Chapter XIV: Part II: The Even Keel (3)

"I hear you're laid up and hope you'll soon be all right again. I
didn't thank you properly the other night; I couldn't; you know
what I mean. Don't worry about my not keeping my promise; that's
all right; everything's as-you-were till you're about again. But
then I want to see you as soon as ever you can. You get well and
don't worry.

"D. R."

Slowly I folded up the note and put it into the pocket of my pyjama-jacket. She seemed fully to expect my silence. The shadow of a marten fled swiftly across the sill of the window. The house-martens built at Ker Annic.

At last, "I see," I said slowly. "I see."

She did not seem to think it necessary to reply. Neither was it.

"I see," I said again. Then, "Yesterday you went cycling," I said. "What did you do the day before?"

"I went for a walk."

"And the day before that?"

"I went for a walk too."

"Jennie ... were they supposed to know about these walks--you know who I mean?"

"Father and mother? No."

"Where did they think you were?"

"Don't know. I didn't say anything at all."

"They've no idea you went for two walks and a bicycle ride with Monsieur Arnaud?"

No reply.

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

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

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

This also she evidently expected. "About father and mother? I've left school. I'm old enough to think for myself. Mother says so. Anyway I'm going to. She always said I should."

"But mother doesn't know about these walks and bicycle rides."

Obstinately she contested every little point, even a casual plural.

"There's only been one bicycle ride."

"One then. She doesn't know about it."

"I can't help that."

"But of course you could----"

"No I couldn't," she rapped out. "I mean I just _can't_ help it. How can anybody help it? How can anybody do anything about it? It's a thing that happens to you, and it happened to them before, and I expect they did just as they liked about it, and didn't care a bit what anybody said! I can just see mother if anybody'd said she wasn't going for a walk with father!"

"You can't see anything of the sort, Jennie. If I remember rightly what your mother said, she had to sit still in her own carriage till her own footman opened the door. That was what happened when your mother was your age."

"Well, they don't do that nowadays, and mother knows it," she retorted.

The heartless logic of youth! It will turn your own words against you as soon as look at you. Because her mother had recognised that the world did not stand still she was to be made an accessory to this deception.

"Then," I said presently, "if they don't know, ought I to know?"

"You knew before," she said. "They didn't."

"But they're bound to find out."

"Oh, I expect everything will be settled by then!" she calmly announced.

The dickens it would! I lay back on my pillow. Fortunately the appearance of tea at that moment gave me a little time in which to collect my thoughts. Jennie removed various objects from the bedside table, took the tray from the maid, and began to pour out.

"Then," I said by and by, "why aren't you bicycling--or walking--this afternoon?" I wanted to have the position quite clear. If she could spend three days with him in succession, why not a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth?

"I had to give that note to you," she said.

"Ah, the note! I forgot that.... Have you any idea what's in it?"

She blushed crimson, flamed with reproach. All the same, I contrasted her shameless deception of her parents with this point of honour about peeping into an unsealed note to myself. These heaven-born young beauties draw the line in such odd places.

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

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

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

"Well, what does he think?"

"He thinks you were perfectly ripping to him the other night, about not doing anything till you saw him again, and when I told him you were ill he was awfully upset, and tore a page out of his sketch-book and wrote the note that very moment."

The devil!... But I went on.

"So he was sketching, and you went with him?"

"Yes. He did a sweet sketch, with me in it," she breathed, her eyes softly shining.

Only to see her and to go for bicycle-rides with her--only to speak to her and to paint her among the glowing sarrasin, the green translucence of the woods, the golden seaweed of the rocks or wherever it was----

"Oh, he did! And where was this?"

It was neither among the sarrasin, nor in the green woods, nor on the shore.

"It was miles and miles away, right past Saint Samson, nearly at Dinan, at a chateau called La Garaye," she said softly. "I never saw anything so lovely. There's a huge wide avenue of beeches like a tunnel--it's all in the middle of a lovely beechwood--and there's a lovely soft grass-ride right down the middle. Then at the bottom there are two great masses of ivy that used to be the chateau gates. And past them are the little white bits of the ruins. And there was an enormous loud humming everywhere, like a hundred aeroplanes. That was them thrashing at the farm with four horses that went round and round. We rode our bicycles down the green ride and put them up by some farm-buildings. They don't a bit mind your going anywhere you like, and they said he could paint if he wanted to. So he got out his things and I watched him. He didn't want me for the picture at once, because he had all the other to do first. Then he made me lie down in a frightfully nettley place, but he only laughed and said I'd got to be just there because it was where he wanted me. My hands are all nettled yet, look. So he painted me, Uncle George, and that horse-thing never stopped humming, and oh, it was so hot and blue and drowsy--I nearly went to sleep once. But the loveliest thing of all was afterwards. We climbed about among all those stones and ivy, and then there was a tower. Just like a castle tower, Uncle George, but not a hole or a window anywhere, except a place at the bottom just big enough to creep through. And what it was was an old pigeon-place, where they used to keep pigeons. All honeycombed inside with holes for thousands and thousands of pigeons. But, of course, there weren't any pigeons there, only an old sitting hen among the nettles that scurried round and round and then clucked away. It was like being at the bottom of a kiln or something, with grasses and flowers and things round the top and the sky _e_-ver so blue! And all those thousands of pigeon-holes, all grown up with birch and ivy and nettles and that silly old hen! I picked a bit of herb-robert. Oh, it was a heavenly place!"

Heavenly indeed, I thought grimly. Heaven enough inside that columbarium, with only a small hole to creep in at, and the muffled drone of that horse-gin, shut out by the walls that had once been filled with the cushing of a thousand doves and only God's blue looking down on them from the top!

Heavenly enough to make your heart ache when you remembered that there, in that ruined place of dead doves, he conscientiously sought to keep his promise to me--while she had given never a word to take back. Oh, I saw it all right. No question about that. She took very good care that I should see it....

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

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

For she was a woman. In little more than a week or two she had almost visibly altered, shot up into maturity. I had no doubt that he would keep his word to me; but--_only_ to see her, _only_ to speak to her! Only! Though it were but looking, what inch of beauty was there about her of which I could dare to say, "His eyes have not embraced that, his glance has not been as his very lips upon it?" Though it were but hearing, what tone was there in the sweet gamut of her voice of which I could tell myself, "His ears at any rate have not heard that?" Not one. And under the homage of his gazing, under the flattery of his hearing, the last particle of her girlhood had turned and altered. That hair, so recently a ruddy plait to be "put up" on occasion, was now a bride's single garland, its golden strands to be unwound again on an occasion that was not even her parents' concern. Disdain was now all that young Charterhouse, young Rugby had from those pebble-grey eyes. And that tongue of hers, lately so petulant with the world, was now her subtlest weapon, to get under my guard, to seduce me with her confidences about pigeon-towers and what not, and by and by (I had not the slightest doubt) to say with a touching and heartfelt sigh, "Oh, what a comfort it is to have one person one can tell everything to!"

But this was all very well. Quite excellent to pat my pillow, and ask me whether my flowers had been changed, and to fuss about pouring out tea for me. But, while I had more or less got their measure singly, I had no idea what double-dealing they might not be capable of together. So as she still sat with shining eyes, dreaming again of that columbarium, I pressed to the next point.

"So he painted you. All in one sitting?"

She dropped the eyes. "I think he said it might take three or four."

"In fact it might be cheaper in the long run to buy the bicycle instead of hiring it?"

She was demure. "Oh, I don't think so, Uncle George."

"What do they charge for the hire of a bicycle?"

"I don't know, Uncle George. I haven't paid anything yet."

"Then you still have it? Haven't they asked any questions about it?"

She looked quickly and innocently up. "Father?... Oh, it isn't here! You see the tram's almost as quick to St Briac."

"Oh! Then it's at St Briac?"

"Yes. In the kitchen."

"The kitchen where Coco lives?"

"Yes. That one. But, of course, Coco's outside except when it's raining. And he has sung 'Quand je bois mon vin clairet.' He sang it beautifully."

"I'm sure he did," I assented grimly.... "Now tell me a little more of what Monsieur Arnaud said when he was so grateful to me for not doing my plain duty."

Her eyes were full on mine, with an expression I did not understand. Somehow the pretty scatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose seemed to give the look an added directness. Her lips parted, but not in a smile.

"You needn't call him Monsieur Arnaud," she said.

"What then?" I asked quickly. "What do you call him, if I may ask?"

At her reply the teacup almost dropped from my hand.

"That's really what he said I had to tell you this afternoon," she said. "Of course I call him Derry, like you."

VII

I was hardly ill enough to have a temperature-chart over the head of my bed; had there been one heaven knows how high into the hundreds it must have leaped. I had been prepared for progression, development. Swiftly as things seemed to have advanced, from taking a single bicycle ride with him to keeping a bicycle in his kitchen was after all only a matter of degree. But this, of so totally different a piece, positively stunned me.

"Derry!" I echoed stupidly. "Derry what?"

"Rose, of course." Then, rushing almost breathlessly to forestall me, "But of course I know it's the most _fr-r-right_-ful secret! I know that only the three of us know. And it's splendid of you, darling Uncle George, to have stuck up for him the way you did! I wouldn't breathe a single word, not if they were to stick knives into me!"

Her eyes brimmed with thanks for my loyalty, disloyalty or whatever it was. But what, in God's name, had he been mad enough to tell her? Everything? Had he told her the whole story rather than strangle her on the spot?

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

"Of course I'm going to. But oh, how could I be so horrid to you about that note! As if you _would_ think that I should peep into a note anyway! You do forgive me, don't you?"

"If you're going to tell me tell me quickly," I groaned.

So this, if you please, is what came next:

"It was while we were in that pigeon-place, where the hen was. They look like rows and rows of little square holes, where the pigeons used to live I mean, but when you put your hand in they're quite big inside, all scooped out, lots of room for both pigeons and all their eggs. And one row hooks round inside one way and the other the other. I discovered that when I put my hand in, and I turned round to tell Derry. And do you know, Uncle George, he's got such a funny name for that place. He calls it the Tower of Oblivion. I didn't know what oblivion was, so I didn't know what he meant just at first, but I think it's a splendid name for it now. You see----"

"You were saying that you turned round to tell him something."

"I was just coming to that. So I turned round, and at first I had rather a fright, because I couldn't see him. I thought he'd gone, but I didn't see how he could, because there was only that one little way in and I was standing close to it. Then I saw him behind the bushes and things, all among the nettles, and his head was against the wall. I made a noise, but he didn't seem to hear me. So then I touched him.

"'What's the matter, M'sieur Arnaud?' I said. 'Is something the matter?'

"Well, he didn't move, Uncle George. For ever so long he didn't move. Then he turned round, and oh, his poor eyes! I don't mean he was crying. He didn't cry once all the time. But he made me so anxious I didn't know what to do.

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

"'You mustn't call me that,' he said. 'It isn't my name.'

"'Not your name!' I said. 'But Sir George Coverham calls you that, and mother calls you that, and Sir George wouldn't have told mother so if it wasn't so, and they call you that where you live!'

"'They do, and it isn't my name,' he said. 'I want to tell you my name,' he said.

"Well, I thought it awfully funny everybody calling him something that wasn't his name. So I said, 'Well, what _is_ your name?'

"'Rose,' he said.

"'What besides Rose?' I said.

"'Derwent,' he said. 'Derwent Rose. But George calls me Derry.'

"'George? Do you mean Sir George Coverham?' I said.

"'Yes. I sometimes call him George,' he said.

"And then, Uncle George, he put his head against the wall again and went on saying to himself, 'The Tower of Oblivion, the Tower of Oblivion,' over and over again."

I closed my eyes, but it was like closing them in a swing, so sick and dizzy did I feel. I had never seen that Tower in my life, yet somehow I seemed to be there--walled in, cut off from the rest of mankind, with only that hot deep blue overhead, and the grasses that fringed the circular top minutely bright and intense against it. The loud droning of the threshing-gin at the adjacent farm seemed to be in my ears, but in my heart was a more moving murmur. Gentle and forgotten place! With what croonings, what flutterings, had it not once been astir! Those little cavities into which she had thrust her hand were the cells of a once-throbbing heart. But who had built a Tower of stone to guard the dove's faithfulness? What masonry could make that, the very emblem of love, more secure? Of all birds, the constant dove to be thus immured? Towers are for the defence of the helpless, not of that invulnerable meekness and strength. All the stones in the world could not more fortify those soft immutable hearts. Such humility, yet so stable: such defencelessness, yet so steadfast! It was in this wondrous place, thrice strong without but ten times strong within, that Derwent Rose had sought his atonement. He too, hard without, was all tenderness within. He had no choice but to lie to the rest of the world, but she must be told the truth. Arnaud would do well enough for others, but he had no peace unless to her he was Derwent Rose. It was his comfort to tell her so, and that Tower was in truth his confessional, the Oblivion of his dead years.

"But of course you know all about it, Uncle George," she went on. "I didn't, you see, and that's what made it sound so queer. So I said to him, 'But why do you call yourself Arnaud if your name is Rose?'

"'Because something once happened to me,' he said.

"'What?' I asked him.

"'I don't know,' he said. 'George doesn't know. Nobody knows. A doctor once tried to tell me, but he didn't know either.'

"'But what sort of a thing?' I said. 'What does it do?'

"'It makes me younger,' he said. 'I'm years and years older than I look. I'm not young at all.'

"'But I don't understand,' I said. 'If it makes you young then you _are_ young, aren't you?'

"And then he smiled. I was so glad to see him smile. He'd been fearfully mopey up to then.

"'That's so,' he said. 'And anyway it's all over now. If it wasn't I shouldn't be telling you. If it wasn't over I shouldn't be here, Jennie.'

"He called me Jennie for the first time. He hadn't called me anything up to then, ever.

"'Then if it's all over what are you bothering about it for?' I said. 'Was it your fault?'

"'No,' he said.

"'Then,' I said, 'if a thing isn't a person's fault I think we ought to be sorry for them, and it doesn't matter if it's all over. And,' I said, 'if Uncle George calls you Derry I'm going to call you Derry too. It really is all over, Derry dear?'

"'Look, Jennie,' he said.

"And then, Uncle George, he looked up at the sky out of the top of the Tower, and bent his knee and crossed himself three times, like this."

Over her young breast her hand did what his had done.

"'And you promise it wasn't your fault?' I said.

"'That was my promise, Jennie,' he said.

"'Then,' I said, 'I don't want to hear another word about it. I won't listen. You're not to tell me any more.'

"So I wouldn't listen, and when he opened his mouth I just did this----"

And laughingly, with her hands tight over her ears, she shook her head. She would no more peep behind his word than she would have peeped into his note.

"And all this was yesterday?"

"Yes."

"Where is he to-day?"

"I only saw him just for a minute this morning. He wouldn't let me go with him to-day. He said I must come to you and tell you what I've just told you. So I waited till father and mother had gone out and then I came."

"And when father and mother come back? How do I stand? What am I to do?"

She sat straight up. "To do, Uncle George? But you _promised_ him!"

"I promised him for the moment."

"Well, this _is_ the moment, isn't it? You'll see him as soon as ever you get up again, won't you?"

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

Suddenly through the open window came the sound of voices below. Alec and Madge had returned. Jennie flew to my glass, and then, apparently finding all well there, turned, smiled, and put her finger on her lips. She was busily packing up my tray when Madge entered.

"Well, decided to live, George?" the kind creature rallied me. "All sorts of sympathetic messages for you from the Nobles and the Fergusons and the Tank Beverleys--run-after creature that you are! Been to sleep?"

"No."

Jennie passed behind her mother with the tray. She gave me a half-veiled glance as she did so. Then, almost imperceptibly, she brushed her mother's shoulder with her lips.

And well, I thought, she might!

"Jennie been reading to you?" said Madge.

"No, we've just been talking."

"Well, you'll have somebody else to talk to the day after to-morrow. We didn't want to trouble you with the affairs of this world when you were at death's door, but who do you think's coming?"

I made a great effort. "Animal, vegetable or mineral?"

"Angel, whichever that is," said Madge.

"I've angels enough about me."

"Pooh!... Julia Oliphant's coming. So you'd better get your colour back in case she wants to paint that portrait here."

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