During our first day in London my husband had many visitors, including
Mr. Eastcliff and Mr. Vivian, who had much to tell and arrange about.
I dare say a great many events had happened during our six months'
absence from England; but the only thing I heard of was that Mr.
Eastcliff had married his dancing-girl, that she had retired from the
stage, and that her public appearances were now confined to the box-seat
of a four-in-hand coach, which he drove from London to Brighton.
This expensive toy he proposed to bring round to the hotel the following
day, which chanced to be Derby Day, when a party was to be made up for
the races.
In the preparations for the party, Alma, who, as usual, attracted
universal admiration, was of course included, but I did not observe that
any provision was made for me, though that circumstance did not distress
me in the least, because I was waiting for Martin's message.
It came early next morning in the person of Martin himself, who, running
into our sitting-room like a breath of wind from the sea, said his
fellow officers were separating that day, each going to his own home,
and their commander had invited me to lunch with them on their ship,
which was lying off Tilbury.
It did not escape me that my husband looked relieved at this news, and
that Alma's face brightened as she said in her most succulent tones:
"I should go if I were you, Mary. The breeze on the river will do you a
world of good, dear."
I was nothing loath to take them at their word, so I let them go off in
their four-in-hand coach, a big and bustling party, while with a
fast-beating heart I made ready to spend the day with Martin, having, as
I thought, so much and such serious things to say to him.
A steam launch from the ship was waiting for us at the Westminster
Pier, and from the moment I stepped into it I felt like another woman.
It was a radiant day in May, when the climate of our much-maligned
London is the brightest and best, and the biggest city in the world is
also the most beautiful.
How I loved it that day! The sunlight, the moving river, the soft air of
early summer, the passing panorama of buildings, old and new--what a joy
it was to me I sat on a side seat, dipping my hand over the gunwale into
the cool water, while Martin, with a rush of racy words, was pointing
out and naming everything.
St. Paul's was soon past, with the sun glistening off the golden cross
on its dome; then London Bridge; then the Tower, with its Traitors'
Gate; then the new Thames Bridge; and then we were in the region of the
barges and wharfs and warehouses, with their colliers and coasting
traders, and with the scum of coal and refuse floating on the surface of
the stream.
After that came uglier things still, which we did not mind, and then the
great docks with the hammering of rivets and the cranking noise of the
lightermen's donkey engines, loading and unloading the big steamers and
sailing ships; and then the broad reaches of the river where the great
liners, looking so high as we steamed under them, lay at anchor to their
rusty cable-chains, with their port-holes gleaming in the sun like rows
of eyes, as Martin said, in the bodies of gigantic fish.
At last we came out in a fresh breadth of water, with marshes on either
side and a far view of the sea, and there, heaving a little to the
flowing tide, and with a sea-gull floating over her mizzen mast, lay
Martin's ship.
She was a wooden schooner, once a Dundee whaler called the _Mary_ but
now re-christened the _Scotia_, and it would be silly to say how my eyes
filled at sight of her, just because she had taken Martin down into the
deep Antarctic and brought him safely back again.
"She's a beauty, isn't she?" said Martin.
"Isn't she?" I answered, and in spite of all my troubles I felt entirely
happy.
We had steamed down against a strong tide, so we were half an hour late
for luncheon, and the officers had gone down to the saloon, but it was
worth being a little after time to see the way they all leapt up and
received me like a queen--making me feel, as I never felt before, the
difference between the politeness of the fashionable idlers and the
manners of the men who do things.
"Holloa!" they cried.
"Excuse us, won't you? We thought something had happened and perhaps you
were not coming," said the commander, and then he put me to sit between
himself and Martin.
The strange thing was that I was at home in that company in a moment,
and if anybody imagines that I must have been embarrassed because I was
the only member of my sex among so many men he does not know the heart
of a woman.
They were such big, bronzed manly fellows with the note of health and
the sense of space about them--large space--as if they had come out of
the heroic youth of the world, that they set my blood a-tingling to look
at them.
They were very nice to me too, though I knew that I only stood for the
womankind that each had got at home and was soon to go back to, but none
the less it was delightful to feel as if I were taking the first fruits
of their love for them.
So it came to pass that within a few minutes I, who had been called
insipid and was supposed to have no conversation, was chattering away
softly and happily, making remarks about the things around me and asking
all sorts of questions.
Of course I asked many foolish ones, which made the men laugh very much;
but their laughter did not hurt me the least bit in the world, because
everybody laughed on that ship, even the sailors who served the dishes,
and especially one grizzly old salt, a cockney from Wapping, who for
some unexplained reason was called Treacle.
It made me happy to see how they all deferred to Martin, saying: "Isn't
that so, Doctor?" or "Don't you agree, Doctor?" and though it was
strange and new to hear Martin (my "Mart of Spitzbergen") called
"Doctor," it was also very charming.
After luncheon was over, and while coffee was being served, the
commander sent Treacle to his cabin for a photograph of all hands which
had been taken when they were at the foot of Mount Erebus; and when it
came I was called upon to identify one by one, the shaggy, tousled,
unkempt, bearded, middle-aged men in the picture with the smart,
clean-shaven young officers who sat round me at the table.
Naturally I made shockingly bad shots, and the worst of them was when I
associated Treacle with the commander, which made the latter rock in
his seat and the former shake and shout so much that he spilled the
coffee.
"But what about the fourth man in the front row from the left?" asked
the commander.
"Oh, I should recognise him if I were blindfolded," I answered.
"By what?"
"By his eyes," I said, and after this truly Irish and feminine answer
the men shrieked with laughter.
"She's got you there, doc," cried somebody.
"She has sure," said Martin, who had said very little down to that
moment, but was looking supremely happy.
At length the time came for the men to go, and I went up on deck to see
them off by the launch, and then nobody was left on the ship except
Martin and myself, with the cook, the cabin-boy and a few of the crew,
including Treacle.
I knew that that was the right time to speak, but I was too greedy of
every moment of happiness to break in on it with the story of my
troubles, so when Martin proposed to show me over the ship, away I went
with him to look at the theodolites and chronometers and sextants, and
sledges and skis, and the aeronautic outfit and the captive balloon, and
the double-barrelled guns, and the place where they kept the petroleum
and the gun cotton for blasting the ice, and the hold forward for the
men's provisions in hermetically-sealed tins, and the hold aft for the
dried fish and biscuit that were the food for the Siberian dogs, and the
empty cage for the dogs themselves, which had just been sent up to the
Zoo to be taken care of.
Last of all he showed me his own cabin, which interested me more than
anything else, being such a snug little place (though I thought I should
like to tidy it up a bit), with his medical outfit, his books, his bed
like a shelf, and one pretty photograph of his mother's cottage with the
roses growing over it, that I almost felt as if I would not mind going
to the Antarctic myself if I could live in such comfortable quarters.
Two hours passed in this way, though they had flown like five minutes,
when the cabin-boy came to say that tea was served in the saloon, and
then I skipped down to it as if the ship belonged to me. And no sooner
had I screwed myself into the commander's chair, which was fixed to the
floor at the head of the narrow table, and found the tea-tray almost on
my lap, than a wave of memory from our childhood came sweeping back on
me, and I could not help giving way to the coquetry which lies hidden in
every girl's heart so as to find out how much Martin had been thinking
of me.
"I'll bet you anything," I said, (I had caught Martin's style) "you
can't remember where you and I first saw each other."
He could--it was in the little dimity-white room in his mother's house
with its sweet-smelling "scraas" under the sloping thatch.
"Well, you don't remember what you were doing when we held our first
conversation?"
He did--he was standing on his hands with his feet against the wall and
his inverted head close to the carpet.
"But you've forgotten what happened next?"
He hadn't--I had invited William Rufus and himself into bed, and they
had sat up on either side of me.
Poor William Rufus! I heard at last what had become of him. He had died
of distemper soon after I was sent to school. His master had buried him
in the back-garden, and, thinking I should be as sorry as he was for the
loss of our comrade, he had set up a stone with an inscription in our
joint names--all of his own inditing. It ran--he spelled it out to me--
"HERE LICE WILYAM ROOFUS WRECKTED
BY IZ OLE FRENS MARTIN CONRAD
AND MARY O'NEILL."
Two big blinding beads came into my eyes at that story, but they were
soon dashed away by Martin who saw them coming and broke into the
vernacular. I broke into it, too, (hardly knowing that the well of my
native speech was still there until I began to tap it), and we talked of
Tommy the Mate and his "starboard eye," called each other "bogh mulish,"
said things were "middling," spoke of the "threes" (trees) and the
"tunder" (thunder), and remembered that "our Big Woman was a wicked
devil and we wouldn't trust but she'd burn in hell."
How we laughed! We laughed at everything; we laughed at nothing; we
laughed until we cried; but I have often thought since that this was
partly because we knew in our secret hearts that we were always hovering
on the edge of tragic things.
Martin never once mentioned my husband or my marriage, or his letters to
my father, the Bishop and Father Dan, which had turned out so terribly
true; but we had our serious moments for all that, and one of them was
when we were bending over a large chart which he had spread out on the
table to show me the course of the ship through the Great Unknown,
leaning shoulder to shoulder, so close that our heads almost touched,
and I could see myself in his eyes as he turned to speak to me.
"You were a little under the weather yesterday, shipmate--what was the
cause of it?" he asked.
"Oh, we . . . we can talk of that another time, can't we?" I answered,
and then we both laughed again, goodness knows why, unless it was
because we felt we were on the verge of unlocking the doors of each
other's souls.
Oh that joyful, wonderful, heart-swelling day! But no day ever passed so
quickly. At half-past six Martin said we must be going back, or I should
be late for dinner, and a few minutes afterwards we were in the launch,
which had returned to fetch us.
I had had such a happy time on the ship that as we were steaming off I
kissed my hand to her, whereupon Treacle, who was standing at the top of
the companion, taking the compliment to himself, returned the salute
with affectionate interest, which sent Martin and me into our last wild
shriek of laughter.
The return trip was just as delightful as the coming out had been,
everything looking different the other way round, for the sunset was
like a great celestial fire which had been lighted in the western sky,
and the big darkening city seemed to have turned its face to it.
Martin talked all the way back about a scheme he had afoot for going
down to the region of the Pole again in order to set up some machinery
that was to save life and otherwise serve humanity, and while I sat
close up to him, looking into his flashing eyes--they were still as blue
as the bluest sea--I said, again and again: "How splendid! How glorious!
What a great, great thing it will be for the world."
"Won't it?" he said, and his eyes sparkled like a boy's.
Thus the time passed without our being aware how it was going, and we
were back at Westminster Pier before I bethought me that of the sad and
serious subject I had intended to speak about I had said nothing at
all.
But all London seemed to have been taking holiday that day, for as we
drove in a taxi up Parliament Street streams of vehicles full of happy
people were returning from the Derby, including costers' donkey carts in
which the girls were carrying huge boughs of May blossom, and the boys
were wearing the girls' feathery hats, and at the top of their lusty
lungs they were waking the echoes of the stately avenue with the
"Honeysuckle and the Bee."
"_Yew aw the enny, Oi em ther bee,
Oi'd like ter sip ther enny from those red lips, yew see_."
As we came near our hotel we saw a rather showy four-in-hand coach,
called the "Phoebus," drawing up at the covered way in front of it, and
a lady on top, in a motor veil, waving her hand to us.
It was Alma, with my husband's and Mr. Eastcliff's party back from the
races, and as soon as we met on the pavement she began to pay me high
compliments on my improved appearance.
"Didn't I say the river air would do you good, dearest?" she said, and
then she added something else, which would have been very sweet if it
had been meant sweetly, about there being no surer way to make a girl
beautiful than to make her happy.
There was some talk of our dining together that night, but I excused
myself, and taking leave of Martin, who gave my hand a gentle pressure,
I ran upstairs without waiting for the lift, being anxious to get to my
own room that I might be alone and go over everything in my mind.
I did so, ever so many times, recalling all that had been said and done
by the commander and his comrades, and even by Treacle, but above all by
Martin, and laughing softly to myself as I lived my day over again in a
world of dream.
My maid came in once or twice, with accounts of the gorgeous Derby
dinner that was going on downstairs, but that did not matter to me in
the least, and as soon as I had swallowed a little food I went to bed
early--partly in order to get rid of Price that I might go over
everything again and yet again.
I must have done so far into the night, and even when the wings of my
memory were weary of their fluttering and I was dropping off at last, I
thought I heard Martin calling "shipmate," and I said "Yes," quite loud,
as if he had been with me still in that vague and beautiful shadow-land
which lies on the frontier of sleep.
How mysterious, how magical, how wonderful!
Looking back I cannot but think it strange that even down to that moment
I did not really know what was happening to me, being only conscious of
a great flood of joy. I cannot but think it strange that, though Nature
had been whispering to me for months, I did not know what it had been
saying. I cannot but think it strange that, though I had been looking
for love so long without finding it, I did not recognise it immediately
when it had come to me of itself.
But when I awoke early in the morning, very early, while the sunrise was
filling my bedroom with a rosy flush, and the thought of Martin was the
first that was springing from the mists of sleep to my conscious mind,
and I was asking myself how it happened that I was feeling so glad,
while I had so many causes for grief, then suddenly--suddenly as the sun
streams through the cloud-scud over the sea--I knew that what had long
been predestined had happened, that the wondrous new birth, the great
revelation, the joyous mystery which comes to every happy woman in the
world had come at last to me.