PART II
THE EVEN KEEL
I
That evening I sat in Ker Annic, alone. Alec and Madge had gone out foran after-dinner walk, taking a silent Jennie with them. Silent too hadbeen our return along the cliff-tops that afternoon. Whether she alreadyregretted having opened her heart to me I could not tell.
I sat at the open window of the salon, looking out over the sea thatshowed pale milky green against the heavy sunset bank. Inside the roomGanymede and the Eagle had been lighted, and my shadow streamed down thesteps and was lost in the darkening garden. It was not a cold evening,and yet I felt a little cold. No fire was laid behind the drawn-downiron shutter where Alec threw his crumpled tobacco packets, and it washardly worth while troubling a maid. I closed the window, crossed to theshuttered fireplace, and sat down in a striped tapestried chair.
What had become of my illusion that certain things could not exist inthis clear atmosphere of Northern France? No man with two memories bathein that milky green sea I had just shut out? But he had swum it. No manof forty-five masquerade as a quarter of a century younger in thisbroomy, thymy air? But here he was.... I looked round the little salon,as if its spurious gaiety had misled me. Across the varnished ceilingthe lamp-chains threw straggling spider's webs of shadow. In one giltoval mirror a corner of the lamp was duplicated, in anotherre-duplicated. Everywhere were bits of inessential decoration, thetrophy of Senegalese spears over the door, the fringed and frettedbracket with nothing on it, a bronze fingerplate, a bit of lace orcoloured glass, all the rest of the quick artifice with which that greatnation diverts attention from its naked purpose in life--to wring fromeverything the last benefit the occasion will yield. Or so at any rateit seemed to me that night, as my eyes rested on the wriggling giltribbons of the mirrors and Ganymede struggling in the Eagle's clutch.
When Alec Aird had greeted me on Dinard Cale he had glanced at the twosuit-cases I had thrown ashore and asked me whether that was all thegear I had brought with me. And it is true that one cannot stay manyweeks in a place on the resources of two suit-cases. But the length orshortness of my stay was now only part of a wider issue. The questionwas, not how long I was to stay, but how I was ever going to leave untilDerry was ready to come with me. Was he likely to come now? Wouldanything drag him away? Hardly! Jennie was perfectly right: "He isn'teven thinking of leaving, because we both know now--we knew in theshop--and he loves me too!"
A pretty kettle of fish, I reflected, looking at the empty brackets andthe spears over the doorway....
For it was all very well to talk about only seeing one another, onlyspeaking to one another. How long was that likely to last? How long hadit lasted Julia Oliphant? Just as long as it had taken her to helpherself to more. True, Julia was not a sleeping, but a particularlywide-awake beauty. Julia was not Jennie. For the glimmers of starlightthat Julia had formerly brought into his life Jennie had now given himthe sun itself. Both had known it in that long exchange of eyes in theDinard Bazaar that morning.
Therefore I feared that, while Julia had produced in him an aberrationgrave enough but still only of the second magnitude, Jennie might nowunwittingly bring about a cataclysm indeed. For he himself had said thathis chances of stability lay in an even and unexciting tenor of life. Hemust sail, so to speak, on an even keel. Calmly and equably he must pickhis way through this beautiful and passionate wonder. He must lash thewheel of his will lest the lightest of her sighs should drive himrail-under. A glance might mean the loss of years to him, a kissdeath.... Others than I have told of loves between two normalcreatures, if such in love there be. I am the first, since a mortal fellin love with a god, to tell of lovers whose lives met as they approachedeach other from opposite directions.
Yet--only to see one another, only to speak to one another! Who with aheart could refuse them that? Who, only looking at them, he serious andradiant, she as I had seen her among the marguerites that afternoon?Love was first invented for such as they. Could he but have slept, likeEndymion, in his loveliness for ever!... You see what had already becomeof my momentary anger against him. It was quite, quite gone. He was oncemore my son, outside whose door I had paused with a sick dread that verymorning.
And as love of him re-possessed me the marvel grew that he should sohave survived that shock of beauty and emotion that had been his wherethe cars had stood parked in the transparent gloom. "Who was that withyou in the garden, George?" his ardent whisper seemed to sound again.Was it possible that there were _two_ loves, the one shattering,ruinous, destructive of the few years of his life, but the other full ofsecurity, healing and rest? Was there indeed a Love Sacred and a LoveProfane? (Yet who would call Julia Oliphant's love for him profane? Hehimself, since he had always refused it? Surely none other.) And Iremembered his own halting surmises as to the origin of his singularfate. He had known heaven and hell--had "been too close to the balm orthe other thing." God (he had said) was more than a gland; not a knockon the head in the war, but the contending angels themselves of Good andEvil had brought him to this. The one principle had fetched down hisyears all clattering about him on that moonlit night when the crackingof a cone on my balcony had brought me out of my bed. Was the oppositeprinciple now about to expunge that other ill, to restore him, and tomake him a whole and forward-living man again? He believed that therewas a chance of it. Was it too utterly beyond belief after all?
Did it prove to be true, then all was heavenly clear. His new life wouldbe what we all sigh that our lives were not--no blind groping in thenight of ignorance and doubt, but the angelic victory over the hosts ofdarkness. He was nineteen and unburdened of his sin, she seventeen andsinless. They would marry. One marriage such as theirs might at the lastbe enough to rehabilitate the despairing world. Instead of being in hisown person a public peril he might be society's hope and stay.
And--I found my excitement quickening--so far all was well. "_Entrez!_"the bright voice that might have been silent for ever had called, and Ihad entered to find him humming over a paint-box.
Surely he knew about himself if anybody did----
And he thought he could keep on an even keel---
There broke in on my musing the sudden sound of voices. The Airds werereturning from their walk. Madge tapped at the window, the catch ofwhich I had turned, and she and Alec entered. Jennie walked straightpast, and I heard her step in the hall, then on the stairs. Apparentlyshe was going straight to bed.
"Then if he's English what the devil does he wear those clothes for?"Alec demanded as he closed the window again.
"_Mon ami_, as he hasn't consulted me about his clothes I don't know."
"Where did Jennie pick him up?"
"Don't speak as if he was a germ. And do make a _tee_-ny effort to be alittle less insular, my dear. 'When the Lord said all men He includedme.'"
"We aren't in heaven. We're in Dinard."
"Among the world, the flesh and the French," said Madge cheerfully. "Whyshouldn't he speak good French instead of your eternal '_Donnez-moi_'and '_Combien_'? Why shouldn't a thing mean something simply because itisn't in English? You'd better go home and go to Lords'.... George,you've been asleep!"
If I had I was very far from being asleep now. If my ears told me truly,since leaving Ker Annic the Airds had met, and had spoken to, DerwentRose. Alec crossed to the fireplace, lifted the shutter, knocked out hispipe, and took up the running again.
"And what on earth made Jennie speak to him in French?"
"Jennie's quite right to practise her French."
"You don't practise French on a fellow who says he's anEnglishman--porter's blouse or no porter's blouse. I can hardly imagineshe spoke to him without knowing something about him."
"As you and I were there, very likely not," said Madge dryly.
"Anyway I marched Jennie on ahead," Alec growled. "Confounded mixedforeign company--wish we'd never come here----"
"I," said Madge serenely, "found him entirely and altogether charming,as well as being one of the handsomest boys I've ever
seen. And he'scoming to have tea with me.... This, George," she turned to me, "is afriend of Jennie's we met while we were out. He'd been making a sketchof the sunset and was just packing up, so we walked along together. Ohyes, I know--I ought to be ashamed at my time of life--but he's the mostadorable creature! A good deal like your Derwent Rose to look at--verylike him, in fact--though of course the Bear's old enough to be hisfather. And listen to Alec, just because he was dressed as half theEnglish and American students in Paris are dressed! I don't know whetherJennie's fallen in love with him, but _I_ have!"
"And if he's English what's he called Arnaud for?" Alec demanded withrenewed suspicion.
"Dear but simple husband, possibly he had a French father. Such thingshave been heard of, even in that Rough Island's Story of yours. Ifyou'll make me out a list of the questions you want asked I'll get itall out of him when he comes to tea. In the meantime:--unless Georgewould like to take me on the Casino for an hour--I think I shall go tobed. Feel like a modest flutter, George?"
I shook my head.
"Then bed. I'll dream I won a lot of money. Unless I dream of youngArnaud. Don't let Alec fall asleep in his chair. _Dors bien_----"
She tripped out under the trophy of assegais.
I was hardly five minutes behind her. Slowly I ascended to my room,crossed to the window, and leaned out over the balcony.
So that was that. Simply, and without any fuss at all, his foot was inthe door of Ker Annic. The whole thing had taken almost exactlytwenty-four hours. In the space of two revolutions of the clock, he,from the lurking-place of his roadside hotel at St Briac, had contrivedto get himself asked to the house to tea. I wondered what he would doabout myself. Would he blandly bow, as if our acquaintance began at thatmoment, or would he advance with outstretched hand, own up to it, andact on the square? If he admitted his acquaintance with me, whatquestions of Alec's should I not have to answer? How answer them, howexplain my concealment? How accept any responsibility whatever for him?Yet how avoid complete responsibility? Apparently only Jennie and themaid who had announced him knew of his furtive visit to myself theevening before; but Jennie knew, and what more she might learn when theyput their heads together I could not guess. Perhaps little or nothing.Perhaps all....
My thoughts flew to Jennie again and the miracle of the past twenty-fourhours for her. The first awakening look of that moment by the cars, thelovely and irreparable surrender in the Dinard Bazaar, her sobs againstmy shoulder that afternoon, the radiant burst in which she had realisedthat he too loved her--and then that evening's encounter whatever it hadbeen, when apparently she had taken matters into her own hands, bowed tohim, and spoken her first words to him in French, to be answered inEnglish.... No wonder she could not yet realise it. The day before hadfound her a child, moody, wilful, not knowing what ailed her, but cryingto Life to take her, use her and not spare her; now she was a woman,with a strange sweet turmoil in her bosom, and a quite matter-of-factresolution in the brain beneath that red-gold hair. No need to askwhether she slept! Sleep, with that ache and bliss at war in her breast?She must be awake at that moment, wondering whether he was awake,knowing that he was awake, lying in her innocent bed with her faceturned towards St Briac. His miniature was painted on the curtains ofher closed but unsleeping eyes, the echo of his voice was in her ears asshe had spoken to him in French, and he had answered--in English.
And by the way, _why_ had he answered her in English? Only that morninghe had cajoled me into talking French, at any rate among French people.Had he too, stupefied with bliss, answered her instinctively in her ownnative tongue and his? Or had he deliberately resolved that here at anyrate should be no trick or stratagem to be subsequently explained, but aperfectly clean beginning? If so, how would he contrive to maintain it?How could he be secure that the contretemps of any single moment of theday would not catch him out? I remembered the masterfulness and skillwith which he had managed me; had he his plans for the handling of theAirds also? Were they to be founded on the appearance of completehonesty, with only the trifling fact suppressed that he had lived awhole life before?
If that was the idea, I could only catch my breath at the impudence anddaring and pure cheek of it. Look at its comic beauties! Months before,Madge had begged me to bring the author of _The Hands of Esau_ to seeher; well, here was that author coming--as a corduroyed younglandscape-painter about whose nationality there seemed to be someambiguity! That afternoon at the Lyonnesse Club she had admired him forthe beauty of the prime of his manhood; and as a stripling youth hisbeauty had again engaged her eye! Suppose one of the books of DerwentRose should happen to be mentioned; would he say "Ah yes, I've readthat," and quote a page of it? Suppose she should say that he was ratherlike a man she had met in Queen's Gate who was rather like DerwentRose; would he say "Naturally, Mrs Aird, since I am the same man"? Orwould he suppress even the twinkle of his eye and continue hisleg-pulling? The thing began to teem with quite fascinatingpossibilities, and in a couple of days, in his French clothes or hisEnglish ones, he would be upon us. Within a week he might be paintingJennie's portrait, as Julia Oliphant was supposed to be painting my own.
And where were young Rugby, young Charterhouse, now that he had appearedon the scene?
Suddenly, on the little balcony at Ker Annic that night, with the Ploughover the sea and the lamplight from the salon below yellowing thegarden, I found myself one tingle of hope that he might pull it off.
II
You will appreciate my growing excitement when I tell you of a resolve Itook. It would have been perfectly simple for me to take the first tramout to St Briac, to see him at his hotel, to tell him I was aware of theturn events had been made to take, and to ask him to be good enough totell me where I came in among it all. But I found myself vowing that Iwould be hanged first. It was his show, and for the present at any ratehe should run it without any interference from me. If when he came totea at Ker Annic he chose to call me George, well, we would see whathappened; if he solemnly stood waiting to be introduced to me, that washis affair. At the least it would be interesting. It might proveenthralling.
Therefore I did not seek him the next day, but crossed to St Malo withAlec and went for a potter about the quays of St Servan.
I learned later that I should not have found him at St Briac even had Isought him there. He, who had so lately avoided the eyes of men, nowcoolly came forth and took his place in the world. His bicycle, insteadof taking him and his painting-gear to Pleudihen or Ploubalay or thewar-ravaged woods of Pontual, brought him into Dinard early in theforenoon. In the afternoon it brought him in again. It would probablyhave brought him in again in the evening had there been the faintestchance of a glimpse of Jennie Aird. It was on the afternoon trip thatMadge met him, and when we returned from St Servan Alec and I were toldthat Monsieur Arnaud was asked to tea the next day.
"Are you deliberately throwing him at that child's head?" Alec askedcrossly.
"I'm adding him to my collection of nice people. I should be so muchobliged if you happened to go to the Club, dear. Not that you're in theleast like a wet blanket, darling. Only the thermometer drops just theleast little bit."
"It'll go up again all right if I see any reason for it," Alec promised."You know nothing about the fellow. He may be all right for all I know,but as a matter of principle----"
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Alec on matters of principle takes timeto run down. At the end he turned his head to find that Madge had leftthe room. And that is enough to annoy anybody.
Something that I overheard on my way to my room the following afternooncaused me to smile. The door of Madge's room stood ajar, and as I passedit Jennie's imploring voice came from within.
"Oh, mother, not _that_ old thing! _Do_ wear the putty colour!"
"What!" in a faint shriek. "My very newest new one!"
"Please, mother!"
"But I was keeping that specially for----"
"Ple-e-ease! And the little darling hat!"
"But----"
"_Please, please!_"
I passed on. Evidently the best there was was none too good for MonsieurArnaud, alias Arnold, alias Derwent Rose.
Tea was set out inside the pergola; Jennie herself placed little leavesround the sandwiches, begonia petals about the dishes of chocolate andnougat. Critically she paraded her mother's putty-coloured frock forinspection, touched the little darling hat deftly. She herself wore herpale gold silk jumper; her proud throat and small head issued from itlike the little porcelain busts in the shop in the Rue Levavasseur--theWatteaus and Chardins and Fragonards that are made up into pincushionsand cosies. She was a tremulous tender pout of anticipation and anxiety.A dozen times she moved the objects on the table, a dozen times movedthem back again. Alec had dissociated himself from all this absurd fussabout a chance-met English youth with a French name, but he sat not faraway, in the shade of the auracaria, behind the _Paris Daily Mail_.
Then, at four o'clock, there was the short soft slide of somebodyalighting from a bicycle, and Derry stood by the wrought-iron gate,looking about him.
"This way--come straight down!" Madge called. "The bicycle will be allright there."
Rapidly as I knew Jennie's heart to be beating, I was hardly lessexcited myself. Now what was he going to do?
What he did was the simplest thing imaginable. As he advanced among themontbretias and begonias I noticed that he wore his English clothes. Hetook Madge's hand; he smiled simply at Jennie; and then, as Madge wasabout to present him to myself, he smiled and shook hands with me too.
"That's all right--we do know one another," he said. "Quite a long time.In London, eh, sir? And, as a matter of fact, I came here to see him theother night, but you were all so busy with the party----"
Beautifully, calmly disarming. He said it, too, just as Alec cameup--for Alec may growl before his guests come, and growl again when theyhave gone, but he is their host as long as they are there. If MonsieurArnaud had known Sir George Coverham in London the situation was more orless regularised. The growling might continue, but in a diminuendo.Growling is sometimes a man's duty to his own face.
"Well, let's have tea anyway," Alec said. "Tell them, Jennie."
The dark blue clothes--that had crossed the Channel in a motor-launchwhile their owner, thickly greased, had swum alongside in thenight--fitted him quite passably well; I remembered the very suit. Hisboots and collar, however, were French, and apparently he had no Englishhat, for his head was uncovered. I remember a foolish fleeting wonderthat the light chequer of shadow should pattern his clear andself-possessed face exactly as it did our own--and he the _lusus naturae_he was! He stood there, modest and at ease, waiting for his seniors toseat themselves. I saw Alec's expert glance at his perfect build. Imentally gave the subject of athletics about ten minutes in which tocrop up.
"Do sit down," said Madge; and she added to me, "George, you never toldme you knew Mr Arnaud in London!"
"I think this is the first time we've all been together," I parried.
Derry gave me a demure glance. "Oh yes. And I stayed a week-end in SirGeorge's place not so long ago--had a jolly swim in his pond--isn't thatso, sir?"
He should at any rate have a tweak in return. "When there's a prepschool in the neighbourhood a good many young people use a man's pond,"I observed; and at that moment Jennie and a maid arrived with tea.
Already I fancied I had what is called a "line" on him. The only word Ican apply to his modest impudence is "neck"--charming, bashful, butquite deliberate "neck." He had not merely met me before in London; ohdear no; he went a good deal beyond that. He was a young man I had tostay in my house, allowed to swim in my pond. I saw the way alreadypaved for as many visits to Ker Annic as he pleased. I saw inanticipation Alec coming round to his English clothes, his grace andstrength of build. Madge he already had in his pocket. He even admittedhaving sought me at this very house a night or two before! My positionwas as neatly turned as heart could wish. I could not even imitate hisown mendacious candour lest I should give him and myself completelyaway. Yes, I think "neck" is the word.
He talked quietly, charmingly, not too much. Jennie hardly ventured tolook at him, nor he at her. To Madge he was the most perfect of squires.Alec, like myself, was "sir" to him.
"Yes, sir," he said, "that's quite right. I did do a bit of a sprint atAmbleteuse. I'm that Arnaud. But I've had to knock it off. You wouldn'tthink it to look at me, but I've got to go awfully steady. I used to bequite fast, but that's some time ago. And of course I shall be all rightagain in a little time. That's one of the reasons I took up painting. Itkeeps me in the air practically all the time."
"Chest?" said Alec.
"Something of the sort, sir. No thank you, I don't smoke."
But for one significant trifle I think Alec might have been more or lesssatisfied. This was the fact that, in his own hearing, his daughter hadspoken to this charming stranger in French, and had been answered inEnglish. It might mean little or nothing, but I saw that it stuck in hismind. In his different way Alec is no less quick than his wife. Let himdown once and you are likely to have to take the consequences for alltime. A trifle ceases to be a trifle when it is all there is. Alec knewnothing of his visitor, but he did know that Jennie never addressed theblazered tennis-playing English youths in French. He also knew that forthree days Jennie, who up to then had soaked herself in tennis, had notbeen near the nets at all. The intensely insular father of a beautifulgirl of seventeen is not blind to these things.
"I suppose your people were French at one time?" Alec said presently,not too pointedly.
"Yes, sir," said Derry, for all I knew with perfect truth. "My motherwas a Treherne, a Somerset woman. I believe she and my father ran away.I don't remember him."
"And you went to a French school?"
"No, sir. Shrewsbury." This, too, was perfectly true.
"You've got an uncommonly good French accent, that's all," remarkedAlec; and relapsed into silence.
After all, the last question he would have thought of asking his youngguest was whether he might have a look at his birth certificate.
Up to this point our gathering had had its distinctly amusing side. Withconsummate dissembling he had turned us round his finger, and it wouldhave taken a conjurer to guess that he was softly laughing at all of usexcept Jennie. But the more I considered the "line" I had on his subtlemachinations the less a laughing matter it all became. Behind the gentledeference of his manner I felt the grimmest determination. His charm wasthe charm of a charming youth, but it rested on the hard experience andresolution of a man. And behind that again in the last resort menacewould lie. This man, actually older than Madge, not much younger thanAlec and myself, and a full quarter of a century older than Jennie, hadtoiled for fame and had missed the fruits of it; he had chased thewill-o'-the-wisp pleasure and had floundered in the bog; but now he hadseen the shining thing beside which fame and pleasure are nothing atall. To seize that was now the whole intention of his marvelloustwice-lived life. Let him keep his eyes as he would from lookingdirectly at Jennie, Jennie was there, the prize for which he strove. AndI knew in my soul that were I or another to try to frustrate him we hadbetter look to ourselves. It was a thing none the less to beware of thathis brow was smooth, his eyes bright, his skin clear as the skin of aboy.
And all in a moment I found myself looking at him with--I don't know howelse to express it--a sort of induced unfamiliarity. All the strangenessof it came over me again like a wave. I knew that I didn't know him inthe least. Behind that mask he knew infinitely more about me than Iknew about him. He sat with his back to the sea, and the tartan oftricky shadow laced his brow, was lost again as his face dipped,reappeared on the navy-blue sleeve and his brown hand on the table. Yes,completely a stranger to me. I his father? He was his own father. Whatelse did all that turgid stuff in _The Times_ about "maximum faculties"mean? New words for old things! "The boy is father of the man." They ofold time knew it all before us. We only think it is truer to-day becausemore people talk about it. H
ere, incipient and scarcely veiled, was thereal parent of the Derwent Rose of _The Vicarage of Bray_, _An Ape inHell_, and all else he had ever done. Here, implicitly and in embryo,were the wit of the _Vicarage_, the patient purpose of _Esau_, and thedeadly suppressed anger of the _Ape_. Possibly you have never seen,brightly and sunnily displayed with a light and laughing lazy-tongs ofrippling shadow, the authentic beginning of a man you have knowntwenty-five years farther on in time. Perhaps it is as well that theywho have seen it are few. You may take my word for it that that familytree of which the roots are Arnaud and the blossoms Rose can be a ratherterrifying thing.
Therefore I and I alone was able to pierce through his blandness, and tosee the tremendousness of the effort behind it all; and I wonderedwhether _that_ was his idea of an easy and unexciting life! Whatever itwas to him, I can only say that I did not find it so. I almost sweatedto see his composure. Yet to all outward appearance he never turned ahair. His keel was still even, the rudder of his will under perfectcontrol. Jennie with the downcast eyes was the mark on which he steered.And his own eyes sought the rest of us in turn with crafty innocence andinfernal candour.
"I beg your pardon, sir?" he was saying to Alec. "Oh"--he gave a littlelaugh of confusion--"in a place like this it's sometimes difficult tosay! Where was it, Miss Aird?" (But he gave her no chance to reply.)"One hardly knows how one meets anybody else; it seems to be in the air;you can hardly help knowing people. But these holiday acquaintances canbe easily dropped afterwards."
("Steady, Derry!" I found myself commenting. "Don't overdo it--that'srather experienced--don't be too wise for the age you look.")
"Anyway," he went on, "I shall probably be the last one here. I like theplace, and the rate of exchange is all to the good when you know yourway about--not in a villa," he twinkled modestly. "They say Italy's theplace, but I can't quite manage that, and England doesn't suit me, so Ishall just stick on here and paint."
"I've only seen the sketch you were doing the other night," remarkedMadge--dangerously invitingly, I thought.
"Oh, they aren't anything." He waved them aside. "I hope to do somethingone day. But it's a funny thing," he explained, "words and books and allthat sort of thing never interested me in the least. I couldn't write ifmy life depended on it; can't imagine how Mrs Aird and Sir George do it.But everybody understands what they see with their eyes. Paint's thestuff."
"Then when are you going to show us?" said Madge.
"If you'd care to, of course. George--Sir George Coverham knows where Ihang out. Perhaps you'd bring Mrs Aird round, sir?... _Ah_----"
The last little exclamation accompanied as wonderful a feat of its kindas I ever saw. As she had turned to him Madge's elbow had caught ateaspoon, which slipped over the table's edge. But it never reached theground. He did not even shake the table. The position of his shoulderaltered, his hand shot out. He put the spoon back on the table. Withsuch instantaneous smoothness had he done it that it seemed simple. ButI tell you I caught my breath....
"Near thing," he smiled. "Oh, come any time. You won't have to mind afew stairs. But I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. I'm only a beginnerreally."
And so not one door, but two were opened, the second one at his lodgingat St Briac.
But Alec as well as I had seen that marvellous piece of fielding withthe teaspoon. Suddenly he got up, stretched himself, and walked away.
The moment his back was turned Jennie spoke for the first time.
"Perhaps Mr Arnaud would like to see the rest of the garden, mother?"
"Then show him, child," said Madge. "We'll be with you in a minute."
Their eyes met. He rose. They went off together. Madge swung round onme.
"Why didn't you say you knew him before?" she demanded.
"The question never arose."
"The question always arises if Alec's anywhere about. You know he's likea bear with a sore head about young men."
"It's the duty of a father's head to be sore. I quite agree with Alec."
"But if you'd only said 'He's quite all right, he stays with me inHaslemere----'"
"Quite a number of people stay with me in Haslemere, if that's a socialguarantee----"
"You know what I mean. Alec's simply a troglodyte. He doesn't belong toto-day. It's all very flattering, of course, but he simply can't forgetwhat things were like when I was a girl. They never dreamed of lettingus travel without a maid; why, we actually had to sit still in thecarriage till the footman had opened our own front door. Alec doesn'trealise that the world's moved on since then. And you could have put itall on a proper footing with three words!"
"'It?'"
"Yes, his coming here. All that fuss! I think he's perfectly delightful.And I know those Somerset Trehernes if they're the Edward Trehernes ofWitton Regis. And I expect his painting's clever too. He looks as if hehad all the gifts.... Now I make you answerable for Alec, George. Thathe's not simply stupid and unreasonable, I mean. I don't mean that he'snot perfectly right to ask the usual questions, but Jennie's got to beconsidered too. She's quite old enough to know her own mind. Now I'mgoing to them. Are you coming?"
"I'll come along in a few minutes," I replied.
III
My intelligence with regard to painting is simply that of the ordinaryman. I seldom speculate on the relation between one art and another.True, I have read my Browning, and have wondered whether he really knewwhat he was talking about when he spoke of a man "finding himself" inone medium, and starting again all unprejudiced and anew in another. Itsounds rather of a piece with much more art talk we heard when we wereyoung.
But Derwent Rose was only fallaciously young. He had time at hisdisposal in a sense that neither Browning nor you nor I ever had. And itseemed to me significant of the state of his memory that he should haveturned his back on words and taken up paint instead. For the burden ofhis age was lifted from him, and he was advancing on his youth with ahigh and exhilarating sense of adventure. Now words had been thegreatest concern of his "A," or Age Memory, and words, it must beadmitted, have arrogated to themselves the lion's share of this strangefaculty that we call remembering. Had he now found a means of expressionmore closely in correspondence with the untrodden ground ahead? In otherwords, was he a kind of alembical meeting-ground where the artsinterpenetrated and became transmuted?... I hazard it merely as aconjecture in passing, and leave you to judge. Let us pass to that visitwe paid to St Briac to see his sketches.
Alec was not with us. The Kings, Queens and Knaves of the bridge-tablewere pictures enough for him. So I accompanied Madge and Jennie.Jennie's bosom lifted as we approached the wide spaces of the links--butthen the St Briac air is admittedly fresher than the tepid medium thatis canalised, so to speak, in the streets and lanes of Dinard. It wasafternoon, and the shed at the terminus was a bustle of moving luggage,friends meeting friends, parties going into Dinard to return by theseven o'clock tram. We crossed the road to his glass-fronted hotel.There was no need to ask for him. Evidently he had been watching fromhis window. He stood at the gate, once more in blouse and corduroys.
"Tea first, I think, and the works of art afterwards," he greeted uscheerfully. "Where's Mr Aird? Oh, what a pity! This way--straightthrough the kitchen--I thought it would be nicer outside----"
He led the way through the black and cavernous kitchen towards the sunnygreen doorway and the back garden.
Tea was set under an apple tree. The garden was some fifteen yardssquare, but only close under the tree was there room for the table andthe four chairs. Even then we had to be careful how we moved, lest weshould crush a growing plant. There were no paths--you could hardly callthose single-file, six-inches-wide threads paths. Unless you put onefoot fairly in line with the other pop went a radish, a strawberry, aflower. Not one single hand's-breadth anywhere was uncultivated. BehindMadge as she sat a row of scarlet runners made a bright straggle ofcoral, and dwarf beans filled the interstices. Over the runners tallnodding onion-heads showed, and behind them again bushes heavy withwhite curr
ant. Along a knee-high latticed fence huge red-coated appleswere espaliered, and the ochre flowers of a marrow sprawled over amanure-heap. Bees droned and butterflies flitted in the sun, glints ofglass cloches pierced the screens of warm grey-green. And, where a treeof yellow genet covered half the wall, a large green and red parrot in acage had suddenly become silent on hearing voices.
"That's Coco," Derry said. "Coco! Ck!--'Quand je bois mon vinclairet----'"
The parrot cocked his head on one side and regarded us with anupside-down eye.
"Chants, Coco!--'Quand je bois'--You'll hear him all right in a minute,Mrs Aird.... Ma me-r-r-r-e! Nous voici a table!"
"Tout est pret--on va servir!" came the shrill reassurance fromsomewhere inside the house; and an immensely fat old patronne in a bluecheck apron brought out tea, followed by one of the reserved youngAmazons with strawberries, cream, and little crocks of jam with waspsstruggling on the top.
As for Jennie and myself, I think she had completely forgotten that Ihad ever tried to keep her and Derry apart. I was now the person throughwhose good offices she sat, with at least semi-parental approval, herein his garden. I do not want to pretend to more knowledge than I haveabout these secretive young goddesses, but, as she sat there, her eyesstill bashfully avoiding Derry's, I was prepared to take a reasonablebet that I guessed what was passing through her mind. Derry had stayedin my house in England. Her too I had asked to visit me there. What anUncle George indeed I should be if at some time or other I were to askthem together! Only as thanks in advance, after which I could not findit in my heart to withhold the benefit, could I explain the soft andgrateful looks I received from time to time. I had one of these glancesquite unmistakably before I had as much as touched the cup of tea Madgepoured out for me. "You see, mother's all right," it said as plainly asif she had uttered the words; "you'll make it all right with father,won't you? I know you can if you will! And thank you so much, dear UncleGeorge, for the perfectly lovely time we're going to have when we cometo see you!" At any rate, that was my interpretation of it, while Derry,no less charming as a host than he had been as a guest, made himselfhoney-sweet to Madge and politely attentive to her daughter.
Nevertheless, I presently asked a direct question about the hours ofdeparture of the trams. I saw the faintest flicker of demure fun crosshis face; and I too remembered, too late, how I had once countered himabout the Sunday trains from Haslemere.
"There's a four-thirty-five and a five-forty-eight," he said. "It'sfour-twenty now. We can cut out the pictures, of course, but it seems apity not to have tea."
So we had nearly an hour and a half.
I don't really think that he had the least desire to show us hispictures. The pictures had served their turn handsomely enough already.He wanted to remain under the apple tree, with Madge and myself theresince we must be there, but anyway with Jennie opposite to him, eatinghis strawberries and jam, occasionally not knowing which way to look,the possession on which his twofold heart was set, the lovely andprecious godsend he had missed once but would see us all with ourthroats cut rather than not clasp her to his bosom in the end.
So we sat there over our empty cups, with the wasps struggling in thejam and Coco harping on the wires of his cage, but still obstinatelyrefusing to sing "Quand je bois." Jennie got up to give him a piece ofsugar, and he cocked his yellow upside-down eye at her and showed theribbed black tongue inside his hook of a beak. Were I a painter I shouldpaint the picture she made against the shrill yellow of the broom, withthe sun full on her white summer frock, her gleaming hair, and thesun-loving bird with his head on one side watching her. "Mind his beak,"Derry called; and she smiled over her shoulder, as if his mere voicewere so much that she must turn her eyes whatever it said. Then shereturned to the table, but not before she had plucked a sprig of genetand put it in her breast. It lay at the pit of her stately throat like adropped blossom at the plinth of a column.
"But what about the pictures?" Madge suddenly said. "We came here to seepictures, didn't we?"
"Then that means a trail upstairs," said Derry, springing up. "Carefullythrough the kitchen, Mrs Aird; it's always as dark as the pit afteryou've been sitting out here. Perhaps I'd better go first."
He led the way through the kitchen, up the bare polished stairs, andinto his room.
He cannot have had any great wish to show them; otherwise they wouldhave been set out, or at least ready to hand. As it was he had torummage for them in his single cupboard, selecting some, rejectingothers. He showed a dozen or more of them, mostly canvas on thestretchers, but a few watercolours among them; and I fancy, if the truthmust be told, that Madge was just a shade disappointed. I think she hadhoped for jazz and lightning and something to go with her drawing-roomcushions. Nor did I myself quite know what to make of those pictures.The first impression of them I had was a kind of--let me saydatelessness; I can't think of a better word. All were landscapes, thelargest of them not more than a couple of feet by eighteen inches; andat first he set them up one after another rather negligently. But asMadge began to question him his manner rather curiously changed. Thatpreternatural skill that he had shown for two whole afternoons seemed todrop from him. He seemed to halt a little, to take risks, to advancewarily into deeper water. If Mrs Aird really wished to know, then he wassincerely ready to explain. And he began to take me, for one, throughthe unsuspected intricacies of what at a first glance appeared to be afew casual brush-marks on the flat.
"I dare say I'm all wrong--I feel rather an ass talking about it," hesaid diffidently, "but I'll try to tell you. I mean I came across afellow one day just outside Pleudihen, and he was painting what hecalled a Romantic Landscape. I asked him what a Romantic Landscape was,and he was just a bit stuffy about it. 'This that I'm painting,' hesaid. 'But why can't you paint just a landscape?' I said. 'Because I'mdoing a Romantic one and I can't do two things at once,' he said. 'Whatare you doing it for?' I asked him. 'The Salon,' he said. 'No, but Imean _why_ are you doing it?' I said. 'I suppose because I belong to theRomantic School,' says he.... Well, there you are, Mrs Aird. What I meanis that he was painting it because he belonged to a school that didpaint that sort of thing. If he'd belonged to another school he'd havepainted something different, I suppose. So of course that set methinking a bit."
"I suppose so," said Madge, quite out of her depth.
"So I said to him, 'What do you want to belong to a school at all for?''Everybody does,' says he. 'I should have thought that was all the morereason why you shouldn't,' says I. 'Oh, if you're a blooming genius!' hesaid ... a bit rotten of him, I thought, but he was years older than I.So I rather let myself go, I'm afraid. I picked up the nearest leaf.'Look here,' I said to him, 'this thing's a leaf, just a leaf. It's acertain colour and a certain shape and certain other things; the pointis it's itself and nothing else; and neither you nor I can alter it,sir' (I told you he was years older than I). 'The light hits it there,and only one possible thing can happen; it hits it there, where thedirection alters, and only another thing can happen. In another minutethe light will have changed, and a quite different set of things willhave happened. Everything there is happens to that leaf in the course ofa day, and if you know all about that leaf you know all abouteverything. And if you can paint it you can paint all the leaves in theworld.' I hope I didn't seem too rude, but that's what I said to him."
I had moved to the window. He was talking with a mixture of diffidenceand warmth, on a subject I had never heard him on before, and yet itseemed to me that I had heard something strangely like it all before.
"And what did he say?" Madge asked.
"Oh, he said something, but he was years older than I, so I just saidgood afternoon. I suppose he went back to school," said Derwent Rose.
Once more I was disturbed. Was this a new phase, or an old one all overagain? If he was going to abolish schools and precedents and all theaccepted apparatus by which the world's thought is carried on, it seemedto me to matter very little whether he dealt in words, as before, or inpaint, as no
w. True, this parallelism might exist largely in my ownimagination; he had said nothing that another man might not have saidwithout arousing anxiety; but again he was trying to see something,though only a leaf, as if it had never been seen before, and I noted itcarefully as I looked out over the sunny northward water.
"So that's more or less what I'm after," he was saying. "I know they'repretty bad, but I think they start right. That sky's as clumsy as it canbe, but it _is_ horizontal. That tree's got a back you don't see as wellas a front you do. So I simply don't go to look at other people'sstuff.... Ah, this branch will explain what I mean."
It did when he pointed it out, but I should never have seen for myself.As completely as a worshipping pagan he sought to subdue himself to onegiven thing in one given moment. As I say, I know nothing aboutpainting. That may be a valid theory of painting landscape or it maynot. But it was his, there was no ear-say or eye-say about it, and it isof him and not of his pictures that I am speaking.
"I believe I shall pull it off one day; in fact I know I shall.... Andnow that's quite enough about me. That's my view, Mrs Aird, and this iswhere I live. My old landlady's a perfect dear, and Madeleine andHortense are all right. But sometimes that brute Coco simply won'tsing----"
I saw Jennie drinking in every detail of his room. There was not to beone inch of it that she could not reproduce when she went to bed thatnight and turned her face in the direction of St Briac. Her eyes took inhis moulded ceiling-beams, the glass knob of his door, his neat bed, theherring-boned parquet of the floor. It was a little bare, perhaps, butthen he spent all his days out of doors, painting those wonderfulpaintings, and, of course, this was not his real home. She hated thatolder painter--a hundred at least--who had been rude to him about theRomantic Landscapes; instantly and passionately she had taken sides withher hero. She loved the fat old Frenchwoman who looked after him and wasnearly seventy; she did not so much love the two Breton women who lookedafter him and were not nearly seventy. Coco was a naughty bird not tosing "Quand je bois" when he was told, and if his window did not facetowards Dinard, at any rate he had the tram opposite, and could watchit every time it started, and know that it was going almost past thegates of Ker Annic. She stood with puckered brows before his canvases.She loved trees. They would always be different to her now that he hadshown her about them. She had no doubt whatever about his theory oflandscape; how could it be wrong if it was his? Her fingers touched theblossom of broom at her throat that had grown on his tree.
Then she came over to the window to make sure that Dinard really did notlie that way. Most stupidly it did not. Actually it lay miles away pastthe glass door-knob, and the Garde Guerin to the right was invisiblefrom Dinard. But she pressed my arm lightly. "September, Uncle George?"the pleading pressure silently said. "You'll ask us both down inSeptember, the moment we get back from here?"
I looked at my watch.
Then I heard Madge's voice across the room, and my heart almost stoppedat the swift peril.
"Then your mother was Cicely Treherne, and she married an Arnaud?"
But he weathered it. He did it with his rascally eyes. He smiled down onher.
"Well ... I shouldn't be allowed to swear it in a court of law, becauseit was before I was born, you see."
The smile conquered. She laughed. I cut quickly in, my watch half out ofmy pocket. Gunpowder was safer than family history with Madge Airdabout.
"Time?" I said.
"Ought we to be going?"
"The tram has a way of filling up."
"Then don't let's miss it," said Madge, drawing on her gloves. "Thankyou for a most delightful afternoon, Mr Arnaud (all my friends are 'Mr'for at least a week, you know). I think the pictures are fascinating;they make our books look very dull. Good-bye."
"Oh, I'm coming to see you off," he said.
Something in his last words, I really can't tell you what, made me takea swift resolve. If he was going to see us off, I was going to see himoff also. I had a superstitious idea that it might be necessary. He hadbamboozled Alec about his delicate chest, had only just evaded thatquestion of Madge's that simply meant, if you like to do a little sumabout it, that his mother had borne him at two different dates with aquarter of a century between them. Blandly as he might cover it up, Inow expected nothing but tricks from him--tricks coolly and resolutelyplanned and carried out without a moment's compunction or hesitation.Very well. He was going to be watched if I had eyes in my head.
And so was Miss Jennie. With a guile so innocent and transparent that Ihad nothing for it but the tenderest and most smiling love, she too wasquite capable of duplicity. More than once her tell-tale hand hadfluttered about the flower at the pit of her throat. As I have said, Idon't pretend to deep knowledge of the hearts of these superb andrecently-awakened young creatures, but I do know when things are in thewind.
Nothing happened as we passed down the stairs and out into the street. Icould have taken my oath of that. And, devoted as always, he walked withMadge across to the terminus, leaving Jennie to me. But I felt itcoming....
It came as he took the tickets at the guichet; and it was not of hisdoing, but of hers. I had silver in my hand, ready to repay him, andthere was no reason why she also should have pressed so close to him.Again there was the little flurry about the flower at her throat; herbent nape was towards me; the thing was movingly clumsily done.
But it was done for all that. A note passed from her hand to his, andthe fingers that passed it were held for a moment.
Don't tell me that that note had not been in readiness probably sincethe evening before. Don't tell me that it had not lain under her pillowfor a whole night before being transferred to that tenderer post-bagthat was sealed with the yellow flower. Don't tell me that it had notbeen even more sweetly sealed. For I saw her face when she turnedagain. I saw its str