The fog swirled slowly round him, driven by a heavy movement of its own, for of course there was no wind. It hung in poisonous thick coils and loops; it rose and sank; no light penetrated it directly from street lamp or motor-car, though here and there some big shop-window shed a glimmering patch upon its ever-shifting curtain.
O"Reilly"s eyes ached and smarted with the incessant effort to see a foot beyond his face. The optic nerve grew tired, and sight, accordingly, less accurate. He coughed as he shuffled forward cautiously through the choking gloom. Only the stifled rumble of crawling traffic persuaded him he was in a crowded city at all--this, and the vague outlines of groping figures, hugely magnified, emerging suddenly and disappearing again, as they fumbled along inch by inch towards uncertain destinations.
The figures, however were human beings; they were real. That much he knew. He heard their m.u.f.fled voices, now close, now distant, strangely smothered always. He also heard the tapping of innumerable sticks, feeling for iron railings or the kerb. These phantom outlines represented living people. He was not alone.
It was the dread of finding himself _quite_ alone that haunted him, for he was still unable to cross an open s.p.a.ce without a.s.sistance. He had the physical strength, it was the mind that failed him. Midway the panic terror might descend upon him, he would shake all over, his will dissolve, he would shriek for help, run wildly--into the traffic probably--or, as they called it in his North Ontario home, "throw a fit" in the street before advancing wheels. He was not yet entirely cured, although under ordinary conditions he was safe enough, as Dr.
Henry had a.s.sured him.
When he left Regent"s Park by Tube an hour ago the air was clear, the November sun shone brightly, the pale blue sky was cloudless, and the a.s.sumption that he could manage the journey across London Town alone was justified. The following day he was to leave for Brighton for the week of final convalescence: this little preliminary test of his powers on a bright November afternoon was all to the good. Doctor Henry furnished minute instructions: "You change at Piccadilly Circus--without leaving the underground station, mind--and get out at South Kensington. You know the address of your V.A.D. friend. Have your cup of tea with her, then come back the same way to Regent"s Park. Come back before dark--say six o"clock at latest. It"s better." He had described exactly what turns to take after leaving the station, so many to the right, so many to the left; it was a little confusing, but the distance was short. "You can always ask. You can"t possibly go wrong."
The unexpected fog, however, now blurred these instructions in a confused jumble in his mind. The failure of outer sight reacted upon memory. The V.A.D. besides had warned him her address was "not easy to find the first time. The house lies in a backwater. But with your "backwoods" instincts you"ll probably manage it better than any Londoner!" She, too, had not calculated upon the fog.
When O"Reilly came up the stairs at South Kensington Station, he emerged into such murky darkness that he thought he was still underground. An impenetrable world lay round him. Only a raw bite in the damp atmosphere told him he stood beneath an open sky. For some little time he stood and stared--a Canadian soldier, his home among clear brilliant s.p.a.ces, now face to face for the first time in his life with that thing he had so often read about--a bad London fog. With keenest interest and surprise he "enjoyed" the novel spectacle for perhaps ten minutes, watching the people arrive and vanish, and wondering why the station lights stopped dead the instant they touched the street--then, with a sense of adventure--it cost an effort--he left the covered building and plunged into the opaque sea beyond.
Repeating to himself the directions he had received--first to the right, second to the left, once more to the left, and so forth--he checked each turn, a.s.suring himself it was impossible to go wrong. He made correct if slow progress, until someone blundered into him with an abrupt and startling question: "Is this right, do you know, for South Kensington Station?"
It was the suddenness that startled him; one moment there was no one, the next they were face to face, another, and the stranger had vanished into the gloom with a courteous word of grateful thanks. But the little shock of interruption had put memory out of gear. Had he already turned twice to the right, or had he not? O"Reilly realized sharply he had forgotten his memorized instructions. He stood still, making strenuous efforts at recovery, but each effort left him more uncertain than before. Five minutes later he was lost as hopelessly as any townsman who leaves his tent in the backwoods without blazing the trees to ensure finding his way back again. Even the sense of direction, so strong in him among his native forests, was completely gone. There were no stars, there was no wind, no smell, no sound of running water. There was nothing anywhere to guide him, nothing but occasional dim outlines, groping, shuffling, emerging and disappearing in the eddying fog, but rarely coming within actual speaking, much less touching, distance. He was lost utterly; more, he was alone.
Yet not _quite_ alone--the thing he dreaded most. There were figures still in his immediate neighborhood. They emerged, vanished, reappeared, dissolved. No, he was not quite alone. He saw these thickenings of the fog, he heard their voices, the tapping of their cautious sticks, their shuffling feet as well. They were real. They moved, it seemed, about him in a circle, never coming very close.
"But they"re real," he said to himself aloud, betraying the weak point in his armour. "They"re human beings right enough. I"m positive of that."
He had never argued with Dr. Henry--he wanted to get well; he had obeyed implicitly, believing everything the doctor told him--up to a point. But he had always had his own idea about these "figures," because, among them, were often enough his own pals from the Somme, Gallipoli, the Mespot horror, too. And he ought to know his own pals when he saw them!
At the same time he knew quite well he had been "shocked," his being dislocated; half dissolved as it were, his system pushed into some lopsided condition that meant inaccurate registration. True. He grasped that perfectly. But, in that shock and dislocation, had he not possibly picked up another gear? Were there not gaps and broken edges, pieces that no longer dovetailed, fitted as usual, interstices, in a word?
Yes, that was the word--interstices. Cracks, so to speak, between his perception of the outside world and his inner interpretation of these? Between memory and recognition? Between the various states of consciousness that usually dovetailed so neatly that the joints were normally imperceptible?
His state, he well knew, was abnormal, but were his symptoms on that account unreal? Could not these "interstices" be used by--others? When he saw his "figures," he used to ask himself: "Are not these the real ones, and the others--the human beings--unreal?"
This question now revived in him with a new intensity. Were these figures in the fog real or unreal? The man who had asked the way to the station, was he not, after all, a shadow merely?
By the use of his cane and foot and what of sight was left to him he knew that he was on an island. A lamppost stood up solid and straight beside him, shedding its faint patch of glimmering light. Yet there were railings, however, that puzzled him, for his stick hit the metal rods distinctly in a series. And there should be no railings round an island.
Yet he had most certainly crossed a dreadful open s.p.a.ce to get where he was. His confusion and bewilderment increased with dangerous rapidity.
Panic was not far away.
He was no longer on an omnibus route. A rare taxi crawled past occasionally, a whitish patch at the window indicating an anxious human face; now and again came a van or cart, the driver holding a lantern as he led the stumbling horse. These comforted him, rare though they were.
But it was the figures that drew his attention most. He was quite sure they were real. They were human beings like himself.
For all that, he decided he might as well be positive on the point. He tried one accordingly--a big man who rose suddenly before him out of the very earth.
"Can you give me the trail to Morley Place?" he asked.
But his question was drowned by the other"s simultaneous inquiry in a voice much louder than his own.
"I say, is this right for the Tube station, d"you know? I"m utterly lost. I want South Ken."
And by the time O"Reilly had pointed the direction whence he himself had just come, the man was gone again, obliterated, swallowed up, not so much as his footsteps audible, almost as if--it seemed again--he never had been there at all.
This left an acute unpleasantness in him, a sense of bewilderment greater than before. He waited five minutes, not daring to move a step, then tried another figure, a woman this time who, luckily, knew the immediate neighbourhood intimately. She gave him elaborate instructions in the kindest possible way, then vanished with incredible swiftness and ease into the sea of gloom beyond. The instantaneous way she vanished was disheartening, upsetting; it was so uncannily abrupt and sudden. Yet she comforted him. Morley Place, according to her version, was not two hundred yards from where he stood. He felt his way forward, step by step, using his cane, crossing a giddy open s.p.a.ce kicking the kerb with each boot alternately, coughing and choking all the time as he did so.
"They were real, I guess, anyway," he said aloud. "They were both real enough all right. And it may lift a bit soon!" He was making a great effort to hold himself in hand. He was already fighting, that is. He realized this perfectly. The only point was--the reality of the figures.
"It may lift now any minute," he repeated louder. In spite of the cold, his skin was sweating profusely.
But, of course, it did not lift. The figures, too, became fewer. No carts were audible. He had followed the woman"s directions carefully, but now found himself in some by-way, evidently, where pedestrians at the best of times were rare. There was dull silence all about him. His foot lost the kerb, his cane swept the empty air, striking nothing solid, and panic rose upon him with its shuddering, icy grip. He was alone, he knew himself alone, worse still--he was in another open s.p.a.ce.
It took him fifteen minutes to cross that open s.p.a.ce, most of the way upon his hands and knees, oblivious of the icy slime that stained his trousers, froze his fingers, intent only upon feeling solid support against his back and spine again. It was an endless period. The moment of collapse was close, the shriek already rising in his throat, the shaking of the whole body uncontrollable, when--his outstretched fingers struck a friendly kerb, and he saw a glimmering patch of diffused radiance overhead. With a great, quick effort he stood upright, and an instant later his stick rattled along an area railing. He leaned against it, breathless, panting, his heart beating painfully while the street lamp gave him the further comfort of its feeble gleam, the actual flame, however, invisible. He looked this way and that; the pavement was deserted. He was engulfed in the dark silence of the fog.
But Morley Place, he knew, must be very close by now. He thought of the friendly little V.A.D. he had known in France, of a warm bright fire, a cup of tea and a cigarette. One more effort, he reflected, and all these would be his. He pluckily groped his way forward again, crawling slowly by the area railings. If things got really bad again, he would ring a bell and ask for help, much as he shrank from the idea. Provided he had no more open s.p.a.ces to cross, provided he saw no more figures emerging and vanishing like creatures born of the fog and dwelling within it as within their native element--it was the figures he now dreaded more than anything else, more even than the loneliness--provided the panic sense----
A faint darkening of the fog beneath the next lamp caught his eye and made him start. He stopped. It was not a figure this time, it was the shadow of the pole grotesquely magnified. No, it moved. It moved towards him. A flame of fire followed by ice flowed through him. It was a figure--close against his face. It was a woman.
The doctor"s advice came suddenly back to him, the counsel that had cured him of a hundred phantoms:
"Do not ignore them. Treat them as real. Speak and go with them. You will soon prove their unreality then. And they will leave you...."
He made a brave, tremendous effort. He was shaking. One hand clutched the damp and icy area railing.
"Lost your way like myself, haven"t you, ma"am?" he said in a voice that trembled. "Do you know where we are at all? Morley Place _I_"m looking for----"
He stopped dead. The woman moved nearer and for the first time he saw her face clearly. Its ghastly pallor, the bright, frightened eyes that stared with a kind of dazed bewilderment into his own, the beauty above all, arrested his speech midway. The woman was young, her tall figure wrapped in a dark fur coat.
"Can I help you?" he asked impulsively, forgetting his own terror for the moment. He was more than startled. Her air of distress and pain stirred a peculiar anguish in him. For a moment she made no answer, thrusting her white face closer as if examining him, so close, indeed, that he controlled with difficulty his instinct to shrink back a little.
"Where am I?" she asked at length, searching his eyes intently. "I"m lost--I"ve lost myself. I can"t find my way back." Her voice was low, a curious wailing in it that touched his pity oddly. He felt his own distress merging in one that was greater.
"Same here," he replied more confidently. "I"m terrified of being alone, too. I"ve had sh.e.l.l-shock, you know. Let"s go together. We"ll find a way together----"
"Who are you!" the woman murmured, still staring at him with her big bright eyes, their distress, however, no whit lessened. She gazed at him as though aware suddenly of his presence.
He told her briefly. "And I"m going to tea with a V.A.D. friend in Morley Place. What"s your address? Do you know the name of the street?"
She appeared not to hear him, or not to understand exactly; it was as if she was not listening again.
"I came out so suddenly, so unexpectedly," he heard the low voice with pain in every syllable; "I can"t find my home again. Just when I was expecting him too----" She looked about her with a distraught expression that made O"Reilly long to carry her in his arms to safety then and there. "He may be there now--waiting for me at this very moment--and I can"t get back." And so sad was her voice that only by an effort did O"Reilly prevent himself putting out his hand to touch her. More and more he forgot himself in his desire to help her. Her beauty, the wonder of her strange bright eyes in the pallid face, made an immense appeal.
He became calmer. This woman was real enough. He asked again the address, the street and number, the distance she thought it was. "Have you any idea of the direction, ma"am, any idea at all? We"ll go together and----"
She suddenly cut him short. She turned her head as if to listen, so that he saw her profile a moment, the outline of the slender neck, a glimpse of jewels just below the fur.
"Hark! I hear him calling! I remember...!" And she was gone from his side into the swirling fog.
Without an instant"s hesitation O"Reilly followed her, not only because he wished to help, but because he dared not be left alone. The presence of this strange, lost woman comforted him; he must not lose sight of her, whatever happened. He had to run, she went so rapidly, ever just in front, moving with confidence and certainty, turning right and left, crossing the street, but never stopping, never hesitating, her companion always at her heels in breathless haste, and with a growing terror that he might lose her any minute. The way she found her direction through the dense fog was marvellous enough, but O"Reilly"s only thought was to keep her in sight, lest his own panic redescend upon him with its inevitable collapse in the dark and lonely street. It was a wild and panting pursuit, and he kept her in view with difficulty, a dim fleeting outline always a few yards ahead of him. She did not once turn her head, she uttered no sound, no cry; she hurried forward with unfaltering instinct. Nor did the chase occur to him once as singular; she was his safety, and that was all he realized.
One thing, however, he remembered afterwards, though at the actual time he no more than registered the detail, paying no attention to it--a definite perfume she left upon the atmosphere, one, moreover, that he knew, although he could not find its name as he ran. It was a.s.sociated vaguely, for him, with something unpleasant, something disagreeable. He connected it with misery and pain. It gave him a feeling of uneasiness.
More than that he did not notice at the moment, nor could he remember--he certainly did not try--where he had known this particular scent before.
Then suddenly the woman stopped, opened a gate and pa.s.sed into a small private garden--so suddenly that O"Reilly, close upon her heels, only just avoided tumbling into her. "You"ve found it?" he cried. "May I come in a moment with you? Perhaps you"ll let me telephone to the doctor."
She turned instantly. Her face close against his own, was livid.