The Tower of Oblivion Part 55

"Then hear mine. I have a car waiting just off the Square. You may knock me on the head, as you've already threatened. At least I shall have no further responsibility for you then. But unless you do that I'm going to get straight into that car, drive to Ker Annic, and tell the Airds the whole thing before I go to bed. You'll then have the satisfaction that it's a straight fight in the open, and that you aren't creeping like a blight into a happy house under a name that isn't even your own."

He spoke very, very slowly. "You mean that, George?"

"Enough. I'm going to stand here without moving till the next time that Light shows your face. Then I shall do what I've said."

And I stood, still as the rocks at the foot of the Crucifix, giving him his chance.

V

The darkness seemed an omnipresent thing, positive rather than an absence, that invaded and became part of me, of him, of the place, of the hour. Not a star was to be seen, not one speck in the immensity of the night. I did not even look where I knew his black-bloused figure to be; his hand might have been uplifted for all I knew. Or for all I cared. Once more I was weary to death of him and his domination. There was not room for both of us. He might have the field henceforward to himself. I had done what I could.

It was an eleven-seconds interval. The Light came. Still I did not look at him. The Light pa.s.sed away again.

Four seconds, and once more the Light.

Eleven seconds, the Light, four seconds, the Light....

Then only did I look up.

I had not heard him move, but he had done so. He had sunk to the rocks at the foot of the Calvary, the rocks worn smooth with the sitting of generations of evening gossips. I heard a faint choke.

Then his voice came.

"Isn't it--isn't it a little rough on a fellow, sir?"

In a moment I was on my knees by his side. "Derry! Derry! Derry!" I repeated over and over again. It was all the speech I could find.

"Isn't it rough on a fellow, sir? Isn't it? Isn't it?"

"Derry my boy, my boy!"

"I feel you're right in a way, sir--you're bound to be wiser than I am--but when I heard them singing that song this evening ... le long de mon calvaire ... en esperant j'ai pu souffrir ... rien n'est fini, tout recommence ... it seemed so like it all, sir--you don't know--you've no idea----"

I rocked him gently in my arms.

"You don't know--you can't possibly know--n.o.body knows who hasn't been through it. Mon calvaire--mon Dieu! And to have it hurt you like that just because you are _able_ to hope! Not the end after all, but the beginning of everything! Oh, can't you see it, sir--not even a little bit of it?"

"Yes, talk, my boy--get it over----"

"I shall be all right in a minute. It simply got me by the throat. That song, I mean. I suppose it's just an ordinary song really--the French are like that--but it got me by the throat, it was so like me. So like the way things have been with me. What did they say it was called? I've forgotten."

"'_Il est venu le Jour._'"

"Yes, that's it. The day's come. After all that. It came that night--I'm not making a joke, sir--that night in the garden. It's been day ever since. Night's been day, like a soft sun shining all night. And I wouldn't ask you to lift a finger to help me if I didn't know it was quite all right. I do know. It's she who's made everything all right.

That's the funny thing about her--that she's made everything perfectly all right again. I wonder why that is?"

"Don't wonder. Just stay quiet a while."

"But a fellow can't help wondering a bit. Why should it have made everything all right the moment I set eyes on her? But she did. I told you about something happening before, sir, something I can't quite remember about. That seemed like some sort of an emptying--leaving me all empty and aching, if you understand. But this filled it all up again, with happiness and I don't know what--lovely things--all since that night. That's what makes me so sure. I wouldn't say it if it wasn't true. It isn't the kind of thing one cares to be untruthful about, is it? You're in the same house with her--you see her--you know what I mean----"

Between this simplicity and his late menace, what could I say for his comfort, what do for my own? I was torn in two. I was a weary, elderly man, careworn and disillusioned; but he, through unimaginable tribulation, had mysteriously found this place of stillness and peace and hope. What his intimidation had not done, that his utter reliance and trust now began to do. He sat up on the rocks and began to talk.

"You know something about my life, sir. Miss Oliphant knows most, of course, but you know quite a lot. If it doesn't sound most awfully conceited, I was rather a nice sort of fellow at eighteen. All the same I always felt there was something not quite right. I don't mean anything I did; I mean there always seemed to be a sheet of thick gla.s.s between me and the things I wanted to get close to. I could see through it all right, all the brightness and the colours, but somehow I couldn't get any nearer. There wasn't any feel of warmth somehow. It may sound silly to you, but I used to press up against that gla.s.s like a kid at a shop window full of things he wanted. It wasn't that I wasn't fond of things and people and so on. I was frightfully fond of them. But I couldn't manage to let them know it. Even my mother. When she wasn't there I was tremendously fond of her, but when she came--I don't know--of course I was fond then--I suppose it was my imagination. But when she wasn't there she meant an enormous lot to me, and when she came she was just a nice little mother I was very fond of but never managed to let her know--just as if I was ashamed. And it was so with everything else. I used to get excited over Shakespeare and Juliet and Hamlet and Falstaff and all those people, but they made other people seem rather shadowy.

Then, when I was about twenty-one, it worried me fearfully sometimes.

Other people didn't seem to be like that. I wanted to be like other people. They hadn't blocks of gla.s.s in front of them all the time.

Somehow they seemed so nice and happy and warm all the time. I had a dog I was really fonder of than I was of anybody! And I wanted to be fond.

I'm afraid this sounds absolute rot, sir, but I can't explain it any better."

"I'm very much interested. Go on."

"Well, that's lasted more or less all through my life. I'd get all in a glow about things--just things, and of course people too in a way: somebody's hair under a stained-gla.s.s window in a church, or the organ or the Psalms. But always something in between, I don't know what. It worried me because I knew I was all glow inside if I could only get it out. I was awfully fond of Miss Oliphant, for instance, but I simply couldn't let her know it. I used to go and see her sometimes and sit there wondering about it. 'Now here's a jolly sort of girl,' I used to think, 'as good as they make 'em--good-looking, sometimes nearly beautiful--and awfully fond of you. Now why can't you get on with her?

Why is there always something you don't say, don't really want to say perhaps, but it would make such a difference if you could say it?' I used to ask myself that, but there was never any answer. There never has been. There it always was, that sheet of gla.s.s, as polished as you please, but shutting me right out from everything everybody else seemed to have."

"But your books, Derry? You weren't shut out from everybody there!"

"Perhaps that was where it went. You can give things to other people in a book you can't when you're sitting next to them. That's why I don't care if I never do anything of that sort again. I want to get near....

And now"--his voice fell to a happy hush--"it's all right. That was what she did, all in a moment, all in one look. That gla.s.s went. That's why I know that as long as she's near to me no harm will happen to me.

Oh, I know it."

Then, without the slightest warning, he broke into a heartrending appeal. It was as if he had suddenly remembered that I was not yet won over.

"Tout recommence! Mon calvaire, mon calvaire!... Have I to lose it the moment I see it? Must I go back the same way? Can't I go the other?

Haven't I carried my poor little bit of a cross too, sir? Haven't I?

Haven't I? J'ai vecu des heures cruelles.... And hasn't it sometimes been so heavy that I've prayed it would crush me and get it over? And even when I've done the rottenest things haven't I always wanted to do something better--always? Thank G.o.d for the gla.s.s those times anyway!

Sometimes I've stood off and looked at myself and said: 'Poor devil, it isn't you really--if you must do this get it over as quick as you can and start afresh!' I've always started afresh. I never give up hope....

And do I get nothing at all at the end of it, sir? Are you going to sc.r.a.pe up all those bits of gla.s.s she broke, and put them together again, and send me back the same way? Not even a chance, now that everything really _is_ beginning again? Now that the day's come? Now that for a week every night's been like a soft warm sun shining? Are you going to turn me back?"

Oh, had he but knocked me on the head a quarter of an hour ago it would have been easier! Then had I been at rest, with those who had built desolate palaces for themselves before me. Or could I but have believed what he so firmly believed! Yet must I not almost believe it? Had he not now almost compelled me? What I had feared to find that morning at St Briac, the morning after the first meeting of their eyes over the car, had not happened, but something no less profound had. That hard clear obstruction that had stood immutably between him and life all his days had been taken away. I remembered my speculation as to whether there were not two loves, Jennie's and Julia's, a sacred and a profane. Two?

How if he were right, and there were not two loves, but one love only, which is simply--Love? What then became of all my arithmetic, my rect.i.tude, my conventions, even my duty to my friends? What, by comparison with that love, that law-annihilating love that breaks the invisible adamant fetters that bind the old Adam and bids the new man stand forth, were any or all of these things? They were no more than those social rates and taxes, registrations, commitments, undertakings, contracts, all the rest of the paper business of our lease of life on which he had lately poured his scorn. The infinitude of pa.s.sion and suffering of a single human soul seemed to me to dwarf them all. And if a man must sin, let him sin at the fringe and circ.u.mference of things, not at their centre.

Could he give me any a.s.surance whatever of these things he ached no more to enter his heaven than I ached to thrust him in.

Every four seconds, every eleven seconds, Frehel opened the furnace of his white and blazing eye. Tremulously in and out of the gloom the Calvary seemed to advance and to recede again. Dimly I distinguished Derry's face--young, faithful, agonised, interceding for his lovelier self....

It is a fearful responsibility a man past his prime a.s.sumes when he bids such a creature to hope no more, but to veil his face and to return to the pit whence he was digged....

And how had he offended me? He had merely received a note--had not even given it, but had simply accepted it and held for a moment the fingers that had pa.s.sed it....

Had I, in my own insignificant youth, never done such a thing?

"Derry," I said gently, "I can't go over old ground again. At present--I say at present--I'm staying in the house. I must now decide how much longer I can stay there. But first tell me exactly what it is you propose to do."

"I haven't any intentions at all, sir."

"At present you haven't. You hadn't before, but that didn't last. What is it you want?"

"Only that you shouldn't thrust me back into--that other."