PART IV
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 storyof all, and the newest. It is told an infinitude of times, and yet, likethat first story of the cycle of a thousand, we do not remember to haveheard it before. Let us listen to it just once again.
No coral-reef breaks its ceaselessly-thundering rollers into surf, nopalms wave their dark fronds in the blue. Only a holiday-coast, with theLondon and South Western Company's steamers passing daily, and the knownand familiar trees of oak and ilex and lime. No garments of skins andnecklaces 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 andbranches that he who is with her toils to make with his own hands, butFrench 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 withpleasure-steamers running, and cars full of tourists coming and going,and the Rate of Exchange quoted daily, and the sound of a familiar andfriendly tongue everywhere. A Desert Island with guide-books andtime-tables, chars-a-bancs, the vedettes up the Rance, the excursions toMont St Michel. A Desert Island with cameras and picture-postcards andgreetings at every corner: "I didn't know you were over here! TheSo-and-Sos have just gone to Quimper. We're off to Concarneau onTuesday. Where are you staying, and did you ever know anything like theprice of golf-balls over here?" All over Haute Bretagne the same, allover Northern France the same; and somewhere among it all a DesertIsland _a deux_. Probably a moving one, on four bicycle-wheels. Butwhere look for it? In Dol? Lamballe? Rennes? In what arrondissement,canton, commune? There are many bicycles in France, but there is onlyone Island precisely like that one. For there is only one man who hasbeen forty-five years of age and is now eighteen, only one woman who,embracing him, has made her fate commensurate with his own. They areapart, unapproachable, unidentified, not to be communicated with thoughyou look into their faces and speak to them. Their nonentity is lost inthe multitudinousness of everything else. They keep no signal-firesburning day and night for your ship or mine that passes. They aremarooned in their own bliss, angelic castaways who will not return tous.
Only to see her, only to hear her voice----
Only on a fatal day to tell her his name, the name of that prisoner inthe Tower that may not be spoken----
Only to send back a bicycle to a shop (but to trust her to guess thatwhere a bicycle would be left a letter would also be left, and anappointment made at some secret hour between a _the dansant_ and bedtimethat night).
Only to cut the knot that no power on earth could untie, to fetch thatfree-wheel back from the shop under cover of the darkness, and to be offand 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 timeshave changed since Madge sat in her mother's carriage waiting until thisservant, and not that one, opened the door. It is no good telling Madgehe told her so. He can disown Jennie or he can take her back, but thereis no middle way. The consul in the Rue St Philippe at St Malo cannothelp him, and at the Mairie at St Briac they will run through the filesof the _permis de sejour_ in vain. He can whisper--he has whispered--inthe ears of the police, and they may run the pair to earth, but it willnot be to the earth of that magical island of theirs. And let Alecagonise in Agony Columns as much as he will. He can forgive her, or shecan 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 thenear and dear heart. But only by those who envy not and vaunt not, whosuffer long and are kind. If sin there has been it must have been takenaway 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 throughthe lashes of its opening eye. It looks up with the mounting rays, andits 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 inthe Jardin des Anglais in Dinan, alone. The Airds were still at KerAnnic, Julia Oliphant still with them; but I, although their guest andunder promise to return to them, had absented myself for a few days. Ihad done this as much for their sake as for my own. Alec was out allday, or if not out hardly to be seen by the rest of us. Julia and Madgewere better together without me. So I had made no falsely delicateexcuse. I had told them exactly what I am saying at this moment. And Ithink they had been grateful.
The garden looks east over the viaduct of Lanvallay, and above the mistyviolet that enshrouded the land a trail of pale shirley poppies wasstrung out over the sky--the leagues of cloud-tops caught by the last ofthe sun. The parapet in front of me hid all else as I sat. One or twopeople stood against it, looking out over the abyss; a few others movedslowly along the ramparts. The limes above me were already benighted,the dark mass of St Sauveur hidden behind them. The crowded vedettes hadlong since departed, and the comparatively few visitors who stay inDinan were probably at the Cafe de Bretagne at the other side of thetown.
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 tosupport it, such mazes of spiritual conjecture did it open up. Once moreI will do the best I can with it. Understand, to begin with, that he hadnow repeated what I had better call the "experience of the flash-lamp."Formerly it had been Julia; now it was Jennie. Therefore this, ifanything, 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 haddisappeared from his rooms in Cambridge Circus, when he had leftTrenchard's rooms in South Kensington and had got to France by swimmingthe Channel, leaped upon me again on the ramparts of that ancient Frenchtown.
How old was he now?
But no, I have not finished yet. Let us take it a little further. Thestate of his memory at this point was a matter of the most urgentimportance, since I now began to suspect that the whole of his chance ofagain 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 struckme, sitting there watching the shirley poppies in the east with StSauveur dark among the limes behind me.
When you or I forget a thing our forgetting does not mean that thatthing never was. Would to God it sometimes did! But you and I do notlive backwards through our years, and we are dealing now with a man whodid. 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 evenkeel, he _should_ presently begin to forge ahead again? In that case hewould once more be advancing on the unknown. His future to him would bewhat your future is to you, mine to me. And it is a condition of afuture's being a future that it _shall not already have been_. Whatother future than that is there? There was no man living, Derwent Roseor anybody else, who had _not_ a future. And when a thing has not beenit has not been, and there is the end of it. He was, quite simply, andexactly as you once were, exactly as I once was, young with a single ageagain. With the disappearance of his last "A" recollection, past timeitself 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 weekago, namely, his promise to me. Nay, that must have gone before everthey fled, for nothing would have been easier for him than to send me anote demanding his release from his word. But gone how, and when?Remember, my own last actual sight of him had been by Frehel's Lightwhen we had stood by the Crucifix that overlooks St Briac harbour. Mylast direct word from him had been that note that Jennie had brought, inwhich he had reassured me that he was to be trusted, at any rate till Iwas out and about again. And my last news of him of any kind prior totheir flight was that he had sat with Jennie among the sarrasin sheaves.Therefore whatever had happened had happened during the few days betweenhis writing his note and Noble's discovery of them and speeding to KerAnnic 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 hadconspicuously failed to mind his own business, and we had all been setby the ears.
So far so good. His "A" memory might have broken down on any of thesedays.
And yet on the very next day he had greeted Miss Oliphant by name! Hehad not only remembered her when she had presented herself at his hotel,but had remembered her in the rather curious sense that, whereas she hadformerly 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 Iremembered Dinan only imperfectly, it was for evenings such as this thatI had come. It was a certainty that Derry and Jennie would never come toDinan, where, when the tides served, half a dozen packet-boats a daymight bring their loads of visitors from the very place from which theyhad fled. During the hours when the excursionists thronged the old townit was simple for me to get out into the surrounding country, to take anomelette at some inn or other, and to return to dinner. At other statesof the tide the passage by river was impracticable, and few strangerswere to be seen.
The poppies went out of the sky almost suddenly. Over the parapet allwas a soft violet vapour. But when I rose and turned slowly up the PlaceSt Sauveur my thoughts still gave me their shadowy company.
But one shadow was spared me. This was the fear with which I had mountedthe stairs of his lodging at St Briac. Had he not been living, she atany rate would have been heard of at Ker Annic before this. It was forthis that poor Alec telegraphed, advertised, instructed agents. Not thathe must not have him as well as her. Though he showed him the doorimmediately afterwards, this Arnaud must marry Jennie first.
And the chances of tracing him were now far different from those when Ihad fruitlessly sought him in London, only to have him put his hand onmy shoulder in a Shaftesbury Avenue picture-house in the end. For he hadbeen a middle-aged man then, with all the bolt-holes of his successivepersonal appearances to dodge fantastically in and out of. Then, anight, any night, might have made him unrecognisable, nameless, a ghostamong living men. But between eighteen and sixteen is no very greatdifference. He might be a little less tall, a little less broad, butsomewhere between those two years he was cornered. His description wascirculated, hers did not vary. They had been gone four days. Probably aweek at the outside would see him touched on the shoulder in this placeor that, a "Pardon, M'sieu'" spoken in his ear, and back to Alec hewould go.
And though I have said as a foolish figure of speech that on thatmagical Island of theirs they were unapproachably alone, that was theimportant 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 calledthat it ought to be, for these Porches stride out over the pavement ontheir ancient legs of stone and wood as if to knock together theoverhanging brows of their fantastic upper stories. Indeed one would saythat the stalls and shops and barrows tunnelled beneath them had but amoment before been flush with those ancient facades, and that at a callthe whole house had suddenly advanced a pace, and the next moment mightadvance another. And if you take a chest of drawers, and draw the bottomdrawer out a little, and the one above a little more, and the one abovethat a little more still, and then set opposite to it another chest ofdrawers to which you have done the same, you will have the appearance ofthose carved and corbelled and enriched and decaying frontages. I passedunder their trampling legs and sought my cafe.
I don't remember ever actually entering that cafe in my life. Ipreferred either of the two tiny round pavement-tables that stood one oneither side of its low doorway. There was just room to squeeze inbetween the two portable hedges of privet that stood in long woodenboxes on the kerb; and from this seat, unless they happened to be comingtowards you under the Porches or going directly away, little more than aglimpse of passers-by could be had through the narrow opening. If theyhappened to pass on a bicycle it was the merest zoetrope-flicker andthey were gone.
I sat down, called for coffee and a _fine_, and watched the shopkeepersopposite putting up their shutters for the night.
One thing at any rate seemed now to be over and done with, and that waspoor Julia Oliphant's desperate adventure. Poor woman, it was as muchfor her sake as theirs that I had left the Airds for a few days. Couldshe have done the same and have gone back to England it might have beenas well, but that would have been to leave Madge insupportably alone. Asingle day in that daughterless house had been enough for me. The nextmorning I had made my explanation, had promised to return, had made afew purchases, and had packed my bag. Any news was to be wired ortelephoned to me at the Poste. That briefly-concluded arrangement hadbeen practically the whole of my conversation with Madge.
With Julia I had had even fewer words; for what was there to say? Evento Madge one could hardly have committed the grossness and superfluityof saying that one was sorry; what then of Julia? Was I sorry? Forherself my heart bled; but was I sorry for the miscarriage of hervehement and tremendous attempt?
Yet how remember her as I had found her in the salon on the morning ofthe 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 beenwhiter than her face nor the auracaria darker than her sombre lashes andringed 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 tobe 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 therewas anything I could do for herself.
But
if not because she had failed, at least because of this all-at-oncedropping of the bottom out of everything for which she had lived, oneheart in Dinan resumed its ache for her that night. Stratagems learnedof any man, though she broke his heart with a laugh in the learning--andthen to have her own broken! Arms to provoke the world--and no world tobe provoked now that he, her world, had failed her! Nothing had been toolittle for her, nothing too great. Officers' Woodbines and her adorationof his painting, his years of war and a hat that hid one eye! What werethose arms and shoulders of hers but his own gesture, ready to be givenback to him, when he had shown himself in my swimming-pond, in thatstudio in Cremorne Road? How she had dreamed to glory in herself; whatglories, for all I knew, had she not planned for the very next day! Andall, all to have gone in the seeming security of that very moment whenshe had thought her rival out of the way! "New bicycles for old," shehad planned, a new free-wheel with packing about its saddle and stringand paper round its polished parts; but not a wheel would any bicycleever turn now to help her. The last she had seen of this man whosedestiny she had so arrogantly made her own was when he had shown her apicture--a picture of her young victress, lying among white masonry asruined 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 lastshutter, the seller of hardware and Breton pottery across the way hadalready done so. Elsewhere from under the houses' bellies dim gleams oflight showed as if through horn. In the upper stories window shone intowindow across the street--half Dinan is in bed by half-past nine. Apriest in soutane and pancake hat hurried past, glancing into my retreatas he did so. Presently there was little light except that that streamedfrom the doorway behind me, yellowing the artificial hedge and showingthe elephantine feet opposite--still where they were. Even this lightwas darkened as a couple of _convives_, with a "Bonsoir, Madame,"blocked the doorway for a moment, gave me also a muttered "Bonsoir," andmingled with the shadows down the street. I watched them disappear.
But before they were quite lost among the trampling Porches there cutacross my opening, quick as a zoetrope-flicker, and with the singlelittle "ting" of an ill-adjusted bell, a bicycle.
My eyes function quite normally; but they are not an instantaneouscamera. In the tenth part of a second I had turned my head to the rightinside 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. Iextricated myself just one moment too late. I stood looking down thedark Rue de la Cordonnerie.
But she had vanished.
She--not he; for even in that momentary flash there had been nomistaking that uncovered red-gold head. But nothing else had beenfamiliar. A black shawl had enwrapped her shoulders, a green plaid skirthad made an irregular rhomboid from the saddle downwards. Her stockingswere black, and white canvas shoes with jute soles covered her feet. Onthe handle-bar had swung a basket, with parcels in it and a baton ofbread 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 thehandle-bar. If I myself could clear off during the busy hours of the dayand take my omelette at a quiet roadside inn, what was there to preventtheir doing the same? She had been "buying in." Possibly she was nowcutting sandwiches for the morrow's consumption. Then, like myself, theywould return at night, in the hour when the shutters were being put up,the Porches played heaven knew what gambols in the darkness, and eventhe lights of the Bretagne were extinguished, the awnings rolled up andthe chairs and tables carried inside.
Or for that matter, they might be in Dinan for the night only, and offon their bicycles in the morning.
Yet somehow there had been a settled look about that figure that hadpassed the opening of the privet and been gone all in a moment. Peoplewho stay only one night in a place usually have their buying-in done forthem. And if he was in vareuse and corduroys, her own dress had beenindistinguishable from that of almost any shop-assistant or ouvreuse onemight meet in the town. In vain had Alec and Madge gone through herwardrobe to see what garments were missing. That part of his descriptionwas 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. Twostreets led to the right, but one of these might be eliminated, since inorder 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 Ruede la Cordonnerie. This is a narrower slit even than that made by thePorches. The sign of a dingy little restaurant, dimly seen by the lightof a lantern high up in the middle of the street, alone seemed to keepthe two sides from bumping together. One makes one's way as best one canbetween two gutters, none too pleasant to the nostrils, and to right andleft the low-windowed shops and eating-houses seem to have settled ayard into the earth.
Then, half way down this alley, bicycles caught my eye. The murky lightfrom a half-open door on the right showed the gleam of a couple ofmudguards. I stepped over the gutter.
The next moment I had cursed myself for a fool. The officers from thetwo great barracks of Duguesclin and Baumanoir dine at the Poste or atthe Bretagne, but there is not a cabaret or eating-house in the townthat is not nightly visited by the N.C.O.'s and men. To see half adozen 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 smokykitchen interior, one half of it like any other kitchen, but the fartherend entirely occupied by a dresser crowded with bottles of all shapesand sizes and colours. A fat little woman in a blue-checked apron andlace cap was ironing; the rest of the table was a litter of kepis,bottles and glasses. Through drifting cigarette-smoke men's bare headsshowed, the red breeches of dragoons, the black breeches of infantry,and a couple of young fellows in horizon-blue, one with a steel cap onhis head. No woman's bicycle was likely to be found among those heavyService machines. I turned away.
So she had slipped me for the moment. But she was in Dinan. What to donow?
Wire immediately to Alec, I supposed.
But as I crossed the Place Duguesclin I had a better idea. It was thelights of the Poste showing under the dark limes that put it into myhead. Charlotte might be able to help me. Charlotte was the littleItalian-looking toulonnaise who served the cafes and _fines_ outside thehotel and never failed to ask me how I had slept when she brought mycoffee and roll in the morning. My French, I ought to say, thoughserviceable enough, is not of the same pure fount as was Derry's, andCharlotte even more than the other ladies of the hotel took the mostcharming and hospitable pains in talking with me. And I have alwaysfound that, whether in another tongue or in your own, a great deal ofyour ease depends on who you are talking to. What I mean is thatCharlotte and I were friends.
I walked into the large public room where Madame at her desk was castingup her day's accounts. The chairs were being piled on the marble-toppedtables, and through the maze of their legs I saw that Charlotte had notyet gone. That was my idea. I knew that Charlotte lived, not in thehotel, but somewhere in the town, coming and going daily. I approachedher. I will give our low and brief conversation in English.
"Have you remarked in the town, Charlotte, a young woman ofsuch-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 atnight and possibly on a bicycle?"
"The shops are closed when one leaves this hotel, M'sieu'," sighedCharlotte.
"But you inhabit the town. I will re-describe." I did so. "If it werepossible 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 Spanis
h cow."
"Non, non, M'sieu'," Charlotte politely protested. "But wait. She isalone?"
"She is with her French husband, the most beautiful young man even amongthe beautiful young men of France." (I was glad Alec was not there tohear 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 aggrandiseitself----"
And there passed between us certain pieces of postage-stamp-edging thatunited the filthy remnants of what had once been the notes of a Chamberof 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 sounsafe after all. And his mastery of French would enable him to remainobscure.
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 tothe last cabbage-leaf, have risked discovery by sending her shoppinginstead of going himself? Was another change coming? Had it come? Thoughit could not now be externally a great one, was he none the lessnervous about it?... But it was no good guessing. If Charlotte had anyluck at all I should know in the morning. In the meantime bed was no badplace.
My room looked on the inner courtyard of the hotel. I was asleep beforethe lights of the staircases and windows opposite had ceased to flickerover 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 rememberwhat it was of importance that I had on my mind. Then the mists of sleepcleared away and it all came brightly back. I dressed hurriedly anddescended. Almost immediately Charlotte came to my table with my coffeeand my news.
And I had been right after all. They were at that house sunk a yard intothe earth in the Rue de la Cordonnerie where the soldiers' bicycles hadstood.
"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 bestin Dinan, it is understood----"
A quarter past nine found me at that low doorway into which I had peepedthe evening before. Madame stood at the table, washing lettuce in acrock. 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 Isee them?"
She had kind, vivacious and shrewd little eyes, which seemed to measureme for a moment.
"And the name of M'sieu' who asks?"
I thought it possible that he might have left instructions about anybodywho might ask for him. In any case there was nothing for it but to beopen and above-board. I told her my name, corroborating my statementwith my card. She wiped her wet hands on her apron and took the card bythe extreme tip.
"Merci, M'sieu'. But actually it is that they have gone painting, takingwith 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, herface lighted up and she broke into a flood of ecstatic French of which Iunderstood perhaps one word in three.
"But it is just as I said to my husband, 'M'sieu'--the fairy-tale ofCendrillon, just! 'Vieux sot, but where are your eyes?' I said. 'Regardhow she holds the fer-a-repasser to her cheek; did she ever before irona chemise or a coiffe in her life? Look at her hands which hold theneedle. It is not like you and me, ce couple-ci; it is of a differentorder. You will see arrive the coach presently--justement Cendrillon!'Ah, the beautiful pair! And he, so young, to have fought through thisterrible 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. Thepoilus here, they would not believe. Who would believe? But mon Dieu, itis true! Our Caporal Robert, he was at the very places. It is correctabsolutely--the regiments, the divisions, the commandants, thetranchees, the boyaux, the dates--Caporal Robert can verify all, for hetoo, he, was in contact with the English armies! To hear them talk of anevening, M'sieu', yes, in this very room, while Madame sews or assistsme 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 asthey drop from the skies! It beautifies our life. C'est une fuite, sansdoute, 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 thetable on the bench that had been occupied by the red-breeched dragoonsthe night before I glanced round the room. Behind the open door theinner tube of a bicycle hung on a nail in the wall, and a bicycle-pumpand an oilcan stood on a little shelf above it. Beneath the shelf was anempty space, more than sufficient for a bicycle. I saw now how I hadmissed her. She had wheeled her bicycle straight in and had put itbehind 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 hadcertainly not been among the soldiers when I had peeped in.
"You say that M'sieu' talks to the clients of an evening, Madame. Did hedo so last night?"
"Last night, no, M'sieu'. One missed him. But talk to them, he! Forthree nights he has talked and laughed all the evening while she hasassisted me. Talk and laugh? C'est a dire! To hear him sing to thecopains--'En France y a qu' des Francais'--la figure, les gestes--c'esta tordre!"
And sitting there she sought to give me the impression, singing his songin 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 wasMadame who made les emplettes last night; ordinarily it is he, and oh,M'sieu', M'sieu', pour les occasions!... She took her bicycle whichreposes behind the door there, and was gone scarcely a little half-hour,and then she replaced the bicycle and mounted straight to him in theroom 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 youdo not see them return this evening.")
For this was newly disturbing. Apparently for three nights he had madethe purchases, as I had anticipated he would; then on the fourth nighthe had sent her. For three nights he had sat in that half-undergroundroom, laughing and talking with the evening customers; then on thefourth 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 itsleft, what division was in support, under whose command. Quite possiblyCaporal Robert had been had in specially to check his accuracy. What astroke of luck for him that he had actually served at a point of contactbetween the British line and the French! And here in this room he hadsat, pulling their legs, as he had pulled mine in the Boulevard Feart,Alec Aird's at Ker Annic. The cool impudence of his song! "OnlyFrenchmen in France!" How he had laughed in his sleeve! Well mightMadame 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 whatwas the appalling position now that his nights were shared with another?Her too I tried to picture again in that lamplighted kitchen, clumsilysewing, burning herself with the iron, with the poilus, grave andrespectful, but making the very utmost of their moustaches and stealingcovert glances at her as her head was down hung
over the ironing-board."Une fuite"--obviously an elopement. Anyone could see that with half aneye. But to what had she fled? To yet another of his transformations?Slight though any transformation must now be, she knew every line of hisbeautiful face, and what must be her consternation, what her alarm, didbut a single line alter, though it became more beautiful still?
And unless they returned to the Rue de la Cordonnerie to-night (which Inow entirely doubted), what was the good of telegraphing to Alec?
"You say he is painting, as every day," I said. "Has he any pictures inthe 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 Idid his room with my own hands."
"He sells his pictures?"
She gave a shrug. "That I cannot say. He sketches the clients, but thosehe gives away. Caporal Robert he drew as one should say himself, leCaporal, breathing upon the paper. Evidemment he has exposed at theGalleries. 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 andthat 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 adiscretion 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 avermouth sec with me."
But she was on her feet instantly. "Non non non non! It is I who shouldhave remembered! We are going to drink to those two angels, but yes, atthe expense of the house, I implore! Et quand la Carosse de Cendrillonarrivera 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 sothe 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 aimlesslyhither and thither, out through St Louis' ancient gate, under the greywalls of the Petits Fosses, back and forth in the shade of the tallelms, stupid with too much thinking. I could only repeat over and overto myself, "Another lapse, another lapse! That was why he kept to hisroom last night. His landlady didn't see him go out this morning; shewon't see him come back to-night. It's happened again, and he's offsomewhere else. And she's with him. Poor child, poor, poor child!"
I lunched at the Poste, and in the afternoon walked again. But thebrilliance of the summer's day was lost on me. I thought that after allI would go back to England. What was done was done, what was to comewould come. The sight-seers who wandered up and down under the Porchesor gaped in groups in the Place St Sauveur seemed unreal to me; theshadow of what had probably again happened was my reality. Poor, poorchild! She, our lovely Jennie Aird, to alight on a broken wing in thatdingy kitchen, to sit among poilus, to listen to his mocking song! Andhe, with that shadow darkening over both of them, could actually find itin his heart to sing....
The visitors descended the Lainerie to the vedettes again; the Porcheswatched them go; and once more I had the Place St Sauveur to myself.
Mechanically I entered the church. I closed the leather door softlybehind 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 awaxed moustache held a babe in his arms. He tickled the infant's chinand allowed it to clutch his finger, chatting and laughing softly asthey waited for the priest. The priest appeared, followed by three orfour acolytes carrying candles; he also laughed and joked and chattedquietly, while the cerise-coped urchins, their candles at all angles,shifted their feet, leaned against the font, and looked negligentlyround. There was an almost jocular intimacy about it all, until thepriest, in a secret, attentive and distinct voice that neverthelessfilled the aisle, began the Sacrament.... And I caught myself foolishlywondering whether that babe too would grow up, have somethinginexplicable happen to it, and set out on the return journey to thecradle 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 byand by the part of a George Coverham to play? Why should not that miteof four holding her mother's hand turn out to be a Julia Oliphant? Orthose other wide-eyed tots be some future Madge and Alec Aird?... But itoccurred to me that these thoughts would not do. All at once I rose andstole silently out. Even in a church there seemed to be no comfort forme. This time I took a long walk, I hardly remember where, and did notreturn till it was time for dinner.
I had very little hope of seeing the runaways, but I might as well keepmy appointment as not. At a little before nine, therefore, I turned intothe Rue de la Cordonnerie. As I did so my heart gave a leap to noticethat 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 windowitself was modern. The light was apparently placed low down, on a chairor on the floor, for half over the sagging ceiling I could see theenormous soft shadow of somebody's head. The shadow moved, and thesomebody approached the window.
Then I saw the glint of her hair.
I entered the brasserie, bowed to Madame among her troopers, and lookedinquiringly towards the inner door. She had a candle ready. She lightedit, opened the door, put the candle into my hand and one finger on herlips, pointed up a staircase no wider than if two interior walls hadcracked 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)--'quirenfermait Le Chat, machine de guerre'--(where the Chat, a machine ofwar, was kept)--'sorte de belier a griffes pour les sieges'--somethingwith claws for sieges--now what on earth is 'belier'? Seems to have beensome sort of a battering-ram.... There, how stupid of me! Why, I've justsaid the very word! 'Ram,' of course. They kept the battering-ramthere.... 'On peut visiter dans une maison voisine le passage encasemate de la courtine'--sort of fortified wall, I expect--'et aussidans les caves de l'Hotel de la Poste'--and also in the cellars of theHotel de la Poste----"
Thereupon I pushed and entered.
He was sitting on a long, low chest, the sort of thing corn or flourwould be kept in, with the single candle by his side. In his hand wasthe paper-covered guide-book from which he was laboriously reading. Thelittle table at which she stood was pushed up against the wall justbeyond him; she was preparing their supper. A long roll was tucked underher left arm, and she spread the butter from a little casserole. A paperof sausage was before her, with two of Madame's glasses and a bottle ofmilk. In the corner by the window stood a bed with a draped canopy and acrimson coverlet that resembled a souffle. Had you put a marble down onthat ancient floor heaven knows where it would have come to rest, forthe whole room was warped and distorted, as if indeed it had justretired panting from its struggle with the house across the street.Under the window his canvases were stacked. Near the bed's head hung asingle devotional picture, a Virgin and Child in blue and white andgilt. The bed had to be where it was because of the window on the otherside of the way.
Then, before I could make my presence known, he flung the guide-bookacross the room, sprang to his feet, opened his arms wide, ran towardsher, 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. Hemade no attempt to kiss her; some far, far deeper joy seemed to possessthem. I had the most vivid impression that this was not the first northe second nor the tenth time that day they had clasped like that. Hewas
laughing down at her, she laughing softly back. She was fresh andfair as a jonquil--yes, jonquil-hued even to her little gilding offreckles, as if the flower's heart had burst with a happiness like theirown, and spread its golden dust around. And they seemed to adore, not somuch one another, as some wondrous secret that existed between them.
Then suddenly I saw her stiffen. She had seen me, and he had seen thelook in her eyes. Both heads turned swiftly, and they severed. I did notmove.
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 asour 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 wassomething they were aching to communicate.
The room had two chairs, one a church chair with a rush bottom, theother a straight-backed piece of carved Breton work, but so old that itscolour had become a dry dusty grey. He placed this chair for me, and satdown again on the corn-bin. He was softly kneading his brown hands, as Ihad formerly seen him do in Cambridge Circus. It is odd how these trickscling 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; apparentlyhe was to do the telling. I noticed that at any rate he had notforgotten to buy her a ring. He caught my glance at it, and noddedjoyously.
"That's it," he said.
Once before he had asked me to talk French to him. I now had a reasonfor 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 thewhole thing! Yesterday morning when I woke up"--he glanced towards thebed by the window--"I hardly dared to believe it! They were talking downin the street or somewhere, and all at once I wondered--what I mean isthat 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 uneplume, 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 bedand 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 everymorning 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; Idon't ever want to hear it again. Anyway, I'd used that word for threemornings, and that morning I couldn't remember it for the life of me. Ithought perhaps if I just went to the door and called without stoppingto think it might come of itself, but not it! I had to ask forcafe-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 awfullyfunny and foreign, was on my mind all the time. And the next thing wasthat I forgot the word for willow--I happened to be sketching somewillows. Couldn't think of the French for willow. And all day it was thesame. 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'sjust as much English as French.
"Then I started talking bits of French to Jennie, and she got a bitcross--didn't you, sweetheart? She thought I was pulling her leg abouther own French. And so it went on all day, and me getting more and moreexcited about it. Then at night I told Jennie all about it. I told hershe'd have to go out and do the shopping, because I simply daren't. I'dhad 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 seewhat I'm getting at, don't you?"
Dismay filled my heart. So this was the magnificent news that had thrownthem so ecstatically into one another's arms! This was what had happenedin the night this time! He, who the evening before had sung to thepoilus downstairs, had had to send her to do their shopping! Littleenough to rejoice over, I thought. But he went on.
"Then to-night, just before you came in, it happened again. Some Frenchword or other, quite a simple one--I just couldn't remember the Englishfor it. It was hardly a moment before you came in. I tell you it's allgoing away from me by leaps and bounds. Even when I know the words mytongue won't pronounce them properly. And then you came in. You see whatit means, don't you?"
"What does it mean?" I managed to ask. It seemed to me to mean only onething--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 freshstart it means."
I glanced at Jennie. "I wonder whether you'd mind getting another glassand letting me share your milk," I said.
Then, when the door had closed behind her, "This is simply the old thingover 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'mtelling you this for now is because it absolutely clinches it!"
"How does forgetting clinch anything?"
"Because it _is_ forgetting!" he cried triumphantly, echoing andconfirming my own abstruse meditation as I had watched the shirleypoppies over the ramparts. "I say, I mustn't shout, though. I'm notsupposed 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 amI doing remembering things all that time ago? I'm not perfectly righttill I've forgotten every single thing! And I'm forgetting withouttrying; you can't try to forget. Heaps of things have gone besidesFrench--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 Portone 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 somehouse with a pond?"
"Do you remember a Miss Oliphant?"
"Oliphant? Yes--wait a bit--yes I do. I'd met her somewhere or othertoo. But the last time I saw her was when she came for a bicycle. Whythey should have sent her I don't know, but of course I knew there was astorm blowing up, so I simply gave her the bicycle and showed her a fewsketches, 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 tillJennie 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? Itseemed to me that with the clearing up of one other point I should havean idea of how matters really stood. I turned to Jennie.
"Derry's still talking about the great news," I said. "He says you knowall about it. Well, I want you to tell me one thing. Does he remembereverything 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 themoment 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 hasgone?"
"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'tremember 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. Iremembered his own trouble and unbelief when it had first occurred tohim that this astounding development might lie ahead. Wistfully he hadput it aside as too dazzling to be entertained. "I suppose that's toomuch 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 certainlyseemed to have the proof of it. His face had been puzzled candour itselfwhen I had put my sudden questions: Had he and I met before, and did heknow a Miss Oliphant? Vaguely he remembered a pond, vaguely a MissOliphant in England; and to-morrow he was not going to remember either.My hazardous surmise as I had watched the shirley poppies wasjustified, 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. Whatnext happened in the night would be what happens to every one of usevery night--the gentle and beautiful small forward step to age. He wasall but at the maximum of his unassisted, unhindered power, a white pageon 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, hewould probably retain; but thereafter his life dated from a certainmoment when, by the upcast glow of the headlights of a French car, hehad seen Jennie Aird's eyes looking into his. He even spoke as if histalk with me that night by Le Port gap had been the beginning of hisconfidence in me. Not a suspicion did he seem to have that he had madesimilar confidences before, in his rooms in Cambridge Circus, in thatloft over a South Kensington mews. That meeting of eyes across thecar--that swift "Who was that with you in the garden, George?"--his wilyshepherding of me into the Dinard Bazaar--his surreptitious meetingswith her, and his last crowning escapade--these made up the wholehistory of his re-created life. Within this perfect period he hadforgotten nothing ... but yes, he had forgotten one thing. This was hispromise to me. And very likely he had not forgotten that at all. Thechances were that he had knowingly and deliberately broken his word. Andwhat of it? Who was I to have extorted it from him? Could I reproach himwith that--now? Is the law so hard? Shall we add to the tortures ofTantalus the unbinding of his hands, and forbid him to seize the fruithe thirsts for? Let him cut the knot and take his joy! At the worst hehad merely omitted to send me a note releasing himself. And should Ispeak of that--now?
So, if he was eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, he was--simply--eighteenor seventeen or sixteen. What, by that fact, mattered hisbirth-certificate? If he was not the age he was, what age was he? Howold 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 anothermatter. But out of that ancient mould of his former history a new sprouthad pushed, sweet, vigorous, and identical with itself. That shoot wasDerwent Rose. If it was not Derwent Rose where then was Derwent Rose? NoDerwent Rose had died. If you would find him you must seek him among theliving. Or if any Derwent Rose had died, it was the author of _The Handsof Esau_ and _The Vicarage of Bray_. Dead indeed he might be; for nolink now existed between him and his youth, unlettered in anything butthe perfection of a beautiful love. He stood in that sagging room in theRue de la Cordonnerie, what he was and nothing else. He had been it aslong as he had been it, and neither more time nor less. No power onearth 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 thetable. They were munching their bread and sausage.
"That's perfectly simple," said Derry. "As I've told you, that sillyArnaud business is all over. I'm Derwent Rose. Nobody can say I'mimpersonating him, can they? So I must _be_ him, and if I'm him it'sjust like anybody else being themselves. And I'm awfully sorry it had tobe tip-and-run, but there wasn't anything else for it at the time. Butthat's all over. I've got that beastly memory nearly off my shoulders. Idon't know anybody in England. I remember our own village of course--inSussex 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 Oliphantin England at all. There's a little Julia Oliphant, but she's only akid, and no relation at all probably. But this one's a bit like what Icould imagine little Julia growing up to be. Never mind. What I want toask 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 hisbread and sausage, learn to darn his socks, sew on his buttons, wash outhis handkerchiefs for him; that her hands as well as her heart shouldserve and adore him was all her joy; but I saw the droop of her head andthe tremor of that upturned lip that betrayed the pearls. Julia Oliphantmight hardly dare, but this one--ah, she was so recently a child! Ithink she would even have left Derry's side for ten minutes might theybut have been spent with her mother's arms about her and the smell ofher father's pipe not far away. I don't know whether a tear had everdropped on to that ironing-board of Madame's downstairs. I saw one dropnow.
"Yes, Jennie's people," I said again. "I suppose you want to know aboutthem?"
I saw no harm in reminding him, at any rate, that however great thingsmight be happening to him, minor but still important ones were happeningsimultaneously elsewhere. Even when you start a new life under theshadow of an old one you cannot entirely escape the world and itsordinary responsibilities.
"Of course we do," he said, surprised. "I'm going to them the momentthings are shipshape again."
"You may see them even sooner than that. I need hardly tell you I shallhave to wire to them immediately."
He sighed a little. "Well, I suppose the music's got to be faced," hesaid 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 tellingyou? That's the whole idea. If all goes as it is going a couple of daysmight put the stopper on this memory business once for all. Then weshall go to them at once. I want to get it over."
I looked around the room again. Practically upon the window-sill of itsomebody across the street was preparing for bed. In order to get tothat upper chamber of theirs at all one had to pass through the publicroom downstairs. Everything about the place sighed with age andindefinable odour; one knew not what mould, what sweating life, what"silver fishes," those tired old walls did not harbour. I don't think Iam 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 muchmoney have you got?"
He looked serious. "Awfully little I'm afraid. And I don't know whereI'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 lendme--that and a couple of sketches I sold to a fellow at St Briac. I'mafraid 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 thatyou're going to Jennie's people the moment things are all right. Willyou as a first step settle up here and come along with me to my hotelnow? You came here to lie doggo. That's all over. This is no place foreither of
you."
He blushed with embarrassment. He hesitated. But evidently the problemhad been worrying him, for he looked frankly up.
"I will on one condition, Sir George. That is that it's added to thefive hundred. I shall be selling my sketches presently if you can wait abit. You're quite right; Jennie oughtn't to be here. But I hope thePoste isn't too expensive. I shall have to pay you back sooner orlater."
"Well, that can stand over for the present. Come and see thecurtain-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 thecabaret, and beckoned to Madame. There, at the foot of the stairs, andin complete darkness except for the inch that the door was left open, wehad 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, itis I who will regulate that if you will prepare it for to-morrow. Andone does not buy goodness of heart, Madame; nevertheless----"
Nevertheless, in the short struggle of hands in the darkness, the handthat proffered and the hand that refused, the hand that proffered wasthe victor. I re-ascended to their room.
The other time I had not knocked, but this time I did so. They were as Ihad left them--ready in what they stood up in. He carried the littleblack bundle of her necessaries and his own. They took a last look roundthat warped and wonderful and memory-haunted room....
But I had given them five minutes with its memories while I hadnegotiated 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, faceswatched us round the stacked-up kepis on the table. But though probablylittle else had been talked of for the last hour, none was supposed toknow that I was the Fairy Godmother who had brought the coach forCinderella. Derry took no farewell of the copains who, with sundry othernationalities, were the French population of France. Only Jennie rantowards Madame and was pressed for a minute against a bosom well able tosustain her weight. Derry got out the bicycles from behind the door.Outside he walked ahead between them. Jennie and I followed him alongthe Rue de la Cordonnerie.
A quarter of an hour later I had asked Madame at my hotel to be soobliging as to allow me the use of her telephone. There was no telephoneat Ker Annic, but there was one at the Beverleys' hotel, and I knew thatBeverley would see to it that a message for Alec was deliveredimmediately. I did not think it necessary to tell Beverley what it wasall about; I merely asked him to send word to the Airds that I wished tosee them in Dinan to-morrow.
Then I engaged another room--an ordinary hotel bedroom, where achambermaid would bring up hot water in the morning and a bath was to behad for stepping across the corridor--just an ordinary hotelbedroom--not a place of memories and romance like that tumbling old roomover that cabaret in the Rue de la Cordonnerie that looked as if it hadsunk a yard into the earth----
The Tower of Oblivion Page 9
