The Tower of Oblivion Part 44

But I could not get out the words "Good night."

How did I know what the night was going to be for him?

For it happened in the night....

I left him standing by the earth-wall, with the lights still twinkling at sea and the low glare of Frehel in the sky behind him. Four seconds, eleven seconds, four times a minute----

"Jennie!" I heard his hushed, rapt voice as I turned away.

V

"_Le_ Por-r-rt! _Le_ Por-r-rt!"

Only an old woman with white streamers and a basket descended from the tram, but instinctively I turned my head to look at the flowery bank on which I had sat so few hours before. It was a sparkling morning, with an intense blue sky, high white clouds and singing larks. The fields of flowering sarrasin were white, cream, pink, deep russet; and far away the grey-green boscage receded into misty blue, unbroken by walls or fences, that contradictory communal undulation of a country where individualism is at its most intense, holdings small, and a ditch or a bank you could stride over fencing enough. But I was too anxious to be able to admire. At the best it looked as if I should have to a.s.sume complete responsibility for him and so cut my visit to the Airds abruptly short. At the worst--but I put the worst from me.

"Allez! Roulez!"

With the sound of a tank going into action the tram clattered forward to St Lunaire.

Up the steep street, and a swerve past the acres of tennis-courts that had once been gra.s.s. The huge six-acre cage was already full of players, and I thought of Jennie Aird. Then past the magasins and the long cafe, with half-clad young Frenchmen punting a ball and walking on their hands in the strip of meadow opposite. The Casino, the hotels, and then a steep planted avenue that seemed to end in the air. Then a rush and another swerve, and out on to the wide expanse of tussocky links, grey and fawn sandhills, and turf gemmed with a myriad tiny flowers.

His hotel was within a biscuit's-toss of the terminus. It stood by the roadside, and its front consisted of a built-out structure of gla.s.s, within which a couple of Breton girls with tight hair, string-soled shoes, and the physique of middle-weight boxers, were laying a dozen small tables for _dejeuner_. A lad dressed precisely as Derry had been dressed was delivering lifebuoys of bread, and knives clattered in baskets, and two-foot-high stacks of coloured plates were being carried in.

"M'sieu' Arnaud?" I inquired of one of the string-slippered Amazons.

"M'sieu' n'est pas descendu--si vour voulez monter au deuxieme, M'sieu'."

She indicated a way through the back salon that had once been the street frontage. Beyond yawned a cavernous kitchen, the blacker because of its opening on to a dazzlingly green back yard. Between the two rose a staircase, which a strapping youth was polis.h.i.+ng with a mop on his foot.

I mounted and gained the _deuxieme_. Then, outside the closed door, I stopped with a thumping heart.

But it was no good hesitating. I pulled myself together and knocked.

"_----trez!_" called a clear voice.

I thanked G.o.d, pushed and entered.

His head was bent over his colour-box. On a piece of paper he appeared to be making a list of the colours to be replenished. He looked smilingly up, and our eyes met.

Clear eyes, grave sweet mouth, undoubting smile----

And unchanged. The night had pa.s.sed, and nothing perceptible had happened. I crossed to the window. Now that all was well, I dare to admit to myself that I had been prepared to find him--dead. If he was right in fixing his climacteric at sixteen he might well have been dead.

But there he was, bending over his colour-box and murmuring "Cobalt--I seem to eat cobalt--raw sienna--orange vermilion----"

Presently I spoke, still from the window.

"Well, I don't know anything about downstairs, but you've a gorgeous view up here."

"Isn't it?" he said. "Grows on you. At first I thought it rather sc.r.a.ppy, a little bit of everything, and I wish they'd put a bomb under that silly chateau-place; but it grows on you. Inland's the country though. Orange vermilion, pale cadmium, and a double go of cobalt----"

I looked round his room. The smell of oil-colours clung about it, but it was exquisitely tidy and simple. Its walls were covered with a yellowish striped paper, its ceiling beams were moulded, its herring-boned parquet floor shone. A single mat lay by the side of his ornate wooden bedstead, which, with the little night cupboard by it, a small table at the window, and a single upholstered chair, was the only furniture in the room. The door-k.n.o.b was of gla.s.s, and the lace curtains had been draped back over the open leaves of the window. From a flimsy little hat-rack hung his two haversacks. His canvases apparently were in the cupboard that was sunk into the wall.

"Well," he said, putting his list of colours into his pocket, "it seems rather a rum idea bringing you right out here when I've got to go into Dinard myself. Can I have the money, George?"

I counted it out.

"And oh, by the way--I know you won't mind--but if you'd talk French when there's anybody about--it makes things a bit simpler----"

Here I began to be aware of the imminence of another problem. I don't mean the talking French; I mean the whole problem of his company. He was going into Dinard to buy colours, and I also was returning to Dinard.

The natural thing was that we should go together. I could hardly const.i.tute myself his guardian and not be seen about with him--bargain with him that he only came to me or I to him like Nicodemus, by night.

He seemed to take all this cheerfully for granted.

But whither would it presently lead? Dinard was, in a word, the world--that world in which he had no place. Everybody knew scores of people in Dinard, and Madge Aird hundreds. Tennis, tea, the shops, the plage--all was public, familiar, open in the last degree. Within a couple of days, on the strength of being seen twice or thrice with me, he would be exchanging bows and smiles and "Bonjours" with goodness knows who.

"Well, come along," I said in a sort of daze. "But I don't know that I feel like talking much, either in French or English. You're a devil of a fellow for keeping your friends guessing, Monsieur Arnaud. You're still Monsieur Arnaud, I suppose?"

"How can I change it?" he replied gravely.

Of course he couldn't change it. Arnaud he must remain until he became too young to be Arnaud any longer.

On the returning tram I addressed myself somewhat as follows:

"George Coverham, this can't go on. You've got to make up your mind one way or the other. If you don't he'll make it up for you. His is already made up. He sees no reason why he shouldn't carry on. He's either right or wrong. Well, suppose for a moment that he's right? What then?

"You know what you were prepared for when you went up those stairs of his. You know you had to put your hand up three times before you dared knock. Well, everything was all right; nothing had happened. If he's really suddenly and desperately in love it ought to have happened, but anyway it didn't. That means, in plain English, that he knows more about himself than you do.

"And he thinks he can stay as he is. Suppose he can? Suppose even that maddest conjecture of all is true, and that he actually may re-become normal and live out his life like everybody else? It wouldn't be any more wonderful than the rest. So what's the obvious thing to do? Why, simply to take him as he is--as long as he is it. That's all he's asking you. And he's promised to clear out at the very first hint of another transformation. In fact he's got to. It's in the very nature of the case.

"Look at him on the seat opposite to you there, between those two bare-headed young women. Those two Breton girls may keep their four handsome Breton eyes straight before them, but they're conscious of every moment of his presence. Who wouldn't be? He's a dream of beauty.

And remember how he pleaded with you last night. Can't you hear him still? 'Only to see her, only to talk to her: can't you manage that, sir? Can't you, George?' Was ever grat.i.tude more touching and absurd than when you merely told him her name--'Jennie!' Why shouldn't he have the love now he missed before? Julia Oliphant didn't stop to think twice about it. Who made you Rhadamanthus, George Coverham?... Anyway, you've got to make up your mind."

I told myself all this, and more; but I cannot say I convinced myself.

Indeed, in the face of past experience, I made the mistake of once more thinking I had a choice in the matter. I thought that I possessed him, and not he me. So I floundered among details, little practical details, such as talking French to him and being seen about Dinard with him. I recalled how already Madge Aird had asked whether he had a brother. I seemed to see Alec's face when he was told that a Frenchman had fallen in love with his daughter, my own as I explained that the Frenchman was not really a Frenchman, and Alec's again as he asked me what the devil I meant. Then there was his name--Arnaud. That again landed us straight into a dilemma. He couldn't change it, must stop Arnaud; but as Arnaud the athlete he had been seen at Ambleteuse. The brother of some young Rugby or young Charterhouse at that moment in Dinard (the words seemed to detach themselves from the noisy babble of a teashop) had seen him.

He might be recognised here; people do look twice at a casual stranger who strolls into a Stade, chucks off his coat, and in his walking boots does something like level time. He looked it, too, every inch of him....

And whispers might be flying round Dover too. The straits are not very wide, and men who can swim them do not come down with every shower of rain.... Oh, the whole thing bristled with risks. I counted a hundred of them while the tram rolled in its cloud of filthy smoke past La Gueriplais, La Fourberie, St Enogat, the Rue de la Gare....

"Devoiturons," he said suddenly, touching my knee.

He had taken matters into his own hands even while I had mused. I had intended to postpone my decision by dropping off at St Enogat; now we were at the corner of the Boulevard Feart. "Down we get!" _We!_ Apparently "we" could get to "our" colour shop without making the circuit of the rest of the town. I will not swear that I saw a momentary twinkle of mischief in his eyes. I was standing in the middle of the road looking after the tram, which was already fifty yards away.

Together a middle-aged English gentleman in a neat lounge suit and a splendid young specimen of French manhood in blouse and corduroys turned into the Boulevard Feart.

There would still have been time to retrieve my indecision. The Boulevard, approached from that end of the town, is not nearly so frequented as the Rue Levava.s.seur and the quarter near the Casino. It was, in fact, particularly quiet. But every step we took under the shady limes, past the white-facaded houses and gardens vermilion with geraniums and bluer than the sky with lobelia, brought us nearer to that crowded busy world in which he held so singular a place. Or I could have left him at the corner of the Rue Jacques Cartier and made my escape by way of the Rue St Enogat. But what then? If I shook him off to-day the question would be to face again to-morrow.... Ker Yvonne, Ker Maria, Ker Loc ... the shuttered villas slipped past us.

Then, "Derry," I said in desperation, "I'm at my wits' end about you. I haven't the faintest idea what I ought to do."

"It's jolly just being with you," he said, looking straight ahead.