The Tower of Oblivion Part 34

If on the fourth day he had been the lower figure--thirty--then he had only dropped a year in a night.

But if on the fourth day he had been thirty-three, then he had dropped four whole years in the same time.

Either was possible, and yet in the one case the ratio was, appallingly, four times as great as in the other.

And now that I was getting to the root of the matter I wished to take nothing for granted. His equations were high above my head, but I reviewed the position in terms of my own. This is how I set it out:

I HAD ALREADY KNOWN THE DIARY NOW TOLD ME

That by June 8th he had That his "straphanging"

slipped back from forty-five age three weeks later to thirty-five. (on June 29th) was "thirty-three--thirty."

That on Wednesday, June 30th, In a pathetic little jotting of Julia had been scheming to the same date, that he feared make herself his secretary. he would never write his book, that he was "getting too young for it," but that he intended to attempt it at all costs.

That on the following Friday That he now doubted whether and Sat.u.r.day, at my house, what he had at first thought he had been vivid, momentary, to be will-power had really intense. been that at all; in fact, that the real effort of will would have been, not to put his work out of his head for a couple of days, _but to remember it_.

At this point I began to grow excited. It seemed to me that at last I began to see light. I had taken him step by step from the starting-point of June 8th to the evening of Sat.u.r.day, July 3rd, and the reason I had not gone beyond that date was that the diary itself stopped there. Its last entry was the one I have just given--that he feared he had been mistaken in supposing that will-power had had anything whatever to do with that stolen week-end's holiday.

Oh, had there but been one, one single entry dated Sunday, July 4th!

For if it was possible for him to shuffle off four years in what I may call an ordinary night, what was _im_possible after an experience as stupefying as had been his on the night of Sat.u.r.day-Sunday?

And yet in appearance it had not altered him. I had spent practically the whole of Sunday with him, and there had been nothing to indicate that he was not still twenty-nine. His manner, it is true, had been alternately jumpy and morose, but that might have been the mere vague pull of his Wanderjahre. Therefore it looked as if that mad onslaught of Julia's on his stability had pa.s.sed him over after all.

_Ah, but wait a moment!..._ I sat up at my desk, vociferating the words aloud. Were we at such a dead end after all? Perhaps not....

And first of all I remembered that question I had asked him about the flash-lamp as he had stood behind the screen of rugosa roses on the Sunday afternoon. "Has there been a moment since yesterday when that lamp has been held as close as it could be held?" Again I saw his sudden pallor. Again I felt his clutch on my shoulder, again heard his faint "George--I've been trying to remember ... the lamp ... very close ...

touching ... one intense brilliant spot ... but I swear I never moved it ... it was as if somebody took the torch out of my hand ... somebody meddled in my life...."

And he had made me go through his Sat.u.r.day evening's programme again--his inspection of the Hogarths, his unusual wakefulness, the hour at which he had gone upstairs.

Only for a few moments on the Sunday morning had he seemed dimly to surmise that something of the last importance might have happened to him during the hours of darkness. He had then forgotten all about it.

Nevertheless, would not his next rejuvenation date, not the moment of the fact itself, _but from that of the beginning of his realisation of it_?

No--no--I was not quite right even yet. Even _that_ moment of wild fear, so quickly gone again, was not the moment I sought. Even after _that_ he might to all appearances have remained twenty-nine for some hours longer.

For his change happened while he slept, and I had not reckoned with that sleep that must come in between.

His next sleep had been, not in my house, but in Trenchard's loft.

_Monday morning, July 5th_, had been his new starting-point, and that day he had disappeared.

You have now all the material dates that I had. You know that in comparatively uneventful, unexciting circ.u.mstances he could go back four years in a night. And I have told you of the headlong role Julia Oliphant had taken upon herself.

How old, then, was Derwent Rose when he woke up in Trenchard's rooms on the morning of Monday, July 5th, 1920?

Twenty-five?

Twenty?

Or sixteen and already dead?

II

I now turn to that portion of the diary that seemed to confirm my impression that he had gone to France.

Both his memories, "A" and "B," appeared so far to be functioning normally. In order to ascertain this he had applied a number of ingenious tests to himself. But it immediately struck me that while all his "A" (or Age) notes were written in English, all those in the "B" (or Boyhood) direction were in French.

And not only was the language French. The ill.u.s.trations and incidents were French in character also. Thus, he wrote in English: "Have been trying to see how much of _Esau_ I can remember without looking at the book"; but of something that had once happened in Ma.r.s.eilles I read: "Je tache de me debrouiller de ces souvenirs-ci." There might have been purpose in this alternation of the two languages, but I was more inclined to think that he had done it purely instinctively. When a man speaks a language as Derwent Rose spoke French he finds a pleasure in the mere exercise of his attainment. France had always attracted him, he had not unlimited money at his disposal, and mere considerations of ordinary time (an intensely special thing to him) might preclude his getting more than a few hours' journey away. Anyway, with one thing and another, I had chanced it, and guessed that somewhere on the north coast of France would find him.

"And you're going over there to stay with the Airds," Julia mused. "Then there's just a possibility----"

"Oh, the whole coast will be swarming with English by the end of the month."

"Still----"

"Do you want me to let you know if I come across him?"

"Oh, I don't know. I leave it to you. Do just as you think. When are you going?"

"On the thirtieth."

"What about his money?"

"Oh, he needn't worry about that."

"George"--she looked at me accusingly--"I believe you've bought those things of his yourself."

"Bought's hardly the word," I laughed. "Anyway, why shouldn't I?"

"And you're going to finance him."

"Well, the man's got to eat. And Carpentier _might_ knock him out."

She looked away down the crowded tea-room and made no reply.

She herself had chosen the Piccadilly, and I looked at her again as she sat there, tucked away in a far corner of the room, with merry parties at the neighbouring tables and De Groot playing the "_Relicario_." She was differently and quite brilliantly dressed. As far as externals could a.s.sist her, she appeared to have resolved to go back step by step and hand in hand with Derwent Rose. Her furs were thrown back, showing the V-shaped opening of her brown _charmeuse_, perfectly plain except for a tiny bronze beading at the edge and a lump of amber on a fine gold chain. Her arms were dropped over the sides of her chair, making from throat and dropped shoulders to the tips of her fingers one mantle-like flowing line. Her dark hair was arranged after a different fas.h.i.+on, and on it was a little brown brocade toque with owl's ears sticking out.

About her younger women chattered and laughed, but among them she seemed to be--I hardly know how to express it--above rather than out of the picture, architecture to their building, a contralto melody underrunning their treble and fragmentary tunes, a white marble against which their fountains glittered and rainbowed and splashed. No shawls, worsted stockings and hot milk here! If Derry must be young, she too would be as young as clothes could make her. And I could not deny her success.

Not a word had I said to her about my discovery of his diary. I did not see what help it would be to do so. It could only open up the rather dreadful question, whether, in suddenly thrusting into the infinitely-delicate mechanism of his progression no less potent a factor than herself, she had not brought irreparable ruin upon him. More and more I had begun to fear that this might be so. I have already said how little I was concerned with the mere right or wrong of her theft, gift, or whatever else she liked to call it. That was swept aside in the singularity of the whole catastrophe. But for him I was deeply anxious.

I could not shake off the impression that this time he must have "dropped" very heavily indeed. I thought I knew now why he had not telegraphed for that diary. It was of little further use to him. He had begun it with that torch at the cool and wide and "philosophic" range; he had continued it at the "emotional" focus of keen and rapid sensation; but at that point the diary had stopped. There was no entry since Julia Oliphant, seeing her Eden twice and no angel with a flaming sword guarding this unsuspected postern of it, had set all a-flux in one blinding spot of irrevocable contact. Could the torch, after that climax, ever be withdrawn again? Was he at this moment burning out the residue of his youth at its whitest heat of combustion? Was he, since that last sleep in Trenchard's place, rus.h.i.+ng through the months and years so swiftly as to gasp for very breath?

And if so, what were those experiences that swept down on him in one wild blurr of things long since finished with, unrepeatable in their original form, and yet inevitably to be repeated in that form or in another?

To all this Julia was still the key. One or two trivia in his diary apart, she was the only key. She it was who had received those letters of his from Nimes, Arles, Trieste, and who farther back still had known his childhood, its happiness, aspirations, beliefs, dreams. Whatever soil he trod at this moment he must still be the boy she had known in a Suss.e.x village. French stained-gla.s.s instead of English might hold his rapt eyes, the organ of a High Ma.s.s evoke raptures in his Anglican heart, but he was still the same.

And, before that stage was reached, the wild and reckless English years might even now be re-enacting themselves somewhere in the Pas de Calais, Ille-et-Vilaine or the Cote du Nord.