The Tower of Oblivion Part 75

I was silent as Jennie reappeared.

And yet, if she knew all, as he said, why the caution of silence? It seemed to me that with the clearing up of one other point I should have an idea of how matters really stood. I turned to Jennie.

"Derry's still talking about the great news," I said. "He says you know all about it. Well, I want you to tell me one thing. Does he remember everything that's happened since he first saw you?"

Derry answered for her, with a soft laugh. "Do I remember that! Why, it's all I'm going to know presently!"

"Has your 'B' memory quite gone?"

"Quite, so far as I can say."

"And your 'A' is going, and you're starting a brand-new one from the moment you met Jennie?"

"Not 'met.' 'Saw.' That's it exactly. Couldn't have been better put."

"And"--I hesitated, but took my fence--"that's all? Nothing else has gone?"

"What do you mean, Sir George? Only the remembered things are going.

_I'm_ the same, if that's what you mean."

"The same that you always were?"

"Well"--he made a simple gesture with his open hands--"if I don't remember what I was I can't very well tell that, can I?"

"You still do a little, but it's going, and soon you won't at all?"

"Exactly. _Now_ do you see what I mean?"

It was impossible to believe that even unconsciously he was lying. I remembered his own trouble and unbelief when it had first occurred to him that this astounding development might lie ahead. Wistfully he had put it aside as too dazzling to be entertained. "I suppose that's too much to expect," he had sighed as he had put it from him. But now, unless he was lying to me, to Jennie, and to himself, he certainly seemed to have the proof of it. His face had been puzzled candour itself when I had put my sudden questions: Had he and I met before, and did he know a Miss Oliphant? Vaguely he remembered a pond, vaguely a Miss Oliphant in England; and to-morrow he was not going to remember either.

My hazardous surmise as I had watched the s.h.i.+rley poppies was justified, my fears for the breaking-up of his faculties groundless.

This was not the break-up, but the very confirmation of those faculties, the complete was.h.i.+ng-out of everything _not_ inherent in himself. What next happened in the night would be what happens to every one of us every night--the gentle and beautiful small forward step to age. He was all but at the maximum of his una.s.sisted, unhindered power, a white page on which to write anew.

And what a lovely ma.n.u.script might it not now be made! His schooling, the rudiments he had formerly acquired up to the age of sixteen, he would probably retain; but thereafter his life dated from a certain moment when, by the upcast glow of the headlights of a French car, he had seen Jennie Aird's eyes looking into his. He even spoke as if his talk with me that night by Le Port gap had been the beginning of his confidence in me. Not a suspicion did he seem to have that he had made similar confidences before, in his rooms in Cambridge Circus, in that loft over a South Kensington mews. That meeting of eyes across the car--that swift "Who was that with you in the garden, George?"--his wily shepherding of me into the Dinard Bazaar--his surrept.i.tious meetings with her, and his last crowning escapade--these made up the whole history of his re-created life. Within this perfect period he had forgotten nothing ... but yes, he had forgotten one thing. This was his promise to me. And very likely he had not forgotten that at all. The chances were that he had knowingly and deliberately broken his word. And what of it? Who was I to have extorted it from him? Could I reproach him with that--now? Is the law so hard? Shall we add to the tortures of Tantalus the unbinding of his hands, and forbid him to seize the fruit he thirsts for? Let him cut the knot and take his joy! At the worst he had merely omitted to send me a note releasing himself. And should I speak of that--now?

So, if he was eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, he was--simply--eighteen or seventeen or sixteen. What, by that fact, mattered his birth-certificate? If he was not the age he was, what age was he? How old are you? how old am I? We are as old as our knowledge of ourselves.

_Had_ his faculties been impaired--ah, that would have been another matter. But out of that ancient mould of his former history a new sprout had pushed, sweet, vigorous, and identical with itself. That shoot was Derwent Rose. If it was not Derwent Rose where then was Derwent Rose? No Derwent Rose had died. If you would find him you must seek him among the living. Or if any Derwent Rose had died, it was the author of _The Hands of Esau_ and _The Vicarage of Bray_. Dead indeed he might be; for no link now existed between him and his youth, unlettered in anything but the perfection of a beautiful love. He stood in that sagging room in the Rue de la Cordonnerie, what he was and nothing else. He had been it as long as he had been it, and neither more time nor less. No power on earth could make it otherwise. No power in heaven would have tried.

"Well, what's to be done?" I asked presently.

We were all three sitting on the corn-bin, they together, I nearest the table. They were munching their bread and sausage.

"That's perfectly simple," said Derry. "As I've told you, that silly Arnaud business is all over. I'm Derwent Rose. n.o.body can say I'm impersonating him, can they? So I must _be_ him, and if I'm him it's just like anybody else being themselves. And I'm awfully sorry it had to be tip-and-run, but there wasn't anything else for it at the time. But that's all over. I've got that beastly memory nearly off my shoulders. I don't know anybody in England. I remember our own village of course--in Suss.e.x it was--and a few odds and ends--and oh!" He slapped his knee.

"_That's_ where I heard the name Oliphant! I didn't know Miss Oliphant in England at all. There's a little Julia Oliphant, but she's only a kid, and no relation at all probably. But this one's a bit like what I could imagine little Julia growing up to be. Never mind. What I want to ask you now is about Jennie's people."

"Yes, Jennie's people," I said.

V

It was the drop of gall in the honey of her happiness. She would cut his bread and sausage, learn to darn his socks, sew on his b.u.t.tons, wash out his handkerchiefs for him; that her hands as well as her heart should serve and adore him was all her joy; but I saw the droop of her head and the tremor of that upturned lip that betrayed the pearls. Julia Oliphant might hardly dare, but this one--ah, she was so recently a child! I think she would even have left Derry's side for ten minutes might they but have been spent with her mother's arms about her and the smell of her father's pipe not far away. I don't know whether a tear had ever dropped on to that ironing-board of Madame's downstairs. I saw one drop now.

"Yes, Jennie's people," I said again. "I suppose you want to know about them?"

I saw no harm in reminding him, at any rate, that however great things might be happening to him, minor but still important ones were happening simultaneously elsewhere. Even when you start a new life under the shadow of an old one you cannot entirely escape the world and its ordinary responsibilities.

"Of course we do," he said, surprised. "I'm going to them the moment things are s.h.i.+pshape again."

"You may see them even sooner than that. I need hardly tell you I shall have to wire to them immediately."

He sighed a little. "Well, I suppose the music's got to be faced," he said quietly.

"You're not going to try to give me the slip, are you?"

Again the surprised look. "Of course not. What have I just been telling you? That's the whole idea. If all goes as it is going a couple of days might put the stopper on this memory business once for all. Then we shall go to them at once. I want to get it over."

I looked around the room again. Practically upon the window-sill of it somebody across the street was preparing for bed. In order to get to that upper chamber of theirs at all one had to pa.s.s through the public room downstairs. Everything about the place sighed with age and indefinable odour; one knew not what mould, what sweating life, what "silver fishes," those tired old walls did not harbour. I don't think I am too fastidious, but that was no place for that jonquil, Jennie Aird.

"Look here, Derry," I said suddenly, "if it's a fair question, how much money have you got?"

He looked serious. "Awfully little I'm afraid. And I don't know where I'm going to get any either."

"Haven't you any--put away anywhere?"

"No."

"What have you been living on?"

"What's left of that five hundred francs you were so good as to lend me--that and a couple of sketches I sold to a fellow at St Briac. I'm afraid you'll have to wait for that five hundred, Sir George."

"Let me see. When did I lend it to you?"

"While I was at St Briac, you remember."

He had forgotten it was his own money. I rose from the corn-bin.

"Very well. You say you're not going to give me the slip, and that you're going to Jennie's people the moment things are all right. Will you as a first step settle up here and come along with me to my hotel now? You came here to lie doggo. That's all over. This is no place for either of you."

He blushed with embarra.s.sment. He hesitated. But evidently the problem had been worrying him, for he looked frankly up.

"I will on one condition, Sir George. That is that it's added to the five hundred. I shall be selling my sketches presently if you can wait a bit. You're quite right; Jennie oughtn't to be here. But I hope the Poste isn't too expensive. I shall have to pay you back sooner or later."

"Well, that can stand over for the present. Come and see the curtain-wall or whatever it is in the cellars of the Hotel de la Poste.

Come now. You can fetch your canvases to-morrow. Get your things on, Jennie."

"They are on," said Jennie.

"Then just let me leave you for a minute or two."

I pa.s.sed down that fissure of a staircase again, opened the door of the cabaret, and beckoned to Madame. There, at the foot of the stairs, and in complete darkness except for the inch that the door was left open, we had our low conversation.