So there were four of us at the Hôtel de la Poste.
I don't know what happened to letters during those early September days in Dinan. Somebody told me they went on to Paris to be sorted; I only know that it took an unconscionable time to get an answer from a place I could have got to and back again in a couple of days. And as three, and then four days passed, I think I could have written a Guide Book to Dinan, so familiar with it did I begin to come. And always it was a laughing, buoyant, affectionate and extraordinarily clever Derry who conducted us everywhere.
Then, when finally my letter did arrive, it was inexplicit, and I had either to go to London myself or write again. It was Madge who entreated me to stay. So I wrote my second letter.
Often we went out into the surrounding country as a change from the town. Derry never touched a brush, never once mentioned painting. Occasionally he and Jennie went off together somewhere, but for the most part we kept together. So far I had to admit that there was no sign of his young godhead being too much for his simple white-hearted Semele. She adored him with every particle of herself, from the feet that ran to meet him to the eyes that continually thanked his face for being what it was. And never Bayard nor Du Guesclin nor Beaumanoir of them all had served his lady with a gentler love than young Derwent Rose had for Jennie Aird.
One morning at a little before ten we went up into the Clock Tower in the Rue de l'Horloge. This tower, together with the belfry of St Sauveur, is the highest point of the ancient town that crowns Dinan's rock. Up and up inside the turret we mounted, through lofts and empty chambers and timbered garrets, till the stone gave way to slate and wood and lead, and the soft tock-tocking of the clock itself began to sound. The clock is in a room with a locked and glass-panelled door, a machine of brass on an iron table, with a slow escapement, compensated pendulums, and the white hemp ropes of the weights disappearing through a hole in the floor to the stories below. On the iron table stood an oilcan, and the small indicator-clock showed a few minutes to ten. A circular piercing in the wall gave us light, and light also streamed down through the opening where the wooden ladder rose to the upper platform. We peered through the glass door, while "Tock-tock, tock-tock" spoke the unhurrying clock....
Then on the verge of ten a large vane slipped and dissolved itself into a mist, to the murmur of moving wheels. Four times on an open third sounded the warning tenor bell overhead; and then the twin vane slipped and dissolved. There was a clang that shook the timbers inside their skin of lead....
"Come along, Jennie!" cried Derry, making a dash for the belfry, while again the bell thundered out....
It was two short flights up, but Madge and I were after them in time to hear the last two strokes. The structure still trembled with an enormous humming. This lasted for minutes, wave succeeding wave, crests and troughs of lingering sound, diminishing but seeming as if they would never quite cease. Our eyes sought one another's eyes expectantly as we waited for the last murmur of the hymning metal....
Then light voices floated up from the street again, and the noises of the town could be heard once more.
"Just look at the view!" said Derry, hanging half over the rail.