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, doeshe 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 therecipe, or whatever the saying is."
I assumed a lightness I hardly felt. "Did you 'fall for' this otherparagon as you did for Mr Rose?"
She laughed. "Oh, I don't know. I dare say beauty of that sort would beill to live with. Better a dinner of herbs all to yourself than astalled ox every woman you knew would be running after. Or words to thateffect. So you and Alec needn't be too downhearted. But really he wasmost 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 likethat--I'd far too good a look at him the other time, the dazzlingcreature! But you might find out if the family's seriously addicted tomonogamy, unless he turns out to have a brother after all. Well, whenare 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 whatyou'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 arequite a number of pretty things to be said----"
We continued to talk and walk aimlessly side by side. I had met her inQueen's Gate, and I intended to retrace my steps to Queen's Gate themoment 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 whoselabours on my behalf my own seem puny.
"Because I've got a feeling that this creature of all the talents reallyis coming off this time," she went on. "Hastings has found a publisherwho's going to see that Derwent Rose is 'It' or die in the attempt. Soif you want to do the Bear a good turn send him to Hastings. When is hecoming back?"
"I don't quite know."
"Well, there's no immediate hurry. Everybody'll be away in another weekor two. But it _would_ be rather joysome to see Derwent Rose at lastwhere 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 thingit can sometimes come freshly over you; and merely in the professionalpart of me I had felt an oddly special little pang at Madge's lastwords. Here, apparently, was a publisher who believed in Derwent Roseand was prepared to back his belief with money; and--it was too late!Derwent Rose, wanderer, would never write another book. A fewtravel-sketches, perhaps, a few pen-pictures by the way, a fewevening-paper articles; but another book--no. I wished that publisher noill, but I did wish that he had recognised Derry's struggles,endeavours, faithfulness, strength, a little sooner than a day after thefair. Poor Derry would not have even the cynical consolation that whilehis real books had been neglected money would be heaped on him for hisbad ones. He no longer had a book left in him. A pugilist's managerwould be of more use to him than a publisher now.
I passed up Queen's Gate and turned into the mews where I had arrangedto meet Trenchard.
I had made my appointment with him because I had a question of specialimportance to ask him. I wanted to know whether Trenchard had seen himimmediately before his departure, and, if he had, _how old he nowlooked_.
For the farther he travelled the more crucial this question became. Fromforty-five to thirty-five he might still pass as Derwent Rose, but hecould hardly do so from, say, forty-five to twenty. I had not a moment'sdoubt that it had indeed been he whom Madge had seen and had failed torecognise--nay, had unhesitatingly assumed to be another man. Also myhousekeeper's suspicions that all was not as it should have been hadalso been thoroughly awakened. "It is Mr Rose, isn't it?" she had askedme with a puzzled look on the Friday midday; but by Sunday morning Juliaand he had become "the lady and gentleman" who had had to be fetched into breakfast. Old Mrs Truscott again had unhesitatingly set him down asyears younger than Julia. If Trenchard had seen him before his departurehe had probably been the last of us to do so. Trenchard, in short, wasto tell me what Derry's diary had completely failed to tell me.
For that little shiny-backed pocket book had merely brought things to amore hideously complicated pass even than before. I shall return to thisdiary in a moment; for the present let it suffice that, like thepublisher's offer, it seemed to me to have turned up just a few hourstoo late. I had hoped for a survey wide enough, simplified enough, tohelp me to his rate of progress. I had so far found nothing of theslightest use whatever. I was without the faintest idea of his presentage. He might have been thirty, twenty-five, twenty, younger. He mighteven be sixteen, at which age he had said he would die.
Trenchard I found to be a black-haired, pleasant-voiced, very muchalive fellow of a little under thirty. His rank, I believe, had beenthat of major, and even the atrocious crippling he had received at LaBassee did not destroy his look of perfect efficiency. He was just ableto start up a car, and cars were his livelihood and he lived in them. Iintroduced myself, and he hobbled cheerfully about among his cups andbread-and-butter and methylated spirits.
"So," I concluded my introduction of myself, "as I'm settling up a fewmatters for him I wanted to know how you stood."
"Oh, everything's perfectly all right as far as I'm concerned," helaughed, filling the teapot. "Place left like a new pin, Bradburys in anenvelope, and a quite unnecessary letter of thanks for what he calls mykindness. 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 seenhim 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 knowwhat to do with letters if any come for him."
Already I guessed that it would be useless to put my question; but Iasked 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, andit says he's off to-morrow.... By the way, what _am_ I to do aboutletters?"
There wouldn't be any letters. Of that I was sure. But I gave him myaddress, wound up a pleasant chat rather quickly, and took my leave.
And now for that diary that, instead of helping me, had proved thegreatest stumbling-block of all.
I had had not a moment's scruple in reading every word of it, in tryingto disentangle every diagram and equation it contained. Any question ofordinary decorum had long since passed out of the relation that existedbetween him, Julia, and myself. And let me repeat once more that a manwho has questioned the universe until he has asked one question too manyinvolves in his own fatality all who have to endure the contact of him.His state is apocalyptic, his existence merely spatial, without zenithof virtue or nadir of disgrace. If my roof had not been abused, neitherdid I violate his diary. I merely read it without a qualm.
Its oddity began with its very first page. Ordinarily on the first pageof a diary you look for the owner's name and address. Here was noaddress; on the other hand there was a string of names. There were, tobe exact, eight of them, with space for more, the whole written in hissmall fine hand and disposed in a neat vertical column. This block ofnames might have been from the everyday-book of any w
orking novelist,part of whose task it is to label his puppets appropriately. I had noreason to suppose that hitherto Derwent Rose had ever gone under anyname but his own. It had certainly occurred to me that he might sooneror later have to do so. This appeared to be a preparation for such acontingency. 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 onsquared paper, such as draughtsmen use, of so many squares to the inch;and these squares had been numbered horizontally along the top with theyears 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 ofvarious lengths were set in echelon. These were sprinkled over withnumbers, which I discovered to refer to the pages that followed. Certainarrows pointed in opposite directions. Over these were written, in onedirection, 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. Itdid not appear to have been completed. A heavy black line ruled upthrough the year 1905 was lettered "true middle," but that appeared tobe the only stable term of its kind. The rest was a mere rain ofpencil-lines, momentary false middles that apparently he had tried toseize in passing. I knew by this time how unseizable they were. Not oneof them lay on the right side of the true middle line. All oversteppedit and travelled in a gradual procession towards the left of thediagram.
On other pages I found other diagrams. These were merely enlargeddetails of the foregoing, with days of the month instead of years.
One wild chart was an attempt to combine the whole in a singlecomprehensive statement. But this had completely beaten him. Aserpentine whip-lash of pencil had been flung so viciously across itthat 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 letterasking for the book's instant return. If it really contained the key tohis speed of retrogression it was probably the most important thing hehad in the world. Therefore, lest he should claim it before I hadfinished with it, it stayed in my breast pocket when it was not actuallyin my hand.
And so I had three days' madness over the hateful thing. Twenty times Inearly tore it in two as he had once torn a six-shilling novel. Then atthe end of the three days I put it down, leaned back exhausted in mychair, 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. Itwas merely what it had been all along, and I ought to have been familiarwith it by this time.... I merely wanted to know his age. Just that andnothing more.
Yet of all the shocks that a man can receive, the shock of the expectedand waited-for is sometimes the most profound. You know it is coming; itis therefore pure, fundamental shock, unalleviated by the lighterelement we call surprise. When something you have lived with every day,taken for granted, thought you knew all about, have become familiar withto the point of boredom, suddenly so recalls attention to itself thatall your habitual notions about it drop clean away, leaving you face toface with a strange thing--a line of verse, an object in your house, atune, a picture, a wife--when this happens, then you may know thatsomething has been wrong all along, is still wrong, and that if youwould set it right you must go back to the very beginning again.
So there I stood, an unhappy, over-confident little scholar, whom theinexorable tutor silently points back to his task.
Humbly I returned to the book that, if it told me anything at all, mustat least tell me this.
And now I must ask you to bear your portion of that little shiny-backedbook too; for on a point of this importance I cannot allow you to acceptmy own conclusions on trust. You must know how I arrived at them. WhereDerwent Rose was at that moment, what manner of man he was, what he wasdoing, how long he might continue to do it, whether he was alive atall--these things depended on no off-handed survey of his case, but onthe dry figures, dates and details that I had hitherto neglected.
Fortunately we had a roughly-sufficient starting-point. This was thedate of June 8th, 1920, the day when I had met him at the LyonnesseClub. It was not, it must be confessed, his true zero. The true zero wasnow indiscoverable. But I myself, in good faith and knowing nothing ofall this, had judged him to be thirty-five that afternoon; he himselfhad confirmed my judgment, subsequent changes had sufficiently borne itout, and the diary now re-affirmed it.
So much for June 8th, when, if he had had an age at all, it hadpresumably been thirty-five. Thereafter he had disappeared for exactlythree weeks, and on June 29th, a Tuesday, he had spoken to me in thepicture-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 theBritish Museum.
Then, two days later still, on Friday, July 2nd, they had unexpectedlyturned up together at my house.
Now a definite note in the diary, written as a matter of fact in my ownhouse (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 thevagueness of these mere "feelings" as an index to age, but there it wasfor what it was worth, and it agreed with the impression I had myselfformed, based on his vivid and ecstatic and momentary moods. Except whenI had compelled him to speak of his book, Saturday had been thecounterpart of Friday. That is to say, that during the whole of Fridayand 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 3rdhe had dropped a total of six years.
So far so good; but that was not quite what I wanted to know. What I wastrying 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 whetherthis figure were a high or a low one.
And now groan, as I groaned, when you look at the four days between June29th and July 3rd--those four days in which, in order that he might beat the very top of his power for the writing of his book, he hadvehemently _denied_ his age, had juggled with it, wrestled with it,refused it, ignored it, vowed that a false middle was or should be atrue one, and had hung as it were to a strap while the whole momentum ofhis being had tried to sway him in another direction.
The entry for those four days was a mere question-mark with an openchoice. 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 hadonly dropped a year in a night.
But if on the fourth day he had been thirty-three, then he had droppedfour 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 takenothing for granted. His equations were high above my head, but Ireviewed 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.
&
nbsp; 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 Ibegan to see light. I had taken him step by step from the starting-pointof June 8th to the evening of Saturday, July 3rd, and the reason I hadnot gone beyond that date was that the diary itself stopped there. Itslast entry was the one I have just given--that he feared he had beenmistaken in supposing that will-power had had anything whatever to dowith 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 maycall an ordinary night, what was _im_possible after an experience asstupefying as had been his on the night of Saturday-Sunday?
And yet in appearance it had not altered him. I had spent practicallythe whole of Sunday with him, and there had been nothing to indicatethat he was not still twenty-nine. His manner, it is true, had beenalternately jumpy and morose, but that might have been the mere vaguepull of his Wanderjahre. Therefore it looked as if that mad onslaught ofJulia's on his stability had passed him over after all.
_Ah, but wait a moment!..._ I sat up at my desk, vociferating the wordsaloud. Were we at such a dead end after all? Perhaps not....
And first of all I remembered that question I had asked him about theflash-lamp as he had stood behind the screen of rugosa roses on theSunday afternoon. "Has there been a moment since yesterday when thatlamp has been held as close as it could be held?" Again I saw his suddenpallor. 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 movedit ... it was as if somebody took the torch out of my hand ... somebodymeddled in my life...."
And he had made me go through his Saturday evening's programmeagain--his inspection of the Hogarths, his unusual wakefulness, the hourat which he had gone upstairs.
Only for a few moments on the Sunday morning had he seemed dimly tosurmise that something of the last importance might have happened to himduring the hours of darkness. He had then forgotten all about it.
Nevertheless, would not his next rejuvenation date, not the moment ofthe fact itself, _but from that of the beginning of his realisation ofit_?
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_ hemight to all appearances have remained twenty-nine for some hourslonger.
For his change happened while he slept, and I had not reckoned with thatsleep 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 thatday he had disappeared.
You have now all the material dates that I had. You know that incomparatively uneventful, unexciting circumstances he could go back fouryears in a night. And I have told you of the headlong role JuliaOliphant had taken upon herself.
How old, then, was Derwent Rose when he woke up in Trenchard's rooms onthe 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 myimpression that he had gone to France.
Both his memories, "A" and "B," appeared so far to be functioningnormally. In order to ascertain this he had applied a number ofingenious tests to himself. But it immediately struck me that while allhis "A" (or Age) notes were written in English, all those in the "B" (orBoyhood) direction were in French.
And not only was the language French. The illustrations and incidentswere French in character also. Thus, he wrote in English: "Have beentrying to see how much of _Esau_ I can remember without looking at thebook"; but of something that had once happened in Marseilles I read: "Jetache de me debrouiller de ces souvenirs-ci." There might have beenpurpose in this alternation of the two languages, but I was moreinclined to think that he had done it purely instinctively. When a manspeaks a language as Derwent Rose spoke French he finds a pleasure inthe mere exercise of his attainment. France had always attracted him, hehad not unlimited money at his disposal, and mere considerations ofordinary time (an intensely special thing to him) might preclude hisgetting more than a few hours' journey away. Anyway, with one thing andanother, I had chanced it, and guessed that somewhere on the north coastof France would find him.
"And you're going over there to stay with the Airds," Julia mused. "Thenthere's just a possibility----"
"Oh, the whole coast will be swarming with English by the end of themonth."
"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 yougoing?"
"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 thosethings 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 shesat there, tucked away in a far corner of the room, with merry partiesat the neighbouring tables and De Groot playing the "_Relicario_." Shewas differently and quite brilliantly dressed. As far as externals couldassist her, she appeared to have resolved to go back step by step andhand in hand with Derwent Rose. Her furs were thrown back, showing theV-shaped opening of her brown _charmeuse_, perfectly plain except for atiny bronze beading at the edge and a lump of amber on a fine goldchain. Her arms were dropped over the sides of her chair, making fromthroat and dropped shoulders to the tips of her fingers one mantle-likeflowing line. Her dark hair was arranged after a different fashion, andon it was a little brown brocade toque with owl's ears sticking out.About her younger women chattered and laughed, but among them she seemedto be--I hardly know how to express it--above rather than out of thepicture, architecture to their building, a contralto melody underrunningtheir treble and fragmentary tunes, a white marble against which theirfountains glittered and rainbowed and splashed. No shawls, worstedstockings and hot milk here! If Derry must be young, she too would be asyoung 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 notsee what help it would be to do so. It could only open up the ratherdreadful question, whether, in suddenly thrusting into theinfinitely-delicate mechanism of his progression no less potent a factorthan herself, she had not brought irreparable ruin upon him. More andmore I had begun to fear that this might be so. I have already said howlittle 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 thesingularity 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 nottelegraphed for that diary. It was of little further use to him. He hadbegun it with that torch at the cool and wide and "philosophic" range;he had continued it at the "emotional" focus of keen and rapidsensation; but at that point the diary had stopped. There was no entrysince Julia Oliphant, seeing her Eden twice and no angel
with a flamingsword guarding this unsuspected postern of it, had set all a-flux in oneblinding spot of irrevocable contact. Could the torch, after thatclimax, ever be withdrawn again? Was he at this moment burning out theresidue of his youth at its whitest heat of combustion? Was he, sincethat last sleep in Trenchard's place, rushing through the months andyears so swiftly as to gasp for very breath?
And if so, what were those experiences that swept down on him in onewild blurr of things long since finished with, unrepeatable in theiroriginal form, and yet inevitably to be repeated in that form or inanother?
To all this Julia was still the key. One or two trivia in his diaryapart, she was the only key. She it was who had received those lettersof his from Nimes, Arles, Trieste, and who farther back still had knownhis childhood, its happiness, aspirations, beliefs, dreams. Whateversoil he trod at this moment he must still be the boy she had known in aSussex village. French stained-glass instead of English might hold hisrapt eyes, the organ of a High Mass evoke raptures in his Anglicanheart, but he was still the same.
And, before that stage was reached, the wild and reckless English yearsmight even now be re-enacting themselves somewhere in the Pas de Calais,Ille-et-Vilaine or the Cote du Nord.
And she who had given that extra spin to the already whizzing wheel ofhis fate sat there in the Piccadilly, her head a little back, her lips alittle 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? Itisn'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 stillbeating time.
"Easy enough to talk, but we may as well look at the practical side ofit. _He'll_ have to."
"If you mean his money, that's very nice of you, George, but I thoughtthat was all arranged? Or do you mean that as he used to write to mebefore he may do so again? If that's it you can hand his money over tome."
"I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking----"
But she interrupted me vivaciously. "Oh, look at that woman in the cloakjust getting up! That's _ra_ther a wrap, isn't it? And I wonder whetherI could wear those shoes!... Now that's what I call having the best ofboth worlds, George. She's all the advantages of that flapper with thenice fair-haired boy there--the one smoking a cigarette and showing hergarters--as well as being a woman. But perhaps she isn't your type. Mendo run to types, don't they?... George, you're not listening. I askedyou 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 readyto toy with anything that comes along?"
"I thought that you said the end of that man was that he knew nothingabout women."
"Oh, what's the use of telling me what I used to say!" She tossed thelittle cap with the owl's ears. "At any rate I don't talk the same follytwice. 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 notmutton-dressed-as-lamb? And you haven't seen my shoes----"
Round the leg of her chair she pushed a suede sheath slender as one ofthe 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: ifI'd had just one grain of sense before instead of being a sloppyart-student he only remembered once in six months, all flat heels andhair in her eyes, thinking that by cutting sandwiches ... don't youthink, George? Mightn't it have made a _wee_ bit of difference? Andwon't it still when----"
"When what?"
"Oh--any moment! Who knows?"
I tried to break the current of her infatuated fancies. "Julia, don'tyou think----" But her eyes laughed me down.
"Think, George!... But this _is_ thinking! You've no idea of the amountof brainwork there is in it! Oh, I'm not talking about rubbishy booksand pictures now! Why, this is all the thinking I've ever done!"
"I was going to ask you whether you thought that things with himwere--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-goingwoman--like I used to be--ought to adopt you.... Why, you stupid, as ifI wasn't _willing_ him to speed up, as you call it, with every particlethat's in me, if only I can manage to be somewhere at hand when he getsthere!"
I gave her a quick look. "Do you mean that you're going to slip over toFrance after all?" I demanded.
"No. Wasn't thinking of it. As far as I know at present I shall juststay here. But," she said meaningly, "if I were going anywhere itwouldn't be France."
"Where would it be?"
"Belgium."
"Belgium's about the last place anybody with his war-experience would goto 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 toAntwerp either. But you once asked me whether I thought I could bringhim by just sitting still and loving him. Well"--a victorious smile--"Ialmost believe I could--now. But I shouldn't cut him sandwiches--now. Ishouldn't be just somebody he remembered when he was at a looseend--now. I'd have him keen, George-old-Thing. He'd think anything Igave him a devil of a favour. Look at that wise young minx with thegarters there; I'd have him to heel as she has her boy. Look, she'shaving 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 tobegin 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 incisionappeared for a moment between her brows. She pressed it away again withher fingers.
"I suppose so," she said quietly. "You can't say ours isn't anextraordinary relation. It's safe to say there's nothing like it in thisroom."
Nor anywhere else, I thought; and I was glad to think so. I am anaverage, more or less straight-living man, with a bias towards virtuerather than the other way; but almost any relation, it seemed to me, wasto be preferred to this unnatural inhibition that had so singularlylittle to do with virtue. Allow me, as a man who possibly has beennearer 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 overthe reversing-gear of his life as Derwent Rose had done. He will landyou in his own net. Unless you are more magnificently steady than I,even when it comes to your relations with an admirable woman you willfind yourself interfered with at every step you take. Even the evil thatyou 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 fringeof the moral commotion Derwent Rose had made on this planet. She wasdeliberately advancing on its very storm-centre. And in the very natureof things she was doomed to frustration. It seemed to me that she hadalready frustrated herself. For suppose she should succeed in her aim,and should pull off--well, wh
atever Rose had hinted at when he hadspoken of Andalusian dancers and tilted mirrors in Marseilles sailors'kens. What then? That had not been Derwent Rose! "Je tache de medebrouiller de ces souvenirs-ci." Where was her success, seeing that ithad been the greatest of his dreads that he must re-live that dingyphase before finding the lovelier Derwent Rose who dwelt away on theother side?
Therefore, do what she would, her lot was as predestined as his own. Hersuccessive roles awaited her also--sister, aunt, elderly friend. But theway to Eden--ah, _that_ she would terribly contrive! He, sick with atwice-lived anxiety, might turn away from his fence; but she approachedit from the other side. Dust and ashes to him were all enticement toher. 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 beall un-sinned again, while her own would be upheaped an hundredfold. Herlot was his. Jointly they advanced on a common fate. When all was overshe would put off those crafty garments again. But until then he was tobe tripped--at his maddest, at his wildest.
"Julia," I said with a failing voice, "for his sake can't you let itrest?"
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 canhardly express.
"For pity of him! And why of him? What about me? Why do you try toseparate us? We never were separated really. All that ever separated uswas my own ignorance and conceit and not having the right hair! I'll bobit--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 shouldhe for ever give, give, give, and get nothing in return? He never didget anything--nothing out of his books, nothing out of his life, onlythis one magnificent thing that's happened! He's flung pearls away, allthe splendid pearls of himself, flung them to the grunters as they didin the Bible, and all they wanted was common greasy farthings! Farthingswould have done, and he showered pearls on 'em! And not one single thingdid he ever get back! Oh, it makes me boil!... But I've picked up awrinkle or two since then, George! Nobody ever told me anything aboutlife, nothing that was true. They told me that if I opened my mouth andshut my eyes and never forgot that I'd been nicely brought up all sortsof lovely things would come of themselves. Nobody ever told me I shouldhave to get up and get and fight for my own hand. I was to speak when Iwas spoken to, and what did it matter how I did my hair or what sort ofshoes I wore as long as men understood I was a nice girl and not to betaken liberties with? They took their liberties somewhere else weweren't supposed to know anything about. The un-nice girls got theinsults--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 farthingafter all the pearls were gone. They called that marriage, and said itwas 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 theregetting 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 thoughtit out for myself, like Peggy. It was my job, and I didn't do it. Ipainted idiotic canvases instead. It wasn't Derry's job. It isn't anyman's job. I'd been throwing sheep's-eyes at him all my life; why didn'tI say to myself, 'Look here, Julia my girl, this doesn't appear to beworking somehow. Cutting sandwiches and letting him pose for you andmooning about him afterwards isn't doing the trick. You knowhe's--obtainable--because you know other women do it. What's the matterwith _you_?'--I ought to have asked myself that, and I didn't. I letmyself drift into being a 'good sort' to him. Stupidest thing a womancan 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 happenedbefore, all the more gorgeous luck! He _shall_ have something back forhis life. He shall know what love is before he dies. You can go toanybody you like for your portrait, George; Peggy and I are out forblood. What's the good of having luck if you don't believe in it? Ifbeing 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 tohappen. He'll be writing to me or something; I'm not worrying in theleast.... But I mustn't let my neck get all pink like this just withthinking of him." She fetched out a little mirror and a puff. "Nicegirls used to do that, and it was called maiden modesty, and I'm damnedif it paid. I'm perfectly willing to learn, either from Peggy with hergarters or anybody else.... Ah, she's getting up! I must see her closeto----"
She was on her feet. I heard her murmur, "I'm taller than she isanyway----"
"Sit down till I've got the waiter," I said.
But she continued to stand. She was looking after the girl she hadcalled Peggy--erect, ready, perilously instructed, a beautiful danger.Her life had been one unvarying, starry lamp of love; now, for thebeguiling of the Derry of those onrushing years of the heat of hisblood, a hundred false fires were being prepared. And I could onlyremain silent at the wonder of it, that all was one, and that the falsewas no less true than the true.
III
It still wanted a week to the thirtieth, but I had various matters toset in order, and the time passed quickly. I saw Julia once more beforeI left. She still nonchalantly left it to me, should I come acrossDerry, to let her know or not, as I thought best. She herself was notgoing very far--merely into Buckingham to stay with friends. She gave medates and addresses, and then her manner seemed to me to show somehesitation.
"If he should write to me for money suddenly," she said. "You see, youwon't be at hand."
"Oh, that's all arranged. He wouldn't wait till he was actually starvingbefore 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--asooty shower of black chiffon over I know not what intricately-simpleand 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 Ilooked 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 apenny. If he writes to you you'd better wire me."
"Poor Julia!" she laughed. "When she was sensible she could do nothingright, and now that she's quite mad she's as wrong as ever. Well, ashort 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 itwasn't going to rain--for I had looked down below and preferred thedeck. 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 againand 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 Iwatched the phantom-grey water that hissed and rustled hoarsely past oursides. The throbbing of the engines began to beat softly and incessantlyin my head, and half dozing, I found myself wondering what Derry haddone about his passport. "Throb-throb," churned the engines ... perhapshe had forged himself a seaman's and fireman's ticket, signed on as adeckhand or stoker, and had given the L.S.W. Ra
ilway Company the slipthe moment he had got across. Dreamily, muffled up in my wrappings, Itried to picture it. He would be careful. He would be careful about hisbeard, for example. He would let it grow a day or so before; perhaps hewould now continue to wear a beard. Unless.... And he would sleep theday before and stoke through the night. A stoker for a night, dressed ina boiler-suit or stripped to the waist, as he had stripped when he hadheld Julia Oliphant's sewing-machine aloft. And grime in his goldenbeard. Or else the author of _The Vicarage of Bray_ bending the warp onto the drum of the steam-winch or putting the luggage in the slings inthe hold. Oh, as she had said, he would get across somehow if he wantedto.....
And once across he would have very little trouble. He would mingle withthe porters and camionneurs, carrying his gear in his hand. Probably hewould pretend it was somebody else's. Then--the small luggage throughfirst--_rien a declarer_--his perfect French--he would be along the quayand in the vedette before they had begun to get the big stuff out of thehold. As for his passport--oh, he would manage....
An employe picked his way through the dark huddles on the deck, took thereading of the log, and retired again. The masthead lights made loopsand circles in the rain. I took a nip from my flask and dropped backinto 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 sejour_--oh, things like that were for ordinary people. Whatwould he do with a _permis de sejour_ who had no _permis de sejour_ inlife itself, but must doubly dodge through it, from this place to thatand from one date to the date before?... But I rather fancied he hadgone by Dover. Certain notes almost at the end of his diary seemed anindication 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 spentwith me.... "Lord Warden"--that meant Dover--tide--time.... Again theCompany's man came to take the reading of the log. Again the throbbingof the engines evoked the image of Derry, stripped, moving in the redglare of the furnaces, sweating, coal-dust in his beard. But perhaps heno longer had a beard. Perhaps Julia had made sure of that. Julia,desperate creature, wild, disturbing creature.... Peggy in hergarters ... 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 doublechins, little buttons of chins, short necks, thrust-forward necks,square shoulders instead of that long mantle-like line down over hershoulders like swift water before it breaks, to the fingers that movedsoftly in time to the "_Relicario_" ... the "Relicario" ... De Groot ...De Groot, De Groot, De Groot.... Myster_ieuse_, Myster_ieuse_.... Againthe reading of the log, again the sailor's return through the dozinghuddles on the deck; the phantom-grey water rustling hoarsely past, themasthead lights swinging aloft. I hate these short and crowded crossingswhen it is hardly worth while to take off your clothes and you arrivecramped, crumpled, unshaven, unrefreshed. I wondered how early it wouldbe possible to get a cup of tea. A cup of tea--a cocktail--cocktails fortea--"So _that's_ a cocktail!"--Manhattan, Manhattan, De Groot, DeGroot, 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 tostir. The east kindled, as I had last seen it kindle over the Devil'sPunch Bowl and Gibbet Hill. The sun flashed on the waves, on peoplebestirring themselves, opening dressing-cases, making such toilets asthey could. Then I heard the welcome click of teacups and flung off myrugs. I went below, secured a seat for breakfast, and made myself lessunpresentable. Hot breakfast, after all, goes a long way towardsobliterating the discomforts of a night on deck. As I rose from thetable I glanced through the open port. Pale on the starboard bow was thelong line of Cap Frehel, ahead was St Malo's spire.
FRANCE
The Tower of Oblivion Page 5