over the face of the Continent at large.
_Cogito, ergo sum._ The distance of the lamp from the table's edge was
apparently not an irrevocably fixed factor. "By sheer strength of will"
he had been able to vary it. He _could_ enjoy intensely and reason
infallibly, if not at one and the same time, at any rate by turns. He
_was_ still capable of work and of play, and at the maximum of either.
How, then, did she stand with her wild scheme of marrying him?
I sat down at my table and worked it out thus:
While he was in his working But while he was at play his
mood he was inaccessible to accessibility was a raised
her. power.
As his secretary she could not But as his playmate she met
hope for more than a repetition him on his return journey--he
of her former experience. as he had been, but she
far more _rusée_ and resolved.
His work occupied by far the Therefore his work stood in
greater portion of his time. her way.
Therefore his work must be But I had encouraged him to
discouraged. speak of it.
I had done her a disservice. But they were at play at this
moment, setting up a fishing-rod
on the verandah.
His Wanderjahre would presently She knew this, and would
be upon him again. lose no time.
I think that states it fairly.
And she had the whole day and the whole of to-morrow before her.
I began to wonder whether I had done wisely in asking them to stay after
all.
But perhaps I was troubling myself unnecessarily about this
moonshine-marriage after all. What about him? He at least would see the
monstrous anomaly and would never allow it. He at any rate knew that if
there was one place on earth where no woman must come it was into his
room between evening and dawn. Things far too terrifying and precise
happened during those hours. He knew this, and five minutes between him
and myself would settle Julia's business once for all.
But again I saw in a flash where I was wrong. Five minutes between him
and myself? It couldn't be done. Why? For the simple reason that, in
order to talk to me at all on such a matter, he would have to be in his
aware and "working" mood--the very mood in which he had always been
inaccessible to her. My answer would be a stare from those steady
grey-blue eyes. "Marry Julia!" he would exclaim. "My dear chap, what on
earth are you talking about? If I'd ever dreamed of marrying Julia
shouldn't I have done it years ago? It's the very last thing in the
world I ever thought of!" That would be his reply to me. I should be
warning him against a contingency he had never for a moment entertained.
And yet--for even that was not the end of it--it was perfectly possible
that with that word "Preposterous!" still on his lips he might go
straight to her, hand her into the punt, once more alter his focus of
intelligence, and be under her spell again before they were half-way
across the pond....
Suddenly I heard his call below: "Quick, Julia, the net--I've got him
on!" I stepped out on to the balcony to watch. It was one of the
three-pounders, making a good fight for it. But he had little chance
against my green-heart in Derry's hand. Three minutes settled it. There
he lay on the bank, with Derry and Julia bending over him. I think she
thought him a lucky fish to have been caught by Derry. I descended and
joined them.
"Going to try for another?" I asked him. But already he was taking down
the rod.
"No, we thought of doing a bit of crosscut sawing for a change."
"Not the incinerator?" I hinted with a glance at Julia.
"Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the incinerator," he exclaimed. "Which
shall we do, Julia? Walk on to the blacksmith's or do the sawing? The
sawing I think; it'll take some time to cut the rods, and we can send a
lad with the sizes and fetch them after lunch. Do the boys come to bathe
on Saturdays, George?"
"They do," I said with another glance at her.
I saw the little mutinous dip of the corners of her mouth.
I am not going to take you in detail through the whole of that day. For
half the afternoon they disappeared; they had gone for a walk in the
neighbouring woods; but they were back in time for the bathing-parade.
Again Derry swam, with the boys, while I lay with Julia in the punt.
We occupied opposite ends of it, and hardly spoke. The commotion made by
the swimmers was almost spent by the time it reached our end of the
pond, and we moved almost imperceptibly under the oaks, with now a soft
touch on the bank, then a little way out, and then the glide to the bank
again. A sort of amicable hostility seemed to have settled between us.
It seemed to be understood that she would do what she would do, and I
should prevent it if I could. I could see the soles of her walking-shoes
and her worsted-clad ankles as I lay, and I mused on the contrasts in
her. She was ready to be off with him anywhere, anyhow; but the evening
before she had been glad of a glass of hot milk and a fire to warm her
hands at. She might, as she said, be a good walker, but she had drawn my
sister's shawl closely enough about her shoulders to keep out the night
air. She was a young forty, yet somehow hardly young enough to traipse
houseless after him wherever his whim might lead him. She was not
altogether irresponsible, and yet she contemplated "the least serious
marriage there ever was."
The punt rocked as she suddenly sat half up. "Are you asleep, George?"
"No."
"I nearly was. I can't imagine why you ever come to London when you've a
place like this to bask in. How do you manage to get any work done?"
"I can't say I am doing a great deal at present."
"Now that's the first inhospitable thing you've said. Which is your
study--the end room there?" She glanced up at the balcony.
"Yes."
"Don't you ever sleep out?"
"No. My room's at the back, and it's two wide-open windows."
"I love the ramblers up the pillars! May I have some to take back?"
"_Mais naturellement._"
"Ah, but you can't stay that like Derry, George----"
"I can't do anything like Derry. On the whole I'm not sure that I want
to."
"You don't believe that sometimes one single hour may be worth all the
rest of life put together?"
"I suppose I'm the other kind of man."
"Ah well!" She stretched herself luxuriously. "I used to think as you
do. But I've learned a lot since then. An awful lot."
"'Awful's' perhaps the word."
"But lovely. Anyway who cares? What does it matter? What does anything
matter? (Oh, look at his dive!) Nothing matters, George--nothing. I dare
you to say it does."
"It might be difficult to run the world on those lines."
"Oh, I don't know. It's in a pretty ghastly muddle as it is. Do you
know, I've made a discovery about that, George."
"Really?"
"It's this: That we make the mistake of regarding the world as full of
rational people, with perhaps a few particularly stupid ones here and
there. Now if you'll only regard it as full of perfect zenies, with just
once in a while a reasonable being among them, that would explain
everything."
"You'd better go to sleep again, Julia."
"But it is so. I see it, oh so clearly! And you don't worry about
anything then--what anybody thinks or says or does or anything. You just
take the funny old peepshow as it is. That's the way to live."
"On an endless walking-tour?"
"Why not, if you're in jolly places all the time?"
"Siena? Nîmes? Trieste?"
"Literal George!... But really, nothing matters. Everything except the
present moment is meant to be forgotten. It's the only one you live in.
In the past you're dead and in the future you aren't born yet--except
him.... George----"
"Hm?"
"Girls nowadays _do_ have an awfully easy time!... You've only got to
look at their clothes. We dressed down to our toes and up to our ears,
and that meant we had to take a good deal of trouble about things. We
had to make a little go a long way, so to speak--talk, and smile, and be
amusing, and think what we said. If we didn't we were soon left out in
the cold. But girls nowadays simply powder their shoulder blades and
dress to their knees more or less, and that's all. Lots of 'em never
open their mouths except to eat. They don't _do_ anything; they get
there by _un_doing something.... But how boring for you, George. What
does it matter as long as you do get there?"
"I hope you'll think twice before you commit a very great folly," I
said.
She laughed. "No, no. I've finished thinking. It was one of my mother's
maxims: 'Take care of your health and don't ever give way to serious
thinking.' Don't you think it's rather good?"
"I agree as far as your health's concerned."
"Oh, the other too. She was a wise woman. I've only lately begun to
realise how wise.... Ah, they're going in. Come along."
She stood up in the punt to see whether Derry appeared on the balcony on
his way to dress.
At teatime I had a caller, a gentle old friend and neighbour of mine,
Mrs Truscott. I saw her old-fashioned victoria standing in the drive as
we reached the terrace. Derry was charming to the old lady; Julia--also
charming, but with some subtle difference that I cannot explain. After
tea Derry and Julia strolled off to see whether the rods had come from
the blacksmith's yet, but they stopped to examine the victoria on the
way. Mrs Truscott turned to me.
"What an exceedingly handsome man! But surely she's a good deal older
than he?"
"Why do you couple them like that?" I asked.
"Aren't they engaged?"
"No."
She smiled. "Not yet?"
"Nor likely to be," I risked.
She shook her head, so that her grey curls trembled about her cheeks.
"Ah, you bachelors, Sir George! All sorts of things happen under your
noses that you don't see!"
"I don't think anything's happening here. They've simply been friends
since they were boy and girl together."
"That's a handicap, I admit," she replied. "Perhaps the worst a woman
has to put up with. But occasionally things happen in spite of it."
"I really think you're mistaken this time, Mrs Truscott."
"Well, well, well, well.... And are you writing us another of your
charming books?"
It passed at that, but it left me with an uneasy feeling. These old
ladies are so very acute.
Nothing remarkable happened at dinner, except a curious little covert
duel between Julia and myself when I once more tried to draw out Derry
to talk about his book. I am afraid that she won and I failed.
Good-temperedly but flatly he refused to discuss it; he wanted to look
at my Hogarths instead. So I drew the large folio-stand up in front of
the drawing-room fire, arranged the lights and we turned over the
prints. He seemed very much less drowsy; indeed it was half-past nine
before he spoke of going to bed; and as in the country that is not an
unreasonably early hour, and since moreover Julia had sat up late the
night before, I was not surprised when she also said that she would
retire early. He went first, but she was not long after him. I was
therefore left either to sit over my fire alone, or to follow them,
which ever I liked best.
I went my nightly round, of window-fastenings and so forth; for although
Mrs Moxon has always been round before me, it is my house, and there
would be small satisfaction in scolding her were anything to happen. As
a matter of fact I had that night to reopen the side door, for it had
occurred to me that the driver of Mrs Truscott's victoria, who was
almost as old as herself, had the bad habit of leaving the drive-gate
open. Accordingly I walked up the drive, saw that the gate was properly
fastened, and then stood for a moment enjoying the cool air.
It was a full and late-rising moon, and only the faintest hint of yellow
yet lighted the trunks of the plantation behind the house. The overflow
from the lake, which I never heard in the daytime, sounded loudly. The
evening star had set; the others were exceedingly tiny, pale and remote;
in another hour or so they would be almost extinguished in the moon's
effulgence. A glow-worm burned stilly, lighting up the whole leaf as a
ship's sidelight lights up its painted box. Through a gleam from the
house a bat flickered. I stood for several minutes; then I turned, went
in, locked up, and ascended to my bedroom.
This room, I should explain, is at the back of the house and does not
overlook the pond. This is in some ways a drawback, but it has its
advantages. By foregoing the amenity of sleeping in one of the rooms
with the pleasantest view I was able to have a practically
self-contained suite all to myself--study in front, and dressing-room,
bathroom and bedroom all communicating. My books alone run into all
three rooms, and are thus kept together; and the rest of the upper floor
is left for my guests and servants. Derry's room was the one next to my
study. Julia's, like my own, was at the back. I had put her there partly
because of the second bathroom, and partly because Mrs Moxon would be
within call had she need of anything.
All was quiet as I entered the room. I switched on my bedside light,
undressed, and got into bed. But I was not very sleepy, so I got out
again, reached down a book at random, punched my pillow into position
and began to read.
I was not very lucky in my book, however, and my attention wandered.
From wondering what was wrong with my author I passed away from him
altogether, and presently found myself spinning, as it were, fantasias
on life in human terms. And as I continued to do this these fantasias
began to accrete more and more about the figure of Derwent Rose.
What a history had unfolded since that afternoon when I had found him in
the Lyonnesse Club, gazing at his image in the glass of a framed print
on the wall! Hitherto I had contemplated that unfolding only a portion
at a time. I had typified him as it were in terms of his books, had seen
the man who had written _The Hands of Esau_ give way to him who had
written _An Ape in Hell_, and this one in turn to the author of _The
Vicarage of Bray_. I had taken him phase by phase; I was not yet sure of
a single unit of the repeating-pattern of his backward life. But these
books were not merely his three principal books. They were his only
books of any importance. All prior to the _Vicarage_ had been
experimental, fragmentary, partial--as indeed all he had ever done was
fragmentary and partial by the side of the huge and desperate work he
now contemplated. Therefore we were at the end of measurement by books.
The rest was in Julia Oliphant's possession. She was now his sole
authentic companion, and soon she would have shouldered even me
completely out of his life, and would go forward--backward--with him
alone.
My thoughts passed to her. What a history for her too since that
afternoon when I had taken her hands in mine, had asked her a question,
and had had her matter-of-fact reply, "Of course; all my life; but it
never made any difference to him." Now it was to make a difference to
him. Though he presently eluded her never so swiftly down the slippery
years, she had come to the conclusion that it was worth it. And, for a
few weeks, a few hours yet, I had to admit that they were not
ill-matched. Mrs Truscott had thought that she was older than he, but
had none the less assumed them to be lovers. He, of course, had sunk
into a vast of sleep an hour ago, but I wondered whether she was at that
moment lying awake, scheming, contriving, making sure....
Then, tired of thought, I switched off my lamp and closed my eyes.
The rather secluded situation of my house has its reaction on the
quality of my sleep. I don't mean that I don't ordinarily sleep
perfectly soundly and naturally, but the routine of locking up for the
night sets, as it were, a timepiece in my head. The running of the lake,
the night-sounds of animals and birds, the creaking of a bough, the
motion of a window-blind in the wind--these are every-night sounds to
which I have grown accustomed; but any unusual sound will bring me wide
awake in a moment. Robbery in the neighbourhood is not entirely unknown.
I had slept for perhaps a couple of hours when I was thus brought
suddenly awake.
The moon was high over the plantation; it slanted whitely across my
window-sash, cut into relief the folds of the casement curtains. Outside
the night creatures would be at play or about their nocturnal
employments. But it was no owl nor rabbit that I had heard. It had been
the light crackling of something under a foot. I sat up, still,
listening.
I heard nothing further, and after a minute noiselessly uncovered myself
and slipped out of bed. All the doors of my little suite stood open, so
that I had no handle to turn as I tiptoed from my bedroom into the
dressing-room. Thence I could look through the study to the balcony
beyond. The night was palely brilliant; my eyes could penetrate into the
detailed depths of the oaks across the pond; I could see the pebbles on
the path, the shadow of a chimney-stack over the bathing-stage. The
balcony itself, however, was a blackness. On that side of the house a
marauder could easily hide.
I went back to the dressing-room, took down a dark-coloured gown, put it
on, and returned through the study. If anybody was lurking about I
wished to be inconspicuous. I reached my writing-table and was about to
step outside when again I heard the sound. It came, not from below, but
from the balcony itself.
My study doors are so arranged that I can either hook them half back, at
an angle of forty-five, or entirely so, flush against the walls. That
night they stood at their fullest width, so that, if anybody was on the
verandah, I had not to risk discovering myself as it were obliquely. I
advanced to the hinged edge and peered cautiously forth.
Derry was not asleep. He was moving irresolutely, now a few steps this
way, now a few steps that, at the farther end of the balcony, and the
noise I had heard had been the cracking of a fir-cone or fragment of
bark under his feet. His hair was tumbled, he had put on his old tweed
jacket, but the pyjama-suit I had lent him was small for him, and his
bare ankles showed above his heelless slippers. There was no light in
his room, and I suddenly remembered that that evening he had not shown
his usual anxiety to be off early upstairs.
After those immensities of sleep, was he now suffering from insomnia?
I was about to step out to him when something within me, I really can't
tell you what, drew me swiftly back again. The room past Derry's,
opposite which he now stood, was unoccupied, and its windows were closed
except for the little doors in the upper panes. But somebody was undoing
a fastening. I had seen the turn of Derry's head towards me, and had
withdrawn my own head only just in time. The sound of unfastening
continued.
I think already I knew what I was going to see. By crossing the corridor
Julia could enter that unoccupied room, pass through it, and gain the
balcony. Indeed (I struggled to persuade myself) were she sleepless and
in need of air there was no reason why she shouldn't. But I knew that I
mocked myself. I knew that not sleeplessness had brought her out.
Almost, I thought, they must hear the thumping of my heart. I wondered
whether I dared look again.
I dared not--yet I had to----
She had cast over her the Burberry she had brought out for the single
day. She left the bedroom door open behind her and stood with her pale
hand on the edge of it, not advancing. Slowly his head lifted. His eyes
met hers. I think I could have stepped bodily out and he would not have
seen me for the look he gave her. It was hard, fixed, tranced. Still she
did not move. All her life she had waited for him; it was proper now
that he should come to her.
Very slowly he lifted his hands----
Already I had turned away.
For I had heard the little flutter of her garments, the rush and catch
of her breath----
Grim King of the Ghosts!
She was in his arms.
IV
The next morning I did not hear his plunge into the lake. This was not
because I was not back in my own house in time.
For I had not remained in it. I had dressed, had crept softly
downstairs, and had let myself out, easing the catch of the side-door
behind me. I had walked to Hindhead, and from the edge of the Punch Bowl
had seen the night end and the day begin. I had watched the cloudlets
kindle like plumes of the wings of cherubim, ineffable, indifferent,
anguishing in that the eye and heart ached and fainted for more than
they could endure, gazed and yet saw not because of their own
overbrimming. I had turned away, weary of the heavenly thing, yet had
returned with tears for more of it. I had cast myself down with my face
hidden in the wet earth. I had tried not to think or feel. Had it been
possible I would have been, not a few miles, but a few worlds away. And
in sober fact I am not sure that I was not worlds away. In the thing
that had happened time, distance, had no meaning. Nothing so mystic in
its very nature can be merely _a little_ in error; once it is not right,
it is wrong with an unimaginable totality. Ordinary measurement is
annihilated; in the very instant of identity the last conceivable
differences are wrapped up together as in the vital element of a seed. I
am sorry I cannot make this plainer. You either see what had happened or
you don't. It beat and bludgeoned my spirit as I lay there, sometimes
quivering, sometimes still, while the sun had risen over the Devil's
Punch Bowl.
On my return to the house Mrs Moxon met me. She is an efficient
creature, but a little given to impressionistic fancies, and there was
perplexity in her face as I entered by the way I had left--the side
door.
"The gentleman and lady don't seem to be having any breakfast, sir," she
said.
"Why not?"
"I'm sure I can't tell you, sir. Mr--Mr Rose asked where you were, and
then said perhaps I'd better keep breakfast back."
"Where are Mr Rose and Miss Oliphant now?"
"They went off that way, sir." She nodded in the direction of the
kitchen-garden.
"Then I'll see about it. Have breakfast ready in ten minutes, please."
The kitchen-garden is not very large, but it is a straggling sort of
place, being, in fact, the oddments of ground left over when the
tennis-court was made. I looked for my guests among the dewy canes, but
did not see them; they were not behind the sweet-pea hedge that made my
lungs open of themselves to receive its fragrance. But they had been
there, for I saw that the roller on the court had been moved. Its barrel
was wet all round with dew, and the patch of grass where it had stood
during the night was dry.
Then, just as I was on the point of calling their names, they appeared
from behind the tall artichoke brake.
I spoke first, ignoring what Mrs Moxon had told me.
"Good morning," I called. "Breakfast is just ready. I'm sorry to have
kept you waiting. Come along."
It was Derry who answered, advancing across the court towards me.
"Ah, there you are. I've been looking for you. I wanted to thank you and
say good-bye. I'm afraid I've got to be pushing along."
I acted my part as well as I could. "Pushing along! What are you talking
about? What train are you going by? This is Sunday. Come along in to
breakfast."
"Oh, I'd a cup of tea and a biscuit in my room, thanks," he said
hesitatingly. "I know it's springing it on you rather suddenly, George,
but I really must be getting along."
"What's all this about? Your book?" I demanded.
"Yes, the book. Yes, the book, George."
"But I tell you it's Sunday. There the twelve-forty-six and the
four-fifty. You've missed the eight-fifty-five."
"I thought of walking," he said.
"All the way to London? That would take you two days. So it isn't your
book after all."
"Oh, I meant part of the way," he evaded, fidgeting. "Guildford or
Weybridge or somewhere."
"And is Julia going to walk to Guildford or Weybridge too? Don't be
absurd. Come along to breakfast."
Reluctantly he turned his face towards the house.
I say I acted as well as I could; but it was acting. I had to act
because I was afraid to face the reality. His haste to be off seemed to
make that reality a twofold possibility. In the highly peculiar
circumstances it was not for me, his host, to inquire whether he
scrupled to breakfast or sit down in my house; but it was for me,
technically still his friend, to wonder why he had tried to put me off
with some tale about wanting to get on with his book and, in his
eagerness to be gone, proposed to walk to London. It might have been
decency and delicacy. On the other hand, he now experienced everything
with the greatest intensity, and this sudden and imperious urge to walk
might have been the first faint thrilling of that communicating nerve
that, traced back, led to his Wanderjahre.
At Julia I had not yet dared to look.
I made him eat whether he wished it or not; oh, I was not above using my
advantage. For he was entirely unaware that the cracking of a fir-cone
under his foot had brought me out of my bed and to the door of my study.
It was because he supposed me to have been soundly asleep all night that
I was able to compel him to swallow his punctiliousness at the same time
that he swallowed his trout, coffee and marmalade. If either or all of
them stuck in his throat there was no remedy for that.... At least so at
first I thought. But as breakfast proceeded, I began to be strangely
aware of my complete helplessness. Much as I might wish it, I could not
wash my hands of him. Once more, the choice was not mine, but his.
For what could I do with him? Nothing--nothing at all. I was bound hand
and foot. You cannot turn a two-memoried man out of your house as you
can another. You don't get rid of him if you do. He has his
own--ubiquity. There is only one of him, and you never know where he
isn't. It was not now a question of whether he should marry Julia
Oliphant, but whether he was to be suffered to vanish, to be swallowed
up in the world of men, a drop in the human ocean that did not merge but
still remained a drop, a grain on humanity's shore yet numbered too, an
anomaly, a contradiction in nature, a ghost in the flesh, a man among
ghosts. For if he was a ghost to us we must be ghosts to him. And ghost
does not bring ghost to book for reasons of the flesh. No, he was still
Derry, on whom this enormous destiny had alighted. He was not to be
judged.
Nevertheless he must settle his soul's affairs and eat his breakfast
like anybody else.
We got through that meal somehow. Julia talked to Derry, and I suppose I
also was included, but I have no memory of what it was all about. One
vivid little incident, however, I do remember. I learned why the heavy
roller on the tennis court had been moved. She had asked Derry whether
he could lift it, and for answer he had picked it up and held it above
his head, as once he had held her sewing-machine. So she had gloried in
him.... But of the rest of the conversation I remember nothing.
Breakfast over, I excused myself and left them at the table together. It
had occurred to me that I was still as I had returned from the Devil's
Punch Bowl, and that I had neither shaved nor bathed.
But on my way to my room Mrs Moxon again met me. She was replacing
flowers, and she carried a pail of withered ones in her hand.
"I beg pardon, sir, but may I ask if you got up in the night?" she
asked.
"Yes," I answered. "Why?"
"Only that I fancied I heard somebody moving about," she said.
"Yes. I went into Mr Rose's room. Then I went out for a walk. I'm not
sleeping very well, Mrs Moxon. To-night I shall take a draught."
She knows my tone. I hope she was satisfied. I passed on to my
dressing-room.
Three quarters of an hour later I came down again. I found Julia at one
of the drawing-room windows, alone and gazing out over the pond. She
started at the sound of my voice behind her.
"Where's Derry?" I had asked.
"Over there by the punt," she replied.
I had not noticed him as he had stooped behind the little shelter to
untie it.
"Is he leaving to-day?"
"I don't know."
"Are you trying to keep him?"
She had turned her back on me again and was once more looking out of the
window. "Of course I'm trying to keep him--so far as I may in somebody
else's house."
"Oh.... Why 'of course?'"
"Of course it's of course. Do you think I'm going to take my eyes off
him for a single moment? You heard what he said before breakfast."
"About walking to London as the quickest way of getting back to that
book of his?"
She did not answer. Derry had moved, and her eyes had instantly moved
with him.
"Why is he putting out by himself? Why aren't you with him?" I asked.
"Oh--as long as I know where he is----"
"Didn't he ask you to join him?"
"No."
"The first time for two days?"
No reply.
"I wonder why he didn't ask you?"
"I wonder," she repeated.
"Have you no idea?"
With that she suddenly confronted me. She stood with her hands on either
side of the window-frame, dark against the morning light. She looked
straight into my eyes.
"Isn't this rather a catechism, George?" she said. "Your tone too. I
want you to tell me something. It's this; Are these _really_ the
questions you're wanting to ask me?"
She said it with the proudest calm; but whatever it was that existed
between us made me for some moments longer as calm as herself.
"I do want to know those things. Otherwise I shouldn't have asked you."
"Oh, I'm afraid I said it badly. That's not what I meant. I mean are
those the _only_ questions you want to ask me?"
The moment she said it I was much less certain that they were not. Her
next words plunged me still deeper into doubt. She spoke as it were
direct from the heart of some uttermost complexity.
"What _is_ the relation between you and me, George?" she demanded.
I considered, my eyes downcast. I felt hers steadily on my face all the
time. I spoke in a low voice.
"I'm beginning to know less than ever."
"You'd hardly call it ordinary, would you--conventional and so on?"
"That's quite the last word I should use."
"It's not ordinary because of an extraordinary element that's at the
very root of it. You know what that is; it's"--her eyes went towards the
punt--"it's all him. He's got us all on the run. Give him his head and
he could have the whole world on the run. There's no reason about it; as
many people as knew about him would simply be bewitched. So I've taken
it for granted that we don't quite come under everyday rules. We have to
break and make rules as we go along.... About those questions. They
really _are_ all that you want to know--just what he'll do next and so
on?" she challenged me.
I think I should have broken in on the spot with a "Yes--I want to know
_nothing_ else--nothing at all!" But she gave me no time. Her eyes
called my own downcast ones peremptorily up from the floor.
"Because," she said, with the utmost distinctness in the shaping of each
syllable, "I notice that since breakfast you've shaved, George. You've
also changed your clothes. One does not usually change one's clothes
immediately after breakfast. I suppose Mrs Moxon is brushing the others.
They needed brushing. They had bits of dried grass and heather on
them.... George--George dear--thank you----"
I spoke in little more than a whisper. "For--going out?"
"Oh no. For only thinking of it--for only thinking of it. But you would
think of it; I always knew you'd be like that.... Now ask me anything
you like. _Any_thing you like. Only don't ask Derry. It made"--for an
instant only there was the slightest tremor in her voice--"it made no
difference to him."
What, as she had said, was our relation? Had he "got us going"? Had he
subdued all our standards to his own standardlessness? Had he withdrawn
some linchpin of ordinary conduct from the wheel on which the whole
world revolves? I didn't know. I don't know now. The more I think of it
the less I know. I only know what I did. Her affairs were her affairs,
and I have ado enough to look after my own. I took one of her cool hands
in mine, bowed as low over it as if she had been a queen, and kissed it.
Her other hand rested lightly for a moment on my head as I did so.
"And now," she resumed in her ordinary tones, "about him."
He was sitting alone in the punt, some forty yards away, gazing straight
before him. He had ceased to paddle, the water had ceased to drip from
his resting blade. It accentuated his isolation that for two whole days
he had hardly left her side. Restlessness and impatience plainly
possessed him. He was straining to be off. It would not have surprised
me to see him suddenly thrust the paddle in, swirl across the lake, tie
up the punt, walk straight up to me, hold out his hand, and say,
"George, old man, it's no good--I've got to go this moment." I turned to
Julia.
"If he leaves shall you go with him?" I asked.
"Leaves here? This house? To-day?"
"I didn't mean that."
"You mean if he buckles on his knapsack again?"
"If that's the next stage."
"I'm afraid to think."
"Then you _do_ think he might just--go off?"
She sighed a little. "I suppose it has to be faced."
"And in that case would you go with him?"
She started nervously. He had put in the paddle. But he only gave a
couple of strokes, and withdrew it again. Her voice was low.
"I would, of course. To the end of the world. But that's the whole
point. He never wanted me. He doesn't want me now. He won't want me
then."
I saw--only too plainly. Naturally he would not want her. It was the
very essence of his wandering that he should be unhampered and alone.
That which she now had she had; but it seemed to me that it was all she
would ever have. She had thrown, and--won? Lost? Which? That was for her
to say. Had she remained content as she was she might have kept him on
the original terms in perpetuity; but it looked as if in precipitating
the event she had encompassed her own defeat. Her eyes were now on him
as if they would never see him again.
"Shall we go across to him?" I said.
She shook her head. "Don't worry him. There's no stopping it. He's bound
to go. There, I didn't want to say it, but it's better to face it. He's
fighting with the Wanderlust now. And if he goes it isn't the end. There
are stages beyond that, and there's no stopping them either. He'll come
back in the end."
"Then you'll let him go?"
"He shall do whatever he wishes. It mayn't be for long."
"How many Wanderjahre had he?"
"Two--three--I don't quite remember. But that may not mean more than a
week or a fortnight really."
"And--he'll come back?"
"He'll come back, or we can go to him. Probably he won't be able to get
very far. Anyway nothing on earth can stop it, so there's no more to be
said."
I looked at her fixedly, earnestly. "But there is more to be said. What
about yourself?" I said quietly.
For a moment her eyes left that man in the punt who fidgeted to feel the
stick in his hand again, the pack on his back and the hard road under
his feet. They smiled dimly into mine.
"Oh, I'm a painter. There'll be that portrait of yours to start
presently, George."
And back went the eyes to the motionless figure in the punt.
V
Derry stayed to lunch without further pressing. He had made his book his
excuse; that brushed aside, he had no choice but to stay or give his
reason for not staying. So, as a man who is starting on a walking-tour
of indefinite duration can hardly boggle at an hour or two sooner or
later in the starting, and as, moreover, having brought Julia, he must
in ordinary politeness take her back again, he stayed.
But lunch was nearly as extraordinary as breakfast had been. Once more
he tried to urge his book, and again failed. And I remembered how
formerly, in Cambridge Circus, his very thought and essence had been
modified in my presence, awaiting only sleep to put the visible and
physical seal upon it. It needed only half an eye to see that he no
longer had the least interest in that book. The more he urged it, the
more plainly it became a thing of the past. Vivaciously, yet as if
repeating them from memory, he said things he had said twice and thrice
before; echoes, mere echoes.... And then suddenly he ceased to talk
about his book. He wanted a change, he said; wanted to get away
somewhere; and this rang instantly true. I fancied he even became a
little cunning. "Do you know, George, I've never in my life been in
Ireland?" he said. "Only an hour or two away, and I've never been! Lord,
how we do sit still in one place! I feel positively ashamed. We settle
down--get sitzfleich--heavens, I do want a change!" ... And somehow I
knew that he was dragging in Ireland as a red-herring. He had no
intention of going there. That was purely for our benefit. He not only
wanted to go away alone, but he did not wish to have his whereabouts
known. Only a few hours before he had made much of Julia and myself, as
his only rest and comfort in that wavering ebb of his life; now he no
longer did not need, but very definitely did not want companionship. And
he threw dust in our eyes. Yes, just a little cunning. I made a note of
it.
I have said that the afternoon train to town was at four-forty. There
was not another till seven-eighteen, reaching Waterloo at
eight-forty-one. There was little doubt which of the two he would
choose. As we all three took a stroll backwards and forwards after lunch
he turned to Julia.
"Will the four-forty suit you all right?" he asked.
She only nodded.
"Right. And I say: would you mind if when we got to town I put you on
your bus at Waterloo and left you? There's a little job I must do."
"Very well, Derry," she said.
"And now, George, if you could spare me just a moment----," this time he
turned to me.
Julia walked rather quickly away.
The "little job" of which he had spoken was this:
He wanted me--quite at my own convenience, of course, and whenever I
next happened to be in town--to arrange for the sale of his things at
Cambridge Circus. To attend to this himself might be to ask for trouble.
So I was to sell everything for what it would fetch and remit the money
to him.
"Where?" I asked him. ("Ireland?" I thought.)
"I shall have to let you know that later," he replied. "I want to sell
the lot and pay all up there; chairs and curtains are no good to a man
like me. I don't suppose I shall ever want 'em again. I shall have to
settle up with Trenchard too, and money's as well in your pocket as
anywhere else."
"Will you have some now to be going on with?"
"No, that's quite all right. I have all I want for the present, if you
wouldn't mind doing this other for me. Thanks, old fellow."
"Is it to Cambridge Circus that you're going to-night when you leave
Julia?" I asked.
"Yes. There are one or two small things I want, and also a few things I
think I'd better destroy."
"Couldn't you," I said slowly and quite deliberately, "have taken her
home and seen about your things to-morrow?"
I felt the beginning of his perturbation. "It's so dashed awkward,
George," he stammered. "I don't want to go in the daytime."
"Couldn't you go to-morrow night and still take her home?"
Again he muttered, his eyes on the ground. "Why waste a day?"
"If, as you say, you want a change--supposing you were to go off
somewhere for a bit--wouldn't you like somebody with you?"
"No, George," he answered curtly.
"You are going away?"
"Yes," he admitted.
"Immediately?"
"Yes."
"Where to?"
"I don't know yet."
"Would you let me come with you?"
"No."
"Would you, if it were possible, take Julia?"
"No."
"Might both of us come with you together?"
"No." And, raising his voice, "No, I tell you, no!" he said.
We had stopped by a rather shabby-looking thicket of rugosa roses near
the diving-stage. The pink-flowered hedge hid us from the house. I spoke
quietly, not to give my own agitation too much head.
"Derry," I said, "you remember what you showed me with that flashlight
that night in your rooms?"
With marked reluctance he answered, "Yes I do."
"I've been thinking about that. I've been thinking a lot about it. Of
course it makes a considerable difference how far away you hold the
lamp."
"A hell of a difference," he muttered.
"Do you always hold it at the same distance?"
His whole mind seemed to wriggle. "I haven't, if you must know. But why
drag all this up again? I offered to tell you before but you wouldn't
listen."
"I hadn't the reason then that I have now. Do you--move it about
deliberately?"
"I have to some extent. I told you that. I did by an effort of will when
I came here for a day's rest."
"A day's rest?... You're not going back to that book. You know that
better than I do. That book's all past and done with. Something's
happened since."
I saw him turn pale. "What do you mean?" he asked almost inaudibly.
"You came here on Friday midday. I've watched you carefully ever since.
Let's--well, let's stick to terms of the flash-lamp. Except for a
quarter of an hour or so at breakfast yesterday morning, when you talked
about your book, you've had that lamp steadily rather close to the edge
of the table. Isn't that so?"
"I tell you a holiday's a holiday," he said faintly.
"Let me go on. I want to know how close that lamp has been. The closer
you hold it the more ecstatically you experience, you know. Very well.
Now has there been a moment since yesterday when ... _you've held it as
close as you could get it_?"
I was in time to catch him as he swayed. He clutched at my shoulder.
"George----"
"Steady--but tell me----"
"George--I've been trying to remember----"
"What! Good God! You don't remem--_so close that you don't remember_?"
"I honestly--but no, that isn't true--I seem to remember something--let
me think, let me think.... What time did I go to bed last night?"
"Later than usual. Not till half-past nine."
"What was I doing? Tell me what I was doing. I was looking at pictures
or something, wasn't I?"
"You were looking at the Hogarth prints."
"Yes, yes, that's right.... I didn't fall asleep, did I?"
"No, you didn't."
He muttered thickly. Outrageous, extravagant, beyond reason as it was,
his sincerity could not be doubted. "It made no difference to him,"
Julia had said; but that her words should be taken _au pied de la
lettre_ like that!... He continued to mutter.
"I do remember something--I do remember--at least I did this morning--I
thought I did--but it went. Why didn't I come into breakfast? _Why_ was
I going away without any breakfast? _Why_ wouldn't I have breakfast,
George? I'm sure there was a reason, but I can't for the life of me
remember." Then he began to talk rapidly. "That lamp--very close, you
say--touching--something all instantaneous and burning--one intense
brilliant spot--no before or after--all isolated by itself--but I'll
swear I didn't fake the lamp that time! By all that's sacred I swear it,
George! Something happened in the night that had nothing to do with me
at all! It all happens in the night. Why"--he flung out his arms in a
perfectly amazing appeal--"if I'd moved the light at all it would have
been farther away! I _wanted_ to do that book! I thought about nothing
else from the moment I went upstairs! I ached to be at it--wished this
wasted week-end was over--I saw it all again perfectly clearly,
beautifully clearly! I'd got out of bed. And then ... everything went
out. It was exactly as if somebody'd taken that torch out of my hand,
somebody with a stronger will than mine, and concentrated it--in the
very moment when I saw that book practically written--one bright blazing
bull's-eye----"
There was a little bench about four yards away. I think I needed its
support more than he. Together we reached it and sat down. He turned the
beautiful grey-blue eyes on me.
"George," he said more quietly, "something happened. I know it did."
I made no reply.
"Something happened. Something's been done to me. Somebody's been taking
a hand in my life. At breakfast-time I almost knew what it was. Do _you_
know what it was?"
There was only one possible answer to this. I made it, in a broken
voice.
"No, old man, I don't."
"Except of course that I've slipped back again."
"Except that, I suppose."
He passed his hand wearily over his brow, and, much as I hated that
insolent vainglorious book of his, the gesture with which he wiped it
away went strangely to my heart.
"Then what's that make the year now? 1903 or 4 I suppose; all blind
guessing though; how can you tell your age to a year or two simply by
how you feel?... But that would be about it. I was in the Adriatic in
1903; Venice, and across to Genoa and Marseilles. I'd been in Marseilles
a few years before and thought I'd like another look at it. Gay place.
There was a little café on the Vieux Port with a little stage where a
woman used to dance. Andalusian; very dark-eyed; pretty sort of wild
animal. She had a little sloping mirror at the top of the stage so she
could see who was in front when she was behind. Wicked show; I wasn't
having any; knives come out too easily there. But of course she'd gone
when I went again in 1904."
I made one more appeal. "Derry, can't you stay here a little longer?"
But it had now resumed its possession of him. He was almost cheerful
again.
"Sorry, George. It's good of you to ask me, but it's quite impossible.
Glad Julia was able to take a run down with me; she's a rattling good
sort. I feel rather beastly about shaking her at Waterloo, but I really
must get up to Cambridge Circus to-night. And if you'll see about
selling those things, George--any time will do--I've got nearly a
hundred pounds, so there's really no hurry--I'll let you know where to
send the money to----"
* * * * *
I drove them to the station. As the car turned out of the drive Julia's
eyes took a last look at my balconied house. His spirits were now high;
he was on the eve of a holiday. They got into an empty third-class
carriage.
"Well, thanks most awfully, George," he said.
We waved hands.
Both their heads were framed in the window as the train glided out of
the station.
That night I once more roamed restlessly from room to room of my house.
The place seemed extraordinarily and insistently empty, and I could not
have told you whether I was glad or sorry for it. For this thing was
getting altogether too much for me. Remember that I am merely a
commercially successful English novelist, not a person accustomed to the
contemplation of the mysteries of life and death in terms of electric
torches and bamboo tables. Also a man of my years does not spend a night
at the Devil's Punch Bowl without knowing something about it afterwards.
In this connection, going into my dressing-room, I found that after all
my suit of clothes had not been brushed. I summoned Mrs Moxon and told
her to take them away. She stiffened a little, and some part of her
clothing creaked.
"It's made a good deal of extra work for the week-end," she reminded me.
"I'm sorry for that, but you were consulted beforehand," I said.
"It was more than I reckoned for," she announced with dignity.
A little of this was enough.
"Very well, Mrs Moxon. Take the clothes away, please, and let me have
them to-morrow. By the way, I shall be going up to town by the midday
train."
"In that case, sir," she said, "if you're seeing Mr Rose perhaps you'd
give him this. I suppose it's his. I found it in his room."
She put into my hand a small book covered with shiny black cloth. I
opened it to see what it was.
A single glance told me. It was Derwent Rose's diary.
PART V
THE PIVOT
I
"George, you haven't brought your Beautiful Bear round to see me yet,"
said Madge Aird. And I jumped a little as she added, "By the way, does
he happen to have a brother?"
"No. At least I never heard of one. Why?"
"I wondered. I've seen somebody most remarkably like him, only younger.
In this neighbourhood too. I thought Nature made him and then lost the
recipe, or whatever the saying is."
I assumed a lightness I hardly felt. "Did you 'fall for' this other
paragon as you did for Mr Rose?"
She laughed. "Oh, I don't know. I dare say beauty of that sort would be
ill to live with. Better a dinner of herbs all to yourself than a
stalled ox every woman you knew would be running after. Or words to that
effect. So you and Alec needn't be too downhearted. But really he was
most astonishingly like. Where does Mr Rose live?"
"Mr Rose is at present abroad."
"Oh, I don't mean that it was he! I couldn't make a mistake like
that--I'd far too good a look at him the other time, the dazzling
creature! But you might find out if the family's seriously addicted to
monogamy, unless he turns out to have a brother after all. Well, when
are you coming to see us? Better hurry, as we're off very soon."
"Where are you going?"
"Dinard. The three of us. Johnnie's taken a villa. Have you settled what
you're going to do yet?"
"Not yet."
"Then why not come over to us for a few weeks? When you get tired of me,
Jennie's getting most take-about-able. She's seventeen. And--George----"
"Yes?"
"When a woman tells you she's got a daughter of seventeen there are
quite a number of pretty things to be said----"
We continued to talk and walk aimlessly side by side. I had met her in
Queen's Gate, and I intended to retrace my steps to Queen's Gate the
moment I had got rid of her. She chattered on.
"And by the way, has Hastings mentioned Mr Rose to you lately?"
"No. Why?" I said. Hastings is my literary agent, the man beside whose
labours on my behalf my own seem puny.
"Because I've got a feeling that this creature of all the talents really
is coming off this time," she went on. "Hastings has found a publisher
who's going to see that Derwent Rose is 'It' or die in the attempt. So
if you want to do the Bear a good turn send him to Hastings. When is he
coming back?"
"I don't quite know."
"Well, there's no immediate hurry. Everybody'll be away in another week
or two. But it _would_ be rather joysome to see Derwent Rose at last
where he really belongs! Well, think about Dinard. Any time you like.
'Bye----"
And with a wave of her hand she was off.
Even when you think you are thoroughly accustomed to the idea of a thing
it can sometimes come freshly over you; and merely in the professional
part of me I had felt an oddly special little pang at Madge's last
words. Here, apparently, was a publisher who believed in Derwent Rose
and was prepared to back his belief with money; and--it was too late!
Derwent Rose, wanderer, would never write another book. A few
travel-sketches, perhaps, a few pen-pictures by the way, a few
evening-paper articles; but another book--no. I wished that publisher no
ill, but I did wish that he had recognised Derry's struggles,
endeavours, faithfulness, strength, a little sooner than a day after the
fair. Poor Derry would not have even the cynical consolation that while
his real books had been neglected money would be heaped on him for his
bad ones. He no longer had a book left in him. A pugilist's manager
would be of more use to him than a publisher now.
I passed up Queen's Gate and turned into the mews where I had arranged
to meet Trenchard.
I had made my appointment with him because I had a question of special
importance to ask him. I wanted to know whether Trenchard had seen him
immediately before his departure, and, if he had, _how old he now
looked_.
For the farther he travelled the more crucial this question became. From
forty-five to thirty-five he might still pass as Derwent Rose, but he
could hardly do so from, say, forty-five to twenty. I had not a moment's
doubt that it had indeed been he whom Madge had seen and had failed to
recognise--nay, had unhesitatingly assumed to be another man. Also my
housekeeper's suspicions that all was not as it should have been had
also been thoroughly awakened. "It is Mr Rose, isn't it?" she had asked
me with a puzzled look on the Friday midday; but by Sunday morning Julia
and he had become "the lady and gentleman" who had had to be fetched in
to breakfast. Old Mrs Truscott again had unhesitatingly set him down as
years younger than Julia. If Trenchard had seen him before his departure
he had probably been the last of us to do so. Trenchard, in short, was
to tell me what Derry's diary had completely failed to tell me.
For that little shiny-backed pocket book had merely brought things to a
more hideously complicated pass even than before. I shall return to this
diary in a moment; for the present let it suffice that, like the
publisher's offer, it seemed to me to have turned up just a few hours
too late. I had hoped for a survey wide enough, simplified enough, to
help me to his rate of progress. I had so far found nothing of the
slightest use whatever. I was without the faintest idea of his present
age. He might have been thirty, twenty-five, twenty, younger. He might
even be sixteen, at which age he had said he would die.
Trenchard I found to be a black-haired, pleasant-voiced, very much
alive fellow of a little under thirty. His rank, I believe, had been
that of major, and even the atrocious crippling he had received at La
Bassée did not destroy his look of perfect efficiency. He was just able
to start up a car, and cars were his livelihood and he lived in them. I
introduced myself, and he hobbled cheerfully about among his cups and
bread-and-butter and methylated spirits.
"So," I concluded my introduction of myself, "as I'm settling up a few
matters for him I wanted to know how you stood."
"Oh, everything's perfectly all right as far as I'm concerned," he
laughed, filling the teapot. "Place left like a new pin, Bradburys in an
envelope, and a quite unnecessary letter of thanks for what he calls my
kindness. I was only too glad to have somebody in the place."
"Do you know what day he left?"
"Let me see. To-day's the ninth. He left on Monday, the fifth."
(Note: he had cleared out of Trenchard's place the day after I had seen
him and Julia off at Haslemere Station.)
"He didn't say where he was going?"
He gave me a quick glance. "I say, this _is_ all right, isn't it?" Then,
laughing as I smiled, "Sorry, but one has to be careful, you know. No,
he didn't say. Here's his note if you care to read it. I don't even know
what to do with letters if any come for him."
Already I guessed that it would be useless to put my question; but I
asked it none the less.
"You didn't _see_ him before he left, then?"
"No. He simply left that note. It's dated the evening of the fourth, and
it says he's off to-morrow.... By the way, what _am_ I to do about
letters?"
There wouldn't be any letters. Of that I was sure. But I gave him my
address, wound up a pleasant chat rather quickly, and took my leave.
And now for that diary that, instead of helping me, had proved the
greatest stumbling-block of all.
I had had not a moment's scruple in reading every word of it, in trying
to disentangle every diagram and equation it contained. Any question of
ordinary decorum had long since passed out of the relation that existed
between him, Julia, and myself. And let me repeat once more that a man
who has questioned the universe until he has asked one question too many
involves in his own fatality all who have to endure the contact of him.
His state is apocalyptic, his existence merely spatial, without zenith
of virtue or nadir of disgrace. If my roof had not been abused, neither
did I violate his diary. I merely read it without a qualm.
Its oddity began with its very first page. Ordinarily on the first page
of a diary you look for the owner's name and address. Here was no
address; on the other hand there was a string of names. There were, to
be exact, eight of them, with space for more, the whole written in his
small fine hand and disposed in a neat vertical column. This block of
names might have been from the everyday-book of any working novelist,
part of whose task it is to label his puppets appropriately. I had no
reason to suppose that hitherto Derwent Rose had ever gone under any
name but his own. It had certainly occurred to me that he might sooner
or later have to do so. This appeared to be a preparation for such a
contingency. His own name of Derwent Rose, by the way, did not appear.
Opposite the names a diagram had been pasted into the book. It was on
squared paper, such as draughtsmen use, of so many squares to the inch;
and these squares had been numbered horizontally along the top with the
years from 1891 to 1920, that is to say from his own age of sixteen on.
Lower down the page, and still horizontally, red and black lines of
various lengths were set in echelon. These were sprinkled over with
numbers, which I discovered to refer to the pages that followed. Certain
arrows pointed in opposite directions. Over these were written, in one
direction, the words "'A' memory," in the other the words "'B' memory."
This completed the horizontal arrangement.
The vertical set-out appeared to have given him much more trouble. It
did not appear to have been completed. A heavy black line ruled up
through the year 1905 was lettered "true middle," but that appeared to
be the only stable term of its kind. The rest was a mere rain of
pencil-lines, momentary false middles that apparently he had tried to
seize in passing. I knew by this time how unseizable they were. Not one
of them lay on the right side of the true middle line. All overstepped
it and travelled in a gradual procession towards the left of the
diagram.
On other pages I found other diagrams. These were merely enlarged
details of the foregoing, with days of the month instead of years.
One wild chart was an attempt to combine the whole in a single
comprehensive statement. But this had completely beaten him. A
serpentine whip-lash of pencil had been flung so viciously across it
that one almost heard the crack.
The rest of the book consisted of text.
I was of course prepared at any moment to receive a telegram or letter
asking for the book's instant return. If it really contained the key to
his speed of retrogression it was probably the most important thing he
had in the world. Therefore, lest he should claim it before I had
finished with it, it stayed in my breast pocket when it was not actually
in my hand.
And so I had three days' madness over the hateful thing. Twenty times I
nearly tore it in two as he had once torn a six-shilling novel. Then at
the end of the three days I put it down, leaned back exhausted in my
chair, and asked myself what it was that I was really in search of.
I wonder whether the answer will startle you as much as it startled me.
True, it came pat enough. There was nothing whatever new about it. It
was merely what it had been all along, and I ought to have been familiar
with it by this time.... I merely wanted to know his age. Just that and
nothing more.
Yet of all the shocks that a man can receive, the shock of the expected
and waited-for is sometimes the most profound. You know it is coming; it
is therefore pure, fundamental shock, unalleviated by the lighter
element we call surprise. When something you have lived with every day,
taken for granted, thought you knew all about, have become familiar with
to the point of boredom, suddenly so recalls attention to itself that
all your habitual notions about it drop clean away, leaving you face to
face with a strange thing--a line of verse, an object in your house, a
tune, a picture, a wife--when this happens, then you may know that
something has been wrong all along, is still wrong, and that if you
would set it right you must go back to the very beginning again.
So there I stood, an unhappy, over-confident little scholar, whom the
inexorable tutor silently points back to his task.
Humbly I returned to the book that, if it told me anything at all, must
at least tell me this.
And now I must ask you to bear your portion of that little shiny-backed
book too; for on a point of this importance I cannot allow you to accept
my own conclusions on trust. You must know how I arrived at them. Where
Derwent Rose was at that moment, what manner of man he was, what he was
doing, how long he might continue to do it, whether he was alive at
all--these things depended on no off-handed survey of his case, but on
the dry figures, dates and details that I had hitherto neglected.
Fortunately we had a roughly-sufficient starting-point. This was the
date of June 8th, 1920, the day when I had met him at the Lyonnesse
Club. It was not, it must be confessed, his true zero. The true zero was
now indiscoverable. But I myself, in good faith and knowing nothing of
all this, had judged him to be thirty-five that afternoon; he himself
had confirmed my judgment, subsequent changes had sufficiently borne it
out, and the diary now re-affirmed it.
So much for June 8th, when, if he had had an age at all, it had
presumably been thirty-five. Thereafter he had disappeared for exactly
three weeks, and on June 29th, a Tuesday, he had spoken to me in the
picture-house in Shaftesbury Avenue.
On the following day, Wednesday, June 30th, I had returned to Haslemere,
having left Julia waiting for her books in the reading-room of the
British Museum.
Then, two days later still, on Friday, July 2nd, they had unexpectedly
turned up together at my house.
Now a definite note in the diary, written as a matter of fact in my own
house (for he kept it instantly up to date), told me that on that day,
July 2nd, he had "felt twenty-nine." True, he had later admitted the
vagueness of these mere "feelings" as an index to age, but there it was
for what it was worth, and it agreed with the impression I had myself
formed, based on his vivid and ecstatic and momentary moods. Except when
I had compelled him to speak of his book, Saturday had been the
counterpart of Friday. That is to say, that during the whole of Friday
and Saturday he had remained twenty-nine.
Therefore (and omitting the loss of the years forty-five to thirty-five,
now untraceable), during the twenty-five days from June 8th to July 3rd
he had dropped a total of six years.
So far so good; but that was not quite what I wanted to know. What I was
trying to ascertain was a far more important thing--the shortest
_actual_ time in which he had lost the great length of _apparent_ time.
It would make the greatest practical difference in the world whether
this figure were a high or a low one.
And now groan, as I groaned, when you look at the four days between June
29th and July 3rd--those four days in which, in order that he might be
at the very top of his power for the writing of his book, he had
vehemently _denied_ his age, had juggled with it, wrestled with it,
refused it, ignored it, vowed that a false middle was or should be a
true one, and had hung as it were to a strap while the whole momentum of
his being had tried to sway him in another direction.
The entry for those four days was a mere question-mark with an open
choice. It read:
"Thirty-three--thirty?"
And yet on the fifth day he had been twenty-nine!
Now let us take the queried figures separately and subtract.
If on the fourth day he had been the lower figure--thirty--then he had
only dropped a year in a night.
But if on the fourth day he had been thirty-three, then he had dropped
four whole years in the same time.
Either was possible, and yet in the one case the ratio was, appallingly,
four times as great as in the other.
And now that I was getting to the root of the matter I wished to take
nothing for granted. His equations were high above my head, but I
reviewed the position in terms of my own. This is how I set it out:
I HAD ALREADY KNOWN THE DIARY NOW TOLD ME
That by June 8th he had That his "straphanging"
slipped back from forty-five age three weeks later
to thirty-five. (on June 29th) was
"thirty-three--thirty."
That on Wednesday, June 30th, In a pathetic little jotting of
Julia had been scheming to the same date, that he feared
make herself his secretary. he would never write his
book, that he was "getting
too young for it," but that he
intended to attempt it at all
costs.
That on the following Friday That he now doubted whether
and Saturday, at my house, what he had at first thought
he had been vivid, momentary, to be will-power had really
intense. been that at all; in fact, that
the real effort of will would
have been, not to put his
work out of his head for a
couple of days, _but to
remember it_.
At this point I began to grow excited. It seemed to me that at last I
began to see light. I had taken him step by step from the starting-point
of June 8th to the evening of Saturday, July 3rd, and the reason I had
not gone beyond that date was that the diary itself stopped there. Its
last entry was the one I have just given--that he feared he had been
mistaken in supposing that will-power had had anything whatever to do
with that stolen week-end's holiday.
Oh, had there but been one, one single entry dated Sunday, July 4th!
For if it was possible for him to shuffle off four years in what I may
call an ordinary night, what was _im_possible after an experience as
stupefying as had been his on the night of Saturday-Sunday?
And yet in appearance it had not altered him. I had spent practically
the whole of Sunday with him, and there had been nothing to indicate
that he was not still twenty-nine. His manner, it is true, had been
alternately jumpy and morose, but that might have been the mere vague
pull of his Wanderjahre. Therefore it looked as if that mad onslaught of
Julia's on his stability had passed him over after all.
_Ah, but wait a moment!..._ I sat up at my desk, vociferating the words
aloud. Were we at such a dead end after all? Perhaps not....
And first of all I remembered that question I had asked him about the
flash-lamp as he had stood behind the screen of rugosa roses on the
Sunday afternoon. "Has there been a moment since yesterday when that
lamp has been held as close as it could be held?" Again I saw his sudden
pallor. Again I felt his clutch on my shoulder, again heard his faint
"George--I've been trying to remember ... the lamp ... very close ...
touching ... one intense brilliant spot ... but I swear I never moved
it ... it was as if somebody took the torch out of my hand ... somebody
meddled in my life...."
And he had made me go through his Saturday evening's programme
again--his inspection of the Hogarths, his unusual wakefulness, the hour
at which he had gone upstairs.
Only for a few moments on the Sunday morning had he seemed dimly to
surmise that something of the last importance might have happened to him
during the hours of darkness. He had then forgotten all about it.
Nevertheless, would not his next rejuvenation date, not the moment of
the fact itself, _but from that of the beginning of his realisation of
it_?
No--no--I was not quite right even yet. Even _that_ moment of wild fear,
so quickly gone again, was not the moment I sought. Even after _that_ he
might to all appearances have remained twenty-nine for some hours
longer.
For his change happened while he slept, and I had not reckoned with that
sleep that must come in between.
His next sleep had been, not in my house, but in Trenchard's loft.
_Monday morning, July 5th_, had been his new starting-point, and that
day he had disappeared.
You have now all the material dates that I had. You know that in
comparatively uneventful, unexciting circumstances he could go back four
years in a night. And I have told you of the headlong rôle Julia
Oliphant had taken upon herself.
How old, then, was Derwent Rose when he woke up in Trenchard's rooms on
the morning of Monday, July 5th, 1920?
Twenty-five?
Twenty?
Or sixteen and already dead?
II
I now turn to that portion of the diary that seemed to confirm my
impression that he had gone to France.
Both his memories, "A" and "B," appeared so far to be functioning
normally. In order to ascertain this he had applied a number of
ingenious tests to himself. But it immediately struck me that while all
his "A" (or Age) notes were written in English, all those in the "B" (or
Boyhood) direction were in French.
And not only was the language French. The illustrations and incidents
were French in character also. Thus, he wrote in English: "Have been
trying to see how much of _Esau_ I can remember without looking at the
book"; but of something that had once happened in Marseilles I read: "Je
tâche de me débrouiller de ces souvenirs-ci." There might have been
purpose in this alternation of the two languages, but I was more
inclined to think that he had done it purely instinctively. When a man
speaks a language as Derwent Rose spoke French he finds a pleasure in
the mere exercise of his attainment. France had always attracted him, he
had not unlimited money at his disposal, and mere considerations of
ordinary time (an intensely special thing to him) might preclude his
getting more than a few hours' journey away. Anyway, with one thing and
another, I had chanced it, and guessed that somewhere on the north coast
of France would find him.
"And you're going over there to stay with the Airds," Julia mused. "Then
there's just a possibility----"
"Oh, the whole coast will be swarming with English by the end of the
month."
"Still----"
"Do you want me to let you know if I come across him?"
"Oh, I don't know. I leave it to you. Do just as you think. When are you
going?"
"On the thirtieth."
"What about his money?"
"Oh, he needn't worry about that."
"George"--she looked at me accusingly--"I believe you've bought those
things of his yourself."
"Bought's hardly the word," I laughed. "Anyway, why shouldn't I?"
"And you're going to finance him."
"Well, the man's got to eat. And Carpentier _might_ knock him out."
She looked away down the crowded tea-room and made no reply.
She herself had chosen the Piccadilly, and I looked at her again as she
sat there, tucked away in a far corner of the room, with merry parties
at the neighbouring tables and De Groot playing the "_Relicario_." She
was differently and quite brilliantly dressed. As far as externals could
assist her, she appeared to have resolved to go back step by step and
hand in hand with Derwent Rose. Her furs were thrown back, showing the
V-shaped opening of her brown _charmeuse_, perfectly plain except for a
tiny bronze beading at the edge and a lump of amber on a fine gold
chain. Her arms were dropped over the sides of her chair, making from
throat and dropped shoulders to the tips of her fingers one mantle-like
flowing line. Her dark hair was arranged after a different fashion, and
on it was a little brown brocade toque with owl's ears sticking out.
About her younger women chattered and laughed, but among them she seemed
to be--I hardly know how to express it--above rather than out of the
picture, architecture to their building, a contralto melody underrunning
their treble and fragmentary tunes, a white marble against which their
fountains glittered and rainbowed and splashed. No shawls, worsted
stockings and hot milk here! If Derry must be young, she too would be as
young as clothes could make her. And I could not deny her success.
Not a word had I said to her about my discovery of his diary. I did not
see what help it would be to do so. It could only open up the rather
dreadful question, whether, in suddenly thrusting into the
infinitely-delicate mechanism of his progression no less potent a factor
than herself, she had not brought irreparable ruin upon him. More and
more I had begun to fear that this might be so. I have already said how
little I was concerned with the mere right or wrong of her theft, gift,
or whatever else she liked to call it. That was swept aside in the
singularity of the whole catastrophe. But for him I was deeply anxious.
I could not shake off the impression that this time he must have
"dropped" very heavily indeed. I thought I knew now why he had not
telegraphed for that diary. It was of little further use to him. He had
begun it with that torch at the cool and wide and "philosophic" range;
he had continued it at the "emotional" focus of keen and rapid
sensation; but at that point the diary had stopped. There was no entry
since Julia Oliphant, seeing her Eden twice and no angel with a flaming
sword guarding this unsuspected postern of it, had set all a-flux in one
blinding spot of irrevocable contact. Could the torch, after that
climax, ever be withdrawn again? Was he at this moment burning out the
residue of his youth at its whitest heat of combustion? Was he, since
that last sleep in Trenchard's place, rushing through the months and
years so swiftly as to gasp for very breath?
And if so, what were those experiences that swept down on him in one
wild blurr of things long since finished with, unrepeatable in their
original form, and yet inevitably to be repeated in that form or in
another?
To all this Julia was still the key. One or two trivia in his diary
apart, she was the only key. She it was who had received those letters
of his from Nîmes, Arles, Trieste, and who farther back still had known
his childhood, its happiness, aspirations, beliefs, dreams. Whatever
soil he trod at this moment he must still be the boy she had known in a
Sussex village. French stained-glass instead of English might hold his
rapt eyes, the organ of a High Mass evoke raptures in his Anglican
heart, but he was still the same.
And, before that stage was reached, the wild and reckless English years
might even now be re-enacting themselves somewhere in the Pas de Calais,
Ille-et-Vilaine or the Côte du Nord.
And she who had given that extra spin to the already whizzing wheel of
his fate sat there in the Piccadilly, her head a little back, her lips a
little parted, her dark eyes sensitised to all the glitter of the room,
the fingers of one down-hung hand moving in time to Raquel's song.
Suddenly I broke in on her mood.
"Julia. As a practical matter. How do you suppose he got to France? It
isn't easy for a man without papers of any kind, you know."
"Oh, he'd get there if he wanted to," she answered, the fingers still
beating time.
"Easy enough to talk, but we may as well look at the practical side of
it. _He'll_ have to."
"If you mean his money, that's very nice of you, George, but I thought
that was all arranged? Or do you mean that as he used to write to me
before he may do so again? If that's it you can hand his money over to
me."
"I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking----"
But she interrupted me vivaciously. "Oh, look at that woman in the cloak
just getting up! That's _ra_ther a wrap, isn't it? And I wonder whether
I could wear those shoes!... Now that's what I call having the best of
both worlds, George. She's all the advantages of that flapper with the
nice fair-haired boy there--the one smoking a cigarette and showing her
garters--as well as being a woman. But perhaps she isn't your type. Men
do run to types, don't they?... George, you're not listening. I asked
you whether men ran to types."
"If you mean do I, you've had most of my time lately."
"Don't be silly. I mean women men are in love with. Or are you all ready
to toy with anything that comes along?"
"I thought that you said the end of that man was that he knew nothing
about women."
"Oh, what's the use of telling me what I used to say!" She tossed the
little cap with the owl's ears. "At any rate I don't talk the same folly
twice. Life's too short. Do you like my hat?"
"Very charming."
"Not absurd on me? Nor the way I've done my hair for it? I'm not
mutton-dressed-as-lamb? And you haven't seen my shoes----"
Round the leg of her chair she pushed a suede sheath slender as one of
the willow-leaves on my pond.
"I do hold my own? Among all these smooth hairs and pretty complexions?
I haven't got a touch of powder on; do you think I should? Don't natter;
honestly; should I be all right if I met Derry?"
I looked at her without smiling. "Which Derry?" I asked.
"Oh, any Derry! Derry at his maddest, his wildest! Tell me, George: if
I'd had just one grain of sense before instead of being a sloppy
art-student he only remembered once in six months, all flat heels and
hair in her eyes, thinking that by cutting sandwiches ... don't you
think, George? Mightn't it have made a _wee_ bit of difference? And
won't it still when----"
"When what?"
"Oh--any moment! Who knows?"
I tried to break the current of her infatuated fancies. "Julia, don't
you think----" But her eyes laughed me down.
"Think, George!... But this _is_ thinking! You've no idea of the amount
of brainwork there is in it! Oh, I'm not talking about rubbishy books
and pictures now! Why, this is all the thinking I've ever done!"
"I was going to ask you whether you thought that things with him
were--going quicker than they ought to, let us say."
"Not if they bring him back to me."
"But you let him go away."
"Oh, on his Wanderjahre. I dare say that's all over by now."
"Then you do think he may have--speeded up?"
"It wouldn't surprise me."
"Why wouldn't it?"
"Nothing would surprise me."
"But this particular thing?"
She shook with soft laughter. "Oh, George, some nice steady-going
woman--like I used to be--ought to adopt you.... Why, you stupid, as if
I wasn't _willing_ him to speed up, as you call it, with every particle
that's in me, if only I can manage to be somewhere at hand when he gets
there!"
I gave her a quick look. "Do you mean that you're going to slip over to
France after all?" I demanded.
"No. Wasn't thinking of it. As far as I know at present I shall just
stay here. But," she said meaningly, "if I were going anywhere it
wouldn't be France."
"Where would it be?"
"Belgium."
"Belgium's about the last place anybody with his war-experience would go
to for a holiday."
"What, Antwerp in August?"
"I don't see. Sorry."
"Aren't they holding the Olympic games there?"
"_Ah!..._ So you think they might draw him?"
"I didn't say so. I don't know as a matter of fact that I should go to
Antwerp either. But you once asked me whether I thought I could bring
him by just sitting still and loving him. Well"--a victorious smile--"I
almost believe I could--now. But I shouldn't cut him sandwiches--now. I
shouldn't be just somebody he remembered when he was at a loose
end--now. I'd have him keen, George-old-Thing. He'd think anything I
gave him a devil of a favour. Look at that wise young minx with the
garters there; I'd have him to heel as she has her boy. Look, she's
having a cocktail. Order me a cocktail, please."
"Which? Martini? Manhattan? Bronx?"
"I dunno. Never tasted one in my life. But I'm not too proud to learn.
And--Geordie"--she shot a sidelong glance at me--"I've half a mind to
begin practising on you!"
"Well--if that will keep you from practising on anybody else----"
"You think you'd be safe, George?"
"Wretchedly safe."
All at once the hectic manner seemed to fall from her. A little incision
appeared for a moment between her brows. She pressed it away again with
her fingers.
"I suppose so," she said quietly. "You can't say ours isn't an
extraordinary relation. It's safe to say there's nothing like it in this
room."
Nor anywhere else, I thought; and I was glad to think so. I am an
average, more or less straight-living man, with a bias towards virtue
rather than the other way; but almost any relation, it seemed to me, was
to be preferred to this unnatural inhibition that had so singularly
little to do with virtue. Allow me, as a man who possibly has been
nearer to these things than you have, to give you a little advice.
Avoid, by all means in your power, contact with a man who has put over
the reversing-gear of his life as Derwent Rose had done. He will land
you in his own net. Unless you are more magnificently steady than I,
even when it comes to your relations with an admirable woman you will
find yourself interfered with at every step you take. Even the evil that
you would you do not, and the good that you would not, that you do.
But it was a question of her rather than of me. I was only at the fringe
of the moral commotion Derwent Rose had made on this planet. She was
deliberately advancing on its very storm-centre. And in the very nature
of things she was doomed to frustration. It seemed to me that she had
already frustrated herself. For suppose she should succeed in her aim,
and should pull off--well, whatever Rose had hinted at when he had
spoken of Andalusian dancers and tilted mirrors in Marseilles sailors'
kens. What then? That had not been Derwent Rose! "Je tâche de me
débrouiller de ces souvenirs-ci." Where was her success, seeing that it
had been the greatest of his dreads that he must re-live that dingy
phase before finding the lovelier Derwent Rose who dwelt away on the
other side?
Therefore, do what she would, her lot was as predestined as his own. Her
successive rôles awaited her also--sister, aunt, elderly friend. But the
way to Eden--ah, _that_ she would terribly contrive! He, sick with a
twice-lived anxiety, might turn away from his fence; but she approached
it from the other side. Dust and ashes to him were all enticement to
her. Once already she had put herself in his way; but what was once?...
Ah, these inappeasable human hearts of ours! We cry "Give me but this,
Lord, and I ask no more." But, having it, we must have more. "Nay, Lord,
so quickly gone?" ... She recked not that presently his sins would be
all un-sinned again, while her own would be upheaped an hundredfold. Her
lot was his. Jointly they advanced on a common fate. When all was over
she would put off those crafty garments again. But until then he was to
be tripped--at his maddest, at his wildest.
"Julia," I said with a failing voice, "for his sake can't you let it
rest?"
She turned quickly. "What do you mean--for his sake?"
"For pity of him--perhaps even for his life."
She broke out, softly, but with a concentration of energy that I can
hardly express.
"For pity of him! And why of him? What about me? Why do you try to
separate us? We never were separated really. All that ever separated us
was my own ignorance and conceit and not having the right hair! I'll bob
it--I'll peroxide it--I'll do anything--but I'm not going to stop now!"
I tried to quieten her, but she went passionately on.
"Pity of _him_! Why, it's for pity of him that I'm doing it! Why should
he for ever give, give, give, and get nothing in return? He never did
get anything--nothing out of his books, nothing out of his life, only
this one magnificent thing that's happened! He's flung pearls away, all
the splendid pearls of himself, flung them to the grunters as they did
in the Bible, and all they wanted was common greasy farthings! Farthings
would have done, and he showered pearls on 'em! And not one single thing
did he ever get back! Oh, it makes me boil!... But I've picked up a
wrinkle or two since then, George! Nobody ever told me anything about
life, nothing that was true. They told me that if I opened my mouth and
shut my eyes and never forgot that I'd been nicely brought up all sorts
of lovely things would come of themselves. Nobody ever told me I should
have to get up and get and fight for my own hand. I was to speak when I
was spoken to, and what did it matter how I did my hair or what sort of
shoes I wore as long as men understood I was a nice girl and not to be
taken liberties with? They took their liberties somewhere else we
weren't supposed to know anything about. The un-nice girls got the
insults--and the pearls. We just went on being respected, and sometimes,
if we'd been very nice indeed, one of us would get a greasy farthing
after all the pearls were gone. They called that marriage, and said it
was the crown of a woman's life. That's what we were taught, George.
That's what every woman of my age was taught. And look at Peggy there
getting away with it as fast as she can!"
I touched her sleeve, but she refused to be stopped.
"And it was all my own fault for believing them. I ought to have thought
it out for myself, like Peggy. It was my job, and I didn't do it. I
painted idiotic canvases instead. It wasn't Derry's job. It isn't any
man's job. I'd been throwing sheep's-eyes at him all my life; why didn't
I say to myself, 'Look here, Julia my girl, this doesn't appear to be
working somehow. Cutting sandwiches and letting him pose for you and
mooning about him afterwards isn't doing the trick. You know
he's--obtainable--because you know other women do it. What's the matter
with _you_?'--I ought to have asked myself that, and I didn't. I let
myself drift into being a 'good sort' to him. Stupidest thing a woman
can do. I expect he'd have thought it a sort of sacrilege to kiss me.
Sacrilege!----"
She checked contemptuously at the word, but went straight on.
"And now this has happened, just to him and me, and if it never happened
before, all the more gorgeous luck! He _shall_ have something back for
his life. He shall know what love is before he dies. You can go to
anybody you like for your portrait, George; Peggy and I are out for
blood. What's the good of having luck if you don't believe in it? If
being nice didn't work let's have a shot at the other thing. (Ah, so
_that's_ a cocktail!) So that's that, George. Something's bound to
happen. He'll be writing to me or something; I'm not worrying in the
least.... But I mustn't let my neck get all pink like this just with
thinking of him." She fetched out a little mirror and a puff. "Nice
girls used to do that, and it was called maiden modesty, and I'm damned
if it paid. I'm perfectly willing to learn, either from Peggy with her
garters or anybody else.... Ah, she's getting up! I must see her close
to----"
She was on her feet. I heard her murmur, "I'm taller than she is
anyway----"
"Sit down till I've got the waiter," I said.
But she continued to stand. She was looking after the girl she had
called Peggy--erect, ready, perilously instructed, a beautiful danger.
Her life had been one unvarying, starry lamp of love; now, for the
beguiling of the Derry of those onrushing years of the heat of his
blood, a hundred false fires were being prepared. And I could only
remain silent at the wonder of it, that all was one, and that the false
was no less true than the true.
III
It still wanted a week to the thirtieth, but I had various matters to
set in order, and the time passed quickly. I saw Julia once more before
I left. She still nonchalantly left it to me, should I come across
Derry, to let her know or not, as I thought best. She herself was not
going very far--merely into Buckingham to stay with friends. She gave me
dates and addresses, and then her manner seemed to me to show some
hesitation.
"If he should write to me for money suddenly," she said. "You see, you
won't be at hand."
"Oh, that's all arranged. He wouldn't wait till he was actually starving
before he wrote, and Mrs Moxon is readdressing all letters immediately."
"But suppose he wrote to me. I've no money."
"Then you can wire me. I'll arrange for a sight-draft."
Her hands smoothed down the body of a frock I had not seen before--a
sooty shower of black chiffon over I know not what intricately-simple
and expensive-looking swathing below.
"I believe you're afraid to trust me with his money," she smiled,
preening herself.
This conversation, I ought to say, took place in her studio. Suddenly I
looked up.
"Julia," I demanded, "where's that tallboy gone?"
"The tallboy? Oh, it's somewhere about the place."
"On your back?"
"Not all of it. Some of it's on my feet. Don't you like them?"
She showed them. I turned away.
"Then," I said, "if _he's_ selling furniture to pay for a holiday, and
_you're_ selling it to buy frocks, I certainly shan't trust you with a
penny. If he writes to you you'd better wire me."
"Poor Julia!" she laughed. "When she was sensible she could do nothing
right, and now that she's quite mad she's as wrong as ever. Well, a
short life and a gay one. Good-bye, George, and a happy holiday----"
So the evening of the thirtieth found me on the St Malo boat, hoping it
wasn't going to rain--for I had looked down below and preferred the
deck. Smoothly we glided down Southampton Water. The boat was packed,
and I was unable to dine till ten o'clock. Then I came up on deck again
and set about making myself comfortable for the night.
It did rain, but I was well tucked away in the shelter of a deck-house,
and was little the worse for it. A fresh south-west wind blew, and I
watched the phantom-grey water that hissed and rustled hoarsely past our
sides. The throbbing of the engines began to beat softly and incessantly
in my head, and half dozing, I found myself wondering what Derry had
done about his passport. "Throb-throb," churned the engines ... perhaps
he had forged himself a seaman's and fireman's ticket, signed on as a
deckhand or stoker, and had given the L.S.W. Railway Company the slip
the moment he had got across. Dreamily, muffled up in my wrappings, I
tried to picture it. He would be careful. He would be careful about his
beard, for example. He would let it grow a day or so before; perhaps he
would now continue to wear a beard. Unless.... And he would sleep the
day before and stoke through the night. A stoker for a night, dressed in
a boiler-suit or stripped to the waist, as he had stripped when he had
held Julia Oliphant's sewing-machine aloft. And grime in his golden
beard. Or else the author of _The Vicarage of Bray_ bending the warp on
to the drum of the steam-winch or putting the luggage in the slings in
the hold. Oh, as she had said, he would get across somehow if he wanted
to.....
And once across he would have very little trouble. He would mingle with
the porters and camionneurs, carrying his gear in his hand. Probably he
would pretend it was somebody else's. Then--the small luggage through
first--_rien à declarer_--his perfect French--he would be along the quay
and in the vedette before they had begun to get the big stuff out of the
hold. As for his passport--oh, he would manage....
An employe picked his way through the dark huddles on the deck, took the
reading of the log, and retired again. The masthead lights made loops
and circles in the rain. I took a nip from my flask and dropped back
into my doze. Alderney Light winked, and up the Race it blew stiffly....
Yes, he would get across if he had made up his mind to. As for his
_permis de séjour_--oh, things like that were for ordinary people. What
would he do with a _permis de séjour_ who had no _permis de séjour_ in
life itself, but must doubly dodge through it, from this place to that
and from one date to the date before?... But I rather fancied he had
gone by Dover. Certain notes almost at the end of his diary seemed an
indication of that. These notes had no coherence--just odd words like
"Lord Warden," "boat," "tide," and a little time-table of figures.
Apparently he had worked it out just before that week-end he had spent
with me.... "Lord Warden"--that meant Dover--tide--time.... Again the
Company's man came to take the reading of the log. Again the throbbing
of the engines evoked the image of Derry, stripped, moving in the red
glare of the furnaces, sweating, coal-dust in his beard. But perhaps he
no longer had a beard. Perhaps Julia had made sure of that. Julia,
desperate creature, wild, disturbing creature.... Peggy in her
garters ... selling furniture to buy frocks, shoes, stockings, scent....
"Pour Troubler," "Myster_ieuse_" ... "Myster_ieuse_, Myster_ieuse_,
Myster_ieuse_," sighed the water rushing past.... And in the Piccadilly,
that long white throat, the fine angle of her jaw, among little double
chins, little buttons of chins, short necks, thrust-forward necks,
square shoulders instead of that long mantle-like line down over her
shoulders like swift water before it breaks, to the fingers that moved
softly in time to the "_Relicario_" ... the "Relicario" ... De Groot ...
De Groot, De Groot, De Groot.... Myster_ieuse_, Myster_ieuse_.... Again
the reading of the log, again the sailor's return through the dozing
huddles on the deck; the phantom-grey water rustling hoarsely past, the
masthead lights swinging aloft. I hate these short and crowded crossings
when it is hardly worth while to take off your clothes and you arrive
cramped, crumpled, unshaven, unrefreshed. I wondered how early it would
be possible to get a cup of tea. A cup of tea--a cocktail--cocktails for
tea--"So _that's_ a cocktail!"--Manhattan, Manhattan, De Groot, De
Groot, De Groot....
Another pull at my flask, and then I really did sleep.
The day was grey when I awoke. The huddles on the deck had begun to
stir. The east kindled, as I had last seen it kindle over the Devil's
Punch Bowl and Gibbet Hill. The sun flashed on the waves, on people
bestirring themselves, opening dressing-cases, making such toilets as
they could. Then I heard the welcome click of teacups and flung off my
rugs. I went below, secured a seat for breakfast, and made myself less
unpresentable. Hot breakfast, after all, goes a long way towards
obliterating the discomforts of a night on deck. As I rose from the
table I glanced through the open port. Pale on the starboard bow was the
long line of Cap Fréhel, ahead was St Malo's spire.
FRANCE
PART I
THE LONG SPLICE
I
As the little vedette approached Dinard Cale--I had got quickly through
the Customs and come across with the hampers of that morning's fish--an
Alec Aird out of a Men's Summer Catalogue waved his hand to George
Coverham out of a flea-bag and called out a cheery good morning. It was
hardly yet half-past seven, so Alec must have been up betimes. He seized
the two bags I pushed ashore and gesticulated to the driver of a
nondescript sort of carosse. Then he looked me up and down and grinned.
"Ready for breakfast?"
"I'm ready for some hot water and clean clothes," I replied. "No, it
wasn't so bad."
"And is this all the stuff you've brought? I asked you to come and stay
with us, not just to drop in to lunch. Well, up you get. I don't suppose
you'll see Madge and Jennie till midday. That damned Casino; three a.m.
again last night. But it's no good talking to Madge. It always ends in
her doing just as she likes. Why, when I was Jennie's age I didn't know
there was such a thing as a roulette-table.... I say, have you brought
any English tobacco?"
I had not been in Dinard, nor indeed in France at all, since before the
war; but the long steep street where the little dark cafés were opening
seemed very friendly and familiar. We rumbled past the English Club into
the Rue Lavavasseur, and instinctively my head turned to the right. Each
short descending street gave the same remembered glimpse, of white
casino or hotel at the bottom and the bright emerald beyond. We
clattered down to the Place, and then slackened again to the ascent of
dark tree-planted avenues. "Gauche--droit, I mean--starboard a couple of
points," directed Alec, whose French bears no very great strain; and
after ten minutes or so the sound of our wheels suddenly ceased. We
were on the soft sandy drive that ended at the gate of Ker Annic.
Alec Aird hates the Casino, partly because they won't let him smoke his
pipe there, partly because he doesn't like his life strung up to
concert-pitch all the time. But Madge loves these vast vestibules of
shining mahogany and cut and bevelled glass, these palms that brush the
electric chandeliers, these broad terraces, all this bright restlessness
of hotels and shops and plage. So they had split the difference in the
villa they had rented. It stood high-perched among ilex and
Spanish-chestnut, looking out over the rocks and islands that make of
that bay a jaw full of cruel black splintered teeth. It had little
broken lawns set with hydrangeas and beds and borders of blood-red
begonias and montbretia and geraniums and marguerites, the whole tilted
up as if it would have spilled over the rough cliff-top to the rocks
below. The plage itself was hidden, but a little way out the translucent
greens began, dappled with a fairy-like refraction that brought the
purply shoals almost up to the surface. After that away northwards
spread the wide sea--serene yet curiously wistful, tender yet never gay,
dreamily lovely but unflashing, unglittering--the pensive aspect of a
sea that has its back to the sun.
"Here we are," said Alec as we pulled up in front of a chromo-lithograph
from a toybox lid, the villa of dove-grey with shutters of a chalky
greeny-white and slender ironwork everywhere--grilles of ironwork over
the glazing of the double doors, scrolled balcony railings, and iron
passementerie along the ridge of the mansard-roof. "Now look here, if
you want to go to bed say so, and we'll all be Sleeping
Beauties--confound those rotten late hours for that kid----"
I assured him that I had no wish to go to bed.
"Right. Then come along upstairs, and sing out if there's anything you
want. You'll find me somewhere about when you come down. And you might
give me that tobacco----"
And, showing me up a staircase of waxed boards into my room, he left me
to my toilet.
The pergola in which I found him three quarters of an hour later was at
the bottom of the garden. Its roof was latticed, so that over the floor,
over the garden chairs and tables, over our shoulders and hands and
white flannels, lay an intricate shepherd's-plaid of gay shadow that
crept like a net over us whenever we moved. A _bonne_ followed me with
coffee and rolls, and we sat down to talk and to watch the flat
untwinkling sea.
We, or rather Alec, talked of Boche rolling-stock on French lines (did I
tell you my friend was by way of being a consulting engineer?), of
coasting boats building at St Malo, of France's prospects of recovery
from the devastation of the war. He thought they might pick up quickly,
applauded the way they were putting their backs into it. And it may have
been my fancy or the force of former associations, but already I was
conscious of a different atmosphere. There seemed to thrill in the very
air the push of a logical, practical, unsentimental people. I had felt
it in the bustle of the porters and camionneurs on St Malo quay, in the
unyielding Breton eyes of the fishwives in the vedette, in the ten
francs that that scoundrel of a cocher had overcharged Alec. It began to
be impossible to look over that sunny emerald water and to say to
yourself, "A man with two memories is bathing in that," to sit in the
warm cage of that pergola and to remember a man who clung to false
middles and had extraordinary things happen to him in the night. Beyond
the point a couple of fishing-boats and a brown-sailed bisquine
appeared. Out toward St Cast crept an early pleasure steamer, its smoke
trailing behind it like a smudge of brown worsted. From somewhere behind
that toybox of a villa came rapid exchanges in French--the day's
provisions were arriving.
Suddenly Alec looked at his watch. "I say, what about having a look in
at the Stade? I expect there are a few of them there by now."
"Anything you like; what's on?"
"These elimination-trials for Antwerp next month," Alec replied, who was
a Fettes man and an International in his day, and is still a familiar
figure at Twickenham and Blackheath. "Haven't you seen the posters?
'Debout les Athlètes'--'Sons of the Patrie'--they've been all over the
place for months. All out they are too, and some dashed good athletes
among 'em. There's one fellow I've heard of called Arnaud--haven't seen
him--in fact he's a bit of a mystery ... but look here, we've only just
time for the tram. Come along----"
The filthy little tram took us to the Stade in ten minutes. It was an
open field, with tracks and hurdles and a small white-painted Grand
Stand at one end of it, and already _les athlètes_ had got down to work.
There were perhaps a dozen of them, in zephyrs and shorts and sweaters,
leaping, practising short bursts off the mark, doggedly covering the
outer track or resting in twos and threes on the grass. Several of them
wore little more clothing than a pair of shoes and a waist-sash. They
flaunted their glossy sunburnt backs, stood with arms folded over
uplifted chests, heads erect, eyes flashing, and never a smile. No
Briton would have dared to display such physical naïveté. They might
have been grimly training, not for a sporting contest, but for a duel to
the death.
We watched them for an hour, and then the whooping of that horrible
little tram was heard in the distance. It hurtled up to the Halte,
fouling the air with the smoke of the dust and slate and slack that
served it for coal, and we sat with our backs to the engine and took
what care of our flannels we might.
The sluggards had descended by the time we reached the house again.
Among the harlequin shadows of the pergola Madge advanced to me with
both hands outstretched.
"Monsieur! Sois le bienvenu!" Then, standing back to look at me, "What
nice flannels, George! Some of the Frenchmen here, quite nice men, go
about in the most extraordinary cheesecloth arrangements, and as for
their shoes----! Yes, I think I can be seen with you. You can take me
shopping this afternoon. I saw it in a window yesterday but hadn't time
to go in. ('It's' a hat, if you must know, Alec.) And this is Jennie,
in case she's grown so much you don't remember her."
There was a time when I used to kiss little Jennie Aird, but I should
not have dared to kiss the young woman who stood before me now.
Take-aboutable, by Jove!... Jennie had her father's colouring,
golden-red hair over a tea-rose-petal complexion lightly freckled; and
if her eyebrows were faint, that somehow merely seemed to enhance the
steady clear pebble-grey of the gaze beneath. She was six inches taller
than her mother, and whether it was the smallness of her short-featured
face that made full her beautiful throat, or whether it was the other
way round, I will not attempt to say. Nor do I remember whether her hair
was up or down that day. I have an idea that at that time it was
sometimes the one and sometimes the other. Her gesture as she offered me
her hand had the proper condescension of such a creature for a battered
old piece of goods life myself. I wondered whether I ought to call her
Miss Aird. These things come over one with rather a shock sometimes.
We lunched in a shining little salon, the exact centre of which, whether
you measured sideways, lengthwise or up-and-down, was occupied by an
enormous gilt Ganymede and Eagle lamp slung by heavy chains from the
ceiling--for the lighting was either oil or candles at Ker Annic. Then
back to the pergola for coffee. The tide had receded, and the rocks and
the stakes that marked the channels stuck up everywhere menacingly--the
Fort, Les Herbiers, Cézembre. The warm air was laden with the smell of
genets, the sky was brightly blue over our white lattice. I saw Alec
preparing to doze.
"Well, what about Dinard?" I said to Madge.
"Sure you wouldn't rather follow Alec's example? Very well, we'll drop
Jennie at the tennis-place and you and I'll go off on the prowl. I'll be
ready in five minutes. Jennie!"
She ran up to the house, and I waited for her on the sandy drive.
We walked into Dinard. The magasin that enshrined "It" was near the
Casino, and there, in an impermanent little white-screened and
gilt-chaired shop that had hardly been open a fortnight and would close
down again the moment the season was over, I had a soothing half-hour
while Alec's money took wing.
"Mais tiens, Madame"--the saleswoman's witty fingers touched, hovered,
butterflied, while the hat became half a dozen different things under
the diablerie--"posé commé ça, en effet sur l'oreille--Claire, la voile
verte--legèrment--oh, m'sieu!" A delectable gesture of admiration of
everything and everybody concerned, the hat, the veil, Madge, herself,
as unabashed as the attitudinising of the sunbrowned young athletes. "On
dirait un sourire sur la tête de Madame!"
So, on a purely hypothetical rate of exchange, Madge bought three, and
we sought the teashop and Jennie.
All English-speaking Dinard meets at that teashop in the afternoon. From
four o'clock onwards it is a mob of youths in the blazers of Eton and
Charterhouse and the Old Merchant Taylors, forking gateaux from the
glass counters for themselves, their sisters, other fellows' sisters,
their sisters' friends. Their days sped in tennis, bathing, tennis, a
hurried déjeuner between the sets, tennis, watching tennis as they
waited for a partner or a court, a sudden flocking to the Le Bras for
tea, tennis, dancing, chocolates, and the programme for the tennis for
the next day. They filled the ground-floor of the shop, made a continual
coming and going on the staircase that led to the room upstairs. I
steered Madge towards the table where Jennie was already seated, and
found myself with young Rugby on my right, his shirt open at the neck,
flannels hitched up over his white-socked ankles. About me buzzed the
whirl of talk.
"He saw him at Ambleteuse, and he did it in ten in his walking-boots on
grass----"
"Rot! It's run in metres, not yards, and the record's ten and
seventh-tenths----"
"American----"
"I bet you----"
"Well, it's nearly the same, and in his boots on grass----"
"Oh, put your head in a bag! Jennie, we've got Number Four Court for
five-thirty, remember----"
"But I tell you this chap Arnaud----"
"Do let me get you one of those strawberry things, Mrs Aird----"
"My brother saw him--he just threw off his coat and waistcoat and ran as
he was----"
"Mademoiselle, trois thés, s'il vous plait----"
I spoke in Madge's ear.
"She's a very beautiful child."
"Jennie?" said proud Madge. "Rather a young queen, isn't she? But Alec's
perfectly absurd about her. Thinks young people to-day are the same as
we were. She shall have the best time I can give her."
"Any----?" I looked the question.
"No. Quite asleep. She's perfectly happy dancing and dreaming and
talking sport with these boys."
"Who are they?"
She told me. She knew half Dinard, and the printed Visitors' List gave
her the rest.
"Well, well," was all I found to say, as I looked at Jennie again.
For while woman's beauty is coeval with Time itself, you have only your
own allotted portion of it. The loveliness that comes too early or too
late is no more your affair than the dawns before your time, the sunsets
after you are gone. Madge at the midday of her life was still within my
reach at my post-meridian, but Jennie would bloom like a rosy daybreak
when my own evening star appeared. Young Rugby, young Charterhouse,
would write his vers-libre to that small head, sweet throat and the
red-gold of her hair.... But I hardly know why I write all this. I am
only trying to show how sorely I had needed a change and how grateful I
was now that it had come. I knew that I was welcome to stay with the
Airds as long as I pleased. It didn't matter if I didn't write another
book for ten years, it didn't greatly matter if I never wrote another. I
didn't want to write. That ethereal sea, that multi-coloured plage, the
genet-scented air, the feeling that all about me were people who knew
what they could not do and wasted no time in attempting to do it--ah,
they live their lives from the beginning and end them at the end in that
fair and unperplexed land of northern France.
II
Both by Alec and Madge, Jennie's education was discussed before me with
complete freedom.
"Stuff and nonsense!" Madge would roundly declare.
"Look at those two Beverley girls!"
"Very nice girls, I should have thought," Alec would growl.
"Yes, and who's ever going to marry them? Nobody as far as I can see.
That's Vi Beverley's fault. She's let them sit in one another's pockets,
and have their own silly family jargon, and think that the rest of the
world's a cinema just to amuse them, till they don't know how to talk to
a stranger without being rude. They positively freeze any young man who
goes near them, and when they do go away it's to cousins. Family
affection's all very well in its place, but you can have too much of it.
Jennie shall take people as they are. If she does miss an hour's sleep
once in a while she can stay in bed all next day if she wants."
"Better teach her baccarat and have done with it."
"Well, she needn't faint when it's mentioned. This is 1920. If ever
those Beverley girls marry it will be one another."
"If she begins to think of marrying in another four or five years----"
"She's not going to sit on the arm of your chair for five years while
you read the _Paris Daily Mail_.... Anyway, about to-night's party----"
Then, on the way to the Stade or the Club, I should have Alec's view of
the matter.
"When we were kids, if we were allowed to stop up once a year for a
pantomime ... beastly mixed sort of place like this too! Madge doesn't
know half that goes on. Why, before I'd been here three days one of the
waiters at the Grand had the infernal neck to come up to me and
whisper----"
I broke into uncontrollable laughter. The idea of a waiter whispering
alluring suggestions to Alec Aird of all people was altogether too much
for me.
"And what did you say?" I asked him.
"Say?" said Alec grimly. "When I said 'Frog' he jumped, I promise you
that!... And mark you, these French fellows look after their own women
all right--got their hands on their elbows all the time. It's only our
confounded ideas of freedom----"
"But there's no harm in to-night's party----"
"Oh, that's all right. That's at home. We can turn 'em out at ten
o'clock, and be in bed in reasonable time. It's that damned Casino I
bar----"
And so on. Early to bed and a nap after lunch certainly suited Alec. I
have seen once-fine athletes settle down like this before.
I had been at Ker Annic some days, when about the last thing I expected
had happened to me. I have just told you how little I cared whether I
ever wrote another book or not. Well, that morning I had remained in my
room after coffee and rolls to write a couple of necessary letters.
These finished, I had sat gazing out of the window at nothing in
particular, lazily content with the beauty of the morning. Then,
suddenly and without the least premeditation, I had taken a fresh sheet
of paper and had begun to make detached and random notes. These had
presently strung themselves together, and by and by a phrase had sprung
up of itself....
Whereupon, in the very moment of my despairing of ever writing again, I
had realised that my next novel was stirring within me.
Now let me tell you the part that Jennie Aird played in this.
I frankly admit that the writers of my own generation have sometimes
been a little smug and make-believe about young girlhood. We have seen a
lovely thing, and perhaps have let its mere loveliness run away with us,
to the loss of what I believe is nowadays called "contact." We have not
seen the butterfly's anatomy for the pretty bloom of its wing.
Nevertheless, I cannot see that the eager young morphologists who are
succeeding us have so very much to teach us after all. To read some of
these you would think that the whole moving mystery had been disposed of
when they had said that a young girl became conscious, shy, and had a
talk with her mother. If it must be anatomy or bloom, I think I shall go
on preferring the bloom. I have no wish to exchange the eyes in my head
for that improved apparatus that turns a woman's hand that is meant to
be stooped over into a shadowy bundle of metacarpal bones.
At the same time I do not take it for granted that youth is necessarily
the happiest season of our lives. I remember my own youth too well for
that. Emotionally, I am aware, it is all over the shop. It will giggle
in church or make a heartbreak out of nothing, indifferently and with
tragical facility. It is exploring the new-found marvels within itself
against the day when its eyes shall open to the miracle of another.
That, at any rate, and as nearly as I can express it, was the state of
Madge Aird's sleeping beauty of a daughter on the evening of the party
of which Madge and Alec had spoken.
It was a ravishing evening of late light over an opal sea. The same dusk
that turned the begonias velvety-black in their beds made luminous the
pale hydrangeas, until they resembled the glimmering whites and mauves
of the frocks that moved in and out among them. The villa was lighted up
like a paper lantern, and the moving couples inside made ceaselessly
wavering shadows across the lawn. Over the ragged bay the phares winked
in and out, and beyond the ilex and chestnut a faint luminosity
trembled--the corona of Dinard lighting up for the night.
They danced in and out between the wide hall and the salon where the
gilded Ganymede struggled with the Eagle--youngsters in their first
dinner-jackets, sylphs with their plaits swinging about their
softly-browned napes, their elders mingling among them or watching them
from the walls. Madge, in a frock that seemed to be held up singly and
solely by her presence of mind, played fox-trots. Alec was busy
"buttling" in the little recess where a scratch supper had been set out.
The air was filled with the light talk in French and English, throbbed
with the rhythm of the foxtrotting piano.
For half an hour or so I made myself agreeable to a number of ladies of
whose names I had not the faintest idea; then, with a sense of duty
done, I turned my back on the pretty scene and strolled into the garden.
On the whole I was pleased with my day. That was what I had wanted--the
solace and security of being at work again. Nothing world-shaking or
tremendous; I simply wanted to get on with the unpretentious job that
was mine, and incidentally to be tolerably well-paid for it. That, when
all was said, was the way of wisdom, the kind of thing men very properly
get knighthoods for and had their portraits hung up in Clubs. It seemed
to me that I had been through a very evil time, and that now that I was
rid of the weight of it life was worth living again. I paced the paths
of the gay artificial little garden, my thoughts on all manner of
pleasant times to come.
Near the end of the house grew an auracaria, forbidding and black. As I
moved towards it I noticed a dim white shape beneath it. I was turning
away again (for at a party like that no unaccompanied bachelor has any
title to the dimmer corners) when the figure moved towards me. It was
Jennie Aird--alone.
"Hallo, why aren't you dancing?" I asked. I had already watched her
dance four dances in succession with the same partner--young Kingston I
believe it was.
She made a quick little grimace, but did not reply.
"This is rather a nice party," I remarked.
To this she did reply. "It's a beastly party, and I hate it."
I drew certain conclusions; but "Oh?" I said. "What's the matter with
it? I thought it rather fun."
"Everything's beastly, and I wish we were back in London," she snapped.
"Anything the matter, Jennie?"
"Oh, how I do wish people wouldn't ask one what's the matter!"
"Then come for a turn and I won't."
She put her hand indifferently on my arm. She was nearly as tall as I,
and I noticed as we passed the windows that, that night at any rate, her
red-gold plait had been taken up and was closely swathed about her nape.
Of course young Kingsley or young somebody else had said something or
done something, or hadn't said or done anything, or if he had had done
it at the wrong moment or in the wrong way or had otherwise conjured up
the shade of tragedy. Therefore, as there are occasions when tact may
take the form of talking about one's self, I talked to Jennie about
myself as we skirted the garden.
"Do you know, something rather exciting happened to me this morning," I
remarked.
She showed no great interest, but asked me what it was.
"It mayn't sound much to you, but it interests me. I think I've started
a new book."
"I wish I'd something to do," was the extent of her congratulation.
"What would you like to do?"
"Oh, anything. I shouldn't care what it was. Anything's better than
this."
"Than this jolly party?"
"Yes. Or else I wish I'd been born a man. They get all the chances."
I reflected that one man, somewhere in the world, would have a very
enviable chance, but kept my thought to myself. "Been having a row with
somebody?" I asked.
"No," she answered, I have no doubt entirely untruthfully. "I'm just fed
up. I wish I could have nursed in the war or something, but I was too
young. Or I wish I could write like you. But if I told father I wanted
to earn my own living he wouldn't hear of it, and mother's one idea is
to dress me up and show me off and marry me to somebody. They don't know
how sick I am of it."
I glanced at her as we passed the lighted windows again. That soft red
sill of her lower lip was level, and just a shade short for the upper
member of her mouth's sweet portal, so that the pearls within were
negligently guarded. Temper and discontent were in her pebble-grey eyes.
She gave her head an impatient toss, as if to shake off the thought of
the boisterous young cadets and crammer's-pups within. In a day she
seemed to have outgrown them, to have lengthened her mind as she
lengthened her frocks--if young women do lengthen their frocks nowadays.
She wanted to nurse, to write, to be a student or some personage's
secretary, to say to the dingy world, "Here I am--use me and don't spare
me," in the very moment when I and such as I, disillusioned and worn,
were sighing "Enough--release me--or if that may not be, give me but
once more, once more that first dawning joy!"
"I don't want to get married," she sulked. "Ever. Mother may laugh, but
I won't. It would have been different in the war. I love all those
darling boys who were killed. But these schoolboys are all the same....
You don't want a secretary for your new book, do you?"
It may have been my imagination, but I am not sure that there did not
stir in my memory some faint echo, of a woman sitting under a murky dome
as she waited for her _Manuel de Répertoire Bibliographique Universel_.
I know these secretaries and their wiles, and if my answer had had
twenty syllables instead of one I should have meant them all.
"No," I said.
We had reached the wrought-iron gates at the beginning of the sandy
drive. Three or four cars were parked there, and apparently somebody or
other was leaving early, for a chauffeur had just switched on the
head-lights of a heavy touring-car that shook the ground with its
muttering. Judging from the power of the lights it was the car of one of
Madge's French friends, for no English car carries shafts so blinding as
those twin beams that clove the darkness. They made the windows of the
house seem a dull expiring turnip-lantern. Their blaze lighted up every
pebble, every blade of grass, defined the shadows of blade on blade. Out
of the fumy darkness insects dropped, stunned with light, and moved
feebly on the path. I drew Jennie behind the glare, and as I did so one
of the English servant maids came up to me.
"A gentleman wishes to speak to you, sir," she said.
"To me? What gentleman? Where?"
"A French gentleman, sir. A M'seer Arnaud his name is."
"Arnaud? I don't know any Arnaud. Are you sure he asked for me and not
for Mr Aird?"
"It was Sir George Coverham he asked for, sir."
"Well, where is he?"
"Here--at least he was a moment ago----"
"Arnaud?" I mused. "Do you know a M'sieur Arnaud, Jennie?"
As I turned to her I saw her in that false illumination with curious
distinctness. The soft upward glow from the path reminded one of a
photographer's manipulation of his tissue-paper screens. She stood there
semi-footlighted--smooth brows, low glint of her hair, the caught-up
upper lip that showed the pearls, her steady gaze....
Ah, her gaze! What was this, that made me for a moment unable to remove
my own eyes from her face? At what object beyond the car was she so
fixedly looking? Why had her bosom risen? Why, as if at some "Open,
Sesame!" did that betraying upper lip offer, not two, but all the pearls
within?
My eyes followed hers....
As they did so sounds of talk and laughter and farewells drew near from
the house. The departing guests were upon us.
But I had seen. If only for an instant before it retreated swiftly into
the shadows again, I had seen. Gazing at her as steadily as she had
gazed at him, the vision of a young man's face had momentarily
appeared.
Then the babble broke out about us.
"Thank you a thousand times, chère Madame----"
"Delicieuse----"
"Merci, M'sieu' Air-r-r-rd----"
"Better have the rug round you----"
"Where's Jennie? Ah, here she is----"
"À demain, à onze heures----"
"Good-bye----"
"Good-bye, Sair-r-r George----"
But I still saw that face haunting the transparent gloom. A béret cap
had surmounted it, a blouse _en grosse toile_ had clothed the shoulders
below. Monsieur Arnaud, if it was he, was dressed as an _ouvrier_ or a
sailor dresses.
And he was young, sunbrowned, grave, beautiful.
The car backed and turned. There was a grating as the clutch was slipped
in, and then the engine dropped to a steady purr. The wrought-iron gates
started out in the glare, the red tail-lights diminished. I was dimly
aware that Madge said something to me, but I remained motionless where I
stood. I came to myself to find myself alone.
Sunbrowned, grave, beautiful, young!
And he called himself Arnaud!
I have told you of that list of names with which his diary began. Arnaud
was not among them. But Arnold was. He had simply Gallicised it, and as
Arnaud he was seeking me.
Then I felt my sleeve timidly touched. His voice came from behind me, a
voice with a charming, uncertain timbre.
"George--I say, George--who was that?"
III
I will make a shameful confession. My heart had sunk like lead. I had
wanted a holiday from him. That very morning I had thought I had secured
it, had blithely planned my new and cheerful work.
And here he was, with his hand on my sleeve.
He repeated his words in a whisper. "George, who was that?"
Slowly I turned. "It _is_ you?"
"Yes."
"How did you know I was here?"
"I saw your name in the Visitors' List."
"Tell me what I can do for you."
He fell a little back. "George," he faltered, "why this tone?"
I refused to admit at once that I was ashamed. "We can't stop talking
here," I said. "Where are you staying?"
"Out at St Briac."
"Then I suppose you're walking back? The last tram went long ago."
"It's only six miles."
"Then wait here, and I'll walk part of the way with you."
They were still merrily dancing in the house, but I managed to get to my
own room unseen. I put on an ordinary jacket and cap and descended
again. He was not where I had left him. He had skirted the lauristinus
bushes, and from a safe distance was gazing into the house.
Oh, inopportune--inopportune and undesirable in the last degree!
"Ready?" I said.
Reluctantly he turned away his eyes and followed me past the cars. We
passed out of the drive and into the dark tree-planted lanes of St
Enogat.
A rutty little ruelle runs along the side of St Enogat Church and makes
a short cut to the high road. We passed the church without exchanging a
word. At last, where the street widened, I broke the silence.
"So you're Arnaud now?"
"Yes," he said in a low voice.
"The athlete people are talking about?"
He muttered that there were lots of Arnauds.
"You're a Frenchman anyway?"
"I've got to be something."
"Are you going to stay a Frenchman?"
"I don't know yet."
We continued our walk. The little white-painted Grand Stand of the Stade
glimmered over the hedge on our right when next he spoke. I saw his
glance at it.
"About those athletics, George," he said awkwardly. "I was an awful ass.
If there's anybody who oughtn't to draw attention to himself it's me.
But I did it without thinking. It was at Ambleteuse. They were running
and jumping, and I suppose my conceit got the better of me and I just
had to have a go. But I've cut all that out. It wasn't safe. I don't go
near a Stade now."
"Ambleteuse? Then you did cross Dover-Calais?"
He hesitated. "Not exactly Dover-Calais. Thereabouts."
"Thereabouts?... I suppose you worked your passage and then gave them
the slip?"
"No. I thought of that, but it was a bit too chancy."
"Then what did you do?"
"Well--strictly between ourselves, George--it's much better not talked
about--you see my difficulty--but I swam it."
I stopped dead in my stride. "_You what!_"
He spoke apologetically, as if it were something not quite creditable.
"Yes. But I don't want to give you a wrong impression. I didn't swim it
really fairly. Not like Webb and Burgess. I only swam it more or less.
For one thing, I hadn't trained, you see."
I recovered my breath. "What do you mean by swimming it more or less?"
His modesty was almost excessive. "It was like this, George. You see I
rather funked just jumping in at Dover and trusting to luck to bring me
across. It's a devil of a long swim, you know, and besides, I had to
have my clothes; couldn't land here with nothing on. So I got hold of a
fellow at the Lord Warden, a boatman who'd been with Woolf when he just
missed it. I swore him to secrecy and all that, and fixed things up with
him, and he gave me tides and times and currents and so on. I told him I
was only an amateur who didn't want to make a fuss till he'd had a
sighting-shot, and--well, it cost me a tenner. But it saved no end of
trouble. He and another chap came across with me in a little
motor-launch. I greased myself and got into a mask, and a mile out of
Dover I went overboard. Even then I didn't swim it fairly, for I was
hauled in again after about six hours for another greasing. My flesh was
quite dead half an inch in, you see. I was sick too. If we'd been really
meant to do that sort of thing we should have been given scales, like
fishes."
"Well, and then?"
"Well--that's all. I landed a little this side of Grisnez, just as if
I'd been out for an ordinary bathe. My chaps kept a sharp look-out for
the coastguard, and smuggled my clothes on to a rock; my English ones,
of course; I bought this rig in Boulogne. And in three or four days I
was pretty well all right again. But I don't think I'd have the stamina
to do it again.... I say, promise me you won't go talking about it,
George. I've got to lie absolutely low. I frightfully wanted to go to
Antwerp, but I simply daren't do it. I might be asked for my Army
Discharge Papers, or something awkward like that."
So _that_ was how he had solved the passport problem! Unable to walk the
Straits, he had simply swum them, and had saved that night's stoking
with coal-dust in his beard! And suddenly and inexplicably, I found
something of my resentment already softening within me. There was a
noble simplicity about his expedient, and even his voluminous corduroys
and shapeless vareuse did not hide the magnificence of his build. And
yet he, so magnificent, must forego that deep joy in his physical
splendour if he was to preserve his anonymity. It passed him by as the
publisher's belief in him had passed him by--as, it began to appear to
me, all else in life must pass him by. Antwerp and the Stades for
others, but for him, who would have won glorious laurels there--no. Nay,
say he was now what he looked, nineteen or twenty. His athletic prime
was already far advanced. He himself doubted whether he had the stamina
to swim the Channel again. This alone would have sufficed to win my
compassion.
We were now well clear of St Enogat. The night was moonless, but the
heavens were crowded with stars, and seaward the lights burned emerald,
diamond, ruby. Southward over the land the eye wandered over the dim
fruit trees that dotted the fields of sarrasin. A light breeze moved in
the tops of the crooked poplars, and where the tramway leaves the road
and takes as it were a dive into a wilderness of dark tamarisk and thorn
a gramophone played somewhere in an unseen cottage. Already an
intermittent paleness had begun to sweep the sky ahead: a pulse of faint
light, four seconds of darkness, the pulse again and eleven seconds of
darkness--the Giant of Cap Fréhel.
At least another ten years in less than a month! I kept stealing shy
glances at him through the limpid darkness. Quite literally I felt shy
in his presence, for he was both known and unknown to me. If he was now
nineteen, I saw him now at nineteen for the first time in my life--grave
and young, brown and beautiful. His talk had a gentleness and a modesty
too. No wonder Julia Oliphant had loved him!
"Well, go on after you left Ambleteuse," I said by and by.
"Oh, then I walked, and took train once in a while, till I got to Rouen
and Caen and on here. Lovely churches all the way; I want to go to Caen
again. That took me a fortnight. Then I'd a couple of days in St Malo,
and--well, that about accounts for the time."
"And what are you doing at St Briac?"
"Sketching. Taken a great fancy to it. I've got a bike cheap, and I
either walk or ride. I stay at a rather shabby little place, but it
suits me. I've only a couple of haversacks and my painting things, so I
can be off at a moment's notice if--if anything crops up."
Charmingly and sincerely as he spoke, I was yet conscious of a reserve.
He kept, as it were, to the surface of his itinerary, dwelling only on
the outer details of his life. And, as little by little he repossessed
me, I knew that I should have to get behind this reticence. For when
and how had he lost those ten years? In Trenchard's loft, or since, or
partly both? Had he, when he had plunged into the sea a mile out of
Dover, been still twenty-nine, or his present age, or some intermediate
one? If I was to be of service to him it was necessary that I should
know all this.
"Derry," I said, using his name for the first time, "I can't walk all
the way to St Briac and back again. For one thing I'm dressed for a
party. Let's sit down."
There was a warm dry earth-wall with heath and thyme and rest-harrow and
convolvulus growing on it, and there we sat down. Opposite us opened the
marshy gap of Le Port, and every four seconds, every eleven seconds, the
aurora-like Light a dozen miles away was faintly reduplicated in the wet
mud. All was quiet save for the ceaseless rustle of the ragged poplars,
the creeping whisper of the tide.
"Now," I quietly ordered him, "I want you to tell me all the things
you've been leaving out."
At first I thought he was going to behave like an obdurate boy, whose
affairs are hugely important just because they are his. But he seemed to
think better of it. In a hesitating voice he said, "What things?"
"Well, begin with Trenchard's place on Sunday night, the 4th of July.
What happened then?"
His answer was hardly audible. "Yes, it was then."
"How much?"
"The whole lot."
"At one go you dropped from twenty-nine to--what is it now? Twenty?"
"Nineteen or twenty. I don't know. Yes."
"Then nothing's happened since then?"
"No--at least I'm not quite sure."
"Not sure?"
"No. I honestly don't know. There's been a gap somewhere, something I
ought to have come to again, but that somehow I've missed altogether. I
simply can't account for it."
"Explain, Derry."
He seemed hardly to trust his voice. "It's the queerest thing of all,
but I'll swear it on a Bible if you like. You know what it was I funked
more than anything--all those beastly rotten things going to happen all
over again.... Don't let's talk about them. They were all the time like
a nightmare to me, that I was drawing nearer and nearer to all the time.
I tell you, I'd decided to put myself out rather than wallow through all
that again.... Well, I can only tell you I've absolutely skipped it. On
my honour I have. It's the most unaccountable thing, but----" He choked
a little.
"But," I said, deeply pondering, "is it possible to skip a step--_any_
step?"
"I should have said not," he replied. "Beats me altogether. I started on
a dead straight course back, and I fancied I should have to take my
fences as I came to them. But this kink's come, and somehow I've picked
up the thread again clear on the other side of it."
I pondered more gravely still. "Wait a bit. It all happened that Sunday
night, kink and all?"
"Yes."
"That was the night you left my place with Julia Oliphant, said good-bye
to her at Waterloo, and went on to Trenchard's? Did you stick to that
programme?"
"Yes."
("And so," something seemed positively to shout within me, "much good
you've done yourself, Julia Oliphant! Much good you're still plotting!
That gap that he's skipped altogether--that's precisely where you're
setting the man-traps for him, you and your chiffons and your brown
charmeuse and your new willow-leaf shoes! You'd better forget Peggy and
her garters and get back into your nice quiet tea-gowns again!")
But aloud I resumed: "Then, if nothing's happened since that night, that
means that you're now stable--stationary?"
His reply gave me a queer shock. It was in the last word that the shock
lay. "As far as I can make out, sir."
"So you haven't got to move on from pillar to post and one lodging to
another?"
"I've been at St Briac for ten days. And that isn't all," he continued
earnestly. "I can't say for certain, and perhaps it's too soon to talk
about it. So this is touching wood. But I've got a sort of feeling that
if I'm careful and live perfectly quietly--no excitement and going to
bed early, you know--I might be able to stick just like this for a long
time. I know no more about that gap than you do, but it seems to have
cleared the air like a thunderstorm. And when I tell you that I really
intended to put myself out ... oh, how thankful...." But again he
checked himself.
And I too found myself gulping to think that I had so recently wanted to
wash my hands of him. Be rid of him? I knew now that not only should I
never be rid of him, but that never again should I want to. Charming,
innocent, beautiful and grave! I cannot tell you, for I do not know,
what mysterious spiritual thing Julia Oliphant had actually wrought upon
him. I only knew that all that he had so greatly dreaded she had taken
upon herself, and that whatever her portion thenceforward was, his was
complete absolution. "One for the Lord, the other for Azazel"; out into
the wilderness she, the scapegoat, must go; but on him the smell of that
fiercest fire of all had not so much as passed.... And I realised in
that moment that thenceforward he was my charge--yes, my son had I had
one. Must he stay in France? Then I must stay with him. Must he wander?
Then I must wander too. For the rest of his unstable life I must be his
staff and support.
"But I say, sir," he said shyly presently, "about why I dug you out
to-night. I hope you'll say no straight away if you think it's fearful
cheek, but the fact is I must have some more colours, and--well, I've
got a little money in London, but I can't get at it just for the moment.
So I really came to ask you if you could lend me five hundred francs."
This was strange. I shot a swift glance at him as he lay, a rich dark
patch of blouse and corduroys at my side.
"Where," I asked him as steadily as I could, "is your money in London?"
"I have a little there," he said awkwardly.
"How much?"
"I don't quite know, but it's certainly more than five hundred francs."
"Where did it come from?"
Through the clear dark I saw his dusky flush. "I'm sorry. I oughtn't to
have asked you. Never mind."
"Derry," I said, greatly moved, "tell me: are you remembering things
quite properly? You surely haven't forgotten that _I_ have your money?"
"Eh?" he said. The next moment he had tried to cover his quick
confusion. "Eh? Why, of course. What am I thinking of? It did slip my
memory just for the moment; stupid! I'd got it mixed up somehow with
Julia Oliphant. I was going to write to her. I remember, of course. You
sold my furniture. You did sell it, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"How much did it fetch?"
This time it was my turn to evade. "Well, as you say, more than five
hundred francs. I--I haven't totted it up yet. I came away in rather a
hurry. But there's quite a lot, and I can let you have all you want
to-morrow."
"Then that's all right," he said cheerfully.
But I found it anything but all right. On the contrary, it was
profoundly disturbing. If he could forget that he had authorised me to
sell that black oak furniture of his he could forget more vital matters.
Yet he had remembered the furniture when I had urged him.
"Tell me," I said more quietly, "as simply as you can, exactly what you
do and what you don't remember."
"I only forgot it for a moment," he stammered.
"But you did forget it. Can you explain it?"
I felt that his mind laboured, struggled; but I was hardly prepared for
what came next.
"Just let me think for a minute. I want to get to the bottom of it too.
It's a thing I've been watching most carefully, and I give you my word
I remembered everything absolutely clearly up to a couple of hours ago.
I knew all about that furniture when I came to that place for you,
because as I walked along I was trying to work out how much it ought to
amount to. In fact I wasn't coming to borrow at all, but just to ask you
for something on account. Let me think. I got there at exactly at
quarter to ten----"
His fingers were playing with the wild flowers on the earth-wall. In and
out through the whispering poplars the stars peeped. Every four seconds,
every eleven seconds, four times a minute, rose and fell the Light. I
fell to counting the intervals as I waited for his reply. Diamond,
emerald, ruby, twinkled the lights at sea....
Then suddenly he sat up and took a deep breath. I saw his radiant smile.
He faced me with the starlight in his eyes.
"George," he said, "_who was that with you in the garden_?"
IV
For some seconds the stars seemed to go out of the sky. I seemed to be,
not sitting with him on that earth-wall by Le Port gap, but to be
standing again in the drive of Ker Annic, with the glare of a
touring-car thrown up from the ground and Jennie Aird by my side. I
seemed to see again her parted lips, to hear that soft intake of her
breath. And his own face seemed to hang again like a beautiful mask
suspended in the glow.
And when I had descended from my room again I had found him lurking in
the bushes, gazing into the lighted house.
Stars in the night above us! Was that to be the next thing to happen?
Had it happened?
Evidently something had happened, and had happened during the past two
hours.
Then, as I strove to grasp the immense possibility, a deep and hapless
yearning flooded my heart. The loveliness, the loveliness of it had it
been possible! She, with the dreams still unrubbed from her opening
eyes, he a December primrose peeping up anew out of the roots of his
wrecked and fruitless years--they would have been matchlessly coupled.
Had he in truth been my son I could have desired no more for him than
this.
Yet why do I say "had it been possible"? Possible or impossible,
something, whether more beautiful or fatal I could not say, had in fact
happened. Whether to her or not, it had happened to him. How else
explain that treacherous little slip about his money? Up to then his
memory had not failed him. Reticence he had shown, a youthful
unwillingness to talk about himself, but not in order to conceal an
impaired faculty. His account of his movements during the past month had
been slight, but complete enough. One gap only--the Julia gap--he found
unaccountable, and that was no enigma to me.
But was he now on the eve of yet another transformation? Had one look of
eyes into eyes hastened him to another stage? Absolved he was; was he
now to be, not merely absolved, but confirmed in all the beauty and
liberty of that absolution? Consider it as I tried to consider it,
sitting on that thymy earth-wall while Fréhel, like a ghostly clock,
threw those wavering false dawns across the night.
Julia, by her ruthless act, had But Jennie had now seen him
despoiled him of ten years as Julia had seen him more
of his life. than twenty years ago.
That act of hers constituted the But should another gap now come
gap that, try as he would, his heart would understand.
he could not account for.
In some dark and hidden way He was now beautiful, grave,
Julia had taken upon herself innocent and unafraid.
his burden of sin.
Julia, darkly machinating, was But Jennie, as spotless as he,
counting on waylaying him knew nothing of machination.
again, and yet again.
"He _shall_ know what love is; If his question to me meant
why should he get nothing anything, a wonder had happened
out of his life?" Julia had to him not two hours ago.
passionately cried.
On his former pilgrimage he But was Love the wonder now?
had not known Love.
If so, it was Julia's gift when And it was a gift to Jennie.
she had restored his innocence
to him.
But the position was inconceivable, not to be thought of. Experience
such as never man had possessed lurked behind that simulacrum of beauty
by my side. Young as he was, he was old enough to have been Jennie's
father. He was, he still remained, the man who had written _The Hands of
Esau_ and _An Ape in Hell_, the man for whom I had hunted in
questionable London haunts, who had known to the full the sin and shame
of his accumulated years. I knew, Julia knew, what contact with his
ruinous uniqueness meant. How was it possible to permit such an error in
nature as to allow him to fall in love with Jennie Aird?
Yet if he had already done so, what was there to do?
His voice sounded again softly by my side.
"You haven't told me who that was with you in the garden," he said.
"Let's finish with the other things first," I answered.
"Oh, I'm tired of talking about myself, sir."
"That's one of them. Why do you sometimes call me 'sir' and sometimes
'George'?"
He gave a start. "Have I been doing that?"
"Didn't you know?"
I couldn't catch his reply.
"When you were young I suppose you called older men 'sir'?"
"Of course."
"Do you think that at this moment you could repeat, say, half a page of
_The Hands of Esau_?" (I had my reasons for choosing that book rather
than another.)
"I think so."
"Will you try?"
"Shall you know if I'm right?"
"Near enough for the purpose, I think."
He puckered his brows and fixed his eyes on the road. He began to
recite. _The Hands of Esau_ had been written in or before 1912, and the
year was now 1920. To remember even your own book textually eight years
afterwards is something of a performance; but he was remembering, at
nineteen, the words he had written at thirty-eight--a space of nearly
twenty years. I stopped him, satisfied, but he himself immediately took
up the running.
"Of course I see what you're after, but I've done all that myself.
Honour bright, that about the furniture was the first slip of the kind
I've made. But I've made one discovery."
"What's that?"
"You're starting at the wrong end. That memory's all right. It's the
other one I've sometimes wondered about."
"Ah! The one you call your 'B' Memory! Do you mean--it sounds an odd way
of putting it, but I suppose it's all right--do you mean you don't
remember what sort of thing you'll be doing, say, next year?"
"Not very clearly, George. Sometimes that seems an absolutely unknown
adventure. And sometimes it's like that queer feeling--I expect you know
it--that you've been somewhere before, or done something before, or
heard the same thing before. It lasts for a second, and then it's gone."
"Do you think it will continue like that?"
"I've stopped thinking about it."
"That page you repeated just now. That wasn't a stock page you--keep in
rehearsal, so to speak?"
"No, that was pukka."
I considered my next question carefully. But there was no avoiding it;
it had to be put. I watched him deliberately.
"Now tell me one other thing. Do you ever remember hearing or writing
these words: '_Je tâche de me débrouiller de ces souvenirs-ci?_'"
Poor, poor lad! He winced as if I had cut at him with a lash. He turned
over on the bank so that I could not see his face. He made no response
when I placed my hand on his shoulder. My heart ached for him ... but he
had to be shown that any question of love between himself and Jennie
Aird was impossible.
I shook him. "_Do_ you remember that, Derry?"
Slowly he sat up on the bank. He turned a set face on me.
"Let me say, Coverham," he said tremulously, "that I went through a
whole war without seeing as cowardly a thing as that done. I will not
forgive you."
And with barely a moment's pause he broke out:
"Oh, what am I to do, sir, what am I to do? You're older and wiser than
I am--I want help--advice----"
* * * * *
That is why I have called this portion of his history "The Long Splice."
Extremes as wide apart as those met there and interwove their strands.
Fortunate it was for me that they did, for had not that last helpless
cry been wrung from him I should have been dumb before the bitterness of
his reproach. Whether memories of sweetness and light were failing him
or not, those of bitterness and gall remained, and it was on this
quivering complexity of exposed nerves that I had laid the lash.
And yet simultaneously he was innocent, assoiled, acquitted. Only the
man he had been had groaned under the stroke; the other had turned to me
for comfort and guidance and help. And what is a remembered self that we
should weep for it? What is memory that we should writhe? No philosopher
has yet ventured to write "I remember, therefore I am." Nor does a man
remember entirely and wholly of his own will. He is his memory's lord
when he sets himself to repeat a passage from a book; but who is the
master when something leaps upon him without warning from the past,
tears open an old wound, and leaves him quivering and bleeding?...
Derry's "A" Memory now seemed to me to be beside the mark, and it was
with a sudden joy that I recognised it to be a boon that his "B" Memory
was dissolving into a golden haze. "An absolutely unknown adventure," he
had said; and what better, more merciful, more beautiful? As the Great
Pity hides other men's ends from them, so his beginning was to be hidden
from him. No remembrance of disillusion would mar for him the bloom of
his fair discoveries. What though seas were sailed before if you know it
not? Are the garden's scents less fragrant that you wonder, for a
fleeting instant, when you have smelt them before? And what of the kiss
of your mouth when that kiss is both an undoing and a re-beginning, the
end of one dream but the beginning of a lovelier still? What Julia had
done once Jennie would do again, and I had only to think of his
innocence, his beauty and his doom to know, more surely than I ever knew
anything in my life, that this would a thousandfold transcend the other.
And--supposing that it had already happened, implicit in that single
revealing look--_he had still to sleep that night_.
I forget in what words he began to plead his cause. His idea was this:
He conceived himself to be now stationary, or, if moving at all, to be
doing so hardly perceptibly. Ignorant of the connection between Julia's
attack and his putting-off of the years, he knew as little that similar
results might follow what had happened in the garden of Ker Annic that
evening. He would "hang on" by gentle and equable living, and to that
extent, and if all went well, time might presently become to him
something more nearly approaching what it was to anybody else. He even
hazarded a suggestion wild enough to make the hair stand up on your
head.
"And if I got as far as that," he mused, his eyes straight before him in
the night, "I might even--it's no madder than anything else--I might
even start living forward again; but I suppose that's too much to
expect," he sighed.
On this I simply refused to make any comment at all.
I had told him that Jennie was the daughter of my host. He was for
making plain sailing of it. His outbreak about my cowardice, by the way,
had been disregarded by both of us.
"But don't you see, Derry, you're so unimaginably different from anybody
and everybody else," I repeated for the tenth time.
"Not if I can stop decently still," was his dogged reply.
"But you don't know yet that you can."
"You don't know that I can't, sir."
I couldn't enter into that. If I had ever intended to do so the time for
it would have been on that Sunday afternoon behind the rugosa roses.
"You actually mean that you want me to take you to the house, and
introduce you to Mrs Aird, and open up the way to--God knows what?" I
demanded incredulously.
"You offered to introduce me to Mrs Aird once before."
"I offered to introduce the man I then knew."
"Am I any worse now?"
"There's no question of better or worse. A thing can be done or it
can't, and this can't."
"Do you mean because of my clothes and my being a Frenchman and all
that?"
"I mean, simply, your being Derwent Rose. And I don't know that the
other things are quite as simple as they look either."
"But I'm English really. And I've got a decent suit of English clothes."
"Do they fit you--or did they merely do so once?"
At this he became almost cross. "Look here, sir," he said, "when
everything's said I _am_ me, and I feel pretty sure I can stop as I am.
Dash it, I _am_ on the blessed map! I'm quite a passable nineteen as
fellows go, and the rest's all rubbishy detail." Then his manner
changed. His voice suddenly shook. "You see, I'm--I'm--I'm in it,
George. Regularly for it. Just as deep as--oh, deep and lovely! I
didn't know there was such a thing. There wasn't, not before.... Not
just to speak to her? Not just to see her? Not if I promise faithfully
not to say a single word about it, not even touch her finger? Not if I
promise to cut and run at the very first sign of a change? Can't you
manage that, sir? Am I such a rotten outcast as all that? It would be
quite safe--I wouldn't say a word anybody couldn't hear--I'd promise--on
my soul I'd promise----"
I had got up and begun to pace agitatedly back and forth. How could I
have him at the Airds'--and yet how resist his supplication? How refuse
what would have been my very heart's desire for him--yet how grant it to
the ruin of her young life as well as of his? I felt his eyes on my
face. He knew, the rascal, that he had moved me, and was greedily
looking for the faintest hint of my yielding. Yet the impossibility!...
I stopped before him.
"There's one thing that settles it if nothing else did," I said gently.
"Miss Aird's probably off in a couple of days."
It was, of course, a flagrant invention. I had thought of it on the spur
of the moment. But it could be made true if necessary, I thought. He
stared at me blankly.
"Off! Did you say off?"
"Right away. And it's now nearly two o'clock, and I want you to make me
a promise before I leave you."
"Off!" he repeated stupidly, as if he had imagined her fixed for all
eternity as he had seen her in that moment by the car.
"I'll bring your money round to-morrow at ten o'clock. I want you to
promise to wait in your room for me till then."
"Where is she going?"
"Will you wait in your room till I come?"
"Back to England?"
"I don't know. Will you wait for me in your room?"
"Tell me one other thing, sir," he pleaded; "just her name----"
"Her name's Jennie."
He received it as if it had been a costly gift. "Jennie, Jennie----" he
breathed softly.
"You'll wait for me?"
"Of course, sir. Thank you, George."
"Then I'll say----"
But I could not get out the words "Good night."
How did I know what the night was going to be for him?
For it happened in the night....
I left him standing by the earth-wall, with the lights still twinkling
at sea and the low glare of Fréhel in the sky behind him. Four seconds,
eleven seconds, four times a minute----
"Jennie!" I heard his hushed, rapt voice as I turned away.
V
"_Le_ Por-r-rt! _Le_ Por-r-rt!"
Only an old woman with white streamers and a basket descended from the
tram, but instinctively I turned my head to look at the flowery bank on
which I had sat so few hours before. It was a sparkling morning, with an
intense blue sky, high white clouds and singing larks. The fields of
flowering sarrasin were white, cream, pink, deep russet; and far away
the grey-green boscage receded into misty blue, unbroken by walls or
fences, that contradictory communal undulation of a country where
individualism is at its most intense, holdings small, and a ditch or a
bank you could stride over fencing enough. But I was too anxious to be
able to admire. At the best it looked as if I should have to assume
complete responsibility for him and so cut my visit to the Airds
abruptly short. At the worst--but I put the worst from me.
"Allez! Roulez!"
With the sound of a tank going into action the tram clattered forward to
St Lunaire.
Up the steep street, and a swerve past the acres of tennis-courts that
had once been grass. The huge six-acre cage was already full of
players, and I thought of Jennie Aird. Then past the magasins and the
long café, with half-clad young Frenchmen punting a ball and walking on
their hands in the strip of meadow opposite. The Casino, the hotels, and
then a steep planted avenue that seemed to end in the air. Then a rush
and another swerve, and out on to the wide expanse of tussocky links,
grey and fawn sandhills, and turf gemmed with a myriad tiny flowers.
His hotel was within a biscuit's-toss of the terminus. It stood by the
roadside, and its front consisted of a built-out structure of glass,
within which a couple of Breton girls with tight hair, string-soled
shoes, and the physique of middle-weight boxers, were laying a dozen
small tables for _déjeuner_. A lad dressed precisely as Derry had been
dressed was delivering lifebuoys of bread, and knives clattered in
baskets, and two-foot-high stacks of coloured plates were being carried
in.
"M'sieu' Arnaud?" I inquired of one of the string-slippered Amazons.
"M'sieu' n'est pas déscendu--si vour voulez monter au deuxième,
M'sieu'."
She indicated a way through the back salon that had once been the street
frontage. Beyond yawned a cavernous kitchen, the blacker because of its
opening on to a dazzlingly green back yard. Between the two rose a
staircase, which a strapping youth was polishing with a mop on his foot.
I mounted and gained the _deuxième_. Then, outside the closed door, I
stopped with a thumping heart.
But it was no good hesitating. I pulled myself together and knocked.
"_----trez!_" called a clear voice.
I thanked God, pushed and entered.
His head was bent over his colour-box. On a piece of paper he appeared
to be making a list of the colours to be replenished. He looked
smilingly up, and our eyes met.
Clear eyes, grave sweet mouth, undoubting smile----
And unchanged. The night had passed, and nothing perceptible had
happened. I crossed to the window. Now that all was well, I dare to
admit to myself that I had been prepared to find him--dead. If he was
right in fixing his climacteric at sixteen he might well have been dead.
But there he was, bending over his colour-box and murmuring "Cobalt--I
seem to eat cobalt--raw sienna--orange vermilion----"
Presently I spoke, still from the window.
"Well, I don't know anything about downstairs, but you've a gorgeous
view up here."
"Isn't it?" he said. "Grows on you. At first I thought it rather
scrappy, a little bit of everything, and I wish they'd put a bomb under
that silly château-place; but it grows on you. Inland's the country
though. Orange vermilion, pale cadmium, and a double go of cobalt----"
I looked round his room. The smell of oil-colours clung about it, but it
was exquisitely tidy and simple. Its walls were covered with a yellowish
striped paper, its ceiling beams were moulded, its herring-boned parquet
floor shone. A single mat lay by the side of his ornate wooden bedstead,
which, with the little night cupboard by it, a small table at the
window, and a single upholstered chair, was the only furniture in the
room. The door-knob was of glass, and the lace curtains had been draped
back over the open leaves of the window. From a flimsy little hat-rack
hung his two haversacks. His canvases apparently were in the cupboard
that was sunk into the wall.
"Well," he said, putting his list of colours into his pocket, "it seems
rather a rum idea bringing you right out here when I've got to go into
Dinard myself. Can I have the money, George?"
I counted it out.
"And oh, by the way--I know you won't mind--but if you'd talk French
when there's anybody about--it makes things a bit simpler----"
Here I began to be aware of the imminence of another problem. I don't
mean the talking French; I mean the whole problem of his company. He was
going into Dinard to buy colours, and I also was returning to Dinard.
The natural thing was that we should go together. I could hardly
constitute myself his guardian and not be seen about with him--bargain
with him that he only came to me or I to him like Nicodemus, by night.
He seemed to take all this cheerfully for granted.
But whither would it presently lead? Dinard was, in a word, the
world--that world in which he had no place. Everybody knew scores of
people in Dinard, and Madge Aird hundreds. Tennis, tea, the shops, the
plage--all was public, familiar, open in the last degree. Within a
couple of days, on the strength of being seen twice or thrice with me,
he would be exchanging bows and smiles and "Bonjours" with goodness
knows who.
"Well, come along," I said in a sort of daze. "But I don't know that I
feel like talking much, either in French or English. You're a devil of a
fellow for keeping your friends guessing, Monsieur Arnaud. You're still
Monsieur Arnaud, I suppose?"
"How can I change it?" he replied gravely.
Of course he couldn't change it. Arnaud he must remain until he became
too young to be Arnaud any longer.
On the returning tram I addressed myself somewhat as follows:
"George Coverham, this can't go on. You've got to make up your mind one
way or the other. If you don't he'll make it up for you. His is already
made up. He sees no reason why he shouldn't carry on. He's either right
or wrong. Well, suppose for a moment that he's right? What then?
"You know what you were prepared for when you went up those stairs of
his. You know you had to put your hand up three times before you dared
knock. Well, everything was all right; nothing had happened. If he's
really suddenly and desperately in love it ought to have happened, but
anyway it didn't. That means, in plain English, that he knows more about
himself than you do.
"And he thinks he can stay as he is. Suppose he can? Suppose even that
maddest conjecture of all is true, and that he actually may re-become
normal and live out his life like everybody else? It wouldn't be any
more wonderful than the rest. So what's the obvious thing to do? Why,
simply to take him as he is--as long as he is it. That's all he's asking
you. And he's promised to clear out at the very first hint of another
transformation. In fact he's got to. It's in the very nature of the
case.
"Look at him on the seat opposite to you there, between those two
bare-headed young women. Those two Breton girls may keep their four
handsome Breton eyes straight before them, but they're conscious of
every moment of his presence. Who wouldn't be? He's a dream of beauty.
And remember how he pleaded with you last night. Can't you hear him
still? 'Only to see her, only to talk to her: can't you manage that,
sir? Can't you, George?' Was ever gratitude more touching and absurd
than when you merely told him her name--'Jennie!' Why shouldn't he have
the love now he missed before? Julia Oliphant didn't stop to think twice
about it. Who made you Rhadamanthus, George Coverham?... Anyway, you've
got to make up your mind."
I told myself all this, and more; but I cannot say I convinced myself.
Indeed, in the face of past experience, I made the mistake of once more
thinking I had a choice in the matter. I thought that I possessed him,
and not he me. So I floundered among details, little practical details,
such as talking French to him and being seen about Dinard with him. I
recalled how already Madge Aird had asked whether he had a brother. I
seemed to see Alec's face when he was told that a Frenchman had fallen
in love with his daughter, my own as I explained that the Frenchman was
not really a Frenchman, and Alec's again as he asked me what the devil I
meant. Then there was his name--Arnaud. That again landed us straight
into a dilemma. He couldn't change it, must stop Arnaud; but as Arnaud
the athlete he had been seen at Ambleteuse. The brother of some young
Rugby or young Charterhouse at that moment in Dinard (the words seemed
to detach themselves from the noisy babble of a teashop) had seen him.
He might be recognised here; people do look twice at a casual stranger
who strolls into a Stade, chucks off his coat, and in his walking boots
does something like level time. He looked it, too, every inch of him....
And whispers might be flying round Dover too. The straits are not very
wide, and men who can swim them do not come down with every shower of
rain.... Oh, the whole thing bristled with risks. I counted a hundred of
them while the tram rolled in its cloud of filthy smoke past La
Guériplais, La Fourberie, St Enogat, the Rue de la Gare....
"Dévoiturons," he said suddenly, touching my knee.
He had taken matters into his own hands even while I had mused. I had
intended to postpone my decision by dropping off at St Enogat; now we
were at the corner of the Boulevard Féart. "Down we get!" _We!_
Apparently "we" could get to "our" colour shop without making the
circuit of the rest of the town. I will not swear that I saw a momentary
twinkle of mischief in his eyes. I was standing in the middle of the
road looking after the tram, which was already fifty yards away.
Together a middle-aged English gentleman in a neat lounge suit and a
splendid young specimen of French manhood in blouse and corduroys turned
into the Boulevard Féart.
There would still have been time to retrieve my indecision. The
Boulevard, approached from that end of the town, is not nearly so
frequented as the Rue Levavasseur and the quarter near the Casino. It
was, in fact, particularly quiet. But every step we took under the shady
limes, past the white-façaded houses and gardens vermilion with
geraniums and bluer than the sky with lobelia, brought us nearer to that
crowded busy world in which he held so singular a place. Or I could have
left him at the corner of the Rue Jacques Cartier and made my escape by
way of the Rue St Enogat. But what then? If I shook him off to-day the
question would be to face again to-morrow.... Ker Yvonne, Ker Maria, Ker
Loïc ... the shuttered villas slipped past us.
Then, "Derry," I said in desperation, "I'm at my wits' end about you. I
haven't the faintest idea what I ought to do."
"It's jolly just being with you," he said, looking straight ahead.
"Yes. It's other people who're the difficulty."
I had the same answer as before. "As long as I sit tight, George?" he
said mildly.
"Even then. You said yourself that you were both the most public and the
most private man alive."
"Ah, but that was when I was slipping about all over the place.--Up
here's our shop."
"But even if you're stationary you're just as much an anomaly. Nobody
except you stops at one age."
"Well, it's a step in the right direction so to speak. At any rate it
isn't going back."
"I wish I knew how you knew that."
"I wish I could tell you, old fellow," he placidly replied.
"Look here," I said abruptly. "There's just one possible way out, but I
rather doubt whether you'd agree to it. I mean about what you wanted me
to do last night. Would you allow me to tell the whole thing to my
friends the Airds and leave the decision to them?"
Quickly, very quickly, he shook his head. "No, I'm afraid I couldn't do
that."
"But is anything else fair and right?"
"If I stop as I am?"
"In any case."
"They wouldn't believe you."
"I think Mrs Aird might believe me."
He gave a short laugh. "She can swallow a good deal if she can swallow
that!"
"She's a very observant woman. She said one thing that perhaps I ought
to tell you."
"What?" he asked with sudden curiosity.
"She saw you one day in South Kensington."
"Well?"
"She'd also had a good look at you that day at the Lyonnesse Club."
"Well?"
"She asked me whether Derwent Rose had a brother."
"Et vous avez répondu?"
"J'ai dit que non."
"C'était la figure? La taille?"
"Le tout ensemble."
"Elle avait des conjectures? Pas possible!"
"Comme vous le dîtes, pas possible; mais s'ils poussent sur le Rosier
trop de boutons----"
"Il n'y-en poussera plus," he laughed; and the little knot of French
people passed us by.
He made light of my recital. I heard his quiet chuckle. Then suddenly I
realised that we were at the corner of the Rue Levavasseur, outside the
Hôtel de Provence.
"Look here, haven't we passed your shop?" I said.
"Eh? Have we? By Jove, so we have. That's the charm of your
conversation, George."
"Then hadn't we better go back?"
"Of course we must; it's the only colour shop in the place. But just
step across the road now that we are here. I want some tooth-powder. And
some envelopes at the Bazaar there. Must have some--run right out
yesterday."
We crossed to a chemist's, but it appeared that he usually went to a
chemist's a little farther down the street. There he made his purchases,
and once more we came out into the street.
"Now I want some bootlaces," he said. "You see, I always load up when I
come into Dinard. Saves time, not to speak of the tram-fare."
It was approaching a brilliant midday, and from the Tennis Club, the
shops, the confectioners, and the cafés, people were beginning to press
to their various hotels and villas to lunch. In another half-hour the
street would be half empty, but now it was at its gayest with bright
blazers, gaudy costumes, sleek heads, sea-browned faces. One saw
laughing, turning heads, caught snatches of appointments--"À ce
soir"--"Don't forget, Blanche"--"Number Four at two-thirty"--"You coming
our way, Suzette?"
Suddenly my arm was seized, and M. Arnaud took a quick step forward.
"Thees ou-ay," he said laughingly, "des enveloppes----"
I was dragged into the Bazaar.
Then, but too late, I wondered what his so pressing need of envelopes
was. "Must have some--ran right out yesterday!" Who were _his_
correspondents? Of what did _his_ letter-bag consist? Letters, he! A
passport and a birth-certificate would have been more to the point; a
_permis de séjour_ and his Army Discharge Papers would have been more to
the point. And most to the point of all was that the rascal had
completely hoodwinked me.
For, standing there among hoops and grace-sticks, string shoes and cards
of bijouterie, caoutchouc bathing-caps and all the one-franc-fifty
fal-lals of the Bazaar, alone and for the moment with her back to us,
was Jennie Aird.
VI
This time if he wanted French he had it--off the ice.
"Touché--et merci, Monsieur. Bonjour."
I bowed, stepped forward, and placed myself between him and Jennie. I
touched her elbow.
"I saw you come in. Are you nearly ready? We shall be late."
I was the angrier that it was with myself that I was chiefly angry.
Jennie, giving me only the tail of her glance, turned to her choice of a
bathing-cap again--the yellow one or the green one. My back was towards
Rose, but I heard a saleswoman step up to him.
"Rien, merci--j'attends M'sieur," he said.
Jennie too heard, and turned.
There was no atmosphere of soft and factitious half-illumination now.
This was the full blaze of a perfect August midday, that flooded the
shop with sunshine and made a dazzle of Jennie's little white hat with
the cord about it, of the burnished hair beneath. The sleeves of her
white frock were cut short above the dimple of her elbow, the tiny blue
ribbon across her shoulders peeped through. She in her sunny white, he
in black vareuse and corduroys brown as a wintry coppice, again stood
looking one at the other.
And for the second time within the course of a sun I saw the world begin
anew, as it begins anew for some he, for some she, with every moment
that passes. For the beginning of the cradle is not the real beginning.
That is only the end of the darkness of forebeing that is pierced with a
woman's pang. That is still an uneasy slumber, yea, even though it
weakly smile, and by and by stumble over its syllables, and stumble over
its own uncertain feet, and walk, and spell, and use a tennis-racket. It
is incomplete, and will never be complete in itself. It is completed in
that moment when its eyes open on other eyes, and the wonder kindles
there, and the ground underfoot is forgotten, and the surrounding
sunlight is forgotten, and nothing is remembered except that those eyes
have found their other-own eyes, and, though they lose them again in
that same instant, never to see them again, will remember them in the
hour when the shadow closes over all. That, that re-begins the cycle, is
our real beginning. It was that which, in that tawdry Bazaar, turned the
golden sunlight to a nimbus about us.
Again I touched her.
"The yellow one, is it? Let me put it in my pocket."
I had secured her arm. I picked up for her the horrible fifty-centime
notes of her change. She had dropped her eyes, and her face was as
rich-coloured as her lips, her lips a pulpy quiver. I felt the touch of
Derry's hand on my sleeve, but I disregarded it. I felt bitterly towards
him.
"Come along, my dear," I said; and I pushed her past him.
Yet if, as he had said, he wished merely to see her, merely to speak
with her, he had half his wish in that moment. Her left arm was in my
right one, I between her and him. Suddenly, blush or no blush, she
lifted her head. Behind me, she looked full at him. For two, three paces
her head and shoulders continued to turn. I set my lips and looked
straight ahead.
Then her head dropped again. Her teeth caught at her upper lip. For a
moment she was a limp weight on my arm. We left the shop.
I saw his face at the window as we passed. Whether or not he stepped to
the door to watch us out of sight I do not know.
I say that it was with myself that I was chiefly angry; but I have never
found that a particularly mollifying reflection. As I have seen a man
get rid of an undesired guest by blandly pressing him to stay but
leading him gently by the arm all the time nearer to the door, so our
young man had used me. I had been piloted here, there, in whichever
direction he had wished. And as for Jennie's long backward look and turn
of the head ... well, it seemed to me that the thing might now be
regarded as done. It did not need me to murmur "Jennie, this is M.
Arnaud--Miss Aird." The back door into Alec Aird's jealously-guarded
house was set ajar, and I, the only one who could have watched it, had
failed to do so. I frowned, watching her white-clad feet moving on the
sunny pavement. I avoided looking at her face. I knew that she equally
avoided looking at mine.
Of one thing I was perfectly sure: she would not of her own accord speak
of the young man we had just left. Perhaps it was that there are some
things which, unless you out with them at once, become more and more
difficult with every moment that passes. Many a close secret was not a
secret at all in the beginning; it merely became one. Therefore she was
already showing obstinacy. She knew that I knew about that look. She had
looked openly, deliberately, as careless of my presence as if I had not
been there. And in that critical moment it was a toss-up what my
relations with my friend's seventeen-years-old daughter were to be. She
might, suddenly and swiftly, break into an emotional confession. On the
other hand she might thenceforward bear me an unspoken grudge that I
knew anything about her affairs at all.
I noticed that she carried no tennis racket. I therefore asked her, as
we crossed the emptying Place du Commerce, whether she had left it at
the Club.
"No," she said.
"Haven't you been playing this morning?"
"No."
"Too tired after the party last night?"
"No."
"I was wondering--but I suppose you've far more amusing things to do
than to come for a walk with me this afternoon."
In those few words the whole situation trembled as in a balance. If she
said Yes, much might follow; if No, then resentment would be my portion.
We continued to ascend the high-walled street, past tall garden gates
and notice-boards--"A Vendre," "Locations," "Agence Boutin." We passed
Beausejour, Primavera, Les Cyclamens....
Then for the first time she looked sideways at me.
"I should like to," she said.
I was still angry with myself and him. He was probably right in refusing
the only definite suggestion I had found to make, namely, that he should
permit me to tell my host and hostess the whole story. But if his
alternative was to lie in wait for her in the streets and shops of a
French summer resort and to hang about the open windows of the house at
night, I felt very strongly about it. He was going to be wily and
masterful, was he? He, swaying on a tightrope of time, was going to
claim the treatment of a normal man? Well, that remained to be seen. The
cold shoulder for a day or two might bring him to a more reasonable
view. Anyway, after our encounter in the Bazaar, he could hardly pretend
not to know my mind.
And yet (I asked myself as my anger began to wear itself out), who can
know the mind of a man who does not know his own? More, when was
anything that mattered ever settled by chop-logic of the sort that set
my head spinning? Why, his brilliant beauty alone laughed to nothing all
my attempts to get him off my mind. And suddenly my mind flashed back,
back, it seemed interminable years back. There sprang up in my memory a
lecture I had once attended at the Society of Arts, a cutting I had
taken from an article in _The Times_.
"Human beings," said the article, "differ not only in the
knowledge they have acquired, but in their dower of intelligence
or natural ability. The latter has a maximum for each individual,
attained early in life. Sixteen years has usually been taken as
the age at which, even in those best endowed, the limit of
intelligence has been reached."
Say that this was so; whither did it now lead?
A staggering vista to open before a middle-aged-to-elderly gentleman
like myself, on his way to luncheon at a _riant_ holiday villa with a
moody and beautiful young creature of seventeen by his side!
For it seemed to me to lead like a ray straight into the blinding heart
of the Sun of Life. The mind blinked in its attempt to follow it; I
believe I actually passed my hand over my eyes as if to shut out a
physical dazzling. I have said a little, a very little, about Derwent
Rose's books; but how if they, foursquare and strongly-built as they
were, were merely external things, well enough in their way, but clogged
in the gross and unwieldy medium through which his central fire and
power torturedly struggled? How if a more essential beauty should
presently appear, free of these trammels of process, independent of
acquirement and painful lore, dissociated from performance--shining,
self-sufficient, its mere existence its own justification and law?
"Every morning of my life," he had once said, "I've tried to wake up as
if that was the first day of the world." Was he now on the way to his
fulfilment? Was that first morning actually about to dawn for him? Was
an early sun about to rise on a creature _not_ ready-made, _not_
pre-instructed, unfettered by the prejudice of a single word, but man
given to all understanding, man at the moment of his perfection, man
liberated, and without a name or foothold in the human world?
A pretty speculation, I say, for a humdrum old gentleman going home to
luncheon!
Luncheon over, I took a liqueur with Alec in the pergola. The lattice of
shadow flecked the ascending smoke from his pipe.
"By the way, what became of you last night? You didn't go on to the
Casino, did you?" he said.
"No. I took a walk."
"I heard you come in. The others had only just gone to bed. And of
course Jennie was dog-tired and went upstairs with a headache."
"Well, she's coming for a walk with me this afternoon."
"Then for goodness' sake take her somewhere quiet. It isn't my idea of a
holiday that you have to take a rest-cure after it."
I laughed. "I'll look after her. But when I'm with Jennie I like as many
people as possible to see me with Jennie."
"Then tell her that and shake her out of herself, you old humbug. Hanged
if I'd trust her with you if you were a few years younger."
"You'll have to trust her with somebody presently."
"Plenty of time for that yet," Alec grunted. "I've got my eye on it all
right.... Well, if you're going out I'm going to have forty of the best.
Watch me fade away----"
He proceeded to "fade away," while the shadows crept over the ascending
smoke from his pipe on the table.
On this occasion, however, I was content to forego my pride in being
seen with Jennie by my side. Just a quiet cliff-path not too far away
would do. There is much to be said for a quiet cliff-path when a young
woman feels the first sweet trouble at her heart.
I left the completely faded-away Alec as I heard her step at the door of
the house. She looked me straight in the eyes, as if it would be at my
peril did I notice anything the matter with her own pebble-grey ones. We
passed out, took the steep secluded lane towards the tea-cabin above St
Enogat plage, and then descended the hewn steps to the shore. It is a
tiny plage, remarkably steep, bordered with villas that resemble their
own bathing-tents, and with a path that winds up the rocks beyond. We
did not speak as we crossed the plage and began to climb.
Along that deeply indented coast you do a lot of walking for the
distance forrader you get, and also a good deal of up-and-down round
rocky gulfs with the bottle-green water heaving lazily below. But over
the seaward walls of villa and château peep valerian and fig, and the
path is coral-sprinkled with pimpernel and enamelled with convolvulus
and borage and the hosts of smaller flowers. Away ahead the demi-tower
of a sea-mark rose chalk-white against the deep blue, with the airy
point of St Lunaire beyond. We approached a small field of marguerites,
so eagerly open to the afternoon sun that at a short distance they were
not white at all, but pale honey-yellow with the offering of their
golden hearts. Poppies flamed among them, and the cigales crackled like
ceaselessly-running insect machinery. From the cliff's foot came the
lazy breaking of the waves. That, I thought, was quite a pleasant place.
Even Alec would have approved of it. We sat down between the staring
marguerites and the sea.
I do not wish to speak of Jennie in a fatherly or avuncular manner. One
had better not have been born than not be simple with the heart of a
young girl. At the faintest trace of a smile it will close against you
for ever, and wonder follows wonder so quickly over it that it will be a
long time before you get your second chance. So do not tell it that it
will think differently about things to-morrow. It is you who will think
differently to-morrow if you do. I say in all sincerity that, in that
long pause between my asking Jennie to come for a walk with me and her
acceptance, I had felt a suspense as real as any I ever felt. If that
pivotal moment on which the oncoming generation turns is not to be
gravely considered, I know of no other moment that need greatly trouble
us.
So I listened to the treble of the cigales and the soft deep bass of the
sea, and the silence continued between us. She picked and nibbled
florets of clover, her eyes far away. Her gaze wandered to butterflies,
to a lizard that disappeared with a glint of bronze into a cranny, to a
ladybird that alighted on her forearm.
Then the largest tear I have ever seen brimmed, trickled and dropped.
On leaving the house she had dared me to notice anything about her eyes;
but it is another matter when a tear so engulfs a ladybird that it is a
question whether the creature's pretty wing-cases will ever be the same
again. I had to speak after that.
"Cheer up, Jennie," I said softly.
She gulped. "Why were you so horrid and cross with him!"
"This morning in the shop?"
"Yes."
"Well ... I fancied he'd played me rather a mean trick."
"He didn't!" she flashed. "I'm sure he wouldn't do anything mean!"
"Then say a trick I didn't expect from him."
"I heard him tell the woman in the shop he was waiting for you, and--and
you walked straight past him without looking at him!"
"It might have been better if you'd done the same, Jennie."
"Did he come to fetch you out last night?"
"I took him out."
"Is he the--the Monsieur Arnaud the maid meant?"
"That's the name he goes by."
"Isn't it his name?"
"I suppose it is."
"Then why do you say it like that?... I want you to tell me about him,
Uncle George, please," she ordered me.
I too wanted to do that; but I found it anything but simple. I might
have told her that he was simply a vagrant, just a fellow who wandered
about sketching, here to-day and gone to-morrow. That would have been
perfectly true. But it would have been equally untrue. That was no
picture of Derry. She had seen a far, far truer picture of him when she
had turned her head towards him in the toyshop.
"Well, of course that _is_ why I asked you to come for a walk this
afternoon, Jennie," I said slowly. "As a matter of fact M'sieur Arnaud's
had a very curious experience that I can't very well tell you about. The
result of this is that he's--a rather odd sort of person to know. In
fact he's better not known. He wanted me to introduce him to your
mother, and I told him I'd rather not do so. Anyway he's going away
soon."
"That doesn't sound like a horrid sort of person," she commented. "Is
that why he came last night--to be introduced to mother?"
"No, he came for something quite different last night."
"What?"
Here again I might have answered with a certain appearance of truth that
he had come for money, though it was his own money; but that too would
be to misrepresent him. The cigales crackled loudly. I suppose the
ladybird was all right again, for it was nowhere to be seen. I mused,
and then turned to her.
"You said yesterday that you wished you were back in England, Jennie," I
said. "How would you like to come and stay with me in Surrey for a bit?"
"No thank you, Uncle George. Thank you very much."
"It's quite jolly there in its way, and I dare say I could get somebody
quite nice to be with you."
"I should like to some day, of course," she said, "but not just now, if
you don't think it horrid of me." And she added, "I love being here."
"Since yesterday?"
She did not reply.
Of course I had not expected for a moment that she would say Yes, even
had I made up my own mind to abandon Derry to his fate, which I had not
done. Yet a thought flashed into my mind. Were I to return to England,
taking Jennie with me, Derry would still not be unlooked-after. The
moment I left, Julia Oliphant, I felt certain, would fly to his side.
And if Jennie would not come with me, what would the impossible
combination be then?... My half-formed thought became a sudden picture,
a contrast, vivid and arresting, between two women--the one who
experimented with her dress and wanted to know what a cocktail tasted
like, the other this fragrant hawthorn-bough by my side. And between the
two rose his grave and sunbrowned face....
I stared at my picture, fascinated. The three of them together!
Exquisite and horrible complication! Suppose it should ever come to
that!
Then the picture vanished, and I saw the translucent untwinkling sea.
The roofs of distant St Lunaire made a pale cluster of brightness. The
wind rippled the edges of the satiny poppies.
All at once she clutched my sleeve with both her hands and buried her
face against it. It broke, the storm that had been pent up for nearly
twenty hours. As the marguerites exposed their yearning golden hearts,
so she kept nothing back, laid bare her own heart to the sun that was
its lord.
"Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do! I can't bear it; it's
too--too--oh, tell me what to do, Uncle George! I know he's my darling!
I don't want to live without him! If he goes away I don't know what will
happen! It's all since yesterday--I didn't sleep a wink--I went out into
the garden when they'd all gone and stood in the same place. Then I
heard father moving about and hid.... And then this morning when you
were horrid to him--no, you weren't horrid, dear Uncle George--I know
it's all a stupid mistake--I love him! I don't care if he doesn't speak
a word of English. I want him here now! I want to be with him! Please,
please introduce him to mother. She loves French people. And he did ask
you to, so he can't be horrid. I'm sure he didn't mean to play you a
mean trick. There must be a mistake. I'm sure he can explain if you'll
let him. Dear, dear Uncle George--do, do!"
I put my hand on her hat, which was as much of her as I could see.
"Don't look at me, please--I don't want to move for just a minute."
"As long as you like, my dear."
"Oh, I'll do anything if you only will! Where is he staying? I never saw
him in Dinard before. Where is he staying? Does he live here all the
time? I could see him if you came too, couldn't I? And I don't care what
sort of clothes he wears ... do, do, Uncle George!"
Then she straightened herself, and looked full at me through her flooded
eyes. She was suddenly imperious.
"Now tell me something else, please. When you went off with him last
night. Did he say anything about me?"
Perhaps I did not lie with sufficient promptitude. "About you? No, of
course not."
She looked accusingly at me; she caught her breath.
"Oh, how _can_ you say that! I don't believe it! He did!"
"But he couldn't even see you in the dark!"
"It wasn't dark--it wasn't a _bit_ dark--it was quite light enough to
see anybody--_you_ saw him----"
"Well, he's going away, and there's an end of it."
Like a rainbow was the light that woke in her lately showering eyes. Up
went the soft lip, out peeped the pearls. Back, back from their golden
hearts lay the petals of the marguerites.
"If," she said with extreme slowness, "if he told you he was going away,
that must have been last night."
I was dumb. I saw her effort to close her inner eyes on the light that
broke on them, lest a wonder on a wonder should prove more than she
could bear.
"That was _last night_!" the triumphant words rang out.
I suppose there is no such thing as one half of a miracle without the
other----
"That was _last night_, and there hadn't _been_ a this morning then, and
he hadn't seen me when I was buying my bathing-cap, and if he said he
was going away he's changed his mind and he isn't going away at all!
Neither of us is going away! Oh-h-h!" (That "Oh" echoes in my heart
still.) "He isn't even thinking of going now! Because we both know
now--we knew in the shop--and he loves me too!"
Just to see one another--just to speak to one another--that was all they
asked of me.
PART II
THE EVEN KEEL
I
That evening I sat in Ker Annic, alone. Alec and Madge had gone out for
an after-dinner walk, taking a silent Jennie with them. Silent too had
been our return along the cliff-tops that afternoon. Whether she already
regretted having opened her heart to me I could not tell.
I sat at the open window of the salon, looking out over the sea that
showed pale milky green against the heavy sunset bank. Inside the room
Ganymede and the Eagle had been lighted, and my shadow streamed down the
steps and was lost in the darkening garden. It was not a cold evening,
and yet I felt a little cold. No fire was laid behind the drawn-down
iron shutter where Alec threw his crumpled tobacco packets, and it was
hardly worth while troubling a maid. I closed the window, crossed to the
shuttered fireplace, and sat down in a striped tapestried chair.
What had become of my illusion that certain things could not exist in
this clear atmosphere of Northern France? No man with two memories bathe
in that milky green sea I had just shut out? But he had swum it. No man
of forty-five masquerade as a quarter of a century younger in this
broomy, thymy air? But here he was.... I looked round the little salon,
as if its spurious gaiety had misled me. Across the varnished ceiling
the lamp-chains threw straggling spider's webs of shadow. In one gilt
oval mirror a corner of the lamp was duplicated, in another
re-duplicated. Everywhere were bits of inessential decoration, the
trophy of Senegalese spears over the door, the fringed and fretted
bracket with nothing on it, a bronze fingerplate, a bit of lace or
coloured glass, all the rest of the quick artifice with which that great
nation diverts attention from its naked purpose in life--to wring from
everything the last benefit the occasion will yield. Or so at any rate
it seemed to me that night, as my eyes rested on the wriggling gilt
ribbons of the mirrors and Ganymede struggling in the Eagle's clutch.
When Alec Aird had greeted me on Dinard Cale he had glanced at the two
suit-cases I had thrown ashore and asked me whether that was all the
gear I had brought with me. And it is true that one cannot stay many
weeks in a place on the resources of two suit-cases. But the length or
shortness of my stay was now only part of a wider issue. The question
was, not how long I was to stay, but how I was ever going to leave until
Derry was ready to come with me. Was he likely to come now? Would
anything drag him away? Hardly! Jennie was perfectly right: "He isn't
even thinking of leaving, because we both know now--we knew in the
shop--and he loves me too!"
A pretty kettle of fish, I reflected, looking at the empty brackets and
the spears over the doorway....
For it was all very well to talk about only seeing one another, only
speaking to one another. How long was that likely to last? How long had
it lasted Julia Oliphant? Just as long as it had taken her to help
herself to more. True, Julia was not a sleeping, but a particularly
wide-awake beauty. Julia was not Jennie. For the glimmers of starlight
that Julia had formerly brought into his life Jennie had now given him
the sun itself. Both had known it in that long exchange of eyes in the
Dinard Bazaar that morning.
Therefore I feared that, while Julia had produced in him an aberration
grave enough but still only of the second magnitude, Jennie might now
unwittingly bring about a cataclysm indeed. For he himself had said that
his chances of stability lay in an even and unexciting tenor of life. He
must sail, so to speak, on an even keel. Calmly and equably he must pick
his way through this beautiful and passionate wonder. He must lash the
wheel of his will lest the lightest of her sighs should drive him
rail-under. A glance might mean the loss of years to him, a kiss
death.... Others than I have told of loves between two normal
creatures, if such in love there be. I am the first, since a mortal fell
in love with a god, to tell of lovers whose lives met as they approached
each other from opposite directions.
Yet--only to see one another, only to speak to one another! Who with a
heart could refuse them that? Who, only looking at them, he serious and
radiant, she as I had seen her among the marguerites that afternoon?
Love was first invented for such as they. Could he but have slept, like
Endymion, in his loveliness for ever!... You see what had already become
of my momentary anger against him. It was quite, quite gone. He was once
more my son, outside whose door I had paused with a sick dread that very
morning.
And as love of him re-possessed me the marvel grew that he should so
have survived that shock of beauty and emotion that had been his where
the cars had stood parked in the transparent gloom. "Who was that with
you in the garden, George?" his ardent whisper seemed to sound again.
Was it possible that there were _two_ loves, the one shattering,
ruinous, destructive of the few years of his life, but the other full of
security, healing and rest? Was there indeed a Love Sacred and a Love
Profane? (Yet who would call Julia Oliphant's love for him profane? He
himself, since he had always refused it? Surely none other.) And I
remembered his own halting surmises as to the origin of his singular
fate. He had known heaven and hell--had "been too close to the balm or
the other thing." God (he had said) was more than a gland; not a knock
on the head in the war, but the contending angels themselves of Good and
Evil had brought him to this. The one principle had fetched down his
years all clattering about him on that moonlit night when the cracking
of a cone on my balcony had brought me out of my bed. Was the opposite
principle now about to expunge that other ill, to restore him, and to
make him a whole and forward-living man again? He believed that there
was a chance of it. Was it too utterly beyond belief after all?
Did it prove to be true, then all was heavenly clear. His new life would
be what we all sigh that our lives were not--no blind groping in the
night of ignorance and doubt, but the angelic victory over the hosts of
darkness. He was nineteen and unburdened of his sin, she seventeen and
sinless. They would marry. One marriage such as theirs might at the last
be enough to rehabilitate the despairing world. Instead of being in his
own person a public peril he might be society's hope and stay.
And--I found my excitement quickening--so far all was well. "_Entrez!_"
the bright voice that might have been silent for ever had called, and I
had entered to find him humming over a paint-box.
Surely he knew about himself if anybody did----
And he thought he could keep on an even keel---
There broke in on my musing the sudden sound of voices. The Airds were
returning from their walk. Madge tapped at the window, the catch of
which I had turned, and she and Alec entered. Jennie walked straight
past, and I heard her step in the hall, then on the stairs. Apparently
she was going straight to bed.
"Then if he's English what the devil does he wear those clothes for?"
Alec demanded as he closed the window again.
"_Mon ami_, as he hasn't consulted me about his clothes I don't know."
"Where did Jennie pick him up?"
"Don't speak as if he was a germ. And do make a _tee_-ny effort to be a
little less insular, my dear. 'When the Lord said all men He included
me.'"
"We aren't in heaven. We're in Dinard."
"Among the world, the flesh and the French," said Madge cheerfully. "Why
shouldn't he speak good French instead of your eternal '_Donnez-moi_'
and '_Combien_'? Why shouldn't a thing mean something simply because it
isn't in English? You'd better go home and go to Lords'.... George,
you've been asleep!"
If I had I was very far from being asleep now. If my ears told me truly,
since leaving Ker Annic the Airds had met, and had spoken to, Derwent
Rose. Alec crossed to the fireplace, lifted the shutter, knocked out his
pipe, and took up the running again.
"And what on earth made Jennie speak to him in French?"
"Jennie's quite right to practise her French."
"You don't practise French on a fellow who says he's an
Englishman--porter's blouse or no porter's blouse. I can hardly imagine
she spoke to him without knowing something about him."
"As you and I were there, very likely not," said Madge dryly.
"Anyway I marched Jennie on ahead," Alec growled. "Confounded mixed
foreign company--wish we'd never come here----"
"I," said Madge serenely, "found him entirely and altogether charming,
as well as being one of the handsomest boys I've ever seen. And he's
coming to have tea with me.... This, George," she turned to me, "is a
friend of Jennie's we met while we were out. He'd been making a sketch
of the sunset and was just packing up, so we walked along together. Oh
yes, I know--I ought to be ashamed at my time of life--but he's the most
adorable creature! A good deal like your Derwent Rose to look at--very
like him, in fact--though of course the Bear's old enough to be his
father. And listen to Alec, just because he was dressed as half the
English and American students in Paris are dressed! I don't know whether
Jennie's fallen in love with him, but _I_ have!"
"And if he's English what's he called Arnaud for?" Alec demanded with
renewed suspicion.
"Dear but simple husband, possibly he had a French father. Such things
have been heard of, even in that Rough Island's Story of yours. If
you'll make me out a list of the questions you want asked I'll get it
all out of him when he comes to tea. In the meantime:--unless George
would like to take me on the Casino for an hour--I think I shall go to
bed. Feel like a modest flutter, George?"
I shook my head.
"Then bed. I'll dream I won a lot of money. Unless I dream of young
Arnaud. Don't let Alec fall asleep in his chair. _Dors bien_----"
She tripped out under the trophy of assegais.
I was hardly five minutes behind her. Slowly I ascended to my room,
crossed to the window, and leaned out over the balcony.
So that was that. Simply, and without any fuss at all, his foot was in
the door of Ker Annic. The whole thing had taken almost exactly
twenty-four hours. In the space of two revolutions of the clock, he,
from the lurking-place of his roadside hotel at St Briac, had contrived
to get himself asked to the house to tea. I wondered what he would do
about myself. Would he blandly bow, as if our acquaintance began at that
moment, or would he advance with outstretched hand, own up to it, and
act on the square? If he admitted his acquaintance with me, what
questions of Alec's should I not have to answer? How answer them, how
explain my concealment? How accept any responsibility whatever for him?
Yet how avoid complete responsibility? Apparently only Jennie and the
maid who had announced him knew of his furtive visit to myself the
evening before; but Jennie knew, and what more she might learn when they
put their heads together I could not guess. Perhaps little or nothing.
Perhaps all....
My thoughts flew to Jennie again and the miracle of the past twenty-four
hours for her. The first awakening look of that moment by the cars, the
lovely and irreparable surrender in the Dinard Bazaar, her sobs against
my shoulder that afternoon, the radiant burst in which she had realised
that he too loved her--and then that evening's encounter whatever it had
been, when apparently she had taken matters into her own hands, bowed to
him, and spoken her first words to him in French, to be answered in
English.... No wonder she could not yet realise it. The day before had
found her a child, moody, wilful, not knowing what ailed her, but crying
to Life to take her, use her and not spare her; now she was a woman,
with a strange sweet turmoil in her bosom, and a quite matter-of-fact
resolution in the brain beneath that red-gold hair. No need to ask
whether she slept! Sleep, with that ache and bliss at war in her breast?
She must be awake at that moment, wondering whether he was awake,
knowing that he was awake, lying in her innocent bed with her face
turned towards St Briac. His miniature was painted on the curtains of
her closed but unsleeping eyes, the echo of his voice was in her ears as
she had spoken to him in French, and he had answered--in English.
And by the way, _why_ had he answered her in English? Only that morning
he had cajoled me into talking French, at any rate among French people.
Had he too, stupefied with bliss, answered her instinctively in her own
native tongue and his? Or had he deliberately resolved that here at any
rate should be no trick or stratagem to be subsequently explained, but a
perfectly clean beginning? If so, how would he contrive to maintain it?
How could he be secure that the contretemps of any single moment of the
day would not catch him out? I remembered the masterfulness and skill
with which he had managed me; had he his plans for the handling of the
Airds also? Were they to be founded on the appearance of complete
honesty, with only the trifling fact suppressed that he had lived a
whole life before?
If that was the idea, I could only catch my breath at the impudence and
daring and pure cheek of it. Look at its comic beauties! Months before,
Madge had begged me to bring the author of _The Hands of Esau_ to see
her; well, here was that author coming--as a corduroyed young
landscape-painter about whose nationality there seemed to be some
ambiguity! That afternoon at the Lyonnesse Club she had admired him for
the beauty of the prime of his manhood; and as a stripling youth his
beauty had again engaged her eye! Suppose one of the books of Derwent
Rose should happen to be mentioned; would he say "Ah yes, I've read
that," and quote a page of it? Suppose she should say that he was rather
like a man she had met in Queen's Gate who was rather like Derwent
Rose; would he say "Naturally, Mrs Aird, since I am the same man"? Or
would he suppress even the twinkle of his eye and continue his
leg-pulling? The thing began to teem with quite fascinating
possibilities, and in a couple of days, in his French clothes or his
English ones, he would be upon us. Within a week he might be painting
Jennie's portrait, as Julia Oliphant was supposed to be painting my own.
And where were young Rugby, young Charterhouse, now that he had appeared
on the scene?
Suddenly, on the little balcony at Ker Annic that night, with the Plough
over the sea and the lamplight from the salon below yellowing the
garden, I found myself one tingle of hope that he might pull it off.
II
You will appreciate my growing excitement when I tell you of a resolve I
took. It would have been perfectly simple for me to take the first tram
out to St Briac, to see him at his hotel, to tell him I was aware of the
turn events had been made to take, and to ask him to be good enough to
tell me where I came in among it all. But I found myself vowing that I
would be hanged first. It was his show, and for the present at any rate
he should run it without any interference from me. If when he came to
tea at Ker Annic he chose to call me George, well, we would see what
happened; if he solemnly stood waiting to be introduced to me, that was
his affair. At the least it would be interesting. It might prove
enthralling.
Therefore I did not seek him the next day, but crossed to St Malo with
Alec and went for a potter about the quays of St Servan.
I learned later that I should not have found him at St Briac even had I
sought him there. He, who had so lately avoided the eyes of men, now
coolly came forth and took his place in the world. His bicycle, instead
of taking him and his painting-gear to Pleudihen or Ploubalay or the
war-ravaged woods of Pontual, brought him into Dinard early in the
forenoon. In the afternoon it brought him in again. It would probably
have brought him in again in the evening had there been the faintest
chance of a glimpse of Jennie Aird. It was on the afternoon trip that
Madge met him, and when we returned from St Servan Alec and I were told
that Monsieur Arnaud was asked to tea the next day.
"Are you deliberately throwing him at that child's head?" Alec asked
crossly.
"I'm adding him to my collection of nice people. I should be so much
obliged if you happened to go to the Club, dear. Not that you're in the
least like a wet blanket, darling. Only the thermometer drops just the
least little bit."
"It'll go up again all right if I see any reason for it," Alec promised.
"You know nothing about the fellow. He may be all right for all I know,
but as a matter of principle----"
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Alec on matters of principle takes time
to run down. At the end he turned his head to find that Madge had left
the room. And that is enough to annoy anybody.
Something that I overheard on my way to my room the following afternoon
caused me to smile. The door of Madge's room stood ajar, and as I passed
it Jennie's imploring voice came from within.
"Oh, mother, not _that_ old thing! _Do_ wear the putty colour!"
"What!" in a faint shriek. "My very newest new one!"
"Please, mother!"
"But I was keeping that specially for----"
"Ple-e-ease! And the little darling hat!"
"But----"
"_Please, please!_"
I passed on. Evidently the best there was was none too good for Monsieur
Arnaud, alias Arnold, alias Derwent Rose.
Tea was set out inside the pergola; Jennie herself placed little leaves
round the sandwiches, begonia petals about the dishes of chocolate and
nougat. Critically she paraded her mother's putty-coloured frock for
inspection, touched the little darling hat deftly. She herself wore her
pale gold silk jumper; her proud throat and small head issued from it
like the little porcelain busts in the shop in the Rue Levavasseur--the
Watteaus and Chardins and Fragonards that are made up into pincushions
and cosies. She was a tremulous tender pout of anticipation and anxiety.
A dozen times she moved the objects on the table, a dozen times moved
them back again. Alec had dissociated himself from all this absurd fuss
about a chance-met English youth with a French name, but he sat not far
away, in the shade of the auracaria, behind the _Paris Daily Mail_.
Then, at four o'clock, there was the short soft slide of somebody
alighting from a bicycle, and Derry stood by the wrought-iron gate,
looking about him.
"This way--come straight down!" Madge called. "The bicycle will be all
right there."
Rapidly as I knew Jennie's heart to be beating, I was hardly less
excited myself. Now what was he going to do?
What he did was the simplest thing imaginable. As he advanced among the
montbretias and begonias I noticed that he wore his English clothes. He
took Madge's hand; he smiled simply at Jennie; and then, as Madge was
about to present him to myself, he smiled and shook hands with me too.
"That's all right--we do know one another," he said. "Quite a long time.
In London, eh, sir? And, as a matter of fact, I came here to see him the
other night, but you were all so busy with the party----"
Beautifully, calmly disarming. He said it, too, just as Alec came
up--for Alec may growl before his guests come, and growl again when they
have gone, but he is their host as long as they are there. If Monsieur
Arnaud had known Sir George Coverham in London the situation was more or
less regularised. The growling might continue, but in a diminuendo.
Growling is sometimes a man's duty to his own face.
"Well, let's have tea anyway," Alec said. "Tell them, Jennie."
The dark blue clothes--that had crossed the Channel in a motor-launch
while their owner, thickly greased, had swum alongside in the
night--fitted him quite passably well; I remembered the very suit. His
boots and collar, however, were French, and apparently he had no English
hat, for his head was uncovered. I remember a foolish fleeting wonder
that the light chequer of shadow should pattern his clear and
self-possessed face exactly as it did our own--and he the _lusus naturæ_
he was! He stood there, modest and at ease, waiting for his seniors to
seat themselves. I saw Alec's expert glance at his perfect build. I
mentally gave the subject of athletics about ten minutes in which to
crop up.
"Do sit down," said Madge; and she added to me, "George, you never told
me you knew Mr Arnaud in London!"
"I think this is the first time we've all been together," I parried.
Derry gave me a demure glance. "Oh yes. And I stayed a week-end in Sir
George's place not so long ago--had a jolly swim in his pond--isn't that
so, sir?"
He should at any rate have a tweak in return. "When there's a prep
school in the neighbourhood a good many young people use a man's pond,"
I observed; and at that moment Jennie and a maid arrived with tea.
Already I fancied I had what is called a "line" on him. The only word I
can apply to his modest impudence is "neck"--charming, bashful, but
quite deliberate "neck." He had not merely met me before in London; oh
dear no; he went a good deal beyond that. He was a young man I had to
stay in my house, allowed to swim in my pond. I saw the way already
paved for as many visits to Ker Annic as he pleased. I saw in
anticipation Alec coming round to his English clothes, his grace and
strength of build. Madge he already had in his pocket. He even admitted
having sought me at this very house a night or two before! My position
was as neatly turned as heart could wish. I could not even imitate his
own mendacious candour lest I should give him and myself completely
away. Yes, I think "neck" is the word.
He talked quietly, charmingly, not too much. Jennie hardly ventured to
look at him, nor he at her. To Madge he was the most perfect of squires.
Alec, like myself, was "sir" to him.
"Yes, sir," he said, "that's quite right. I did do a bit of a sprint at
Ambleteuse. I'm that Arnaud. But I've had to knock it off. You wouldn't
think it to look at me, but I've got to go awfully steady. I used to be
quite fast, but that's some time ago. And of course I shall be all right
again in a little time. That's one of the reasons I took up painting. It
keeps me in the air practically all the time."
"Chest?" said Alec.
"Something of the sort, sir. No thank you, I don't smoke."
But for one significant trifle I think Alec might have been more or less
satisfied. This was the fact that, in his own hearing, his daughter had
spoken to this charming stranger in French, and had been answered in
English. It might mean little or nothing, but I saw that it stuck in his
mind. In his different way Alec is no less quick than his wife. Let him
down once and you are likely to have to take the consequences for all
time. A trifle ceases to be a trifle when it is all there is. Alec knew
nothing of his visitor, but he did know that Jennie never addressed the
blazered tennis-playing English youths in French. He also knew that for
three days Jennie, who up to then had soaked herself in tennis, had not
been near the nets at all. The intensely insular father of a beautiful
girl of seventeen is not blind to these things.
"I suppose your people were French at one time?" Alec said presently,
not too pointedly.
"Yes, sir," said Derry, for all I knew with perfect truth. "My mother
was a Treherne, a Somerset woman. I believe she and my father ran away.
I don't remember him."
"And you went to a French school?"
"No, sir. Shrewsbury." This, too, was perfectly true.
"You've got an uncommonly good French accent, that's all," remarked
Alec; and relapsed into silence.
After all, the last question he would have thought of asking his young
guest was whether he might have a look at his birth certificate.
Up to this point our gathering had had its distinctly amusing side. With
consummate dissembling he had turned us round his finger, and it would
have taken a conjurer to guess that he was softly laughing at all of us
except Jennie. But the more I considered the "line" I had on his subtle
machinations the less a laughing matter it all became. Behind the gentle
deference of his manner I felt the grimmest determination. His charm was
the charm of a charming youth, but it rested on the hard experience and
resolution of a man. And behind that again in the last resort menace
would lie. This man, actually older than Madge, not much younger than
Alec and myself, and a full quarter of a century older than Jennie, had
toiled for fame and had missed the fruits of it; he had chased the
will-o'-the-wisp pleasure and had floundered in the bog; but now he had
seen the shining thing beside which fame and pleasure are nothing at
all. To seize that was now the whole intention of his marvellous
twice-lived life. Let him keep his eyes as he would from looking
directly at Jennie, Jennie was there, the prize for which he strove. And
I knew in my soul that were I or another to try to frustrate him we had
better look to ourselves. It was a thing none the less to beware of that
his brow was smooth, his eyes bright, his skin clear as the skin of a
boy.
And all in a moment I found myself looking at him with--I don't know how
else to express it--a sort of induced unfamiliarity. All the strangeness
of it came over me again like a wave. I knew that I didn't know him in
the least. Behind that mask he knew infinitely more about me than I
knew about him. He sat with his back to the sea, and the tartan of
tricky shadow laced his brow, was lost again as his face dipped,
reappeared on the navy-blue sleeve and his brown hand on the table. Yes,
completely a stranger to me. I his father? He was his own father. What
else did all that turgid stuff in _The Times_ about "maximum faculties"
mean? New words for old things! "The boy is father of the man." They of
old time knew it all before us. We only think it is truer to-day because
more people talk about it. Here, incipient and scarcely veiled, was the
real parent of the Derwent Rose of _The Vicarage of Bray_, _An Ape in
Hell_, and all else he had ever done. Here, implicitly and in embryo,
were the wit of the _Vicarage_, the patient purpose of _Esau_, and the
deadly suppressed anger of the _Ape_. Possibly you have never seen,
brightly and sunnily displayed with a light and laughing lazy-tongs of
rippling shadow, the authentic beginning of a man you have known
twenty-five years farther on in time. Perhaps it is as well that they
who have seen it are few. You may take my word for it that that family
tree of which the roots are Arnaud and the blossoms Rose can be a rather
terrifying thing.
Therefore I and I alone was able to pierce through his blandness, and to
see the tremendousness of the effort behind it all; and I wondered
whether _that_ was his idea of an easy and unexciting life! Whatever it
was to him, I can only say that I did not find it so. I almost sweated
to see his composure. Yet to all outward appearance he never turned a
hair. His keel was still even, the rudder of his will under perfect
control. Jennie with the downcast eyes was the mark on which he steered.
And his own eyes sought the rest of us in turn with crafty innocence and
infernal candour.
"I beg your pardon, sir?" he was saying to Alec. "Oh"--he gave a little
laugh of confusion--"in a place like this it's sometimes difficult to
say! Where was it, Miss Aird?" (But he gave her no chance to reply.)
"One hardly knows how one meets anybody else; it seems to be in the air;
you can hardly help knowing people. But these holiday acquaintances can
be easily dropped afterwards."
("Steady, Derry!" I found myself commenting. "Don't overdo it--that's
rather experienced--don't be too wise for the age you look.")
"Anyway," he went on, "I shall probably be the last one here. I like the
place, and the rate of exchange is all to the good when you know your
way about--not in a villa," he twinkled modestly. "They say Italy's the
place, but I can't quite manage that, and England doesn't suit me, so I
shall just stick on here and paint."
"I've only seen the sketch you were doing the other night," remarked
Madge--dangerously invitingly, I thought.
"Oh, they aren't anything." He waved them aside. "I hope to do something
one day. But it's a funny thing," he explained, "words and books and all
that sort of thing never interested me in the least. I couldn't write if
my life depended on it; can't imagine how Mrs Aird and Sir George do it.
But everybody understands what they see with their eyes. Paint's the
stuff."
"Then when are you going to show us?" said Madge.
"If you'd care to, of course. George--Sir George Coverham knows where I
hang out. Perhaps you'd bring Mrs Aird round, sir?... _Ah_----"
The last little exclamation accompanied as wonderful a feat of its kind
as I ever saw. As she had turned to him Madge's elbow had caught a
teaspoon, which slipped over the table's edge. But it never reached the
ground. He did not even shake the table. The position of his shoulder
altered, his hand shot out. He put the spoon back on the table. With
such instantaneous smoothness had he done it that it seemed simple. But
I tell you I caught my breath....
"Near thing," he smiled. "Oh, come any time. You won't have to mind a
few stairs. But I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. I'm only a beginner
really."
And so not one door, but two were opened, the second one at his lodging
at St Briac.
But Alec as well as I had seen that marvellous piece of fielding with
the teaspoon. Suddenly he got up, stretched himself, and walked away.
The moment his back was turned Jennie spoke for the first time.
"Perhaps Mr Arnaud would like to see the rest of the garden, mother?"
"Then show him, child," said Madge. "We'll be with you in a minute."
Their eyes met. He rose. They went off together. Madge swung round on
me.
"Why didn't you say you knew him before?" she demanded.
"The question never arose."
"The question always arises if Alec's anywhere about. You know he's like
a bear with a sore head about young men."
"It's the duty of a father's head to be sore. I quite agree with Alec."
"But if you'd only said 'He's quite all right, he stays with me in
Haslemere----'"
"Quite a number of people stay with me in Haslemere, if that's a social
guarantee----"
"You know what I mean. Alec's simply a troglodyte. He doesn't belong to
to-day. It's all very flattering, of course, but he simply can't forget
what things were like when I was a girl. They never dreamed of letting
us travel without a maid; why, we actually had to sit still in the
carriage till the footman had opened our own front door. Alec doesn't
realise that the world's moved on since then. And you could have put it
all on a proper footing with three words!"
"'It?'"
"Yes, his coming here. All that fuss! I think he's perfectly delightful.
And I know those Somerset Trehernes if they're the Edward Trehernes of
Witton Regis. And I expect his painting's clever too. He looks as if he
had all the gifts.... Now I make you answerable for Alec, George. That
he's not simply stupid and unreasonable, I mean. I don't mean that he's
not perfectly right to ask the usual questions, but Jennie's got to be
considered too. She's quite old enough to know her own mind. Now I'm
going to them. Are you coming?"
"I'll come along in a few minutes," I replied.
III
My intelligence with regard to painting is simply that of the ordinary
man. I seldom speculate on the relation between one art and another.
True, I have read my Browning, and have wondered whether he really knew
what he was talking about when he spoke of a man "finding himself" in
one medium, and starting again all unprejudiced and anew in another. It
sounds rather of a piece with much more art talk we heard when we were
young.
But Derwent Rose was only fallaciously young. He had time at his
disposal in a sense that neither Browning nor you nor I ever had. And it
seemed to me significant of the state of his memory that he should have
turned his back on words and taken up paint instead. For the burden of
his age was lifted from him, and he was advancing on his youth with a
high and exhilarating sense of adventure. Now words had been the
greatest concern of his "A," or Age Memory, and words, it must be
admitted, have arrogated to themselves the lion's share of this strange
faculty that we call remembering. Had he now found a means of expression
more closely in correspondence with the untrodden ground ahead? In other
words, was he a kind of alembical meeting-ground where the arts
interpenetrated and became transmuted?... I hazard it merely as a
conjecture in passing, and leave you to judge. Let us pass to that visit
we paid to St Briac to see his sketches.
Alec was not with us. The Kings, Queens and Knaves of the bridge-table
were pictures enough for him. So I accompanied Madge and Jennie.
Jennie's bosom lifted as we approached the wide spaces of the links--but
then the St Briac air is admittedly fresher than the tepid medium that
is canalised, so to speak, in the streets and lanes of Dinard. It was
afternoon, and the shed at the terminus was a bustle of moving luggage,
friends meeting friends, parties going into Dinard to return by the
seven o'clock tram. We crossed the road to his glass-fronted hotel.
There was no need to ask for him. Evidently he had been watching from
his window. He stood at the gate, once more in blouse and corduroys.
"Tea first, I think, and the works of art afterwards," he greeted us
cheerfully. "Where's Mr Aird? Oh, what a pity! This way--straight
through the kitchen--I thought it would be nicer outside----"
He led the way through the black and cavernous kitchen towards the sunny
green doorway and the back garden.
Tea was set under an apple tree. The garden was some fifteen yards
square, but only close under the tree was there room for the table and
the four chairs. Even then we had to be careful how we moved, lest we
should crush a growing plant. There were no paths--you could hardly call
those single-file, six-inches-wide threads paths. Unless you put one
foot fairly in line with the other pop went a radish, a strawberry, a
flower. Not one single hand's-breadth anywhere was uncultivated. Behind
Madge as she sat a row of scarlet runners made a bright straggle of
coral, and dwarf beans filled the interstices. Over the runners tall
nodding onion-heads showed, and behind them again bushes heavy with
white currant. Along a knee-high latticed fence huge red-coated apples
were espaliered, and the ochre flowers of a marrow sprawled over a
manure-heap. Bees droned and butterflies flitted in the sun, glints of
glass cloches pierced the screens of warm grey-green. And, where a tree
of yellow genet covered half the wall, a large green and red parrot in a
cage had suddenly become silent on hearing voices.
"That's Coco," Derry said. "Coco! Ck!--'Quand je bois mon vin
clairet----'"
The parrot cocked his head on one side and regarded us with an
upside-down eye.
"Chants, Coco!--'Quand je bois'--You'll hear him all right in a minute,
Mrs Aird.... Ma mè-r-r-r-e! Nous voici à table!"
"Tout est prêt--on va servir!" came the shrill reassurance from
somewhere inside the house; and an immensely fat old patronne in a blue
check apron brought out tea, followed by one of the reserved young
Amazons with strawberries, cream, and little crocks of jam with wasps
struggling on the top.
As for Jennie and myself, I think she had completely forgotten that I
had ever tried to keep her and Derry apart. I was now the person through
whose good offices she sat, with at least semi-parental approval, here
in his garden. I do not want to pretend to more knowledge than I have
about these secretive young goddesses, but, as she sat there, her eyes
still bashfully avoiding Derry's, I was prepared to take a reasonable
bet that I guessed what was passing through her mind. Derry had stayed
in my house in England. Her too I had asked to visit me there. What an
Uncle George indeed I should be if at some time or other I were to ask
them together! Only as thanks in advance, after which I could not find
it in my heart to withhold the benefit, could I explain the soft and
grateful looks I received from time to time. I had one of these glances
quite unmistakably before I had as much as touched the cup of tea Madge
poured out for me. "You see, mother's all right," it said as plainly as
if she had uttered the words; "you'll make it all right with father,
won't you? I know you can if you will! And thank you so much, dear Uncle
George, for the perfectly lovely time we're going to have when we come
to see you!" At any rate, that was my interpretation of it, while Derry,
no less charming as a host than he had been as a guest, made himself
honey-sweet to Madge and politely attentive to her daughter.
Nevertheless, I presently asked a direct question about the hours of
departure of the trams. I saw the faintest flicker of demure fun cross
his face; and I too remembered, too late, how I had once countered him
about the Sunday trains from Haslemere.
"There's a four-thirty-five and a five-forty-eight," he said. "It's
four-twenty now. We can cut out the pictures, of course, but it seems a
pity not to have tea."
So we had nearly an hour and a half.
I don't really think that he had the least desire to show us his
pictures. The pictures had served their turn handsomely enough already.
He wanted to remain under the apple tree, with Madge and myself there
since we must be there, but anyway with Jennie opposite to him, eating
his strawberries and jam, occasionally not knowing which way to look,
the possession on which his twofold heart was set, the lovely and
precious godsend he had missed once but would see us all with our
throats cut rather than not clasp her to his bosom in the end.
So we sat there over our empty cups, with the wasps struggling in the
jam and Coco harping on the wires of his cage, but still obstinately
refusing to sing "Quand je bois." Jennie got up to give him a piece of
sugar, and he cocked his yellow upside-down eye at her and showed the
ribbed black tongue inside his hook of a beak. Were I a painter I should
paint the picture she made against the shrill yellow of the broom, with
the sun full on her white summer frock, her gleaming hair, and the
sun-loving bird with his head on one side watching her. "Mind his beak,"
Derry called; and she smiled over her shoulder, as if his mere voice
were so much that she must turn her eyes whatever it said. Then she
returned to the table, but not before she had plucked a sprig of genet
and put it in her breast. It lay at the pit of her stately throat like a
dropped blossom at the plinth of a column.
"But what about the pictures?" Madge suddenly said. "We came here to see
pictures, didn't we?"
"Then that means a trail upstairs," said Derry, springing up. "Carefully
through the kitchen, Mrs Aird; it's always as dark as the pit after
you've been sitting out here. Perhaps I'd better go first."
He led the way through the kitchen, up the bare polished stairs, and
into his room.
He cannot have had any great wish to show them; otherwise they would
have been set out, or at least ready to hand. As it was he had to
rummage for them in his single cupboard, selecting some, rejecting
others. He showed a dozen or more of them, mostly canvas on the
stretchers, but a few watercolours among them; and I fancy, if the truth
must be told, that Madge was just a shade disappointed. I think she had
hoped for jazz and lightning and something to go with her drawing-room
cushions. Nor did I myself quite know what to make of those pictures.
The first impression of them I had was a kind of--let me say
datelessness; I can't think of a better word. All were landscapes, the
largest of them not more than a couple of feet by eighteen inches; and
at first he set them up one after another rather negligently. But as
Madge began to question him his manner rather curiously changed. That
preternatural skill that he had shown for two whole afternoons seemed to
drop from him. He seemed to halt a little, to take risks, to advance
warily into deeper water. If Mrs Aird really wished to know, then he was
sincerely ready to explain. And he began to take me, for one, through
the unsuspected intricacies of what at a first glance appeared to be a
few casual brush-marks on the flat.
"I dare say I'm all wrong--I feel rather an ass talking about it," he
said diffidently, "but I'll try to tell you. I mean I came across a
fellow one day just outside Pleudihen, and he was painting what he
called a Romantic Landscape. I asked him what a Romantic Landscape was,
and he was just a bit stuffy about it. 'This that I'm painting,' he
said. 'But why can't you paint just a landscape?' I said. 'Because I'm
doing a Romantic one and I can't do two things at once,' he said. 'What
are you doing it for?' I asked him. 'The Salon,' he said. 'No, but I
mean _why_ are you doing it?' I said. 'I suppose because I belong to the
Romantic School,' says he.... Well, there you are, Mrs Aird. What I mean
is that he was painting it because he belonged to a school that did
paint that sort of thing. If he'd belonged to another school he'd have
painted something different, I suppose. So of course that set me
thinking a bit."
"I suppose so," said Madge, quite out of her depth.
"So I said to him, 'What do you want to belong to a school at all for?'
'Everybody does,' says he. 'I should have thought that was all the more
reason why you shouldn't,' says I. 'Oh, if you're a blooming genius!' he
said ... a bit rotten of him, I thought, but he was years older than I.
So I rather let myself go, I'm afraid. I picked up the nearest leaf.
'Look here,' I said to him, 'this thing's a leaf, just a leaf. It's a
certain colour and a certain shape and certain other things; the point
is it's itself and nothing else; and neither you nor I can alter it,
sir' (I told you he was years older than I). 'The light hits it there,
and only one possible thing can happen; it hits it there, where the
direction alters, and only another thing can happen. In another minute
the light will have changed, and a quite different set of things will
have happened. Everything there is happens to that leaf in the course of
a day, and if you know all about that leaf you know all about
everything. And if you can paint it you can paint all the leaves in the
world.' I hope I didn't seem too rude, but that's what I said to him."
I had moved to the window. He was talking with a mixture of diffidence
and warmth, on a subject I had never heard him on before, and yet it
seemed to me that I had heard something strangely like it all before.
"And what did he say?" Madge asked.
"Oh, he said something, but he was years older than I, so I just said
good afternoon. I suppose he went back to school," said Derwent Rose.
Once more I was disturbed. Was this a new phase, or an old one all over
again? If he was going to abolish schools and precedents and all the
accepted apparatus by which the world's thought is carried on, it seemed
to me to matter very little whether he dealt in words, as before, or in
paint, as now. True, this parallelism might exist largely in my own
imagination; he had said nothing that another man might not have said
without arousing anxiety; but again he was trying to see something,
though only a leaf, as if it had never been seen before, and I noted it
carefully as I looked out over the sunny northward water.
"So that's more or less what I'm after," he was saying. "I know they're
pretty bad, but I think they start right. That sky's as clumsy as it can
be, but it _is_ horizontal. That tree's got a back you don't see as well
as a front you do. So I simply don't go to look at other people's
stuff.... Ah, this branch will explain what I mean."
It did when he pointed it out, but I should never have seen for myself.
As completely as a worshipping pagan he sought to subdue himself to one
given thing in one given moment. As I say, I know nothing about
painting. That may be a valid theory of painting landscape or it may
not. But it was his, there was no ear-say or eye-say about it, and it is
of him and not of his pictures that I am speaking.
"I believe I shall pull it off one day; in fact I know I shall.... And
now that's quite enough about me. That's my view, Mrs Aird, and this is
where I live. My old landlady's a perfect dear, and Madeleine and
Hortense are all right. But sometimes that brute Coco simply won't
sing----"
I saw Jennie drinking in every detail of his room. There was not to be
one inch of it that she could not reproduce when she went to bed that
night and turned her face in the direction of St Briac. Her eyes took in
his moulded ceiling-beams, the glass knob of his door, his neat bed, the
herring-boned parquet of the floor. It was a little bare, perhaps, but
then he spent all his days out of doors, painting those wonderful
paintings, and, of course, this was not his real home. She hated that
older painter--a hundred at least--who had been rude to him about the
Romantic Landscapes; instantly and passionately she had taken sides with
her hero. She loved the fat old Frenchwoman who looked after him and was
nearly seventy; she did not so much love the two Breton women who looked
after him and were not nearly seventy. Coco was a naughty bird not to
sing "Quand je bois" when he was told, and if his window did not face
towards Dinard, at any rate he had the tram opposite, and could watch
it every time it started, and know that it was going almost past the
gates of Ker Annic. She stood with puckered brows before his canvases.
She loved trees. They would always be different to her now that he had
shown her about them. She had no doubt whatever about his theory of
landscape; how could it be wrong if it was his? Her fingers touched the
blossom of broom at her throat that had grown on his tree.
Then she came over to the window to make sure that Dinard really did not
lie that way. Most stupidly it did not. Actually it lay miles away past
the glass door-knob, and the Garde Guérin to the right was invisible
from Dinard. But she pressed my arm lightly. "September, Uncle George?"
the pleading pressure silently said. "You'll ask us both down in
September, the moment we get back from here?"
I looked at my watch.
Then I heard Madge's voice across the room, and my heart almost stopped
at the swift peril.
"Then your mother was Cicely Treherne, and she married an Arnaud?"
But he weathered it. He did it with his rascally eyes. He smiled down on
her.
"Well ... I shouldn't be allowed to swear it in a court of law, because
it was before I was born, you see."
The smile conquered. She laughed. I cut quickly in, my watch half out of
my pocket. Gunpowder was safer than family history with Madge Aird
about.
"Time?" I said.
"Ought we to be going?"
"The tram has a way of filling up."
"Then don't let's miss it," said Madge, drawing on her gloves. "Thank
you for a most delightful afternoon, Mr Arnaud (all my friends are 'Mr'
for at least a week, you know). I think the pictures are fascinating;
they make our books look very dull. Good-bye."
"Oh, I'm coming to see you off," he said.
Something in his last words, I really can't tell you what, made me take
a swift resolve. If he was going to see us off, I was going to see him
off also. I had a superstitious idea that it might be necessary. He had
bamboozled Alec about his delicate chest, had only just evaded that
question of Madge's that simply meant, if you like to do a little sum
about it, that his mother had borne him at two different dates with a
quarter of a century between them. Blandly as he might cover it up, I
now expected nothing but tricks from him--tricks coolly and resolutely
planned and carried out without a moment's compunction or hesitation.
Very well. He was going to be watched if I had eyes in my head.
And so was Miss Jennie. With a guile so innocent and transparent that I
had nothing for it but the tenderest and most smiling love, she too was
quite capable of duplicity. More than once her tell-tale hand had
fluttered about the flower at the pit of her throat. As I have said, I
don't pretend to deep knowledge of the hearts of these superb and
recently-awakened young creatures, but I do know when things are in the
wind.
Nothing happened as we passed down the stairs and out into the street. I
could have taken my oath of that. And, devoted as always, he walked with
Madge across to the terminus, leaving Jennie to me. But I felt it
coming....
It came as he took the tickets at the guichet; and it was not of his
doing, but of hers. I had silver in my hand, ready to repay him, and
there was no reason why she also should have pressed so close to him.
Again there was the little flurry about the flower at her throat; her
bent nape was towards me; the thing was movingly clumsily done.
But it was done for all that. A note passed from her hand to his, and
the fingers that passed it were held for a moment.
Don't tell me that that note had not been in readiness probably since
the evening before. Don't tell me that it had not lain under her pillow
for a whole night before being transferred to that tenderer post-bag
that was sealed with the yellow flower. Don't tell me that it had not
been even more sweetly sealed. For I saw her face when she turned
again. I saw its struggle of soft emotion and the will to be calm. With
a quick little impulse that I did not understand she flew to her
mother's arm.
"There are three seats there if we're quick," she said in a broken
little voice....
Only to see one another--only to speak to one another--and to pass a
secret note at the first opportunity----
IV
"You know that we can't quarrel, Derry," I said.
"In that case----" he said quietly, but did not finish.
"We can't quarrel for the reason there's always been--that we aren't in
the same ring and can't possibly get there."
"I wish----" he began, but once more suddenly stopped.
From the obscurity of the next table where the four young Frenchmen sat
another soft unaccompanied song broke out.
"Listen," whispered Derry.
"En mon coeur, tendre réliquaire,
J'avais gardé ton souvenir;
Par lui le long de mon calvaire
En espérant, j'ai pu souffrir!"
"Hush!" his voice came huskily from the dusk by my side.
"J'ai vécu des heures cruelles
Loin de toi, que j'aimais toujours;
Les revoici, pour moi plus belles
Puisqu'elles sonnent ton rétour."
The song was finished without further interruption from him.
"Ne parlons plus de nos alarmes,
Effaçons l'horrible passé;
Reviens, je veux sécher tes larmes
Et revivre pour t'adorer:
"Rien n'est fini, tout recommence,
Puisque nous voilà réunis
Au chaud soleil de l'espérance--
A tout jamais, soyons unis!"
It was nine o'clock of the same evening, and we were sitting outside the
hotel of St Briac's tiny triangular Square. I had broken away from
dinner at Ker Annic in order that I might see him without a moment's
loss of time. What did it matter that I had had to hire a special car,
and that that car was waiting for me in the darkness of a side-street
now? As it had happened, I had met him on the road. Had I not done so I
should have scoured the neighbourhood until I had found him.
Our backs were to the lighted windows of the hotel, but he had blotted
himself into the shadow by the door. The Square might have been a
set-piece on a stage. Yellow strips of light streamed from open
doorways, illuminated window-squares showed the movement of dark heads
within. Children playing their last ten minutes before going to bed
flitted like moths in and out of the beams, and the comers and goers
across the square seemed actors in spite of themselves. The four young
Frenchmen sat in the shadows beyond the lighted doorway, and they had
sung three or four songs before singing that one.
There was a long silence between Derwent Rose and myself. Then suddenly
he got up and crossed to the group of Frenchmen. In a minute or so he
came back again, and thrust himself more deeply still into the shadow.
Then I felt rather than heard his soft shaky mutter.
"Le long de mon calvaire ... mon calvaire, mon Dieu! ... effaçons
l'horrible passé ... rien n'est fini, tout recommence ... tout
recommence...."
That wretched, wretched song! It had suddenly made it impossible for me
to go on.
"I suppose you went over to ask the name of it?" I said sullenly; I
almost said "The name of the beastly thing."
"It's called '_Il est venu le Jour_."
"Coincidences are stupid things."
"I dare say."
And another long silence fell between us.
Nevertheless I had not taken a special journey to St Briac merely to
listen to his disturbed breathing. What I had seen that afternoon had
taken matters far beyond that. If he, in his situation, thought he could
do thus and thus, I was there to see, to the limit of my power, that he
did not. I had already told him so, in those words. He had made a stiff
reply. Then had come that calamitous song, and our present silence.
"Well ... you can't, and there's an end of it, Derry," I said, quietly
but flatly.
"So I understood you to say."
"It's what I came specially to tell you."
"I gathered that too. By the way, if you want to send your car away
there's a Casino bus going in at ten o'clock. No need to waste money."
"We may not have finished our talk by then."
"Then we can finish it in the bus. I'd thought of going in myself."
"To hang about that house?"
"You and the gendarmerie can stop that easily enough."
We were back at the same point--that we, between whom a quarrel was
impossible, must apparently nevertheless quarrel.
"Look here," I said at last, "can't you see my position?"
"I can. It's a rotten one."
"If I saw the faintest glimmer of hope----"
"Espérance," he muttered.
"----even from their point of view. Aird isn't a fool. He heard Jennie
speak in French to you, evidently the very first time she had spoken to
you--regular monkeys'-parade business from his point of view--and he
draws his own conclusions. And Mrs Aird isn't a fool either. She won't
be in London two days before she's found out all about your mother."
"I see all that."
"Your mother didn't marry an Arnaud."
"Quite right. She'll know that too."
"And Aird's athlete enough to know you're no more poitrinaire than he
is."
"I once saw him score a ripping try on the Rectory Ground. I was about
twenty."
"You haven't a paper to your name."
"Not one."
"You can't even get back to England."
"Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to say that."
"And you're no better off if you do."
"That remains to be seen too."
"Then Mrs Aird's a writer herself. She knows every word Derwent Rose
ever wrote."
"Oh, I had a reader here and there," he replied nonchalantly.
"And she wants to meet you--not Arnaud, but Derwent Rose. I'm to take
you round there."
I felt his smile. "That would be the deuce of a hole for you to be in,
George. You'd simply have to say you couldn't find me."
"But Derwent Rose is supposed to be alive somewhere. Nobody's heard of
his death."
"One man extra, one man missing, so it's as-you-were. Anyway nobody'll
worry much about that. I never had a tenth of your readers."
"And you're bound to be caught out here sooner or later on the question
of domicile."
"Not if I see them first," he replied grimly.
"Derry, you're my despair."
"Oh, don't despair, George. Never despair. It will be all right. What
about sending that car away? No good wasting good francs. You see, we've
finished our talk."
"We haven't begun it yet."
"Then for goodness sake let's begin and get it over."
"Very well. Get ready.... I stood by you at the tramway office this
afternoon. I saw what was given you there. I know what you have tucked
away somewhere about you at this moment."
He had asked for it, and had got it. Hitherto I had stuck to
generalities; that this was particular enough I knew by his quick
movement. His foot knocked against the flimsy table, and a coffee-cup
all but fell. He spoke in a low but harsh voice.
"That's not on the agenda, Coverham."
"Pardon me."
"It's not, and it's not going to be."
"If you prefer it in French, it's a _fait accompli_."
"You mean you'll bring matters to a head by telling them over there?" He
jerked his head in the direction of Ker Annic.
"That rests with you, here and now."
He muttered. At first I could not distinguish the words. Then I heard,
"No, not here ... now if you like ... it's got to come, I suppose...."
He rose. "Very well," he said. "I'm ready."
"Wait a moment till I've paid for the coffee."
"Oh, I'll wait all right."
I entered the hotel and paid. When I came out again I looked right and
left for him; then I saw his black smock and corduroys by a lighted door
half-way across the Square. I joined him, and together we took the dark
street to the right that leads to where the Calvary stretches out its
arms across the harbour to Lancieux.
Past the Post Office, past the Mairie we walked without speaking--that
Mairie that either as an Englishman or a Frenchman knew him not. We
ascended the short lane to the promontory. It was a whispering
half-tide, but all was darkness save for a low remnant in the west, a
twinkle or two over the shallows, and once more Fréhel, this time
directly visible and giving us distinct shadows. The last gossip had
disappeared from the point. I don't think even a couple of lovers
lingered on the steep below. It was him and myself for it, with the
Calvary above us and that twelve-miles-distant Giant as timekeeper of
our encounter.
But he did an unexpected thing before he spoke. Under Fréhel's sweeping
finger the Calvary started forth for a moment from the shadows. He
advanced to it, dipped his knee, and crossed himself.
Then he turned to me.
"Well----" he said quietly.
I waited. It was he who began.
"Don't think I don't see the force of everything you've said. Every word
of it's true, and a child could see it. For one hole you can pick in the
position I can pick five hundred. But picking holes doesn't help. What
you aren't allowing for is the force of circumstances."
"It's the force of circumstances I've been trying to point out," I said,
as quietly as he had spoken.
"I'm speaking of the circumstances _I_ find myself in, the pressure that
drives _me_ to do what I am doing. You don't think I'm deceiving these
decent people as a matter of choice, do you?"
"You say what you've got to say. I'll tell you what I think by and by."
"I've _no_ choice. I'm driven to it, can't escape it; it's my handicap.
I want you to look at it for a moment from my end. What's the very first
thing I've got to do? To lie about my name. I must lie, knowing
perfectly well that a day, a week or a month or two at the outside will
see me caught out and shown the door. Never mind other instances; let's
stick to that one; the rest are just the same, only a good deal worse,
some of 'em. Now here's the point. Do you suppose I should put my head
into a noose like that unless I was perfectly sure that I'd finished
sliding, was well dug in, and had a fairly reasonable prospect of
presently going straight ahead like anybody else?"
But I had no intention of going over that ground again. My foolish
excited hope that he might "pull it off" had been scattered to the
winds by the events of that afternoon. As far as he himself was
concerned I wished him all the best that could happen to him, but it was
not a chance that the happiness and safety of the daughter of my friends
could be risked upon. Let him start to go forward first; let us have
some assurance that the ghastly business was all over; then would be
time enough to talk about the rest.
"We've had all that," I interrupted him.
"We haven't, George," he said earnestly. "You don't know. You can't
possibly know. You've no idea of the care--the tests----"
"If it comes off all right nobody will rejoice more than I shall, Derry.
What's between us at the moment is what happened this afternoon."
Instantly I was conscious of his hardening. But he did not become
granite all at once.
"That can't be dragged in."
"'Dragged in'!"
"Can't you accept the situation, George?"
"No."
"Not if I solemnly assure you that I have a good chance?"
"When it's a proved certainty we'll talk about it."
"Not if I tell you my mind's perfectly made up?"
"That's the point."
"Not if it meant a breach between you and me?"
"It looks as if I had to have a breach with somebody."
"Your friends. I know. I've admitted all that. It's beastly. But I'm
afraid it can't be allowed to make any difference."
"Suppose I denounce you?"
"I'm sure you'll act perfectly conscientiously whatever you do."
"That would mean your complete exposure."
"I'm prepared for that."
"You said the other night that you only wanted to see and talk to her.
You said you'd go no further than that. Do you call what happened this
afternoon keeping your word?"
"I meant what I said at the time. You know that I honestly hadn't a
thought of deceiving you. I'm afraid that word can't be kept. Perhaps I
hadn't quite realised."
"Have you realised yet?"
"Oh!"
"You haven't. Let me help you. And I'll put it as much in your favour as
I can. I'll assume you're standing still for the present. I'll even
assume the other possibility, or impossibility, whichever it is--that
you might actually turn round again. Even then what would it mean? It
would mean that I, a guest of my old friends, was lending my countenance
to something against every conception of mental--decency let us say. I
think I know your dates and figures pretty well by this time. You were
born in '75. Now, in 1920, we'll say you're eighteen. It's taken you
forty-five years to live to eighteen, and if you're to live to
forty-five again it will have taken you--how long?--seventy-two years.
It will then be getting on for 1950. Jennie was born in 1903. You're now
forty-five to her seventeen. If this thing comes off you'll be in the
early forties together. But at the same time you'll be over seventy.
Look at it, Derry--look at it."
"Look at it? I have looked at it. I'll look at it again if you like....
Now I've looked at it again. Only you and I know it. And anyway there's
nothing in it."
"Julia Oliphant knows it."
"Then only you and I and Julia Oliphant know it, and there's nothing in
it."
"Then tell me if there's anything in this. What guarantee have you that
exactly the same thing won't happen to you again? Take the maddest view
of all--that you actually might go forward. If indications are anything
you're repeating your experiences already."
"How so?" he demanded.
"In this painting of yours. I heard your explanations to Mrs Aird this
afternoon. You're starting with exactly the same ideas as
before--complete dissociation from everything else that's ever been
done. You're going to be the First Man again instead of the Millionth
Man. How do you know it won't land you in the same mess? It used to be
words; now it's paint, and that's all the difference I see."
There was a long pause; then I heard his soft, almost indulgent laugh.
"Look here, George," he said slowly. "I'll make you a fair offer. Can't
you and I come to terms if I swear to you that I'll never touch another
canvas or brush or pen or sheet of paper as long as I live? Will _that_
satisfy you?"
"I'm afraid not."
"But doesn't that meet your objection, old fellow?"
"No. Because you'd be the same man whether you wrote or painted or not!"
"But how on earth can I alter that?"
I seized on his words. "Exactly. That's my whole meaning. You can't
alter it. Whether you do the same or not, you _are_ the same. For all I
know you'll go on being it till the crack of doom. It's yourself that's
been visited, not your books. And that's why things can't go on between
you and Jennie Aird."
"Then you're going to stand between us as long as I am I?"
"That's about the size of it."
"Doesn't it strike you as a little--hard, George?" he asked slowly.
"Yes," I admitted doggedly. "But you'll be bearing it, not she."
By the swinging beam of Fréhel I saw that his head was bowed. Without my
noticing it the riding-lights in the little harbour below had
disappeared; as no boat could now put in till dawn the pécheurs had
waded across the shallows and extinguished them. The tall Crucifix
seemed to advance and to retire again into the gloom with the next
revolution of the Light.
Then he raised his head and asked about the last question I expected.
"About my money, George. You don't know exactly how much I've got?"
"No, not at this moment."
"Who bought the stuff?"
"I sold it in the best market I could find."
Ironically came his reply. "Hasn't it got a name? Are there two of
us?... Anyway, without worrying you too much about it, I'd like an
account soon. I want that matter cleared up."
"Well, never mind furniture at present. That's a detail."
"Oh no it isn't!" he answered quickly. "We seem to have different ideas
as to what's detail. You've given me quite a lot of what I call detail.
This is important.--You really don't remember the name of the man who
bought that furniture of mine?" he mocked me.
"I've already told you you can draw to any reasonable amount."
"I see.... Is this it, that my furniture isn't sold at all, and you're
advancing me money on the security of it?"
"Security, Derry!"
"And I still have my furniture and I owe you five hundred francs?"
"Must we talk about this now?"
There was no mistake about the granite this time.
"Yes, we'd better," he said curtly. "We've wasted time enough about
things that don't matter that"--he snapped his fingers. "I've listened
to what you've got to say, and now I'm going to ask you to listen to me.
I owe you five hundred francs, for which I'm most sincerely obliged. But
I don't think I should have asked you if I'd known. And I want you to
understand that it's all I do owe you."
"Derry, old fellow----"
"Tut-tut! One tale's always good till you hear the other side. It
doesn't seem to strike you that you've made pretty free with me. I'm a
subject for sums and mental arithmetic exercises--you're better at that
than at accounts. I'm some kind of an oddity, that's got to be shoo-ed
with an apron this way and that, and told where he's to go and not to
go, and who he shall speak to and who he shan't. You'd be best pleased
of all if you could shut your eyes and tell yourself that I didn't
exist. But I do exist, and I'm not on sale for five hundred francs. I'm
here on earth, and I don't see what you're going to do about it. I'm not
less alive than anybody else; I'm more alive--a hundred times more
alive. You can call me any age you please--but who'd be locked up, you
or I, if you showed me to any reasonable being and told them I was
forty-five? Care to try it on the Airds? I'll give you the chance if you
like."
Bitterly as he spoke, he grew bitterer as he proceeded.
"This is not the first time you've interfered. You've made free with my
latchkey before this. Julia Oliphant knows about me; who told her, and
who gave you permission? It seems to me I've been pretty patient. I'm
not saying you've not been decent about some things, that time when I
was slipping about all over the scale, but I'm warning you now. I've
listened to all you had to say. I've met you at every point. I've even
offered--I'm hanged if I know why--not to write or paint again if that
will please you. But beyond that----"
Then came an outburst the contempt of which I cannot reproduce.
"Writing! Painting! Books! Pictures! As if _they_ had any more to do
with life than a baby playing with its doll! They're to help fools to
think they're thinking. They're to make 'em believe that but for some
slight accident they could do the same themselves--as they could, and
do! They call a thing like that a 'gift'; but what's the Gift that Life
still has to give when they've said their very last word--they and their
schools? What's been there all the time, waiting for us to get the dust
out of our eyes?... George Coverham, try to come between me and that and
as sure as God will bring to-morrow morning I'll put a stop to your
arithmetic for ever! What do I care if I have to take a new name every
day? What do I care if your friends the Airds bundle you out of the
house? Do you think it matters to me whose father and mother and family
history and papers I steal? That's all life seems to mean to some of
you. 'Where did he come from? Who knows him? Is he French or English?
What does he do for his living? Has he paid his Income Tax? Is he
respectable? What did he do in the war? Where does he bank? What's his
club? Where does he live and how much is his rateable value?' You can't
see a man for all _that_! You can't even see me now for Derwent Rose and
his tombstones of books! By Jove, I said I was a ghost once! But that
was when I was on the slide! I'm no ghost now! It's you others who are
the ghosts! It's you who'd better get off the map! J'y suis, j'y reste;
I'm here--here!"
And again Fréhel showed him there--young, beautiful, indomitable and
ruthless.
Yet what did he utter but his own deeper and deeper condemnation?
Simple, heart-full, innocent Jennie Aird be mated with his piercing and
impossible view of the world! She herself, yes, even in her body's
beauty, to be what his books had formerly been, what his painting was to
be again--the very medium of his transcendental transgression! Why, one
peep at that awful sleeping dynamo of his mind would be enough to drive
her mad, one glimpse of the experience that had been his suffice to
shrivel her opening heart for ever! Did he think to put off his flames
and clouds and lightnings every time he whispered a love-word into her
ear? What fate would be hers, poor Semele, did he forget, as he had
forgotten before now, and put forth the enormousness of his power by her
side? With every word he spoke it was less and less to be thought of. As
far as my own carcass was concerned he might do what he pleased. I would
not stand by and see it done. His vision and will might exceed mine a
thousandfold, but even in my humble heart glimmered the small flame of
what I considered to be my duty. I faced him, waiting for the Light
again.
"Very well," I said as it came over his face. "Am I to take that as your
last word?"
"If you please."
"Then hear mine. I have a car waiting just off the Square. You may knock
me on the head, as you've already threatened. At least I shall have no
further responsibility for you then. But unless you do that I'm going to
get straight into that car, drive to Ker Annic, and tell the Airds the
whole thing before I go to bed. You'll then have the satisfaction that
it's a straight fight in the open, and that you aren't creeping like a
blight into a happy house under a name that isn't even your own."
He spoke very, very slowly. "You mean that, George?"
"Enough. I'm going to stand here without moving till the next time that
Light shows your face. Then I shall do what I've said."
And I stood, still as the rocks at the foot of the Crucifix, giving him
his chance.
V
The darkness seemed an omnipresent thing, positive rather than an
absence, that invaded and became part of me, of him, of the place, of
the hour. Not a star was to be seen, not one speck in the immensity of
the night. I did not even look where I knew his black-bloused figure to
be; his hand might have been uplifted for all I knew. Or for all I
cared. Once more I was weary to death of him and his domination. There
was not room for both of us. He might have the field henceforward to
himself. I had done what I could.
It was an eleven-seconds interval. The Light came. Still I did not look
at him. The Light passed away again.
Four seconds, and once more the Light.
Eleven seconds, the Light, four seconds, the Light....
Then only did I look up.
I had not heard him move, but he had done so. He had sunk to the rocks
at the foot of the Calvary, the rocks worn smooth with the sitting of
generations of evening gossips. I heard a faint choke.
Then his voice came.
"Isn't it--isn't it a little rough on a fellow, sir?"
In a moment I was on my knees by his side. "Derry! Derry! Derry!" I
repeated over and over again. It was all the speech I could find.
"Isn't it rough on a fellow, sir? Isn't it? Isn't it?"
"Derry my boy, my boy!"
"I feel you're right in a way, sir--you're bound to be wiser than I
am--but when I heard them singing that song this evening ... le long de
mon calvaire ... en espérant j'ai pu souffrir ... rien n'est fini, tout
recommence ... it seemed so like it all, sir--you don't know--you've no
idea----"
I rocked him gently in my arms.
"You don't know--you can't possibly know--nobody knows who hasn't been
through it. Mon calvaire--mon Dieu! And to have it hurt you like that
just because you are _able_ to hope! Not the end after all, but the
beginning of everything! Oh, can't you see it, sir--not even a little
bit of it?"
"Yes, talk, my boy--get it over----"
"I shall be all right in a minute. It simply got me by the throat. That
song, I mean. I suppose it's just an ordinary song really--the French
are like that--but it got me by the throat, it was so like me. So like
the way things have been with me. What did they say it was called? I've
forgotten."
"'_Il est venu le Jour._'"
"Yes, that's it. The day's come. After all that. It came that night--I'm
not making a joke, sir--that night in the garden. It's been day ever
since. Night's been day, like a soft sun shining all night. And I
wouldn't ask you to lift a finger to help me if I didn't know it was
quite all right. I do know. It's she who's made everything all right.
That's the funny thing about her--that she's made everything perfectly
all right again. I wonder why that is?"
"Don't wonder. Just stay quiet a while."
"But a fellow can't help wondering a bit. Why should it have made
everything all right the moment I set eyes on her? But she did. I told
you about something happening before, sir, something I can't quite
remember about. That seemed like some sort of an emptying--leaving me
all empty and aching, if you understand. But this filled it all up
again, with happiness and I don't know what--lovely things--all since
that night. That's what makes me so sure. I wouldn't say it if it wasn't
true. It isn't the kind of thing one cares to be untruthful about, is
it? You're in the same house with her--you see her--you know what I
mean----"
Between this simplicity and his late menace, what could I say for his
comfort, what do for my own? I was torn in two. I was a weary, elderly
man, careworn and disillusioned; but he, through unimaginable
tribulation, had mysteriously found this place of stillness and peace
and hope. What his intimidation had not done, that his utter reliance
and trust now began to do. He sat up on the rocks and began to talk.
"You know something about my life, sir. Miss Oliphant knows most, of
course, but you know quite a lot. If it doesn't sound most awfully
conceited, I was rather a nice sort of fellow at eighteen. All the same
I always felt there was something not quite right. I don't mean anything
I did; I mean there always seemed to be a sheet of thick glass between
me and the things I wanted to get close to. I could see through it all
right, all the brightness and the colours, but somehow I couldn't get
any nearer. There wasn't any feel of warmth somehow. It may sound silly
to you, but I used to press up against that glass like a kid at a shop
window full of things he wanted. It wasn't that I wasn't fond of things
and people and so on. I was frightfully fond of them. But I couldn't
manage to let them know it. Even my mother. When she wasn't there I was
tremendously fond of her, but when she came--I don't know--of course I
was fond then--I suppose it was my imagination. But when she wasn't
there she meant an enormous lot to me, and when she came she was just a
nice little mother I was very fond of but never managed to let her
know--just as if I was ashamed. And it was so with everything else. I
used to get excited over Shakespeare and Juliet and Hamlet and Falstaff
and all those people, but they made other people seem rather shadowy.
Then, when I was about twenty-one, it worried me fearfully sometimes.
Other people didn't seem to be like that. I wanted to be like other
people. They hadn't blocks of glass in front of them all the time.
Somehow they seemed so nice and happy and warm all the time. I had a dog
I was really fonder of than I was of anybody! And I wanted to be fond.
I'm afraid this sounds absolute rot, sir, but I can't explain it any
better."
"I'm very much interested. Go on."
"Well, that's lasted more or less all through my life. I'd get all in a
glow about things--just things, and of course people too in a way:
somebody's hair under a stained-glass window in a church, or the organ
or the Psalms. But always something in between, I don't know what. It
worried me because I knew I was all glow inside if I could only get it
out. I was awfully fond of Miss Oliphant, for instance, but I simply
couldn't let her know it. I used to go and see her sometimes and sit
there wondering about it. 'Now here's a jolly sort of girl,' I used to
think, 'as good as they make 'em--good-looking, sometimes nearly
beautiful--and awfully fond of you. Now why can't you get on with her?
Why is there always something you don't say, don't really want to say
perhaps, but it would make such a difference if you could say it?' I
used to ask myself that, but there was never any answer. There never has
been. There it always was, that sheet of glass, as polished as you
please, but shutting me right out from everything everybody else seemed
to have."
"But your books, Derry? You weren't shut out from everybody there!"
"Perhaps that was where it went. You can give things to other people in
a book you can't when you're sitting next to them. That's why I don't
care if I never do anything of that sort again. I want to get near....
And now"--his voice fell to a happy hush--"it's all right. That was
what she did, all in a moment, all in one look. That glass went. That's
why I know that as long as she's near to me no harm will happen to me.
Oh, I know it."
Then, without the slightest warning, he broke into a heartrending
appeal. It was as if he had suddenly remembered that I was not yet won
over.
"Tout recommence! Mon calvaire, mon calvaire!... Have I to lose it the
moment I see it? Must I go back the same way? Can't I go the other?
Haven't I carried my poor little bit of a cross too, sir? Haven't I?
Haven't I? J'ai vécu des heures cruelles.... And hasn't it sometimes
been so heavy that I've prayed it would crush me and get it over? And
even when I've done the rottenest things haven't I always wanted to do
something better--always? Thank God for the glass those times anyway!
Sometimes I've stood off and looked at myself and said: 'Poor devil, it
isn't you really--if you must do this get it over as quick as you can
and start afresh!' I've always started afresh. I never give up hope....
And do I get nothing at all at the end of it, sir? Are you going to
scrape up all those bits of glass she broke, and put them together
again, and send me back the same way? Not even a chance, now that
everything really _is_ beginning again? Now that the day's come? Now
that for a week every night's been like a soft warm sun shining? Are you
going to turn me back?"
Oh, had he but knocked me on the head a quarter of an hour ago it would
have been easier! Then had I been at rest, with those who had built
desolate palaces for themselves before me. Or could I but have believed
what he so firmly believed! Yet must I not almost believe it? Had he not
now almost compelled me? What I had feared to find that morning at St
Briac, the morning after the first meeting of their eyes over the car,
had not happened, but something no less profound had. That hard clear
obstruction that had stood immutably between him and life all his days
had been taken away. I remembered my speculation as to whether there
were not two loves, Jennie's and Julia's, a sacred and a profane. Two?
How if he were right, and there were not two loves, but one love only,
which is simply--Love? What then became of all my arithmetic, my
rectitude, my conventions, even my duty to my friends? What, by
comparison with that love, that law-annihilating love that breaks the
invisible adamant fetters that bind the old Adam and bids the new man
stand forth, were any or all of these things? They were no more than
those social rates and taxes, registrations, commitments, undertakings,
contracts, all the rest of the paper business of our lease of life on
which he had lately poured his scorn. The infinitude of passion and
suffering of a single human soul seemed to me to dwarf them all. And if
a man must sin, let him sin at the fringe and circumference of things,
not at their centre.
Could he give me any assurance whatever of these things he ached no more
to enter his heaven than I ached to thrust him in.
Every four seconds, every eleven seconds, Fréhel opened the furnace of
his white and blazing eye. Tremulously in and out of the gloom the
Calvary seemed to advance and to recede again. Dimly I distinguished
Derry's face--young, faithful, agonised, interceding for his lovelier
self....
It is a fearful responsibility a man past his prime assumes when he bids
such a creature to hope no more, but to veil his face and to return to
the pit whence he was digged....
And how had he offended me? He had merely received a note--had not even
given it, but had simply accepted it and held for a moment the fingers
that had passed it....
Had I, in my own insignificant youth, never done such a thing?
"Derry," I said gently, "I can't go over old ground again. At present--I
say at present--I'm staying in the house. I must now decide how much
longer I can stay there. But first tell me exactly what it is you
propose to do."
"I haven't any intentions at all, sir."
"At present you haven't. You hadn't before, but that didn't last. What
is it you want?"
"Only that you shouldn't thrust me back into--that other."
"And then?"
"I can't think beyond that, sir."
"But there will be something beyond that."
He was silent while the Light revolved twice, thrice, then:
"Et revivre pour t'adorer ... like a soft warm sun even in the night,"
he breathed scarcely audibly. "You can't call it sleeping. Something
blessed that you can't see is going on behind it all the time. Something
seems to be breathing. That's what happens in the night now. It isn't
sleeping; you're too happy to want to go to sleep. Then she smiles. Not
like in the toyshop. She didn't smile in the toyshop; that was a
different kind of look altogether. She smiled yesterday when we were
having tea, but you weren't looking. And twice to-day--twice.... At
first I was afraid my painting was going to excite me a bit, upset me.
Once or twice it did a little. I didn't want to talk about it much this
afternoon for fear of it upsetting me. But everything calms down when
she looks and smiles. It's just her being there. There isn't any glass
at all; the glass is between us two and everybody else in the world.
Painting's perfectly safe with her by me--perfectly safe.... But
nothing's safe without. I shall slip again without her now. I felt
myself even begin to slip that time you said she was going away. It was
frightening.... Don't ask me to try the experiment, sir; it's so
horribly risky; but if they were to spring it on me that she _was_ going
away I know quite well what would happen. It would be like before; I
should have to pack up my traps and disappear again. And that time it
would be the end.... But as long as I'm with her it's all clear
ahead--the new way--the way I always tried to find and always missed--il
est venu le jour----"
He was hardly speaking to me. Little as I could see of his face, I could
divine what passed there. After that recent violence, this almost dumb
meekness and awaiting my judgment. And because he was not speaking to
me, but was communing with his own solitary soul as gravely as he had
bent his knee before That which rose above us into the night, I knew
that I must end by believing him. At a word I could have sent her away.
He had offered to put himself to the test of her departure. That he
might be believed he had even offered to risk once more that hideous
hiatus in his life.
But it was not demonstration that swayed me to my irrevocable act. It
was rather that transcending love that he himself had invoked. Love and
pity lest this my son should once more be cast to the wolves of pain
welled up like a sudden fountain in my heart. Nay, not from my own poor
heart did it well, but from That above us that showed its dim crowned
head and outspread arms every four seconds, every eleven seconds, four
times a minute, cloaked itself in the night again, and again softly
reappeared with the sweep of the occulted Light--from That I think my
pity descended. No thought for the morrow had that Original taken, no
care of father or mother or friend, but only for the weak and the
outcasts of the world. Who was outcast if this grave and destiny-ridden
young figure before me was not? I had stood before him waiting for him
to strike me down; now in his patience and submission he struck me down.
I could leave the Airds. I could turn my back on them for ever. This
dark-bloused lad was my loved son, who mutely implored me to be given
his chance. Were the Airds to die I should have to part from them.
Death, that comes unannounced at any moment, parts us from all our
friends. My portrait need never hang in the Lyonnesse Club to remind
Madge Aird that she had once had a friend who had betrayed her. I need
not even return to England. So Derry might but establish himself, what
did it matter though I wandered? I had no love, nobody had a love for
me, such as that that made his days and nights softly radiant. In a few
years I should be gone. But he would be once more in the glory of his
prime, living a life of my giving. In him would be my resurrection. To
help him over this dead point the rest of my life was at his service.
His prayer should be answered.
But not without a stipulation. When all is said one has to be
practical. Should she after all fail to lead him by the hand forward
again into those fair and untrodden fields of life, all was rescinded.
He must report progress. No step must be taken without my knowledge. One
does not meditate a treason against one's friends quite so
light-heartedly as all that. Nor need he yet be told what I had in my
mind. I turned to him.
"I shall go back now," I said.
He did not speak.
"But I shall do nothing to-night. In fact I won't do anything till I've
seen you again."
He did not thank me in words.
"But the understanding is that you do nothing either. Is that agreed?"
"I promise that, sir."
"Then that's all. I'm very tired. I think I want to sleep."
"Won't you lean on my shoulder, sir?"
"Perhaps I will----"
Only to touch her willing hand--only to carry her letter in his
breast--only to feel that in the unison of their two hearts the rest of
the world might be lost in oblivion----
VI
My reason for not telling him of my decision was that I did not wish him
to have the uneasiness of knowing that he was responsible for it. Nor am
I apologising for the mood in which I had made my choice. I had done so,
however, without very much regard for necessary and practical details.
These it was that I began to turn over in my mind as, racked and
restless, I lay in my bed that night.
And first of all I began to realise that my choice involved me straight
away in that very web of sophistry and dissimulation that I had wished
to avoid. I had imagined on the spur of the moment that by walking out
of the Airds' house with the most plausible explanation I could find, or
for that matter none at all, I should be observing some sort of a
decency to the roof that had so hospitably sheltered me. But when I came
to look at it again!... Good God, what sort of decency was that? To
begin with, when you walk away from somewhere you walk to somewhere, and
where was I to walk to? Away from Dinard altogether? That would be to
walk away from Derry. Take him away with me? That would be to take him
away from Jennie and all hope. Move to an hotel? I should be running
into my late friends every hour, at every turn.
In a word, what I was contemplating was not war on the Airds, nor even a
hypocritical neutrality. It was a vile assassination. And suddenly I
saw, and with a most singular clearness, that my only way out, the only
possible and honourable course, was not to leave the Airds and Dinard at
all, but to leave the earth altogether. Believe me, who know, that that
in the end is what contact with such a man as Derwent Rose amounts to.
But I cannot say that suicide, sentimental, religious or of whatever
kind, has ever strongly attracted me. There was a much, much simpler way
out. Derry knew nothing of what had passed through my mind while
Fréhel's sweeping beam had conjured up that pallid Christ out of the
darkness. I had not told him that I was prepared to sacrifice myself for
him. All that he had been promised was a respite on terms till
to-morrow.
A flood of mean gratitude swept over me that I had told him no more. I
have never known a viler or more shameful ease than that that possessed
me when it became plain that I could go back on him and he be none the
wiser. I am not sure that my recreant lips had not the impudence to
thank God that only I knew the depth of my cowardice and indecision.
For my plan was utterly impossible of execution. It was as impossible to
give him his chance as I had found it to refuse it. Racked and restless
I tossed. I even imagine I had a slight touch of delirium, for fantastic
thoughts and images seemed to dance and interweave and pop up and
disappear again before me. I saw Derry back in Cambridge Circus again,
and his black oak furniture played the most unamusing tricks. Sometimes
his table would be a litter of newspapers and clothing and brown paper,
with an overturned teacup and the two halves of a torn novel lying on
the top; then it would magically clear itself, and Jennie would be
standing by it, a sort of mental extension of Jennie, whose face,
however, I did not see. His catalogued shelves of books would disappear,
and there would be an easel in the middle of the room, and canvases
round the walls, and these would change to the rugs and lacquer of Julia
Oliphant's little recess.... Then the whole of Cambridge would slide
obliquely away, and I would see Jennie's back as she mounted the ladder
of a South Kensington Mews. Then he would appear from nowhere and take
her in his arms, and he had a golden beard, and the next moment was
riding in a hansom with nothing of Jennie visible but her slipper....
Julia Oliphant's slipper in the Piccadilly, Peggy and her garters, lots
of slippers, Jennie's dancing slippers, Jennie in the Dinard Bazaar,
Jennie at the guichet slipping a note into his hand. The ticking of my
watch on the table annoyed me, but I did not get up, and presently I had
ceased to hear it. Then it came again, regularly, irregularly, once
every four seconds, once every eleven seconds, tick-tick, darkness and
the Light, tick-tick, darkness and the Light....
So I tossed, waking every now and then with a start to tell myself that
something must be done--where nothing was possible to be done.
And so, like Peter, I was prepared to deny him ere the cock crew.
I had, in fact, a touch of fever. The next morning I managed to dress
for déjeuner, but when I entered the salon I must needs choose that
moment to give a little lurch and stagger. Alec caught me.
"Here, what's all this about?" he said.
"It's all right."
He gave me a quick look. "It isn't all right. You'd better come upstairs
to bed again."
So I was undressed, and back into bed I was put, my protests
notwithstanding.
The affection with which I was treated certainly helped me very little
in my resolution to glide like a snake noiselessly out of this house,
leaving my poison behind me. Madge was in and out the whole of the
afternoon, a perfect angel of attention and comfort; Alec hunted out an
English doctor--I am sure he believed that a French one would subtly and
diabolically have made away with me. I was told that I must stay in bed
for some days. I demurred, but I really doubt whether I could have got
up.
So they turned Ker Annic upside down for me. To leave father and mother
and friends is a thing you have to do quickly and with immediate
acceptance of the consequences, or not to do at all. You mustn't begin
to let people be kind to you.
And no less than in material things were they solicitous to keep from me
anything that might worry me. Madge laughed away my apologies for the
havoc I made of her engagements, Alec vowed that it was a top-hole way
of spending a holiday to sit at my open window, pretending he was
smoking outside, while the gentle summer breeze that stirred the
curtains blew it all in again. I think his crowning kindness was to get
in a barber daily to shave me. Were I to grow a beard I fear it would
not be a golden one.
And even Jennie visited me once or twice, which is very much indeed from
seventeen who has never known a headache to one who has known more than
he cares to think about.
On Jennie's first two visits to me other people were in and out of the
room; but on the third occasion I was alone. It was mid-afternoon, and
Madge and Alec, I knew, had gone out to pay a call. They had left me
everything that I was likely to need until their return, and I had
imagined the house to be empty. But Jennie tapped and entered, and
asked me how I was. Then she crossed over and stood by the window, where
the sun touched the gold of her hair and showed the shadow of her arms
within her light sleeves.
"Nothing very amusing to do this afternoon, Jennie?" I asked from my
pillow.
"No, only pottering about," she replied.
"Then won't you come and have tea with me presently?"
"I'll order it now if you like."
"Do, and then come back and sit with me unless it bores you."
She went out, and presently returned. She was not particularly good
about a sick-room. She gave a superfluous touch to things here and
there, and then bent over me and shook my pillow with a gesture that
somehow reminded me of that quick little run to her mother's side at the
tramway terminus at St Briac.
"Would you like me to read to you?" she asked.
"Thank you--presently perhaps."
"Did they change those flowers this morning?"
I smiled. "There won't be any flowers left in the garden soon, I get so
many."
"Then there isn't anything I can do," she said helplessly.
Poor child, I don't think that I myself was entirely the object of her
concern--no, not even though I was so blest as to be a link between her
and a certain young Englishman who went about in French clothes and was
known by a French name. I don't think she quite knew what she wanted,
except that it was exquisite to be a little mournful, and to be doing
something for somebody. In spite of that impulsive little gesture, I
don't think her mother had her confidence. That was rather the
compounding of a secrecy than a confidence. It was an atonement, a
guilty little reparation that but locked up her secret the more
securely. I am aware that young girls are traditionally supposed to fly
instantly to their mothers with their troubles of this sort. I can only
say that that is not my experience. Far more frequently they will fly to
a confidante of their own age, and even once in a while to a person like
myself. Her mother would be much, oh, ever so much to her; but she
would not be told about that note that had been surreptitiously slipped
from hand to hand.
"Well, what have you been doing with yourself for the last three days,
Jennie?" I asked.
A Brittany crock of genêts made fragrant the room. Her eyes were fixed
on the flowers.
"Yesterday I went for a bicycle ride," she said.
"Oh? I didn't know you had a bicycle here."
"I hadn't. I hired one."
"Where did you go? Anywhere nice?"
Instead of answering my question she said, with her eyes still on the
flowers, "I've got something for you, Uncle George."
"And what's that?"
"Here it is."
From some tuck in the region of her waist she drew out a note, which she
handed to me. With my elbow on my pillow I read it. It was on a page
torn out from a sketch-book, and it ran:
"I hear you're laid up and hope you'll soon be all right again. I
didn't thank you properly the other night; I couldn't; you know
what I mean. Don't worry about my not keeping my promise; that's
all right; everything's as-you-were till you're about again. But
then I want to see you as soon as ever you can. You get well and
don't worry.
"D. R."
Slowly I folded up the note and put it into the pocket of my
pyjama-jacket. She seemed fully to expect my silence. The shadow of a
marten fled swiftly across the sill of the window. The house-martens
built at Ker Annic.
At last, "I see," I said slowly. "I see."
She did not seem to think it necessary to reply. Neither was it.
"I see," I said again. Then, "Yesterday you went cycling," I said.
"What did you do the day before?"
"I went for a walk."
"And the day before that?"
"I went for a walk too."
"Jennie ... were they supposed to know about these walks--you know who I
mean?"
"Father and mother? No."
"Where did they think you were?"
"Don't know. I didn't say anything at all."
"They've no idea you went for two walks and a bicycle ride with Monsieur
Arnaud?"
No reply.
That is to say, no reply in words; but for anything else her reply was
plain enough. In every line of her lovely resolute short-featured little
face I read that they did not know, were not to know, and that in the
last resort she didn't care a straw whether they knew or not. And I
remembered that in the matter of the note it was she who had taken the
initiative, not he. A beautiful young woman is the devil from the moment
when she gets too old to slap.
But the thing was grave. He had given me an undertaking which, his note
now assured me, he was faithfully keeping; but I had no undertaking from
her. And bachelor as I am, I am under no delusions as to what happens
when mine, the proud, stalking, choosing sex, is marked down by its
demure, still and emotional opposite number. Something can be done with
us; we give undertakings and abide by them; but what can be done when
the Jennie Airds take the bit between those pearls of their teeth? I
shook my head. I shake it over the same problem still.
"But look here, Jennie," I said quietly. "This is all very well, but is
it quite--playing the game?"
This also she evidently expected. "About father and mother? I've left
school. I'm old enough to think for myself. Mother says so. Anyway I'm
going to. She always said I should."
"But mother doesn't know about these walks and bicycle rides."
Obstinately she contested every little point, even a casual plural.
"There's only been one bicycle ride."
"One then. She doesn't know about it."
"I can't help that."
"But of course you could----"
"No I couldn't," she rapped out. "I mean I just _can't_ help it. How can
anybody help it? How can anybody do anything about it? It's a thing that
happens to you, and it happened to them before, and I expect they did
just as they liked about it, and didn't care a bit what anybody said! I
can just see mother if anybody'd said she wasn't going for a walk with
father!"
"You can't see anything of the sort, Jennie. If I remember rightly what
your mother said, she had to sit still in her own carriage till her own
footman opened the door. That was what happened when your mother was
your age."
"Well, they don't do that nowadays, and mother knows it," she retorted.
The heartless logic of youth! It will turn your own words against you as
soon as look at you. Because her mother had recognised that the world
did not stand still she was to be made an accessory to this deception.
"Then," I said presently, "if they don't know, ought I to know?"
"You knew before," she said. "They didn't."
"But they're bound to find out."
"Oh, I expect everything will be settled by then!" she calmly announced.
The dickens it would! I lay back on my pillow. Fortunately the
appearance of tea at that moment gave me a little time in which to
collect my thoughts. Jennie removed various objects from the bedside
table, took the tray from the maid, and began to pour out.
"Then," I said by and by, "why aren't you bicycling--or walking--this
afternoon?" I wanted to have the position quite clear. If she could
spend three days with him in succession, why not a fourth, and a fifth,
and a sixth?
"I had to give that note to you," she said.
"Ah, the note! I forgot that.... Have you any idea what's in it?"
She blushed crimson, flamed with reproach. All the same, I contrasted
her shameless deception of her parents with this point of honour about
peeping into an unsealed note to myself. These heaven-born young
beauties draw the line in such odd places.
"I never thought----", she said, biting her lip; and I hastened to set
her right.
"Good heavens, Jennie, you can't think that I meant _that_! I meant in a
general way, what the subject of it is."
"I know what he thinks," she said, the fierce colour slowly retiring
again.
"Well, what does he think?"
"He thinks you were perfectly ripping to him the other night, about not
doing anything till you saw him again, and when I told him you were ill
he was awfully upset, and tore a page out of his sketch-book and wrote
the note that very moment."
The devil!... But I went on.
"So he was sketching, and you went with him?"
"Yes. He did a sweet sketch, with me in it," she breathed, her eyes
softly shining.
Only to see her and to go for bicycle-rides with her--only to speak to
her and to paint her among the glowing sarrasin, the green translucence
of the woods, the golden seaweed of the rocks or wherever it was----
"Oh, he did! And where was this?"
It was neither among the sarrasin, nor in the green woods, nor on the
shore.
"It was miles and miles away, right past Saint Samson, nearly at Dinan,
at a château called La Garaye," she said softly. "I never saw anything
so lovely. There's a huge wide avenue of beeches like a tunnel--it's all
in the middle of a lovely beechwood--and there's a lovely soft
grass-ride right down the middle. Then at the bottom there are two great
masses of ivy that used to be the château gates. And past them are the
little white bits of the ruins. And there was an enormous loud humming
everywhere, like a hundred aeroplanes. That was them thrashing at the
farm with four horses that went round and round. We rode our bicycles
down the green ride and put them up by some farm-buildings. They don't a
bit mind your going anywhere you like, and they said he could paint if
he wanted to. So he got out his things and I watched him. He didn't want
me for the picture at once, because he had all the other to do first.
Then he made me lie down in a frightfully nettley place, but he only
laughed and said I'd got to be just there because it was where he wanted
me. My hands are all nettled yet, look. So he painted me, Uncle George,
and that horse-thing never stopped humming, and oh, it was so hot and
blue and drowsy--I nearly went to sleep once. But the loveliest thing of
all was afterwards. We climbed about among all those stones and ivy, and
then there was a tower. Just like a castle tower, Uncle George, but not
a hole or a window anywhere, except a place at the bottom just big
enough to creep through. And what it was was an old pigeon-place, where
they used to keep pigeons. All honeycombed inside with holes for
thousands and thousands of pigeons. But, of course, there weren't any
pigeons there, only an old sitting hen among the nettles that scurried
round and round and then clucked away. It was like being at the bottom
of a kiln or something, with grasses and flowers and things round the
top and the sky _e_-ver so blue! And all those thousands of
pigeon-holes, all grown up with birch and ivy and nettles and that silly
old hen! I picked a bit of herb-robert. Oh, it was a heavenly place!"
Heavenly indeed, I thought grimly. Heaven enough inside that
columbarium, with only a small hole to creep in at, and the muffled
drone of that horse-gin, shut out by the walls that had once been filled
with the cushing of a thousand doves and only God's blue looking down on
them from the top!
Heavenly enough to make your heart ache when you remembered that there,
in that ruined place of dead doves, he conscientiously sought to keep
his promise to me--while she had given never a word to take back. Oh, I
saw it all right. No question about that. She took very good care that I
should see it....
For I was being as softly cajoled and canvassed and propagandised as
ever I was in my life. Derry, piloting me from shop to shop into the
Dinard Bazaar, had taken me by the arm; but she wound herself in among
my very heartstrings. And her plan was to upheap me with unasked
confidences before I could say her nay. After that, if I guessed her
thoughts rightly, there would be nothing for me to do but to respect the
sacred but unwanted encumbrance. I should then be enlisted against Alec
and Madge. Those of us whom the years have perhaps mellowed a little are
ever at the mercy of calculated guile of this sort. To tell somebody
something they don't want to know--and then to put them upon their
honour not to divulge it!
The boy, the father of the man, indeed! Save us from the machinations of
the maiden who is mother of the woman!
For she was a woman. In little more than a week or two she had almost
visibly altered, shot up into maturity. I had no doubt that he would
keep his word to me; but--_only_ to see her, _only_ to speak to her!
Only! Though it were but looking, what inch of beauty was there about
her of which I could dare to say, "His eyes have not embraced that, his
glance has not been as his very lips upon it?" Though it were but
hearing, what tone was there in the sweet gamut of her voice of which I
could tell myself, "His ears at any rate have not heard that?" Not one.
And under the homage of his gazing, under the flattery of his hearing,
the last particle of her girlhood had turned and altered. That hair, so
recently a ruddy plait to be "put up" on occasion, was now a bride's
single garland, its golden strands to be unwound again on an occasion
that was not even her parents' concern. Disdain was now all that young
Charterhouse, young Rugby had from those pebble-grey eyes. And that
tongue of hers, lately so petulant with the world, was now her subtlest
weapon, to get under my guard, to seduce me with her confidences about
pigeon-towers and what not, and by and by (I had not the slightest
doubt) to say with a touching and heartfelt sigh, "Oh, what a comfort it
is to have one person one can tell everything to!"
But this was all very well. Quite excellent to pat my pillow, and ask me
whether my flowers had been changed, and to fuss about pouring out tea
for me. But, while I had more or less got their measure singly, I had no
idea what double-dealing they might not be capable of together. So as
she still sat with shining eyes, dreaming again of that columbarium, I
pressed to the next point.
"So he painted you. All in one sitting?"
She dropped the eyes. "I think he said it might take three or four."
"In fact it might be cheaper in the long run to buy the bicycle instead
of hiring it?"
She was demure. "Oh, I don't think so, Uncle George."
"What do they charge for the hire of a bicycle?"
"I don't know, Uncle George. I haven't paid anything yet."
"Then you still have it? Haven't they asked any questions about it?"
She looked quickly and innocently up. "Father?... Oh, it isn't here! You
see the tram's almost as quick to St Briac."
"Oh! Then it's at St Briac?"
"Yes. In the kitchen."
"The kitchen where Coco lives?"
"Yes. That one. But, of course, Coco's outside except when it's raining.
And he has sung 'Quand je bois mon vin clairet.' He sang it
beautifully."
"I'm sure he did," I assented grimly.... "Now tell me a little more of
what Monsieur Arnaud said when he was so grateful to me for not doing my
plain duty."
Her eyes were full on mine, with an expression I did not understand.
Somehow the pretty scatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose
seemed to give the look an added directness. Her lips parted, but not in
a smile.
"You needn't call him Monsieur Arnaud," she said.
"What then?" I asked quickly. "What do you call him, if I may ask?"
At her reply the teacup almost dropped from my hand.
"That's really what he said I had to tell you this afternoon," she said.
"Of course I call him Derry, like you."
VII
I was hardly ill enough to have a temperature-chart over the head of my
bed; had there been one heaven knows how high into the hundreds it must
have leaped. I had been prepared for progression, development. Swiftly
as things seemed to have advanced, from taking a single bicycle ride
with him to keeping a bicycle in his kitchen was after all only a matter
of degree. But this, of so totally different a piece, positively stunned
me.
"Derry!" I echoed stupidly. "Derry what?"
"Rose, of course." Then, rushing almost breathlessly to forestall me,
"But of course I know it's the most _fr-r-right_-ful secret! I know that
only the three of us know. And it's splendid of you, darling Uncle
George, to have stuck up for him the way you did! I wouldn't breathe a
single word, not if they were to stick knives into me!"
Her eyes brimmed with thanks for my loyalty, disloyalty or whatever it
was. But what, in God's name, had he been mad enough to tell her?
Everything? Had he told her the whole story rather than strangle her on
the spot?
"Tell me what he said," I moaned in a weak voice. Better know the worst
and get it over.
"Of course I'm going to. But oh, how could I be so horrid to you about
that note! As if you _would_ think that I should peep into a note
anyway! You do forgive me, don't you?"
"If you're going to tell me tell me quickly," I groaned.
So this, if you please, is what came next:
"It was while we were in that pigeon-place, where the hen was. They look
like rows and rows of little square holes, where the pigeons used to
live I mean, but when you put your hand in they're quite big inside, all
scooped out, lots of room for both pigeons and all their eggs. And one
row hooks round inside one way and the other the other. I discovered
that when I put my hand in, and I turned round to tell Derry. And do you
know, Uncle George, he's got such a funny name for that place. He calls
it the Tower of Oblivion. I didn't know what oblivion was, so I didn't
know what he meant just at first, but I think it's a splendid name for
it now. You see----"
"You were saying that you turned round to tell him something."
"I was just coming to that. So I turned round, and at first I had rather
a fright, because I couldn't see him. I thought he'd gone, but I didn't
see how he could, because there was only that one little way in and I
was standing close to it. Then I saw him behind the bushes and things,
all among the nettles, and his head was against the wall. I made a
noise, but he didn't seem to hear me. So then I touched him.
"'What's the matter, M'sieur Arnaud?' I said. 'Is something the matter?'
"Well, he didn't move, Uncle George. For ever so long he didn't move.
Then he turned round, and oh, his poor eyes! I don't mean he was crying.
He didn't cry once all the time. But he made me so anxious I didn't know
what to do.
"'What is the matter, M'sieur Arnaud? Do tell me what's the matter!' I
said.
"'You mustn't call me that,' he said. 'It isn't my name.'
"'Not your name!' I said. 'But Sir George Coverham calls you that, and
mother calls you that, and Sir George wouldn't have told mother so if it
wasn't so, and they call you that where you live!'
"'They do, and it isn't my name,' he said. 'I want to tell you my name,'
he said.
"Well, I thought it awfully funny everybody calling him something that
wasn't his name. So I said, 'Well, what _is_ your name?'
"'Rose,' he said.
"'What besides Rose?' I said.
"'Derwent,' he said. 'Derwent Rose. But George calls me Derry.'
"'George? Do you mean Sir George Coverham?' I said.
"'Yes. I sometimes call him George,' he said.
"And then, Uncle George, he put his head against the wall again and went
on saying to himself, 'The Tower of Oblivion, the Tower of Oblivion,'
over and over again."
I closed my eyes, but it was like closing them in a swing, so sick and
dizzy did I feel. I had never seen that Tower in my life, yet somehow I
seemed to be there--walled in, cut off from the rest of mankind, with
only that hot deep blue overhead, and the grasses that fringed the
circular top minutely bright and intense against it. The loud droning of
the threshing-gin at the adjacent farm seemed to be in my ears, but in
my heart was a more moving murmur. Gentle and forgotten place! With what
croonings, what flutterings, had it not once been astir! Those little
cavities into which she had thrust her hand were the cells of a
once-throbbing heart. But who had built a Tower of stone to guard the
dove's faithfulness? What masonry could make that, the very emblem of
love, more secure? Of all birds, the constant dove to be thus immured?
Towers are for the defence of the helpless, not of that invulnerable
meekness and strength. All the stones in the world could not more
fortify those soft immutable hearts. Such humility, yet so stable: such
defencelessness, yet so steadfast! It was in this wondrous place, thrice
strong without but ten times strong within, that Derwent Rose had sought
his atonement. He too, hard without, was all tenderness within. He had
no choice but to lie to the rest of the world, but she must be told the
truth. Arnaud would do well enough for others, but he had no peace
unless to her he was Derwent Rose. It was his comfort to tell her so,
and that Tower was in truth his confessional, the Oblivion of his dead
years.
"But of course you know all about it, Uncle George," she went on. "I
didn't, you see, and that's what made it sound so queer. So I said to
him, 'But why do you call yourself Arnaud if your name is Rose?'
"'Because something once happened to me,' he said.
"'What?' I asked him.
"'I don't know,' he said. 'George doesn't know. Nobody knows. A doctor
once tried to tell me, but he didn't know either.'
"'But what sort of a thing?' I said. 'What does it do?'
"'It makes me younger,' he said. 'I'm years and years older than I look.
I'm not young at all.'
"'But I don't understand,' I said. 'If it makes you young then you _are_
young, aren't you?'
"And then he smiled. I was so glad to see him smile. He'd been fearfully
mopey up to then.
"'That's so,' he said. 'And anyway it's all over now. If it wasn't I
shouldn't be telling you. If it wasn't over I shouldn't be here,
Jennie.'
"He called me Jennie for the first time. He hadn't called me anything up
to then, ever.
"'Then if it's all over what are you bothering about it for?' I said.
'Was it your fault?'
"'No,' he said.
"'Then,' I said, 'if a thing isn't a person's fault I think we ought to
be sorry for them, and it doesn't matter if it's all over. And,' I said,
'if Uncle George calls you Derry I'm going to call you Derry too. It
really is all over, Derry dear?'
"'Look, Jennie,' he said.
"And then, Uncle George, he looked up at the sky out of the top of the
Tower, and bent his knee and crossed himself three times, like this."
Over her young breast her hand did what his had done.
"'And you promise it wasn't your fault?' I said.
"'That was my promise, Jennie,' he said.
"'Then,' I said, 'I don't want to hear another word about it. I won't
listen. You're not to tell me any more.'
"So I wouldn't listen, and when he opened his mouth I just did this----"
And laughingly, with her hands tight over her ears, she shook her head.
She would no more peep behind his word than she would have peeped into
his note.
"And all this was yesterday?"
"Yes."
"Where is he to-day?"
"I only saw him just for a minute this morning. He wouldn't let me go
with him to-day. He said I must come to you and tell you what I've just
told you. So I waited till father and mother had gone out and then I
came."
"And when father and mother come back? How do I stand? What am I to do?"
She sat straight up. "To do, Uncle George? But you _promised_ him!"
"I promised him for the moment."
"Well, this _is_ the moment, isn't it? You'll see him as soon as ever
you get up again, won't you?"
"Between the two of you I don't seem to have very much choice," I
muttered....
Suddenly through the open window came the sound of voices below. Alec
and Madge had returned. Jennie flew to my glass, and then, apparently
finding all well there, turned, smiled, and put her finger on her lips.
She was busily packing up my tray when Madge entered.
"Well, decided to live, George?" the kind creature rallied me. "All
sorts of sympathetic messages for you from the Nobles and the Fergusons
and the Tank Beverleys--run-after creature that you are! Been to sleep?"
"No."
Jennie passed behind her mother with the tray. She gave me a half-veiled
glance as she did so. Then, almost imperceptibly, she brushed her
mother's shoulder with her lips.
And well, I thought, she might!
"Jennie been reading to you?" said Madge.
"No, we've just been talking."
"Well, you'll have somebody else to talk to the day after to-morrow. We
didn't want to trouble you with the affairs of this world when you were
at death's door, but who do you think's coming?"
I made a great effort. "Animal, vegetable or mineral?"
"Angel, whichever that is," said Madge.
"I've angels enough about me."
"Pooh!... Julia Oliphant's coming. So you'd better get your colour back
in case she wants to paint that portrait here."
With which comforting words she took up my bowl of quite fresh flowers
and marched off to get some more.
PART III
THE CUT-OUT
I
"But won't you find it a little cold?"
"Cold!" Julia laughed. "If Jennie can I can; why, it's a heavenly day!
But are you quite warm? You're the one we have to coddle."
"Oh, I'm quite all right. Well, that's your tent, the green-striped one.
I'll walk along to the rocks."
She took the escholtzia-hued robe and other fripperies from my arm,
nodded smilingly, and passed up the beach.
The Airds and their set bathed, not from the crowded plage of Dinard
proper, but in the quieter bay of St Enogat. The beach glistened with
minute particles of mica, deposited in moiré patterns as the wavelets
had left them, and to touch that sand with your hand was to withdraw it
again all infinitesimally spangled. It sparkled like gun-metal in the
rocks, floated in suspension in the green water. You would have said
that the whole shore had been sown with that metallic powder with which
children used to tinsel themselves at Christmas parties.
I crossed the tent-bordered plage towards the rocks. Already a dozen
bathers splashed and played. Every contour of wet limb reflected the
warm gold, every rubber-capped head had its piercing little flash of
sunlight. I looked for Jennie's yellow cap, but did not see it; she was
still in the tent whither she had preceded Julia five minutes before.
But I saw the Beverley girls, of whose mutual sufficiency Madge so
strongly disapproved. Jennie was not to be brought up on those lines....
I lay down on a purple-weeded rock and watched the fruit salad of the
bathers. Scattered over the beach where they had dropped them lay their
bright wraps, the prints of their sandals patterned the mica. Tank
Beverley's head could be seen, a dark dot a quarter of a mile out, and
in the green marge two little French children splashed, brown as nuts
and innocent of any garment whatever. Their barefooted mother knitted a
few yards from where I sat, their father lay by her side with his panama
over his face. The sun shone honey-yellow through the wings of the
gulls, and far out a little launch crept among the rocks and sent its
soft "thut-thut" over the water.
Jennie and Julia were taking rather a long time to get ready, I thought,
and I hoped all was well. For Jennie, if the truth must be told, was
behaving abominably. She was far, far too submissive and sweet and
self-effacing before the older woman--altogether too good to be
true--and I happened to know that Madge had taken her to task about it a
couple of days before.
"I don't see why you can't call her just Julia if it comes to that," she
had rebuked her. "She isn't a hundred, anyway. I do wish you'd stop
saying 'Aunt Julia.'"
"I'm very sorry, mother darling. Shall I call her Miss Oliphant?"
As a matter of fact I had not since heard her use any form of address
whatever.
It was the third day after Julia's arrival, and my own longest walk
since my touch of illness. Without even changing her travelling-things,
Julia had come straight up into my room the moment of her arrival at Ker
Annic, and, kneeling down by my bed, had taken both my hands into hers.
"You poor old George!" she had laughed. "So this is what you've been and
gone and done to yourself! Well, we must see what an extra nurse can
do."
"Had you a good crossing?"
"Well--crowded wasn't the word; but two nice dear men looked after me.
I'd a scandalous flirtation with one of them; oh, I 'got off'; he was
putting my collar round my neck for me before we passed the Needles. And
may I solemnly assure you, George, that in Buckingham where I've been
staying a male man wanted to marry me? Fact. And when I said No-could-do
he accused me of encouraging him and left the house the next day. Such
is human life so gliding on. Have you fallen in love with a Frenchwoman
yet?"
"Not yet."
"Oh, but they're so wonderful! They walk like lines of poetry. There was
one on the boat coming over; I suppose my cavalier didn't speak French
very well, or he'd never have looked at me with her about. I don't know
though--it gives you a lot of confidence when you've been proposed
to.... Well, I must go and have a bath and change. I only peeped in to
see you. 'Après le bain,' as the Salon pictures say--be good."
And with a nod over the collar of her terra-cotta blanket-coat she had
left me.
Of our subsequent talk about Derwent Rose I will speak presently.
They appeared together from behind the green-striped bathing-tent. The
wind-blown wrap of escholtzia-orange and the green turban were Julia's;
Jennie wore her white towelling gathered closely about her, and the
yellow cap was pulled as low as her eyebrows. Julia is only slightly
taller than Jennie. A good four feet separated the orange and the white
as they advanced towards me. Julia saw me and waved her hand; Jennie
made no gesture. Julia looked freely about her; Jennie gazed straight
ahead. The blowing aside of Julia's wrap showed a short-skirted bright
green costume with ribboned sandals; Jennie bathed in her plain
navy-blue "Club" and her feet were bare. I rose to take their wraps.
Except for one piece of advice she offered, Jennie did not speak to
Julia.
"I don't think I'd go beyond the point there," she said as her towelling
fell to her feet. "There's rather a rip."
She ran down to the water. Julia turned to me.
"You all right?" she asked. "Here"--laughingly she took the vivid wrap
from my arm and put it about my shoulders. "There! Now you're all comfy.
That'll keep both you and it warm for when I come out again."
She nodded and followed Jennie. Julia Oliphant has very little to learn
about walking from any woman, French or not. With her robe about me I
sat down on the rock again.
Atrociously Jennie was behaving. She had been told by Madge in plain
words that she was expected to bathe with Julia that afternoon, and she
intended that Julia should be quite aware of the quality of her
obedience. Even in her little warning about the rip at the point there
had been a delicately-measured ungeniality, and their attitude as they
had walked from the tent together had been--well, polite. She had now
joined the Beverley girls in the water, and if Miss Oliphant cared to go
beyond the point after being warned not to that was her look-out. She
did not fail of a single attention to the older woman; but every time
she vacated a chair or asked Julia whether she could fetch her book she
had the air of saying to herself, "There, I did that and mother can't
say I didn't."
And I suppose it does make you a little cross when you are sent to bathe
when you want to be off somewhere on a bicycle.
Julia Oliphant had not bathed during that week-end she had spent in my
house in Surrey. It had been Derry who had done the swimming. But I
fancied it would have been different had she had that week-end to live
over again. She had remarkably little to be ashamed of in the water. The
long arm she threw out thickened, rather surprisingly and very
beautifully, up to its pit; and the man on the boat who had shown the
solicitude about the collar of her blanket-coat had been quite a good
judge of necks. Jennie's glistening dark-blue shape seemed still coltish
and nubile by comparison with Julia's ampler mould. But the twenty-odd
years that separated them were Jennie's stored and untouched riches, not
Julia's. It was Jennie, not Julia, who could stay half a day in that
water and come out without as much as the numbing of a finger-tip. And
the difference between Jennie's navy-blue "skin" and that other smart
and tricky green was the difference between the young leaf-bundle in
its sticky sheath and the broad opened palms of the chestnut in
midsummer.
As I sat there on the rocks, forgetting that escholtzia-yellow thing
about my shoulders as the seniors forget their tissue-paper caps at a
children's party, I pondered a resolve I had taken. Between Julia
Oliphant and myself there had not hitherto been a single secret in
anything that concerned Derwent Rose. But a secret there must now be.
She might find out about Derry and Jennie for herself, but from me she
should never hear it. Jennie was hardly likely to confide in her. Derry
himself--who knew?--might. Him she had not yet seen.
But we had spoken of him, and almost my first question had been to ask
her whether she had been staying on in England in the expectation of his
return. Her reply had been curiously, smilingly nonchalant.
"No, I don't think so; not altogether, that is. What does it matter
whether I see him there or here?"
"But you weren't seeing him, either there or here."
"Oh, there wasn't any hurry. It's only three weeks. That isn't very
long."
"That depends. Three weeks with him might be a very long time indeed."
"Oh, but if _that_ happened again you'd have told me," she had said,
with the same off-handedness.
"I might not have done so. You left it entirely to me."
"Well, no news is usually good news. And I wasn't wasting my time. I did
get a proposal."
"About that. And forgive me, because I don't mean it rudely. But is that
a joke?"
"Not a bit of a joke. He did want to marry me. So you see that's Derry's
too."
"What is?"
"_That_ is. The more--let's say desirable I am, if I don't scandalise
you, the more I have for him. And anyhow I'm here now."
"Did you ask Madge to ask you?"
"Yes. In the end I thought I would. There was no hurry, but there was
no sense in positively wasting time. You say he's at St Briac. Where's
that? I don't know this coast."
"Six or seven miles. A tram takes you all the way."
"Then we'll look him up. But I want to do a bit of shopping with Madge
first. Must have a couple of hats. I hardly bought a single thing to
come away with."
And her manner ever since had been for all the world as if something was
inevitable, would come of itself, in its own good time, whether she
lifted a finger to further it or not.
It may sound fantastic to you, but I could almost have believed that
when she had taken that yellow thing from her own shoulders and had put
it over mine, she had invested me with something more than a garment,
something almost of herself. I had seen Jennie's disdainful glance at
the coquetry with which she had cast it about me; almost insolently she
had allowed her own towelling to drop where it would; and Julia now
enveloped me in a double sense. Cloak or no cloak, she claimed all my
thoughts, all my gazing. For I and I only knew why she was in France.
Her errand was the deadlier the less haste she made. I had sought to
interpose between him and Jennie because Jennie was too young; could I
now step between him and Julia because Julia was too old? Moreover, both
women now knew his terrific secret. The exquisite complication I had
dreaded to entertain was upon us in its perfection. What, between the
three of them, was to happen now?
For Julia he was on his way For Jennie he hoped to go
back to sixteen. forward again.
Julia's influence over him had But I could guess what calm
been to rob him of eleven and healing had brooded over
years in a single night. him as he stood with
Jennie in the Tower.
Julia had strangely made herself Jennie knew nothing of this,
his scapegoat and had and yet had an instinct that
left him lighthearted, innocent, Julia Oliphant was a person
free. to be kept at arm's length.
Julia was still unaware that Jennie, his partial confession
apparently his years had in the Tower notwithstanding,
ceased to ebb. was unaware that the
matter had any great seriousness.
Julia had her knowledge of his Jennie was in possession of
former youth. his present one.
Julia would walk through Jennie would do no less to keep
flame to find him. him.
One drop of comfort I found in the whole extravaganza, and one only.
Jennie's naughtiness might reach extremes of civility, but so far at any
rate Julia was tolerantly good-humoured about it. For she could hardly
be unconscious of the--well, the bracing temperature of the atmosphere.
But how long was that likely to last? Once more Derry seemed to have us
all entangled in the web of his unique condition. Already my own
surreptitious visits to him had made me feel little better than a
slinking conspirator; the presence of Jennie's bicycle in that St Briac
kitchen did not improve matters; and now, to cap all, Julia and I were
to seek him out.
Again I found myself weakly wishing that I could wash my hands of him.
And again I knew that I could not. It seemed to me that there was
nothing to do, not even anything to refrain from doing. The whole thing
ran itself. It ran itself independently of any of us, as it had run
itself with equal smoothness and efficiency whether Julia had stayed in
England or had come over here.
And I sat contemplating it, wrapped in her vivid cloak, wrapped in her
lurid thoughts, my looks alternately seeing and avoiding her shape in
the water, while the sun flashed on the grapes and apricots and oranges
of that fruit-salad in the waves of St Enogat's plage.
II
They came out again, dripping, gleaming, Julia laughing, Jennie without
a smile.
"I'll wait here for you," I said to Julia as I replaced her wrap on her
shoulders.
"Right you are. Ten minutes. Come along, Jennie----"
The billowing escholtzia-yellow and the closely-gathered white retreated
up the beach again.
In a quarter of an hour Julia returned alone. She sat down by my side.
"Jennie wouldn't come. She's taken the things in. George," she suddenly
demanded, "is that child in love?"
I parried. "Is that a thing I should be very likely to know?"
"Then I'll tell you. She is. All the signs--every one. She can't sit
still in one place for five minutes. Poor little darling!" she smiled.
"I remember _so_ well...."
"Wouldn't it be better if you were to take a walk after your bathe?"
"What about you? Sure it wouldn't be too much for you?"
"I should like a walk."
"Come along then. I suppose I did stay in as long as was good for me."
A steep stone staircase descends between the villas, in the chinks of
which hawkweed and poppies and pimpernel have seeded themselves. At the
top of it a winding lane leads to the church, and from this there
branches off the Port Blanc road. In that direction we walked, and in
ten minutes were among cornfields and hedges, clumps of elms and
coppices of oak. Ploughs and chain-harrows lay by the footpaths, and the
sea might have been a hundred miles away.
"Sure you're not overdoing it?" she asked as we took a little path under
a convolvulus-starred hedge.
"Quite all right, thanks."
"Oh, smell the air! This is a jolly place! Which way is St Briac from
here?"
"Over that way."
The dark eyes sent a message. "Well, now tell me what his painting's
like. I expect it's as wonderful as his writing was."
"It rather struck me--I don't know much about it--but I fancied it was
on somewhat similar lines."
"What sort of lines?"
"The old story--starting anew from the very beginning of
everything--nothing to do with anything else, past, present or to come."
"Of course he would be the same.... But now tell me--we've hardly had
ten words yet, what with Madge and shopping and your silly illness and
one thing and another. You say he's got to twenty?"
"Thereabouts."
"And he hasn't moved since--you know what I mean?"
"That isn't quite clear."
"What isn't there clear about it?"
"He thinks he's moving--he hopes to move--forward again."
She stopped to stare at me. Already the few days' sun had softly browned
her natural milky pallor.
"He _what_!" she gasped.... "But that's wilder than all the rest put
together!"
"It's what he thinks. There's simply his word for it. He can't explain
it. But he's staking everything on it."
"Everything? What?"
"His future course, I suppose, whatever that is. By the way, has Madge
said anything to you about him?"
She stared harder than ever. "Madge! Does Madge know him?"
"She doesn't know Derry. But she knows Arnaud. He's been to the house."
"He's been ... Oh-h-h-h!"
You may call me if you will the most dunderheaded fellow who ever
meddled in things he did not understand. I deserve it all and more. All
the same I must ask you to believe me when I say that it was not until
that "Oh-h-h-h!" broke in an interminable contralto whisper from her
lips that I saw what I had done. I had resolved that not one word of
Jennie Aird's affairs should she learn from me. As much for her own sake
as for Jennie's I had determined to spare her that.
And now I had gone and told her that very thing!
For the knowledge of it leaped full-blown out of that long record of her
own heart. Jennie was in love; Arnaud had been to Ker Annic;
therefore--she knew it, she knew it--Jennie was in love with Derry. How
should anybody, seeing him as Julia Oliphant had seen him at his former
twenty, not fall in love with him? Young, sunbrowned, beautiful,
grave--only to see him, only to have him at the house for tea, was to be
in love with him during the whole of the remaining days. Who knew this
if Julia Oliphant did not? Jennie thenceforward would love him as she
herself had loved him through the unbroken past. And if he thought his
turning-point had now come, forward into the future again he and Jennie
would go together.
That and nothing else was what I had told her.
"Oh-h-h-h!" she said again. "I _see_!" And yet once more, "Oh-h-h-h! I
_see_!"
And, losing my head once, in that very same moment a wilder thing still
rose up in my heart to crown it with folly. I forgot that between Julia
Oliphant and myself there could never be any question of love. Little
difference it made that I now loved her, knew now that I had long loved
her. For me she could never care. Yet I forgot that. It seemed to me in
that overwrought moment that if Derry really was right, and on the point
of living normally forward again, in one way the field of the future
could be left to him and to Jennie Aird. Julia and I together could
leave it to them. She in my arms (I was distracted enough to think),
Jennie in his, would at least cut the knot it passed our wits to untie.
In any case Derry would never again look at Julia Oliphant. He never had
looked at her. But I looked and found her desirable, as other men had
found her desirable. And why should not I too have whatever of good the
remaining years could give me?
So, under that convolvulus-starred hedge, with that sweet air in our
nostrils and the whispering of the corn in our ears, I asked Julia
Oliphant to marry me.
Before coming out she had picked up and put on her head one of Alec's
panamas. For the rest she wore a sort of rough creamy crape, with a
wide-open collar, elbow-length sleeves, a cord round her waist, grey
silk stockings and suède shoes. Little wisps of her dark hair were still
damp from her bathe, and her skirt was dusted with particles of mica
from the sands. Since uttering that "Oh-h-h-h!" she had not moved.
"I see," she said again. "I see."
"Then, Julia----"
"Oh, I see! I ought to have known the very first moment!"
"Then----"
She turned towards me, but only for an instant. Then she looked away
again. "What were you saying?" she asked.
"Very humbly, I asked you to marry me, Julia."
"Queer," she murmured.
"Is it so very queer?"
She gave a tremulous little laugh. "The way everything happens at once,
I mean. Get yourself proposed to once and you go on. I shall know quite
a lot about it soon.... I say, George----"
"What, Julia?"
"How long ago was that--when he came to the house, I mean?"
"About ten days ago."
"And you there! What nerve! Did he let himself be introduced to you, or
what?"
"He came up and shook hands with me. In fact he carried everything off
very competently."
"Carried everything off ..." she repeated, looking away over the corn.
"And has he been since then?"
"We had tea with him in his garden one afternoon."
"One afternoon ..." she murmured again. "How does Jennie spend most of
her time?"
"I've been laid up in bed."
"Of course," she nodded. Apparently she passed it as a good man's
answer, as men's answers go.
But my own question she did not appear to dream of answering. Except to
compare it with another man's similar question she might not have heard
it. Nor had I asked that question only as the solution of an otherwise
insoluble problem. Happy I, could I have taken her into my arms there
and then. So I waited, my eyes in the shadow of her panama, while she
continued to look far away.
Then, "I see," she said yet once more. "Of course I ought to have known
in the tent."
"In the tent?"
"The bathing-tent. She could hardly bear to share it with me. But she
let me have the little stool, and untied a knot for me, and carried my
wet things home."
"Madge Aird's daughter wouldn't behave altogether too unlike a lady."
"Madge Aird's daughter's a woman," she replied.
Then her whole tone changed. She confronted me.
"That that you've just been saying is all nonsense, of course," she said
abruptly. "You know it is. What happened in July puts that out of the
question once for all. How can you possibly ask that woman to marry
you?"
"I have asked her."
"She isn't her own to marry anybody. And I don't see how Derry can marry
anybody either. What's he going to do--forge papers, or impersonate
somebody?... No, George; my way was the only way--take what you can
while you can."
"Marry me, come right away, and have done with it."
She gave me a slow sidelong look.
"Is _that_ the idea--just a way out for everybody?"
"Don't think it. I didn't begin to love you this afternoon."
"Proposals pour in--once they start!" she admired. "Oh, how little we
know when we're young, and how much when it's too late to make any
difference!"
"Julia," I said abruptly, "what do you intend to do about him?"
She smiled, but without speaking.
"Are you going to see him?"
"That's a silly question. Of course I am."
"Is it wise?"
"I'm not wise. I suppose I should be Lady Coverham if I were wise."
"What are you going to do about Jennie?"
"Oh, I shan't fly out at her."
"Marry me and come away."
She shook her head. "That's the one thing I _am_ sure about."
"Then don't marry me, but come back to England."
"And leave the field clear? I see that too. Of course you want to give
her to him."
"If you only knew how I've striven to prevent it!"
Her hand touched my sleeve for a moment. "Poor old George--always trying
to prevent somebody from doing something! Has it ever occurred to you
that that's sometimes the way to bring it about?" Then, imperiously,
"Has he told you he's in love with her?"
"If he is in love with her, and has no eyes for any other woman living,
and never will have, will you marry me then?"
"Oh, we had all that years ago. Has he told you he's in love with her?"
"Since you must know, he has."
"Now we're getting at it. I thought you'd something up your sleeve. Now
just one more question. Do you happen to know whether he's told _her_
that?"
You see what I was in her hands. She cut clean through my web of
speculations as scissors go through cloth. I had resolved to tell her
this, not to tell her that. The end of it was that I told her precisely
what she wished to know.
"I've reason for thinking he hasn't," I said. "For one thing, he made me
a promise."
But she flicked his promise aside as she flicked the convolvulus with
her nail. She laughed a little.
"Anyway I don't suppose he has the least idea what's the matter with
him. He never did know anything about women."
But ah, Julia Oliphant, whatever mistakes you made in your life, you
never made a greater one than that! Me you might turn this way and that
round your finger, but here was something beyond your knowledge and
control. I knew what you did not know. I knew what had happened by those
softly-illumined cars, by that earth-wall at Le Port gap, and that other
night when Fréhel had bidden the Crucifix move and come to life. It was
not now he who knew nothing about women, but you who knew nothing about
him. I grant you all your other rightness; I grant you that I had
drifted and bungled as men do drift and bungle in these things; but here
I was right and you hopelessly and irretrievably wrong. He did know
about women. Books he had flung aside, pictures he would fling aside,
for these were but the dust out of which that loveliest flower bloomed.
He did know about women, and all the beauty of his strange destiny had
now swung over to Jennie. He had passed with her into the Tower of
Oblivion, and Julia and I and the rest of the world for him and her were
not.
The Tower of Oblivion! It was his own name for it. Jennie had not
understood him; the name had merely sounded sweet to her because it was
his; but what apter emblem of his own life? To find this new and smiling
love in the place so hauntingly whispering with memories of the old!
There, in the very middle of the busyness of life, with a threshing-gin
droning and the lad's whip cracking among the walking horses and man's
simple bread making as it was made in the beginning, he had shut himself
in with her and the blue heaven overhead. They had not kissed,
but--only to be there with her, only to be rid of the lie he lived to
the rest of the world and to be all truth to her!... Julia Oliphant
would but bruise her heart against the stones of that Tower,
thrice-strong outside but impregnably strong within. God or gland, it
vanquished us all. He had found what he had so long sought, and the
sooner Julia became Lady Coverham the better.
I forget the precise words in which I reminded Miss Oliphant that I was
still waiting for her answer. She turned on me with eyes that so kindled
that for a moment I thought she had reconsidered it.
"George, tell me one thing. Do you really believe it--that his clock's
really set forward again?"
I answered slowly. "I don't know. I won't say that I don't. Sometimes I
almost have believed it. One has his word for the age he feels, and
there's nothing else to go by. After all, going forward seems somehow
more natural than going back. I've no other grounds for my belief."
Somehow my words had not in the least the effect I intended. Everything
I said or did seemed to work contrary to my intention. I saw her making
a swift mental calculation. She was a woman to be desired--very
thoroughly she had made it her business to be so. If I wanted her, if
other men wanted her, so (I read her thought) might he be made to want
her. What stood in her way? A chit of seventeen in turkey-towelling!
What was a trifle like that to daunt a ripe woman who knew coquetries
with escholtzia-yellow bathing-wraps? If it only lasted a year ... six
months ... the rest of the summer ... the rest of the summer of her
life....
"Young and beautiful," she said softly with a quickening of her breath.
"I remember--I remember----"
"Then forget. He'll never look at you."
"Ah, he thought that once before----"
"You brought him to the verge of ruin last July----"
"You say he's young and beautiful--that's what I brought him to--youth
and beauty----"
"Unless he goes forward now--if he begins to slip back again--you know
what he said his climacteric was--sixteen----"
She threw up the white-panama'd head on the long throat. My eyes dropped
before hers, my question was blown to the winds that set the corn
a-rustling. I told you at the beginning of this story that I had never
married.
"And how," she said proudly, "if he had it in my arms?"
III
Whether Madge and Julia were friends because of, or in spite of, the
differences in their nature, I will not attempt to say. In the situation
now in course of development at Ker Annic, however, they struck me as
not so much different as opposite. Madge's bark is always infinitely
more terrifying than her bite; but the more mischief Julia meditated the
stiller she always became, except for a little dancing play deep-drowned
in her eyes. She had risk-taking eyes, and the expression in them, if
you looked at her as if you wondered whether she had counted the cost,
was one of detached surprise that you should pause to weigh chances with
the gorgeous adventure plain before you.
And what a risk she now contemplated, certainly for him, perhaps more
for herself! What the penalty of failure--or of success--might be to
herself I cannot tell you, since I am not in the habit of speculating
about what responsibilities ladies incur who love a man all their lives,
grow up alongside him as a "jolly good sort," violently assail him when
he clings as it were to a loop amid the dizzy curves of his life's
track, and then, when he comes to rest and again begins slowly to
revolve on the turn-table at the terminus, put out their hands to the
lever once more. What she had taken from him, what she had given him in
return, were mysteries beyond me. I merely realised that, if she
undertook this in the spirit of adventure, it was adventure on a
well-nigh apocalyptic scale.
But what about him? For him it was not a question, as it was for her, of
a few weeks' madness and then a folding of the hands, the Nunc Dimittis
and darkness. She would merely be putting the seal on a life that
already anticipated its close; but he would be asked to cut one off in
the very moment of its re-flowering. He saw ahead of him that boon for
which humanity has cried out ever since another woman gave her man the
Knowledge in the Garden. "Ah, might I live again knowing what I know
now!" ... _Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait!..._ He did know,
he was able; and Julia Oliphant, discovering that she had done all for
Jennie Aird, now sought to take it back again. For should ruin
supervene, it would be Jennie, not Julia, who would now be robbed and
wronged. I could hardly look at Julia, standing there by the hedge,
without re-living those anguished moments in which I had ascended his
stairs and knocked at his door, hardly daring to hope for an answer. He
knew not that ultimately it was from Julia that he now had this manna
and honey, this healing oil and wine. He only knew that he received them
at Jennie's hands, and with this soft nourishment he had victualled his
Tower.
So what disaster might not befall if Julia were to introduce that yeasty
fermenting element of herself all over again?
Slowly we returned together across the cornfields, I and the woman who
had hardly deigned to refuse me. Since our final rapid exchange, that
had ended with her demand "How if he had it in my arms?" not a word had
passed between us. In that one insolent sentence she had not merely put
my pretensions out of existence: she had made them as if they had never
been. That they could never be again I knew only too well. Therefore, in
silence we passed under the shadow of St Enogat Church, crossed the
little space opposite the Café de la Mer, and entered the winding lanes
to Ker Annic.
At the gate of the villa Madge met us with a peremptory question.
"Where's Jennie? Isn't she with you?" she demanded. She gave a quick
glance behind her as she spoke. Obviously she wasn't. Madge glanced over
her shoulder again.
"Then don't for goodness sake say she hasn't been. Alec's stamping up
and down the garden--says she's been seen with young Arnaud somewhere at
the back of beyond on a bicycle. I sent her to bathe with you, Julia."
"She did," said Julia quickly.
"Then just tell him that and say she must have gone into town or
something. I know she has been back, because I looked into her room and
saw her half-dried costume. You quieten Alec down, George. Have you had
tea?"
But in spite of my efforts to placate Alec, I found the fat badly in the
fire at Ker Annic. Alec raged up and down the pergola as if he had been
caged within it.
"Exactly what I said would happen! I knew it all along!" he stormed.
"Noble saw 'em--no mistake possible, he says--pedalling all over
Brittany with Tom, Dick and Harry.... Where did she get that bicycle? I
haven't seen any bicycle about here! First I've heard of a bicycle!"
"Simmer down, Alec. There's no great harm in a bicycle ride after all."
"If she's been for one she's been for a dozen for all I know. She was
sent off to bathe."
"Well, she did bathe."
"Were you there? Did you see her?" he challenged me, now suspicious at
every point.
"Yes. She bathed with Julia. I waited for them."
"You waited for Julia, you mean. Nipped in and out so as to be able to
say she'd been and then dashed off with this fellow, I suppose. Look
here, he appears to be a protégé of yours, but I want to know more about
him before there's any more of this. What does he go about in that rig
for? Why does he talk French like that?" (This last headed the list of
his offences in Alec's eyes.) "There's something fishy about the whole
thing. Jennie sees him sketching, evidently doesn't know any more than
the man in the moon who he is, and goes up to him and speaks to him in
French and he answers in English! Then he says he's a level-time man,
but touched in the bellows. He's about as much touched in the bellows as
I am!... Who is he? Did he really stay with you? How did you get to know
him?"
"He did stay with me. He's perfectly straight. Don't make such a fuss."
"Well, I expect Jennie's as much to blame as he is. They generally are.
If I've told Madge once ... anyway it's got to stop. Of course if he's a
friend of yours that's another matter, but gadding about all over the
place has got to stop. Is she back yet? I want to see her when she does
come in."
And so on. I left him in his cage, angrily knocking out his pipe against
the lattice.
The worst of it was that Alec was so very much righter than he knew. I
had ventured to assure him that our young French-speaker was perfectly
straight, and you know how far that was true. In the wider sense who was
crookeder, whose life more devious? Not one straight step did his
circumstances permit him to take. Why, the only satisfactory way he had
been able to hit on to provide himself with money had been his fantastic
idea of fighting Georges Carpentier, the simplest way he had found of
crossing the Channel had been to swim it! Straight? Too straight
altogether. The world is not accustomed to people so straight that they
go straight plumb into the heart of things like that.... And, merely as
straightness, how was he now to acquire even an ordinary identity? Had
he _been_ anybody, had he in the past once possessed an identity he was
able to acknowledge, ways might have been found. He would then have had
a starting point. He might have invested himself with a name and place
in the world by means of the French equivalent of a deed poll. He might
have got himself cited by name in a civil court, have snatched a social
existence even out of the formalities of registration attendant on a
State Lottery. But not one of these ways was open to him. Nothing short
of an act of creation could establish him. Nothing comes out of nothing,
nothing can be made out of nothing. Stronger even than that Tower of
stone is this other invisible Tower in which we all live, each stone an
ego, its mortar the whole complicated everyday nexus of the social
fabric. All that he was able to do was to make assertion that he was
Arnaud, and let us take it or leave it at that. How Alec would take it
there was very little doubt.
Nor was there much doubt in Madge's case either. She might talk family
histories and hidden scandals till the cows came home, but, in the end,
the Airds' would be the last household into which any suitor would
penetrate without the strictest investigation. Derry might palm off his
Somerset Trehernes upon us during a casual tea-hour, but Alec would now
dive into the last pigeon-hole in Somerset House but he would know
exactly who it was who aspired to become his son-in-law.
Jennie appeared at about half-past six, and Alec's first demand was to
be told where that bicycle was.
"What bicycle?" she asked.
"Haven't you come home on a bicycle?"
"No, I came home by the tram, father."
"Where from?"
"From St Briac."
"Haven't you been out with that fellow on a bicycle, or has a mistake
been made?"
The game was up. "I did go for a bicycle ride."
"With that fellow Arnaud?"
"Yes, father."
"You went immediately after your bathe?"
"Yes."
"Where's the bicycle now?"
"I left it at St Briac."
"Where in St Briac?"
"At his hotel, where mother and Uncle George and I went that day."
"Where did the bicycle come from?"
"I hired it, father."
"In St Briac?"
"No, in Dinard."
"And you keep it in St Briac?"
"Yes."
"Why there instead of here?"
No reply.
"Why in St Briac instead of here?"
Still no reply.
"How often have you been for these rides?"
"About eight or ten times, father."
"Did mother know about it?"
"No, father."
"Then that means that you've been practically every day for a
fortnight?"
No reply.
"Very well, Jennie. Now listen to what I have to say."
Enough. You see the style of it. Alec is an affectionate father, but,
his grumbling indulgence to Madge notwithstanding, there are no two ways
about his being master in his own house. The upshot of it was that a
maid was to be sent to fetch that bicycle first thing in the morning,
and back it was to go to the shop where it had come from. Further, if
Jennie wished to see this M. Arnaud again, it must only be by express
permission from himself. There was plenty of amusement at the Tennis
Club among young fellows they knew something about, and--not another
word. It ought never to have begun, but anyway it was done with now and
need not be referred to again. She had better go and have some tea if
she hadn't had any, and as for _thé dansant_ to-morrow afternoon, if she
wanted a new frock for it she might have one. Now run along, and don't
be late for dinner.
Of the five of us, Alec was easily the most cheerful at that evening's
meal. His duty done--kindly, he hoped, but anyway done--he talked about
anything but that afternoon's unpleasantness. Then, rather to my
surprise, about half-way through dinner Julia began to second his
efforts. We sat round the Ganymede, two men and three women, Alec
between Julia and his wife, Jennie between Madge and myself. Everybody,
Alec included, was kindness itself to the silent child, and _thé
dansant_ was talked of. The Beverleys were giving it. They had engaged a
room at one of the hotels, and Madge had been helping to decorate that
afternoon.
"Those were the Beverley girls bathing with us this afternoon, weren't
they, Jennie?" Julia asked across me.
"Yes."
"Aren't they just a little--stand-offish?"
"I don't know. I didn't notice. Are they?" said Jennie dully.
"They're----" Alec began, but checked himself. In the circumstances the
upbringing of the Beverley girls was not the happiest of subjects, and
Madge struck hastily in.
"One gets almost sick of the hydrangeas here, Julia, but they're really
most extraordinarily effective. We've put four great tubs of them,
ice-blue almost, in the corners, as big as this table nearly, and
against all that cream-and-gold.... Oh, Jennie! You know father says you
can have whichever of those frocks you like. I should say the voile.
Which do you think?"
"I don't care which, mother. My last one's all right. I don't want
another."
Again across the table from Julia: "That's a darling one you're wearing
now!"
"Do you like it, Aunt Julia?"
"Sweet!"
"And oh, Julia," suddenly in a little outburst from Madge,
"honestly, now! Do you think I could wear those sleeves, or those
not-any-sleeves-at-all rather--you know--the quite new ones, that show
your arm from the very top of your shoulder? You _must_, of course, with
your arms--it's your duty--but I'm not so sure about me----"
"Stuff and nonsense, of course you can. And I'm certainly going to,"
Julia declared.
"Bit French, aren't they?" said Alec over his canapé. "I've seen 'em."
"He's seen 'em, Julia!" Madge laughed. "Don't tell me after that that a
man doesn't notice what a woman has on--at any rate if there's as little
of it as there is of those sleeves! But let's settle Jennie's frock
first. _I_ think the voile. And you can wear a hat with it or not, just
as you like."
"Would you very much mind if I didn't go, mother?" said Jennie
dejectedly.
"Frightfully," was Madge's cheerful reply. "Of course you're coming. And
all to-morrow morning we'll try-on, all three of us. So that's the voile
for Jennie--and most decidedly those no-sleeves for you, Julia, with
your arms----"
IV
The rest of the evening was the same: slightly false, slightly
tremulous, a little off the note. I honestly believe that that "Aunt"
Julia of Jennie's was a pure inadvertence, for she was far too
low-spirited to be interested in anything but herself, her mood and her
troubles. After dinner she went out into the garden alone, and Madge
gave us a quick inclusive look.
"Don't worry her, poor darling," she said with soft sympathy. "Let her
have a good cry and she'll be all right to-morrow."
"Let me go to her," said Julia.
"I really wouldn't."
"Very well if you think not. What about a rubber?"
So Alec and Julia took fifteen shillings from Madge and myself while
Jennie got over it in the garden.
But I found difficulty in understanding Julia's new attitude towards
Jennie. There had been nothing in the least degree hypocritical in her
sweetness at dinner; quite simply she had been nice and gentle with
her. She had even interposed very quickly indeed when, for a brief
moment, there had seemed a doubt as to whether Jennie had bathed that
afternoon at all. But that she would hold unswervingly to her private
purpose I was entirely convinced. Was her confidence, then, so
insolently fixed that she had pity left over and to spare for this
unhappy child who was to all intents and purposes forbidden to leave the
house without permission? Could she toss her an alms out of her
superfluity? Would her gentleness have been quite the same had she not
known that that bicycle was being fetched back from St Briac to-morrow?
Or would she, had Madge not stopped her, have gone to Jennie in the
garden with some such words as these: "Cheer up, Jennie; you'll have
forgotten all about this in ten days. When I was your age I had these
fancies, but I forgot all about them in ten days. You'll be in love with
scores of young men yet; nobody ever remembers any of them for long.
Why, I've forgotten the very name of the boy I thought I was in love
with when I was a girl. I can't even remember what he looked like. It
seems hard for the moment, but it's over in no time. Cheer up, Jennie.
There are lots of nice boys at the Tennis Club. Go and flirt with one of
them, and forget about M. Arnaud. We all do."
Would she have said something like that? She was fully capable of it. At
any rate I am fully capable of thinking she was.
But, whatever the circumstances may be, a man can hardly ask a woman to
be his wife in the afternoon, have his suit treated as if it had
scarcely been heard, and finish the evening with Auction as contentedly
as though nothing had happened. Even poor George Coverham has his
private affairs, and it was I more than any of them who should have
found myself by Jennie's side. Indeed, as Alec and Julia divided their
winnings I rose and walked to the window. It was dark, but not too dark
to distinguish that she was still there, a dim white figure leaning up
against one of the pillars of the pergola. A half-moon had southed, and
the ironwork of the roof-ridge of Ker Annic showed sharp against the
silvery blueness as I stepped out. It had suddenly come upon me that if
she needed my comfort, I needed hers hardly less. She was seventeen and
I fifty, but that day had separated both of us from our desires.
She heard my step, but did not change her position. Anyway she had had a
full hour to herself. It was she who spoke, and without preface.
"I wished you'd come," she said.
"We've been playing bridge."
"I very nearly didn't come home at all."
"Why, Jennie?"
"I knew I was going to catch it. Old Noble needn't think he's the only
person with any eyes. I saw him too. I pretended not to, but I did."
"I was afraid it was only a question of time," I said with a head-shake.
"Where was it?"
"The rottenest luck!" she answered softly and bitterly. "Nobody but that
horrid old man on his motor-bike would have thought of going there!
Right up a little lane, it was, and we'd put our bicycles under the
hedge, and we were sitting against one of the stooks. That dark red
stuff whatever they call it--six bundles together and then another like
an umbrella on the top. He barged into one of the bicycles, clumsy
thing, and then came to tell us that we oughtn't to leave them there in
people's way. Derry shoved me behind the stook, but it was too late. I
did think he might just possibly have the decency to keep his mouth
shut, but I suppose that was too much to expect. So I knew there'd be a
row."
"And of course Derry knew there'd be a row too?"
"Yes."
I sighed. "Well, the row's over now. Better let the whole thing drop.
Your father's perfectly right, and you were bound to get found out
sooner or later."
She made no reply.
But she returned to her luckless plaint a moment later. She struck the
upright of the pergola softly and vindictively with her hand.
"It was all that beastly bathe and Miss Oliphant's being late! We
should have been all right if she'd been there at the proper time!"
"I'm afraid that was my fault, Jennie. I walked rather slowly, and Miss
Oliphant waited for me."
"I know; of course it had nothing to do with you at all.... Then she
goes and gets her things into knots, and I have to untie them, and that
costume of hers is as bad as getting into a ball-dress instead of just a
skin like nearly everybody else! Anyway the sea's there if she wants to
bathe, and she can swim as well as I can if she does get into a current,
and it isn't as if she needed a chaperone----"
"Jennie, my dear, be reasonable!" I begged her. "You can hardly blame
Miss Oliphant for--for what your father was told."
"Oh, I'm not blaming her! But it makes you angry when stupid little
accidents like those----" She swallowed.
"I'm afraid stupid little accidents fill rather a large place in the
world, Jennie."
"I hate them having anything to do with me anyhow. And with having to
take the towels home I only just caught the tram----"
"What's that?" I took her up. "You _did_ catch the tram? Then it wasn't
that that made you late at all. You'd have been waiting for the tram if
you hadn't been waiting for Miss Oliphant."
"Well, I don't care. It's all--all---"
She did not say what, but hit the pergola with her hand again.
I was too sorry for her to be hurt by her words about Julia. That little
slip about the tram had completely betrayed her, and it was against
chance, and not against Julia, that she sought an occasion. Nevertheless
the merciless mistrust of youth lay behind. The beginning and end of it
was that she didn't like Julia, and her young heart had not yet learned
the duplicity that makes us more rather than less sweet to those whom we
dislike. She broke out again:
"And I _won't_ go to that dance to-morrow! I _won't_ be scolded and
given a new frock and told I mustn't go out of the house! Mother and
Miss Oliphant can go without me, and when I get back to London I shall
earn my own living and I shall be able to do what I like then!"
"Very few people who earn their own living do what they like, Jennie."
"Well, it'll be a change anyway," she retorted.
A cheerful call of "Jen-nie-e-e!" came from the house. We all used a
marked brightness in speaking to Jennie that evening.
"Yes, mother--I'm only with Uncle George."
"Don't be long, darling."
"I'll bring her in presently," I answered for her; and we continued to
stand side by side.
I suppose that ordinarily a man of my years would keep such a dismissal
as I had received that afternoon locked in his own breast, or would at
any rate hesitate before sharing it with a young girl. And I did
hesitate. But trouble is mysteriously lightened when it is merged in
another trouble, and to cheer Jennie up was the aim of all of us that
night. And I think that perhaps the Jennie I wanted to tell was Jennie
the woman, not Jennie the child.
So "Jennie," I said quietly, "you're not the only one."
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"I've had my medicine too this afternoon."
"Your medicine?"
"Oh," I took myself up, "not that kind of medicine. I mean that you're
not the only one who's had to go through it this afternoon."
"I don't understand you, Uncle George."
"While you went for a bicycle ride I went for a walk with somebody
else."
"You went for a walk with Miss Oliphant, didn't you?"
"Yes. And I asked her not to remain Miss Oliphant any longer."
I felt the eager uprush of her solicitude. "Oh, Uncle George! Do you
mean you asked Miss Oliphant to marry you?"
"Yes."
"So you're engaged?" The words jumped from her.
"No."
"Hasn't she decided yet?"
"Yes, she's decided."
"What!" A deep, deep breath. "You don't mean that she said No?"
"I'm afraid she did."
"_Oh!_"
She threw her arms about my waist and held me strongly.
"Oh! Poor Uncle George!"
"So you see we're in the cart together, Jennie. I thought I'd tell you.
I don't suppose I shall ever tell anybody else."
And I knew that I could not have told her three weeks before. That is
how we with our belated loves strike the young--we of the Valley of
Bones. Nevertheless my mother's embrace had been hardly more maternal
than was the pressure of those seventeen-year-old arms that night.
Then, with another "Poor, poor Uncle George!" she released me. Her next
words broke from her with a vivid little jump.
"Oh, _how_ I hate her now!"
"Jennie, Jennie! You can't hate anybody I've just told you that about!"
"Oh, I can! Worse than ever! To think of her cheek in refusing you! She
ought to have been proud--instead of playing cards all the evening!"
"Playing cards isn't a bad thing to do. I played cards too."
"Pretty poor look-out for her if she's in love with somebody else
anyway!" she commented.
"By no means, Jennie. Other people than I are in love with her. But what
I want to ask you is whether you can't be nice to her for my sake."
"I'll do anything I can," she said bitterly. "If you say she was awfully
kind and gentle to you about it that might help a bit."
"Then let me say it. She was awfully kind and gentle."
"And so she ought to be! But _is_ she in love with somebody else, then?"
"I think she doesn't want to get married."
"I don't believe _that_!" declared Jennie flatly. "Why, she thinks about
nothing but clothes and who's watching her and if she's looking all
right!"
"Is that being kind to her, Jennie?"
"No it isn't, and I will try, but I didn't like her before, and I'm only
trying now because of you. Why did she ask mother if she might come
here, especially if she knew you were in love with her and you were
here?"
"I hadn't told her I was in love with her."
"Don't tell me she didn't know, for all that," was the unbelieving
reply.
"Well, well.... There it is and we must make the best of it. You try to
make the best of things too, my dear. Shall we go in?"
Whether I had done Julia any great service in Jennie's opinion was
doubtful. I had at any rate given Jennie something else to think of. And
that was something.
Contrary to my expectations, I slept immediately and deeply that night.
It was nine o'clock in the morning before I awoke, half-past when I
descended. I found Madge in the salon.
"I say, what's become of Julia?" she asked. "Though I don't see how you
could very well know seeing you've only just this moment come down."
A maid was clearing away the _petit déjeuner_.
"Madam," she said.
"What is it, Ellen?"
"Miss Oliphant left word she'd be back at half-past eleven."
"Has she gone out? But we were to go into Dinard this morning!"
"She's gone to St Briac, madam, and she said as she was going to see
somebody at the Golf Club she might as well save one of us a journey and
bring a bicycle back. It wasn't exactly your orders, madam, but there's
a deal to do this morning what with this dance, and as Miss Oliphant was
so kind I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind."
"Oh, I don't mind, except that it doesn't leave us much time for
shopping. I shall go into Dinard, and you'd better tell Miss Oliphant to
follow me when she comes back."
"Very good, madam."
"Anyway," said Madge, turning to me, "it certainly does save one of the
maids a couple of hours, as long as Julia doesn't mind. But who has she
gone to see at the Golf Club at nine o'clock in the morning?"
V
The dances of my time were the waltz, the cotillion and the quadrille,
and as I am not a Pelmanist I have never acquired the dancing-fashions
of to-day. So I stood by one of Madge's tubs of hydrangeas and watched.
The large cream-and-gold room had a glazed end that opened on to the
terrace and overlooked the crowded plage below, and when I wearied of
watching the dancers I walked out on to this terrace, and when I was
tired of watching the people who moved in and out among the tents and
umbrellas and deck-chairs on the beach I returned to the dancing-room
again. And much of the time I moved about out of sheer restlessness and
apprehension.
Jennie had come to the Beverleys' party after all. She danced
occasionally with young Rugby or young Marlborough, but kept more often
close to her mother's side. And Julia Oliphant was there, not dancing at
all, talking to Madge only infrequently, but gaily enough to everybody
else--with the single exception of myself, whom (it seemed to me) she
avoided in the most marked fashion. As for the others, they danced in
flannels and blazers and varnished evening shoes, and the Beverley girls
danced with one another.
What had happened at St Briac that morning? The question gave me no
rest. Had Julia seen Derry? Idle to ask; of course she had. What had
passed between them? Useless to try to guess. I had glanced at the
Indicateur. She had caught the tram at St Enogat at eight-thirty-four
and had taken the ten-fifty-three back, reaching St Enogat again at
eleven-nineteen. Actually she had had two hours of but seven minutes at
St Briac, and that was all I knew. Again she had seized her chance with
ruthless instancy. Except for a night's rest, the very moment Jennie had
been out of the running she had been at the door of his hotel. She had
even had the effrontery to use Jennie's own bicycle as her pretext.
And now why, when I was in the dancing-room, did she seek the terrace,
and why, when I went out on the terrace, did she immediately enter the
dancing-room again?
She wore the sleeveless frock; and "Oh Juno, white-armed Queen!" I had
murmured to myself when my eyes had rested on it.... But, whatever her
other attempts had been, those arms at any rate he had not seen that
morning, for the simple reason that the frock had only been purchased
and hastily made ready on her return. But its purchase was not to be
dissociated from him. With him and him only in her mind she had chosen
it. What other plans had she in her mind? Was she now going to get a
bicycle--she, whom it was impossible to forbid to see whom she pleased
and whenever she pleased? Would she go with him to that dove-haunted
Tower, recline with him among the sarrasin-stooks with none to say her
nay? And would her hosts see as little of her at Ker Annic as I had seen
of Jennie during the days I had spent in bed?
Dire woman--dire, and _capable de tout_!
But even my preoccupation did not quite blind me to the prettiness of
the scene about me. Whether inside or out was the prettier I will not
say. They had improvised tennis on the beach, and from the tall
diving-stage forty yards out lithe figures poised, inclined, and dropped
gracefully downwards in the swallow-dive. The brightly-clad mêlée almost
hid the dowdy sands. Back in the dancing-room the tall cream pilasters
with the gold capitals supported the sweeping oval of the ceiling,
painted with Olympian loves; and bright hair, bright faces, light
ankles, passed and interpassed before the eye could catch more than a
blended impression of the total charm. The band was playing that which
these bands do play, the fiddler on the little rostrum alternately
conducting and using his bow, and----
And this time I really thought I had Julia pinned down. Madge was on one
side of her, talking with animation, and Jennie stood on her other side.
Yes, I thought I had her cornered. She could hardly break away in the
middle of one of her hostess's sentences. I advanced.
But she deftly eluded me. Madge had turned with an "Oh, here he is!" and
in that moment Julia held out both her hands to Jennie.
"Come along, Jennie," she said, "if those Beverley girls can dance
together we can."
But I will swear that it was only because of her promise to me the night
before, that Jennie allowed herself to be led away.
I watched them as they stood balanced, bodies close together, foot
alternating with foot. Jennie never once looked at Julia, but Julia's
dark eyes smiled from time to time on Jennie's face. And present with
them in some strange way, hauntingly about and between them,
he--he--seemed to be there: young, sunbrowned, and beautiful as he had
formerly been, young, sunbrowned and beautiful as he was to-day. A
quartette seemed to be rhythmically balancing there, one of her, one of
her, two of him.
Then, seeing my look, Julia frankly smiled at me for the first time.
Jennie also saw me, but did not smile. She would dance with Julia for
me, but she would not pretend to smile over it.
Twice, thrice round the room they moved, the woman who had refused me
yesterday and would not be denied him to-morrow, the girl who had glowed
with angry compassion for me and knew in her feminine heart that that
smiling partner had not offered to fetch a bicycle from St Briac that
morning without having a reason for it....
"A penny for them, George," Madge's voice suddenly sounded at my side.
"Eh? I was only thinking of those two."
"Julia and Jennie? I'm glad Jennie's come round and is behaving with
something like ordinary decency again.... And by the way, that about
that bicycle of Jennie's is a funnier mix-up than ever now."
"How so?"
"Well, Julia saw young Arnaud this morning. Rather a difficult position
for her, and I can't imagine why she offered to go, seeing she'd never
set eyes on the young man in her life. But she seems to have done the
best thing possible."
"What was that?"
"She never once mentioned Jennie's name. She simply said that she
understood that a bicycle was to be fetched back to Ker Annic, and as
she was coming out that way she'd said she'd call for it. It seems to
have been quite all right. He didn't ask any questions either; he got it
out and put it on the tram for her himself."
"The same tram? She came straight back?" (I may say that there is only
one tram to St Briac, which runs backwards and forwards).
"No, the next journey. It had gone, so she had to wait. She tried to
ride the bicycle, but couldn't quite manage it. So he showed her his
pictures, as he did to us."
"Before she went to the Golf Club, or after?"
"She didn't say."
"And he didn't even ask why the bicycle had been sent for?"
"Not a word about it. He just put it on the tram."
I can't say I much liked the look of this. I remembered how he had
formerly bamboozled me.
"Then he simply accepts the situation?" I said.
"Whatever it is, apparently."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, that's the funny part. What _is_ the situation? You see, Arnaud's
knowing you complicates it. If he hadn't known you I expect Alec would
have sent him about his business at the double. Not that you're to blame
in any way; it's nothing at all to do with you. But then is Jennie to
blame either for falling in love with the delicious creature? I told
Alec so. Oh, we had a lively hour yesterday while you and Julia were out
bathing and walking and enjoying yourselves! Alec blustered, and he
wouldn't have this and he wouldn't have that, but I asked him, 'Where
was the harm if the young man came round in a straightforward way and
took his chance with the others?' 'I don't call this straightforward,'
he said; and of course I could hardly say it was, but we've all been
young once. Anyway, the long and the short of it was that there's to be
no more bicycle-riding, but he hasn't forbidden her to see him provided
everything's above-board and we're told about it."
"Was that a concession for my sake?"
"It's for Jennie's sake. It's her happiness I'm thinking about. You've
nothing to do with it."
"Except to provide his credentials," I thought, but said nothing.
I begin to like it less and less. Not one single thing about it did I
like. Julia was supposed not to know this Arnaud, but that had not
prevented her from thrusting herself into his affairs and lying
unblushingly about an appointment at the Golf Club seven miles away at
nine o'clock in the morning. And if Madge thought that Julia and Jennie
were "behaving with ordinary decency" at that moment, so did not I. As
for Derry, honestly I was afraid of him. He had had a whole night in
which to think over the almost certain consequences of that surprise
among the sarrasin stooks, and if he was caught without a plan he was
not the man I took him for. Julia might think she had scored during that
hour and a half when he had shown her his pictures, but the change was
just as likely to be in his pocket. Probably he had expected that that
bicycle would be sent for before the day was many hours old. The only
thing he could not have expected was that Julia Oliphant would come in
person for it.
Then the dance ended, and Julia, as barefaced as she was barearmed, came
straight up to me, wide-smiling, daring.
"Well, George! Good morning! Enjoying yourself?"
"Hadn't Derry a nerve!" she had said to me when I had told her about the
tea-party at Ker Annic. I don't think his nerve surpassed her own. I
looked straight at her.
"Since it's good morning, come for a turn," I said.
Still smiling all over her face, she placed a resplendent arm on mine,
and we passed out on to the terrace.
She wore an immense white hat, so cavalierly dragged down on one side
and so arrogantly jutting up on the other that from certain points you
had to walk half way round her before you saw her face at all. One eye
lurked permanently within the recess of that outrageous brim. She had
also done something to her lips.
There were little round tables on the terrace, and at one of these we
sat down, vis-à-vis. She placed the backs of her clasped hands under her
chin and sat there, magnetising me.
"Well, how goes it?" she said.
"I hear," I said, "that you're learning to ride a bicycle."
"No, George."
"What's that?"
"Not a bicycle. Only a free-wheel. I rode a bicycle years ago. It's only
the free-wheel that's a bit tricky."
"You saw him?"
"Of course. Didn't Madge tell you?"
"And he knew you?"
"My dear George, do pull yourself together! He was expecting me!"
"What! By appointment?"
"No, no, no, I don't mean that. I didn't write or send him a telegram or
anything of that kind. But, of course, he knew I was here. He knew days
ago--before I came probably. What would be the first thing Jennie'd tell
him? That they were expecting a visitor, but it needn't make any
difference to their meetings. So of course he was expecting me. Perhaps
not quite so early in the morning, but oh, quite soon!"
"What I meant was, did he recognise you?"
"Recognise me? Why not? He called me Miss Oliphant and showed me his
sketches. They're"--the eye I could see sparkled, taking in the whole
bright terrace--"they're glorious!"
"What about the bicycle?"
"Glo--rious! He's a divine painter! Why, his books are like sawdust
after his painting! I don't paint worth a rap myself, but oh, I know
celestial stuff when I see it!"
"What did he say about the bicycle?"
"I didn't go there to talk about bicycles. I went there to see his
glorious pictures and his glorious self!"
"And incidentally to meet an apocryphal person at the Golf Club."
"Pooh!" She took that in her stride. "But about those pictures----"
"Leave the pictures for a moment. Why have you avoided me the whole
afternoon until you came up a moment ago and said good morning?"
"Surely you can guess that?" Again the fascination of the smile.
"Guessing's lost some of its novelty for me lately."
"Well, I wanted to dance with Jennie, you see."
"I'm afraid I don't see."
She looked at me quizzically, reflectively. "N--o. Perhaps it isn't as
simple as I thought. But you were glad when I danced with Jennie,
weren't you?"
"I won't say glad. I was--very interested."
"Why?"
"You two--and him. That interested me enormously."
"Well, now you've very nearly got it. That dance was our understanding,
Jennie's and mine. We had it all out."
"You didn't appear to be talking much."
"I don't think we spoke three words, but we had it out for all that."
"That's the kind of thing I give up."
"Make an effort, George. You don't think I'd do anything unfair, do you?
As long as there was a fair way left, I mean?"
"I don't even know what you mean by fair."
"Well, you're on her side, whether you know it or not. It took me
exactly one tenth of a second to see that yesterday. You want him to get
going straight ahead again and marry her. Don't you?" she challenged me
with a brilliant look.
"Never mind my answer for the present."
"Well, you want that, and I want--something quite different."
"Jennie doesn't even know that you know him."
"What? How do you know what he's told her about me? Anyway, even if he
hasn't, she knows I didn't fetch that bicycle for nothing. She smelt
something in the wind, and now she knows perfectly well what it is."
"From that dance? Wonderful dance!"
"It's your sex that's wonderful. If you don't believe me, ask her."
"I don't think it will be necessary. There's just one thing you've
forgotten."
"What's that?"
"Him."
"Oh, I've forgotten _him_!" she smiled, touching the reddened lips with
her fingertips.
"Him and what he may do. I think you'll find you've left that out of the
account. We shall see.... So I take it you dodged me all the afternoon
because we hadn't all been properly introduced to the new situation, so
to speak? Is that it?"
"Yes, that's quite good. There's no stealing advantages now.
Everything's on the square, and what sort of a vermouth do they give you
here?"
With that I asked her a question that for the moment surprised even her.
I asked it perfectly seriously, seeking not only the unblinkered eye,
but also the one within its deep ambush of white hat-brim.
"Julia, are you yourself in every respect the same woman to-day that you
were before we had our talk yesterday?"
She turned her head to watch the tennis-players on the sands below, the
swallow-divers from the tall stage. She turned it further, and her gaze
passed from the clustered villas across the bay to the awnings of the
hotel, the sunny white of the balustrade, the waiter who approached in
answer to my summons. Then she looked at me.
"I know what you mean. Not just this hat and a touch of lipstick and
these"--she showed her arms. "I'm the same, of course, but I suppose I'm
different too. And I'm going to be different. Ask Jennie. She knows. Any
woman would know--just by dancing with somebody and never saying a word,
George. One keeps one's eyes open and--adapts oneself. Jennie knows all
about it. Ask her."
And the flashing, daring, confident smile, which had vanished for a
moment, reappeared.
It was her request for a vermouth that had prompted my sudden question.
All at once I had found myself wondering who the man was, in
Buckinghamshire apparently, who shared with myself the privilege of
having been refused by her. Not that I was interested in his identity;
but from him, or from the man who had been attentive to her on the boat,
or from somebody else, or from a whole series of men for all I knew, she
had--the slang is required--"picked up a thing or two." It was a far cry
from that first cocktail in the Piccadilly to this hat, this revelation
of arms, these conscious coquetries with bathing-wraps and auction with
Alec Aird. Mind you, I knew as surely as I sat opposite to her that not
one of these fellow-unfortunates of mine had had a scrap more from her
than I had had myself. They had been dismissed without compunction the
moment she had had what she required of them. On Derry and on Derry
alone her dark eyes were unchangingly set. No trifling, no flirtation by
the way, any more than to the rehearsal is given the unstinted kiss of
the passionate performance. Therefore in this she was single and
unchanged.
But she had seen Derry that morning, and that excited bombardment of
electrons that seemed to emanate from him and to alter the nature of
everyone who came into contact with him had worked an alteration in her.
She might call it "adapting herself," but it was essentially more than
that. For she had seen Jennie too, knew of their love, and had instantly
re-assembled and re-marshalled all the forces at her disposal. Whatever
might be her broadside of hat, arms and the rest, swiftly and craftily
she had seen that there was one thing she could not ape--the simplicity
of seventeen. Contest on that ground meant defeat in advance. In this,
its vivid opposite, lay her desperate chance.
And, I thought with apprehension, no negligible chance either! For a man
may be young and innocent and grave and be entirely at the mercy of this
very simplicity and trust. It is the woman old enough to be his mother,
but not too old to have this shot left in her locker, who bowls him
over. Lucky for him if a more contemporaneous passion already occupies
his heart.
VI
"So," she said, her eyes far away, "there are those wonderful pictures."
Yes, she would not hesitate to make capital out of his pictures too.
"The mere handling, quite apart from anything else----"
There again she had Jennie on the hip. Jennie might love his pictures
merely because they were his, but Julia painted, knew the
technicalities, would make intimacies, opportunities, flattering
occasions out of them----
"There's one, just a few bits of broken white ruins with her lying
there--he wasn't going to show me that at first----"
But ah, her eyes had spied it out, and he had had to show it.
"You've seen them, George. Now I ask you, _could_ any boy of eighteen
possibly have painted them?"
That too she had the audacity to claim--that he was eighteen when she
wanted him to be eighteen and forty-five when she wanted him to be
forty-five. Here again Jennie Aird was to be put in the wrong. It was to
be an anachronism and monstrous that Jennie should love so widely out of
her age.
"Could he, I ask you? Doesn't it show? You were perfectly right when you
tried to stop that flirtation between those two, George, and you're
absolutely wrong in wanting it to go on now. She's no right whatever,
and neither has he. Leave it to me. He called me Miss Oliphant, but it
can be Julia in five minutes, and anything else I like in ten----"
I did not choose to remind her again that she was leaving him out of the
calculation. I had warned her once, and it comforted me to think that he
was not quite so unarmed as she supposed against this sort of spiritual
rape.... She went musingly on.
"'Miss Oliphant!' ... But wait a bit. It was myself and Daphne Wade for
it before, and then it was all sentimental association and stained-glass
and church-music and because he was wrapped in dreams. Sentiment's all
very well in its way, George, but give me Get-up-and-get. That's the
cock to fight. Daphne euchred me once----"
"Where did you get these expressions?" I asked her calmly.
"----and she didn't get him either. He never knew the first thing about
women. So here we are, with the situation an exact repetition of what it
was before."
"With Jennie playing Daphne's part?"
"For him. Why not? If he's the same again he's the same again, isn't he?
But oh, when I saw him this morning!... It was exciting and terrific!
You've looked at a photograph-album you haven't seen for years, I
expect, but the things didn't move about and talk to you and ask you how
you were and show you their pictures----"
I couldn't help a light shiver. Certainly this woman might claim that
she had lived through an extraordinary cycle of experience.
"So he's the same, and the same thing will happen all over again--except
for what _I_ do," she added wickedly.
"And that will be?"
She shook her head and pursed her mouth.
"No, no. I won't marry you, George, but I will be your friend. I'm not
going to tell you that. You must wait. I see how difficult your position
is, and it will be much, much better if you're able to say afterwards
that you didn't know anything at all about it."
"Isn't it already a little late to say that?"
"Well, least said's soonest mended anyway. Got an Officers' Woodbine
about you?"
"A what?"
She laughed. "You must get used to us young things, George. An Officers'
Woodbine's a Gasper, otherwise a Gold Flake, otherwise a Yellow Peril,
and therefore any sort of a cigarette. _He'll_ know what I mean, and
he'll laugh. He went through the war, you see. Oh, I shall be able to
make him laugh all right!"
So she would reap a profit even out of the war. I could not deny her
thoroughness. I gave her a cigarette, and as I held the match for her I
saw that she made a note of my care for the brim of her hat. She would
pass that too on to Derry as part of his education--that expensive hats
must not have holes burned in them.
There were fewer bathers on the diving-stage now but the beach was as
crowded as ever. Julia noted hats, shoes, costumes; she noted men too,
but no young figure in béret and vareuse appeared in the
rainbow-coloured coming and going below. Then the hum of an aeroplane
was heard, and "Look, that's rather amusing," she remarked as there
broke out from the machine, twinkling against the blue, a tiny
cirrus-cloudlet of white that slowly dissolved and was borne
away--leaflets for the races probably, or advertisements for something
or other at the Casino.
We ceased to talk. For all I know she was revolving projects that
included a new free-wheel bicycle, fresh from its crate, with packing
round its saddle and string and paper about its bright parts. Together
we watched the fluttering of paper melt away. A minute later you could
hardly have imagined that it had ever been there. There seemed no reason
why it ever should have been there. There seemed so little reason for
any of our activities. Not one of those leaflets had fallen over the
land, and had they done so, what then? A litter of paper from an
aeroplane, a little of petty acts from a person, and the immensity of
the blue persisting exactly as before. For the humming of that plane had
reminded me of another humming. I remembered a Tower, with a horse-gin
threshing at an adjacent farm. In that Tower too things had happened, so
mighty-seeming at the time, so hushed in the empty cells of its stone
heart now. I watched the plane out of sight.
There seemed so little difference between a handful of leaflets
scattered over the sea and a handful of grasses seeded on that circular
coping, as long as the eternal Oblivion of the Blue brooded overhead.
Late that night, in the garden of Ker Annic, there kissed me a young
woman who had never kissed me before. She kissed me, and then with a sob
fled past the dark auracaria into the house. The young woman was Jennie
Aird.
The next morning she had gone.
PART IV
THE DESERT ISLAND
I
The Island is deserted only in that none but they come there; for them,
just those two, it blossoms as the rose. Its story is the oldest story
of all, and the newest. It is told an infinitude of times, and yet, like
that first story of the cycle of a thousand, we do not remember to have
heard it before. Let us listen to it just once again.
No coral-reef breaks its ceaselessly-thundering rollers into surf, no
palms wave their dark fronds in the blue. Only a holiday-coast, with the
London and South Western Company's steamers passing daily, and the known
and familiar trees of oak and ilex and lime. No garments of skins and
necklaces of shells, but a white summer frock, a grey raincoat over it,
and a bundle that can be carried in the hand. No shelter of stones and
branches that he who is with her toils to make with his own hands, but
French slates, French tiles, French thatching, whichever it may be.
And no wreck. Only the wreck of a home.
Yet it is a Desert Island none the less; a Desert Island with
pleasure-steamers running, and cars full of tourists coming and going,
and the Rate of Exchange quoted daily, and the sound of a familiar and
friendly tongue everywhere. A Desert Island with guide-books and
time-tables, chars-à-bancs, the vedettes up the Rance, the excursions to
Mont St Michel. A Desert Island with cameras and picture-postcards and
greetings at every corner: "I didn't know you were over here! The
So-and-Sos have just gone to Quimper. We're off to Concarneau on
Tuesday. Where are you staying, and did you ever know anything like the
price of golf-balls over here?" All over Haute Bretagne the same, all
over Northern France the same; and somewhere among it all a Desert
Island _à deux_. Probably a moving one, on four bicycle-wheels. But
where look for it? In Dol? Lamballe? Rennes? In what arrondissement,
canton, commune? There are many bicycles in France, but there is only
one Island precisely like that one. For there is only one man who has
been forty-five years of age and is now eighteen, only one woman who,
embracing him, has made her fate commensurate with his own. They are
apart, unapproachable, unidentified, not to be communicated with though
you look into their faces and speak to them. Their nonentity is lost in
the multitudinousness of everything else. They keep no signal-fires
burning day and night for your ship or mine that passes. They are
marooned in their own bliss, angelic castaways who will not return to
us.
Only to see her, only to hear her voice----
Only on a fatal day to tell her his name, the name of that prisoner in
the Tower that may not be spoken----
Only to send back a bicycle to a shop (but to trust her to guess that
where a bicycle would be left a letter would also be left, and an
appointment made at some secret hour between a _thé dansant_ and bedtime
that night).
Only to cut the knot that no power on earth could untie, to fetch that
free-wheel back from the shop under cover of the darkness, and to be off
and miles away before the sun rose again.
Was it well or ill that they had ever set eyes on one another?
And what the better now is Alec Aird if he does find them? The times
have changed since Madge sat in her mother's carriage waiting until this
servant, and not that one, opened the door. It is no good telling Madge
he told her so. He can disown Jennie or he can take her back, but there
is no middle way. The consul in the Rue St Philippe at St Malo cannot
help him, and at the Mairie at St Briac they will run through the files
of the _permis de séjour_ in vain. He can whisper--he has whispered--in
the ears of the police, and they may run the pair to earth, but it will
not be to the earth of that magical island of theirs. And let Alec
agonise in Agony Columns as much as he will. He can forgive her, or she
can go unforgiven. All else is out of his hands.
And yet it need be no long voyage to that Isle. It is to be found in the
near and dear heart. But only by those who envy not and vaunt not, who
suffer long and are kind. If sin there has been it must have been taken
away again--en souffrance, en espérance, avant qu'il est venu le jour.
But then, when that day comes, it comes as it were with a smile through
the lashes of its opening eye. It looks up with the mounting rays, and
its eyebrow becomes the arch of heaven. C'est effacé, l'horrible passé.
Il est venu le jour.
II
On a clear evening in the last days of August I found myself sitting in
the Jardin des Anglais in Dinan, alone. The Airds were still at Ker
Annic, Julia Oliphant still with them; but I, although their guest and
under promise to return to them, had absented myself for a few days. I
had done this as much for their sake as for my own. Alec was out all
day, or if not out hardly to be seen by the rest of us. Julia and Madge
were better together without me. So I had made no falsely delicate
excuse. I had told them exactly what I am saying at this moment. And I
think they had been grateful.
The garden looks east over the viaduct of Lanvallay, and above the misty
violet that enshrouded the land a trail of pale shirley poppies was
strung out over the sky--the leagues of cloud-tops caught by the last of
the sun. The parapet in front of me hid all else as I sat. One or two
people stood against it, looking out over the abyss; a few others moved
slowly along the ramparts. The limes above me were already benighted,
the dark mass of St Sauveur hidden behind them. The crowded vedettes had
long since departed, and the comparatively few visitors who stay in
Dinan were probably at the Café de Bretagne at the other side of the
town.
The dark tangle, that for the hundredth time I was trying to unravel,
is almost impossible of statement, so little of the solid was there to
support it, such mazes of spiritual conjecture did it open up. Once more
I will do the best I can with it. Understand, to begin with, that he had
now repeated what I had better call the "experience of the flash-lamp."
Formerly it had been Julia; now it was Jennie. Therefore this, if
anything, seemed to follow:
THAT OTHER TIME THIS TIME
Julia ... Jennie ...
The approach of the lamp ... The approach of the lamp ...
He had been greatly loved. He was greatly loved.
He had not loved. She was his very heart.
He had remembered nothing. I knew nothing whatever about it.
But he had woke up younger I knew nothing whatever about
by eleven years. it.
Had ended in fluctuations of I knew nothing whatever about
his "B" memory. it.
But, save for that "flash-lamp" I knew nothing whatever about
gap, his "A" memory had it.
been unimpaired.
He had therefore attained a I knew nothing whatever about
duality of (approximately) it.
eighteen and forty-five.
But did he still retain it? It was precisely that that I
wanted to know.
In other words, the problem that had confronted me when he had
disappeared from his rooms in Cambridge Circus, when he had left
Trenchard's rooms in South Kensington and had got to France by swimming
the Channel, leaped upon me again on the ramparts of that ancient French
town.
How old was he now?
But no, I have not finished yet. Let us take it a little further. The
state of his memory at this point was a matter of the most urgent
importance, since I now began to suspect that the whole of his chance of
again going forward turned on it. So we now had:
Julia had taken his sin, but not His cry had been immediately
his memory of it, since he had followed by an aching cry
cried out upon my cowardice in for help and advice.
speaking of it at Le Port gap.
He had subsequently repeated He had vowed that books had
a page from his book. never in the least interested
him.
I had particularly questioned I had not had an opportunity
him about his memory. of questioning him.
He had promised to take no He had taken a step without
step without my knowledge. my knowledge.
I did not think that he would He had broken it.
knowingly break his word to me.
Do you see whither it leads? You do; but let me state it as it struck
me, sitting there watching the shirley poppies in the east with St
Sauveur dark among the limes behind me.
When you or I forget a thing our forgetting does not mean that that
thing never was. Would to God it sometimes did! But you and I do not
live backwards through our years, and we are dealing now with a man who
did. Suppose, then, that this "A" memory were to go the way of his "B"
one? And suppose in addition that, instead of merely resting on an even
keel, he _should_ presently begin to forge ahead again? In that case he
would once more be advancing on the unknown. His future to him would be
what your future is to you, mine to me. And it is a condition of a
future's being a future that it _shall not already have been_. What
other future than that is there? There was no man living, Derwent Rose
or anybody else, who had _not_ a future. And when a thing has not been
it has not been, and there is the end of it. He was, quite simply, and
exactly as you once were, exactly as I once was, young with a single age
again. With the disappearance of his last "A" recollection, past time
itself was abolished. For him forty-five was not, and never had been.
And gone already was his memory of at least one event of hardly a week
ago, namely, his promise to me. Nay, that must have gone before ever
they fled, for nothing would have been easier for him than to send me a
note demanding his release from his word. But gone how, and when?
Remember, my own last actual sight of him had been by Fréhel's Light
when we had stood by the Crucifix that overlooks St Briac harbour. My
last direct word from him had been that note that Jennie had brought, in
which he had reassured me that he was to be trusted, at any rate till I
was out and about again. And my last news of him of any kind prior to
their flight was that he had sat with Jennie among the sarrasin sheaves.
Therefore whatever had happened had happened during the few days between
his writing his note and Noble's discovery of them and speeding to Ker
Annic with the tale.
I counted these days one by one.
On Wednesday he had written his note.
I had received it on Thursday.
On the following Saturday Julia Oliphant had arrived.
On the Tuesday after, the day of my first walk abroad, Noble had
conspicuously failed to mind his own business, and we had all been set
by the ears.
So far so good. His "A" memory might have broken down on any of these
days.
And yet on the very next day he had greeted Miss Oliphant by name! He
had not only remembered her when she had presented herself at his hotel,
but had remembered her in the rather curious sense that, whereas she had
formerly been "Julia" to him, she was now "Miss."
What in the name of the falling night was one to make of it all?
My hotel was the Poste, in the Place Duguesclin, and, though I
remembered Dinan only imperfectly, it was for evenings such as this that
I had come. It was a certainty that Derry and Jennie would never come to
Dinan, where, when the tides served, half a dozen packet-boats a day
might bring their loads of visitors from the very place from which they
had fled. During the hours when the excursionists thronged the old town
it was simple for me to get out into the surrounding country, to take an
omelette at some inn or other, and to return to dinner. At other states
of the tide the passage by river was impracticable, and few strangers
were to be seen.
The poppies went out of the sky almost suddenly. Over the parapet all
was a soft violet vapour. But when I rose and turned slowly up the Place
St Sauveur my thoughts still gave me their shadowy company.
But one shadow was spared me. This was the fear with which I had mounted
the stairs of his lodging at St Briac. Had he not been living, she at
any rate would have been heard of at Ker Annic before this. It was for
this that poor Alec telegraphed, advertised, instructed agents. Not that
he must not have him as well as her. Though he showed him the door
immediately afterwards, this Arnaud must marry Jennie first.
And the chances of tracing him were now far different from those when I
had fruitlessly sought him in London, only to have him put his hand on
my shoulder in a Shaftesbury Avenue picture-house in the end. For he had
been a middle-aged man then, with all the bolt-holes of his successive
personal appearances to dodge fantastically in and out of. Then, a
night, any night, might have made him unrecognisable, nameless, a ghost
among living men. But between eighteen and sixteen is no very great
difference. He might be a little less tall, a little less broad, but
somewhere between those two years he was cornered. His description was
circulated, hers did not vary. They had been gone four days. Probably a
week at the outside would see him touched on the shoulder in this place
or that, a "Pardon, M'sieu'" spoken in his ear, and back to Alec he
would go.
And though I have said as a foolish figure of speech that on that
magical Island of theirs they were unapproachably alone, that was the
important thing from Alec's point of view.
There is a little café tucked away in an angle of the Rue de l'Apport,
called, if I remember rightly, the Café des Porches. If it is not called
that it ought to be, for these Porches stride out over the pavement on
their ancient legs of stone and wood as if to knock together the
overhanging brows of their fantastic upper stories. Indeed one would say
that the stalls and shops and barrows tunnelled beneath them had but a
moment before been flush with those ancient façades, and that at a call
the whole house had suddenly advanced a pace, and the next moment might
advance another. And if you take a chest of drawers, and draw the bottom
drawer out a little, and the one above a little more, and the one above
that a little more still, and then set opposite to it another chest of
drawers to which you have done the same, you will have the appearance of
those carved and corbelled and enriched and decaying frontages. I passed
under their trampling legs and sought my café.
I don't remember ever actually entering that café in my life. I
preferred either of the two tiny round pavement-tables that stood one on
either side of its low doorway. There was just room to squeeze in
between the two portable hedges of privet that stood in long wooden
boxes on the kerb; and from this seat, unless they happened to be coming
towards you under the Porches or going directly away, little more than a
glimpse of passers-by could be had through the narrow opening. If they
happened to pass on a bicycle it was the merest zoetrope-flicker and
they were gone.
I sat down, called for coffee and a _fine_, and watched the shopkeepers
opposite putting up their shutters for the night.
One thing at any rate seemed now to be over and done with, and that was
poor Julia Oliphant's desperate adventure. Poor woman, it was as much
for her sake as theirs that I had left the Airds for a few days. Could
she have done the same and have gone back to England it might have been
as well, but that would have been to leave Madge insupportably alone. A
single day in that daughterless house had been enough for me. The next
morning I had made my explanation, had promised to return, had made a
few purchases, and had packed my bag. Any news was to be wired or
telephoned to me at the Poste. That briefly-concluded arrangement had
been practically the whole of my conversation with Madge.
With Julia I had had even fewer words; for what was there to say? Even
to Madge one could hardly have committed the grossness and superfluity
of saying that one was sorry; what then of Julia? Was I sorry? For
herself my heart bled; but was I sorry for the miscarriage of her
vehement and tremendous attempt?
Yet how remember her as I had found her in the salon on the morning of
the discovery, and be glad for Derwent Rose and his irregular bridal?
She had worn a hat and frock of white piqué, but the piqué had not been
whiter than her face nor the auracaria darker than her sombre lashes and
ringed eyes.
"You've heard?" she had said.
"Alec's just told me."
"Of course----" The unuttered words were "with him."
"It looks terribly like it."
"Had you any idea?" This with a look so imperious that I was thankful to
be able to reply truthfully.
"None. Is there anything--any little thing--we may do?"
"Settle that with Alec. I must be with her."
And that had been about all. I had not dared to ask her whether there
was anything I could do for herself.
But if not because she had failed, at least because of this all-at-once
dropping of the bottom out of everything for which she had lived, one
heart in Dinan resumed its ache for her that night. Stratagems learned
of any man, though she broke his heart with a laugh in the learning--and
then to have her own broken! Arms to provoke the world--and no world to
be provoked now that he, her world, had failed her! Nothing had been too
little for her, nothing too great. Officers' Woodbines and her adoration
of his painting, his years of war and a hat that hid one eye! What were
those arms and shoulders of hers but his own gesture, ready to be given
back to him, when he had shown himself in my swimming-pond, in that
studio in Cremorne Road? How she had dreamed to glory in herself; what
glories, for all I knew, had she not planned for the very next day! And
all, all to have gone in the seeming security of that very moment when
she had thought her rival out of the way! "New bicycles for old," she
had planned, a new free-wheel with packing about its saddle and string
and paper round its polished parts; but not a wheel would any bicycle
ever turn now to help her. The last she had seen of this man whose
destiny she had so arrogantly made her own was when he had shown her a
picture--a picture of her young victress, lying among white masonry as
ruined as Julia Oliphant's hope.
And even that she had had to ask to see.
The greengrocer under the Porche to the left was putting up his last
shutter, the seller of hardware and Breton pottery across the way had
already done so. Elsewhere from under the houses' bellies dim gleams of
light showed as if through horn. In the upper stories window shone into
window across the street--half Dinan is in bed by half-past nine. A
priest in soutane and pancake hat hurried past, glancing into my retreat
as he did so. Presently there was little light except that that streamed
from the doorway behind me, yellowing the artificial hedge and showing
the elephantine feet opposite--still where they were. Even this light
was darkened as a couple of _convives_, with a "Bonsoir, Madame,"
blocked the doorway for a moment, gave me also a muttered "Bonsoir," and
mingled with the shadows down the street. I watched them disappear.
But before they were quite lost among the trampling Porches there cut
across my opening, quick as a zoetrope-flicker, and with the single
little "ting" of an ill-adjusted bell, a bicycle.
My eyes function quite normally; but they are not an instantaneous
camera. In the tenth part of a second I had turned my head to the right
inside my little screen of privet. Alas! Round tubs, with more privet,
blocked either end. I sprang up, but the round table was in my way. I
extricated myself just one moment too late. I stood looking down the
dark Rue de la Cordonnerie.
But she had vanished.
She--not he; for even in that momentary flash there had been no
mistaking that uncovered red-gold head. But nothing else had been
familiar. A black shawl had enwrapped her shoulders, a green plaid skirt
had made an irregular rhomboid from the saddle downwards. Her stockings
were black, and white canvas shoes with jute soles covered her feet. On
the handle-bar had swung a basket, with parcels in it and a bâton of
bread sticking out.
They were in Dinan after all.
III
In Dinan after all, and risking the visitors who arrived by the boat!
One moment though. There had been provisions in that basket on the
handle-bar. If I myself could clear off during the busy hours of the day
and take my omelette at a quiet roadside inn, what was there to prevent
their doing the same? She had been "buying in." Possibly she was now
cutting sandwiches for the morrow's consumption. Then, like myself, they
would return at night, in the hour when the shutters were being put up,
the Porches played heaven knew what gambols in the darkness, and even
the lights of the Bretagne were extinguished, the awnings rolled up and
the chairs and tables carried inside.
Or for that matter, they might be in Dinan for the night only, and off
on their bicycles in the morning.
Yet somehow there had been a settled look about that figure that had
passed the opening of the privet and been gone all in a moment. People
who stay only one night in a place usually have their buying-in done for
them. And if he was in vareuse and corduroys, her own dress had been
indistinguishable from that of almost any shop-assistant or ouvreuse one
might meet in the town. In vain had Alec and Madge gone through her
wardrobe to see what garments were missing. That part of his description
was useless. Only Madame Arnaud's face was Jennie Aird's.
I did not sit down again. I called inside the café, paid what I owed,
and walked slowly in the direction the bicycle had taken. There was now,
unfortunately, no hurry, and I considered this direction carefully. Two
streets led to the right, but one of these might be eliminated, since in
order to take it she would have had to skirt the shadow of the Porches,
which she could hardly have done without my seeing her. Remained the Rue
de la Cordonnerie. This is a narrower slit even than that made by the
Porches. The sign of a dingy little restaurant, dimly seen by the light
of a lantern high up in the middle of the street, alone seemed to keep
the two sides from bumping together. One makes one's way as best one can
between two gutters, none too pleasant to the nostrils, and to right and
left the low-windowed shops and eating-houses seem to have settled a
yard into the earth.
Then, half way down this alley, bicycles caught my eye. The murky light
from a half-open door on the right showed the gleam of a couple of
mudguards. I stepped over the gutter.
The next moment I had cursed myself for a fool. The officers from the
two great barracks of Duguesclin and Baumanoir dine at the Poste or at
the Bretagne, but there is not a cabaret or eating-house in the town
that is not nightly visited by the N.C.O.'s and men. To see half a
dozen bicycles stacked outside a doorway was the commonest of sights.
There were four or five of them here now.
Nevertheless I peeped through the half-open door. I saw a low smoky
kitchen interior, one half of it like any other kitchen, but the farther
end entirely occupied by a dresser crowded with bottles of all shapes
and sizes and colours. A fat little woman in a blue-checked apron and
lace cap was ironing; the rest of the table was a litter of képis,
bottles and glasses. Through drifting cigarette-smoke men's bare heads
showed, the red breeches of dragoons, the black breeches of infantry,
and a couple of young fellows in horizon-blue, one with a steel cap on
his head. No woman's bicycle was likely to be found among those heavy
Service machines. I turned away.
So she had slipped me for the moment. But she was in Dinan. What to do
now?
Wire immediately to Alec, I supposed.
But as I crossed the Place Duguesclin I had a better idea. It was the
lights of the Poste showing under the dark limes that put it into my
head. Charlotte might be able to help me. Charlotte was the little
Italian-looking toulonnaise who served the cafés and _fines_ outside the
hotel and never failed to ask me how I had slept when she brought my
coffee and roll in the morning. My French, I ought to say, though
serviceable enough, is not of the same pure fount as was Derry's, and
Charlotte even more than the other ladies of the hotel took the most
charming and hospitable pains in talking with me. And I have always
found that, whether in another tongue or in your own, a great deal of
your ease depends on who you are talking to. What I mean is that
Charlotte and I were friends.
I walked into the large public room where Madame at her desk was casting
up her day's accounts. The chairs were being piled on the marble-topped
tables, and through the maze of their legs I saw that Charlotte had not
yet gone. That was my idea. I knew that Charlotte lived, not in the
hotel, but somewhere in the town, coming and going daily. I approached
her. I will give our low and brief conversation in English.
"Have you remarked in the town, Charlotte, a young woman of
such-and-such a manner of dress and such-and-such a face and hair,
especially the hair, who buys her bread and groceries a little late at
night and possibly on a bicycle?"
"The shops are closed when one leaves this hotel, M'sieu'," sighed
Charlotte.
"But you inhabit the town. I will re-describe." I did so. "If it were
possible to furnish me with renseignements----"
"Hold, M'sieu'. This lady is French?"
"Only exteriorly. Without doubt she speaks French, but as I do myself,
like a Spanish cow."
"Non, non, M'sieu'," Charlotte politely protested. "But wait. She is
alone?"
"She is with her French husband, the most beautiful young man even among
the beautiful young men of France." (I was glad Alec was not there to
hear me.)
Charlotte gave an exclamation. "Then it _is_ they!"
"Ah! And they live----?"
"I do not know, M'sieu'. But Dinan is not very large."
"Neither is this very large, Charlotte, but it may aggrandise
itself----"
And there passed between us certain pieces of postage-stamp-edging that
united the filthy remnants of what had once been the notes of a Chamber
of Commerce. I sought my candle and ascended to my room.
In Dinan! Well, it was quite like him to have cunningly read our minds,
anticipated our conclusions, and decided that Dinan was perhaps not so
unsafe after all. And his mastery of French would enable him to remain
obscure.
Yet one or two little things puzzled me. Jennie's French, for example,
was not remarkable; why then should he, able to bargain like a native to
the last cabbage-leaf, have risked discovery by sending her shopping
instead of going himself? Was another change coming? Had it come? Though
it could not now be externally a great one, was he none the less
nervous about it?... But it was no good guessing. If Charlotte had any
luck at all I should know in the morning. In the meantime bed was no bad
place.
My room looked on the inner courtyard of the hotel. I was asleep before
the lights of the staircases and windows opposite had ceased to flicker
over my ceiling and the wardrobe-mirror at my bed's foot.
I awoke to the sound of Dinan's bells. At first I could not remember
what it was of importance that I had on my mind. Then the mists of sleep
cleared away and it all came brightly back. I dressed hurriedly and
descended. Almost immediately Charlotte came to my table with my coffee
and my news.
And I had been right after all. They were at that house sunk a yard into
the earth in the Rue de la Cordonnerie where the soldiers' bicycles had
stood.
"And the name of the proprietor of the house?"
"C'est Madame Carguet, M'sieu'."
"Merci, Charlotte. You will buy yourself a hat for Sundays, but the best
in Dinan, it is understood----"
A quarter past nine found me at that low doorway into which I had peeped
the evening before. Madame stood at the table, washing lettuce in a
crock. I tapped and entered.
"Madame Carguet?"
"It is I, M'sieu'."
"I am a friend of the lady and gentleman who are staying with you. May I
see them?"
She had kind, vivacious and shrewd little eyes, which seemed to measure
me for a moment.
"And the name of M'sieu' who asks?"
I thought it possible that he might have left instructions about anybody
who might ask for him. In any case there was nothing for it but to be
open and above-board. I told her my name, corroborating my statement
with my card. She wiped her wet hands on her apron and took the card by
the extreme tip.
"Merci, M'sieu'. But actually it is that they have gone painting, taking
with them the provisions for the day, as every day."
"They will be back----?"
"This evening. Oh, assuredly, M'sieu'."
Then, whether my manner or my card reassured her, or however it was, her
face lighted up and she broke into a flood of ecstatic French of which I
understood perhaps one word in three.
"But it is just as I said to my husband, 'M'sieu'--the fairy-tale of
Cendrillon, just! 'Vieux sot, but where are your eyes?' I said. 'Regard
how she holds the fer-à-repasser to her cheek; did she ever before iron
a chemise or a coiffe in her life? Look at her hands which hold the
needle. It is not like you and me, ce couple-ci; it is of a different
order. You will see arrive the coach presently--justement Cendrillon!'
Ah, the beautiful pair! And he, so young, to have fought through this
terrible war! Mais oui, M'sieu', c'est vrai--but necessarily M'sieu'
knows better than I who tell him. At first one would not believe. The
poilus here, they would not believe. Who would believe? But mon Dieu, it
is true! Our Caporal Robert, he was at the very places. It is correct
absolutely--the regiments, the divisions, the commandants, the
tranchées, the boyaux, the dates--Caporal Robert can verify all, for he
too, he, was in contact with the English armies! To hear them talk of an
evening, M'sieu', yes, in this very room, while Madame sews or assists
me with the ironing or no matter what----"
"But they have only been here--how many days?"
"Four days, M'sieu'--but we love them. Ah, the difference when such as
they drop from the skies! It beautifies our life. C'est une fuite, sans
doute, M'sieu'?"
"A little; but all will be accommodated."
"You are a parent, M'sieu'?"
"I am a friend of the parents. I am un peu--ambassador."
"And they will return and be pardoned?"
"It is what I seek to arrange."
She had placed a chair for me. She herself sat with her back to the
table on the bench that had been occupied by the red-breeched dragoons
the night before I glanced round the room. Behind the open door the
inner tube of a bicycle hung on a nail in the wall, and a bicycle-pump
and an oilcan stood on a little shelf above it. Beneath the shelf was an
empty space, more than sufficient for a bicycle. I saw now how I had
missed her. She had wheeled her bicycle straight in and had put it
behind the door, had crossed the kitchen to a closed door on my right,
and had gone to her room--gone to where he waited for her, for he had
certainly not been among the soldiers when I had peeped in.
"You say that M'sieu' talks to the clients of an evening, Madame. Did he
do so last night?"
"Last night, no, M'sieu'. One missed him. But talk to them, he! For
three nights he has talked and laughed all the evening while she has
assisted me. Talk and laugh? C'est à dire! To hear him sing to the
copains--'En France y a qu' des Français'--la figure, les gestes--c'est
à tordre!"
And sitting there she sought to give me the impression, singing his song
in a cracked voice:
"A part les Anglais, Américains,
Espagnols, Anamit's, Italiens,
Les Russes, Les Hollandais et les p'tits Japonais--
En France y a qu' des Français!
Ah, but he is an original, he!"
"But why then was he not of the clientèle last night?" I asked.
"I do not know, M'sieu'. Perhaps he was a little souffrant. It was
Madame who made les emplettes last night; ordinarily it is he, and oh,
M'sieu', M'sieu', pour les occasions!... She took her bicycle which
reposes behind the door there, and was gone scarcely a little half-hour,
and then she replaced the bicycle and mounted straight to him in the
room that is above."
"Did you see them go out this morning?"
"No, M'sieu'."
("Then, chère Madame," I thought to myself, "do not be surprised if you
do not see them return this evening.")
For this was newly disturbing. Apparently for three nights he had made
the purchases, as I had anticipated he would; then on the fourth night
he had sent her. For three nights he had sat in that half-underground
room, laughing and talking with the evening customers; then on the
fourth he had buried himself upstairs. I looked round the kitchen again.
I tried to see the picture--the incredulous poilus, questioning,
cross-questioning, demanding who was on his regiment's right, who on its
left, what division was in support, under whose command. Quite possibly
Caporal Robert had been had in specially to check his accuracy. What a
stroke of luck for him that he had actually served at a point of contact
between the British line and the French! And here in this room he had
sat, pulling their legs, as he had pulled mine in the Boulevard Féart,
Alec Aird's at Ker Annic. The cool impudence of his song! "Only
Frenchmen in France!" How he had laughed in his sleeve! Well might
Madame Carguet shake her head and say that he was impayable, he!
But--it (you know what I mean by "it") happened in the night; and what
was the appalling position now that his nights were shared with another?
Her too I tried to picture again in that lamplighted kitchen, clumsily
sewing, burning herself with the iron, with the poilus, grave and
respectful, but making the very utmost of their moustaches and stealing
covert glances at her as her head was down hung over the ironing-board.
"Une fuite"--obviously an elopement. Anyone could see that with half an
eye. But to what had she fled? To yet another of his transformations?
Slight though any transformation must now be, she knew every line of his
beautiful face, and what must be her consternation, what her alarm, did
but a single line alter, though it became more beautiful still?
And unless they returned to the Rue de la Cordonnerie to-night (which I
now entirely doubted), what was the good of telegraphing to Alec?
"You say he is painting, as every day," I said. "Has he any pictures in
the house at this moment?"
"Twenty or more, M'sieu'."
"They are in his room without doubt?"
"Oui, M'sieu'. At this moment even. After his departure this morning I
did his room with my own hands."
"He sells his pictures?"
She gave a shrug. "That I cannot say. He sketches the clients, but those
he gives away. Caporal Robert he drew as one should say himself, le
Caporal, breathing upon the paper. Evidemment he has exposed at the
Galleries. Are his pictures of great value, M'sieu'?"
"I am unable to say, Madame."
("But," I thought, "as it is a wager that those pictures upstairs and
that bicycle-pump behind the door will be his payment for his lodging,
it is to be hoped they are.")
I rose.
"Thank you, Madame. As to my visit to you, you will see that there is a
discretion to be observed. I shall return this evening at nine o'clock.
In the meantime it would give me great pleasure if you would share a
vermouth sec with me."
But she was on her feet instantly. "Non non non non! It is I who should
have remembered! We are going to drink to those two angels, but yes, at
the expense of the house, I implore! Et quand la Carosse de Cendrillon
arrivera à la porte ... non non, M'sieu', it is the house that pays ...
ah, but what insistence!... Well, well, as M'sieu' wishes----"
She busied herself among her bottles, humming to herself as she did so
the words of his song: "----et les p'tits Japonais, En France y a qu'
des Français!"
I will not linger over the details of that day. I wandered aimlessly
hither and thither, out through St Louis' ancient gate, under the grey
walls of the Petits Fosses, back and forth in the shade of the tall
elms, stupid with too much thinking. I could only repeat over and over
to myself, "Another lapse, another lapse! That was why he kept to his
room last night. His landlady didn't see him go out this morning; she
won't see him come back to-night. It's happened again, and he's off
somewhere else. And she's with him. Poor child, poor, poor child!"
I lunched at the Poste, and in the afternoon walked again. But the
brilliance of the summer's day was lost on me. I thought that after all
I would go back to England. What was done was done, what was to come
would come. The sight-seers who wandered up and down under the Porches
or gaped in groups in the Place St Sauveur seemed unreal to me; the
shadow of what had probably again happened was my reality. Poor, poor
child! She, our lovely Jennie Aird, to alight on a broken wing in that
dingy kitchen, to sit among poilus, to listen to his mocking song! And
he, with that shadow darkening over both of them, could actually find it
in his heart to sing....
The visitors descended the Lainerie to the vedettes again; the Porches
watched them go; and once more I had the Place St Sauveur to myself.
Mechanically I entered the church. I closed the leather door softly
behind me as I became aware of a small group a little way up the aisle.
I slipped into the nearest pew, half concealed behind a pillar.
Apparently a christening was toward, for a stout little Frenchman with a
waxed moustache held a babe in his arms. He tickled the infant's chin
and allowed it to clutch his finger, chatting and laughing softly as
they waited for the priest. The priest appeared, followed by three or
four acolytes carrying candles; he also laughed and joked and chatted
quietly, while the cerise-coped urchins, their candles at all angles,
shifted their feet, leaned against the font, and looked negligently
round. There was an almost jocular intimacy about it all, until the
priest, in a secret, attentive and distinct voice that nevertheless
filled the aisle, began the Sacrament.... And I caught myself foolishly
wondering whether that babe too would grow up, have something
inexplicable happen to it, and set out on the return journey to the
cradle again. If to one, why not to another? Why not to all the world?
What was there to prevent one of those inattentive acolytes having by
and by the part of a George Coverham to play? Why should not that mite
of four holding her mother's hand turn out to be a Julia Oliphant? Or
those other wide-eyed tots be some future Madge and Alec Aird?... But it
occurred to me that these thoughts would not do. All at once I rose and
stole silently out. Even in a church there seemed to be no comfort for
me. This time I took a long walk, I hardly remember where, and did not
return till it was time for dinner.
I had very little hope of seeing the runaways, but I might as well keep
my appointment as not. At a little before nine, therefore, I turned into
the Rue de la Cordonnerie. As I did so my heart gave a leap to notice
that the window over the low doorway of the inn was lighted up.
With my eyes on the light I moved to the other side of the street.
Carved wooden corbals supported the overhanging bay, but the window
itself was modern. The light was apparently placed low down, on a chair
or on the floor, for half over the sagging ceiling I could see the
enormous soft shadow of somebody's head. The shadow moved, and the
somebody approached the window.
Then I saw the glint of her hair.
I entered the brasserie, bowed to Madame among her troopers, and looked
inquiringly towards the inner door. She had a candle ready. She lighted
it, opened the door, put the candle into my hand and one finger on her
lips, pointed up a staircase no wider than if two interior walls had
cracked slightly apart, and withdrew. I ascended.
Then, before I reached the landing, I heard his clear voice.
"I say, darling, what does 'bélier' mean?"
IV
The door was a couple of inches ajar. The clear voice continued.
Apparently he was reading aloud.
"'Là était une tour dite Le Poulailler'--(poulaille's poultry)--'qui
renfermait Le Chat, machine de guerre'--(where the Chat, a machine of
war, was kept)--'sorte de bélier à griffes pour les sièges'--something
with claws for sieges--now what on earth is 'bélier'? Seems to have been
some sort of a battering-ram.... There, how stupid of me! Why, I've just
said the very word! 'Ram,' of course. They kept the battering-ram
there.... 'On peut visiter dans une maison voisine le passage en
casemate de la courtine'--sort of fortified wall, I expect--'et aussi
dans les caves de l'Hôtel de la Poste'--and also in the cellars of the
Hôtel de la Poste----"
Thereupon I pushed and entered.
He was sitting on a long, low chest, the sort of thing corn or flour
would be kept in, with the single candle by his side. In his hand was
the paper-covered guide-book from which he was laboriously reading. The
little table at which she stood was pushed up against the wall just
beyond him; she was preparing their supper. A long roll was tucked under
her left arm, and she spread the butter from a little casserole. A paper
of sausage was before her, with two of Madame's glasses and a bottle of
milk. In the corner by the window stood a bed with a draped canopy and a
crimson coverlet that resembled a soufflé. Had you put a marble down on
that ancient floor heaven knows where it would have come to rest, for
the whole room was warped and distorted, as if indeed it had just
retired panting from its struggle with the house across the street.
Under the window his canvases were stacked. Near the bed's head hung a
single devotional picture, a Virgin and Child in blue and white and
gilt. The bed had to be where it was because of the window on the other
side of the way.
Then, before I could make my presence known, he flung the guide-book
across the room, sprang to his feet, opened his arms wide, ran towards
her, and clasped her rapturously to him.
"Oh, darling, darling! Isn't it simply ripping--_ripping_!"
I have never heard such a cry of pure happiness from human throat. He
made no attempt to kiss her; some far, far deeper joy seemed to possess
them. I had the most vivid impression that this was not the first nor
the second nor the tenth time that day they had clasped like that. He
was laughing down at her, she laughing softly back. She was fresh and
fair as a jonquil--yes, jonquil-hued even to her little gilding of
freckles, as if the flower's heart had burst with a happiness like their
own, and spread its golden dust around. And they seemed to adore, not so
much one another, as some wondrous secret that existed between them.
Then suddenly I saw her stiffen. She had seen me, and he had seen the
look in her eyes. Both heads turned swiftly, and they severed. I did not
move.
Then slowly my eyes moved from her face to his.
Not a trace of change could I distinguish. He was young, not too young,
grave, and filled with some exaltation that did not quite leave him as
our eyes looked into one another's.
"I must beg your pardon," I muttered.
He advanced towards me. "Why--Sir George!"
Then swiftly he glanced at her, she as swiftly at him.
The next moment her cheek was against my breast.
"Are they here?" she murmured in a failing voice.
I did not pretend not to understand. "No, Jennie, I'm here alone."
"How did you know we were here?"
"I'm staying in Dinan for a few days. I saw you last night."
She lifted her head. Again their eyes sought one another's. There was
something they were aching to communicate.
The room had two chairs, one a church chair with a rush bottom, the
other a straight-backed piece of carved Breton work, but so old that its
colour had become a dry dusty grey. He placed this chair for me, and sat
down again on the corn-bin. He was softly kneading his brown hands, as I
had formerly seen him do in Cambridge Circus. It is odd how these tricks
cling to one.
Then, his face again transfigured with that undivulged joy they shared,
he looked up at me. Jennie was back at her buttering again; apparently
he was to do the telling. I noticed that at any rate he had not
forgotten to buy her a ring. He caught my glance at it, and nodded
joyously.
"That's it," he said.
Once before he had asked me to talk French to him. I now had a reason
for speaking it unasked.
"Qu'est-ce que veut dire----" I said.
He laughed aloud.
"That's all right--you can talk English! Can't he talk English, Jennie?"
Jennie nodded.
"Suppose you talk it," I said.
"Rather! I'm going to tell him, Jennie.... English? Why, that's the
whole thing! Yesterday morning when I woke up"--he glanced towards the
bed by the window--"I hardly dared to believe it! They were talking down
in the street or somewhere, and all at once I wondered--what I mean is
that I couldn't quite catch it. It all seemed so quick and difficult,
just a lot of jabbering. Not a bit like we learned it: 'Je veux une
plume, de l'encre et du papier'--you know. So I lay there thinking,
looking up at the ceiling. Then I had an idea. I got quietly out of bed
and went to the door there." He nodded in the direction of the door now.
"I opened the door and called down to Madame. I've done that every
morning for café-au-lait, you see. Now here's the point."
He emphasised the point with a forefinger.
"There's a Breton word for café-au-lait. Don't ask me what it is; I
don't ever want to hear it again. Anyway, I'd used that word for three
mornings, and that morning I couldn't remember it for the life of me. I
thought perhaps if I just went to the door and called without stopping
to think it might come of itself, but not it! I had to ask for
café-au-lait, and of course up it came all right....
"Well, I didn't say a word to Jennie. We got up and went out sketching.
But forgetting that word, and all the French I heard sounding so awfully
funny and foreign, was on my mind all the time. And the next thing was
that I forgot the word for willow--I happened to be sketching some
willows. Couldn't think of the French for willow. And all day it was the
same. Some people came and looked over my shoulder while I was painting,
but all I could make out was the word 'Salon,' and, of course, that's
just as much English as French.
"Then I started talking bits of French to Jennie, and she got a bit
cross--didn't you, sweetheart? She thought I was pulling her leg about
her own French. And so it went on all day, and me getting more and more
excited about it. Then at night I told Jennie all about it. I told her
she'd have to go out and do the shopping, because I simply daren't. I'd
had little jokes with the shop people, you see, and I thought to myself,
'By Jove, if they joke back now I shan't have a word to say!' You see
what I'm getting at, don't you?"
Dismay filled my heart. So this was the magnificent news that had thrown
them so ecstatically into one another's arms! This was what had happened
in the night this time! He, who the evening before had sung to the
poilus downstairs, had had to send her to do their shopping! Little
enough to rejoice over, I thought. But he went on.
"Then to-night, just before you came in, it happened again. Some French
word or other, quite a simple one--I just couldn't remember the English
for it. It was hardly a moment before you came in. I tell you it's all
going away from me by leaps and bounds. Even when I know the words my
tongue won't pronounce them properly. And then you came in. You see what
it means, don't you?"
"What does it mean?" I managed to ask. It seemed to me to mean only one
thing--the beginning of the end.
"What does it mean?" he exulted. "Why, it means that I'm simply
_me_--just myself and none of this beastly Arnaud business--a fresh
start it means."
I glanced at Jennie. "I wonder whether you'd mind getting another glass
and letting me share your milk," I said.
Then, when the door had closed behind her, "This is simply the old thing
over again, Derry. You've talked about fresh starts before."
He laughed. "Is that all you sent her out for? She knows all about it.
Of course I really started some time ago. I think I told you so. All I'm
telling you this for now is because it absolutely clinches it!"
"How does forgetting clinch anything?"
"Because it _is_ forgetting!" he cried triumphantly, echoing and
confirming my own abstruse meditation as I had watched the shirley
poppies over the ramparts. "I say, I mustn't shout, though. I'm not
supposed to know any English except the few words Jennie's taught me.
Great jokes we've had about that! So doesn't this prove it? Why, what am
I doing remembering things all that time ago? I'm not perfectly right
till I've forgotten every single thing! And I'm forgetting without
trying; you can't try to forget. Heaps of things have gone besides
French--heaps of English things. Why, I've forgotten----"
"You remember me?"
"Yes. I met you at the Airds. I told you the whole story out at Le Port
one night. You can't have forgotten!"
"Hadn't we met before then?"
"Yes, I think we had. There was a pond, wasn't there? Wasn't it at some
house with a pond?"
"Do you remember a Miss Oliphant?"
"Oliphant? Yes--wait a bit--yes I do. I'd met her somewhere or other
too. But the last time I saw her was when she came for a bicycle. Why
they should have sent her I don't know, but of course I knew there was a
storm blowing up, so I simply gave her the bicycle and showed her a few
sketches, and let it go at that."
"You don't remember where you'd met her before, do you?"
"I know it was in England somewhere. But I didn't know you knew her till
Jennie told me."
"You really didn't know I knew Miss Oliphant?"
"Honestly I didn't, Sir George."
I was silent as Jennie reappeared.
And yet, if she knew all, as he said, why the caution of silence? It
seemed to me that with the clearing up of one other point I should have
an idea of how matters really stood. I turned to Jennie.
"Derry's still talking about the great news," I said. "He says you know
all about it. Well, I want you to tell me one thing. Does he remember
everything that's happened since he first saw you?"
Derry answered for her, with a soft laugh. "Do I remember that! Why,
it's all I'm going to know presently!"
"Has your 'B' memory quite gone?"
"Quite, so far as I can say."
"And your 'A' is going, and you're starting a brand-new one from the
moment you met Jennie?"
"Not 'met.' 'Saw.' That's it exactly. Couldn't have been better put."
"And"--I hesitated, but took my fence--"that's all? Nothing else has
gone?"
"What do you mean, Sir George? Only the remembered things are going.
_I'm_ the same, if that's what you mean."
"The same that you always were?"
"Well"--he made a simple gesture with his open hands--"if I don't
remember what I was I can't very well tell that, can I?"
"You still do a little, but it's going, and soon you won't at all?"
"Exactly. _Now_ do you see what I mean?"
It was impossible to believe that even unconsciously he was lying. I
remembered his own trouble and unbelief when it had first occurred to
him that this astounding development might lie ahead. Wistfully he had
put it aside as too dazzling to be entertained. "I suppose that's too
much to expect," he had sighed as he had put it from him. But now,
unless he was lying to me, to Jennie, and to himself, he certainly
seemed to have the proof of it. His face had been puzzled candour itself
when I had put my sudden questions: Had he and I met before, and did he
know a Miss Oliphant? Vaguely he remembered a pond, vaguely a Miss
Oliphant in England; and to-morrow he was not going to remember either.
My hazardous surmise as I had watched the shirley poppies was
justified, my fears for the breaking-up of his faculties groundless.
This was not the break-up, but the very confirmation of those faculties,
the complete washing-out of everything _not_ inherent in himself. What
next happened in the night would be what happens to every one of us
every night--the gentle and beautiful small forward step to age. He was
all but at the maximum of his unassisted, unhindered power, a white page
on which to write anew.
And what a lovely manuscript might it not now be made! His schooling,
the rudiments he had formerly acquired up to the age of sixteen, he
would probably retain; but thereafter his life dated from a certain
moment when, by the upcast glow of the headlights of a French car, he
had seen Jennie Aird's eyes looking into his. He even spoke as if his
talk with me that night by Le Port gap had been the beginning of his
confidence in me. Not a suspicion did he seem to have that he had made
similar confidences before, in his rooms in Cambridge Circus, in that
loft over a South Kensington mews. That meeting of eyes across the
car--that swift "Who was that with you in the garden, George?"--his wily
shepherding of me into the Dinard Bazaar--his surreptitious meetings
with her, and his last crowning escapade--these made up the whole
history of his re-created life. Within this perfect period he had
forgotten nothing ... but yes, he had forgotten one thing. This was his
promise to me. And very likely he had not forgotten that at all. The
chances were that he had knowingly and deliberately broken his word. And
what of it? Who was I to have extorted it from him? Could I reproach him
with that--now? Is the law so hard? Shall we add to the tortures of
Tantalus the unbinding of his hands, and forbid him to seize the fruit
he thirsts for? Let him cut the knot and take his joy! At the worst he
had merely omitted to send me a note releasing himself. And should I
speak of that--now?
So, if he was eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, he was--simply--eighteen
or seventeen or sixteen. What, by that fact, mattered his
birth-certificate? If he was not the age he was, what age was he? How
old are you? how old am I? We are as old as our knowledge of ourselves.
_Had_ his faculties been impaired--ah, that would have been another
matter. But out of that ancient mould of his former history a new sprout
had pushed, sweet, vigorous, and identical with itself. That shoot was
Derwent Rose. If it was not Derwent Rose where then was Derwent Rose? No
Derwent Rose had died. If you would find him you must seek him among the
living. Or if any Derwent Rose had died, it was the author of _The Hands
of Esau_ and _The Vicarage of Bray_. Dead indeed he might be; for no
link now existed between him and his youth, unlettered in anything but
the perfection of a beautiful love. He stood in that sagging room in the
Rue de la Cordonnerie, what he was and nothing else. He had been it as
long as he had been it, and neither more time nor less. No power on
earth could make it otherwise. No power in heaven would have tried.
"Well, what's to be done?" I asked presently.
We were all three sitting on the corn-bin, they together, I nearest the
table. They were munching their bread and sausage.
"That's perfectly simple," said Derry. "As I've told you, that silly
Arnaud business is all over. I'm Derwent Rose. Nobody can say I'm
impersonating him, can they? So I must _be_ him, and if I'm him it's
just like anybody else being themselves. And I'm awfully sorry it had to
be tip-and-run, but there wasn't anything else for it at the time. But
that's all over. I've got that beastly memory nearly off my shoulders. I
don't know anybody in England. I remember our own village of course--in
Sussex it was--and a few odds and ends--and oh!" He slapped his knee.
"_That's_ where I heard the name Oliphant! I didn't know Miss Oliphant
in England at all. There's a little Julia Oliphant, but she's only a
kid, and no relation at all probably. But this one's a bit like what I
could imagine little Julia growing up to be. Never mind. What I want to
ask you now is about Jennie's people."
"Yes, Jennie's people," I said.
V
It was the drop of gall in the honey of her happiness. She would cut his
bread and sausage, learn to darn his socks, sew on his buttons, wash out
his handkerchiefs for him; that her hands as well as her heart should
serve and adore him was all her joy; but I saw the droop of her head and
the tremor of that upturned lip that betrayed the pearls. Julia Oliphant
might hardly dare, but this one--ah, she was so recently a child! I
think she would even have left Derry's side for ten minutes might they
but have been spent with her mother's arms about her and the smell of
her father's pipe not far away. I don't know whether a tear had ever
dropped on to that ironing-board of Madame's downstairs. I saw one drop
now.
"Yes, Jennie's people," I said again. "I suppose you want to know about
them?"
I saw no harm in reminding him, at any rate, that however great things
might be happening to him, minor but still important ones were happening
simultaneously elsewhere. Even when you start a new life under the
shadow of an old one you cannot entirely escape the world and its
ordinary responsibilities.
"Of course we do," he said, surprised. "I'm going to them the moment
things are shipshape again."
"You may see them even sooner than that. I need hardly tell you I shall
have to wire to them immediately."
He sighed a little. "Well, I suppose the music's got to be faced," he
said quietly.
"You're not going to try to give me the slip, are you?"
Again the surprised look. "Of course not. What have I just been telling
you? That's the whole idea. If all goes as it is going a couple of days
might put the stopper on this memory business once for all. Then we
shall go to them at once. I want to get it over."
I looked around the room again. Practically upon the window-sill of it
somebody across the street was preparing for bed. In order to get to
that upper chamber of theirs at all one had to pass through the public
room downstairs. Everything about the place sighed with age and
indefinable odour; one knew not what mould, what sweating life, what
"silver fishes," those tired old walls did not harbour. I don't think I
am too fastidious, but that was no place for that jonquil, Jennie Aird.
"Look here, Derry," I said suddenly, "if it's a fair question, how much
money have you got?"
He looked serious. "Awfully little I'm afraid. And I don't know where
I'm going to get any either."
"Haven't you any--put away anywhere?"
"No."
"What have you been living on?"
"What's left of that five hundred francs you were so good as to lend
me--that and a couple of sketches I sold to a fellow at St Briac. I'm
afraid you'll have to wait for that five hundred, Sir George."
"Let me see. When did I lend it to you?"
"While I was at St Briac, you remember."
He had forgotten it was his own money. I rose from the corn-bin.
"Very well. You say you're not going to give me the slip, and that
you're going to Jennie's people the moment things are all right. Will
you as a first step settle up here and come along with me to my hotel
now? You came here to lie doggo. That's all over. This is no place for
either of you."
He blushed with embarrassment. He hesitated. But evidently the problem
had been worrying him, for he looked frankly up.
"I will on one condition, Sir George. That is that it's added to the
five hundred. I shall be selling my sketches presently if you can wait a
bit. You're quite right; Jennie oughtn't to be here. But I hope the
Poste isn't too expensive. I shall have to pay you back sooner or
later."
"Well, that can stand over for the present. Come and see the
curtain-wall or whatever it is in the cellars of the Hôtel de la Poste.
Come now. You can fetch your canvases to-morrow. Get your things on,
Jennie."
"They are on," said Jennie.
"Then just let me leave you for a minute or two."
I passed down that fissure of a staircase again, opened the door of the
cabaret, and beckoned to Madame. There, at the foot of the stairs, and
in complete darkness except for the inch that the door was left open, we
had our low conversation.
"Tout va bien, M'sieu'?" she asked with anxious sympathy.
"Oui, Madame. The coach will take away your Cendrillon immediately."
"Is it not as I said to my husband! And M'sieu' Arnaud also goes?"
"Naturally. They will depart in a few minutes. As for their account, it
is I who will regulate that if you will prepare it for to-morrow. And
one does not buy goodness of heart, Madame; nevertheless----"
Nevertheless, in the short struggle of hands in the darkness, the hand
that proffered and the hand that refused, the hand that proffered was
the victor. I re-ascended to their room.
The other time I had not knocked, but this time I did so. They were as I
had left them--ready in what they stood up in. He carried the little
black bundle of her necessaries and his own. They took a last look round
that warped and wonderful and memory-haunted room....
But I had given them five minutes with its memories while I had
negotiated with Madame....
"Ready?" I said.
We descended that interior crack for the last time.
There was a sudden hush in the kitchen as we entered. The blonde heads,
the dark heads, turned above the tunics of black and horizon-blue, faces
watched us round the stacked-up képis on the table. But though probably
little else had been talked of for the last hour, none was supposed to
know that I was the Fairy Godmother who had brought the coach for
Cinderella. Derry took no farewell of the copains who, with sundry other
nationalities, were the French population of France. Only Jennie ran
towards Madame and was pressed for a minute against a bosom well able to
sustain her weight. Derry got out the bicycles from behind the door.
Outside he walked ahead between them. Jennie and I followed him along
the Rue de la Cordonnerie.
A quarter of an hour later I had asked Madame at my hotel to be so
obliging as to allow me the use of her telephone. There was no telephone
at Ker Annic, but there was one at the Beverleys' hotel, and I knew that
Beverley would see to it that a message for Alec was delivered
immediately. I did not think it necessary to tell Beverley what it was
all about; I merely asked him to send word to the Airds that I wished to
see them in Dinan to-morrow.
Then I engaged another room--an ordinary hotel bedroom, where a
chambermaid would bring up hot water in the morning and a bath was to be
had for stepping across the corridor--just an ordinary hotel
bedroom--not a place of memories and romance like that tumbling old room
over that cabaret in the Rue de la Cordonnerie that looked as if it had
sunk a yard into the earth----
PART V
THE HOME STRETCH
I
The next day we were five at the Hôtel de la Poste. We sat long after
luncheon, on the creeper-awninged terrace that overhangs the Petits
Fosses. The other tables had long since been cleared, but the waiters,
smelling thunder in the air, kept well away from ours.
My heart was sore for Alec too. Officially he had been driven to accept
the sworn but unbelievable statement; in his heart he neither understood
nor believed one single word of it. It was so unlike the engineering and
Rugby football that he did understand. That to which his mind always
returned was the plain meaning of these words: Treachery, Seduction and
Falsehood.
Madge's reception of the incredible thing had been one of the most
extraordinary experiences I ever had in my life. She and Alec had
arrived in Dinan at nine o'clock and had come straight to my hotel. At a
quarter past nine I had locked my bedroom door against the interrupting
bootboys and chambermaids who busied themselves on staircases and
landings. The morning stir also filled the courtyard below. Jennie and
Derry I had told to keep out of the way until lunch-time. I had hastily
covered my bed, and Madge had sat down on the edge of it. During the
whole of the time I had talked, half a dozen Alecs in the various
mirrors had met and re-met one another as he had paced the room.
First of all she had drawn an extraordinarily deep breath. Then slowly
she had pressed her fingertips over her eyelids. Her lips had moved
under the little eaves made by her hands. She had had the air of trying
to see something anew, to see a succession of things anew, and to name
them as they came. She had sat there for quite two minutes, eyes hidden,
lips moving, seeing, repeating....
Then, "The Club----" she had breathed.
And then, "Queen's Gate----"
I had found myself nodding.
"His brother--Arnaud--sketching----"
She was well away now.
Then suddenly her hands had dropped, she had stared at me, and a shrill
cry had broken explosively from her.
"The Beautiful Bear! Derwent Rose! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!...
George Coverham, tell me--is it? _Is_ it?"
"It is."
"That afternoon--looking at himself in the picture--his brother in
Queen's Gate--Arnaud--Derwent Rose--I knew it, I knew it all the
time----"
And she had slid with my coverlet gently to the floor.
And she did in fact recognise him--did pick out, as it were through some
bright reversed telescope of time, that still-sealed but identical
beauty of the grown man she had found so superb. He was like, as a son
is like a father, as for a fleeting instant a newly-born babe may
resemble a grandparent. She had wished to meet Derwent Rose. She had now
met him, at this far end of a corridor of years.
And I had had to pick her up from where she crouched, on a coverlet on
my bedroom floor.
But give her a little time--the time to pull herself together--and you
could no more have persuaded Madge that it was not so than you could
have got Alec to believe it was.
"But why wasn't I told all this at once?" he had demanded, not twice or
thrice, but twenty times. "Are you telling me now, or am I wrong in my
head? Why didn't you? Why didn't you? Then he could have been put where
he belongs--in the asylum yonder----"
And again, and yet again: "You brought him to my house, you brought him
to my house! You practically introduced him under a French name--you
didn't contradict it anyway--you knew all about him--and I wasn't
told--I'm only told after he's stolen my girl! Why didn't you tell me,
Coverham?"
But I considered that I had less to reproach myself with than he
thought. I had done everything in my power to isolate him, to keep her
out of his path. Madge, not I, had asked him to Ker Annic. Madge had
invited herself to his hotel in St Briac. He had given me his word, I
had trusted to it, and he had broken it. And had I at any time told Alec
the truth he would no more have comprehended it than he did now.
So he had railed bitterly on, turning the nightmare over and over again,
meeting and re-meeting himself in the mirrors, very much as Derwent Rose
had met and re-met himself in the windings of his marvellous life.
"Oh, we're mad! We're all mad! Any chance of our waking up? And you talk
to me about somebody called Derwent Rose as if I ought to know all about
the fellow the moment you mention his name! I never heard of a Derwent
Rose in my life! Who the devil is Derwent Rose anyway?"
This at any rate Madge had been able to tell him.
"But he says he's never written a book in his life! Who should know if
he doesn't?"
I made another attempt.
"The idea, Alec, is that that is a corroboration of the whole thing. He
doesn't remember that he ever wrote a book, and I've a notion it would
be safer not to try to make him remember. Another thing, Alec. You say
I'm mad. But you can have absolutely independent evidence any time you
like. Julia Oliphant's in Dinard. She knows nothing of what's happening
in this room. Go to her and tell her, from me, that she's to tell you
all she knows about a man called Derwent Rose. Then see what she says."
"And you say you're going to make a legal adoption of something that's
shaped like a man but ought to be kept in a padded room?"
"I am if it's possible. The letter's written and in the box. All we can
do is to wait till I've had a reply to it."
"Oh, we're all daft, we're all daft!" he had cried, his head in his
hands.
And that was still his burden--that we were all daft. I will not deny
that there seemed something to be said for it.
My letter to my solicitors had taken me the best part of the night to
write. I wanted to be sure of the position without divulging too much.
Derwent Rose existed; the record of his birth was to be found in
Somerset House among the files for the year 1875, and nowhere was there
a certificate of his death. If Derwent Rose as he now in fact was ought
properly to have been born in the year 1902 or thereabouts, the thought
had come to me that this difference might be bridged by my own legal
adoption of him. Discreetly I had asked for information on this point.
If the thing was feasible, Derry would then be George Coverham's son,
and his marriage to Alec Aird's daughter would follow immediately. I had
not seen what fairer offer I could make, and even Alec had grudgingly
agreed--until the whole thing had once more overwhelmed him, and he had
cried out that we were all daft and ought to be locked up.
That creeper-hung terrace at the back of the Hôtel de la Poste will
probably never crash with its diners and waiters down into the moat
below, but it always looks as if it might. A few slender iron struts
stepped on to the old corbels of the wall below support it; for the rest
it is suspended in the air, high as the nests in the great elms
opposite, part of the ivy of the outer wall on which the hotel is built.
Save for its screen of creeper it is open to the sky, and its dozen or
so tables stand behind the great letters you read from the Fosse far
below--HÔTEL DE LA POSTE.
And if from the ramparts by St Sauveur you see the shirley poppies of
the sunset in the east, here you see the sun himself, burning
intolerable holes through the elms, and turning the creeper into a
crewelwork of flame and the valerian of the walls to dark blood.
But this was only after lunch, with the sun just outlining the wall to
our left with brightness and shining on the fruit and cheese and
coffee-cups which the waiters were itching to clear away. In the
promenade below, absurd little hats put forth little feet, now fore,
now aft, as they went about their affairs. Derry's eyes were musingly on
the walkers. Alec had compelled himself to sit at the same table with
us, though his own meal had consisted of nothing but a bottle of wine. A
few moments before he had uttered a grunt, that had been understood to
mean that, since there was nothing for it but to wait for letters from
London, we might as well wait at Ker Annic as here.
Suddenly Derry removed his eyes from the hats below and looked at Alec,
deferentially but obstinately.
"Speaking for myself, sir----"
Though he had nothing of Alec but his profile, he went on.
"If you don't mind I shall not come. Sir George has tried to explain to
you, and I've tried to explain to you, that there was nothing for it but
the way I took. We've agreed it's no good going into all that again.
Call it my pigheadedness if you like; I can't very well object to
anything you call me; but I won't come. I'll come, if I'm still asked,
when everything's settled up. And that should be a week at the outside."
Alec turned. It was plain that he would loathe his son-in-law, when he
became that, to the end of his days.
"It will or it won't," he growled.
"It can't be much longer than that, sir."
"Can't it? Let me tell you how it can. I may have to swallow that insane
yarn for the moment; you've left me very little choice--took dashed good
care of that. But you've got to find somebody else crazy enough to get
it down yet."
"What do you mean, Alec?" I interposed.
"Any English parson," Alec flung over his shoulder as he rose and walked
away.
Derry sighed as his broad back disappeared into the hotel. When you have
cut a knot it is difficult to tie it again. The straightforward course
of his choice seemed little less crooked than the other. Almost it
seemed a mistake after all.
II
I perfectly well understood Derry's scruple about going to Ker Annic. It
was the kind of scruple I should have liked a son of mine to have.
Except as a husband he had no footing in that house, and except as a
husband he refused to enter it. I think he would have given much to have
been able to say that he never had set foot in it, but that milk was
spilt.
But Jennie would never be torn from his side, and the chances were that
Madge would not now be torn from Jennie's. So it looked as if either
Alec must return to Dinard alone or else stay with us at the Poste and
make the best of it.
Half an hour before lunch Madge had done an odd thing. She had called me
away for a moment from Alec's side, and had asked me in which house in
the Rue de la Cordonnerie I had found them. She had also wanted to know
Madame Carguet's name. Then she had gone off.... I had seen her embrace
of Jennie on her return. Her hand now once more stole to Jennie's as,
with Alec's departure, we continued to sit at the table.
Again Derry sighed, but I think it was a little wilfully that he dwelt
on the gloomier side, and that it was not altogether unmixed despair. We
do allow ourselves these little luxuries at eighteen or thereabouts.
"Well, I've made a lot of bother," he sighed.
Madge was half cross, half consoling. "Oh, I expect it will come out all
right in the end," she said impatiently. "He'll come round presently."
It began to look as if she herself had already come more than half-way
round. And, now that Alec and his thundercloud had gone, a waiter
ventured to advance.
"Si on peut désservir, Madame----"
Madge rose abruptly.
"Yes, let's go out. It's no good sitting here getting morbid. Which way
has my husband gone? Because just for an hour I'm going in the opposite
direction. Come along, let's all go for a walk."
We left the creepered terrace, crossed the courtyard of the hotel, and
came out into the Place Duguesclin.
I think I have discovered what it is that gives certain French façades
their air at once luminous and austere. It is the roofs above them. Our
flat-pitched English roofs thanklessly send back heaven's light where it
comes from; but these, steeply mansarded, dormered, and hog's-backed
again above that--it is these that flash it into our eyes like mirrors,
these across which the shadows of the chimneys lie, blots of black in
the glitter. The façades themselves may be flatly lighted or gloomed
over with pastel-like shade; it is above that everything happens, above
that the sun, the brick and the shining slate play out the drama of the
altering day.
And the sun was Lord of Dinan that afternoon. He turned the arcades of
the fishmarket to barrels of blackness, but crowned the roofs beyond
with flashing silver. The dark limes of the Place Duguesclin might drink
up his rays like green blotting-paper, but the east side of the Square
gave them out again as if the pale paint and chalk and plaster had been
self-luminous--faint greens of peeling ironwork, flaky blues of closed
shutters, the dazzle of the roof, the chimneys like tall dominoes on
end, patched with bricks of rose. And what a town for him to play with!
The towers, the gates, the ivied encircling walls, are but the outer
shell of the immemorial place; within it, what pranks and gaieties of
light and under-light and hide-and-seek of shadows does not his Lordship
play! Derry began to cheer up. Eighteen is never downcast for long. This
father-in-law-elect of his might sit morosely at the same table with
them or take his bottle of wine to whatever table he pleased; the sun
would shine on carved stone and old painted wood just the same. Yes,
Derry bucked up, and in a bright voice began to take command.
"I say, let's have a peep into the Cordeliers," he said. "It was shut
the last time I tried to get in."
Under the legs of the Porches, across the street and in at the half-open
portail we passed.
Oh, yes, Derry was decidedly better. He had treated Alec with grave
deference, if not with entire submission; but now less and less did he
seem to consider himself a culprit. As we passed along the cloisters he
paused to show Madge a "Ci-gist" or a bit of old woodwork let into a
wall; and from these he turned to the _affiches_ and class-lists of the
wall on the other side. His head was high. He was Derwent Rose, fixed
and indivisibly. If lately he had not been so, so much the better these
times than those. He was going ahead; he was going to marry; a year
hence might find him looking exactly a year older than he looked at this
moment; and though for the moment a certain modesty and humility might
be due from him, abjectness and shame--no. He trod the cobbles and
_dalles_ lightly by Madge's side. And I think that already the rogue
knew that he could turn her round his finger as he pleased.
For while Alec might never have heard of a novelist called Derwent Rose,
and might secretly be rather proud of the fact, she had read every word
he had ever written. She knew more about it than he knew about himself,
since he now knew nothing. Perhaps, walking silently by his side, she
realised the power and passion at present folded up in him, but soon
again to be declared. And perhaps she saw even further than his own
re-creation. There is a passion of grandmotherhood, different, but even
more unrelenting than that tender rage that brings us all into the
world. That Jennie should never have married was inconceivable; Jennie
was to have married whom she chose; and what, for beauty and gentleness
and knowledge and strength, could she have chosen better than this? Were
there whispers in Dinard? Madge was capable of dealing with them. If
there was talk, then there should be more talk, till all was talked
down. By and by Madge would start her own, the authentic version of the
affair. And with this young man presently settled as George Coverham's
adopted son, and Jennie blushing and brooding on the other side of her,
it would be a strange thing indeed if Madge Aird, who knew as much about
intimate histories as anybody, could not put some sort of a face upon
it.
Authoritatively Derry led us through the cloisters and under a low
tunnel-like arch. We came out into a bright courtyard with plane trees
and doors at intervals round it.
"This is what I wanted to see," he said smilingly, but a little as if
what he wanted to see overruled everything else. "Especially that bit
over there."
It was a lime-white old court, with tourelles to the west and north. In
its south-eastern corner rose a slated ogival turret with a gilded
ornamental flèche. An old woman in a lace cap was filling a bucket at a
tap, and from one of the dark upper windows came a girl's light laugh.
Through one of the doorways a glimpse could be seen of school-desks,
grey and cracked and dry as the legs of the Porches themselves. The
tourelle in front of us carried a little side-belfry, and its inch-thick
plaster had flaked off in great maps, showing the rubble beneath. And
again the sunlight was absorbed by the plane trees, but blazed on the
roof, made the flèche a vivid sparkle against the blue, and seemed to
penetrate into the very substance of the soft decaying white.
"Now just come and have a look at this," said Derry, striding across the
court.
The thing that he had brought us to see might almost have passed
unnoticed in Dinan, where at every corner something that man's fine wit
has carved has been uncarved again by stupid and obliterating Time. It
was no more than a bit of moulding, the upper edge of which caught the
sun, directly, making the cavetto underneath it a soft yellowing glow.
But into that rounded plaster tourelle with the belfry a flat door had
at one time been placed without interruption to the moulding, and in the
result the sun had a frolic indeed. For no man had designed that
miraculous accident where curve and flat met and deliciously quarrelled,
to be reconciled again by the sun's laughing kiss. Never did light and
its opposite more sweetly interchange and compose.... I don't want you
to think this is my own observation. But for Derry I should probably not
have given it a glance. But for him it was a thing to come specially to
see. He stood before it, moving his hand a little this way and a little
that, as in a sparkling room one will place one's hand over glass or
water to see whether it is indeed that which makes the little
fairy-ribbon on the wall. He peered underneath, he stood off, he glanced
up at the sun. With his hand throwing the shadow, the sun and he were
partners.
"What is it, Derry?" I asked him.
He laughed. "What is it? I should say it was everything," he replied.
"Everything there is, and if there's any more, that too."
"Are you going to paint it, dearest?" Jennie asked.
He turned. "Eh?" he said.
And there, in that sun-flooded court, I had a swift premonition.
Something seemed to tell me that he was not going to paint it. Neither
was he going to write about it, nor even to speak of it again. He had no
wish to communicate it to any other person, by any means whatever. That
he himself possessed the pure understanding of it was enough; he would
not even care that any should know that he knew, so he might but have
the bliss of knowing. His painting was over, as his writing was over.
Contemplation, withdrawal, solitude, the infinite soft ecstasy of being
at one with that which is not one self, though it were but the sunlight
on a bit of fifteenth-century plaster--that, it now flashed suddenly on
me, was what we might henceforward expect.
And though he understood all mysteries, and had all knowledge, yet he
now had something even richer to profit him. He had his Love.
"I should very much like a cup of tea," said Madge.
Instantly he was all graceful attention. The human desire for a cup of
tea was equally a thing to be understood.
"This glare does get in your eyes a bit," he smiled. "There's a nice
shady place not five minutes away."
As he led us back through the cloisters he all but took her arm.
His place was gratefully shady. Through a small teashop one passed into
a sort of leafy cage that, I learned, had at one time been an aviary. It
was empty, and at a little rustic table against the trellis we sat
down.
"Would you mind ordering, Sir George?" he said. "This is one of my
off-days for French, I'm afraid."
I ordered tea.
My new premonition proceeded to take still further possession of me. As
he chatted with modest freedom to Madge I fell more and more into
abstraction. I suppose that in all the circumstances it was my part to
have taken charge of the conversation, to have guided it through the
rocks and shoals of the difficult position, but I couldn't. Anyway he
seemed quite capable of doing so.
Capable? There was nothing of which he was not capable. And yet at the
same time he was capable of nothing! For, supposing that my foreboding
was right, what was his future? Isolation and Oblivion indeed! What man
can live, sufficient unto himself, excommunicated from the world,
wrapped in the vanity that he is not as others? Who dare dwell alone
with Truth? Is it not our anchorage and our joy to run with our little
half-truths in our hands and to thrust them upon our neighbour, that he
may admire and share them with us? Who so great that some such
littleness is not the very leaven of his life? Derwent Rose had written;
Derwent Rose had painted; and now Derwent Rose would withdraw himself to
some Tower, shut the door behind him, and be forgotten of men because
their affairs were too small for him.... It was just as well that I was
going to adopt him. What otherwise would his living be? In what corner
of earth would he plant his cabbages and cherish his perfect and
unprofitable knowledge?
And would he retain his simplicity of heart, or would he harden into
arrogance, sour into contempt, and--yes, it had to be faced--once more
ask of God that One Question Too Many?...
And she, his meek and sweet Semele? How long would she endure this
partnership of his Oblivion? How long would it be before she prayed that
that Tower might fall and crush her into the earth? She was only Jennie
Aird, seventeen years old, with the nape under her red-gold hair hardly
yet browned by its exposure to the sun. Happier--I cannot say; but
better perhaps for her had she never seen this lovely lad who was so
soon to be my son. She had married an angel, had endured his caress. But
she could not follow him to his skies.
It was half-past five when we reached the hotel, and Alec was there
waiting for us. He asked Madge where we had been, and when she said to
the Convent of the Cordeliers I am pretty sure that I heard him mutter
under his breath that that was exactly where "he" would spend his spare
time--hanging about a girls' school.
"Well, I suppose you're staying here to-night," he said gruffly to his
wife. "I'm going back. I may come again to-morrow. Better put a stop to
those inquiries--unless they take it into their heads to bolt again. I
shall probably be here by the nearest train to midday. I'm off now. Good
night."
Poor fellow! I suppose it was the nearest approach to a kiss he could
bring himself to give his wife and only child.
Something, I forget what, happened about our table on the terrace that
night, and we had to dine in the room of which it was an extension. The
sun was having his last and most magnificent fling for that day. He
turned the room in which we sat to ebony-black. The eye could hardly
distinguish in the corners the neo-Greek furnishings of key-pattern and
fretted valances, of amphoræ on pedestals, of frieze and dentel and sham
black marble. But everywhere through the ebony ran like wildfire a gold
that the eye could hardly bear. A waiter would be lost in blackness save
for a spot of burning gold on brow or nose-bridge or knuckle; a glass, a
knife-blade or the edge of a plate would flash like a diamond. The
creeper outside flamed like the Burning Bush itself; you would not have
thought that the head of a woman dining under it could have flamed more,
yet it did. And the glass of water she lifted pierced like a heliograph
into the room.
And it was as we dined, not talking much, that Madge capitulated
completely. The sun played "I spy" with the white hand she suddenly put
on Derry's brown one. She was not speaking to me, but I heard.
"Oh, my dear, dear boy--you'll see it will be all right--be a little
patient--his bark's ever so much worse than his bite--and come and say
good night to your mother presently."
III
Derry now wore the English suit he had worn on the day when he had come
to tea at Ker Annic, Jennie the white frock and the little white cap in
which she had stolen out of the house that night. I never knew what
became of their French clothes. To all appearances we were now four
English sight-seers in a place where English sight-seers are bumped into
at every turn. And I must mention a curious little incident that
occurred when, the next morning, after breakfast, we left the hotel and
strolled into the Church of St Sauveur to see how the little girls were
getting on with their decoration for the approaching fête.
There is only one decent piece of glass in St Sauveur. That is the
window of the north transept that looks down on the burial-place of Du
Guesclin's heart. As we passed among the gay and lightsome shrines
Jennie happened to pause under this window. I saw his sudden dead stop.
It is a remarkable thing when a man does the same thing twice in his
life, each time for the first time. He looked at Jennie in St Sauveur
just as, all those years before, he had looked at somebody else in a
village church in Sussex; and he had no knowledge of the repetition. She
stood there, all low-toned pearls of frock and cool dark apricot of face
and neck; her hair peeped forth beneath the little hat; and there, under
the mellow ambers and ruby-dust and bits of green that might have been
dyed in Dinard's sea, for a minute she was aureoled.... She moved on,
and we followed.
But in that moment it was not he who had been haled back into that
earlier time. That was all over for him. He did all anew. It was I
myself who had come close to the ghost of my own youth.
The nearest train to twelve o'clock, by which Alec had said he would
arrive, was the one reaching Dinard at twelve-fifteen. The one before
that, leaving Dinard at ten-twelve, ran on certain days only, and
moreover would hardly have allowed Alec the necessary time in which to
stop the various inquiries he had set afoot. Therefore we had a long
morning to ourselves, and it mattered little how we spent it. Indeed it
mattered very little now what we did with our time until my letters
should arrive from London.
So once more that morning, watching Derry, I seemed to be watching, not
the Derry actually by my side, but a Derry who had been a stripling when
I had been in my middle twenties. For example, a troop of dragoons
clattered past, in blue steel hats, dark blue tunics, red breeches,
black boots; and I saw the sparkle of his eyes at the four red pennons
they carried. Just so, for all I knew, his eyes had sparkled when he had
first seen the sentries at the Horse Guards. We strolled on to the Porte
St Louis, and under its arch he paused. He examined the
portcullis-grooves, the remnants of hinges, the steep couloirs down
which the stones had been rolled and the boiling water poured from the
guard-room above. I don't know whether in his other boyhood he had known
York or Sandwich, but I saw by his face that his memory reduplicated
those old echoings, the clanging of iron, the hurtling of stones, the
shouting of men within the ringing arch. Outside in the Petits Fosses it
was the same. He peered into slits, glanced at the machicolations aloft,
measured salients and re-entrants and dead-ground with his eyes. I think
he saw that "bélier à griffes" again in use, the staggering storied sow
pushed up to the walls by the horses and oxen in the hide-hung penthouse
behind.... And this same man had seen modern war! He had flung the Mills
and the "hairbrush," had worn a box-respirator, seen wire-netted gunpits
and flame-throwing and the white puff-balls following the aeroplanes
through the sky. Extraordinary, extraordinary! I could not get used to
it....
At twelve o'clock I walked on to the station to meet Alec. His train was
a few minutes late. It drew up on the farther set of rails. At Dinan one
walks across on the level, and as I advanced to meet him I saw him
appear round the engine.
But not until a moment later did I see that he was followed by Julia
Oliphant.
She was dressed in travelling-tweeds, but it was not the tweeds that
filled me with the instant conviction that she was departing and had
come to say good-bye to Madge. It was rather something indefinable in
her face. Nor had she come to corroborate my story. She and Alec had
doubtless already got that over, if ever it could be got over. She
greeted me with a faint smile, but without speaking. In fact I don't
think that one of the three of us spoke during the seven or eight
minutes it took us to reach the Poste.
Once more something had happened about our terrace-table. Perhaps
because of the slight lateness of Alec's train, added to the quarter of
an hour we had already delayed our meal (for déjeuner at the Poste is at
twelve), the only table capable of seating six had been made over to a
party of visitors who would depart in little more than an hour by the
vedette.
This, however, seemed to suit Alec rather than otherwise. He took Madge
by the arm.
"Then you come over here," he said to her. "You've got till six o'clock
to talk to Julia. I want a word with you first."
"And I want a word with you too," I heard her reply as she turned to
follow him.
So Madge and Alec lunched some tables away, out of earshot, while Julia
and Jennie, Derry and myself, sat down behind the iron "O" of the sign
HÔTEL DE LA POSTE.
Had it not been for Derry I think our lunch would have been as silent as
our walk from the station had been. Jennie rolled bread-pellets and
fiddled with salt. I moodily wondered whether Julia would not have done
better to have taken her farewells with Madge as said and have stayed
away. But it frequently happens that a happy mood at the beginning of
an acquaintance sets the key for the meetings that follow. Derry had
come off gaily best with Miss Oliphant when, instead of questioning her
about that bicycle she had fetched from St Briac, he had anticipated her
and had taken the wind out of her sails with smiling acquiescence; and
he now was wreathed in ease and charm. There was a dash of the
gentlemanly devil about that son-elect of mine. His grey-blue eyes were
frequently downcast, but when he did lift them that imp of fun and
mischief peeped unmistakably out.
"I'd no idea when I showed you my sketches that morning that you were a
painter yourself, Miss Oliphant," he said demurely over his soup.
"Jennie only told me afterwards. I don't think that was quite fair of
you.... What do you paint?" asked the man who had stood before her,
stripped to the waist, with her sewing-machine held aloft.
"Very little lately," said Julia composedly.
"Now you're putting me off. But of course I ought to have known. You can
always tell by the way a person looks at a thing whether they know
anything about it or not. Do tell me what you paint!"
"I'm supposed to be painting Sir George's portrait one of these days."
"Ah!" A polite little inclination of the head made you forget the
mischief for a moment. "I'm no good at portraits. Never dared try, in
fact, except for that sketch of Jennie, and you can hardly call that a
portrait. It would take more experience than I've got. You'd have to
know a good deal about a person before you risked painting their
portrait I should think, wouldn't you?"
And that of course was pure mischief again, for he was virtually telling
her, though without words, that she knew very little about him if she
had expected him to give his intentions away by making a fuss about that
bicycle. And similarly unspoken was his daring little invitation to
her--to her who had drawn him from memory as King Arthur, in armour and
a golden beard--"Won't you learn a little about me and paint me one of
these days?"
So I watched her as she saw, for the second time in her life, what I saw
for the first time in mine--the father of the man he had been and was to
be again, his acts and gestures varying with a thousand accidents of
circumstance, but himself essentially and unchangeably the same. You may
charge me if you will with laying claim to knowledge after the event,
but there radiated from every particle of him his own yet-folded
potentialities. His gentle mischief towards her was the germ of that
masterful wit that had made the Barnacles of _The Vicarage of Bray_ skip
at his pleasure. His good-humour and urbanity and willingness to talk
while we sat oppressed and silent were, in little, the qualities that
had bloomed in his mature work, _The Hands of Esau_. Only the fierce
passion of _An Ape in Hell_ was to seek, and none could have said that
it did not lurk there, inappropriate to the occasion, therefore uncalled
on, but deep-slumbering under all.
And if I was able to make a dim guess or two at these involutions, what
of this woman to whom it was not guessing, but open knowledge? In her
mind was a parallelism indeed! I had seen one trifle for myself that
very morning--his sudden stop when Jennie had paused under the window of
St Sauveur; but of just such bright threaded beads of memories her whole
life, all of it that was worth anything to her, had been composed. Her
unwavering love had been the string that had held all together. And not
only did she sit there now telling, as it were, these beads over, to the
last one drowned at the bottom of the pools of her deep eyes; she had
them uniquely and desolately to herself. He, who had provided them, had
no part whatever in them. She could no longer say "Do you remember this
or that." He remembered only from the moment of his setting eyes on
Jennie. As unconsciously as when he had stripped to the waist for her,
as unknowingly as when he had swum before her, he now seared her in his
very innocence and ignorance. A village church--Sussex fields and
lanes--a day at Chalfont--another day somewhere else--and a week-end at
my house ... oh, the jewels were quickly counted. Perhaps she had
others of which I did not know. If so, they were the secret of the eyes
that looked away past the elms, down on to the walking hats in the Fosse
below.
And he would grow up again, but she could only continue her life. In
another twenty years he would be as old as she was now; but she, I
myself ... only Jennie, only Jennie would be by his side on that distant
day. At some still unknown fireside, in some unguessed house or garden,
they would speak of "poor old Miss Oliphant, poor old Coverham," long
since out of the way. Different generations, different generations!
And--I cannot be sure of this, and I shall never know--but I do not
think that by this time he, who had started the whole mystic thing, had
the least recollection of anything whatever he had been and done.
"But look here, Miss Oliphant," he was saying. "Jennie's going to lie
down this afternoon; won't you let me take you for a walk? Let's go to
Léhon or somewhere. You don't mind, do you, Jennie? And"--he laughed,
perfectly conscious of his charming and irresistible impudence--"it
seems awfully stiff to go on calling you Miss Oliphant! Sounds so
fearfully high-and-dry! Oh, I know! Shocking scandal! But if you'll come
for a walk with me----" He twinkled.
Jennie had not uttered a word. Nor had she eaten more than a few crumbs.
Suddenly she got up.
"I'm going to lie down now," she said. Then, turning timidly to Julia,
"Can you come with me for just a minute--Julia?"
Julia got instantly up, passed round the table, and preceded her into
the hotel.
Other lunchers also were astir. The party of visitors who had usurped
our table were settling up with the waiter. Derry and I sat awaiting
Julia's return. Alec and Madge, at the neighbouring table, seemed to
have finished their talk. I did not know what Alec's announcement to her
had been. What she had said to him I thought I could guess.
Suddenly, after an absence of barely five minutes, Julia reappeared. She
walked straight up to Madge and held out her hand.
"What?" I heard Madge's surprised exclamation. "But I thought----"
"----by the boat, I think ... ever so much ... delightful...."
She shook hands with them and crossed over to us. She looked straight
into Derry's face. We were all standing. The five or six words she spoke
were as if she was telling those beads again. Each one was isolated,
bright, lingering yet relentlessly passing, a thank-offering, a
prayer----
"So--long--Derry--dear ... all--the--best," she said, her hand in his.
"Good-bye--Julia," he said, smiling.
She walked away.
I caught her up in front of the hotel. Little groups of people moved
across the lime-shaded Square, all in one direction, seeking the Porches
and the Lainerie, leaving themselves comfortable time for the vedette.
We followed them. She did not take my arm, neither did any word pass
between us.
Under the Porches, past the Convent we went. The groups of people became
more frequent as they concentrated from various luncheon-places. We
dropped down the steep astounding street that is called Jerzual. We were
nearly at the Porte, of which the twelfth-century portion is the modern
part, before she opened her lips.
"I hate people who cry," she said suddenly.
Then she closed her lips again.
I supposed she meant Jennie. I didn't answer.
She only spoke once more. This was at the embarcadère, as she stepped on
to the vedette.
"Don't wait," she said. "I suppose I shall be seeing you in London some
time."
Obediently I turned away.
IV
Alec had had nothing new to say to Madge. Only the variations had been a
little more elaborate. The thing was as lunatic to him as ever, and it
all came of not stopping in one's own country. Things like that never
happened at his office in Victoria Street or on the Rectory Ground at
Blackheath.
"You can stay on here if you like, but I'm off back," he said. "And
the next time you catch me in France or anywhere else foreign you
can tell me about it. And you can let me know when they're married.
Does that three-eighteen run to-day, or is that another of their
Sundays-and-week-days excepted?"
"The waiter will tell you," said Madge.
"Damn the waiter," said Alec.
So there were four of us at the Hôtel de la Poste.
I don't know what happened to letters during those early September days
in Dinan. Somebody told me they went on to Paris to be sorted; I only
know that it took an unconscionable time to get an answer from a place I
could have got to and back again in a couple of days. And as three, and
then four days passed, I think I could have written a Guide Book to
Dinan, so familiar with it did I begin to come. And always it was a
laughing, buoyant, affectionate and extraordinarily clever Derry who
conducted us everywhere.
Then, when finally my letter did arrive, it was inexplicit, and I had
either to go to London myself or write again. It was Madge who entreated
me to stay. So I wrote my second letter.
Often we went out into the surrounding country as a change from the
town. Derry never touched a brush, never once mentioned painting.
Occasionally he and Jennie went off together somewhere, but for the most
part we kept together. So far I had to admit that there was no sign of
his young godhead being too much for his simple white-hearted Semele.
She adored him with every particle of herself, from the feet that ran
to meet him to the eyes that continually thanked his face for being what
it was. And never Bayard nor Du Guesclin nor Beaumanoir of them all had
served his lady with a gentler love than young Derwent Rose had for
Jennie Aird.
One morning at a little before ten we went up into the Clock Tower in
the Rue de l'Horloge. This tower, together with the belfry of St
Sauveur, is the highest point of the ancient town that crowns Dinan's
rock. Up and up inside the turret we mounted, through lofts and empty
chambers and timbered garrets, till the stone gave way to slate and wood
and lead, and the soft tock-tocking of the clock itself began to sound.
The clock is in a room with a locked and glass-panelled door, a machine
of brass on an iron table, with a slow escapement, compensated
pendulums, and the white hemp ropes of the weights disappearing through
a hole in the floor to the stories below. On the iron table stood an
oilcan, and the small indicator-clock showed a few minutes to ten. A
circular piercing in the wall gave us light, and light also streamed
down through the opening where the wooden ladder rose to the upper
platform. We peered through the glass door, while "Tock-tock, tock-tock"
spoke the unhurrying clock....
Then on the verge of ten a large vane slipped and dissolved itself into
a mist, to the murmur of moving wheels. Four times on an open third
sounded the warning tenor bell overhead; and then the twin vane slipped
and dissolved. There was a clang that shook the timbers inside their
skin of lead....
"Come along, Jennie!" cried Derry, making a dash for the belfry, while
again the bell thundered out....
It was two short flights up, but Madge and I were after them in time to
hear the last two strokes. The structure still trembled with an enormous
humming. This lasted for minutes, wave succeeding wave, crests and
troughs of lingering sound, diminishing but seeming as if they would
never quite cease. Our eyes sought one another's eyes expectantly as we
waited for the last murmur of the hymning metal....
Then light voices floated up from the street again, and the noises of
the town could be heard once more.
"Just look at the view!" said Derry, hanging half over the rail.
But I wanted a rope round my waist before I approached that rail. A head
for heights is not one of the things of which I boast.
Another day, this time in the afternoon, we pulled in a skiff a mile or
two down the Rance, where men were fishing with the "balance"--the net
on the crossed bough-like arms that made a dripping bag while the rope
ran over the pulley of the pry-pole. Men used the same machine in the
days before Moses, they are using it to-day on the Rance and the
Yang-tse-Kiang. It was this vast antiquity that seemed to strike Derry,
even more than the fortifications had struck him, even more than that
clock that tried to measure with its "tock-tock" something that had no
beginning and can have no end. Several times he seemed on the point of
speaking, but each time desisted. There was nothing to be said, no word
that, like the clock, was more than "tock-tock, tock-tock." And I
fancied that for a day or more past he had talked much less, that he was
ceasing to talk, as he had ceased to write, as he had ceased to paint.
He sat for long spells thinking, as if measuring that which was himself
against all that was not himself and coming to his understanding about
it.... He and Jennie had the oars. Suddenly he gave a little laugh, very
musical, and took the oar again.
"Stroke," he said.
We set off back up the stream.
We landed at the Old Bridge and began the ascent to the town; but near
the Arch of Jerzual, almost on the very spot where Julia had said she
hated people who cried, he stopped again. From a dark interior on our
left had come the knocking of a hand-loom. We entered, and Madge
translated his questions into French.
Once more he seemed to find the same fascination--the spell of the
oldest and of the newest, the first primitive principle of which our
modern inventions are but elaborated conveniences, man measuring his
strength and pitting his wit against all that is not man. So men had
fished, so they did fish. So they had woven, so they did weave. They had
fought in steel caps with hand-grenades in the past, they fought in
steel caps with hand-grenades still. And nothing to be written, painted
or said. As it had been in the beginning it would be until the end. A
momentary life was not meant for the expression of these things. They
were for contemplation, perfect understanding, and--silence.
That was on a Saturday evening. After dinner we strolled to the Jardin
des Anglais again and stood looking over the ramparts. There were no
shirley poppies in the sky now, but a serene unbroken heaven, a tender
blue fading to the still tenderer peaches and greys that merged into the
darkening land. The cypresses below us were inky black, the river where
the fishermen had fished a soft thread of inverted sky. Folk again took
their evening stroll round the walls. None of us spoke. I was wondering
what Julia Oliphant was doing in London.
Suddenly Derry broke the silence. He did so in these words.
"It's all right for Léhon and the Château de Beaumanoir to-morrow
morning, I suppose?"
"Yes, dear boy," said Madge.
How was she to have known, how was I to have known, how "all right" it
was for Léhon, the Château de Beaumanoir and--to-morrow?
V
The château stands a bare mile out of Dinan, and we had been there half
a dozen times before; but Derry loved those crumbling old towers on
their upstanding rock. It rises almost sheer, buttressed round with the
broken works, and from the talus to the plateau on the top is a network
of precipitous paths. You ascend it very much as you can, and the view
that is blocked as you approach it breaks on you from the summit--first
the sickening gulf of air at your feet, then the three or four miles of
the southward plain, and the canalised Rance parting company with its
attendant road to Tressaint, écluse after écluse, until it picks it up
again towards Evran. That is when you look south. To the north, peering
down through oak and beech as you might peer over the edge of a nest,
are glimpses of white ribbon--the road along which you have passed. And
on the level plateau in the middle, enclosed by oak and beech and lime,
rubble-built but with dressed stone buttresses, stands the tiny modern
Chapel of St Joseph of Consolation.
Jennie and Derry waited at the top of the last zigzag for Madge and
myself, and then gave us time to recover our breath. It was eleven
o'clock of a Sunday morning, and Dinan's bells sounded lightly in the
distance. They languished almost like human voices as, instead of
quickening for the final summons, they delayed, with longer and longer
intervals until, when you expected just one more sweet note, all was
silence.
I think that what gives that château-crowned rock its air of lightsome
space is that you come to it from Dinan, where everything crowds upon
you, the Porches trample you, and the people across the street go to bed
practically on the sill of your window. True, from the ramparts you have
sweep enough, but unless you go there very early you get a mediocre,
unbroken illumination, with every shadow hidden behind the face that is
turned towards you, and two tones paint all, the pale blue of the sky
and the average of the lighted land. So there is little to be seen from
the Château de Beaumanoir to the north.
But turn your face south, and--ah! That is where the brightness lies!
That flat average of greens and browns disappears, and you are looking,
not at colour, but at Light itself! And yet every shadow points directly
at you. All the sun that there is is on your own face--there, and
graving as if on a tarnished silver plate a glittering outline round
every object you see. Not a green, not a brown; all is grey; but
twinkles with a silver edge every tree of Rance's valley, and fuming
silver is every thread of house-smoke that ascends. That stretch of lock
that is lost again towards Tressaint is a needle-flash, and you see the
summer clouds only as you see the poplar-sheddings that float over the
gulf in June--as if save for their edges they did not exist.
Then, turning your back on the glitter, you see the heavy browns and
greens and ochres of the ruins once more.
"Do they never open this chapel, I wonder?" said Derry, peering through
the grille of the closed door.
I peeped in after him. It had a tiny altar with four tapers, and a
blue-and-white pennon with a device upon it. The little porcelain Virgin
was blue and white and gold, and under the three lancet windows a dozen
rickety chairs stood. The walls were whitewashed, with a picture here
and there, and there was a rat-hole in the floor. A small and very bad
rose-window reminded me of the window of St Sauveur, and I turned away
again.
We pottered about here and there among the scrub and masonry. Seen from
above, the west tower, that which looks over to Trélivan, is the most
complete; but the one to the south-west can be entered by climbing down
half-effaced steps in the thickness of the wall. I descended. But there
was nothing to see inside but the peep through a single loophole. Its
walls chirped with grasshoppers, and a thin screen of oak gave it a
roof. I was restless, and came out again. I wanted my letters from
London. Then this interminable business would be quickly finished.
But London reminded me once more of Julia Oliphant, of what she was
doing, of what she would do....
Madge was waiting for me when I re-ascended. The others were nowhere to
be seen. And we no longer had the ruins to ourselves. Over by the
_zigzag_ path to the east of the rock I heard voices and the brushing of
branches. But the colline is so overgrown with shrub that it is not
difficult to lose anybody. Derry and Jennie could not be far away.
"I expect they're looking for blackberries," said Madge.
"Then they'll be on the sunny side," I replied; and I led her across the
shady plateau.
Then suddenly Madge saw them, for she called "Be careful there,
children!" They were standing on the brink of the southern tower,
looking away into the brightness. Close to them a mountain-ash overhung
the deep, and about the scabious at the foot of it butterflies hovered,
part of the airy light. Her hand was on his shoulder, her white frock a
luminosity of grey shadow. About one pink glowing ear her loosened hair
was a radiance of coppery gold.
But the newly-come party was close behind us. Through the leaves I heard
a rustle and a woman's voice suddenly raised.
"I'm sure I saw him come this way----"
"I should get rid of the little beast if I were you," a man's voice
growled.
Then the woman's voice uplifted again. "_Puppetty! Puppetty!_ Oh, you
naughty boy!"
The man and the woman appeared.
"Puppetty! Puppetty!... Excuse me, have you seen anything of a
little---- Good heavens alive, if it isn't Sir George Coverham! Of all
the--fancy meeting----"
But I had eyes for her for one fleeting instant only. All at once there
had come a stifled cry from Derry. He stood there, dark against the
morning light, embroidered round with light. His eyes were immovably on
that woman who had called the dog--on that Daphne Bassett who, in years
that were now clean-sponged from his memory, had been Daphne Wade.
Jennie too was staring at her, bewildered that he should stare so. Her
hand was still on his shoulder. She drew a little more closely to him.
The struggle that began on his darkened face was a struggle to remember
something; or perhaps its real beginning was that he seemed to remember
that there was something to remember. But what? Not a book that he had
written? Not a book that she had written? Not two books, of which he had
written one and she the other? He had never written a book--had never
dreamed of writing a book; he left that to clever people like Sir George
Coverham and Mrs. Aird--"Mummie."
A picture, then? No, not a picture. He had dabbled in paint for a
bit--there was a lot of stuffy old canvas in the hotel now--but it
couldn't be that.... He did not look at Jennie. His hands tried to put
her away from him. He muttered hoarsely.
"Let me go, Jennie, let me go."
But she only held him the more closely, both arms now wrapped about him.
Then he cried out sharply, loudly. "Let go--let go, I say--and don't
look--take your eyes away--_don't look at my face_!"
But she would now never let him go. She would look at his face, yes,
even though he commanded her not to, because of what had already begun
to pass there....
And what that was you may see by turning back to the beginning of this
book. Yesterday, in the Tour de l'Horloge, a clock had prepared to
strike the hour. It had begun with the soft fluttering of a vane that
had dissolved into a mist; there had been the murmur of mechanism, those
preparatory notes on an open third.
But this was not hearing. It was seeing. We all saw. Jennie saw.
As the hues of a coloured top alter at a touch of the finger, so change
began to succeed change over that face with its back to the morning
light.
Oh, by no means violent ones at first. Quite gentle ones. We merely saw
the youth who had painted a few pictures, the young man who had swum the
Channel, the athlete who had discussed tides and currents with boatmen
in the Lord Warden at Dover----
Then a certain acceleration (though you must understand that this
fantasia on Time that we watched is but comparative, happened in a few
instants, more quickly than I can write or you read). Against the sun a
glint of golden beard appeared and was gone in a twink. I had once seen
that beard at breakfast-time, in a South Kensington mews.
But oh my heart! Then a terrific leap!... His whole form bulked, loomed.
Eleven years descended on him like a Nasmyth hammer. He seemed to take
the very brain out of my head and to put it, not in France at all, but
into a house in Surrey with a pond in front of it, while he, with a
punt-pole in his hand, brought a piece of water-starwort into Julia
Oliphant's hand----
His arm, both his arms, were over his face as he tried to hide it all
from her. No cry broke from him now. But her arms were locked
desperately about his waist. She would never let him go.
Then somewhere a dog yapped, and at the sound the horrible life-slide
ceased. It ceased because it could not go further. How could it go
further than that side-street off Piccadilly in which the woman who had
written _The Parthian Arrow_ had set a dog upon the author of _An Ape in
Hell_? Already I had started forward, but my foot caught in the scrub,
and I found myself rolling, clutching wildly in the air for something to
hold.
But I swear it was for them and not for myself that I feared.
Then, as they slowly swayed outward together by the mountain-ash, the
beautiful, re-transfiguring thing happened.
A stupid woman with a wretched little pet dog! A rebuff on a pavement
over a miserable literary squabble! Was it for _this_ that the years had
changed on his face as the hues change on a spinning top? Was _that_ all
that this commonplace apparition of a woman had reminded him of? Why, he
had thought it had been something important, something to do with the
peace of churches, the beauty of coloured windows, the glorious
thunder-roll from the organ! He had thought it had something to do with
his boyhood's dreams, aspirations, vows! But only _this_!... It was not
worth the trouble of having sought it. He had better get back to his
deliverance.
He laughed. The vane whirred in the opposite direction. He began to go
back to Jennie----
He swam back to her across the Channel, knowing now that she awaited him
on the other side----
He ran at Ambleteuse--ran swiftly to her.
His eyes met hers in the glow of the headlights at Ker Annic----
Once more he stood with her in that Tower of dead and forgotten
doves--fled on silent wheels with her through the night--in that upper
room in the Rue de la Cordonnerie took her, stainless, into his own
virgin arms----
He was here again, back at the Château de Beaumanoir; young, beautiful,
innocent, grave, his arm dropped now, looking into her eyes, calling to
her.
"_Look--look at me--yes, look, Jennie!_"
"Oh, my God, catch them!" Madge screamed.
But I don't think she saw what I think I saw. Let us say that the scrub
was treacherous, that it betrayed his foot; it makes no difference now,
for I have no son. Why, after all, go forward again if going forward
meant no more than that four-seconds pilgrimage from which he had but
that moment returned? Better as it was, neither forward nor back nor
standing still on that edge of masonry or on any other edge. He drew her
close to him. Their lips met....
"_Oh, Lord, Thou hast prevented him with sweetness; he asked life of
Thee and Thou hast given him length of days._"
We heard the parting of the bushes down below....
A yard beyond the mountain-ash the butterflies continued to hover, and
past them the silver-flashing stretch of canal-lock by Tressaint could
be seen once more.
EPILOGUE
I stood before the Tower at the Château de la Garaye. No thrashing-gin
sounded, for the day's work was over, and in and out of the empty
windows of the glimmering Renaissance ruin the bats flitted. Madge, Alec
and I were leaving France to-morrow. There was nothing further to do,
there is nothing further to write. I shall never re-visit Dinan.
But I did not enter their Tower. I should hardly have done so even had
not that which showed in the saffron sky seemed to forbid me. For it
seemed to me the perfect symbol of his end. It was the old moon in the
new one's arms.
Just so, just like that curved golden thread, so thin that a few minutes
before it had not been to be seen--just so had that tender crescent of
his youth held that dim and gibbous and ghostly round of his past. Just
so he had been haggardly haunted, but touched with golden innocence in
the end. And he himself seemed to me to be peeping into that Tower which
I did not enter, as for ages other crescents had peeped when the doves
had filled that hollow with their crooning and no other sound had broken
the hush of eve. And thenceforward he would always re-visit it,
embracing with a gilded edge the whole dark content of man.
But they lay elsewhere. They are not together, but side by side. Alec
would not have it otherwise, and Madge did not seem greatly to care.
The parallelism of their fair young bodies is the closing parallelism of
this book. On his stone is a discrepancy that commonly passes as a
carver's error. They lie thus:
JANET AIRD DERWENT ROSE
b. 1903 d. 1920 b. 1875 d. 1920
at the Château de Beaumanoir at the same Time and Place
aged 17 years aged 16 years
R.I.P.
* * * * *
TRANSCRIBER NOTES:
Punctuation has been corrected silently.
Alternate spellings have been retained as well as some possible typos
other than those listed below.
page 001, typo "Side-slip" vs "Sidestep" has been retained in the
TOC
page 076, "hansome" changed to "hansom" (and the hansom with)
page 149, "me" changed to "be" (it would be merely a)
page 221, "magazin" changed to "magasin" (The magasin that
enshrined)
page 231, "A" changed to "À" (À demain)
page 249, "magazins" changed to "magasins" (the magasins and the)
page 256, "A" changed to "À" ("À ce soir")
page 262, "forrarder" changed to "forrader" (for the distance
forrader ou get)
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