The Last Stage

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_ I

'What do you aim at in your life?' I said to Sidney Heron one night, when the first decade of the new century was drawing near its close. Heron had dined with me, and we had continued our talk in my rooms. It was a Saturday night, and therefore for me free of engagements.

'The end of it,' replied Heron, without a moment's hesitation.

'Ah! Nothing else? Nothing to come before the end?'

'Oh, well, to be precise, I suppose one does, in certain moods, cherish vague hopes of coming upon a--a way out, you know, some time before the end; time to compose one's mind decently before the prime adventure. Yes, one cherishes the notion vaguely; but I apprehend that realisation of it is only for such swells as you. I have sometimes known thrifty bursts, in which I have saved a little; but--a man doesn't buy estates out of my sort of work, you know. He's lucky if he can keep out-- Well, out of Fleet Street, say, saving your worship's presence.'

'Yes, yes; you've always done that, haven't you? A negative kind of ambition, perhaps, but----'

'Oh, naturally, you must pretend scorn for it, I see that,' said Heron.

'Not at all, my dear chap, not a bit of it. Indeed, I should be one of the last to scorn that particular aim. But I was wondering if you cherished any other. A "way out." Yes, there's something rather heart-stirring about the thought. I wonder if there is such a thing as a "way out." I forget the name of the Roman gentleman who hankered after a "way out." Once in a year or so he used to wake up, full of the conviction that he'd found it. Out came the family chariots, and off he would gallop across the Campagna to the hills beyond, where, no doubt, he had a villa of sorts, vineyards, and the rest of it. Here, in chaste seclusion, was his "way out": a glorious relief, the beginning of the great peace. And, a few weeks later, Rome would see his chariots dashing back again into the city, even harder driven than on the passage out. However, I suppose there is a "way out" somewhere for every one.'

'Well, I wouldn't say for every one,' said Heron thoughtfully. 'It doesn't matter how fast you drive, you can't get away from yourself, of course. The question of whether there is or is not a "way out" depends on what you want to get away from, and where you want to reach.'

It may be well enough to say with the poet: 'What so wild as words are?' But the fact remains that mere words, and the grouping of words, apart from their normal, everyday significance, have a notable influence upon the thoughts of some folk, and especially, I suppose, of writers. I know that Heron's careless 'way out' phrase occupied my mind greatly for many weeks after it was spoken.

'After all,' I sometimes asked myself, 'what has my whole life amounted to but an uneasy, restless, striving search for a "way out"? It has never been "to-day" with me, but always "to-morrow"; and the morrow has never come. Never for a moment have I thought: "This thing in my hand is what I want; this present Here and Now is what I desire. I will retain this, and so shall be content." No, my strivings--and I have been always striving--have been for something the future was to bring. And, behold, what was the future is more barren than the past; it is that thing which I seem incapable of valuing--the present. Is there a "way out" for me? Surely there must be. I certainly am no more fastidious than my neighbours, and indeed am much simpler in my tastes than most of them.'

And that was true. If I could lay claim to no other kind of progress, I could fairly say that I had cultivated simplicity in taste and appetite, and did in all honesty prefer simple ways. That otherwise abominable thing, my disabled digestive system, had perhaps influenced me in this direction. In days gone by, I should have said my most desired 'way out' would be the path to independent leisure for literary work. Now, if I desired anything, it was independent leisure, not for the production of immortal books, but for thinking; for the calm thought that should yield self-comprehension. Yes, I told myself, I hated the daily round of Fleet Street, with its never-slackening demand for the production of restrained moralising, polished twaddle, and non-committal, two-sided conclusions, or careful omissions, and one-eyed deductions. It was thus I thought of it, then.

'What you want is a holiday, my friend,' said Arncliffe, upon whose kindly heart and front of brass the beating of the waves of Time seemed powerless to develop the smallest fissure.

'You are right,' I thought. 'A holiday without an end is what I want. And, why not take it, instead of waiting till the other end comes, and shuts out all possibility of holidays, work, or thought? Why not?'

I began a reckoning up of my resources. But it was a perfunctory reckoning. The facts really did not greatly interest me. After all, had I not once calmly set up my establishment in the country, with a total capital of perhaps twenty pounds? Or, if one came to that, had I not cheerfully sallied forth into the world, armed only with a one-pound note? True, I told myself, with some bitterness, the youth had possessed many capabilities which the man lacked. Still, the reckoning did not greatly interest me. And, while I made it, my thoughts persistently reverted to Australian bush scenes; never, by the way, to my days of comparative prosperity in Sydney, but always to bush scenes: camp fires under vast and sombre red mahogany trees; lonely tracks in heavily timbered country; glimpses of towns like Dursley, seen from the rugged tops of high wooded ridges; little creeks, lisping over stones never touched by the feet of men or beasts; tiny clearings among the hills, where a spiral of blue smoke bespoke an open hearth and human care, though no sound disturbed the peaceful solitude save the hum of insects and the occasional cry of birds.

Now and again I would allow myself to compose a mental picture of some peaceful retreat upon the outskirts of a remote English village, where every stock and stone would have a history, and every inhabitant prove a repository of folklore and local tradition. From actual experience I still knew very little of rural England, though of late years I had done some exploring. But, vicariously, I had lived much in Wessex, East Anglia, the delectable Duchy, and other parts of the country, through the works of favourite writers. And so I did dream at times of an English retreat, but always such musings would end upon a note of scepticism. These parts were not far enough away to furnish anything so wonderful, so epoch-making, as my desired 'way out.' For persons of my temperament one of the commonest and most disastrous blunders of life is the tacit assumption that the thing easy of attainment and near at hand cannot possibly prove the thing one wants.

Gradually, then, the idea developed in my mind that the true solution of my problems lay in a working back upon my life's tracks. My thoughts wandered insistently to the northern half of the coast of New South Wales. Even now I could hardly say just how much of my retrospective vision was genuine recollection, and how much the glamour of youth. I tried to recall without sentiment the effects produced upon me, for example, by the climate of that undoubtedly favoured region. But I am not sure that my efforts gave results of any practical value. For practical purposes it is extremely difficult, in middle life, to form reliable estimates of the congeniality to one's self of any place to which one has been a stranger since youth. Recollections pitched in such a key as, 'How good one used to feel when--,' or,'How beautiful the country looked at ---- when one--,' are apt to be very misleading for a man of broken health and middle age; the one thing he cannot properly allow for being the radical change which has taken place in himself. I bore the name of the lad who tramped the roads from Myall Creek down to Dursley. In most other respects I was not now that person, but somebody else--a totally different somebody.

I could not very well talk of the plans which now took shape in my mind to Sidney Heron; because, in effect, he declined to discuss them.

'I think it would be a rather less reasonable step than suicide, and I have always declined to discuss suicide. One must see some glimmer of rationality in a project to be able to discuss it, and in this notion of yours I can see none, none whatever.'

A vague suspicion that others might be likely to share Heron's view prevented my seeking the counsel of my few friends; and also, I fear, tended rather to strengthen my inclinations to go my own way. The more I thought upon it, the more determined I became to cut completely adrift from my present life; to find a way of escaping all its insistent calls; to get far enough away from my life (so to say) to be able calmly and thoughtfully to observe it, and seek to understand it. I did not admit this, but I suppose my real aim was to escape from myself.

'Your lease is not a long one, in any case,' I told myself. 'While yet you have the chance cease to be a machine, and begin to live as a rational, reasoning creature. Be done with your petty striving after ends you have forgotten, or cannot see, or care nothing for. Get out into the open, and live, and think!'

I do not quite know the basis of my conviction that I should never make old bones, as the saying goes. The life assurance offices certainly shared this view, for they would have none of me. (I had long since thought of taking out what is called a double endowment policy.) My father died at an early age, and I had known good health hardly at all since my first two years in London. The doctor who had last examined me showed that he thought poorly of my heart; and, indeed, experience had taught me that prolonged gastric disorder is calculated to affect injuriously most organs of the human anatomy. But the thinking and planning with regard to a radical change in my life had given me a certain interest in living, and that had acted beneficially upon my health; so that, for the time being, I felt better than for a long while past.

While this fact gave a certain air of unreality to the resignation, on the grounds of ill-health, from my appointment as a member of Arncliffe's staff, it did not in the least affect my weariness of Fleet Street and all its works, or my determination to be done with them. The circle of my intimates was so very small that the task of explaining my intentions was not a formidable one, nor even one which I felt called upon to perform with any particular thoroughness. I proposed to take a voyage for the good of my health, and did not know precisely when I should return. That I deemed sufficient for most of those to whom anything at all needed to be said.

II

There was something strange, a dream-like want of reality, about my final departure from England, after five-and-twenty years of working life in London. I am not likely to forget any incident of it; but yet the whole experience, both at the time and now, seemed (and seems) to be shrouded in a kind of mist, a by no means disagreeable haze of unreality, which in a measure numbed all my senses. More than ever before I seemed to be, not so much living through an experience, as observing it from a detached standpoint.

Investigation of my resources showed that I had accumulated some means during the past dozen years of simple living and incessant work, not ill-paid. I had just upon two thousand pounds invested, and between one and two hundred pounds lying to my credit at call, I told myself that living alone and simply in the bush, a hundred pounds in the year would easily cover all my expenses. That I had anything like twenty years of life before me was a supposition which I could not entertain for one moment. And, therefore, I told myself again and again, with curious insistence, there really was no reason why I need ever again work for money, or waste one moment over petty anxiety regarding ways and means. That was a very great boon, I told myself; the greatest of all boons, and better fortune than in recent years I had dared to hope would be mine. And, puzzled by the coldness with which my inner mind responded to these assurances, I would reiterate them, watching my mind the while, and almost angered by the absence of elation and enthusiasm which I observed there.

'You have not properly realised as yet what it means, my friend,' I murmured to myself as I walked slowly through city alley-ways, after booking my passage to Sydney in a steam ship of perhaps seven times the tonnage of the old Ariadne of my boyhood's journey to Australia. 'But it is the biggest thing you have ever known. You will begin to realise it presently. You are free. Do you hear? An absolutely free man. You need never write another line unless you wish it, and then you may write precisely what you think, no more, no less. You are going right away from this howling cockpit, and never need set foot in it again. You are going to a beautiful climate, a free life in the open, with no vestige of sham or pretence about it, and long, secure leisure to reflect, to think, to muse, to read, to do precisely what you desire to do, and nothing else. You are free--free! Do you hear, you tired hack? Too tired to prick your ears, eh? Ah, well, wait till you've been a week or two at sea!'

Very quietly I addressed my sluggish and jaded self in this wise. Yet more than one hurried walker in the city ways looked curiously at me, as I passed along, with a wondering scrutiny which amused me a good deal. 'Too tired to prick your ears.' The suggestion came from the contemptuously self-commiserating thought that I was rather like a worn-out 'bus horse, to whom some benevolent minor Providence was offering the freedom of a fine grazing paddock. 'You're too much galled and spavined, you poor devil, to be moved by verbal assurances. Wait till you scent the breezy upland, and your feet feel the turf. You'll know better what it all means then.'

I had entertained vague notions of a little farewell feast which I would give to Heron, and, possibly, to one or two other friends. But from the reality of such convivial enterprise I shrank, when the time came, preferring to adopt, even to Heron, the attitude of a traveller who would presently return. And when, as the event proved, I found myself the guest of honour at a dinner presided over by Arncliffe, my embarrassment pierced through all sense of unreality and caused me acute discomfort.

It is odd that I, who always have been foolishly sensitive to blame (from professed critics and others), should shrink so painfully from spoken praise or formal tribute of any kind. It makes my skin hot even to recall the one or two such episodes I have faced. The wretched inability to think where to dispose of one's hands and gaze during the genial delivery of after-dinner encomiums; the distressing difficulty of replying! Upon the whole, I think I was better at receiving punishment. But it is true, the latter one received in privacy, and was under no obligation to answer; since replying to printed criticisms was never a folly I indulged.

On the eve of my departure from London I did a curious and perhaps foolish thing, on the spur of a moment's impulse. I hailed a cab, and drove to Cynthia's house in Sloane Street. Yes, Mr. and Mrs. Barthrop were at home, and alone, the servant told me; and in another few moments I was shaking hands with them. Naturally, they called my visit an unexpected pleasure. It was, in fact, not a very pleasurable quarter of an hour for either one of us. For years I had known nothing of their interests, or they of mine. Our talk was necessarily shallow, and I dare say Cynthia, no less than her husband, was glad when I rose to take my leave. The sweet, clear candour of her face had given place, I thought, to something not wholly unlike querulousness. But, I had one glance from her eyes, as she took my hand, which seemed to me to say:

'God speed! I understand.'

It may have meant nothing, but I like to think it meant understanding.

From Cynthia's house I went on to Heron's lodging, for I had a horror of being 'seen off,' and wished to bid my friend good-bye in his own rooms. Our talk was constrained, I remember. The stress of my uprooting affected me far more than I knew at the time. Heron regarded my going with grave disapproval as a crazy step. He regretted it, too; and such feelings always tended to exaggerate his tendency to taciturnity, or to a harsh, sardonic vein in speech.

As his way was in such a matter, Heron calmly ignored my stipulation about being 'seen off,' and he was standing beside the curb when I stepped out of my cab at Fenchurch Street Station next morning. There was nearly half an hour to spare, we found, before the boat train started.

'The correct thing would be a stirrup-cup,' growled Heron.

'The very thing,' I said; conversation in such a place, and in such circumstances, proving quite impossible for me. By an odd chance I recalled my first experiences upon arrival at this same mean and dolorous station, more than twenty years previously. 'We will go to the house in which the "genelmun orduder bawth,"' I said, and led Heron across into the Blue Boar.

The forced jocularity of these occasions is apt to be a pitifully wooden business, and I suppose it was a relief to us both when my train began slowly to move.

'By the way--I had forgotten,' said Heron, very gruffly. 'Take this trifle with you-- May be of some use. Good-bye! Look me up as soon as you get back. I give you a year--or nearly.'

He waved his hand jerkily, and was gone. He had given me the silver cigarette-case which he had used for all the years of our acquaintance. It bore his initials in one corner, and under these I now saw engraved: 'To N. F., 1890-1910.' I do not recall any small incident that impressed me more than this.

I still moved through a mist. The voices of my travelling companions seemed oddly small and remote. I felt as though encased and insulated, in some curious way, from the everyday life about me. And this mood possessed me all through that day. Through all the customary bustle of an ocean liner's departure, I moved slowly, silently, aloofly, as a somnambulist. It was a singular outsetting, this start upon my 'way out.'

III

In ordinary times my thrifty instinct might have led me to travel in the second class division of the great steamer. But it had happened that the sum I set aside to cover my travelling expenses proved more than ample. Several small unreckoned additions had been made to it during my last month in England; and the upshot was that I decided to travel by first saloon, and even to indulge myself in the added luxury of a single-berth, upper-deck cabin. For me privacy had for long been one of the few luxuries I really did value. Heron had mildly satirised my sybaritic plans as representing an ingenious preparation for hut life in the Australian bush, but I had claimed that comfort and privacy on the passage would give me a deserved holiday, and help put me into good form for my fresh start oversea. I am not sure which view was the more correct.

At all events I certainly was very comfortably placed on board the Oronta. My books I had deliberately packed in boxes marked 'Not wanted on voyage.' There was not so much as a sheet of manuscript paper among my cabin luggage. Beyond an odd letter or two for postage at ports of call, and any casual browsing in the ship's library to which I might feel impelled in my idleness, I was prepared to give no thought to reading or writing for the present; since for five-and-twenty years I had been giving practically all my days and half my nights to these pursuits as a working man of letters.

I had amused myself of late with elaborate anticipations of the delights of idleness during this passage to Australia. My ideas of sea travel were really culled from recollections of life on a full rigged clipper ship--not a steamboat. (The homeward passage from Australia had hardly been sea-travel in the ordinary sense for me, but rather six weeks of clerking in an office.) In my anticipations of the present journey, the dominant impressions had been based upon memories of the spotless cleanliness, endless leisure, and primitive simplicity of the old time sailing ship life. I do not mean that I had thought I should trot about the decks of the Oronta bare-footed, as I and my childish companions had done aboard the Ariadne; but I do mean that the atmosphere of the Ariadne life had coloured all my thoughts of what the present trip would be for me.

And that, of course, was a mistake. The smoothly ordered life of the Oronta's saloon passengers was very much that of a first-class seaside hotel, say in Bournemouth. So far from sprawling upon the snowy deck of a forecastle-head, to watch the phosphorescent lights in the water under our ship's bow, saloon passengers on board the Oronta were not expected ever to intrude upon the forward deck--the ship had no forecastle-head--which was reserved for the uses of the crew. Also, in the conventional black and white of society's evening uniform for men, I suppose one does not exactly sprawl on decks, even where these are spotless, as they never are on board a steamship.

The pleasant race of sailor men, of shell-backs, such as those who swung the yards and tallied on to the halliards of the Ariadne, may or may not have become extinct, and given place to a breed of sea-going mechanics, who protect their feet by means of rubber boots when washing decks down in the morning. In any case, I met none of the old salted variety among the Oronta's multitudinous crew. For me there was here no sitting on painted spars, or tarry hatch-covers, or rusty anchor-stocks, and listening to long, rambling 'yarns,' or 'cuffers,' in idle dog-watches or restful night-watches, when the southern Trades blew steadily, and the braces hung untouched upon their pins for a week on end. No, in the second dog-watch here, one took a solemn constitutional preparatory to dressing for dinner; and in the first night-watch one smoked and listened willy-nilly to polite small talk, and (from the ship's orchestra) the latest and most criminal products of New York's musical genius. I never heard or saw the process of relieving wheel or look-out aboard the Oronta, and long before the beginning of the middle watch I had usually switched off for the night the electric reading-lamp over my pillow.

The fact is, of course, that I had never had any kind of training for such a life as that in which I now found myself. I will not pretend to regret that, for, to be frank, it is a vapid, foolish, empty life enough. But there it was; one could not well evade it, and I had had no previous experience of anything at all like it. The most popular breakfast-hour was something after nine. Beef-tea, ices, and suchlike aids to indigestion were partaken of a couple of hours later. Luncheon was a substantial dinner. The four o'clock tea was quite a meal for most passengers. Caviare and anchovy sandwiches were the rule in the half hour preceding dinner, which was, of course, a serious function. But ours was a valiant company, and supper was a seventh meal achieved by many. The orchestra seemed never far away; games were numerous (here again I had hopelessly neglected my education), and at night there were concerts, impromptu dances, and balls that were far from being impromptu.

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 Nazionale, that it fell to me to rescue the elegant young widow, Mrs. Oldcastle, from the embarrassing 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 embarrassment, 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-passengers 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 passenger 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 attitude 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-passengers.

'After all,' I told myself, 'this forming of hasty impressions of people, from snatches 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 sex 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 mass, and in the confinement of a ship.'

The passengers' 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 sex 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-passengers:

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

With some such thought, I am assured, 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 pass a group of lady passengers in the full glare of an electric lamp, and rarely when we were unobserved.

There is doubtless a certain forceful magic about the combined influences of propinquity and sea air, as these are enjoyed by the idle passengers 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-passengers 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 attitude 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 petite 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 asserted 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 circumstances, of course, but there were many ways in which I gathered that she was rather rich than poor. A young Australian among the passengers 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 passing 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 circumstances 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 association. 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 passionate, 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 passionate 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 passengers--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 ashore. 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. And then, apart from Mr. Heron and others, there will be a friend waiting to see you in London, and--and wanting to see you.... That's my agent, the man with the green-lined umbrella. Good-bye--friend!' _

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