CHAPTER VI. THE SOLE SURVIVOR
A few weeks later I landed in England, I, who no longer desired to setfoot on any land again.
At nine-and-twenty I was gaunt and gray; my nerves were shattered, myheart was broken; and my face showed it without let or hindrance fromthe spirit that was broken too. Pride, will, courage, and endurance, allthese had expired in my long and lonely battle with the sea. They hadkept me alive-for this. And now they left me naked to mine enemies.
For every hand seemed raised against me, though in reality it was thehand of fellowship that the world stretched out, and the other was thereading of a jaundiced eye. I could not help it: there was a poison inmy veins that made me all ingratitude and perversity. The world welcomedme back, and I returned the compliment by sulking like the recapturedrunaway I was at heart. The world showed a sudden interest in me; so Itook no further interest in the world, but, on the contrary, resentedits attentions with unreasonable warmth and obduracy; and my would-befriends I regarded as my very worst enemies. The majority, I feel sure,meant but well and kindly by the poor survivor. But the survivor couldnot forget that his name was still in the newspapers, nor blink the factthat he was an unworthy hero of the passing hour. And he sufferedenough from brazenly meddlesome and self-seeking folk, from impudent andinquisitive intruders, to justify some suspicion of old acquaintancessuddenly styling themselves old friends, and of distant connectionsnewly and unduly eager to claim relationship. Many I misjudged, and havelong known it. On the whole, however, I wonder at that attitude of mineas little as I approve of it.
If I had distinguished myself in any other way, it would have been adifferent thing. It was the fussy, sentimental, inconsiderateinterest in one thrown into purely accidental and necessarily painfulprominence--the vulgarization of an unspeakable tragedy--that my soulabhorred. I confess that I regarded it from my own unique and selfishpoint of view. What was a thrilling matter to the world was a torturingmemory to me. The quintessence of the torture was, moreover, my ownsecret. It was not the loss of the Lady Jermyn that I could not bear tospeak about; it was my own loss; but the one involved the other. Myloss apart, however, it was plain enough to dwell upon experiences soterrible and yet so recent as those which I had lived to tell. I didwhat I considered my duty to the public, but I certainly did no more. Myreticence was rebuked in the papers that made the most of me, but wouldfain have made more. And yet I do not think that I was anything butdocile with those who had a manifest right to question me; to theowners, and to other interested persons, with whom I was confronted onone pretext or another, I told my tale as fully and as freely as I havetold it here, though each telling hurt more than the last. That wasnecessary and unavoidable; it was the private intrusions which Iresented with all the spleen the sea had left me in exchange for thequalities it had taken away.
Relatives I had as few as misanthropist could desire; but fromself-congratulation on the fact, on first landing, I soon came to keenregret. They at least would have sheltered me from spies and busybodies;they at least would have secured the peace and privacy of one who wasno hero in fact or spirit, whose noblest deed was a piece of selfpreservation which he wished undone with all his heart.
Self-consciousness no doubt multiplied my flattering assailants. Ihave said that my nerves were shattered. I may have imagined much andexaggerated the rest. Yet what truth there was in my suspicions youshall duly see. I felt sure that I was followed in the street, and myevery movement dogged by those to whom I would not condescend to turnand look. Meanwhile, I had not the courage to go near my club, andthe Temple was a place where I was accosted in every court, effusivelycongratulated on the marvellous preservation of my stale spoilt life,and invited right and left to spin my yarn over a quiet pipe! Well,perhaps such invitations were not so common as they have grown in mymemory; nor must you confuse my then feelings on all these matters withthose which I entertain as I write. I have grown older, and, I hope,something kindlier and wiser since then. Yet to this day I cannot blamemyself for abandoning my chambers and avoiding my club.
For a temporary asylum I pitched upon a small, quiet, empty, privatehotel which I knew of in Charterhouse Square. Instantly the room nextmine became occupied.
All the first night I imagined I heard voices talking about me in thatroom next door. It was becoming a disease with me. Either I was beingdogged, watched, followed, day and night, indoors and out, or I was thevictim of a very ominous hallucination. That night I never closed an eyenor lowered my light. In the morning I took a four-wheel cab anddrove straight to Harley Street; and, upon my soul, as I stood on thespecialist's door-step, I could have sworn I saw the occupant of theroom next mine dash by me in a hansom!
"Ah!" said the specialist; "so you cannot sleep; you hear voices;you fancy you are being followed in the street. You don't think thesefancies spring entirely from the imagination? Not entirely--just so. Andyou keep looking behind you, as though somebody were at your elbow; andyou prefer to sit with your back close to the wall. Just so--just so.Distressing symptoms, to be sure, but--but hardly to be wondered at in aman who has come through your nervous strain." A keen professional lightglittered in his eyes. "And almost commonplace," he added, smiling,"compared with the hallucinations you must have suffered from on thathen-coop! Ah, my dear sir, the psychological interest of your case isvery great!"
"It may be," said I, brusquely. "But I come to you to get that hen-coopout of my head, not to be reminded of it. Everybody asks me about thedamned thing, and you follow everybody else. I wish it and I were at thebottom of the sea together!"
This speech had the effect of really interesting the doctor in mypresent condition, which was indeed one of chronic irritation andextreme excitability, alternating with fits of the very blackestdespair. Instead of offending my gentleman I had put him on his mettle,and for half an hour he honored me with the most exhaustive inquisitionever elicited from a medical man. His panacea was somewhat in the natureof an anti-climax, but at least it had the merits of simplicity andof common sense. A change of air--perfect quiet--say a cottage in thecountry--not too near the sea. And he shook my hand kindly when I left.
"Keep up your heart, my dear sir," said he. "Keep up your courage andyour heart."
"My heart!" I cried. "It's at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean."
He was the first to whom I had said as much. He was a stranger. What didit matter? And, oh, it was so true--so true.
Every day and all day I was thinking of my love; every hour and allhours she was before me with her sunny hair and young, young face. Herwistful eyes were gazing into mine continually. Their wistfulness Ihad never realized at the time; but now I did; and I saw it for what itseemed always to have been, the soft, sad, yearning look of one fatedto die young. So young--so young! And I might live to be an old man,mourning her.
That I should never love again I knew full well. This time there was nomistake. I have implied, I believe, that it was for another woman I fledoriginally to the diggings. Well, that one was still unmarried, and whenthe papers were full of me she wrote me a letter which I now believe tohave been merely kind. At the time I was all uncharitableness; but wordsof mine would fail to tell you how cold this letter left me; it was as acandle lighted in the full blaze of the sun.
With all my bitterness, however, you must not suppose that I had quitelost the feelings which had inspired me at sunset on the lonely ocean,while my mind still held good. I had been too near my Maker ever to losethose feelings altogether. They were with me in the better moments ofthese my worst days. I trusted His wisdom still. There was a reason foreverything; there were reasons for all this. I alone had been saved outof all those souls who sailed from Melbourne in the Lady Jermyn. Whyshould I have been the favored one; I with my broken heart and nowlonely life? Some great inscrutable reason there must be; at my worstI did not deny that. But neither did I puzzle my sick brain with thereason. I just waited for it to be revealed to me, if it were God's willever to reveal it. And that I conceive to be the one spirit
in which aman may contemplate, with equal sanity and reverence, the mysteries andthe miseries of his life.
CHAPTER VII. I FIND A FRIEND