The Tower of Oblivion Part 63

"In the tent?"

"The bathing-tent. She could hardly bear to share it with me. But she let me have the little stool, and untied a knot for me, and carried my wet things home."

"Madge Aird's daughter wouldn't behave altogether too unlike a lady."

"Madge Aird's daughter's a woman," she replied.

Then her whole tone changed. She confronted me.

"That that you've just been saying is all nonsense, of course," she said abruptly. "You know it is. What happened in July puts that out of the question once for all. How can you possibly ask that woman to marry you?"

"I have asked her."

"She isn't her own to marry anybody. And I don't see how Derry can marry anybody either. What's he going to do--forge papers, or impersonate somebody?... No, George; my way was the only way--take what you can while you can."

"Marry me, come right away, and have done with it."

She gave me a slow sidelong look.

"Is _that_ the idea--just a way out for everybody?"

"Don't think it. I didn't begin to love you this afternoon."

"Proposals pour in--once they start!" she admired. "Oh, how little we know when we're young, and how much when it's too late to make any difference!"

"Julia," I said abruptly, "what do you intend to do about him?"

She smiled, but without speaking.

"Are you going to see him?"

"That's a silly question. Of course I am."

"Is it wise?"

"I'm not wise. I suppose I should be Lady Coverham if I were wise."

"What are you going to do about Jennie?"

"Oh, I shan't fly out at her."

"Marry me and come away."

She shook her head. "That's the one thing I _am_ sure about."

"Then don't marry me, but come back to England."

"And leave the field clear? I see that too. Of course you want to give her to him."

"If you only knew how I've striven to prevent it!"

Her hand touched my sleeve for a moment. "Poor old George--always trying to prevent somebody from doing something! Has it ever occurred to you that that's sometimes the way to bring it about?" Then, imperiously, "Has he told you he's in love with her?"

"If he is in love with her, and has no eyes for any other woman living, and never will have, will you marry me then?"

"Oh, we had all that years ago. Has he told you he's in love with her?"

"Since you must know, he has."

"Now we're getting at it. I thought you'd something up your sleeve. Now just one more question. Do you happen to know whether he's told _her_ that?"

You see what I was in her hands. She cut clean through my web of speculations as scissors go through cloth. I had resolved to tell her this, not to tell her that. The end of it was that I told her precisely what she wished to know.

"I've reason for thinking he hasn't," I said. "For one thing, he made me a promise."

But she flicked his promise aside as she flicked the convolvulus with her nail. She laughed a little.

"Anyway I don't suppose he has the least idea what's the matter with him. He never did know anything about women."

But ah, Julia Oliphant, whatever mistakes you made in your life, you never made a greater one than that! Me you might turn this way and that round your finger, but here was something beyond your knowledge and control. I knew what you did not know. I knew what had happened by those softly-illumined cars, by that earth-wall at Le Port gap, and that other night when Frehel had bidden the Crucifix move and come to life. It was not now he who knew nothing about women, but you who knew nothing about him. I grant you all your other rightness; I grant you that I had drifted and bungled as men do drift and bungle in these things; but here I was right and you hopelessly and irretrievably wrong. He did know about women. Books he had flung aside, pictures he would fling aside, for these were but the dust out of which that loveliest flower bloomed.

He did know about women, and all the beauty of his strange destiny had now swung over to Jennie. He had pa.s.sed with her into the Tower of Oblivion, and Julia and I and the rest of the world for him and her were not.

The Tower of Oblivion! It was his own name for it. Jennie had not understood him; the name had merely sounded sweet to her because it was his; but what apter emblem of his own life? To find this new and smiling love in the place so hauntingly whispering with memories of the old!

There, in the very middle of the busyness of life, with a thres.h.i.+ng-gin droning and the lad's whip cracking among the walking horses and man's simple bread making as it was made in the beginning, he had shut himself in with her and the blue heaven overhead. They had not kissed, but--only to be there with her, only to be rid of the lie he lived to the rest of the world and to be all truth to her!... Julia Oliphant would but bruise her heart against the stones of that Tower, thrice-strong outside but impregnably strong within. G.o.d or gland, it vanquished us all. He had found what he had so long sought, and the sooner Julia became Lady Coverham the better.

I forget the precise words in which I reminded Miss Oliphant that I was still waiting for her answer. She turned on me with eyes that so kindled that for a moment I thought she had reconsidered it.

"George, tell me one thing. Do you really believe it--that his clock's really set forward again?"

I answered slowly. "I don't know. I won't say that I don't. Sometimes I almost have believed it. One has his word for the age he feels, and there's nothing else to go by. After all, going forward seems somehow more natural than going back. I've no other grounds for my belief."

Somehow my words had not in the least the effect I intended. Everything I said or did seemed to work contrary to my intention. I saw her making a swift mental calculation. She was a woman to be desired--very thoroughly she had made it her business to be so. If I wanted her, if other men wanted her, so (I read her thought) might he be made to want her. What stood in her way? A chit of seventeen in turkey-towelling!

What was a trifle like that to daunt a ripe woman who knew coquetries with escholtzia-yellow bathing-wraps? If it only lasted a year ... six months ... the rest of the summer ... the rest of the summer of her life....

"Young and beautiful," she said softly with a quickening of her breath.

"I remember--I remember----"

"Then forget. He'll never look at you."

"Ah, he thought that once before----"

"You brought him to the verge of ruin last July----"

"You say he's young and beautiful--that's what I brought him to--youth and beauty----"

"Unless he goes forward now--if he begins to slip back again--you know what he said his climacteric was--sixteen----"

She threw up the white-panama'd head on the long throat. My eyes dropped before hers, my question was blown to the winds that set the corn a-rustling. I told you at the beginning of this story that I had never married.