menu_book Chapter 10

CHAPTER X. THE MISSING WINDOW in the moment when anthony drellincourt knew that the secret was his the secret for which he had striven so long so strongly with such a delicate fervour such an ardour of patience he ceased to desire more all the uses to which he had intended to put his discovery seemed now unimportant puerile he had attained that was the one thing that mattered as one in a dream he locked the door of that underground room where the knowledge of his triumph had come to him staggered up the damp stone steps and threw himself in the easy chair in his laboratory there for a while he lay every muscle relaxed every nerve quiescent as a man might lie who has long struggled in deep wild waters and has been suddenly thrown up by a wave greater than he had believed any wave to be

on to a shore more tranquil than any shore of which he had ever dreamed he had attained to a knowledge that had been hidden since the beginning of time except for glimpses vague or brief caught by people who had been called mad and imprisoned, or called wizards, and burned at the stake. He had wedded the philosophy of the ancients to modern science. It was as though he had been labouring to bring together the mystic soul of the one and the splendid body of the other. And now here, suddenly, when he had been distracted by weaker and baser adventures, he returned disheartened to his workshop to find

that the forces he had set in motion had, in his absence, done that which, in his presence, they had never done. The result was achieved. The two were at last made one. The horizon of thought receded.

Yet there was no longer room in his world for thought. The glory of his triumph overpowered all else and wrapped him in a warm glow, mellow as midsummer, radiant as sunlight. and the glory slowly ceased or rather merged in that other, closer, more intimate enfolding of content

which held him as in a predestined nest, soft, warm and grey as the down of the ida. And from this he was roused by the voices on the river, singing of romance and true love. Of course, I must tell Rose at once, he thought of himself sitting there, folding the content and the glory round him, with never a thought of Rose or for her. He clenched his fist and hit his open left hand with it.

He stumbled down his stairs and out across the wharf. The boat was receding. You fool, he said. Can't you at least try to behave like other men? How would Mullinger act if he'd found out anything?

Well, no, not that exactly. But... Well, anyhow, he'd stand champagne. he started off across the waist and came back with the brown paper parcel took it to the laboratory lighted fire and drew curtains then he went down to the wharf again the boat was coming back now anthony struck the key to which he felt a successful discoverer and lover should if he were like other men seek to attune himself when he cried aloud hello you strayed rebellious and hugged himself on his close resemblance to the normal

it is not necessary to explain definitely the nature of antony's discovery at this point of the tale it would not even be interesting he was to use it later but the need for its use is not yet for the present you see him contentedly returning to drellingcourt to prepare the way for his house-party lady blair met him at the station wonderfully upright in a very high dog-cart as he smiled into her old eyes and pressed her little thick gloved hand and thanked her for coming and climbed up beside her and watched the groom tuck the driving rug round their knees he felt that old thrill of pride of the successful way in which he was acting his charade really any one would think it was real almost he told himself it is so very like real life as one has read about it and yet one knows it's all allusion no thank you he added aloud to lady blair who wonderfully girlish in a large hat and white veil was offering the reins i like to see you do it you do it so beautifully drive do you mean she asked flicking a chestnut ear with a very smart whip no everything said antony almost expecting the applause of a large audience

but you do drive don't you she asked and he answered soberly no i have never had the opportunity of acquiring the accomplishment you will enjoy it she said smiling and gazing in his eyes at the dangerous crisis of cross-roads a motor a wood-cart and a tramp wheeling an old perambulator riding too i am sure you will find that it is what you have longed for always unconsciously i mean if these things were heritable i ought to be an accomplished horseman he said of course and no doubt you will find that it comes naturally to you your father i was thinking of my grandfather he said suddenly coming out of the charade he broke his neck in the hunting field you know worse luck for me if lady blur did not say tut tut why drag in your maternal grandfather anthony heard it in her silence you see he went on suavely i owe it to my maternal grandfather that i was not brought up in the workhouse school my father's people seem to have had no anxieties in that regard my dear anthony she said urging the horse to increase speed by what to dwelling court seemed occult powers if an old woman might venture to advise but of course he said if there were one and felt himself in the shroud once more

let the dead past bury its dead let dead dogs lie he amended between his teeth no let bygones be bygones when you are married when you have sons you will understand better the feelings of a father whose son of course i know that your dear mother must have been the sweetest thing the best of women and your grandfather was prejudiced no doubt but it's all over now why rake up old grievances you have drellingcourt and i know you will be worthy of the drellingcourt tradition "'It was your paternal grandfather's misfortune that he could not know this.' "'Humph!' said Antony, and he said it as it is spelt, which is unusual and startling. "'What did you say?' Lady Blair inquired.

"'I said, humph!' Antony replied, and I meant humph. "'Let me illustrate. Once, when I was travelling abroad, I engaged a sleeping car. "'It was very extravagant, but I was mad with overwork. She frowned ever so slightly, and he laughed with ever so slight a bitterness. I apologise for the sordid detail, so unfamiliar to you, but it belongs to the story.

I undressed and went to sleep. At Leon, the train stopped. Stopped going for good, I mean. It was all change. A very wet night.

I got into my clothes as well as I could. But before I was dressed, the officials turned the lights out and dragged me and my odds and ends onto a swimming black platform. Then the train went away, and I found I had lost my watch and my purse. I carry a purse.

I learned from Mr Saint-Mont that gentlemen carry their money loose. How can you be so silly, she said. Go on with the story. Infuriated by my personal discomfort and pecuniary losses, Anthony went on, warming to his narrative,

I called for those highest in office at the station of Lyon and I reproached them calmly but firmly. I was told, I said, that this train went to Marseille. I was told three times by three officials of different ranks, I said, that this train went to Marseille. And confident of the honour and probity of these officials, I went to bed. Now I find that the train doesn't go to Marseille.

I am turned out on your, I leave the adjective to you, platform. I have lost my watch and my purse and I feel that I have caught the cold of my life. They told me that I was mistaken, that no French railway official could have been so lost to all sense of personal honour as to deceive a traveller, especially a monsieur so incontrovertibly commie of foe as this one. I replied

I have a code in my head and your statements are false who is the head man the very top of you all I will complain to him

and then they said the thing that makes this tale apropos in this moment's crisis they said oh monsieur reflect

do not complain to the bureau rather put yourself in the place of those unfortunates those poor deceived officials who, themselves trompés, informed you that your train did not stop till it arrived at Marseille?

Think, monsieur, they said, with what practically amounted to tears of emotion. Think what must now be the feelings of those officials of varyingly important position. Think of them, monsieur. Imagine their chagrin, their dolor, their despair, when they discover that they have deceived themselves in renseignering a monsieur so amiable, so distinguished, so entirely as it must. Well, that's just it. What I felt then was just what I feel now, when I hear

you pitying my father's father for having been a mean fool. The cart swung in at the lodge gates, and a woman, two boy children and a girl child, bobbed curtsies and touched forelocks. Don't vituperate, Lady Blair said, managing reins and whip incredibly with one hand while she laid the other on his arm. Of course I understand, but one doesn't say those things you know. All the same, you're wonderful. I didn't at all realise you till now.

You have been so mousy, so polite. Do you know I have always had a haunting feeling that you might perhaps somehow, at some time, just by accident, as it were, be too polite? You don't mind my saying that, do you? I adore your saying that. Antony was already almost again in the charade.

I knew you would, she said. Well, you see, up to now, I haven't seen the real you at all. You've been more like a character in a book, you know. Not at all like a real person. Or perhaps more like someone who was a real person,

trying to pretend that he was a real person of quite a different quality. and now and now anthony repeated watching his park unfolding itself like a beautiful and extraordinarily realistic map and now well now i'm sure which i shouldn't have been yesterday i'm sure that you'll understand me when i say there is an infectious quality about your candour my dear anthony when i say that you have originality strength personality you'll do my dear child you'll do shall i he threw back shall i thank you so much i did you know so dreadfully desire to do don't play the henry james trump she said surprisingly the trick's yours without that then don't you play the queen of snubs let my mother's father alone he said i didn't lady blair answered oh antony i do wish

what he asked if it's in my power to grant it's yours even to the half of my kingdom what i wish she told him is more than the whole of your kingdom it's in another dimension tell me what you wish he commanded his eyes on the budding beauty of his new kingdom shall i she asked and again bright bay responding to a signal quite imperceptible to antony bounded forward well i will i'm more than seventy i whisper it because of oddling sitting there all ears in his top-boots behind us because what i'm now going to say is rather in the nature of a love declaration i wish that i were twenty so that i might marry you the charade feeling was overpowering as antony answered i wish you were but that's past praying for said lady blair however there are gleanings left we might try friendship halves and no secrets i should like to be friends with you will you you're very nice to me to-day antony said and the chimneys of drellincourt shot up through the trees let us be friends to the death

halves and no secrets repeated lady blair brightly halves and no secrets he answered right-o then you'll tell me what the room was that was bricked up what that boarded-up window belonged to the house's face was now plain to see in the gay spring sunshine and he heard the horses hoofs plash plash on the damp gravel in the little silence that hardly had time to settle before it took flight at her answer of course i'll tell you anything only in return you must tell me things about your fair lady and your dreams and ambitions and what you feel and what you think you ought to feel anthony suddenly experienced the sensation that a man may know who walks on to a green lawn that looks firm and finds it a quaking morass he caught at the staff of the lie absolute the staff which looks so firm and which in the moment of stress so suddenly desperately betrays i will tell you everything he said everything you shall be my sole confidant

since that is all i can be to you the wonderful old lady replied that is what i want to be perhaps it will save trouble if i explain at once that i have fallen in love with you deep i too he said once more lost in the charade over heads and ears i will tell you all the secrets of my soul and you he added quite firmly you will tell me where that missing room is and why it was boarded up of course i will tell you anything but as for windows if there was one it must have been when there was the window-tacks all old houses shut some of their eyes in those days not with boards he said the tack's windows were bricked up not boarded they drew up in front of the beautiful gray face of drelingcourt and a pause came like a full stop in their talk oh well of course you know best she said and the groom took the reins after dinner he said in the instant before he alighted you will tell me the truth then there isn't anything really lady blair said but if we are to be friends we are and after all it is my own house he said and wondered if he were being ungentlemanly it's our own house she said and smiled at him like sweet-and-twenty i am a drellingcourt too you know

sebastian greeted his master with something approaching enthusiasm instantly and fervently demanding news of mam'selle which they tell me a perfectly trained and newly engaged valet would not have done nor a master accustomed to valets have tolerated but antony was pleased he went down to dinner full of interest in lady blair and in what she was to tell him and a very silent-footed man came to him across soft carpets and told him in a low voice that her ladyship had a slight headache and begged sir antony to excuse her so he dined alone and wondered and then he sat down in the library and reflected that lady blair was probably making up her mind what to tell him and that the chance for telling him what he wanted to know was remote he had a feeling that she would try not to tell him anything that he could use that she did not want him to know what he wanted to know ought to know since it was after all his house it was now perfectly plain to him that there was a space not accounted for between the library where he sat and the outer wall where the boarded-up window lay blind under the ivy

also it was perfectly plain to him that that window had been boarded up for a reason and that lady blur knew that reason and did not want to tell it but she shall he told himself the room was very quiet no sound from the rest of the house could pass those panelled oak doors and the stiff curtains of gilded spanish leather that hung in front of them only through the open window came the late talk of birds making their arrangements for the night and the soft rustling of young leaves as the breeze ruffled the trees anthony liked this room better than any room at drelling court not merely its noble proportions the carved panelling of ceiling and chimney-piece the subdued richness of its brown and crimson and gold its chandeliers of antique brass and faintly purple copper spoil of some old church rifled long ago not even the books themselves shelf upon shelf of them rising brown and ribbed with their gleams of gilding and warmth of red and green labels

nor the scent of the books warm and mysterious and like no other scent in the world not the comfort of the chairs nor the splendid daring incongruity of the vast bulled writing-table all these possessed charm but they were not the charm of charms that was perhaps in part the charm of all libraries the sense of the minds behind those ordered rows of brown leather backs of all the men who had done and thought and suffered and then written their books made their little scratch upon the sand of time which the sea of time not yet had obliterated and further in this room alone of all the rooms in this house of his father's anthony felt near to his work here alone he could feel that he anthony drelincourt was the same man as the anthony drelincourt who had studied in the white-faced house whose portal the pale wisteria overhung who had worked in the schools and in the laboratory toiled and agonised and failed failed many times and at last succeeded in this room alone he seemed to be one person not one of three or four

there is a doubt which i suppose we all know a suspicion which comes now and then to the simplest of us that perhaps we are not really quite so simple as we thought ourselves we seem to see now and then that the man of tuesday is not the man of last friday week but our various personalities seemed to overlap to blend to qualify or obscure each other so that we feel ourselves to be many-sided but not many with antony the lines of division were sharpened with him there was no overlapping hardly any shading off he was a particular kind of antony at a particular moment and without vagueness of transition would suddenly become another kind of antony so different that each transition had for him all the effect of an awakening from a vivid dream in this room the different dreams seemed to steady themselves to become part of a whole not harmonious indeed but not madly discordant and the antony of the moment whatever his mood did really seem one with the antony of yesterday and of last year

the mood of the antony of the moment as he sat here in the stillness of the may evening was at first the calm satisfaction of the well and fully fed he had ventured for the first time to order wilkes to put down the coffee and leave it all of it he said just as it is and you need not come back for it i am going to work i shall want to go on drinking coffee wilkes retired i'm not saying anything against sir anthony he said later to the housekeeper for my part i don't dislike the young man but he can't be of an observing turn or he know it's not my business how many cups of coffee he drinks there wasn't any call for so much apologies an affable gentleman that's all said the housekeeper to my mind he's most handsome and such a look of melancholy he wants some good woman to take care of him that's what he wants anthony at his third cup of coffee felt his mood change to a childish but fierce curiosity about the room behind that boarded window after all it was his own house he could break the panelling all to pieces if he liked

he lighted one of the wax candles in the silver candlesticks i will investigate every inch of the place he said and carried the candle across to the wall of books that stood guarding the missing space If there's a secret room, it's my secret room, and I'm going to find it. End of chapter 10