John Coxeter was standing in the library of Mrs. Archdale's home in
Wimpole Street. Two nights had elapsed since their arrival in London,
and now he was to see her for the first time since they had parted on
the Charing Cross platform, in the presence of the crowd of people
comprised of unknown sympathisers, acquaintances, and friends who had
come to meet them.
He looked round him with a curious sense of unfamiliarity. The colouring
of the room was grey and white, with touches of deep-toned mahogany. It
was Nan's favourite sitting-room, though it still looked what it had
been ever since Nan could remember it--a man's room. In his day her
father had been a collector of books, medals, and engravings connected
with the severer type of eighteenth-century art and letters.
In a sense this room always pleased Coxeter's fancy, partly because it
implied a great many things that money and even modern culture cannot
buy. But now, this morning--for it was still early, and he was on his
way to his office for the first time since what an aunt of his had
called his mysterious preservation from death--he seemed to see
everything in this room in another light. Everything which had once been
to him important had become, if not worthless, then unessential.
He had sometimes secretly wondered why Mrs. Archdale, possessed as she
was of considerable means, had not altered the old house, had not made
it pretty as her friends' houses and rooms were pretty; but to-day he no
longer wondered at this. His knowledge of the fleetingness of life, and
of the unimportance of all he had once thought so important, was too
vividly present....
She came into the room, and he saw that she was dressed in a more
feminine kind of garment than that in which he generally saw her. It
was white, and though girdled with a black ribbon, it made her look very
young, almost girlish.
For a moment they looked at one another in constraint. Mrs. Archdale
also had altered, altered far less than John Coxeter, but she was aware,
as he was not aware, of the changes which long nearness to death had
brought her; and for almost the first time in her life she was more
absorbed in her own sensations than in those of the person with her.
Seeing John Coxeter standing there waiting for her, looking so like his
old self, so absolutely unchanged, confused her and made her feel
desperately shy.
She held out her hand, but Coxeter scarcely touched it. After having
held her so long in his arms, he did not care to take her hand in formal
greeting. She mistook his gesture, thought that he was annoyed at having
received no word from her since they had parted. The long day in between
had been to Nan Archdale full of nervous horror, for relations, friends,
acquaintances had come in troops to see her, and would not be denied.
Already she had received two or three angry notes from people who
thought they loved her, and who were bitterly incensed that she had
refused to see them when they had rushed to hear her account of an
adventure which might so easily have happened to them. She made the
mistake of confusing Coxeter with these selfish people.
"I am so sorry," she said in a low voice, "that when you called
yesterday I was supposed to be asleep. I have been most anxious to see
you"--she waited a moment and then added his name--"Mr. Coxeter. I knew
that you would have the latest news, and that you would tell it me."
"There is news," he said, "of all the boats; good news--with the
exception of the last boat----" His voice sounded strangely to himself.
"Oh, but that must be all right too, Mr. Coxeter! The captain said the
boats might drift about for a long time."
Coxeter shook his head. "I'm afraid not," he said. "In fact"--he waited
a moment, and she came close up to him.
"Tell me," she commanded in a low voice, "tell me what you know. They
say I ought to put it all out of my mind, but I can think of nothing
else. Whenever I close my eyes I see the awful struggle that went on
round that last boat!" She gave a quick, convulsive sob.
Coxeter was dismayed. How wildly she spoke, how unlike herself she
seemed to-day--how unlike what she had been during the whole of their
terrible ordeal.
Already that ordeal had become, to him, something to be treasured. There
is no lack of physical courage in the breed of Englishmen to which John
Coxeter belonged. Pain, entirely unassociated with shame, holds out
comparatively little terror to such as he. There was something rueful in
the look he gave her.
"The last boat was run down in the fog," he said briefly. "Some of the
bodies have been washed up on the French coast."
She looked at him apprehensively. "Any of the people we had spoken to?
Any of those who were with us in the railway carriage?"
"Yes, I'm sorry to say that one of the bodies washed up is that of the
person who sat next to you."
"That poor French boy?"
Coxeter shook his head. "No, no--he's all right; at least I believe he's
all right. It--the body I mean--was that of your other neighbour;" he
added, unnecessarily, "the man who made sweets."
And then for the first time Coxeter saw Nan Archdale really moved out of
herself. What he had just said had had the power to touch her, to cause
her greater anguish than anything which had happened during the long
hours of terror they had gone through. She turned and, moving as if
blindly, pressed her hand to her face as if to shut out some terrible
and pitiful sight.
"Ah!" she exclaimed in a low voice, "I shall never forgive myself over
that! Do you know I had a kind of instinct that I ought to ask that man
the name, the address"--her voice quivered and broke--"of his friend--of
that poor young woman who saw him off at the Paris station."
Till this moment Coxeter had not known that Nan had been aware of what
had, to himself, been so odious, so ridiculous, and so grotesque, a
scene. But now he felt differently about this, as about everything else
that touched on the quick of life. For the first time he understood,
even sympathized with, Nan's concern for that majority of human beings
who are born to suffering and who are bare to the storm....
"Look here," he said awkwardly, "don't be unhappy. It's all right. That
man spoke to me on the boat--he did what you wished, he made a will
providing for that woman; I took charge of it for him. As a matter of
fact I went and saw his old mother yesterday. She behaved splendidly."
"Then the life-saver was no good after all?"
"No good," he said, and he avoided looking at her. "At least so it would
seem, but who can tell?"
Nan's eyes filled with tears; something beckoning, appealing seemed to
pass from her to him....
The door suddenly opened.
"Mrs. Eaton, ma'am. She says she only heard what happened, to-day, and
she's sure you will see her."
Before Mrs. Archdale could answer, a woman had pushed her way past the
maid into the room. "Nan? Poor darling! What an awful thing! I _am_ glad
I came so early; now you will be able to tell me all about it!"
The visitor, looking round her, saw John Coxeter, and seemed surprised.
Fortunately she did not know him, and, feeling as if, had he stayed, he
must have struck the woman, he escaped from the room.
* * * * *
As Coxeter went through the hall, filled with a perplexity and pain very
alien from his positive nature, a good-looking, clean-shaven man, who
gave him a quick measured glance, passed by. With him there had been no
parleying at the door as in Coxeter's own case.
"Who's that?" he asked, with a scowl, of the servant.
"The doctor, sir," and he felt absurdly relieved. "We sent for him
yesterday, for Mrs. Archdale seemed very bad last night." The servant
dropped her voice, "It's the doctor, sir, as says Mrs. Archdale oughtn't
to see visitors. You see it was in all the papers about the shipwreck,
sir, and of course Mrs. Archdale's friends all come and see her to hear
about it. They've never stopped. The doctor, he says that she ought to
have stayed in bed and been quite quiet. But what would be the good of
that, seeing she don't seem able to sleep? I suppose you've not suffered
that way yourself, sir?"
The young woman was staring furtively at Coxeter, but, noting his cold
manner and imperturbable face, she felt that he was indeed a
disappointing hero of romance--not at all the sort of gentleman with
whom one would care to be shipwrecked, if it came to a matter of choice.
"No," he said solemnly, "I can't say that I have."
He looked thoughtfully out into what had never been to him a "long
unlovely street," and which just now was the only place in the world
where he desired to stay. Coxeter, always so sure of himself, and of
what was the best and wisest thing to do in every circumstance of life,
felt for the first time unable to cope with a situation presented to his
notice.
As he was hesitating, a carriage drove up, and a footman came forward
with a card, while the occupant of the carriage called out, making
anxious inquiries as to Mrs. Archdale's condition, and promising to call
again the same afternoon.
Coxeter suddenly told himself that it behoved him to see the doctor, and
ascertain from him whether Mrs. Archdale was really ill.
He crossed the street, and began pacing up and down, and unconsciously
he quickened his steps as he went over every moment of his brief
interview with Nan. All that was himself--and there was a good deal more
of John Coxeter than even he was at all aware of--had gone out to her in
a rapture of memory and longing, but she, or so it seemed to him, had
purposely made herself remote.
At last, after what seemed a very long time, the doctor came out of Mrs.
Archdale's house and began walking quickly down the street.
Coxeter crossed over and touched him on the arm. "If I may," he said, "I
should like a word with you. I want to ask you--I mean I trust that Mrs.
Archdale is recovering from the effect of the terrible experience she
went through the other night." He spoke awkwardly, stiffly. "I saw her
for a few minutes just before you came, and I was sorry to find her very
unlike herself."
The doctor went on walking; he looked coldly at Coxeter.
"It's a great pity that Mrs. Archdale's friends can't leave her alone!
As to being unlike herself, you and I would probably be very unlike
ourselves if we had gone through what this poor lady had just gone
through!"
"You see, I was with her on the boat. We were not travelling together,"
Coxeter corrected himself hastily, "I happened to meet her merely on the
journey. My name is Coxeter."
The other man's manner entirely altered. He slackened in his quick walk.
"I beg your pardon," he said; "of course I had no notion who you were.
She says you saved her life! That but for you she would have been in
that boat--the boat that was lost."
Coxeter tried to say something in denial of this surprising statement,
but the doctor hurried on, "I may tell you that I'm very worried about
Mrs. Archdale--in fact seriously concerned at her condition. If you have
any influence with her, I beg you to persuade her to refuse herself to
the endless busybodies who want to hear her account of what happened.
She won't have a trained nurse, but there ought to be someone on
guard--a human watchdog warranted to snarl and bite!"
"Do you think she ought to go away from London?" asked Coxeter in a low
voice.
"No, I don't think that--at least not for the present," the medical man
frowned thoughtfully. "What she wants is to be taken out of herself. If
I could prescribe what I believe would be the best thing for her, I
should advise that she go away to some other part of London with someone
who will never speak to her of what happened, and yet who will always
listen to her when she wants to talk about it--some sensible,
commonplace person who could distract her mind without tiring her, and
who would make her do things she has never done before. If she was an
ordinary smart lady, I should prescribe philanthropy"--he made a slight
grimace--"make her go and see some of my poorer patients--come into
contact with a little _real_ trouble. But that would be no change to
Mrs. Archdale. No; what she wants is someone who will force her to be
selfish--who will take her up the Monument one day, and to a music-hall
the next, motor her out to Richmond Park, make her take a good long
walk, and then sit by the sofa and hold her hand if she feels like
crying----" He stopped, a little ashamed of his energy.
"Thank you," said Coxeter very seriously, "I'm much obliged to you for
telling me this. I can see the sense of what you say."
"You know, in spite of her quiet manner, Mrs. Archdale's a nervous,
sensitive woman"--the doctor was looking narrowly at Coxeter as he
spoke.
"She was perfectly calm and--and very brave at the time----"
"That means nothing! Pluck's not a matter of nerve--it ought to be, but
it isn't! But I admit you're a remarkable example of the presence of the
one coupled with the absence of the other. You don't seem a penny the
worse, and yet it must have been a very terrible experience."
"You see, it came at the end of my holiday," said Coxeter gravely, "and,
as a matter of fact"--he hesitated--"I feel quite well, in fact,
remarkably well. Do you see any objection to my calling again, I mean
to-day, on Mrs. Archdale? I might put what you have just said before
her."
"Yes, do! Do that by all means! Seeing how well you have come through
it"--the doctor could not help smiling a slightly satirical
smile--"ought to be a lesson to Mrs. Archdale. It ought to show her that
after all she is perhaps making a great deal of fuss about nothing."
"Hardly that," said Coxeter with a frown.
They had now come to the corner of Queen Anne Street. He put out his
hand hesitatingly. The doctor took it, and, oddly enough, held it for a
moment while he spoke.
"Think over what I've said, Mr. Coxeter. It's a matter of hours. Mrs.
Archdale ought to be taken in hand at once." Then he went off, crossing
the street. "Pity the man's such a dry stick," he said to himself;
"now's his chance, if he only knew it!"
John Coxeter walked straight on. He had written the day before to say
that he would be at his office as usual this morning, but now the fact
quite slipped his mind.
Wild thoughts were surging through his brain; they were running away
with him and to such unexpected places!
The Monument? He had never thought of going up the Monument; he would
formerly have thought it a sad waste of time, but now the Monument
became to John Coxeter a place of pilgrimage, a spot of secret healing.
A man had once told him that the best way to see the City was at night,
but that if you were taking a lady you should choose a Sunday morning,
and go there on the top of a 'bus. He had thought the man who said this
very eccentric, but now he remembered the advice and thought it well
worth following.
By the time Coxeter turned into Cavendish Square he had travelled far
further than the Monument. He was in Richmond Park; Nan's hand was
thrust through his arm, as it had been while they had watched the first
boat fill slowly with the women and children.
* * * * *
To lovers who remember, the streets of a great town, far more than
country roads and lanes, hold over the long years precious, poignant
memories, for a background of stones and mortar has about it a character
of permanence which holds captive and echoes the scenes and words
enacted and uttered there.
Coxeter has not often occasion to go the little round he went that
morning, but when some accidental circumstance causes him to do so, he
finds himself again in the heart of that kingdom of romance from which
he was so long an alien, and of which he has now become a naturalized
subject. As most of us know, many ways lead to the kingdom of romance;
Coxeter found his way there by a water-way.
And so it is that when he reaches the turning into Queen Anne Street
there seems to rise round him the atmosphere of what Londoners call the
City--the City as it is at night, uncannily deserted save for the
ghosts and lovers who haunt its solitary thoroughfares after the bustle
of the day is stilled. It was then that he and Nan first learnt to
wander there. From there he travels on into golden sunlight; he is again
in Richmond Park as it was during the whole of that beautiful October.
Walking up the west side of Cavendish Square, Coxeter again becomes
absorbed in his great adventure,--a far greater adventure than that with
which his friends and acquaintances still associate his name. With some
surprise, even perhaps with some discomfiture, he sees himself--for he
has not wholly cast out the old Adam--he sees himself as he was that
memorable morning, carried, that is, wholly out of his usual wise,
ponderate self. Perhaps he even wonders a little how he could ever have
found courage to do what he did--he who has always thought so much, in a
hidden way, of the world's opinion and of what people will say.
He could still tell you which lamp-post he was striding past when he
realized, with a thrill of relief, that in any case Nan Archdale would
not treat him as would almost certainly do one of those women whom he
had honoured with his cold approval something less than a week ago. Any
one of those women would have regarded what he was now going to ask Nan
to do as an outrage on the conventions of life. But Nan Archdale would
be guided only by what she herself thought right and seemly....
And then, as he turns again into Wimpole Street, as he comes near to
what was once his wife's house, his long steady stride becomes slower.
Unwillingly he is living again those doubtful moments when he knocked at
her door, when he gave the surprised maid the confused explanation that
he had a message from the doctor for Mrs. Archdale. He hears the young
woman say, "Mrs. Archdale is just going out, sir. The doctor thought she
ought to take a walk;" and his muttered answer, "I won't keep her a
moment...."
Again he feels the exultant, breathless thrill which seized him when she
slipped, neither of them exactly knew how, into his arms, and when the
sentences he had prepared, the arguments he meant to use, in his hurried
rush up the long street, were all forgotten. He hears himself imploring
her to come away with him now, at once. Is she not dressed to go out?
Instinct teaches him for the first time to make to her the one appeal to
which she ever responds. He had meant to tell her what the doctor had
said--to let that explain his great temerity--but instead he tells her
only that he wants her, that he cannot go on living apart from her. Is
there any good reason why they should not start now, this moment, for
Doctors' Commons, in order to see how soon they can be married?
So it is that when John Coxeter stands in Wimpole Street, so typical a
Londoner belonging to the leisured and conventional class that none of
the people passing by even glance his way, he lives again through the
immortal moment when she said, "Very well."
* * * * *
To this day, so transforming is the miracle of love, Nan Coxeter
believes that during their curious honeymoon it was she who was taking
care of John, not he of her.