The Tower of Oblivion Part 66

"And of course Derry knew there'd be a row too?"

"Yes."

I sighed. "Well, the row's over now. Better let the whole thing drop.

Your father's perfectly right, and you were bound to get found out sooner or later."

She made no reply.

But she returned to her luckless plaint a moment later. She struck the upright of the pergola softly and vindictively with her hand.

"It was all that beastly bathe and Miss Oliphant's being late! We should have been all right if she'd been there at the proper time!"

"I'm afraid that was my fault, Jennie. I walked rather slowly, and Miss Oliphant waited for me."

"I know; of course it had nothing to do with you at all.... Then she goes and gets her things into knots, and I have to untie them, and that costume of hers is as bad as getting into a ball-dress instead of just a skin like nearly everybody else! Anyway the sea's there if she wants to bathe, and she can swim as well as I can if she does get into a current, and it isn't as if she needed a chaperone----"

"Jennie, my dear, be reasonable!" I begged her. "You can hardly blame Miss Oliphant for--for what your father was told."

"Oh, I'm not blaming her! But it makes you angry when stupid little accidents like those----" She swallowed.

"I'm afraid stupid little accidents fill rather a large place in the world, Jennie."

"I hate them having anything to do with me anyhow. And with having to take the towels home I only just caught the tram----"

"What's that?" I took her up. "You _did_ catch the tram? Then it wasn't that that made you late at all. You'd have been waiting for the tram if you hadn't been waiting for Miss Oliphant."

"Well, I don't care. It's all--all---"

She did not say what, but hit the pergola with her hand again.

I was too sorry for her to be hurt by her words about Julia. That little slip about the tram had completely betrayed her, and it was against chance, and not against Julia, that she sought an occasion. Nevertheless the merciless mistrust of youth lay behind. The beginning and end of it was that she didn't like Julia, and her young heart had not yet learned the duplicity that makes us more rather than less sweet to those whom we dislike. She broke out again:

"And I _won't_ go to that dance to-morrow! I _won't_ be scolded and given a new frock and told I mustn't go out of the house! Mother and Miss Oliphant can go without me, and when I get back to London I shall earn my own living and I shall be able to do what I like then!"

"Very few people who earn their own living do what they like, Jennie."

"Well, it'll be a change anyway," she retorted.

A cheerful call of "Jen-nie-e-e!" came from the house. We all used a marked brightness in speaking to Jennie that evening.

"Yes, mother--I'm only with Uncle George."

"Don't be long, darling."

"I'll bring her in presently," I answered for her; and we continued to stand side by side.

I suppose that ordinarily a man of my years would keep such a dismissal as I had received that afternoon locked in his own breast, or would at any rate hesitate before sharing it with a young girl. And I did hesitate. But trouble is mysteriously lightened when it is merged in another trouble, and to cheer Jennie up was the aim of all of us that night. And I think that perhaps the Jennie I wanted to tell was Jennie the woman, not Jennie the child.

So "Jennie," I said quietly, "you're not the only one."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I've had my medicine too this afternoon."

"Your medicine?"

"Oh," I took myself up, "not that kind of medicine. I mean that you're not the only one who's had to go through it this afternoon."

"I don't understand you, Uncle George."

"While you went for a bicycle ride I went for a walk with somebody else."

"You went for a walk with Miss Oliphant, didn't you?"

"Yes. And I asked her not to remain Miss Oliphant any longer."

I felt the eager uprush of her solicitude. "Oh, Uncle George! Do you mean you asked Miss Oliphant to marry you?"

"Yes."

"So you're engaged?" The words jumped from her.

"No."

"Hasn't she decided yet?"

"Yes, she's decided."

"What!" A deep, deep breath. "You don't mean that she said No?"

"I'm afraid she did."

"_Oh!_"

She threw her arms about my waist and held me strongly.

"Oh! Poor Uncle George!"

"So you see we're in the cart together, Jennie. I thought I'd tell you.

I don't suppose I shall ever tell anybody else."

And I knew that I could not have told her three weeks before. That is how we with our belated loves strike the young--we of the Valley of Bones. Nevertheless my mother's embrace had been hardly more maternal than was the pressure of those seventeen-year-old arms that night.

Then, with another "Poor, poor Uncle George!" she released me. Her next words broke from her with a vivid little jump.

"Oh, _how_ I hate her now!"

"Jennie, Jennie! You can't hate anybody I've just told you that about!"