Chapter 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.'