The Tower of Oblivion Part 67

"Oh, I can! Worse than ever! To think of her cheek in refusing you! She ought to have been proud--instead of playing cards all the evening!"

"Playing cards isn't a bad thing to do. I played cards too."

"Pretty poor look-out for her if she's in love with somebody else anyway!" she commented.

"By no means, Jennie. Other people than I are in love with her. But what I want to ask you is whether you can't be nice to her for my sake."

"I'll do anything I can," she said bitterly. "If you say she was awfully kind and gentle to you about it that might help a bit."

"Then let me say it. She was awfully kind and gentle."

"And so she ought to be! But _is_ she in love with somebody else, then?"

"I think she doesn't want to get married."

"I don't believe _that_!" declared Jennie flatly. "Why, she thinks about nothing but clothes and who's watching her and if she's looking all right!"

"Is that being kind to her, Jennie?"

"No it isn't, and I will try, but I didn't like her before, and I'm only trying now because of you. Why did she ask mother if she might come here, especially if she knew you were in love with her and you were here?"

"I hadn't told her I was in love with her."

"Don't tell me she didn't know, for all that," was the unbelieving reply.

"Well, well.... There it is and we must make the best of it. You try to make the best of things too, my dear. Shall we go in?"

Whether I had done Julia any great service in Jennie's opinion was doubtful. I had at any rate given Jennie something else to think of. And that was something.

Contrary to my expectations, I slept immediately and deeply that night.

It was nine o'clock in the morning before I awoke, half-past when I descended. I found Madge in the salon.

"I say, what's become of Julia?" she asked. "Though I don't see how you could very well know seeing you've only just this moment come down."

A maid was clearing away the _pet.i.t dejeuner_.

"Madam," she said.

"What is it, Ellen?"

"Miss Oliphant left word she'd be back at half-past eleven."

"Has she gone out? But we were to go into Dinard this morning!"

"She's gone to St Briac, madam, and she said as she was going to see somebody at the Golf Club she might as well save one of us a journey and bring a bicycle back. It wasn't exactly your orders, madam, but there's a deal to do this morning what with this dance, and as Miss Oliphant was so kind I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind."

"Oh, I don't mind, except that it doesn't leave us much time for shopping. I shall go into Dinard, and you'd better tell Miss Oliphant to follow me when she comes back."

"Very good, madam."

"Anyway," said Madge, turning to me, "it certainly does save one of the maids a couple of hours, as long as Julia doesn't mind. But who has she gone to see at the Golf Club at nine o'clock in the morning?"

V

The dances of my time were the waltz, the cotillion and the quadrille, and as I am not a Pelmanist I have never acquired the dancing-fashions of to-day. So I stood by one of Madge's tubs of hydrangeas and watched.

The large cream-and-gold room had a glazed end that opened on to the terrace and overlooked the crowded plage below, and when I wearied of watching the dancers I walked out on to this terrace, and when I was tired of watching the people who moved in and out among the tents and umbrellas and deck-chairs on the beach I returned to the dancing-room again. And much of the time I moved about out of sheer restlessness and apprehension.

Jennie had come to the Beverleys' party after all. She danced occasionally with young Rugby or young Marlborough, but kept more often close to her mother's side. And Julia Oliphant was there, not dancing at all, talking to Madge only infrequently, but gaily enough to everybody else--with the single exception of myself, whom (it seemed to me) she avoided in the most marked fashion. As for the others, they danced in flannels and blazers and varnished evening shoes, and the Beverley girls danced with one another.

What had happened at St Briac that morning? The question gave me no rest. Had Julia seen Derry? Idle to ask; of course she had. What had pa.s.sed between them? Useless to try to guess. I had glanced at the Indicateur. She had caught the tram at St Enogat at eight-thirty-four and had taken the ten-fifty-three back, reaching St Enogat again at eleven-nineteen. Actually she had had two hours of but seven minutes at St Briac, and that was all I knew. Again she had seized her chance with ruthless instancy. Except for a night's rest, the very moment Jennie had been out of the running she had been at the door of his hotel. She had even had the effrontery to use Jennie's own bicycle as her pretext.

And now why, when I was in the dancing-room, did she seek the terrace, and why, when I went out on the terrace, did she immediately enter the dancing-room again?

She wore the sleeveless frock; and "Oh Juno, white-armed Queen!" I had murmured to myself when my eyes had rested on it.... But, whatever her other attempts had been, those arms at any rate he had not seen that morning, for the simple reason that the frock had only been purchased and hastily made ready on her return. But its purchase was not to be dissociated from him. With him and him only in her mind she had chosen it. What other plans had she in her mind? Was she now going to get a bicycle--she, whom it was impossible to forbid to see whom she pleased and whenever she pleased? Would she go with him to that dove-haunted Tower, recline with him among the sarrasin-stooks with none to say her nay? And would her hosts see as little of her at Ker Annic as I had seen of Jennie during the days I had spent in bed?

Dire woman--dire, and _capable de tout_!

But even my preoccupation did not quite blind me to the prettiness of the scene about me. Whether inside or out was the prettier I will not say. They had improvised tennis on the beach, and from the tall diving-stage forty yards out lithe figures poised, inclined, and dropped gracefully downwards in the swallow-dive. The brightly-clad melee almost hid the dowdy sands. Back in the dancing-room the tall cream pilasters with the gold capitals supported the sweeping oval of the ceiling, painted with Olympian loves; and bright hair, bright faces, light ankles, pa.s.sed and interpa.s.sed before the eye could catch more than a blended impression of the total charm. The band was playing that which these bands do play, the fiddler on the little rostrum alternately conducting and using his bow, and----

And this time I really thought I had Julia pinned down. Madge was on one side of her, talking with animation, and Jennie stood on her other side.

Yes, I thought I had her cornered. She could hardly break away in the middle of one of her hostess's sentences. I advanced.

But she deftly eluded me. Madge had turned with an "Oh, here he is!" and in that moment Julia held out both her hands to Jennie.

"Come along, Jennie," she said, "if those Beverley girls can dance together we can."

But I will swear that it was only because of her promise to me the night before, that Jennie allowed herself to be led away.

I watched them as they stood balanced, bodies close together, foot alternating with foot. Jennie never once looked at Julia, but Julia's dark eyes smiled from time to time on Jennie's face. And present with them in some strange way, hauntingly about and between them, he--he--seemed to be there: young, sunbrowned, and beautiful as he had formerly been, young, sunbrowned and beautiful as he was to-day. A quartette seemed to be rhythmically balancing there, one of her, one of her, two of him.

Then, seeing my look, Julia frankly smiled at me for the first time.

Jennie also saw me, but did not smile. She would dance with Julia for me, but she would not pretend to smile over it.

Twice, thrice round the room they moved, the woman who had refused me yesterday and would not be denied him to-morrow, the girl who had glowed with angry compa.s.sion for me and knew in her feminine heart that that smiling partner had not offered to fetch a bicycle from St Briac that morning without having a reason for it....

"A penny for them, George," Madge's voice suddenly sounded at my side.

"Eh? I was only thinking of those two."

"Julia and Jennie? I'm glad Jennie's come round and is behaving with something like ordinary decency again.... And by the way, that about that bicycle of Jennie's is a funnier mix-up than ever now."

"How so?"

"Well, Julia saw young Arnaud this morning. Rather a difficult position for her, and I can't imagine why she offered to go, seeing she'd never set eyes on the young man in her life. But she seems to have done the best thing possible."

"What was that?"