The Tower of Oblivion Part 60

She sat straight up. "To do, Uncle George? But you _promised_ him!"

"I promised him for the moment."

"Well, this _is_ the moment, isn't it? You'll see him as soon as ever you get up again, won't you?"

"Between the two of you I don't seem to have very much choice," I muttered....

Suddenly through the open window came the sound of voices below. Alec and Madge had returned. Jennie flew to my gla.s.s, and then, apparently finding all well there, turned, smiled, and put her finger on her lips.

She was busily packing up my tray when Madge entered.

"Well, decided to live, George?" the kind creature rallied me. "All sorts of sympathetic messages for you from the n.o.bles and the Fergusons and the Tank Beverleys--run-after creature that you are! Been to sleep?"

"No."

Jennie pa.s.sed behind her mother with the tray. She gave me a half-veiled glance as she did so. Then, almost imperceptibly, she brushed her mother's shoulder with her lips.

And well, I thought, she might!

"Jennie been reading to you?" said Madge.

"No, we've just been talking."

"Well, you'll have somebody else to talk to the day after to-morrow. We didn't want to trouble you with the affairs of this world when you were at death's door, but who do you think's coming?"

I made a great effort. "Animal, vegetable or mineral?"

"Angel, whichever that is," said Madge.

"I've angels enough about me."

"Pooh!... Julia Oliphant's coming. So you'd better get your colour back in case she wants to paint that portrait here."

With which comforting words she took up my bowl of quite fresh flowers and marched off to get some more.

PART III

THE CUT-OUT

I

"But won't you find it a little cold?"

"Cold!" Julia laughed. "If Jennie can I can; why, it's a heavenly day!

But are you quite warm? You're the one we have to coddle."

"Oh, I'm quite all right. Well, that's your tent, the green-striped one.

I'll walk along to the rocks."

She took the escholtzia-hued robe and other fripperies from my arm, nodded smilingly, and pa.s.sed up the beach.

The Airds and their set bathed, not from the crowded plage of Dinard proper, but in the quieter bay of St Enogat. The beach glistened with minute particles of mica, deposited in moire patterns as the wavelets had left them, and to touch that sand with your hand was to withdraw it again all infinitesimally spangled. It sparkled like gun-metal in the rocks, floated in suspension in the green water. You would have said that the whole sh.o.r.e had been sown with that metallic powder with which children used to tinsel themselves at Christmas parties.

I crossed the tent-bordered plage towards the rocks. Already a dozen bathers splashed and played. Every contour of wet limb reflected the warm gold, every rubber-capped head had its piercing little flash of sunlight. I looked for Jennie's yellow cap, but did not see it; she was still in the tent whither she had preceded Julia five minutes before.

But I saw the Beverley girls, of whose mutual sufficiency Madge so strongly disapproved. Jennie was not to be brought up on those lines....

I lay down on a purple-weeded rock and watched the fruit salad of the bathers. Scattered over the beach where they had dropped them lay their bright wraps, the prints of their sandals patterned the mica. Tank Beverley's head could be seen, a dark dot a quarter of a mile out, and in the green marge two little French children splashed, brown as nuts and innocent of any garment whatever. Their barefooted mother knitted a few yards from where I sat, their father lay by her side with his panama over his face. The sun shone honey-yellow through the wings of the gulls, and far out a little launch crept among the rocks and sent its soft "thut-thut" over the water.

Jennie and Julia were taking rather a long time to get ready, I thought, and I hoped all was well. For Jennie, if the truth must be told, was behaving abominably. She was far, far too submissive and sweet and self-effacing before the older woman--altogether too good to be true--and I happened to know that Madge had taken her to task about it a couple of days before.

"I don't see why you can't call her just Julia if it comes to that," she had rebuked her. "She isn't a hundred, anyway. I do wish you'd stop saying 'Aunt Julia.'"

"I'm very sorry, mother darling. Shall I call her Miss Oliphant?"

As a matter of fact I had not since heard her use any form of address whatever.

It was the third day after Julia's arrival, and my own longest walk since my touch of illness. Without even changing her travelling-things, Julia had come straight up into my room the moment of her arrival at Ker Annic, and, kneeling down by my bed, had taken both my hands into hers.

"You poor old George!" she had laughed. "So this is what you've been and gone and done to yourself! Well, we must see what an extra nurse can do."

"Had you a good crossing?"

"Well--crowded wasn't the word; but two nice dear men looked after me.

I'd a scandalous flirtation with one of them; oh, I 'got off'; he was putting my collar round my neck for me before we pa.s.sed the Needles. And may I solemnly a.s.sure you, George, that in Buckingham where I've been staying a male man wanted to marry me? Fact. And when I said No-could-do he accused me of encouraging him and left the house the next day. Such is human life so gliding on. Have you fallen in love with a Frenchwoman yet?"

"Not yet."

"Oh, but they're so wonderful! They walk like lines of poetry. There was one on the boat coming over; I suppose my cavalier didn't speak French very well, or he'd never have looked at me with her about. I don't know though--it gives you a lot of confidence when you've been proposed to.... Well, I must go and have a bath and change. I only peeped in to see you. 'Apres le bain,' as the Salon pictures say--be good."

And with a nod over the collar of her terra-cotta blanket-coat she had left me.

Of our subsequent talk about Derwent Rose I will speak presently.

They appeared together from behind the green-striped bathing-tent. The wind-blown wrap of escholtzia-orange and the green turban were Julia's; Jennie wore her white towelling gathered closely about her, and the yellow cap was pulled as low as her eyebrows. Julia is only slightly taller than Jennie. A good four feet separated the orange and the white as they advanced towards me. Julia saw me and waved her hand; Jennie made no gesture. Julia looked freely about her; Jennie gazed straight ahead. The blowing aside of Julia's wrap showed a short-skirted bright green costume with ribboned sandals; Jennie bathed in her plain navy-blue "Club" and her feet were bare. I rose to take their wraps.

Except for one piece of advice she offered, Jennie did not speak to Julia.

"I don't think I'd go beyond the point there," she said as her towelling fell to her feet. "There's rather a rip."

She ran down to the water. Julia turned to me.

"You all right?" she asked. "Here"--laughingly she took the vivid wrap from my arm and put it about my shoulders. "There! Now you're all comfy.

That'll keep both you and it warm for when I come out again."

She nodded and followed Jennie. Julia Oliphant has very little to learn about walking from any woman, French or not. With her robe about me I sat down on the rock again.