The Tower of Oblivion Part 52

"Hush!" his voice came huskily from the dusk by my side.

"J'ai vecu des heures cruelles Loin de toi, que j'aimais toujours; Les revoici, pour moi plus belles Puisqu'elles sonnent ton retour."

The song was finished without further interruption from him.

"Ne parlons plus de nos alarmes, Effacons l'horrible pa.s.se; Reviens, je veux secher tes larmes Et revivre pour t'adorer:

"Rien n'est fini, tout recommence, Puisque nous voila reunis Au chaud soleil de l'esperance-- A tout jamais, soyons unis!"

It was nine o'clock of the same evening, and we were sitting outside the hotel of St Briac's tiny triangular Square. I had broken away from dinner at Ker Annic in order that I might see him without a moment's loss of time. What did it matter that I had had to hire a special car, and that that car was waiting for me in the darkness of a side-street now? As it had happened, I had met him on the road. Had I not done so I should have scoured the neighbourhood until I had found him.

Our backs were to the lighted windows of the hotel, but he had blotted himself into the shadow by the door. The Square might have been a set-piece on a stage. Yellow strips of light streamed from open doorways, illuminated window-squares showed the movement of dark heads within. Children playing their last ten minutes before going to bed flitted like moths in and out of the beams, and the comers and goers across the square seemed actors in spite of themselves. The four young Frenchmen sat in the shadows beyond the lighted doorway, and they had sung three or four songs before singing that one.

There was a long silence between Derwent Rose and myself. Then suddenly he got up and crossed to the group of Frenchmen. In a minute or so he came back again, and thrust himself more deeply still into the shadow.

Then I felt rather than heard his soft shaky mutter.

"Le long de mon calvaire ... mon calvaire, mon Dieu! ... effacons l'horrible pa.s.se ... rien n'est fini, tout recommence ... tout recommence...."

That wretched, wretched song! It had suddenly made it impossible for me to go on.

"I suppose you went over to ask the name of it?" I said sullenly; I almost said "The name of the beastly thing."

"It's called '_Il est venu le Jour_."

"Coincidences are stupid things."

"I dare say."

And another long silence fell between us.

Nevertheless I had not taken a special journey to St Briac merely to listen to his disturbed breathing. What I had seen that afternoon had taken matters far beyond that. If he, in his situation, thought he could do thus and thus, I was there to see, to the limit of my power, that he did not. I had already told him so, in those words. He had made a stiff reply. Then had come that calamitous song, and our present silence.

"Well ... you can't, and there's an end of it, Derry," I said, quietly but flatly.

"So I understood you to say."

"It's what I came specially to tell you."

"I gathered that too. By the way, if you want to send your car away there's a Casino bus going in at ten o'clock. No need to waste money."

"We may not have finished our talk by then."

"Then we can finish it in the bus. I'd thought of going in myself."

"To hang about that house?"

"You and the gendarmerie can stop that easily enough."

We were back at the same point--that we, between whom a quarrel was impossible, must apparently nevertheless quarrel.

"Look here," I said at last, "can't you see my position?"

"I can. It's a rotten one."

"If I saw the faintest glimmer of hope----"

"Esperance," he muttered.

"----even from their point of view. Aird isn't a fool. He heard Jennie speak in French to you, evidently the very first time she had spoken to you--regular monkeys'-parade business from his point of view--and he draws his own conclusions. And Mrs Aird isn't a fool either. She won't be in London two days before she's found out all about your mother."

"I see all that."

"Your mother didn't marry an Arnaud."

"Quite right. She'll know that too."

"And Aird's athlete enough to know you're no more poitrinaire than he is."

"I once saw him score a ripping try on the Rectory Ground. I was about twenty."

"You haven't a paper to your name."

"Not one."

"You can't even get back to England."

"Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to say that."

"And you're no better off if you do."

"That remains to be seen too."

"Then Mrs Aird's a writer herself. She knows every word Derwent Rose ever wrote."

"Oh, I had a reader here and there," he replied nonchalantly.

"And she wants to meet you--not Arnaud, but Derwent Rose. I'm to take you round there."

I felt his smile. "That would be the deuce of a hole for you to be in, George. You'd simply have to say you couldn't find me."

"But Derwent Rose is supposed to be alive somewhere. n.o.body's heard of his death."

"One man extra, one man missing, so it's as-you-were. Anyway n.o.body'll worry much about that. I never had a tenth of your readers."

"And you're bound to be caught out here sooner or later on the question of domicile."

"Not if I see them first," he replied grimly.