The Tower of Oblivion Part 25

For that was about the size of it. Did he remain in that mood, there she would be in the punt with him, or holding iron rods for him as he set out the plan of the incinerator, or hunting with him for the kingfishers' nest, or watching him as he bathed with to-morrow's batch of boys. He would blow little boats of willow-leaves to her, bring water-blossoms gliding into her hand. To-morrow evening they would watch that amber star together, stroll along my winding paths as the glow-worms came out. That was to be her theft--to press herself home in the glamorous irresistible moment, let what would afterwards befall. My modest little estate was to be her antechamber to paradise, and unwittingly I had set open the gates of it for her myself.

And she was laughing at me for it--openly laughing at me.

"Well--the portrait for the Lyonnesse Club's getting along very nicely, George," she laughed.

"Dear, dear Julia----" I began.

"That earnest expression's rather good. What a pity I didn't bring my painting-tools--we might have got a good day's work done to-morrow."

"My dear----"

Then, suddenly, "How long have you actually known Derry, George?" she demanded.

"About fifteen years."

"Not longer? Then you don't know what's coming next?"

I don't like to be smiled at as she was smiling. I jumped up.

"Yes I do," I said with a flush. "What's coming next is that you're not going to do this. You're going to promise me not to. Be his secretary, his nurse, his housekeeper, anything else you like, but you're not to do this. It it's nothing else it's----"

"Taking a mean advantage, you mean?" she supplied the words for me. "But he never did know anything about women. Why shouldn't he learn, poor dear?"

"Julia, you _can't_ have thought! A man without an age! A man, except for you and me, without even a name a week together! A man who says of himself that he's to all intents and purposes a ghost haunting anybody who happens to know anything about him!... Anyway you shan't."

"Shan't I, George?" she asked with a long deep look into my eyes.

"That you shall not."

She too rose and stood before me, one elbow on the mantelpiece. She drew up the walking-skirt an inch or two and pushed at a log with her foot.

"Of course it isn't as if you and I could ever quarrel, George," she said. "There, I'm burning your sister's slipper. I say we can't quarrel, because we're ever so far beyond that. Therefore we can talk quite plainly about anything on earth, or under it, or above it. So now tell me why I mustn't marry Derry."

I thought of the man upstairs, of the spirit-kettle on his table, of why he must be alone when he woke in the morning.

"There are physical reasons, if there weren't any others."

"Of course. He'll get younger. He'll be sixteen. Well, I can be his mother then. But I shall have _been_ his wife."

"For how long?"

She lifted her beautiful shoulders. "What does that matter? I said his wife. Does any bride on her wedding-day ask herself how long it's for?

There have been widows who've never even taken breakfast with their husbands."

"But they married men like other men."

"Pooh! Tell that to any woman in love! They're all Derrys as long as it lasts, and he's Derry as long as it lasts."

"But his memory?"

"We don't know that anything's the matter with it. Really you're very hard to please, George. First you complain that he's got too much memory and he's writing what you call a wicked book with it. Now you seem afraid he hasn't enough to get married with. If he's happier without a memory at all, what's the odds?"

"But yourself?"

"Oh, I can look after myself--now! And anyway you needn't worry about _my_ memory!"

Yet that was what I was worrying about. How gorgeously she had enriched her memories that very day I had seen for myself. Openly she exulted in her treasures. But what was to be the end of it all? By marriage did she mean one last wild lovely memory more and after that--nothing? If so, was ever degree so inconceivably prohibited? A dark-haired child in the wrong seat in a village church--a few odd hours in the country that it might have been a mercy to spare her--that day in my own house and grounds--to-morrow with whatever it might bring--perhaps another day or two unless he overtook another milestone before then ... and then the relative and inevitable sequence: his bride, his elder sister, his mother, aunt, elderly adviser and friend, and so on to the close. This was the prospect she was deliberately embracing. Here she espied her joy....

And should there be a child?...

She had sat down again. That appearance of a quarrel between two people who could never quarrel was at an end. I lifted the logs, arranged her shawl again, and then also sat down. Mrs Moxon brought in a tray, with hot milk and biscuits for her and whisky for myself. She set a small table between us. Julia's slender fingers played as it were a tune as she moved the too-hot gla.s.s from one position to another. Mrs Moxon gave a final glance round, wished us good night, and went out again. I mixed myself a peg, and then turned to Julia.

"I think you were going to tell me, when I interrupted you, what happened before I knew Derry," I said.

Little pistol-like cracks began to break from the green-oak logs I had moved. A thin pouring of amethyst streamed up the chimney-back, and the heart of the fire was intense pink and salmon. The glow from the ceiling made semi-transparent the rich shadows of the farther recesses of the room. It was true that as against my fifteen years she had known him for more than thirty. My own personal knowledge of his history was now on the point of failing. Only to her could I look for an antic.i.p.ation of what might next be expected.

"Yes," she said musingly. "Anyway I'm prepared for it."

"What was it?"

"You don't know?"

"Only in a general way that at some time or other he must have travelled a good deal."

She nodded. "That's it. His Wanderjahre. He walked mostly--Italy, Germany, France, racketed about all over the place. Broke hearts wherever he went too I expect. It was then that he picked up his wonderful French."

"Then do you think that that phase is--falling due again?"

She shook her head slowly. How could she tell? "I only had occasional letters from him at that time. Usually to smuggle him out some tobacco or see about a letter of credit or something. I had one from Siena, and one from Trieste, and another from Nimes.... But," she added briskly, "if I married him of course I should go with him. That would solve everything."

"Would it!"

"I mean if his appearance changed much. You say yourself he can't stop in one place for long. He can't even take an ordinary job. And you seem to think that's a reason why I shouldn't marry him. But to my mind it's the very reason why I should. He shan't be left to tramp the world all alone, poor boy. I'm quite a good walker."

But for the shawl round her shoulders, the gla.s.s of hot milk and my sister's slippers, she seemed ready to start immediately.

"Julia, are you well off?" I suddenly asked her.

She smiled. "The sooner I'm paid for that portrait of you the better, George," she said.

"Because," I continued, "his royalties won't keep his boots soled, and as for that mad idea of fighting Carpentier----"

She made an indifferent gesture within the shawl and sipped her milk.

"And now," I pursued her, "I want you to notice how you've changed your mind this last half-hour or so. As you sit there now you haven't the least intention of becoming his secretary. In fact you're calmly planning how you can murder that book of his."

"How do you know that, George?"

"You are. Remember the flash-lamp. _He_ wants to light up his time-scale from sixteen to forty or thereabouts. _You_ want it like a burning-gla.s.s, all concentrated in one brilliant spot--yourself. In other words you're planning a mental a.s.sault on him."