The Tower of Oblivion Part 24

"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 about here. Rus.h.i.+ng 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 Suss.e.x 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 pa.s.sive. She was _not_ waiting. 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 diminis.h.i.+ng 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.

"_Do_ you 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 equipment for 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, "_would_ you 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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.... _Have_ you the right?"

She laughed softly. "You mean I'm a baby-s.n.a.t.c.her?" she said.

I did not reply.