The Tower of Oblivion

by Oliver Onions

  PART V

  THE HOME STRETCH

  I

  The next day we were five at the Hotel de la Poste. We sat long afterluncheon, on the creeper-awninged terrace that overhangs the PetitsFosses. The other tables had long since been cleared, but the waiters,smelling thunder in the air, kept well away from ours.

  My heart was sore for Alec too. Officially he had been driven to acceptthe sworn but unbelievable statement; in his heart he neither understoodnor believed one single word of it. It was so unlike the engineering andRugby football that he did understand. That to which his mind alwaysreturned was the plain meaning of these words: Treachery, Seduction andFalsehood.

  Madge's reception of the incredible thing had been one of the mostextraordinary experiences I ever had in my life. She and Alec hadarrived in Dinan at nine o'clock and had come straight to my hotel. At aquarter past nine I had locked my bedroom door against the interruptingbootboys and chambermaids who busied themselves on staircases andlandings. The morning stir also filled the courtyard below. Jennie andDerry I had told to keep out of the way until lunch-time. I had hastilycovered my bed, and Madge had sat down on the edge of it. During thewhole of the time I had talked, half a dozen Alecs in the variousmirrors had met and re-met one another as he had paced the room.

  First of all she had drawn an extraordinarily deep breath. Then slowlyshe had pressed her fingertips over her eyelids. Her lips had movedunder the little eaves made by her hands. She had had the air of tryingto see something anew, to see a succession of things anew, and to namethem as they came. She had sat there for quite two minutes, eyes hidden,lips moving, seeing, repeating....

  Then, "The Club----" she had breathed.

  And then, "Queen's Gate----"

  I had found myself nodding.

  "His brother--Arnaud--sketching----"

  She was well away now.

  Then suddenly her hands had dropped, she had stared at me, and a shrillcry had broken explosively from her.

  "The Beautiful Bear! Derwent Rose! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!...George Coverham, tell me--is it? _Is_ it?"

  "It is."

  "That afternoon--looking at himself in the picture--his brother inQueen's Gate--Arnaud--Derwent Rose--I knew it, I knew it all thetime----"

  And she had slid with my coverlet gently to the floor.

  And she did in fact recognise him--did pick out, as it were through somebright reversed telescope of time, that still-sealed but identicalbeauty of the grown man she had found so superb. He was like, as a sonis like a father, as for a fleeting instant a newly-born babe mayresemble a grandparent. She had wished to meet Derwent Rose. She had nowmet him, at this far end of a corridor of years.

  And I had had to pick her up from where she crouched, on a coverlet onmy bedroom floor.

  But give her a little time--the time to pull herself together--and youcould no more have persuaded Madge that it was not so than you couldhave got Alec to believe it was.

  "But why wasn't I told all this at once?" he had demanded, not twice orthrice, but twenty times. "Are you telling me now, or am I wrong in myhead? Why didn't you? Why didn't you? Then he could have been put wherehe belongs--in the asylum yonder----"

  And again, and yet again: "You brought him to my house, you brought himto my house! You practically introduced him under a French name--youdidn't contradict it anyway--you knew all about him--and I wasn'ttold--I'm only told after he's stolen my girl! Why didn't you tell me,Coverham?"

  But I considered that I had less to reproach myself with than hethought. I had done everything in my power to isolate him, to keep herout of his path. Madge, not I, had asked him to Ker Annic. Madge hadinvited herself to his hotel in St Briac. He had given me his word, Ihad trusted to it, and he had broken it. And had I at any time told Alecthe truth he would no more have comprehended it than he did now.

  So he had railed bitterly on, turning the nightmare over and over again,meeting and re-meeting himself in the mirrors, very much as Derwent Rosehad met and re-met himself in the windings of his marvellous life.

  "Oh, we're mad! We're all mad! Any chance of our waking up? And you talkto me about somebody called Derwent Rose as if I ought to know all aboutthe fellow the moment you mention his name! I never heard of a DerwentRose in my life! Who the devil is Derwent Rose anyway?"

  This at any rate Madge had been able to tell him.

  "But he says he's never written a book in his life! Who should know ifhe doesn't?"

  I made another attempt.

  "The idea, Alec, is that that is a corroboration of the whole thing. Hedoesn't remember that he ever wrote a book, and I've a notion it wouldbe safer not to try to make him remember. Another thing, Alec. You sayI'm mad. But you can have absolutely independent evidence any time youlike. Julia Oliphant's in Dinard. She knows nothing of what's happeningin this room. Go to her and tell her, from me, that she's to tell youall she knows about a man called Derwent Rose. Then see what she says."

  "And you say you're going to make a legal adoption of something that'sshaped like a man but ought to be kept in a padded room?"

  "I am if it's possible. The letter's written and in the box. All we cando is to wait till I've had a reply to it."

  "Oh, we're all daft, we're all daft!" he had cried, his head in hishands.

  And that was still his burden--that we were all daft. I will not denythat there seemed something to be said for it.

  My letter to my solicitors had taken me the best part of the night towrite. I wanted to be sure of the position without divulging too much.Derwent Rose existed; the record of his birth was to be found inSomerset House among the files for the year 1875, and nowhere was therea certificate of his death. If Derwent Rose as he now in fact was oughtproperly to have been born in the year 1902 or thereabouts, the thoughthad come to me that this difference might be bridged by my own legaladoption of him. Discreetly I had asked for information on this point.If the thing was feasible, Derry would then be George Coverham's son,and his marriage to Alec Aird's daughter would follow immediately. I hadnot seen what fairer offer I could make, and even Alec had grudginglyagreed--until the whole thing had once more overwhelmed him, and he hadcried out that we were all daft and ought to be locked up.

  That creeper-hung terrace at the back of the Hotel de la Poste willprobably never crash with its diners and waiters down into the moatbelow, but it always looks as if it might. A few slender iron strutsstepped on to the old corbels of the wall below support it; for the restit is suspended in the air, high as the nests in the great elmsopposite, part of the ivy of the outer wall on which the hotel is built.Save for its screen of creeper it is open to the sky, and its dozen orso tables stand behind the great letters you read from the Fosse farbelow--HOTEL DE LA POSTE.

  And if from the ramparts by St Sauveur you see the shirley poppies ofthe sunset in the east, here you see the sun himself, burningintolerable holes through the elms, and turning the creeper into acrewelwork of flame and the valerian of the walls to dark blood.

  But this was only after lunch, with the sun just outlining the wall toour left with brightness and shining on the fruit and cheese andcoffee-cups which the waiters were itching to clear away. In thepromenade below, absurd little hats put forth little feet, now fore,now aft, as they went about their affairs. Derry's eyes were musingly onthe walkers. Alec had compelled himself to sit at the same table withus, though his own meal had consisted of nothing but a bottle of wine. Afew moments before he had uttered a grunt, that had been understood tomean that, since there was nothing for it but to wait for letters fromLondon, we might as well wait at Ker Annic as here.

  Suddenly Derry removed his eyes from the hats below and looked at Alec,deferentially but obstinately.

  "Speaking for myself, sir----"

  Though he had nothing of Alec but his profile, he went on.

  "If you don't mind I shall not come. Sir George has tried to explain toyou, and I've tried to explain to you, that there was nothing for it butthe way I took. We've agreed i
t's no good going into all that again.Call it my pigheadedness if you like; I can't very well object toanything you call me; but I won't come. I'll come, if I'm still asked,when everything's settled up. And that should be a week at the outside."

  Alec turned. It was plain that he would loathe his son-in-law, when hebecame that, to the end of his days.

  "It will or it won't," he growled.

  "It can't be much longer than that, sir."

  "Can't it? Let me tell you how it can. I may have to swallow that insaneyarn for the moment; you've left me very little choice--took dashed goodcare of that. But you've got to find somebody else crazy enough to getit down yet."

  "What do you mean, Alec?" I interposed.

  "Any English parson," Alec flung over his shoulder as he rose and walkedaway.

  Derry sighed as his broad back disappeared into the hotel. When you havecut a knot it is difficult to tie it again. The straightforward courseof his choice seemed little less crooked than the other. Almost itseemed a mistake after all.

  II

  I perfectly well understood Derry's scruple about going to Ker Annic. Itwas the kind of scruple I should have liked a son of mine to have.Except as a husband he had no footing in that house, and except as ahusband he refused to enter it. I think he would have given much to havebeen able to say that he never had set foot in it, but that milk wasspilt.

  But Jennie would never be torn from his side, and the chances were thatMadge would not now be torn from Jennie's. So it looked as if eitherAlec must return to Dinard alone or else stay with us at the Poste andmake the best of it.

  Half an hour before lunch Madge had done an odd thing. She had called meaway for a moment from Alec's side, and had asked me in which house inthe Rue de la Cordonnerie I had found them. She had also wanted to knowMadame Carguet's name. Then she had gone off.... I had seen her embraceof Jennie on her return. Her hand now once more stole to Jennie's as,with Alec's departure, we continued to sit at the table.

  Again Derry sighed, but I think it was a little wilfully that he dwelton the gloomier side, and that it was not altogether unmixed despair. Wedo allow ourselves these little luxuries at eighteen or thereabouts.

  "Well, I've made a lot of bother," he sighed.

  Madge was half cross, half consoling. "Oh, I expect it will come out allright in the end," she said impatiently. "He'll come round presently."

  It began to look as if she herself had already come more than half-wayround. And, now that Alec and his thundercloud had gone, a waiterventured to advance.

  "Si on peut desservir, Madame----"

  Madge rose abruptly.

  "Yes, let's go out. It's no good sitting here getting morbid. Which wayhas my husband gone? Because just for an hour I'm going in the oppositedirection. Come along, let's all go for a walk."

  We left the creepered terrace, crossed the courtyard of the hotel, andcame out into the Place Duguesclin.

  I think I have discovered what it is that gives certain French facadestheir air at once luminous and austere. It is the roofs above them. Ourflat-pitched English roofs thanklessly send back heaven's light where itcomes from; but these, steeply mansarded, dormered, and hog's-backedagain above that--it is these that flash it into our eyes like mirrors,these across which the shadows of the chimneys lie, blots of black inthe glitter. The facades themselves may be flatly lighted or gloomedover with pastel-like shade; it is above that everything happens, abovethat the sun, the brick and the shining slate play out the drama of thealtering day.

  And the sun was Lord of Dinan that afternoon. He turned the arcades ofthe fishmarket to barrels of blackness, but crowned the roofs beyondwith flashing silver. The dark limes of the Place Duguesclin might drinkup his rays like green blotting-paper, but the east side of the Squaregave them out again as if the pale paint and chalk and plaster had beenself-luminous--faint greens of peeling ironwork, flaky blues of closedshutters, the dazzle of the roof, the chimneys like tall dominoes onend, patched with bricks of rose. And what a town for him to play with!The towers, the gates, the ivied encircling walls, are but the outershell of the immemorial place; within it, what pranks and gaieties oflight and under-light and hide-and-seek of shadows does not his Lordshipplay! Derry began to cheer up. Eighteen is never downcast for long. Thisfather-in-law-elect of his might sit morosely at the same table withthem or take his bottle of wine to whatever table he pleased; the sunwould shine on carved stone and old painted wood just the same. Yes,Derry bucked up, and in a bright voice began to take command.

  "I say, let's have a peep into the Cordeliers," he said. "It was shutthe last time I tried to get in."

  Under the legs of the Porches, across the street and in at the half-openportail we passed.

  Oh, yes, Derry was decidedly better. He had treated Alec with gravedeference, if not with entire submission; but now less and less did heseem to consider himself a culprit. As we passed along the cloisters hepaused to show Madge a "Ci-gist" or a bit of old woodwork let into awall; and from these he turned to the _affiches_ and class-lists of thewall on the other side. His head was high. He was Derwent Rose, fixedand indivisibly. If lately he had not been so, so much the better thesetimes than those. He was going ahead; he was going to marry; a yearhence might find him looking exactly a year older than he looked at thismoment; and though for the moment a certain modesty and humility mightbe due from him, abjectness and shame--no. He trod the cobbles and_dalles_ lightly by Madge's side. And I think that already the rogueknew that he could turn her round his finger as he pleased.

  For while Alec might never have heard of a novelist called Derwent Rose,and might secretly be rather proud of the fact, she had read every wordhe had ever written. She knew more about it than he knew about himself,since he now knew nothing. Perhaps, walking silently by his side, sherealised the power and passion at present folded up in him, but soonagain to be declared. And perhaps she saw even further than his ownre-creation. There is a passion of grandmotherhood, different, but evenmore unrelenting than that tender rage that brings us all into theworld. That Jennie should never have married was inconceivable; Jenniewas to have married whom she chose; and what, for beauty and gentlenessand knowledge and strength, could she have chosen better than this? Werethere whispers in Dinard? Madge was capable of dealing with them. Ifthere was talk, then there should be more talk, till all was talkeddown. By and by Madge would start her own, the authentic version of theaffair. And with this young man presently settled as George Coverham'sadopted son, and Jennie blushing and brooding on the other side of her,it would be a strange thing indeed if Madge Aird, who knew as much aboutintimate histories as anybody, could not put some sort of a face uponit.

  Authoritatively Derry led us through the cloisters and under a lowtunnel-like arch. We came out into a bright courtyard with plane treesand doors at intervals round it.

  "This is what I wanted to see," he said smilingly, but a little as ifwhat he wanted to see overruled everything else. "Especially that bitover there."

  It was a lime-white old court, with tourelles to the west and north. Inits south-eastern corner rose a slated ogival turret with a gildedornamental fleche. An old woman in a lace cap was filling a bucket at atap, and from one of the dark upper windows came a girl's light laugh.Through one of the doorways a glimpse could be seen of school-desks,grey and cracked and dry as the legs of the Porches themselves. Thetourelle in front of us carried a little side-belfry, and its inch-thickplaster had flaked off in great maps, showing the rubble beneath. Andagain the sunlight was absorbed by the plane trees, but blazed on theroof, made the fleche a vivid sparkle against the blue, and seemed topenetrate into the very substance of the soft decaying white.

  "Now just come and have a look at this," said Derry, striding across thecourt.

  The thing that he had brought us to see might almost have passedunnoticed in Dinan, where at every corner something that man's fine withas carved has been uncarved again by stupid and obliterating Time. Itwas no more than a bit of moulding, the upper edge of whic
h caught thesun, directly, making the cavetto underneath it a soft yellowing glow.But into that rounded plaster tourelle with the belfry a flat door hadat one time been placed without interruption to the moulding, and in theresult the sun had a frolic indeed. For no man had designed thatmiraculous accident where curve and flat met and deliciously quarrelled,to be reconciled again by the sun's laughing kiss. Never did light andits opposite more sweetly interchange and compose.... I don't want youto think this is my own observation. But for Derry I should probably nothave given it a glance. But for him it was a thing to come specially tosee. He stood before it, moving his hand a little this way and a littlethat, as in a sparkling room one will place one's hand over glass orwater to see whether it is indeed that which makes the littlefairy-ribbon on the wall. He peered underneath, he stood off, he glancedup at the sun. With his hand throwing the shadow, the sun and he werepartners.

  "What is it, Derry?" I asked him.

  He laughed. "What is it? I should say it was everything," he replied."Everything there is, and if there's any more, that too."

  "Are you going to paint it, dearest?" Jennie asked.

  He turned. "Eh?" he said.

  And there, in that sun-flooded court, I had a swift premonition.Something seemed to tell me that he was not going to paint it. Neitherwas he going to write about it, nor even to speak of it again. He had nowish to communicate it to any other person, by any means whatever. Thathe himself possessed the pure understanding of it was enough; he wouldnot even care that any should know that he knew, so he might but havethe bliss of knowing. His painting was over, as his writing was over.Contemplation, withdrawal, solitude, the infinite soft ecstasy of beingat one with that which is not one self, though it were but the sunlighton a bit of fifteenth-century plaster--that, it now flashed suddenly onme, was what we might henceforward expect.

  And though he understood all mysteries, and had all knowledge, yet henow had something even richer to profit him. He had his Love.

  "I should very much like a cup of tea," said Madge.

  Instantly he was all graceful attention. The human desire for a cup oftea was equally a thing to be understood.

  "This glare does get in your eyes a bit," he smiled. "There's a niceshady place not five minutes away."

  As he led us back through the cloisters he all but took her arm.

  His place was gratefully shady. Through a small teashop one passed intoa sort of leafy cage that, I learned, had at one time been an aviary. Itwas empty, and at a little rustic table against the trellis we satdown.

  "Would you mind ordering, Sir George?" he said. "This is one of myoff-days for French, I'm afraid."

  I ordered tea.

  My new premonition proceeded to take still further possession of me. Ashe chatted with modest freedom to Madge I fell more and more intoabstraction. I suppose that in all the circumstances it was my part tohave taken charge of the conversation, to have guided it through therocks and shoals of the difficult position, but I couldn't. Anyway heseemed quite capable of doing so.

  Capable? There was nothing of which he was not capable. And yet at thesame time he was capable of nothing! For, supposing that my forebodingwas right, what was his future? Isolation and Oblivion indeed! What mancan live, sufficient unto himself, excommunicated from the world,wrapped in the vanity that he is not as others? Who dare dwell alonewith Truth? Is it not our anchorage and our joy to run with our littlehalf-truths in our hands and to thrust them upon our neighbour, that hemay admire and share them with us? Who so great that some suchlittleness is not the very leaven of his life? Derwent Rose had written;Derwent Rose had painted; and now Derwent Rose would withdraw himself tosome Tower, shut the door behind him, and be forgotten of men becausetheir affairs were too small for him.... It was just as well that I wasgoing to adopt him. What otherwise would his living be? In what cornerof earth would he plant his cabbages and cherish his perfect andunprofitable knowledge?

  And would he retain his simplicity of heart, or would he harden intoarrogance, sour into contempt, and--yes, it had to be faced--once moreask of God that One Question Too Many?...

  And she, his meek and sweet Semele? How long would she endure thispartnership of his Oblivion? How long would it be before she prayed thatthat Tower might fall and crush her into the earth? She was only JennieAird, seventeen years old, with the nape under her red-gold hair hardlyyet browned by its exposure to the sun. Happier--I cannot say; butbetter perhaps for her had she never seen this lovely lad who was sosoon to be my son. She had married an angel, had endured his caress. Butshe could not follow him to his skies.

  It was half-past five when we reached the hotel, and Alec was therewaiting for us. He asked Madge where we had been, and when she said tothe Convent of the Cordeliers I am pretty sure that I heard him mutterunder his breath that that was exactly where "he" would spend his sparetime--hanging about a girls' school.

  "Well, I suppose you're staying here to-night," he said gruffly to hiswife. "I'm going back. I may come again to-morrow. Better put a stop tothose inquiries--unless they take it into their heads to bolt again. Ishall probably be here by the nearest train to midday. I'm off now. Goodnight."

  Poor fellow! I suppose it was the nearest approach to a kiss he couldbring himself to give his wife and only child.

  Something, I forget what, happened about our table on the terrace thatnight, and we had to dine in the room of which it was an extension. Thesun was having his last and most magnificent fling for that day. Heturned the room in which we sat to ebony-black. The eye could hardlydistinguish in the corners the neo-Greek furnishings of key-pattern andfretted valances, of amphorae on pedestals, of frieze and dentel and shamblack marble. But everywhere through the ebony ran like wildfire a goldthat the eye could hardly bear. A waiter would be lost in blackness savefor a spot of burning gold on brow or nose-bridge or knuckle; a glass, aknife-blade or the edge of a plate would flash like a diamond. Thecreeper outside flamed like the Burning Bush itself; you would not havethought that the head of a woman dining under it could have flamed more,yet it did. And the glass of water she lifted pierced like a heliographinto the room.

  And it was as we dined, not talking much, that Madge capitulatedcompletely. The sun played "I spy" with the white hand she suddenly puton Derry's brown one. She was not speaking to me, but I heard.

  "Oh, my dear, dear boy--you'll see it will be all right--be a littlepatient--his bark's ever so much worse than his bite--and come and saygood night to your mother presently."

  III

  Derry now wore the English suit he had worn on the day when he had cometo tea at Ker Annic, Jennie the white frock and the little white cap inwhich she had stolen out of the house that night. I never knew whatbecame of their French clothes. To all appearances we were now fourEnglish sight-seers in a place where English sight-seers are bumped intoat every turn. And I must mention a curious little incident thatoccurred when, the next morning, after breakfast, we left the hotel andstrolled into the Church of St Sauveur to see how the little girls weregetting on with their decoration for the approaching fete.

  There is only one decent piece of glass in St Sauveur. That is thewindow of the north transept that looks down on the burial-place of DuGuesclin's heart. As we passed among the gay and lightsome shrinesJennie happened to pause under this window. I saw his sudden dead stop.

  It is a remarkable thing when a man does the same thing twice in hislife, each time for the first time. He looked at Jennie in St Sauveurjust as, all those years before, he had looked at somebody else in avillage church in Sussex; and he had no knowledge of the repetition. Shestood there, all low-toned pearls of frock and cool dark apricot of faceand neck; her hair peeped forth beneath the little hat; and there, underthe mellow ambers and ruby-dust and bits of green that might have beendyed in Dinard's sea, for a minute she was aureoled.... She moved on,and we followed.

  But in that moment it was not he who had been haled back into thatearlier time. That was all over for him. He did all anew. It was Imys
elf who had come close to the ghost of my own youth.

  The nearest train to twelve o'clock, by which Alec had said he wouldarrive, was the one reaching Dinard at twelve-fifteen. The one beforethat, leaving Dinard at ten-twelve, ran on certain days only, andmoreover would hardly have allowed Alec the necessary time in which tostop the various inquiries he had set afoot. Therefore we had a longmorning to ourselves, and it mattered little how we spent it. Indeed itmattered very little now what we did with our time until my lettersshould arrive from London.

  So once more that morning, watching Derry, I seemed to be watching, notthe Derry actually by my side, but a Derry who had been a stripling whenI had been in my middle twenties. For example, a troop of dragoonsclattered past, in blue steel hats, dark blue tunics, red breeches,black boots; and I saw the sparkle of his eyes at the four red pennonsthey carried. Just so, for all I knew, his eyes had sparkled when he hadfirst seen the sentries at the Horse Guards. We strolled on to the PorteSt Louis, and under its arch he paused. He examined theportcullis-grooves, the remnants of hinges, the steep couloirs downwhich the stones had been rolled and the boiling water poured from theguard-room above. I don't know whether in his other boyhood he had knownYork or Sandwich, but I saw by his face that his memory reduplicatedthose old echoings, the clanging of iron, the hurtling of stones, theshouting of men within the ringing arch. Outside in the Petits Fosses itwas the same. He peered into slits, glanced at the machicolations aloft,measured salients and re-entrants and dead-ground with his eyes. I thinkhe saw that "belier a griffes" again in use, the staggering storied sowpushed up to the walls by the horses and oxen in the hide-hung penthousebehind.... And this same man had seen modern war! He had flung the Millsand the "hairbrush," had worn a box-respirator, seen wire-netted gunpitsand flame-throwing and the white puff-balls following the aeroplanesthrough the sky. Extraordinary, extraordinary! I could not get used toit....

  At twelve o'clock I walked on to the station to meet Alec. His train wasa few minutes late. It drew up on the farther set of rails. At Dinan onewalks across on the level, and as I advanced to meet him I saw himappear round the engine.

  But not until a moment later did I see that he was followed by JuliaOliphant.

  She was dressed in travelling-tweeds, but it was not the tweeds thatfilled me with the instant conviction that she was departing and hadcome to say good-bye to Madge. It was rather something indefinable inher face. Nor had she come to corroborate my story. She and Alec haddoubtless already got that over, if ever it could be got over. Shegreeted me with a faint smile, but without speaking. In fact I don'tthink that one of the three of us spoke during the seven or eightminutes it took us to reach the Poste.

  Once more something had happened about our terrace-table. Perhapsbecause of the slight lateness of Alec's train, added to the quarter ofan hour we had already delayed our meal (for dejeuner at the Poste is attwelve), the only table capable of seating six had been made over to aparty of visitors who would depart in little more than an hour by thevedette.

  This, however, seemed to suit Alec rather than otherwise. He took Madgeby the arm.

  "Then you come over here," he said to her. "You've got till six o'clockto talk to Julia. I want a word with you first."

  "And I want a word with you too," I heard her reply as she turned tofollow him.

  So Madge and Alec lunched some tables away, out of earshot, while Juliaand Jennie, Derry and myself, sat down behind the iron "O" of the signHOTEL DE LA POSTE.

  Had it not been for Derry I think our lunch would have been as silent asour walk from the station had been. Jennie rolled bread-pellets andfiddled with salt. I moodily wondered whether Julia would not have donebetter to have taken her farewells with Madge as said and have stayedaway. But it frequently happens that a happy mood at the beginning ofan acquaintance sets the key for the meetings that follow. Derry hadcome off gaily best with Miss Oliphant when, instead of questioning herabout that bicycle she had fetched from St Briac, he had anticipated herand had taken the wind out of her sails with smiling acquiescence; andhe now was wreathed in ease and charm. There was a dash of thegentlemanly devil about that son-elect of mine. His grey-blue eyes werefrequently downcast, but when he did lift them that imp of fun andmischief peeped unmistakably out.

  "I'd no idea when I showed you my sketches that morning that you were apainter yourself, Miss Oliphant," he said demurely over his soup."Jennie only told me afterwards. I don't think that was quite fair ofyou.... What do you paint?" asked the man who had stood before her,stripped to the waist, with her sewing-machine held aloft.

  "Very little lately," said Julia composedly.

  "Now you're putting me off. But of course I ought to have known. You canalways tell by the way a person looks at a thing whether they knowanything about it or not. Do tell me what you paint!"

  "I'm supposed to be painting Sir George's portrait one of these days."

  "Ah!" A polite little inclination of the head made you forget themischief for a moment. "I'm no good at portraits. Never dared try, infact, except for that sketch of Jennie, and you can hardly call that aportrait. It would take more experience than I've got. You'd have toknow a good deal about a person before you risked painting theirportrait I should think, wouldn't you?"

  And that of course was pure mischief again, for he was virtually tellingher, though without words, that she knew very little about him if shehad expected him to give his intentions away by making a fuss about thatbicycle. And similarly unspoken was his daring little invitation toher--to her who had drawn him from memory as King Arthur, in armour anda golden beard--"Won't you learn a little about me and paint me one ofthese days?"

  So I watched her as she saw, for the second time in her life, what I sawfor the first time in mine--the father of the man he had been and was tobe again, his acts and gestures varying with a thousand accidents ofcircumstance, but himself essentially and unchangeably the same. You maycharge me if you will with laying claim to knowledge after the event,but there radiated from every particle of him his own yet-foldedpotentialities. His gentle mischief towards her was the germ of thatmasterful wit that had made the Barnacles of _The Vicarage of Bray_ skipat his pleasure. His good-humour and urbanity and willingness to talkwhile we sat oppressed and silent were, in little, the qualities thathad bloomed in his mature work, _The Hands of Esau_. Only the fiercepassion of _An Ape in Hell_ was to seek, and none could have said thatit did not lurk there, inappropriate to the occasion, therefore uncalledon, but deep-slumbering under all.

  And if I was able to make a dim guess or two at these involutions, whatof this woman to whom it was not guessing, but open knowledge? In hermind was a parallelism indeed! I had seen one trifle for myself thatvery morning--his sudden stop when Jennie had paused under the window ofSt Sauveur; but of just such bright threaded beads of memories her wholelife, all of it that was worth anything to her, had been composed. Herunwavering love had been the string that had held all together. And notonly did she sit there now telling, as it were, these beads over, to thelast one drowned at the bottom of the pools of her deep eyes; she hadthem uniquely and desolately to herself. He, who had provided them, hadno part whatever in them. She could no longer say "Do you remember thisor that." He remembered only from the moment of his setting eyes onJennie. As unconsciously as when he had stripped to the waist for her,as unknowingly as when he had swum before her, he now seared her in hisvery innocence and ignorance. A village church--Sussex fields andlanes--a day at Chalfont--another day somewhere else--and a week-end atmy house ... oh, the jewels were quickly counted. Perhaps she hadothers of which I did not know. If so, they were the secret of the eyesthat looked away past the elms, down on to the walking hats in the Fossebelow.

  And he would grow up again, but she could only continue her life. Inanother twenty years he would be as old as she was now; but she, Imyself ... only Jennie, only Jennie would be by his side on that distantday. At some still unknown fireside, in some unguessed house or garden,they would speak of "poor old Miss Ol
iphant, poor old Coverham," longsince out of the way. Different generations, different generations!

  And--I cannot be sure of this, and I shall never know--but I do notthink that by this time he, who had started the whole mystic thing, hadthe least recollection of anything whatever he had been and done.

  "But look here, Miss Oliphant," he was saying. "Jennie's going to liedown this afternoon; won't you let me take you for a walk? Let's go toLehon or somewhere. You don't mind, do you, Jennie? And"--he laughed,perfectly conscious of his charming and irresistible impudence--"itseems awfully stiff to go on calling you Miss Oliphant! Sounds sofearfully high-and-dry! Oh, I know! Shocking scandal! But if you'll comefor a walk with me----" He twinkled.

  Jennie had not uttered a word. Nor had she eaten more than a few crumbs.Suddenly she got up.

  "I'm going to lie down now," she said. Then, turning timidly to Julia,"Can you come with me for just a minute--Julia?"

  Julia got instantly up, passed round the table, and preceded her intothe hotel.

  Other lunchers also were astir. The party of visitors who had usurpedour table were settling up with the waiter. Derry and I sat awaitingJulia's return. Alec and Madge, at the neighbouring table, seemed tohave finished their talk. I did not know what Alec's announcement to herhad been. What she had said to him I thought I could guess.

  Suddenly, after an absence of barely five minutes, Julia reappeared. Shewalked straight up to Madge and held out her hand.

  "What?" I heard Madge's surprised exclamation. "But I thought----"

  "----by the boat, I think ... ever so much ... delightful...."

  She shook hands with them and crossed over to us. She looked straightinto Derry's face. We were all standing. The five or six words she spokewere as if she was telling those beads again. Each one was isolated,bright, lingering yet relentlessly passing, a thank-offering, aprayer----

  "So--long--Derry--dear ... all--the--best," she said, her hand in his.

  "Good-bye--Julia," he said, smiling.

  She walked away.

  I caught her up in front of the hotel. Little groups of people movedacross the lime-shaded Square, all in one direction, seeking the Porchesand the Lainerie, leaving themselves comfortable time for the vedette.We followed them. She did not take my arm, neither did any word passbetween us.

  Under the Porches, past the Convent we went. The groups of people becamemore frequent as they concentrated from various luncheon-places. Wedropped down the steep astounding street that is called Jerzual. We werenearly at the Porte, of which the twelfth-century portion is the modernpart, before she opened her lips.

  "I hate people who cry," she said suddenly.

  Then she closed her lips again.

  I supposed she meant Jennie. I didn't answer.

  She only spoke once more. This was at the embarcadere, as she stepped onto the vedette.

  "Don't wait," she said. "I suppose I shall be seeing you in London sometime."

  Obediently I turned away.

  IV

  Alec had had nothing new to say to Madge. Only the variations had been alittle more elaborate. The thing was as lunatic to him as ever, and itall came of not stopping in one's own country. Things like that neverhappened at his office in Victoria Street or on the Rectory Ground atBlackheath.

  "You can stay on here if you like, but I'm off back," he said. "Andthe next time you catch me in France or anywhere else foreign youcan tell me about it. And you can let me know when they're married.Does that three-eighteen run to-day, or is that another of theirSundays-and-week-days excepted?"

  "The waiter will tell you," said Madge.

  "Damn the waiter," said Alec.

  So there were four of us at the Hotel de la Poste.

  I don't know what happened to letters during those early September daysin Dinan. Somebody told me they went on to Paris to be sorted; I onlyknow that it took an unconscionable time to get an answer from a place Icould have got to and back again in a couple of days. And as three, andthen four days passed, I think I could have written a Guide Book toDinan, so familiar with it did I begin to come. And always it was alaughing, buoyant, affectionate and extraordinarily clever Derry whoconducted us everywhere.

  Then, when finally my letter did arrive, it was inexplicit, and I hadeither to go to London myself or write again. It was Madge who entreatedme to stay. So I wrote my second letter.

  Often we went out into the surrounding country as a change from thetown. Derry never touched a brush, never once mentioned painting.Occasionally he and Jennie went off together somewhere, but for the mostpart we kept together. So far I had to admit that there was no sign ofhis young godhead being too much for his simple white-hearted Semele.She adored him with every particle of herself, from the feet that ranto meet him to the eyes that continually thanked his face for being whatit was. And never Bayard nor Du Guesclin nor Beaumanoir of them all hadserved his lady with a gentler love than young Derwent Rose had forJennie Aird.

  One morning at a little before ten we went up into the Clock Tower inthe Rue de l'Horloge. This tower, together with the belfry of StSauveur, is the highest point of the ancient town that crowns Dinan'srock. Up and up inside the turret we mounted, through lofts and emptychambers and timbered garrets, till the stone gave way to slate and woodand lead, and the soft tock-tocking of the clock itself began to sound.The clock is in a room with a locked and glass-panelled door, a machineof brass on an iron table, with a slow escapement, compensatedpendulums, and the white hemp ropes of the weights disappearing througha hole in the floor to the stories below. On the iron table stood anoilcan, and the small indicator-clock showed a few minutes to ten. Acircular piercing in the wall gave us light, and light also streameddown through the opening where the wooden ladder rose to the upperplatform. We peered through the glass door, while "Tock-tock, tock-tock"spoke the unhurrying clock....

  Then on the verge of ten a large vane slipped and dissolved itself intoa mist, to the murmur of moving wheels. Four times on an open thirdsounded the warning tenor bell overhead; and then the twin vane slippedand dissolved. There was a clang that shook the timbers inside theirskin of lead....

  "Come along, Jennie!" cried Derry, making a dash for the belfry, whileagain the bell thundered out....

  It was two short flights up, but Madge and I were after them in time tohear the last two strokes. The structure still trembled with an enormoushumming. This lasted for minutes, wave succeeding wave, crests andtroughs of lingering sound, diminishing but seeming as if they wouldnever quite cease. Our eyes sought one another's eyes expectantly as wewaited for the last murmur of the hymning metal....

  Then light voices floated up from the street again, and the noises ofthe town could be heard once more.

  "Just look at the view!" said Derry, hanging half over the rail.

  But I wanted a rope round my waist before I approached that rail. A headfor heights is not one of the things of which I boast.

  Another day, this time in the afternoon, we pulled in a skiff a mile ortwo down the Rance, where men were fishing with the "balance"--the neton the crossed bough-like arms that made a dripping bag while the roperan over the pulley of the pry-pole. Men used the same machine in thedays before Moses, they are using it to-day on the Rance and theYang-tse-Kiang. It was this vast antiquity that seemed to strike Derry,even more than the fortifications had struck him, even more than thatclock that tried to measure with its "tock-tock" something that had nobeginning and can have no end. Several times he seemed on the point ofspeaking, but each time desisted. There was nothing to be said, no wordthat, like the clock, was more than "tock-tock, tock-tock." And Ifancied that for a day or more past he had talked much less, that he wasceasing to talk, as he had ceased to write, as he had ceased to paint.He sat for long spells thinking, as if measuring that which was himselfagainst all that was not himself and coming to his understanding aboutit.... He and Jennie had the oars. Suddenly he gave a little laugh, verymusical, and took the oar again.

  "Stroke," he said.
<
br />   We set off back up the stream.

  We landed at the Old Bridge and began the ascent to the town; but nearthe Arch of Jerzual, almost on the very spot where Julia had said shehated people who cried, he stopped again. From a dark interior on ourleft had come the knocking of a hand-loom. We entered, and Madgetranslated his questions into French.

  Once more he seemed to find the same fascination--the spell of theoldest and of the newest, the first primitive principle of which ourmodern inventions are but elaborated conveniences, man measuring hisstrength and pitting his wit against all that is not man. So men hadfished, so they did fish. So they had woven, so they did weave. They hadfought in steel caps with hand-grenades in the past, they fought insteel caps with hand-grenades still. And nothing to be written, paintedor said. As it had been in the beginning it would be until the end. Amomentary life was not meant for the expression of these things. Theywere for contemplation, perfect understanding, and--silence.

  That was on a Saturday evening. After dinner we strolled to the Jardindes Anglais again and stood looking over the ramparts. There were noshirley poppies in the sky now, but a serene unbroken heaven, a tenderblue fading to the still tenderer peaches and greys that merged into thedarkening land. The cypresses below us were inky black, the river wherethe fishermen had fished a soft thread of inverted sky. Folk again tooktheir evening stroll round the walls. None of us spoke. I was wonderingwhat Julia Oliphant was doing in London.

  Suddenly Derry broke the silence. He did so in these words.

  "It's all right for Lehon and the Chateau de Beaumanoir to-morrowmorning, I suppose?"

  "Yes, dear boy," said Madge.

  How was she to have known, how was I to have known, how "all right" itwas for Lehon, the Chateau de Beaumanoir and--to-morrow?

  V

  The chateau stands a bare mile out of Dinan, and we had been there halfa dozen times before; but Derry loved those crumbling old towers ontheir upstanding rock. It rises almost sheer, buttressed round with thebroken works, and from the talus to the plateau on the top is a networkof precipitous paths. You ascend it very much as you can, and the viewthat is blocked as you approach it breaks on you from the summit--firstthe sickening gulf of air at your feet, then the three or four miles ofthe southward plain, and the canalised Rance parting company with itsattendant road to Tressaint, ecluse after ecluse, until it picks it upagain towards Evran. That is when you look south. To the north, peeringdown through oak and beech as you might peer over the edge of a nest,are glimpses of white ribbon--the road along which you have passed. Andon the level plateau in the middle, enclosed by oak and beech and lime,rubble-built but with dressed stone buttresses, stands the tiny modernChapel of St Joseph of Consolation.

  Jennie and Derry waited at the top of the last zigzag for Madge andmyself, and then gave us time to recover our breath. It was eleveno'clock of a Sunday morning, and Dinan's bells sounded lightly in thedistance. They languished almost like human voices as, instead ofquickening for the final summons, they delayed, with longer and longerintervals until, when you expected just one more sweet note, all wassilence.

  I think that what gives that chateau-crowned rock its air of lightsomespace is that you come to it from Dinan, where everything crowds uponyou, the Porches trample you, and the people across the street go to bedpractically on the sill of your window. True, from the ramparts you havesweep enough, but unless you go there very early you get a mediocre,unbroken illumination, with every shadow hidden behind the face that isturned towards you, and two tones paint all, the pale blue of the skyand the average of the lighted land. So there is little to be seen fromthe Chateau de Beaumanoir to the north.

  But turn your face south, and--ah! That is where the brightness lies!That flat average of greens and browns disappears, and you are looking,not at colour, but at Light itself! And yet every shadow points directlyat you. All the sun that there is is on your own face--there, andgraving as if on a tarnished silver plate a glittering outline roundevery object you see. Not a green, not a brown; all is grey; buttwinkles with a silver edge every tree of Rance's valley, and fumingsilver is every thread of house-smoke that ascends. That stretch of lockthat is lost again towards Tressaint is a needle-flash, and you see thesummer clouds only as you see the poplar-sheddings that float over thegulf in June--as if save for their edges they did not exist.

  Then, turning your back on the glitter, you see the heavy browns andgreens and ochres of the ruins once more.

  "Do they never open this chapel, I wonder?" said Derry, peering throughthe grille of the closed door.

  I peeped in after him. It had a tiny altar with four tapers, and ablue-and-white pennon with a device upon it. The little porcelain Virginwas blue and white and gold, and under the three lancet windows a dozenrickety chairs stood. The walls were whitewashed, with a picture hereand there, and there was a rat-hole in the floor. A small and very badrose-window reminded me of the window of St Sauveur, and I turned awayagain.

  We pottered about here and there among the scrub and masonry. Seen fromabove, the west tower, that which looks over to Trelivan, is the mostcomplete; but the one to the south-west can be entered by climbing downhalf-effaced steps in the thickness of the wall. I descended. But therewas nothing to see inside but the peep through a single loophole. Itswalls chirped with grasshoppers, and a thin screen of oak gave it aroof. I was restless, and came out again. I wanted my letters fromLondon. Then this interminable business would be quickly finished.

  But London reminded me once more of Julia Oliphant, of what she wasdoing, of what she would do....

  Madge was waiting for me when I re-ascended. The others were nowhere tobe seen. And we no longer had the ruins to ourselves. Over by the_zigzag_ path to the east of the rock I heard voices and the brushing ofbranches. But the colline is so overgrown with shrub that it is notdifficult to lose anybody. Derry and Jennie could not be far away.

  "I expect they're looking for blackberries," said Madge.

  "Then they'll be on the sunny side," I replied; and I led her across theshady plateau.

  Then suddenly Madge saw them, for she called "Be careful there,children!" They were standing on the brink of the southern tower,looking away into the brightness. Close to them a mountain-ash overhungthe deep, and about the scabious at the foot of it butterflies hovered,part of the airy light. Her hand was on his shoulder, her white frock aluminosity of grey shadow. About one pink glowing ear her loosened hairwas a radiance of coppery gold.

  But the newly-come party was close behind us. Through the leaves I hearda rustle and a woman's voice suddenly raised.

  "I'm sure I saw him come this way----"

  "I should get rid of the little beast if I were you," a man's voicegrowled.

  Then the woman's voice uplifted again. "_Puppetty! Puppetty!_ Oh, younaughty boy!"

  The man and the woman appeared.

  "Puppetty! Puppetty!... Excuse me, have you seen anything of alittle---- Good heavens alive, if it isn't Sir George Coverham! Of allthe--fancy meeting----"

  But I had eyes for her for one fleeting instant only. All at once therehad come a stifled cry from Derry. He stood there, dark against themorning light, embroidered round with light. His eyes were immovably onthat woman who had called the dog--on that Daphne Bassett who, in yearsthat were now clean-sponged from his memory, had been Daphne Wade.Jennie too was staring at her, bewildered that he should stare so. Herhand was still on his shoulder. She drew a little more closely to him.

  The struggle that began on his darkened face was a struggle to remembersomething; or perhaps its real beginning was that he seemed to rememberthat there was something to remember. But what? Not a book that he hadwritten? Not a book that she had written? Not two books, of which he hadwritten one and she the other? He had never written a book--had neverdreamed of writing a book; he left that to clever people like Sir GeorgeCoverham and Mrs. Aird--"Mummie."

  A picture, then? No, not a picture. He had dabbled in paint for abit--there was a lot of stuffy old canvas
in the hotel now--but itcouldn't be that.... He did not look at Jennie. His hands tried to puther away from him. He muttered hoarsely.

  "Let me go, Jennie, let me go."

  But she only held him the more closely, both arms now wrapped about him.

  Then he cried out sharply, loudly. "Let go--let go, I say--and don'tlook--take your eyes away--_don't look at my face_!"

  But she would now never let him go. She would look at his face, yes,even though he commanded her not to, because of what had already begunto pass there....

  And what that was you may see by turning back to the beginning of thisbook. Yesterday, in the Tour de l'Horloge, a clock had prepared tostrike the hour. It had begun with the soft fluttering of a vane thathad dissolved into a mist; there had been the murmur of mechanism, thosepreparatory notes on an open third.

  But this was not hearing. It was seeing. We all saw. Jennie saw.

  As the hues of a coloured top alter at a touch of the finger, so changebegan to succeed change over that face with its back to the morninglight.

  Oh, by no means violent ones at first. Quite gentle ones. We merely sawthe youth who had painted a few pictures, the young man who had swum theChannel, the athlete who had discussed tides and currents with boatmenin the Lord Warden at Dover----

  Then a certain acceleration (though you must understand that thisfantasia on Time that we watched is but comparative, happened in a fewinstants, more quickly than I can write or you read). Against the sun aglint of golden beard appeared and was gone in a twink. I had once seenthat beard at breakfast-time, in a South Kensington mews.

  But oh my heart! Then a terrific leap!... His whole form bulked, loomed.Eleven years descended on him like a Nasmyth hammer. He seemed to takethe very brain out of my head and to put it, not in France at all, butinto a house in Surrey with a pond in front of it, while he, with apunt-pole in his hand, brought a piece of water-starwort into JuliaOliphant's hand----

  His arm, both his arms, were over his face as he tried to hide it allfrom her. No cry broke from him now. But her arms were lockeddesperately about his waist. She would never let him go.

  Then somewhere a dog yapped, and at the sound the horrible life-slideceased. It ceased because it could not go further. How could it gofurther than that side-street off Piccadilly in which the woman who hadwritten _The Parthian Arrow_ had set a dog upon the author of _An Ape inHell_? Already I had started forward, but my foot caught in the scrub,and I found myself rolling, clutching wildly in the air for something tohold.

  But I swear it was for them and not for myself that I feared.

  Then, as they slowly swayed outward together by the mountain-ash, thebeautiful, re-transfiguring thing happened.

  A stupid woman with a wretched little pet dog! A rebuff on a pavementover a miserable literary squabble! Was it for _this_ that the years hadchanged on his face as the hues change on a spinning top? Was _that_ allthat this commonplace apparition of a woman had reminded him of? Why, hehad thought it had been something important, something to do with thepeace of churches, the beauty of coloured windows, the gloriousthunder-roll from the organ! He had thought it had something to do withhis boyhood's dreams, aspirations, vows! But only _this_!... It was notworth the trouble of having sought it. He had better get back to hisdeliverance.

  He laughed. The vane whirred in the opposite direction. He began to goback to Jennie----

  He swam back to her across the Channel, knowing now that she awaited himon the other side----

  He ran at Ambleteuse--ran swiftly to her.

  His eyes met hers in the glow of the headlights at Ker Annic----

  Once more he stood with her in that Tower of dead and forgottendoves--fled on silent wheels with her through the night--in that upperroom in the Rue de la Cordonnerie took her, stainless, into his ownvirgin arms----

  He was here again, back at the Chateau de Beaumanoir; young, beautiful,innocent, grave, his arm dropped now, looking into her eyes, calling toher.

  "_Look--look at me--yes, look, Jennie!_"

  "Oh, my God, catch them!" Madge screamed.

  But I don't think she saw what I think I saw. Let us say that the scrubwas treacherous, that it betrayed his foot; it makes no difference now,for I have no son. Why, after all, go forward again if going forwardmeant no more than that four-seconds pilgrimage from which he had butthat moment returned? Better as it was, neither forward nor back norstanding still on that edge of masonry or on any other edge. He drew herclose to him. Their lips met....

  "_Oh, Lord, Thou hast prevented him with sweetness; he asked life ofThee and Thou hast given him length of days._"

  We heard the parting of the bushes down below....

  A yard beyond the mountain-ash the butterflies continued to hover, andpast them the silver-flashing stretch of canal-lock by Tressaint couldbe seen once more.

  EPILOGUE

  I stood before the Tower at the Chateau de la Garaye. No thrashing-ginsounded, for the day's work was over, and in and out of the emptywindows of the glimmering Renaissance ruin the bats flitted. Madge, Alecand I were leaving France to-morrow. There was nothing further to do,there is nothing further to write. I shall never re-visit Dinan.

  But I did not enter their Tower. I should hardly have done so even hadnot that which showed in the saffron sky seemed to forbid me. For itseemed to me the perfect symbol of his end. It was the old moon in thenew one's arms.

  Just so, just like that curved golden thread, so thin that a few minutesbefore it had not been to be seen--just so had that tender crescent ofhis youth held that dim and gibbous and ghostly round of his past. Justso he had been haggardly haunted, but touched with golden innocence inthe end. And he himself seemed to me to be peeping into that Tower whichI did not enter, as for ages other crescents had peeped when the doveshad filled that hollow with their crooning and no other sound had brokenthe hush of eve. And thenceforward he would always re-visit it,embracing with a gilded edge the whole dark content of man.

  But they lay elsewhere. They are not together, but side by side. Alecwould not have it otherwise, and Madge did not seem greatly to care.

  The parallelism of their fair young bodies is the closing parallelism ofthis book. On his stone is a discrepancy that commonly passes as acarver's error. They lie thus:

  JANET AIRD DERWENT ROSE

  b. 1903 d. 1920 b. 1875 d. 1920 at the Chateau de Beaumanoir at the same Time and Place aged 17 years aged 16 years

  R.I.P.

  * * * * *

  TRANSCRIBER NOTES:

  Punctuation has been corrected silently.

  Alternate spellings have been retained as well as some possible typosother than those listed below.

  page 001, typo "Side-slip" vs "Sidestep" has been retained in the TOC

  page 076, "hansome" changed to "hansom" (and the hansom with)

  page 149, "me" changed to "be" (it would be merely a)

  page 221, "magazin" changed to "magasin" (The magasin that enshrined)

  page 231, "A" changed to "A" (A demain)

  page 249, "magazins" changed to "magasins" (the magasins and the)

  page 256, "A" changed to "A" ("A ce soir")

  page 262, "forrarder" changed to "forrader" (for the distance forrader ou get)