As I passed through the hall the old colonel and the old clergyman were
standing by the dining-room door. They were talking excitedly, and while
I was going upstairs, panting hard and holding on by the handrail, I
heard part of their conversation.
"Scotia was the name of the South Pole ship, wasn't it?"
"Certainly it was. We must send young John out for a paper."
Reaching my room I dropped into my chair. My faculties had so failed me
that for some minutes I was unable to think. Presently my tired brain
recalled the word "Reported" and to that my last hope began to cling as
a drowning sailor clings to a drifting spar.
After a while I heard some of our boarders talking on the floor below.
Opening my door and listening eagerly I heard one of them say, in such a
casual tone:
"Rather sad--this South Pole business, isn't it?"
"Yes, if it's true."
"Doesn't seem much doubt about that--unless there are two ships of the
same name, you know."
At that my heart leapt up. I had now two rafts to cling to. Just then
the gong sounded, and my anxiety compelled me to go down to tea.
As I entered the drawing-room the old colonel was unfolding a newspaper.
"Here we are," he was saying. "Reported loss of the _Scotia_--Appalling
Antarctic Calamity."
I tried to slide into the seat nearest to the door, but the old actress
made room for me on the sofa close to the tea-table.
"You enjoyed the rehearsal? Yes?" she whispered.
"Hush!" said our landlady, handing me a cup of tea, and then the old
colonel, standing back to the fire, began to read.
_"Telegrams from New Zealand report the picking up of large fragments of
a ship which were floating from the Antarctic seas. Among them were the
bulwarks, some portions of the deck cargo, and the stern of a boat,
bearing the name 'Scotia.'
"Grave fears are entertained that these fragments belong to the schooner
of the South Pole expedition, which left Akaroa a few weeks ago, and the
character of some of the remnants (being vital parts of a ship's
structure) lead to the inference that the vessel herself must have
foundered."_
"Well, well," said the old clergyman, with his mouth full of buttered
toast.
The walls of the room seemed to be moving around me. I could scarcely
see; I could scarcely hear.
_"Naturally there can be no absolute certainty that the 'Scotia' may not
be still afloat, or that the members of the expedition may not have
reached a place of safety, but the presence of large pieces of ice
attached to some of the fragments seem to the best authorities to favour
the theory that the unfortunate vessel was struck by one of the huge
icebergs which have lately been floating up from the direction of the
Admiralty Mountains, and in that case her fate will probably remain one
of the many insoluble mysteries of the ocean."_
"Now that's what one might call the irony of fate," said the old
clergyman, "seeing that the object of the expedition . . ."
"Hush!"
_"While the sympathy of the public will be extended to the families of
all the explorers who have apparently perished in a brave effort to
protect mankind from one of the worst dangers of the great deep, the
entire world will mourn the loss (as we fear it may be) of the heroic
young Commander, Doctor Martin Conrad, who certainly belonged to the
ever-diminishing race of dauntless and intrepid souls who seem to be
born will that sacred courage which leads men to render up their lives
at the lure of the Unknown and the call of a great idea."_
I felt as if I were drowning. At one moment there was the shrieking of
waves about my face; at the next the rolling of billows over my head.
_"Though it seems only too certain . . . this sacred courage quenched
. . . let us not think such lives as his are wasted . . . only wasted
lives . . . lives given up . . . inglorious ease . . . pursuit of idle
amusements. . . . Therefore let loved ones left behind . . . take
comfort . . . inspiring thought . . . if lost . . . not died in vain . . .
Never pleasure but Death . . . the lure that draws true hearts. . . ."_
I heard no more. The old colonel's voice, which had been beating on my
brain like a hammer, seemed to die away in the distance.
"How hard you are breathing. What is amiss?" said our landlady.
I made no reply. Rising to my feet I became giddy and held on to the
table cloth to prevent myself from falling.
The landlady jumped up to protect her crockery and at the same moment
the old actress led me from the room. I excused myself on the ground of
faintness, and the heat of the house after my quick walk home from the
theatre.
Back in my bedroom my limbs gave way and I sank to the floor with my
head on the chair. There was no uncertainty for me now. It was all over.
The great love which had engrossed my life had gone.
In the overwhelming shock of that moment I could not think of the
world's loss. I could not even think of Martin's. I could only think of
my own, and once more I felt as if something of myself had been torn out
of my breast.
"Why? Why?" I was crying in the depths of my heart--why, when I was so
utterly alone, so helpless and so friendless, had the light by which I
lived been quenched.
After a while the gong sounded for dinner. I got up and lay on the bed.
The young waiter brought up some dishes on a tray. I sent them down
again. Then time passed and again I heard voices on the floor below.
"Rough on that young peeress if Conrad has gone down, eh?"
"What peeress?"
"Don't you remember--the one who ran away from that reprobate Raa?"
"Ah, yes, certainly. I remember now."
"Of course, Conrad was the man pointed at, and perhaps if he had lived
to come back he might have stood up for the poor thing, but now. . . ."
"Ah, well, that's the way, you see."
The long night passed.
Sometimes it seemed to go with feet of lead, sometimes with galloping
footsteps. I remember that the clocks outside seemed to strike every few
minutes, and then not to strike at all. At one moment I heard the bells
of a neighbouring church ringing merrily, and by that I knew it was
Christmas morning.
I did not sleep during the first hours of night, but somewhere in the
blank reaches of that short space between night and day (like the
slack-water between ebb and flow), which is the only time when London
rests, I fell into a troubled doze.
I wish I had not done so, for at the first moment of returning
consciousness I had that sense, so familiar to bereaved ones, of memory
rushing over me like a surging tide. I did not cry, but I felt as if my
heart were bleeding.
The morning dawned dark and foggy. In the thick air of my room the
window looked at me like a human eye scaled with cataract. It was my
first experience of a real London fog and I was glad of it. If there had
been one ray of sunshine that morning I think my heart would have
broken.
The cockney chambermaid came with her jug of hot water and wished me "a
merry Christmas." I did my best to answer her.
The young waiter came with my breakfast. I told him to set it down, but
I did not touch it.
Then the cockney chambermaid came back to make up my room and, finding
me still in bed, asked if I would like a fire. I answered "Yes," and
while she was lighting a handful between the two bars of my little grate
she talked of the news in the newspaper.
"It don't do to speak no harm of the dead, but as to them men as 'ad a
collusion with a iceberg in the Australier sea, serve 'em jolly well
right I say. What was they a-doing down there, risking their lives for
nothing, when they ought to have been a-thinking of their wives and
children. My Tom wanted to go for a sailor, but I wouldn't let him! Not
me! 'If you're married to a sailor,' says I, ''alf your time you never
knows whether you 'as a 'usband or 'asn't.' 'Talk sense,' says Tom. 'I
_am_ a-talking sense,' says I, 'and then think of the kiddies,' I says."
After a while I got up and dressed and sat long hours before the fire. I
tried to think of others beside myself who must be suffering from the
same disaster--especially of Martin's mother and the good old doctor. I
pictured the sweet kitchen-parlour in Sunny Lodge, with the bright
silver bowls on the high mantelpiece. There was no fire under the
_slouree_ now. The light of that house was out, and two old people were
sitting on either side of a cold hearth.
I passed in review my maidenhood, my marriage, and my love, and told
myself that the darkest days of my loneliness in London had hitherto
been relieved by one bright hope. I had only to live on and Martin would
come back to me. But now I was utterly alone, I was in the presence of
nothingness. The sanctuary within me where Martin had lived was only a
cemetery of the soul.
"Why? Why? Why?" I cried again, but there was no answer.
Thus I passed my Christmas Day (for which I had formed such different
plans), and I hardly knew if it was for punishment or warning that I was
at last compelled to think of something besides my own loss.
My unborn child!
No man on earth can know anything about that tragic prospect, though
millions of women must have had to face it. To have a child coming that
is doomed before its birth to be fatherless--there is nothing in the
world like that.
I think the bitterest part of my grief was that nobody could ever know.
If Martin had lived he would have leapt to acknowledge his offspring in
spite of all the laws and conventions of life. But being dead he could
not be charged with it. Therefore the name of the father of my unborn
child must never, never, never be disclosed.
The thickening of the fog told me that the day was passing.
It passed. The houses on the opposite side of the square vanished in a
vaporous, yellow haze, and their lighted windows were like rows of
bloodshot eyes looking out of the blackness.
Except the young waiter and the chambermaid nobody visited me until a
little before dinner time. Then the old actress came up, rather
fantastically dressed (with a kind of laurel crown on her head), to say
that the boarders were going to have a dance and wished me to join
them. I excused myself on the ground of headache, and she said:
"Young women often suffer from it. It's a pity, though! Christmas night,
too!"
Not long after she had gone, I heard, through the frequent tooting of
the taxis in the street, the sound of old-fashioned waltzes being played
on the piano, and then a dull thudding noise on the floor below, mingled
with laughter, which told me that the old boarders were dancing.
I dare say my head was becoming light. I had eaten nothing for nearly
forty hours, and perhaps the great shock which chance had given me had
brought me near to the blank shadowland which is death.
I remember that in some vague way there arose before me a desire to die.
It was not to be suicide--my religion saved me from that--but death by
exhaustion, by continuing to abstain from food, having no desire for it.
Martin was gone--what was there to live for? Had I not better die before
my child came to life? And if I could go where Martin was I should be
with him eternally.
Still I did not weep, but--whether audibly or only in the unconscious
depths of my soul--more than once I cried to Martin by name.
"Martin! Martin! I am coming to you!"
I was in this mood (sitting in my chair as I had done all day and
staring into the small slow fire which was slipping to the bottom of the
grate) when I heard a soft step in the corridor outside. At the next
moment my door was opened noiselessly, and somebody stepped into the
room.
It was Mildred, and she knelt by my side and said in a low voice:
"You are in still deeper trouble, Mary--tell me."
I tried to pour out my heart to her as to a mother, but I could not do
so, and indeed there was no necessity. The thought that must have rushed
into my eyes was instantly reflected in hers.
"It is he, isn't it?" she whispered, and I could only bow my head.
"I thought so from the first," she said. "And now you are thinking of
. . . of what is to come?"
Again I could only bow, but Mildred put her arms about me and said:
"Don't lose heart, dear. Our Blessed Lady sent me to take care of you.
And I will--I will."