The Tower of Oblivion Part 27

The punt rocked as she suddenly sat half up. "Are you asleep, George?"

"No."

"I nearly was. I can't imagine why you ever come to London when you've a place like this to bask in. How do you manage to get any work done?"

"I can't say I am doing a great deal at present."

"Now that's the first inhospitable thing you've said. Which is your study--the end room there?" She glanced up at the balcony.

"Yes."

"Don't you ever sleep out?"

"No. My room's at the back, and it's two wide-open windows."

"I love the ramblers up the pillars! May I have some to take back?"

"_Mais naturellement._"

"Ah, but you can't stay that like Derry, George----"

"I can't do anything like Derry. On the whole I'm not sure that I want to."

"You don't believe that sometimes one single hour may be worth all the rest of life put together?"

"I suppose I'm the other kind of man."

"Ah well!" She stretched herself luxuriously. "I used to think as you do. But I've learned a lot since then. An awful lot."

"'Awful's' perhaps the word."

"But lovely. Anyway who cares? What does it matter? What does anything matter? (Oh, look at his dive!) Nothing matters, George--nothing. I dare you to say it does."

"It might be difficult to run the world on those lines."

"Oh, I don't know. It's in a pretty ghastly muddle as it is. Do you know, I've made a discovery about that, George."

"Really?"

"It's this: That we make the mistake of regarding the world as full of rational people, with perhaps a few particularly stupid ones here and there. Now if you'll only regard it as full of perfect zenies, with just once in a while a reasonable being among them, that would explain everything."

"You'd better go to sleep again, Julia."

"But it is so. I see it, oh so clearly! And you don't worry about anything then--what anybody thinks or says or does or anything. You just take the funny old peepshow as it is. That's the way to live."

"On an endless walking-tour?"

"Why not, if you're in jolly places all the time?"

"Siena? Nimes? Trieste?"

"Literal George!... But really, nothing matters. Everything except the present moment is meant to be forgotten. It's the only one you live in.

In the past you're dead and in the future you aren't born yet--except him.... George----"

"Hm?"

"Girls nowadays _do_ have an awfully easy time!... You've only got to look at their clothes. We dressed down to our toes and up to our ears, and that meant we had to take a good deal of trouble about things. We had to make a little go a long way, so to speak--talk, and smile, and be amusing, and think what we said. If we didn't we were soon left out in the cold. But girls nowadays simply powder their shoulder blades and dress to their knees more or less, and that's all. Lots of 'em never open their mouths except to eat. They don't _do_ anything; they get there by _un_doing something.... But how boring for you, George. What does it matter as long as you do get there?"

"I hope you'll think twice before you commit a very great folly," I said.

She laughed. "No, no. I've finished thinking. It was one of my mother's maxims: 'Take care of your health and don't ever give way to serious thinking.' Don't you think it's rather good?"

"I agree as far as your health's concerned."

"Oh, the other too. She was a wise woman. I've only lately begun to realise how wise.... Ah, they're going in. Come along."

She stood up in the punt to see whether Derry appeared on the balcony on his way to dress.

At teatime I had a caller, a gentle old friend and neighbour of mine, Mrs Truscott. I saw her old-fas.h.i.+oned victoria standing in the drive as we reached the terrace. Derry was charming to the old lady; Julia--also charming, but with some subtle difference that I cannot explain. After tea Derry and Julia strolled off to see whether the rods had come from the blacksmith's yet, but they stopped to examine the victoria on the way. Mrs Truscott turned to me.

"What an exceedingly handsome man! But surely she's a good deal older than he?"

"Why do you couple them like that?" I asked.

"Aren't they engaged?"

"No."

She smiled. "Not yet?"

"Nor likely to be," I risked.

She shook her head, so that her grey curls trembled about her cheeks.

"Ah, you bachelors, Sir George! All sorts of things happen under your noses that you don't see!"

"I don't think anything's happening here. They've simply been friends since they were boy and girl together."

"That's a handicap, I admit," she replied. "Perhaps the worst a woman has to put up with. But occasionally things happen in spite of it."

"I really think you're mistaken this time, Mrs Truscott."

"Well, well, well, well.... And are you writing us another of your charming books?"

It pa.s.sed at that, but it left me with an uneasy feeling. These old ladies are so very acute.

Nothing remarkable happened at dinner, except a curious little covert duel between Julia and myself when I once more tried to draw out Derry to talk about his book. I am afraid that she won and I failed.

Good-temperedly but flatly he refused to discuss it; he wanted to look at my Hogarths instead. So I drew the large folio-stand up in front of the drawing-room fire, arranged the lights and we turned over the prints. He seemed very much less drowsy; indeed it was half-past nine before he spoke of going to bed; and as in the country that is not an unreasonably early hour, and since moreover Julia had sat up late the night before, I was not surprised when she also said that she would retire early. He went first, but she was not long after him. I was therefore left either to sit over my fire alone, or to follow them, which ever I liked best.