Part 6

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 a _Lady of Lyons_ on 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. The _John 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."

V

One news straight came huddling on another Of 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.