There were letters first, some of them left from the night before. An obscure acquaintance, a lady in Somersetshire, sent some verses, asking for his criticism, and for the address of "a publisher who would pay for them." One of the poems began
"Hark! hark! hark!'Tis the song of the Lark,Dewy with spangles of morn."
A second letter from the same lady enclosed a "Poem on My Cat Peter," which had been accidentally omitted from the other envelope. His agent sent him a very welcome cheque for £108, for his newly completed novel. Next came a letter from a stranger, asking for permission to set some verses to music. A charitable countess asked for verses for her new Bazaar Book. An American News Cutting Bureau sent a little bundle of reviews of his book of sketches. The wrapper on the bundle bore a legend in red ink:—
"We mail you 45 clippings ofThe Handful. Has your Agency sent you that many? If you like our way of business, mail us $1.50, and we will continue to collect clippings under your name."
He disliked their way of business. He flung the clippings unread into the fireplace. The next letter asked him to lecture to the Torchbearers' Guild, who, it seemed, admired "the virile manliness" of his style. Last of all came a letter from an unknown clergyman denouncing the pernicious influence ofThe Handfulin words which, without being rude, were offensive beyond measure. He took up the papers.
The first paper,The Daily Dawn, treated himd'haut en bas, as follows:—
"M. Falempin's latest theatrical adventure,A Roman Matron, by Mr. Roger Naldrett (whom we suspect, from internal evidence, to be a not very old lady), was produced last night at the King's Theatre. As far as the audience permitted us to judge, before the piece ended in a storm of groans, we think that it is entirely unsuited to the modern stage. The character of Petronius, finely played by Mr. Danvers, showed some power of psychological analysis; but Mr. (or Miss) Naldrett would do well to remember that the Aristotelian definition of tragedy cannot be disregarded lightly."
The criticism in the second paper,The Dayspring, was written in more stately prose than that ofThe Dawn.
"An unreasonable amount of excitement was begotten by the entourage," it ran; "but the piece, which was dull, and occasionally disgusting, convinced us that the New Drama, about which we have heard so much lately, would do better to adequately study a drama more germane to modern ideas, such as we fortunately possess, than libel the institutions from which our glorious Constitution is derived," which was certainly a home-thrust fromThe Dayspring.
The third paper,The Morning, in its news column, referred to a disgracefulfracasat the King's Theatre. "The police," saidThe Morning, "were soon on the spot, and removed the more noisy members of the audience. Neither M. Falempin, the manager of the theatre, nor Miss Hanlon, who took a leading part in the offending play, would consent to be interviewed, when waited on, late last night, by a representative of this paper."
The fourth paper,The Day, said savagely thatThe Matronshould never have passed the Censor, and that its production was an indelible blot on M. Falempin's (hitherto spotless) artistic record. Roger had written occasional reviews forThe Day, about a dozen, all told. On the same page, and in the column next to that containing the "Dramatic Notes," was a review signed by him. Roger turned to this review, to see how it read. It was a review of a worthless book of verse by a successful versifier. The literary editor ofThe Dayhad asked Roger to write a column on the book. As the book deserved, at most, three scathing words in a Dunciad, Roger had written a column about poetry, a very pretty piece of critical writing, worth five thousand such books fifty times over. Its only fault was that, being about poetry, it had little reference to the book of verse by the successful poet. So the literary editor had "cut" and "written in" and altered the article, till Roger, reading it, on this tragical morning, found himself self-accused of despicable truckling to Mammon, and the palliation of iniquity, in sentences the rhythms of which jarred, and in platitudes which stung him. He flung down the paper. He would never again write forThe Day. He would never write another word for any daily or weekly paper. He remembered what d'Arthez says inLes Illusions Perdues. He blamed himself for not having remembered before.
He ate very hurriedly, so that he might lose no time in getting to the flat in Shaftesbury Avenue, to find out if Ottalie were really there. Ottalie; the sight of Ottalie; the sound of her voice even, would end his troubles for him. The thought of her calmed him. The thought of her brought back the dream, with a glow of pleasure. The dream came and went in his mind, seeming now strange, now beautiful. His impression of it was that given by all moving dreams. He thought of it as a kind of divine adventure in which he had taken part. He felt that he had apprehended spiritually the mysterious life beyond ours, and had learned, finally, forever, that Ottalie's soul was linked to his soul by bonds forged by powers greater than man. A cab came clattering up. There came a vehement knocking at the outer door. "Ottalie," he thought. Selina, the house-maid, entered.
"A lady to see you, sir," she said.
He stood up, gulping, expecting Ottalie. The lady entered. She was not Ottalie. She was a total stranger in a state of great excitement.
"Are you Mr. Naldrett, sir?" she said.
"Yes. Yes. What is it?"
"Mrs. Pollock's compliments, sir, and will you please come round at once?"
"What's the matter?"
"It's Mr. Pollock, sir. He's had a fit or somethink. He's lying in the grate with all the blood gone to his apalex."
"Right," said Roger, stuffing his letters into his pockets. "I'll come. When did it happen?"
"Just now, sir. He'd just gone into the studio, to begin his painting. Then there came a crash. And the missus and I rush in, and there he was in the grate, sir."
"Yes. Yes. Have you sent for a doctor?"
"No, sir. The missus said to go for you."
They galloped off in the cab together. Pollock with the bloody apalex was a young artist whose studio was in Vincent Square. Roger was fond of him. He had shared rooms with him until his marriage. Roger wondered as he drove what was going to happen to the wife if Pollock died. She was expecting a child. Pollock hadn't made much, poor fellow.
"Very beautiful paintings, Mr. Pollock does, sir," said the lady with enthusiasm. "Oh, he does them beautiful. But they're not like ordinary pictures. I mean, they're not pretty, like ordinary pictures. They're like old-fashioned pictures."
"Yes," said Roger. "Tell me. Is his big picture finished? The one with the lady under a stained-glass window."
"No, sir. It's got a lot to do yet, sir. O I 'ope nothink's going to 'appen to 'im, sir."
"Now here we are," said Roger, as the cab slackened. "Now you drive to the corner there. You'll see a brass plate with DR. COLLINSON on it at the corner house. Tell him to get into the cab with you and come round at once. Go on, now. See that he comes at once."
The door of the flat stood open. Roger entered hurriedly. Just inside he ran against Pollock, who was hastening with a jug of water from the bathroom.
"What is it, Pollock? Are you better?"
"I'm all right," said Pollock, feeling a bandaged head. "It's Kitty. Not me. Come on in, quick."
"But I thought you were having apoplexy."
"That heavy frame full of Dürers came down. The corner caught me over the eye while I was standing by the mantelpiece. It knocked me out. Come on in. I believe Kitty's in a bad way."
Kitty lay on a couch. Her face was not like a human being's face. Pollock, very white, sponged her brow with cold water.
"There, dear," he kept saying, "O God, O God, O God," those words, over and over again.
Roger ran to the bedroom for pillows. There was a fire in the kitchen. He poked it up, and put water to boil.
"Where's her hot-water bottle?" he called. Not getting any answer he looked for it in one of the beds, which had not yet been made up. He filled the bottle and made up the bed. "Now, Charles," he said, "we must get her into bed. I wish your girl would bring the doctor."
Charles looked at him stupidly. "I believe she's dying, Roger," he answered. "O God, I believe she's dying. I've never seen any one like this. She used to be so pretty, Roger, before all this happened."
"Dying? Nonsense!" said Roger. He turned to the patient. "Kitty," he said, "we're going to put you to bed. Lean on my arm."
The laughter stopped; but the limbs crazily made protest. He had never seen anything like it. It was as though the charming graceful woman had suddenly been filled by the spirit of a wild animal, which was knocking itself to pieces against the corners in the strange house.
"We shall have to carry her, Charles," he said.
"No, no," said Charles. "She's dying."
The doctor, coming in abruptly, took the battle out of his hands. "Come, come," he said. "Come, Mrs. Pollock. I was afraid that you were ill. You'll feel a lot better when you get to bed. I want you to rest."
He turned to Pollock. "Get her into bed," he said. "Have you got a nurse?"
"No," said Pollock. "She can't come till July."
"Bessie here will do for the moment," said Roger.
Bessie and Pollock helped her to bed. The doctor and Roger talked desultorily.
"No. It's nothing serious. So the frame came down and stunned him? I see. And she came in and found him in the grate? Yes. A nasty shock. Yes. Yes. Of course, it may be serious. It will be impossible to say till I see her. If she had had other children I should say not. But— Would you say that she is an excitable woman, given to these attacks?"
"No. She used to write a little. She is nervous; but not excitable. Do you find that occupation has much influence on the capacity to resist shock?"
"N-no," said the doctor. "Resistance depends on character. Occupation only modifies character slightly. Life being what it is, one has to be adaptable to survive."
Pollock entered, looking beaten.
"Will you come, doctor?" he said.
They went.
Presently Pollock returned alone. He sat down.
"It's It," he said despondently. "My picture's not done. I shan't have a penny till July. We were counting on its not happening till July. I've not got ten pounds."
"You mustn't worry about that," said Roger. "You must borrow from me. Take this cheque. I'll endorse it. Give me yours for half of it. Don't say you won't. Look here. You must. Now about a nurse. Look here. Listen to me, Charles. You can't leave here. I'll see about a nurse. I know the sort of woman Kitty would like. I'll settle all that with the doctor. I'll send the best I can. You can't leave Kitty, that's certain."
Pollock pulled himself together. The doctor returned. Roger took the addresses of several women, and hurried off to interview them. No cab was in sight. He wasted ten good minutes of nervous tension in trying to find one. He found one at last. As he drove, the desire to be at Ottalie's flat made him forget his friend. He thought only of the chance of seeing Ottalie. He must waste no time. He wondered if he would be too late, as in his dream. He would have to get there early, very early. He prayed that the first nurse on his list might be a suitable woman. The image of the suitable nurse, a big, calm, placid, ox-eyed woman, formed in his mind. If he could find her at once he would be in time. He was longing to be pounding past Whitehall, on the way to Shaftesbury Avenue. A clock above a hosier's told him that it was nine. No. That clock had stopped. Another clock, further on, over a general store, said eight-fifteen. Yet another, eight-thirty. His watch said eight-thirty-five; but his watch was fast.
Mrs. Perks, of 7 Denning Street, was out. Would he leave a message? No, he would not leave a message. Was it Mrs. Ford? No, not Mrs. Ford, another lady. Perhaps he would come back. He bade the cabman to hurry. Mrs. Stanton, the next on the list, could not come. She was expecting a call from another lady. Mrs. Sanders was out, and "wouldn't be back all day, she said." The fourth, a brisk, level-headed woman, busy at a sewing-machine in a neat room, would come; but was he the husband, and could she be certain of her fees, and what servants were kept?
He said that the fees were safe. He gave her two sovereigns on account. Then she boggled at the single servant. She was not very strong. She had never before been with any lady with only one servant. She wasn't sure how she would get on. She had herself to consider.
"I'm sorry," said Roger. "You would have been the very woman. I'll go on to the hospital."
"Perhaps I could manage," she said.
"Will you come?" he asked.
"Is it in a house or a flat?"
"It's in a top flat."
"I dare say I could manage," she said, still hesitating.
Roger, remembering suddenly that Pollock had a married sister, vowed that another lady would be there a good deal in the daytime. She weighed this fact as she stood by the door of the cupboard about to take her hat.
"I don't think I should care to do it," she said suddenly. "I've not been used to that class of work."
Turning at the door as he went out, he saw that she was watching him with a faint smile. Only the hospital remained.
It took him a long way out of his way. It was twenty past nine when he reached the hospital. Very soon it would be too late for Ottalie. His heart sank. He believed in telepathy. He was thinking so fixedly on Ottalie that he believed that she must sense his thought. "Ottalie, Ottalie," he kept saying to himself. "Wait for me. Wait for me. I shall come. I am coming as fast as I can. Can't you feel me hurrying to you? Wait for me. Don't let me miss you." He discharged his horse-cab, and engaged a motor-cab. Two minutes later he had engaged a nurse. She was in the cab with him. They were whirling south.
"No," she was telling him. "I don't find much difference in my cases. I don't generally see them after. Some are more interesting than others. I like being with an interesting case. I don't mean to say a serious case, and have either of them die, and that. I mean, you know, out of the usual. That's why I like having to do with a first child."
She asked if there were any chance of her being too late. Roger, with his heart full of Ottalie, could not tell her.
"I shouldn't like to be too late," she said. "I've never missed a case yet. Never. I should be vexed if I were too late with this one. It's a painter gentleman, I think you said it was?"
"Yes."
"I was with a painter's lady once before," she said. "He gave me a little picture of myself."
They reached the flat. Pollock's sister had arrived. The doctor had sent his son for her. Pollock was moodily breaking chalk upon a drawing. The studio was foul with the smoke of cigarettes. "I can't work," he said, lighting a cigarette from the fag-end of the last. "Sit down." He flung away his chalk and sat down. "You've been awfully good to me, Roger. You've got me out of a tragedy. You don't know what it feels like."
"How is Kitty?"
"Pretty well, the doctor thinks. God knows what he would call bad. This is all new to me. I don't want to go through this again. God knows if she'll ever get through it. I shall shoot myself if anything happens to Kitty."
Roger glanced at his watch. It was eighteen minutes to ten. He would have to fly to find Ottalie. If she were in town at all, she would be out by ten. He was sure of that. His motor-cab was waiting. He had a quarter of an hour. But how could he leave Pollock in this state?
"Charles," he said, "I want you to come out with me. You've got on shoes, I see. Take your hat. Kitty is with three capable women and a doctor. You're only in the way, and making a fuss. Come with me. I'll leave you at the National Gallery, while I see a friend. Then we'll go to Bondini's, in Suffolk Street." He called gently to Pollock's sister. "Mrs. Fane," he said, "I'm taking Charles to Bondini's, in Suffolk Street."
"A very good thing," said Mrs. Fane. "A man is much better out of the way in times like these."
They started. Just outside Dean's Yard Gate the cab broke down. Roger got out. "What's the matter?" he asked.
"Nothing much, sir," said the man, already busy under the bonnet. "I won't keep you a minute. Get in again, sir."
A hand touched Roger's arm. He turned. A total stranger, unmistakably a journalist, was at his side. Roger shuddered. It was an interviewer fromThe Meridian.
"Mr. Naldrett?" said the interviewer, taking a long shot. "I recognised you by your portrait inThe Bibliophile. A lucky meeting. Perhaps you didn't get my telegram. I called round at your rooms just now, but you were out. I want to ask you about your playThe Matron. It attracted considerable attention. Will you please tell me if you have any particular ideas about tragedy?"
"Yes," said Roger; "I have. And I'm going to express them. I'm in a great hurry; and I must refuse to be interviewed. Please thank your editor from me for the honour he has done me; but tell him that I cannot be interviewed."
"Certainly not, since you wish it," said the journalist. "But I would like to ask you one thing. I am told your play is very morbid. Are you morbid? You don't look very morbid."
"I am sorry," said Roger. "But I am not morbid."
"Mr. Naldrett," said the journalist, "are you going to write any more tragedies likeThe Roman Matron?"
"I have one finished and one half finished," said Roger.
"I hope, Mr. Naldrett," said the journalist, "that you have written them for ordinary people, as well as to please yourself. Writing to please one's self is very artistic. But won't you consider Clapham, and Balham, and Tooting? How will you please them with tragedies? A good comedy is what people like. They want something to laugh at, after their day's work. They're quite right. A good comedy's the thing. Anybody can write a tragedy. What's the good of making people gloomy? One wants the pleasant things of life, Mr. Naldrett, on the stage. One goes to the theatre to be amused. There's enough tragedy in real life without one getting more in the theatre. I suppose you've studied Ibsen, Mr. Naldrett?"
"Have not you?"
"I don't believe in him. He may be a thinker and all that, but his view of life is very morbid. He is a decadent. Of course, they say his technique is very fine. But he has a mind like a sewer."
"Quite ready, sir," said the chauffeur, swinging himself into his seat.
"I must wish you good-bye, here," said Roger to the interviewer. "Mind your coat. It's caught in the door. Mind you thank your editor." The cab snorted off, honking. The interviewer gazed after it. "H'm," he said, with that little cynical nod with which the unintelligent express comprehension. "So that's the new drama, is it?"
The car reached Trafalgar Square without being stopped by the traffic. St. Martin's clock stood at a few minutes to ten. Roger was in the dismal mood of one who, having given up hope, is yet not certain. He dropped Pollock at the Gallery, and then sped on, through Leicester Square, up a little street full of restaurants and French book shops. The car was stopped by traffic at the end of this street. Roger leapt out, paid the man hurriedly, and ran into the Avenue. Within thirty seconds, he was running up four flights of stairs to the door on which he had knocked in his vision.
He peered through the glass in the door. As in his dream, something lay in the passage beyond, some glove or handkerchief or crumpled letter, with a shaft of sunlight upon it from an open door. No one came to open to him; but Roger, knocking there, was conscious of the presence of Ottalie by him and in him; he felt her brushing past him, a rustling, breathing beauty, wearing a great hat, and those old pearl earrings which trembled when she turned her head. But no Ottalie came to the door, no Agatha, no old Mrs. Hicks the caretaker. The flat was empty. After a couple of minutes of knocking, an old, untidy, red-faced woman came out from the flat beneath, gasping for breath, with her hand against her side.
"No use your knockin'," she said crustily. "They're gawn awy. They i'n't 'ere. They're gawn awy."
"When did they go?" asked Roger, filled suddenly with leaping fire.
"They're gawn awy," repeated the old woman. "No use your knockin'. They're gawn awy." She gasped for a moment, eyeing Roger with suspicion and dislike; then turned to her home with the slow, uncertain, fumbling movements of one whose heart is affected.
Roger was left alone on the stairs, aware that he had come too late.
The stairs were covered with a layer of sheet-lead. When the old woman had shut her door, Roger grovelled down upon them, lighting match after match, in the hope of finding footmarks which might tell him more. Agatha had rather long feet, Ottalie's were small, but very well proportioned. Mrs. Hicks's feet were disguised by the boots she wore. A scrap of brown linoleum on the stair-head bore evident marks of a man's hobnail boots which had waited there, perhaps for an answer. There were other, non-committal marks, which might have been made by anybody. On the whole, Roger fancied that a woman had made them, when going out, with dry shoes, that morning. The problem now was, had she left London for Ireland or for the Continent? With some misgivings, he decided against Ireland. On former occasions she had always made her stay in London after her visit to the Continent. If she had been staying in London for more than one night, she would have written to him; he would have seen her. As she had not written to him, she was plainly going abroad, probably for a month or six weeks, after resting for one night on the way. He would not see her till the middle of the summer. That she had been in town, for at least one night, was plain from what the woman had said. The thought that only a few hours ago she had passed where he stood, came home to him like her touch upon him. He sat down upon the stair-head till his disappointment was mastered.
He took a last look through the door-glass at the crumpled thing, glove, letter, or handkerchief, lying in the passage. Then he went out into the avenue. The disappointment was very bitter to him. It was so strong an emphasis upon the prophetic quality of his dream. Ottalie had been there, waiting for him. He had come there too late. He had missed her. The thought that he had missed her, suggested the cause. He would have to go back to Pollock. He could not leave his friend alone in that wild state of mind. A smaller man would perhaps have felt resentment against the cause. Roger was without that littleness. He saw only the tragic irony. He saw life being played upon a great plan. He felt himself to be a fine piece set aside from his own combination by one greater, stronger, more wonderful. It seemed very wonderful that he had been kept (so unexpectedly) from Ottalie, by the one thing in the world strong enough so to keep him. Nothing but a matter of life and death could have kept him from her.
A lively desire sprang up in him to know whither she had gone. This (he thought) he could find out, without difficulty, from a Bradshaw. If she were going to Greece, she would go by one of two ways. For a few minutes he had the hope that she might not yet have left London, that he might catch her at the station. A Bradshaw showed him that this was possible, since, going by one route, she would not have to start till after seven in the evening. But, if she had chosen that route, why should she have closed the flat so early? He saw no answer to the question. Still, the uncertainty preyed upon him and flattered him at the same time. She might be there at seven. He would go to the station, in any case. Would it were seven! He had nine hours to live through.
He walked hurriedly to the National Gallery. He remembered, when he entered, that he had made no rendezvous with Pollock. He expected to find him before theAriadne. He was not there. He was not before his other favourite,The Return of Ulysses. He was not in any of the little rooms opening off the Italian rooms. A hurried walk round all the foreign schools showed that Pollock was not in that part of the Gallery at all. Very few people were in the Gallery at that hour. There could be no mistake. He tried the English rooms, without success. He described Pollock to the keepers of the lower stairs. "No, sir. No one's gone down like that." Search in the basement, in the little rooms where the Turner water-colours and Arundel prints are kept, showed him that Pollock was not in the Gallery. He wished to be quite certain. He made a swift beat of the French and Spanish rooms, and thence, by the Dutch and Flemish schools, to the Italian rooms. Here he doubled back upon his tracks, to avoid all possibility of mistake. He was now certain Pollock was not in the Gallery. Very probably he had never entered it. What had become of him?
He could hardly have gone to the Portrait Gallery, he thought. Yet it was possible. Pollock was in an excited state of mind. He was hardly in a fit state to be out alone. Roger felt anxious. He hurried to the Portrait Gallery. After a long search, upstairs and downstairs, in those avenues of painted eyes, he decided that Pollock was not there, either. He must have gone to Bondini's. Suffolk Street was only a quarter of a mile away. Roger hurried on to look for him at Bondini's. But no. He was not at Bondini's. Where, then, could he be?
By this time, Roger was alarmed for his friend. He thought that something must have happened to Kitty. He took a cab to Vincent Square to make sure. Pollock let him in. He was smoking a cigarette. His bandage gave him a one-eyed look, infinitely depressing.
"I'm sorry, Roger," he said; "I couldn't keep away from Kitty. She's quieter, but no better. O God, Roger, I don't know how men can be unkind to women. I don't know what I shall do without her, if anything happens to her."
"You must not lose heart, like this," Roger said. "I understand, very well, what you are feeling. But you ought not to expect evil in this way. Very, very few cases go wrong, now. I was afraid that something had happened to you. Will you come to my rooms for a game of chess? Then we could lunch together, and go on, perhaps, to Henderson's. He has finished the picture he was working on."
Pollock was not to be tempted. He would not leave Kitty. After talking with him for nearly an hour, Roger left him, promising to come back before long, to enquire.
When he got outside, into the street, with no definite, immediate object to occupy his mind, he was assailed by the memories of his succession of mishaps. He could not say that one of them hurt more than another. The loss of Ottalie, following so swiftly on the dream, made him miserable. The destruction of his play by the critics made him feel not exactly guilty, but unclean, as though the rabble had spat upon him. He felt "unclean," in the Levitical sense. He had some hesitation in going to mix with his fellows.
He kept saying to himself that if he were not very careful, the world would be flooding into his mind, trampling its garden to mud. It was his duty to beat back the world before it fouled his inner vision. If he were not very careful he would find that his next work would be tainted with some feverish animosity, some personal bitterness, or weakness of contempt. It was his duty as a man and as an artist to prevent that, so that his mind might be as a hedged garden full of flowers, or as a clear, unflawed mirror, reflecting only perfect images. The events of the night before had broken in his barriers. He felt that his old theory, laid aside long before, when he first felt the fascination of modern artistic methods, was true, after all; that the right pursuit of the artist was the practice of Christianity. He found in the National Gallery, in the battle picture of Uccello, in the nobleness of that young knight, riding calmly among the spears, a healing image of the artist. He lingered before that divine young man with the fair hair until one o'clock. He passed the afternoon at a table in the British Museum, reading all that he could find about Ottalie. There was her name in full in the Irish Landed Gentry. There were the names of all her relatives, and the names of their houses. It was an absurd thing to read these entries, but the names were all stimulants to memory. He knew these people and places. They took vivid shape in his mind as he read them. He had read them before, more than once, when the craving for her had been bitter in the past. He knew the names of her forebears unto the third and fourth generation. A volume ofWho's Whogave him details of her living relatives. A married uncle's recreations were "shooting and hunting." A maiden aunt had publishedSongs of Quiet Life, in 1902. Her older brother, Leslie Fawcett, had published a novel,One Summer, in 1891. Both these volumes lay beside him. He read them again, for the tenth time. Both were very short works; and both, he felt, helped him to understand Ottalie. Neither work was profound; but both came from a sweet and noble nature, at once charming and firm. There were passages in the songs which were like Ottalie's inner nature speaking. In the novel, in the chapter on a girl, he thought that he recognised Ottalie as she must have been long ago.
The volume of the Landed Gentry gave him pity for the historian who would come a century hence, to grub up facts for his history. Ottalie, dear, breathing, beautiful woman, witty, and lovely-haired, and noble like a lady in a poem, would be to such a one "3rd dau.," or, perhaps, mere "issue."
At five o'clock, he put away his books. He went to drink tea at a dairy, in High Holborn. He entered the place with some misgivings, for his two emotions made the world distasteful to him. The memory of the night before made him feel that he had been whipped in public. The thought of Ottalie made him feel that the real world was in his brain. He shrank from meeting anybody known to him. That old feeling of "uncleanness" came strongly over him. The stuffy unquiet of the Museum had at least been filled by preoccupied, selfish people. Here in the tea-shop, everybody stared. All the little uncomfortable tables were peopled by pairs of eyes. He felt that a woman giggled, that a young man nudged his fellow. Stepping back to let a waitress pass, he knocked over a chair. The place was cramped; he felt stupidly awkward and uncomfortable. He blushed as he picked up the chair. Everybody stared. It seemed to him that they were saying, "That is Mr. Naldrett, the author of the piece which was booed off last night. They say it's very immoral. Millie was there. She said it was a silly lot of old-fashioned stuff. What funny eyes he's got. And look at the way he puts his feet."
He sat down in a corner, from which he could survey the room. A paper lay upon the table; he picked it up abstractedly. It was a copy ofThe Post Meridian. Somebody had rested butter upon the upper part of it. He glanced at it for an instant, just long enough to see a leading article below the grease mark. "Drama and Decency," ran the scarehead. It went on to say that the London public had once again shown its unerring sense of the fitness of things over Mr. Naldrett's play. He dropped the paper to one side, and wiped the hand which had touched it. He felt beaten to bay. He stared forward at the house so fiercely that a timid lady, of middle age and ill-health, possibly as beaten as himself, turned from the chair opposite before she sat down. There were no friends of his there, except a red-haired, fierce little poet, who sat close by, reading and eating cake. The yellow back ofLes Fleurs du Malwas propped against his teapot. He bit so fiercely that his beard wagged at each bite. Something of the fierceness and passion of theFemmes Damnées, or ofle vin de l'Assassin, was wreaked upon the cake. There came a muttering among the bites. The man was almost reading aloud. A memory of Baudelaire came to Roger, a few grand melancholy lines:—
"La servante au grand coeur dont vous étiez jalouse,Et qui dort sans sommeil sous une humble pelouse,Nous devrions pourtant lui porter quelques fleurs.Les morts, les pauvres morts, ont de grandes douleurs,Et quand Octobre souffle, émondeur des vieux arbres,Son vent mélancolique à l'entour de leurs marbres,Certe, ils doivent trouver les vivants bien ingrats."
He wondered if it would be like that. A waitress brought him tea and toast. He poured a little tea into his cup, thinking of a man now dead, who had drunk tea there with him a year ago. One was very callous about the dead. He wondered if the dead were callous about the living, or whether they had ofgrandes douleurs, as the poet thought. He felt that he would not mind being dead, but for Ottalie. He wondered whether Ottalie had read the papers. He buttered some toast and laid it to one side of his plate, a sort of burnt offering to the dead. A line on the bill of fare caught his eye. "Pan-Bos. Our new Health Bread. Per Portion, 2d." His tired mind turned it backwards, ".d2 ,noitroP reP daerB." "I am going mad," he said to himself. "Shall I go to Ireland to-night?"
Something warned him that if he went to Ireland, Ottalie would not be there. With Ottalie away, it would be intolerable. There would be her house, up on the hills, and all those sycamores, like ghosts in the twilight, ghosts of old men brooding on her beauty, like the old men in Troy when Helen passed. No. He could not bear Ireland with her away. He thought of the boat train with regret for the old jolly jaunts. The guard with a Scotch accent, the carriage in front which went on to Dundee, the sound of the beautiful Irish voice ("voce assai più che la nostra viva"), and then the hiring of rug and pillow, knowing that one would wake in Scotland, among hills, running water, a "stately speech," and pure air. It would not be wise to go to Ireland. If he went now, with Ottalie away, he might not be able to go later, when she would be there. It would be nothing without her. Nothing but lonely reading, writing, walking, and swimming. It would be better not to go. Here the poet gulped his cake, rose, and advanced on Roger.
"How d'you do?" he said, speaking rapidly, as though his words were playing tag. "I've just been talking to Collins about you. He's been telling me about your play. I hear you had a row, or something."
"Yes. There was a row."
"Collins has been going for you inThe Daystar. He says you haven't read Aristotle, or something. Have you seen his article?"
"No. I haven't seen it."
"Oh, you ought to read it. Parts of it are very witty. It would cheer you up."
"What does he say?"
"He says that— Oh, you know what Collins says. He says that you— I believe I've got it on me. I cut it out. Where did I put it?"
"Never mind. I'm not interested in Collins."
"Aren't you? He's very good. I suppose your play'll be produced again later?"
"I think not."
He got rid of the poet, paid his bill, and walked out. Outside he ran into Hollins, the critic ofThe Week. He would have avoided Hollins, but Hollins stopped him.
"Ah, Naldrett," he said. "I've just been going for you inThe Week. What do you mean by that third act? Really. It really was—"
It gave Roger a kind of awe to think that this man had been damning other people's acts before he was born.
"What was wrong with the third act? You didn't hear it."
"You must read M. Capus," said Hollins, passing on. "I shall go for you until you do."
A newsboy, with a voice like a bird of doom, flying in the night, held a coloured bill. "Drama and Decency," ran the big letters. Another, offering a copy, shewed, as allurement, "'ceful Fracas." The whole town seemed angry with him. He crossed into Seven Dials, and along to St. Martin's Lane, where he knew of a quiet reading-room. Here he hid.
There's hope left yet.The Virgin Martyr.
At seven o'clock he went to the station, hoping (against his better judgment) that he might see Ottalie at the train. The train was very crowded. The travellers wore the pleased, expectant look with which one leaves an English city. Ottalie was not among them. He went down the train twice, in opposite directions, without success. She was not there. She must have started that morning. He had missed her.
He sat down on one of the station benches. His world seemed slipping from him. He told himself that to-morrow he would have to work, or all these worries would destroy him. He felt more lonely than he had ever felt in his life. A week before, he would have had O'Neill, Pollock, and another friend, now abroad. O'Neill was gone, without a farewell. Pollock was fighting his own battles, with poor success. Ottalie was thundering across France, or, perhaps, just drawing into Paris.
A longing to see some one drove him out of the station. He walked to Soho, to a Spanish restaurant, where some of his friends sometimes dined.
Here, at night, the curious may visit Spain, and hear the guttural, lisping speech, and munch upon chuletas, and swallow all manner of strangeness in cazuelas. Very bold young men cry aloud there for "Mozo," lisping the z. The less bold signal with the hand. The timid point, and later, eat that which is set before them, asking no question, obeying Holy Writ, though without spiritual profit.
On entering the place, he bowed to the Scotch-looking, heavily-earringed Spanish woman, who sat at the desk readingBlanco y Negro. She gave him a "Buenas tardes," without lifting her eyes. Then came, from his right, a cry of "Naldrett!"
Two painters, a poet, and proportionable woman-kind, were dining together there, over the evening papers.
"How are you?" said one of the painters.
"We've just been reading about you," said the other.
"Reading the most terrible things," said the poet.
"Shew himThe Orb.The Orb'sthe best."
"No. Shew himThe Planet. The one who says he ought to be prosecuted."
Roger, refusingOrbandPlanet, shook hands with one of the ladies. She was a little actress, delicate, fragile, almost inhuman, with charm in all she did. She said that she had been reading his book ofThe Handful, and had found it very "interesting." She wanted Roger to come to tea, to talk over a scheme of hers. It dawned on Roger that she was saving him from his friends.
"You're the man of the moment," said the poet.
"Don't you pay any attention to any of them," said the painter who had first spoken. "You may be quite sure that when one has to say a thing in a hurry, as these critics must, one says the easiest thing, and the thing which comes handiest to say. If I paid attention to all they say about me I should be in a lunatic asylum. Besides, what does it matter what they say? Who are they, when all is said?"
The talk drifted into a wit combat, in which the seven set themselves to define a critic with the greatest possible pungency and precision. Having done this, to their own satisfaction, they set themselves to the making of a composite sonnet on the critic, upon the backs of bills of fare. One of the painters drew an ideal critic, in the manners, now of Tintoret, now of Velasquez, now of Watteau. The other, who complained that old masters ought to be ranked with critics, because they spoiled the market for living painters, drew him in the manner of Rops.
After dinner, Roger walked home by a roundabout road, which took him past his theatre. A few people hung about outside it, staring idly at a few others who were entering. His play was still running, it seemed, in spite of the trouble. Falempin was brave.
He walked back to his rooms, wondering why he had not gone to Ireland that night. London oppressed and pained him. He thought it an ugly city, full of ugly life. He was without any desire to be a citizen of such a city. He disliked the place and her people; but to-night, being, perhaps, a little humbled by his misfortunes, he found himself wondering whether all the squalor of the town, its beastly drinking dens, its mobs of brainless, inquisitive shouters, might not be changed suddenly to beauty and noble life by some sudden general inspiration, such as comes to nations at rare times under suffering. He decided against it. Patience under suffering was hardly one of our traits.
On his sitting-room table was a letter from Ottalie, bearing the London post-mark across the Greek stamps, and underneath them the legend, "2d. to pay." By the date on the letter it had been ten days in getting to him. He opened it eagerly, half expecting to find in it the very letter of the dream, though something told him that the dream-letters had contained her essential thoughts, the letter in his hand the worldly covering of those thoughts, translated into earthly speech with its reservations and half-heartedness. He learned from this letter that she had been for a month in Greece, and was now coming home. She would be for four days, from the 7th to the 11th, at her flat in London. She hoped to see him there, before she returned to Ireland. To his amazement the postscript ran: "I have read your last book. It reads like the diary of a lost soul," the very words seen by him in dream. For the moment this did not move him so deeply as the thought that this was the 11th of the month. She had been in London with him for the last three or four days, and he had never known it. He had seen her light blown out the night before. If he had had a little sense he would have called on her early that morning before he had breakfasted. Had he done so, he would have seen her, he would have driven with her to the station, he could, perhaps, have travelled with her to Ireland. The bitterness of his disappointment made him think, for a moment, meanly of Agatha, who, in his fancy, had kept them apart. He suspected that Agatha had held back the letter. How else could it have been posted in London with Greek stamps upon it?
Then came the thought that she had not gone to Ireland that morning. He had never known her go back to Ireland by the day-boats. She liked to sleep in the train, and save the daylight for life. His knowledge of her told him what had happened. She had taken her luggage to the station, soon after breakfast. Having done this, she had passed the day in amusement, dined at the station hotel, and now—
He sat down, beaten by this last disappointment. Now she was steaming north in the night express to Port Patrick. She had only just gone. She was within a dozen miles of him. The train did not start till eight. It was now only fourteen minutes past. If he had not been a fool; if he had only come home instead of going to the station!
"Selina," he cried down to the basement, "when did this letter come? This letter with the foreign stamp."
"Just after you'd gone out this morning, sir."
Five minutes' patience would have altered his life.
"A lady come to see you, sir."
"What was her name?"
"She didn't leave a name, sir."
"What was she like? When did she come?"
"She came about a few minutes before nine, sir. She seemed very put out at not finding you."
"Had she been here before?"
"I think she was the lady come here one time with another lady, a dark lady, when you 'ad the suite upstairs, sir. I think she come in one evenin' when you read to them."
Ottalie had been there. It must have been Ottalie.
"I told her you was gone awy, sir. You 'adn't said where to."
He thanked Selina. He bit his lips lest he should ask whether the visitor had worn earrings. He went back into his room and sat down. He had not realised till then how much Ottalie meant to him. A voice rang in his brain that he had missed her, missed her by a few minutes, through his own impatience, through some chance, through some juggling against him of the powers outside life. All his misery seemed rolled into a leaden ball, which was smashing through his brain. The play was a little thing. The loss of John was a little thing. Templeton was farcical, the critics were little gnats, but to have missed Ottalie, to have lost Ottalie! He tasted a moment of despair.
Despair does not last long. It kills, or it goads to action. With Roger it lasted for a few seconds, and then changed to a passion to be on the way to her. But he would have to wait, he would have to wait. There were all those interminable hours to wait. All a whole night of purgatory. What could he do meanwhile? How could he pass that night? What could he do? Work was impossible. Talk was impossible. He remembered then, another thing.
He opened his Bradshaw feverishly. Yes. There was another boat-train to Holyhead. He could be in Dublin a little after dawn the next day; "8.45 from Euston." He could just do it. He would catch that second boat-train. It was a bare chance; but it could be done. He could be with Ottalie by the afternoon of the next day. But money; he had not enough money. Five minutes to pack. He could spare that; but how about money? To whom could he go for money? Who would have money to lend upon the instant? It would have to be some one near at hand. Every second made his task harder. Where would there be a cab? Which of his friends lived on the way to Euston? Who lives between Westminster and Euston? It is all park, and slum, and boarding-house. Big Ben, lifting his voice, intoned the quarter.
He caught a cab outside Dean's Yard. He drove to a friend in Thames Chambers. The friend lent him a sovereign and some loose silver. He had enough now to take him to Ireland. He bade the cabman to hurry. The newsboys were busy in the Strand. They were calling out something about winner, and disaster. He saw one newsbill flutter out from a man's hand. "British Liner Lost," ran the heading. He felt relieved that the monkey-mind had now something new to occupy it. The changing of the newsbill heading made him feel cleaner.
Up to the crossing of Holborn, he felt that he would catch the train. At Holborn the way was barred by traffic. The Euston Road was also barred to him. He missed the train by rather more than a minute. He was too tired to feel more disappointment. The best thing for him to do, he thought, would be to sleep at home, catch the boat-train in the morning and travel all day. That plan would land him in Ireland within twenty-four hours. He could then either stay a night in port, or post the forty miles to his cottage. In any case he would be with Ottalie, actually in her very presence, within forty hours. By posting the forty miles he might watch the next night outside her window, in the deep peace of the Irish country, almost within sound of the sea. The thought of the great stars sweeping over Ottalie's home, and of the moon coming up, filling the valley, and of the little wind which trembled the leaves, giving, as it were, speech to the beauty of the night, moved him intensely. In his overwrought mood, these things were the only real things. The rest was all nightmare.
Driving back from Euston, he noticed another affiche, bearing the words, "Steamer Sunk. Lives Lost." He paid no attention to it. He wondered vaguely, as he had often wondered in the past, what kind of a mind browsed upon these things. A disaster, an attack upon the Government, and a column of betting news. That was what God's image brooded upon, night after night. That was what God's image wrote about nightly, after an expensive education.
He was very tired; but there could be no rest for him till he had enquired after Mrs. Pollock. She had given birth to a little girl, who was likely to live. She herself was very weak, but not in serious danger. Pollock was making good resolutions in a mist of cigarette smoke. Roger was not wanted there. He went home, to bed, tired out. He slept heavily.
He was fresh and merry the next morning. He packed at leisure, breakfasted at ease, and drove away to the station, feeling like a boy upon a holiday. He was leaving this grimy, gritty wilderness. He was going to forget all about it. In a few hours he would be over the border, in a new land. That night he would be over the sea, so changed, and in a land so different, that all this would seem like a horrid, far-away dream, indescribably squalid and useless. London was a strong, poisonous drug, to be taken in minute doses. He was going to take a strong corrective.
The train journey was long and slow; but after Carlisle was passed, his mind began to feel the excitement of it. In a couple of hours he would be in a steamer, standing well forward, watching for the double lights to flash, and the third light, farther to the south, to blink and gleam. The dull, low, Scottish landscape, where Burns lived and Keats tramped, gave way to irregular low hills, indescribably lonely, with boggy lowland beneath them and forlorn pools. He looked out for one such pool. He had often noticed it before, on his journeys that way. It was a familiar landmark to him. Like all the rest of that Scottish land, it was associated in his mind with Ottalie. All the journey was associated with her. He had travelled past those hills and pools so often, only to see her, that they had become a sort of ritual to him, a part of seeing her, something which inevitably led to her. After the hill with the cairn, he saw his landmark. There glittered the pool under the last of the sun. The little lonely island, not big enough for a peel, but big enough, years ago, for a lake-dwelling, shone out in a glimmer of withered grass. A few bents, bristling the shallows, bowed and bowed and bowed as the wind blew. A reef of black rocks glided out at the pool's end, like an eel swimming. Roger again had the fancy, which had risen in his mind before a dozen times, when passing the pool, that he would like to be a boy there, with a toy boat. Another landmark tenderly looked for, was a little white house rather far from the line, high up on the moor. He had once thought (in passing) that that would be a pleasant place for a week's stay when he and Ottalie were married. The tenderness of the original fancy lingered still. It had become an inevitable part of the journey. After a few minutes of looking, it came into view, newly whitewashed, or, it may be, merely very bright in the sunset. A woman stood at a little garden gate. He had seen her there once before. Perhaps she looked out for this evening train. It might be an event in her life. She must be very lonely there, so many miles from anywhere. After this, he saw only one more landmark, a copse of spruce-fir by the line. A faint mist was gathering. There was going to be a fog. The boat would make a slow passage.
The mist was dim over everything when the train stopped. He got out on to a platform which was wet with mist. Wet milk-cans gleamed. Rails shone below his feet. A bulk of a mail-train rose up, vacant and dim. People shouted and passed. There was a hot whiff of ship's engine. A man passed, with nervous hurry, carrying two teacups from the refreshment-room. Somebody cried out to come along with the mails. An Irish voice answered excitedly, with a witty bitterness which defined the owner to Roger, in vivid outline. Mist came driving down under the shed. A few moist steps took him to a rail of chains, beyond which was motionless sea, a dim, grey-brown under the mist, with a gull or two drifting and falling. A row of lights dimly dying away beyond, shewed him the steamer. The gangway slanted down, dripping wet from the handrail. A man was saying that "Indeed, it was," in the curt, charming accent of the hills.
He did not recognise the steamer. Her name, seen upon a life-belt, was new to him. He did not remember aLady of Lyonson this line. He laid his bag in a corner of the saloon, where already timid ladies were preparing for the worst, by lying down, under rugs, with bottles of salts at hand. The smell of the saloon, the smells of disinfectant, oil, rubber, and food, mixed with the sickliness of a place half aired and overheated, drove him on deck again. An elderly man was telling his wife that it had been a terrible business. The lady answered with the hope that nothing would happen to them, for what would poor Eddie do?
Somebody near the gangway, a hills-man by his speech, probably the ticket-collector, or mate, was speaking in the intervals of work. He was checking the slinging-in of crates, and talking to an acquaintance. Roger had no wish to hear him. He was impatient for the ship to start. But sitting down there, wrapped in his mackintosh, he could not help overhearing odds and ends of a story among the clack of the winches. Something terrible had happened, and Tom would know about it, and, indeed, it was a sad thing for the widow O'Hara; but it was a quick death, anyway, and might come on any man, for the matter of that. Indeed, it was a quick death, and the fault lay in these fogs, which never gave a man a chance till she was right on top of you. What use were sidelights, when a fog might make a headlight as red as blood? She had come right into her, just abaft the bridge, and cut her clean down. They never saw a stim of her. She wasn't even sounding her horn. Yes. One of these big five-masted Yankee schooners. TheJohn P. Graves. Just out of Glasgow. They hadn't even a look-out set. Taking her chance. Her crowd was drunk. And one of the dead was an English wumman only married that morning. No. The man was saved. Like a stunned man. The most of the bodies was ashore to the wast of the light. There was a fierce jobble wast of the light.
There had been a collision somewhere. There were always being collisions. Roger listened, and ceased to listen, thinking of that "Steamer Sunk, Lives Lost" on the London placard. He thought that these vivid, picturesque talkers, professional men; but full of feeling, gave such an event a kind of poetry, and made it a part of their lives, while the paper-reader, very far away in the city, glanced at it, among a dozen similar events, none of them closely brought home to him, or, indeed, to be understood by him, and dismissed the matter with an indifferent "Really. How ghastly!" He reproved himself for thinking thus. This collision had affected the men near him in their daily business. Londoners were affected by disasters which touched themselves. This disaster, whatever it was, did not touch him. He was in a contrary, bitter mood, too much occupied with himself to feel for others. He was thinking that the men who did most were self-centred men, shut away from the world without. A snail, suddenly stung on the tender horn, may think similarly.
It was dark night, but clear enough, when they reached Ireland. The lights in the bay shone as before. The lights on the island had not changed. One, high up, which he had often noticed, was as like a star as ever. Little glimmers of light danced before him, as he dined in the hotel, attended by a grave old waiter. The hotel was fuller than usual at that time of year. It was full of restless, anxious, sad-looking people, some of whom had been with him in the boat. They gave him the fancy that they had all come over for a funeral. After supping, he went hurriedly to bed.
In the morning, at breakfast, there were the same sad-looking people. They sat at the next table, talking in subdued voices, drinking tea. They were breakfasting on tea. An old woman with that hard, commercial face, assumed by predatory natures without energy, mothered the party. Her red eyes, swollen by weeping, emphasised the vulpine in her. A late-comer rustled up. "Alice won't come down," she said. "She'll have some tea upstairs."
The old woman, calling a maid, sent tea to Alice. A pale girl, daughter to the matron in all but spirit, snuffled on the perilous brink, worn out by grief and weariness. The old woman rebuked her. "We shall have to be starting in a minute." She had that cast-iron nature limited to itself. Roger wondered whether in old Rome, or Puritan England, that kind of character had been consciously bred in the race. He changed his table.
The waiter brought him a newspaper. He fingered it, and left it untouched. He was not going to open a paper till he could be sure that the uproar about him had been forgotten. He was a timorous, hunted hart. The hounds should not follow him into this retreat. He debated as he ate, whether he should bicycle, take the "long car," a forty-mile drive, or take train. Finally, seeing that the roads were dry, and the wind not bad, he decided to ride, sending his baggage by the car. He liked riding to Ottalie. It was a difficult ride, he thought, owing to the blasts which beat down from the hills, but there came a moment, as he well remembered, rather near to the end of the journey, when the hills gave place to mountains. Here the road, topping a crest, fell away, shewing a valley and a stretch of sea. Hills and headlands rolled north in ranks to a bluish haze. The crag beyond all rose erect from the surf, an upright, defined line in the blueness. From Ottalie's home, high up, he could see that great crag. With an opera-glass he could see the surf bursting below it. It was now eight o'clock. The morning boat was coming in. He would start. By lunch-time he would be in his little cottage above the sea. He would swim before lunch. After lunch he would climb through the long grey avenue of beeches to Ottalie's home. The old excitement came over him to give to his ardour the memory of many other rides to her.
Riding through the squalid town he found himself reckoning up little curious particular details of things seen by him on similar journeys in the past. The clatter of the "long car" behind him made him spurt ahead. It was a point of vanity with him to beat the car over the forty-mile course. The last thing noticed by him as he cleared the town was a yellow affiche, bearing the legend:
"LOSS OF THE 'LORD ULLIN'"CORONER'S VERDICT."
One news straight came huddling on anotherOf death, and death, and death.The Broken Heart.
The sun was golden over all the marvel of Ireland. The sea came in sight from time to time. Beyond a cliff castle a gannet dropped, white and swift, with a splash which faintly came to him a quarter of a mile away. Turning inland, he rode into the hills. Little low rolling green hills, wooded and sunny, lay ahead. On each side of him were pastures unspeakably green, sleepily cropped by cattle. He set himself to ride hard through this bright land. He spurted up the little hills, dipped down, and again climbed. He was eager to reach a gate on a hilltop, from which he could see the headland which shut him from the land of his desire. As he rode, he thought burningly of what that afternoon would be to him. Ottalie might not be there. She might be away. She might be out; but something told him she would be there. With Ottalie in the world, the world did not matter greatly. The thought of Ottalie gave him a fine sense, only properly enjoyed in youth, of his own superiority to the world. With a thumping heart, due not to emotion, but to riding uphill, he climbed the gate, and looked out over the beautiful fields to the distant headland. There it lay, gleaming, fifteen miles away. Beyond it was Ottalie. Protesters, in old, unhappy far-off times, had painted a skull and cross-bones on the gate, as, in other parts, they dug graves at front doors, or fired with lucky slugs from cover. The bones were covered with lichen, now; but the skull grinned at Roger friendly, as it had often grinned. Riding on, and glancing back over his shoulder, at risk of going into the ditch, he saw the skull's eyes fixed upon him.
The last part of the ride was downhill. He lifted his bicycle over a low stone wall, and vaulted over after it. The sea was within fifty yards of him, in brimming flood. Norah Kennedy, the old woman who kept house for him, was there at the door, looking out.
"Indeed, Mr. Naldrett," she began; "the blessing of God on you. I was feared the boat was gone down on you. It's a sad time this for you to be coming here. Indeed, I never saw you looking better. You're liker your mother than your da. He was a grand man, your da, of all the folks ever I remember. Indeed, your dinner is just ready for you. Will I wet the tea, sir?"
The old woman rambled on from subject to subject, glancing at each, so lightly, that one less used to her ways would not have suspected the very shrewd and bitter critic hidden beneath the charm of the superficial nature. Roger felt somehow that the critic was alert in her, that she resented something in his manner or dress. He concluded that he was late, or that she, perhaps in her zeal for him, had put on the joint too early. As usual, when she was not pleased, she served the dinner muttering personal remarks, not knowing (as is the way with lonely old people, who talk to themselves) that they were sometimes audible. "I'll do you no peas for your supper, my man," was one of her asides, when he helped himself sparingly to peas. "It's easy seen you're only an Englishman," was another, at his national diffidence towards a potato. Roger wondered what was wrong, and how soon he would become again "the finest young man ever I remember, except perhaps it was your da. Indeed, Mr. Roger, to see your da, and him riding wast in a red coat, you would think it was the Queen's man,* or one of the Saints of God. There was no one I ever seen had the glory on him your da had, unless it was yourself stepping." Roger's da had died of drink there, after a life passed in the preservation of the game laws.
* The late Prince Consort.
When his baggage arrived, he dressed carefully, and set out up the hill to Ottalie's house, which he could see, even from his cottage, as a white, indeterminate mass, screened by trees from sea-winds. The road branched off into a loaning, hedged with tumbled stone on each side. As he climbed the loaning, the roguish Irish bulls, coming in a gallop, at the sound of his feet, peered down at him, through hedges held together by Providence, or left to the bulls' imagination. A lusty white bull followed him for some time, restrained only by a foot-high wire.
"Indeed," said an old labourer, who, resting by the way, expressed sympathy both for Roger and the bull, "he's only a young bull. He wad do no one anny hurrt, except maybe he felt that way. Let you not trouble, sir."
Up above Ottalie's house was the garden. The garden wall backed upon the loaning. A little blue door with peeling, blistered paint, let him into the garden, into a long, straight rose-walk, in which the roses had not yet begun to bloom. A sweet-smelling herb grew by the door. He crumpled a leaf of it between his fingers, thinking how wonderful the earth was, which could grow this fragrance, out of mould and rain. The bees were busy among the flowers. The laurustine was giving out sweetness. In the sun of that windless afternoon, the smell thickened the air above the path, making it a warm clot of perfume, to breathe which was to breathe beginning life. Butterflies wavered, keeping low down, in the manner of butterflies near the coast. Birds made musical calls, sudden delightful exclamations, startling laughter, as though the god Pan laughed to himself among the laurustine bushes.
He felt the beauty of the late Irish season as he had never before felt it. It stirred him to the excitement which is beyond poetry, to that delighted sensitiveness, in which the mind, tremulously open, tremulously alive, can neither select nor combine. He longed to be writing poetry; but in the open air the imagination is subordinated to the senses. The lines which formed in his mind were meaningless exclamations. Nature is a setting, merely. The soul of man, which alone, of created things, regards her, is the important thing.
The blinds of the sunny southern front were drawn down; but the marks of carriage wheels upon the drive shewed him that she had returned. After ringing, he listened for the crackled tinkle far away in the kitchen, and turning, saw a squirrel leap from one beech to another, followed by three or four sparrows. Footsteps shuffled near. Somewhere outside, at the back, an old woman's voice asked whiningly for a bit of bread, for the love of the Almighty God, since she was perished with walking and had a cough on her that would raise pity in a martial man. A younger voice, high, clear, and hard, bidding her whisht, and let her get out of it, ceased suddenly, in her prohibition. The door opened. There was old Mary Laverty, the housekeeper.
"How are you, Mary? Are you quite well?"
"I am, sir. I thank you."
"Is Miss Fawcett in?"
"Have you not heard, sir?"
"Heard what?"
"Miss Ottalah's dead, sir."
"What?"
"She was drowned in the boat that was run into, crossing the sea, two days ago. There was a fog, sir. Did no one tell you, sir?"
"No."
"There was eleven of them drowned, sir."
"Was she ... Is she lying here?"
"Yes, sir. She's within. The burying will no be till Saturday. She is no chested yet."
"Was Miss Agatha with her?"
"Miss Agatha was not in the cabbon. She was not wetted, indeed. She had not so much as her skirrt wetted, sir. She is within, sir."
"Do you think she would see me?"
"Come in, sir. I will ask."
He stepped in, feeling stunned. His mind gave him an image of something hauled ashore. There was an image of a dripping thing being carried by men up the drive, the gravel crunched under their boots—crunch—crunch in slow time, then a rest at the door, and then, slowly, into the hall, and drip, drip, up the stairs to the darkened bedroom. Then out again, reverently, fumbling their hats, to talk about it with the cook. He did not realise what had happened. Here he was in the room. There was his photograph. There was the Oriental bowl full of potpourri. Ottalie had been drowned. Ottalie was lying upstairs, a dead thing, with neither voice nor movement. Ottalie was dead. She had sat with him in that very room. The old precise sofa was her favourite seat. How could she be dead? She had been in London, asking for him, only two days before. Her letter was in his pocket. There was her music. There was her violin. Why did she not come in, as of old, with her smiling daintiness, and with her hands in great gardening gauntlets clasping tulips for the jars? That beauty was over for the world.
He was stunned by it. He did not know what was happening; but there was Agatha, motioning to him not to get up. He said something about pity. "I pity you." After a minute, he added, "My God!" He was trying to say something to comfort her. The change in her told him that it was all true. It branded it into him. Ottalie was dead, and this was what it meant to the world. This was death, this horror.
His mind groped about like a fainting man for something to clutch. Baudelaire's lines rose up before him. The sentiment of French decadence, with its fancy of ingratitude, made him shudder. A turmoil of quotations seethed and died down in him, "And is old Double dead?" "Come away, death," with a phrase of Arne's setting. A wandering strange phrase of Grieg.
He went up to Agatha and took her hands.
"You poor thing; you poor thing," he repeated. "My God, you poor women suffer!" The clock was ticking all the time. Some one was bringing tea to the next room. The lines in the Persian rug had a horrible regularity. "Agatha," he said. Afterwards he believed that he kissed her, and that she thanked him.
"I don't know. I don't know," she said. "Oh, I'm so very wretched. So wretched. So wretched. And I can't die." She shook in a passion of tears.
"She was wonderful," he said, choking. "She was so beautiful. All she did."
"She was with me a minute before," said Agatha. "We were on deck. She went down to get a wrap. It was so cold in the fog. I had left her wraps in the dining-room. It was my fault."
"Don't say that, Agatha. That's nonsense."
"I never saw her again. It all happened at once. The next instant we were run into. I couldn't see anything. There was a crash, which made us heel right over, and then there was a panic. I didn't know what had happened. I tried to get down to her; but a lot of half-drunk tourists came raving and fighting to get to the boats. I couldn't get to the doors past them. One of them hit me with his fist and swore at me. The ship was sinking. I nearly got to the door, and then a stewardess cried out that everybody was up from below, and then a great brute of a man flung me into a boat. I hit my head. When I came to, I distinctly felt some one pulling off my rings, and there was a sort of weltering noise where the ship had sunk. One of the tourists cried out: 'Wot-ow! A shipwreck; oh, Polly.' Everybody was shouting all round us, and there was a poor little child crying. I caught at the hand which was taking my rings." Here she stopped. There had been some final humiliation here. She went on after a moment: "The men said that every one had been saved. I didn't know till we all landed. Nor till after that even. It was so foggy. Then I knew.
"There was a very kind Scotch lady who took me to the hotel. She was very kind. I don't know who she was. The divers came from Belfast during the night. Ottalie was in the saloon. She was wearing her wraps. She must have just put them on. There were five others in the saloon. The inquest was ghastly. One of the witnesses was drunk, and the jury were laughing. The waiter at the hotel knew me. He wired to Leslie, and Leslie hired a motor and came over. Colonel Fawcett is in bed with sciatica. Leslie is arranging everything."