Part 5

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 the _Ariadne_. 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 of _Who's Who_ gave him details of her living relatives. A married uncle's recreations were "shooting and hunting." A maiden aunt had published _Songs 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 of _The 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 of _Les Fleurs du Mal_ was propped against his teapot. He bit so fiercely that his beard wagged at each bite. Something of the fierceness and passion of the _Femmes Damnées_, or of _le 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 of _grandes 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 in _The 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 of _The Week_. He would have avoided Hollins, but Hollins stopped him.

"Ah, Naldrett," he said. "I've just been going for you in _The 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.

IV

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 reading _Blanco 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 him _The Orb_. _The Orb's_ the best."

"No. Shew him _The Planet_. The one who says he ought to be prosecuted."

Roger, refusing _Orb_ and _Planet_, 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 of _The 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.