"Well, you didn't die of the shock, so why should I? Come and get me my ticket."
We passed through the glazed doors and along the Roman Gallery. I rang at the closed door where the temporary tickets are obtained. There was no difficulty, and slowly we walked past the double row of Cæsars and Emperors again. I had taken her arm. Somehow I suddenly felt as though I were about to lose her, perhaps for a long time, perhaps for an even longer one. I spoke in a low voice.
"Do you think it will be—safe? Just to walk in on him, I mean. Wouldn't it be better to prepare him first?"
"No, no—that's the one thing Iamsure of."
"Are you sure you can trust yourself?"
"I don't know. If I can't there's an end of everything, so I must."
"What about our going together?"
"No, nor that either." She flushed a little as she said it.
I think, though I am not sure, that there was jealousy in that flush. In that unspeakable solitude of his Derry had so far only a single friend—myself. She was prepared, if she could, to steal my share of him, to have him all to herself.
"But I've got to see him to-day; I promised it," I said.
"Then off you go now, while I'm here. But you're not to say a word about my coming. Then if I were you I should get off to Haslemere."
She meant I had better get out of the way altogether. I sighed.... "Well, come and get your books."
We sought the reading-room, and I put her into a seat and passed to the catalogue counter. I took her slips to her for signature, dropped them into the basket, and then returned to her. It was early, and few readers had yet arrived. We were in the "N" bay, which we had to ourselves. I saw her look up at the million books, dingy and misty in the pale light of the high rotunda. I saw her dark eyes travel along the frieze of names in tarnished gold—Carlyle, Tennyson, Browning. In the past I have spent a good deal oftime in the reading-room; now it is a place I get out of as quickly as I can. It crushes me, annihilates my spirit with the weight of the vanity of vanities. Of the makers, as well as of the making of books, there is no end. They are born, they lisp, they spell, they write; and then they die. The eager heart, the busy brain, are a few tarnished letters on a frieze, a strip of paper gummed into the casualty-list of a catalogue. We think, write, and to-morrow we die. Only one man was not going to think, write, and die to-morrow. He was going to be different from all men who had gone before him. Because of something that had happened to him, he was going to blazon his name, not in that circular cemetery of dead books, but across the whole width of the heavens outside.
And this tired woman trifling with the tips of her long fingers against the book-rest as she waited for her books was going to be his accomplice. She was going, by means of something called love, to keep him at that acme of his powers where innocence and wisdom met and in the past he had thrown her a friendly word from time to time. She was going, single-handed, to arrest that backward drift of his life. Whatever had caused it should be thwarted in her. He shouldnotbe thirty. Heshouldremain, if she could compass it, thirty-three for as long as he wanted—for the rest of his life and hers.
I wondered the dome did not fall on her.
Presently she turned her head and smiled in my eyes.
"Well, don't you wait, George. Thanks so much. Good-bye."
I left her sitting there, in that vast and brown-hued well, still waiting for her books.
A conspicuous feature about my small house in Surrey is its lake—eighty yards by forty of clear dark water among the oak and willows, spring-fed and with trout in it. This lake lies immediately in front of the house, where other houses have their lawns. It needs a good deal of attention, for springtime sheddings that are charming on grass are messy on water, and nothing but wind can sweep the glossy surface. But its infinite variety of mood lights up the whole place like a smiling eye, and I am very attached to it.
Not more than a quarter of an hour's bicycle-ride away is a preparatory school for boys up to the age of fourteen.
Need I say that I have had to put up a diving-platform at one end of the lake?
There are, of course, certain rules: bicycles to be left at the potting-shed, diving from the punt not allowed, not more than four bathers at one time, etc., etc. But within these limits the pond is as much theirs as mine, and seldom a summer afternoon passes without a bathing-party.
I had done Julia's bidding and had come back home again. It had been on a Wednesday morning that I had left her waiting for her books in the reading-room of the British Museum. It was now Friday, and I had not heard a word either of her or Derry.
I had tried not to think of them. Finding that impossible, I had wandered restlessly up and down, no good to myself or to anybody else. On Thursday, and again on Friday, I had almost returned to London. I could not shake off that picture of her, sitting alone in that dreary rotunda of accumulated human knowledge. Had she started that crack-brained index, he his terrifying book?Had she gone to him? What had she said? What had he replied? I could neither guess nor forget about it. As if he had infected me with something of his own calamity, my mind too was in two places at the same time—among the Surrey oaks and sweet-chestnut, and in that loft where he had lived over the South Kensington mews.
My study is an upper room at the front of the house, with French windows that open on to a wide verandah. I often drag out a table and work outside. But work that morning was impossible. I was too unsettled even to answer letters. So I walked out on to the verandah and leaned on the ramblered rail. The oaks across the lake were turning from gold to green, and the two big willows by the diving-stage were a ruffle of silver-grey. Under the clear surface the trout were basking shadows. I wished the afternoon were here. It would at least bring the boys to bathe.
Suddenly I heard my housekeeper's step on the verandah behind me. She always walks straight through the study if she gets no answer to her knock.
"Miss Oliphant," she announced.
I nearly jumped out of my skin.
"Miss Oliphant! Where?"
"In the drawing-room, sir."
In five seconds I was through the study and half-way downstairs. The drawing-room is a cool, low-ceilinged apartment at the farther end of the house. It has windows on two of its sides, those to the north green with brushing leaves and a ferny bank, the others glazed doors that that morning stood wide open. As I entered I heard mingled laughter.
They both stood there.
They were silhouetted against the sunny opening, laughing like a couple of children. Perhaps the joke was that Julia only had been announced. I stood watching them for a moment; then I advanced.
"Good morning," I said.
Julia gave a swift turn. The next moment she had pushed Derry forward.
"You explain—I wash my hands of it," she laughed.
She wore thick shoes and a walking-costume, and on her head was a little felt hat with a pheasant's feather. He had on an old tweed jacket and grey flannel bags. He held out his hand.
"Hope we're not dragging you from your work, George," he laughed. "Do you good anyway. I felt like a day off, so I dug out Julia. 'Down tools, Julia,' I said; 'no work to-day. Where shall we go? Shall we give George Coverham a surprise?' So here we are, to lunch, please. By Jove, there's a kingfisher!"
He sprang out on to the terrace to see where the electric-blue flash had whistled off to.
Swiftly I glanced at Julia. In her eyes was the old deep shining. But Derry called over his shoulder:
"That was a young one, wasn't it? Is there a nest? How many hatched out? Do they go for the fish?"
He seemed splendidly fit, perfectly happy. He seemed so happy that suddenly I wondered what I had been making myself so miserable about. A weight seemed to lift all at once from my mind. Too much London had oppressed me, I supposed. Cambridge Circus is not the place for a country-living man to stay too long in. It bred too many fancies. Much better for the Circus-dweller to come into the country.
"It went over by that bank," Derry was saying, still peering after the kingfisher; and I stepped out.
"Yes. The nest's right in the bank. Six of them hatched. You'll see another in a minute."
But at that moment his eyes fell on the punt. Quickly he turned to Julia.
"Years since I've had a punt-pole in my hand!" he exclaimed. "Is it in working order, George? Come along——"
"You go, Julia," I said; and I returned into the house to see about lunch.
What had happened? Had he really brought her out for the day on his own account, as formerly he had used to do?Or was she allowing him to think that he had? Was he repeating himself even textually, in those words "Down tools, Julia, no work to-day"? I must know. It was essential that I should know. Yet already something in his manner told me that I should not learn it from him. He was here not to talk about himself, but to enjoy, keenly and vividly, every moment of his day. Whatever my own megrims had been, he showed none. Not he, but Julia, would have to explain matters.
Suddenly I took a resolution. I pushed at a baize door.
"Mrs Moxon!" I called.
My housekeeper appeared.
"Would it be upsetting your arrangements if I asked my visitors to stay for the week-end?" I asked.
She considered a moment; then she thought it could be managed. But she seemed puzzled.
"ItisMr Rose, isn't it?" she said.
Derry, I may say, had been to my house twice or thrice before.
"Of course."
"I thought it was, sir, but they told me only to say Miss Oliphant."
"Oh, that was their little surprise for me," I replied. "Very well, Mrs Moxon. Lunch, and I'll ask them to stay for the week-end. My sister left a few things, didn't she?"
"That'll be all right, sir. I'll see to Miss Oliphant."
I came out of the house again and sought the lake. They were out in the middle of it, lying down in the punt together with their heads over the side. They were watching the trout. I was on the point of hailing them when I refrained. Something dramatic in their juxtaposition pulled me up short.
Their heads were together, their laughter came across the water. Shewashaving her summer again. But what would it cost her? Her unchanging adoration—and his affectionate indifference! He had never cared, he never would care. To-morrow he would have forgotten all about it. But she would have still another day's memories to add to thoseothers when he had jumped five-barred gates with his pipe in his mouth and his stick in his hand—memories of my punt and pond and the greening oaks and the silvery willows.... Yet she was laughing as carelessly as he. They were playing a game. A willow-leaf had floated like a fairy shallop towards them, and he was blowing it her way, she blowing it back again.
Then a dragonfly caught their attention, and they forgot the willow-leaf, as instantly as children forget.
At lunch I sat with my back to the open windows, they where they could look out. Apparently he had completely forgotten that night, only three days ago, when he had told me that I was the only one of his old acquaintances to whom he dared reveal himself. He called her Julia, she him Derry, and to both of them I was George. We laughed, joked, said anything that came into our heads; but beneath it all I was in an extreme of curiosity.Howhad they come together?Whathad happened that there was now a second person in the world to whom he could pronounce his name?
Half-way through lunch I made my proposal that they should remain for a couple of days. His brow suddenly clouded. I watched him carefully, and I knew that Julia was watching him as carefully as I.
"Awfully good of you, George," he said in a suddenly altered voice, "but I really don't think I can spare the time. I only downed tools for one day, you know. I really must get back."
"But to-morrow's Saturday. I promise to let you go on Sunday evening if you really must."
"I'm so fearfully busy, you see," he said uneasily.
Under the table I felt Julia's foot touch mine. She spoke.
"Fancy Derry talking like a minor novelist about being busy!" she laughed. "Why, you always used to say that if it was as hard work as all that something was wrong and ought to be seen to!"
His brow instantly cleared again. "That's so," he said. "Did I say that? I'd forgotten. Busyness is all bunk, of course; made for duffers. A thing either does itself or it doesn't.... Right, George, I'll stop if Julia will. I hope you won't mind if I go to bed rather early though. I really have been hard at it, and I need a lot of sleep."
"This air'll make you sleep," I assured him. I did not add that if he wished to go to bed early lest he should sink into abysmal sleep in the middle of a sentence he should have his wish. Razors and a spirit-lamp were going to be put into his room. A little teapot and caddy would also be placed there. I intended to tell Mrs Moxon that he was faddy about his early-morning tea. He might then use his hot water for any purpose he wished.
We took coffee outside, and then went for a stroll round my few acres. In the kitchen-garden he had a new idea. Over a hedge at one end of it, well out of the way, was a rather unsightly dump of old household rubbish—tins, burst buckets, old zinc baths, broken utensils of every kind. A few spadefuls of earth are thrown over these from time to time, and a handful of nasturtium-seeds once in a while helps to mitigate the eyesore.
"You want an incinerator, George," he announced. "Here's all your stuff ready. Hammer this old junk out flat, get the blacksmith to cut a few rods, a cartload of stones and a few barrowloads of clay, and there you are. Lots of fine ash for your beds too, though I shouldn't think this soil needed much. Got a pencil? I'll show you——"
He made rough sketches of the incinerator on the back of an envelope.
We strolled back to the pond and the punt again, and he threw off his coat, turned up his sleeves, and poled us up and down. He glowed with vitality and power. Both for strength and delicacy of touch he did whatever he liked with the punt. One beautifully-finished little feat he performed. A blossom of water-starwort floated on the pond some fifteen yards away. Julia's hand was trailing lazily in the water.
"Keep your hand just as it is," he ordered her.
She had only to close her fingers on the blossom. With one perfect stroke, one complicated thrust of the pole, that included I knew not what components of opposite forces reconciled to one end, the flower sped swiftly to her hand and rested there. There was no jar, only a thrilling as of a sound-board as the punt fetched up still. He laughed with pleasure at his skill.
Then at that moment I heard the sound of boys' voices. The bathing-party had arrived. I turned to Julia.
"They come every afternoon. Would you like to go up to the house, or will you stay here in the punt under the trees?"
"Oh, in the punt, please," she said; and Derry turned quickly.
"Bathing? Did you say boys were going to bathe? I say, that's rather an idea! Got a spare costume, George?"
Across the lake a stripling figure stood on the diving-stage with a towel about his shoulders. It was Du Pré Major. He dropped the towel, stood poised, and then came the sound of a plunge. Derry's eyes shone. In a moment he had put the punt in under the trees.
"That's done it," he laughed. "Can I ask your housekeeper for a towel?"
"You know my room. You'll find everything you want there."
"Right. I've nearly forgotten how to swim——"
He stepped from the punt and ran lightly round the pond.
Julia's wet fingers still held the flower. Her head hung a little down, so that the light from the water was thrown softly up on to her face. Her eyes, but her eyes only, moved as the sound of another plunge was heard; but it was only the other Du Pré and Southby. I did not speak. There would be time enough for talking after Derry had gone to bed—early.
Then over by the house a gleam of white appeared. It was Derry with a robe of towelling over his shoulders. He did not take the path to the diving-board; instead, hedropped the towel on a grass border, looked aloft for a moment, and then took a straight run at one of the willows. It was a "cricket-bat" willow, and it overhung the diving-board at an angle out of the vertical. How he managed the leap I do not know, but in a moment he was up the tree like a squirrel, poised in the fork, laughing down at the surprised boys on the stage below.
"Stand clear," he called.
His path through the air was a swallow's. There was a soft plunge, a hissing effervescence as of black soda-water, and he shot to the surface again like a javelin, a dozen yards away.
"Oh, ripping plunge, sir!" one of the boys called rapturously. "Jimmy! Did you see it? Did you see that?"
"Come in—let's make a dog-fight of it!" Derry cried.
And one after another they tumbled in and splashed towards him.
I have been told that that Friday's four are still the envied of the whole school. He was very wonderful with them. The dog-fight over he set to work to coach them. They had never seen the stroke that consists of turning the left leg from the knee downwards into a screw-propeller, so that the swimmer travels forward, not in a series of impulses, but at a uniform rate of progress. He showed them in the water, and then hoisted himself to the diving-platform and showed them there. The stage became a comical waggling of nubile white legs.
"No, no," his voice came to us, "from the knee—think of a screw—and about a six-inch stroke with your left hand—it's worth learning—makes swimming as easy as walking——"
"Show us a racing-stroke, sir——"
"Shut up, Jimmy. Is this right? It does catch your knee, though——"
"Do that dive again, sir——"
Then, when Derry judged they had had enough of it, he ordered them out. He himself did a final dash of the whole eighty yards and back again, while the water boiledbehind him. Then he sought his wrap and disappeared into the house.
"He's 'some' swimmer, isn't he?" said Julia softly. She had neither spoken nor moved.
He was.
But even I could see that he knew nothing of women.
The bit of water-starwort was still in her hand. Suddenly with a little laugh she tossed it over the side.
"Oughtn't he to have some tea?" she said....
I do not wish to labour the details of that afternoon. I may say that already I had a very distinct and curious impression of them, namely, that theyweredetails, isolated and without continuity; but I will come to that presently. We sat rather a long time over tea, and Derry talked. The only subject he seemed to avoid was that of his work. Otherwise he was alert, keen, dead "on the spot." On athletics he was extraordinarily illuminating. Granted that as an engine his body was pretty near perfection; it was on the "fundamental brainwork" of the subject that he laid the greatest stress. The modesty of the demonstrations which he made on the verandah before our eyes was altogether charming; he was as simple and earnest with us as he had been with the boys. For such-and-such a performance (he showed) your balancemustbe thus and thus; for swiftness, a certain speed of movementmustbe the perfectly-synchronised sum-total of half a dozen different speeds. I am no very remarkable athlete myself; I have always supposed that I lacked some special gift; but Derry spoke almost as if, by the mere taking of thought, he could add a cubit to his leap or plunge. He took his sport and his writing in very much the same way. You "just helped nature all you could."
Then he was back on the subject of the incinerator again.
Shortly after that it was an oak that ought to be lightened on one side unless I wanted to have a hole torn in the bank of my pond.
Then, dinner over, he began to fidget. This was at a little after eight o'clock. At twenty past he rose abruptly.
"It's that bathe I suppose," he yawned. "If you don't mind I think I'll turn in. You said I might, you know——"
"I'll show you up," I said.
"Don't trouble," he replied, Julia's hand in his.
But I wanted to make sure that the tea-caddy was where I had told Mrs Moxon to put it.
On the night when he had half scared me out of my wits with that horrible demonstration with the electric torch on the edge of the bamboo table, he had been careful to explain that he was putting the question in its most elementary form. There were (he had said) other factors, and more important ones. One of these had already occurred to me. Stated as simply as possible, it was this:
As he had held the torch that night, with that notch that "had got to be thirty-three" in the middle of the illuminated edge, about six inches on either side of the notch had come within the lamp's beam. "Keep your eye on that edge and never mind the other dimensions," he had said, and he had proceeded to manipulate the lamp.
But how had he determined the distance at which the lamp must be held from the table's edge?
You see the enormous importance of this. The lighted portion of the edge was the extent of his memory, faculty or whatever one may call it. But what about that memory'squalityas distinct from its extent? Suppose, instead of holding the torch a foot away, he had held it three inches away only? The nearer the shorter—but the brighter; the farther away the longer—but the dimmer. Our childish recollections are intense, but of small things; as we grow older we remember more, but more vaguely.... I find that I shall have to make use of the parallel columns again. Indeed I begin to suspect that I shall have to do so throughout. Was this then the position?
BY APPROACHING THE LAMPBY WITHDRAWING THE LAMPHe might re-live a given age again with great intensity.The intensity would diminish but the scope of memory would enlarge.Emotion or passion might become predominant characteristics, at the expense of intellectual comparisons.He might become comparative, critical, philosophic, but at the cost of intensity of emotional experience.He certainly would not succeed in any task that demanded width of outlook first of all.He might be in danger of including so much that he would become diffuse and pointless.He might concentrate so brilliantly as to perform a momentary and sensational feat—say to knockout Carpentier.The speculative man might get the upper hand of the practical one and he would fail in a supreme momentary effort—in other words, Carpentier would knock him out.A summer's day in the country might be almost unbearably beautiful to him.It would be merely a matter of fresh air and exercise, to be set off against the working hours lost and the cost of two railway tickets.
I am anxious not to go beyond my brief. I knew that for the purpose of his book he was attempting to manipulate himself, but what his success had so far been I did not know. Nevertheless all the possibilities had to be considered, and the more I thought of this one the more it impressed me. For practical purposes, these differences of memory-intensity might turn out to be the pivot on which all else turned.
For suppose that he had no choice but to go back and reopen the closed book of his life, and that nothing that Julia or I could do would stop him. Whether in that casewas the better: to live as it were day by day and hour and hour, with joy and grief experienced at their highest pitch, or to continue to possess to the full this unique and double knowledge, of a past that had been a future and of a future that was once more a past?
To put it in another form, since he must do this Widdershins Walk, was it better for him to know he was doing it, or to do it knowing as little as possible about it?
Or, in its simplest form of all, would he be happier with or without a memory of any kind?
I said good night to him at the door of his room and closed it behind me. I had not taken more than a couple of steps when I heard him softly lock it. I went down to Julia in the drawing-room.
Even on a warm summer's evening, when the windows stand wide open, I like a wood fire. Outside the heavens were a beauteous pink glow, with one amber star. The trout were rising for their evening meal, and a sedge-warbler sang short sweet phrases. From time to time a moorhen scuttered along the surface of the pond, and the smell of night-flowering tobacco floated into the quiet room. But Julia had no wish to go out. Into a pair of my sister's slippers she had thrust her worsted-clad feet, and she was toasting her toes and smiling into the fire.
"Is that window too much for you?" I asked.
"No."
"Then put this shawl over your shoulders. You'll have hot milk to go to bed with."
"Thank you, George."
"And now," I said, drawing up my chair opposite to her, "tell me what's happened since Wednesday."
She mused. "Happened to him?"
"I want to knowallthat you did. Did you go to him?"
"No. He turned up at the Boltons this morning and dragged me out, exactly as he said."
"But——"
"Oh, I'd sent him a note."
"Ah! I wondered.... What did you say?"
"It was only a couple of lines. I forget what the exact words were. I merely said that I shouldn't be in the least afraid of anything, and that anyway I hadn't a dog to set at him. Just that. Nothing else. I wrote it in the Museum after you'd gone."
"And that fetched him round?"
"Yes."
"Well, what did he say?"
She hesitated. "That's just it, George. He hasn't even referred to it."
"What, not in any way?"
"Not in any way."
"He just came into the Boltons as if nothing had happened, and he's talked all day as if nothing had happened?"
"That's exactly it."
"He's not mentioned his book?"
"Only what you heard at lunch."
"He is writing it?"
"One would gather so. You know as much about it as I do."
I gazed into the fire. A louder splash came from the pond—one of the three-pound rainbows. Julia resumed of her own accord.
"You see, when you left me in the Museum I really didn't know what to do. After what you'd told me I didn't want to risk upsetting him by simply walking in to his place unannounced. So I wrote that note, and he'd get it last night. And he was round early this morning. But he hasn't even mentioned the note. I suppose he got it, but things aren't in the least like what you told me. You told me he was passionately grateful at finding you. Well, that doesn't at all describe his manner to me. He's jolly, keen, full of enjoyment and zest at everything that comes along—and that's all. Hemusthave understood my note; that's why I put in that bit about the dog; if he didn't understand he'd have to ask whatthatmeant. But not one single word. What do you suppose has happened?"
A little disingenuously I asked her what she meant by "happened."
"To him of course. I've told you allIdid. It must have been rather heartrending between you two; so why this perfect composure now that there are three of us?"
I didn't know. I was a little afraid to guess. But again I pondered that distance of the torch from the table's edge.... Julia was still gazing into the fire, her long hands between her knees, so that her walking-skirt shaped them. Then suddenly she looked from the fire to me.
"How many things has he talked about to-day, since he's been here?" she asked abruptly.
I moved uneasily. "Oh—how many things does one talk about in a day? Hundreds," I replied.
"But—at such apitch!" She threw the word at me with almost accusatory energy. "Top-note all the time—birds' nests, punts, athletics, incinerators, those boys bathing——"
Less and less at my ease, I could only urge that a holiday was a holiday, and that Derry might as well have stayed at home as bring his cares with him.
"You think it's just that?" she demanded, looking me full in the face.
"I should say so."
"Hm!"
But in spite of that rather critical "Hm!" she seemed reassured. Suddenly she gave a soft chuckle.
"He was rather wonderful with those boys," she said.
"They're nice boys."
"What a games-master he'd make!" Then, with a sly and guilty look in her eyes, "What shall we do to-morrow, George? Oh, it's ripping luck, being here unexpectedly like this!"
"What would you like to do? There's the car if you want to go anywhere!"
"N—o," she said reflectively, as if running over in her mind a dozen delectable plans. "I think just potter abouthere. Rushing about in cars ... no, it's perfectly adorable here. I don't want to set foot out of your grounds. George, you are a duck!" She hugged herself.
Whether he was living from moment to moment or not, there was no doubt about her. She basked shamelessly. I am not making her out to be anything she was not. She was a ready, practical creature, by no means above what is called feminine littleness, not very young, but with her own beauty. It was, too, her beauty's hour. Sitting there between the firelight and the fairness of the evening outside, long-throated, cool-browed, with the glow of the wood-flames richly in her eyes, her body seemed an ivory lamp that guarded its light with sacred and jealous care. And that flame was to all intents and purposes stolen. She now intended, calculated, planned, contrived. Up to that moment I had supposed her to be waiting (as it were) in that remembered Sussex village, waiting at the centre of whatever mystery had happened to him, waiting for him to come back to her. But now I knew that she was doing nothing so passive. She wasnotwaiting. She was prepared to bring events about. To the little that he had spared her on his forward journey she was prepared to help herself immeasurably as he returned. Like a footpad she watched his drawing-near. Sitting there by my fire, with that day's memories still glowing about her, she was contriving further ones for the morrow....
And suddenly the whole scope of her daring flashed upon me. At twenty-eight she had failed to get him. Now, at forty, she would not scruple to make use of whatever arts she had since acquired.
She would, if she could, marry Derwent Rose.
I cannot tell you my stupefaction at my own discovery. It was wellnigh with awe that I looked at her. For in that case her adventure was hardly less tremendous than his own. That is what I meant when I said that he began to constrain us and to draw us into the wheel of his own destiny. To marry a man of diminishing age! To marry a man who had lately been forty-five, was now at some unknown point in the neighbourhood of the thirties, and would presently miraculously re-attain adolescence! What unheard-of marriage was this?
As if she enumerated something to herself, one slender finger-tip was on another. "First I shall go with him to the blacksmith's about those rods," she said softly.
I avoided her gaze. "I don't know," I said, "that I want an incinerator built."
"But Derry wants to build it," she answered, as if that settled the question.
"He may have forgotten all about it to-morrow."
Swiftly she turned on me. "What do you mean by that?"
"The plain meaning of the words—he may have forgotten."
"Do you mean something about his memory?"
"Which memory? He's two of them—so far."
"Tch!... You just this moment said that he was deliberately putting things away from him because this was a holiday. Did you say that just to keep me quiet? Don't you believe it yourself?"
"I neither believe nor disbelieve. I simply don't know."
"Oh, you're tiresome!... In plain English, then: are you suggesting that when he came to me this morning, the only reason he didn't mention my note was that he had forgotten all about it in the night?"
I shrugged my shoulders. It all happened in the night. That was why he went to bed early. That was why I had given him a spirit-kettle for tea—or shaving. Something might have happened during the night of which she spoke. Something might be happening in my house at that very moment.
"Doyou mean his memory's cracking up?" she demanded.
"I think we could find out."
"How?"
"By getting him to talk about his book. To write that book he must draw on both his memories, experiences, or whatever you like to call it. That's his whole equipmentfor it—two conscious experiences, with himself balanced in the middle making the most of both. We might find out that way."
"Oh, there's a shorter way than that," she said.
"What?"
"To ask him."
I shrugged my shoulders again. "Yes...."
And then I took her entirely off her guard. Outside the pink had turned to peach, and the amber star had become a diamond. Suddenly, as they do, the trout had ceased to rise, and a single short squawk came from the moorhens' nest. I rose and stood before her.
"Julia," I said without warning, "wouldyou marry him?"
She might not have heard. I thought she was never going to reply. She drew the shawl a little more closely about her shoulders, and I crossed the room and closed the windows. Then I returned to my place in front of her.
At last she spoke.
"I suppose you may ask that," she said. "The answer is—Yes."
"You've considered it?"
"Yes."
"Everything it would mean?"
"Yes."
"And you think you've—the right?"
She stared at me. "The right?"
"Yes, the right. Look at it this way. There's no doubt at all about one thing; he isn't the same man to-day, or at any rate he isn't in the same mood, that he was two days ago. He may be just deliberately putting his work aside for a day, or—he may be the other thing. He may be going on with his book on Monday morning—or he may be quite past it already. It makes a good deal of difference to you which of these two men he is."
"It makes no difference."
"Oh yes it does. In the one case you'd be simply his secretary, and things would be more or less as they were before. But for the other he wouldn't want a secretary.That mad book would be all over and done with. You saw him as he was to-day: one quick brilliant impression after another. That man might write a few vivid short stories, but never that appalling book.... Look here, Julia, I didn't want to tell you, because the whole idea gives me a shudder; but this is the way he explained it himself."
And without any more ado I told her of his demonstration with the electric torch and of my own additions thereto.
She was not afraid of much, that woman. I had almost written that she took it perfectly calmly, but that was just what she did not do. But it was no fear of immensity and the blackness of Infinity that she showed. Rather she seemed to see an opportunity to be snatched at. That face that I have likened to the ivory of a lamp betrayed the soft radiance that she tried to, but could not hide.
"Yes, that gives it," she breathed.
"So you see what I mean by 'having the right.' You'd be there, the nearest, the brightest, vivider than everything else....Haveyou the right?"
She laughed softly. "You mean I'm a baby-snatcher?" she said.
I did not reply.
For that was about the size of it. Did he remain in that mood, there she would be in the punt with him, or holding iron rods for him as he set out the plan of the incinerator, or hunting with him for the kingfishers' nest, or watching him as he bathed with to-morrow's batch of boys. He would blow little boats of willow-leaves to her, bring water-blossoms gliding into her hand. To-morrow evening they would watch that amber star together, stroll along my winding paths as the glow-worms came out. That was to be her theft—to press herself home in the glamorous irresistible moment, let what would afterwards befall. My modest little estate was to be her antechamber to paradise, and unwittingly I had set open the gates of it for her myself.
And she was laughing at me for it—openly laughing at me.
"Well—the portrait for the Lyonnesse Club's getting along very nicely, George," she laughed.
"Dear, dear Julia——" I began.
"That earnest expression's rather good. What a pity I didn't bring my painting-tools—we might have got a good day's work done to-morrow."
"My dear——"
Then, suddenly, "How long have you actually known Derry, George?" she demanded.
"About fifteen years."
"Not longer? Then you don't know what's coming next?"
I don't like to be smiled at as she was smiling. I jumped up.
"Yes I do," I said with a flush. "What's coming next is that you're not going to do this. You're going to promise me not to. Be his secretary, his nurse, his housekeeper, anything else you like, but you're not to do this. It it's nothing else it's——"
"Taking a mean advantage, you mean?" she supplied the words for me. "But he never did know anything about women. Why shouldn't he learn, poor dear?"
"Julia, youcan'thave thought! A man without an age! A man, except for you and me, without even a name a week together! A man who says of himself that he's to all intents and purposes a ghost haunting anybody who happens to know anything about him!... Anyway you shan't."
"Shan't I, George?" she asked with a long deep look into my eyes.
"That you shall not."
She too rose and stood before me, one elbow on the mantelpiece. She drew up the walking-skirt an inch or two and pushed at a log with her foot.
"Of course it isn't as if you and I could ever quarrel, George," she said. "There, I'm burning your sister's slipper. I say we can't quarrel, because we're ever so far beyond that. Therefore we can talk quite plainly about anything on earth, or under it, or above it. So now tell me why I mustn't marry Derry."
I thought of the man upstairs, of the spirit-kettle on histable, of why he must be alone when he woke in the morning.
"There are physical reasons, if there weren't any others."
"Of course. He'll get younger. He'll be sixteen. Well, I can be his mother then. But I shall havebeenhis wife."
"For how long?"
She lifted her beautiful shoulders. "What does that matter? I said his wife. Does any bride on her wedding-day ask herself how long it's for? There have been widows who've never even taken breakfast with their husbands."
"But they married men like other men."
"Pooh! Tell that to any woman in love! They're all Derrys as long as it lasts, and he's Derry as long as it lasts."
"But his memory?"
"We don't know that anything's the matter with it. Really you're very hard to please, George. First you complain that he's got too much memory and he's writing what you call a wicked book with it. Now you seem afraid he hasn't enough to get married with. If he's happier without a memory at all, what's the odds?"
"But yourself?"
"Oh, I can look after myself—now! And anyway you needn't worry aboutmymemory!"
Yet that was what I was worrying about. How gorgeously she had enriched her memories that very day I had seen for myself. Openly she exulted in her treasures. But what was to be the end of it all? By marriage did she mean one last wild lovely memory more and after that—nothing? If so, was ever degree so inconceivably prohibited? A dark-haired child in the wrong seat in a village church—a few odd hours in the country that it might have been a mercy to spare her—that day in my own house and grounds—to-morrow with whatever it might bring—perhaps another day or two unless he overtook another milestone before then ... and then the relative and inevitable sequence: his bride, his elder sister, his mother, aunt, elderly adviser and friend, and so on to the close. This was the prospect she was deliberately embracing. Here she espied her joy....
And should there be a child?...
She had sat down again. That appearance of a quarrel between two people who could never quarrel was at an end. I lifted the logs, arranged her shawl again, and then also sat down. Mrs Moxon brought in a tray, with hot milk and biscuits for her and whisky for myself. She set a small table between us. Julia's slender fingers played as it were a tune as she moved the too-hot glass from one position to another. Mrs Moxon gave a final glance round, wished us good night, and went out again. I mixed myself a peg, and then turned to Julia.
"I think you were going to tell me, when I interrupted you, what happened before I knew Derry," I said.
Little pistol-like cracks began to break from the green-oak logs I had moved. A thin pouring of amethyst streamed up the chimney-back, and the heart of the fire was intense pink and salmon. The glow from the ceiling made semi-transparent the rich shadows of the farther recesses of the room. It was true that as against my fifteen years she had known him for more than thirty. My own personal knowledge of his history was now on the point of failing. Only to her could I look for an anticipation of what might next be expected.
"Yes," she said musingly. "Anyway I'm prepared for it."
"What was it?"
"You don't know?"
"Only in a general way that at some time or other he must have travelled a good deal."
She nodded. "That's it. His Wanderjahre. He walked mostly—Italy, Germany, France, racketed about all over the place. Broke hearts wherever he went too I expect. It was then that he picked up his wonderful French."
"Then do you think that that phase is—falling due again?"
She shook her head slowly. How could she tell? "I only had occasional letters from him at that time. Usuallyto smuggle him out some tobacco or see about a letter of credit or something. I had one from Siena, and one from Trieste, and another from Nîmes.... But," she added briskly, "if I married him of course I should go with him. That would solve everything."
"Would it!"
"I mean if his appearance changed much. You say yourself he can't stop in one place for long. He can't even take an ordinary job. And you seem to think that's a reason why I shouldn't marry him. But to my mind it's the very reason why I should. He shan't be left to tramp the world all alone, poor boy. I'm quite a good walker."
But for the shawl round her shoulders, the glass of hot milk and my sister's slippers, she seemed ready to start immediately.
"Julia, are you well off?" I suddenly asked her.
She smiled. "The sooner I'm paid for that portrait of you the better, George," she said.
"Because," I continued, "his royalties won't keep his boots soled, and as for that mad idea of fighting Carpentier——"
She made an indifferent gesture within the shawl and sipped her milk.
"And now," I pursued her, "I want you to notice how you've changed your mind this last half-hour or so. As you sit there now you haven't the least intention of becoming his secretary. In fact you're calmly planning how you can murder that book of his."
"How do you know that, George?"
"You are. Remember the flash-lamp.Hewants to light up his time-scale from sixteen to forty or thereabouts.Youwant it like a burning-glass, all concentrated in one brilliant spot—yourself. In other words you're planning a mental assault on him."
She laughed delightedly. "Before committing a physical one? George, you shock me! I hope you're not going to lock me into my room!"
"Further than that. You don't intend to lose a momentof time, because those Wanderjahre may be drawing very near."
Her mouth was prim. "It's a difficult position, George."
"Do you intend to ask him outright to marry you?"
"It's a very difficult position," she repeated demurely. "Suppose he accepted me one day and forgot all about it the next. I should have to propose to him daily, shouldn't I?"
"I don't think you need joke about it."
Her daring eyes positively fondled my face. She showed all her teeth in a wide smile.
"Why not?" she asked. "What else is there to do? You wouldn't have me take it seriously, would you? How can it be taken seriously?"
And she added, stretching her long hands to the fire, "Why, it would be the least serious marriage there ever was!"
By breakfast-time the next morning I had taken a resolve. I had slept little for thinking of it. I intended, if I could, to make Derry talk about his book.
For while I abhorred the very idea of that book, there was one thing I abhorred more. This was the thought of the collapse of his memory. If anything happened to that the situation was horribly simple. A man who, from having had two memories, passes to not having one at all, is—gently but without any further pother—locked up. And had that been the end of it I don't think I should have had the heart to write Derry's tale.
He came down, shaven, radiant, hungry. I had heard his plunge into the lake three quarters of an hour before. Julia too was fresh as the dew, and ate heartily. So, over coffee and kidneys and bacon, with such offhandedness as I could assume, I asked him point-blank how his book was getting on.
A wave of thankfulness passed over me at his very first words.
"I say, George," he protested, "this is a holiday, you know. Must we talk shop? By sheer strength of will I've put it all on one side for a couple of days, and here you are trying to shove my nose back on to the grindstone again! Bit of a nigger-driver you are.... Well, just for the length of one pipe; after that shop's taboo for the rest of the day. What is it you want to know about it?"
"Oh, just how it's shaping."
He told me. His account of it as far as it had gone, his projection of the continuing portion, were perfectly lucid, reasoned, logical. He brought all his faculties to bear, was completely master of himself. His memory was as clear in both directions as it had been. I tested this by means of one or two questions that otherwise are of no importance here. All was well. My most dreaded fear was removed. Indeed it was I who, at the end of our pipe, had to change the subject.
One awkward, rather shamefaced explanation, however, he did make. This was both to Julia and to myself.
"I ought to say one thing while I'm about it," he said in a halting and embarrassed voice. "I got your note, Julia. I know what you mean. How you tumbled to it I don't know, and I needn't say it's an unspeakable comfort having the two of you. I'm not going to look a gift-horse like that in the mouth, so if you don't mind we won't talk about it. I suppose George told you, though?"
"Yes."
"Then that's all right. Of course he won't tell anybody else. If he'd asked me first I might have kicked a bit, but it's turned out all right, so that's all we need worry about.... Now what are we going to do to-day? Those trout at all muddy, George? Give me a mayfly and let's have a try at one of 'em——"
I got him a rod and warned him against the telephone-wire that has to cross one end of the pond. I left him and Julia mounting the cast on the verandah.
I went up to my study. I went there from a motive not unlike gratitude to God. An embodied ghost Derry might be to the rest of the world, but our little private triumvirate had still a normal basis. He understood the whole situation, and so to us was no ghost. Nor was even the prospect of his Wanderjahre now quite so intimidating. The terror would have been to think of him as anignis fatuus, unconscious of himself, flitting hither and thither over the face of the Continent at large.Cogito, ergo sum.The distance of the lamp from the table's edge was apparently not an irrevocably fixed factor. "By sheer strength of will" he had been able to vary it. Hecouldenjoy intensely and reason infallibly, if not at one and the same time, at any rate by turns. Hewasstill capable of work and of play, and at the maximum of either.
How, then, did she stand with her wild scheme of marrying him?
I sat down at my table and worked it out thus: