"I don't care which, mother. My last one's all right. I don't want another."
Again across the table from Julia: "That's a darling one you're wearing now!"
"Do you like it, Aunt Julia?"
"Sweet!"
"And oh, Julia," suddenly in a little outburst from Madge, "honestly, now! Do you think I could wear those sleeves, or those not-any-sleeves-at-all rather—you know—the quite new ones, that show your arm from the very top of your shoulder? Youmust, of course, with your arms—it's your duty—but I'm not so sure about me——"
"Stuff and nonsense, of course you can. And I'm certainly going to," Julia declared.
"Bit French, aren't they?" said Alec over his canapé. "I've seen 'em."
"He's seen 'em, Julia!" Madge laughed. "Don't tell me after that that a man doesn't notice what a woman has on—at any rate if there's as little of it as there is of those sleeves! But let's settle Jennie's frock first.Ithink the voile. And you can wear a hat with it or not, just as you like."
"Would you very much mind if I didn't go, mother?" said Jennie dejectedly.
"Frightfully," was Madge's cheerful reply. "Of course you're coming. And all to-morrow morning we'll try-on, all three of us. So that's the voile for Jennie—and most decidedly those no-sleeves for you, Julia, with your arms——"
The rest of the evening was the same: slightly false, slightly tremulous, a little off the note. I honestly believe that that "Aunt" Julia of Jennie's was a pure inadvertence, for she was far too low-spirited to be interested in anything but herself, her mood and her troubles. After dinner she went out into the garden alone, and Madge gave us a quick inclusive look.
"Don't worry her, poor darling," she said with soft sympathy. "Let her have a good cry and she'll be all right to-morrow."
"Let me go to her," said Julia.
"I really wouldn't."
"Very well if you think not. What about a rubber?"
So Alec and Julia took fifteen shillings from Madge and myself while Jennie got over it in the garden.
But I found difficulty in understanding Julia's new attitude towards Jennie. There had been nothing in the least degree hypocritical in her sweetness at dinner; quite simplyshe had been nice and gentle with her. She had even interposed very quickly indeed when, for a brief moment, there had seemed a doubt as to whether Jennie had bathed that afternoon at all. But that she would hold unswervingly to her private purpose I was entirely convinced. Was her confidence, then, so insolently fixed that she had pity left over and to spare for this unhappy child who was to all intents and purposes forbidden to leave the house without permission? Could she toss her an alms out of her superfluity? Would her gentleness have been quite the same had she not known that that bicycle was being fetched back from St Briac to-morrow? Or would she, had Madge not stopped her, have gone to Jennie in the garden with some such words as these: "Cheer up, Jennie; you'll have forgotten all about this in ten days. When I was your age I had these fancies, but I forgot all about them in ten days. You'll be in love with scores of young men yet; nobody ever remembers any of them for long. Why, I've forgotten the very name of the boy I thought I was in love with when I was a girl. I can't even remember what he looked like. It seems hard for the moment, but it's over in no time. Cheer up, Jennie. There are lots of nice boys at the Tennis Club. Go and flirt with one of them, and forget about M. Arnaud. We all do."
Would she have said something like that? She was fully capable of it. At any rate I am fully capable of thinking she was.
But, whatever the circumstances may be, a man can hardly ask a woman to be his wife in the afternoon, have his suit treated as if it had scarcely been heard, and finish the evening with Auction as contentedly as though nothing had happened. Even poor George Coverham has his private affairs, and it was I more than any of them who should have found myself by Jennie's side. Indeed, as Alec and Julia divided their winnings I rose and walked to the window. It was dark, but not too dark to distinguish that she was still there, a dim white figure leaning up against one of the pillars of the pergola. A half-moon had southed, and the ironwork of the roof-ridge of Ker Annic showed sharp againstthe silvery blueness as I stepped out. It had suddenly come upon me that if she needed my comfort, I needed hers hardly less. She was seventeen and I fifty, but that day had separated both of us from our desires.
She heard my step, but did not change her position. Anyway she had had a full hour to herself. It was she who spoke, and without preface.
"I wished you'd come," she said.
"We've been playing bridge."
"I very nearly didn't come home at all."
"Why, Jennie?"
"I knew I was going to catch it. Old Noble needn't think he's the only person with any eyes. I saw him too. I pretended not to, but I did."
"I was afraid it was only a question of time," I said with a head-shake. "Where was it?"
"The rottenest luck!" she answered softly and bitterly. "Nobody but that horrid old man on his motor-bike would have thought of going there! Right up a little lane, it was, and we'd put our bicycles under the hedge, and we were sitting against one of the stooks. That dark red stuff whatever they call it—six bundles together and then another like an umbrella on the top. He barged into one of the bicycles, clumsy thing, and then came to tell us that we oughtn't to leave them there in people's way. Derry shoved me behind the stook, but it was too late. I did think he might just possibly have the decency to keep his mouth shut, but I suppose that was too much to expect. So I knew there'd be a row."
"And of course Derry knew there'd be a row too?"
"Yes."
I sighed. "Well, the row's over now. Better let the whole thing drop. Your father's perfectly right, and you were bound to get found out sooner or later."
She made no reply.
But she returned to her luckless plaint a moment later. She struck the upright of the pergola softly and vindictively with her hand.
"It was all that beastly bathe and Miss Oliphant's beinglate! We should have been all right if she'd been there at the proper time!"
"I'm afraid that was my fault, Jennie. I walked rather slowly, and Miss Oliphant waited for me."
"I know; of course it had nothing to do with you at all.... Then she goes and gets her things into knots, and I have to untie them, and that costume of hers is as bad as getting into a ball-dress instead of just a skin like nearly everybody else! Anyway the sea's there if she wants to bathe, and she can swim as well as I can if she does get into a current, and it isn't as if she needed a chaperone——"
"Jennie, my dear, be reasonable!" I begged her. "You can hardly blame Miss Oliphant for—for what your father was told."
"Oh, I'm not blaming her! But it makes you angry when stupid little accidents like those——" She swallowed.
"I'm afraid stupid little accidents fill rather a large place in the world, Jennie."
"I hate them having anything to do with me anyhow. And with having to take the towels home I only just caught the tram——"
"What's that?" I took her up. "Youdidcatch the tram? Then it wasn't that that made you late at all. You'd have been waiting for the tram if you hadn't been waiting for Miss Oliphant."
"Well, I don't care. It's all—all—-"
She did not say what, but hit the pergola with her hand again.
I was too sorry for her to be hurt by her words about Julia. That little slip about the tram had completely betrayed her, and it was against chance, and not against Julia, that she sought an occasion. Nevertheless the merciless mistrust of youth lay behind. The beginning and end of it was that she didn't like Julia, and her young heart had not yet learned the duplicity that makes us more rather than less sweet to those whom we dislike. She broke out again:
"And Iwon'tgo to that dance to-morrow! Iwon'tbe scolded and given a new frock and told I mustn't go out ofthe house! Mother and Miss Oliphant can go without me, and when I get back to London I shall earn my own living and I shall be able to do what I like then!"
"Very few people who earn their own living do what they like, Jennie."
"Well, it'll be a change anyway," she retorted.
A cheerful call of "Jen-nie-e-e!" came from the house. We all used a marked brightness in speaking to Jennie that evening.
"Yes, mother—I'm only with Uncle George."
"Don't be long, darling."
"I'll bring her in presently," I answered for her; and we continued to stand side by side.
I suppose that ordinarily a man of my years would keep such a dismissal as I had received that afternoon locked in his own breast, or would at any rate hesitate before sharing it with a young girl. And I did hesitate. But trouble is mysteriously lightened when it is merged in another trouble, and to cheer Jennie up was the aim of all of us that night. And I think that perhaps the Jennie I wanted to tell was Jennie the woman, not Jennie the child.
So "Jennie," I said quietly, "you're not the only one."
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"I've had my medicine too this afternoon."
"Your medicine?"
"Oh," I took myself up, "not that kind of medicine. I mean that you're not the only one who's had to go through it this afternoon."
"I don't understand you, Uncle George."
"While you went for a bicycle ride I went for a walk with somebody else."
"You went for a walk with Miss Oliphant, didn't you?"
"Yes. And I asked her not to remain Miss Oliphant any longer."
I felt the eager uprush of her solicitude. "Oh, Uncle George! Do you mean you asked Miss Oliphant to marry you?"
"Yes."
"So you're engaged?" The words jumped from her.
"No."
"Hasn't she decided yet?"
"Yes, she's decided."
"What!" A deep, deep breath. "You don't mean that she said No?"
"I'm afraid she did."
"Oh!"
She threw her arms about my waist and held me strongly.
"Oh! Poor Uncle George!"
"So you see we're in the cart together, Jennie. I thought I'd tell you. I don't suppose I shall ever tell anybody else."
And I knew that I could not have told her three weeks before. That is how we with our belated loves strike the young—we of the Valley of Bones. Nevertheless my mother's embrace had been hardly more maternal than was the pressure of those seventeen-year-old arms that night.
Then, with another "Poor, poor Uncle George!" she released me. Her next words broke from her with a vivid little jump.
"Oh,howI hate her now!"
"Jennie, Jennie! You can't hate anybody I've just told you that about!"
"Oh, I can! Worse than ever! To think of her cheek in refusing you! She ought to have been proud—instead of playing cards all the evening!"
"Playing cards isn't a bad thing to do. I played cards too."
"Pretty poor look-out for her if she's in love with somebody else anyway!" she commented.
"By no means, Jennie. Other people than I are in love with her. But what I want to ask you is whether you can't be nice to her for my sake."
"I'll do anything I can," she said bitterly. "If you say she was awfully kind and gentle to you about it that might help a bit."
"Then let me say it. She was awfully kind and gentle."
"And so she ought to be! Butisshe in love with somebody else, then?"
"I think she doesn't want to get married."
"I don't believethat!" declared Jennie flatly. "Why, she thinks about nothing but clothes and who's watching her and if she's looking all right!"
"Is that being kind to her, Jennie?"
"No it isn't, and I will try, but I didn't like her before, and I'm only trying now because of you. Why did she ask mother if she might come here, especially if she knew you were in love with her and you were here?"
"I hadn't told her I was in love with her."
"Don't tell me she didn't know, for all that," was the unbelieving reply.
"Well, well.... There it is and we must make the best of it. You try to make the best of things too, my dear. Shall we go in?"
Whether I had done Julia any great service in Jennie's opinion was doubtful. I had at any rate given Jennie something else to think of. And that was something.
Contrary to my expectations, I slept immediately and deeply that night. It was nine o'clock in the morning before I awoke, half-past when I descended. I found Madge in the salon.
"I say, what's become of Julia?" she asked. "Though I don't see how you could very well know seeing you've only just this moment come down."
A maid was clearing away thepetit déjeuner.
"Madam," she said.
"What is it, Ellen?"
"Miss Oliphant left word she'd be back at half-past eleven."
"Has she gone out? But we were to go into Dinard this morning!"
"She's gone to St Briac, madam, and she said as she was going to see somebody at the Golf Club she might as well save one of us a journey and bring a bicycle back. Itwasn't exactly your orders, madam, but there's a deal to do this morning what with this dance, and as Miss Oliphant was so kind I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind."
"Oh, I don't mind, except that it doesn't leave us much time for shopping. I shall go into Dinard, and you'd better tell Miss Oliphant to follow me when she comes back."
"Very good, madam."
"Anyway," said Madge, turning to me, "it certainly does save one of the maids a couple of hours, as long as Julia doesn't mind. But who has she gone to see at the Golf Club at nine o'clock in the morning?"
The dances of my time were the waltz, the cotillion and the quadrille, and as I am not a Pelmanist I have never acquired the dancing-fashions of to-day. So I stood by one of Madge's tubs of hydrangeas and watched. The large cream-and-gold room had a glazed end that opened on to the terrace and overlooked the crowded plage below, and when I wearied of watching the dancers I walked out on to this terrace, and when I was tired of watching the people who moved in and out among the tents and umbrellas and deck-chairs on the beach I returned to the dancing-room again. And much of the time I moved about out of sheer restlessness and apprehension.
Jennie had come to the Beverleys' party after all. She danced occasionally with young Rugby or young Marlborough, but kept more often close to her mother's side. And Julia Oliphant was there, not dancing at all, talking to Madge only infrequently, but gaily enough to everybody else—with the single exception of myself, whom (it seemed to me) she avoided in the most marked fashion. As for the others, they danced in flannels and blazers and varnished evening shoes, and the Beverley girls danced with one another.
What had happened at St Briac that morning? The question gave me no rest. Had Julia seen Derry? Idle to ask; of course she had. What had passed between them? Useless to try to guess. I had glanced at the Indicateur. She had caught the tram at St Enogat at eight-thirty-four and had taken the ten-fifty-three back, reaching St Enogat again at eleven-nineteen. Actually she had had two hours of but seven minutes at St Briac, and that was all I knew. Again she had seized her chance with ruthless instancy. Except for a night's rest, the very moment Jennie had been out of the running she had been at the door of his hotel. She had even had the effrontery to use Jennie's own bicycle as her pretext.
And now why, when I was in the dancing-room, did she seek the terrace, and why, when I went out on the terrace, did she immediately enter the dancing-room again?
She wore the sleeveless frock; and "Oh Juno, white-armed Queen!" I had murmured to myself when my eyes had rested on it.... But, whatever her other attempts had been, those arms at any rate he had not seen that morning, for the simple reason that the frock had only been purchased and hastily made ready on her return. But its purchase was not to be dissociated from him. With him and him only in her mind she had chosen it. What other plans had she in her mind? Was she now going to get a bicycle—she, whom it was impossible to forbid to see whom she pleased and whenever she pleased? Would she go with him to that dove-haunted Tower, recline with him among the sarrasin-stooks with none to say her nay? And would her hosts see as little of her at Ker Annic as I had seen of Jennie during the days I had spent in bed?
Dire woman—dire, andcapable de tout!
But even my preoccupation did not quite blind me to the prettiness of the scene about me. Whether inside or out was the prettier I will not say. They had improvised tennis on the beach, and from the tall diving-stage forty yards out lithe figures poised, inclined, and dropped gracefully downwards in the swallow-dive. The brightly-clad mêlée almost hid the dowdy sands. Back in the dancing-room the tallcream pilasters with the gold capitals supported the sweeping oval of the ceiling, painted with Olympian loves; and bright hair, bright faces, light ankles, passed and interpassed before the eye could catch more than a blended impression of the total charm. The band was playing that which these bands do play, the fiddler on the little rostrum alternately conducting and using his bow, and——
And this time I really thought I had Julia pinned down. Madge was on one side of her, talking with animation, and Jennie stood on her other side. Yes, I thought I had her cornered. She could hardly break away in the middle of one of her hostess's sentences. I advanced.
But she deftly eluded me. Madge had turned with an "Oh, here he is!" and in that moment Julia held out both her hands to Jennie.
"Come along, Jennie," she said, "if those Beverley girls can dance together we can."
But I will swear that it was only because of her promise to me the night before, that Jennie allowed herself to be led away.
I watched them as they stood balanced, bodies close together, foot alternating with foot. Jennie never once looked at Julia, but Julia's dark eyes smiled from time to time on Jennie's face. And present with them in some strange way, hauntingly about and between them, he—he—seemed to be there: young, sunbrowned, and beautiful as he had formerly been, young, sunbrowned and beautiful as he was to-day. A quartette seemed to be rhythmically balancing there, one of her, one of her, two of him.
Then, seeing my look, Julia frankly smiled at me for the first time.
Jennie also saw me, but did not smile. She would dance with Julia for me, but she would not pretend to smile over it.
Twice, thrice round the room they moved, the woman who had refused me yesterday and would not be denied him to-morrow, the girl who had glowed with angry compassion for me and knew in her feminine heart that that smilingpartner had not offered to fetch a bicycle from St Briac that morning without having a reason for it....
"A penny for them, George," Madge's voice suddenly sounded at my side.
"Eh? I was only thinking of those two."
"Julia and Jennie? I'm glad Jennie's come round and is behaving with something like ordinary decency again.... And by the way, that about that bicycle of Jennie's is a funnier mix-up than ever now."
"How so?"
"Well, Julia saw young Arnaud this morning. Rather a difficult position for her, and I can't imagine why she offered to go, seeing she'd never set eyes on the young man in her life. But she seems to have done the best thing possible."
"What was that?"
"She never once mentioned Jennie's name. She simply said that she understood that a bicycle was to be fetched back to Ker Annic, and as she was coming out that way she'd said she'd call for it. It seems to have been quite all right. He didn't ask any questions either; he got it out and put it on the tram for her himself."
"The same tram? She came straight back?" (I may say that there is only one tram to St Briac, which runs backwards and forwards).
"No, the next journey. It had gone, so she had to wait. She tried to ride the bicycle, but couldn't quite manage it. So he showed her his pictures, as he did to us."
"Before she went to the Golf Club, or after?"
"She didn't say."
"And he didn't even ask why the bicycle had been sent for?"
"Not a word about it. He just put it on the tram."
I can't say I much liked the look of this. I remembered how he had formerly bamboozled me.
"Then he simply accepts the situation?" I said.
"Whatever it is, apparently."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, that's the funny part. Whatisthe situation? You see, Arnaud's knowing you complicates it. If he hadn't known you I expect Alec would have sent him about his business at the double. Not that you're to blame in any way; it's nothing at all to do with you. But then is Jennie to blame either for falling in love with the delicious creature? I told Alec so. Oh, we had a lively hour yesterday while you and Julia were out bathing and walking and enjoying yourselves! Alec blustered, and he wouldn't have this and he wouldn't have that, but I asked him, 'Where was the harm if the young man came round in a straightforward way and took his chance with the others?' 'I don't call this straightforward,' he said; and of course I could hardly say it was, but we've all been young once. Anyway, the long and the short of it was that there's to be no more bicycle-riding, but he hasn't forbidden her to see him provided everything's above-board and we're told about it."
"Was that a concession for my sake?"
"It's for Jennie's sake. It's her happiness I'm thinking about. You've nothing to do with it."
"Except to provide his credentials," I thought, but said nothing.
I begin to like it less and less. Not one single thing about it did I like. Julia was supposed not to know this Arnaud, but that had not prevented her from thrusting herself into his affairs and lying unblushingly about an appointment at the Golf Club seven miles away at nine o'clock in the morning. And if Madge thought that Julia and Jennie were "behaving with ordinary decency" at that moment, so did not I. As for Derry, honestly I was afraid of him. He had had a whole night in which to think over the almost certain consequences of that surprise among the sarrasin stooks, and if he was caught without a plan he was not the man I took him for. Julia might think she had scored during that hour and a half when he had shown her his pictures, but the change was just as likely to be in his pocket. Probably he had expected that that bicycle would be sent for before the day was many hours old. The only thing he could nothave expected was that Julia Oliphant would come in person for it.
Then the dance ended, and Julia, as barefaced as she was barearmed, came straight up to me, wide-smiling, daring.
"Well, George! Good morning! Enjoying yourself?"
"Hadn't Derry a nerve!" she had said to me when I had told her about the tea-party at Ker Annic. I don't think his nerve surpassed her own. I looked straight at her.
"Since it's good morning, come for a turn," I said.
Still smiling all over her face, she placed a resplendent arm on mine, and we passed out on to the terrace.
She wore an immense white hat, so cavalierly dragged down on one side and so arrogantly jutting up on the other that from certain points you had to walk half way round her before you saw her face at all. One eye lurked permanently within the recess of that outrageous brim. She had also done something to her lips.
There were little round tables on the terrace, and at one of these we sat down, vis-à-vis. She placed the backs of her clasped hands under her chin and sat there, magnetising me.
"Well, how goes it?" she said.
"I hear," I said, "that you're learning to ride a bicycle."
"No, George."
"What's that?"
"Not a bicycle. Only a free-wheel. I rode a bicycle years ago. It's only the free-wheel that's a bit tricky."
"You saw him?"
"Of course. Didn't Madge tell you?"
"And he knew you?"
"My dear George, do pull yourself together! He was expecting me!"
"What! By appointment?"
"No, no, no, I don't mean that. I didn't write or send him a telegram or anything of that kind. But, of course, he knew I was here. He knew days ago—before I came probably. What would be the first thing Jennie'd tell him? That they were expecting a visitor, but it needn't make any difference to their meetings. So of course he was expectingme. Perhaps not quite so early in the morning, but oh, quite soon!"
"What I meant was, did he recognise you?"
"Recognise me? Why not? He called me Miss Oliphant and showed me his sketches. They're"—the eye I could see sparkled, taking in the whole bright terrace—"they're glorious!"
"What about the bicycle?"
"Glo—rious! He's a divine painter! Why, his books are like sawdust after his painting! I don't paint worth a rap myself, but oh, I know celestial stuff when I see it!"
"What did he say about the bicycle?"
"I didn't go there to talk about bicycles. I went there to see his glorious pictures and his glorious self!"
"And incidentally to meet an apocryphal person at the Golf Club."
"Pooh!" She took that in her stride. "But about those pictures——"
"Leave the pictures for a moment. Why have you avoided me the whole afternoon until you came up a moment ago and said good morning?"
"Surely you can guess that?" Again the fascination of the smile.
"Guessing's lost some of its novelty for me lately."
"Well, I wanted to dance with Jennie, you see."
"I'm afraid I don't see."
She looked at me quizzically, reflectively. "N—o. Perhaps it isn't as simple as I thought. But you were glad when I danced with Jennie, weren't you?"
"I won't say glad. I was—very interested."
"Why?"
"You two—and him. That interested me enormously."
"Well, now you've very nearly got it. That dance was our understanding, Jennie's and mine. We had it all out."
"You didn't appear to be talking much."
"I don't think we spoke three words, but we had it out for all that."
"That's the kind of thing I give up."
"Make an effort, George. You don't think I'd do anything unfair, do you? As long as there was a fair way left, I mean?"
"I don't even know what you mean by fair."
"Well, you're on her side, whether you know it or not. It took me exactly one tenth of a second to see that yesterday. You want him to get going straight ahead again and marry her. Don't you?" she challenged me with a brilliant look.
"Never mind my answer for the present."
"Well, you want that, and I want—something quite different."
"Jennie doesn't even know that you know him."
"What? How do you know what he's told her about me? Anyway, even if he hasn't, she knows I didn't fetch that bicycle for nothing. She smelt something in the wind, and now she knows perfectly well what it is."
"From that dance? Wonderful dance!"
"It's your sex that's wonderful. If you don't believe me, ask her."
"I don't think it will be necessary. There's just one thing you've forgotten."
"What's that?"
"Him."
"Oh, I've forgottenhim!" she smiled, touching the reddened lips with her fingertips.
"Him and what he may do. I think you'll find you've left that out of the account. We shall see.... So I take it you dodged me all the afternoon because we hadn't all been properly introduced to the new situation, so to speak? Is that it?"
"Yes, that's quite good. There's no stealing advantages now. Everything's on the square, and what sort of a vermouth do they give you here?"
With that I asked her a question that for the moment surprised even her. I asked it perfectly seriously, seeking not only the unblinkered eye, but also the one within its deep ambush of white hat-brim.
"Julia, are you yourself in every respect the same woman to-day that you were before we had our talk yesterday?"
She turned her head to watch the tennis-players on the sands below, the swallow-divers from the tall stage. She turned it further, and her gaze passed from the clustered villas across the bay to the awnings of the hotel, the sunny white of the balustrade, the waiter who approached in answer to my summons. Then she looked at me.
"I know what you mean. Not just this hat and a touch of lipstick and these"—she showed her arms. "I'm the same, of course, but I suppose I'm different too. And I'm going to be different. Ask Jennie. She knows. Any woman would know—just by dancing with somebody and never saying a word, George. One keeps one's eyes open and—adapts oneself. Jennie knows all about it. Ask her."
And the flashing, daring, confident smile, which had vanished for a moment, reappeared.
It was her request for a vermouth that had prompted my sudden question. All at once I had found myself wondering who the man was, in Buckinghamshire apparently, who shared with myself the privilege of having been refused by her. Not that I was interested in his identity; but from him, or from the man who had been attentive to her on the boat, or from somebody else, or from a whole series of men for all I knew, she had—the slang is required—"picked up a thing or two." It was a far cry from that first cocktail in the Piccadilly to this hat, this revelation of arms, these conscious coquetries with bathing-wraps and auction with Alec Aird. Mind you, I knew as surely as I sat opposite to her that not one of these fellow-unfortunates of mine had had a scrap more from her than I had had myself. They had been dismissed without compunction the moment she had had what she required of them. On Derry and on Derry alone her dark eyes were unchangingly set. No trifling, no flirtation by the way, any more than to the rehearsal is given the unstinted kiss of the passionate performance. Therefore in this she was single and unchanged.
But she had seen Derry that morning, and that excitedbombardment of electrons that seemed to emanate from him and to alter the nature of everyone who came into contact with him had worked an alteration in her. She might call it "adapting herself," but it was essentially more than that. For she had seen Jennie too, knew of their love, and had instantly re-assembled and re-marshalled all the forces at her disposal. Whatever might be her broadside of hat, arms and the rest, swiftly and craftily she had seen that there was one thing she could not ape—the simplicity of seventeen. Contest on that ground meant defeat in advance. In this, its vivid opposite, lay her desperate chance.
And, I thought with apprehension, no negligible chance either! For a man may be young and innocent and grave and be entirely at the mercy of this very simplicity and trust. It is the woman old enough to be his mother, but not too old to have this shot left in her locker, who bowls him over. Lucky for him if a more contemporaneous passion already occupies his heart.
"So," she said, her eyes far away, "there are those wonderful pictures."
Yes, she would not hesitate to make capital out of his pictures too.
"The mere handling, quite apart from anything else——"
There again she had Jennie on the hip. Jennie might love his pictures merely because they were his, but Julia painted, knew the technicalities, would make intimacies, opportunities, flattering occasions out of them——
"There's one, just a few bits of broken white ruins with her lying there—he wasn't going to show me that at first——"
But ah, her eyes had spied it out, and he had had to show it.
"You've seen them, George. Now I ask you,couldany boy of eighteen possibly have painted them?"
That too she had the audacity to claim—that he was eighteen when she wanted him to be eighteen and forty-five when she wanted him to be forty-five. Here again Jennie Aird was to be put in the wrong. It was to be an anachronism and monstrous that Jennie should love so widely out of her age.
"Could he, I ask you? Doesn't it show? You were perfectly right when you tried to stop that flirtation between those two, George, and you're absolutely wrong in wanting it to go on now. She's no right whatever, and neither has he. Leave it to me. He called me Miss Oliphant, but it can be Julia in five minutes, and anything else I like in ten——"
I did not choose to remind her again that she was leaving him out of the calculation. I had warned her once, and it comforted me to think that he was not quite so unarmed as she supposed against this sort of spiritual rape.... She went musingly on.
"'Miss Oliphant!' ... But wait a bit. It was myself and Daphne Wade for it before, and then it was all sentimental association and stained-glass and church-music and because he was wrapped in dreams. Sentiment's all very well in its way, George, but give me Get-up-and-get. That's the cock to fight. Daphne euchred me once——"
"Where did you get these expressions?" I asked her calmly.
"——and she didn't get him either. He never knew the first thing about women. So here we are, with the situation an exact repetition of what it was before."
"With Jennie playing Daphne's part?"
"For him. Why not? If he's the same again he's the same again, isn't he? But oh, when I saw him this morning!... It was exciting and terrific! You've looked at a photograph-album you haven't seen for years, I expect, but the things didn't move about and talk to you and ask you how you were and show you their pictures——"
I couldn't help a light shiver. Certainly this woman mightclaim that she had lived through an extraordinary cycle of experience.
"So he's the same, and the same thing will happen all over again—except for whatIdo," she added wickedly.
"And that will be?"
She shook her head and pursed her mouth.
"No, no. I won't marry you, George, but I will be your friend. I'm not going to tell you that. You must wait. I see how difficult your position is, and it will be much, much better if you're able to say afterwards that you didn't know anything at all about it."
"Isn't it already a little late to say that?"
"Well, least said's soonest mended anyway. Got an Officers' Woodbine about you?"
"A what?"
She laughed. "You must get used to us young things, George. An Officers' Woodbine's a Gasper, otherwise a Gold Flake, otherwise a Yellow Peril, and therefore any sort of a cigarette.He'llknow what I mean, and he'll laugh. He went through the war, you see. Oh, I shall be able to make him laugh all right!"
So she would reap a profit even out of the war. I could not deny her thoroughness. I gave her a cigarette, and as I held the match for her I saw that she made a note of my care for the brim of her hat. She would pass that too on to Derry as part of his education—that expensive hats must not have holes burned in them.
There were fewer bathers on the diving-stage now but the beach was as crowded as ever. Julia noted hats, shoes, costumes; she noted men too, but no young figure in béret and vareuse appeared in the rainbow-coloured coming and going below. Then the hum of an aeroplane was heard, and "Look, that's rather amusing," she remarked as there broke out from the machine, twinkling against the blue, a tiny cirrus-cloudlet of white that slowly dissolved and was borne away—leaflets for the races probably, or advertisements for something or other at the Casino.
We ceased to talk. For all I know she was revolving projects that included a new free-wheel bicycle, fresh from its crate, with packing round its saddle and string and paper about its bright parts. Together we watched the fluttering of paper melt away. A minute later you could hardly have imagined that it had ever been there. There seemed no reason why it ever should have been there. There seemed so little reason for any of our activities. Not one of those leaflets had fallen over the land, and had they done so, what then? A litter of paper from an aeroplane, a little of petty acts from a person, and the immensity of the blue persisting exactly as before. For the humming of that plane had reminded me of another humming. I remembered a Tower, with a horse-gin threshing at an adjacent farm. In that Tower too things had happened, so mighty-seeming at the time, so hushed in the empty cells of its stone heart now. I watched the plane out of sight.
There seemed so little difference between a handful of leaflets scattered over the sea and a handful of grasses seeded on that circular coping, as long as the eternal Oblivion of the Blue brooded overhead.
Late that night, in the garden of Ker Annic, there kissed me a young woman who had never kissed me before. She kissed me, and then with a sob fled past the dark auracaria into the house. The young woman was Jennie Aird.
The next morning she had gone.
The Island is deserted only in that none but they come there; for them, just those two, it blossoms as the rose. Its story is the oldest story of all, and the newest. It is told an infinitude of times, and yet, like that first story of the cycle of a thousand, we do not remember to have heard it before. Let us listen to it just once again.
No coral-reef breaks its ceaselessly-thundering rollers into surf, no palms wave their dark fronds in the blue. Only a holiday-coast, with the London and South Western Company's steamers passing daily, and the known and familiar trees of oak and ilex and lime. No garments of skins and necklaces of shells, but a white summer frock, a grey raincoat over it, and a bundle that can be carried in the hand. No shelter of stones and branches that he who is with her toils to make with his own hands, but French slates, French tiles, French thatching, whichever it may be.
And no wreck. Only the wreck of a home.
Yet it is a Desert Island none the less; a Desert Island with pleasure-steamers running, and cars full of tourists coming and going, and the Rate of Exchange quoted daily, and the sound of a familiar and friendly tongue everywhere. A Desert Island with guide-books and time-tables, chars-à-bancs, the vedettes up the Rance, the excursions to Mont St Michel. A Desert Island with cameras and picture-postcards and greetings at every corner: "I didn't know you were over here! The So-and-Sos have just gone to Quimper. We're off to Concarneau on Tuesday. Where are you staying, and did you ever know anything like the price of golf-balls over here?" All over Haute Bretagne the same, all over Northern France the same; and somewhere among it all a Desert Islandà deux. Probably amoving one, on four bicycle-wheels. But where look for it? In Dol? Lamballe? Rennes? In what arrondissement, canton, commune? There are many bicycles in France, but there is only one Island precisely like that one. For there is only one man who has been forty-five years of age and is now eighteen, only one woman who, embracing him, has made her fate commensurate with his own. They are apart, unapproachable, unidentified, not to be communicated with though you look into their faces and speak to them. Their nonentity is lost in the multitudinousness of everything else. They keep no signal-fires burning day and night for your ship or mine that passes. They are marooned in their own bliss, angelic castaways who will not return to us.
Only to see her, only to hear her voice——
Only on a fatal day to tell her his name, the name of that prisoner in the Tower that may not be spoken——
Only to send back a bicycle to a shop (but to trust her to guess that where a bicycle would be left a letter would also be left, and an appointment made at some secret hour between athé dansantand bedtime that night).
Only to cut the knot that no power on earth could untie, to fetch that free-wheel back from the shop under cover of the darkness, and to be off and miles away before the sun rose again.
Was it well or ill that they had ever set eyes on one another?
And what the better now is Alec Aird if he does find them? The times have changed since Madge sat in her mother's carriage waiting until this servant, and not that one, opened the door. It is no good telling Madge he told her so. He can disown Jennie or he can take her back, but there is no middle way. The consul in the Rue St Philippe at St Malo cannot help him, and at the Mairie at St Briac they will run through the files of thepermis de séjourin vain. He can whisper—he has whispered—in the ears of the police, and they may run the pair to earth, but it will not be to the earth of that magical island of theirs. And let Alec agonise in Agony Columns as much as he will. Hecan forgive her, or she can go unforgiven. All else is out of his hands.
And yet it need be no long voyage to that Isle. It is to be found in the near and dear heart. But only by those who envy not and vaunt not, who suffer long and are kind. If sin there has been it must have been taken away again—en souffrance, en espérance, avant qu'il est venu le jour. But then, when that day comes, it comes as it were with a smile through the lashes of its opening eye. It looks up with the mounting rays, and its eyebrow becomes the arch of heaven. C'est effacé, l'horrible passé. Il est venu le jour.
On a clear evening in the last days of August I found myself sitting in the Jardin des Anglais in Dinan, alone. The Airds were still at Ker Annic, Julia Oliphant still with them; but I, although their guest and under promise to return to them, had absented myself for a few days. I had done this as much for their sake as for my own. Alec was out all day, or if not out hardly to be seen by the rest of us. Julia and Madge were better together without me. So I had made no falsely delicate excuse. I had told them exactly what I am saying at this moment. And I think they had been grateful.
The garden looks east over the viaduct of Lanvallay, and above the misty violet that enshrouded the land a trail of pale shirley poppies was strung out over the sky—the leagues of cloud-tops caught by the last of the sun. The parapet in front of me hid all else as I sat. One or two people stood against it, looking out over the abyss; a few others moved slowly along the ramparts. The limes above me were already benighted, the dark mass of St Sauveur hidden behind them. The crowded vedettes had long since departed, and the comparatively few visitors who stay in Dinan were probably at the Café de Bretagne at the other side of the town.
The dark tangle, that for the hundredth time I was tryingto unravel, is almost impossible of statement, so little of the solid was there to support it, such mazes of spiritual conjecture did it open up. Once more I will do the best I can with it. Understand, to begin with, that he had now repeated what I had better call the "experience of the flash-lamp." Formerly it had been Julia; now it was Jennie. Therefore this, if anything, seemed to follow: