The Tower of Oblivion Part 39

"Than this jolly party?"

"Yes. Or else I wish I'd been born a man. They get all the chances."

I reflected that one man, somewhere in the world, would have a very enviable chance, but kept my thought to myself. "Been having a row with somebody?" I asked.

"No," she answered, I have no doubt entirely untruthfully. "I'm just fed up. I wish I could have nursed in the war or something, but I was too young. Or I wish I could write like you. But if I told father I wanted to earn my own living he wouldn't hear of it, and mother's one idea is to dress me up and show me off and marry me to somebody. They don't know how sick I am of it."

I glanced at her as we pa.s.sed the lighted windows again. That soft red sill of her lower lip was level, and just a shade short for the upper member of her mouth's sweet portal, so that the pearls within were negligently guarded. Temper and discontent were in her pebble-grey eyes.

She gave her head an impatient toss, as if to shake off the thought of the boisterous young cadets and crammer's-pups within. In a day she seemed to have outgrown them, to have lengthened her mind as she lengthened her frocks--if young women do lengthen their frocks nowadays.

She wanted to nurse, to write, to be a student or some personage's secretary, to say to the dingy world, "Here I am--use me and don't spare me," in the very moment when I and such as I, disillusioned and worn, were sighing "Enough--release me--or if that may not be, give me but once more, once more that first dawning joy!"

"I don't want to get married," she sulked. "Ever. Mother may laugh, but I won't. It would have been different in the war. I love all those darling boys who were killed. But these schoolboys are all the same....

You don't want a secretary for your new book, do you?"

It may have been my imagination, but I am not sure that there did not stir in my memory some faint echo, of a woman sitting under a murky dome as she waited for her _Manuel de Repertoire Bibliographique Universel_.

I know these secretaries and their wiles, and if my answer had had twenty syllables instead of one I should have meant them all.

"No," I said.

We had reached the wrought-iron gates at the beginning of the sandy drive. Three or four cars were parked there, and apparently somebody or other was leaving early, for a chauffeur had just switched on the head-lights of a heavy touring-car that shook the ground with its muttering. Judging from the power of the lights it was the car of one of Madge's French friends, for no English car carries shafts so blinding as those twin beams that clove the darkness. They made the windows of the house seem a dull expiring turnip-lantern. Their blaze lighted up every pebble, every blade of gra.s.s, defined the shadows of blade on blade. Out of the fumy darkness insects dropped, stunned with light, and moved feebly on the path. I drew Jennie behind the glare, and as I did so one of the English servant maids came up to me.

"A gentleman wishes to speak to you, sir," she said.

"To me? What gentleman? Where?"

"A French gentleman, sir. A M'seer Arnaud his name is."

"Arnaud? I don't know any Arnaud. Are you sure he asked for me and not for Mr Aird?"

"It was Sir George Coverham he asked for, sir."

"Well, where is he?"

"Here--at least he was a moment ago----"

"Arnaud?" I mused. "Do you know a M'sieur Arnaud, Jennie?"

As I turned to her I saw her in that false illumination with curious distinctness. The soft upward glow from the path reminded one of a photographer's manipulation of his tissue-paper screens. She stood there semi-footlighted--smooth brows, low glint of her hair, the caught-up upper lip that showed the pearls, her steady gaze....

Ah, her gaze! What was this, that made me for a moment unable to remove my own eyes from her face? At what object beyond the car was she so fixedly looking? Why had her bosom risen? Why, as if at some "Open, Sesame!" did that betraying upper lip offer, not two, but all the pearls within?

My eyes followed hers....

As they did so sounds of talk and laughter and farewells drew near from the house. The departing guests were upon us.

But I had seen. If only for an instant before it retreated swiftly into the shadows again, I had seen. Gazing at her as steadily as she had gazed at him, the vision of a young man's face had momentarily appeared.

Then the babble broke out about us.

"Thank you a thousand times, chere Madame----"

"Delicieuse----"

"Merci, M'sieu' Air-r-r-rd----"

"Better have the rug round you----"

"Where's Jennie? Ah, here she is----"

"a demain, a onze heures----"

"Good-bye----"

"Good-bye, Sair-r-r George----"

But I still saw that face haunting the transparent gloom. A beret cap had surmounted it, a blouse _en grosse toile_ had clothed the shoulders below. Monsieur Arnaud, if it was he, was dressed as an _ouvrier_ or a sailor dresses.

And he was young, sunbrowned, grave, beautiful.

The car backed and turned. There was a grating as the clutch was slipped in, and then the engine dropped to a steady purr. The wrought-iron gates started out in the glare, the red tail-lights diminished. I was dimly aware that Madge said something to me, but I remained motionless where I stood. I came to myself to find myself alone.

Sunbrowned, grave, beautiful, young!

And he called himself Arnaud!

I have told you of that list of names with which his diary began. Arnaud was not among them. But Arnold was. He had simply Gallicised it, and as Arnaud he was seeking me.

Then I felt my sleeve timidly touched. His voice came from behind me, a voice with a charming, uncertain timbre.

"George--I say, George--who was that?"

III

I will make a shameful confession. My heart had sunk like lead. I had wanted a holiday from him. That very morning I had thought I had secured it, had blithely planned my new and cheerful work.

And here he was, with his hand on my sleeve.

He repeated his words in a whisper. "George, who was that?"

Slowly I turned. "It _is_ you?"

"Yes."

"How did you know I was here?"

"I saw your name in the Visitors' List."