Chapter VIII: Part IV: The Double Cross (2)

The punt rocked as she suddenly sat half up. "Are you asleep, George?"

"No."

"I nearly was. I can't imagine why you ever come to London when you've a place like this to bask in. How do you manage to get any work done?"

"I can't say I am doing a great deal at present."

"Now that's the first inhospitable thing you've said. Which is your study--the end room there?" She glanced up at the balcony.

"Yes."

"Don't you ever sleep out?"

"No. My room's at the back, and it's two wide-open windows."

"I love the ramblers up the pillars! May I have some to take back?"

"_Mais naturellement._"

"Ah, but you can't stay that like Derry, George----"

"I can't do anything like Derry. On the whole I'm not sure that I want to."

"You don't believe that sometimes one single hour may be worth all the rest of life put together?"

"I suppose I'm the other kind of man."

"Ah well!" She stretched herself luxuriously. "I used to think as you do. But I've learned a lot since then. An awful lot."

"'Awful's' perhaps the word."

"But lovely. Anyway who cares? What does it matter? What does anything matter? (Oh, look at his dive!) Nothing matters, George--nothing. I dare you to say it does."

"It might be difficult to run the world on those lines."

"Oh, I don't know. It's in a pretty ghastly muddle as it is. Do you know, I've made a discovery about that, George."

"Really?"

"It's this: That we make the mistake of regarding the world as full of rational people, with perhaps a few particularly stupid ones here and there. Now if you'll only regard it as full of perfect zenies, with just once in a while a reasonable being among them, that would explain everything."

"You'd better go to sleep again, Julia."

"But it is so. I see it, oh so clearly! And you don't worry about anything then--what anybody thinks or says or does or anything. You just take the funny old peepshow as it is. That's the way to live."

"On an endless walking-tour?"

"Why not, if you're in jolly places all the time?"

"Siena? Nimes? Trieste?"

"Literal George!... But really, nothing matters. Everything except the present moment is meant to be forgotten. It's the only one you live in. In the past you're dead and in the future you aren't born yet--except him.... George----"

"Hm?"

"Girls nowadays _do_ have an awfully easy time!... You've only got to look at their clothes. We dressed down to our toes and up to our ears, and that meant we had to take a good deal of trouble about things. We had to make a little go a long way, so to speak--talk, and smile, and be amusing, and think what we said. If we didn't we were soon left out in the cold. But girls nowadays simply powder their shoulder blades and dress to their knees more or less, and that's all. Lots of 'em never open their mouths except to eat. They don't _do_ anything; they get there by _un_doing something.... But how boring for you, George. What does it matter as long as you do get there?"

"I hope you'll think twice before you commit a very great folly," I said.

She laughed. "No, no. I've finished thinking. It was one of my mother's maxims: 'Take care of your health and don't ever give way to serious thinking.' Don't you think it's rather good?"

"I agree as far as your health's concerned."

"Oh, the other too. She was a wise woman. I've only lately begun to realise how wise.... Ah, they're going in. Come along."

She stood up in the punt to see whether Derry appeared on the balcony on his way to dress.

At teatime I had a caller, a gentle old friend and neighbour of mine, Mrs Truscott. I saw her old-fashioned victoria standing in the drive as we reached the terrace. Derry was charming to the old lady; Julia--also charming, but with some subtle difference that I cannot explain. After tea Derry and Julia strolled off to see whether the rods had come from the blacksmith's yet, but they stopped to examine the victoria on the way. Mrs Truscott turned to me.

"What an exceedingly handsome man! But surely she's a good deal older than he?"

"Why do you couple them like that?" I asked.

"Aren't they engaged?"

"No."

She smiled. "Not yet?"

"Nor likely to be," I risked.

She shook her head, so that her grey curls trembled about her cheeks.

"Ah, you bachelors, Sir George! All sorts of things happen under your noses that you don't see!"

"I don't think anything's happening here. They've simply been friends since they were boy and girl together."

"That's a handicap, I admit," she replied. "Perhaps the worst a woman has to put up with. But occasionally things happen in spite of it."

"I really think you're mistaken this time, Mrs Truscott."

"Well, well, well, well.... And are you writing us another of your charming books?"

It passed at that, but it left me with an uneasy feeling. These old ladies are so very acute.

Nothing remarkable happened at dinner, except a curious little covert duel between Julia and myself when I once more tried to draw out Derry to talk about his book. I am afraid that she won and I failed. Good-temperedly but flatly he refused to discuss it; he wanted to look at my Hogarths instead. So I drew the large folio-stand up in front of the drawing-room fire, arranged the lights and we turned over the prints. He seemed very much less drowsy; indeed it was half-past nine before he spoke of going to bed; and as in the country that is not an unreasonably early hour, and since moreover Julia had sat up late the night before, I was not surprised when she also said that she would retire early. He went first, but she was not long after him. I was therefore left either to sit over my fire alone, or to follow them, which ever I liked best.

I went my nightly round, of window-fastenings and so forth; for although Mrs Moxon has always been round before me, it is my house, and there would be small satisfaction in scolding her were anything to happen. As a matter of fact I had that night to reopen the side door, for it had occurred to me that the driver of Mrs Truscott's victoria, who was almost as old as herself, had the bad habit of leaving the drive-gate open. Accordingly I walked up the drive, saw that the gate was properly fastened, and then stood for a moment enjoying the cool air.

It was a full and late-rising moon, and only the faintest hint of yellow yet lighted the trunks of the plantation behind the house. The overflow from the lake, which I never heard in the daytime, sounded loudly. The evening star had set; the others were exceedingly tiny, pale and remote; in another hour or so they would be almost extinguished in the moon's effulgence. A glow-worm burned stilly, lighting up the whole leaf as a ship's sidelight lights up its painted box. Through a gleam from the house a bat flickered. I stood for several minutes; then I turned, went in, locked up, and ascended to my bedroom.

This room, I should explain, is at the back of the house and does not overlook the pond. This is in some ways a drawback, but it has its advantages. By foregoing the amenity of sleeping in one of the rooms with the pleasantest view I was able to have a practically self-contained suite all to myself--study in front, and dressing-room, bathroom and bedroom all communicating. My books alone run into all three rooms, and are thus kept together; and the rest of the upper floor is left for my guests and servants. Derry's room was the one next to my study. Julia's, like my own, was at the back. I had put her there partly because of the second bathroom, and partly because Mrs Moxon would be within call had she need of anything.

All was quiet as I entered the room. I switched on my bedside light, undressed, and got into bed. But I was not very sleepy, so I got out again, reached down a book at random, punched my pillow into position and began to read.

I was not very lucky in my book, however, and my attention wandered. From wondering what was wrong with my author I passed away from him altogether, and presently found myself spinning, as it were, fantasias on life in human terms. And as I continued to do this these fantasias began to accrete more and more about the figure of Derwent Rose.

What a history had unfolded since that afternoon when I had found him in the Lyonnesse Club, gazing at his image in the glass of a framed print on the wall! Hitherto I had contemplated that unfolding only a portion at a time. I had typified him as it were in terms of his books, had seen the man who had written _The Hands of Esau_ give way to him who had written _An Ape in Hell_, and this one in turn to the author of _The Vicarage of Bray_. I had taken him phase by phase; I was not yet sure of a single unit of the repeating-pattern of his backward life. But these books were not merely his three principal books. They were his only books of any importance. All prior to the _Vicarage_ had been experimental, fragmentary, partial--as indeed all he had ever done was fragmentary and partial by the side of the huge and desperate work he now contemplated. Therefore we were at the end of measurement by books. The rest was in Julia Oliphant's possession. She was now his sole authentic companion, and soon she would have shouldered even me completely out of his life, and would go forward--backward--with him alone.

My thoughts passed to her. What a history for her too since that afternoon when I had taken her hands in mine, had asked her a question, and had had her matter-of-fact reply, "Of course; all my life; but it never made any difference to him." Now it was to make a difference to him. Though he presently eluded her never so swiftly down the slippery years, she had come to the conclusion that it was worth it. And, for a few weeks, a few hours yet, I had to admit that they were not ill-matched. Mrs Truscott had thought that she was older than he, but had none the less assumed them to be lovers. He, of course, had sunk into a vast of sleep an hour ago, but I wondered whether she was at that moment lying awake, scheming, contriving, making sure....

Then, tired of thought, I switched off my lamp and closed my eyes.

The rather secluded situation of my house has its reaction on the quality of my sleep. I don't mean that I don't ordinarily sleep perfectly soundly and naturally, but the routine of locking up for the night sets, as it were, a timepiece in my head. The running of the lake, the night-sounds of animals and birds, the creaking of a bough, the motion of a window-blind in the wind--these are every-night sounds to which I have grown accustomed; but any unusual sound will bring me wide awake in a moment. Robbery in the neighbourhood is not entirely unknown.

I had slept for perhaps a couple of hours when I was thus brought suddenly awake.

The moon was high over the plantation; it slanted whitely across my window-sash, cut into relief the folds of the casement curtains. Outside the night creatures would be at play or about their nocturnal employments. But it was no owl nor rabbit that I had heard. It had been the light crackling of something under a foot. I sat up, still, listening.

I heard nothing further, and after a minute noiselessly uncovered myself and slipped out of bed. All the doors of my little suite stood open, so that I had no handle to turn as I tiptoed from my bedroom into the dressing-room. Thence I could look through the study to the balcony beyond. The night was palely brilliant; my eyes could penetrate into the detailed depths of the oaks across the pond; I could see the pebbles on the path, the shadow of a chimney-stack over the bathing-stage. The balcony itself, however, was a blackness. On that side of the house a marauder could easily hide.

I went back to the dressing-room, took down a dark-coloured gown, put it on, and returned through the study. If anybody was lurking about I wished to be inconspicuous. I reached my writing-table and was about to step outside when again I heard the sound. It came, not from below, but from the balcony itself.

My study doors are so arranged that I can either hook them half back, at an angle of forty-five, or entirely so, flush against the walls. That night they stood at their fullest width, so that, if anybody was on the verandah, I had not to risk discovering myself as it were obliquely. I advanced to the hinged edge and peered cautiously forth.

Derry was not asleep. He was moving irresolutely, now a few steps this way, now a few steps that, at the farther end of the balcony, and the noise I had heard had been the cracking of a fir-cone or fragment of bark under his feet. His hair was tumbled, he had put on his old tweed jacket, but the pyjama-suit I had lent him was small for him, and his bare ankles showed above his heelless slippers. There was no light in his room, and I suddenly remembered that that evening he had not shown his usual anxiety to be off early upstairs.

After those immensities of sleep, was he now suffering from insomnia?

I was about to step out to him when something within me, I really can't tell you what, drew me swiftly back again. The room past Derry's, opposite which he now stood, was unoccupied, and its windows were closed except for the little doors in the upper panes. But somebody was undoing a fastening. I had seen the turn of Derry's head towards me, and had withdrawn my own head only just in time. The sound of unfastening continued.

I think already I knew what I was going to see. By crossing the corridor Julia could enter that unoccupied room, pass through it, and gain the balcony. Indeed (I struggled to persuade myself) were she sleepless and in need of air there was no reason why she shouldn't. But I knew that I mocked myself. I knew that not sleeplessness had brought her out. Almost, I thought, they must hear the thumping of my heart. I wondered whether I dared look again.

I dared not--yet I had to----

She had cast over her the Burberry she had brought out for the single day. She left the bedroom door open behind her and stood with her pale hand on the edge of it, not advancing. Slowly his head lifted. His eyes met hers. I think I could have stepped bodily out and he would not have seen me for the look he gave her. It was hard, fixed, tranced. Still she did not move. All her life she had waited for him; it was proper now that he should come to her.

Very slowly he lifted his hands----

Already I had turned away.

For I had heard the little flutter of her garments, the rush and catch of her breath----

Grim King of the Ghosts!

She was in his arms.

IV

The next morning I did not hear his plunge into the lake. This was not because I was not back in my own house in time.

For I had not remained in it. I had dressed, had crept softly downstairs, and had let myself out, easing the catch of the side-door behind me. I had walked to Hindhead, and from the edge of the Punch Bowl had seen the night end and the day begin. I had watched the cloudlets kindle like plumes of the wings of cherubim, ineffable, indifferent, anguishing in that the eye and heart ached and fainted for more than they could endure, gazed and yet saw not because of their own overbrimming. I had turned away, weary of the heavenly thing, yet had returned with tears for more of it. I had cast myself down with my face hidden in the wet earth. I had tried not to think or feel. Had it been possible I would have been, not a few miles, but a few worlds away. And in sober fact I am not sure that I was not worlds away. In the thing that had happened time, distance, had no meaning. Nothing so mystic in its very nature can be merely _a little_ in error; once it is not right, it is wrong with an unimaginable totality. Ordinary measurement is annihilated; in the very instant of identity the last conceivable differences are wrapped up together as in the vital element of a seed. I am sorry I cannot make this plainer. You either see what had happened or you don't. It beat and bludgeoned my spirit as I lay there, sometimes quivering, sometimes still, while the sun had risen over the Devil's Punch Bowl.

On my return to the house Mrs Moxon met me. She is an efficient creature, but a little given to impressionistic fancies, and there was perplexity in her face as I entered by the way I had left--the side door.

"The gentleman and lady don't seem to be having any breakfast, sir," she said.

"Why not?"

"I'm sure I can't tell you, sir. Mr--Mr Rose asked where you were, and then said perhaps I'd better keep breakfast back."

"Where are Mr Rose and Miss Oliphant now?"

"They went off that way, sir." She nodded in the direction of the kitchen-garden.

"Then I'll see about it. Have breakfast ready in ten minutes, please."

The kitchen-garden is not very large, but it is a straggling sort of place, being, in fact, the oddments of ground left over when the tennis-court was made. I looked for my guests among the dewy canes, but did not see them; they were not behind the sweet-pea hedge that made my lungs open of themselves to receive its fragrance. But they had been there, for I saw that the roller on the court had been moved. Its barrel was wet all round with dew, and the patch of grass where it had stood during the night was dry.

Then, just as I was on the point of calling their names, they appeared from behind the tall artichoke brake.

I spoke first, ignoring what Mrs Moxon had told me.

"Good morning," I called. "Breakfast is just ready. I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. Come along."

It was Derry who answered, advancing across the court towards me.

"Ah, there you are. I've been looking for you. I wanted to thank you and say good-bye. I'm afraid I've got to be pushing along."

I acted my part as well as I could. "Pushing along! What are you talking about? What train are you going by? This is Sunday. Come along in to breakfast."

"Oh, I'd a cup of tea and a biscuit in my room, thanks," he said hesitatingly. "I know it's springing it on you rather suddenly, George, but I really must be getting along."

"What's all this about? Your book?" I demanded.

"Yes, the book. Yes, the book, George."

"But I tell you it's Sunday. There the twelve-forty-six and the four-fifty. You've missed the eight-fifty-five."

"I thought of walking," he said.

"All the way to London? That would take you two days. So it isn't your book after all."

"Oh, I meant part of the way," he evaded, fidgeting. "Guildford or Weybridge or somewhere."

"And is Julia going to walk to Guildford or Weybridge too? Don't be absurd. Come along to breakfast."

Reluctantly he turned his face towards the house.

I say I acted as well as I could; but it was acting. I had to act because I was afraid to face the reality. His haste to be off seemed to make that reality a twofold possibility. In the highly peculiar circumstances it was not for me, his host, to inquire whether he scrupled to breakfast or sit down in my house; but it was for me, technically still his friend, to wonder why he had tried to put me off with some tale about wanting to get on with his book and, in his eagerness to be gone, proposed to walk to London. It might have been decency and delicacy. On the other hand, he now experienced everything with the greatest intensity, and this sudden and imperious urge to walk might have been the first faint thrilling of that communicating nerve that, traced back, led to his Wanderjahre.

At Julia I had not yet dared to look.

I made him eat whether he wished it or not; oh, I was not above using my advantage. For he was entirely unaware that the cracking of a fir-cone under his foot had brought me out of my bed and to the door of my study. It was because he supposed me to have been soundly asleep all night that I was able to compel him to swallow his punctiliousness at the same time that he swallowed his trout, coffee and marmalade. If either or all of them stuck in his throat there was no remedy for that.... At least so at first I thought. But as breakfast proceeded, I began to be strangely aware of my complete helplessness. Much as I might wish it, I could not wash my hands of him. Once more, the choice was not mine, but his.

For what could I do with him? Nothing--nothing at all. I was bound hand and foot. You cannot turn a two-memoried man out of your house as you can another. You don't get rid of him if you do. He has his own--ubiquity. There is only one of him, and you never know where he isn't. It was not now a question of whether he should marry Julia Oliphant, but whether he was to be suffered to vanish, to be swallowed up in the world of men, a drop in the human ocean that did not merge but still remained a drop, a grain on humanity's shore yet numbered too, an anomaly, a contradiction in nature, a ghost in the flesh, a man among ghosts. For if he was a ghost to us we must be ghosts to him. And ghost does not bring ghost to book for reasons of the flesh. No, he was still Derry, on whom this enormous destiny had alighted. He was not to be judged.

Nevertheless he must settle his soul's affairs and eat his breakfast like anybody else.

We got through that meal somehow. Julia talked to Derry, and I suppose I also was included, but I have no memory of what it was all about. One vivid little incident, however, I do remember. I learned why the heavy roller on the tennis court had been moved. She had asked Derry whether he could lift it, and for answer he had picked it up and held it above his head, as once he had held her sewing-machine. So she had gloried in him.... But of the rest of the conversation I remember nothing. Breakfast over, I excused myself and left them at the table together. It had occurred to me that I was still as I had returned from the Devil's Punch Bowl, and that I had neither shaved nor bathed.

But on my way to my room Mrs Moxon again met me. She was replacing flowers, and she carried a pail of withered ones in her hand.

"I beg pardon, sir, but may I ask if you got up in the night?" she asked.

"Yes," I answered. "Why?"

"Only that I fancied I heard somebody moving about," she said.

"Yes. I went into Mr Rose's room. Then I went out for a walk. I'm not sleeping very well, Mrs Moxon. To-night I shall take a draught."

She knows my tone. I hope she was satisfied. I passed on to my dressing-room.

Three quarters of an hour later I came down again. I found Julia at one of the drawing-room windows, alone and gazing out over the pond. She started at the sound of my voice behind her.

"Where's Derry?" I had asked.

"Over there by the punt," she replied.

I had not noticed him as he had stooped behind the little shelter to untie it.

"Is he leaving to-day?"

"I don't know."

"Are you trying to keep him?"

She had turned her back on me again and was once more looking out of the window. "Of course I'm trying to keep him--so far as I may in somebody else's house."

"Oh.... Why 'of course?'"

"Of course it's of course. Do you think I'm going to take my eyes off him for a single moment? You heard what he said before breakfast."

"About walking to London as the quickest way of getting back to that book of his?"

She did not answer. Derry had moved, and her eyes had instantly moved with him.

"Why is he putting out by himself? Why aren't you with him?" I asked.

"Oh--as long as I know where he is----"

"Didn't he ask you to join him?"

"No."

"The first time for two days?"

No reply.

"I wonder why he didn't ask you?"

"I wonder," she repeated.

"Have you no idea?"

With that she suddenly confronted me. She stood with her hands on either side of the window-frame, dark against the morning light. She looked straight into my eyes.

"Isn't this rather a catechism, George?" she said. "Your tone too. I want you to tell me something. It's this; Are these _really_ the questions you're wanting to ask me?"

She said it with the proudest calm; but whatever it was that existed between us made me for some moments longer as calm as herself.

"I do want to know those things. Otherwise I shouldn't have asked you."

"Oh, I'm afraid I said it badly. That's not what I meant. I mean are those the _only_ questions you want to ask me?"

The moment she said it I was much less certain that they were not. Her next words plunged me still deeper into doubt. She spoke as it were direct from the heart of some uttermost complexity.

"What _is_ the relation between you and me, George?" she demanded.

I considered, my eyes downcast. I felt hers steadily on my face all the time. I spoke in a low voice.

"I'm beginning to know less than ever."

"You'd hardly call it ordinary, would you--conventional and so on?"

"That's quite the last word I should use."

"It's not ordinary because of an extraordinary element that's at the very root of it. You know what that is; it's"--her eyes went towards the punt--"it's all him. He's got us all on the run. Give him his head and he could have the whole world on the run. There's no reason about it; as many people as knew about him would simply be bewitched. So I've taken it for granted that we don't quite come under everyday rules. We have to break and make rules as we go along.... About those questions. They really _are_ all that you want to know--just what he'll do next and so on?" she challenged me.

I think I should have broken in on the spot with a "Yes--I want to know _nothing_ else--nothing at all!" But she gave me no time. Her eyes called my own downcast ones peremptorily up from the floor.

"Because," she said, with the utmost distinctness in the shaping of each syllable, "I notice that since breakfast you've shaved, George. You've also changed your clothes. One does not usually change one's clothes immediately after breakfast. I suppose Mrs Moxon is brushing the others. They needed brushing. They had bits of dried grass and heather on them.... George--George dear--thank you----"

I spoke in little more than a whisper. "For--going out?"

"Oh no. For only thinking of it--for only thinking of it. But you would think of it; I always knew you'd be like that.... Now ask me anything you like. _Any_thing you like. Only don't ask Derry. It made"--for an instant only there was the slightest tremor in her voice--"it made no difference to him."

What, as she had said, was our relation? Had he "got us going"? Had he subdued all our standards to his own standardlessness? Had he withdrawn some linchpin of ordinary conduct from the wheel on which the whole world revolves? I didn't know. I don't know now. The more I think of it the less I know. I only know what I did. Her affairs were her affairs, and I have ado enough to look after my own. I took one of her cool hands in mine, bowed as low over it as if she had been a queen, and kissed it.

Her other hand rested lightly for a moment on my head as I did so.

"And now," she resumed in her ordinary tones, "about him."

He was sitting alone in the punt, some forty yards away, gazing straight before him. He had ceased to paddle, the water had ceased to drip from his resting blade. It accentuated his isolation that for two whole days he had hardly left her side. Restlessness and impatience plainly possessed him. He was straining to be off. It would not have surprised me to see him suddenly thrust the paddle in, swirl across the lake, tie up the punt, walk straight up to me, hold out his hand, and say, "George, old man, it's no good--I've got to go this moment." I turned to Julia.

"If he leaves shall you go with him?" I asked.

"Leaves here? This house? To-day?"

"I didn't mean that."

"You mean if he buckles on his knapsack again?"

"If that's the next stage."

"I'm afraid to think."

"Then you _do_ think he might just--go off?"

She sighed a little. "I suppose it has to be faced."

"And in that case would you go with him?"

She started nervously. He had put in the paddle. But he only gave a couple of strokes, and withdrew it again. Her voice was low.

"I would, of course. To the end of the world. But that's the whole point. He never wanted me. He doesn't want me now. He won't want me then."

I saw--only too plainly. Naturally he would not want her. It was the very essence of his wandering that he should be unhampered and alone. That which she now had she had; but it seemed to me that it was all she would ever have. She had thrown, and--won? Lost? Which? That was for her to say. Had she remained content as she was she might have kept him on the original terms in perpetuity; but it looked as if in precipitating the event she had encompassed her own defeat. Her eyes were now on him as if they would never see him again.

"Shall we go across to him?" I said.

She shook her head. "Don't worry him. There's no stopping it. He's bound to go. There, I didn't want to say it, but it's better to face it. He's fighting with the Wanderlust now. And if he goes it isn't the end. There are stages beyond that, and there's no stopping them either. He'll come back in the end."

"Then you'll let him go?"

"He shall do whatever he wishes. It mayn't be for long."

"How many Wanderjahre had he?"

"Two--three--I don't quite remember. But that may not mean more than a week or a fortnight really."

"And--he'll come back?"

"He'll come back, or we can go to him. Probably he won't be able to get very far. Anyway nothing on earth can stop it, so there's no more to be said."

I looked at her fixedly, earnestly. "But there is more to be said. What about yourself?" I said quietly.

For a moment her eyes left that man in the punt who fidgeted to feel the stick in his hand again, the pack on his back and the hard road under his feet. They smiled dimly into mine.

"Oh, I'm a painter. There'll be that portrait of yours to start presently, George."

And back went the eyes to the motionless figure in the punt.

V

Derry stayed to lunch without further pressing. He had made his book his excuse; that brushed aside, he had no choice but to stay or give his reason for not staying. So, as a man who is starting on a walking-tour of indefinite duration can hardly boggle at an hour or two sooner or later in the starting, and as, moreover, having brought Julia, he must in ordinary politeness take her back again, he stayed.

But lunch was nearly as extraordinary as breakfast had been. Once more he tried to urge his book, and again failed. And I remembered how formerly, in Cambridge Circus, his very thought and essence had been modified in my presence, awaiting only sleep to put the visible and physical seal upon it. It needed only half an eye to see that he no longer had the least interest in that book. The more he urged it, the more plainly it became a thing of the past. Vivaciously, yet as if repeating them from memory, he said things he had said twice and thrice before; echoes, mere echoes.... And then suddenly he ceased to talk about his book. He wanted a change, he said; wanted to get away somewhere; and this rang instantly true. I fancied he even became a little cunning. "Do you know, George, I've never in my life been in Ireland?" he said. "Only an hour or two away, and I've never been! Lord, how we do sit still in one place! I feel positively ashamed. We settle down--get sitzfleich--heavens, I do want a change!" ... And somehow I knew that he was dragging in Ireland as a red-herring. He had no intention of going there. That was purely for our benefit. He not only wanted to go away alone, but he did not wish to have his whereabouts known. Only a few hours before he had made much of Julia and myself, as his only rest and comfort in that wavering ebb of his life; now he no longer did not need, but very definitely did not want companionship. And he threw dust in our eyes. Yes, just a little cunning. I made a note of it.

I have said that the afternoon train to town was at four-forty. There was not another till seven-eighteen, reaching Waterloo at eight-forty-one. There was little doubt which of the two he would choose. As we all three took a stroll backwards and forwards after lunch he turned to Julia.

"Will the four-forty suit you all right?" he asked.

She only nodded.

"Right. And I say: would you mind if when we got to town I put you on your bus at Waterloo and left you? There's a little job I must do."

"Very well, Derry," she said.

"And now, George, if you could spare me just a moment----," this time he turned to me.

Julia walked rather quickly away.

The "little job" of which he had spoken was this:

He wanted me--quite at my own convenience, of course, and whenever I next happened to be in town--to arrange for the sale of his things at Cambridge Circus. To attend to this himself might be to ask for trouble. So I was to sell everything for what it would fetch and remit the money to him.

"Where?" I asked him. ("Ireland?" I thought.)

"I shall have to let you know that later," he replied. "I want to sell the lot and pay all up there; chairs and curtains are no good to a man like me. I don't suppose I shall ever want 'em again. I shall have to settle up with Trenchard too, and money's as well in your pocket as anywhere else."

"Will you have some now to be going on with?"

"No, that's quite all right. I have all I want for the present, if you wouldn't mind doing this other for me. Thanks, old fellow."

"Is it to Cambridge Circus that you're going to-night when you leave Julia?" I asked.

"Yes. There are one or two small things I want, and also a few things I think I'd better destroy."

"Couldn't you," I said slowly and quite deliberately, "have taken her home and seen about your things to-morrow?"

I felt the beginning of his perturbation. "It's so dashed awkward, George," he stammered. "I don't want to go in the daytime."

"Couldn't you go to-morrow night and still take her home?"

Again he muttered, his eyes on the ground. "Why waste a day?"

"If, as you say, you want a change--supposing you were to go off somewhere for a bit--wouldn't you like somebody with you?"

"No, George," he answered curtly.

"You are going away?"

"Yes," he admitted.

"Immediately?"

"Yes."

"Where to?"

"I don't know yet."

"Would you let me come with you?"

"No."

"Would you, if it were possible, take Julia?"

"No."

"Might both of us come with you together?"

"No." And, raising his voice, "No, I tell you, no!" he said.

We had stopped by a rather shabby-looking thicket of rugosa roses near the diving-stage. The pink-flowered hedge hid us from the house. I spoke quietly, not to give my own agitation too much head.

"Derry," I said, "you remember what you showed me with that flashlight that night in your rooms?"

With marked reluctance he answered, "Yes I do."

"I've been thinking about that. I've been thinking a lot about it. Of course it makes a considerable difference how far away you hold the lamp."

"A hell of a difference," he muttered.

"Do you always hold it at the same distance?"

His whole mind seemed to wriggle. "I haven't, if you must know. But why drag all this up again? I offered to tell you before but you wouldn't listen."

"I hadn't the reason then that I have now. Do you--move it about deliberately?"

"I have to some extent. I told you that. I did by an effort of will when I came here for a day's rest."

"A day's rest?... You're not going back to that book. You know that better than I do. That book's all past and done with. Something's happened since."

I saw him turn pale. "What do you mean?" he asked almost inaudibly.

"You came here on Friday midday. I've watched you carefully ever since. Let's--well, let's stick to terms of the flash-lamp. Except for a quarter of an hour or so at breakfast yesterday morning, when you talked about your book, you've had that lamp steadily rather close to the edge of the table. Isn't that so?"

"I tell you a holiday's a holiday," he said faintly.

"Let me go on. I want to know how close that lamp has been. The closer you hold it the more ecstatically you experience, you know. Very well. Now has there been a moment since yesterday when ... _you've held it as close as you could get it_?"

I was in time to catch him as he swayed. He clutched at my shoulder.

"George----"

"Steady--but tell me----"

"George--I've been trying to remember----"

"What! Good God! You don't remem--_so close that you don't remember_?"

"I honestly--but no, that isn't true--I seem to remember something--let me think, let me think.... What time did I go to bed last night?"

"Later than usual. Not till half-past nine."

"What was I doing? Tell me what I was doing. I was looking at pictures or something, wasn't I?"

"You were looking at the Hogarth prints."

"Yes, yes, that's right.... I didn't fall asleep, did I?"

"No, you didn't."

He muttered thickly. Outrageous, extravagant, beyond reason as it was, his sincerity could not be doubted. "It made no difference to him," Julia had said; but that her words should be taken _au pied de la lettre_ like that!... He continued to mutter.

"I do remember something--I do remember--at least I did this morning--I thought I did--but it went. Why didn't I come into breakfast? _Why_ was I going away without any breakfast? _Why_ wouldn't I have breakfast, George? I'm sure there was a reason, but I can't for the life of me remember." Then he began to talk rapidly. "That lamp--very close, you say--touching--something all instantaneous and burning--one intense brilliant spot--no before or after--all isolated by itself--but I'll swear I didn't fake the lamp that time! By all that's sacred I swear it, George! Something happened in the night that had nothing to do with me at all! It all happens in the night. Why"--he flung out his arms in a perfectly amazing appeal--"if I'd moved the light at all it would have been farther away! I _wanted_ to do that book! I thought about nothing else from the moment I went upstairs! I ached to be at it--wished this wasted week-end was over--I saw it all again perfectly clearly, beautifully clearly! I'd got out of bed. And then ... everything went out. It was exactly as if somebody'd taken that torch out of my hand, somebody with a stronger will than mine, and concentrated it--in the very moment when I saw that book practically written--one bright blazing bull's-eye----"

There was a little bench about four yards away. I think I needed its support more than he. Together we reached it and sat down. He turned the beautiful grey-blue eyes on me.

"George," he said more quietly, "something happened. I know it did."

I made no reply.

"Something happened. Something's been done to me. Somebody's been taking a hand in my life. At breakfast-time I almost knew what it was. Do _you_ know what it was?"

There was only one possible answer to this. I made it, in a broken voice.

"No, old man, I don't."

"Except of course that I've slipped back again."

"Except that, I suppose."

He passed his hand wearily over his brow, and, much as I hated that insolent vainglorious book of his, the gesture with which he wiped it away went strangely to my heart.

"Then what's that make the year now? 1903 or 4 I suppose; all blind guessing though; how can you tell your age to a year or two simply by how you feel?... But that would be about it. I was in the Adriatic in 1903; Venice, and across to Genoa and Marseilles. I'd been in Marseilles a few years before and thought I'd like another look at it. Gay place. There was a little cafe on the Vieux Port with a little stage where a woman used to dance. Andalusian; very dark-eyed; pretty sort of wild animal. She had a little sloping mirror at the top of the stage so she could see who was in front when she was behind. Wicked show; I wasn't having any; knives come out too easily there. But of course she'd gone when I went again in 1904."

I made one more appeal. "Derry, can't you stay here a little longer?"

But it had now resumed its possession of him. He was almost cheerful again.

"Sorry, George. It's good of you to ask me, but it's quite impossible. Glad Julia was able to take a run down with me; she's a rattling good sort. I feel rather beastly about shaking her at Waterloo, but I really must get up to Cambridge Circus to-night. And if you'll see about selling those things, George--any time will do--I've got nearly a hundred pounds, so there's really no hurry--I'll let you know where to send the money to----"

* * * * *

I drove them to the station. As the car turned out of the drive Julia's eyes took a last look at my balconied house. His spirits were now high; he was on the eve of a holiday. They got into an empty third-class carriage.

"Well, thanks most awfully, George," he said.

We waved hands.

Both their heads were framed in the window as the train glided out of the station.

That night I once more roamed restlessly from room to room of my house. The place seemed extraordinarily and insistently empty, and I could not have told you whether I was glad or sorry for it. For this thing was getting altogether too much for me. Remember that I am merely a commercially successful English novelist, not a person accustomed to the contemplation of the mysteries of life and death in terms of electric torches and bamboo tables. Also a man of my years does not spend a night at the Devil's Punch Bowl without knowing something about it afterwards. In this connection, going into my dressing-room, I found that after all my suit of clothes had not been brushed. I summoned Mrs Moxon and told her to take them away. She stiffened a little, and some part of her clothing creaked.

"It's made a good deal of extra work for the week-end," she reminded me.

"I'm sorry for that, but you were consulted beforehand," I said.

"It was more than I reckoned for," she announced with dignity.

A little of this was enough.

"Very well, Mrs Moxon. Take the clothes away, please, and let me have them to-morrow. By the way, I shall be going up to town by the midday train."

"In that case, sir," she said, "if you're seeing Mr Rose perhaps you'd give him this. I suppose it's his. I found it in his room."

She put into my hand a small book covered with shiny black cloth. I opened it to see what it was.

A single glance told me. It was Derwent Rose's diary.