sick with rage, but there was nothing now to be done except walk back
to “The Black Dog,” which he began to do. Rage gave place to anxiety,
fear of some unthinkable disaster, some tragic horror at the inn.
“What a clumsy fool! All my fault, my own stupidity!” He groaned
when he crossed the bridge at the half distance. He halted there:
“It’s dreadful, dreadful!” A tremor in his blood, the shame of his
foolishness, the fear of catastrophe, all urged him to turn back to the
station and hasten away from these miserable complications.
But he did not do so, for across the marshes at the foot of the uplands
he saw the horse and trap coming back furiously towards him. Orianda
was driving it.
“What has happened?” she cried, jumping from the trap. “O, what fear I
was in, what’s happened?” She put her arms around him tenderly.
“And I was in great fear,” he said with a laugh of relief. “What has
happened?”
“The horse came home, just trotted up to the door and stood still.
Covered with sweat and foam, you see. The trap was empty. We couldn’t
understand it, anything, unless you had been flung out and were
bleeding on the road somewhere. I turned the thing back and came on
at once.” She was without a hat; she had been anxious and touched him
fondly. “Tell me what’s the scare?”
He told her all.
“But Lizzie was not in the trap,” Orianda declared excitedly. “She has
not come back. What does it mean, what does she want to do? Let us find
her. Jump up, Gerald.”
Away they drove again, but nobody had seen anything of Lizzie. She had
gone, vanished, dissolved, and in that strong warm air her soul might
indeed have been blown to Paradise. But they did not know how or why.
Nobody knew. A vague search was carried on in the afternoon, guarded
though fruitless enquiries were made, and at last it seemed clear,
tolerably clear, that Lizzie had conquered her mad impulse or intention
or whatever it was, and walked quietly away across the fields to a
station in another direction.
V
For a day or two longer time resumed its sweet slow delightfulness,
though its clarity was diminished and some of its enjoyment dimmed.
A village woman came to assist in the mornings, but Orianda was now
seldom able to leave the inn; she had come home to a burden, a happy,
pleasing burden, that could not often be laid aside, and therefore a
somewhat lonely Loughlin walked the high and the low of the country by
day and only in the evenings sat in the parlour with Orianda. Hope too
was slipping from his heart as even the joy was slipping from his days,
for the spirit of vanished Lizzie, defrauded and indicting, hung in the
air of the inn, an implacable obsession, a triumphant forboding that
was proved a prophecy when some boys fishing in the mill dam hooked
dead Lizzie from the pool under the hornbeam tree.
Then it was that Loughlin’s soul discovered to him a mass of
feelings—fine sympathy, futile sentiment, a passion for righteousness,
morbid regrets—from which a tragic bias was born. After the dread
ordeal of the inquest, which gave a passive verdict of Found Drowned,
it was not possible for him to stem this disloyal tendency of his mind.
It laid that drowned figure accusatively at the feet of his beloved
girl, and no argument or sophistry could disperse the venal savour that
clung to the house of “The Black Dog.” “To analyse or assess a person’s
failings or deficiencies,” he declared to himself, “is useless, not
because such blemishes are immovable, but because they affect the mass
of beholders in divers ways. Different minds perceive utterly variant
figures in the same being. To Brown Robinson is a hero, to Jones a
snob, to Smith a fool. Who then is right? You are lucky if you can put
your miserable self in relation at an angle where your own deficiencies
are submerged or minimized, and wise if you can maintain your vision of
that interesting angle.” But embedded in Loughlin’s modest intellect
there was a stratum of probity that was rock to these sprays of the
casuist; and although Orianda grew more alluring than ever, he packed
his bag, and on a morning she herself drove him in the gig to the
station.
Upon that miserable departure it was fitting that rain should fall. The
station platform was piled with bushel baskets and empty oil barrels.
It rained with a quiet remorselessness. Neither spoke a word, no one
spoke, no sound was uttered but the faint flicking of the raindrops.
Her kiss to him was long and sweet, her good-bye almost voiceless.
“You will write?” she whispered.
“Yes, I will write.”
But he does not do so. In London he has not forgotten, but he cannot
endure the thought of that countryside—to be far from the madding crowd
is to be mad indeed. It is only after some trance of recollection,
when his fond experience is all delicately and renewingly there, that
he wavers; but time and time again he relinquishes or postpones his
return. And sometimes he thinks he really will write a letter to his
friend who lives in the country.
But he does not do so.
_Alas, Poor Bollington!_
“I walked out of the hotel, just as I was, and left her there. I never
went back again. I don’t think I intended anything quite so final, so
dastardly; I had not intended it, I had not thought of doing so, but
that is how it happened. I lost her, lost my wife purposely. It was
heartless, it was shabby, for she was a nice woman, a charming woman,
a good deal younger than I was, a splendid woman, in fact she was very
beautiful, and yet I ran away from her. How can you explain that,
Turner?”
Poor Bollington looked at Turner, who looked at his glass of whiskey,
and that looked irresistible—he drank some. Bollington sipped a little
from his glass of milk.
I often found myself regarding Bollington as a little old man. Most of
the club members did so too, but he was not that at all, he was still
on the sunny side of fifty, but _so_ unassertive, no presence to speak
of, no height, not enough hair to mention—if he had had it would surely
have been yellow. So mild and modest he cut no figure at all, just a
man in glasses that seemed rather big for him. Turner was different,
though he was just as bald; he had stature and bulk, his very pince-nez
seemed twice the size of Bollington’s spectacles. They had not met each
other for ten years.
“Well, yes,” Turner said, “but that was a serious thing to do.”
“Wasn’t it!” said the other, “and I had no idea of the enormity of the
offence—not at the time. She might have been dead, poor girl, and her
executors advertising for me. She had money you know, her people had
been licensed victuallers, quite wealthy. Scandalous!”
Bollington brooded upon his sin until Turner sighed: “Ah well, my dear
chap.”
“But you have no idea,” protested Bollington, “how entirely she
engrossed me. She was twenty-five and I was forty when we married. She
was entrancing. She had always lived in a stinking hole in Balham, and
it is amazing how strictly some of those people keep their children;
licensed victuallers, did I tell you? Well I was forty, and she was
twenty-five; we lived for a year dodging about from one hotel to
another all over the British Isles, she was a perfect little nomad. Are
you married, Turner?”
No, Turner was not married, he never had been.
“O, but you should be,” cried little Bollington, “it’s an extraordinary
experience, the real business of the world is marriage, marriage. I was
deliriously happy and she was learning French and Swedish—that’s where
we were going later. She was an enchanting little thing, fair, with
blue eyes; Phoebe her name was.”
Turner thoughtfully brushed his hand across his generous baldness, then
folded his arms.
“You really should,” repeated Bollington, “you ought to, really. But
I remember we went from Killarney to Belfast, and there something
dreadful happened. I don’t know, it had been growing on her I suppose,
but she took a dislike to me there, had strange fancies, thought I
was unfaithful to her. You see she was popular wherever we went, a
lively little woman, in fact she wasn’t merely a woman, she was a
little magnet, men congregated and clung to her like so many tacks
and nails and pins. I didn’t object at all—on the contrary, ‘Enjoy
yourself, Phoebe,’ I said, ‘I don’t expect you always to hang around
an old fogey like me.’ Fogey was the very word I used; I didn’t mean
it, of course, but that was the line I took, for she was so charming
until she began to get so bad tempered. And believe me, that made her
angry, furious. No, not the fogey, but the idea that I did not object
to her philandering. It was fatal, it gave colour to her suspicions of
me—Turner, I was as innocent as any lamb—tremendous colour. And she
had such a sharp tongue! If you ventured to differ from her—and you
couldn’t help differing sometimes—she’d positively bludgeon you, and
you couldn’t help being bludgeoned. And she had a passion for putting
me right, and I always seemed to be so very wrong, always. She would
not be satisfied until she had proved it, and it was so monstrous to
be made feel that because you were rather different from other people
you were an impertinent fool. Yes, I seemed at last to gain only the
pangs and none of the prizes of marriage. Now there was a lady we met
in Belfast to whom I paid some attention....”
“O, good lord!” groaned Turner.
“No, but listen,” pleaded Bollington, “it was a very innocent
friendship—nothing was further from my mind—and she was very much
like my wife, very much, it was noticeable, everybody spoke of it— I
mean the resemblance. A Mrs. Macarthy, a delightful woman, and Phoebe
simply loathed her. I confess that my wife’s innuendoes were so mean
and persistent that at last I hadn’t the strength to deny them, in fact
at times I wished they were true. Love is idolatry if you like, but it
cannot be complete immolation—there’s no such bird as the phœnix, is
there, Turner?”
“What, what?”
“No such bird as the phœnix.”
“No, there is no such bird, I believe.”
“And sometimes I had to ask myself quite seriously if I really hadn’t
been up to some infidelity! Nonsense, of course, but I assure you that
was the effect it was having upon me. I had doubts of myself, frenzied
doubts! And it came to a head between Phoebe and me in our room one
day. We quarrelled, O dear, how we quarrelled! She said I was sly,
two-faced, unfaithful, I was a scoundrel, and so on. Awfully untrue,
all of it. She accused me of dreadful things with Mrs. Macarthy and she
screamed out: ‘I hope you will treat her better than you have treated
me.’ Now what did she mean by that, Turner?”
Bollington eyed his friend as if he expected an oracular answer, but
just as Turner was about to respond, Bollington continued: “Well, I
never found out, I never knew, for what followed was too terrible. ‘I
shall go out,’ I said, ‘it will be better, I think.’ Just that, nothing
more. I put on my hat and I put my hand on the knob of the door when
she said most violently: ‘Go with your Macarthys, I never want to see
your filthy face again!’ Extraordinary you know, Turner. Well, I went
out, and I will not deny I was in a rage, terrific. It was raining
but I didn’t care, and I walked about in it. Then I took shelter in
a bookseller’s doorway opposite a shop that sold tennis rackets and
tobacco, and another one that displayed carnations and peaches on wads
of coloured wool. The rain came so fast that the streets seemed to
empty, and the passers-by were horridly silent under their umbrellas,
and their footsteps splashed so dully, and I tell you I was very sad,
Turner, there. I debated whether to rush across the road and buy a lot
of carnations and peaches and take them to Phoebe. But I did not do so,
Turner, I never went back, never.”
“Why, Bollington, you, you were a positive ruffian, Bollington.”
“O, scandalous,” rejoined the ruffian.
“Well, out with it, what about this Mrs. Macarthy?”
“Mrs. Macarthy? But, Turner, I never saw her again, never, I ... I
forgot her. Yes, I went prowling on until I found myself at the docks
and there it suddenly became dark; I don’t know, there was no evening,
no twilight, the day stopped for a moment—and it did not recover. There
were hundreds of bullocks slithering and panting and steaming in the
road, thousands; lamps were hung up in the harbour, cabs and trollies
rattled round the bullocks, the rain fell dismally and everybody
hurried. I went into the dock and saw them loading the steamer, it was
called s.s. _Frolic_, and really, Turner, the things they put into the
belly of that steamer were rather funny: tons and tons of monstrous big
chain, the links as big as soup plates, and two or three pantechnicon
vans. Yes, but I was anything but frolicsome, I assure you, I was full
of misery and trepidation and the deuce knows what. I did not know
what I wanted to do, or what I was going to do, but I found myself
buying a ticket to go to Liverpool on that steamer, and, in short, I
embarked. How wretched I was, but how determined. Everything on board
was depressing and dirty, and when at last we moved off the foam slewed
away in filthy bubbles as if that dirty steamer had been sick and was
running away from it. I got to Liverpool in the early morn, but I did
not stay there, it is such a clamouring place, all trams and trollies
and teashops. I sat in the station for an hour, the most miserable man
alive, the most miserable ever born. I wanted some rest, some peace,
some repose, but they never ceased shunting an endless train of goods
trucks, banging and screeching until I almost screamed at the very
porters. Criff was the name on some of the trucks, I remember, Criff,
and everything seemed to be going criff, criff, criff. I haven’t
discovered to this day what Criff signifies, whether it’s a station
or a company, or a manufacture, but it was Criff, I remember. Well, I
rushed to London and put my affairs in order. A day or two later I went
to Southampton and boarded another steamer and put to sea, or rather we
were ignominiously lugged out of the dock by a little rat of a tug that
seemed all funnel and hooter. I was off to America, and there I stopped
for over three years.”
Turner sighed. A waiter brought him another glass of spirit.
“I can’t help thinking, Bollington, that it was all very fiery and
touchy. Of course, I don’t know, but really it was a bit steep, very
squeamish of you. What did your wife say?”
“I never communicated with her, I never heard from her, I just dropped
out. My filthy face, you know, she did not want to see it again.”
“Oh come, Bollington! And what did Mrs. Macarthy say?”
“Mrs. Macarthy! I never saw or heard of her again. I told you that.”
“Ah, yes, you told me. So you slung off to America.”
“I was intensely miserable there for a long while. Of course I loved
Phoebe enormously, I felt the separation, I.... O, it is impossible to
describe. But what was worst of all was the meanness of my behaviour,
there was nothing heroic about it, I soon saw clearly that it was a
shabby trick, disgusting, I had bolted and left her to the mercy of
... well, of whatever there was. It made such an awful barrier—you’ve
no idea of my compunction—I couldn’t make overtures—‘Let us forgive
and forget.’ I was a mean rascal, I _was_ filthy. That was the
barrier—myself; I was too bad. I thought I should recover and enjoy
life again, I began to think of Phoebe as a cat, a little cat. I went
everywhere and did everything. But America is a big country, I couldn’t
get into contact, I was lonely, very lonely, and although two years
went by I longed for Phoebe. Everything I did I wanted to do with
Phoebe by my side. And then my cousin, my only relative in the world—he
lived in England—he died. I scarcely ever saw him, but still he was my
kin. And he died. You’ve no comprehension, Turner, of the truly awful
sensation such a bereavement brings. Not a soul in the world now would
have the remotest interest in my welfare. O, I tell you, Turner, it was
tragic, tragic, when my cousin died. It made my isolation complete. I
was alone, a man who had made a dreadful mess of life. What with sorrow
and remorse I felt that I should soon die, not of disease, but disgust.”
“You were a great ninny,” ejaculated his friend. “Why the devil didn’t
you hurry back, claim your wife, bygones be bygones; why bless my
conscience, what a ninny, what a great ninny!”
“Yes, Turner, it is as you say. But though conscience is a good
servant it is a very bad master, it overruled me, it shamed me, and
I hung on to America for still another year. I tell you my situation
was unbearable, I was tied to my misery, I was a tethered dog, a duck
without water—even dirty water. And I hadn’t any faith in myself or
in my case; I knew I was wrong, had always been wrong, Phoebe had
taught me that. I hadn’t any faith, I wish I had had. Faith can move
mountains, so they say, though I’ve never heard of it actually being
done.”
“No, not in historical times,” declared Turner.
“What do you mean by that?”
“O well, time is nothing, it’s nothing, it comes and off it goes.
Has it ever occurred to you, Bollington, that in 5,000 years or so
there will be nobody in the world speaking the English language,
our very existence even will be speculated upon, as if we were the
Anthropophagi? O good lord, yes.”
And another whiskey.
“You know, Bollington, you were a perfect fool. You behaved like one of
those half-baked civil service hounds who lunch in a dairy on a cup of
tea and a cream horn. You wanted some beef, some ginger. You came back,
you must have come back because there you are now.”
“Yes, Turner, I came back after nearly four years. Everything was
different, ah, how strange! I could not find Phoebe, it is weird how
people can disappear. I made enquiries, but it was like looking for a
lost umbrella, fruitless after so long.”
“Well, but what about Mrs. Macarthy?”
Mr. Bollington said, slowly and with the utmost precision: “I did not
see Mrs. Macarthy again.”
“O, of course, you did not see her again, not ever.”
“Not ever. I feared Phoebe had gone abroad too, but at last I found her
in London....”
“No,” roared Turner, “why the devil couldn’t you say so and done with
it? I’ve been sweating with sympathy for you. O, I say, Bollington!”
“My dear Turner, listen. Do you know, she was delighted to see me, she
even kissed me, straight off, and we went out to dine and had the very
deuce of a spread and we were having the very deuce of a good time.
She was lovelier than ever, and I could see all her old affection for
me was returning, she was so ... well, I can’t tell you, Turner, but
she had no animosity whatever, no grievance, she would certainly have
taken me back that very night. O dear, dear ... and then! I was anxious
to throw myself at her feet, but you couldn’t do that in a public café,
I could only touch her hands, beautiful, as they lay on the white linen
cloth. I kept asking: ‘Do you forgive me?’ and she would reply: ‘I have
nothing to forgive, dear, nothing.’ How wonderful that sounded to my
truly penitent soul—I wanted to die.
“‘But you don’t ask me where I’ve been!’ she cried gaily, ‘or what I’ve
been doing, you careless old Peter. I’ve been to France, and Sweden
too!’
“I was delighted to hear that, it was so very plucky.
“‘When did you go?’ I asked.
“‘When I left you,’ she said.
“‘You mean when I went away?’
“‘Did you go away? O, of course, you must have. Poor Peter, What a sad
time he has had.’
“I was a little bewildered, but I was delighted; in fact, Turner, I was
hopelessly infatuated again, I wanted to wring out all the dregs of my
detestable villainy and be absolved. All I could begin with was: ‘Were
you not very glad to be rid of me?’
“‘Well,’ she said, ‘my great fear at first was that you would find me
again and make it up. I didn’t want that then, at least, I thought I
didn’t.’
“‘That’s exactly what I felt,’ I exclaimed, ‘but how could I find you?’
“‘Well,’ Phoebe said, ‘you might have found out and followed me. But I
promise never to run away again, Peter dear, never.’
“Turner, my reeling intelligence swerved like a shot bird.
“‘Do you mean, Phoebe, that you ran away from _me_?’
“‘Yes, didn’t I?’ she answered.
“‘But I ran away from _you_,’ I said. ‘I walked out of the hotel on
that dreadful afternoon we quarrelled so, and I never went back. I went
to America. I was in America nearly four years.’
“‘Do you mean you ran away from me?’ she cried.
“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘didn’t I?’
“‘But that is exactly what I did—I mean, I ran away from you. _I_
walked out of the hotel directly you had gone—_I_ never went back, and
I’ve been abroad thinking how tremendously I had served you out, and
wondering what you thought of it all and where you were.’
“I could only say ‘Good God, Phoebe, I’ve had the most awful four years
of remorse and sorrow, all vain, mistaken, useless, thrown away.’ And
she said: ’And I’ve had four years—living in a fool’s paradise after
all. How dared you run away, it’s disgusting!’
“And, Turner, in a moment she was at me again in her old dreadful way,
and the last words I had from her were: ‘Now I _never_ want to see your
face again, never, this _is_ the end!’
“And that’s how things are now, Turner. It’s rather sad, isn’t it?”
“Sad! Why you chump, when was it you saw her?”
“O, a long time ago, it must be nearly three years now.”
“Three years! But you’ll see her again!”
“Tfoo! No, no, no, Turner. God bless me, no, no, no!” said the little
old man.
_The Ballet Girl_
On the last night of Hilary term Simpkins left his father’s shop a
quarter before the closing hour in order to deliver personally a letter
to John Evans-Antrobus, Esq., of St. Saviour’s College. Simpkins was
a clerk to his father, and the letter he carried was inscribed on its
envelope as “Important,” and a further direction, “Wait Answer,” was
doubly underlined. Acting as he was told to act by his father, than
whom he was incapable of recognizing any bigger authority either in
this world or, if such a slight, shrinking fellow could ever project
his comprehension so far, in the next, he passed the porter’s lodge
under the archway of St. Saviour’s, and crossing the first quadrangle,
entered a small hall that bore the names J. Evans-Antrobus with half
a dozen others neatly painted on the wall. He climbed two flights of
wooden stairs, and knocking over a door whose lintel was marked “5,
Evans-Antrobus,” was invited to “Come in.” He entered a study, and
confronted three hilarious young men, all clothed immaculately in
evening dress, a costume he himself privily admired much as a derelict
might envy the harp of an angel. The noisiest young gentleman, the
tall one with a monocle, was his quarry; he handed the letter to him.
Mr. Evans-Antrobus then read the letter, which invited him to pay
instanter a four-year-old debt of some nine or ten pounds which he had
inexplicably but consistently overlooked. And there was a half-hidden
but unpleasant alternative suggested should Mr. Evans-Antrobus fail
to comply with this not unreasonable request. Mr. Evans-Antrobus said
“Damn!” In point of fact he enlarged the scope of his vocabulary far
beyond the limits of that modest expletive, while his two friends,
being invited to read the missive, also exclaimed in terms that were
not at all subsidiary.
“My compliments to Messrs. Bagshot and Buffle!” exclaimed the tall
young man with the monocle angrily; “I shall certainly call round and
see them in the morning. Good evening!”
Little Simpkins explained that Bagshot and Buffle were not in need of
compliments, their business being to sell boots and to receive payment
for them. Two of the jolly young gentlemen proposed to throw him down
the stairs, and were only persuaded not to by the third jolly young
gentleman, who much preferred to throw him out of the window. Whereupon
Simpkins politely hinted that he would be compelled to interview the
college dean and await developments in his chambers. Simpkins made it
quite clear that, whatever happened, he was going to wait somewhere
until he got the money. The three jolly young gentlemen then told
little Simpkins exactly what they thought of him, exactly, omitting no
shade of denunciation, fine or emphatic. They told him where he ought
to be at the very moment, where he would quickly be unless he took
himself off; in short, they told him a lot of prophetic things which,
as is the way of prophecy, invited a climax of catastrophic horror.
“What is your name? Who the devil are you?”
“My name is Simpkins.”