The Tower of Oblivion Part 17

And for the first time in my life I found myself wondering whether I did want to know so very much about those morrows after all.

At last I found my voice. "Then you accept that explanation?" I said.

"No," he replied.

"Thank G.o.d for something! Why not?"

"Oh, for various reasons. In the first place I only got it as a sort of fiction-stunt, remember. He merely said that n.o.body could contradict me."

"And in the second place?"

"In the second place, I still think yours is the better explanation--not biology at all, but simple right and wrong, good and evil. Nothing of that kind ever did happen to me in the War that I know of--I never got any whack over the head--and there's one other thing that seems to me to prove it."

"What's that?"

"That I do know the difference between the better and the worse, and want the better all the time."

"In other words--G.o.d?"

"I think G.o.d comes before a gland," he replied.

Quite apart from his extraordinary interview with his doctor, the past few weeks had been a series of the commonest everyday incidents mixed up with sheer impossibilities in the most bewildering fas.h.i.+on. As I stoutly refused to see his diagrams and the details of his diary (though I saw them later), I could only touch the fringe of his experience at that time. I gathered, however, that in those slowed-down pictures he had found a certain relief, as also in some music, particularly organ-music; and he had other alleviations of a similar nature. But I noticed that obstinately (as it seemed to me) he chose to regard the interval of time since I had last seen him, not as the three weeks it really was, but as the fortnight he had spent in that loft over the garage. Of the first of the three weeks he spoke not one single word. I need hardly mention the reason. He was looking farther back still. As he had been at thirty-five, so he had been in the twenties. Those "A" memories, so recent, were "B" memories too.... But that was a long way off yet.

Yet among so much vagueness and fluctuation one thing was abundantly clear. He had left behind him the last vestige of the man who had written _An Ape in h.e.l.l_. At the very least he was now the man who had written _The Vicarage of Bray_, and not impossibly he was an earlier man still. And here I had better say a word or two about the _Vicarage_, not as describing the book itself, but as isolating the stage he had reached and differentiating between his former and his present experiences of it.

It was, of course, the "t.i.te Barnacle" portions of the book that had pleased the public, supposing the public to have been pleased at all.

Yet, witty as these were, they were the least essential parts of the work. The book had to be cla.s.sed as Political, Social, Economic, or some welding of all three descriptions; and Rose was never the man to approach a subject of this kind with his mind already made up. He recognised frankly (for example) that the mere mechanism of a Ministry or a Department is a gigantic thing, the men with the habit of running it necessarily few, and that to give control to an unpractised hand would be fatal. Thus his book was no mere slap at what it was the fas.h.i.+on some little time ago to call The Old Gang. He refrained from the common gibe that the surest qualification for success in one department is to have failed in another. Instead, he examined, first the machine, and then the man in charge of it. Between these two an accommodation has always to be found. No system of government will prove altogether a failure if it is in the hands of the right men, and equally none will work if it is in the hands of the wrong ones. So he sought the equilibrium between the two.

Not one reader in a million, laughing over that merciless and iridescent book that Julia Oliphant said he had written in little more than three months, had the faintest idea of the sheer burden of merely intellectual work that lay behind it. Piece by piece he had dissected the whole of our national economy before setting pen to paper at all. Bear with me for a moment if I take one little piece only--s.h.i.+pping. It will give an idea of the scale, not so much of the _Vicarage_ only as of that far vaster thing--the book he now projected and for the sake of which he clung so desperately to his "false middle" of thirty-three.

Men (he argued) need s.h.i.+ps; but, over and above those who actually handle them, s.h.i.+ps need men no less. From one standpoint s.h.i.+ps exist in order that men may be carried from one place to another; but from the opposite standpoint a s.h.i.+p is merely a hungry belly that must be constantly fed with its human food--pa.s.sengers. Without its meal of pa.s.sengers it cannot live for a week. Thus, the Thing must move the Man from one place to another whether he wishes it or not, whether in itself it is desirable that he should be moved or not. The s.h.i.+ps of one nation snarl at those of another for this sustenance. Where then is the balance? Where does blind force get the upper hand, and where wise control? What happens if the power is usurped by a "Vicar" who can by no means be dislodged?... I need say no more. You see the yawning immensities of it.

And that was only s.h.i.+pping. There were a hundred other things. He had applied his brilliant intellect to them all in turn, and had (as I may say) so "orchestrated" the whole that in the result it seemed the easiest of improvisations.

And now think what his present plan was!

He contemplated, not an a.n.a.lysis of one system, _but a welding of a.n.a.lyses of all systems_!

That was why he sought to juggle with his own years--that he might combine the enthusiasm of sixteen with the grasp and certainty and power of forty-five, and at the same time a.s.sure the coincidence between his past and his present impulses to create.

Montesquieu had never dreamed of such a work--Moses' task had been simpler.

Therefore I saw the position as follows:

He was thirty-three. But thirty-three was a falsemiddle.

He was in a rage to attempt a But the dazzling endeavour might work for which no man had ever elude him at any moment.

been equipped as he was equipped.

He would make that python-meal But he might be thirty again of material and produce a before he digested it.

super-_Vicarage_.

He was still hanging on, his But he was hanging on as a enthusiasm at its keenest, straphanger hangs on--totteringly, his experience at its richest. insecurely.

Once he had got going he would But not until he got going.

take a week off with me, a day with Julia Oliphant.

One thing was clear. He would have to give it up. If necessary he would have to be made to give it up. If I couldn't persuade him, Julia must.

But already I saw the cost to him. He was an artist, with a pa.s.sionate need to create. He was an artist so highly specialised that the creation of a small thing merely irritated him. But see where he was placed! So close to the dreamed splendour that he brushed it with his fingertips, and then perhaps to see it recede, diminish, go out! To be conscious of that inordinate power, and to have the agony of knowing that it could not last long enough for the task to be completed! To be unique, as he was unique, and yet to be forced to share the common bitterness and humiliation and despair!... A few moments ago I risked the word "impious." To my way of thinking it was impiety. If it was not impiety I do not see why Prometheus was bound.

For what was this monstrous right that Derwent Rose claimed, to put all the rest of us into the shadow of his own overweening and presumptuous glory? Who was he, to seize on immortality like this? Not satin slippers with poor little feet inside them that would soon, too soon be dust--not this was the sin. It was this other that is not forgiven. And man is forbidden to call his brother by the name that fitted Derwent Rose.

Poor Derry! Apparently he could do nothing right. As Julia had said, his whole life had been one marvellous mistake after another.

Suddenly I introduced Julia's name.

He had not moved since his last words some minutes ago--that he thought G.o.d was more than a gland. The mews outside had come to life again. Cars were returning from suppers and the theatres; the glare of their headlights played palely about the upper part of his window-frame. He now turned his head and smiled.

"Good sort, Julia. But she's forgotten all about me long ago."

"What makes you think that?"

But instead of answering my question he went musingly on. "Funny, that.

Dashed funny. I forgot all about Julia when I was making those notes."

"What notes?"

"Why, of the way I strike people. Those who remember me and those who don't. I remembered that doctor, who'd only seen me once, but Julia, who's known me practically all my life, I go and forget all about. In fact there's only about one other person who's known me as long as Julia has, and she absolutely failed to recognise me when I spoke to her a year or so ago."

My nerves became all jangled again. "Derry--_how_ long ago?"

"About a year.... As you were. What am I talking about? Must stick to one scale of time, I suppose. I ought to have said about ten days ago."

"What was all this?" I asked, though I knew well enough; and he became grave as he unfolded another aspect of his singular case to me.

"It's difficult to explain to you, George, because you know the whole thing--though how you kept your reason when I told you I can't imagine; magnificently steady!... As a matter of fact this other person I mean was Mrs Ba.s.sett; you remember I'd been looking for her. Well, I met her one day and spoke to her"--he coloured a little at the memory of the details he suppressed; "and by Jove, it was a lesson to me! A perfectly hideous risk! I was on the point of telling her who I was when I drew back, just in time. G.o.d, how I sweated! I'm cold now when I think she _might_ have recognised me.... Imagine the scene, George; woman screaming and falling down in a fit in the street because she thinks a ghost's spoken to her. And the ghost himself--this ghost"--he tapped his solid chest--"a ghost marched off between a couple of policemen--if two could hold me--I don't believe ten could--my strength's immense--immense----"

"But--but--then haven't you even a _name_ to anybody who sees you more than once or twice?"

Slowly he shook his head. "You see. You see as well as I do. It seems to me that to everybody but you I'm simply dead. I can't go about giving people fits like that. That was a lesson to me, speaking to Daphne Ba.s.sett. I'll never do such a thing again.... So that cuts out Julia Oliphant. Pity, because she was a good sort. Always the same to me; just a pal. She used to give me expensive paste-sandwiches for tea when I knew she couldn't afford it; I used sometimes to stop away on that account. That was when she lived in Chelsea. Then I lost sight of her for a bit, but I've thought a good deal of her lately. I never had a sister.... Don't mind my running on like this, old fellow. I've n.o.body but you to talk to, n.o.body at all. Funny sort of situation, isn't it--a ghost like me mourning for living people? That's practically what it amounts to."

At something in his tone I interposed abruptly.

"Derry," I said, "you haven't been thinking of putting an end to yourself, have you?"

He stared at me for a moment.