The Tower of Oblivion Part 61

Atrociously Jennie was behaving. She had been told by Madge in plain words that she was expected to bathe with Julia that afternoon, and she intended that Julia should be quite aware of the quality of her obedience. Even in her little warning about the rip at the point there had been a delicately-measured ungeniality, and their att.i.tude as they had walked from the tent together had been--well, polite. She had now joined the Beverley girls in the water, and if Miss Oliphant cared to go beyond the point after being warned not to that was her look-out. She did not fail of a single attention to the older woman; but every time she vacated a chair or asked Julia whether she could fetch her book she had the air of saying to herself, "There, I did that and mother can't say I didn't."

And I suppose it does make you a little cross when you are sent to bathe when you want to be off somewhere on a bicycle.

Julia Oliphant had not bathed during that week-end she had spent in my house in Surrey. It had been Derry who had done the swimming. But I fancied it would have been different had she had that week-end to live over again. She had remarkably little to be ashamed of in the water. The long arm she threw out thickened, rather surprisingly and very beautifully, up to its pit; and the man on the boat who had shown the solicitude about the collar of her blanket-coat had been quite a good judge of necks. Jennie's glistening dark-blue shape seemed still coltish and nubile by comparison with Julia's ampler mould. But the twenty-odd years that separated them were Jennie's stored and untouched riches, not Julia's. It was Jennie, not Julia, who could stay half a day in that water and come out without as much as the numbing of a finger-tip. And the difference between Jennie's navy-blue "skin" and that other smart and tricky green was the difference between the young leaf-bundle in its sticky sheath and the broad opened palms of the chestnut in midsummer.

As I sat there on the rocks, forgetting that escholtzia-yellow thing about my shoulders as the seniors forget their tissue-paper caps at a children's party, I pondered a resolve I had taken. Between Julia Oliphant and myself there had not hitherto been a single secret in anything that concerned Derwent Rose. But a secret there must now be.

She might find out about Derry and Jennie for herself, but from me she should never hear it. Jennie was hardly likely to confide in her. Derry himself--who knew?--might. Him she had not yet seen.

But we had spoken of him, and almost my first question had been to ask her whether she had been staying on in England in the expectation of his return. Her reply had been curiously, smilingly nonchalant.

"No, I don't think so; not altogether, that is. What does it matter whether I see him there or here?"

"But you weren't seeing him, either there or here."

"Oh, there wasn't any hurry. It's only three weeks. That isn't very long."

"That depends. Three weeks with him might be a very long time indeed."

"Oh, but if _that_ happened again you'd have told me," she had said, with the same off-handedness.

"I might not have done so. You left it entirely to me."

"Well, no news is usually good news. And I wasn't wasting my time. I did get a proposal."

"About that. And forgive me, because I don't mean it rudely. But is that a joke?"

"Not a bit of a joke. He did want to marry me. So you see that's Derry's too."

"What is?"

"_That_ is. The more--let's say desirable I am, if I don't scandalise you, the more I have for him. And anyhow I'm here now."

"Did you ask Madge to ask you?"

"Yes. In the end I thought I would. There was no hurry, but there was no sense in positively wasting time. You say he's at St Briac. Where's that? I don't know this coast."

"Six or seven miles. A tram takes you all the way."

"Then we'll look him up. But I want to do a bit of shopping with Madge first. Must have a couple of hats. I hardly bought a single thing to come away with."

And her manner ever since had been for all the world as if something was inevitable, would come of itself, in its own good time, whether she lifted a finger to further it or not.

It may sound fantastic to you, but I could almost have believed that when she had taken that yellow thing from her own shoulders and had put it over mine, she had invested me with something more than a garment, something almost of herself. I had seen Jennie's disdainful glance at the coquetry with which she had cast it about me; almost insolently she had allowed her own towelling to drop where it would; and Julia now enveloped me in a double sense. Cloak or no cloak, she claimed all my thoughts, all my gazing. For I and I only knew why she was in France.

Her errand was the deadlier the less haste she made. I had sought to interpose between him and Jennie because Jennie was too young; could I now step between him and Julia because Julia was too old? Moreover, both women now knew his terrific secret. The exquisite complication I had dreaded to entertain was upon us in its perfection. What, between the three of them, was to happen now?

For Julia he was on his way For Jennie he hoped to go back to sixteen. forward again.

Julia's influence over him had But I could guess what calm been to rob him of eleven and healing had brooded over years in a single night. him as he stood with Jennie in the Tower.

Julia had strangely made herself Jennie knew nothing of this, his scapegoat and had and yet had an instinct that left him lighthearted, innocent, Julia Oliphant was a person free. to be kept at arm's length.

Julia was still unaware that Jennie, his partial confession apparently his years had in the Tower notwithstanding, ceased to ebb. was unaware that the matter had any great seriousness.

Julia had her knowledge of his Jennie was in possession of former youth. his present one.

Julia would walk through Jennie would do no less to keep flame to find him. him.

One drop of comfort I found in the whole extravaganza, and one only.

Jennie's naughtiness might reach extremes of civility, but so far at any rate Julia was tolerantly good-humoured about it. For she could hardly be unconscious of the--well, the bracing temperature of the atmosphere.

But how long was that likely to last? Once more Derry seemed to have us all entangled in the web of his unique condition. Already my own surrept.i.tious visits to him had made me feel little better than a slinking conspirator; the presence of Jennie's bicycle in that St Briac kitchen did not improve matters; and now, to cap all, Julia and I were to seek him out.

Again I found myself weakly wishing that I could wash my hands of him.

And again I knew that I could not. It seemed to me that there was nothing to do, not even anything to refrain from doing. The whole thing ran itself. It ran itself independently of any of us, as it had run itself with equal smoothness and efficiency whether Julia had stayed in England or had come over here.

And I sat contemplating it, wrapped in her vivid cloak, wrapped in her lurid thoughts, my looks alternately seeing and avoiding her shape in the water, while the sun flashed on the grapes and apricots and oranges of that fruit-salad in the waves of St Enogat's plage.

II

They came out again, dripping, gleaming, Julia laughing, Jennie without a smile.

"I'll wait here for you," I said to Julia as I replaced her wrap on her shoulders.

"Right you are. Ten minutes. Come along, Jennie----"

The billowing escholtzia-yellow and the closely-gathered white retreated up the beach again.

In a quarter of an hour Julia returned alone. She sat down by my side.

"Jennie wouldn't come. She's taken the things in. George," she suddenly demanded, "is that child in love?"

I parried. "Is that a thing I should be very likely to know?"

"Then I'll tell you. She is. All the signs--every one. She can't sit still in one place for five minutes. Poor little darling!" she smiled.

"I remember _so_ well...."

"Wouldn't it be better if you were to take a walk after your bathe?"

"What about you? Sure it wouldn't be too much for you?"

"I should like a walk."

"Come along then. I suppose I did stay in as long as was good for me."

A steep stone staircase descends between the villas, in the c.h.i.n.ks of which hawkweed and poppies and pimpernel have seeded themselves. At the top of it a winding lane leads to the church, and from this there branches off the Port Blanc road. In that direction we walked, and in ten minutes were among cornfields and hedges, clumps of elms and coppices of oak. Ploughs and chain-harrows lay by the footpaths, and the sea might have been a hundred miles away.

"Sure you're not overdoing it?" she asked as we took a little path under a convolvulus-starred hedge.

"Quite all right, thanks."