The Tower of Oblivion Part 38

"Well, well," was all I found to say, as I looked at Jennie again.

For while woman's beauty is coeval with Time itself, you have only your own allotted portion of it. The loveliness that comes too early or too late is no more your affair than the dawns before your time, the sunsets after you are gone. Madge at the midday of her life was still within my reach at my post-meridian, but Jennie would bloom like a rosy daybreak when my own evening star appeared. Young Rugby, young Charterhouse, would write his vers-libre to that small head, sweet throat and the red-gold of her hair.... But I hardly know why I write all this. I am only trying to show how sorely I had needed a change and how grateful I was now that it had come. I knew that I was welcome to stay with the Airds as long as I pleased. It didn't matter if I didn't write another book for ten years, it didn't greatly matter if I never wrote another. I didn't want to write. That ethereal sea, that multi-coloured plage, the genet-scented air, the feeling that all about me were people who knew what they could not do and wasted no time in attempting to do it--ah, they live their lives from the beginning and end them at the end in that fair and unperplexed land of northern France.

II

Both by Alec and Madge, Jennie's education was discussed before me with complete freedom.

"Stuff and nonsense!" Madge would roundly declare.

"Look at those two Beverley girls!"

"Very nice girls, I should have thought," Alec would growl.

"Yes, and who's ever going to marry them? n.o.body as far as I can see.

That's Vi Beverley's fault. She's let them sit in one another's pockets, and have their own silly family jargon, and think that the rest of the world's a cinema just to amuse them, till they don't know how to talk to a stranger without being rude. They positively freeze any young man who goes near them, and when they do go away it's to cousins. Family affection's all very well in its place, but you can have too much of it.

Jennie shall take people as they are. If she does miss an hour's sleep once in a while she can stay in bed all next day if she wants."

"Better teach her baccarat and have done with it."

"Well, she needn't faint when it's mentioned. This is 1920. If ever those Beverley girls marry it will be one another."

"If she begins to think of marrying in another four or five years----"

"She's not going to sit on the arm of your chair for five years while you read the _Paris Daily Mail_.... Anyway, about to-night's party----"

Then, on the way to the Stade or the Club, I should have Alec's view of the matter.

"When we were kids, if we were allowed to stop up once a year for a pantomime ... beastly mixed sort of place like this too! Madge doesn't know half that goes on. Why, before I'd been here three days one of the waiters at the Grand had the infernal neck to come up to me and whisper----"

I broke into uncontrollable laughter. The idea of a waiter whispering alluring suggestions to Alec Aird of all people was altogether too much for me.

"And what did you say?" I asked him.

"Say?" said Alec grimly. "When I said 'Frog' he jumped, I promise you that!... And mark you, these French fellows look after their own women all right--got their hands on their elbows all the time. It's only our confounded ideas of freedom----"

"But there's no harm in to-night's party----"

"Oh, that's all right. That's at home. We can turn 'em out at ten o'clock, and be in bed in reasonable time. It's that d.a.m.ned Casino I bar----"

And so on. Early to bed and a nap after lunch certainly suited Alec. I have seen once-fine athletes settle down like this before.

I had been at Ker Annic some days, when about the last thing I expected had happened to me. I have just told you how little I cared whether I ever wrote another book or not. Well, that morning I had remained in my room after coffee and rolls to write a couple of necessary letters.

These finished, I had sat gazing out of the window at nothing in particular, lazily content with the beauty of the morning. Then, suddenly and without the least premeditation, I had taken a fresh sheet of paper and had begun to make detached and random notes. These had presently strung themselves together, and by and by a phrase had sprung up of itself....

Whereupon, in the very moment of my despairing of ever writing again, I had realised that my next novel was stirring within me.

Now let me tell you the part that Jennie Aird played in this.

I frankly admit that the writers of my own generation have sometimes been a little smug and make-believe about young girlhood. We have seen a lovely thing, and perhaps have let its mere loveliness run away with us, to the loss of what I believe is nowadays called "contact." We have not seen the b.u.t.terfly's anatomy for the pretty bloom of its wing.

Nevertheless, I cannot see that the eager young morphologists who are succeeding us have so very much to teach us after all. To read some of these you would think that the whole moving mystery had been disposed of when they had said that a young girl became conscious, shy, and had a talk with her mother. If it must be anatomy or bloom, I think I shall go on preferring the bloom. I have no wish to exchange the eyes in my head for that improved apparatus that turns a woman's hand that is meant to be stooped over into a shadowy bundle of metacarpal bones.

At the same time I do not take it for granted that youth is necessarily the happiest season of our lives. I remember my own youth too well for that. Emotionally, I am aware, it is all over the shop. It will giggle in church or make a heartbreak out of nothing, indifferently and with tragical facility. It is exploring the new-found marvels within itself against the day when its eyes shall open to the miracle of another.

That, at any rate, and as nearly as I can express it, was the state of Madge Aird's sleeping beauty of a daughter on the evening of the party of which Madge and Alec had spoken.

It was a ravis.h.i.+ng evening of late light over an opal sea. The same dusk that turned the begonias velvety-black in their beds made luminous the pale hydrangeas, until they resembled the glimmering whites and mauves of the frocks that moved in and out among them. The villa was lighted up like a paper lantern, and the moving couples inside made ceaselessly wavering shadows across the lawn. Over the ragged bay the phares winked in and out, and beyond the ilex and chestnut a faint luminosity trembled--the corona of Dinard lighting up for the night.

They danced in and out between the wide hall and the salon where the gilded Ganymede struggled with the Eagle--youngsters in their first dinner-jackets, sylphs with their plaits swinging about their softly-browned napes, their elders mingling among them or watching them from the walls. Madge, in a frock that seemed to be held up singly and solely by her presence of mind, played fox-trots. Alec was busy "b.u.t.tling" in the little recess where a scratch supper had been set out.

The air was filled with the light talk in French and English, throbbed with the rhythm of the foxtrotting piano.

For half an hour or so I made myself agreeable to a number of ladies of whose names I had not the faintest idea; then, with a sense of duty done, I turned my back on the pretty scene and strolled into the garden.

On the whole I was pleased with my day. That was what I had wanted--the solace and security of being at work again. Nothing world-shaking or tremendous; I simply wanted to get on with the unpretentious job that was mine, and incidentally to be tolerably well-paid for it. That, when all was said, was the way of wisdom, the kind of thing men very properly get knighthoods for and had their portraits hung up in Clubs. It seemed to me that I had been through a very evil time, and that now that I was rid of the weight of it life was worth living again. I paced the paths of the gay artificial little garden, my thoughts on all manner of pleasant times to come.

Near the end of the house grew an auracaria, forbidding and black. As I moved towards it I noticed a dim white shape beneath it. I was turning away again (for at a party like that no unaccompanied bachelor has any t.i.tle to the dimmer corners) when the figure moved towards me. It was Jennie Aird--alone.

"Hallo, why aren't you dancing?" I asked. I had already watched her dance four dances in succession with the same partner--young Kingston I believe it was.

She made a quick little grimace, but did not reply.

"This is rather a nice party," I remarked.

To this she did reply. "It's a beastly party, and I hate it."

I drew certain conclusions; but "Oh?" I said. "What's the matter with it? I thought it rather fun."

"Everything's beastly, and I wish we were back in London," she snapped.

"Anything the matter, Jennie?"

"Oh, how I do wish people wouldn't ask one what's the matter!"

"Then come for a turn and I won't."

She put her hand indifferently on my arm. She was nearly as tall as I, and I noticed as we pa.s.sed the windows that, that night at any rate, her red-gold plait had been taken up and was closely swathed about her nape.

Of course young Kingsley or young somebody else had said something or done something, or hadn't said or done anything, or if he had had done it at the wrong moment or in the wrong way or had otherwise conjured up the shade of tragedy. Therefore, as there are occasions when tact may take the form of talking about one's self, I talked to Jennie about myself as we skirted the garden.

"Do you know, something rather exciting happened to me this morning," I remarked.

She showed no great interest, but asked me what it was.

"It mayn't sound much to you, but it interests me. I think I've started a new book."

"I wish I'd something to do," was the extent of her congratulation.

"What would you like to do?"

"Oh, anything. I shouldn't care what it was. Anything's better than this."