THAT OTHER TIMETHIS TIMEJulia ...Jennie ...The approach of the lamp ...The approach of the lamp ...He had been greatly loved.He was greatly loved.He had not loved.She was his very heart.He had remembered nothing.I knew nothing whatever about it.But he had woke up younger by eleven years.I knew nothing whatever about it.Had ended in fluctuations of his "B" memory.I knew nothing whatever about it.But, save for that "flash-lamp" gap, his "A" memory had been unimpaired.I knew nothing whatever about it.He had therefore attained a duality of (approximately) eighteen and forty-five.I knew nothing whatever about it.But did he still retain it?It was precisely that that I wanted to know.
In other words, the problem that had confronted me when he had disappeared from his rooms in Cambridge Circus,when he had left Trenchard's rooms in South Kensington and had got to France by swimming the Channel, leaped upon me again on the ramparts of that ancient French town.
How old was he now?
But no, I have not finished yet. Let us take it a little further. The state of his memory at this point was a matter of the most urgent importance, since I now began to suspect that the whole of his chance of again going forward turned on it. So we now had:
Julia had taken his sin, but not his memory of it, since he had cried out upon my cowardice in speaking of it at Le Port gap.His cry had been immediately followed by an aching cry for help and advice.He had subsequently repeated a page from his book.He had vowed that books had never in the least interested him.I had particularly questioned him about his memory.I had not had an opportunity of questioning him.He had promised to take no step without my knowledge.He had taken a step without my knowledge.I did not think that he would knowingly break his word to me.He had broken it.
Do you see whither it leads? You do; but let me state it as it struck me, sitting there watching the shirley poppies in the east with St Sauveur dark among the limes behind me.
When you or I forget a thing our forgetting does not mean that that thing never was. Would to God it sometimes did! But you and I do not live backwards through our years, and we are dealing now with a man who did. Suppose, then, that this "A" memory were to go the way of his "B" one? And suppose in addition that, instead of merely resting on an even keel, heshouldpresently beginto forge ahead again? In that case he would once more be advancing on the unknown. His future to him would be what your future is to you, mine to me. And it is a condition of a future's being a future that itshall not already have been. What other future than that is there? There was no man living, Derwent Rose or anybody else, who hadnota future. And when a thing has not been it has not been, and there is the end of it. He was, quite simply, and exactly as you once were, exactly as I once was, young with a single age again. With the disappearance of his last "A" recollection, past time itself was abolished. For him forty-five was not, and never had been.
And gone already was his memory of at least one event of hardly a week ago, namely, his promise to me. Nay, that must have gone before ever they fled, for nothing would have been easier for him than to send me a note demanding his release from his word. But gone how, and when? Remember, my own last actual sight of him had been by Fréhel's Light when we had stood by the Crucifix that overlooks St Briac harbour. My last direct word from him had been that note that Jennie had brought, in which he had reassured me that he was to be trusted, at any rate till I was out and about again. And my last news of him of any kind prior to their flight was that he had sat with Jennie among the sarrasin sheaves. Therefore whatever had happened had happened during the few days between his writing his note and Noble's discovery of them and speeding to Ker Annic with the tale.
I counted these days one by one.
On Wednesday he had written his note.
I had received it on Thursday.
On the following Saturday Julia Oliphant had arrived.
On the Tuesday after, the day of my first walk abroad, Noble had conspicuously failed to mind his own business, and we had all been set by the ears.
So far so good. His "A" memory might have broken down on any of these days.
And yet on the very next day he had greeted Miss Oliphant by name! He had not only remembered her when she had presented herself at his hotel, but had remembered her in the rather curious sense that, whereas she had formerly been "Julia" to him, she was now "Miss."
What in the name of the falling night was one to make of it all?
My hotel was the Poste, in the Place Duguesclin, and, though I remembered Dinan only imperfectly, it was for evenings such as this that I had come. It was a certainty that Derry and Jennie would never come to Dinan, where, when the tides served, half a dozen packet-boats a day might bring their loads of visitors from the very place from which they had fled. During the hours when the excursionists thronged the old town it was simple for me to get out into the surrounding country, to take an omelette at some inn or other, and to return to dinner. At other states of the tide the passage by river was impracticable, and few strangers were to be seen.
The poppies went out of the sky almost suddenly. Over the parapet all was a soft violet vapour. But when I rose and turned slowly up the Place St Sauveur my thoughts still gave me their shadowy company.
But one shadow was spared me. This was the fear with which I had mounted the stairs of his lodging at St Briac. Had he not been living, she at any rate would have been heard of at Ker Annic before this. It was for this that poor Alec telegraphed, advertised, instructed agents. Not that he must not have him as well as her. Though he showed him the door immediately afterwards, this Arnaud must marry Jennie first.
And the chances of tracing him were now far different from those when I had fruitlessly sought him in London, only to have him put his hand on my shoulder in a Shaftesbury Avenue picture-house in the end. For he had been a middle-aged man then, with all the bolt-holes of his successive personal appearances to dodge fantastically in and out of. Then, a night, any night, might have made him unrecognisable, nameless, a ghost among living men. But between eighteen and sixteen is no very great difference. He might be a little less tall, a little less broad, but somewhere between those two years he was cornered. His description was circulated, hers did not vary. They had been gone four days. Probably a week at the outside would see him touched on the shoulder in this place or that, a "Pardon, M'sieu'" spoken in his ear, and back to Alec he would go.
And though I have said as a foolish figure of speech that on that magical Island of theirs they were unapproachably alone, that was the important thing from Alec's point of view.
There is a little café tucked away in an angle of the Rue de l'Apport, called, if I remember rightly, the Café des Porches. If it is not called that it ought to be, for these Porches stride out over the pavement on their ancient legs of stone and wood as if to knock together the overhanging brows of their fantastic upper stories. Indeed one would say that the stalls and shops and barrows tunnelled beneath them had but a moment before been flush with those ancient façades, and that at a call the whole house had suddenly advanced a pace, and the next moment might advance another. And if you take a chest of drawers, and draw the bottom drawer out a little, and the one above a little more, and the one above that a little more still, and then set opposite to it another chest of drawers to which you have done the same, you will have the appearance of those carved and corbelled and enriched and decaying frontages. I passed under their trampling legs and sought my café.
I don't remember ever actually entering that café in my life. I preferred either of the two tiny round pavement-tables that stood one on either side of its low doorway. There was just room to squeeze in between the two portable hedges of privet that stood in long wooden boxes on the kerb; and from this seat, unless they happened to be coming towards you under the Porches or going directly away, little more than a glimpse of passers-by could be had through the narrow opening. If they happened to pass on a bicycle it was the merest zoetrope-flicker and they were gone.
I sat down, called for coffee and afine, and watched the shopkeepers opposite putting up their shutters for the night.
One thing at any rate seemed now to be over and done with, and that was poor Julia Oliphant's desperate adventure. Poor woman, it was as much for her sake as theirs that I had left the Airds for a few days. Could she have done the same and have gone back to England it might have been as well, but that would have been to leave Madge insupportably alone. A single day in that daughterless house had been enough for me. The next morning I had made my explanation, had promised to return, had made a few purchases, and had packed my bag. Any news was to be wired or telephoned to me at the Poste. That briefly-concluded arrangement had been practically the whole of my conversation with Madge.
With Julia I had had even fewer words; for what was there to say? Even to Madge one could hardly have committed the grossness and superfluity of saying that one was sorry; what then of Julia? Was I sorry? For herself my heart bled; but was I sorry for the miscarriage of her vehement and tremendous attempt?
Yet how remember her as I had found her in the salon on the morning of the discovery, and be glad for Derwent Rose and his irregular bridal? She had worn a hat and frock of white piqué, but the piqué had not been whiter than her face nor the auracaria darker than her sombre lashes and ringed eyes.
"You've heard?" she had said.
"Alec's just told me."
"Of course——" The unuttered words were "with him."
"It looks terribly like it."
"Had you any idea?" This with a look so imperious that I was thankful to be able to reply truthfully.
"None. Is there anything—any little thing—we may do?"
"Settle that with Alec. I must be with her."
And that had been about all. I had not dared to ask her whether there was anything I could do for herself.
But if not because she had failed, at least because of this all-at-once dropping of the bottom out of everything for which she had lived, one heart in Dinan resumed its ache for her that night. Stratagems learned of any man, though she broke his heart with a laugh in the learning—and then to have her own broken! Arms to provoke the world—and no world to be provoked now that he, her world, had failed her! Nothing had been too little for her, nothing too great. Officers' Woodbines and her adoration of his painting, his years of war and a hat that hid one eye! What were those arms and shoulders of hers but his own gesture, ready to be given back to him, when he had shown himself in my swimming-pond, in that studio in Cremorne Road? How she had dreamed to glory in herself; what glories, for all I knew, had she not planned for the very next day! And all, all to have gone in the seeming security of that very moment when she had thought her rival out of the way! "New bicycles for old," she had planned, a new free-wheel with packing about its saddle and string and paper round its polished parts; but not a wheel would any bicycle ever turn now to help her. The last she had seen of this man whose destiny she had so arrogantly made her own was when he had shown her a picture—a picture of her young victress, lying among white masonry as ruined as Julia Oliphant's hope.
And even that she had had to ask to see.
The greengrocer under the Porche to the left was putting up his last shutter, the seller of hardware and Breton pottery across the way had already done so. Elsewhere from under the houses' bellies dim gleams of light showed as if through horn. In the upper stories window shone into window across the street—half Dinan is in bed by half-past nine. A priest in soutane and pancake hat hurried past, glancing into my retreat as he did so. Presently there was little light except that that streamed from the doorway behind me, yellowing the artificial hedge and showing the elephantine feet opposite—still where they were. Even this light was darkened as a couple ofconvives, with a "Bonsoir,Madame," blocked the doorway for a moment, gave me also a muttered "Bonsoir," and mingled with the shadows down the street. I watched them disappear.
But before they were quite lost among the trampling Porches there cut across my opening, quick as a zoetrope-flicker, and with the single little "ting" of an ill-adjusted bell, a bicycle.
My eyes function quite normally; but they are not an instantaneous camera. In the tenth part of a second I had turned my head to the right inside my little screen of privet. Alas! Round tubs, with more privet, blocked either end. I sprang up, but the round table was in my way. I extricated myself just one moment too late. I stood looking down the dark Rue de la Cordonnerie.
But she had vanished.
She—not he; for even in that momentary flash there had been no mistaking that uncovered red-gold head. But nothing else had been familiar. A black shawl had enwrapped her shoulders, a green plaid skirt had made an irregular rhomboid from the saddle downwards. Her stockings were black, and white canvas shoes with jute soles covered her feet. On the handle-bar had swung a basket, with parcels in it and a bâton of bread sticking out.
They were in Dinan after all.
In Dinan after all, and risking the visitors who arrived by the boat!
One moment though. There had been provisions in that basket on the handle-bar. If I myself could clear off during the busy hours of the day and take my omelette at a quiet roadside inn, what was there to prevent their doing the same? She had been "buying in." Possibly she was now cutting sandwiches for the morrow's consumption. Then, like myself, they would return at night, in the hour when the shutters were being put up, the Porches played heavenknew what gambols in the darkness, and even the lights of the Bretagne were extinguished, the awnings rolled up and the chairs and tables carried inside.
Or for that matter, they might be in Dinan for the night only, and off on their bicycles in the morning.
Yet somehow there had been a settled look about that figure that had passed the opening of the privet and been gone all in a moment. People who stay only one night in a place usually have their buying-in done for them. And if he was in vareuse and corduroys, her own dress had been indistinguishable from that of almost any shop-assistant or ouvreuse one might meet in the town. In vain had Alec and Madge gone through her wardrobe to see what garments were missing. That part of his description was useless. Only Madame Arnaud's face was Jennie Aird's.
I did not sit down again. I called inside the café, paid what I owed, and walked slowly in the direction the bicycle had taken. There was now, unfortunately, no hurry, and I considered this direction carefully. Two streets led to the right, but one of these might be eliminated, since in order to take it she would have had to skirt the shadow of the Porches, which she could hardly have done without my seeing her. Remained the Rue de la Cordonnerie. This is a narrower slit even than that made by the Porches. The sign of a dingy little restaurant, dimly seen by the light of a lantern high up in the middle of the street, alone seemed to keep the two sides from bumping together. One makes one's way as best one can between two gutters, none too pleasant to the nostrils, and to right and left the low-windowed shops and eating-houses seem to have settled a yard into the earth.
Then, half way down this alley, bicycles caught my eye. The murky light from a half-open door on the right showed the gleam of a couple of mudguards. I stepped over the gutter.
The next moment I had cursed myself for a fool. The officers from the two great barracks of Duguesclin and Baumanoir dine at the Poste or at the Bretagne, but there is not a cabaret or eating-house in the town that is not nightly visited by the N.C.O.'s and men. To see half a dozen bicycles stacked outside a doorway was the commonest of sights. There were four or five of them here now.
Nevertheless I peeped through the half-open door. I saw a low smoky kitchen interior, one half of it like any other kitchen, but the farther end entirely occupied by a dresser crowded with bottles of all shapes and sizes and colours. A fat little woman in a blue-checked apron and lace cap was ironing; the rest of the table was a litter of képis, bottles and glasses. Through drifting cigarette-smoke men's bare heads showed, the red breeches of dragoons, the black breeches of infantry, and a couple of young fellows in horizon-blue, one with a steel cap on his head. No woman's bicycle was likely to be found among those heavy Service machines. I turned away.
So she had slipped me for the moment. But she was in Dinan. What to do now?
Wire immediately to Alec, I supposed.
But as I crossed the Place Duguesclin I had a better idea. It was the lights of the Poste showing under the dark limes that put it into my head. Charlotte might be able to help me. Charlotte was the little Italian-looking toulonnaise who served the cafés andfinesoutside the hotel and never failed to ask me how I had slept when she brought my coffee and roll in the morning. My French, I ought to say, though serviceable enough, is not of the same pure fount as was Derry's, and Charlotte even more than the other ladies of the hotel took the most charming and hospitable pains in talking with me. And I have always found that, whether in another tongue or in your own, a great deal of your ease depends on who you are talking to. What I mean is that Charlotte and I were friends.
I walked into the large public room where Madame at her desk was casting up her day's accounts. The chairs were being piled on the marble-topped tables, and through the maze of their legs I saw that Charlotte had not yet gone. That was my idea. I knew that Charlotte lived, not in the hotel, but somewhere in the town, coming and going daily.I approached her. I will give our low and brief conversation in English.
"Have you remarked in the town, Charlotte, a young woman of such-and-such a manner of dress and such-and-such a face and hair, especially the hair, who buys her bread and groceries a little late at night and possibly on a bicycle?"
"The shops are closed when one leaves this hotel, M'sieu'," sighed Charlotte.
"But you inhabit the town. I will re-describe." I did so. "If it were possible to furnish me with renseignements——"
"Hold, M'sieu'. This lady is French?"
"Only exteriorly. Without doubt she speaks French, but as I do myself, like a Spanish cow."
"Non, non, M'sieu'," Charlotte politely protested. "But wait. She is alone?"
"She is with her French husband, the most beautiful young man even among the beautiful young men of France." (I was glad Alec was not there to hear me.)
Charlotte gave an exclamation. "Then itisthey!"
"Ah! And they live——?"
"I do not know, M'sieu'. But Dinan is not very large."
"Neither is this very large, Charlotte, but it may aggrandise itself——"
And there passed between us certain pieces of postage-stamp-edging that united the filthy remnants of what had once been the notes of a Chamber of Commerce. I sought my candle and ascended to my room.
In Dinan! Well, it was quite like him to have cunningly read our minds, anticipated our conclusions, and decided that Dinan was perhaps not so unsafe after all. And his mastery of French would enable him to remain obscure.
Yet one or two little things puzzled me. Jennie's French, for example, was not remarkable; why then should he, able to bargain like a native to the last cabbage-leaf, have risked discovery by sending her shopping instead of going himself? Was another change coming? Had it come? Though itcould not now be externally a great one, was he none the less nervous about it?... But it was no good guessing. If Charlotte had any luck at all I should know in the morning. In the meantime bed was no bad place.
My room looked on the inner courtyard of the hotel. I was asleep before the lights of the staircases and windows opposite had ceased to flicker over my ceiling and the wardrobe-mirror at my bed's foot.
I awoke to the sound of Dinan's bells. At first I could not remember what it was of importance that I had on my mind. Then the mists of sleep cleared away and it all came brightly back. I dressed hurriedly and descended. Almost immediately Charlotte came to my table with my coffee and my news.
And I had been right after all. They were at that house sunk a yard into the earth in the Rue de la Cordonnerie where the soldiers' bicycles had stood.
"And the name of the proprietor of the house?"
"C'est Madame Carguet, M'sieu'."
"Merci, Charlotte. You will buy yourself a hat for Sundays, but the best in Dinan, it is understood——"
A quarter past nine found me at that low doorway into which I had peeped the evening before. Madame stood at the table, washing lettuce in a crock. I tapped and entered.
"Madame Carguet?"
"It is I, M'sieu'."
"I am a friend of the lady and gentleman who are staying with you. May I see them?"
She had kind, vivacious and shrewd little eyes, which seemed to measure me for a moment.
"And the name of M'sieu' who asks?"
I thought it possible that he might have left instructions about anybody who might ask for him. In any case there was nothing for it but to be open and above-board. I told her my name, corroborating my statement with my card. She wiped her wet hands on her apron and took the card by the extreme tip.
"Merci, M'sieu'. But actually it is that they have gone painting, taking with them the provisions for the day, as every day."
"They will be back——?"
"This evening. Oh, assuredly, M'sieu'."
Then, whether my manner or my card reassured her, or however it was, her face lighted up and she broke into a flood of ecstatic French of which I understood perhaps one word in three.
"But it is just as I said to my husband, 'M'sieu'—the fairy-tale of Cendrillon, just! 'Vieux sot, but where are your eyes?' I said. 'Regard how she holds the fer-à-repasser to her cheek; did she ever before iron a chemise or a coiffe in her life? Look at her hands which hold the needle. It is not like you and me, ce couple-ci; it is of a different order. You will see arrive the coach presently—justement Cendrillon!' Ah, the beautiful pair! And he, so young, to have fought through this terrible war! Mais oui, M'sieu', c'est vrai—but necessarily M'sieu' knows better than I who tell him. At first one would not believe. The poilus here, they would not believe. Who would believe? But mon Dieu, it is true! Our Caporal Robert, he was at the very places. It is correct absolutely—the regiments, the divisions, the commandants, the tranchées, the boyaux, the dates—Caporal Robert can verify all, for he too, he, was in contact with the English armies! To hear them talk of an evening, M'sieu', yes, in this very room, while Madame sews or assists me with the ironing or no matter what——"
"But they have only been here—how many days?"
"Four days, M'sieu'—but we love them. Ah, the difference when such as they drop from the skies! It beautifies our life. C'est une fuite, sans doute, M'sieu'?"
"A little; but all will be accommodated."
"You are a parent, M'sieu'?"
"I am a friend of the parents. I am un peu—ambassador."
"And they will return and be pardoned?"
"It is what I seek to arrange."
She had placed a chair for me. She herself sat with her back to the table on the bench that had been occupied by the red-breeched dragoons the night before I glanced round the room. Behind the open door the inner tube of a bicycle hung on a nail in the wall, and a bicycle-pump and an oilcan stood on a little shelf above it. Beneath the shelf was an empty space, more than sufficient for a bicycle. I saw now how I had missed her. She had wheeled her bicycle straight in and had put it behind the door, had crossed the kitchen to a closed door on my right, and had gone to her room—gone to where he waited for her, for he had certainly not been among the soldiers when I had peeped in.
"You say that M'sieu' talks to the clients of an evening, Madame. Did he do so last night?"
"Last night, no, M'sieu'. One missed him. But talk to them, he! For three nights he has talked and laughed all the evening while she has assisted me. Talk and laugh? C'est à dire! To hear him sing to the copains—'En France y a qu' des Français'—la figure, les gestes—c'est à tordre!"
And sitting there she sought to give me the impression, singing his song in a cracked voice:
"A part les Anglais, Américains,Espagnols, Anamit's, Italiens,Les Russes, Les Hollandais et les p'tits Japonais—En France y a qu' des Français!
Ah, but he is an original, he!"
"But why then was he not of the clientèle last night?" I asked.
"I do not know, M'sieu'. Perhaps he was a little souffrant. It was Madame who made les emplettes last night; ordinarily it is he, and oh, M'sieu', M'sieu', pour les occasions!... She took her bicycle which reposes behind the door there, and was gone scarcely a little half-hour, and then she replaced the bicycle and mounted straight to him in the room that is above."
"Did you see them go out this morning?"
"No, M'sieu'."
("Then, chère Madame," I thought to myself, "do not be surprised if you do not see them return this evening.")
For this was newly disturbing. Apparently for three nights he had made the purchases, as I had anticipated he would; then on the fourth night he had sent her. For three nights he had sat in that half-underground room, laughing and talking with the evening customers; then on the fourth he had buried himself upstairs. I looked round the kitchen again. I tried to see the picture—the incredulous poilus, questioning, cross-questioning, demanding who was on his regiment's right, who on its left, what division was in support, under whose command. Quite possibly Caporal Robert had been had in specially to check his accuracy. What a stroke of luck for him that he had actually served at a point of contact between the British line and the French! And here in this room he had sat, pulling their legs, as he had pulled mine in the Boulevard Féart, Alec Aird's at Ker Annic. The cool impudence of his song! "Only Frenchmen in France!" How he had laughed in his sleeve! Well might Madame Carguet shake her head and say that he was impayable, he!
But—it (you know what I mean by "it") happened in the night; and what was the appalling position now that his nights were shared with another? Her too I tried to picture again in that lamplighted kitchen, clumsily sewing, burning herself with the iron, with the poilus, grave and respectful, but making the very utmost of their moustaches and stealing covert glances at her as her head was down hung over the ironing-board. "Une fuite"—obviously an elopement. Anyone could see that with half an eye. But to what had she fled? To yet another of his transformations? Slight though any transformation must now be, she knew every line of his beautiful face, and what must be her consternation, what her alarm, did but a single line alter, though it became more beautiful still?
And unless they returned to the Rue de la Cordonnerie to-night (which I now entirely doubted), what was the good of telegraphing to Alec?
"You say he is painting, as every day," I said. "Has he any pictures in the house at this moment?"
"Twenty or more, M'sieu'."
"They are in his room without doubt?"
"Oui, M'sieu'. At this moment even. After his departure this morning I did his room with my own hands."
"He sells his pictures?"
She gave a shrug. "That I cannot say. He sketches the clients, but those he gives away. Caporal Robert he drew as one should say himself, le Caporal, breathing upon the paper. Evidemment he has exposed at the Galleries. Are his pictures of great value, M'sieu'?"
"I am unable to say, Madame."
("But," I thought, "as it is a wager that those pictures upstairs and that bicycle-pump behind the door will be his payment for his lodging, it is to be hoped they are.")
I rose.
"Thank you, Madame. As to my visit to you, you will see that there is a discretion to be observed. I shall return this evening at nine o'clock. In the meantime it would give me great pleasure if you would share a vermouth sec with me."
But she was on her feet instantly. "Non non non non! It is I who should have remembered! We are going to drink to those two angels, but yes, at the expense of the house, I implore! Et quand la Carosse de Cendrillon arrivera à la porte ... non non, M'sieu', it is the house that pays ... ah, but what insistence!... Well, well, as M'sieu' wishes——"
She busied herself among her bottles, humming to herself as she did so the words of his song: "——et les p'tits Japonais, En France y a qu' des Français!"
I will not linger over the details of that day. I wandered aimlessly hither and thither, out through St Louis' ancient gate, under the grey walls of the Petits Fosses, back and forth in the shade of the tall elms, stupid with too much thinking. I could only repeat over and over to myself, "Another lapse, another lapse! That was why he kept tohis room last night. His landlady didn't see him go out this morning; she won't see him come back to-night. It's happened again, and he's off somewhere else. And she's with him. Poor child, poor, poor child!"
I lunched at the Poste, and in the afternoon walked again. But the brilliance of the summer's day was lost on me. I thought that after all I would go back to England. What was done was done, what was to come would come. The sight-seers who wandered up and down under the Porches or gaped in groups in the Place St Sauveur seemed unreal to me; the shadow of what had probably again happened was my reality. Poor, poor child! She, our lovely Jennie Aird, to alight on a broken wing in that dingy kitchen, to sit among poilus, to listen to his mocking song! And he, with that shadow darkening over both of them, could actually find it in his heart to sing....
The visitors descended the Lainerie to the vedettes again; the Porches watched them go; and once more I had the Place St Sauveur to myself.
Mechanically I entered the church. I closed the leather door softly behind me as I became aware of a small group a little way up the aisle. I slipped into the nearest pew, half concealed behind a pillar. Apparently a christening was toward, for a stout little Frenchman with a waxed moustache held a babe in his arms. He tickled the infant's chin and allowed it to clutch his finger, chatting and laughing softly as they waited for the priest. The priest appeared, followed by three or four acolytes carrying candles; he also laughed and joked and chatted quietly, while the cerise-coped urchins, their candles at all angles, shifted their feet, leaned against the font, and looked negligently round. There was an almost jocular intimacy about it all, until the priest, in a secret, attentive and distinct voice that nevertheless filled the aisle, began the Sacrament.... And I caught myself foolishly wondering whether that babe too would grow up, have something inexplicable happen to it, and set out on the return journey to the cradle again. If to one, why not to another? Why not to all the world? What was there to prevent oneof those inattentive acolytes having by and by the part of a George Coverham to play? Why should not that mite of four holding her mother's hand turn out to be a Julia Oliphant? Or those other wide-eyed tots be some future Madge and Alec Aird?... But it occurred to me that these thoughts would not do. All at once I rose and stole silently out. Even in a church there seemed to be no comfort for me. This time I took a long walk, I hardly remember where, and did not return till it was time for dinner.
I had very little hope of seeing the runaways, but I might as well keep my appointment as not. At a little before nine, therefore, I turned into the Rue de la Cordonnerie. As I did so my heart gave a leap to notice that the window over the low doorway of the inn was lighted up.
With my eyes on the light I moved to the other side of the street. Carved wooden corbals supported the overhanging bay, but the window itself was modern. The light was apparently placed low down, on a chair or on the floor, for half over the sagging ceiling I could see the enormous soft shadow of somebody's head. The shadow moved, and the somebody approached the window.
Then I saw the glint of her hair.
I entered the brasserie, bowed to Madame among her troopers, and looked inquiringly towards the inner door. She had a candle ready. She lighted it, opened the door, put the candle into my hand and one finger on her lips, pointed up a staircase no wider than if two interior walls had cracked slightly apart, and withdrew. I ascended.
Then, before I reached the landing, I heard his clear voice.
"I say, darling, what does 'bélier' mean?"
The door was a couple of inches ajar. The clear voice continued. Apparently he was reading aloud.
"'Là était une tour dite Le Poulailler'—(poulaille's poultry)—'qui renfermait Le Chat, machine de guerre'—(wherethe Chat, a machine of war, was kept)—'sorte de bélier à griffes pour les sièges'—something with claws for sieges—now what on earth is 'bélier'? Seems to have been some sort of a battering-ram.... There, how stupid of me! Why, I've just said the very word! 'Ram,' of course. They kept the battering-ram there.... 'On peut visiter dans une maison voisine le passage en casemate de la courtine'—sort of fortified wall, I expect—'et aussi dans les caves de l'Hôtel de la Poste'—and also in the cellars of the Hôtel de la Poste——"
Thereupon I pushed and entered.
He was sitting on a long, low chest, the sort of thing corn or flour would be kept in, with the single candle by his side. In his hand was the paper-covered guide-book from which he was laboriously reading. The little table at which she stood was pushed up against the wall just beyond him; she was preparing their supper. A long roll was tucked under her left arm, and she spread the butter from a little casserole. A paper of sausage was before her, with two of Madame's glasses and a bottle of milk. In the corner by the window stood a bed with a draped canopy and a crimson coverlet that resembled a soufflé. Had you put a marble down on that ancient floor heaven knows where it would have come to rest, for the whole room was warped and distorted, as if indeed it had just retired panting from its struggle with the house across the street. Under the window his canvases were stacked. Near the bed's head hung a single devotional picture, a Virgin and Child in blue and white and gilt. The bed had to be where it was because of the window on the other side of the way.
Then, before I could make my presence known, he flung the guide-book across the room, sprang to his feet, opened his arms wide, ran towards her, and clasped her rapturously to him.
"Oh, darling, darling! Isn't it simply ripping—ripping!"
I have never heard such a cry of pure happiness from human throat. He made no attempt to kiss her; some far, far deeper joy seemed to possess them. I had the most vividimpression that this was not the first nor the second nor the tenth time that day they had clasped like that. He was laughing down at her, she laughing softly back. She was fresh and fair as a jonquil—yes, jonquil-hued even to her little gilding of freckles, as if the flower's heart had burst with a happiness like their own, and spread its golden dust around. And they seemed to adore, not so much one another, as some wondrous secret that existed between them.
Then suddenly I saw her stiffen. She had seen me, and he had seen the look in her eyes. Both heads turned swiftly, and they severed. I did not move.
Then slowly my eyes moved from her face to his.
Not a trace of change could I distinguish. He was young, not too young, grave, and filled with some exaltation that did not quite leave him as our eyes looked into one another's.
"I must beg your pardon," I muttered.
He advanced towards me. "Why—Sir George!"
Then swiftly he glanced at her, she as swiftly at him.
The next moment her cheek was against my breast.
"Are they here?" she murmured in a failing voice.
I did not pretend not to understand. "No, Jennie, I'm here alone."
"How did you know we were here?"
"I'm staying in Dinan for a few days. I saw you last night."
She lifted her head. Again their eyes sought one another's. There was something they were aching to communicate.
The room had two chairs, one a church chair with a rush bottom, the other a straight-backed piece of carved Breton work, but so old that its colour had become a dry dusty grey. He placed this chair for me, and sat down again on the corn-bin. He was softly kneading his brown hands, as I had formerly seen him do in Cambridge Circus. It is odd how these tricks cling to one.
Then, his face again transfigured with that undivulged joy they shared, he looked up at me. Jennie was back at her buttering again; apparently he was to do the telling. Inoticed that at any rate he had not forgotten to buy her a ring. He caught my glance at it, and nodded joyously.
"That's it," he said.
Once before he had asked me to talk French to him. I now had a reason for speaking it unasked.
"Qu'est-ce que veut dire——" I said.
He laughed aloud.
"That's all right—you can talk English! Can't he talk English, Jennie?"
Jennie nodded.
"Suppose you talk it," I said.
"Rather! I'm going to tell him, Jennie.... English? Why, that's the whole thing! Yesterday morning when I woke up"—he glanced towards the bed by the window—"I hardly dared to believe it! They were talking down in the street or somewhere, and all at once I wondered—what I mean is that I couldn't quite catch it. It all seemed so quick and difficult, just a lot of jabbering. Not a bit like we learned it: 'Je veux une plume, de l'encre et du papier'—you know. So I lay there thinking, looking up at the ceiling. Then I had an idea. I got quietly out of bed and went to the door there." He nodded in the direction of the door now. "I opened the door and called down to Madame. I've done that every morning for café-au-lait, you see. Now here's the point."
He emphasised the point with a forefinger.
"There's a Breton word for café-au-lait. Don't ask me what it is; I don't ever want to hear it again. Anyway, I'd used that word for three mornings, and that morning I couldn't remember it for the life of me. I thought perhaps if I just went to the door and called without stopping to think it might come of itself, but not it! I had to ask for café-au-lait, and of course up it came all right....
"Well, I didn't say a word to Jennie. We got up and went out sketching. But forgetting that word, and all the French I heard sounding so awfully funny and foreign, was on my mind all the time. And the next thing was that I forgot the word for willow—I happened to be sketchingsome willows. Couldn't think of the French for willow. And all day it was the same. Some people came and looked over my shoulder while I was painting, but all I could make out was the word 'Salon,' and, of course, that's just as much English as French.
"Then I started talking bits of French to Jennie, and she got a bit cross—didn't you, sweetheart? She thought I was pulling her leg about her own French. And so it went on all day, and me getting more and more excited about it. Then at night I told Jennie all about it. I told her she'd have to go out and do the shopping, because I simply daren't. I'd had little jokes with the shop people, you see, and I thought to myself, 'By Jove, if they joke back now I shan't have a word to say!' You see what I'm getting at, don't you?"
Dismay filled my heart. So this was the magnificent news that had thrown them so ecstatically into one another's arms! This was what had happened in the night this time! He, who the evening before had sung to the poilus downstairs, had had to send her to do their shopping! Little enough to rejoice over, I thought. But he went on.
"Then to-night, just before you came in, it happened again. Some French word or other, quite a simple one—I just couldn't remember the English for it. It was hardly a moment before you came in. I tell you it's all going away from me by leaps and bounds. Even when I know the words my tongue won't pronounce them properly. And then you came in. You see what it means, don't you?"
"What does it mean?" I managed to ask. It seemed to me to mean only one thing—the beginning of the end.
"What does it mean?" he exulted. "Why, it means that I'm simplyme—just myself and none of this beastly Arnaud business—a fresh start it means."
I glanced at Jennie. "I wonder whether you'd mind getting another glass and letting me share your milk," I said.
Then, when the door had closed behind her, "This is simply the old thing over again, Derry. You've talked about fresh starts before."
He laughed. "Is that all you sent her out for? She knows all about it. Of course I really started some time ago. I think I told you so. All I'm telling you this for now is because it absolutely clinches it!"
"How does forgetting clinch anything?"
"Because itisforgetting!" he cried triumphantly, echoing and confirming my own abstruse meditation as I had watched the shirley poppies over the ramparts. "I say, I mustn't shout, though. I'm not supposed to know any English except the few words Jennie's taught me. Great jokes we've had about that! So doesn't this prove it? Why, what am I doing remembering things all that time ago? I'm not perfectly right till I've forgotten every single thing! And I'm forgetting without trying; you can't try to forget. Heaps of things have gone besides French—heaps of English things. Why, I've forgotten——"
"You remember me?"
"Yes. I met you at the Airds. I told you the whole story out at Le Port one night. You can't have forgotten!"
"Hadn't we met before then?"
"Yes, I think we had. There was a pond, wasn't there? Wasn't it at some house with a pond?"
"Do you remember a Miss Oliphant?"
"Oliphant? Yes—wait a bit—yes I do. I'd met her somewhere or other too. But the last time I saw her was when she came for a bicycle. Why they should have sent her I don't know, but of course I knew there was a storm blowing up, so I simply gave her the bicycle and showed her a few sketches, and let it go at that."
"You don't remember where you'd met her before, do you?"
"I know it was in England somewhere. But I didn't know you knew her till Jennie told me."
"You really didn't know I knew Miss Oliphant?"
"Honestly I didn't, Sir George."
I was silent as Jennie reappeared.
And yet, if she knew all, as he said, why the caution of silence? It seemed to me that with the clearing up of oneother point I should have an idea of how matters really stood. I turned to Jennie.
"Derry's still talking about the great news," I said. "He says you know all about it. Well, I want you to tell me one thing. Does he remember everything that's happened since he first saw you?"
Derry answered for her, with a soft laugh. "Do I remember that! Why, it's all I'm going to know presently!"
"Has your 'B' memory quite gone?"
"Quite, so far as I can say."
"And your 'A' is going, and you're starting a brand-new one from the moment you met Jennie?"
"Not 'met.' 'Saw.' That's it exactly. Couldn't have been better put."
"And"—I hesitated, but took my fence—"that's all? Nothing else has gone?"
"What do you mean, Sir George? Only the remembered things are going.I'mthe same, if that's what you mean."
"The same that you always were?"
"Well"—he made a simple gesture with his open hands—"if I don't remember what I was I can't very well tell that, can I?"
"You still do a little, but it's going, and soon you won't at all?"
"Exactly.Nowdo you see what I mean?"
It was impossible to believe that even unconsciously he was lying. I remembered his own trouble and unbelief when it had first occurred to him that this astounding development might lie ahead. Wistfully he had put it aside as too dazzling to be entertained. "I suppose that's too much to expect," he had sighed as he had put it from him. But now, unless he was lying to me, to Jennie, and to himself, he certainly seemed to have the proof of it. His face had been puzzled candour itself when I had put my sudden questions: Had he and I met before, and did he know a Miss Oliphant? Vaguely he remembered a pond, vaguely a Miss Oliphant in England; and to-morrow he was not going to remember either. My hazardous surmise as I had watched the shirleypoppies was justified, my fears for the breaking-up of his faculties groundless. This was not the break-up, but the very confirmation of those faculties, the complete washing-out of everythingnotinherent in himself. What next happened in the night would be what happens to every one of us every night—the gentle and beautiful small forward step to age. He was all but at the maximum of his unassisted, unhindered power, a white page on which to write anew.
And what a lovely manuscript might it not now be made! His schooling, the rudiments he had formerly acquired up to the age of sixteen, he would probably retain; but thereafter his life dated from a certain moment when, by the upcast glow of the headlights of a French car, he had seen Jennie Aird's eyes looking into his. He even spoke as if his talk with me that night by Le Port gap had been the beginning of his confidence in me. Not a suspicion did he seem to have that he had made similar confidences before, in his rooms in Cambridge Circus, in that loft over a South Kensington mews. That meeting of eyes across the car—that swift "Who was that with you in the garden, George?"—his wily shepherding of me into the Dinard Bazaar—his surreptitious meetings with her, and his last crowning escapade—these made up the whole history of his re-created life. Within this perfect period he had forgotten nothing ... but yes, he had forgotten one thing. This was his promise to me. And very likely he had not forgotten that at all. The chances were that he had knowingly and deliberately broken his word. And what of it? Who was I to have extorted it from him? Could I reproach him with that—now? Is the law so hard? Shall we add to the tortures of Tantalus the unbinding of his hands, and forbid him to seize the fruit he thirsts for? Let him cut the knot and take his joy! At the worst he had merely omitted to send me a note releasing himself. And should I speak of that—now?
So, if he was eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, he was—simply—eighteen or seventeen or sixteen. What, by that fact, mattered his birth-certificate? If he was not the age he was,what age was he? How old are you? how old am I? We are as old as our knowledge of ourselves.Hadhis faculties been impaired—ah, that would have been another matter. But out of that ancient mould of his former history a new sprout had pushed, sweet, vigorous, and identical with itself. That shoot was Derwent Rose. If it was not Derwent Rose where then was Derwent Rose? No Derwent Rose had died. If you would find him you must seek him among the living. Or if any Derwent Rose had died, it was the author ofThe Hands of EsauandThe Vicarage of Bray. Dead indeed he might be; for no link now existed between him and his youth, unlettered in anything but the perfection of a beautiful love. He stood in that sagging room in the Rue de la Cordonnerie, what he was and nothing else. He had been it as long as he had been it, and neither more time nor less. No power on earth could make it otherwise. No power in heaven would have tried.
"Well, what's to be done?" I asked presently.
We were all three sitting on the corn-bin, they together, I nearest the table. They were munching their bread and sausage.
"That's perfectly simple," said Derry. "As I've told you, that silly Arnaud business is all over. I'm Derwent Rose. Nobody can say I'm impersonating him, can they? So I mustbehim, and if I'm him it's just like anybody else being themselves. And I'm awfully sorry it had to be tip-and-run, but there wasn't anything else for it at the time. But that's all over. I've got that beastly memory nearly off my shoulders. I don't know anybody in England. I remember our own village of course—in Sussex it was—and a few odds and ends—and oh!" He slapped his knee. "That'swhere I heard the name Oliphant! I didn't know Miss Oliphant in England at all. There's a little Julia Oliphant, but she's only a kid, and no relation at all probably. But this one's a bit like what I could imagine little Julia growing up to be. Never mind. What I want to ask you now is about Jennie's people."
"Yes, Jennie's people," I said.
It was the drop of gall in the honey of her happiness. She would cut his bread and sausage, learn to darn his socks, sew on his buttons, wash out his handkerchiefs for him; that her hands as well as her heart should serve and adore him was all her joy; but I saw the droop of her head and the tremor of that upturned lip that betrayed the pearls. Julia Oliphant might hardly dare, but this one—ah, she was so recently a child! I think she would even have left Derry's side for ten minutes might they but have been spent with her mother's arms about her and the smell of her father's pipe not far away. I don't know whether a tear had ever dropped on to that ironing-board of Madame's downstairs. I saw one drop now.
"Yes, Jennie's people," I said again. "I suppose you want to know about them?"
I saw no harm in reminding him, at any rate, that however great things might be happening to him, minor but still important ones were happening simultaneously elsewhere. Even when you start a new life under the shadow of an old one you cannot entirely escape the world and its ordinary responsibilities.
"Of course we do," he said, surprised. "I'm going to them the moment things are shipshape again."
"You may see them even sooner than that. I need hardly tell you I shall have to wire to them immediately."
He sighed a little. "Well, I suppose the music's got to be faced," he said quietly.
"You're not going to try to give me the slip, are you?"
Again the surprised look. "Of course not. What have I just been telling you? That's the whole idea. If all goes as it is going a couple of days might put the stopper on this memory business once for all. Then we shall go to them at once. I want to get it over."
I looked around the room again. Practically upon the window-sill of it somebody across the street was preparingfor bed. In order to get to that upper chamber of theirs at all one had to pass through the public room downstairs. Everything about the place sighed with age and indefinable odour; one knew not what mould, what sweating life, what "silver fishes," those tired old walls did not harbour. I don't think I am too fastidious, but that was no place for that jonquil, Jennie Aird.
"Look here, Derry," I said suddenly, "if it's a fair question, how much money have you got?"
He looked serious. "Awfully little I'm afraid. And I don't know where I'm going to get any either."
"Haven't you any—put away anywhere?"
"No."
"What have you been living on?"
"What's left of that five hundred francs you were so good as to lend me—that and a couple of sketches I sold to a fellow at St Briac. I'm afraid you'll have to wait for that five hundred, Sir George."
"Let me see. When did I lend it to you?"
"While I was at St Briac, you remember."
He had forgotten it was his own money. I rose from the corn-bin.
"Very well. You say you're not going to give me the slip, and that you're going to Jennie's people the moment things are all right. Will you as a first step settle up here and come along with me to my hotel now? You came here to lie doggo. That's all over. This is no place for either of you."
He blushed with embarrassment. He hesitated. But evidently the problem had been worrying him, for he looked frankly up.
"I will on one condition, Sir George. That is that it's added to the five hundred. I shall be selling my sketches presently if you can wait a bit. You're quite right; Jennie oughtn't to be here. But I hope the Poste isn't too expensive. I shall have to pay you back sooner or later."
"Well, that can stand over for the present. Come and see the curtain-wall or whatever it is in the cellars of theHôtel de la Poste. Come now. You can fetch your canvases to-morrow. Get your things on, Jennie."
"They are on," said Jennie.
"Then just let me leave you for a minute or two."
I passed down that fissure of a staircase again, opened the door of the cabaret, and beckoned to Madame. There, at the foot of the stairs, and in complete darkness except for the inch that the door was left open, we had our low conversation.
"Tout va bien, M'sieu'?" she asked with anxious sympathy.
"Oui, Madame. The coach will take away your Cendrillon immediately."
"Is it not as I said to my husband! And M'sieu' Arnaud also goes?"
"Naturally. They will depart in a few minutes. As for their account, it is I who will regulate that if you will prepare it for to-morrow. And one does not buy goodness of heart, Madame; nevertheless——"
Nevertheless, in the short struggle of hands in the darkness, the hand that proffered and the hand that refused, the hand that proffered was the victor. I re-ascended to their room.
The other time I had not knocked, but this time I did so. They were as I had left them—ready in what they stood up in. He carried the little black bundle of her necessaries and his own. They took a last look round that warped and wonderful and memory-haunted room....
But I had given them five minutes with its memories while I had negotiated with Madame....
"Ready?" I said.
We descended that interior crack for the last time.
There was a sudden hush in the kitchen as we entered. The blonde heads, the dark heads, turned above the tunics of black and horizon-blue, faces watched us round the stacked-up képis on the table. But though probably little else had been talked of for the last hour, none was supposed to know that I was the Fairy Godmother who had broughtthe coach for Cinderella. Derry took no farewell of the copains who, with sundry other nationalities, were the French population of France. Only Jennie ran towards Madame and was pressed for a minute against a bosom well able to sustain her weight. Derry got out the bicycles from behind the door. Outside he walked ahead between them. Jennie and I followed him along the Rue de la Cordonnerie.
A quarter of an hour later I had asked Madame at my hotel to be so obliging as to allow me the use of her telephone. There was no telephone at Ker Annic, but there was one at the Beverleys' hotel, and I knew that Beverley would see to it that a message for Alec was delivered immediately. I did not think it necessary to tell Beverley what it was all about; I merely asked him to send word to the Airds that I wished to see them in Dinan to-morrow.
Then I engaged another room—an ordinary hotel bedroom, where a chambermaid would bring up hot water in the morning and a bath was to be had for stepping across the corridor—just an ordinary hotel bedroom—not a place of memories and romance like that tumbling old room over that cabaret in the Rue de la Cordonnerie that looked as if it had sunk a yard into the earth——