The Tower of Oblivion Part 26

She laughed delightedly. "Before committing a physical one? George, you shock me! I hope you're not going to lock me into my room!"

"Further than that. You don't intend to lose a moment of time, because those Wanderjahre may be drawing very near."

Her mouth was prim. "It's a difficult position, George."

"Do you intend to ask him outright to marry you?"

"It's a very difficult position," she repeated demurely. "Suppose he accepted me one day and forgot all about it the next. I should have to propose to him daily, shouldn't I?"

"I don't think you need joke about it."

Her daring eyes positively fondled my face. She showed all her teeth in a wide smile.

"Why not?" she asked. "What else is there to do? You wouldn't have me take it seriously, would you? How can it be taken seriously?"

And she added, stretching her long hands to the fire, "Why, it would be the least serious marriage there ever was!"

III

By breakfast-time the next morning I had taken a resolve. I had slept little for thinking of it. I intended, if I could, to make Derry talk about his book.

For while I abhorred the very idea of that book, there was one thing I abhorred more. This was the thought of the collapse of his memory. If anything happened to that the situation was horribly simple. A man who, from having had two memories, pa.s.ses to not having one at all, is--gently but without any further pother--locked up. And had that been the end of it I don't think I should have had the heart to write Derry's tale.

He came down, shaven, radiant, hungry. I had heard his plunge into the lake three quarters of an hour before. Julia too was fresh as the dew, and ate heartily. So, over coffee and kidneys and bacon, with such offhandedness as I could a.s.sume, I asked him point-blank how his book was getting on.

A wave of thankfulness pa.s.sed over me at his very first words.

"I say, George," he protested, "this is a holiday, you know. Must we talk shop? By sheer strength of will I've put it all on one side for a couple of days, and here you are trying to shove my nose back on to the grindstone again! Bit of a n.i.g.g.e.r-driver you are.... Well, just for the length of one pipe; after that shop's taboo for the rest of the day.

What is it you want to know about it?"

"Oh, just how it's shaping."

He told me. His account of it as far as it had gone, his projection of the continuing portion, were perfectly lucid, reasoned, logical. He brought all his faculties to bear, was completely master of himself. His memory was as clear in both directions as it had been. I tested this by means of one or two questions that otherwise are of no importance here.

All was well. My most dreaded fear was removed. Indeed it was I who, at the end of our pipe, had to change the subject.

One awkward, rather shamefaced explanation, however, he did make. This was both to Julia and to myself.

"I ought to say one thing while I'm about it," he said in a halting and embarra.s.sed voice. "I got your note, Julia. I know what you mean. How you tumbled to it I don't know, and I needn't say it's an unspeakable comfort having the two of you. I'm not going to look a gift-horse like that in the mouth, so if you don't mind we won't talk about it. I suppose George told you, though?"

"Yes."

"Then that's all right. Of course he won't tell anybody else. If he'd asked me first I might have kicked a bit, but it's turned out all right, so that's all we need worry about.... Now what are we going to do to-day? Those trout at all muddy, George? Give me a mayfly and let's have a try at one of 'em----"

I got him a rod and warned him against the telephone-wire that has to cross one end of the pond. I left him and Julia mounting the cast on the verandah.

I went up to my study. I went there from a motive not unlike grat.i.tude to G.o.d. An embodied ghost Derry might be to the rest of the world, but our little private triumvirate had still a normal basis. He understood the whole situation, and so to us was no ghost. Nor was even the prospect of his Wanderjahre now quite so intimidating. The terror would have been to think of him as an _ignis fatuus_, unconscious of himself, flitting hither and thither over the face of the Continent at large.

_Cogito, ergo sum._ The distance of the lamp from the table's edge was apparently not an irrevocably fixed factor. "By sheer strength of will"

he had been able to vary it. He _could_ enjoy intensely and reason infallibly, if not at one and the same time, at any rate by turns. He _was_ still capable of work and of play, and at the maximum of either.

How, then, did she stand with her wild scheme of marrying him?

I sat down at my table and worked it out thus:

While he was in his working But while he was at play his mood he was inaccessible to accessibility was a raised her. power.

As his secretary she could not But as his playmate she met hope for more than a repet.i.tion him on his return journey--he of her former experience. as he had been, but she far more _rusee_ and resolved.

His work occupied by far the Therefore his work stood in greater portion of his time. her way.

Therefore his work must be But I had encouraged him to discouraged. speak of it.

I had done her a disservice. But they were at play at this moment, setting up a fishing-rod on the verandah.

His Wanderjahre would presently She knew this, and would be upon him again. lose no time.

I think that states it fairly.

And she had the whole day and the whole of to-morrow before her.

I began to wonder whether I had done wisely in asking them to stay after all.

But perhaps I was troubling myself unnecessarily about this moonshine-marriage after all. What about him? He at least would see the monstrous anomaly and would never allow it. He at any rate knew that if there was one place on earth where no woman must come it was into his room between evening and dawn. Things far too terrifying and precise happened during those hours. He knew this, and five minutes between him and myself would settle Julia's business once for all.

But again I saw in a flash where I was wrong. Five minutes between him and myself? It couldn't be done. Why? For the simple reason that, in order to talk to me at all on such a matter, he would have to be in his aware and "working" mood--the very mood in which he had always been inaccessible to her. My answer would be a stare from those steady grey-blue eyes. "Marry Julia!" he would exclaim. "My dear chap, what on earth are you talking about? If I'd ever dreamed of marrying Julia shouldn't I have done it years ago? It's the very last thing in the world I ever thought of!" That would be his reply to me. I should be warning him against a contingency he had never for a moment entertained.

And yet--for even that was not the end of it--it was perfectly possible that with that word "Preposterous!" still on his lips he might go straight to her, hand her into the punt, once more alter his focus of intelligence, and be under her spell again before they were half-way across the pond....

Suddenly I heard his call below: "Quick, Julia, the net--I've got him on!" I stepped out on to the balcony to watch. It was one of the three-pounders, making a good fight for it. But he had little chance against my green-heart in Derry's hand. Three minutes settled it. There he lay on the bank, with Derry and Julia bending over him. I think she thought him a lucky fish to have been caught by Derry. I descended and joined them.

"Going to try for another?" I asked him. But already he was taking down the rod.

"No, we thought of doing a bit of crosscut sawing for a change."

"Not the incinerator?" I hinted with a glance at Julia.

"Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the incinerator," he exclaimed. "Which shall we do, Julia? Walk on to the blacksmith's or do the sawing? The sawing I think; it'll take some time to cut the rods, and we can send a lad with the sizes and fetch them after lunch. Do the boys come to bathe on Sat.u.r.days, George?"

"They do," I said with another glance at her.

I saw the little mutinous dip of the corners of her mouth.

I am not going to take you in detail through the whole of that day. For half the afternoon they disappeared; they had gone for a walk in the neighbouring woods; but they were back in time for the bathing-parade.

Again Derry swam, with the boys, while I lay with Julia in the punt.

We occupied opposite ends of it, and hardly spoke. The commotion made by the swimmers was almost spent by the time it reached our end of the pond, and we moved almost imperceptibly under the oaks, with now a soft touch on the bank, then a little way out, and then the glide to the bank again. A sort of amicable hostility seemed to have settled between us.

It seemed to be understood that she would do what she would do, and I should prevent it if I could. I could see the soles of her walking-shoes and her worsted-clad ankles as I lay, and I mused on the contrasts in her. She was ready to be off with him anywhere, anyhow; but the evening before she had been glad of a gla.s.s of hot milk and a fire to warm her hands at. She might, as she said, be a good walker, but she had drawn my sister's shawl closely enough about her shoulders to keep out the night air. She was a young forty, yet somehow hardly young enough to traipse houseless after him wherever his whim might lead him. She was not altogether irresponsible, and yet she contemplated "the least serious marriage there ever was."