Part 6. I Am Lost - Chapter 104

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_ SIXTH PART. I AM LOST
ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTH CHAPTER

On reaching the front street, I may have taken the penny tram, for though I had a sense of growing blind and deaf I have vague memories of lights flashing past me and of the clanging of electric cars.

At Bow Church I must have got out (probably to save a further fare) because I recollect walking along the Bow Road between the lights in the shops and the coarse flares from the stalls on the edge of the pavement, where women with baskets on their arms were doing their Saturday night's shopping.

My heart was still strong (sharpened indeed into, poignancy) and I know I was not crying, for at one moment as I passed the mirror in a chemist's window I caught sight of my face and it was fierce as flame.

At another moment, while I was hurrying along, I collided with a drunken woman who was coming out of a public-house with her arm about the neck of a drunken sailor.

"Gawd! Here's the Verging Mary agine!" she cried.

It was the woman who had carried baby, and when I tried to hurry past her she said:

"You think I'm drunk, don't you, dear? So'am. Don't you never get drunk? No? What a bleedin' fool you are! Want to get out o' this 'ere 'ole? Tike my tip then--gettin' drunk's on'y way out of it."

Farther on I had to steer my way through jostling companies of young people of both sexes who were going (I thought) the same way as the woman--girls out of the factories with their free walk, and their boisterous "fellers" from the breweries.

It was a cold and savage night. As I approached the side street in which I lived I saw by the light of the arc lamps a small group of people, a shivering straggle of audience, with the hunched-up shoulders of beings thinly clad and badly fed, standing in stupid silence at the corner while two persons wearing blue uniforms (a man in a peaked cap and a young woman in a poke bonnet) sang a Salvation hymn of which the refrain was "It is well, it is well with my soul."

The door of the Jew's house was shut (for the first time in my experience), so I had to knock and wait, and while I waited I could not help but hear the young woman in the poke bonnet pray.

Her prayer was about "raising the standard of Calvary," and making the drunkards and harlots of the East End into "seekers" and "soul yielders" and "prisoners of the King of Kings."

Before the last words of the prayer were finished the man in the peaked cap tossed up his voice in another hymn, and the young woman joined him with an accordion:

"Shall we gather at the river,
Where bright angel feet have trod. . . ."

The door was opened by the Jew himself, who, assuming a severe manner, said something to me in his guttural voice which I did not hear or heed, for I pushed past him and walked firmly upstairs.

When I had reached my room and lit the gas, I closed and locked the door, as if I were preparing to commit a crime--and perhaps I was.

I did not allow myself to think of what I intended to do that night, but I knew quite well, and when at one moment my conscience pressed me hard something cried out in my heart:

"Who can blame me since my child's life is in danger?"

I opened my trunk and took out my clothes--all that remained of the dresses I had brought from Ellan. They were few, and more than a little out of fashion, but one of them, though far from gay, was bright and stylish--a light blue frock with a high collar and some white lace over the bosom.

I remember wondering why I had not thought of pawning it during the week, when I had had so much need of money, and then being glad that I had not done so.

It was thin and light, being the dress I had worn on the day I first came to the East End, carrying my baby to Ilford, when the weather was warm which now was cold; but I paid no heed to that, thinking only that it was my best and most attractive.

After I had put it on and glanced at myself in my little swinging looking-glass I was pleased, but I saw at the same time that my face was deadly pale, and that made me think of some bottles and cardboard boxes which lay in the pockets of my trunk.

I knew what they contained--the remains of the cosmetics which I had bought in Cairo in the foolish days when I was trying to make my husband love me. Never since then had I looked at them, but now I took them out (with a hare's foot and some pads and brushes) and began to paint my pale face--reddening my cracked and colourless lips and powdering out the dark rings under my eyes.

While I was doing this I heard (though I was trying not to) the deadened sound of the singing in the front street, with the young woman's treble voice above the man's bass and the wheezing of the accordion:

"Yes, we'll gather, at the river,
Where bright angel feet have trod,
With its, crystal tide for ever
Flowing by the throne of God."

The Dark Spirit must have taken possession of me by this time, poor vessel of conflicting passions as I was, for I remember that while I listened I laughed--thinking what mockery was to sing of "angel feet" and "crystal tides" to those shivering wretches at the corner of the London street in the smoky night air.

"What a farce!" I thought. "What a heartless farce!"

Then I put on my hat, which was also not very gay, and taking out of my trunk a pair of long light gloves which I had never worn since I left Ellan, I began to pull them on.

I was standing before the looking-glass in the act of doing this, and trying (God pity me!) to smile at myself, when I was suddenly smitten by a new thought.

I was about to commit suicide--the worst kind of suicide, not the suicide which is followed by oblivion, but by a life on earth after death!

After that night Mary O'Neill would no longer exist! I should never he able to think of her again! I should have killed her and buried her and stamped the earth down on her and she would be gone from me for ever!

That made a grip at my heart--awakening memories of happy days in my childhood, bringing back the wild bliss of the short period of my great love, and even making me think of my life in Rome, with its confessions, its masses, and the sweetness of its church bells.

I was saying farewell to Mary O'Neill! And parting with oneself seemed so terrible that when I thought of it my heart seemed ready to burst.

"But who can blame me when my child's life is in danger?" I asked myself again, still tugging at my long gloves.

By the time I had finished dressing the Salvationists were going off to their barracks with their followers behind them. Under the singing I could faintly hear the shuffling of bad shoes, which made a sound like the wash of an ebbing tide over the teeth of a rocky beach--up our side street, past the Women's Night Shelter (where the beds never had time to become cool), and beyond the public-house with the placard in the window saying the ale sold there could be guaranteed to make anybody drunk for fourpence.

"We'll stand the storm, it won't be long,
And we'll anchor in the sweet by-and-by."

I listened and tried to laugh again, but I could not do so now. There was one last spasm of my cruelly palpitating heart, in which I covered my face with both hands, and cried:

"For baby's sake! For my baby's sake!"

And then I opened my bedroom door, walked boldly downstairs and went out into the streets.

MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD

I don't call it Chance that this was the very day of my return to England.

If I had to believe that, I should have to disbelieve half of what is best in the human story, and the whole of what we are taught about a guiding Providence and the spiritual influences which we cannot reason about and prove.

We were two days late arriving, having made dirty weather of it in the Bay of Biscay, which injured our propeller and compelled us to lie to, so I will not say that the sense of certainty which came to me off Finisterre did not suffer a certain shock.

In fact the pangs of uncertainty grew so strongly upon me as we neared home that in the middle of the last night of our voyage I went to O'Sullivan's cabin, and sat on the side of his bunk for hours, talking of the chances of my darling being lost and of the possibility of finding her.

O'Sullivan, God bless him, was "certain sure" that everything would be right, and he tried to take things gaily.

"The way I'm knowing she'll be at Southampton in a new hat and feather! So mind yer oi, Commanther."

We passed the Channel Islands in the spring of morning, and at breakfast-time we picked up the pilot, who had brought out a group of reporters. I did my best for the good chaps (though it is mighty hard to talk about exploring when you are thinking of another subject), and then handed them over to my shipmates.

Towards seven o'clock at night we heaved up to the grey stone pier at the head of Southampton Water. It was then dark, so being unable to see more than the black forms and waving hands of the crowd waiting for us with the lights behind them, I arranged with O'Sullivan that he should slip ashore as soon as we got alongside, and see if he could find my dear one.

"Will you remember her face?" I asked.

"And why wouldn't I? By the stars of God, there's only one of it in the world," he answered.

The welcome we got when we were brought to was enough to make a vain man proud, and a modest one ashamed, and perhaps I should have had a little of both feelings if the right woman had been there to share them.

My state-room was on the promenade deck, and I stood at the door of it as long as I dared, raising my cap at the call of my name, but feeling as if I were the loneliest man in the world, God help me!

O'Sullivan had not returned when Treacle came to say that everything was ready, and it was time to go ashore.

I will not say that I was not happy to be home; I will not pretend that the warm-hearted welcome did not touch me; but God knows there was a moment when, for want of a face I did not see, I could have turned about and gone back to the South Pole there and then, without an instant's hesitation.

When I got ashore I had as much as I could do to stand four-square to the storm of hand-shaking that fell on me. And perhaps if I had been in better trim I should have found lots of fun in the boyish delight of my shipmates in being back, with old Treacle shaking hands with everybody from the Mayor of the town to the messenger-boys (crying "What cheer, matey?"), while the scientific staff were bringing up their wives to be introduced to me, just as the lower-form fellows used to do with their big sisters at school.

At last O'Sullivan came back with a long face to say he could see nothing of my dear one, and then I braced myself and said:

"Never mind! She'll be waiting for us in London perhaps."

It took a shocking time to pass through the Customs, but we got off at last in a special train commissioned by our chairman--half of our company with their wives and a good many reporters having crammed themselves into the big saloon carriage reserved for me.

At the last moment somebody threw a sheaf of evening papers through my window, and as soon as we were well away I took up one of them and tried to read it, but column after column fell blank on my eyes, for my mind was full of other matters.

The talk in the carriage, too, did not interest me in the least. It was about the big, hustling, resonant world, general elections, the fall of ministries, Acts of Parliament, and the Lord knows what--things that had looked important when we were in the dumb solitude of Winter Quarters, but seemed to be of no account now when I was hungering for something else.

At last I got a quiet pressman in a corner and questioned him about Ellan.

"That's my native island, you know--anything going on there?"

The reporter said yes, there was some commotion about the failure of banks, with the whole island under a cloud, and its biggest financial man gone smash.

"Is his name O'Neill?" I asked.

"That's it."

"Anything else happened there while I've been away?"

"No . . . yes . . . well, now that I think of it, there was a big scare a year or so ago about a young peeress who disappeared mysteriously."

"Was . . . was it Lady Raa?"

"Yes," said the reporter, and then (controlling myself as well as I could) I listened to a rapid version of what had become known about my dear one down to the moment when she "vanished as utterly as if she had been dropped into the middle of the Irish Sea."

It is of no use saying what I felt after that, except that flying in an express train to London, I was as impatient of space and time as if I had been in a ship down south stuck fast in the rigid besetment of the ice.

I could not talk, and I dared not think, so I shouted for a sing-song, and my shipmates (who had been a little low at seeing me so silent) jumped at the proposal like schoolboys let loose from school.

Of course O'Sullivan gave us "The Minsthrel Boy"; and Treacle sang "Yew are the enny"; and then I, yes I (Oh, God!), sang "Sally's the gel," and every man of my company joined in the ridiculous chorus.

Towards ten o'clock we changed lines on the loop at Waterloo and ran into Charing Cross, where we found another and still bigger crowd of hearty people behind a barrier, with a group of my committee, my fellow explorers, and geographers in general, waiting on the platform.

I could not help it if I made a poor return to their warm-hearted congratulations, for my eyes were once more searching for a face I could not see, so that I was glad and relieved when I heard the superintendent say that the motor-car that was to take me to the hotel was ready and waiting.

But just then O'Sullivan came up and whispered that a priest and a nun were asking to speak to me, and he believed they had news of Mary.

The priest proved to be dear old Father Dan, and the nun to be Sister Veronica, whom my dear one calls Mildred. At the first sight of their sad-joyful faces something gripped me by the throat, for I knew what they had come to say before they said it--that my darling was lost, and Father Dan (after some priestly qualms) had concluded that I was the first man who ought to be told of it.

Although this was exactly what I had expected, it fell on me like a thunderbolt, and in spite of the warmth of my welcome home, I believe in my soul I was the most downhearted man alive.

Nevertheless I bundled Father Dan and the Sister and O'Sullivan into the automobile, and jumping in after them, told the chauffeur to drive like the deuce to the hotel.

He could not do that, though, for the crowd in the station-yard surrounded the car and shouted for a speech. I gave them one, saying heaven knows what, except that their welcome made me ashamed of not having got down to the Pole, but please God I should get there next time or leave my bones on the way.

We got to the hotel at last (the same that my poor stricken darling had stayed at after her honeymoon), and as soon as we reached my room I locked the door and said:

"Now out with it. And please tell me everything."

Father Dan was the first to speak, but his pulpit style was too slow for me in my present stress of thoughts and feelings. He had hardly got further than his difference with his Bishop, and the oath he had sworn by him who died for us to come to London and never go back until he had found my darling, when I shook his old hand and looked towards the Sister.

She was quicker by a good deal, and in a few minutes I knew something of my dear one's story--how she had fled from home on my account, and for my sake had become poor; how she had lodged for a while in Bloomsbury; how hard she had been hit by the report of the loss of my ship; and how (Oh my poor, suffering, heroic, little woman!) she had disappeared on the approach of another event of still more serious consequence.

It was no time for modesty, not from me at all events, so while the Father's head was down, I asked plainly if there was a child, and was told there was, and the fear of having it taken from her (I could understand that) was perhaps the reason my poor darling had hidden herself away.

"And now, when, where, and by whom was she seen last?" I asked.

"Last week, and again to-day, to-night, here in the West End--by a fallen woman," answered the Sister.

"And what conclusion do you draw from that?"

The Sister hesitated for a moment and then said:

"That her child is dead; that she does not know you are alive; and that she is throwing herself away, thinking there is nothing left to live for."

"What?" I cried. "You believe that? Because she left that brute of a husband . . . and because she came to me . . . you believe that she could. . . . Never! Not Mary O'Neill! She would beg her bread, or die in the streets first."

I dare say my thickening voice was betraying me; but when I looked at Mildred and saw the tears rolling down her cheeks and heard her excuses (it was "what hundreds of poor women were driven to every day"), I was ashamed and said so, and she put her kind hand in my hand in token of her forgiveness.

"But what's to be done now?" she asked.

O'Sullivan was for sending for the police, but I would not hear of that. I was beginning to feel as I used to do when I lost a comrade in a blizzard down south, and (without a fact or a clue to guide me) sent a score of men in a broad circle from the camp (like spokes in a wheel) to find him or follow back on their tracks.

There were only four of us, but I mapped out our courses, where we were to go, when we were to return, and what we were to do if any of us found my lost one--take her to Sister's flat, which she gave the address of.

It was half-past eleven when we started on our search, and I dare say our good old Father Dan, after his fruitless journeys, thought it a hopeless quest. But I had found myself at last. My spirits which had been down to zero had gone up with a bound. I had no ghost of an idea that I had been called home from the 88th latitude for nothing. And I had no fear that I had come too late.

Call it frenzy if you like--I don't much mind what people call it. But I was as sure as I have ever been of anything in this life, or ever expect to be, that the sufferings of my poor martyred darling were at an end, and that within an hour I should be holding her in my arms.

M.C.

[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM] _

Read next: Part 6. I Am Lost: Chapter 105

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