The Tower of Oblivion Part 7

"I've met her once."

We entered the station. I took my friend's ticket. I saw her to the gate of her lift, and the attendant paused, his hand on the iron lattice.

"Well," she said, "I think you'll find that won't matter. Let me know how you go on. Good-bye--and you can tell the Bear from me that no decent person believes a word of it."

And with a wave of her hand across the grille she sank with the lift into the ground.

I walked to my Club, lunched alone, and then, in a corner of the smoking-room, busied myself with my rather scanty recollections of the lady I was going to see that afternoon. Though I had only actually met her upon one occasion, we had a sort of hearsay acquaintance in addition. She and Derwent Rose had been children together, and one does not begin quite at the beginning with the friends of one's friends.

Moreover, there are these people whom one may actually meet only at wide intervals, but over whom absence does not seem to have its ordinary power. Nothing seems to ice over, you come together again at the point where you left off. Perhaps because you draw your nourishment from the same elements, you are able to take the gaps for granted.

Nevertheless, of my own single personal meeting with Miss Oliphant I could remember little but her eyes. I had been presented to her across a small dinner-table, with rosy-shaded electric candles, that had turned those great eyes pansy-black in the pinky gloom. I had guessed that in the daylight they were of the deep brown kind that, alas, so frequently means gla.s.ses for reading and distressing headaches; but what had struck me at the time had been their quiet readiness and familiarity, as if they said to me, "He's told me about you; I wonder what he's said to you about me!"

And now those same eyes, photographed in a leather frame, had watched me during the whole of the previous night. They had watched me as I had read that awful book. Darkly watchful and expectant, they had seen my first amazed incredulity, then my successive waves of anger. "But go on," they had seemed ever to urge me; "there's much more to come!"

And under the bedside lamp they had been still watching me when the maid had brought in tea and had flung the curtains aside, admitting the bright suns.h.i.+ne.

Then, when the book had dropped from my hand to the floor, they had said, "Don't you think it would be rather a good thing if you were to come to see me?"

I am not going to advertise that hateful book of Mrs Ba.s.sett's. If I could have torn it in two as Rose had torn it I should have done so. She had hardly changed his name--for what was "Kendal Thorne" but Derwent Rose? So I will merely say that to old memories she had added new and malicious inventions, and had produced a ridiculous grotesque of a vain and peevish childhood, an impossibly blatant youth, and a culmination born of her own distorted imagination. It was for her, and not for himself, that he had blushed. For her sake he would have torn up every single copy of it if by that means it could never have been. He could have scolded her, shaken her, smacked her, ashamed, angry and helpless as one is before an ill-conditioned child who nevertheless has claims on one. That there could ever have been any pa.s.sage between them her book put entirely out of the question. And so much for _The Parthian Arrow_.

At half-past three that afternoon I was at the Boltons, ringing Miss Oliphant's bell. A tiny maid admitted me, and I was shown into a sort of alcove with a good deal of tapestry and bric-a-brac and bra.s.s about, the sort of things the artists of half a generation ago affected for the sake of their "colour." Nor was the studio into which I was presently shown much different from a hundred other studios I had seen. These gla.s.s-roofed, indigo-blinded, north-lighted wells, I may say, always depress me, and had I to live in one of them I should instantly have a side-window cut, so that I might at least have a glimpse once in a while of somebody who pa.s.sed in the outer world.

But somehow the place suited Miss Oliphant. Perhaps it was the north light. Artists choose the north light because it varies little, and there was something about her that didn't vary very much either. She came through a portiere-hung door, and as she stood there for a moment, not surprised (for I had telephoned that I was coming), but with that familiarity and expectancy once more in her dark eyes, I was able to check this cool and composed impression of her with my former one of over-l.u.s.trous eyes in the pinky gloom of the shaded lamps of the dinner-table.

Her hair, like her eyes, was dark; but she had a habit rather than a style of dressing it. It was piled in a high ma.s.s over her white brow, quite neatly, but rather as if to have it out of the way and done with than as making the most of its rich glossy treasure. A dateless, but by no means inappropriate tea-gown of filmy grey with a gold thread somewhere in it showed her long harmonious lines of limb and allowed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to be guessed at; and the ripeness of her shoulders set off her long and almost too slender neck. She had cool and beautiful hands, sleeved to the wrist; but the daylight added to her years. At our former meeting I should have said she was thirty-five. Now I saw that she could hardly be less than forty.

She took my hand for a moment, smiled, but without speaking, and began to busy herself at a Benares tray. She reinserted the plug of an electric kettle, which immediately broke into a purr. She listened for a moment with her ear at the kettle, and then suddenly filled the teapot.

She spoke, once more smiling, through the little cloudlet of steam.

"Do sit down," she said, indicating a "property" curule chair. "Well, how's Derry? Have you seen him lately?"

I made a note of the name she too called him by, and said, Yes, I had seen him yesterday. "I'm sorry to say he seemed worried," I added.

"Oh? What's worrying him?" she asked, withdrawing the plug from the wall and popping a cosy over the pot. It was a French cosy, a dainty little porcelain Marie Antoinette, with a sac and a padded and filigreed petticoat, and I remember thinking that if Miss Oliphant ever went to fancy-dress dances the costume of her cosy would have suited her very well.

"Have you read that horrible woman's horrible book?" I asked her point-blank.

"_The Parthian Arrow?_ Yes, I've read it," she said equably.

"Well, I should say that's one of the things that's worrying him," I replied. "I've just read it, and the taste of it's in my mouth still."

She considered the teapot. "We'll give it two minutes and then take the bag out," she remarked. Then, "Oh yes, I've read it. I don't think she need have written it either. But it is written, and there's an end of it. As for Derry, anybody who knows him knows that his whole life's been one marvellous mistake after another. He dodges it somehow in his books, but he knows nothing whatever about women in real life. Never did.

Sugar?"

This was hardly what Madge Aird had led me to expect. I had gathered from her that Miss Oliphant and Mrs Ba.s.sett had more or less fallen out about that book; in fact Madge had definitely said, "I'm not sure that they speak now." But here was Miss Oliphant, Rose's friend, not only quite inadequately angry on the one hand, but on the other talking about Rose's ignorance of women almost as if he had been as much to blame as Mrs Ba.s.sett herself.... Moreover, when a woman tells a man that another man knows nothing about women, the man who is spoken to invariably tries the words on himself to see whether he too is included in the disparagement. My understanding of Miss Oliphant, such as it was, suddenly failed me. I looked at her again to see whether, and if so where, I had made a mistake.

She was doing a perfectly innocent little thing, one that at any other time I might have found charming. Her long fingers were slyly lifting the tops of sandwich after sandwich in search of the kind she wanted. A child does the same thing with sweets--and sometimes goes beyond mere peeping. But the infantility of the gesture jarred on me, and jarred no less when, her eyes meeting mine, she laughed, pouted, and said: "Well, after all, I cut them." I did not smile. Her coolness and unconcern when a friend was savagely attacked disappointed me. As for the portrait that was to have been the excuse for my call on her, I was glad now that it hadn't been mentioned. I now doubted whether I should mention it. I had supposed her to be a woman--not merely a female painter who gave a male sitter tea in her studio.

"I don't understand you," I said, a little curtly I'm afraid. "You speak as if that book was a mere point of view to which she's ent.i.tled."

Again she smiled at me, as if she liked me very much.

"Well, she has her point of view. It's evident that you don't know Mrs Ba.s.sett."

"Her book's told me all about her that I ever want to know."

"So," she laughed, "you're just showing how cross you can be?"

At that moment there came a ring at the bell. She was on her feet instantly, as if to forestall the little maid. With less tact than ever, I thought, her fingertips touched my shoulder lightly as she pa.s.sed by me. It was only then that I noticed that the Benares tray held a third cup and saucer.

The next moment she had shown Mrs Ba.s.sett herself in.

I am going to show Mrs Ba.s.sett in and out of this story again with all possible speed. Only once have I set eyes on the lady since, and that was in a moment when I was far too occupied with other matters to give her more than a glance. She came in, a fluff of cendre hair, surmounted by a hat made of a thousand brilliant tiny blue feathers. This was intended to enhance the pallid blue of her eyes; as a matter of fact it completely extinguished it. She was a Christmas-tree of silver stole and silver m.u.f.f, toy dog, and a pale blue padded and embroidered object that I presently discovered to be the dog's quilt. I was presented to her, bowed, and--suddenly found myself alone with her. Miss Oliphant had picked up the teapot and was nowhere to be seen.

And this was the kind of arch ripple that proceeded from the author of _The Parthian Arrow_:

"Oh, how d'you do, Sir George? Really a red-letter day. Sir George Coverham and Julia Oliphant together. Quite a galaxy--or is galaxy wrong and does it take more than two to make one, like the Milky Way?--_Oh, Puppetty, my stole!_--You mustn't mind if I ask you thousands of questions--I always do when I meet distinguished people--peep behind the scenes, eh?--_Puppetty, I shall slap you!_"--a tap on the beast's boot-b.u.t.ton of a nose. "_So_ handsome, Julia is, don't you think? Not in a picture-postcard sort of way, perhaps, but such character (don't you call it?) and such a lovely figure! I know if I were a man I should fall head over ears in love with her! Do you mind, Sir George?"

She meant, not did I mind falling in love with Miss Oliphant, but did I mind taking the dog's cradle and quilt from her arms. I did so, made my bow as Miss Oliphant appeared again, and moved quickly towards the alcove where I had left my hat.

But it was Miss Oliphant herself who stopped me, and stopped me not so much by her quietly-spoken words--"I want you to stay"--as by the sudden command in her eyes. This was quite unmistakable. For the first time since I had entered her studio I saw the woman I had expected to see.

That look was too imperious altogether to disobey. I sat down again.

I swear that Mrs Ba.s.sett wore that silver stole twenty different ways in as many minutes. The air about her was ceaselessly in motion. If Puppetty was in his quilted cradle she had him out; if he was out she put him back again and tucked him in. She kissed and scolded the wretched beast, and discussed Miss Oliphant's pictures and my own books.

Only her own book she never once mentioned. And I sat, saying as little as possible, looking from one to the other of the two women.

Then, out of the very excess of the contrast between them, light began to dawn on me. All at once I found myself saying to myself, "This can't be what it appears to be. There's something behind it all. Look at them sitting there, and believe if you can that the one who's pouring out tea couldn't, for sheer womanliness, eat the other alive! Look at her! She's a whole packed-full history behind her, and one that's by no means at an end yet. It radiates from every particle of her. Of course Miss Oliphant cares just as much as you do when her friend's attacked. She's a different way of showing it, that's all. See if she isn't putting that other one through her paces now, and for your benefit. She's not keeping you here without a reason. Sit still and watch."

I repeat that I said this to myself.

And from that moment I knew I was on the right track.

At last Mrs Ba.s.sett rose to go. I a.s.sure you that I was on my feet almost before she was, for I knew that my talk with Miss Oliphant was not now to be resumed--it was to begin. The author of _The Parthian Arrow_ was piled up with quilts, cradles and Puppetty again, and I need say no more about the thickness of her skin than that she gave me her telephone number and asked me to go and see her. I bowed, and Julia Oliphant towered over her as she showed her out.

Seldom in my life have I held a door open for a woman with greater pleasure.

The outer door closed, and Miss Oliphant reappeared and crossed slowly to the settee. I now knew beyond all doubt that I was right. She seemed suddenly exhausted. She pa.s.sed her hand wearily over those too-l.u.s.trous eyes. Listlessly she told me to smoke if I wanted to. Then she continued to sit in silence.

At last she roused a little. She turned her eyes on me.

"Well--now you've seen the author of _The Parthian Arrow_."

I made no remark.

"And," she continued, "you did exactly as I expected--exactly what a man would do."

"What was that?"

"You'd one look, and then you turned away."