Chapter 1

The Letter

I have read of men who, when forced by their calling to live for long
periods in utter solitude—save for a few black faces—have made it a
rule to dress regularly for dinner in order to maintain their
self-respect and prevent a relapse into barbarism. It was in some such
spirit, with an added touch of self-consciousness, that, at seven
o’clock in the evening of September 23 in a recent year, I was making
my evening toilet in my chambers in Pall Mall. I thought the date and
the place justified the parallel; to my advantage even; for the obscure
Burmese administrator might well be a man of blunted sensibilities and
coarse fibre, and at least he is alone with nature, while I—well, a
young man of condition and fashion, who knows the right people, belongs
to the right clubs, has a safe, possibly a brilliant, future in the
Foreign Office—may be excused for a sense of complacent martyrdom,
when, with his keen appreciation of the social calendar, he is doomed
to the outer solitude of London in September. I say “martyrdom”, but in
fact the case was infinitely worse. For to feel oneself a martyr, as
everybody knows, is a pleasurable thing, and the true tragedy of my
position was that I had passed that stage. I had enjoyed what sweets it
had to offer in ever dwindling degree since the middle of August, when
ties were still fresh and sympathy abundant. I had been conscious that
I was missed at Morven Lodge party. Lady Ashleigh herself had said so
in the kindest possible manner, when she wrote to acknowledge the
letter in which I explained, with an effectively austere reserve of
language, that circumstances compelled me to remain at my office. “We
know how busy you must be just now”, she wrote, “and I do hope you
won’t overwork; we shall _all_ miss you very much.” Friend after friend
“got away” to sport and fresh air, with promises to write and chaffing
condolences, and as each deserted the sinking ship, I took a grim
delight in my misery, positively almost enjoying the first week or two
after my world had been finally dissipated to the four bracing winds of
heaven. I began to take a spurious interest in the remaining five
millions, and wrote several clever letters in a vein of cheap satire,
indirectly suggesting the pathos of my position, but indicating that I
was broad-minded enough to find intellectual entertainment in the
scenes, persons, and habits of London in the dead season. I even did
rational things at the instigation of others. For, though I should have
liked total isolation best, I, of course, found that there was a
sediment of unfortunates like myself, who, unlike me, viewed the
situation in a most prosaic light. There were river excursions, and so
on, after office-hours; but I dislike the river at any time for its
noisy vulgarity, and most of all at this season. So I dropped out of
the fresh air brigade and declined H——’s offer to share a riverside
cottage and run up to town in the mornings. I did spend one or two
week-ends with the Catesbys in Kent; but I was not inconsolable when
they let their house and went abroad, for I found that such partial
compensations did not suit me. Neither did the taste for satirical
observation last. A passing thirst, which I dare say many have shared,
for adventures of the fascinating kind described in the _New Arabian
Nights_ led me on a few evenings into some shady haunts in Soho and
farther eastward; but was finally quenched one sultry Saturday night
after an hour’s immersion in the reeking atmosphere of a low music-hall
in Ratcliffe Highway, where I sat next a portly female who suffered
from the heat, and at frequent intervals refreshed herself and an
infant from a bottle of tepid stout.

By the first week in September I had abandoned all palliatives, and had
settled into the dismal but dignified routine of office, club, and
chambers. And now came the most cruel trial, for the hideous truth
dawned on me that the world I found so indispensable could after all
dispense with me. It was all very well for Lady Ashleigh to assure me
that I was deeply missed; but a letter from F——, who was one of the
party, written “in haste, just starting to shoot”, and coming as a
tardy reply to one of my cleverest, made me aware that the house party
had suffered little from my absence, and that few sighs were wasted on
me, even in the quarter which I had assumed to have been discreetly
alluded to by the underlined _all_ in Lady Ashleigh’s “we shall _all_
miss you”. A thrust which smarted more, if it bit less deeply, came
from my cousin Nesta, who wrote: “It’s horrid for you to have to be
baking in London now; but, after all, it must be a great pleasure to
you” (malicious little wretch!) “to have such interesting and important
work to do.” Here was a nemesis for an innocent illusion I had been
accustomed to foster in the minds of my relations and acquaintances,
especially in the breasts of the trustful and admiring maidens whom I
had taken down to dinner in the last two seasons; a fiction which I had
almost reached the point of believing in myself. For the plain truth
was that my work was neither interesting nor important, and consisted
chiefly at present in smoking cigarettes, in saying that Mr So-and-So
was away and would be back about October 1, in being absent for lunch
from twelve till two, and in my spare moments making _précis_ of—let us
say—the less confidential consular reports, and squeezing the results
into cast-iron schedules. The reason of my detention was not a cloud on
the international horizon—though I may say in passing that there was
such a cloud—but a caprice on the part of a remote and mighty
personage, the effect of which, ramifying downwards, had dislocated the
carefully-laid holiday plans of the humble juniors, and in my own small
case had upset the arrangement between myself and K——, who positively
liked the dog-days in Whitehall.

Only one thing was needed to fill my cup of bitterness, and this it was
that specially occupied me as I dressed for dinner this evening. Two
days more in this dead and fermenting city and my slavery would be at
an end. Yes, but—irony of ironies!—I had nowhere to go to! The Morven
Lodge party was breaking up. A dreadful rumour as to an engagement
which had been one of its accursed fruits tormented me with the fresh
certainty that I had not been missed, and bred in me that most
desolating brand of cynicism which is produced by defeat through
insignificance. Invitations for a later date, which I had declined in
July with a gratifying sense of being much in request, now rose up
spectrally to taunt me. There was at least one which I could easily
have revived, but neither in this case nor in any other had there been
any renewal of pressure, and there are moments when the difference
between proposing oneself and surrendering as a prize to one of several
eagerly competing hostesses seems too crushing to be contemplated. My
own people were at Aix for my father’s gout; to join them was a
_pis-aller_ whose banality was repellent. Besides, they would be
leaving soon for our home in Yorkshire, and I was not a prophet in my
own country. In short, I was at the extremity of depression.

The usual preliminary scuffle on the staircase prepared me for the
knock and entry of Withers. (One of the things which had for some time
ceased to amuse me was the laxity of manners, proper to the season,
among the servants of the big block of chambers where I lived.) Withers
demurely handed me a letter bearing a German postmark and marked
“Urgent”. I had just finished dressing, and was collecting my money and
gloves. A momentary thrill of curiosity broke in upon my depression as
I sat down to open it. A corner on the reverse of the envelope bore the
blotted legend: “Very sorry, but there’s one other thing—a pair of
rigging screws from Carey and Neilson’s, size 1⅜, _galvanised_.” Here
it is:

Yacht _Dulcibella_,
Flensburg, Schleswig-Holstein, _Sept_. 21.

_Dear Carruthers_,—I daresay you’ll be surprised at hearing from me, as
it’s ages since we met. It is more than likely, too, that what I’m
going to suggest won’t suit you, for I know nothing of your plans, and
if you’re in town at all you’re probably just getting into harness
again and can’t get away. So I merely write on the offchance to ask if
you would care to come out here and join me in a little yachting, and,
I hope, duck-shooting. I know you’re keen on shooting, and I sort of
remember that you have done some yachting too, though I rather forget
about that. This part of the Baltic—the Schleswig fiords—is a splendid
cruising-ground—A1 scenery—and there ought to be plenty of duck about
soon, if it gets cold enough. I came out here _via_ Holland and the
Frisian Islands, starting early in August. My pals have had to leave
me, and I’m badly in want of another, as I don’t want to lay up yet for
a bit. I needn’t say how glad I should be if you could come. If you
can, send me a wire to the P.O. here. Flushing and on by Hamburg will
be your best route, I think. I’m having a few repairs done here, and
will have them ready sharp by the time your train arrives. Bring your
gun and a good lot of No. 4’s; and would you mind calling at
Lancaster’s and asking for mine, and bringing it too? Bring some
oilskins. Better get the eleven-shilling sort, jacket and trousers—not
the “yachting” brand; and if you paint bring your gear. I know you
speak German like a native, and that will be a great help. Forgive this
hail of directions, but I’ve a sort of feeling that I’m in luck and
that you’ll come. Anyway, I hope you and the F.O. both flourish.
Good-bye.

Yours ever,
_Arthur H. Davies_.

Would you mind bringing me out a _prismatic compass_, and a pound of
Raven mixture?

This letter marked an epoch for me; but I little suspected the fact as
I crumpled it into my pocket and started languidly on the _voie
douloureuse_ which I nightly followed to the club. In Pall Mall there
were no dignified greetings to be exchanged now with well-groomed
acquaintances. The only people to be seen were some late stragglers
from the park, with a perambulator and some hot and dusty children
lagging fretfully behind; some rustic sightseers draining the last
dregs of the daylight in an effort to make out from their guide-books
which of these reverend piles was which; a policeman and a builder’s
cart. Of course the club was a strange one, both of my own being closed
for cleaning, a coincidence expressly planned by Providence for my
inconvenience. The club which you are “permitted to make use of” on
these occasions always irritates with its strangeness and discomfort.
The few occupants seem odd and oddly dressed, and you wonder how they
got there. The particular weekly that you want is not taken in; the
dinner is execrable, and the ventilation a farce. All these evils
oppressed me to-night. And yet I was puzzled to find that somewhere
within me there was a faint lightening of the spirits; causeless, as
far as I could discover. It could not be Davies’s letter. Yachting in
the Baltic at the end of September! The very idea made one shudder.
Cowes, with a pleasant party and hotels handy, was all very well. An
August cruise on a steam yacht in French waters or the Highlands was
all very well; but what kind of a yacht was this? It must be of a
certain size to have got so far, but I thought I remembered enough of
Davies’s means to know that he had no money to waste on luxuries. That
brought me to the man himself. I had known him at Oxford—not as one of
my immediate set; but we were a sociable college, and I had seen a good
deal of him, liking him for his physical energy combined with a certain
simplicity and modesty, though, indeed, he had nothing to be conceited
about; liked him, in fact, in the way that at that receptive period one
likes many men whom one never keeps up with later. We had both gone
down in the same year—three years ago now. I had gone to France and
Germany for two years to learn the languages; he had failed for the
Indian Civil, and then had gone into a solicitor’s office. I had only
seen him since at rare intervals, though I admitted to myself that for
his part he had clung loyally to what ties of friendship there were
between us. But the truth was that we had drifted apart from the nature
of things. I had passed brilliantly into my profession, and on the few
occasions I had met him since I made my triumphant _début_ in society I
had found nothing left in common between us. He seemed to know none of
my friends, he dressed indifferently, and I thought him dull. I had
always connected him with boats and the sea, but never with yachting,
in the sense that I understood it. In college days he had nearly
persuaded me into sharing a squalid week in some open boat he had
picked up, and was going to sail among some dreary mudflats somewhere
on the east coast. There was nothing else, and the funereal function of
dinner drifted on. But I found myself remembering at the _entrée_ that
I had recently heard, at second or third hand, of something else about
him—exactly what I could not recall. When I reached the savoury, I had
concluded, so far as I had centred my mind on it at all, that the whole
thing was a culminating irony, as, indeed, was the savoury in its way.
After the wreck of my pleasant plans and the fiasco of my martyrdom, to
be asked as consolation to spend October freezing in the Baltic with an
eccentric nonentity who bored me! Yet, as I smoked my cigar in the
ghastly splendour of the empty smoking-room, the subject came up again.
Was there anything in it? There were certainly no alternatives at hand.
And to bury myself in the Baltic at this unearthly time of year had at
least a smack of tragic thoroughness about it.

I pulled out the letter again, and ran down its impulsive staccato
sentences, affecting to ignore what a gust of fresh air, high spirits,
and good fellowship this flimsy bit of paper wafted into the jaded
club-room. On reperusal, it was full of evil presage—“A1 scenery”—but
what of equinoctial storms and October fogs? Every sane yachtsman was
paying off his crew now. “There ought to be duck”—vague, very vague.
“If it gets cold enough”—cold and yachting seemed to be a gratuitously
monstrous union. His pals had left him; why? “Not the ‘yachting’
brand”; and why not? As to the size, comfort, and crew of the yacht—all
cheerfully ignored; so many maddening blanks. And, by the way, why in
Heaven’s name “a prismatic compass”? I fingered a few magazines, played
a game of fifty with a friendly old fogey, too importunate to be worth
the labour of resisting, and went back to my chambers to bed, ignorant
that a friendly Providence had come to my rescue; and, indeed, rather
resenting any clumsy attempt at such friendliness.