The Tower of Oblivion Part 41

His answer was hardly audible. "Yes, it was then."

"How much?"

"The whole lot."

"At one go you dropped from twenty-nine to--what is it now? Twenty?"

"Nineteen or twenty. I don't know. Yes."

"Then nothing's happened since then?"

"No--at least I'm not quite sure."

"Not sure?"

"No. I honestly don't know. There's been a gap somewhere, something I ought to have come to again, but that somehow I've missed altogether. I simply can't account for it."

"Explain, Derry."

He seemed hardly to trust his voice. "It's the queerest thing of all, but I'll swear it on a Bible if you like. You know what it was I funked more than anything--all those beastly rotten things going to happen all over again.... Don't let's talk about them. They were all the time like a nightmare to me, that I was drawing nearer and nearer to all the time.

I tell you, I'd decided to put myself out rather than wallow through all that again.... Well, I can only tell you I've absolutely skipped it. On my honour I have. It's the most unaccountable thing, but----" He choked a little.

"But," I said, deeply pondering, "is it possible to skip a step--_any_ step?"

"I should have said not," he replied. "Beats me altogether. I started on a dead straight course back, and I fancied I should have to take my fences as I came to them. But this kink's come, and somehow I've picked up the thread again clear on the other side of it."

I pondered more gravely still. "Wait a bit. It all happened that Sunday night, kink and all?"

"Yes."

"That was the night you left my place with Julia Oliphant, said good-bye to her at Waterloo, and went on to Trenchard's? Did you stick to that programme?"

"Yes."

("And so," something seemed positively to shout within me, "much good you've done yourself, Julia Oliphant! Much good you're still plotting!

That gap that he's skipped altogether--that's precisely where you're setting the man-traps for him, you and your chiffons and your brown charmeuse and your new willow-leaf shoes! You'd better forget Peggy and her garters and get back into your nice quiet tea-gowns again!")

But aloud I resumed: "Then, if nothing's happened since that night, that means that you're now stable--stationary?"

His reply gave me a queer shock. It was in the last word that the shock lay. "As far as I can make out, sir."

"So you haven't got to move on from pillar to post and one lodging to another?"

"I've been at St Briac for ten days. And that isn't all," he continued earnestly. "I can't say for certain, and perhaps it's too soon to talk about it. So this is touching wood. But I've got a sort of feeling that if I'm careful and live perfectly quietly--no excitement and going to bed early, you know--I might be able to stick just like this for a long time. I know no more about that gap than you do, but it seems to have cleared the air like a thunderstorm. And when I tell you that I really intended to put myself out ... oh, how thankful...." But again he checked himself.

And I too found myself gulping to think that I had so recently wanted to wash my hands of him. Be rid of him? I knew now that not only should I never be rid of him, but that never again should I want to. Charming, innocent, beautiful and grave! I cannot tell you, for I do not know, what mysterious spiritual thing Julia Oliphant had actually wrought upon him. I only knew that all that he had so greatly dreaded she had taken upon herself, and that whatever her portion thenceforward was, his was complete absolution. "One for the Lord, the other for Azazel"; out into the wilderness she, the scapegoat, must go; but on him the smell of that fiercest fire of all had not so much as pa.s.sed.... And I realised in that moment that thenceforward he was my charge--yes, my son had I had one. Must he stay in France? Then I must stay with him. Must he wander?

Then I must wander too. For the rest of his unstable life I must be his staff and support.

"But I say, sir," he said shyly presently, "about why I dug you out to-night. I hope you'll say no straight away if you think it's fearful cheek, but the fact is I must have some more colours, and--well, I've got a little money in London, but I can't get at it just for the moment.

So I really came to ask you if you could lend me five hundred francs."

This was strange. I shot a swift glance at him as he lay, a rich dark patch of blouse and corduroys at my side.

"Where," I asked him as steadily as I could, "is your money in London?"

"I have a little there," he said awkwardly.

"How much?"

"I don't quite know, but it's certainly more than five hundred francs."

"Where did it come from?"

Through the clear dark I saw his dusky flush. "I'm sorry. I oughtn't to have asked you. Never mind."

"Derry," I said, greatly moved, "tell me: are you remembering things quite properly? You surely haven't forgotten that _I_ have your money?"

"Eh?" he said. The next moment he had tried to cover his quick confusion. "Eh? Why, of course. What am I thinking of? It did slip my memory just for the moment; stupid! I'd got it mixed up somehow with Julia Oliphant. I was going to write to her. I remember, of course. You sold my furniture. You did sell it, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"How much did it fetch?"

This time it was my turn to evade. "Well, as you say, more than five hundred francs. I--I haven't totted it up yet. I came away in rather a hurry. But there's quite a lot, and I can let you have all you want to-morrow."

"Then that's all right," he said cheerfully.

But I found it anything but all right. On the contrary, it was profoundly disturbing. If he could forget that he had authorised me to sell that black oak furniture of his he could forget more vital matters.

Yet he had remembered the furniture when I had urged him.

"Tell me," I said more quietly, "as simply as you can, exactly what you do and what you don't remember."

"I only forgot it for a moment," he stammered.

"But you did forget it. Can you explain it?"

I felt that his mind laboured, struggled; but I was hardly prepared for what came next.

"Just let me think for a minute. I want to get to the bottom of it too.

It's a thing I've been watching most carefully, and I give you my word I remembered everything absolutely clearly up to a couple of hours ago.

I knew all about that furniture when I came to that place for you, because as I walked along I was trying to work out how much it ought to amount to. In fact I wasn't coming to borrow at all, but just to ask you for something on account. Let me think. I got there at exactly at quarter to ten----"

His fingers were playing with the wild flowers on the earth-wall. In and out through the whispering poplars the stars peeped. Every four seconds, every eleven seconds, four times a minute, rose and fell the Light. I fell to counting the intervals as I waited for his reply. Diamond, emerald, ruby, twinkled the lights at sea....

Then suddenly he sat up and took a deep breath. I saw his radiant smile.

He faced me with the starlight in his eyes.

"George," he said, "_who was that with you in the garden_?"