And all the time and all the way down as they descended he was thinking of something else—of gilded salons and baroque antechambers, of consulates and embassies and chancelleries, of faded uniforms and tarnished orders, of intrigues and plottings and counter-plottings, of Paris cafés where Russian émigrés passed their days on a treadmill of futile anticipation, of Riviera hotels where the very waiters were princes and expected extra tips for so being, of dark and secret assassinations, of frontiers stiff with bayonets, of men in Moscow council-rooms ruthless, logical, and aware. That madly spinning world lay so close, and it was in his power to thrust her into the very vortex of it.
That night he took out of a sealed envelope certain curiously-marked papers. They were twelve years old; time and a fumigating oven had considerably faded them. He looked them through and then replaced them in the envelope. It was late, past midnight; the sailors had returned to their ship; even the Roones had gone to bed, and the lamps in the corridor were all out. He groped his way downstairs and found the drawing-room. There were the remains of a fire just faintly red in the grate; he knelt on the hearth-rug and fanned the embers till they glowed into flame. Then he placed the envelope on the top and watched it burn with all its contents. He waited till the last inch was turned to ashes and he could break and scatter them with the poker. Then he went back to his room and to bed.
But he did not sleep too well. If one problem had been settled, another remained; if he had not traced her in order to tell her who she was, why had he traced her at all? What need was there to stay at Roone’s any longer? And so, bewitching and insidious, came again the memory of the past; she was a shadow, an echo, reminding him that he was still young, and that the Harley Street man might have made a mistake. And the idea came to him that he might tell her some day, not about her own identity, which did not matter, but about himself and Daly.
The next morning began a chaotic interlude of travel; he wired to his London lawyer and the two arranged a half-way meeting at the railway hotel at Fishguard. The dignified elderly solicitor, obviously flustered by such hectic arrangements, scratched away for an hour in a private sitting-room; then Fothergill signed; and two hotel servants acted as witnesses and were suitably rewarded. The lawyer saw his client off on the Rosslare boat and parted from him full of misgivings. “It is not for me to offer criticism, Mr. Fothergill,” he said, accepting a drink in the saloon before the gangways were lowered, “but I do hope you have given all this your most careful consideration.” Fothergill assured him that he had, and added: “Anyhow, I hope I’m not going to die just yet—it’s only a precaution.” To which the lawyer replied: “I must say I think you’re looking very much better than when I saw you in London,” and Fothergill answered: “My dear chap, I really don’t think I ever felt better in my life. It’s the Irish climate—it seems to suit me.”
He was at Roone’s again by the afternoon of the next day, with Mrs. Consett immensely curious about his lightning dash to England. “Business,” he told her, and she was satisfactorily impressed; her idea of the successful business man was perfectly in accord with such fantastic journeys on mysterious errands.
Back at Roone’s he yielded again to the spell of magic possibility. Could he tell her about their earlier meeting when she was but a child; could he thus make fast to his own life this new and charming fragrance that might otherwise fade away?
So he perplexed himself, but that Saturday night as he saw her talking to a young naval sub-lieutenant he came to sudden decision. He saw her smiling at the pink-checked and handsome boy; he heard their laughter together; then they danced, and all at once, as he watched them, he felt old again and knew that he was old; and when Mrs. Consett began her usual chatter, he felt: We are a couple of old folks, watching the youngsters amuse themselves…
But half an hour later she came up to him, having left her partner, and said: “Don’t you want to dance tonight, Mr. Fothergill? I suppose you’re tired after the journey?” And he was up in a moment, ready to whirl through the world with her, old or young.
She said, as they danced: “That was a nice boy, if he wasn’t so silly.”
“I thought he looked a very attractive young fellow.”
“Yes—but silly. I suppose most girls like it and I’m the exception. I never could get on very well with boys of that age.”
“That age, indeed? I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s half a dozen years older than you.”
“Yes, I know—it’s strange, isn’t it? Perhaps the silliness is in me, after all.”
“In you?”
“Why not? Probably I’m old for my years. I’ve a sort of theory that I aged a good deal before I was six and that now I’m anything between thirty and forty.”
“That would put you nearer me.”
“Yes, wouldn’t it?”
Her calm, friendly eyes were looking up at him, and he had to exert every atom of will-power to prevent himself from yielding to the call of so rich a memory. His brain reeled and eddied; he began to speak, but found his voice so grotesque and uncertain that he broke off and tried to fix himself into some kind of temporary coherence; he heard her saying: “I don’t think you’re dancing very well to-night—you look as if your mind’s on something else all the time.”
“As a matter of fact, it just is.”
“Shall we stop, then? I don’t mind. Perhaps you feel tired?”
“I never felt less tired in my life. What I’d just like now is to go out and climb the Baragh.”
“Really? Do you mean it—really?”
He hadn’t at first, but he did then, suddenly. “Yes,” he said.
“Well, we could, couldn’t we? It’s bright moonlight and we know the way. It’s quite early—we should be back before the others begin clearing off to bed. I love doing odd things that most people would think quite mad.”
They slipped out through the verandah and began, hatless and coatless, the steep scramble through the woods, drenched with dew, and then up the rough, boulder-strewn borcen to the summit. They climbed too swiftly and breathlessly for speech, and all the way he was dizzily making up his mind for all the things he would say when they reached the topmost ridge. He imagined himself telling her: “Dear child, you are all that means anything in my life, and I want to tell you how and why—I want you to know how I missed my way in life, over and over again, yet found in the end something that was worth it all. You see, I want us always to be friends—great friends—you and I, not just as if we were chance travellers and had taken to each other. Much more than that. And it’s all so strange that I want you to try to understand.” And other confessions equally wild and enchanting. But when lie stood finally on that moonlit peak, with the sky a blue-black sea all around him, he could not think of anything to say at all. She stood so still and close to him, thrilling with rapture at the view, pointing down excitedly to the tiny winking lights of the cruiser, and then swinging round to peer into the silver dimness of the valley on the other side. “I shall never, never forget this as long as I live,” she whispered. “It’s far more wonderful than in the day-time when we climbed before.”
Then suddenly he realised why, or perhaps one reason why, he was not speaking. He was in pain. He felt as if a bar of white-hot steel were bending round his body and being tightened. Yet he hardly felt the pain, even though he knew it was there; it was as if the moonlight and the thoughts that swam in his mind were anaesthetising him. He opened his mouth and tried to speak, but could only hear himself gasping; and lie felt, beyond the knowledge of pain, an impotent fury with his body for spoiling such a moment. He smiled a twisted smile; he had been too venturesome, too defiant; he had climbed too fast. And all at once, just then, the thought came to him: Supposing I were to drop dead, up here—poor child, what a shock it would be for her, and what a lot of damned unpleasant fuss for her afterward…