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.