He would never, in all probability, see either of them again.
A letter from a firm of enquiry agents in New York City, dated several months back and addressed to him in Paris: “With reference to your recent enquiry, we regret that up to the present we have found it impossible to obtain any information. We are, however, continuing to investigate, and will report to you immediately should any development occur.”
Another letter, some weeks later: “Re Mary Denver, we are at last able to report progress. It appears that the child was adopted by a family named Consett, of Red Springs, Colorado, middle-class people of English descent, moderately well-off. Mr. Consett died in 1927. We have had difficulty in tracing the rest of the family since then. They left Red Springs, and are believed to have gone to Philadelphia. We are continuing our enquiries.” A third letter, dated three weeks back:
“We are now able to inform you that Mrs. Consett and daughter crossed the Atlantic in November of last year and spent Christmas at Algiers. Our European representative, to whom we have cabled instructions, will take the matter in hand as from there.” A fourth letter, from this European representative, conveying the information that the Consetts had left Algiers with the intention of touring in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Pretty vague, that, but a fifth letter had narrowed it down to ‘England and Ireland,’ and a sixth letter—the one that had arrived only the day before—had stated, with admirable definiteness: “I understand that Mrs. and Miss Consett left Stratford-on-Avon on Tuesday last and crossed to Ireland. They are now believed to be staying at the Shelburne Hotel, Dublin.”
He gathered the letters into a pile and took them into the dining-car with him when he went to lunch. He was on the right-hand side of the train, whence he could see the North Wales coast, blue sea and sandy shore, streaming past the window like a cinema-film. Crowds of holiday-makers, pierrot entertainers, bathers bobbing up and down in the water, a sudden jangle of goods-yard, a station, a tunnel, the sea and shore again, deserted for an odd half-mile or so; then bungalows, boardinghouses, a promenade, a bandstand, bathing-huts, crowds, a jangle of goods-yard, a station—on, on, beyond the soup to the fish and the underdone roast beef of that very English and mediocre train-lunch.
He arrived in Dublin at seven that night, and drove straight to the Shelburne. The Consetts, he learned from the hotel porter, had gone on to Killarney two days before. “Americans, sir. See Killarney and die—you know the kind of thing? After that, I expect they’ll be rushing to kiss the Blarney Stone.”
He stayed at the Shelburne for the night and caught the morning express to Killarney. The porter at the Shelburne had given him the names of some of the more likely hotels, and it was easy to drive from one to another making enquiries. At a third asking he discovered that the Consetts had left that morning for Carrigole, Co. Cork, where they were almost bound to be staying at Roone’s Hotel.
There was no railway to Carrigole, so he hired a car to drive him the forty-odd miles over the hills. It was a marvellous summer afternoon, just beginning to fade into the soft glow of evening; by the time he reached the top of the pass and the driver pointed out Carrigole harbour in the distance, all the world seemed melting into a rarefied purple dusk. After the metropolitan bustle of Dublin and the stage-Irishry of Killarney, this, he felt, was the real Ireland, and immediately, in a way he hardly understood, he felt kinship with it. Successive days of travel had increased his fatigue, but the calm, tranquil mountain-air was uplifting him, giving him satisfaction, almost buoyancy.
It was dark when he reached Roone’s, and the yellow oil-lamps were lit in the tiled hall and under the built-out verandah. Somehow by instinct, as he took his first step into that cool interior, lie knew that he would have to go no further, and for that reason he did not ask about the Consetts when he booked a room. All that would come later; he must give himself the pleasure of doing everything sweetly and with due proportion. “May I have dinner?” he enquired, and was directed to a room whose windows, ranging from floor to ceiling along one side, showed the still darkly glowing harbour with the mountains brooding over it as in some ancient, kindly conspiracy.
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.