The Tower of Oblivion

by Oliver Onions

  PART II

  THE EVEN KEEL

  I

  That evening I sat in Ker Annic, alone. Alec and Madge had gone out foran after-dinner walk, taking a silent Jennie with them. Silent too hadbeen our return along the cliff-tops that afternoon. Whether she alreadyregretted having opened her heart to me I could not tell.

  I sat at the open window of the salon, looking out over the sea thatshowed pale milky green against the heavy sunset bank. Inside the roomGanymede and the Eagle had been lighted, and my shadow streamed down thesteps 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-downiron shutter where Alec threw his crumpled tobacco packets, and it washardly worth while troubling a maid. I closed the window, crossed to theshuttered fireplace, and sat down in a striped tapestried chair.

  What had become of my illusion that certain things could not exist inthis clear atmosphere of Northern France? No man with two memories bathein that milky green sea I had just shut out? But he had swum it. No manof forty-five masquerade as a quarter of a century younger in thisbroomy, thymy air? But here he was.... I looked round the little salon,as if its spurious gaiety had misled me. Across the varnished ceilingthe lamp-chains threw straggling spider's webs of shadow. In one giltoval mirror a corner of the lamp was duplicated, in anotherre-duplicated. Everywhere were bits of inessential decoration, thetrophy of Senegalese spears over the door, the fringed and frettedbracket with nothing on it, a bronze fingerplate, a bit of lace orcoloured glass, all the rest of the quick artifice with which that greatnation diverts attention from its naked purpose in life--to wring fromeverything the last benefit the occasion will yield. Or so at any rateit seemed to me that night, as my eyes rested on the wriggling giltribbons 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 twosuit-cases I had thrown ashore and asked me whether that was all thegear I had brought with me. And it is true that one cannot stay manyweeks in a place on the resources of two suit-cases. But the length orshortness of my stay was now only part of a wider issue. The questionwas, not how long I was to stay, but how I was ever going to leave untilDerry was ready to come with me. Was he likely to come now? Wouldanything drag him away? Hardly! Jennie was perfectly right: "He isn'teven thinking of leaving, because we both know now--we knew in theshop--and he loves me too!"

  A pretty kettle of fish, I reflected, looking at the empty brackets andthe spears over the doorway....

  For it was all very well to talk about only seeing one another, onlyspeaking to one another. How long was that likely to last? How long hadit lasted Julia Oliphant? Just as long as it had taken her to helpherself to more. True, Julia was not a sleeping, but a particularlywide-awake beauty. Julia was not Jennie. For the glimmers of starlightthat Julia had formerly brought into his life Jennie had now given himthe sun itself. Both had known it in that long exchange of eyes in theDinard Bazaar that morning.

  Therefore I feared that, while Julia had produced in him an aberrationgrave enough but still only of the second magnitude, Jennie might nowunwittingly bring about a cataclysm indeed. For he himself had said thathis chances of stability lay in an even and unexciting tenor of life. Hemust sail, so to speak, on an even keel. Calmly and equably he must pickhis way through this beautiful and passionate wonder. He must lash thewheel of his will lest the lightest of her sighs should drive himrail-under. A glance might mean the loss of years to him, a kissdeath.... Others than I have told of loves between two normalcreatures, if such in love there be. I am the first, since a mortal fellin love with a god, to tell of lovers whose lives met as they approachedeach other from opposite directions.

  Yet--only to see one another, only to speak to one another! Who with aheart could refuse them that? Who, only looking at them, he serious andradiant, she as I had seen her among the marguerites that afternoon?Love was first invented for such as they. Could he but have slept, likeEndymion, in his loveliness for ever!... You see what had already becomeof my momentary anger against him. It was quite, quite gone. He was oncemore my son, outside whose door I had paused with a sick dread that verymorning.

  And as love of him re-possessed me the marvel grew that he should sohave survived that shock of beauty and emotion that had been his wherethe cars had stood parked in the transparent gloom. "Who was that withyou 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 ofsecurity, healing and rest? Was there indeed a Love Sacred and a LoveProfane? (Yet who would call Julia Oliphant's love for him profane? Hehimself, since he had always refused it? Surely none other.) And Iremembered his own halting surmises as to the origin of his singularfate. He had known heaven and hell--had "been too close to the balm orthe other thing." God (he had said) was more than a gland; not a knockon the head in the war, but the contending angels themselves of Good andEvil had brought him to this. The one principle had fetched down hisyears all clattering about him on that moonlit night when the crackingof a cone on my balcony had brought me out of my bed. Was the oppositeprinciple now about to expunge that other ill, to restore him, and tomake him a whole and forward-living man again? He believed that therewas 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 wouldbe what we all sigh that our lives were not--no blind groping in thenight of ignorance and doubt, but the angelic victory over the hosts ofdarkness. He was nineteen and unburdened of his sin, she seventeen andsinless. They would marry. One marriage such as theirs might at the lastbe enough to rehabilitate the despairing world. Instead of being in hisown 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 Ihad 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 werereturning from their walk. Madge tapped at the window, the catch ofwhich I had turned, and she and Alec entered. Jennie walked straightpast, and I heard her step in the hall, then on the stairs. Apparentlyshe 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 alittle less insular, my dear. 'When the Lord said all men He includedme.'"

  "We aren't in heaven. We're in Dinard."

  "Among the world, the flesh and the French," said Madge cheerfully. "Whyshouldn't he speak good French instead of your eternal '_Donnez-moi_'and '_Combien_'? Why shouldn't a thing mean something simply because itisn'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, DerwentRose. Alec crossed to the fireplace, lifted the shutter, knocked out hispipe, 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 anEnglishman--porter's blouse or no porter's blouse. I can hardly imagineshe 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 mixedforeign 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'scoming to have tea with me.... This, George," she turned to me, "is afriend of Jennie's we met while we were out. He'd been making a sketchof the sunset and was just packing up, so we walked along together. Ohyes, I know--I ought to be ashamed at my time of life--but he's the mostadorable creature! A good deal like your Derwent Rose to look at--verylike him, in fact--though of course the Bear's old enough to be hisfather. And listen to Alec, just because he was dressed as half theEnglish and American students in Paris are dressed! I don't know whetherJennie's fallen in love with him, but _I_ have!"

  "And if he's English what's he called Arnaud for?" Alec demanded withrenewed suspicion.

  "Dear but simple husband, possibly he had a French father. Such thingshave been heard of, even in that Rough Island's Story of yours. Ifyou'll make me out a list of the questions you want asked I'll get itall out of him when he comes to tea. In the meantime:--unless Georgewould like to take me on the Casino for an hour--I think I shall go tobed. 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 youngArnaud. 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 inthe door of Ker Annic. The whole thing had taken almost exactlytwenty-four hours. In the space of two revolutions of the clock, he,from the lurking-place of his roadside hotel at St Briac, had contrivedto get himself asked to the house to tea. I wondered what he would doabout myself. Would he blandly bow, as if our acquaintance began at thatmoment, or would he advance with outstretched hand, own up to it, andact on the square? If he admitted his acquaintance with me, whatquestions of Alec's should I not have to answer? How answer them, howexplain my concealment? How accept any responsibility whatever for him?Yet how avoid complete responsibility? Apparently only Jennie and themaid who had announced him knew of his furtive visit to myself theevening before; but Jennie knew, and what more she might learn when theyput 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-fourhours for her. The first awakening look of that moment by the cars, thelovely and irreparable surrender in the Dinard Bazaar, her sobs againstmy shoulder that afternoon, the radiant burst in which she had realisedthat he too loved her--and then that evening's encounter whatever it hadbeen, when apparently she had taken matters into her own hands, bowed tohim, and spoken her first words to him in French, to be answered inEnglish.... No wonder she could not yet realise it. The day before hadfound her a child, moody, wilful, not knowing what ailed her, but cryingto 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-factresolution in the brain beneath that red-gold hair. No need to askwhether 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 faceturned towards St Briac. His miniature was painted on the curtains ofher closed but unsleeping eyes, the echo of his voice was in her ears asshe 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 morninghe had cajoled me into talking French, at any rate among French people.Had he too, stupefied with bliss, answered her instinctively in her ownnative tongue and his? Or had he deliberately resolved that here at anyrate should be no trick or stratagem to be subsequently explained, but aperfectly clean beginning? If so, how would he contrive to maintain it?How could he be secure that the contretemps of any single moment of theday would not catch him out? I remembered the masterfulness and skillwith which he had managed me; had he his plans for the handling of theAirds also? Were they to be founded on the appearance of completehonesty, with only the trifling fact suppressed that he had lived awhole life before?

  If that was the idea, I could only catch my breath at the impudence anddaring 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 seeher; well, here was that author coming--as a corduroyed younglandscape-painter about whose nationality there seemed to be someambiguity! That afternoon at the Lyonnesse Club she had admired him forthe beauty of the prime of his manhood; and as a stripling youth hisbeauty had again engaged her eye! Suppose one of the books of DerwentRose should happen to be mentioned; would he say "Ah yes, I've readthat," and quote a page of it? Suppose she should say that he was ratherlike a man she had met in Queen's Gate who was rather like DerwentRose; would he say "Naturally, Mrs Aird, since I am the same man"? Orwould he suppress even the twinkle of his eye and continue hisleg-pulling? The thing began to teem with quite fascinatingpossibilities, and in a couple of days, in his French clothes or hisEnglish ones, he would be upon us. Within a week he might be paintingJennie's portrait, as Julia Oliphant was supposed to be painting my own.

  And where were young Rugby, young Charterhouse, now that he had appearedon the scene?

  Suddenly, on the little balcony at Ker Annic that night, with the Ploughover the sea and the lamplight from the salon below yellowing thegarden, 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 Itook. It would have been perfectly simple for me to take the first tramout to St Briac, to see him at his hotel, to tell him I was aware of theturn events had been made to take, and to ask him to be good enough totell me where I came in among it all. But I found myself vowing that Iwould be hanged first. It was his show, and for the present at any ratehe should run it without any interference from me. If when he came totea at Ker Annic he chose to call me George, well, we would see whathappened; if he solemnly stood waiting to be introduced to me, that washis affair. At the least it would be interesting. It might proveenthralling.

  Therefore I did not seek him the next day, but crossed to St Malo withAlec 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 Isought him there. He, who had so lately avoided the eyes of men, nowcoolly came forth and took his place in the world. His bicycle, insteadof taking him and his painting-gear to Pleudihen or Ploubalay or thewar-ravaged woods of Pontual, brought him into Dinard early in theforenoon. In the afternoon it brought him in again. It would probablyhave brought him in again in the evening had there been the faintestchance of a glimpse of Jennie Aird. It was on the afternoon trip thatMadge met him, and when we returned from St Servan Alec and I were toldthat Monsieur Arnaud was asked to tea the next day.

  "Are you deliberately throwing him at that child's head?" Alec askedcrossly.

  "I'm adding him to my collection of nice people. I should be so muchobliged if you happened to go to the Club, dear. Not that you're in theleast like a wet blanket, darling. Only the thermometer drops just theleast 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 timeto run down. At the end he turned his head to find that Madge had leftthe room. And that is enough to annoy anybody.

  Something that I overheard on my way to my room the following afternooncaused me to smile. The door of Madge's room stood ajar, and as I passedit 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 MonsieurArnaud, alias Arnold, alias Derwent Rose.

  Tea was set out inside the pergola; Jennie herself placed little leavesround the sandwiches, begonia petals about the dishes of chocolate andnougat. Critically she paraded her mother's putty-coloured frock forinspection, touched the little darling hat deftly. She herself wore herpale gold silk jumper; her proud throat and small head issued from itlike the little porcelain busts in the shop in the Rue Levavasseur--theWatteaus and Chardins and Fragonards that are made up into pincushionsand cosies. She was a tremulous tender pout of anticipation and anxiety.A dozen times she moved the objects on the table, a dozen times movedthem back again. Alec had dissociated himself from all this absurd fussabout a chance-met English youth with a French name, but he sat not faraway, in the shade of the auracaria, behind the _Paris Daily Mail_.

  Then, at four o'clock, there was the short soft slide of somebodyalighting 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 allright there."

  Rapidly as I knew Jennie's heart to be beating, I was hardly lessexcited myself. Now what was he going to do?

  What he did was the simplest thing imaginable. As he advanced among themontbretias and begonias I noticed that he wore his English clothes. Hetook Madge's hand; he smiled simply at Jennie; and then, as Madge wasabout 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 theother night, but you were all so busy with the party----"

  Beautifully, calmly disarming. He said it, too, just as Alec cameup--for Alec may growl before his guests come, and growl again when theyhave gone, but he is their host as long as they are there. If MonsieurArnaud had known Sir George Coverham in London the situation was more orless 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-launchwhile their owner, thickly greased, had swum alongside in thenight--fitted him quite passably well; I remembered the very suit. Hisboots and collar, however, were French, and apparently he had no Englishhat, for his head was uncovered. I remember a foolish fleeting wonderthat the light chequer of shadow should pattern his clear andself-possessed face exactly as it did our own--and he the _lusus naturae_he was! He stood there, modest and at ease, waiting for his seniors toseat themselves. I saw Alec's expert glance at his perfect build. Imentally gave the subject of athletics about ten minutes in which tocrop up.

  "Do sit down," said Madge; and she added to me, "George, you never toldme 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 SirGeorge's place not so long ago--had a jolly swim in his pond--isn't thatso, sir?"

  He should at any rate have a tweak in return. "When there's a prepschool 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 Ican apply to his modest impudence is "neck"--charming, bashful, butquite deliberate "neck." He had not merely met me before in London; ohdear no; he went a good deal beyond that. He was a young man I had tostay in my house, allowed to swim in my pond. I saw the way alreadypaved for as many visits to Ker Annic as he pleased. I saw inanticipation Alec coming round to his English clothes, his grace andstrength of build. Madge he already had in his pocket. He even admittedhaving sought me at this very house a night or two before! My positionwas as neatly turned as heart could wish. I could not even imitate hisown mendacious candour lest I should give him and myself completelyaway. Yes, I think "neck" is the word.

  He talked quietly, charmingly, not too much. Jennie hardly ventured tolook 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 atAmbleteuse. I'm that Arnaud. But I've had to knock it off. You wouldn'tthink it to look at me, but I've got to go awfully steady. I used to bequite fast, but that's some time ago. And of course I shall be all rightagain in a little time. That's one of the reasons I took up painting. Itkeeps 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 lesssatisfied. This was the fact that, in his own hearing, his daughter hadspoken to this charming stranger in French, and had been answered inEnglish. It might mean little or nothing, but I saw that it stuck in hismind. In his different way Alec is no less quick than his wife. Let himdown once and you are likely to have to take the consequences for alltime. A trifle ceases to be a trifle when it is all there is. Alec knewnothing of his visitor, but he did know that Jennie never addressed theblazered tennis-playing English youths in French. He also knew that forthree days Jennie, who up to then had soaked herself in tennis, had notbeen near the nets at all. The intensely insular father of a beautifulgirl 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 motherwas 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," remarkedAlec; and relapsed into silence.

  After all, the last question he would have thought of asking his youngguest was whether he might have a look at his birth certificate.

  Up to this point our gathering had had its distinctly amusing side. Withconsummate dissembling he had turned us round his finger, and it wouldhave taken a conjurer to guess that he was softly laughing at all of usexcept Jennie. But the more I considered the "line" I had on his subtlemachinations the less a laughing matter it all became. Behind the gentledeference of his manner I felt the grimmest determination. His charm wasthe charm of a charming youth, but it rested on the hard experience andresolution of a man. And behind that again in the last resort menacewould lie. This man, actually older than Madge, not much younger thanAlec and myself, and a full quarter of a century older than Jennie, hadtoiled for fame and had missed the fruits of it; he had chased thewill-o'-the-wisp pleasure and had floundered in the bog; but now he hadseen the shining thing beside which fame and pleasure are nothing atall. To seize that was now the whole intention of his marvelloustwice-lived life. Let him keep his eyes as he would from lookingdirectly at Jennie, Jennie was there, the prize for which he strove. AndI knew in my soul that were I or another to try to frustrate him we hadbetter look to ourselves. It was a thing none the less to beware of thathis brow was smooth, his eyes bright, his skin clear as the skin of aboy.

  And all in a moment I found myself looking at him with--I don't know howelse to express it--a sort of induced unfamiliarity. All the strangenessof it came over me again like a wave. I knew that I didn't know him inthe least. Behind that mask he knew infinitely more about me than Iknew about him. He sat with his back to the sea, and the tartan oftricky 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. Whatelse 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 ofold time knew it all before us. We only think it is truer to-day becausemore people talk about it. H
ere, incipient and scarcely veiled, was thereal parent of the Derwent Rose of _The Vicarage of Bray_, _An Ape inHell_, and all else he had ever done. Here, implicitly and in embryo,were the wit of the _Vicarage_, the patient purpose of _Esau_, and thedeadly suppressed anger of the _Ape_. Possibly you have never seen,brightly and sunnily displayed with a light and laughing lazy-tongs ofrippling shadow, the authentic beginning of a man you have knowntwenty-five years farther on in time. Perhaps it is as well that theywho have seen it are few. You may take my word for it that that familytree of which the roots are Arnaud and the blossoms Rose can be a ratherterrifying thing.

  Therefore I and I alone was able to pierce through his blandness, and tosee the tremendousness of the effort behind it all; and I wonderedwhether _that_ was his idea of an easy and unexciting life! Whatever itwas to him, I can only say that I did not find it so. I almost sweatedto see his composure. Yet to all outward appearance he never turned ahair. His keel was still even, the rudder of his will under perfectcontrol. 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 andinfernal candour.

  "I beg your pardon, sir?" he was saying to Alec. "Oh"--he gave a littlelaugh of confusion--"in a place like this it's sometimes difficult tosay! 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 canbe easily dropped afterwards."

  ("Steady, Derry!" I found myself commenting. "Don't overdo it--that'srather 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 theplace, and the rate of exchange is all to the good when you know yourway about--not in a villa," he twinkled modestly. "They say Italy's theplace, but I can't quite manage that, and England doesn't suit me, so Ishall just stick on here and paint."

  "I've only seen the sketch you were doing the other night," remarkedMadge--dangerously invitingly, I thought.

  "Oh, they aren't anything." He waved them aside. "I hope to do somethingone day. But it's a funny thing," he explained, "words and books and allthat sort of thing never interested me in the least. I couldn't write ifmy 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 thestuff."

  "Then when are you going to show us?" said Madge.

  "If you'd care to, of course. George--Sir George Coverham knows where Ihang out. Perhaps you'd bring Mrs Aird round, sir?... _Ah_----"

  The last little exclamation accompanied as wonderful a feat of its kindas I ever saw. As she had turned to him Madge's elbow had caught ateaspoon, which slipped over the table's edge. But it never reached theground. He did not even shake the table. The position of his shoulderaltered, his hand shot out. He put the spoon back on the table. Withsuch instantaneous smoothness had he done it that it seemed simple. ButI tell you I caught my breath....

  "Near thing," he smiled. "Oh, come any time. You won't have to mind afew stairs. But I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. I'm only a beginnerreally."

  And so not one door, but two were opened, the second one at his lodgingat St Briac.

  But Alec as well as I had seen that marvellous piece of fielding withthe 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 onme.

  "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 likea 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 inHaslemere----'"

  "Quite a number of people stay with me in Haslemere, if that's a socialguarantee----"

  "You know what I mean. Alec's simply a troglodyte. He doesn't belong toto-day. It's all very flattering, of course, but he simply can't forgetwhat things were like when I was a girl. They never dreamed of lettingus travel without a maid; why, we actually had to sit still in thecarriage till the footman had opened our own front door. Alec doesn'trealise that the world's moved on since then. And you could have put itall 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 ofWitton Regis. And I expect his painting's clever too. He looks as if hehad all the gifts.... Now I make you answerable for Alec, George. Thathe's not simply stupid and unreasonable, I mean. I don't mean that he'snot perfectly right to ask the usual questions, but Jennie's got to beconsidered too. She's quite old enough to know her own mind. Now I'mgoing 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 ordinaryman. I seldom speculate on the relation between one art and another.True, I have read my Browning, and have wondered whether he really knewwhat he was talking about when he spoke of a man "finding himself" inone medium, and starting again all unprejudiced and anew in another. Itsounds rather of a piece with much more art talk we heard when we wereyoung.

  But Derwent Rose was only fallaciously young. He had time at hisdisposal in a sense that neither Browning nor you nor I ever had. And itseemed to me significant of the state of his memory that he should haveturned his back on words and taken up paint instead. For the burden ofhis age was lifted from him, and he was advancing on his youth with ahigh and exhilarating sense of adventure. Now words had been thegreatest concern of his "A," or Age Memory, and words, it must beadmitted, have arrogated to themselves the lion's share of this strangefaculty that we call remembering. Had he now found a means of expressionmore closely in correspondence with the untrodden ground ahead? In otherwords, was he a kind of alembical meeting-ground where the artsinterpenetrated and became transmuted?... I hazard it merely as aconjecture in passing, and leave you to judge. Let us pass to that visitwe paid to St Briac to see his sketches.

  Alec was not with us. The Kings, Queens and Knaves of the bridge-tablewere pictures enough for him. So I accompanied Madge and Jennie.Jennie's bosom lifted as we approached the wide spaces of the links--butthen the St Briac air is admittedly fresher than the tepid medium thatis canalised, so to speak, in the streets and lanes of Dinard. It wasafternoon, and the shed at the terminus was a bustle of moving luggage,friends meeting friends, parties going into Dinard to return by theseven 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 fromhis window. He stood at the gate, once more in blouse and corduroys.

  "Tea first, I think, and the works of art afterwards," he greeted uscheerfully. "Where's Mr Aird? Oh, what a pity! This way--straightthrough the kitchen--I thought it would be nicer outside----"

  He led the way through the black and cavernous kitchen towards the sunnygreen doorway and the back garden.

  Tea was set under an apple tree. The garden was some fifteen yardssquare, but only close under the tree was there room for the table andthe four chairs. Even then we had to be careful how we moved, lest weshould crush a growing plant. There were no paths--you could hardly callthose single-file, six-inches-wide threads paths. Unless you put onefoot fairly in line with the other pop went a radish, a strawberry, aflower. Not one single hand's-breadth anywhere was uncultivated. BehindMadge as she sat a row of scarlet runners made a bright straggle ofcoral, and dwarf beans filled the interstices. Over the runners tallnodding onion-heads showed, and behind them again bushes heavy withwhite curr
ant. Along a knee-high latticed fence huge red-coated appleswere espaliered, and the ochre flowers of a marrow sprawled over amanure-heap. Bees droned and butterflies flitted in the sun, glints ofglass cloches pierced the screens of warm grey-green. And, where a treeof yellow genet covered half the wall, a large green and red parrot in acage had suddenly become silent on hearing voices.

  "That's Coco," Derry said. "Coco! Ck!--'Quand je bois mon vinclairet----'"

  The parrot cocked his head on one side and regarded us with anupside-down eye.

  "Chants, Coco!--'Quand je bois'--You'll hear him all right in a minute,Mrs Aird.... Ma me-r-r-r-e! Nous voici a table!"

  "Tout est pret--on va servir!" came the shrill reassurance fromsomewhere inside the house; and an immensely fat old patronne in a bluecheck apron brought out tea, followed by one of the reserved youngAmazons with strawberries, cream, and little crocks of jam with waspsstruggling on the top.

  As for Jennie and myself, I think she had completely forgotten that Ihad ever tried to keep her and Derry apart. I was now the person throughwhose good offices she sat, with at least semi-parental approval, herein his garden. I do not want to pretend to more knowledge than I haveabout these secretive young goddesses, but, as she sat there, her eyesstill bashfully avoiding Derry's, I was prepared to take a reasonablebet that I guessed what was passing through her mind. Derry had stayedin my house in England. Her too I had asked to visit me there. What anUncle George indeed I should be if at some time or other I were to askthem together! Only as thanks in advance, after which I could not findit in my heart to withhold the benefit, could I explain the soft andgrateful looks I received from time to time. I had one of these glancesquite unmistakably before I had as much as touched the cup of tea Madgepoured out for me. "You see, mother's all right," it said as plainly asif 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 UncleGeorge, for the perfectly lovely time we're going to have when we cometo 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 himselfhoney-sweet to Madge and politely attentive to her daughter.

  Nevertheless, I presently asked a direct question about the hours ofdeparture of the trams. I saw the faintest flicker of demure fun crosshis face; and I too remembered, too late, how I had once countered himabout the Sunday trains from Haslemere.

  "There's a four-thirty-five and a five-forty-eight," he said. "It'sfour-twenty now. We can cut out the pictures, of course, but it seems apity 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 hispictures. The pictures had served their turn handsomely enough already.He wanted to remain under the apple tree, with Madge and myself theresince we must be there, but anyway with Jennie opposite to him, eatinghis strawberries and jam, occasionally not knowing which way to look,the possession on which his twofold heart was set, the lovely andprecious godsend he had missed once but would see us all with ourthroats 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 thejam and Coco harping on the wires of his cage, but still obstinatelyrefusing to sing "Quand je bois." Jennie got up to give him a piece ofsugar, and he cocked his yellow upside-down eye at her and showed theribbed black tongue inside his hook of a beak. Were I a painter I shouldpaint the picture she made against the shrill yellow of the broom, withthe sun full on her white summer frock, her gleaming hair, and thesun-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 voicewere so much that she must turn her eyes whatever it said. Then shereturned to the table, but not before she had plucked a sprig of genetand put it in her breast. It lay at the pit of her stately throat like adropped blossom at the plinth of a column.

  "But what about the pictures?" Madge suddenly said. "We came here to seepictures, didn't we?"

  "Then that means a trail upstairs," said Derry, springing up. "Carefullythrough the kitchen, Mrs Aird; it's always as dark as the pit afteryou've been sitting out here. Perhaps I'd better go first."

  He led the way through the kitchen, up the bare polished stairs, andinto his room.

  He cannot have had any great wish to show them; otherwise they wouldhave been set out, or at least ready to hand. As it was he had torummage for them in his single cupboard, selecting some, rejectingothers. He showed a dozen or more of them, mostly canvas on thestretchers, but a few watercolours among them; and I fancy, if the truthmust be told, that Madge was just a shade disappointed. I think she hadhoped for jazz and lightning and something to go with her drawing-roomcushions. 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 saydatelessness; I can't think of a better word. All were landscapes, thelargest of them not more than a couple of feet by eighteen inches; andat first he set them up one after another rather negligently. But asMadge began to question him his manner rather curiously changed. Thatpreternatural skill that he had shown for two whole afternoons seemed todrop from him. He seemed to halt a little, to take risks, to advancewarily into deeper water. If Mrs Aird really wished to know, then he wassincerely ready to explain. And he began to take me, for one, throughthe unsuspected intricacies of what at a first glance appeared to be afew casual brush-marks on the flat.

  "I dare say I'm all wrong--I feel rather an ass talking about it," hesaid diffidently, "but I'll try to tell you. I mean I came across afellow one day just outside Pleudihen, and he was painting what hecalled 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,' hesaid. 'But why can't you paint just a landscape?' I said. 'Because I'mdoing a Romantic one and I can't do two things at once,' he said. 'Whatare you doing it for?' I asked him. 'The Salon,' he said. 'No, but Imean _why_ are you doing it?' I said. 'I suppose because I belong to theRomantic School,' says he.... Well, there you are, Mrs Aird. What I meanis that he was painting it because he belonged to a school that didpaint that sort of thing. If he'd belonged to another school he'd havepainted something different, I suppose. So of course that set methinking 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 morereason why you shouldn't,' says I. 'Oh, if you're a blooming genius!' hesaid ... 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 acertain colour and a certain shape and certain other things; the pointis 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 thedirection alters, and only another thing can happen. In another minutethe light will have changed, and a quite different set of things willhave happened. Everything there is happens to that leaf in the course ofa day, and if you know all about that leaf you know all abouteverything. And if you can paint it you can paint all the leaves in theworld.' 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 diffidenceand warmth, on a subject I had never heard him on before, and yet itseemed 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 saidgood 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 overagain? If he was going to abolish schools and precedents and all theaccepted apparatus by which the world's thought is carried on, it seemedto me to matter very little whether he dealt in words, as before, or inpaint, as no
w. True, this parallelism might exist largely in my ownimagination; he had said nothing that another man might not have saidwithout 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 itcarefully 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'repretty bad, but I think they start right. That sky's as clumsy as it canbe, but it _is_ horizontal. That tree's got a back you don't see as wellas a front you do. So I simply don't go to look at other people'sstuff.... 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 onegiven thing in one given moment. As I say, I know nothing aboutpainting. That may be a valid theory of painting landscape or it maynot. But it was his, there was no ear-say or eye-say about it, and it isof 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.... Andnow that's quite enough about me. That's my view, Mrs Aird, and this iswhere I live. My old landlady's a perfect dear, and Madeleine andHortense are all right. But sometimes that brute Coco simply won'tsing----"

  I saw Jennie drinking in every detail of his room. There was not to beone inch of it that she could not reproduce when she went to bed thatnight and turned her face in the direction of St Briac. Her eyes took inhis moulded ceiling-beams, the glass knob of his door, his neat bed, theherring-boned parquet of the floor. It was a little bare, perhaps, butthen he spent all his days out of doors, painting those wonderfulpaintings, and, of course, this was not his real home. She hated thatolder painter--a hundred at least--who had been rude to him about theRomantic Landscapes; instantly and passionately she had taken sides withher hero. She loved the fat old Frenchwoman who looked after him and wasnearly seventy; she did not so much love the two Breton women who lookedafter him and were not nearly seventy. Coco was a naughty bird not tosing "Quand je bois" when he was told, and if his window did not facetowards Dinard, at any rate he had the tram opposite, and could watchit every time it started, and know that it was going almost past thegates of Ker Annic. She stood with puckered brows before his canvases.She loved trees. They would always be different to her now that he hadshown her about them. She had no doubt whatever about his theory oflandscape; how could it be wrong if it was his? Her fingers touched theblossom 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 notlie that way. Most stupidly it did not. Actually it lay miles away pastthe glass door-knob, and the Garde Guerin to the right was invisiblefrom Dinard. But she pressed my arm lightly. "September, Uncle George?"the pleading pressure silently said. "You'll ask us both down inSeptember, 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 stoppedat 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 onher.

  "Well ... I shouldn't be allowed to swear it in a court of law, becauseit was before I was born, you see."

  The smile conquered. She laughed. I cut quickly in, my watch half out ofmy pocket. Gunpowder was safer than family history with Madge Airdabout.

  "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. "Thankyou 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 takea swift resolve. If he was going to see us off, I was going to see himoff also. I had a superstitious idea that it might be necessary. He hadbamboozled Alec about his delicate chest, had only just evaded thatquestion of Madge's that simply meant, if you like to do a little sumabout it, that his mother had borne him at two different dates with aquarter of a century between them. Blandly as he might cover it up, Inow expected nothing but tricks from him--tricks coolly and resolutelyplanned 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 Ihad nothing for it but the tenderest and most smiling love, she too wasquite capable of duplicity. More than once her tell-tale hand hadfluttered about the flower at the pit of her throat. As I have said, Idon't pretend to deep knowledge of the hearts of these superb andrecently-awakened young creatures, but I do know when things are in thewind.

  Nothing happened as we passed down the stairs and out into the street. Icould have taken my oath of that. And, devoted as always, he walked withMadge across to the terminus, leaving Jennie to me. But I felt itcoming....

  It came as he took the tickets at the guichet; and it was not of hisdoing, but of hers. I had silver in my hand, ready to repay him, andthere 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; herbent 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, andthe fingers that passed it were held for a moment.

  Don't tell me that that note had not been in readiness probably sincethe evening before. Don't tell me that it had not lain under her pillowfor a whole night before being transferred to that tenderer post-bagthat was sealed with the yellow flower. Don't tell me that it had notbeen even more sweetly sealed. For I saw her face when she turnedagain. I saw its struggle of soft emotion and the will to be calm. Witha quick little impulse that I did not understand she flew to hermother's arm.

  "There are three seats there if we're quick," she said in a brokenlittle voice....

  Only to see one another--only to speak to one another--and to pass asecret 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 inthe 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 satanother soft unaccompanied song broke out.

  "Listen," whispered Derry.

  "En mon coeur, tendre reliquaire, J'avais garde ton souvenir; Par lui le long de mon calvaire En esperant, j'ai pu souffrir!"

  "Hush!" his voice came huskily from the dusk by my side.

  "J'ai vecu des heures cruelles Loin de toi, que j'aimais toujours; Les revoici, pour moi plus belles Puisqu'elles sonnent ton retour."

  The song was finished without further interruption from him.

  "Ne parlons plus de nos alarmes, Effacons l'horrible passe; Reviens, je veux secher tes larmes Et revivre pour t'adorer:

  "Rien n'est fini, tout recommence, Puisque nous voila reunis Au chaud soleil de l'esperance-- A tout jamais, soyons unis!"

  It was nine o'clock of the same evening, and we were sitting outside thehotel of St Briac's tiny triangular Square. I had broken away fromdinner at Ker Annic in order that I might see him without a moment'sloss 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-streetnow? As it had happened, I had met him on the road. Had I not done so Ishould have scoured the neighbourhood until I had found him.

  Our backs were to the lighted windows of the hotel, but he had blottedhimself into the shadow by the door. The Square might have been aset-piece on a stage. Yellow strips of light streamed from opendoorways, illu
minated window-squares showed the movement of dark headswithin. Children playing their last ten minutes before going to bedflitted like moths in and out of the beams, and the comers and goersacross the square seemed actors in spite of themselves. The four youngFrenchmen sat in the shadows beyond the lighted doorway, and they hadsung three or four songs before singing that one.

  There was a long silence between Derwent Rose and myself. Then suddenlyhe got up and crossed to the group of Frenchmen. In a minute or so hecame 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! ... effaconsl'horrible passe ... rien n'est fini, tout recommence ... toutrecommence...."

  That wretched, wretched song! It had suddenly made it impossible for meto go on.

  "I suppose you went over to ask the name of it?" I said sullenly; Ialmost 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 tolisten to his disturbed breathing. What I had seen that afternoon hadtaken matters far beyond that. If he, in his situation, thought he coulddo thus and thus, I was there to see, to the limit of my power, that hedid not. I had already told him so, in those words. He had made a stiffreply. Then had come that calamitous song, and our present silence.

  "Well ... you can't, and there's an end of it, Derry," I said, quietlybut 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 awaythere'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 wasimpossible, 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----"

  "Esperance," he muttered.

  "----even from their point of view. Aird isn't a fool. He heard Jenniespeak in French to you, evidently the very first time she had spoken toyou--regular monkeys'-parade business from his point of view--and hedraws his own conclusions. And Mrs Aird isn't a fool either. She won'tbe 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 heis."

  "I once saw him score a ripping try on the Rectory Ground. I was abouttwenty."

  "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 Roseever 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 takeyou 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 ofhis death."

  "One man extra, one man missing, so it's as-you-were. Anyway nobody'llworry 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 questionof 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. Whatabout sending that car away? No good wasting good francs. You see, we'vefinished 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 thisafternoon. I saw what was given you there. I know what you have tuckedaway somewhere about you at this moment."

  He had asked for it, and had got it. Hitherto I had stuck togeneralities; that this was particular enough I knew by his quickmovement. His foot knocked against the flimsy table, and a coffee-cupall 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?" Hejerked 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 andleft for him; then I saw his black smock and corduroys by a lighted doorhalf-way across the Square. I joined him, and together we took the darkstreet to the right that leads to where the Calvary stretches out itsarms across the harbour to Lancieux.

  Past the Post Office, past the Mairie we walked without speaking--thatMairie that either as an Englishman or a Frenchman knew him not. Weascended the short lane to the promontory. It was a whisperinghalf-tide, but all was darkness save for a low remnant in the west, atwinkle or two over the shallows, and once more Frehel, this timedirectly visible and giving us distinct shadows. The last gossip haddisappeared from the point. I don't think even a couple of loverslingered on the steep below. It was him and myself for it, with theCalvary above us and that twelve-miles-distant Giant as timekeeper ofour encounter.

  But he did an unexpected thing before he spoke. Under Frehel's sweepingfinger the Calvary started forth for a moment from the shadows. Headvanced 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 wordof it's true, and a child could see it. For one hole you can pick in theposition I can pick five hundred. But picking holes doesn't help. Whatyou 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 thatdrives _me_ to do what I am doing. You don't think I'm deceiving thesedecent 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 firstthing I've got to do? To lie about my name. I must lie, knowingperfectly well that a day, a week or a month or two at the outside willsee me caught out and shown the door. Never mind other instances; let'sstick 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 headinto a noose like that unless I was perfectly sure that I'd finishedsliding, was well dug in, and had a fairly reasonable prospect ofpresently going straight ahead like anybody else?"

  But I had no intention of going over that ground again. My foolishexcited hope that he might "pull it off" had
been scattered to thewinds by the events of that afternoon. As far as he himself wasconcerned I wished him all the best that could happen to him, but it wasnot a chance that the happiness and safety of the daughter of my friendscould be risked upon. Let him start to go forward first; let us havesome assurance that the ghastly business was all over; then would betime 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'tpossibly 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 becomegranite 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'mafraid 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 thisafternoon keeping your word?"

  "I meant what I said at the time. You know that I honestly hadn't athought of deceiving you. I'm afraid that word can't be kept. Perhaps Ihadn'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 asI can. I'll assume you're standing still for the present. I'll evenassume the other possibility, or impossibility, whichever it is--thatyou might actually turn round again. Even then what would it mean? Itwould mean that I, a guest of my old friends, was lending my countenanceto something against every conception of mental--decency let us say. Ithink I know your dates and figures pretty well by this time. You wereborn in '75. Now, in 1920, we'll say you're eighteen. It's taken youforty-five years to live to eighteen, and if you're to live toforty-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 nowforty-five to her seventeen. If this thing comes off you'll be in theearly 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'snothing in it."

  "Julia Oliphant knows it."

  "Then only you and I and Julia Oliphant know it, and there's nothing init."

  "Then tell me if there's anything in this. What guarantee have you thatexactly the same thing won't happen to you again? Take the maddest viewof all--that you actually might go forward. If indications are anythingyou're repeating your experiences already."

  "How so?" he demanded.

  "In this painting of yours. I heard your explanations to Mrs Aird thisafternoon. You're starting with exactly the same ideas asbefore--complete dissociation from everything else that's ever beendone. You're going to be the First Man again instead of the MillionthMan. How do you know it won't land you in the same mess? It used to bewords; 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'tyou and I come to terms if I swear to you that I'll never touch anothercanvas 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'talter it. Whether you do the same or not, you _are_ the same. For all Iknow you'll go on being it till the crack of doom. It's yourself that'sbeen visited, not your books. And that's why things can't go on betweenyou 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 Frehel I saw that his head was bowed. Without mynoticing it the riding-lights in the little harbour below haddisappeared; as no boat could now put in till dawn the pecheurs hadwaded across the shallows and extinguished them. The tall Crucifixseemed to advance and to retire again into the gloom with the nextrevolution 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 ofus?... Anyway, without worrying you too much about it, I'd like anaccount 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 ideasas 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 whobought 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'readvancing 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 aboutthings that don't matter that"--he snapped his fingers. "I've listenedto 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. ButI don't think I should have asked you if I'd known. And I want you tounderstand that it's all I do owe you."

  "Derry, old fellow----"

  "Tut-tut! One tale's always good till you hear the other side. Itdoesn't seem to strike you that you've made pretty free with me. I'm asubject for sums and mental arithmetic exercises--you're better at thatthan at accounts. I'm some kind of an oddity, that's got to be shoo-edwith an apron this way and that, and told where he's to go and not togo, and who he shall speak to and who he shan't. You'd be best pleasedof all if you could shut your eyes and tell yourself that I didn'texist. But I do exist, and I'm not on sale for five hundred francs. I'mhere on earth, and I don't see what you're going to do about it. I'm notless alive than anybody else; I'm more alive--a hundred times morealive. You can call me any age you please--but who'd be locked up, youor I, if you showed me to any reasonable being and told them I wasforty-five? Care to try it on the Airds? I'll give you the chance if youlike."

  Bitterly as he spoke, he grew bitterer as he proceeded.

  "This is not the first time you've interfered. You've made free with mylatchkey before this. Julia Oliphant knows about me; who told her, andwho gave you permission? It seems to me I've been pretty patient. I'mnot saying you've not been decent about some things, that time when Iwas slipping about all over the scale, but I'm warning you now. I'velistened to all you h
ad to say. I've met you at every point. I've evenoffered--I'm hanged if I know why--not to write or paint again if thatwill 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 dowith life than a baby playing with its doll! They're to help fools tothink they're thinking. They're to make 'em believe that but for someslight accident they could do the same themselves--as they could, anddo! They call a thing like that a 'gift'; but what's the Gift that Lifestill has to give when they've said their very last word--they and theirschools? What's been there all the time, waiting for us to get the dustout of our eyes?... George Coverham, try to come between me and that andas sure as God will bring to-morrow morning I'll put a stop to yourarithmetic for ever! What do I care if I have to take a new name everyday? What do I care if your friends the Airds bundle you out of thehouse? Do you think it matters to me whose father and mother and familyhistory and papers I steal? That's all life seems to mean to some ofyou. '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 herespectable? What did he do in the war? Where does he bank? What's hisclub? Where does he live and how much is his rateable value?' You can'tsee a man for all _that_! You can't even see me now for Derwent Rose andhis tombstones of books! By Jove, I said I was a ghost once! But thatwas when I was on the slide! I'm no ghost now! It's you others who arethe ghosts! It's you who'd better get off the map! J'y suis, j'y reste;I'm here--here!"

  And again Frehel showed him there--young, beautiful, indomitable andruthless.

  Yet what did he utter but his own deeper and deeper condemnation?Simple, heart-full, innocent Jennie Aird be mated with his piercing andimpossible view of the world! She herself, yes, even in her body'sbeauty, to be what his books had formerly been, what his painting was tobe again--the very medium of his transcendental transgression! Why, onepeep at that awful sleeping dynamo of his mind would be enough to driveher mad, one glimpse of the experience that had been his suffice toshrivel her opening heart for ever! Did he think to put off his flamesand clouds and lightnings every time he whispered a love-word into herear? What fate would be hers, poor Semele, did he forget, as he hadforgotten before now, and put forth the enormousness of his power by herside? With every word he spoke it was less and less to be thought of. Asfar as my own carcass was concerned he might do what he pleased. I wouldnot stand by and see it done. His vision and will might exceed mine athousandfold, but even in my humble heart glimmered the small flame ofwhat I considered to be my duty. I faced him, waiting for the Lightagain.

  "Very well," I said as it came over his face. "Am I to take that as yourlast word?"

  "If you please."

  "Then hear mine. I have a car waiting just off the Square. You may knockme on the head, as you've already threatened. At least I shall have nofurther responsibility for you then. But unless you do that I'm going toget straight into that car, drive to Ker Annic, and tell the Airds thewhole thing before I go to bed. You'll then have the satisfaction thatit's a straight fight in the open, and that you aren't creeping like ablight 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 thatLight 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 himhis chance.

  V

  The darkness seemed an omnipresent thing, positive rather than anabsence, that invaded and became part of me, of him, of the place, ofthe hour. Not a star was to be seen, not one speck in the immensity ofthe night. I did not even look where I knew his black-bloused figure tobe; his hand might have been uplifted for all I knew. Or for all Icared. Once more I was weary to death of him and his domination. Therewas not room for both of us. He might have the field henceforward tohimself. I had done what I could.

  It was an eleven-seconds interval. The Light came. Still I did not lookat 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 rocksat the foot of the Calvary, the rocks worn smooth with the sitting ofgenerations 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!" Irepeated 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 Iam--but when I heard them singing that song this evening ... le long demon calvaire ... en esperant j'ai pu souffrir ... rien n'est fini, toutrecommence ... it seemed so like it all, sir--you don't know--you've noidea----"

  I rocked him gently in my arms.

  "You don't know--you can't possibly know--nobody knows who hasn't beenthrough it. Mon calvaire--mon Dieu! And to have it hurt you like thatjust because you are _able_ to hope! Not the end after all, but thebeginning of everything! Oh, can't you see it, sir--not even a littlebit of it?"

  "Yes, talk, my boy--get it over----"

  "I shall be all right in a minute. It simply got me by the throat. Thatsong, I mean. I suppose it's just an ordinary song really--the Frenchare like that--but it got me by the throat, it was so like me. So likethe way things have been with me. What did they say it was called? I'veforgotten."

  "'_Il est venu le Jour._'"

  "Yes, that's it. The day's come. After all that. It came that night--I'mnot making a joke, sir--that night in the garden. It's been day eversince. Night's been day, like a soft sun shining all night. And Iwouldn't ask you to lift a finger to help me if I didn't know it wasquite 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 perfectlyall 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 madeeverything all right the moment I set eyes on her? But she did. I toldyou about something happening before, sir, something I can't quiteremember about. That seemed like some sort of an emptying--leaving meall empty and aching, if you understand. But this filled it all upagain, with happiness and I don't know what--lovely things--all sincethat night. That's what makes me so sure. I wouldn't say it if it wasn'ttrue. It isn't the kind of thing one cares to be untruthful about, isit? You're in the same house with her--you see her--you know what Imean----"

  Between this simplicity and his late menace, what could I say for hiscomfort, what do for my own? I was torn in two. I was a weary, elderlyman, careworn and disillusioned; but he, through unimaginabletribulation, had mysteriously found this place of stillness and peaceand hope. What his intimidation had not done, that his utter relianceand 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, ofcourse, but you know quite a lot. If it doesn't sound most awfullyconceited, I was rather a nice sort of fellow at eighteen. All the sameI always felt there was something not quite right. I don't mean anythingI did; I mean there always seemed to be a sheet of thick glass betweenme and the things I wanted to get close to. I could see through it allright, all the brightness and the colours, but somehow I couldn't getany nearer. There wasn't any feel of warmth somehow. It may sound sillyto you, but I used to press up against that glass like a kid at a shopwindow full of things he wanted. It wasn't that I wasn't fond of thingsand people and so on. I was frightfully fond of them. But I couldn'tmanage to let them know it. Even my mother. When she wasn't there I wastremendously fond of her, but when she came--I don't know--of course Iwas
fond then--I suppose it was my imagination. But when she wasn'tthere she meant an enormous lot to me, and when she came she was just anice little mother I was very fond of but never managed to let herknow--just as if I was ashamed. And it was so with everything else. Iused to get excited over Shakespeare and Juliet and Hamlet and Falstaffand 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 otherpeople. 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 dogI 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 anybetter."

  "I'm very much interested. Go on."

  "Well, that's lasted more or less all through my life. I'd get all in aglow 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 organor the Psalms. But always something in between, I don't know what. Itworried me because I knew I was all glow inside if I could only get itout. I was awfully fond of Miss Oliphant, for instance, but I simplycouldn't let her know it. I used to go and see her sometimes and sitthere wondering about it. 'Now here's a jolly sort of girl,' I used tothink, 'as good as they make 'em--good-looking, sometimes nearlybeautiful--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 sayperhaps, but it would make such a difference if you could say it?' Iused to ask myself that, but there was never any answer. There never hasbeen. There it always was, that sheet of glass, as polished as youplease, but shutting me right out from everything everybody else seemedto 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 ina book you can't when you're sitting next to them. That's why I don'tcare 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 waswhat she did, all in a moment, all in one look. That glass went. That'swhy 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 heartrendingappeal. It was as if he had suddenly remembered that I was not yet wonover.

  "Tout recommence! Mon calvaire, mon calvaire!... Have I to lose it themoment 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 vecu des heures cruelles.... And hasn't it sometimesbeen so heavy that I've prayed it would crush me and get it over? Andeven when I've done the rottenest things haven't I always wanted to dosomething better--always? Thank God for the glass those times anyway!Sometimes I've stood off and looked at myself and said: 'Poor devil, itisn't you really--if you must do this get it over as quick as you canand 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 toscrape up all those bits of glass she broke, and put them togetheragain, and send me back the same way? Not even a chance, now thateverything really _is_ beginning again? Now that the day's come? Nowthat for a week every night's been like a soft warm sun shining? Are yougoing to turn me back?"

  Oh, had he but knocked me on the head a quarter of an hour ago it wouldhave been easier! Then had I been at rest, with those who had builtdesolate palaces for themselves before me. Or could I but have believedwhat he so firmly believed! Yet must I not almost believe it? Had he notnow almost compelled me? What I had feared to find that morning at StBriac, the morning after the first meeting of their eyes over the car,had not happened, but something no less profound had. That hard clearobstruction that had stood immutably between him and life all his dayshad been taken away. I remembered my speculation as to whether therewere 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, myrectitude, my conventions, even my duty to my friends? What, bycomparison with that love, that law-annihilating love that breaks theinvisible adamant fetters that bind the old Adam and bids the new manstand forth, were any or all of these things? They were no more thanthose social rates and taxes, registrations, commitments, undertakings,contracts, all the rest of the paper business of our lease of life onwhich he had lately poured his scorn. The infinitude of passion andsuffering of a single human soul seemed to me to dwarf them all. And ifa 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 moreto enter his heaven than I ached to thrust him in.

  Every four seconds, every eleven seconds, Frehel opened the furnace ofhis white and blazing eye. Tremulously in and out of the gloom theCalvary seemed to advance and to recede again. Dimly I distinguishedDerry's face--young, faithful, agonised, interceding for his lovelierself....

  It is a fearful responsibility a man past his prime assumes when he bidssuch a creature to hope no more, but to veil his face and to return tothe pit whence he was digged....

  And how had he offended me? He had merely received a note--had not evengiven it, but had simply accepted it and held for a moment the fingersthat 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--Isay at present--I'm staying in the house. I must now decide how muchlonger I can stay there. But first tell me exactly what it is youpropose to do."

  "I haven't any intentions at all, sir."

  "At present you haven't. You hadn't before, but that didn't last. Whatis 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. Somethingblessed that you can't see is going on behind it all the time. Somethingseems to be breathing. That's what happens in the night now. It isn'tsleeping; you're too happy to want to go to sleep. Then she smiles. Notlike in the toyshop. She didn't smile in the toyshop; that was adifferent kind of look altogether. She smiled yesterday when we werehaving tea, but you weren't looking. And twice to-day--twice.... Atfirst 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 thisafternoon for fear of it upsetting me. But everything calms down whenshe looks and smiles. It's just her being there. There isn't any glassat all; the glass is between us two and everybody else in the world.Painting's perfectly safe with her by me--perfectly safe.... Butnothing's safe without. I shall slip again without her now. I feltmyself even begin to slip that time you said she was going away. It wasfrightening.... Don't ask me to try the experiment, sir; it's sohorribly risky; but if they were to spring it on me that she _was_ goingaway I know quite well what would happen. It would be like before; Ishould have to pack up my traps and disappear again. And that time itwould be the end.... But as long as I'm with her it's all clearahead--the new way--the way I always tried to find and always missed--ilest venu le jour----"

  He was hardly speaking to me. Little as I could see of his face, I coulddivine what passed there. After that recent violence, this almost dumbmeekness and awaiting my judgment. And because he was not speaking tome, but was communing with his own solitary soul as gravely as he hadbent his knee before That which rose above us into the night, I knewthat 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 hemight be believed he had even offered to risk once more that hideoushiatus in his life.

  But it was not demonstrat
ion that swayed me to my irrevocable act. Itwas rather that transcending love that he himself had invoked. Love andpity lest this my son should once more be cast to the wolves of painwelled up like a sudden fountain in my heart. Nay, not from my own poorheart did it well, but from That above us that showed its dim crownedhead and outspread arms every four seconds, every eleven seconds, fourtimes a minute, cloaked itself in the night again, and again softlyreappeared with the sweep of the occulted Light--from That I think mypity descended. No thought for the morrow had that Original taken, nocare of father or mother or friend, but only for the weak and theoutcasts of the world. Who was outcast if this grave and destiny-riddenyoung figure before me was not? I had stood before him waiting for himto 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. Thisdark-bloused lad was my loved son, who mutely implored me to be givenhis chance. Were the Airds to die I should have to part from them.Death, that comes unannounced at any moment, parts us from all ourfriends. My portrait need never hang in the Lyonnesse Club to remindMadge Aird that she had once had a friend who had betrayed her. I neednot even return to England. So Derry might but establish himself, whatdid it matter though I wandered? I had no love, nobody had a love forme, such as that that made his days and nights softly radiant. In a fewyears I should be gone. But he would be once more in the glory of hisprime, living a life of my giving. In him would be my resurrection. Tohelp 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 bepractical. Should she after all fail to lead him by the hand forwardagain into those fair and untrodden fields of life, all was rescinded.He must report progress. No step must be taken without my knowledge. Onedoes not meditate a treason against one's friends quite solight-heartedly as all that. Nor need he yet be told what I had in mymind. 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'veseen 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 hisbreast--only to feel that in the unison of their two hearts the rest ofthe world might be lost in oblivion----

  VI

  My reason for not telling him of my decision was that I did not wish himto have the uneasiness of knowing that he was responsible for it. Nor amI 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 andrestless, I lay in my bed that night.

  And first of all I began to realise that my choice involved me straightaway in that very web of sophistry and dissimulation that I had wishedto avoid. I had imagined on the spur of the moment that by walking outof the Airds' house with the most plausible explanation I could find, orfor that matter none at all, I should be observing some sort of adecency to the roof that had so hospitably sheltered me. But when I cameto look at it again!... Good God, what sort of decency was that? Tobegin with, when you walk away from somewhere you walk to somewhere, andwhere was I to walk to? Away from Dinard altogether? That would be towalk away from Derry. Take him away with me? That would be to take himaway from Jennie and all hope. Move to an hotel? I should be runninginto my late friends every hour, at every turn.

  In a word, what I was contemplating was not war on the Airds, nor even ahypocritical neutrality. It was a vile assassination. And suddenly Isaw, and with a most singular clearness, that my only way out, the onlypossible and honourable course, was not to leave the Airds and Dinard atall, but to leave the earth altogether. Believe me, who know, that thatin the end is what contact with such a man as Derwent Rose amounts to.

  But I cannot say that suicide, sentimental, religious or of whateverkind, has ever strongly attracted me. There was a much, much simpler wayout. Derry knew nothing of what had passed through my mind whileFrehel's sweeping beam had conjured up that pallid Christ out of thedarkness. I had not told him that I was prepared to sacrifice myself forhim. All that he had been promised was a respite on terms tillto-morrow.

  A flood of mean gratitude swept over me that I had told him no more. Ihave never known a viler or more shameful ease than that that possessedme when it became plain that I could go back on him and he be none thewiser. I am not sure that my recreant lips had not the impudence tothank God that only I knew the depth of my cowardice and indecision.

  For my plan was utterly impossible of execution. It was as impossible togive him his chance as I had found it to refuse it. Racked and restlessI tossed. I even imagine I had a slight touch of delirium, for fantasticthoughts and images seemed to dance and interweave and pop up anddisappear again before me. I saw Derry back in Cambridge Circus again,and his black oak furniture played the most unamusing tricks. Sometimeshis 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 onthe top; then it would magically clear itself, and Jennie would bestanding 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 canvasesround the walls, and these would change to the rugs and lacquer of JuliaOliphant's little recess.... Then the whole of Cambridge would slideobliquely away, and I would see Jennie's back as she mounted the ladderof a South Kensington Mews. Then he would appear from nowhere and takeher in his arms, and he had a golden beard, and the next moment wasriding in a hansom with nothing of Jennie visible but her slipper....Julia Oliphant's slipper in the Piccadilly, Peggy and her garters, lotsof slippers, Jennie's dancing slippers, Jennie in the Dinard Bazaar,Jennie at the guichet slipping a note into his hand. The ticking of mywatch on the table annoyed me, but I did not get up, and presently I hadceased to hear it. Then it came again, regularly, irregularly, onceevery four seconds, once every eleven seconds, tick-tick, darkness andthe Light, tick-tick, darkness and the Light....

  So I tossed, waking every now and then with a start to tell myself thatsomething 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 dressfor dejeuner, but when I entered the salon I must needs choose thatmoment 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 upstairsto bed again."

  So I was undressed, and back into bed I was put, my protestsnotwithstanding.

  The affection with which I was treated certainly helped me very littlein 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 theafternoon, a perfect angel of attention and comfort; Alec hunted out anEnglish doctor--I am sure he believed that a French one would subtly anddiabolically have made away with me. I was told that I must stay in bedfor some days. I demurred, but I really doubt whether I could have gotup.

  So they turned Ker Annic upside down for me. To leave father and motherand friends is a thing you have to do quickly and with immediateacceptance of the consequences, or not to do at all. You mustn't beginto let people be kind to you.

  And no less than in material things were they solicitous to keep from meanything that might worry me. Madge laughed away my apologies for thehavoc I made of her engagements, Alec vowed that it was a top-hole wayof spending a holiday to sit at my open window, pretendi
ng he wassmoking outside, while the gentle summer breeze that stirred thecurtains blew it all in again. I think his crowning kindness was to getin a barber daily to shave me. Were I to grow a beard I fear it wouldnot be a golden one.

  And even Jennie visited me once or twice, which is very much indeed fromseventeen who has never known a headache to one who has known more thanhe cares to think about.

  On Jennie's first two visits to me other people were in and out of theroom; but on the third occasion I was alone. It was mid-afternoon, andMadge and Alec, I knew, had gone out to pay a call. They had left meeverything that I was likely to need until their return, and I hadimagined the house to be empty. But Jennie tapped and entered, andasked me how I was. Then she crossed over and stood by the window, wherethe sun touched the gold of her hair and showed the shadow of her armswithin her light sleeves.

  "Nothing very amusing to do this afternoon, Jennie?" I asked from mypillow.

  "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 goodabout a sick-room. She gave a superfluous touch to things here andthere, and then bent over me and shook my pillow with a gesture thatsomehow reminded me of that quick little run to her mother's side at thetramway 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 somany."

  "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 herconcern--no, not even though I was so blest as to be a link between herand a certain young Englishman who went about in French clothes and wasknown 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 doingsomething for somebody. In spite of that impulsive little gesture, Idon't think her mother had her confidence. That was rather thecompounding of a secrecy than a confidence. It was an atonement, aguilty little reparation that but locked up her secret the moresecurely. I am aware that young girls are traditionally supposed to flyinstantly to their mothers with their troubles of this sort. I can onlysay that that is not my experience. Far more frequently they will fly toa confidante of their own age, and even once in a while to a person likemyself. Her mother would be much, oh, ever so much to her; but shewould not be told about that note that had been surreptitiously slippedfrom hand to hand.

  "Well, what have you been doing with yourself for the last three days,Jennie?" I asked.

  A Brittany crock of genets made fragrant the room. Her eyes were fixedon 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 theflowers, "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 shehanded to me. With my elbow on my pillow I read it. It was on a pagetorn 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 mypyjama-jacket. She seemed fully to expect my silence. The shadow of amarten fled swiftly across the sill of the window. The house-martensbuilt 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 Imean?"

  "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 MonsieurArnaud?"

  No reply.

  That is to say, no reply in words; but for anything else her reply wasplain enough. In every line of her lovely resolute short-featured littleface I read that they did not know, were not to know, and that in thelast resort she didn't care a straw whether they knew or not. And Iremembered that in the matter of the note it was she who had taken theinitiative, not he. A beautiful young woman is the devil from the momentwhen she gets too old to slap.

  But the thing was grave. He had given me an undertaking which, his notenow assured me, he was faithfully keeping; but I had no undertaking fromher. And bachelor as I am, I am under no delusions as to what happenswhen mine, the proud, stalking, choosing sex, is marked down by itsdemure, still and emotional opposite number. Something can be done withus; we give undertakings and abide by them; but what can be done whenthe Jennie Airds take the bit between those pearls of their teeth? Ishook my head. I shake it over the same problem still.

  "But look here, Jennie," I said quietly. "This is all very well, but isit quite--playing the game?"

  This also she evidently expected. "About father and mother? I've leftschool. I'm old enough to think for myself. Mother says so. Anyway I'mgoing 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 cananybody help it? How can anybody do anything about it? It's a thing thathappens to you, and it happened to them before, and I expect they didjust as they liked about it, and didn't care a bit what anybody said! Ican just see mother if anybody'd said she wasn't going for a walk withfather!"

  "You can't see anything of the sort, Jennie. If I remember rightly whatyour mother said, she had to sit still in her own carriage till her ownfootman opened the door. That was what happened when your mother wasyour 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 assoon as look at you. Because her mother had recognised that the worlddid 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 theappearance of tea at that moment gave me a little time in which tocollect my thoughts. Jennie removed various objects from the bedsidetable, took the tray from the maid, and began to pour out.

  "Then," I said by and by, "why aren't you bicycling--or walking--thisafternoon?" I wanted to have the position quite clear. If she couldspend 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 contrastedher shameless deception of her parents with this point of honour aboutpeeping into an unsealed note to myself. These heaven-born youngbeauties draw the line in such odd places.

  "I never thought----", she said, biting her lip; and I hastened to sether right.

  "Good heavens, Jennie, you can't think that I meant _that_! I meant in ageneral way, what the subject of it is."

  "I know what he thinks," she said, the fierce colour slowly retiringagain.

  "Well, what does he think?"

  "He thinks you were perfectly ripping to him the other night, about notdoing anything till you saw him again, and when I told him you were illhe was awfully upset, and tore a page out of his sketch-book and wrotethe 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 eyessoftly shining.

  Only to see her and to go for bicycle-rides with her--only to speak toher and to paint her among the glowing sarrasin, the green translucenceof 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 theshore.

  "It was miles and miles away, right past Saint Samson, nearly at Dinan,at a chateau called La Garaye," she said softly. "I never saw anythingso lovely. There's a huge wide avenue of beeches like a tunnel--it's allin the middle of a lovely beechwood--and there's a lovely softgrass-ride right down the middle. Then at the bottom there are two greatmasses of ivy that used to be the chateau gates. And past them are thelittle white bits of the ruins. And there was an enormous loud hummingeverywhere, like a hundred aeroplanes. That was them thrashing at thefarm with four horses that went round and round. We rode our bicyclesdown the green ride and put them up by some farm-buildings. They don't abit mind your going anywhere you like, and they said he could paint ifhe wanted to. So he got out his things and I watched him. He didn't wantme 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 onlylaughed and said I'd got to be just there because it was where he wantedme. 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 andblue and drowsy--I nearly went to sleep once. But the loveliest thing ofall was afterwards. We climbed about among all those stones and ivy, andthen there was a tower. Just like a castle tower, Uncle George, but nota hole or a window anywhere, except a place at the bottom just bigenough to creep through. And what it was was an old pigeon-place, wherethey used to keep pigeons. All honeycombed inside with holes forthousands and thousands of pigeons. But, of course, there weren't anypigeons there, only an old sitting hen among the nettles that scurriedround and round and then clucked away. It was like being at the bottomof a kiln or something, with grasses and flowers and things round thetop and the sky _e_-ver so blue! And all those thousands ofpigeon-holes, all grown up with birch and ivy and nettles and that sillyold hen! I picked a bit of herb-robert. Oh, it was a heavenly place!"

  Heavenly indeed, I thought grimly. Heaven enough inside thatcolumbarium, with only a small hole to creep in at, and the muffleddrone of that horse-gin, shut out by the walls that had once been filledwith the cushing of a thousand doves and only God's blue looking down onthem 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 keephis promise to me--while she had given never a word to take back. Oh, Isaw it all right. No question about that. She took very good care that Ishould see it....

  For I was being as softly cajoled and canvassed and propagandised asever I was in my life. Derry, piloting me from shop to shop into theDinard Bazaar, had taken me by the arm; but she wound herself in amongmy very heartstrings. And her plan was to upheap me with unaskedconfidences before I could say her nay. After that, if I guessed herthoughts rightly, there would be nothing for me to do but to respect thesacred but unwanted encumbrance. I should then be enlisted against Alecand Madge. Those of us whom the years have perhaps mellowed a little areever at the mercy of calculated guile of this sort. To tell somebodysomething they don't want to know--and then to put them upon theirhonour not to divulge it!

  The boy, the father of the man, indeed! Save us from the machinations ofthe maiden who is mother of the woman!

  For she was a woman. In little more than a week or two she had almostvisibly altered, shot up into maturity. I had no doubt that he wouldkeep 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 abouther of which I could dare to say, "His eyes have not embraced that, hisglance has not been as his very lips upon it?" Though it were buthearing, what tone was there in the sweet gamut of her voice of which Icould 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, sorecently a ruddy plait to be "put up" on occasion, was now a bride'ssingle garland, its golden strands to be unwound again on an occasionthat was not even her parents' concern. Disdain was now all that youngCharterhouse, young Rugby had from those pebble-grey eyes. And thattongue of hers, lately so petulant with the world, was now her subtlestweapon, to get under my guard, to seduce me with her confidences aboutpigeon-towers and what not, and by and by (I had not the slightestdoubt) to say with a touching and heartfelt sigh, "Oh, what a comfort itis to have one person one can tell everything to!"

  But this was all very well. Quite excellent to pat my pillow, and ask mewhether my flowers had been changed, and to fuss about pouring out teafor me. But, while I had more or less got their measure singly, I had noidea what double-dealing they might not be capable of together. So asshe still sat with shining eyes, dreaming again of that columbarium, Ipressed 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 insteadof 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! Yousee 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 itbeautifully."

  "I'm sure he did," I assented grimly.... "Now tell me a little more ofwhat Monsieur Arnaud said when he was so grateful to me for not doing myplain 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 noseseemed to give the look an added directness. Her lips parted, but not ina 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 mybed; had there been one heaven knows how high into the hundreds it musthave leaped. I had been prepared for progression, development. Swiftlyas things seemed to have advanced, from taking a single bicycle ridewith him to keeping a bicycle in his kitchen was after all only a matterof degree. But this, of so t
otally different a piece, positively stunnedme.

  "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 thatonly the three of us know. And it's splendid of you, darling UncleGeorge, to have stuck up for him the way you did! I wouldn't breathe asingle word, not if they were to stick knives into me!"

  Her eyes brimmed with thanks for my loyalty, disloyalty or whatever itwas. 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 onthe spot?

  "Tell me what he said," I moaned in a weak voice. Better know the worstand get it over.

  "Of course I'm going to. But oh, how could I be so horrid to you aboutthat note! As if you _would_ think that I should peep into a noteanyway! 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 looklike rows and rows of little square holes, where the pigeons used tolive I mean, but when you put your hand in they're quite big inside, allscooped out, lots of room for both pigeons and all their eggs. And onerow hooks round inside one way and the other the other. I discoveredthat when I put my hand in, and I turned round to tell Derry. And do youknow, Uncle George, he's got such a funny name for that place. He callsit the Tower of Oblivion. I didn't know what oblivion was, so I didn'tknow what he meant just at first, but I think it's a splendid name forit 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 rathera fright, because I couldn't see him. I thought he'd gone, but I didn'tsee how he could, because there was only that one little way in and Iwas 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 anoise, 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 knowwhat to do.

  "'What is the matter, M'sieur Arnaud? Do tell me what's the matter!' Isaid.

  "'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, andmother calls you that, and Sir George wouldn't have told mother so if itwasn'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 thatwasn'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 wenton 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 anddizzy did I feel. I had never seen that Tower in my life, yet somehow Iseemed to be there--walled in, cut off from the rest of mankind, withonly that hot deep blue overhead, and the grasses that fringed thecircular top minutely bright and intense against it. The loud droning ofthe threshing-gin at the adjacent farm seemed to be in my ears, but inmy heart was a more moving murmur. Gentle and forgotten place! With whatcroonings, what flutterings, had it not once been astir! Those littlecavities into which she had thrust her hand were the cells of aonce-throbbing heart. But who had built a Tower of stone to guard thedove's faithfulness? What masonry could make that, the very emblem oflove, more secure? Of all birds, the constant dove to be thus immured?Towers are for the defence of the helpless, not of that invulnerablemeekness and strength. All the stones in the world could not morefortify those soft immutable hearts. Such humility, yet so stable: suchdefencelessness, yet so steadfast! It was in this wondrous place, thricestrong without but ten times strong within, that Derwent Rose had soughthis atonement. He too, hard without, was all tenderness within. He hadno choice but to lie to the rest of the world, but she must be told thetruth. Arnaud would do well enough for others, but he had no peaceunless 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 deadyears.

  "But of course you know all about it, Uncle George," she went on. "Ididn't, you see, and that's what made it sound so queer. So I said tohim, '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 doctoronce 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 fearfullymopey up to then.

  "'That's so,' he said. 'And anyway it's all over now. If it wasn't Ishouldn'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 upto 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 tobe 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. Itreally is all over, Derry dear?'

  "'Look, Jennie,' he said.

  "And then, Uncle George, he looked up at the sky out of the top of theTower, 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'tlisten. 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 intohis 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 gowith him to-day. He said I must come to you and tell you what I've justtold you. So I waited till father and mother had gone out and then Icame."

  "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 everyou get up again, won't you?"

  "Between the two of you I don't seem to have very much choice," Imuttered....

  Suddenly through the open window came the sound of voices below. Alecand Madge had returned. Jennie flew to my glass, and then, apparentlyfinding 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. "Allsorts of sympathetic messages for you from the Nobles and the Fergusonsand 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-veiledglance as she did so. Then, almost imperceptibly, she brushed hermother'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. Wedidn't want to trouble you with the affairs of this world when you wereat 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 backin case she wants to paint that portrait here."

  With which comforting words she took up my bowl of quite fresh flowersand marched off to get some more.