The Record of Nicholas Freydon Part 28

'Precisely,' resumed Heron. 'You are doing nothing to remedy it, because there is nothing you are in a position to do. You are merely "standing by," as sailors say, from sentimental motives. It is _laissez-faire_, of a sort; only, it's an infernally painful and wearing sort for you. It reduces your life to something like her own, without, so far as I can see, benefiting her in the least. I think the police could do as well. In fact, in your place, I should clear out altogether, and give Mrs. Pelly a show. But, failing that, I would at least wash my hands, so to say. I would refuse the situation any predominant place in my mind, join a club and use it, and-- O Lord!

what is the use of talking of absolutely hopeless things? I don't know that I'd do anything of the sort, and I do know very well that you won't.'

There fell another silence between us, which lasted several minutes.

And then Heron rose to his feet, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and said he must be going. I walked down the road with him, and paused at its corner, where he would pick up an omnibus. The moon emerged from behind a cloud, touching with a delicate sepia some fleecy edge of c.u.muli.

'Has it ever occurred to you, my innocent, that there is anything in England beyond the metropolitan radius?' asked Heron suddenly.

'Honest, now; have you ever been ten miles from Charing Cross since you landed from that blessed s.h.i.+p?'

'Well, it does seem queer, now you mention it; but I don't believe I have-- Except to Epping Forest, you know. I'm not sure how far that is; but I used often to go there at one time, not lately, but----'

'Before you mortgaged your soul to the _Advocate_, eh? Though I suppose the more serious mortgage was the one before that. Look here!

Bring your wife on Sat.u.r.day, and meet me at Victoria at ten o'clock.

We'll go and have a look at Leith Hill. A tramp will do you both good.

Will you come?'

By doing a certain amount of work there on Sunday, I could always absent myself from office on a Sat.u.r.day. So I agreed to go. On the Friday f.a.n.n.y seemed unusually calm and well. I was quite excited over the prospect of our little jaunt, and f.a.n.n.y herself appeared to think cheerfully and kindly of it. In the lodging we occupied at that time I had a tiny bedroom of my own. I woke very early on the Sat.u.r.day morning, but when I found it was barely five o'clock turned over for another doze. When next I woke it was to find, greatly to my annoyance, that the hour was half-past eight; and there were several little things I wanted to have done before starting for Victoria. I hurried into our sitting-room before dressing, meaning to rouse f.a.n.n.y, whose room opened from it. But she was not in her bedroom, and returning to the other room I found a note on the table.

'I am not feeling well,' the note said, 'and cannot come with you to-day.

So I shall spend the day with mother, and be back here about tea-time.'

For a moment I thought of hurrying round to Mrs. Pelly's, and seeing if I could prevail on f.a.n.n.y to change her mind. But I hated going to that house, and, of late, I had had some experience of the futility of trying to influence f.a.n.n.y in any way during these sullen morning hours, when she was very often possessed by a sort of lethargy, any interference with which provoked only excessive irritation.

It was most disappointing. But-- 'Very well, then,' I muttered to myself, 'she must stay with her mother. I can't leave Heron waiting at Victoria.'

So I dressed and proceeded direct to the station, relying upon having a few minutes to spare there during which to break my fast in the refreshment-room.

Heron nodded rather grimly over my explanation of f.a.n.n.y's absence, and we were both pretty silent during the journey to Dorking. But once out in the open, and tramping along a country road, we breathed deeper of an air clean enough to dispel town-bred languors. I felt my spirits rise, and we began to talk. The day was admirable, beginning with light mists, and ripening, by the time we began our tramp, into that mellow splendour which October does at times vouchsafe, especially in the gloriously wooded country which lies about Leith Hill.

The foliage, the occasional scent of burning wood--always a talisman for one who has slept in the open--glimpses of new-fallowed fields of an exquisite rose-madder hue, bracken and heather underfoot, and overhead blue sky sweetly diversified by snowy piles of cloud--these and a thousand other natural delights combined to enlarge one's heart, ease one's mind, and arouse one's dormant instinct to live, to laugh, and to enjoy. Worries rolled back from me. I responded jovially to Heron's grim quips, and felt more heartily alive than I had felt for years.

Having walked swingingly for four or five hours we sat down in a pleasant inn to a nondescript meal, at something like the eighteenth-century dining hour; consuming large quant.i.ties of cold boiled beef, salad, cheese, home-baked bread, and brown ale. (I had learned now to drink beer, on such occasions as this, at all events; and did it with a childish sense of holiday 'swagger.' Its a.s.sociations with rural life pleased me. But in the town I was annoyed to find that even half a gla.s.s of it was apt to make my head ache villainously.) We sat and smoked, talking lazily in the twilight; missed one train, and walked leisurely to the next station to catch a later one.

The approach to London rather chilled and saddened me by the sharp demand it seemed to make for the laying aside of calm reflection or cheerful conversation, and the taking up of stern realities, practical considerations--the hard, concrete facts of daily life. The outlines of the huddled houses, the moving lights of thronged streets, the Town-- It seemed to grip me by the shoulder.

'Come! Wake up from your fancies. Been laughing, joking, chatting, drawing deep breaths, have you? Ah, well, here am I. You know me. Hear the ring of the hurrying horses' feet on my hard ways? See the anxious ferret faces of my workers? I am Reality. I am your master, and the world's master. You may escape me for a day, and dream you are a free man in the open. Grrrr!--' The train jars to a standstill. 'That may be well enough for a dream; but I am Reality. Come! There's no time here for reflection. Pick up your load. Get on; get on; or I'll smash you down in my gutters, where my human wastage lies!'

That is how cities have always spoken to me as I have entered them from the country. And yet--and yet, most of my life has been spent within their confines. Long imprisonment makes men fear liberty, they say. But how could a man fear the kindly country and its liberty for reflection? And, attaining to it, how could he possibly desire return to the noisy, crowded cells of the city? Impossible, surely, unless of course the city offered him a living, his life; and the country--calm and beautiful--refused it. And that perhaps is rather often the position, for your sedentary man, at all events; your modern, who cannot dig and is ashamed to beg--a numerous and ever increasing body.

Big Ben struck the hour of eight as we trundled past into Whitehall on the top of an omnibus. I thought of f.a.n.n.y with some self-reproach. She would have reached the lodgings by about five, and our evening meal hour was seven. I hoped she had not waited without her meal. I left Heron on the 'bus, for he had farther than I to go, and hurried along to No. 46 Kent Street--the dingy house in which we had been living now for a month or more.

f.a.n.n.y was not there, and, to my surprise, the landlady told me she had not been in all day, save for five minutes in the early afternoon, after which she went out carrying a parcel. I went to my bedroom for an overcoat, as the night was chilly. I possessed two of these garments at the time--one rather heavy and warm, the other a light coat. Both were missing from their accustomed pegs.

'Tcha! Now what does this mean?' I growled to myself; knowing quite well what it meant. 'And I take holidays in the country! I might have known better.'

And with that--all the brightness of the day forgotten now--I hurried out, bound for Howard Street and Mrs. Pelly's house.

But Mrs. Pelly had no idea as to her daughter's whereabouts. It seemed f.a.n.n.y had left her before three o'clock, intending to go home.

Then began a search of the kind which had become only too familiar with me of late. I suppose I must have entered upon scores of such dismal quests since my marriage. First, I visited some twenty or thirty different 'gin-mills.' (In one of them I stayed a few minutes to eat a piece of bread and cheese.) Then I went to two police stations, at the two opposite ends of that locality. Finally, I tramped back to Kent Street, thinking to find f.a.n.n.y there, and picturing in advance the condition in which I should find her. The most I ventured to hope was that she had been able to reach her room without a.s.sistance. But she had not been there at all.

I went out again into the street, somewhat at a loss. It was now past ten o'clock. After some hesitation I caught a pa.s.sing omnibus and journeyed back towards Howard Street, near which stood a third police station, which I had not before visited.

'Wait there a minute, will you?' said the officer to whom my inquiry here was addressed. A moment later I heard his voice from an adjacent corridor; 'Has the doctor gone?' it asked. I did not hear the answer.

But a minute or two later a tall man in a frock coat entered the room and walked up to me. I could see the top of a stethoscope protruding from one of his inner breast-coat pockets.

'Name of Freydon?' he said tersely.

'Yes.'

'Ah! Will you step this way, please, to my room?'

And, as we pa.s.sed into an inner room, he wheeled upon me with a look of grave sympathy in his eyes. 'I have serious news for you, Mr.

Freydon; if--if it is your wife who is here.'

Then I knew. Something in the doctor's grave eyes and meaning voice told me. It was not really necessary for me to ask. I knew quite certainly, and had no wish, no intention to say anything. My subconscious self apparently was bent upon explicitness. For, next moment, I heard my own voice, some little distance from me, saying, in quite a low tone:

'My G.o.d! My G.o.d! My G.o.d!' And then: 'You don't mean that she is dead?'

But I knew all the time.

Then I heard the doctor speaking. His body was close to me, but his voice, like my own, came from some distance away.

'A woman was brought here by a constable this afternoon ...

helpless ... intoxication.... Did your wife ... is she addicted to drink?' I may have nodded. 'There was a p.a.w.nticket in the name of Freydon.... She pa.s.sed away less than an hour ago.... The condition ...

heart undoubtedly accelerated ... alcoholism ... a very short time, in any case.... Medically, an inquest would be quite unnecessary, but....

Will you come with me, and ...'

From a long way off now these phrases trickled into my consciousness, the sense of them somewhat blurred and interrupted by a continuous buzzing noise in my head. We walked along dead white pa.s.sages, and down steps. We stopped at length where a man in uniform stood at a door, which he opened for us at a sign from the doctor. Inside, a woman was bending over a low pallet, and on the little bed was my wife f.a.n.n.y. A greyish sheet was drawn over her body to the chin. I think it was so drawn up as we entered the room. I stared down upon f.a.n.n.y's calm, white face, in which there was now a refinement, a pathetic dignity, a something delicate and womanly which I had not seen there before; not even in the early days, when gentle prettiness had been its quality.

The thought that flashed through my mind as I stood there was not the sort of thought that would be a.s.sociated with such a scene. The buzzing noise was still going on in my head, but yet I was conscious of a vast silence all about me; and looking down upon my wife's face, I thought:

'Death has certainly been courteous, considerate, to poor f.a.n.n.y.'

MANHOOD--ENGLAND: SECOND PERIOD

I

My wife was buried in Kensal Green cemetery, a populous London city of the dead. And that afternoon I resigned my position on the staff of the _Advocate_.

I do not think that even at the time I had any definite reason for this step, and I do not know of any now. I remember Arncliffe remonstrated very kindly with me, spoke of plans he had in view for me, about which he was unable to enter into detail just then, and strongly urged me to reconsider the matter. I told him, without much relevance really, that I had buried my wife that morning; and he, very naturally, said he had not even known I was a married man.

'Look here, Freydon,' he said; 'be guided by me. Take a month's holiday, and then come and talk to me again.'

This was no doubt both wise and kindly advice, but I merely repeated that I must leave; and, within a week or two, I did leave, Arncliffe, in the most friendly way, making things easy for me, and agreeing to take a certain contribution from me once a week. This gave me three guineas a week, and I was grateful for the arrangement.