The Tower of Oblivion Part 80

"Do they never open this chapel, I wonder?" said Derry, peering through the grille of the closed door.

I peeped in after him. It had a tiny altar with four tapers, and a blue-and-white pennon with a device upon it. The little porcelain Virgin was blue and white and gold, and under the three lancet windows a dozen rickety chairs stood. The walls were whitewashed, with a picture here and there, and there was a rat-hole in the floor. A small and very bad rose-window reminded me of the window of St Sauveur, and I turned away again.

We pottered about here and there among the scrub and masonry. Seen from above, the west tower, that which looks over to Trelivan, is the most complete; but the one to the south-west can be entered by climbing down half-effaced steps in the thickness of the wall. I descended. But there was nothing to see inside but the peep through a single loophole. Its walls chirped with gra.s.shoppers, and a thin screen of oak gave it a roof. I was restless, and came out again. I wanted my letters from London. Then this interminable business would be quickly finished.

But London reminded me once more of Julia Oliphant, of what she was doing, of what she would do....

Madge was waiting for me when I re-ascended. The others were nowhere to be seen. And we no longer had the ruins to ourselves. Over by the _zigzag_ path to the east of the rock I heard voices and the brushing of branches. But the colline is so overgrown with shrub that it is not difficult to lose anybody. Derry and Jennie could not be far away.

"I expect they're looking for blackberries," said Madge.

"Then they'll be on the sunny side," I replied; and I led her across the shady plateau.

Then suddenly Madge saw them, for she called "Be careful there, children!" They were standing on the brink of the southern tower, looking away into the brightness. Close to them a mountain-ash overhung the deep, and about the scabious at the foot of it b.u.t.terflies hovered, part of the airy light. Her hand was on his shoulder, her white frock a luminosity of grey shadow. About one pink glowing ear her loosened hair was a radiance of coppery gold.

But the newly-come party was close behind us. Through the leaves I heard a rustle and a woman's voice suddenly raised.

"I'm sure I saw him come this way----"

"I should get rid of the little beast if I were you," a man's voice growled.

Then the woman's voice uplifted again. "_Puppetty! Puppetty!_ Oh, you naughty boy!"

The man and the woman appeared.

"Puppetty! Puppetty!... Excuse me, have you seen anything of a little---- Good heavens alive, if it isn't Sir George Coverham! Of all the--fancy meeting----"

But I had eyes for her for one fleeting instant only. All at once there had come a stifled cry from Derry. He stood there, dark against the morning light, embroidered round with light. His eyes were immovably on that woman who had called the dog--on that Daphne Ba.s.sett who, in years that were now clean-sponged from his memory, had been Daphne Wade.

Jennie too was staring at her, bewildered that he should stare so. Her hand was still on his shoulder. She drew a little more closely to him.

The struggle that began on his darkened face was a struggle to remember something; or perhaps its real beginning was that he seemed to remember that there was something to remember. But what? Not a book that he had written? Not a book that she had written? Not two books, of which he had written one and she the other? He had never written a book--had never dreamed of writing a book; he left that to clever people like Sir George Coverham and Mrs. Aird--"Mummie."

A picture, then? No, not a picture. He had dabbled in paint for a bit--there was a lot of stuffy old canvas in the hotel now--but it couldn't be that.... He did not look at Jennie. His hands tried to put her away from him. He muttered hoa.r.s.ely.

"Let me go, Jennie, let me go."

But she only held him the more closely, both arms now wrapped about him.

Then he cried out sharply, loudly. "Let go--let go, I say--and don't look--take your eyes away--_don't look at my face_!"

But she would now never let him go. She would look at his face, yes, even though he commanded her not to, because of what had already begun to pa.s.s there....

And what that was you may see by turning back to the beginning of this book. Yesterday, in the Tour de l'Horloge, a clock had prepared to strike the hour. It had begun with the soft fluttering of a vane that had dissolved into a mist; there had been the murmur of mechanism, those preparatory notes on an open third.

But this was not hearing. It was seeing. We all saw. Jennie saw.

As the hues of a coloured top alter at a touch of the finger, so change began to succeed change over that face with its back to the morning light.

Oh, by no means violent ones at first. Quite gentle ones. We merely saw the youth who had painted a few pictures, the young man who had swum the Channel, the athlete who had discussed tides and currents with boatmen in the Lord Warden at Dover----

Then a certain acceleration (though you must understand that this fantasia on Time that we watched is but comparative, happened in a few instants, more quickly than I can write or you read). Against the sun a glint of golden beard appeared and was gone in a twink. I had once seen that beard at breakfast-time, in a South Kensington mews.

But oh my heart! Then a terrific leap!... His whole form bulked, loomed.

Eleven years descended on him like a Nasmyth hammer. He seemed to take the very brain out of my head and to put it, not in France at all, but into a house in Surrey with a pond in front of it, while he, with a punt-pole in his hand, brought a piece of water-starwort into Julia Oliphant's hand----

His arm, both his arms, were over his face as he tried to hide it all from her. No cry broke from him now. But her arms were locked desperately about his waist. She would never let him go.

Then somewhere a dog yapped, and at the sound the horrible life-slide ceased. It ceased because it could not go further. How could it go further than that side-street off Piccadilly in which the woman who had written _The Parthian Arrow_ had set a dog upon the author of _An Ape in h.e.l.l_? Already I had started forward, but my foot caught in the scrub, and I found myself rolling, clutching wildly in the air for something to hold.

But I swear it was for them and not for myself that I feared.

Then, as they slowly swayed outward together by the mountain-ash, the beautiful, re-transfiguring thing happened.

A stupid woman with a wretched little pet dog! A rebuff on a pavement over a miserable literary squabble! Was it for _this_ that the years had changed on his face as the hues change on a spinning top? Was _that_ all that this commonplace apparition of a woman had reminded him of? Why, he had thought it had been something important, something to do with the peace of churches, the beauty of coloured windows, the glorious thunder-roll from the organ! He had thought it had something to do with his boyhood's dreams, aspirations, vows! But only _this_!... It was not worth the trouble of having sought it. He had better get back to his deliverance.

He laughed. The vane whirred in the opposite direction. He began to go back to Jennie----

He swam back to her across the Channel, knowing now that she awaited him on the other side----

He ran at Ambleteuse--ran swiftly to her.

His eyes met hers in the glow of the headlights at Ker Annic----

Once more he stood with her in that Tower of dead and forgotten doves--fled on silent wheels with her through the night--in that upper room in the Rue de la Cordonnerie took her, stainless, into his own virgin arms----

He was here again, back at the Chateau de Beaumanoir; young, beautiful, innocent, grave, his arm dropped now, looking into her eyes, calling to her.

"_Look--look at me--yes, look, Jennie!_"

"Oh, my G.o.d, catch them!" Madge screamed.

But I don't think she saw what I think I saw. Let us say that the scrub was treacherous, that it betrayed his foot; it makes no difference now, for I have no son. Why, after all, go forward again if going forward meant no more than that four-seconds pilgrimage from which he had but that moment returned? Better as it was, neither forward nor back nor standing still on that edge of masonry or on any other edge. He drew her close to him. Their lips met....

"_Oh, Lord, Thou hast prevented him with sweetness; he asked life of Thee and Thou hast given him length of days._"

We heard the parting of the bushes down below....

A yard beyond the mountain-ash the b.u.t.terflies continued to hover, and past them the silver-flashing stretch of ca.n.a.l-lock by Tressaint could be seen once more.

EPILOGUE

I stood before the Tower at the Chateau de la Garaye. No thrashing-gin sounded, for the day's work was over, and in and out of the empty windows of the glimmering Renaissance ruin the bats flitted. Madge, Alec and I were leaving France to-morrow. There was nothing further to do, there is nothing further to write. I shall never re-visit Dinan.

But I did not enter their Tower. I should hardly have done so even had not that which showed in the saffron sky seemed to forbid me. For it seemed to me the perfect symbol of his end. It was the old moon in the new one's arms.