The Tower of Oblivion Part 49

And by the way, _why_ had he answered her in English? Only that morning he had cajoled me into talking French, at any rate among French people.

Had he too, stupefied with bliss, answered her instinctively in her own native tongue and his? Or had he deliberately resolved that here at any rate should be no trick or stratagem to be subsequently explained, but a perfectly clean beginning? If so, how would he contrive to maintain it?

How could he be secure that the contretemps of any single moment of the day would not catch him out? I remembered the masterfulness and skill with which he had managed me; had he his plans for the handling of the Airds also? Were they to be founded on the appearance of complete honesty, with only the trifling fact suppressed that he had lived a whole life before?

If that was the idea, I could only catch my breath at the impudence and daring 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 see her; well, here was that author coming--as a corduroyed young landscape-painter about whose nationality there seemed to be some ambiguity! That afternoon at the Lyonnesse Club she had admired him for the beauty of the prime of his manhood; and as a stripling youth his beauty had again engaged her eye! Suppose one of the books of Derwent Rose should happen to be mentioned; would he say "Ah yes, I've read that," and quote a page of it? Suppose she should say that he was rather like a man she had met in Queen's Gate who was rather like Derwent Rose; would he say "Naturally, Mrs Aird, since I am the same man"? Or would he suppress even the twinkle of his eye and continue his leg-pulling? The thing began to teem with quite fascinating possibilities, and in a couple of days, in his French clothes or his English ones, he would be upon us. Within a week he might be painting Jennie's portrait, as Julia Oliphant was supposed to be painting my own.

And where were young Rugby, young Charterhouse, now that he had appeared on the scene?

Suddenly, on the little balcony at Ker Annic that night, with the Plough over the sea and the lamplight from the salon below yellowing the garden, 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 I took. It would have been perfectly simple for me to take the first tram out to St Briac, to see him at his hotel, to tell him I was aware of the turn events had been made to take, and to ask him to be good enough to tell me where I came in among it all. But I found myself vowing that I would be hanged first. It was his show, and for the present at any rate he should run it without any interference from me. If when he came to tea at Ker Annic he chose to call me George, well, we would see what happened; if he solemnly stood waiting to be introduced to me, that was his affair. At the least it would be interesting. It might prove enthralling.

Therefore I did not seek him the next day, but crossed to St Malo with Alec 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 I sought him there. He, who had so lately avoided the eyes of men, now coolly came forth and took his place in the world. His bicycle, instead of taking him and his painting-gear to Pleudihen or Ploubalay or the war-ravaged woods of Pontual, brought him into Dinard early in the forenoon. In the afternoon it brought him in again. It would probably have brought him in again in the evening had there been the faintest chance of a glimpse of Jennie Aird. It was on the afternoon trip that Madge met him, and when we returned from St Servan Alec and I were told that Monsieur Arnaud was asked to tea the next day.

"Are you deliberately throwing him at that child's head?" Alec asked crossly.

"I'm adding him to my collection of nice people. I should be so much obliged if you happened to go to the Club, dear. Not that you're in the least like a wet blanket, darling. Only the thermometer drops just the least 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 time to run down. At the end he turned his head to find that Madge had left the room. And that is enough to annoy anybody.

Something that I overheard on my way to my room the following afternoon caused me to smile. The door of Madge's room stood ajar, and as I pa.s.sed it 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 pa.s.sed on. Evidently the best there was was none too good for Monsieur Arnaud, alias Arnold, alias Derwent Rose.

Tea was set out inside the pergola; Jennie herself placed little leaves round the sandwiches, begonia petals about the dishes of chocolate and nougat. Critically she paraded her mother's putty-coloured frock for inspection, touched the little darling hat deftly. She herself wore her pale gold silk jumper; her proud throat and small head issued from it like the little porcelain busts in the shop in the Rue Levava.s.seur--the Watteaus and Chardins and Fragonards that are made up into pincus.h.i.+ons and cosies. She was a tremulous tender pout of antic.i.p.ation and anxiety.

A dozen times she moved the objects on the table, a dozen times moved them back again. Alec had dissociated himself from all this absurd fuss about a chance-met English youth with a French name, but he sat not far away, in the shade of the auracaria, behind the _Paris Daily Mail_.

Then, at four o'clock, there was the short soft slide of somebody alighting 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 all right there."

Rapidly as I knew Jennie's heart to be beating, I was hardly less excited myself. Now what was he going to do?

What he did was the simplest thing imaginable. As he advanced among the montbretias and begonias I noticed that he wore his English clothes. He took Madge's hand; he smiled simply at Jennie; and then, as Madge was about 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 the other night, but you were all so busy with the party----"

Beautifully, calmly disarming. He said it, too, just as Alec came up--for Alec may growl before his guests come, and growl again when they have gone, but he is their host as long as they are there. If Monsieur Arnaud had known Sir George Coverham in London the situation was more or less 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-launch while their owner, thickly greased, had swum alongside in the night--fitted him quite pa.s.sably well; I remembered the very suit. His boots and collar, however, were French, and apparently he had no English hat, for his head was uncovered. I remember a foolish fleeting wonder that the light chequer of shadow should pattern his clear and self-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 to seat themselves. I saw Alec's expert glance at his perfect build. I mentally gave the subject of athletics about ten minutes in which to crop up.

"Do sit down," said Madge; and she added to me, "George, you never told me 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 Sir George's place not so long ago--had a jolly swim in his pond--isn't that so, sir?"

He should at any rate have a tweak in return. "When there's a prep school 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 I can apply to his modest impudence is "neck"--charming, bashful, but quite deliberate "neck." He had not merely met me before in London; oh dear no; he went a good deal beyond that. He was a young man I had to stay in my house, allowed to swim in my pond. I saw the way already paved for as many visits to Ker Annic as he pleased. I saw in antic.i.p.ation Alec coming round to his English clothes, his grace and strength of build. Madge he already had in his pocket. He even admitted having sought me at this very house a night or two before! My position was as neatly turned as heart could wish. I could not even imitate his own mendacious candour lest I should give him and myself completely away. Yes, I think "neck" is the word.

He talked quietly, charmingly, not too much. Jennie hardly ventured to look 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 at Ambleteuse. I'm that Arnaud. But I've had to knock it off. You wouldn't think it to look at me, but I've got to go awfully steady. I used to be quite fast, but that's some time ago. And of course I shall be all right again in a little time. That's one of the reasons I took up painting. It keeps 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 less satisfied. This was the fact that, in his own hearing, his daughter had spoken to this charming stranger in French, and had been answered in English. It might mean little or nothing, but I saw that it stuck in his mind. In his different way Alec is no less quick than his wife. Let him down once and you are likely to have to take the consequences for all time. A trifle ceases to be a trifle when it is all there is. Alec knew nothing of his visitor, but he did know that Jennie never addressed the blazered tennis-playing English youths in French. He also knew that for three days Jennie, who up to then had soaked herself in tennis, had not been near the nets at all. The intensely insular father of a beautiful girl 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 mother was 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," remarked Alec; and relapsed into silence.