THE DESERT ISLAND
I
The Island is deserted only in that none but they come there; for them,
just those two, it blossoms as the rose. Its story is the oldest story
of all, and the newest. It is told an infinitude of times, and yet, like
that first story of the cycle of a thousand, we do not remember to have
heard it before. Let us listen to it just once again.
No coral-reef breaks its ceaselessly-thundering rollers into surf, no
palms wave their dark fronds in the blue. Only a holiday-coast, with the
London and South Western Company's steamers passing daily, and the known
and familiar trees of oak and ilex and lime. No garments of skins and
necklaces of shells, but a white summer frock, a grey raincoat over it,
and a bundle that can be carried in the hand. No shelter of stones and
branches that he who is with her toils to make with his own hands, but
French slates, French tiles, French thatching, whichever it may be.
And no wreck. Only the wreck of a home.
Yet it is a Desert Island none the less; a Desert Island with
pleasure-steamers running, and cars full of tourists coming and going,
and the Rate of Exchange quoted daily, and the sound of a familiar and
friendly tongue everywhere. A Desert Island with guide-books and
time-tables, chars-a-bancs, the vedettes up the Rance, the excursions to
Mont St Michel. A Desert Island with cameras and picture-postcards and
greetings at every corner: "I didn't know you were over here! The
So-and-Sos have just gone to Quimper. We're off to Concarneau on
Tuesday. Where are you staying, and did you ever know anything like the
price of golf-balls over here?" All over Haute Bretagne the same, all
over Northern France the same; and somewhere among it all a Desert
Island _a deux_. Probably a moving one, on four bicycle-wheels. But
where look for it? In Dol? Lamballe? Rennes? In what arrondissement,
canton, commune? There are many bicycles in France, but there is only
one Island precisely like that one. For there is only one man who has
been forty-five years of age and is now eighteen, only one woman who,
embracing him, has made her fate commensurate with his own. They are
apart, unapproachable, unidentified, not to be communicated with though
you look into their faces and speak to them. Their nonentity is lost in
the multitudinousness of everything else. They keep no signal-fires
burning day and night for your ship or mine that passes. They are
marooned in their own bliss, angelic castaways who will not return to
us.
Only to see her, only to hear her voice----
Only on a fatal day to tell her his name, the name of that prisoner in
the Tower that may not be spoken----
Only to send back a bicycle to a shop (but to trust her to guess that
where a bicycle would be left a letter would also be left, and an
appointment made at some secret hour between a _the dansant_ and bedtime
that night).
Only to cut the knot that no power on earth could untie, to fetch that
free-wheel back from the shop under cover of the darkness, and to be off
and miles away before the sun rose again.
Was it well or ill that they had ever set eyes on one another?
And what the better now is Alec Aird if he does find them? The times
have changed since Madge sat in her mother's carriage waiting until this
servant, and not that one, opened the door. It is no good telling Madge
he told her so. He can disown Jennie or he can take her back, but there
is no middle way. The consul in the Rue St Philippe at St Malo cannot
help him, and at the Mairie at St Briac they will run through the files
of the _permis de sejour_ in vain. He can whisper--he has whispered--in
the ears of the police, and they may run the pair to earth, but it will
not be to the earth of that magical island of theirs. And let Alec
agonise in Agony Columns as much as he will. He can forgive her, or she
can go unforgiven. All else is out of his hands.
And yet it need be no long voyage to that Isle. It is to be found in the
near and dear heart. But only by those who envy not and vaunt not, who
suffer long and are kind. If sin there has been it must have been taken
away again--en souffrance, en esperance, avant qu'il est venu le jour.
But then, when that day comes, it comes as it were with a smile through
the lashes of its opening eye. It looks up with the mounting rays, and
its eyebrow becomes the arch of heaven. C'est efface, l'horrible passe.
Il est venu le jour.
II
On a clear evening in the last days of August I found myself sitting in
the Jardin des Anglais in Dinan, alone. The Airds were still at Ker
Annic, Julia Oliphant still with them; but I, although their guest and
under promise to return to them, had absented myself for a few days. I
had done this as much for their sake as for my own. Alec was out all
day, or if not out hardly to be seen by the rest of us. Julia and Madge
were better together without me. So I had made no falsely delicate
excuse. I had told them exactly what I am saying at this moment. And I
think they had been grateful.
The garden looks east over the viaduct of Lanvallay, and above the misty
violet that enshrouded the land a trail of pale shirley poppies was
strung out over the sky--the leagues of cloud-tops caught by the last of
the sun. The parapet in front of me hid all else as I sat. One or two
people stood against it, looking out over the abyss; a few others moved
slowly along the ramparts. The limes above me were already benighted,
the dark mass of St Sauveur hidden behind them. The crowded vedettes had
long since departed, and the comparatively few visitors who stay in
Dinan were probably at the Cafe de Bretagne at the other side of the
town.
The dark tangle, that for the hundredth time I was trying to unravel,
is almost impossible of statement, so little of the solid was there to
support it, such mazes of spiritual conjecture did it open up. Once more
I will do the best I can with it. Understand, to begin with, that he had
now repeated what I had better call the "experience of the flash-lamp."
Formerly it had been Julia; now it was Jennie. Therefore this, if
anything, seemed to follow:
THAT OTHER TIME THIS TIME
Julia ... Jennie ...
The approach of the lamp ... The approach of the lamp ...
He had been greatly loved. He was greatly loved.
He had not loved. She was his very heart.
He had remembered nothing. I knew nothing whatever about it.
But he had woke up younger I knew nothing whatever about
by eleven years. it.
Had ended in fluctuations of I knew nothing whatever about
his "B" memory. it.
But, save for that "flash-lamp" I knew nothing whatever about
gap, his "A" memory had it.
been unimpaired.
He had therefore attained a I knew nothing whatever about
duality of (approximately) it.
eighteen and forty-five.
But did he still retain it? It was precisely that that I
wanted to know.
In other words, the problem that had confronted me when he had
disappeared from his rooms in Cambridge Circus, when he had left
Trenchard's rooms in South Kensington and had got to France by swimming
the Channel, leaped upon me again on the ramparts of that ancient French
town.
How old was he now?
But no, I have not finished yet. Let us take it a little further. The
state of his memory at this point was a matter of the most urgent
importance, since I now began to suspect that the whole of his chance of
again going forward turned on it. So we now had:
Julia had taken his sin, but not His cry had been immediately
his memory of it, since he had followed by an aching cry
cried out upon my cowardice in for help and advice.
speaking of it at Le Port gap.
He had subsequently repeated He had vowed that books had
a page from his book. never in the least interested
him.
I had particularly questioned I had not had an opportunity
him about his memory. of questioning him.
He had promised to take no He had taken a step without
step without my knowledge. my knowledge.
I did not think that he would He had broken it.
knowingly break his word to me.
Do you see whither it leads? You do; but let me state it as it struck
me, sitting there watching the shirley poppies in the east with St
Sauveur dark among the limes behind me.
When you or I forget a thing our forgetting does not mean that that
thing never was. Would to God it sometimes did! But you and I do not
live backwards through our years, and we are dealing now with a man who
did. Suppose, then, that this "A" memory were to go the way of his "B"
one? And suppose in addition that, instead of merely resting on an even
keel, he _should_ presently begin to forge ahead again? In that case he
would once more be advancing on the unknown. His future to him would be
what your future is to you, mine to me. And it is a condition of a
future's being a future that it _shall not already have been_. What
other future than that is there? There was no man living, Derwent Rose
or anybody else, who had _not_ a future. And when a thing has not been
it has not been, and there is the end of it. He was, quite simply, and
exactly as you once were, exactly as I once was, young with a single age
again. With the disappearance of his last "A" recollection, past time
itself was abolished. For him forty-five was not, and never had been.
And gone already was his memory of at least one event of hardly a week
ago, namely, his promise to me. Nay, that must have gone before ever
they fled, for nothing would have been easier for him than to send me a
note demanding his release from his word. But gone how, and when?
Remember, my own last actual sight of him had been by Frehel's Light
when we had stood by the Crucifix that overlooks St Briac harbour. My
last direct word from him had been that note that Jennie had brought, in
which he had reassured me that he was to be trusted, at any rate till I
was out and about again. And my last news of him of any kind prior to
their flight was that he had sat with Jennie among the sarrasin sheaves.
Therefore whatever had happened had happened during the few days between
his writing his note and Noble's discovery of them and speeding to Ker
Annic with the tale.
I counted these days one by one.
On Wednesday he had written his note.
I had received it on Thursday.
On the following Saturday Julia Oliphant had arrived.
On the Tuesday after, the day of my first walk abroad, Noble had
conspicuously failed to mind his own business, and we had all been set
by the ears.
So far so good. His "A" memory might have broken down on any of these
days.
And yet on the very next day he had greeted Miss Oliphant by name! He
had not only remembered her when she had presented herself at his hotel,
but had remembered her in the rather curious sense that, whereas she had
formerly been "Julia" to him, she was now "Miss."
What in the name of the falling night was one to make of it all?
My hotel was the Poste, in the Place Duguesclin, and, though I
remembered Dinan only imperfectly, it was for evenings such as this that
I had come. It was a certainty that Derry and Jennie would never come to
Dinan, where, when the tides served, half a dozen packet-boats a day
might bring their loads of visitors from the very place from which they
had fled. During the hours when the excursionists thronged the old town
it was simple for me to get out into the surrounding country, to take an
omelette at some inn or other, and to return to dinner. At other states
of the tide the passage by river was impracticable, and few strangers
were to be seen.
The poppies went out of the sky almost suddenly. Over the parapet all
was a soft violet vapour. But when I rose and turned slowly up the Place
St Sauveur my thoughts still gave me their shadowy company.
But one shadow was spared me. This was the fear with which I had mounted
the stairs of his lodging at St Briac. Had he not been living, she at
any rate would have been heard of at Ker Annic before this. It was for
this that poor Alec telegraphed, advertised, instructed agents. Not that
he must not have him as well as her. Though he showed him the door
immediately afterwards, this Arnaud must marry Jennie first.
And the chances of tracing him were now far different from those when I
had fruitlessly sought him in London, only to have him put his hand on
my shoulder in a Shaftesbury Avenue picture-house in the end. For he had
been a middle-aged man then, with all the bolt-holes of his successive
personal appearances to dodge fantastically in and out of. Then, a
night, any night, might have made him unrecognisable, nameless, a ghost
among living men. But between eighteen and sixteen is no very great
difference. He might be a little less tall, a little less broad, but
somewhere between those two years he was cornered. His description was
circulated, hers did not vary. They had been gone four days. Probably a
week at the outside would see him touched on the shoulder in this place
or that, a "Pardon, M'sieu'" spoken in his ear, and back to Alec he
would go.
And though I have said as a foolish figure of speech that on that
magical Island of theirs they were unapproachably alone, that was the
important thing from Alec's point of view.
There is a little cafe tucked away in an angle of the Rue de l'Apport,
called, if I remember rightly, the Cafe des Porches. If it is not called
that it ought to be, for these Porches stride out over the pavement on
their ancient legs of stone and wood as if to knock together the
overhanging brows of their fantastic upper stories. Indeed one would say
that the stalls and shops and barrows tunnelled beneath them had but a
moment before been flush with those ancient facades, and that at a call
the whole house had suddenly advanced a pace, and the next moment might
advance another. And if you take a chest of drawers, and draw the bottom
drawer out a little, and the one above a little more, and the one above
that a little more still, and then set opposite to it another chest of
drawers to which you have done the same, you will have the appearance of
those carved and corbelled and enriched and decaying frontages. I passed
under their trampling legs and sought my cafe.
I don't remember ever actually entering that cafe in my life. I
preferred either of the two tiny round pavement-tables that stood one on
either side of its low doorway. There was just room to squeeze in
between the two portable hedges of privet that stood in long wooden
boxes on the kerb; and from this seat, unless they happened to be coming
towards you under the Porches or going directly away, little more than a
glimpse of passers-by could be had through the narrow opening. If they
happened to pass on a bicycle it was the merest zoetrope-flicker and
they were gone.
I sat down, called for coffee and a _fine_, and watched the shopkeepers
opposite putting up their shutters for the night.
One thing at any rate seemed now to be over and done with, and that was
poor Julia Oliphant's desperate adventure. Poor woman, it was as much
for her sake as theirs that I had left the Airds for a few days. Could
she have done the same and have gone back to England it might have been
as well, but that would have been to leave Madge insupportably alone. A
single day in that daughterless house had been enough for me. The next
morning I had made my explanation, had promised to return, had made a
few purchases, and had packed my bag. Any news was to be wired or
telephoned to me at the Poste. That briefly-concluded arrangement had
been practically the whole of my conversation with Madge.
With Julia I had had even fewer words; for what was there to say? Even
to Madge one could hardly have committed the grossness and superfluity
of saying that one was sorry; what then of Julia? Was I sorry? For
herself my heart bled; but was I sorry for the miscarriage of her
vehement and tremendous attempt?
Yet how remember her as I had found her in the salon on the morning of
the discovery, and be glad for Derwent Rose and his irregular bridal?
She had worn a hat and frock of white pique, but the pique had not been
whiter than her face nor the auracaria darker than her sombre lashes and
ringed eyes.
"You've heard?" she had said.
"Alec's just told me."
"Of course----" The unuttered words were "with him."
"It looks terribly like it."
"Had you any idea?" This with a look so imperious that I was thankful to
be able to reply truthfully.
"None. Is there anything--any little thing--we may do?"
"Settle that with Alec. I must be with her."
And that had been about all. I had not dared to ask her whether there
was anything I could do for herself.
But if not because she had failed, at least because of this all-at-once
dropping of the bottom out of everything for which she had lived, one
heart in Dinan resumed its ache for her that night. Stratagems learned
of any man, though she broke his heart with a laugh in the learning--and
then to have her own broken! Arms to provoke the world--and no world to
be provoked now that he, her world, had failed her! Nothing had been too
little for her, nothing too great. Officers' Woodbines and her adoration
of his painting, his years of war and a hat that hid one eye! What were
those arms and shoulders of hers but his own gesture, ready to be given
back to him, when he had shown himself in my swimming-pond, in that
studio in Cremorne Road? How she had dreamed to glory in herself; what
glories, for all I knew, had she not planned for the very next day! And
all, all to have gone in the seeming security of that very moment when
she had thought her rival out of the way! "New bicycles for old," she
had planned, a new free-wheel with packing about its saddle and string
and paper round its polished parts; but not a wheel would any bicycle
ever turn now to help her. The last she had seen of this man whose
destiny she had so arrogantly made her own was when he had shown her a
picture--a picture of her young victress, lying among white masonry as
ruined as Julia Oliphant's hope.
And even that she had had to ask to see.
The greengrocer under the Porche to the left was putting up his last
shutter, the seller of hardware and Breton pottery across the way had
already done so. Elsewhere from under the houses' bellies dim gleams of
light showed as if through horn. In the upper stories window shone into
window across the street--half Dinan is in bed by half-past nine. A
priest in soutane and pancake hat hurried past, glancing into my retreat
as he did so. Presently there was little light except that that streamed
from the doorway behind me, yellowing the artificial hedge and showing
the elephantine feet opposite--still where they were. Even this light
was darkened as a couple of _convives_, with a "Bonsoir, Madame,"
blocked the doorway for a moment, gave me also a muttered "Bonsoir," and
mingled with the shadows down the street. I watched them disappear.
But before they were quite lost among the trampling Porches there cut
across my opening, quick as a zoetrope-flicker, and with the single
little "ting" of an ill-adjusted bell, a bicycle.
My eyes function quite normally; but they are not an instantaneous
camera. In the tenth part of a second I had turned my head to the right
inside my little screen of privet. Alas! Round tubs, with more privet,
blocked either end. I sprang up, but the round table was in my way. I
extricated myself just one moment too late. I stood looking down the
dark Rue de la Cordonnerie.
But she had vanished.
She--not he; for even in that momentary flash there had been no
mistaking that uncovered red-gold head. But nothing else had been
familiar. A black shawl had enwrapped her shoulders, a green plaid skirt
had made an irregular rhomboid from the saddle downwards. Her stockings
were black, and white canvas shoes with jute soles covered her feet. On
the handle-bar had swung a basket, with parcels in it and a baton of
bread sticking out.
They were in Dinan after all.
III
In Dinan after all, and risking the visitors who arrived by the boat!
One moment though. There had been provisions in that basket on the
handle-bar. If I myself could clear off during the busy hours of the day
and take my omelette at a quiet roadside inn, what was there to prevent
their doing the same? She had been "buying in." Possibly she was now
cutting sandwiches for the morrow's consumption. Then, like myself, they
would return at night, in the hour when the shutters were being put up,
the Porches played heaven knew what gambols in the darkness, and even
the lights of the Bretagne were extinguished, the awnings rolled up and
the chairs and tables carried inside.
Or for that matter, they might be in Dinan for the night only, and off
on their bicycles in the morning.
Yet somehow there had been a settled look about that figure that had
passed the opening of the privet and been gone all in a moment. People
who stay only one night in a place usually have their buying-in done for
them. And if he was in vareuse and corduroys, her own dress had been
indistinguishable from that of almost any shop-assistant or ouvreuse one
might meet in the town. In vain had Alec and Madge gone through her
wardrobe to see what garments were missing. That part of his description
was useless. Only Madame Arnaud's face was Jennie Aird's.
I did not sit down again. I called inside the cafe, paid what I owed,
and walked slowly in the direction the bicycle had taken. There was now,
unfortunately, no hurry, and I considered this direction carefully. Two
streets led to the right, but one of these might be eliminated, since in
order to take it she would have had to skirt the shadow of the Porches,
which she could hardly have done without my seeing her. Remained the Rue
de la Cordonnerie. This is a narrower slit even than that made by the
Porches. The sign of a dingy little restaurant, dimly seen by the light
of a lantern high up in the middle of the street, alone seemed to keep
the two sides from bumping together. One makes one's way as best one can
between two gutters, none too pleasant to the nostrils, and to right and
left the low-windowed shops and eating-houses seem to have settled a
yard into the earth.
Then, half way down this alley, bicycles caught my eye. The murky light
from a half-open door on the right showed the gleam of a couple of
mudguards. I stepped over the gutter.
The next moment I had cursed myself for a fool. The officers from the
two great barracks of Duguesclin and Baumanoir dine at the Poste or at
the Bretagne, but there is not a cabaret or eating-house in the town
that is not nightly visited by the N.C.O.'s and men. To see half a
dozen bicycles stacked outside a doorway was the commonest of sights.
There were four or five of them here now.
Nevertheless I peeped through the half-open door. I saw a low smoky
kitchen interior, one half of it like any other kitchen, but the farther
end entirely occupied by a dresser crowded with bottles of all shapes
and sizes and colours. A fat little woman in a blue-checked apron and
lace cap was ironing; the rest of the table was a litter of kepis,
bottles and glasses. Through drifting cigarette-smoke men's bare heads
showed, the red breeches of dragoons, the black breeches of infantry,
and a couple of young fellows in horizon-blue, one with a steel cap on
his head. No woman's bicycle was likely to be found among those heavy
Service machines. I turned away.
So she had slipped me for the moment. But she was in Dinan. What to do
now?
Wire immediately to Alec, I supposed.
But as I crossed the Place Duguesclin I had a better idea. It was the
lights of the Poste showing under the dark limes that put it into my
head. Charlotte might be able to help me. Charlotte was the little
Italian-looking toulonnaise who served the cafes and _fines_ outside the
hotel and never failed to ask me how I had slept when she brought my
coffee and roll in the morning. My French, I ought to say, though
serviceable enough, is not of the same pure fount as was Derry's, and
Charlotte even more than the other ladies of the hotel took the most
charming and hospitable pains in talking with me. And I have always
found that, whether in another tongue or in your own, a great deal of
your ease depends on who you are talking to. What I mean is that
Charlotte and I were friends.
I walked into the large public room where Madame at her desk was casting
up her day's accounts. The chairs were being piled on the marble-topped
tables, and through the maze of their legs I saw that Charlotte had not
yet gone. That was my idea. I knew that Charlotte lived, not in the
hotel, but somewhere in the town, coming and going daily. I approached
her. I will give our low and brief conversation in English.
"Have you remarked in the town, Charlotte, a young woman of
such-and-such a manner of dress and such-and-such a face and hair,
especially the hair, who buys her bread and groceries a little late at
night and possibly on a bicycle?"
"The shops are closed when one leaves this hotel, M'sieu'," sighed
Charlotte.
"But you inhabit the town. I will re-describe." I did so. "If it were
possible to furnish me with renseignements----"
"Hold, M'sieu'. This lady is French?"
"Only exteriorly. Without doubt she speaks French, but as I do myself,
like a Spanish cow."
"Non, non, M'sieu'," Charlotte politely protested. "But wait. She is
alone?"
"She is with her French husband, the most beautiful young man even among
the beautiful young men of France." (I was glad Alec was not there to
hear me.)
Charlotte gave an exclamation. "Then it _is_ they!"
"Ah! And they live----?"
"I do not know, M'sieu'. But Dinan is not very large."
"Neither is this very large, Charlotte, but it may aggrandise
itself----"
And there passed between us certain pieces of postage-stamp-edging that
united the filthy remnants of what had once been the notes of a Chamber
of Commerce. I sought my candle and ascended to my room.
In Dinan! Well, it was quite like him to have cunningly read our minds,
anticipated our conclusions, and decided that Dinan was perhaps not so
unsafe after all. And his mastery of French would enable him to remain
obscure.
Yet one or two little things puzzled me. Jennie's French, for example,
was not remarkable; why then should he, able to bargain like a native to
the last cabbage-leaf, have risked discovery by sending her shopping
instead of going himself? Was another change coming? Had it come? Though
it could not now be externally a great one, was he none the less
nervous about it?... But it was no good guessing. If Charlotte had any
luck at all I should know in the morning. In the meantime bed was no bad
place.
My room looked on the inner courtyard of the hotel. I was asleep before
the lights of the staircases and windows opposite had ceased to flicker
over my ceiling and the wardrobe-mirror at my bed's foot.
I awoke to the sound of Dinan's bells. At first I could not remember
what it was of importance that I had on my mind. Then the mists of sleep
cleared away and it all came brightly back. I dressed hurriedly and
descended. Almost immediately Charlotte came to my table with my coffee
and my news.
And I had been right after all. They were at that house sunk a yard into
the earth in the Rue de la Cordonnerie where the soldiers' bicycles had
stood.
"And the name of the proprietor of the house?"
"C'est Madame Carguet, M'sieu'."
"Merci, Charlotte. You will buy yourself a hat for Sundays, but the best
in Dinan, it is understood----"
A quarter past nine found me at that low doorway into which I had peeped
the evening before. Madame stood at the table, washing lettuce in a
crock. I tapped and entered.
"Madame Carguet?"
"It is I, M'sieu'."
"I am a friend of the lady and gentleman who are staying with you. May I
see them?"
She had kind, vivacious and shrewd little eyes, which seemed to measure
me for a moment.
"And the name of M'sieu' who asks?"
I thought it possible that he might have left instructions about anybody
who might ask for him. In any case there was nothing for it but to be
open and above-board. I told her my name, corroborating my statement
with my card. She wiped her wet hands on her apron and took the card by
the extreme tip.
"Merci, M'sieu'. But actually it is that they have gone painting, taking
with them the provisions for the day, as every day."
"They will be back----?"
"This evening. Oh, assuredly, M'sieu'."
Then, whether my manner or my card reassured her, or however it was, her
face lighted up and she broke into a flood of ecstatic French of which I
understood perhaps one word in three.
"But it is just as I said to my husband, 'M'sieu'--the fairy-tale of
Cendrillon, just! 'Vieux sot, but where are your eyes?' I said. 'Regard
how she holds the fer-a-repasser to her cheek; did she ever before iron
a chemise or a coiffe in her life? Look at her hands which hold the
needle. It is not like you and me, ce couple-ci; it is of a different
order. You will see arrive the coach presently--justement Cendrillon!'
Ah, the beautiful pair! And he, so young, to have fought through this
terrible war! Mais oui, M'sieu', c'est vrai--but necessarily M'sieu'
knows better than I who tell him. At first one would not believe. The
poilus here, they would not believe. Who would believe? But mon Dieu, it
is true! Our Caporal Robert, he was at the very places. It is correct
absolutely--the regiments, the divisions, the commandants, the
tranchees, the boyaux, the dates--Caporal Robert can verify all, for he
too, he, was in contact with the English armies! To hear them talk of an
evening, M'sieu', yes, in this very room, while Madame sews or assists
me with the ironing or no matter what----"
"But they have only been here--how many days?"
"Four days, M'sieu'--but we love them. Ah, the difference when such as
they drop from the skies! It beautifies our life. C'est une fuite, sans
doute, M'sieu'?"
"A little; but all will be accommodated."
"You are a parent, M'sieu'?"
"I am a friend of the parents. I am un peu--ambassador."
"And they will return and be pardoned?"
"It is what I seek to arrange."
She had placed a chair for me. She herself sat with her back to the
table on the bench that had been occupied by the red-breeched dragoons
the night before I glanced round the room. Behind the open door the
inner tube of a bicycle hung on a nail in the wall, and a bicycle-pump
and an oilcan stood on a little shelf above it. Beneath the shelf was an
empty space, more than sufficient for a bicycle. I saw now how I had
missed her. She had wheeled her bicycle straight in and had put it
behind the door, had crossed the kitchen to a closed door on my right,
and had gone to her room--gone to where he waited for her, for he had
certainly not been among the soldiers when I had peeped in.
"You say that M'sieu' talks to the clients of an evening, Madame. Did he
do so last night?"
"Last night, no, M'sieu'. One missed him. But talk to them, he! For
three nights he has talked and laughed all the evening while she has
assisted me. Talk and laugh? C'est a dire! To hear him sing to the
copains--'En France y a qu' des Francais'--la figure, les gestes--c'est
a tordre!"
And sitting there she sought to give me the impression, singing his song
in a cracked voice:
"A part les Anglais, Americains,
Espagnols, Anamit's, Italiens,
Les Russes, Les Hollandais et les p'tits Japonais--
En France y a qu' des Francais!
Ah, but he is an original, he!"
"But why then was he not of the clientele last night?" I asked.
"I do not know, M'sieu'. Perhaps he was a little souffrant. It was
Madame who made les emplettes last night; ordinarily it is he, and oh,
M'sieu', M'sieu', pour les occasions!... She took her bicycle which
reposes behind the door there, and was gone scarcely a little half-hour,
and then she replaced the bicycle and mounted straight to him in the
room that is above."
"Did you see them go out this morning?"
"No, M'sieu'."
("Then, chere Madame," I thought to myself, "do not be surprised if you
do not see them return this evening.")
For this was newly disturbing. Apparently for three nights he had made
the purchases, as I had anticipated he would; then on the fourth night
he had sent her. For three nights he had sat in that half-underground
room, laughing and talking with the evening customers; then on the
fourth he had buried himself upstairs. I looked round the kitchen again.
I tried to see the picture--the incredulous poilus, questioning,
cross-questioning, demanding who was on his regiment's right, who on its
left, what division was in support, under whose command. Quite possibly
Caporal Robert had been had in specially to check his accuracy. What a
stroke of luck for him that he had actually served at a point of contact
between the British line and the French! And here in this room he had
sat, pulling their legs, as he had pulled mine in the Boulevard Feart,
Alec Aird's at Ker Annic. The cool impudence of his song! "Only
Frenchmen in France!" How he had laughed in his sleeve! Well might
Madame Carguet shake her head and say that he was impayable, he!
But--it (you know what I mean by "it") happened in the night; and what
was the appalling position now that his nights were shared with another?
Her too I tried to picture again in that lamplighted kitchen, clumsily
sewing, burning herself with the iron, with the poilus, grave and
respectful, but making the very utmost of their moustaches and stealing
covert glances at her as her head was down hung over the ironing-board.
"Une fuite"--obviously an elopement. Anyone could see that with half an
eye. But to what had she fled? To yet another of his transformations?
Slight though any transformation must now be, she knew every line of his
beautiful face, and what must be her consternation, what her alarm, did
but a single line alter, though it became more beautiful still?
And unless they returned to the Rue de la Cordonnerie to-night (which I
now entirely doubted), what was the good of telegraphing to Alec?
"You say he is painting, as every day," I said. "Has he any pictures in
the house at this moment?"
"Twenty or more, M'sieu'."
"They are in his room without doubt?"
"Oui, M'sieu'. At this moment even. After his departure this morning I
did his room with my own hands."
"He sells his pictures?"
She gave a shrug. "That I cannot say. He sketches the clients, but those
he gives away. Caporal Robert he drew as one should say himself, le
Caporal, breathing upon the paper. Evidemment he has exposed at the
Galleries. Are his pictures of great value, M'sieu'?"
"I am unable to say, Madame."
("But," I thought, "as it is a wager that those pictures upstairs and
that bicycle-pump behind the door will be his payment for his lodging,
it is to be hoped they are.")
I rose.
"Thank you, Madame. As to my visit to you, you will see that there is a
discretion to be observed. I shall return this evening at nine o'clock.
In the meantime it would give me great pleasure if you would share a
vermouth sec with me."
But she was on her feet instantly. "Non non non non! It is I who should
have remembered! We are going to drink to those two angels, but yes, at
the expense of the house, I implore! Et quand la Carosse de Cendrillon
arrivera a la porte ... non non, M'sieu', it is the house that pays ...
ah, but what insistence!... Well, well, as M'sieu' wishes----"
She busied herself among her bottles, humming to herself as she did so
the words of his song: "----et les p'tits Japonais, En France y a qu'
des Francais!"
I will not linger over the details of that day. I wandered aimlessly
hither and thither, out through St Louis' ancient gate, under the grey
walls of the Petits Fosses, back and forth in the shade of the tall
elms, stupid with too much thinking. I could only repeat over and over
to myself, "Another lapse, another lapse! That was why he kept to his
room last night. His landlady didn't see him go out this morning; she
won't see him come back to-night. It's happened again, and he's off
somewhere else. And she's with him. Poor child, poor, poor child!"
I lunched at the Poste, and in the afternoon walked again. But the
brilliance of the summer's day was lost on me. I thought that after all
I would go back to England. What was done was done, what was to come
would come. The sight-seers who wandered up and down under the Porches
or gaped in groups in the Place St Sauveur seemed unreal to me; the
shadow of what had probably again happened was my reality. Poor, poor
child! She, our lovely Jennie Aird, to alight on a broken wing in that
dingy kitchen, to sit among poilus, to listen to his mocking song! And
he, with that shadow darkening over both of them, could actually find it
in his heart to sing....
The visitors descended the Lainerie to the vedettes again; the Porches
watched them go; and once more I had the Place St Sauveur to myself.
Mechanically I entered the church. I closed the leather door softly
behind me as I became aware of a small group a little way up the aisle.
I slipped into the nearest pew, half concealed behind a pillar.
Apparently a christening was toward, for a stout little Frenchman with a
waxed moustache held a babe in his arms. He tickled the infant's chin
and allowed it to clutch his finger, chatting and laughing softly as
they waited for the priest. The priest appeared, followed by three or
four acolytes carrying candles; he also laughed and joked and chatted
quietly, while the cerise-coped urchins, their candles at all angles,
shifted their feet, leaned against the font, and looked negligently
round. There was an almost jocular intimacy about it all, until the
priest, in a secret, attentive and distinct voice that nevertheless
filled the aisle, began the Sacrament.... And I caught myself foolishly
wondering whether that babe too would grow up, have something
inexplicable happen to it, and set out on the return journey to the
cradle again. If to one, why not to another? Why not to all the world?
What was there to prevent one of those inattentive acolytes having by
and by the part of a George Coverham to play? Why should not that mite
of four holding her mother's hand turn out to be a Julia Oliphant? Or
those other wide-eyed tots be some future Madge and Alec Aird?... But it
occurred to me that these thoughts would not do. All at once I rose and
stole silently out. Even in a church there seemed to be no comfort for
me. This time I took a long walk, I hardly remember where, and did not
return till it was time for dinner.
I had very little hope of seeing the runaways, but I might as well keep
my appointment as not. At a little before nine, therefore, I turned into
the Rue de la Cordonnerie. As I did so my heart gave a leap to notice
that the window over the low doorway of the inn was lighted up.
With my eyes on the light I moved to the other side of the street.
Carved wooden corbals supported the overhanging bay, but the window
itself was modern. The light was apparently placed low down, on a chair
or on the floor, for half over the sagging ceiling I could see the
enormous soft shadow of somebody's head. The shadow moved, and the
somebody approached the window.
Then I saw the glint of her hair.
I entered the brasserie, bowed to Madame among her troopers, and looked
inquiringly towards the inner door. She had a candle ready. She lighted
it, opened the door, put the candle into my hand and one finger on her
lips, pointed up a staircase no wider than if two interior walls had
cracked slightly apart, and withdrew. I ascended.
Then, before I reached the landing, I heard his clear voice.
"I say, darling, what does 'belier' mean?"
IV
The door was a couple of inches ajar. The clear voice continued.
Apparently he was reading aloud.
"'La etait une tour dite Le Poulailler'--(poulaille's poultry)--'qui
renfermait Le Chat, machine de guerre'--(where the Chat, a machine of
war, was kept)--'sorte de belier a griffes pour les sieges'--something
with claws for sieges--now what on earth is 'belier'? Seems to have been
some sort of a battering-ram.... There, how stupid of me! Why, I've just
said the very word! 'Ram,' of course. They kept the battering-ram
there.... 'On peut visiter dans une maison voisine le passage en
casemate de la courtine'--sort of fortified wall, I expect--'et aussi
dans les caves de l'Hotel de la Poste'--and also in the cellars of the
Hotel de la Poste----"
Thereupon I pushed and entered.
He was sitting on a long, low chest, the sort of thing corn or flour
would be kept in, with the single candle by his side. In his hand was
the paper-covered guide-book from which he was laboriously reading. The
little table at which she stood was pushed up against the wall just
beyond him; she was preparing their supper. A long roll was tucked under
her left arm, and she spread the butter from a little casserole. A paper
of sausage was before her, with two of Madame's glasses and a bottle of
milk. In the corner by the window stood a bed with a draped canopy and a
crimson coverlet that resembled a souffle. Had you put a marble down on
that ancient floor heaven knows where it would have come to rest, for
the whole room was warped and distorted, as if indeed it had just
retired panting from its struggle with the house across the street.
Under the window his canvases were stacked. Near the bed's head hung a
single devotional picture, a Virgin and Child in blue and white and
gilt. The bed had to be where it was because of the window on the other
side of the way.
Then, before I could make my presence known, he flung the guide-book
across the room, sprang to his feet, opened his arms wide, ran towards
her, and clasped her rapturously to him.
"Oh, darling, darling! Isn't it simply ripping--_ripping_!"
I have never heard such a cry of pure happiness from human throat. He
made no attempt to kiss her; some far, far deeper joy seemed to possess
them. I had the most vivid impression that this was not the first nor
the second nor the tenth time that day they had clasped like that. He
was laughing down at her, she laughing softly back. She was fresh and
fair as a jonquil--yes, jonquil-hued even to her little gilding of
freckles, as if the flower's heart had burst with a happiness like their
own, and spread its golden dust around. And they seemed to adore, not so
much one another, as some wondrous secret that existed between them.
Then suddenly I saw her stiffen. She had seen me, and he had seen the
look in her eyes. Both heads turned swiftly, and they severed. I did not
move.
Then slowly my eyes moved from her face to his.
Not a trace of change could I distinguish. He was young, not too young,
grave, and filled with some exaltation that did not quite leave him as
our eyes looked into one another's.
"I must beg your pardon," I muttered.
He advanced towards me. "Why--Sir George!"
Then swiftly he glanced at her, she as swiftly at him.
The next moment her cheek was against my breast.
"Are they here?" she murmured in a failing voice.
I did not pretend not to understand. "No, Jennie, I'm here alone."
"How did you know we were here?"
"I'm staying in Dinan for a few days. I saw you last night."
She lifted her head. Again their eyes sought one another's. There was
something they were aching to communicate.
The room had two chairs, one a church chair with a rush bottom, the
other a straight-backed piece of carved Breton work, but so old that its
colour had become a dry dusty grey. He placed this chair for me, and sat
down again on the corn-bin. He was softly kneading his brown hands, as I
had formerly seen him do in Cambridge Circus. It is odd how these tricks
cling to one.
Then, his face again transfigured with that undivulged joy they shared,
he looked up at me. Jennie was back at her buttering again; apparently
he was to do the telling. I noticed that at any rate he had not
forgotten to buy her a ring. He caught my glance at it, and nodded
joyously.
"That's it," he said.
Once before he had asked me to talk French to him. I now had a reason
for speaking it unasked.
"Qu'est-ce que veut dire----" I said.
He laughed aloud.
"That's all right--you can talk English! Can't he talk English, Jennie?"
Jennie nodded.
"Suppose you talk it," I said.
"Rather! I'm going to tell him, Jennie.... English? Why, that's the
whole thing! Yesterday morning when I woke up"--he glanced towards the
bed by the window--"I hardly dared to believe it! They were talking down
in the street or somewhere, and all at once I wondered--what I mean is
that I couldn't quite catch it. It all seemed so quick and difficult,
just a lot of jabbering. Not a bit like we learned it: 'Je veux une
plume, de l'encre et du papier'--you know. So I lay there thinking,
looking up at the ceiling. Then I had an idea. I got quietly out of bed
and went to the door there." He nodded in the direction of the door now.
"I opened the door and called down to Madame. I've done that every
morning for cafe-au-lait, you see. Now here's the point."
He emphasised the point with a forefinger.
"There's a Breton word for cafe-au-lait. Don't ask me what it is; I
don't ever want to hear it again. Anyway, I'd used that word for three
mornings, and that morning I couldn't remember it for the life of me. I
thought perhaps if I just went to the door and called without stopping
to think it might come of itself, but not it! I had to ask for
cafe-au-lait, and of course up it came all right....
"Well, I didn't say a word to Jennie. We got up and went out sketching.
But forgetting that word, and all the French I heard sounding so awfully
funny and foreign, was on my mind all the time. And the next thing was
that I forgot the word for willow--I happened to be sketching some
willows. Couldn't think of the French for willow. And all day it was the
same. Some people came and looked over my shoulder while I was painting,
but all I could make out was the word 'Salon,' and, of course, that's
just as much English as French.
"Then I started talking bits of French to Jennie, and she got a bit
cross--didn't you, sweetheart? She thought I was pulling her leg about
her own French. And so it went on all day, and me getting more and more
excited about it. Then at night I told Jennie all about it. I told her
she'd have to go out and do the shopping, because I simply daren't. I'd
had little jokes with the shop people, you see, and I thought to myself,
'By Jove, if they joke back now I shan't have a word to say!' You see
what I'm getting at, don't you?"
Dismay filled my heart. So this was the magnificent news that had thrown
them so ecstatically into one another's arms! This was what had happened
in the night this time! He, who the evening before had sung to the
poilus downstairs, had had to send her to do their shopping! Little
enough to rejoice over, I thought. But he went on.
"Then to-night, just before you came in, it happened again. Some French
word or other, quite a simple one--I just couldn't remember the English
for it. It was hardly a moment before you came in. I tell you it's all
going away from me by leaps and bounds. Even when I know the words my
tongue won't pronounce them properly. And then you came in. You see what
it means, don't you?"
"What does it mean?" I managed to ask. It seemed to me to mean only one
thing--the beginning of the end.
"What does it mean?" he exulted. "Why, it means that I'm simply
_me_--just myself and none of this beastly Arnaud business--a fresh
start it means."
I glanced at Jennie. "I wonder whether you'd mind getting another glass
and letting me share your milk," I said.
Then, when the door had closed behind her, "This is simply the old thing
over again, Derry. You've talked about fresh starts before."
He laughed. "Is that all you sent her out for? She knows all about it.
Of course I really started some time ago. I think I told you so. All I'm
telling you this for now is because it absolutely clinches it!"
"How does forgetting clinch anything?"
"Because it _is_ forgetting!" he cried triumphantly, echoing and
confirming my own abstruse meditation as I had watched the shirley
poppies over the ramparts. "I say, I mustn't shout, though. I'm not
supposed to know any English except the few words Jennie's taught me.
Great jokes we've had about that! So doesn't this prove it? Why, what am
I doing remembering things all that time ago? I'm not perfectly right
till I've forgotten every single thing! And I'm forgetting without
trying; you can't try to forget. Heaps of things have gone besides
French--heaps of English things. Why, I've forgotten----"
"You remember me?"
"Yes. I met you at the Airds. I told you the whole story out at Le Port
one night. You can't have forgotten!"
"Hadn't we met before then?"
"Yes, I think we had. There was a pond, wasn't there? Wasn't it at some
house with a pond?"
"Do you remember a Miss Oliphant?"
"Oliphant? Yes--wait a bit--yes I do. I'd met her somewhere or other
too. But the last time I saw her was when she came for a bicycle. Why
they should have sent her I don't know, but of course I knew there was a
storm blowing up, so I simply gave her the bicycle and showed her a few
sketches, and let it go at that."
"You don't remember where you'd met her before, do you?"
"I know it was in England somewhere. But I didn't know you knew her till
Jennie told me."
"You really didn't know I knew Miss Oliphant?"
"Honestly I didn't, Sir George."
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 shirley 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 washing-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 unassisted, unhindered power, a white page
on which to write anew.
And what a lovely manuscript 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 surreptitious 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. Nobody 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
Sussex 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 buttons, 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 shipshape 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 pass 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 embarrassment. 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 passed 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.
"Tout va bien, M'sieu'?" she asked with anxious sympathy.
"Oui, Madame. The coach will take away your Cendrillon immediately."
"Is it not as I said to my husband! And M'sieu' Arnaud also goes?"
"Naturally. They will depart in a few minutes. As for their account, it
is I who will regulate that if you will prepare it for to-morrow. And
one does not buy goodness of heart, Madame; nevertheless----"
Nevertheless, in the short struggle of hands in the darkness, the hand
that proffered and the hand that refused, the hand that proffered was
the victor. I re-ascended to their room.
The other time I had not knocked, but this time I did so. They were as I
had left them--ready in what they stood up in. He carried the little
black bundle of her necessaries and his own. They took a last look round
that warped and wonderful and memory-haunted room....
But I had given them five minutes with its memories while I had
negotiated with Madame....
"Ready?" I said.
We descended that interior crack for the last time.
There was a sudden hush in the kitchen as we entered. The blonde heads,
the dark heads, turned above the tunics of black and horizon-blue, faces
watched us round the stacked-up kepis on the table. But though probably
little else had been talked of for the last hour, none was supposed to
know that I was the Fairy Godmother who had brought the coach for
Cinderella. Derry took no farewell of the copains who, with sundry other
nationalities, were the French population of France. Only Jennie ran
towards Madame and was pressed for a minute against a bosom well able to
sustain her weight. Derry got out the bicycles from behind the door.
Outside he walked ahead between them. Jennie and I followed him along
the Rue de la Cordonnerie.
A quarter of an hour later I had asked Madame at my hotel to be so
obliging as to allow me the use of her telephone. There was no telephone
at Ker Annic, but there was one at the Beverleys' hotel, and I knew that
Beverley would see to it that a message for Alec was delivered
immediately. I did not think it necessary to tell Beverley what it was
all about; I merely asked him to send word to the Airds that I wished to
see them in Dinan to-morrow.
Then I engaged another room--an ordinary hotel bedroom, where a
chambermaid would bring up hot water in the morning and a bath was to be
had for stepping across the corridor--just an ordinary hotel
bedroom--not a place of memories and romance like that tumbling old room
over that cabaret in the Rue de la Cordonnerie that looked as if it had
sunk a yard into the earth----