The Record of Nicholas Freydon Part 33

It is, I fear, a confession of natural perversity, but by the time we reached the Mediterranean I was exceedingly restless, and inclined to nervous depression.

I welcomed the various ports of call, and was properly ashamed of the unsocial irritability which made me resent the feeling of being made one of a chattering, laughing, high-spirited horde of tourists, whose descent upon a foreign port seriously damaged whatever charm or interest it might possess. At least the trading residents of these ports were far more sensible than I, their preference undoubtedly causing them to welcome the wielders of camera and guide-book in the vein of 'the more the merrier.'

It was in Naples, outside the Villa n.a.z.ionale, that it fell to me to rescue the elegant young widow, Mrs. Oldcastle, from the embarra.s.sing attentions of a cabman, whose acquaintances were already rallying about him in great force. So far as speech went, my command of Italian was not very much better than Mrs. Oldcastle's perhaps; but at least I had a pocketful of Italian silver, while she, poor lady, had only English money. The cabman was grossly overpaid, of course, but the main point was I silenced him. And then, her flushed cheeks testifying to her embarra.s.sment, Mrs. Oldcastle turned towards the gardens, and, in common courtesy, I walked with her to ascertain if I could be of any further service. The upshot was that we strolled for some time, took tea in the Cafe Umberto, walked through the Museo, visited one of the city's innumerable glove-shops, and finally, still together, drove back to the port and rejoined the _Oronta_.

As fellow-pa.s.sengers we had up till this time merely exchanged casual salutations, Mrs. Oldcastle being one of the three who shared the particular table in the saloon at which I sat. No one else of her name appeared in the pa.s.senger list, in which I had already read the line: 'Mrs. Oldcastle and maid.' I imagined her age to be still something in the earliest thirties, and I had been informed by some obliging gossip that she was English by birth; that she had married an Australian squatter, who had died during the past year or so; that her permanent home was in England, but that she was just now paying a visit to the Commonwealth upon some business connected with her late husband's estates there.

'You have been most kind, Mr. Freydon,' she said, as we stepped from the gangway to the steamer's deck. 'I was in a dreadful muddle by myself, and now, thanks to you, I have really enjoyed my afternoon in Naples. Believe me, I am grateful. And,' she added, with a faint blush, 'I shall now find even greater interest than before in your books. Au revoir!'

So she disappeared, by way of the saloon companion, while I took a turn along the deck to smoke a cigarette. Naturally I had not mentioned my books or profession, and I thought it an odd chance that she should know them. She certainly had been a most agreeable companion, and----

'There's no doubt that life in any other country, no matter where, does seem to enlarge the sympathies of English people,' I told myself.

'It tends to mitigate the severity of their att.i.tude towards the narrower conventions. If this had been her first journey out of England she might have accepted my help in the matter of the cabman, but would almost certainly have felt called upon to reject my company from that on. Instead of which-- H'm! Well, upon my word, I have enjoyed the day far more than I should have done alone. She certainly is very bright and intelligent.'

And I nodded and smiled to myself, recalling some of her comments upon certain figures in the marble gallery of the Museo that afternoon.

There was nothing in the least inane or parrot-like about her conversation. I experienced a more genial and friendly feeling than had been mine till then toward the whole of my fellow-pa.s.sengers.

'After all,' I told myself, 'this forming of hasty impressions of people, from s.n.a.t.c.hes of their talk and mannerisms and so forth, is both misleading and uncharitable. Here have I been sitting at table for a week, and, upon my word, I had no idea that any one among her s.e.x on board had half so much intelligence as she had shown in these few hours away from the crowd. The crowd--that's it. It's misleading to observe folk in the ma.s.s, and in the confinement of a ship.'

The pa.s.sengers' quarters on an ocean liner are fully equal to the residences in a cathedral close as forcing beds of gossip and scandal.

Thus, before we reached the Indian Ocean, I was aware that the gossips had so far condescended as to link my name with that of one whom I certainly rated as the most attractive of her s.e.x on board. Indeed, it was Mrs. Oldcastle herself who drew my attention to this, with a little _moue_ of contempt and disgust.

'Really, people on board ship are too despicable in this matter of gossip,' she said. 'It would seem that they are literally incapable of evolving any other topic than the doings, or supposed doings, of those about them. And the men seem to me just as bad as the women.'

IV

Naturally, the fact that various idle people chose to use my name in their gossip in no sense disturbed my peace of mind. Neither had I any particular occasion to regret it, for Mrs. Oldcastle's sake, since I fancy that independent and high-spirited little lady took a mischievous pleasure in spurring the rather sluggish imaginations of those about her. I found a hint of this in her demeanour occasionally, and could imagine her saying, as she mentally addressed her fellow-pa.s.sengers:

'There! Here's a choice crumb for you, you silly chatterers!'

With some such thought, I am a.s.sured, she occasionally took my arm when we chanced to pace the deck late in the evening. At least, I noted that such actions on her part came frequently when we happened to pa.s.s a group of lady pa.s.sengers in the full glare of an electric lamp, and rarely when we were un.o.bserved.

There is doubtless a certain forceful magic about the combined influences of propinquity and sea air, as these are enjoyed by the idle pa.s.sengers upon a great ocean liner. They do, I think, tend to advance intimacy and accelerate the various stages of intercourse leading thereto, and therefrom, as nothing else does; more particularly as affecting the relations between men and women. Whilst unlike myself (as in most other respects) in that her social instincts were I am sure well developed, it happened that Mrs. Oldcastle did not feel much more drawn toward the majority of her fellow-pa.s.sengers than I did. By a more remarkable coincidence, it chanced that she had read and been interested by several of my books. From such a starting-point, then, it followed almost inevitably that we walked the decks together, and sat and talked together a great deal; these being the normal daily occupations of people so situated, if not indeed the only available occupations for those not given over to such delights as deck quoits.

I am very sure that Mrs. Oldcastle was never what is called a flirt, and I believe the general tone of our conversations was sufficiently rational. Yet I will not deny that there were times--on the balcony of the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo, and on the _Oronta's_ promenade deck by moonlight--when my att.i.tude towards this charming lady was definitely tinged by sentiment. Withal, I doubt if any raw boy could have been more shy, in some respects, than I; for I was most sensitively conscious during this time of the fact that I was a very unsocial, middle-aged man, of indifferent health, and, for that reason, unattractive appearance. Whereas, Mrs. Oldcastle had all the charms of the best type of 'the woman of thirty,' including the evident enjoyment of that sort of health which is the only real preservative of youth. Being by habit a lonely and self-conscious creature, I had even more than the average Englishman's horror of making myself ridiculous.

We were off the coast of south-western Australia when I sat down in my cabin one morning for the purpose of seriously reviewing my position, with special reference to recent conversations with Mrs. Oldcastle.

Certain things I laid down as premises which could not be questioned; as, for example, that I found this gracious little lady (Mrs.

Oldcastle was pet.i.te and softly rounded in figure; I am tall and inclined in these days to a stooping, scraggy kind of gauntness) a most delightful companion, admirably well-informed, vivacious, and unusually gifted in the matter of deductive powers and the sense of humour. Also, that (whatever the ship's chatterboxes might say) there had been nothing in the faintest degree compromising in our relations so far.

From such premises I began to argue with myself upon the question of marriage. It is not very easy to get these things down in black and white. I was perfectly sure that Mrs. Oldcastle was heartwhole. And yet, absurdly presumptuous as it must look when I write it, I was equally sure that it would be possible for me to woo and win her. It may seem odd, but this charming woman did really enjoy my society. She liked talking with me. She found my understanding of her ready and sympathetic, and--what doubtless appealed to both of us--she found that talk with me had a rather stimulating effect upon her; that it drew out, in combating my point of view, the best of her excellent qualities. Using large words for lesser things, she laughingly a.s.serted that I inspired her; and she added that I was the only person she knew who never bored or wearied her. Yes, no matter how awkward the written words may look, I know I was convinced that, if I should set myself to do it, I could woo and win this charming woman, whose first name, by the way, I did not then know.

I did not know Mrs. Oldcastle's precise circ.u.mstances, of course, but there were many ways in which I gathered that she was rather rich than poor. A young Australian among the pa.s.sengers volunteered to me the information that this lady had been the sole legatee of her late husband, who had owned stations in South Australia and in Queensland certainly worth some hundreds of thousands of pounds. Few men could be less attracted than myself by a prospect of controlling a large fortune or extensive properties. But, as against that, whilst marriage with any one possessed of no means would have been mere folly for me, the possession of ample means would remove the most obvious barriers between myself and matrimony.

It was pa.s.sing strange, I thought, that a woman at once so charming and so rich should be travelling alone, and, so far from being surrounded by a court of admirers, content to make such a man as myself almost her sole companion. Mrs. Oldcastle had a mind at once nimble and delicate, sensitive, and quite remarkably quick to seize impressions, and to arrive at (mostly accurate) conclusions. She had a vein of gentle satire, of kindly and withal truly humorous irony, most rare I think in women, and quite delightful in a companion. I learned that her father (now dead) had been the secretary of one of the learned societies in London, and a writer of no mean reputation on archaeology and kindred subjects. Her surviving relatives were few in number, of small means, and resident, I gathered, in the west of England. I had told her a good deal about my London life, and of the circ.u.mstances and plans leading up to my present journey. Her comment was:

'I think I understand perfectly, I am sure I sympathise heartily, and--I give you one more year than your friend, Mr. Heron, allowed. I prophesy that you will return to London within two years.'

'But, just why?' I asked. 'For what reasons will my attempted "way out" prove no more than a way back?'

'Well, I am not sure that I can explain that. No, I don't think I can.

It may prove a good deal more than that, and yet take you back to London within a couple of years. Though I cannot explain, I am sure.

It is not only that you have been a sedentary man all these years. You have also been a thinker. You think intellectual society is of no moment to you. Well, you are very tired, you see. Also, bear this in mind: in the Old World, even for a man who lives alone on a mountain-top, there is more of intellectuality--in the very atmosphere, in the buildings and roads, the hedges and the ditches--than the best cities of the New World have to offer. I suppose it is a matter of tradition and a.s.sociation. The endeavours of the New World are material; a proportion at least of the Old World's efforts are abstract and ideal.

You will see. I give you two years, or nearly. And I don't think for a moment it will be wasted time.'

Sometimes our talk was far more suggestive of the intercourse between two men, fellow-workers even, than that of a man and a woman. Never, I think, was it very suggestive of what it really was: conversation between a middle-aged, and, upon the whole, broken man, and a woman young, beautiful, wealthy, and unattached. Love, in the pa.s.sionate, youthful sense, was not for me, of course, and never again could be. I think I was free from illusions on that point. But I believed I might be a tolerable companion for such a woman as Mrs. Oldcastle, and I felt that her companionship would be a thing very delightful to me.

After all, she had presumably had her love affair, and was now a fully matured woman. Why then should I not definitely lay aside my plans--which even unconventional Sidney Heron thought fantastic--and ask this altogether charming woman to be my wife? Though I could never play the pa.s.sionate lover, my aesthetic sense was far from unconscious or unappreciative of all her purely womanly charm, her grace and beauty of person, as apart from her delightful mental qualities.

I mused over the question through an entire morning, and when the luncheon bugle sounded had arrived at no definite conclusion regarding it.

That afternoon it happened that, as I sat chatting with Mrs.

Oldcastle---we were now in full view of the Australian coast, a rather monotonous though moving picture which was occupying the attention of most pa.s.sengers--our conversation turned upon the age question; how youth was ended in the twentieth year for some people, whilst with others it was prolonged into the thirtieth and even the fortieth year; and, in the case of others again, seemed to last all their lives long.

Mrs. Oldcastle had a friend in London who had placidly adopted middle age in her twenty-fifth year; and we agreed that a white-haired, rubicund gentleman of fully sixty years, then engaged in winning a quoits tournament before our eyes, seemed possessed of the gift of unending youth.

'You know, I really feel quite strongly on the point,' said Mrs.

Oldcastle. 'My friend, Betty Millen, has positively made herself a frump at five-and-twenty. We practically quarrelled over it. I don't think people have any right to do that sort of thing. It is not fair to their friends. Seriously, I do regard it as an actual duty for every one to cherish and preserve her youth.'

'And _his_ youth, too?' I asked.

'Certainly, I think there is even less excuse for men who go out half-way to meet middle-age. That sort of middle-age really is a kind of slow dying. Age is a sort of gradual, piecemeal death, after all. It can be fended off, and ought to be. Men have more active and interesting lives than women, as a rule; and so have the less excuse for allowing age to creep upon them.'

'But surely, in a general way, the poor fellows cannot help it?'

'Oh, I don't agree. I have known men old enough to be my father, so far as years go, who were splendidly youthful. The older a man is, within limits of course, the more interesting he should be, and is, unless he has weakly allowed age to benumb him before his time. Then he becomes merely depressing, a kind of drag and lowering influence upon his friends; and, too, a horridly ageing influence upon them.'

I nodded, musing, none too cheerily.

'After all,' she continued vivaciously, 'science has done such a lot for us of late. Practically every one can keep bodily young and fit.

It only means taking a little trouble. And the rest, I think, is just a question of will-power and mental hygiene. No, I have no patience with people who grow old; unless, of course, they really are very old in years. I think it argues either stupidity or a kind of profligacy--mental, nervous, and emotional, I mean--and in either case it is very unfair to those about them, for there is nothing so horribly contagious.'

I have sometimes wondered if Mrs. Oldcastle had any deliberate purpose in this conversation. Upon the whole, I think not. I remember distinctly that the responsibility for introducing the subject was mine. She might have been covertly instructing me for my own benefit, but I doubt it, I doubt it. My faults of melancholy and unrestfulness had not appeared, I think, in my intercourse with Mrs. Oldcastle, so cheery and enlivening was her influence. No, I think these really were her views, and that she aired them purely conversationally, and without design or afterthought, however kindly. Her own youth she had most admirably conserved, and in a manner which showed real force of character and self-control; for, as I now know, she had had some trying and wearing experiences, though her air and manner were those of a woman young and high-spirited, who had never known a care. As a fact she had known what it was, for three years, to fight against the horrid advance of what was practically a disease, and a terrible one, in her late husband, the chief cause of whose death was alcoholic poisoning.

But, though I am almost sure that this particular conversation was in no sense part of a design or meant to influence me in my relations with her, yet it did, as a matter of fact, serve to put a period to my musings, and bring me to a definite decision, which it may be had considerable importance for both of us. Within forty-eight hours Mrs.

Oldcastle was to leave the _Oronta_, her destination being the South Australian capital. That I had become none too sure of myself in her company is proved by the fact that when I left her that evening, it was with mention of a pretended headache and chill. I kept my cabin next day, and before noon on the day following that we were due at Port Adelaide. Mrs. Oldcastle expressed kindly sympathy in the matter of my supposed indisposition, and that rather upset me. I could see that my non-appearance during her last full day on board puzzled her, and I was not prepared to part from her upon a pretence.

'Why, the fact is,' I said, 'I don't think I can accept your sympathy, because I had no headache or chill. I was a little moody--somewhat middle-aged, you know; and wanted to be alone, and think.'

'I see,' she said thoughtfully, and rather wonderingly.

'I don't very much think you do,' I told her, not very politely. 'And I'm not sure that I can explain--even if it were wise to try. I think, if you don't mind, I'll just say this much: that I greatly value your friendship, and want to retain it, if I can. It seemed to me better to have a headache yesterday, in case--in case I might have done anything to risk losing your friendship.'

'Oh! Well, I do not think you are likely to lose it, for I--I am as much interested as you can be in preserving it. I want you to write to me. Will you? And I will write to you when you have found your hermitage and can give me an address. I will give you my agent's address in Adelaide, and my own address in London, where I shall expect a call from you within two years. No, you wall not find it so easy to lose touch with me, my friend; nor would you if--if you had not had your headache yesterday.'

Upon that she left me to prepare for going ash.o.r.e. I think we understood each other very well then. After that we had no more than a minute together for private talk. During that minute I do not think I said anything except 'Good-bye!' But I very well remember some words Mrs. Oldcastle said.

'You are not to forget me, if you please. Remember, I am not so dull but what I can understand--some headaches. But they must not be accompanied by "moody middle-age." Do please remember when the hermitage palls that it may be left just as easily as it was found.