The Tower of Oblivion Part 50

After all, the last question he would have thought of asking his young guest was whether he might have a look at his birth certificate.

Up to this point our gathering had had its distinctly amusing side. With consummate dissembling he had turned us round his finger, and it would have taken a conjurer to guess that he was softly laughing at all of us except Jennie. But the more I considered the "line" I had on his subtle machinations the less a laughing matter it all became. Behind the gentle deference of his manner I felt the grimmest determination. His charm was the charm of a charming youth, but it rested on the hard experience and resolution of a man. And behind that again in the last resort menace would lie. This man, actually older than Madge, not much younger than Alec and myself, and a full quarter of a century older than Jennie, had toiled for fame and had missed the fruits of it; he had chased the will-o'-the-wisp pleasure and had floundered in the bog; but now he had seen the s.h.i.+ning thing beside which fame and pleasure are nothing at all. To seize that was now the whole intention of his marvellous twice-lived life. Let him keep his eyes as he would from looking directly at Jennie, Jennie was there, the prize for which he strove. And I knew in my soul that were I or another to try to frustrate him we had better look to ourselves. It was a thing none the less to beware of that his brow was smooth, his eyes bright, his skin clear as the skin of a boy.

And all in a moment I found myself looking at him with--I don't know how else to express it--a sort of induced unfamiliarity. All the strangeness of it came over me again like a wave. I knew that I didn't know him in the least. Behind that mask he knew infinitely more about me than I knew about him. He sat with his back to the sea, and the tartan of tricky shadow laced his brow, was lost again as his face dipped, reappeared on the navy-blue sleeve and his brown hand on the table. Yes, completely a stranger to me. I his father? He was his own father. What else did all that turgid stuff in _The Times_ about "maximum faculties"

mean? New words for old things! "The boy is father of the man." They of old time knew it all before us. We only think it is truer to-day because more people talk about it. Here, incipient and scarcely veiled, was the real parent of the Derwent Rose of _The Vicarage of Bray_, _An Ape in h.e.l.l_, and all else he had ever done. Here, implicitly and in embryo, were the wit of the _Vicarage_, the patient purpose of _Esau_, and the deadly suppressed anger of the _Ape_. Possibly you have never seen, brightly and sunnily displayed with a light and laughing lazy-tongs of rippling shadow, the authentic beginning of a man you have known twenty-five years farther on in time. Perhaps it is as well that they who have seen it are few. You may take my word for it that that family tree of which the roots are Arnaud and the blossoms Rose can be a rather terrifying thing.

Therefore I and I alone was able to pierce through his blandness, and to see the tremendousness of the effort behind it all; and I wondered whether _that_ was his idea of an easy and unexciting life! Whatever it was to him, I can only say that I did not find it so. I almost sweated to see his composure. Yet to all outward appearance he never turned a hair. His keel was still even, the rudder of his will under perfect control. Jennie with the downcast eyes was the mark on which he steered.

And his own eyes sought the rest of us in turn with crafty innocence and infernal candour.

"I beg your pardon, sir?" he was saying to Alec. "Oh"--he gave a little laugh of confusion--"in a place like this it's sometimes difficult to say! Where was it, Miss Aird?" (But he gave her no chance to reply.) "One hardly knows how one meets anybody else; it seems to be in the air; you can hardly help knowing people. But these holiday acquaintances can be easily dropped afterwards."

("Steady, Derry!" I found myself commenting. "Don't overdo it--that's rather experienced--don't be too wise for the age you look.")

"Anyway," he went on, "I shall probably be the last one here. I like the place, and the rate of exchange is all to the good when you know your way about--not in a villa," he twinkled modestly. "They say Italy's the place, but I can't quite manage that, and England doesn't suit me, so I shall just stick on here and paint."

"I've only seen the sketch you were doing the other night," remarked Madge--dangerously invitingly, I thought.

"Oh, they aren't anything." He waved them aside. "I hope to do something one day. But it's a funny thing," he explained, "words and books and all that sort of thing never interested me in the least. I couldn't write if my life depended on it; can't imagine how Mrs Aird and Sir George do it.

But everybody understands what they see with their eyes. Paint's the stuff."

"Then when are you going to show us?" said Madge.

"If you'd care to, of course. George--Sir George Coverham knows where I hang out. Perhaps you'd bring Mrs Aird round, sir?... _Ah_----"

The last little exclamation accompanied as wonderful a feat of its kind as I ever saw. As she had turned to him Madge's elbow had caught a teaspoon, which slipped over the table's edge. But it never reached the ground. He did not even shake the table. The position of his shoulder altered, his hand shot out. He put the spoon back on the table. With such instantaneous smoothness had he done it that it seemed simple. But I tell you I caught my breath....

"Near thing," he smiled. "Oh, come any time. You won't have to mind a few stairs. But I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. I'm only a beginner really."

And so not one door, but two were opened, the second one at his lodging at St Briac.

But Alec as well as I had seen that marvellous piece of fielding with the teaspoon. Suddenly he got up, stretched himself, and walked away.

The moment his back was turned Jennie spoke for the first time.

"Perhaps Mr Arnaud would like to see the rest of the garden, mother?"

"Then show him, child," said Madge. "We'll be with you in a minute."

Their eyes met. He rose. They went off together. Madge swung round on me.

"Why didn't you say you knew him before?" she demanded.

"The question never arose."

"The question always arises if Alec's anywhere about. You know he's like a bear with a sore head about young men."

"It's the duty of a father's head to be sore. I quite agree with Alec."

"But if you'd only said 'He's quite all right, he stays with me in Haslemere----'"

"Quite a number of people stay with me in Haslemere, if that's a social guarantee----"

"You know what I mean. Alec's simply a troglodyte. He doesn't belong to to-day. It's all very flattering, of course, but he simply can't forget what things were like when I was a girl. They never dreamed of letting us travel without a maid; why, we actually had to sit still in the carriage till the footman had opened our own front door. Alec doesn't realise that the world's moved on since then. And you could have put it all on a proper footing with three words!"

"'It?'"

"Yes, his coming here. All that fuss! I think he's perfectly delightful.

And I know those Somerset Trehernes if they're the Edward Trehernes of Witton Regis. And I expect his painting's clever too. He looks as if he had all the gifts.... Now I make you answerable for Alec, George. That he's not simply stupid and unreasonable, I mean. I don't mean that he's not perfectly right to ask the usual questions, but Jennie's got to be considered too. She's quite old enough to know her own mind. Now I'm going to them. Are you coming?"

"I'll come along in a few minutes," I replied.

III

My intelligence with regard to painting is simply that of the ordinary man. I seldom speculate on the relation between one art and another.

True, I have read my Browning, and have wondered whether he really knew what he was talking about when he spoke of a man "finding himself" in one medium, and starting again all unprejudiced and anew in another. It sounds rather of a piece with much more art talk we heard when we were young.

But Derwent Rose was only fallaciously young. He had time at his disposal in a sense that neither Browning nor you nor I ever had. And it seemed to me significant of the state of his memory that he should have turned his back on words and taken up paint instead. For the burden of his age was lifted from him, and he was advancing on his youth with a high and exhilarating sense of adventure. Now words had been the greatest concern of his "A," or Age Memory, and words, it must be admitted, have arrogated to themselves the lion's share of this strange faculty that we call remembering. Had he now found a means of expression more closely in correspondence with the untrodden ground ahead? In other words, was he a kind of alembical meeting-ground where the arts interpenetrated and became trans.m.u.ted?... I hazard it merely as a conjecture in pa.s.sing, and leave you to judge. Let us pa.s.s to that visit we paid to St Briac to see his sketches.

Alec was not with us. The Kings, Queens and Knaves of the bridge-table were pictures enough for him. So I accompanied Madge and Jennie.

Jennie's bosom lifted as we approached the wide s.p.a.ces of the links--but then the St Briac air is admittedly fresher than the tepid medium that is ca.n.a.lised, so to speak, in the streets and lanes of Dinard. It was afternoon, and the shed at the terminus was a bustle of moving luggage, friends meeting friends, parties going into Dinard to return by the seven o'clock tram. We crossed the road to his gla.s.s-fronted hotel.

There was no need to ask for him. Evidently he had been watching from his window. He stood at the gate, once more in blouse and corduroys.

"Tea first, I think, and the works of art afterwards," he greeted us cheerfully. "Where's Mr Aird? Oh, what a pity! This way--straight through the kitchen--I thought it would be nicer outside----"

He led the way through the black and cavernous kitchen towards the sunny green doorway and the back garden.

Tea was set under an apple tree. The garden was some fifteen yards square, but only close under the tree was there room for the table and the four chairs. Even then we had to be careful how we moved, lest we should crush a growing plant. There were no paths--you could hardly call those single-file, six-inches-wide threads paths. Unless you put one foot fairly in line with the other pop went a radish, a strawberry, a flower. Not one single hand's-breadth anywhere was uncultivated. Behind Madge as she sat a row of scarlet runners made a bright straggle of coral, and dwarf beans filled the interstices. Over the runners tall nodding onion-heads showed, and behind them again bushes heavy with white currant. Along a knee-high latticed fence huge red-coated apples were espaliered, and the ochre flowers of a marrow sprawled over a manure-heap. Bees droned and b.u.t.terflies flitted in the sun, glints of gla.s.s cloches pierced the screens of warm grey-green. And, where a tree of yellow genet covered half the wall, a large green and red parrot in a cage had suddenly become silent on hearing voices.

"That's Coco," Derry said. "Coco! Ck!--'Quand je bois mon vin clairet----'"

The parrot c.o.c.ked his head on one side and regarded us with an upside-down eye.

"Chants, Coco!--'Quand je bois'--You'll hear him all right in a minute, Mrs Aird.... Ma me-r-r-r-e! Nous voici a table!"

"Tout est pret--on va servir!" came the shrill rea.s.surance from somewhere inside the house; and an immensely fat old patronne in a blue check ap.r.o.n brought out tea, followed by one of the reserved young Amazons with strawberries, cream, and little crocks of jam with wasps struggling on the top.

As for Jennie and myself, I think she had completely forgotten that I had ever tried to keep her and Derry apart. I was now the person through whose good offices she sat, with at least semi-parental approval, here in his garden. I do not want to pretend to more knowledge than I have about these secretive young G.o.ddesses, but, as she sat there, her eyes still bashfully avoiding Derry's, I was prepared to take a reasonable bet that I guessed what was pa.s.sing through her mind. Derry had stayed in my house in England. Her too I had asked to visit me there. What an Uncle George indeed I should be if at some time or other I were to ask them together! Only as thanks in advance, after which I could not find it in my heart to withhold the benefit, could I explain the soft and grateful looks I received from time to time. I had one of these glances quite unmistakably before I had as much as touched the cup of tea Madge poured out for me. "You see, mother's all right," it said as plainly as if she had uttered the words; "you'll make it all right with father, won't you? I know you can if you will! And thank you so much, dear Uncle George, for the perfectly lovely time we're going to have when we come to see you!" At any rate, that was my interpretation of it, while Derry, no less charming as a host than he had been as a guest, made himself honey-sweet to Madge and politely attentive to her daughter.

Nevertheless, I presently asked a direct question about the hours of departure of the trams. I saw the faintest flicker of demure fun cross his face; and I too remembered, too late, how I had once countered him about the Sunday trains from Haslemere.

"There's a four-thirty-five and a five-forty-eight," he said. "It's four-twenty now. We can cut out the pictures, of course, but it seems a pity not to have tea."

So we had nearly an hour and a half.

I don't really think that he had the least desire to show us his pictures. The pictures had served their turn handsomely enough already.

He wanted to remain under the apple tree, with Madge and myself there since we must be there, but anyway with Jennie opposite to him, eating his strawberries and jam, occasionally not knowing which way to look, the possession on which his twofold heart was set, the lovely and precious G.o.dsend he had missed once but would see us all with our throats cut rather than not clasp her to his bosom in the end.