The Tower of Oblivion Part 14

Then, I think on the fourth evening after I had given Julia dinner in Jermyn Street, the history of Derwent Rose moved forward--or backward--once more.

I had thought of looking up Madge Aird that evening, but at the last moment had changed my mind. I did not feel up to Madge's liveliness. So I hung round that now so-drearily-familiar neighbourhood instead--the neighbourhood between Leicester Square Tube Station and Tottenham Court Road. I walked till I was tired, and then, more for the sake of sitting down than for any other reason, I entered a picture-house on the west side of Shaftesbury Avenue. I did not choose that one in particular. It was just like any other picture-house except that it had a small organ built into the wall high up in one corner. This organ was ceasing to play as I entered. The princ.i.p.al drama of the programme was just over.

As it chanced, I had arrived just in time for one of those rather curious effects that are obtained when the film is put through the machine extremely slowly. You know the kind I mean. A racehorse in full career picks up and puts down his legs as if they were fronds of seaweed moving lazily in water; a golf-ball trickles uncannily across the green, rising and falling idly over each minute obstacle, and then floats gently down into the hole. In spite of my languor I found myself interested in these a.n.a.lyses of motion. It is curious to see instantaneousness taking its time over a thing like that.

Then that series also finished, and I felt in my pocket for my cigarette case. As I drew out a cigarette and struck a match somebody behind me leaned forward and touched me lightly on the shoulder.

"I say, isn't your name Coverham?" a man's voice said.

The match was still in my fingers. I looked over my shoulder in the light of it. Then I dropped the match.

I had not found him. He had found me. It was Derwent Rose.

PART III

THE STRAPHANGER

I

He was not far from the end of the row, and in reaching him I had not to disturb more than three or four people. Though it is inadequate, I have decided that the single word that best expresses the way in which he spoke is the word "careful." He spoke slowly, and, it seemed to me, with extreme care.

"Interesting idea that last, isn't it? Restful. Things go at such a deuce of a rate nowadays that it's a comfort to see anything slow. Well, how are you, George? I haven't seen you for--some little time."

It was precisely three weeks since he had last seen me, and I noted that slight, that very slight hesitation before his last words.

"Do you often come here? I--I rather keep away from these places myself; they put everything through much too quickly; but I rather like this one because of the organ. Of course they only play 'effects'--'Ora Pro n.o.bis' and the 'Wedding March'--but there's something about an organ.... I say, George," he said a little uncomfortably, "I've a sort of feeling I owe you an apology."

"Well, this is hardly the place for it. We can't talk here. If you've seen all you want suppose we go outside?"

The thing I wanted first of all was to have a good look at him. Already I could see that he no longer had a beard. But my surrept.i.tious glance at him as we pa.s.sed out into the lighted vestibule and past the box-office told me little. On the pavement of Shaftesbury Avenue he slipped his arm into mine.

"Yes, I fancy I talked an awful lot of rubbish that night--bit of an a.s.s of myself--you remember----"

I did not reply. The important thing was, not whether I remembered, but whether his memory was all that it should have been, for he was forgetting something even as he spoke. He remembered that other night, he had remembered my name; but if he remembered that he had rooms and belongings in Cambridge Circus he was very deliberately turning down Shaftesbury Avenue instead of up it. But I went where he led me. I was resolved, however, that the moment his arm left mine, mine should go into his. I was not going to let him disappear again.

The typical Soho mixture thronged the pavements: Hebrew physiognomies, Italian, Greek; dark chins, bold eyes, bold noses; rings and scarfpins, fancy socks, the double-heeled silk stockings of women. As I could not very well scrutinise his face at that short range I did the next best thing; I watched the faces that advanced towards us. As if he had been a pretty woman, so heads turned as he pa.s.sed. They turned as they turn for Billy Wells. It was not so much his size and proportions as his whole personal aura. He stood out among all that flashy cosmopolitanism as if a special and inherent light attended him.

"Which way are we going? Where do you live?" I suddenly asked him. It was not the question I was burning to ask him. That question was, "_When_ do you live?" I felt the slight movement of the muscles under his sleeve, but he answered steadily enough--carefully enough.

"Oh, I've been rather lucky about that," he said. "I happened to be in the wine-bar of an hotel in Gloucester Road one night, and I got talking to a fellow. I fancied I'd come across him somewhere in France--as a matter of fact I had, though he didn't remember me. Anyway, we'd started talking, and we went on. Rather an amusing crowd there, George. If I were asked to put in one word the basic domestic factor of their lives, do you know what it would be? A pint of methylated spirits. They don't pay half a crown for it at the chemist's; they pay one-and-twopence at the oilshop. To boil their kettles, of course. They all fought, they're all gentlemen, and they're all doing d.a.m.n-all to make a living. So they take garrets and rooms over garages, and cook their breakfasts with methylated spirits. This fellow was called Trenchard. Got all messed up at the Brick Stacks, La Ba.s.see way. He had to go out of town for a month, and said I could have his place for the bare rent, twenty-five bob a week, and the use of his furniture for nothing. So that's where I am. This way----"

We turned into Leicester Square Tube Station.

In the train I sat opposite to him; and, now that he had taken his beard off, I couldn't see that he had changed very remarkably in outward appearance after all. Nevertheless I distrusted my own impression. I knew that I was full of pre-conceptions about him, knew too much of his astonishing case to observe impartially and reliably. There are some things--some scents for example--that you have to make up your mind immediately about or else to remain in indecision. The longer you delay the less sure you become. So I found it with his face in the electric-lighted Tube. It was, of course, astoundingly young for a man in the middle forties; but call him thirty-five and much of the wonder disappeared. The most that a casual acquaintance would have been likely to remark was, "How the deuce does Rose manage to keep so extraordinarily young-looking?" True, his friend Trenchard had failed to recognise the man with whom he had fought at La Ba.s.see, but that meant little. There were millions of men in France, each the spit of the rest for mud and momentariness of acquaintance. To-day, by mere a.s.sociation of times and places and battles, these men are in fact resuming acquaintances they have no recollection of ever having begun. "Oh, I've a rotten memory for faces--seen So-and-so lately? And I say, do you know anybody who wants to take a quiet place for a month?" That, no doubt, had been the substance of that conversation in the Gloucester Road wine-bar.... And there was another thing of which I shall have more to say by and by. I began to suspect that whatever strange element in Derwent Rose had brought him to this pa.s.s, that element reacted on those of us who knew his secret. He probably became less extraordinary in our eyes as contemplation of him made us not quite ordinary ourselves.

Julia Oliphant (it seemed to me) he had already influenced, constrained, isolated. We were getting used to him. But I shall return to this.

In the meantime I was considerably cheered. He remembered that other night; he wanted to apologise for the lunacy of it; he had given a perfectly coherent account of his present whereabouts and how he came to be there, and his summing-up of the fellows whose basic domestic factor was a pint of methylated spirits had given me a clear and straightforward picture. As for the rest--why he had left Cambridge Circus, what it was that he found restful in those slowed-down films, and especially the measured carefulness of his speech--for the present these things could wait.

We left Gloucester Road Station, turned up towards Princes Gate, and then crossed the road and entered a dark gardened Square. Three minutes further walking brought us to a high stone archway with a heavily carved and moulded entablature, beneath which a cobbled way sloped slightly down into a mews. To right and left were garage-doors, some closed, others open and flinging shafts of orange light across the way.

Somewhere an engine was being allowed to "race"; somewhere else a hose was being turned on to the body of a car. High over the roofs of the mews, as if suspended at random in the sky, the oblongs of light of the South Kensington backs showed. One unshaded incandescent burned on a top landing like a star.

"Let me go first; I've got a torch," said Derry, stopping at a narrow side-door next to where the car was being washed. "You'll find the rope on the right."

The moon of his electric torch shone on the broad treads of a steep-pitched ladder that rose to a loft above. Up one side of it ran a hand-rope. He preceded me, and on the upper landing lighted a wire-caged gas-jet. Then I followed him into Trenchard's abode.

He had described the place admirably well when he had spoken of the methylated spirits, adding that Trenchard was a gentleman. A few pieces of furniture--notably a tall walnut hanging-cupboard and a handsome lacquered cabinet--were evidently family possessions; the rest--his cretonne curtains, floor-mats, the blue-and-white check tablecloth on the thick-legged Victorian table and the glimpse into his kitchen--probably represented the greater part of his gratuity-money.

Every ledge and angle and cheap bracket was crowded with photographs, and there were trees in his long row of boots. His central incandescent mantle was unshaded. Two deep basket chairs stood one on either side of where the hearth should have been. The portable oil-burning stove was tucked away in a corner.

"You soon get used to the noises," said Rose with a downward nod of his head. "I scarcely hear 'em now.--Lemonade? It's bottled, but not bad; tastes of lemons anyway. There's a siphon behind you there."

He put me into one of the basket chairs and himself took the other.

Then, without the least warning, but still with that marked effort at steadiness and care, he said:

"Well, what price the world-political state, George? Not home-politics, but the whole thing--democracy--civilisation if you like----"

If he had asked me what I thought of the theory of relativity I should have been readier with an answer. As it was I looked askance at him and asked him what made him so suddenly ask me that.

"Oh, same old reason," he replied. "I expect it's a subject I shall have to tackle. In a book. I wonder if it's too big! It pulls me enormously.

I don't know whether we're in for a general smash-up or not. Sometimes I've the feeling we are."

Something within me, I don't know what, warned me that here it might be well to be as careful as he. The safest thing to do appeared to be to let him run on, and I did so.

"Yes," he continued, his fine smooth brow gathered in thought, "I know it's enormous; perhaps too staggering altogether for one man. But do you know," he laughed a little as if at himself, "I wonder whether it _is_ so enormous after all! There might be quite a simple idea underlying it, I mean. What's more enormous than human nature? Yet every wretched little novelist tackles that every time he writes a book. It all depends on how much you see in a thing. I'm not so sure that I wouldn't as soon tackle one day of the whole world's life as one single hour of a human being's heart."

I spoke warily. "You haven't tackled it yet?"

He hesitated. "N--o," he said slowly. Then, quickening a little, "The fact is, George, a job like that would have to be rather specially approached. I mean unless you were at the very top of your form you'd be bound to come a cropper. No good starting a thing till you know your tools are sharp--in this case your faculties. I'm--I'm sharpening myself now, if you know what I mean."

At this point I became incautious. I ceased to listen to the voice that warned me too to be careful.

"Well, that's what I want to ask you," I said. "I want to know what you're doing here and why you left Cambridge Circus like that."

I was instantly sorry I had said it. Just as wrestlers on a mat lie locked, with little apparent movement, yet in the fiercest intensity of prolonged strain, so I felt that something struggled in him. I heard it in his voice, I saw it in the boyish grey-blue eyes that sought mine.

"Don't, please, old fellow," he pleaded anxiously. "If you mean the rot I talked that other night, I apologise now once for all. I've been hoping for months and mon--for a long time, I mean, that I might run across you. You're so magnificently steady. That other place stopped being steady.... This is the place to write that book. I want to write it. I've never wanted anything so much. It would be on _Vicarage_ lines, I suppose, but oh--immensely bigger! Freedom, scope! The _Vicarage_ was well enough in its way, but fussy and niggly and scratchy. I can do this largely, grandly--I _know_ so much more, you see--and as long as I don't take any risks----"

Then, in spite of his own last words, he swung suddenly round, and the youthful grey-blue eyes were all a-sparkle. They sparkled with daring, as if, though a risk was a risk, there was sometimes prudence in taking it. The wicker of his chair began to creak under the working of his hand.

"One little talk can't make much difference," he muttered. "Do me good probably--magnificently steady----" Then he flashed brightly round on me--an artist at the height of his power confronting a stupendous and magnificent task.

"You see, don't you, George? You see how I'm placed, don't you?" he demanded.

"Not very clearly."

"Then I'll tell you. I _want_ to write this book. I want to write it as Cheops made his Pyramid, as Moses made his Decalogue--to last for ever.