The Tower of Oblivion Part 54

"Have you realised yet?"

"Oh!"

"You haven't. Let me help you. And I'll put it as much in your favour as I can. I'll a.s.sume you're standing still for the present. I'll even a.s.sume the other possibility, or impossibility, whichever it is--that you might actually turn round again. Even then what would it mean? It would mean that I, a guest of my old friends, was lending my countenance to something against every conception of mental--decency let us say. I think I know your dates and figures pretty well by this time. You were born in '75. Now, in 1920, we'll say you're eighteen. It's taken you forty-five years to live to eighteen, and if you're to live to forty-five again it will have taken you--how long?--seventy-two years.

It will then be getting on for 1950. Jennie was born in 1903. You're now forty-five to her seventeen. If this thing comes off you'll be in the early forties together. But at the same time you'll be over seventy.

Look at it, Derry--look at it."

"Look at it? I have looked at it. I'll look at it again if you like....

Now I've looked at it again. Only you and I know it. And anyway there's nothing in it."

"Julia Oliphant knows it."

"Then only you and I and Julia Oliphant know it, and there's nothing in it."

"Then tell me if there's anything in this. What guarantee have you that exactly the same thing won't happen to you again? Take the maddest view of all--that you actually might go forward. If indications are anything you're repeating your experiences already."

"How so?" he demanded.

"In this painting of yours. I heard your explanations to Mrs Aird this afternoon. You're starting with exactly the same ideas as before--complete dissociation from everything else that's ever been done. You're going to be the First Man again instead of the Millionth Man. How do you know it won't land you in the same mess? It used to be words; now it's paint, and that's all the difference I see."

There was a long pause; then I heard his soft, almost indulgent laugh.

"Look here, George," he said slowly. "I'll make you a fair offer. Can't you and I come to terms if I swear to you that I'll never touch another canvas or brush or pen or sheet of paper as long as I live? Will _that_ satisfy you?"

"I'm afraid not."

"But doesn't that meet your objection, old fellow?"

"No. Because you'd be the same man whether you wrote or painted or not!"

"But how on earth can I alter that?"

I seized on his words. "Exactly. That's my whole meaning. You can't alter it. Whether you do the same or not, you _are_ the same. For all I know you'll go on being it till the crack of doom. It's yourself that's been visited, not your books. And that's why things can't go on between you and Jennie Aird."

"Then you're going to stand between us as long as I am I?"

"That's about the size of it."

"Doesn't it strike you as a little--hard, George?" he asked slowly.

"Yes," I admitted doggedly. "But you'll be bearing it, not she."

By the swinging beam of Frehel I saw that his head was bowed. Without my noticing it the riding-lights in the little harbour below had disappeared; as no boat could now put in till dawn the pecheurs had waded across the shallows and extinguished them. The tall Crucifix seemed to advance and to retire again into the gloom with the next revolution of the Light.

Then he raised his head and asked about the last question I expected.

"About my money, George. You don't know exactly how much I've got?"

"No, not at this moment."

"Who bought the stuff?"

"I sold it in the best market I could find."

Ironically came his reply. "Hasn't it got a name? Are there two of us?... Anyway, without worrying you too much about it, I'd like an account soon. I want that matter cleared up."

"Well, never mind furniture at present. That's a detail."

"Oh no it isn't!" he answered quickly. "We seem to have different ideas as to what's detail. You've given me quite a lot of what I call detail.

This is important.--You really don't remember the name of the man who bought that furniture of mine?" he mocked me.

"I've already told you you can draw to any reasonable amount."

"I see.... Is this it, that my furniture isn't sold at all, and you're advancing me money on the security of it?"

"Security, Derry!"

"And I still have my furniture and I owe you five hundred francs?"

"Must we talk about this now?"

There was no mistake about the granite this time.

"Yes, we'd better," he said curtly. "We've wasted time enough about things that don't matter that"--he snapped his fingers. "I've listened to what you've got to say, and now I'm going to ask you to listen to me.

I owe you five hundred francs, for which I'm most sincerely obliged. But I don't think I should have asked you if I'd known. And I want you to understand that it's all I do owe you."

"Derry, old fellow----"

"Tut-tut! One tale's always good till you hear the other side. It doesn't seem to strike you that you've made pretty free with me. I'm a subject for sums and mental arithmetic exercises--you're better at that than at accounts. I'm some kind of an oddity, that's got to be shoo-ed with an ap.r.o.n this way and that, and told where he's to go and not to go, and who he shall speak to and who he shan't. You'd be best pleased of all if you could shut your eyes and tell yourself that I didn't exist. But I do exist, and I'm not on sale for five hundred francs. I'm here on earth, and I don't see what you're going to do about it. I'm not less alive than anybody else; I'm more alive--a hundred times more alive. You can call me any age you please--but who'd be locked up, you or I, if you showed me to any reasonable being and told them I was forty-five? Care to try it on the Airds? I'll give you the chance if you like."

Bitterly as he spoke, he grew bitterer as he proceeded.

"This is not the first time you've interfered. You've made free with my latchkey before this. Julia Oliphant knows about me; who told her, and who gave you permission? It seems to me I've been pretty patient. I'm not saying you've not been decent about some things, that time when I was slipping about all over the scale, but I'm warning you now. I've listened to all you had to say. I've met you at every point. I've even offered--I'm hanged if I know why--not to write or paint again if that will please you. But beyond that----"

Then came an outburst the contempt of which I cannot reproduce.

"Writing! Painting! Books! Pictures! As if _they_ had any more to do with life than a baby playing with its doll! They're to help fools to think they're thinking. They're to make 'em believe that but for some slight accident they could do the same themselves--as they could, and do! They call a thing like that a 'gift'; but what's the Gift that Life still has to give when they've said their very last word--they and their schools? What's been there all the time, waiting for us to get the dust out of our eyes?... George Coverham, try to come between me and that and as sure as G.o.d will bring to-morrow morning I'll put a stop to your arithmetic for ever! What do I care if I have to take a new name every day? What do I care if your friends the Airds bundle you out of the house? Do you think it matters to me whose father and mother and family history and papers I steal? That's all life seems to mean to some of you. 'Where did he come from? Who knows him? Is he French or English?

What does he do for his living? Has he paid his Income Tax? Is he respectable? What did he do in the war? Where does he bank? What's his club? Where does he live and how much is his rateable value?' You can't see a man for all _that_! You can't even see me now for Derwent Rose and his tombstones of books! By Jove, I said I was a ghost once! But that was when I was on the slide! I'm no ghost now! It's you others who are the ghosts! It's you who'd better get off the map! J'y suis, j'y reste; I'm here--here!"

And again Frehel showed him there--young, beautiful, indomitable and ruthless.

Yet what did he utter but his own deeper and deeper condemnation?

Simple, heart-full, innocent Jennie Aird be mated with his piercing and impossible view of the world! She herself, yes, even in her body's beauty, to be what his books had formerly been, what his painting was to be again--the very medium of his transcendental transgression! Why, one peep at that awful sleeping dynamo of his mind would be enough to drive her mad, one glimpse of the experience that had been his suffice to shrivel her opening heart for ever! Did he think to put off his flames and clouds and lightnings every time he whispered a love-word into her ear? What fate would be hers, poor Semele, did he forget, as he had forgotten before now, and put forth the enormousness of his power by her side? With every word he spoke it was less and less to be thought of. As far as my own carca.s.s was concerned he might do what he pleased. I would not stand by and see it done. His vision and will might exceed mine a thousandfold, but even in my humble heart glimmered the small flame of what I considered to be my duty. I faced him, waiting for the Light again.

"Very well," I said as it came over his face. "Am I to take that as your last word?"

"If you please."