The Tower of Oblivion Part 22

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 Pre 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 Pre 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, he dropped the towel on a gra.s.s 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 boiled behind 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 they _were_ details, 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 balance _must_ be thus and thus; for swiftness, a certain speed of movement _must_ be 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.

II

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's _quality_ as 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 LAMP BY WITHDRAWING THE LAMP

He might re-live a given age The intensity would diminish again with great intensity. but the scope of memory would enlarge.