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 passed 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 shore 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 passed the Needles. And
may I solemnly assure 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.
Atrociously Jennie was behaving. She had been told by Madge in plain
words that she was expected to bathe with Julia that afternoon, and she
intended that Julia should be quite aware of the quality of her
obedience. Even in her little warning about the rip at the point there
had been a delicately-measured ungeniality, and their attitude as they
had walked from the tent together had been--well, polite. She had now
joined the Beverley girls in the water, and if Miss Oliphant cared to go
beyond the point after being warned not to that was her look-out. She
did not fail of a single attention to the older woman; but every time
she vacated a chair or asked Julia whether she could fetch her book she
had the air of saying to herself, "There, I did that and mother can't
say I didn't."
And I suppose it does make you a little cross when you are sent to bathe
when you want to be off somewhere on a bicycle.
Julia Oliphant had not bathed during that week-end she had spent in my
house in Surrey. It had been Derry who had done the swimming. But I
fancied it would have been different had she had that week-end to live
over again. She had remarkably little to be ashamed of in the water. The
long arm she threw out thickened, rather surprisingly and very
beautifully, up to its pit; and the man on the boat who had shown the
solicitude about the collar of her blanket-coat had been quite a good
judge of necks. Jennie's glistening dark-blue shape seemed still coltish
and nubile by comparison with Julia's ampler mould. But the twenty-odd
years that separated them were Jennie's stored and untouched riches, not
Julia's. It was Jennie, not Julia, who could stay half a day in that
water and come out without as much as the numbing of a finger-tip. And
the difference between Jennie's navy-blue "skin" and that other smart
and tricky green was the difference between the young leaf-bundle in
its sticky sheath and the broad opened palms of the chestnut in
midsummer.
As I sat there on the rocks, forgetting that escholtzia-yellow thing
about my shoulders as the seniors forget their tissue-paper caps at a
children's party, I pondered a resolve I had taken. Between Julia
Oliphant and myself there had not hitherto been a single secret in
anything that concerned Derwent Rose. But a secret there must now be.
She might find out about Derry and Jennie for herself, but from me she
should never hear it. Jennie was hardly likely to confide in her. Derry
himself--who knew?--might. Him she had not yet seen.
But we had spoken of him, and almost my first question had been to ask
her whether she had been staying on in England in the expectation of his
return. Her reply had been curiously, smilingly nonchalant.
"No, I don't think so; not altogether, that is. What does it matter
whether I see him there or here?"
"But you weren't seeing him, either there or here."
"Oh, there wasn't any hurry. It's only three weeks. That isn't very
long."
"That depends. Three weeks with him might be a very long time indeed."
"Oh, but if _that_ happened again you'd have told me," she had said,
with the same off-handedness.
"I might not have done so. You left it entirely to me."
"Well, no news is usually good news. And I wasn't wasting my time. I did
get a proposal."
"About that. And forgive me, because I don't mean it rudely. But is that
a joke?"
"Not a bit of a joke. He did want to marry me. So you see that's Derry's
too."
"What is?"
"_That_ is. The more--let's say desirable I am, if I don't scandalise
you, the more I have for him. And anyhow I'm here now."
"Did you ask Madge to ask you?"
"Yes. In the end I thought I would. There was no hurry, but there was
no sense in positively wasting time. You say he's at St Briac. Where's
that? I don't know this coast."
"Six or seven miles. A tram takes you all the way."
"Then we'll look him up. But I want to do a bit of shopping with Madge
first. Must have a couple of hats. I hardly bought a single thing to
come away with."
And her manner ever since had been for all the world as if something was
inevitable, would come of itself, in its own good time, whether she
lifted a finger to further it or not.
It may sound fantastic to you, but I could almost have believed that
when she had taken that yellow thing from her own shoulders and had put
it over mine, she had invested me with something more than a garment,
something almost of herself. I had seen Jennie's disdainful glance at
the coquetry with which she had cast it about me; almost insolently she
had allowed her own towelling to drop where it would; and Julia now
enveloped me in a double sense. Cloak or no cloak, she claimed all my
thoughts, all my gazing. For I and I only knew why she was in France.
Her errand was the deadlier the less haste she made. I had sought to
interpose between him and Jennie because Jennie was too young; could I
now step between him and Julia because Julia was too old? Moreover, both
women now knew his terrific secret. The exquisite complication I had
dreaded to entertain was upon us in its perfection. What, between the
three of them, was to happen now?
For Julia he was on his way For Jennie he hoped to go
back to sixteen. forward again.
Julia's influence over him had But I could guess what calm
been to rob him of eleven and healing had brooded over
years in a single night. him as he stood with
Jennie in the Tower.
Julia had strangely made herself Jennie knew nothing of this,
his scapegoat and had and yet had an instinct that
left him lighthearted, innocent, Julia Oliphant was a person
free. to be kept at arm's length.
Julia was still unaware that Jennie, his partial confession
apparently his years had in the Tower notwithstanding,
ceased to ebb. was unaware that the
matter had any great seriousness.
Julia had her knowledge of his Jennie was in possession of
former youth. his present one.
Julia would walk through Jennie would do no less to keep
flame to find him. him.
One drop of comfort I found in the whole extravaganza, and one only.
Jennie's naughtiness might reach extremes of civility, but so far at any
rate Julia was tolerantly good-humoured about it. For she could hardly
be unconscious of the--well, the bracing temperature of the atmosphere.
But how long was that likely to last? Once more Derry seemed to have us
all entangled in the web of his unique condition. Already my own
surreptitious visits to him had made me feel little better than a
slinking conspirator; the presence of Jennie's bicycle in that St Briac
kitchen did not improve matters; and now, to cap all, Julia and I were
to seek him out.
Again I found myself weakly wishing that I could wash my hands of him.
And again I knew that I could not. It seemed to me that there was
nothing to do, not even anything to refrain from doing. The whole thing
ran itself. It ran itself independently of any of us, as it had run
itself with equal smoothness and efficiency whether Julia had stayed in
England or had come over here.
And I sat contemplating it, wrapped in her vivid cloak, wrapped in her
lurid thoughts, my looks alternately seeing and avoiding her shape in
the water, while the sun flashed on the grapes and apricots and oranges
of that fruit-salad in the waves of St Enogat's plage.
II
They came out again, dripping, gleaming, Julia laughing, Jennie without
a smile.
"I'll wait here for you," I said to Julia as I replaced her wrap on her
shoulders.
"Right you are. Ten minutes. Come along, Jennie----"
The billowing escholtzia-yellow and the closely-gathered white retreated
up the beach again.
In a quarter of an hour Julia returned alone. She sat down by my side.
"Jennie wouldn't come. She's taken the things in. George," she suddenly
demanded, "is that child in love?"
I parried. "Is that a thing I should be very likely to know?"
"Then I'll tell you. She is. All the signs--every one. She can't sit
still in one place for five minutes. Poor little darling!" she smiled.
"I remember _so_ well...."
"Wouldn't it be better if you were to take a walk after your bathe?"
"What about you? Sure it wouldn't be too much for you?"
"I should like a walk."
"Come along then. I suppose I did stay in as long as was good for me."
A steep stone staircase descends between the villas, in the chinks of
which hawkweed and poppies and pimpernel have seeded themselves. At the
top of it a winding lane leads to the church, and from this there
branches off the Port Blanc road. In that direction we walked, and in
ten minutes were among cornfields and hedges, clumps of elms and
coppices of oak. Ploughs and chain-harrows lay by the footpaths, and the
sea might have been a hundred miles away.
"Sure you're not overdoing it?" she asked as we took a little path under
a convolvulus-starred hedge.
"Quite all right, thanks."
"Oh, smell the air! This is a jolly place! Which way is St Briac from
here?"
"Over that way."
The dark eyes sent a message. "Well, now tell me what his painting's
like. I expect it's as wonderful as his writing was."
"It rather struck me--I don't know much about it--but I fancied it was
on somewhat similar lines."
"What sort of lines?"
"The old story--starting anew from the very beginning of
everything--nothing to do with anything else, past, present or to come."
"Of course he would be the same.... But now tell me--we've hardly had
ten words yet, what with Madge and shopping and your silly illness and
one thing and another. You say he's got to twenty?"
"Thereabouts."
"And he hasn't moved since--you know what I mean?"
"That isn't quite clear."
"What isn't there clear about it?"
"He thinks he's moving--he hopes to move--forward again."
She stopped to stare at me. Already the few days' sun had softly browned
her natural milky pallor.
"He _what_!" she gasped.... "But that's wilder than all the rest put
together!"
"It's what he thinks. There's simply his word for it. He can't explain
it. But he's staking everything on it."
"Everything? What?"
"His future course, I suppose, whatever that is. By the way, has Madge
said anything to you about him?"
She stared harder than ever. "Madge! Does Madge know him?"
"She doesn't know Derry. But she knows Arnaud. He's been to the house."
"He's been ... Oh-h-h-h!"
You may call me if you will the most dunderheaded fellow who ever
meddled in things he did not understand. I deserve it all and more. All
the same I must ask you to believe me when I say that it was not until
that "Oh-h-h-h!" broke in an interminable contralto whisper from her
lips that I saw what I had done. I had resolved that not one word of
Jennie Aird's affairs should she learn from me. As much for her own sake
as for Jennie's I had determined to spare her that.
And now I had gone and told her that very thing!
For the knowledge of it leaped full-blown out of that long record of her
own heart. Jennie was in love; Arnaud had been to Ker Annic;
therefore--she knew it, she knew it--Jennie was in love with Derry. How
should anybody, seeing him as Julia Oliphant had seen him at his former
twenty, not fall in love with him? Young, sunbrowned, beautiful,
grave--only to see him, only to have him at the house for tea, was to be
in love with him during the whole of the remaining days. Who knew this
if Julia Oliphant did not? Jennie thenceforward would love him as she
herself had loved him through the unbroken past. And if he thought his
turning-point had now come, forward into the future again he and Jennie
would go together.
That and nothing else was what I had told her.
"Oh-h-h-h!" she said again. "I _see_!" And yet once more, "Oh-h-h-h! I
_see_!"
And, losing my head once, in that very same moment a wilder thing still
rose up in my heart to crown it with folly. I forgot that between Julia
Oliphant and myself there could never be any question of love. Little
difference it made that I now loved her, knew now that I had long loved
her. For me she could never care. Yet I forgot that. It seemed to me in
that overwrought moment that if Derry really was right, and on the point
of living normally forward again, in one way the field of the future
could be left to him and to Jennie Aird. Julia and I together could
leave it to them. She in my arms (I was distracted enough to think),
Jennie in his, would at least cut the knot it passed our wits to untie.
In any case Derry would never again look at Julia Oliphant. He never had
looked at her. But I looked and found her desirable, as other men had
found her desirable. And why should not I too have whatever of good the
remaining years could give me?
So, under that convolvulus-starred hedge, with that sweet air in our
nostrils and the whispering of the corn in our ears, I asked Julia
Oliphant to marry me.
Before coming out she had picked up and put on her head one of Alec's
panamas. For the rest she wore a sort of rough creamy crape, with a
wide-open collar, elbow-length sleeves, a cord round her waist, grey
silk stockings and suede shoes. Little wisps of her dark hair were still
damp from her bathe, and her skirt was dusted with particles of mica
from the sands. Since uttering that "Oh-h-h-h!" she had not moved.
"I see," she said again. "I see."
"Then, Julia----"
"Oh, I see! I ought to have known the very first moment!"
"Then----"
She turned towards me, but only for an instant. Then she looked away
again. "What were you saying?" she asked.
"Very humbly, I asked you to marry me, Julia."
"Queer," she murmured.
"Is it so very queer?"
She gave a tremulous little laugh. "The way everything happens at once,
I mean. Get yourself proposed to once and you go on. I shall know quite
a lot about it soon.... I say, George----"
"What, Julia?"
"How long ago was that--when he came to the house, I mean?"
"About ten days ago."
"And you there! What nerve! Did he let himself be introduced to you, or
what?"
"He came up and shook hands with me. In fact he carried everything off
very competently."
"Carried everything off ..." she repeated, looking away over the corn.
"And has he been since then?"
"We had tea with him in his garden one afternoon."
"One afternoon ..." she murmured again. "How does Jennie spend most of
her time?"
"I've been laid up in bed."
"Of course," she nodded. Apparently she passed it as a good man's
answer, as men's answers go.
But my own question she did not appear to dream of answering. Except to
compare it with another man's similar question she might not have heard
it. Nor had I asked that question only as the solution of an otherwise
insoluble problem. Happy I, could I have taken her into my arms there
and then. So I waited, my eyes in the shadow of her panama, while she
continued to look far away.
Then, "I see," she said yet once more. "Of course I ought to have known
in the tent."
"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 passed 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 threshing-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. God 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.
"And how," she said proudly, "if he had it in my arms?"
III
Whether Madge and Julia were friends because of, or in spite of, the
differences in their nature, I will not attempt to say. In the situation
now in course of development at Ker Annic, however, they struck me as
not so much different as opposite. Madge's bark is always infinitely
more terrifying than her bite; but the more mischief Julia meditated the
stiller she always became, except for a little dancing play deep-drowned
in her eyes. She had risk-taking eyes, and the expression in them, if
you looked at her as if you wondered whether she had counted the cost,
was one of detached surprise that you should pause to weigh chances with
the gorgeous adventure plain before you.
And what a risk she now contemplated, certainly for him, perhaps more
for herself! What the penalty of failure--or of success--might be to
herself I cannot tell you, since I am not in the habit of speculating
about what responsibilities ladies incur who love a man all their lives,
grow up alongside him as a "jolly good sort," violently assail him when
he clings as it were to a loop amid the dizzy curves of his life's
track, and then, when he comes to rest and again begins slowly to
revolve on the turn-table at the terminus, put out their hands to the
lever once more. What she had taken from him, what she had given him in
return, were mysteries beyond me. I merely realised that, if she
undertook this in the spirit of adventure, it was adventure on a
well-nigh apocalyptic scale.
But what about him? For him it was not a question, as it was for her, of
a few weeks' madness and then a folding of the hands, the Nunc Dimittis
and darkness. She would merely be putting the seal on a life that
already anticipated its close; but he would be asked to cut one off in
the very moment of its re-flowering. He saw ahead of him that boon for
which humanity has cried out ever since another woman gave her man the
Knowledge in the Garden. "Ah, might I live again knowing what I know
now!" ... _Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait!..._ He did know,
he was able; and Julia Oliphant, discovering that she had done all for
Jennie Aird, now sought to take it back again. For should ruin
supervene, it would be Jennie, not Julia, who would now be robbed and
wronged. I could hardly look at Julia, standing there by the hedge,
without re-living those anguished moments in which I had ascended his
stairs and knocked at his door, hardly daring to hope for an answer. He
knew not that ultimately it was from Julia that he now had this manna
and honey, this healing oil and wine. He only knew that he received them
at Jennie's hands, and with this soft nourishment he had victualled his
Tower.
So what disaster might not befall if Julia were to introduce that yeasty
fermenting element of herself all over again?
Slowly we returned together across the cornfields, I and the woman who
had hardly deigned to refuse me. Since our final rapid exchange, that
had ended with her demand "How if he had it in my arms?" not a word had
passed between us. In that one insolent sentence she had not merely put
my pretensions out of existence: she had made them as if they had never
been. That they could never be again I knew only too well. Therefore, in
silence we passed under the shadow of St Enogat Church, crossed the
little space opposite the Cafe de la Mer, and entered the winding lanes
to Ker Annic.
At the gate of the villa Madge met us with a peremptory question.
"Where's Jennie? Isn't she with you?" she demanded. She gave a quick
glance behind her as she spoke. Obviously she wasn't. Madge glanced over
her shoulder again.
"Then don't for goodness sake say she hasn't been. Alec's stamping up
and down the garden--says she's been seen with young Arnaud somewhere at
the back of beyond on a bicycle. I sent her to bathe with you, Julia."
"She did," said Julia quickly.
"Then just tell him that and say she must have gone into town or
something. I know she has been back, because I looked into her room and
saw her half-dried costume. You quieten Alec down, George. Have you had
tea?"
But in spite of my efforts to placate Alec, I found the fat badly in the
fire at Ker Annic. Alec raged up and down the pergola as if he had been
caged within it.
"Exactly what I said would happen! I knew it all along!" he stormed.
"Noble saw 'em--no mistake possible, he says--pedalling all over
Brittany with Tom, Dick and Harry.... Where did she get that bicycle? I
haven't seen any bicycle about here! First I've heard of a bicycle!"
"Simmer down, Alec. There's no great harm in a bicycle ride after all."
"If she's been for one she's been for a dozen for all I know. She was
sent off to bathe."
"Well, she did bathe."
"Were you there? Did you see her?" he challenged me, now suspicious at
every point.
"Yes. She bathed with Julia. I waited for them."
"You waited for Julia, you mean. Nipped in and out so as to be able to
say she'd been and then dashed off with this fellow, I suppose. Look
here, he appears to be a protege of yours, but I want to know more about
him before there's any more of this. What does he go about in that rig
for? Why does he talk French like that?" (This last headed the list of
his offences in Alec's eyes.) "There's something fishy about the whole
thing. Jennie sees him sketching, evidently doesn't know any more than
the man in the moon who he is, and goes up to him and speaks to him in
French and he answers in English! Then he says he's a level-time man,
but touched in the bellows. He's about as much touched in the bellows as
I am!... Who is he? Did he really stay with you? How did you get to know
him?"
"He did stay with me. He's perfectly straight. Don't make such a fuss."
"Well, I expect Jennie's as much to blame as he is. They generally are.
If I've told Madge once ... anyway it's got to stop. Of course if he's a
friend of yours that's another matter, but gadding about all over the
place has got to stop. Is she back yet? I want to see her when she does
come in."
And so on. I left him in his cage, angrily knocking out his pipe against
the lattice.
The worst of it was that Alec was so very much righter than he knew. I
had ventured to assure him that our young French-speaker was perfectly
straight, and you know how far that was true. In the wider sense who was
crookeder, whose life more devious? Not one straight step did his
circumstances permit him to take. Why, the only satisfactory way he had
been able to hit on to provide himself with money had been his fantastic
idea of fighting Georges Carpentier, the simplest way he had found of
crossing the Channel had been to swim it! Straight? Too straight
altogether. The world is not accustomed to people so straight that they
go straight plumb into the heart of things like that.... And, merely as
straightness, how was he now to acquire even an ordinary identity? Had
he _been_ anybody, had he in the past once possessed an identity he was
able to acknowledge, ways might have been found. He would then have had
a starting point. He might have invested himself with a name and place
in the world by means of the French equivalent of a deed poll. He might
have got himself cited by name in a civil court, have snatched a social
existence even out of the formalities of registration attendant on a
State Lottery. But not one of these ways was open to him. Nothing short
of an act of creation could establish him. Nothing comes out of nothing,
nothing can be made out of nothing. Stronger even than that Tower of
stone is this other invisible Tower in which we all live, each stone an
ego, its mortar the whole complicated everyday nexus of the social
fabric. All that he was able to do was to make assertion that he was
Arnaud, and let us take it or leave it at that. How Alec would take it
there was very little doubt.
Nor was there much doubt in Madge's case either. She might talk family
histories and hidden scandals till the cows came home, but, in the end,
the Airds' would be the last household into which any suitor would
penetrate without the strictest investigation. Derry might palm off his
Somerset Trehernes upon us during a casual tea-hour, but Alec would now
dive into the last pigeon-hole in Somerset House but he would know
exactly who it was who aspired to become his son-in-law.
Jennie appeared at about half-past six, and Alec's first demand was to
be told where that bicycle was.
"What bicycle?" she asked.
"Haven't you come home on a bicycle?"
"No, I came home by the tram, father."
"Where from?"
"From St Briac."
"Haven't you been out with that fellow on a bicycle, or has a mistake
been made?"
The game was up. "I did go for a bicycle ride."
"With that fellow Arnaud?"
"Yes, father."
"You went immediately after your bathe?"
"Yes."
"Where's the bicycle now?"
"I left it at St Briac."
"Where in St Briac?"
"At his hotel, where mother and Uncle George and I went that day."
"Where did the bicycle come from?"
"I hired it, father."
"In St Briac?"
"No, in Dinard."
"And you keep it in St Briac?"
"Yes."
"Why there instead of here?"
No reply.
"Why in St Briac instead of here?"
Still no reply.
"How often have you been for these rides?"
"About eight or ten times, father."
"Did mother know about it?"
"No, father."
"Then that means that you've been practically every day for a
fortnight?"
No reply.
"Very well, Jennie. Now listen to what I have to say."
Enough. You see the style of it. Alec is an affectionate father, but,
his grumbling indulgence to Madge notwithstanding, there are no two ways
about his being master in his own house. The upshot of it was that a
maid was to be sent to fetch that bicycle first thing in the morning,
and back it was to go to the shop where it had come from. Further, if
Jennie wished to see this M. Arnaud again, it must only be by express
permission from himself. There was plenty of amusement at the Tennis
Club among young fellows they knew something about, and--not another
word. It ought never to have begun, but anyway it was done with now and
need not be referred to again. She had better go and have some tea if
she hadn't had any, and as for _the dansant_ to-morrow afternoon, if she
wanted a new frock for it she might have one. Now run along, and don't
be late for dinner.
Of the five of us, Alec was easily the most cheerful at that evening's
meal. His duty done--kindly, he hoped, but anyway done--he talked about
anything but that afternoon's unpleasantness. Then, rather to my
surprise, about half-way through dinner Julia began to second his
efforts. We sat round the Ganymede, two men and three women, Alec
between Julia and his wife, Jennie between Madge and myself. Everybody,
Alec included, was kindness itself to the silent child, and _the
dansant_ was talked of. The Beverleys were giving it. They had engaged a
room at one of the hotels, and Madge had been helping to decorate that
afternoon.
"Those were the Beverley girls bathing with us this afternoon, weren't
they, Jennie?" Julia asked across me.
"Yes."
"Aren't they just a little--stand-offish?"
"I don't know. I didn't notice. Are they?" said Jennie dully.
"They're----" Alec began, but checked himself. In the circumstances the
upbringing of the Beverley girls was not the happiest of subjects, and
Madge struck hastily in.
"One gets almost sick of the hydrangeas here, Julia, but they're really
most extraordinarily effective. We've put four great tubs of them,
ice-blue almost, in the corners, as big as this table nearly, and
against all that cream-and-gold.... Oh, Jennie! You know father says you
can have whichever of those frocks you like. I should say the voile.
Which do you think?"
"I don't care which, mother. My last one's all right. I don't want
another."
Again across the table from Julia: "That's a darling one you're wearing
now!"
"Do you like it, Aunt Julia?"
"Sweet!"
"And oh, Julia," suddenly in a little outburst from Madge,
"honestly, now! Do you think I could wear those sleeves, or those
not-any-sleeves-at-all rather--you know--the quite new ones, that show
your arm from the very top of your shoulder? You _must_, of course, with
your arms--it's your duty--but I'm not so sure about me----"
"Stuff and nonsense, of course you can. And I'm certainly going to,"
Julia declared.
"Bit French, aren't they?" said Alec over his canape. "I've seen 'em."
"He's seen 'em, Julia!" Madge laughed. "Don't tell me after that that a
man doesn't notice what a woman has on--at any rate if there's as little
of it as there is of those sleeves! But let's settle Jennie's frock
first. _I_ think the voile. And you can wear a hat with it or not, just
as you like."
"Would you very much mind if I didn't go, mother?" said Jennie
dejectedly.
"Frightfully," was Madge's cheerful reply. "Of course you're coming. And
all to-morrow morning we'll try-on, all three of us. So that's the voile
for Jennie--and most decidedly those no-sleeves for you, Julia, with
your arms----"
IV
The rest of the evening was the same: slightly false, slightly
tremulous, a little off the note. I honestly believe that that "Aunt"
Julia of Jennie's was a pure inadvertence, for she was far too
low-spirited to be interested in anything but herself, her mood and her
troubles. After dinner she went out into the garden alone, and Madge
gave us a quick inclusive look.
"Don't worry her, poor darling," she said with soft sympathy. "Let her
have a good cry and she'll be all right to-morrow."
"Let me go to her," said Julia.
"I really wouldn't."
"Very well if you think not. What about a rubber?"
So Alec and Julia took fifteen shillings from Madge and myself while
Jennie got over it in the garden.
But I found difficulty in understanding Julia's new attitude towards
Jennie. There had been nothing in the least degree hypocritical in her
sweetness at dinner; quite simply she had been nice and gentle with
her. She had even interposed very quickly indeed when, for a brief
moment, there had seemed a doubt as to whether Jennie had bathed that
afternoon at all. But that she would hold unswervingly to her private
purpose I was entirely convinced. Was her confidence, then, so
insolently fixed that she had pity left over and to spare for this
unhappy child who was to all intents and purposes forbidden to leave the
house without permission? Could she toss her an alms out of her
superfluity? Would her gentleness have been quite the same had she not
known that that bicycle was being fetched back from St Briac to-morrow?
Or would she, had Madge not stopped her, have gone to Jennie in the
garden with some such words as these: "Cheer up, Jennie; you'll have
forgotten all about this in ten days. When I was your age I had these
fancies, but I forgot all about them in ten days. You'll be in love with
scores of young men yet; nobody ever remembers any of them for long.
Why, I've forgotten the very name of the boy I thought I was in love
with when I was a girl. I can't even remember what he looked like. It
seems hard for the moment, but it's over in no time. Cheer up, Jennie.
There are lots of nice boys at the Tennis Club. Go and flirt with one of
them, and forget about M. Arnaud. We all do."
Would she have said something like that? She was fully capable of it. At
any rate I am fully capable of thinking she was.
But, whatever the circumstances may be, a man can hardly ask a woman to
be his wife in the afternoon, have his suit treated as if it had
scarcely been heard, and finish the evening with Auction as contentedly
as though nothing had happened. Even poor George Coverham has his
private affairs, and it was I more than any of them who should have
found myself by Jennie's side. Indeed, as Alec and Julia divided their
winnings I rose and walked to the window. It was dark, but not too dark
to distinguish that she was still there, a dim white figure leaning up
against one of the pillars of the pergola. A half-moon had southed, and
the ironwork of the roof-ridge of Ker Annic showed sharp against the
silvery blueness as I stepped out. It had suddenly come upon me that if
she needed my comfort, I needed hers hardly less. She was seventeen and
I fifty, but that day had separated both of us from our desires.
She heard my step, but did not change her position. Anyway she had had a
full hour to herself. It was she who spoke, and without preface.
"I wished you'd come," she said.
"We've been playing bridge."
"I very nearly didn't come home at all."
"Why, Jennie?"
"I knew I was going to catch it. Old Noble needn't think he's the only
person with any eyes. I saw him too. I pretended not to, but I did."
"I was afraid it was only a question of time," I said with a head-shake.
"Where was it?"
"The rottenest luck!" she answered softly and bitterly. "Nobody but that
horrid old man on his motor-bike would have thought of going there!
Right up a little lane, it was, and we'd put our bicycles under the
hedge, and we were sitting against one of the stooks. That dark red
stuff whatever they call it--six bundles together and then another like
an umbrella on the top. He barged into one of the bicycles, clumsy
thing, and then came to tell us that we oughtn't to leave them there in
people's way. Derry shoved me behind the stook, but it was too late. I
did think he might just possibly have the decency to keep his mouth
shut, but I suppose that was too much to expect. So I knew there'd be a
row."
"And of course Derry knew there'd be a row too?"
"Yes."
I sighed. "Well, the row's over now. Better let the whole thing drop.
Your father's perfectly right, and you were bound to get found out
sooner or later."
She made no reply.
But she returned to her luckless plaint a moment later. She struck the
upright of the pergola softly and vindictively with her hand.
"It was all that beastly bathe and Miss Oliphant's being late! We
should have been all right if she'd been there at the proper time!"
"I'm afraid that was my fault, Jennie. I walked rather slowly, and Miss
Oliphant waited for me."
"I know; of course it had nothing to do with you at all.... Then she
goes and gets her things into knots, and I have to untie them, and that
costume of hers is as bad as getting into a ball-dress instead of just a
skin like nearly everybody else! Anyway the sea's there if she wants to
bathe, and she can swim as well as I can if she does get into a current,
and it isn't as if she needed a chaperone----"
"Jennie, my dear, be reasonable!" I begged her. "You can hardly blame
Miss Oliphant for--for what your father was told."
"Oh, I'm not blaming her! But it makes you angry when stupid little
accidents like those----" She swallowed.
"I'm afraid stupid little accidents fill rather a large place in the
world, Jennie."
"I hate them having anything to do with me anyhow. And with having to
take the towels home I only just caught the tram----"
"What's that?" I took her up. "You _did_ catch the tram? Then it wasn't
that that made you late at all. You'd have been waiting for the tram if
you hadn't been waiting for Miss Oliphant."
"Well, I don't care. It's all--all---"
She did not say what, but hit the pergola with her hand again.
I was too sorry for her to be hurt by her words about Julia. That little
slip about the tram had completely betrayed her, and it was against
chance, and not against Julia, that she sought an occasion. Nevertheless
the merciless mistrust of youth lay behind. The beginning and end of it
was that she didn't like Julia, and her young heart had not yet learned
the duplicity that makes us more rather than less sweet to those whom we
dislike. She broke out again:
"And I _won't_ go to that dance to-morrow! I _won't_ be scolded and
given a new frock and told I mustn't go out of the house! Mother and
Miss Oliphant can go without me, and when I get back to London I shall
earn my own living and I shall be able to do what I like then!"
"Very few people who earn their own living do what they like, Jennie."
"Well, it'll be a change anyway," she retorted.
A cheerful call of "Jen-nie-e-e!" came from the house. We all used a
marked brightness in speaking to Jennie that evening.
"Yes, mother--I'm only with Uncle George."
"Don't be long, darling."
"I'll bring her in presently," I answered for her; and we continued to
stand side by side.
I suppose that ordinarily a man of my years would keep such a dismissal
as I had received that afternoon locked in his own breast, or would at
any rate hesitate before sharing it with a young girl. And I did
hesitate. But trouble is mysteriously lightened when it is merged in
another trouble, and to cheer Jennie up was the aim of all of us that
night. And I think that perhaps the Jennie I wanted to tell was Jennie
the woman, not Jennie the child.
So "Jennie," I said quietly, "you're not the only one."
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"I've had my medicine too this afternoon."
"Your medicine?"
"Oh," I took myself up, "not that kind of medicine. I mean that you're
not the only one who's had to go through it this afternoon."
"I don't understand you, Uncle George."
"While you went for a bicycle ride I went for a walk with somebody
else."
"You went for a walk with Miss Oliphant, didn't you?"
"Yes. And I asked her not to remain Miss Oliphant any longer."
I felt the eager uprush of her solicitude. "Oh, Uncle George! Do you
mean you asked Miss Oliphant to marry you?"
"Yes."
"So you're engaged?" The words jumped from her.
"No."
"Hasn't she decided yet?"
"Yes, she's decided."
"What!" A deep, deep breath. "You don't mean that she said No?"
"I'm afraid she did."
"_Oh!_"
She threw her arms about my waist and held me strongly.
"Oh! Poor Uncle George!"
"So you see we're in the cart together, Jennie. I thought I'd tell you.
I don't suppose I shall ever tell anybody else."
And I knew that I could not have told her three weeks before. That is
how we with our belated loves strike the young--we of the Valley of
Bones. Nevertheless my mother's embrace had been hardly more maternal
than was the pressure of those seventeen-year-old arms that night.
Then, with another "Poor, poor Uncle George!" she released me. Her next
words broke from her with a vivid little jump.
"Oh, _how_ I hate her now!"
"Jennie, Jennie! You can't hate anybody I've just told you that about!"
"Oh, I can! Worse than ever! To think of her cheek in refusing you! She
ought to have been proud--instead of playing cards all the evening!"
"Playing cards isn't a bad thing to do. I played cards too."
"Pretty poor look-out for her if she's in love with somebody else
anyway!" she commented.
"By no means, Jennie. Other people than I are in love with her. But what
I want to ask you is whether you can't be nice to her for my sake."
"I'll do anything I can," she said bitterly. "If you say she was awfully
kind and gentle to you about it that might help a bit."
"Then let me say it. She was awfully kind and gentle."
"And so she ought to be! But _is_ she in love with somebody else, then?"
"I think she doesn't want to get married."
"I don't believe _that_!" declared Jennie flatly. "Why, she thinks about
nothing but clothes and who's watching her and if she's looking all
right!"
"Is that being kind to her, Jennie?"
"No it isn't, and I will try, but I didn't like her before, and I'm only
trying now because of you. Why did she ask mother if she might come
here, especially if she knew you were in love with her and you were
here?"
"I hadn't told her I was in love with her."
"Don't tell me she didn't know, for all that," was the unbelieving
reply.
"Well, well.... There it is and we must make the best of it. You try to
make the best of things too, my dear. Shall we go in?"
Whether I had done Julia any great service in Jennie's opinion was
doubtful. I had at any rate given Jennie something else to think of. And
that was something.
Contrary to my expectations, I slept immediately and deeply that night.
It was nine o'clock in the morning before I awoke, half-past when I
descended. I found Madge in the salon.
"I say, what's become of Julia?" she asked. "Though I don't see how you
could very well know seeing you've only just this moment come down."
A maid was clearing away the _petit dejeuner_.
"Madam," she said.
"What is it, Ellen?"
"Miss Oliphant left word she'd be back at half-past eleven."
"Has she gone out? But we were to go into Dinard this morning!"
"She's gone to St Briac, madam, and she said as she was going to see
somebody at the Golf Club she might as well save one of us a journey and
bring a bicycle back. It wasn't exactly your orders, madam, but there's
a deal to do this morning what with this dance, and as Miss Oliphant was
so kind I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind."
"Oh, I don't mind, except that it doesn't leave us much time for
shopping. I shall go into Dinard, and you'd better tell Miss Oliphant to
follow me when she comes back."
"Very good, madam."
"Anyway," said Madge, turning to me, "it certainly does save one of the
maids a couple of hours, as long as Julia doesn't mind. But who has she
gone to see at the Golf Club at nine o'clock in the morning?"
V
The dances of my time were the waltz, the cotillion and the quadrille,
and as I am not a Pelmanist I have never acquired the dancing-fashions
of to-day. So I stood by one of Madge's tubs of hydrangeas and watched.
The large cream-and-gold room had a glazed end that opened on to the
terrace and overlooked the crowded plage below, and when I wearied of
watching the dancers I walked out on to this terrace, and when I was
tired of watching the people who moved in and out among the tents and
umbrellas and deck-chairs on the beach I returned to the dancing-room
again. And much of the time I moved about out of sheer restlessness and
apprehension.
Jennie had come to the Beverleys' party after all. She danced
occasionally with young Rugby or young Marlborough, but kept more often
close to her mother's side. And Julia Oliphant was there, not dancing at
all, talking to Madge only infrequently, but gaily enough to everybody
else--with the single exception of myself, whom (it seemed to me) she
avoided in the most marked fashion. As for the others, they danced in
flannels and blazers and varnished evening shoes, and the Beverley girls
danced with one another.
What had happened at St Briac that morning? The question gave me no
rest. Had Julia seen Derry? Idle to ask; of course she had. What had
passed between them? Useless to try to guess. I had glanced at the
Indicateur. She had caught the tram at St Enogat at eight-thirty-four
and had taken the ten-fifty-three back, reaching St Enogat again at
eleven-nineteen. Actually she had had two hours of but seven minutes at
St Briac, and that was all I knew. Again she had seized her chance with
ruthless instancy. Except for a night's rest, the very moment Jennie had
been out of the running she had been at the door of his hotel. She had
even had the effrontery to use Jennie's own bicycle as her pretext.
And now why, when I was in the dancing-room, did she seek the terrace,
and why, when I went out on the terrace, did she immediately enter the
dancing-room again?
She wore the sleeveless frock; and "Oh Juno, white-armed Queen!" I had
murmured to myself when my eyes had rested on it.... But, whatever her
other attempts had been, those arms at any rate he had not seen that
morning, for the simple reason that the frock had only been purchased
and hastily made ready on her return. But its purchase was not to be
dissociated from him. With him and him only in her mind she had chosen
it. What other plans had she in her mind? Was she now going to get a
bicycle--she, whom it was impossible to forbid to see whom she pleased
and whenever she pleased? Would she go with him to that dove-haunted
Tower, recline with him among the sarrasin-stooks with none to say her
nay? And would her hosts see as little of her at Ker Annic as I had seen
of Jennie during the days I had spent in bed?
Dire woman--dire, and _capable de tout_!
But even my preoccupation did not quite blind me to the prettiness of
the scene about me. Whether inside or out was the prettier I will not
say. They had improvised tennis on the beach, and from the tall
diving-stage forty yards out lithe figures poised, inclined, and dropped
gracefully downwards in the swallow-dive. The brightly-clad melee almost
hid the dowdy sands. Back in the dancing-room the tall cream pilasters
with the gold capitals supported the sweeping oval of the ceiling,
painted with Olympian loves; and bright hair, bright faces, light
ankles, passed and interpassed before the eye could catch more than a
blended impression of the total charm. The band was playing that which
these bands do play, the fiddler on the little rostrum alternately
conducting and using his bow, and----
And this time I really thought I had Julia pinned down. Madge was on one
side of her, talking with animation, and Jennie stood on her other side.
Yes, I thought I had her cornered. She could hardly break away in the
middle of one of her hostess's sentences. I advanced.
But she deftly eluded me. Madge had turned with an "Oh, here he is!" and
in that moment Julia held out both her hands to Jennie.
"Come along, Jennie," she said, "if those Beverley girls can dance
together we can."
But I will swear that it was only because of her promise to me the night
before, that Jennie allowed herself to be led away.
I watched them as they stood balanced, bodies close together, foot
alternating with foot. Jennie never once looked at Julia, but Julia's
dark eyes smiled from time to time on Jennie's face. And present with
them in some strange way, hauntingly about and between them,
he--he--seemed to be there: young, sunbrowned, and beautiful as he had
formerly been, young, sunbrowned and beautiful as he was to-day. A
quartette seemed to be rhythmically balancing there, one of her, one of
her, two of him.
Then, seeing my look, Julia frankly smiled at me for the first time.
Jennie also saw me, but did not smile. She would dance with Julia for
me, but she would not pretend to smile over it.
Twice, thrice round the room they moved, the woman who had refused me
yesterday and would not be denied him to-morrow, the girl who had glowed
with angry compassion for me and knew in her feminine heart that that
smiling partner had not offered to fetch a bicycle from St Briac that
morning without having a reason for it....
"A penny for them, George," Madge's voice suddenly sounded at my side.
"Eh? I was only thinking of those two."
"Julia and Jennie? I'm glad Jennie's come round and is behaving with
something like ordinary decency again.... And by the way, that about
that bicycle of Jennie's is a funnier mix-up than ever now."
"How so?"
"Well, Julia saw young Arnaud this morning. Rather a difficult position
for her, and I can't imagine why she offered to go, seeing she'd never
set eyes on the young man in her life. But she seems to have done the
best thing possible."
"What was that?"
"She never once mentioned Jennie's name. She simply said that she
understood that a bicycle was to be fetched back to Ker Annic, and as
she was coming out that way she'd said she'd call for it. It seems to
have been quite all right. He didn't ask any questions either; he got it
out and put it on the tram for her himself."
"The same tram? She came straight back?" (I may say that there is only
one tram to St Briac, which runs backwards and forwards).
"No, the next journey. It had gone, so she had to wait. She tried to
ride the bicycle, but couldn't quite manage it. So he showed her his
pictures, as he did to us."
"Before she went to the Golf Club, or after?"
"She didn't say."
"And he didn't even ask why the bicycle had been sent for?"
"Not a word about it. He just put it on the tram."
I can't say I much liked the look of this. I remembered how he had
formerly bamboozled me.
"Then he simply accepts the situation?" I said.
"Whatever it is, apparently."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, that's the funny part. What _is_ the situation? You see, Arnaud's
knowing you complicates it. If he hadn't known you I expect Alec would
have sent him about his business at the double. Not that you're to blame
in any way; it's nothing at all to do with you. But then is Jennie to
blame either for falling in love with the delicious creature? I told
Alec so. Oh, we had a lively hour yesterday while you and Julia were out
bathing and walking and enjoying yourselves! Alec blustered, and he
wouldn't have this and he wouldn't have that, but I asked him, 'Where
was the harm if the young man came round in a straightforward way and
took his chance with the others?' 'I don't call this straightforward,'
he said; and of course I could hardly say it was, but we've all been
young once. Anyway, the long and the short of it was that there's to be
no more bicycle-riding, but he hasn't forbidden her to see him provided
everything's above-board and we're told about it."
"Was that a concession for my sake?"
"It's for Jennie's sake. It's her happiness I'm thinking about. You've
nothing to do with it."
"Except to provide his credentials," I thought, but said nothing.
I begin to like it less and less. Not one single thing about it did I
like. Julia was supposed not to know this Arnaud, but that had not
prevented her from thrusting herself into his affairs and lying
unblushingly about an appointment at the Golf Club seven miles away at
nine o'clock in the morning. And if Madge thought that Julia and Jennie
were "behaving with ordinary decency" at that moment, so did not I. As
for Derry, honestly I was afraid of him. He had had a whole night in
which to think over the almost certain consequences of that surprise
among the sarrasin stooks, and if he was caught without a plan he was
not the man I took him for. Julia might think she had scored during that
hour and a half when he had shown her his pictures, but the change was
just as likely to be in his pocket. Probably he had expected that that
bicycle would be sent for before the day was many hours old. The only
thing he could not have expected was that Julia Oliphant would come in
person for it.
Then the dance ended, and Julia, as barefaced as she was barearmed, came
straight up to me, wide-smiling, daring.
"Well, George! Good morning! Enjoying yourself?"
"Hadn't Derry a nerve!" she had said to me when I had told her about the
tea-party at Ker Annic. I don't think his nerve surpassed her own. I
looked straight at her.
"Since it's good morning, come for a turn," I said.
Still smiling all over her face, she placed a resplendent arm on mine,
and we passed out on to the terrace.
She wore an immense white hat, so cavalierly dragged down on one side
and so arrogantly jutting up on the other that from certain points you
had to walk half way round her before you saw her face at all. One eye
lurked permanently within the recess of that outrageous brim. She had
also done something to her lips.
There were little round tables on the terrace, and at one of these we
sat down, vis-a-vis. She placed the backs of her clasped hands under her
chin and sat there, magnetising me.
"Well, how goes it?" she said.
"I hear," I said, "that you're learning to ride a bicycle."
"No, George."
"What's that?"
"Not a bicycle. Only a free-wheel. I rode a bicycle years ago. It's only
the free-wheel that's a bit tricky."
"You saw him?"
"Of course. Didn't Madge tell you?"
"And he knew you?"
"My dear George, do pull yourself together! He was expecting me!"
"What! By appointment?"
"No, no, no, I don't mean that. I didn't write or send him a telegram or
anything of that kind. But, of course, he knew I was here. He knew days
ago--before I came probably. What would be the first thing Jennie'd tell
him? That they were expecting a visitor, but it needn't make any
difference to their meetings. So of course he was expecting me. Perhaps
not quite so early in the morning, but oh, quite soon!"
"What I meant was, did he recognise you?"
"Recognise me? Why not? He called me Miss Oliphant and showed me his
sketches. They're"--the eye I could see sparkled, taking in the whole
bright terrace--"they're glorious!"
"What about the bicycle?"
"Glo--rious! He's a divine painter! Why, his books are like sawdust
after his painting! I don't paint worth a rap myself, but oh, I know
celestial stuff when I see it!"
"What did he say about the bicycle?"
"I didn't go there to talk about bicycles. I went there to see his
glorious pictures and his glorious self!"
"And incidentally to meet an apocryphal person at the Golf Club."
"Pooh!" She took that in her stride. "But about those pictures----"
"Leave the pictures for a moment. Why have you avoided me the whole
afternoon until you came up a moment ago and said good morning?"
"Surely you can guess that?" Again the fascination of the smile.
"Guessing's lost some of its novelty for me lately."
"Well, I wanted to dance with Jennie, you see."
"I'm afraid I don't see."
She looked at me quizzically, reflectively. "N--o. Perhaps it isn't as
simple as I thought. But you were glad when I danced with Jennie,
weren't you?"
"I won't say glad. I was--very interested."
"Why?"
"You two--and him. That interested me enormously."
"Well, now you've very nearly got it. That dance was our understanding,
Jennie's and mine. We had it all out."
"You didn't appear to be talking much."
"I don't think we spoke three words, but we had it out for all that."
"That's the kind of thing I give up."
"Make an effort, George. You don't think I'd do anything unfair, do you?
As long as there was a fair way left, I mean?"
"I don't even know what you mean by fair."
"Well, you're on her side, whether you know it or not. It took me
exactly one tenth of a second to see that yesterday. You want him to get
going straight ahead again and marry her. Don't you?" she challenged me
with a brilliant look.
"Never mind my answer for the present."
"Well, you want that, and I want--something quite different."
"Jennie doesn't even know that you know him."
"What? How do you know what he's told her about me? Anyway, even if he
hasn't, she knows I didn't fetch that bicycle for nothing. She smelt
something in the wind, and now she knows perfectly well what it is."
"From that dance? Wonderful dance!"
"It's your sex that's wonderful. If you don't believe me, ask her."
"I don't think it will be necessary. There's just one thing you've
forgotten."
"What's that?"
"Him."
"Oh, I've forgotten _him_!" she smiled, touching the reddened lips with
her fingertips.
"Him and what he may do. I think you'll find you've left that out of the
account. We shall see.... So I take it you dodged me all the afternoon
because we hadn't all been properly introduced to the new situation, so
to speak? Is that it?"
"Yes, that's quite good. There's no stealing advantages now.
Everything's on the square, and what sort of a vermouth do they give you
here?"
With that I asked her a question that for the moment surprised even her.
I asked it perfectly seriously, seeking not only the unblinkered eye,
but also the one within its deep ambush of white hat-brim.
"Julia, are you yourself in every respect the same woman to-day that you
were before we had our talk yesterday?"
She turned her head to watch the tennis-players on the sands below, the
swallow-divers from the tall stage. She turned it further, and her gaze
passed from the clustered villas across the bay to the awnings of the
hotel, the sunny white of the balustrade, the waiter who approached in
answer to my summons. Then she looked at me.
"I know what you mean. Not just this hat and a touch of lipstick and
these"--she showed her arms. "I'm the same, of course, but I suppose I'm
different too. And I'm going to be different. Ask Jennie. She knows. Any
woman would know--just by dancing with somebody and never saying a word,
George. One keeps one's eyes open and--adapts oneself. Jennie knows all
about it. Ask her."
And the flashing, daring, confident smile, which had vanished for a
moment, reappeared.
It was her request for a vermouth that had prompted my sudden question.
All at once I had found myself wondering who the man was, in
Buckinghamshire apparently, who shared with myself the privilege of
having been refused by her. Not that I was interested in his identity;
but from him, or from the man who had been attentive to her on the boat,
or from somebody else, or from a whole series of men for all I knew, she
had--the slang is required--"picked up a thing or two." It was a far cry
from that first cocktail in the Piccadilly to this hat, this revelation
of arms, these conscious coquetries with bathing-wraps and auction with
Alec Aird. Mind you, I knew as surely as I sat opposite to her that not
one of these fellow-unfortunates of mine had had a scrap more from her
than I had had myself. They had been dismissed without compunction the
moment she had had what she required of them. On Derry and on Derry
alone her dark eyes were unchangingly set. No trifling, no flirtation by
the way, any more than to the rehearsal is given the unstinted kiss of
the passionate performance. Therefore in this she was single and
unchanged.
But she had seen Derry that morning, and that excited bombardment of
electrons that seemed to emanate from him and to alter the nature of
everyone who came into contact with him had worked an alteration in her.
She might call it "adapting herself," but it was essentially more than
that. For she had seen Jennie too, knew of their love, and had instantly
re-assembled and re-marshalled all the forces at her disposal. Whatever
might be her broadside of hat, arms and the rest, swiftly and craftily
she had seen that there was one thing she could not ape--the simplicity
of seventeen. Contest on that ground meant defeat in advance. In this,
its vivid opposite, lay her desperate chance.
And, I thought with apprehension, no negligible chance either! For a man
may be young and innocent and grave and be entirely at the mercy of this
very simplicity and trust. It is the woman old enough to be his mother,
but not too old to have this shot left in her locker, who bowls him
over. Lucky for him if a more contemporaneous passion already occupies
his heart.
VI
"So," she said, her eyes far away, "there are those wonderful pictures."
Yes, she would not hesitate to make capital out of his pictures too.
"The mere handling, quite apart from anything else----"
There again she had Jennie on the hip. Jennie might love his pictures
merely because they were his, but Julia painted, knew the
technicalities, would make intimacies, opportunities, flattering
occasions out of them----
"There's one, just a few bits of broken white ruins with her lying
there--he wasn't going to show me that at first----"
But ah, her eyes had spied it out, and he had had to show it.
"You've seen them, George. Now I ask you, _could_ any boy of eighteen
possibly have painted them?"
That too she had the audacity to claim--that he was eighteen when she
wanted him to be eighteen and forty-five when she wanted him to be
forty-five. Here again Jennie Aird was to be put in the wrong. It was to
be an anachronism and monstrous that Jennie should love so widely out of
her age.
"Could he, I ask you? Doesn't it show? You were perfectly right when you
tried to stop that flirtation between those two, George, and you're
absolutely wrong in wanting it to go on now. She's no right whatever,
and neither has he. Leave it to me. He called me Miss Oliphant, but it
can be Julia in five minutes, and anything else I like in ten----"
I did not choose to remind her again that she was leaving him out of the
calculation. I had warned her once, and it comforted me to think that he
was not quite so unarmed as she supposed against this sort of spiritual
rape.... She went musingly on.
"'Miss Oliphant!' ... But wait a bit. It was myself and Daphne Wade for
it before, and then it was all sentimental association and stained-glass
and church-music and because he was wrapped in dreams. Sentiment's all
very well in its way, George, but give me Get-up-and-get. That's the
cock to fight. Daphne euchred me once----"
"Where did you get these expressions?" I asked her calmly.
"----and she didn't get him either. He never knew the first thing about
women. So here we are, with the situation an exact repetition of what it
was before."
"With Jennie playing Daphne's part?"
"For him. Why not? If he's the same again he's the same again, isn't he?
But oh, when I saw him this morning!... It was exciting and terrific!
You've looked at a photograph-album you haven't seen for years, I
expect, but the things didn't move about and talk to you and ask you how
you were and show you their pictures----"
I couldn't help a light shiver. Certainly this woman might claim that
she had lived through an extraordinary cycle of experience.
"So he's the same, and the same thing will happen all over again--except
for what _I_ do," she added wickedly.
"And that will be?"
She shook her head and pursed her mouth.
"No, no. I won't marry you, George, but I will be your friend. I'm not
going to tell you that. You must wait. I see how difficult your position
is, and it will be much, much better if you're able to say afterwards
that you didn't know anything at all about it."
"Isn't it already a little late to say that?"
"Well, least said's soonest mended anyway. Got an Officers' Woodbine
about you?"
"A what?"
She laughed. "You must get used to us young things, George. An Officers'
Woodbine's a Gasper, otherwise a Gold Flake, otherwise a Yellow Peril,
and therefore any sort of a cigarette. _He'll_ know what I mean, and
he'll laugh. He went through the war, you see. Oh, I shall be able to
make him laugh all right!"
So she would reap a profit even out of the war. I could not deny her
thoroughness. I gave her a cigarette, and as I held the match for her I
saw that she made a note of my care for the brim of her hat. She would
pass that too on to Derry as part of his education--that expensive hats
must not have holes burned in them.
There were fewer bathers on the diving-stage now but the beach was as
crowded as ever. Julia noted hats, shoes, costumes; she noted men too,
but no young figure in beret and vareuse appeared in the
rainbow-coloured coming and going below. Then the hum of an aeroplane
was heard, and "Look, that's rather amusing," she remarked as there
broke out from the machine, twinkling against the blue, a tiny
cirrus-cloudlet of white that slowly dissolved and was borne
away--leaflets for the races probably, or advertisements for something
or other at the Casino.
We ceased to talk. For all I know she was revolving projects that
included a new free-wheel bicycle, fresh from its crate, with packing
round its saddle and string and paper about its bright parts. Together
we watched the fluttering of paper melt away. A minute later you could
hardly have imagined that it had ever been there. There seemed no reason
why it ever should have been there. There seemed so little reason for
any of our activities. Not one of those leaflets had fallen over the
land, and had they done so, what then? A litter of paper from an
aeroplane, a little of petty acts from a person, and the immensity of
the blue persisting exactly as before. For the humming of that plane had
reminded me of another humming. I remembered a Tower, with a horse-gin
threshing at an adjacent farm. In that Tower too things had happened, so
mighty-seeming at the time, so hushed in the empty cells of its stone
heart now. I watched the plane out of sight.
There seemed so little difference between a handful of leaflets
scattered over the sea and a handful of grasses seeded on that circular
coping, as long as the eternal Oblivion of the Blue brooded overhead.
Late that night, in the garden of Ker Annic, there kissed me a young
woman who had never kissed me before. She kissed me, and then with a sob
fled past the dark auracaria into the house. The young woman was Jennie
Aird.
The next morning she had gone.