ENGLAND
A week later, Antony was sitting in a first-class carriage on his way
from Plymouth to Waterloo. He gazed through the window, his mind filled
with various emotions.
Uppermost was the memory of the voyage and the Duchessa. The memory
already appeared to him almost as a vivid and extraordinarily beautiful
dream, though reason assured him to the contrary. The whole events of the
last month, and even his present position in the train, appeared to him
intangible and unreal. It seemed a dream self, rather than the real
Antony, who was gazing from the window at the landscape which was
slipping past him; who was looking out on the English fields, the English
woods, and the English cottages past which the train was tearing. He saw
gardens ablaze with flowers; bushes snowy with hawthorn; horses and cows
standing idly in the shadow of the trees; and, now and again, small,
trimly-kept country stations, looking for all the world like prim
schoolgirls in gay print dresses.
He glanced from the window to the rack opposite to him, where his
portmanteau was lying. That, at all events, was tangible, real, and
familiar. It struck the sole familiar note in the extraordinary
unfamiliarity of everything around him. He looked at his own initials
painted on it, slowly tracing them in his mind. He pulled out his
pocket-book, and took from it the letter which had altered the whole
perspective of his life. He could almost see the African stoep as he
looked at it, feel the heat of the African sun, hear the occasional
chirping of the grasshoppers. Age-old the memory appeared, caught from
bygone centuries. And it was only a month ago. Replacing it in the book,
his eye fell upon a small piece of pasteboard. The Duchessa had given it
to him that morning. Her name was printed on it, and below she had
written a few pencilled words,--her address in Scotland. She was
remaining in Plymouth for a day or so, before going North. He was to
write to her at the Scotland address, and let her know where she could
acquaint him with her further movements, and the actual date of her
return to the Manor House. That, too, was tangible and real,--that small
piece of white pasteboard. And, then, a little movement beside him, and a
long quivering sigh of content brought back to him the most tangible
thing of all--Josephus. Josephus, who was sleeping the sleep of the
contented, just after a frenzied and rapturous reunion with his deity.
Oh, of course it was all real, and it was he, Antony, his very self, who
was sitting in the train, the train which was rushing through the good
old English country, carrying him towards London and the answer to the
riddle contained in that most amazing of letters.
"It isn't a dream, Josephus," he assured the sleepy puppy. "I am real,
you are real, the train is real, England is real, and Heaven be
praised--the Duchessa is real." After which act of assurance he turned
his attention once more to the window.
And now, the dream sense dispelled, he found long-forgotten memories
awaken within him, memories of early boyhood, aroused by the sight of
some old church tower, of some wood lying on a hillside, of some amber
stream rippling past rush-grown banks. He hugged the memories to his
soul, rejoicing in them. They brought a dozen trivial little incidents to
his mind. He could hear his old nurse's voice warning him not to lean
against the door of the carriage. He could feel his small nose pressed
against the window-pane, his small hand rubbing the glass where it had
been dimmed by his breath. He could hear the crackle of paper bags, as
sandwiches and buns were produced for his refreshment; he could taste the
ham between the pieces of bread and butter; and he could see a small boy,
with one eye on his nurse, pushing a piece of fat between the cushions of
the seat and the side of the carriage. This last memory evoked a little
chuckle of laughter. That nurse had been a strong disciplinarian.
The memories linked together, forming a more connected whole. He recalled
places farther afield than those caught sight of from the window of the
train. He remembered a copse yellow with primroses, a pond where he had
fished for sticklebacks, a bank with a robin's nest in it. He remembered
a later visit with an aunt. He must then have been fourteen or
thereabouts. There had been a small girl, staying with her aunt at a
neighbouring farm, who had accompanied him on his rambles. Despite her
tender age--she couldn't have been more than five years old--she had been
the inventor of their worst escapades. It was she who had egged him on to
the attempt to cross the pond on a log of wood, racing round it to shout
encouragement from the opposite side. The timely advent of one of the
farm-labourers alone had saved him from a watery grave. It was she who
had invented the bows and arrows with which he had accidentally shot the
prize bantam, and it was she who had insisted on his going with her to
search for pheasants' eggs, a crime for which he barely escaped the
penalty of the law.
He remembered her as a fragile fair-haired child, with a wide-eyed
innocence of expression, utterly at variance with her true character. In
spite of her nobly shouldering her full share of the blame, he had
invariably been considered sole culprit, which he most assuredly was not,
though weight of years should have taught him better. But then, one could
hardly expect the Olympians to lay any measure of such crimes at the door
of a grey-eyed, fair-haired angel. And that was what she had appeared to
mere superficial observation. It required extreme perspicacity of vision,
or great intimacy, to arrive at anything a trifle nearer the truth. He
sought in the recesses of his memory for her name. That it had suited her
admirably, and that it was monosyllabic, was all he could remember. After
a few minutes fruitless search, he abandoned it as hopeless, and pulled
pipe and tobacco pouch from his pocket.
Presently he saw the square tower and pinnacles of Exeter Cathedral above
some trees, and the train ran into the station. Antony watched the people
on the platform with interest. They were English, and it was thirteen
years since he had been in England. He listened to the fragmentary
English sentences he heard, finding pleasure in the sound. He marvelled
idly at the lack of colour in the scene before him. The posters on the
walls alone struck a flamboyant note. Yet there was something restful in
the monochrome of the dresses, the dull smoke-griminess of the station.
At all events it was a contrast to the vivid colouring of the African
veldt.
Despite his interest in his fellow humans, however, he found himself
devoutly trusting his privacy would remain undisturbed, and it was with a
sense of relief that he felt the train glide slowly out of the station,
leaving him the sole occupant of his compartment.
Later, he saw the spire of Salisbury Cathedral. Again fortune favoured
him in the matter of privacy, and presently drowsiness descended on his
eyelids, which was not fully dispelled till the train ran into the gloom
of Waterloo station.