PART III
THE CUT-OUT
I
"But won't you find it a little cold?"
"Cold!" Julia laughed. "If Jennie can I can; why, it's a heavenly day!But are you quite warm? You're the one we have to coddle."
"Oh, I'm quite all right. Well, that's your tent, the green-striped one.I'll walk along to the rocks."
She took the escholtzia-hued robe and other fripperies from my arm,nodded smilingly, and passed up the beach.
The Airds and their set bathed, not from the crowded plage of Dinardproper, but in the quieter bay of St Enogat. The beach glistened withminute particles of mica, deposited in moire patterns as the waveletshad left them, and to touch that sand with your hand was to withdraw itagain all infinitesimally spangled. It sparkled like gun-metal in therocks, floated in suspension in the green water. You would have saidthat the whole shore had been sown with that metallic powder with whichchildren used to tinsel themselves at Christmas parties.
I crossed the tent-bordered plage towards the rocks. Already a dozenbathers splashed and played. Every contour of wet limb reflected thewarm gold, every rubber-capped head had its piercing little flash ofsunlight. I looked for Jennie's yellow cap, but did not see it; she wasstill in the tent whither she had preceded Julia five minutes before.But I saw the Beverley girls, of whose mutual sufficiency Madge sostrongly disapproved. Jennie was not to be brought up on those lines....
I lay down on a purple-weeded rock and watched the fruit salad of thebathers. Scattered over the beach where they had dropped them lay theirbright wraps, the prints of their sandals patterned the mica. TankBeverley's head could be seen, a dark dot a quarter of a mile out, andin the green marge two little French children splashed, brown as nutsand innocent of any garment whatever. Their barefooted mother knitted afew yards from where I sat, their father lay by her side with his panamaover his face. The sun shone honey-yellow through the wings of thegulls, and far out a little launch crept among the rocks and sent itssoft "thut-thut" over the water.
Jennie and Julia were taking rather a long time to get ready, I thought,and I hoped all was well. For Jennie, if the truth must be told, wasbehaving abominably. She was far, far too submissive and sweet andself-effacing before the older woman--altogether too good to betrue--and I happened to know that Madge had taken her to task about it acouple of days before.
"I don't see why you can't call her just Julia if it comes to that," shehad rebuked her. "She isn't a hundred, anyway. I do wish you'd stopsaying 'Aunt Julia.'"
"I'm very sorry, mother darling. Shall I call her Miss Oliphant?"
As a matter of fact I had not since heard her use any form of addresswhatever.
It was the third day after Julia's arrival, and my own longest walksince my touch of illness. Without even changing her travelling-things,Julia had come straight up into my room the moment of her arrival at KerAnnic, and, kneeling down by my bed, had taken both my hands into hers.
"You poor old George!" she had laughed. "So this is what you've been andgone and done to yourself! Well, we must see what an extra nurse cando."
"Had you a good crossing?"
"Well--crowded wasn't the word; but two nice dear men looked after me.I'd a scandalous flirtation with one of them; oh, I 'got off'; he wasputting my collar round my neck for me before we passed the Needles. Andmay I solemnly assure you, George, that in Buckingham where I've beenstaying a male man wanted to marry me? Fact. And when I said No-could-dohe accused me of encouraging him and left the house the next day. Suchis human life so gliding on. Have you fallen in love with a Frenchwomanyet?"
"Not yet."
"Oh, but they're so wonderful! They walk like lines of poetry. There wasone on the boat coming over; I suppose my cavalier didn't speak Frenchvery well, or he'd never have looked at me with her about. I don't knowthough--it gives you a lot of confidence when you've been proposedto.... Well, I must go and have a bath and change. I only peeped in tosee you. 'Apres le bain,' as the Salon pictures say--be good."
And with a nod over the collar of her terra-cotta blanket-coat she hadleft me.
Of our subsequent talk about Derwent Rose I will speak presently.
They appeared together from behind the green-striped bathing-tent. Thewind-blown wrap of escholtzia-orange and the green turban were Julia's;Jennie wore her white towelling gathered closely about her, and theyellow cap was pulled as low as her eyebrows. Julia is only slightlytaller than Jennie. A good four feet separated the orange and the whiteas they advanced towards me. Julia saw me and waved her hand; Jenniemade no gesture. Julia looked freely about her; Jennie gazed straightahead. The blowing aside of Julia's wrap showed a short-skirted brightgreen costume with ribboned sandals; Jennie bathed in her plainnavy-blue "Club" and her feet were bare. I rose to take their wraps.
Except for one piece of advice she offered, Jennie did not speak toJulia.
"I don't think I'd go beyond the point there," she said as her towellingfell to her feet. "There's rather a rip."
She ran down to the water. Julia turned to me.
"You all right?" she asked. "Here"--laughingly she took the vivid wrapfrom my arm and put it about my shoulders. "There! Now you're all comfy.That'll keep both you and it warm for when I come out again."
She nodded and followed Jennie. Julia Oliphant has very little to learnabout walking from any woman, French or not. With her robe about me Isat down on the rock again.
Atrociously Jennie was behaving. She had been told by Madge in plainwords that she was expected to bathe with Julia that afternoon, and sheintended that Julia should be quite aware of the quality of herobedience. Even in her little warning about the rip at the point therehad been a delicately-measured ungeniality, and their attitude as theyhad walked from the tent together had been--well, polite. She had nowjoined the Beverley girls in the water, and if Miss Oliphant cared to gobeyond the point after being warned not to that was her look-out. Shedid not fail of a single attention to the older woman; but every timeshe vacated a chair or asked Julia whether she could fetch her book shehad the air of saying to herself, "There, I did that and mother can'tsay I didn't."
And I suppose it does make you a little cross when you are sent to bathewhen you want to be off somewhere on a bicycle.
Julia Oliphant had not bathed during that week-end she had spent in myhouse in Surrey. It had been Derry who had done the swimming. But Ifancied it would have been different had she had that week-end to liveover again. She had remarkably little to be ashamed of in the water. Thelong arm she threw out thickened, rather surprisingly and verybeautifully, up to its pit; and the man on the boat who had shown thesolicitude about the collar of her blanket-coat had been quite a goodjudge of necks. Jennie's glistening dark-blue shape seemed still coltishand nubile by comparison with Julia's ampler mould. But the twenty-oddyears that separated them were Jennie's stored and untouched riches, notJulia's. It was Jennie, not Julia, who could stay half a day in thatwater and come out without as much as the numbing of a finger-tip. Andthe difference between Jennie's navy-blue "skin" and that other smartand tricky green was the difference between the young leaf-bundle inits sticky sheath and the broad opened palms of the chestnut inmidsummer.
As I sat there on the rocks, forgetting that escholtzia-yellow thingabout my shoulders as the seniors forget their tissue-paper caps at achildren's party, I pondered a resolve I had taken. Between JuliaOliphant and myself there had not hitherto been a single secret inanything that concerned Derwent Rose. But a secret there must now be.She might find out about Derry and Jennie for herself, but from me sheshould never hear it. Jennie was hardly likely to confide in her. Derryhimself--who knew?--might. Him she had not yet seen.
But we had spoken of him, and almost my first question had been to askher whether she had been staying on in England in the expectation of hisreturn. Her reply had been curiously, smilingly nonchalant.
"No, I don't think so; not altogether, that is. What does it matterwhether I see him there or here?"
"But you weren't seeing him, either there or here."
"Oh, there wasn't any hurry. It's only three weeks. That isn't verylong."
"That depends. Three weeks with him might be a very long time indeed."
"Oh, but if _that_ happened again you'd have told me," she had said,with the same off-handedness.
"I might not have done so. You left it entirely to me."
"Well, no news is usually good news. And I wasn't wasting my time. I didget a proposal."
"About that. And forgive me, because I don't mean it rudely. But is thata joke?"
"Not a bit of a joke. He did want to marry me. So you see that's Derry'stoo."
"What is?"
"_That_ is. The more--let's say desirable I am, if I don't scandaliseyou, the more I have for him. And anyhow I'm here now."
"Did you ask Madge to ask you?"
"Yes. In the end I thought I would. There was no hurry, but there wasno sense in positively wasting time. You say he's at St Briac. Where'sthat? I don't know this coast."
"Six or seven miles. A tram takes you all the way."
"Then we'll look him up. But I want to do a bit of shopping with Madgefirst. Must have a couple of hats. I hardly bought a single thing tocome away with."
And her manner ever since had been for all the world as if something wasinevitable, would come of itself, in its own good time, whether shelifted a finger to further it or not.
It may sound fantastic to you, but I could almost have believed thatwhen she had taken that yellow thing from her own shoulders and had putit over mine, she had invested me with something more than a garment,something almost of herself. I had seen Jennie's disdainful glance atthe coquetry with which she had cast it about me; almost insolently shehad allowed her own towelling to drop where it would; and Julia nowenveloped me in a double sense. Cloak or no cloak, she claimed all mythoughts, all my gazing. For I and I only knew why she was in France.Her errand was the deadlier the less haste she made. I had sought tointerpose between him and Jennie because Jennie was too young; could Inow step between him and Julia because Julia was too old? Moreover, bothwomen now knew his terrific secret. The exquisite complication I haddreaded to entertain was upon us in its perfection. What, between thethree of them, was to happen now?
For Julia he was on his way For Jennie he hoped to go back to sixteen. forward again.
Julia's influence over him had But I could guess what calm been to rob him of eleven and healing had brooded over years in a single night. him as he stood with Jennie in the Tower.
Julia had strangely made herself Jennie knew nothing of this, his scapegoat and had and yet had an instinct that left him lighthearted, innocent, Julia Oliphant was a person free. to be kept at arm's length.
Julia was still unaware that Jennie, his partial confession apparently his years had in the Tower notwithstanding, ceased to ebb. was unaware that the matter had any great seriousness.
Julia had her knowledge of his Jennie was in possession of former youth. his present one.
Julia would walk through Jennie would do no less to keep flame to find him. him.
One drop of comfort I found in the whole extravaganza, and one only.Jennie's naughtiness might reach extremes of civility, but so far at anyrate Julia was tolerantly good-humoured about it. For she could hardlybe unconscious of the--well, the bracing temperature of the atmosphere.But how long was that likely to last? Once more Derry seemed to have usall entangled in the web of his unique condition. Already my ownsurreptitious visits to him had made me feel little better than aslinking conspirator; the presence of Jennie's bicycle in that St Briackitchen did not improve matters; and now, to cap all, Julia and I wereto seek him out.
Again I found myself weakly wishing that I could wash my hands of him.And again I knew that I could not. It seemed to me that there wasnothing to do, not even anything to refrain from doing. The whole thingran itself. It ran itself independently of any of us, as it had runitself with equal smoothness and efficiency whether Julia had stayed inEngland or had come over here.
And I sat contemplating it, wrapped in her vivid cloak, wrapped in herlurid thoughts, my looks alternately seeing and avoiding her shape inthe water, while the sun flashed on the grapes and apricots and orangesof that fruit-salad in the waves of St Enogat's plage.
II
They came out again, dripping, gleaming, Julia laughing, Jennie withouta smile.
"I'll wait here for you," I said to Julia as I replaced her wrap on hershoulders.
"Right you are. Ten minutes. Come along, Jennie----"
The billowing escholtzia-yellow and the closely-gathered white retreatedup the beach again.
In a quarter of an hour Julia returned alone. She sat down by my side.
"Jennie wouldn't come. She's taken the things in. George," she suddenlydemanded, "is that child in love?"
I parried. "Is that a thing I should be very likely to know?"
"Then I'll tell you. She is. All the signs--every one. She can't sitstill in one place for five minutes. Poor little darling!" she smiled."I remember _so_ well...."
"Wouldn't it be better if you were to take a walk after your bathe?"
"What about you? Sure it wouldn't be too much for you?"
"I should like a walk."
"Come along then. I suppose I did stay in as long as was good for me."
A steep stone staircase descends between the villas, in the chinks ofwhich hawkweed and poppies and pimpernel have seeded themselves. At thetop of it a winding lane leads to the church, and from this therebranches off the Port Blanc road. In that direction we walked, and inten minutes were among cornfields and hedges, clumps of elms andcoppices of oak. Ploughs and chain-harrows lay by the footpaths, and thesea might have been a hundred miles away.
"Sure you're not overdoing it?" she asked as we took a little path undera convolvulus-starred hedge.
"Quite all right, thanks."
"Oh, smell the air! This is a jolly place! Which way is St Briac fromhere?"
"Over that way."
The dark eyes sent a message. "Well, now tell me what his painting'slike. I expect it's as wonderful as his writing was."
"It rather struck me--I don't know much about it--but I fancied it wason somewhat similar lines."
"What sort of lines?"
"The old story--starting anew from the very beginning ofeverything--nothing to do with anything else, past, present or to come."
"Of course he would be the same.... But now tell me--we've hardly hadten words yet, what with Madge and shopping and your silly illness andone thing and another. You say he's got to twenty?"
"Thereabouts."
"And he hasn't moved since--you know what I mean?"
"That isn't quite clear."
"What isn't there clear about it?"
"He thinks he's moving--he hopes to move--forward again."
She stopped to stare at me. Already the few days' sun had softly brownedher natural milky pallor.
"He _what_!" she gasped.... "But that's wilder than all the rest puttogether!"
"It's what he thinks. There's simply his word for it. He can't explainit. But he's staking everything on it."
"Everything? What?"
"His future course, I suppose, whatever that is. By the way, has Madgesaid anything to you about him?"
She stared harder than ever. "Madge! Does Madge know him?"
"She doesn't know Derry. But she knows Arnaud. He's been to the house."
"He's been ... Oh-h-h-h!"
You may call me if you will the most dunderheaded fellow who evermeddled in things he did not understand. I deserve it all and more. Allthe same I must ask you to believe me when I say that it was not untilthat "Oh-h-h-h!" broke in an interminable contra
lto whisper from herlips that I saw what I had done. I had resolved that not one word ofJennie Aird's affairs should she learn from me. As much for her own sakeas for Jennie's I had determined to spare her that.
And now I had gone and told her that very thing!
For the knowledge of it leaped full-blown out of that long record of herown heart. Jennie was in love; Arnaud had been to Ker Annic;therefore--she knew it, she knew it--Jennie was in love with Derry. Howshould anybody, seeing him as Julia Oliphant had seen him at his formertwenty, not fall in love with him? Young, sunbrowned, beautiful,grave--only to see him, only to have him at the house for tea, was to bein love with him during the whole of the remaining days. Who knew thisif Julia Oliphant did not? Jennie thenceforward would love him as sheherself had loved him through the unbroken past. And if he thought histurning-point had now come, forward into the future again he and Jenniewould go together.
That and nothing else was what I had told her.
"Oh-h-h-h!" she said again. "I _see_!" And yet once more, "Oh-h-h-h! I_see_!"
And, losing my head once, in that very same moment a wilder thing stillrose up in my heart to crown it with folly. I forgot that between JuliaOliphant and myself there could never be any question of love. Littledifference it made that I now loved her, knew now that I had long lovedher. For me she could never care. Yet I forgot that. It seemed to me inthat overwrought moment that if Derry really was right, and on the pointof living normally forward again, in one way the field of the futurecould be left to him and to Jennie Aird. Julia and I together couldleave it to them. She in my arms (I was distracted enough to think),Jennie in his, would at least cut the knot it passed our wits to untie.In any case Derry would never again look at Julia Oliphant. He never hadlooked at her. But I looked and found her desirable, as other men hadfound her desirable. And why should not I too have whatever of good theremaining years could give me?
So, under that convolvulus-starred hedge, with that sweet air in ournostrils and the whispering of the corn in our ears, I asked JuliaOliphant to marry me.
Before coming out she had picked up and put on her head one of Alec'spanamas. For the rest she wore a sort of rough creamy crape, with awide-open collar, elbow-length sleeves, a cord round her waist, greysilk stockings and suede shoes. Little wisps of her dark hair were stilldamp from her bathe, and her skirt was dusted with particles of micafrom the sands. Since uttering that "Oh-h-h-h!" she had not moved.
"I see," she said again. "I see."
"Then, Julia----"
"Oh, I see! I ought to have known the very first moment!"
"Then----"
She turned towards me, but only for an instant. Then she looked awayagain. "What were you saying?" she asked.
"Very humbly, I asked you to marry me, Julia."
"Queer," she murmured.
"Is it so very queer?"
She gave a tremulous little laugh. "The way everything happens at once,I mean. Get yourself proposed to once and you go on. I shall know quitea lot about it soon.... I say, George----"
"What, Julia?"
"How long ago was that--when he came to the house, I mean?"
"About ten days ago."
"And you there! What nerve! Did he let himself be introduced to you, orwhat?"
"He came up and shook hands with me. In fact he carried everything offvery competently."
"Carried everything off ..." she repeated, looking away over the corn."And has he been since then?"
"We had tea with him in his garden one afternoon."
"One afternoon ..." she murmured again. "How does Jennie spend most ofher time?"
"I've been laid up in bed."
"Of course," she nodded. Apparently she passed it as a good man'sanswer, as men's answers go.
But my own question she did not appear to dream of answering. Except tocompare it with another man's similar question she might not have heardit. Nor had I asked that question only as the solution of an otherwiseinsoluble problem. Happy I, could I have taken her into my arms thereand then. So I waited, my eyes in the shadow of her panama, while shecontinued to look far away.
Then, "I see," she said yet once more. "Of course I ought to have knownin the tent."
"In the tent?"
"The bathing-tent. She could hardly bear to share it with me. But shelet me have the little stool, and untied a knot for me, and carried mywet things home."
"Madge Aird's daughter wouldn't behave altogether too unlike a lady."
"Madge Aird's daughter's a woman," she replied.
Then her whole tone changed. She confronted me.
"That that you've just been saying is all nonsense, of course," she saidabruptly. "You know it is. What happened in July puts that out of thequestion once for all. How can you possibly ask that woman to marryyou?"
"I have asked her."
"She isn't her own to marry anybody. And I don't see how Derry can marryanybody either. What's he going to do--forge papers, or impersonatesomebody?... No, George; my way was the only way--take what you canwhile you can."
"Marry me, come right away, and have done with it."
She gave me a slow sidelong look.
"Is _that_ the idea--just a way out for everybody?"
"Don't think it. I didn't begin to love you this afternoon."
"Proposals pour in--once they start!" she admired. "Oh, how little weknow when we're young, and how much when it's too late to make anydifference!"
"Julia," I said abruptly, "what do you intend to do about him?"
She smiled, but without speaking.
"Are you going to see him?"
"That's a silly question. Of course I am."
"Is it wise?"
"I'm not wise. I suppose I should be Lady Coverham if I were wise."
"What are you going to do about Jennie?"
"Oh, I shan't fly out at her."
"Marry me and come away."
She shook her head. "That's the one thing I _am_ sure about."
"Then don't marry me, but come back to England."
"And leave the field clear? I see that too. Of course you want to giveher to him."
"If you only knew how I've striven to prevent it!"
Her hand touched my sleeve for a moment. "Poor old George--always tryingto prevent somebody from doing something! Has it ever occurred to youthat that's sometimes the way to bring it about?" Then, imperiously,"Has he told you he's in love with her?"
"If he is in love with her, and has no eyes for any other woman living,and never will have, will you marry me then?"
"Oh, we had all that years ago. Has he told you he's in love with her?"
"Since you must know, he has."
"Now we're getting at it. I thought you'd something up your sleeve. Nowjust one more question. Do you happen to know whether he's told _her_that?"
You see what I was in her hands. She cut clean through my web ofspeculations as scissors go through cloth. I had resolved to tell herthis, not to tell her that. The end of it was that I told her preciselywhat she wished to know.
"I've reason for thinking he hasn't," I said. "For one thing, he made mea promise."
But she flicked his promise aside as she flicked the convolvulus withher nail. She laughed a little.
"Anyway I don't suppose he has the least idea what's the matter withhim. He never did know anything about women."
But ah, Julia Oliphant, whatever mistakes you made in your life, younever made a greater one than that! Me you might turn this way and thatround your finger, but here was something beyond your knowledge andcontrol. I knew what you did not know. I knew what had happened by thosesoftly-illumined cars, by that earth-wall at Le Port gap, and that othernight when Frehel had bidden the Crucifix move and come to life. It wasnot now he who knew nothing about women, but you who knew nothing abouthim. I grant you all your other rightness; I grant you that I haddrifted and bungled as men do drift and bungle in these things; but hereI was right and you hopelessly and irretrievably wrong. He did knowabout women. B
ooks he had flung aside, pictures he would fling aside,for these were but the dust out of which that loveliest flower bloomed.He did know about women, and all the beauty of his strange destiny hadnow swung over to Jennie. He had passed with her into the Tower ofOblivion, and Julia and I and the rest of the world for him and her werenot.
The Tower of Oblivion! It was his own name for it. Jennie had notunderstood him; the name had merely sounded sweet to her because it washis; but what apter emblem of his own life? To find this new and smilinglove in the place so hauntingly whispering with memories of the old!There, in the very middle of the busyness of life, with a threshing-gindroning and the lad's whip cracking among the walking horses and man'ssimple bread making as it was made in the beginning, he had shut himselfin with her and the blue heaven overhead. They had not kissed,but--only to be there with her, only to be rid of the lie he lived tothe rest of the world and to be all truth to her!... Julia Oliphantwould but bruise her heart against the stones of that Tower,thrice-strong outside but impregnably strong within. God or gland, itvanquished us all. He had found what he had so long sought, and thesooner Julia became Lady Coverham the better.
I forget the precise words in which I reminded Miss Oliphant that I wasstill waiting for her answer. She turned on me with eyes that so kindledthat for a moment I thought she had reconsidered it.
"George, tell me one thing. Do you really believe it--that his clock'sreally set forward again?"
I answered slowly. "I don't know. I won't say that I don't. Sometimes Ialmost have believed it. One has his word for the age he feels, andthere's nothing else to go by. After all, going forward seems somehowmore natural than going back. I've no other grounds for my belief."
Somehow my words had not in the least the effect I intended. EverythingI said or did seemed to work contrary to my intention. I saw her makinga swift mental calculation. She was a woman to be desired--verythoroughly she had made it her business to be so. If I wanted her, ifother men wanted her, so (I read her thought) might he be made to wanther. What stood in her way? A chit of seventeen in turkey-towelling!What was a trifle like that to daunt a ripe woman who knew coquetrieswith escholtzia-yellow bathing-wraps? If it only lasted a year ... sixmonths ... the rest of the summer ... the rest of the summer of herlife....
"Young and beautiful," she said softly with a quickening of her breath."I remember--I remember----"
"Then forget. He'll never look at you."
"Ah, he thought that once before----"
"You brought him to the verge of ruin last July----"
"You say he's young and beautiful--that's what I brought him to--youthand beauty----"
"Unless he goes forward now--if he begins to slip back again--you knowwhat he said his climacteric was--sixteen----"
She threw up the white-panama'd head on the long throat. My eyes droppedbefore hers, my question was blown to the winds that set the corna-rustling. I told you at the beginning of this story that I had nevermarried.
"And how," she said proudly, "if he had it in my arms?"
III
Whether Madge and Julia were friends because of, or in spite of, thedifferences in their nature, I will not attempt to say. In the situationnow in course of development at Ker Annic, however, they struck me asnot so much different as opposite. Madge's bark is always infinitelymore terrifying than her bite; but the more mischief Julia meditated thestiller she always became, except for a little dancing play deep-drownedin her eyes. She had risk-taking eyes, and the expression in them, ifyou looked at her as if you wondered whether she had counted the cost,was one of detached surprise that you should pause to weigh chances withthe gorgeous adventure plain before you.
And what a risk she now contemplated, certainly for him, perhaps morefor herself! What the penalty of failure--or of success--might be toherself I cannot tell you, since I am not in the habit of speculatingabout what responsibilities ladies incur who love a man all their lives,grow up alongside him as a "jolly good sort," violently assail him whenhe clings as it were to a loop amid the dizzy curves of his life'strack, and then, when he comes to rest and again begins slowly torevolve on the turn-table at the terminus, put out their hands to thelever once more. What she had taken from him, what she had given him inreturn, were mysteries beyond me. I merely realised that, if sheundertook this in the spirit of adventure, it was adventure on awell-nigh apocalyptic scale.
But what about him? For him it was not a question, as it was for her, ofa few weeks' madness and then a folding of the hands, the Nunc Dimittisand darkness. She would merely be putting the seal on a life thatalready anticipated its close; but he would be asked to cut one off inthe very moment of its re-flowering. He saw ahead of him that boon forwhich humanity has cried out ever since another woman gave her man theKnowledge in the Garden. "Ah, might I live again knowing what I knownow!" ... _Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait!..._ He did know,he was able; and Julia Oliphant, discovering that she had done all forJennie Aird, now sought to take it back again. For should ruinsupervene, it would be Jennie, not Julia, who would now be robbed andwronged. I could hardly look at Julia, standing there by the hedge,without re-living those anguished moments in which I had ascended hisstairs and knocked at his door, hardly daring to hope for an answer. Heknew not that ultimately it was from Julia that he now had this mannaand honey, this healing oil and wine. He only knew that he received themat Jennie's hands, and with this soft nourishment he had victualled hisTower.
So what disaster might not befall if Julia were to introduce that yeastyfermenting element of herself all over again?
Slowly we returned together across the cornfields, I and the woman whohad hardly deigned to refuse me. Since our final rapid exchange, thathad ended with her demand "How if he had it in my arms?" not a word hadpassed between us. In that one insolent sentence she had not merely putmy pretensions out of existence: she had made them as if they had neverbeen. That they could never be again I knew only too well. Therefore, insilence we passed under the shadow of St Enogat Church, crossed thelittle space opposite the Cafe de la Mer, and entered the winding lanesto Ker Annic.
At the gate of the villa Madge met us with a peremptory question.
"Where's Jennie? Isn't she with you?" she demanded. She gave a quickglance behind her as she spoke. Obviously she wasn't. Madge glanced overher shoulder again.
"Then don't for goodness sake say she hasn't been. Alec's stamping upand down the garden--says she's been seen with young Arnaud somewhere atthe back of beyond on a bicycle. I sent her to bathe with you, Julia."
"She did," said Julia quickly.
"Then just tell him that and say she must have gone into town orsomething. I know she has been back, because I looked into her room andsaw her half-dried costume. You quieten Alec down, George. Have you hadtea?"
But in spite of my efforts to placate Alec, I found the fat badly in thefire at Ker Annic. Alec raged up and down the pergola as if he had beencaged within it.
"Exactly what I said would happen! I knew it all along!" he stormed."Noble saw 'em--no mistake possible, he says--pedalling all overBrittany with Tom, Dick and Harry.... Where did she get that bicycle? Ihaven't seen any bicycle about here! First I've heard of a bicycle!"
"Simmer down, Alec. There's no great harm in a bicycle ride after all."
"If she's been for one she's been for a dozen for all I know. She wassent off to bathe."
"Well, she did bathe."
"Were you there? Did you see her?" he challenged me, now suspicious atevery point.
"Yes. She bathed with Julia. I waited for them."
"You waited for Julia, you mean. Nipped in and out so as to be able tosay she'd been and then dashed off with this fellow, I suppose. Lookhere, he appears to be a protege of yours, but I want to know more abouthim before there's any more of this. What does he go about in that rigfor? Why does he talk French like that?" (This last headed the list ofhis offences in Alec's eyes.) "There's something fishy about the wholething. Jennie sees him sketching, evidently
doesn't know any more thanthe man in the moon who he is, and goes up to him and speaks to him inFrench and he answers in English! Then he says he's a level-time man,but touched in the bellows. He's about as much touched in the bellows asI am!... Who is he? Did he really stay with you? How did you get to knowhim?"
"He did stay with me. He's perfectly straight. Don't make such a fuss."
"Well, I expect Jennie's as much to blame as he is. They generally are.If I've told Madge once ... anyway it's got to stop. Of course if he's afriend of yours that's another matter, but gadding about all over theplace has got to stop. Is she back yet? I want to see her when she doescome in."
And so on. I left him in his cage, angrily knocking out his pipe againstthe lattice.
The worst of it was that Alec was so very much righter than he knew. Ihad ventured to assure him that our young French-speaker was perfectlystraight, and you know how far that was true. In the wider sense who wascrookeder, whose life more devious? Not one straight step did hiscircumstances permit him to take. Why, the only satisfactory way he hadbeen able to hit on to provide himself with money had been his fantasticidea of fighting Georges Carpentier, the simplest way he had found ofcrossing the Channel had been to swim it! Straight? Too straightaltogether. The world is not accustomed to people so straight that theygo straight plumb into the heart of things like that.... And, merely asstraightness, how was he now to acquire even an ordinary identity? Hadhe _been_ anybody, had he in the past once possessed an identity he wasable to acknowledge, ways might have been found. He would then have hada starting point. He might have invested himself with a name and placein the world by means of the French equivalent of a deed poll. He mighthave got himself cited by name in a civil court, have snatched a socialexistence even out of the formalities of registration attendant on aState Lottery. But not one of these ways was open to him. Nothing shortof an act of creation could establish him. Nothing comes out of nothing,nothing can be made out of nothing. Stronger even than that Tower ofstone is this other invisible Tower in which we all live, each stone anego, its mortar the whole complicated everyday nexus of the socialfabric. All that he was able to do was to make assertion that he wasArnaud, and let us take it or leave it at that. How Alec would take itthere was very little doubt.
Nor was there much doubt in Madge's case either. She might talk familyhistories and hidden scandals till the cows came home, but, in the end,the Airds' would be the last household into which any suitor wouldpenetrate without the strictest investigation. Derry might palm off hisSomerset Trehernes upon us during a casual tea-hour, but Alec would nowdive into the last pigeon-hole in Somerset House but he would knowexactly who it was who aspired to become his son-in-law.
Jennie appeared at about half-past six, and Alec's first demand was tobe told where that bicycle was.
"What bicycle?" she asked.
"Haven't you come home on a bicycle?"
"No, I came home by the tram, father."
"Where from?"
"From St Briac."
"Haven't you been out with that fellow on a bicycle, or has a mistakebeen made?"
The game was up. "I did go for a bicycle ride."
"With that fellow Arnaud?"
"Yes, father."
"You went immediately after your bathe?"
"Yes."
"Where's the bicycle now?"
"I left it at St Briac."
"Where in St Briac?"
"At his hotel, where mother and Uncle George and I went that day."
"Where did the bicycle come from?"
"I hired it, father."
"In St Briac?"
"No, in Dinard."
"And you keep it in St Briac?"
"Yes."
"Why there instead of here?"
No reply.
"Why in St Briac instead of here?"
Still no reply.
"How often have you been for these rides?"
"About eight or ten times, father."
"Did mother know about it?"
"No, father."
"Then that means that you've been practically every day for afortnight?"
No reply.
"Very well, Jennie. Now listen to what I have to say."
Enough. You see the style of it. Alec is an affectionate father, but,his grumbling indulgence to Madge notwithstanding, there are no two waysabout his being master in his own house. The upshot of it was that amaid was to be sent to fetch that bicycle first thing in the morning,and back it was to go to the shop where it had come from. Further, ifJennie wished to see this M. Arnaud again, it must only be by expresspermission from himself. There was plenty of amusement at the TennisClub among young fellows they knew something about, and--not anotherword. It ought never to have begun, but anyway it was done with now andneed not be referred to again. She had better go and have some tea ifshe hadn't had any, and as for _the dansant_ to-morrow afternoon, if shewanted a new frock for it she might have one. Now run along, and don'tbe late for dinner.
Of the five of us, Alec was easily the most cheerful at that evening'smeal. His duty done--kindly, he hoped, but anyway done--he talked aboutanything but that afternoon's unpleasantness. Then, rather to mysurprise, about half-way through dinner Julia began to second hisefforts. We sat round the Ganymede, two men and three women, Alecbetween Julia and his wife, Jennie between Madge and myself. Everybody,Alec included, was kindness itself to the silent child, and _thedansant_ was talked of. The Beverleys were giving it. They had engaged aroom at one of the hotels, and Madge had been helping to decorate thatafternoon.
"Those were the Beverley girls bathing with us this afternoon, weren'tthey, Jennie?" Julia asked across me.
"Yes."
"Aren't they just a little--stand-offish?"
"I don't know. I didn't notice. Are they?" said Jennie dully.
"They're----" Alec began, but checked himself. In the circumstances theupbringing of the Beverley girls was not the happiest of subjects, andMadge struck hastily in.
"One gets almost sick of the hydrangeas here, Julia, but they're reallymost extraordinarily effective. We've put four great tubs of them,ice-blue almost, in the corners, as big as this table nearly, andagainst all that cream-and-gold.... Oh, Jennie! You know father says youcan have whichever of those frocks you like. I should say the voile.Which do you think?"
"I don't care which, mother. My last one's all right. I don't wantanother."
Again across the table from Julia: "That's a darling one you're wearingnow!"
"Do you like it, Aunt Julia?"
"Sweet!"
"And oh, Julia," suddenly in a little outburst from Madge,"honestly, now! Do you think I could wear those sleeves, or thosenot-any-sleeves-at-all rather--you know--the quite new ones, that showyour arm from the very top of your shoulder? You _must_, of course, withyour arms--it's your duty--but I'm not so sure about me----"
"Stuff and nonsense, of course you can. And I'm certainly going to,"Julia declared.
"Bit French, aren't they?" said Alec over his canape. "I've seen 'em."
"He's seen 'em, Julia!" Madge laughed. "Don't tell me after that that aman doesn't notice what a woman has on--at any rate if there's as littleof it as there is of those sleeves! But let's settle Jennie's frockfirst. _I_ think the voile. And you can wear a hat with it or not, justas you like."
"Would you very much mind if I didn't go, mother?" said Jenniedejectedly.
"Frightfully," was Madge's cheerful reply. "Of course you're coming. Andall to-morrow morning we'll try-on, all three of us. So that's the voilefor Jennie--and most decidedly those no-sleeves for you, Julia, withyour arms----"
IV
The rest of the evening was the same: slightly false, slightlytremulous, a little off the note. I honestly believe that that "Aunt"Julia of Jennie's was a pure inadvertence, for she was far toolow-spirited to be interested in anything but herself, her mood and hertroubles. After dinner she went out into the garden alone, and Madgegave us a quick inclusive look.
"Don'
t worry her, poor darling," she said with soft sympathy. "Let herhave a good cry and she'll be all right to-morrow."
"Let me go to her," said Julia.
"I really wouldn't."
"Very well if you think not. What about a rubber?"
So Alec and Julia took fifteen shillings from Madge and myself whileJennie got over it in the garden.
But I found difficulty in understanding Julia's new attitude towardsJennie. There had been nothing in the least degree hypocritical in hersweetness at dinner; quite simply she had been nice and gentle withher. She had even interposed very quickly indeed when, for a briefmoment, there had seemed a doubt as to whether Jennie had bathed thatafternoon at all. But that she would hold unswervingly to her privatepurpose I was entirely convinced. Was her confidence, then, soinsolently fixed that she had pity left over and to spare for thisunhappy child who was to all intents and purposes forbidden to leave thehouse without permission? Could she toss her an alms out of hersuperfluity? Would her gentleness have been quite the same had she notknown that that bicycle was being fetched back from St Briac to-morrow?Or would she, had Madge not stopped her, have gone to Jennie in thegarden with some such words as these: "Cheer up, Jennie; you'll haveforgotten all about this in ten days. When I was your age I had thesefancies, but I forgot all about them in ten days. You'll be in love withscores of young men yet; nobody ever remembers any of them for long.Why, I've forgotten the very name of the boy I thought I was in lovewith when I was a girl. I can't even remember what he looked like. Itseems hard for the moment, but it's over in no time. Cheer up, Jennie.There are lots of nice boys at the Tennis Club. Go and flirt with one ofthem, and forget about M. Arnaud. We all do."
Would she have said something like that? She was fully capable of it. Atany rate I am fully capable of thinking she was.
But, whatever the circumstances may be, a man can hardly ask a woman tobe his wife in the afternoon, have his suit treated as if it hadscarcely been heard, and finish the evening with Auction as contentedlyas though nothing had happened. Even poor George Coverham has hisprivate affairs, and it was I more than any of them who should havefound myself by Jennie's side. Indeed, as Alec and Julia divided theirwinnings I rose and walked to the window. It was dark, but not too darkto distinguish that she was still there, a dim white figure leaning upagainst one of the pillars of the pergola. A half-moon had southed, andthe ironwork of the roof-ridge of Ker Annic showed sharp against thesilvery blueness as I stepped out. It had suddenly come upon me that ifshe needed my comfort, I needed hers hardly less. She was seventeen andI fifty, but that day had separated both of us from our desires.
She heard my step, but did not change her position. Anyway she had had afull hour to herself. It was she who spoke, and without preface.
"I wished you'd come," she said.
"We've been playing bridge."
"I very nearly didn't come home at all."
"Why, Jennie?"
"I knew I was going to catch it. Old Noble needn't think he's the onlyperson with any eyes. I saw him too. I pretended not to, but I did."
"I was afraid it was only a question of time," I said with a head-shake."Where was it?"
"The rottenest luck!" she answered softly and bitterly. "Nobody but thathorrid old man on his motor-bike would have thought of going there!Right up a little lane, it was, and we'd put our bicycles under thehedge, and we were sitting against one of the stooks. That dark redstuff whatever they call it--six bundles together and then another likean umbrella on the top. He barged into one of the bicycles, clumsything, and then came to tell us that we oughtn't to leave them there inpeople's way. Derry shoved me behind the stook, but it was too late. Idid think he might just possibly have the decency to keep his mouthshut, but I suppose that was too much to expect. So I knew there'd be arow."
"And of course Derry knew there'd be a row too?"
"Yes."
I sighed. "Well, the row's over now. Better let the whole thing drop.Your father's perfectly right, and you were bound to get found outsooner or later."
She made no reply.
But she returned to her luckless plaint a moment later. She struck theupright of the pergola softly and vindictively with her hand.
"It was all that beastly bathe and Miss Oliphant's being late! Weshould have been all right if she'd been there at the proper time!"
"I'm afraid that was my fault, Jennie. I walked rather slowly, and MissOliphant waited for me."
"I know; of course it had nothing to do with you at all.... Then shegoes and gets her things into knots, and I have to untie them, and thatcostume of hers is as bad as getting into a ball-dress instead of just askin like nearly everybody else! Anyway the sea's there if she wants tobathe, and she can swim as well as I can if she does get into a current,and it isn't as if she needed a chaperone----"
"Jennie, my dear, be reasonable!" I begged her. "You can hardly blameMiss Oliphant for--for what your father was told."
"Oh, I'm not blaming her! But it makes you angry when stupid littleaccidents like those----" She swallowed.
"I'm afraid stupid little accidents fill rather a large place in theworld, Jennie."
"I hate them having anything to do with me anyhow. And with having totake the towels home I only just caught the tram----"
"What's that?" I took her up. "You _did_ catch the tram? Then it wasn'tthat that made you late at all. You'd have been waiting for the tram ifyou hadn't been waiting for Miss Oliphant."
"Well, I don't care. It's all--all---"
She did not say what, but hit the pergola with her hand again.
I was too sorry for her to be hurt by her words about Julia. That littleslip about the tram had completely betrayed her, and it was againstchance, and not against Julia, that she sought an occasion. Neverthelessthe merciless mistrust of youth lay behind. The beginning and end of itwas that she didn't like Julia, and her young heart had not yet learnedthe duplicity that makes us more rather than less sweet to those whom wedislike. She broke out again:
"And I _won't_ go to that dance to-morrow! I _won't_ be scolded andgiven a new frock and told I mustn't go out of the house! Mother andMiss Oliphant can go without me, and when I get back to London I shallearn my own living and I shall be able to do what I like then!"
"Very few people who earn their own living do what they like, Jennie."
"Well, it'll be a change anyway," she retorted.
A cheerful call of "Jen-nie-e-e!" came from the house. We all used amarked brightness in speaking to Jennie that evening.
"Yes, mother--I'm only with Uncle George."
"Don't be long, darling."
"I'll bring her in presently," I answered for her; and we continued tostand side by side.
I suppose that ordinarily a man of my years would keep such a dismissalas I had received that afternoon locked in his own breast, or would atany rate hesitate before sharing it with a young girl. And I didhesitate. But trouble is mysteriously lightened when it is merged inanother trouble, and to cheer Jennie up was the aim of all of us thatnight. And I think that perhaps the Jennie I wanted to tell was Jenniethe woman, not Jennie the child.
So "Jennie," I said quietly, "you're not the only one."
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"I've had my medicine too this afternoon."
"Your medicine?"
"Oh," I took myself up, "not that kind of medicine. I mean that you'renot the only one who's had to go through it this afternoon."
"I don't understand you, Uncle George."
"While you went for a bicycle ride I went for a walk with somebodyelse."
"You went for a walk with Miss Oliphant, didn't you?"
"Yes. And I asked her not to remain Miss Oliphant any longer."
I felt the eager uprush of her solicitude. "Oh, Uncle George! Do youmean you asked Miss Oliphant to marry you?"
"Yes."
"So you're engaged?" The words jumped from her.
"No."
"Hasn't she decided yet?"
<
br /> "Yes, she's decided."
"What!" A deep, deep breath. "You don't mean that she said No?"
"I'm afraid she did."
"_Oh!_"
She threw her arms about my waist and held me strongly.
"Oh! Poor Uncle George!"
"So you see we're in the cart together, Jennie. I thought I'd tell you.I don't suppose I shall ever tell anybody else."
And I knew that I could not have told her three weeks before. That ishow we with our belated loves strike the young--we of the Valley ofBones. Nevertheless my mother's embrace had been hardly more maternalthan was the pressure of those seventeen-year-old arms that night.
Then, with another "Poor, poor Uncle George!" she released me. Her nextwords broke from her with a vivid little jump.
"Oh, _how_ I hate her now!"
"Jennie, Jennie! You can't hate anybody I've just told you that about!"
"Oh, I can! Worse than ever! To think of her cheek in refusing you! Sheought to have been proud--instead of playing cards all the evening!"
"Playing cards isn't a bad thing to do. I played cards too."
"Pretty poor look-out for her if she's in love with somebody elseanyway!" she commented.
"By no means, Jennie. Other people than I are in love with her. But whatI want to ask you is whether you can't be nice to her for my sake."
"I'll do anything I can," she said bitterly. "If you say she was awfullykind and gentle to you about it that might help a bit."
"Then let me say it. She was awfully kind and gentle."
"And so she ought to be! But _is_ she in love with somebody else, then?"
"I think she doesn't want to get married."
"I don't believe _that_!" declared Jennie flatly. "Why, she thinks aboutnothing but clothes and who's watching her and if she's looking allright!"
"Is that being kind to her, Jennie?"
"No it isn't, and I will try, but I didn't like her before, and I'm onlytrying now because of you. Why did she ask mother if she might comehere, especially if she knew you were in love with her and you werehere?"
"I hadn't told her I was in love with her."
"Don't tell me she didn't know, for all that," was the unbelievingreply.
"Well, well.... There it is and we must make the best of it. You try tomake the best of things too, my dear. Shall we go in?"
Whether I had done Julia any great service in Jennie's opinion wasdoubtful. I had at any rate given Jennie something else to think of. Andthat was something.
Contrary to my expectations, I slept immediately and deeply that night.It was nine o'clock in the morning before I awoke, half-past when Idescended. I found Madge in the salon.
"I say, what's become of Julia?" she asked. "Though I don't see how youcould very well know seeing you've only just this moment come down."
A maid was clearing away the _petit dejeuner_.
"Madam," she said.
"What is it, Ellen?"
"Miss Oliphant left word she'd be back at half-past eleven."
"Has she gone out? But we were to go into Dinard this morning!"
"She's gone to St Briac, madam, and she said as she was going to seesomebody at the Golf Club she might as well save one of us a journey andbring a bicycle back. It wasn't exactly your orders, madam, but there'sa deal to do this morning what with this dance, and as Miss Oliphant wasso kind I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind."
"Oh, I don't mind, except that it doesn't leave us much time forshopping. I shall go into Dinard, and you'd better tell Miss Oliphant tofollow me when she comes back."
"Very good, madam."
"Anyway," said Madge, turning to me, "it certainly does save one of themaids a couple of hours, as long as Julia doesn't mind. But who has shegone to see at the Golf Club at nine o'clock in the morning?"
V
The dances of my time were the waltz, the cotillion and the quadrille,and as I am not a Pelmanist I have never acquired the dancing-fashionsof to-day. So I stood by one of Madge's tubs of hydrangeas and watched.The large cream-and-gold room had a glazed end that opened on to theterrace and overlooked the crowded plage below, and when I wearied ofwatching the dancers I walked out on to this terrace, and when I wastired of watching the people who moved in and out among the tents andumbrellas and deck-chairs on the beach I returned to the dancing-roomagain. And much of the time I moved about out of sheer restlessness andapprehension.
Jennie had come to the Beverleys' party after all. She dancedoccasionally with young Rugby or young Marlborough, but kept more oftenclose to her mother's side. And Julia Oliphant was there, not dancing atall, talking to Madge only infrequently, but gaily enough to everybodyelse--with the single exception of myself, whom (it seemed to me) sheavoided in the most marked fashion. As for the others, they danced inflannels and blazers and varnished evening shoes, and the Beverley girlsdanced with one another.
What had happened at St Briac that morning? The question gave me norest. Had Julia seen Derry? Idle to ask; of course she had. What hadpassed between them? Useless to try to guess. I had glanced at theIndicateur. She had caught the tram at St Enogat at eight-thirty-fourand had taken the ten-fifty-three back, reaching St Enogat again ateleven-nineteen. Actually she had had two hours of but seven minutes atSt Briac, and that was all I knew. Again she had seized her chance withruthless instancy. Except for a night's rest, the very moment Jennie hadbeen out of the running she had been at the door of his hotel. She hadeven had the effrontery to use Jennie's own bicycle as her pretext.
And now why, when I was in the dancing-room, did she seek the terrace,and why, when I went out on the terrace, did she immediately enter thedancing-room again?
She wore the sleeveless frock; and "Oh Juno, white-armed Queen!" I hadmurmured to myself when my eyes had rested on it.... But, whatever herother attempts had been, those arms at any rate he had not seen thatmorning, for the simple reason that the frock had only been purchasedand hastily made ready on her return. But its purchase was not to bedissociated from him. With him and him only in her mind she had chosenit. What other plans had she in her mind? Was she now going to get abicycle--she, whom it was impossible to forbid to see whom she pleasedand whenever she pleased? Would she go with him to that dove-hauntedTower, recline with him among the sarrasin-stooks with none to say hernay? And would her hosts see as little of her at Ker Annic as I had seenof Jennie during the days I had spent in bed?
Dire woman--dire, and _capable de tout_!
But even my preoccupation did not quite blind me to the prettiness ofthe scene about me. Whether inside or out was the prettier I will notsay. They had improvised tennis on the beach, and from the talldiving-stage forty yards out lithe figures poised, inclined, and droppedgracefully downwards in the swallow-dive. The brightly-clad melee almosthid the dowdy sands. Back in the dancing-room the tall cream pilasterswith the gold capitals supported the sweeping oval of the ceiling,painted with Olympian loves; and bright hair, bright faces, lightankles, passed and interpassed before the eye could catch more than ablended impression of the total charm. The band was playing that whichthese bands do play, the fiddler on the little rostrum alternatelyconducting and using his bow, and----
And this time I really thought I had Julia pinned down. Madge was on oneside of her, talking with animation, and Jennie stood on her other side.Yes, I thought I had her cornered. She could hardly break away in themiddle of one of her hostess's sentences. I advanced.
But she deftly eluded me. Madge had turned with an "Oh, here he is!" andin that moment Julia held out both her hands to Jennie.
"Come along, Jennie," she said, "if those Beverley girls can dancetogether we can."
But I will swear that it was only because of her promise to me the nightbefore, that Jennie allowed herself to be led away.
I watched them as they stood balanced, bodies close together, footalternating with foot. Jennie never once looked at Julia, but Julia'sdark eyes smiled from time to time on Jennie's face. And present withthem in some strange way, h
auntingly about and between them,he--he--seemed to be there: young, sunbrowned, and beautiful as he hadformerly been, young, sunbrowned and beautiful as he was to-day. Aquartette seemed to be rhythmically balancing there, one of her, one ofher, two of him.
Then, seeing my look, Julia frankly smiled at me for the first time.
Jennie also saw me, but did not smile. She would dance with Julia forme, but she would not pretend to smile over it.
Twice, thrice round the room they moved, the woman who had refused meyesterday and would not be denied him to-morrow, the girl who had glowedwith angry compassion for me and knew in her feminine heart that thatsmiling partner had not offered to fetch a bicycle from St Briac thatmorning without having a reason for it....
"A penny for them, George," Madge's voice suddenly sounded at my side.
"Eh? I was only thinking of those two."
"Julia and Jennie? I'm glad Jennie's come round and is behaving withsomething like ordinary decency again.... And by the way, that aboutthat bicycle of Jennie's is a funnier mix-up than ever now."
"How so?"
"Well, Julia saw young Arnaud this morning. Rather a difficult positionfor her, and I can't imagine why she offered to go, seeing she'd neverset eyes on the young man in her life. But she seems to have done thebest thing possible."
"What was that?"
"She never once mentioned Jennie's name. She simply said that sheunderstood that a bicycle was to be fetched back to Ker Annic, and asshe was coming out that way she'd said she'd call for it. It seems tohave been quite all right. He didn't ask any questions either; he got itout and put it on the tram for her himself."
"The same tram? She came straight back?" (I may say that there is onlyone tram to St Briac, which runs backwards and forwards).
"No, the next journey. It had gone, so she had to wait. She tried toride the bicycle, but couldn't quite manage it. So he showed her hispictures, as he did to us."
"Before she went to the Golf Club, or after?"
"She didn't say."
"And he didn't even ask why the bicycle had been sent for?"
"Not a word about it. He just put it on the tram."
I can't say I much liked the look of this. I remembered how he hadformerly bamboozled me.
"Then he simply accepts the situation?" I said.
"Whatever it is, apparently."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, that's the funny part. What _is_ the situation? You see, Arnaud'sknowing you complicates it. If he hadn't known you I expect Alec wouldhave sent him about his business at the double. Not that you're to blamein any way; it's nothing at all to do with you. But then is Jennie toblame either for falling in love with the delicious creature? I toldAlec so. Oh, we had a lively hour yesterday while you and Julia were outbathing and walking and enjoying yourselves! Alec blustered, and hewouldn't have this and he wouldn't have that, but I asked him, 'Wherewas the harm if the young man came round in a straightforward way andtook his chance with the others?' 'I don't call this straightforward,'he said; and of course I could hardly say it was, but we've all beenyoung once. Anyway, the long and the short of it was that there's to beno more bicycle-riding, but he hasn't forbidden her to see him providedeverything's above-board and we're told about it."
"Was that a concession for my sake?"
"It's for Jennie's sake. It's her happiness I'm thinking about. You'venothing to do with it."
"Except to provide his credentials," I thought, but said nothing.
I begin to like it less and less. Not one single thing about it did Ilike. Julia was supposed not to know this Arnaud, but that had notprevented her from thrusting herself into his affairs and lyingunblushingly about an appointment at the Golf Club seven miles away atnine o'clock in the morning. And if Madge thought that Julia and Jenniewere "behaving with ordinary decency" at that moment, so did not I. Asfor Derry, honestly I was afraid of him. He had had a whole night inwhich to think over the almost certain consequences of that surpriseamong the sarrasin stooks, and if he was caught without a plan he wasnot the man I took him for. Julia might think she had scored during thathour and a half when he had shown her his pictures, but the change wasjust as likely to be in his pocket. Probably he had expected that thatbicycle would be sent for before the day was many hours old. The onlything he could not have expected was that Julia Oliphant would come inperson for it.
Then the dance ended, and Julia, as barefaced as she was barearmed, camestraight up to me, wide-smiling, daring.
"Well, George! Good morning! Enjoying yourself?"
"Hadn't Derry a nerve!" she had said to me when I had told her about thetea-party at Ker Annic. I don't think his nerve surpassed her own. Ilooked straight at her.
"Since it's good morning, come for a turn," I said.
Still smiling all over her face, she placed a resplendent arm on mine,and we passed out on to the terrace.
She wore an immense white hat, so cavalierly dragged down on one sideand so arrogantly jutting up on the other that from certain points youhad to walk half way round her before you saw her face at all. One eyelurked permanently within the recess of that outrageous brim. She hadalso done something to her lips.
There were little round tables on the terrace, and at one of these wesat down, vis-a-vis. She placed the backs of her clasped hands under herchin and sat there, magnetising me.
"Well, how goes it?" she said.
"I hear," I said, "that you're learning to ride a bicycle."
"No, George."
"What's that?"
"Not a bicycle. Only a free-wheel. I rode a bicycle years ago. It's onlythe free-wheel that's a bit tricky."
"You saw him?"
"Of course. Didn't Madge tell you?"
"And he knew you?"
"My dear George, do pull yourself together! He was expecting me!"
"What! By appointment?"
"No, no, no, I don't mean that. I didn't write or send him a telegram oranything of that kind. But, of course, he knew I was here. He knew daysago--before I came probably. What would be the first thing Jennie'd tellhim? That they were expecting a visitor, but it needn't make anydifference to their meetings. So of course he was expecting me. Perhapsnot quite so early in the morning, but oh, quite soon!"
"What I meant was, did he recognise you?"
"Recognise me? Why not? He called me Miss Oliphant and showed me hissketches. They're"--the eye I could see sparkled, taking in the wholebright terrace--"they're glorious!"
"What about the bicycle?"
"Glo--rious! He's a divine painter! Why, his books are like sawdustafter his painting! I don't paint worth a rap myself, but oh, I knowcelestial stuff when I see it!"
"What did he say about the bicycle?"
"I didn't go there to talk about bicycles. I went there to see hisglorious pictures and his glorious self!"
"And incidentally to meet an apocryphal person at the Golf Club."
"Pooh!" She took that in her stride. "But about those pictures----"
"Leave the pictures for a moment. Why have you avoided me the wholeafternoon until you came up a moment ago and said good morning?"
"Surely you can guess that?" Again the fascination of the smile.
"Guessing's lost some of its novelty for me lately."
"Well, I wanted to dance with Jennie, you see."
"I'm afraid I don't see."
She looked at me quizzically, reflectively. "N--o. Perhaps it isn't assimple as I thought. But you were glad when I danced with Jennie,weren't you?"
"I won't say glad. I was--very interested."
"Why?"
"You two--and him. That interested me enormously."
"Well, now you've very nearly got it. That dance was our understanding,Jennie's and mine. We had it all out."
"You didn't appear to be talking much."
"I don't think we spoke three words, but we had it out for all that."
"That's the kind of thing I give up."
"Make an effort, George. Y
ou don't think I'd do anything unfair, do you?As long as there was a fair way left, I mean?"
"I don't even know what you mean by fair."
"Well, you're on her side, whether you know it or not. It took meexactly one tenth of a second to see that yesterday. You want him to getgoing straight ahead again and marry her. Don't you?" she challenged mewith a brilliant look.
"Never mind my answer for the present."
"Well, you want that, and I want--something quite different."
"Jennie doesn't even know that you know him."
"What? How do you know what he's told her about me? Anyway, even if hehasn't, she knows I didn't fetch that bicycle for nothing. She smeltsomething in the wind, and now she knows perfectly well what it is."
"From that dance? Wonderful dance!"
"It's your sex that's wonderful. If you don't believe me, ask her."
"I don't think it will be necessary. There's just one thing you'veforgotten."
"What's that?"
"Him."
"Oh, I've forgotten _him_!" she smiled, touching the reddened lips withher fingertips.
"Him and what he may do. I think you'll find you've left that out of theaccount. We shall see.... So I take it you dodged me all the afternoonbecause we hadn't all been properly introduced to the new situation, soto speak? Is that it?"
"Yes, that's quite good. There's no stealing advantages now.Everything's on the square, and what sort of a vermouth do they give youhere?"
With that I asked her a question that for the moment surprised even her.I asked it perfectly seriously, seeking not only the unblinkered eye,but also the one within its deep ambush of white hat-brim.
"Julia, are you yourself in every respect the same woman to-day that youwere before we had our talk yesterday?"
She turned her head to watch the tennis-players on the sands below, theswallow-divers from the tall stage. She turned it further, and her gazepassed from the clustered villas across the bay to the awnings of thehotel, the sunny white of the balustrade, the waiter who approached inanswer to my summons. Then she looked at me.
"I know what you mean. Not just this hat and a touch of lipstick andthese"--she showed her arms. "I'm the same, of course, but I suppose I'mdifferent too. And I'm going to be different. Ask Jennie. She knows. Anywoman would know--just by dancing with somebody and never saying a word,George. One keeps one's eyes open and--adapts oneself. Jennie knows allabout it. Ask her."
And the flashing, daring, confident smile, which had vanished for amoment, reappeared.
It was her request for a vermouth that had prompted my sudden question.All at once I had found myself wondering who the man was, inBuckinghamshire apparently, who shared with myself the privilege ofhaving been refused by her. Not that I was interested in his identity;but from him, or from the man who had been attentive to her on the boat,or from somebody else, or from a whole series of men for all I knew, shehad--the slang is required--"picked up a thing or two." It was a far cryfrom that first cocktail in the Piccadilly to this hat, this revelationof arms, these conscious coquetries with bathing-wraps and auction withAlec Aird. Mind you, I knew as surely as I sat opposite to her that notone of these fellow-unfortunates of mine had had a scrap more from herthan I had had myself. They had been dismissed without compunction themoment she had had what she required of them. On Derry and on Derryalone her dark eyes were unchangingly set. No trifling, no flirtation bythe way, any more than to the rehearsal is given the unstinted kiss ofthe passionate performance. Therefore in this she was single andunchanged.
But she had seen Derry that morning, and that excited bombardment ofelectrons that seemed to emanate from him and to alter the nature ofeveryone who came into contact with him had worked an alteration in her.She might call it "adapting herself," but it was essentially more thanthat. For she had seen Jennie too, knew of their love, and had instantlyre-assembled and re-marshalled all the forces at her disposal. Whatevermight be her broadside of hat, arms and the rest, swiftly and craftilyshe had seen that there was one thing she could not ape--the simplicityof seventeen. Contest on that ground meant defeat in advance. In this,its vivid opposite, lay her desperate chance.
And, I thought with apprehension, no negligible chance either! For a manmay be young and innocent and grave and be entirely at the mercy of thisvery simplicity and trust. It is the woman old enough to be his mother,but not too old to have this shot left in her locker, who bowls himover. Lucky for him if a more contemporaneous passion already occupieshis heart.
VI
"So," she said, her eyes far away, "there are those wonderful pictures."
Yes, she would not hesitate to make capital out of his pictures too.
"The mere handling, quite apart from anything else----"
There again she had Jennie on the hip. Jennie might love his picturesmerely because they were his, but Julia painted, knew thetechnicalities, would make intimacies, opportunities, flatteringoccasions out of them----
"There's one, just a few bits of broken white ruins with her lyingthere--he wasn't going to show me that at first----"
But ah, her eyes had spied it out, and he had had to show it.
"You've seen them, George. Now I ask you, _could_ any boy of eighteenpossibly have painted them?"
That too she had the audacity to claim--that he was eighteen when shewanted him to be eighteen and forty-five when she wanted him to beforty-five. Here again Jennie Aird was to be put in the wrong. It was tobe an anachronism and monstrous that Jennie should love so widely out ofher age.
"Could he, I ask you? Doesn't it show? You were perfectly right when youtried to stop that flirtation between those two, George, and you'reabsolutely wrong in wanting it to go on now. She's no right whatever,and neither has he. Leave it to me. He called me Miss Oliphant, but itcan be Julia in five minutes, and anything else I like in ten----"
I did not choose to remind her again that she was leaving him out of thecalculation. I had warned her once, and it comforted me to think that hewas not quite so unarmed as she supposed against this sort of spiritualrape.... She went musingly on.
"'Miss Oliphant!' ... But wait a bit. It was myself and Daphne Wade forit before, and then it was all sentimental association and stained-glassand church-music and because he was wrapped in dreams. Sentiment's allvery well in its way, George, but give me Get-up-and-get. That's thecock to fight. Daphne euchred me once----"
"Where did you get these expressions?" I asked her calmly.
"----and she didn't get him either. He never knew the first thing aboutwomen. So here we are, with the situation an exact repetition of what itwas before."
"With Jennie playing Daphne's part?"
"For him. Why not? If he's the same again he's the same again, isn't he?But oh, when I saw him this morning!... It was exciting and terrific!You've looked at a photograph-album you haven't seen for years, Iexpect, but the things didn't move about and talk to you and ask you howyou were and show you their pictures----"
I couldn't help a light shiver. Certainly this woman might claim thatshe had lived through an extraordinary cycle of experience.
"So he's the same, and the same thing will happen all over again--exceptfor what _I_ do," she added wickedly.
"And that will be?"
She shook her head and pursed her mouth.
"No, no. I won't marry you, George, but I will be your friend. I'm notgoing to tell you that. You must wait. I see how difficult your positionis, and it will be much, much better if you're able to say afterwardsthat you didn't know anything at all about it."
"Isn't it already a little late to say that?"
"Well, least said's soonest mended anyway. Got an Officers' Woodbineabout you?"
"A what?"
She laughed. "You must get used to us young things, George. An Officers'Woodbine's a Gasper, otherwise a Gold Flake, otherwise a Yellow Peril,and therefore any sort of a cigarette. _He'll_ know what I mean, andhe'll laugh. He went through the war, you see. Oh, I shall be able tomake him lau
gh all right!"
So she would reap a profit even out of the war. I could not deny herthoroughness. I gave her a cigarette, and as I held the match for her Isaw that she made a note of my care for the brim of her hat. She wouldpass that too on to Derry as part of his education--that expensive hatsmust not have holes burned in them.
There were fewer bathers on the diving-stage now but the beach was ascrowded as ever. Julia noted hats, shoes, costumes; she noted men too,but no young figure in beret and vareuse appeared in therainbow-coloured coming and going below. Then the hum of an aeroplanewas heard, and "Look, that's rather amusing," she remarked as therebroke out from the machine, twinkling against the blue, a tinycirrus-cloudlet of white that slowly dissolved and was borneaway--leaflets for the races probably, or advertisements for somethingor other at the Casino.
We ceased to talk. For all I know she was revolving projects thatincluded a new free-wheel bicycle, fresh from its crate, with packinground its saddle and string and paper about its bright parts. Togetherwe watched the fluttering of paper melt away. A minute later you couldhardly have imagined that it had ever been there. There seemed no reasonwhy it ever should have been there. There seemed so little reason forany of our activities. Not one of those leaflets had fallen over theland, and had they done so, what then? A litter of paper from anaeroplane, a little of petty acts from a person, and the immensity ofthe blue persisting exactly as before. For the humming of that plane hadreminded me of another humming. I remembered a Tower, with a horse-ginthreshing at an adjacent farm. In that Tower too things had happened, somighty-seeming at the time, so hushed in the empty cells of its stoneheart now. I watched the plane out of sight.
There seemed so little difference between a handful of leafletsscattered over the sea and a handful of grasses seeded on that circularcoping, as long as the eternal Oblivion of the Blue brooded overhead.
Late that night, in the garden of Ker Annic, there kissed me a youngwoman who had never kissed me before. She kissed me, and then with a sobfled past the dark auracaria into the house. The young woman was JennieAird.
The next morning she had gone.
The Tower of Oblivion Page 8