Read The Tower of Oblivion Page 6

  PART I

  THE LONG SPLICE

  I

  As the little vedette approached Dinard Cale--I had got quickly throughthe Customs and come across with the hampers of that morning's fish--anAlec Aird out of a Men's Summer Catalogue waved his hand to GeorgeCoverham out of a flea-bag and called out a cheery good morning. It washardly yet half-past seven, so Alec must have been up betimes. He seizedthe two bags I pushed ashore and gesticulated to the driver of anondescript sort of carosse. Then he looked me up and down and grinned.

  "Ready for breakfast?"

  "I'm ready for some hot water and clean clothes," I replied. "No, itwasn't so bad."

  "And is this all the stuff you've brought? I asked you to come and staywith us, not just to drop in to lunch. Well, up you get. I don't supposeyou'll see Madge and Jennie till midday. That damned Casino; three a.m.again last night. But it's no good talking to Madge. It always ends inher doing just as she likes. Why, when I was Jennie's age I didn't knowthere was such a thing as a roulette-table.... I say, have you broughtany English tobacco?"

  I had not been in Dinard, nor indeed in France at all, since before thewar; but the long steep street where the little dark cafes were openingseemed very friendly and familiar. We rumbled past the English Club intothe Rue Lavavasseur, and instinctively my head turned to the right. Eachshort descending street gave the same remembered glimpse, of whitecasino or hotel at the bottom and the bright emerald beyond. Weclattered down to the Place, and then slackened again to the ascent ofdark tree-planted avenues. "Gauche--droit, I mean--starboard a couple ofpoints," directed Alec, whose French bears no very great strain; andafter ten minutes or so the sound of our wheels suddenly ceased. Wewere on the soft sandy drive that ended at the gate of Ker Annic.

  Alec Aird hates the Casino, partly because they won't let him smoke hispipe there, partly because he doesn't like his life strung up toconcert-pitch all the time. But Madge loves these vast vestibules ofshining mahogany and cut and bevelled glass, these palms that brush theelectric chandeliers, these broad terraces, all this bright restlessnessof hotels and shops and plage. So they had split the difference in thevilla they had rented. It stood high-perched among ilex andSpanish-chestnut, looking out over the rocks and islands that make ofthat bay a jaw full of cruel black splintered teeth. It had littlebroken lawns set with hydrangeas and beds and borders of blood-redbegonias and montbretia and geraniums and marguerites, the whole tiltedup as if it would have spilled over the rough cliff-top to the rocksbelow. The plage itself was hidden, but a little way out the translucentgreens began, dappled with a fairy-like refraction that brought thepurply shoals almost up to the surface. After that away northwardsspread the wide sea--serene yet curiously wistful, tender yet never gay,dreamily lovely but unflashing, unglittering--the pensive aspect of asea that has its back to the sun.

  "Here we are," said Alec as we pulled up in front of a chromo-lithographfrom a toybox lid, the villa of dove-grey with shutters of a chalkygreeny-white and slender ironwork everywhere--grilles of ironwork overthe glazing of the double doors, scrolled balcony railings, and ironpassementerie along the ridge of the mansard-roof. "Now look here, ifyou want to go to bed say so, and we'll all be SleepingBeauties--confound those rotten late hours for that kid----"

  I assured him that I had no wish to go to bed.

  "Right. Then come along upstairs, and sing out if there's anything youwant. You'll find me somewhere about when you come down. And you mightgive me that tobacco----"

  And, showing me up a staircase of waxed boards into my room, he left meto my toilet.

  The pergola in which I found him three quarters of an hour later was atthe bottom of the garden. Its roof was latticed, so that over the floor,over the garden chairs and tables, over our shoulders and hands andwhite flannels, lay an intricate shepherd's-plaid of gay shadow thatcrept like a net over us whenever we moved. A _bonne_ followed me withcoffee and rolls, and we sat down to talk and to watch the flatuntwinkling sea.

  We, or rather Alec, talked of Boche rolling-stock on French lines (did Itell you my friend was by way of being a consulting engineer?), ofcoasting boats building at St Malo, of France's prospects of recoveryfrom the devastation of the war. He thought they might pick up quickly,applauded the way they were putting their backs into it. And it may havebeen my fancy or the force of former associations, but already I wasconscious of a different atmosphere. There seemed to thrill in the veryair the push of a logical, practical, unsentimental people. I had feltit in the bustle of the porters and camionneurs on St Malo quay, in theunyielding Breton eyes of the fishwives in the vedette, in the tenfrancs that that scoundrel of a cocher had overcharged Alec. It began tobe impossible to look over that sunny emerald water and to say toyourself, "A man with two memories is bathing in that," to sit in thewarm cage of that pergola and to remember a man who clung to falsemiddles and had extraordinary things happen to him in the night. Beyondthe point a couple of fishing-boats and a brown-sailed bisquineappeared. Out toward St Cast crept an early pleasure steamer, its smoketrailing behind it like a smudge of brown worsted. From somewhere behindthat toybox of a villa came rapid exchanges in French--the day'sprovisions were arriving.

  Suddenly Alec looked at his watch. "I say, what about having a look inat the Stade? I expect there are a few of them there by now."

  "Anything you like; what's on?"

  "These elimination-trials for Antwerp next month," Alec replied, who wasa Fettes man and an International in his day, and is still a familiarfigure at Twickenham and Blackheath. "Haven't you seen the posters?'Debout les Athletes'--'Sons of the Patrie'--they've been all over theplace for months. All out they are too, and some dashed good athletesamong 'em. There's one fellow I've heard of called Arnaud--haven't seenhim--in fact he's a bit of a mystery ... but look here, we've only justtime for the tram. Come along----"

  The filthy little tram took us to the Stade in ten minutes. It was anopen field, with tracks and hurdles and a small white-painted GrandStand at one end of it, and already _les athletes_ had got down to work.There were perhaps a dozen of them, in zephyrs and shorts and sweaters,leaping, practising short bursts off the mark, doggedly covering theouter track or resting in twos and threes on the grass. Several of themwore little more clothing than a pair of shoes and a waist-sash. Theyflaunted their glossy sunburnt backs, stood with arms folded overuplifted chests, heads erect, eyes flashing, and never a smile. NoBriton would have dared to display such physical naivete. They mighthave been grimly training, not for a sporting contest, but for a duel tothe death.

  We watched them for an hour, and then the whooping of that horriblelittle tram was heard in the distance. It hurtled up to the Halte,fouling the air with the smoke of the dust and slate and slack thatserved it for coal, and we sat with our backs to the engine and tookwhat care of our flannels we might.

  The sluggards had descended by the time we reached the house again.Among the harlequin shadows of the pergola Madge advanced to me withboth hands outstretched.

  "Monsieur! Sois le bienvenu!" Then, standing back to look at me, "Whatnice flannels, George! Some of the Frenchmen here, quite nice men, goabout in the most extraordinary cheesecloth arrangements, and as fortheir shoes----! Yes, I think I can be seen with you. You can take meshopping this afternoon. I saw it in a window yesterday but hadn't timeto go in. ('It's' a hat, if you must know, Alec.) And this is Jennie,in case she's grown so much you don't remember her."

  There was a time when I used to kiss little Jennie Aird, but I shouldnot have dared to kiss the young woman who stood before me now.Take-aboutable, by Jove!... Jennie had her father's colouring,golden-red hair over a tea-rose-petal complexion lightly freckled; andif her eyebrows were faint, that somehow merely seemed to enhance thesteady clear pebble-grey of the gaze beneath. She was six inches tallerthan her mother, and whether it was the smallness of her short-featuredface that made full her beautiful throat, or whether it was the otherway round, I will not attempt to say. Nor do I remember whether her hairwas up or down
that day. I have an idea that at that time it wassometimes the one and sometimes the other. Her gesture as she offered meher hand had the proper condescension of such a creature for a batteredold piece of goods life myself. I wondered whether I ought to call herMiss Aird. These things come over one with rather a shock sometimes.

  We lunched in a shining little salon, the exact centre of which, whetheryou measured sideways, lengthwise or up-and-down, was occupied by anenormous gilt Ganymede and Eagle lamp slung by heavy chains from theceiling--for the lighting was either oil or candles at Ker Annic. Thenback to the pergola for coffee. The tide had receded, and the rocks andthe stakes that marked the channels stuck up everywhere menacingly--theFort, Les Herbiers, Cezembre. The warm air was laden with the smell ofgenets, the sky was brightly blue over our white lattice. I saw Alecpreparing to doze.

  "Well, what about Dinard?" I said to Madge.

  "Sure you wouldn't rather follow Alec's example? Very well, we'll dropJennie at the tennis-place and you and I'll go off on the prowl. I'll beready in five minutes. Jennie!"

  She ran up to the house, and I waited for her on the sandy drive.

  We walked into Dinard. The magasin that enshrined "It" was near theCasino, and there, in an impermanent little white-screened andgilt-chaired shop that had hardly been open a fortnight and would closedown again the moment the season was over, I had a soothing half-hourwhile Alec's money took wing.

  "Mais tiens, Madame"--the saleswoman's witty fingers touched, hovered,butterflied, while the hat became half a dozen different things underthe diablerie--"pose comme ca, en effet sur l'oreille--Claire, la voileverte--legerment--oh, m'sieu!" A delectable gesture of admiration ofeverything and everybody concerned, the hat, the veil, Madge, herself,as unabashed as the attitudinising of the sunbrowned young athletes. "Ondirait un sourire sur la tete de Madame!"

  So, on a purely hypothetical rate of exchange, Madge bought three, andwe sought the teashop and Jennie.

  All English-speaking Dinard meets at that teashop in the afternoon. Fromfour o'clock onwards it is a mob of youths in the blazers of Eton andCharterhouse and the Old Merchant Taylors, forking gateaux from theglass counters for themselves, their sisters, other fellows' sisters,their sisters' friends. Their days sped in tennis, bathing, tennis, ahurried dejeuner between the sets, tennis, watching tennis as theywaited for a partner or a court, a sudden flocking to the Le Bras fortea, tennis, dancing, chocolates, and the programme for the tennis forthe next day. They filled the ground-floor of the shop, made a continualcoming and going on the staircase that led to the room upstairs. Isteered Madge towards the table where Jennie was already seated, andfound myself with young Rugby on my right, his shirt open at the neck,flannels hitched up over his white-socked ankles. About me buzzed thewhirl of talk.

  "He saw him at Ambleteuse, and he did it in ten in his walking-boots ongrass----"

  "Rot! It's run in metres, not yards, and the record's ten andseventh-tenths----"

  "American----"

  "I bet you----"

  "Well, it's nearly the same, and in his boots on grass----"

  "Oh, put your head in a bag! Jennie, we've got Number Four Court forfive-thirty, remember----"

  "But I tell you this chap Arnaud----"

  "Do let me get you one of those strawberry things, Mrs Aird----"

  "My brother saw him--he just threw off his coat and waistcoat and ran ashe was----"

  "Mademoiselle, trois thes, s'il vous plait----"

  I spoke in Madge's ear.

  "She's a very beautiful child."

  "Jennie?" said proud Madge. "Rather a young queen, isn't she? But Alec'sperfectly absurd about her. Thinks young people to-day are the same aswe were. She shall have the best time I can give her."

  "Any----?" I looked the question.

  "No. Quite asleep. She's perfectly happy dancing and dreaming andtalking sport with these boys."

  "Who are they?"

  She told me. She knew half Dinard, and the printed Visitors' List gaveher the rest.

  "Well, well," was all I found to say, as I looked at Jennie again.

  For while woman's beauty is coeval with Time itself, you have only yourown allotted portion of it. The loveliness that comes too early or toolate is no more your affair than the dawns before your time, the sunsetsafter you are gone. Madge at the midday of her life was still within myreach at my post-meridian, but Jennie would bloom like a rosy daybreakwhen my own evening star appeared. Young Rugby, young Charterhouse,would write his vers-libre to that small head, sweet throat and thered-gold of her hair.... But I hardly know why I write all this. I amonly trying to show how sorely I had needed a change and how grateful Iwas now that it had come. I knew that I was welcome to stay with theAirds as long as I pleased. It didn't matter if I didn't write anotherbook for ten years, it didn't greatly matter if I never wrote another. Ididn't want to write. That ethereal sea, that multi-coloured plage, thegenet-scented air, the feeling that all about me were people who knewwhat they could not do and wasted no time in attempting to do it--ah,they live their lives from the beginning and end them at the end in thatfair and unperplexed land of northern France.

  II

  Both by Alec and Madge, Jennie's education was discussed before me withcomplete freedom.

  "Stuff and nonsense!" Madge would roundly declare.

  "Look at those two Beverley girls!"

  "Very nice girls, I should have thought," Alec would growl.

  "Yes, and who's ever going to marry them? Nobody as far as I can see.That's Vi Beverley's fault. She's let them sit in one another's pockets,and have their own silly family jargon, and think that the rest of theworld's a cinema just to amuse them, till they don't know how to talk toa stranger without being rude. They positively freeze any young man whogoes near them, and when they do go away it's to cousins. Familyaffection's all very well in its place, but you can have too much of it.Jennie shall take people as they are. If she does miss an hour's sleeponce in a while she can stay in bed all next day if she wants."

  "Better teach her baccarat and have done with it."

  "Well, she needn't faint when it's mentioned. This is 1920. If everthose Beverley girls marry it will be one another."

  "If she begins to think of marrying in another four or five years----"

  "She's not going to sit on the arm of your chair for five years whileyou read the _Paris Daily Mail_.... Anyway, about to-night's party----"

  Then, on the way to the Stade or the Club, I should have Alec's view ofthe matter.

  "When we were kids, if we were allowed to stop up once a year for apantomime ... beastly mixed sort of place like this too! Madge doesn'tknow half that goes on. Why, before I'd been here three days one of thewaiters at the Grand had the infernal neck to come up to me andwhisper----"

  I broke into uncontrollable laughter. The idea of a waiter whisperingalluring suggestions to Alec Aird of all people was altogether too muchfor me.

  "And what did you say?" I asked him.

  "Say?" said Alec grimly. "When I said 'Frog' he jumped, I promise youthat!... And mark you, these French fellows look after their own womenall right--got their hands on their elbows all the time. It's only ourconfounded ideas of freedom----"

  "But there's no harm in to-night's party----"

  "Oh, that's all right. That's at home. We can turn 'em out at teno'clock, and be in bed in reasonable time. It's that damned Casino Ibar----"

  And so on. Early to bed and a nap after lunch certainly suited Alec. Ihave seen once-fine athletes settle down like this before.

  I had been at Ker Annic some days, when about the last thing I expectedhad happened to me. I have just told you how little I cared whether Iever wrote another book or not. Well, that morning I had remained in myroom after coffee and rolls to write a couple of necessary letters.These finished, I had sat gazing out of the window at nothing inparticular, lazily content with the beauty of the morning. Then,suddenly and without the least premeditation, I had taken a fresh sheetof paper and had begun t
o make detached and random notes. These hadpresently strung themselves together, and by and by a phrase had sprungup of itself....

  Whereupon, in the very moment of my despairing of ever writing again, Ihad realised that my next novel was stirring within me.

  Now let me tell you the part that Jennie Aird played in this.

  I frankly admit that the writers of my own generation have sometimesbeen a little smug and make-believe about young girlhood. We have seen alovely thing, and perhaps have let its mere loveliness run away with us,to the loss of what I believe is nowadays called "contact." We have notseen the butterfly's anatomy for the pretty bloom of its wing.Nevertheless, I cannot see that the eager young morphologists who aresucceeding us have so very much to teach us after all. To read some ofthese you would think that the whole moving mystery had been disposed ofwhen they had said that a young girl became conscious, shy, and had atalk with her mother. If it must be anatomy or bloom, I think I shall goon preferring the bloom. I have no wish to exchange the eyes in my headfor that improved apparatus that turns a woman's hand that is meant tobe stooped over into a shadowy bundle of metacarpal bones.

  At the same time I do not take it for granted that youth is necessarilythe happiest season of our lives. I remember my own youth too well forthat. Emotionally, I am aware, it is all over the shop. It will gigglein church or make a heartbreak out of nothing, indifferently and withtragical facility. It is exploring the new-found marvels within itselfagainst the day when its eyes shall open to the miracle of another.That, at any rate, and as nearly as I can express it, was the state ofMadge Aird's sleeping beauty of a daughter on the evening of the partyof which Madge and Alec had spoken.

  It was a ravishing evening of late light over an opal sea. The same duskthat turned the begonias velvety-black in their beds made luminous thepale hydrangeas, until they resembled the glimmering whites and mauvesof the frocks that moved in and out among them. The villa was lighted uplike a paper lantern, and the moving couples inside made ceaselesslywavering shadows across the lawn. Over the ragged bay the phares winkedin and out, and beyond the ilex and chestnut a faint luminositytrembled--the corona of Dinard lighting up for the night.

  They danced in and out between the wide hall and the salon where thegilded Ganymede struggled with the Eagle--youngsters in their firstdinner-jackets, sylphs with their plaits swinging about theirsoftly-browned napes, their elders mingling among them or watching themfrom the walls. Madge, in a frock that seemed to be held up singly andsolely by her presence of mind, played fox-trots. Alec was busy"buttling" in the little recess where a scratch supper had been set out.The air was filled with the light talk in French and English, throbbedwith the rhythm of the foxtrotting piano.

  For half an hour or so I made myself agreeable to a number of ladies ofwhose names I had not the faintest idea; then, with a sense of dutydone, I turned my back on the pretty scene and strolled into the garden.On the whole I was pleased with my day. That was what I had wanted--thesolace and security of being at work again. Nothing world-shaking ortremendous; I simply wanted to get on with the unpretentious job thatwas mine, and incidentally to be tolerably well-paid for it. That, whenall was said, was the way of wisdom, the kind of thing men very properlyget knighthoods for and had their portraits hung up in Clubs. It seemedto me that I had been through a very evil time, and that now that I wasrid of the weight of it life was worth living again. I paced the pathsof the gay artificial little garden, my thoughts on all manner ofpleasant times to come.

  Near the end of the house grew an auracaria, forbidding and black. As Imoved towards it I noticed a dim white shape beneath it. I was turningaway again (for at a party like that no unaccompanied bachelor has anytitle to the dimmer corners) when the figure moved towards me. It wasJennie Aird--alone.

  "Hallo, why aren't you dancing?" I asked. I had already watched herdance four dances in succession with the same partner--young Kingston Ibelieve it was.

  She made a quick little grimace, but did not reply.

  "This is rather a nice party," I remarked.

  To this she did reply. "It's a beastly party, and I hate it."

  I drew certain conclusions; but "Oh?" I said. "What's the matter withit? I thought it rather fun."

  "Everything's beastly, and I wish we were back in London," she snapped.

  "Anything the matter, Jennie?"

  "Oh, how I do wish people wouldn't ask one what's the matter!"

  "Then come for a turn and I won't."

  She put her hand indifferently on my arm. She was nearly as tall as I,and I noticed as we passed the windows that, that night at any rate, herred-gold plait had been taken up and was closely swathed about her nape.

  Of course young Kingsley or young somebody else had said something ordone something, or hadn't said or done anything, or if he had had doneit at the wrong moment or in the wrong way or had otherwise conjured upthe shade of tragedy. Therefore, as there are occasions when tact maytake the form of talking about one's self, I talked to Jennie aboutmyself as we skirted the garden.

  "Do you know, something rather exciting happened to me this morning," Iremarked.

  She showed no great interest, but asked me what it was.

  "It mayn't sound much to you, but it interests me. I think I've starteda new book."

  "I wish I'd something to do," was the extent of her congratulation.

  "What would you like to do?"

  "Oh, anything. I shouldn't care what it was. Anything's better thanthis."

  "Than this jolly party?"

  "Yes. Or else I wish I'd been born a man. They get all the chances."

  I reflected that one man, somewhere in the world, would have a veryenviable chance, but kept my thought to myself. "Been having a row withsomebody?" I asked.

  "No," she answered, I have no doubt entirely untruthfully. "I'm just fedup. I wish I could have nursed in the war or something, but I was tooyoung. Or I wish I could write like you. But if I told father I wantedto earn my own living he wouldn't hear of it, and mother's one idea isto dress me up and show me off and marry me to somebody. They don't knowhow sick I am of it."

  I glanced at her as we passed the lighted windows again. That soft redsill of her lower lip was level, and just a shade short for the uppermember of her mouth's sweet portal, so that the pearls within werenegligently guarded. Temper and discontent were in her pebble-grey eyes.She gave her head an impatient toss, as if to shake off the thought ofthe boisterous young cadets and crammer's-pups within. In a day sheseemed to have outgrown them, to have lengthened her mind as shelengthened her frocks--if young women do lengthen their frocks nowadays.She wanted to nurse, to write, to be a student or some personage'ssecretary, to say to the dingy world, "Here I am--use me and don't spareme," in the very moment when I and such as I, disillusioned and worn,were sighing "Enough--release me--or if that may not be, give me butonce more, once more that first dawning joy!"

  "I don't want to get married," she sulked. "Ever. Mother may laugh, butI won't. It would have been different in the war. I love all thosedarling boys who were killed. But these schoolboys are all the same....You don't want a secretary for your new book, do you?"

  It may have been my imagination, but I am not sure that there did notstir in my memory some faint echo, of a woman sitting under a murky domeas she waited for her _Manuel de Repertoire Bibliographique Universel_.I know these secretaries and their wiles, and if my answer had hadtwenty syllables instead of one I should have meant them all.

  "No," I said.

  We had reached the wrought-iron gates at the beginning of the sandydrive. Three or four cars were parked there, and apparently somebody orother was leaving early, for a chauffeur had just switched on thehead-lights of a heavy touring-car that shook the ground with itsmuttering. Judging from the power of the lights it was the car of one ofMadge's French friends, for no English car carries shafts so blinding asthose twin beams that clove the darkness. They made the windows of thehouse seem a dull expiring turnip-lantern. Their blaze ligh
ted up everypebble, every blade of grass, defined the shadows of blade on blade. Outof the fumy darkness insects dropped, stunned with light, and movedfeebly on the path. I drew Jennie behind the glare, and as I did so oneof the English servant maids came up to me.

  "A gentleman wishes to speak to you, sir," she said.

  "To me? What gentleman? Where?"

  "A French gentleman, sir. A M'seer Arnaud his name is."

  "Arnaud? I don't know any Arnaud. Are you sure he asked for me and notfor Mr Aird?"

  "It was Sir George Coverham he asked for, sir."

  "Well, where is he?"

  "Here--at least he was a moment ago----"

  "Arnaud?" I mused. "Do you know a M'sieur Arnaud, Jennie?"

  As I turned to her I saw her in that false illumination with curiousdistinctness. The soft upward glow from the path reminded one of aphotographer's manipulation of his tissue-paper screens. She stood theresemi-footlighted--smooth brows, low glint of her hair, the caught-upupper lip that showed the pearls, her steady gaze....

  Ah, her gaze! What was this, that made me for a moment unable to removemy own eyes from her face? At what object beyond the car was she sofixedly looking? Why had her bosom risen? Why, as if at some "Open,Sesame!" did that betraying upper lip offer, not two, but all the pearlswithin?

  My eyes followed hers....

  As they did so sounds of talk and laughter and farewells drew near fromthe house. The departing guests were upon us.

  But I had seen. If only for an instant before it retreated swiftly intothe shadows again, I had seen. Gazing at her as steadily as she hadgazed at him, the vision of a young man's face had momentarilyappeared.

  Then the babble broke out about us.

  "Thank you a thousand times, chere Madame----"

  "Delicieuse----"

  "Merci, M'sieu' Air-r-r-rd----"

  "Better have the rug round you----"

  "Where's Jennie? Ah, here she is----"

  "A demain, a onze heures----"

  "Good-bye----"

  "Good-bye, Sair-r-r George----"

  But I still saw that face haunting the transparent gloom. A beret caphad surmounted it, a blouse _en grosse toile_ had clothed the shouldersbelow. Monsieur Arnaud, if it was he, was dressed as an _ouvrier_ or asailor dresses.

  And he was young, sunbrowned, grave, beautiful.

  The car backed and turned. There was a grating as the clutch was slippedin, and then the engine dropped to a steady purr. The wrought-iron gatesstarted out in the glare, the red tail-lights diminished. I was dimlyaware that Madge said something to me, but I remained motionless where Istood. I came to myself to find myself alone.

  Sunbrowned, grave, beautiful, young!

  And he called himself Arnaud!

  I have told you of that list of names with which his diary began. Arnaudwas not among them. But Arnold was. He had simply Gallicised it, and asArnaud he was seeking me.

  Then I felt my sleeve timidly touched. His voice came from behind me, avoice with a charming, uncertain timbre.

  "George--I say, George--who was that?"

  III

  I will make a shameful confession. My heart had sunk like lead. I hadwanted a holiday from him. That very morning I had thought I had securedit, had blithely planned my new and cheerful work.

  And here he was, with his hand on my sleeve.

  He repeated his words in a whisper. "George, who was that?"

  Slowly I turned. "It _is_ you?"

  "Yes."

  "How did you know I was here?"

  "I saw your name in the Visitors' List."

  "Tell me what I can do for you."

  He fell a little back. "George," he faltered, "why this tone?"

  I refused to admit at once that I was ashamed. "We can't stop talkinghere," I said. "Where are you staying?"

  "Out at St Briac."

  "Then I suppose you're walking back? The last tram went long ago."

  "It's only six miles."

  "Then wait here, and I'll walk part of the way with you."

  They were still merrily dancing in the house, but I managed to get to myown room unseen. I put on an ordinary jacket and cap and descendedagain. He was not where I had left him. He had skirted the lauristinusbushes, and from a safe distance was gazing into the house.

  Oh, inopportune--inopportune and undesirable in the last degree!

  "Ready?" I said.

  Reluctantly he turned away his eyes and followed me past the cars. Wepassed out of the drive and into the dark tree-planted lanes of StEnogat.

  A rutty little ruelle runs along the side of St Enogat Church and makesa short cut to the high road. We passed the church without exchanging aword. At last, where the street widened, I broke the silence.

  "So you're Arnaud now?"

  "Yes," he said in a low voice.

  "The athlete people are talking about?"

  He muttered that there were lots of Arnauds.

  "You're a Frenchman anyway?"

  "I've got to be something."

  "Are you going to stay a Frenchman?"

  "I don't know yet."

  We continued our walk. The little white-painted Grand Stand of the Stadeglimmered over the hedge on our right when next he spoke. I saw hisglance at it.

  "About those athletics, George," he said awkwardly. "I was an awful ass.If there's anybody who oughtn't to draw attention to himself it's me.But I did it without thinking. It was at Ambleteuse. They were runningand jumping, and I suppose my conceit got the better of me and I justhad to have a go. But I've cut all that out. It wasn't safe. I don't gonear a Stade now."

  "Ambleteuse? Then you did cross Dover-Calais?"

  He hesitated. "Not exactly Dover-Calais. Thereabouts."

  "Thereabouts?... I suppose you worked your passage and then gave themthe slip?"

  "No. I thought of that, but it was a bit too chancy."

  "Then what did you do?"

  "Well--strictly between ourselves, George--it's much better not talkedabout--you see my difficulty--but I swam it."

  I stopped dead in my stride. "_You what!_"

  He spoke apologetically, as if it were something not quite creditable.

  "Yes. But I don't want to give you a wrong impression. I didn't swim itreally fairly. Not like Webb and Burgess. I only swam it more or less.For one thing, I hadn't trained, you see."

  I recovered my breath. "What do you mean by swimming it more or less?"

  His modesty was almost excessive. "It was like this, George. You see Irather funked just jumping in at Dover and trusting to luck to bring meacross. It's a devil of a long swim, you know, and besides, I had tohave my clothes; couldn't land here with nothing on. So I got hold of afellow at the Lord Warden, a boatman who'd been with Woolf when he justmissed it. I swore him to secrecy and all that, and fixed things up withhim, and he gave me tides and times and currents and so on. I told him Iwas only an amateur who didn't want to make a fuss till he'd had asighting-shot, and--well, it cost me a tenner. But it saved no end oftrouble. He and another chap came across with me in a littlemotor-launch. I greased myself and got into a mask, and a mile out ofDover I went overboard. Even then I didn't swim it fairly, for I washauled in again after about six hours for another greasing. My flesh wasquite dead half an inch in, you see. I was sick too. If we'd been reallymeant to do that sort of thing we should have been given scales, likefishes."

  "Well, and then?"

  "Well--that's all. I landed a little this side of Grisnez, just as ifI'd been out for an ordinary bathe. My chaps kept a sharp look-out forthe coastguard, and smuggled my clothes on to a rock; my English ones,of course; I bought this rig in Boulogne. And in three or four days Iwas pretty well all right again. But I don't think I'd have the staminato do it again.... I say, promise me you won't go talking about it,George. I've got to lie absolutely low. I frightfully wanted to go toAntwerp, but I simply daren't do it. I might be asked for my ArmyDischarge Papers, or something awkward like that."

  So _that_ was how he h
ad solved the passport problem! Unable to walk theStraits, he had simply swum them, and had saved that night's stokingwith coal-dust in his beard! And suddenly and inexplicably, I foundsomething of my resentment already softening within me. There was anoble simplicity about his expedient, and even his voluminous corduroysand shapeless vareuse did not hide the magnificence of his build. Andyet he, so magnificent, must forego that deep joy in his physicalsplendour if he was to preserve his anonymity. It passed him by as thepublisher's belief in him had passed him by--as, it began to appear tome, all else in life must pass him by. Antwerp and the Stades forothers, but for him, who would have won glorious laurels there--no. Nay,say he was now what he looked, nineteen or twenty. His athletic primewas already far advanced. He himself doubted whether he had the staminato swim the Channel again. This alone would have sufficed to win mycompassion.

  We were now well clear of St Enogat. The night was moonless, but theheavens were crowded with stars, and seaward the lights burned emerald,diamond, ruby. Southward over the land the eye wandered over the dimfruit trees that dotted the fields of sarrasin. A light breeze moved inthe tops of the crooked poplars, and where the tramway leaves the roadand takes as it were a dive into a wilderness of dark tamarisk and thorna gramophone played somewhere in an unseen cottage. Already anintermittent paleness had begun to sweep the sky ahead: a pulse of faintlight, four seconds of darkness, the pulse again and eleven seconds ofdarkness--the Giant of Cap Frehel.

  At least another ten years in less than a month! I kept stealing shyglances at him through the limpid darkness. Quite literally I felt shyin his presence, for he was both known and unknown to me. If he was nownineteen, I saw him now at nineteen for the first time in my life--graveand young, brown and beautiful. His talk had a gentleness and a modestytoo. No wonder Julia Oliphant had loved him!

  "Well, go on after you left Ambleteuse," I said by and by.

  "Oh, then I walked, and took train once in a while, till I got to Rouenand Caen and on here. Lovely churches all the way; I want to go to Caenagain. That took me a fortnight. Then I'd a couple of days in St Malo,and--well, that about accounts for the time."

  "And what are you doing at St Briac?"

  "Sketching. Taken a great fancy to it. I've got a bike cheap, and Ieither walk or ride. I stay at a rather shabby little place, but itsuits me. I've only a couple of haversacks and my painting things, so Ican be off at a moment's notice if--if anything crops up."

  Charmingly and sincerely as he spoke, I was yet conscious of a reserve.He kept, as it were, to the surface of his itinerary, dwelling only onthe outer details of his life. And, as little by little he repossessedme, I knew that I should have to get behind this reticence. For whenand how had he lost those ten years? In Trenchard's loft, or since, orpartly both? Had he, when he had plunged into the sea a mile out ofDover, been still twenty-nine, or his present age, or some intermediateone? If I was to be of service to him it was necessary that I shouldknow all this.

  "Derry," I said, using his name for the first time, "I can't walk allthe way to St Briac and back again. For one thing I'm dressed for aparty. Let's sit down."

  There was a warm dry earth-wall with heath and thyme and rest-harrow andconvolvulus growing on it, and there we sat down. Opposite us opened themarshy gap of Le Port, and every four seconds, every eleven seconds, theaurora-like Light a dozen miles away was faintly reduplicated in the wetmud. All was quiet save for the ceaseless rustle of the ragged poplars,the creeping whisper of the tide.

  "Now," I quietly ordered him, "I want you to tell me all the thingsyou've been leaving out."

  At first I thought he was going to behave like an obdurate boy, whoseaffairs are hugely important just because they are his. But he seemed tothink better of it. In a hesitating voice he said, "What things?"

  "Well, begin with Trenchard's place on Sunday night, the 4th of July.What happened then?"

  His answer was hardly audible. "Yes, it was then."

  "How much?"

  "The whole lot."

  "At one go you dropped from twenty-nine to--what is it now? Twenty?"

  "Nineteen or twenty. I don't know. Yes."

  "Then nothing's happened since then?"

  "No--at least I'm not quite sure."

  "Not sure?"

  "No. I honestly don't know. There's been a gap somewhere, something Iought to have come to again, but that somehow I've missed altogether. Isimply can't account for it."

  "Explain, Derry."

  He seemed hardly to trust his voice. "It's the queerest thing of all,but I'll swear it on a Bible if you like. You know what it was I funkedmore than anything--all those beastly rotten things going to happen allover again.... Don't let's talk about them. They were all the time likea nightmare to me, that I was drawing nearer and nearer to all the time.I tell you, I'd decided to put myself out rather than wallow through allthat again.... Well, I can only tell you I've absolutely skipped it. Onmy honour I have. It's the most unaccountable thing, but----" He chokeda little.

  "But," I said, deeply pondering, "is it possible to skip a step--_any_step?"

  "I should have said not," he replied. "Beats me altogether. I started ona dead straight course back, and I fancied I should have to take myfences as I came to them. But this kink's come, and somehow I've pickedup the thread again clear on the other side of it."

  I pondered more gravely still. "Wait a bit. It all happened that Sundaynight, kink and all?"

  "Yes."

  "That was the night you left my place with Julia Oliphant, said good-byeto her at Waterloo, and went on to Trenchard's? Did you stick to thatprogramme?"

  "Yes."

  ("And so," something seemed positively to shout within me, "much goodyou've done yourself, Julia Oliphant! Much good you're still plotting!That gap that he's skipped altogether--that's precisely where you'resetting the man-traps for him, you and your chiffons and your browncharmeuse and your new willow-leaf shoes! You'd better forget Peggy andher garters and get back into your nice quiet tea-gowns again!")

  But aloud I resumed: "Then, if nothing's happened since that night, thatmeans that you're now stable--stationary?"

  His reply gave me a queer shock. It was in the last word that the shocklay. "As far as I can make out, sir."

  "So you haven't got to move on from pillar to post and one lodging toanother?"

  "I've been at St Briac for ten days. And that isn't all," he continuedearnestly. "I can't say for certain, and perhaps it's too soon to talkabout it. So this is touching wood. But I've got a sort of feeling thatif I'm careful and live perfectly quietly--no excitement and going tobed early, you know--I might be able to stick just like this for a longtime. I know no more about that gap than you do, but it seems to havecleared the air like a thunderstorm. And when I tell you that I reallyintended to put myself out ... oh, how thankful...." But again hechecked himself.

  And I too found myself gulping to think that I had so recently wanted towash my hands of him. Be rid of him? I knew now that not only should Inever be rid of him, but that never again should I want to. Charming,innocent, beautiful and grave! I cannot tell you, for I do not know,what mysterious spiritual thing Julia Oliphant had actually wrought uponhim. I only knew that all that he had so greatly dreaded she had takenupon herself, and that whatever her portion thenceforward was, his wascomplete absolution. "One for the Lord, the other for Azazel"; out intothe wilderness she, the scapegoat, must go; but on him the smell of thatfiercest fire of all had not so much as passed.... And I realised inthat moment that thenceforward he was my charge--yes, my son had I hadone. Must he stay in France? Then I must stay with him. Must he wander?Then I must wander too. For the rest of his unstable life I must be hisstaff and support.

  "But I say, sir," he said shyly presently, "about why I dug you outto-night. I hope you'll say no straight away if you think it's fearfulcheek, but the fact is I must have some more colours, and--well, I'vegot a little money in London, but I can't get at it just for the moment.So I really came to ask you if you coul
d lend me five hundred francs."

  This was strange. I shot a swift glance at him as he lay, a rich darkpatch of blouse and corduroys at my side.

  "Where," I asked him as steadily as I could, "is your money in London?"

  "I have a little there," he said awkwardly.

  "How much?"

  "I don't quite know, but it's certainly more than five hundred francs."

  "Where did it come from?"

  Through the clear dark I saw his dusky flush. "I'm sorry. I oughtn't tohave asked you. Never mind."

  "Derry," I said, greatly moved, "tell me: are you remembering thingsquite properly? You surely haven't forgotten that _I_ have your money?"

  "Eh?" he said. The next moment he had tried to cover his quickconfusion. "Eh? Why, of course. What am I thinking of? It did slip mymemory just for the moment; stupid! I'd got it mixed up somehow withJulia Oliphant. I was going to write to her. I remember, of course. Yousold my furniture. You did sell it, didn't you?"

  "Yes."

  "How much did it fetch?"

  This time it was my turn to evade. "Well, as you say, more than fivehundred francs. I--I haven't totted it up yet. I came away in rather ahurry. But there's quite a lot, and I can let you have all you wantto-morrow."

  "Then that's all right," he said cheerfully.

  But I found it anything but all right. On the contrary, it wasprofoundly disturbing. If he could forget that he had authorised me tosell that black oak furniture of his he could forget more vital matters.Yet he had remembered the furniture when I had urged him.

  "Tell me," I said more quietly, "as simply as you can, exactly what youdo and what you don't remember."

  "I only forgot it for a moment," he stammered.

  "But you did forget it. Can you explain it?"

  I felt that his mind laboured, struggled; but I was hardly prepared forwhat came next.

  "Just let me think for a minute. I want to get to the bottom of it too.It's a thing I've been watching most carefully, and I give you my wordI remembered everything absolutely clearly up to a couple of hours ago.I knew all about that furniture when I came to that place for you,because as I walked along I was trying to work out how much it ought toamount to. In fact I wasn't coming to borrow at all, but just to ask youfor something on account. Let me think. I got there at exactly atquarter to ten----"

  His fingers were playing with the wild flowers on the earth-wall. In andout through the whispering poplars the stars peeped. Every four seconds,every eleven seconds, four times a minute, rose and fell the Light. Ifell to counting the intervals as I waited for his reply. Diamond,emerald, ruby, twinkled the lights at sea....

  Then suddenly he sat up and took a deep breath. I saw his radiant smile.He faced me with the starlight in his eyes.

  "George," he said, "_who was that with you in the garden_?"

  IV

  For some seconds the stars seemed to go out of the sky. I seemed to be,not sitting with him on that earth-wall by Le Port gap, but to bestanding again in the drive of Ker Annic, with the glare of atouring-car thrown up from the ground and Jennie Aird by my side. Iseemed to see again her parted lips, to hear that soft intake of herbreath. And his own face seemed to hang again like a beautiful masksuspended in the glow.

  And when I had descended from my room again I had found him lurking inthe bushes, gazing into the lighted house.

  Stars in the night above us! Was that to be the next thing to happen?

  Had it happened?

  Evidently something had happened, and had happened during the past twohours.

  Then, as I strove to grasp the immense possibility, a deep and haplessyearning flooded my heart. The loveliness, the loveliness of it had itbeen possible! She, with the dreams still unrubbed from her openingeyes, he a December primrose peeping up anew out of the roots of hiswrecked and fruitless years--they would have been matchlessly coupled.Had he in truth been my son I could have desired no more for him thanthis.

  Yet why do I say "had it been possible"? Possible or impossible,something, whether more beautiful or fatal I could not say, had in facthappened. Whether to her or not, it had happened to him. How elseexplain that treacherous little slip about his money? Up to then hismemory had not failed him. Reticence he had shown, a youthfulunwillingness to talk about himself, but not in order to conceal animpaired faculty. His account of his movements during the past month hadbeen slight, but complete enough. One gap only--the Julia gap--he foundunaccountable, and that was no enigma to me.

  But was he now on the eve of yet another transformation? Had one look ofeyes into eyes hastened him to another stage? Absolved he was; was henow to be, not merely absolved, but confirmed in all the beauty andliberty of that absolution? Consider it as I tried to consider it,sitting on that thymy earth-wall while Frehel, like a ghostly clock,threw those wavering false dawns across the night.

  Julia, by her ruthless act, had But Jennie had now seen him despoiled him of ten years as Julia had seen him more of his life. than twenty years ago.

  That act of hers constituted the But should another gap now come gap that, try as he would, his heart would understand. he could not account for.

  In some dark and hidden way He was now beautiful, grave, Julia had taken upon herself innocent and unafraid. his burden of sin.

  Julia, darkly machinating, was But Jennie, as spotless as he, counting on waylaying him knew nothing of machination. again, and yet again.

  "He _shall_ know what love is; If his question to me meant why should he get nothing anything, a wonder had happened out of his life?" Julia had to him not two hours ago. passionately cried.

  On his former pilgrimage he But was Love the wonder now? had not known Love.

  If so, it was Julia's gift when And it was a gift to Jennie. she had restored his innocence to him.

  But the position was inconceivable, not to be thought of. Experiencesuch as never man had possessed lurked behind that simulacrum of beautyby my side. Young as he was, he was old enough to have been Jennie'sfather. He was, he still remained, the man who had written _The Hands ofEsau_ and _An Ape in Hell_, the man for whom I had hunted inquestionable London haunts, who had known to the full the sin and shameof his accumulated years. I knew, Julia knew, what contact with hisruinous uniqueness meant. How was it possible to permit such an error innature as to allow him to fall in love with Jennie Aird?

  Yet if he had already done so, what was there to do?

  His voice sounded again softly by my side.

  "You haven't told me who that was with you in the garden," he said.

  "Let's finish with the other things first," I answered.

  "Oh, I'm tired of talking about myself, sir."

  "That's one of them. Why do you sometimes call me 'sir' and sometimes'George'?"

  He gave a start. "Have I been doing that?"

  "Didn't you know?"

  I couldn't catch his reply.

  "When you were young I suppose you called older men 'sir'?"

  "Of course."

  "Do you think that at this moment you could repeat, say, half a page of_The Hands of Esau_?" (I had my reasons for choosing that book ratherthan another.)

  "I think so."

  "Will you try?"

  "Shall you know if I'm right?"

  "Near enough for the purpose, I think."

  He puckered his brows and fixed his eyes on the road. He began torecite. _The Hands of Esau_ had been written in or before 1912, and theyear was now 1920. To remember even your own book textually eight yearsafterwards is something of a performance; but he was remembering, atnineteen, the words he had written at thirty-eight--a space of nearlytwenty years. I stopped him, satisfied, but he himself immediately tookup the running.

  "Of course I see what you're after, but I've done all that myself.Honour bright, that about the furniture was the first slip of the kindI've made. But I've
made one discovery."

  "What's that?"

  "You're starting at the wrong end. That memory's all right. It's theother one I've sometimes wondered about."

  "Ah! The one you call your 'B' Memory! Do you mean--it sounds an odd wayof putting it, but I suppose it's all right--do you mean you don'tremember what sort of thing you'll be doing, say, next year?"

  "Not very clearly, George. Sometimes that seems an absolutely unknownadventure. And sometimes it's like that queer feeling--I expect you knowit--that you've been somewhere before, or done something before, orheard the same thing before. It lasts for a second, and then it's gone."

  "Do you think it will continue like that?"

  "I've stopped thinking about it."

  "That page you repeated just now. That wasn't a stock page you--keep inrehearsal, so to speak?"

  "No, that was pukka."

  I considered my next question carefully. But there was no avoiding it;it had to be put. I watched him deliberately.

  "Now tell me one other thing. Do you ever remember hearing or writingthese words: '_Je tache de me debrouiller de ces souvenirs-ci?_'"

  Poor, poor lad! He winced as if I had cut at him with a lash. He turnedover on the bank so that I could not see his face. He made no responsewhen I placed my hand on his shoulder. My heart ached for him ... but hehad to be shown that any question of love between himself and JennieAird was impossible.

  I shook him. "_Do_ you remember that, Derry?"

  Slowly he sat up on the bank. He turned a set face on me.

  "Let me say, Coverham," he said tremulously, "that I went through awhole war without seeing as cowardly a thing as that done. I will notforgive you."

  And with barely a moment's pause he broke out:

  "Oh, what am I to do, sir, what am I to do? You're older and wiser thanI am--I want help--advice----"

  * * * * *

  That is why I have called this portion of his history "The Long Splice."Extremes as wide apart as those met there and interwove their strands.Fortunate it was for me that they did, for had not that last helplesscry been wrung from him I should have been dumb before the bitterness ofhis reproach. Whether memories of sweetness and light were failing himor not, those of bitterness and gall remained, and it was on thisquivering complexity of exposed nerves that I had laid the lash.

  And yet simultaneously he was innocent, assoiled, acquitted. Only theman he had been had groaned under the stroke; the other had turned to mefor comfort and guidance and help. And what is a remembered self that weshould weep for it? What is memory that we should writhe? No philosopherhas yet ventured to write "I remember, therefore I am." Nor does a manremember entirely and wholly of his own will. He is his memory's lordwhen he sets himself to repeat a passage from a book; but who is themaster when something leaps upon him without warning from the past,tears open an old wound, and leaves him quivering and bleeding?...Derry's "A" Memory now seemed to me to be beside the mark, and it waswith a sudden joy that I recognised it to be a boon that his "B" Memorywas dissolving into a golden haze. "An absolutely unknown adventure," hehad said; and what better, more merciful, more beautiful? As the GreatPity hides other men's ends from them, so his beginning was to be hiddenfrom him. No remembrance of disillusion would mar for him the bloom ofhis fair discoveries. What though seas were sailed before if you know itnot? Are the garden's scents less fragrant that you wonder, for afleeting instant, when you have smelt them before? And what of the kissof your mouth when that kiss is both an undoing and a re-beginning, theend of one dream but the beginning of a lovelier still? What Julia haddone once Jennie would do again, and I had only to think of hisinnocence, his beauty and his doom to know, more surely than I ever knewanything in my life, that this would a thousandfold transcend the other.

  And--supposing that it had already happened, implicit in that singlerevealing look--_he had still to sleep that night_.

  I forget in what words he began to plead his cause. His idea was this:

  He conceived himself to be now stationary, or, if moving at all, to bedoing so hardly perceptibly. Ignorant of the connection between Julia'sattack and his putting-off of the years, he knew as little that similarresults might follow what had happened in the garden of Ker Annic thatevening. He would "hang on" by gentle and equable living, and to thatextent, and if all went well, time might presently become to himsomething more nearly approaching what it was to anybody else. He evenhazarded a suggestion wild enough to make the hair stand up on yourhead.

  "And if I got as far as that," he mused, his eyes straight before him inthe night, "I might even--it's no madder than anything else--I mighteven start living forward again; but I suppose that's too much toexpect," he sighed.

  On this I simply refused to make any comment at all.

  I had told him that Jennie was the daughter of my host. He was formaking plain sailing of it. His outbreak about my cowardice, by the way,had been disregarded by both of us.

  "But don't you see, Derry, you're so unimaginably different from anybodyand everybody else," I repeated for the tenth time.

  "Not if I can stop decently still," was his dogged reply.

  "But you don't know yet that you can."

  "You don't know that I can't, sir."

  I couldn't enter into that. If I had ever intended to do so the time forit would have been on that Sunday afternoon behind the rugosa roses.

  "You actually mean that you want me to take you to the house, andintroduce you to Mrs Aird, and open up the way to--God knows what?" Idemanded incredulously.

  "You offered to introduce me to Mrs Aird once before."

  "I offered to introduce the man I then knew."

  "Am I any worse now?"

  "There's no question of better or worse. A thing can be done or itcan't, and this can't."

  "Do you mean because of my clothes and my being a Frenchman and allthat?"

  "I mean, simply, your being Derwent Rose. And I don't know that theother things are quite as simple as they look either."

  "But I'm English really. And I've got a decent suit of English clothes."

  "Do they fit you--or did they merely do so once?"

  At this he became almost cross. "Look here, sir," he said, "wheneverything's said I _am_ me, and I feel pretty sure I can stop as I am.Dash it, I _am_ on the blessed map! I'm quite a passable nineteen asfellows go, and the rest's all rubbishy detail." Then his mannerchanged. His voice suddenly shook. "You see, I'm--I'm--I'm in it,George. Regularly for it. Just as deep as--oh, deep and lovely! Ididn't know there was such a thing. There wasn't, not before.... Notjust to speak to her? Not just to see her? Not if I promise faithfullynot to say a single word about it, not even touch her finger? Not if Ipromise to cut and run at the very first sign of a change? Can't youmanage that, sir? Am I such a rotten outcast as all that? It would bequite safe--I wouldn't say a word anybody couldn't hear--I'd promise--onmy soul I'd promise----"

  I had got up and begun to pace agitatedly back and forth. How could Ihave him at the Airds'--and yet how resist his supplication? How refusewhat would have been my very heart's desire for him--yet how grant it tothe ruin of her young life as well as of his? I felt his eyes on myface. He knew, the rascal, that he had moved me, and was greedilylooking for the faintest hint of my yielding. Yet the impossibility!...I stopped before him.

  "There's one thing that settles it if nothing else did," I said gently."Miss Aird's probably off in a couple of days."

  It was, of course, a flagrant invention. I had thought of it on the spurof the moment. But it could be made true if necessary, I thought. Hestared at me blankly.

  "Off! Did you say off?"

  "Right away. And it's now nearly two o'clock, and I want you to make mea promise before I leave you."

  "Off!" he repeated stupidly, as if he had imagined her fixed for alleternity as he had seen her in that moment by the car.

  "I'll bring your money round to-morrow at ten o'clock. I want you topromise to wait in your room for me
till then."

  "Where is she going?"

  "Will you wait in your room till I come?"

  "Back to England?"

  "I don't know. Will you wait for me in your room?"

  "Tell me one other thing, sir," he pleaded; "just her name----"

  "Her name's Jennie."

  He received it as if it had been a costly gift. "Jennie, Jennie----" hebreathed softly.

  "You'll wait for me?"

  "Of course, sir. Thank you, George."

  "Then I'll say----"

  But I could not get out the words "Good night."

  How did I know what the night was going to be for him?

  For it happened in the night....

  I left him standing by the earth-wall, with the lights still twinklingat sea and the low glare of Frehel in the sky behind him. Four seconds,eleven seconds, four times a minute----

  "Jennie!" I heard his hushed, rapt voice as I turned away.

  V

  "_Le_ Por-r-rt! _Le_ Por-r-rt!"

  Only an old woman with white streamers and a basket descended from thetram, but instinctively I turned my head to look at the flowery bank onwhich I had sat so few hours before. It was a sparkling morning, with anintense blue sky, high white clouds and singing larks. The fields offlowering sarrasin were white, cream, pink, deep russet; and far awaythe grey-green boscage receded into misty blue, unbroken by walls orfences, that contradictory communal undulation of a country whereindividualism is at its most intense, holdings small, and a ditch or abank you could stride over fencing enough. But I was too anxious to beable to admire. At the best it looked as if I should have to assumecomplete responsibility for him and so cut my visit to the Airdsabruptly short. At the worst--but I put the worst from me.

  "Allez! Roulez!"

  With the sound of a tank going into action the tram clattered forward toSt Lunaire.

  Up the steep street, and a swerve past the acres of tennis-courts thathad once been grass. The huge six-acre cage was already full ofplayers, and I thought of Jennie Aird. Then past the magasins and thelong cafe, with half-clad young Frenchmen punting a ball and walking ontheir hands in the strip of meadow opposite. The Casino, the hotels, andthen a steep planted avenue that seemed to end in the air. Then a rushand another swerve, and out on to the wide expanse of tussocky links,grey and fawn sandhills, and turf gemmed with a myriad tiny flowers.

  His hotel was within a biscuit's-toss of the terminus. It stood by theroadside, and its front consisted of a built-out structure of glass,within which a couple of Breton girls with tight hair, string-soledshoes, and the physique of middle-weight boxers, were laying a dozensmall tables for _dejeuner_. A lad dressed precisely as Derry had beendressed was delivering lifebuoys of bread, and knives clattered inbaskets, and two-foot-high stacks of coloured plates were being carriedin.

  "M'sieu' Arnaud?" I inquired of one of the string-slippered Amazons.

  "M'sieu' n'est pas descendu--si vour voulez monter au deuxieme,M'sieu'."

  She indicated a way through the back salon that had once been the streetfrontage. Beyond yawned a cavernous kitchen, the blacker because of itsopening on to a dazzlingly green back yard. Between the two rose astaircase, which a strapping youth was polishing with a mop on his foot.I mounted and gained the _deuxieme_. Then, outside the closed door, Istopped with a thumping heart.

  But it was no good hesitating. I pulled myself together and knocked.

  "_----trez!_" called a clear voice.

  I thanked God, pushed and entered.

  His head was bent over his colour-box. On a piece of paper he appearedto be making a list of the colours to be replenished. He lookedsmilingly up, and our eyes met.

  Clear eyes, grave sweet mouth, undoubting smile----

  And unchanged. The night had passed, and nothing perceptible hadhappened. I crossed to the window. Now that all was well, I dare toadmit to myself that I had been prepared to find him--dead. If he wasright in fixing his climacteric at sixteen he might well have been dead.

  But there he was, bending over his colour-box and murmuring "Cobalt--Iseem to eat cobalt--raw sienna--orange vermilion----"

  Presently I spoke, still from the window.

  "Well, I don't know anything about downstairs, but you've a gorgeousview up here."

  "Isn't it?" he said. "Grows on you. At first I thought it ratherscrappy, a little bit of everything, and I wish they'd put a bomb underthat silly chateau-place; but it grows on you. Inland's the countrythough. Orange vermilion, pale cadmium, and a double go of cobalt----"

  I looked round his room. The smell of oil-colours clung about it, but itwas exquisitely tidy and simple. Its walls were covered with a yellowishstriped paper, its ceiling beams were moulded, its herring-boned parquetfloor shone. A single mat lay by the side of his ornate wooden bedstead,which, with the little night cupboard by it, a small table at thewindow, and a single upholstered chair, was the only furniture in theroom. The door-knob was of glass, and the lace curtains had been drapedback over the open leaves of the window. From a flimsy little hat-rackhung his two haversacks. His canvases apparently were in the cupboardthat was sunk into the wall.

  "Well," he said, putting his list of colours into his pocket, "it seemsrather a rum idea bringing you right out here when I've got to go intoDinard myself. Can I have the money, George?"

  I counted it out.

  "And oh, by the way--I know you won't mind--but if you'd talk Frenchwhen there's anybody about--it makes things a bit simpler----"

  Here I began to be aware of the imminence of another problem. I don'tmean the talking French; I mean the whole problem of his company. He wasgoing into Dinard to buy colours, and I also was returning to Dinard.The natural thing was that we should go together. I could hardlyconstitute myself his guardian and not be seen about with him--bargainwith him that he only came to me or I to him like Nicodemus, by night.He seemed to take all this cheerfully for granted.

  But whither would it presently lead? Dinard was, in a word, theworld--that world in which he had no place. Everybody knew scores ofpeople in Dinard, and Madge Aird hundreds. Tennis, tea, the shops, theplage--all was public, familiar, open in the last degree. Within acouple of days, on the strength of being seen twice or thrice with me,he would be exchanging bows and smiles and "Bonjours" with goodnessknows who.

  "Well, come along," I said in a sort of daze. "But I don't know that Ifeel like talking much, either in French or English. You're a devil of afellow for keeping your friends guessing, Monsieur Arnaud. You're stillMonsieur Arnaud, I suppose?"

  "How can I change it?" he replied gravely.

  Of course he couldn't change it. Arnaud he must remain until he becametoo young to be Arnaud any longer.

  On the returning tram I addressed myself somewhat as follows:

  "George Coverham, this can't go on. You've got to make up your mind oneway or the other. If you don't he'll make it up for you. His is alreadymade up. He sees no reason why he shouldn't carry on. He's either rightor wrong. Well, suppose for a moment that he's right? What then?

  "You know what you were prepared for when you went up those stairs ofhis. You know you had to put your hand up three times before you daredknock. Well, everything was all right; nothing had happened. If he'sreally suddenly and desperately in love it ought to have happened, butanyway it didn't. That means, in plain English, that he knows more abouthimself than you do.

  "And he thinks he can stay as he is. Suppose he can? Suppose even thatmaddest conjecture of all is true, and that he actually may re-becomenormal and live out his life like everybody else? It wouldn't be anymore wonderful than the rest. So what's the obvious thing to do? Why,simply to take him as he is--as long as he is it. That's all he's askingyou. And he's promised to clear out at the very first hint of anothertransformation. In fact he's got to. It's in the very nature of thecase.

  "Look at him on the seat opposite to you there, between those twobare-headed young women. Those two Breton girls may keep their fourhandsome Breton eyes straight before
them, but they're conscious ofevery moment of his presence. Who wouldn't be? He's a dream of beauty.And remember how he pleaded with you last night. Can't you hear himstill? 'Only to see her, only to talk to her: can't you manage that,sir? Can't you, George?' Was ever gratitude more touching and absurdthan when you merely told him her name--'Jennie!' Why shouldn't he havethe love now he missed before? Julia Oliphant didn't stop to think twiceabout it. Who made you Rhadamanthus, George Coverham?... Anyway, you'vegot to make up your mind."

  I told myself all this, and more; but I cannot say I convinced myself.Indeed, in the face of past experience, I made the mistake of once morethinking I had a choice in the matter. I thought that I possessed him,and not he me. So I floundered among details, little practical details,such as talking French to him and being seen about Dinard with him. Irecalled how already Madge Aird had asked whether he had a brother. Iseemed to see Alec's face when he was told that a Frenchman had fallenin love with his daughter, my own as I explained that the Frenchman wasnot really a Frenchman, and Alec's again as he asked me what the devil Imeant. Then there was his name--Arnaud. That again landed us straightinto a dilemma. He couldn't change it, must stop Arnaud; but as Arnaudthe athlete he had been seen at Ambleteuse. The brother of some youngRugby or young Charterhouse at that moment in Dinard (the words seemedto detach themselves from the noisy babble of a teashop) had seen him.He might be recognised here; people do look twice at a casual strangerwho strolls into a Stade, chucks off his coat, and in his walking bootsdoes something like level time. He looked it, too, every inch of him....And whispers might be flying round Dover too. The straits are not verywide, and men who can swim them do not come down with every shower ofrain.... Oh, the whole thing bristled with risks. I counted a hundred ofthem while the tram rolled in its cloud of filthy smoke past LaGueriplais, La Fourberie, St Enogat, the Rue de la Gare....

  "Devoiturons," he said suddenly, touching my knee.

  He had taken matters into his own hands even while I had mused. I hadintended to postpone my decision by dropping off at St Enogat; now wewere at the corner of the Boulevard Feart. "Down we get!" _We!_Apparently "we" could get to "our" colour shop without making thecircuit of the rest of the town. I will not swear that I saw a momentarytwinkle of mischief in his eyes. I was standing in the middle of theroad looking after the tram, which was already fifty yards away.

  Together a middle-aged English gentleman in a neat lounge suit and asplendid young specimen of French manhood in blouse and corduroys turnedinto the Boulevard Feart.

  There would still have been time to retrieve my indecision. TheBoulevard, approached from that end of the town, is not nearly sofrequented as the Rue Levavasseur and the quarter near the Casino. Itwas, in fact, particularly quiet. But every step we took under the shadylimes, past the white-facaded houses and gardens vermilion withgeraniums and bluer than the sky with lobelia, brought us nearer to thatcrowded busy world in which he held so singular a place. Or I could haveleft him at the corner of the Rue Jacques Cartier and made my escape byway of the Rue St Enogat. But what then? If I shook him off to-day thequestion would be to face again to-morrow.... Ker Yvonne, Ker Maria, KerLoic ... the shuttered villas slipped past us.

  Then, "Derry," I said in desperation, "I'm at my wits' end about you. Ihaven't the faintest idea what I ought to do."

  "It's jolly just being with you," he said, looking straight ahead.

  "Yes. It's other people who're the difficulty."

  I had the same answer as before. "As long as I sit tight, George?" hesaid mildly.

  "Even then. You said yourself that you were both the most public and themost private man alive."

  "Ah, but that was when I was slipping about all over the place.--Uphere's our shop."

  "But even if you're stationary you're just as much an anomaly. Nobodyexcept you stops at one age."

  "Well, it's a step in the right direction so to speak. At any rate itisn't going back."

  "I wish I knew how you knew that."

  "I wish I could tell you, old fellow," he placidly replied.

  "Look here," I said abruptly. "There's just one possible way out, but Irather doubt whether you'd agree to it. I mean about what you wanted meto do last night. Would you allow me to tell the whole thing to myfriends the Airds and leave the decision to them?"

  Quickly, very quickly, he shook his head. "No, I'm afraid I couldn't dothat."

  "But is anything else fair and right?"

  "If I stop as I am?"

  "In any case."

  "They wouldn't believe you."

  "I think Mrs Aird might believe me."

  He gave a short laugh. "She can swallow a good deal if she can swallowthat!"

  "She's a very observant woman. She said one thing that perhaps I oughtto tell you."

  "What?" he asked with sudden curiosity.

  "She saw you one day in South Kensington."

  "Well?"

  "She'd also had a good look at you that day at the Lyonnesse Club."

  "Well?"

  "She asked me whether Derwent Rose had a brother."

  "Et vous avez repondu?"

  "J'ai dit que non."

  "C'etait la figure? La taille?"

  "Le tout ensemble."

  "Elle avait des conjectures? Pas possible!"

  "Comme vous le dites, pas possible; mais s'ils poussent sur le Rosiertrop de boutons----"

  "Il n'y-en poussera plus," he laughed; and the little knot of Frenchpeople passed us by.

  He made light of my recital. I heard his quiet chuckle. Then suddenly Irealised that we were at the corner of the Rue Levavasseur, outside theHotel de Provence.

  "Look here, haven't we passed your shop?" I said.

  "Eh? Have we? By Jove, so we have. That's the charm of yourconversation, George."

  "Then hadn't we better go back?"

  "Of course we must; it's the only colour shop in the place. But juststep across the road now that we are here. I want some tooth-powder. Andsome envelopes at the Bazaar there. Must have some--run right outyesterday."

  We crossed to a chemist's, but it appeared that he usually went to achemist's a little farther down the street. There he made his purchases,and once more we came out into the street.

  "Now I want some bootlaces," he said. "You see, I always load up when Icome into Dinard. Saves time, not to speak of the tram-fare."

  It was approaching a brilliant midday, and from the Tennis Club, theshops, the confectioners, and the cafes, people were beginning to pressto their various hotels and villas to lunch. In another half-hour thestreet would be half empty, but now it was at its gayest with brightblazers, gaudy costumes, sleek heads, sea-browned faces. One sawlaughing, turning heads, caught snatches of appointments--"A cesoir"--"Don't forget, Blanche"--"Number Four at two-thirty"--"You comingour way, Suzette?"

  Suddenly my arm was seized, and M. Arnaud took a quick step forward.

  "Thees ou-ay," he said laughingly, "des enveloppes----"

  I was dragged into the Bazaar.

  Then, but too late, I wondered what his so pressing need of envelopeswas. "Must have some--ran right out yesterday!" Who were _his_correspondents? Of what did _his_ letter-bag consist? Letters, he! Apassport and a birth-certificate would have been more to the point; a_permis de sejour_ and his Army Discharge Papers would have been more tothe point. And most to the point of all was that the rascal hadcompletely hoodwinked me.

  For, standing there among hoops and grace-sticks, string shoes and cardsof bijouterie, caoutchouc bathing-caps and all the one-franc-fiftyfal-lals of the Bazaar, alone and for the moment with her back to us,was Jennie Aird.

  VI

  This time if he wanted French he had it--off the ice.

  "Touche--et merci, Monsieur. Bonjour."

  I bowed, stepped forward, and placed myself between him and Jennie. Itouched her elbow.

  "I saw you come in. Are you nearly ready? We shall be late."

  I was the angrier that it was with myself that I was chiefly angry.Jennie, gi
ving me only the tail of her glance, turned to her choice of abathing-cap again--the yellow one or the green one. My back was towardsRose, but I heard a saleswoman step up to him.

  "Rien, merci--j'attends M'sieur," he said.

  Jennie too heard, and turned.

  There was no atmosphere of soft and factitious half-illumination now.This was the full blaze of a perfect August midday, that flooded theshop with sunshine and made a dazzle of Jennie's little white hat withthe cord about it, of the burnished hair beneath. The sleeves of herwhite frock were cut short above the dimple of her elbow, the tiny blueribbon across her shoulders peeped through. She in her sunny white, hein black vareuse and corduroys brown as a wintry coppice, again stoodlooking one at the other.

  And for the second time within the course of a sun I saw the world beginanew, as it begins anew for some he, for some she, with every momentthat passes. For the beginning of the cradle is not the real beginning.That is only the end of the darkness of forebeing that is pierced with awoman's pang. That is still an uneasy slumber, yea, even though itweakly smile, and by and by stumble over its syllables, and stumble overits own uncertain feet, and walk, and spell, and use a tennis-racket. Itis incomplete, and will never be complete in itself. It is completed inthat moment when its eyes open on other eyes, and the wonder kindlesthere, and the ground underfoot is forgotten, and the surroundingsunlight is forgotten, and nothing is remembered except that those eyeshave found their other-own eyes, and, though they lose them again inthat same instant, never to see them again, will remember them in thehour when the shadow closes over all. That, that re-begins the cycle, isour real beginning. It was that which, in that tawdry Bazaar, turned thegolden sunlight to a nimbus about us.

  Again I touched her.

  "The yellow one, is it? Let me put it in my pocket."

  I had secured her arm. I picked up for her the horrible fifty-centimenotes of her change. She had dropped her eyes, and her face was asrich-coloured as her lips, her lips a pulpy quiver. I felt the touch ofDerry's hand on my sleeve, but I disregarded it. I felt bitterly towardshim.

  "Come along, my dear," I said; and I pushed her past him.

  Yet if, as he had said, he wished merely to see her, merely to speakwith her, he had half his wish in that moment. Her left arm was in myright one, I between her and him. Suddenly, blush or no blush, shelifted her head. Behind me, she looked full at him. For two, three pacesher head and shoulders continued to turn. I set my lips and lookedstraight ahead.

  Then her head dropped again. Her teeth caught at her upper lip. For amoment she was a limp weight on my arm. We left the shop.

  I saw his face at the window as we passed. Whether or not he stepped tothe door to watch us out of sight I do not know.

  I say that it was with myself that I was chiefly angry; but I have neverfound that a particularly mollifying reflection. As I have seen a manget rid of an undesired guest by blandly pressing him to stay butleading him gently by the arm all the time nearer to the door, so ouryoung man had used me. I had been piloted here, there, in whicheverdirection he had wished. And as for Jennie's long backward look and turnof the head ... well, it seemed to me that the thing might now beregarded as done. It did not need me to murmur "Jennie, this is M.Arnaud--Miss Aird." The back door into Alec Aird's jealously-guardedhouse was set ajar, and I, the only one who could have watched it, hadfailed to do so. I frowned, watching her white-clad feet moving on thesunny pavement. I avoided looking at her face. I knew that she equallyavoided looking at mine.

  Of one thing I was perfectly sure: she would not of her own accord speakof the young man we had just left. Perhaps it was that there are somethings which, unless you out with them at once, become more and moredifficult with every moment that passes. Many a close secret was not asecret at all in the beginning; it merely became one. Therefore she wasalready showing obstinacy. She knew that I knew about that look. She hadlooked openly, deliberately, as careless of my presence as if I had notbeen there. And in that critical moment it was a toss-up what myrelations with my friend's seventeen-years-old daughter were to be. Shemight, suddenly and swiftly, break into an emotional confession. On theother hand she might thenceforward bear me an unspoken grudge that Iknew anything about her affairs at all.

  I noticed that she carried no tennis racket. I therefore asked her, aswe crossed the emptying Place du Commerce, whether she had left it atthe Club.

  "No," she said.

  "Haven't you been playing this morning?"

  "No."

  "Too tired after the party last night?"

  "No."

  "I was wondering--but I suppose you've far more amusing things to dothan to come for a walk with me this afternoon."

  In those few words the whole situation trembled as in a balance. If shesaid Yes, much might follow; if No, then resentment would be my portion.

  We continued to ascend the high-walled street, past tall garden gatesand notice-boards--"A Vendre," "Locations," "Agence Boutin." We passedBeausejour, Primavera, Les Cyclamens....

  Then for the first time she looked sideways at me.

  "I should like to," she said.

  I was still angry with myself and him. He was probably right in refusingthe only definite suggestion I had found to make, namely, that he shouldpermit me to tell my host and hostess the whole story. But if hisalternative was to lie in wait for her in the streets and shops of aFrench summer resort and to hang about the open windows of the house atnight, I felt very strongly about it. He was going to be wily andmasterful, was he? He, swaying on a tightrope of time, was going toclaim the treatment of a normal man? Well, that remained to be seen. Thecold shoulder for a day or two might bring him to a more reasonableview. Anyway, after our encounter in the Bazaar, he could hardly pretendnot to know my mind.

  And yet (I asked myself as my anger began to wear itself out), who canknow the mind of a man who does not know his own? More, when wasanything that mattered ever settled by chop-logic of the sort that setmy head spinning? Why, his brilliant beauty alone laughed to nothing allmy attempts to get him off my mind. And suddenly my mind flashed back,back, it seemed interminable years back. There sprang up in my memory alecture I had once attended at the Society of Arts, a cutting I hadtaken from an article in _The Times_.

  "Human beings," said the article, "differ not only in the knowledge they have acquired, but in their dower of intelligence or natural ability. The latter has a maximum for each individual, attained early in life. Sixteen years has usually been taken as the age at which, even in those best endowed, the limit of intelligence has been reached."

  Say that this was so; whither did it now lead?

  A staggering vista to open before a middle-aged-to-elderly gentlemanlike myself, on his way to luncheon at a _riant_ holiday villa with amoody and beautiful young creature of seventeen by his side!

  For it seemed to me to lead like a ray straight into the blinding heartof the Sun of Life. The mind blinked in its attempt to follow it; Ibelieve I actually passed my hand over my eyes as if to shut out aphysical dazzling. I have said a little, a very little, about DerwentRose's books; but how if they, foursquare and strongly-built as theywere, were merely external things, well enough in their way, but cloggedin the gross and unwieldy medium through which his central fire andpower torturedly struggled? How if a more essential beauty shouldpresently appear, free of these trammels of process, independent ofacquirement and painful lore, dissociated from performance--shining,self-sufficient, its mere existence its own justification and law?"Every morning of my life," he had once said, "I've tried to wake up asif that was the first day of the world." Was he now on the way to hisfulfilment? Was that first morning actually about to dawn for him? Wasan early sun about to rise on a creature _not_ ready-made, _not_pre-instructed, unfettered by the prejudice of a single word, but mangiven to all understanding, man at the moment of his perfection, manliberated, and without a name or foothold in the human world?

  A pretty speculation, I say, for a humd
rum old gentleman going home toluncheon!

  Luncheon over, I took a liqueur with Alec in the pergola. The lattice ofshadow flecked the ascending smoke from his pipe.

  "By the way, what became of you last night? You didn't go on to theCasino, did you?" he said.

  "No. I took a walk."

  "I heard you come in. The others had only just gone to bed. And ofcourse Jennie was dog-tired and went upstairs with a headache."

  "Well, she's coming for a walk with me this afternoon."

  "Then for goodness' sake take her somewhere quiet. It isn't my idea of aholiday that you have to take a rest-cure after it."

  I laughed. "I'll look after her. But when I'm with Jennie I like as manypeople as possible to see me with Jennie."

  "Then tell her that and shake her out of herself, you old humbug. Hangedif I'd trust her with you if you were a few years younger."

  "You'll have to trust her with somebody presently."

  "Plenty of time for that yet," Alec grunted. "I've got my eye on it allright.... Well, if you're going out I'm going to have forty of the best.Watch me fade away----"

  He proceeded to "fade away," while the shadows crept over the ascendingsmoke from his pipe on the table.

  On this occasion, however, I was content to forego my pride in beingseen with Jennie by my side. Just a quiet cliff-path not too far awaywould do. There is much to be said for a quiet cliff-path when a youngwoman feels the first sweet trouble at her heart.

  I left the completely faded-away Alec as I heard her step at the door ofthe house. She looked me straight in the eyes, as if it would be at myperil did I notice anything the matter with her own pebble-grey ones. Wepassed out, took the steep secluded lane towards the tea-cabin above StEnogat plage, and then descended the hewn steps to the shore. It is atiny plage, remarkably steep, bordered with villas that resemble theirown bathing-tents, and with a path that winds up the rocks beyond. Wedid not speak as we crossed the plage and began to climb.

  Along that deeply indented coast you do a lot of walking for thedistance forrader you get, and also a good deal of up-and-down roundrocky gulfs with the bottle-green water heaving lazily below. But overthe seaward walls of villa and chateau peep valerian and fig, and thepath is coral-sprinkled with pimpernel and enamelled with convolvulusand borage and the hosts of smaller flowers. Away ahead the demi-towerof a sea-mark rose chalk-white against the deep blue, with the airypoint of St Lunaire beyond. We approached a small field of marguerites,so eagerly open to the afternoon sun that at a short distance they werenot white at all, but pale honey-yellow with the offering of theirgolden hearts. Poppies flamed among them, and the cigales crackled likeceaselessly-running insect machinery. From the cliff's foot came thelazy breaking of the waves. That, I thought, was quite a pleasant place.Even Alec would have approved of it. We sat down between the staringmarguerites and the sea.

  I do not wish to speak of Jennie in a fatherly or avuncular manner. Onehad better not have been born than not be simple with the heart of ayoung girl. At the faintest trace of a smile it will close against youfor ever, and wonder follows wonder so quickly over it that it will be along time before you get your second chance. So do not tell it that itwill think differently about things to-morrow. It is you who will thinkdifferently to-morrow if you do. I say in all sincerity that, in thatlong pause between my asking Jennie to come for a walk with me and heracceptance, I had felt a suspense as real as any I ever felt. If thatpivotal moment on which the oncoming generation turns is not to begravely considered, I know of no other moment that need greatly troubleus.

  So I listened to the treble of the cigales and the soft deep bass of thesea, and the silence continued between us. She picked and nibbledflorets of clover, her eyes far away. Her gaze wandered to butterflies,to a lizard that disappeared with a glint of bronze into a cranny, to aladybird that alighted on her forearm.

  Then the largest tear I have ever seen brimmed, trickled and dropped.

  On leaving the house she had dared me to notice anything about her eyes;but it is another matter when a tear so engulfs a ladybird that it is aquestion whether the creature's pretty wing-cases will ever be the sameagain. I had to speak after that.

  "Cheer up, Jennie," I said softly.

  She gulped. "Why were you so horrid and cross with him!"

  "This morning in the shop?"

  "Yes."

  "Well ... I fancied he'd played me rather a mean trick."

  "He didn't!" she flashed. "I'm sure he wouldn't do anything mean!"

  "Then say a trick I didn't expect from him."

  "I heard him tell the woman in the shop he was waiting for you, and--andyou walked straight past him without looking at him!"

  "It might have been better if you'd done the same, Jennie."

  "Did he come to fetch you out last night?"

  "I took him out."

  "Is he the--the Monsieur Arnaud the maid meant?"

  "That's the name he goes by."

  "Isn't it his name?"

  "I suppose it is."

  "Then why do you say it like that?... I want you to tell me about him,Uncle George, please," she ordered me.

  I too wanted to do that; but I found it anything but simple. I mighthave told her that he was simply a vagrant, just a fellow who wanderedabout sketching, here to-day and gone to-morrow. That would have beenperfectly true. But it would have been equally untrue. That was nopicture of Derry. She had seen a far, far truer picture of him when shehad turned her head towards him in the toyshop.

  "Well, of course that _is_ why I asked you to come for a walk thisafternoon, Jennie," I said slowly. "As a matter of fact M'sieur Arnaud'shad a very curious experience that I can't very well tell you about. Theresult of this is that he's--a rather odd sort of person to know. Infact he's better not known. He wanted me to introduce him to yourmother, and I told him I'd rather not do so. Anyway he's going awaysoon."

  "That doesn't sound like a horrid sort of person," she commented. "Isthat why he came last night--to be introduced to mother?"

  "No, he came for something quite different last night."

  "What?"

  Here again I might have answered with a certain appearance of truth thathe had come for money, though it was his own money; but that too wouldbe to misrepresent him. The cigales crackled loudly. I suppose theladybird was all right again, for it was nowhere to be seen. I mused,and then turned to her.

  "You said yesterday that you wished you were back in England, Jennie," Isaid. "How would you like to come and stay with me in Surrey for a bit?"

  "No thank you, Uncle George. Thank you very much."

  "It's quite jolly there in its way, and I dare say I could get somebodyquite nice to be with you."

  "I should like to some day, of course," she said, "but not just now, ifyou don't think it horrid of me." And she added, "I love being here."

  "Since yesterday?"

  She did not reply.

  Of course I had not expected for a moment that she would say Yes, evenhad I made up my own mind to abandon Derry to his fate, which I had notdone. Yet a thought flashed into my mind. Were I to return to England,taking Jennie with me, Derry would still not be unlooked-after. Themoment I left, Julia Oliphant, I felt certain, would fly to his side.And if Jennie would not come with me, what would the impossiblecombination be then?... My half-formed thought became a sudden picture,a contrast, vivid and arresting, between two women--the one whoexperimented with her dress and wanted to know what a cocktail tastedlike, the other this fragrant hawthorn-bough by my side. And between thetwo rose his grave and sunbrowned face....

  I stared at my picture, fascinated. The three of them together!Exquisite and horrible complication! Suppose it should ever come tothat!

  Then the picture vanished, and I saw the translucent untwinkling sea.The roofs of distant St Lunaire made a pale cluster of brightness. Thewind rippled the edges of the satiny poppies.

  All at once she clutched my sleeve with both her hands and buried herface against it. It br
oke, the storm that had been pent up for nearlytwenty hours. As the marguerites exposed their yearning golden hearts,so she kept nothing back, laid bare her own heart to the sun that wasits lord.

  "Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do! I can't bear it; it'stoo--too--oh, tell me what to do, Uncle George! I know he's my darling!I don't want to live without him! If he goes away I don't know what willhappen! It's all since yesterday--I didn't sleep a wink--I went out intothe garden when they'd all gone and stood in the same place. Then Iheard father moving about and hid.... And then this morning when youwere horrid to him--no, you weren't horrid, dear Uncle George--I knowit's all a stupid mistake--I love him! I don't care if he doesn't speaka word of English. I want him here now! I want to be with him! Please,please introduce him to mother. She loves French people. And he did askyou to, so he can't be horrid. I'm sure he didn't mean to play you amean trick. There must be a mistake. I'm sure he can explain if you'lllet him. Dear, dear Uncle George--do, do!"

  I put my hand on her hat, which was as much of her as I could see.

  "Don't look at me, please--I don't want to move for just a minute."

  "As long as you like, my dear."

  "Oh, I'll do anything if you only will! Where is he staying? I never sawhim in Dinard before. Where is he staying? Does he live here all thetime? I could see him if you came too, couldn't I? And I don't care whatsort of clothes he wears ... do, do, Uncle George!"

  Then she straightened herself, and looked full at me through her floodedeyes. She was suddenly imperious.

  "Now tell me something else, please. When you went off with him lastnight. Did he say anything about me?"

  Perhaps I did not lie with sufficient promptitude. "About you? No, ofcourse not."

  She looked accusingly at me; she caught her breath.

  "Oh, how _can_ you say that! I don't believe it! He did!"

  "But he couldn't even see you in the dark!"

  "It wasn't dark--it wasn't a _bit_ dark--it was quite light enough tosee anybody--_you_ saw him----"

  "Well, he's going away, and there's an end of it."

  Like a rainbow was the light that woke in her lately showering eyes. Upwent the soft lip, out peeped the pearls. Back, back from their goldenhearts lay the petals of the marguerites.

  "If," she said with extreme slowness, "if he told you he was going away,that must have been last night."

  I was dumb. I saw her effort to close her inner eyes on the light thatbroke on them, lest a wonder on a wonder should prove more than shecould bear.

  "That was _last night_!" the triumphant words rang out.

  I suppose there is no such thing as one half of a miracle without theother----

  "That was _last night_, and there hadn't _been_ a this morning then, andhe hadn't seen me when I was buying my bathing-cap, and if he said hewas going away he's changed his mind and he isn't going away at all!Neither of us is going away! Oh-h-h!" (That "Oh" echoes in my heartstill.) "He isn't even thinking of going now! Because we both knownow--we knew in the shop--and he loves me too!"

  Just to see one another--just to speak to one another--that was all theyasked of me.