by James Hilton
The room was fairly full, but he had a table to himself, and the dinner was good. The faces of others glowed yellow-brown in the lamplight; the night was full of talking and laughing, the bark of a dog, the hoot of cars entering the drive; yet permeating it all, in a queer way, there was silence—silence such as seemed to rise out of the very earth and sea to meet the sky.
He chatted to the waiter; it was his first visit to Carrigole, he explained, or, for that matter, to Ireland at all. “You seem pretty full—the height of the season, I daresay?”
“Just a little past it, sir. We get a lot of American tourists in July and August, but most of them are beginning to go back by now.”
“Ah yes. I suppose, though, a few of the people here now are Americans?”
“Oh yes, quite a number. Most of them come on from Killarney and stay here a night or so on their way to Cork.”
He did not enquire further, but that evening, after dinner, the problem became merely one of identification. For he was asked to sign the hotel register, and as he wrote “A.J. Fothergill—London—British” he glanced up the column of names and read in plain round handwriting a few inches above—“Mrs. and Miss Consett, Philadelphia.”
He lit a cigar and took coffee in the lounge and wondered who they might be among the faces that passed him by. It would be simple, of course, to enquire directly, to approach them with equal directness, to introduce himself remarkably and dramatically, to talk till midnight about the exceeding singularity of the fate that had linked, then sundered, and now linked again his life and the girl’s. Yet he shrank from it; his mind was sore from drama, aching for some quieter contact, for something at first and perhaps always remote. He wanted everything to be peaceful, gradual, even if it were additionally intricate; he wanted to preserve some path of secret retreat, so that at any moment, if he grew too tired, he could escape into forgotten anonymity. Yet, on the other hand, there was an urgency in the matter that he could not avoid, for the Consetts might not be staving at Carrigole for long, and he could not undertake to follow them all over the world.
Chance came to his aid. The post arrived at Roone’s rather late; he saw the bundle of letters brought in by the cyclist-postman and handed across the counter to Mrs. Roone, who began to sort them. A cluster of people gathered around, and suddenly he heard a girl’s voice asking if there were anything for Mrs. Consett.
There was, and she took a letter, studying its envelope as she walked away across the tiled hall to a table under the verandah where a woman sat reading a magazine.
For a moment he did not look at either of them; all had happened so calmly and comfortably. Then he suddenly knew that his heart was beating very fast. That would never do. He must see them; he must know what they were like. He got up and strolled deliberately by, puffing at his cigar and appearing to stare through the windows at nothing. The woman was plump, cheerful, talkative, fairly attractive; but the girl was less ordinary. She was quiet, rather well- featured, with calm brown eyes that were looking at him before his dared to look at her. That was curious, he thought, that she should have stared first.
He went to bed, slept well, and was down early for breakfast. The Consetts came in later, but to a table at the other end of the room. During the meal the waiter asked him if he would care to join an excursion to visit an ancient hermitage some score miles away over the hills. “It is quite interesting sir,” he recommended, “and if you have nothing else in mind, it would make a pleasant trip.”
“Are most of the others going?”
“Practically everybody, sir, except the fishing gentlemen.”
“I don’t want to have a lot of walking to do.”
“There is hardly any—you just drive right there by car.”
“All right, I daresay I’ll go.”
It was a chance, he realised, and perhaps a better one than many others.
Four large five-seater touring-cars were drawn up outside the hotel. The excursionists arranged themselves as they chose, usually, of course, manoeuvring to be with their friends. It was natural that he should wait rather diffidently until most had taken positions, and that, as an odd man, he should be fitted into the back seat of one of the cars with two other persons. Partly by luck and partly by his own contrivance, those two compulsory fellow- passengers were the Consetts. He was at one side of the car, Mrs. Consett at the other; the girl sat in between them. The driver and a large picnic-hamper shared the seat in front.
The convoy set off at eleven o’clock through lanes full of wildflowers and spattered with sunshine from a dappled sky. The harbour, reaching out into the long narrow inlet, gleamed like a sword-blade; the hills were purple-grey and a little hazy in the distance. He passed some merely polite remark about the weather, and the girl answered him in the same key. But the woman, seizing the opportunity, began to talk. She talked in a strong, copious stream, with never-flagging zest and ever-increasing emphasis. Wasn’t Ireland lovely?—had he visited Killarney?—had he been on the lake and un to the Gap of Dunloe? They had—a most beautiful and romantic excursion, but the flies had been a nuisance during the picnic-lunch, and the food from the hotel had been just awful. It was a curious thing, but the hotels over this side seemed to have no idea…etc., etc.
He listened, occasionally venturing some remark. He said, in response to questioning, that he had never been to America, but had travelled a little in Europe. That opened further flood-gates. He received a full and detailed account of the Consett odyssey from the very day it had begun at Philadelphia. Paris, Interlaken, the Rhine, Münich, Innsbruck, Rome, Algiers, Seville (for Easter), Biarritz, Lourdes, Chartres, Ostend, the battlefields, London, Oxford, Cambridge, Stratford-on-Avon, Dublin…how much they had seen, even if how little! They had loved it all, of course, and Mrs. Consett added, across the girl, as it were: “Mary is just eighteen, you see, and it is such an impressionable age, I think, and I do so want her to see the world when she is young, because later on, you know, one can never be sure of getting such chances—in America so many women live narrow, self- centred lives after they marry—they think they’re seeing the world if they spend a week in New York. My own brothers and sisters, for instance, who live in Colorado, have never travelled further than Los Angeles, and even I never saw Europe till Mary and I landed last fail. And now, though I’m terribly ashamed to think of what I’d missed for so long, Vet I’m just glad to now that Mary’s seeing all these marvellous places at an age when everything means most—the Coliseum at Rome, for instance, and Westminster Abbey, and Shakespeare’s dear little house, and those quaint little jaunting-cars they have at Killarney—have you been on them? We had a most amusing driver to take us—so amusingly Irish—I quite intended to make notes of some of his remarks when I got back to the hotel, but I was just too tired after the long drive, and it was such a beautiful drive—rather like parts of Virginia…” And so on, and so on.
They reached the hermitage about noon; it was a collection of ruins on an island off the shore of a lake—the latter overshadowed by gloomy mountains and reached by a narrow, twisting road over a high pass. The island was still a place of pilgrimage, and many of the arched cells in which the hermits had lived were littered with tawdry votive offerings—beads, buttons, lead-pencils, pieces of ribbon—a quaint miscellany for the rains and winds to disintegrate. The tourists made the usual vague inspection and turned with relief to the more exciting business of finding a place for lunch. Fothergill still remained with the Consetts; indeed, rather to his private amusement, he realised that it would have been difficult to be rid of them in any case. Mrs. Consett had by that time given him the almost complete history of her family and was engaged on a minute explanation of the way in which her husband had made money out of steam-laundries. From that, as the picnic-lunch progressed, she passed on to a sententious discussion of family life in general and of the upbringing of children in particular. At this point a sudden commotion amongst the rest of the party gave the girl an excuse to move away, for whic
h Fothergill did not blame her, though it left him rather unhappily at the mercy of Mrs. Consett. Soon, however, an opportunity arose for himself also; the men of the party began to pack up the hampers and carry them to the cars. He attached himself to their enterprise for a sufficiently reasonable time, and then strolled off on his own, deliberately oblivious of the fact that Mrs. Consett was waiting for him to resume his rôle of listener. He walked towards the lake and across the causeway to the island—a curious place, of interest to him because, with its childlike testimonies of faith, it reminded him of things he had seen in Russia. Was it too fanciful, he wondered, to imagine a spiritual kinship between the countries? He was thus reflecting when he saw the open doors of a small modern chapel built amidst a grove of trees; and inside the building, which was scarcely bigger than the room of a small house, he caught sight of the girl. She heard his footsteps and turned round, smiling slightly.
“I didn’t notice this place when we first went round,” he remarked, approaching.
“Neither did I. It’s really so tiny, isn’t it?—quite the tiniest I’ve ever seen. And isn’t it terribly ugly?”
It was—garishly so in a style which again reminded him of Russia. The comparison was so much on his mind that without any ulterior motive he added: “I’ve seen the same sort of thing abroad—especially in Russia. Simple people always love crude colours and too much ornament.”
She seized on that one vital word. “You know Russia, then?”
“Fairly well. I used to live there.”
“Did you like it?”
“Very much, in some ways.”
“I wish mother and I could have gone there, but I suppose it isn’t really safe for tourists yet.”
“I daresay it would be safe enough, but I should think it would hardly be comfortable.”
“Oh, then it wouldn’t do at all.” She laughed in a way which Fothergill liked instantly and exceedingly—a deep fresh laugh as from some spring-like fountain of humour. “Mother hates hotels where you don’t get a private bathroom next to your bedroom.”
“She can’t be very keen on Roone’s, then.”
“I don’t think she is, but I just love it. I’d hate to find everything exactly like the Plaza at New York. Besides, I don’t think it really matters if you miss the morning bath once now and again.”
“No, I don’t think it really does.” And they smiled at each other, sharing their first confidence.
As they left the chapel he was surprised to see her genuflect; so she was a Catholic, then. That set him thinking of the profound reasonableness of Catholics in holding their faith in reverence while at the same time being free to call one of their churches ugly if it were ugly; and that, in turn, set him thinking of the reasonableness of Father Farington, and of that long conversation in London before he left…
She was saying: “What is your name, by the way?”
“Fothergill.”
“Ours is Consett. I don’t know whether you knew.”
“I did, as a matter of fact. I overheard you asking for letters last night.”
“Oh, did you? That must have been before you passed us on the verandah, then? I noticed you particularly because—I daresay you’ll smile at this—you looked what in America we should call ‘typically English.’”
“‘Typically English,’ eh?” And for the first time for some years he was thoroughly astonished. To be called that, of all things!
She said: “The quiet way, I suppose, that Englishmen have—a sort of look of being rather bored by everything, though really they’re not bored at all. Perhaps I oughtn’t to have said it, though—you don’t look very complimented.”
He smiled. “’Would you be complimented if I were to describe you as ’typically American?”
She paused a moment and then gave him a look of amused candour. “That’s rather clever of you, because I wouldn’t. And, anyhow, in my own case—” She stopped hurriedly, and he said, holding open the wicket-gate for her to pass from the island on to the causeway: “Yes, what were you about to say?”
“I was really going to say that I’m not an American at all.”
“Oh?”
There was rather a long interval .until she went on: “It’s queer to be telling you all this after knowing you for about five minutes—I don’t know what mother would think. But, as it happens, you once lived in Russia, so perhaps that’s an excuse. I’m Russian.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes. I came over with the refugees in 1919. That sounds a bit like coming over with the Pilgrim Fathers, doesn’t it, but it’s really not quite so illustrious. There were just a few hundred refugee orphans who were allowed into America before the government woke up and decided it didn’t want any more of them. They were all adopted into families in various parts of the country. I was six when I came over.”
“That makes you how old now?”
“Just eighteen.”
“I don’t suppose you remember much of your life in Russia.”
“Hardly anything. Sometimes I dream of things which I think might have something to do with it. I wonder if that’s possible?”
“It might be.”
“Here comes mother to meet us. I think I’d better tell her how much I’ve told you.”
The confession was made, and Mrs. Consett, after hearing all the circumstances, bestowed her magnanimous approval. It enabled her to continue the conversation with Fothergill on rather more intimate lines, and this she did all the way during the drive back to Roone’s. “So curious that we should all be learning about one another so quickly, isn’t it? But there, I always think that one should take all the chances one can of making friends wherever one goes—I’m sure Mary and I have already met some charming people during our trip—there was a most delightful man in the hotel at Naples—a Swiss—only a commercial traveller, I surmised—but still, who are we to be snobbish? I’m sure I never try to conceal the fact that my husband made his money out of other people’s washing. But this Swiss man, as I was saying, was such a pleasant companion—he went to Pompeii with us to see those wonderful Roman ruins—and lie was most helpful, too, when we wanted to buy anything in the shops. I should think he saved us quite a lot of money, for, as you know, the Italians think every American must be a millionaire, though, as a matter of fact, we’re not really very well- off—we’ve been saving up for this trip for quite a time, haven’t we, Mary?” And so on.
When they all reached Roone’s again it was quite settled that they should arrange with the waiter to have a larger table, so that they could take meals together. They dined that night, the three of them, by the side of the large window, through which the harbour burned with little dark specks on it that were the row-boats bringing the fishermen ashore by dusk. After the out- door air and the long drive over the mountains he felt tired, yet in a way that gave him a certain rich serenity, breaking only into fitful astonishment that she should be there, that he should have found and spoken with her after so many years. But it was she herself who astonished him most of all. The lamplight touched the ivory white of her face with a glow of amber, and there were five lamps, hung on chains from the ceiling, making islands of light in the huge dark room. Her eyes were like pools that might have been in a forest, and the creamy sweep of her neck against that background reminded him of some old brown Vandyke painting. Contentment closed over him as he looked at her; Mrs. Consett’s continual talking echoed in his ears, yet somehow was not heard; all about the room was chatter, rising to the roof and hovering there, yet to him it was no more than a murmur—as if, he thought fantastically, some monster choir at an immense distance were intoning Latin genitive plurals.
So began a week of purest holiday. The Consetts, it appeared, had no definite plans; they just stayed in one place as long as they liked, and Roone’s was apparently suiting them, despite the lack of private bathrooms. The weather, too, held out in a blaze of splendour just beginning to be autumnal; every morning when Fothergill rose and saw through
his window the grey-green mountains across the harbour he felt a surge of happiness that reminded him, not of his own childhood, but of some remoter and more marvellously recollected childhood of the world. Then after breakfast came plans for the day—delightful arguments in the verandah-lounge, while Mrs. Roone was packing sandwiches for them, and Roone was tapping the barometer and prophesying fine weather. It was always Mrs. Consett who seemed to make the plans, yet always Fothergill who did the real work of organising—finding the route on road-maps, seeing that food was sufficient, arranging terms with motor-drivers. Then they would set out under the long avenue of just fading leaves, swing down the winding hill through the village, and up the further hill to the mountains. He felt the years falling away from him as he rose into that zestful air, and when they halted for picnic- lunch at some lonely vantage-point, with the valleys like clouds beneath them, he was a child again in his enjoyment. He loved the fire-making routine—the collecting of sticks on the hillsides, with the girl but calling distance away from him, and her mother dozing in the car a hundred feet below; the finding of large stones to build a hearth; the careful watching till the kettle boiled at last. Once, tempted by a glorious sunset, they stayed late round a fire they had made at tea-time and talked till the flames seemed to bring all the darkness suddenly over their heads. As she stirred the fire to a last blaze before they left it, the girl remarked on the heat of the big stones, and he said: “If I were going to camp here for the night I should wrap one of those stones in a piece of blanket and use it instead of a hot- water bottle. That’s always a good dodge if you’re sleeping out.”