“My Dear Friend,“A sudden change in the political situation has made it necessary for me to go—where I must not tell you. So, to my great regret, I cannot accompany you. You, however, will start by the morning train, as arranged. The route, as you know, is Paris, Zurich, Saltzburg, and Prague. I enclose letters to sound friends in Prague and Warsaw who will relieve you of all worries and responsibilities. If you do not hear from me in Prague, where I should like you to remain one week—it is a beautiful city, and the Czecho-Slovak Republic is one of the most interesting outcomes of the war—await instructions at Warsaw. But I anticipate picking you up in Prague.
“My Dear Friend,
“A sudden change in the political situation has made it necessary for me to go—where I must not tell you. So, to my great regret, I cannot accompany you. You, however, will start by the morning train, as arranged. The route, as you know, is Paris, Zurich, Saltzburg, and Prague. I enclose letters to sound friends in Prague and Warsaw who will relieve you of all worries and responsibilities. If you do not hear from me in Prague, where I should like you to remain one week—it is a beautiful city, and the Czecho-Slovak Republic is one of the most interesting outcomes of the war—await instructions at Warsaw. But I anticipate picking you up in Prague.
“Yours,
“Boronowski.”
A moment ago, he had dreaded the interruption of Boronowski on his nerve-racked vigil. Now the dismayed prospect of a journey across Europe alone awoke within him a sudden yearning for Boronowski’s society. A dozen matters could be cleared up in an hour’s talk. Suppose Boronowski’s return to Warsaw were indefinitely delayed.
“Thanks very much,” he said. “I’ll take back the answer to Mr. Boronowski myself.”
“There can be no answer,” said Klinski.
“Why?”
“Mr. Boronowski left his lodgings early this evening, and has gone—who knows where?”
Triona shrugged his shoulders. It was the uncomfortable way of conspirators all the world over. To himself he cursed it with heatedness, but to no avail.
“Why didn’t you bring the letter before?” he asked.
“I have had many messages to deliver to-night, sir,” said Klinski, “and I have not finished.”
The stunted, pallid man looked tired out, half-starved. Triona drew from his pocket a ten-shilling note. Klinski drew back a step.
“I thank you. But in the service of my country I can only accept payment from my Government.”
Triona regarded him in admiration.
“It must be a great country!”
“It is,” said Klinski, with a light in his eyes.
“And I’m proud to go and fight for her.”
“It’s a privilege that I envy you,” said Klinski. “May God preserve you.”
Driven by the impossibility of sleep in the frowsy room, by the incurable wander-fever which took him at periods of unrest, he found himself an hour later standing before the block of flats in the Buckingham Palace Road, staring up at the windows of his home. In the bedroom was a faint streak of light quite visible from below through a crack in the curtains. He remembered how, a year ago, he had been compelled by a similar impulse, to stand romantically beneath the building which housed her sacredness, and how the gods, smiling on him, had delivered her into his rescuing hands. And now there were no gods—or if there were, they did but mock him. No white wraith would appear on the pavement, turning to warm flesh and blood, demanding his succour. She was up there, wakeful, behind that streak of light.
He stood racked by an agony of temptation. The Yale latch key was still at the end of his watch-chain. He was her husband. He had the right of entrance. His being clamoured for her, and found utterance in a horrible little cry. The light invited him like a beacon. Yes. He would cross the road. Perhaps the fool Olifant was right. She might yet love him. And then, as if in answer to his half-crazed imaginings, the light went out.
He turned, and walked wearily back across sleeping London.
It was four o’clock when the night porter admitted him. He stumbled to his room. As his train left Victoria at eight, it would be an absurdity to undress and go to bed. Utterly weary, he threw himself on it as he was, his brain whirling. There could be no question of sleep.
Yet suddenly he became conscious of daylight. He started up and looked at his watch. It was past seven. He had slept after all. He made a perfunctory toilet and hurriedly completed his neglected packing. The drowsy night porter, on duty till eight, tardily answered his summons, and took his suit-case to the shabby vestibule. Triona followed, with heavy great coat and canvas kit-bag, his purchases for the campaign. The porter suggested breakfast. There was no time. Luckily he had paid his bill the evening before. All he demanded was a taxi.
But at that early hour of the morning there were none, save a luggage-laden few bound for St. Pancras or King’s Cross.
“I can’t leave the hotel, sir,” said the porter, “or I would get you one from Euston.”
“I’ll find one, then,” said Triona, and putting on the heavy khaki coat and gripping suit-case in one hand and kit-bag in the other, he set off along the Euston Road. As he neared the station entrance, he staggered along, aching and sweating. What a fool he had been not to foresee this idiot difficulty! What a fool he had been to give way to sleep. He came in view of the clock. Given a cab, he would still have time to catch the train at Victoria. He had it on his brain that his salvation depended on his catching the train at Victoria. He stumbled into the outer court, past the hotel wings. An outgoing taxi-cab swirled towards him. He dropped his burdens and stood in its path with upheld arms. There was a sudden pandemonium of hoarse cries, a sounding of brakes. He glanced round just in time to see, for a fraction of a second, the entering motor-lorry which struck him down.
OLIVIAstruggled for a fortnight against Circumstance, when Circumstance got the upper hand.
But it had been a valiant fight from the moment Myra, on her return to the flat, had delivered Triona’s scribbled note, and had given her account of the brief parting interview.
“It’s just as well,” she said. “It’s the only way out.”
She made a brave show of dining, while Myra waited stoically. At last, impelled to speech, she said:
“Well, what do you think of it?”
“How can I think of what I know nothing about?” said Myra.
“Would you like to know?”
“My liking has nothing to do with it,” said Myra brushing the crumbs off the table. “If you tell me, you tell me because it may help you. But—I know it’s not a Christian thing to say—I’m not likely to forgive the man that has done you an injury.”
“He has done me no injury,” said Olivia. “That’s what I want you to know. No injury in the ordinary sense of the word.”
She looked up at Myra’s impassive face, and met the dull blue eyes, and found it very difficult to tell her, in spite of lifelong intimacy. Yet it was right that Myra should have no false notions.
“I’ve discovered that my husband’s name is not Alexis Triona. It is John Briggs.”
“John Briggs,” echoed Myra.
“His father was a labourer in Newcastle. He was a chauffeur in Russia. All that he had said about himself and written in his book is untrue. When he left us last summer to go to Finland, he really went to Newcastle to his mother’s death-bed. Everything he has told me has been a lie from beginning to end. He—oh, God, Myra——”
She broke down and clutched her face, while her throat was choking with dry sobbing. Myra came swiftly round the table and put her arm about her, and drew the beloved head near to her thin body.
“There, there, my dear. You can tell me more another time.”
Olivia let herself be soothed for a while. Then she pulled herself together and rose.
“No, I’ll tell you everything now. Then we’ll never need talk of it again. I’m not going to make a fool of myself.”
She stiffened herself against feminine weakness. At the end of the story, Myra asked her:
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to carry on as if nothing had happened. At any rate for the present.”
Myra nodded slowly. “You’re not the only one who has had to carry on as if nothing had happened.”
“What do you mean?” Olivia asked quickly.
“Nothing but what I said,” replied Myra. “It takes some doing. But you’ve got to believe in God and believe in yourself.”
“Where did you get your wisdom from, Myra?” asked Olivia wonderingly.
“From life, my dear,” replied Myra with unwonted softness. And picking up the last tray of removed dinner things, she left the room.
The next afternoon, she said to Myra, “Major Olifant has telephoned me that Mr. Triona is arriving at Paddington by a six-fifteen train. I should like you to come with me.”
“Very well,” said Myra.
It was characteristic of their relations that they spoke not a word of Triona during their drive to the station or during their wait on the platform. When the train came in, and they had assured themselves that he had not arrived—for they had taken the precaution to separate and each to scan a half-section—they re-entered their waiting taxi-cab and drove home.
“I hope I shall never see him again,” said Olivia, humiliated by this new deception. “He told Major Olifant he was coming straight to town by the train. The truth isn’t in him. You mustn’t suppose,” she turned rather fiercely to Myra, “that I came to meet him with any idea of reconciliation. That’s why I brought you with me. But people don’t part for ever in this hysterical way. There are decencies of life. There are the commonplace arrangements of a separation.”
She burned with a new sense of wrong. Once more he had eluded her. Now, what she told Myra was true. She wished never to see him again.
Blaise Olifant came up to town, anxious to be of service, and found her in this defiant mood.
“It’s impossible for it all to end like this,” he said. “You are wounded to the quick. He’s in a state of crazy remorse. Time will soften things. He’ll come to his senses and return and ask your forgiveness, and you will give it.”
She replied, “My dear Blaise, you don’t understand. The man I loved and married doesn’t exist.”
“The man of genius exists. Listen,” said he. “After he left me, I’ve done scarcely anything but think of the two of you. He could have put forward a case—a very strong case—but he didn’t.”
“And what was his strong case?” she asked bitterly.
Olifant put before her his reasoned apologia for the life of Triona. Given the first deception practised under the obsession of the little black book acting on a peculiarly sensitive temperament, the rest followed remorselessly.
“He was being blackmailed by one lie.”
“My intelligence grasps what you say,” Olivia answered, “but my heart doesn’t. You’re standing away and can see things in the round. I’m in the middle of them, and I can’t.”
If she, although his wife, had stood away; if she had been dissociated from his deceptions; if nothing more had occurred than the exposure of the Triona myth, she might have forgiven him. But the deceptions had been interwoven with the sacred threads of her love; she could not forgive that intimate entanglement. To a woman the little things are as children, as the little ones whose offenders Christ cursed with the millstone and the sea. She had lain awake, his forgotten wrist-watch on her arm, picturing him tossed by the waves of the North Sea in the execution of her country’s errand. She had proudly told a hundred people of the Bolshevist gyve-marks around his ankle. She had been moved to her depths by the tragical romance of the fictitious Vronsky. In her heart there had been hot rebellion against a Foreign Office keeping strangle-hold on a heroic servant and restricting his freedom of action. These little sufferings he had caused her she could not forgive. While inflicting them, he knew that she suffered.
In vain did Olifant, unversed in the psychology of woman, plead the cause of the erratic creature that was her husband. In vain did he set out his honourable and uncontested record; that of a man whose response to the call of duty was unquestioned; of whose courage and endurance she had received personal testimony; who had cheerfully suffered wounds, the hardships of flight through Revolutionary Russia, the existence on a mine-sweeper on perilous seas ending in the daily dreaded catastrophe; the record of a man who, apart from his fraud, had justified himself as a queer, imaginative genius, writing of life in a new way, in a new, vibrating style that had compelled the attention of the English-speaking world. In vain did he adduce the boyish charm of the man. Olivia sighed.
“I don’t know him as you see him,” she said.
“Then what can I do?” he asked.
She shook a despairing head. “Nothing, my dear Blaise.” She rubbed the palm of one hand on the back of the other, and turned her great dark eyes on him. “You can’t do anything, but you’ve done something. You’ve shown me how loyal a man can be.”
He protested vaguely. “My dear Olivia . . .”
“It’s true,” she said. “And I’ll always remember it. And now, don’t let us ever talk about this again.”
“As you will,” said he. “But what are you going to do?”
She replied as she had done to Myra. She would carry on.
“Until when?”
She shrugged her shoulders. She would carry on indefinitely. To act otherwise would open the door to gossip. She was not going to be done to death by slanderous tongues. She rose and stood before him in slim, rigid dignity.
“If I can’t out-brave the world, I’m a poor thing.”
“You stay here, then?” he asked.
“Why not? Where else should I go?”
“I came with a little note from my sister,” said Olifant, drawing a letter from his pocket and handing it to her.
Olivia read it through. Then she said, in a softened voice:
“You’re a dear, kind friend.”
“It’s my sister,” he smiled; but he could not keep an appeal out of his eyes. “Why shouldn’t you?” he asked suddenly. “It will be hateful for you here, for all your courage. And you’ll be fighting what? Just shadows, and you’ll expend all your strength in it. What good will it do you or anybody? You want rest, real rest, of body and soul.”
She met his eyes.
“Do I look so woebegone?”
“The sight of you now is enough to break the heart of any one who cares for you, Olivia,” he said soberly.
“It’s merely a question of sleeplessness. That’ll pass off.”
“It will pass off quicker in the country,” he urged. “It will be a break. The house will be yours. Mary and I, the discreetest shadows. You don’t know the self-effacing dear that Mary is. Besides, she is one of those women who is a living balm for the wounded. To look at her is to draw love and comforting from her.” He ventured the tips of his fingers on her slender shoulders. “Do come. Your old room shall be yours, just as you left it. Or the room I have always kept sacred.”
She stood by the fireplace, her arm on the mantelshelf, looking away from him.
“Or, if you like,” he went on, “we’ll clear out—we only want a few days—and give you back your old home all to yourself.”
She stretched out a groping hand; he took it.
“I know you would,” she said. “It’s—it’s beautiful of you. I’m not surprised, because—” she swayed head and shoulders a bit, seeking for words, her eyes away from him, “—because, after that first day at Medlow, I have never thought of you as doing otherwise than what was beautiful and noble. It sounds silly. But I mean it.”
She withdrew her hand and walked away into the room, her back towards him. He strode after her.
“That’s foolishness. I’m only an ordinary, decent sort of man. In the circumstances, good Lord! I couldn’t do less.”
She faced him in the middle of the room.
“And I as an ordinary, decent woman, couldn’t do less than what I’ve said.”
“Well?” said he.
They stood for a few seconds eye to eye. A faint colour came into her cheeks, and she smiled.
“Don’t suppose I’m not tempted. I am. But if I came, you’d spoil me. I’ve got to fight.”
This valiant attitude he could not induce her to abandon. At last, with a pathetic air of disappointment, he said:
“If I can help you in any other way, and you won’t let me, I shall be hurt.”
“Oh, I’ll let you,” she cried impulsively. “You may be sure. Who else is there?”
He went away comforted. Yet he did not return to Medlow. These early days, he argued, were critical. Anything might happen, and it would be well for him to remain within call.
Of what the future held for her she did not think. Her mind was concentrated on the struggle through the present. She received a woman caller and chattered over tea as though nothing had happened. The effort braced her, and she felt triumphant over self. She went about on her trivial shopping. She remembered a fitting for a coat and skirt which she had resolved to postpone till after the projected motor jaunt. If she was to live in the world, she must have clothes to cover her. One morning, therefore, she journeyed to the dressmaker’s in Hanover Street, and, the fitting over, wandered through the square, down Conduit Street into Bond Street. At the corner, she ran into Lydia, expensively dressed, creamy, serene.
“My dear, you’re looking like a ghost. What have you been doing with yourself?”
“Jogging on as usual,” said Olivia.
Their acquaintance had not been entirely broken. A few calls had been exchanged. Once Lydia had lunched with Olivia alone in the Buckingham Palace Road. But they had not met since the early part of the year. They strolled slowly down Bond Street. Lydia was full of news. Bobby Quinton had married Mrs. Bellingham—a rich woman twice his age.
“The way of the transgressor is soft,” said Olivia.
Mauregard was transferred to Rome. His idol, the Russian dancer, had run off with Danimède, the fitter at Luquin’s. Hadn’t Olivia heard?
“Where have you been living, my dear child? In a tomb? It has been the talk of London for the past six weeks. They’re in Paris now, and they say she lies down on the floor and lets the little beast kick her. She likes it. There’s no accounting for tastes. Perhaps that’s why she left Mauregard.”
In her serene, worldly way, she went through the scandalous chronicles of her galley. She came at last to Edwin Mavenna. Olivia remembered Mavenna? She laughed indulgently. Olivia shuddered at the memory and gripped her hands tight. Mavenna—he mattered little. A beast let loose for a few moments from the darkness. He was eclipsed from her vision by the boyish, grey-clad figure in the moonlight. She scarcely heard Lydia’s chatter.
“One must live and let live, you know, in this world. He and Sydney are partners now. I hinted something of the sort at the time. You don’t mind now, do you?”
“Not a bit. Why should I?” said Olivia.
“That’s really why I’ve not asked you down to our place in Sussex. But if you don’t mind meeting him—he’s quite a good sport really.”
Olivia’s eyes wandered up and down the crowded roadway.
“I wish I could see an empty taxi,” she said.
She had a sudden horror of Lydia—a horror queerly mingled with fierce jealousy. Why should Lydia, with her gross materialism, be leading this unruffled existence?
“Are you in a hurry?” Lydia asked placidly.
“I’ve an appointment with—my dentist.”
“We’ll get in here and wait till we see a taxi,” said Lydia.
They stood in the recess of a private doorway, by the bow-window of a print shop.
“You’re not looking well, my dear,” said Lydia quite affectionately. “Marriage doesn’t seem to agree with you. What’s the matter?”
Olivia flashed: “Nothing’s the matter.”
“How’s your husband?”
“Very well.”
This was intolerable. She strained her eyes for the little red flag of freedom. Then, as she had told her visitor of a day or two before:
“He’s gone abroad—on important business.”
“And not taken you with him?”
“His business isn’t ordinary business,” she said instinctively. Then she recognized she was covering him with his own cloak. Her pale cheeks flushed.
“So that’s it,” said Lydia smiling. “You’re a poor little grass widow. You want bucking up, my dear. A bit of old times. Come and do a dinner and a theatre with us. Sydney would love to see you again. We’ll steer clear of naughty old Mavenna——”
She had to stop; for Olivia had rushed across the pavement and was holding up her little embroidered bag at arm’s length, and the Heaven-sent taxi was drawing up to the kerb.
Lydia followed her and stood while she entered the cab.
“You’ll come, won’t you, dear?”
“I’ll telephone,” said Olivia. She put out a hand. “Good-bye. It has been so pleasant seeing you again.”
Lydia shook hands and smiled in her prosperous, contented way. Then she said:
“Where shall he drive to?”
Olivia had not given the matter a thought. She reflected swiftly. If she said “Home,” Lydia would suspect her eagerness to escape. After all, she didn’t want to hurt Lydia’s feelings. She cried at random:
“Marlborough Road, St. John’s Wood.”
“What a funny place for a dentist to live,” said Lydia.
Anyhow, it was over. She was alone in the taxi, which was proceeding northwards up Bond Street. Of all people in the world Lydia was the one she least had desired to meet. Dinner and Revue. Possibly supper and a dance afterwards! Back again to where she had started little over a year ago. She suddenly became aware of herself shrieking with laughter. In horror, she stopped short, and felt a clattering shock all through her frame, like a car going at high speed when, at the instant of danger, all the brakes are suddenly applied. She lay back on the cushions, panting. Her brow was moist. She put up her hand and found a wisp of hair sticking to her temples.
The cab went on. Where was she? Where was she going? She looked out of the window and recognized Regent’s Park. Then she remembered her wildly-given destination. She put her head through the window.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she said to the driver. “Go to Buckingham Palace Mansions.”
The next morning came a letter from Lydia on expensive primrose note-paper. Would Friday be convenient? Sydney and herself would call for her at seven. There was a postscript:
“I hope the St. John’s Wood dentist didn’t hurt you too much.”
It gave her an idea. She replied:
“So sorry. The St. John’s Wood dentist has made it impossible for me to appear in public for at least a month.”
She checked an impulse of laughter. She must keep hold on herself.
Olifant came in the afternoon. She told him of a communication she had received from her bank to the effect that Alexis had placed a large sum of money to her account. But she did not tell him of her meeting with Lydia.
“What’s to be done with the money? I don’t want it. It had better be retransferred.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Olifant.
He came back next morning. He had seen the manager of Triona’s bank. Nothing could be done. Alexis had drawn out his balance in cash and closed his account.
“Let things be—at any rate for the present,” Olifant counselled.
When he took his leave, he said, looking down on her from his lean height:
“I do wish you would come to Medlow.”
She knew that she was ill. She knew that she was looking ill. But her little frame shook with an impatient movement.
“I’m going to stick it, Blaise. I’m going to stick it if I die for it.”
“It’s magnificent, but it isn’t war—or anything else,” said he.
Then came Rowington. The last straw. The last straw, in the guise of an anxious, kindly, gold-spectacled, clean-shaven, florid-faced philanthropist. First he had asked over the telephone for Triona’s address. An urgent matter. Olivia replied that his address was secret. Would she kindly forward a letter? She replied that none of her husband’s letters were to be forwarded. Would Mrs. Triona see him, then? He would wait on her at any time convenient to her. She fixed the hour. He came on the stroke.
Olivia, her heart cold, her brain numbed by a hundred apprehensions, was waiting for him in the drawing-room. Myra announced him. Olivia rose.
“My dear Mrs. Triona,” said he, emphasizing the conventional handshake by laying his hand over hers and holding it, “where is that wonderful husband of yours?”
“He’s gone abroad,” said Olivia.
“He must come back,” said Rowington.
“He has gone away for a long time on important business,” said Olivia, parrot-wise.
She motioned him to a chair. They sat down.
“I gathered something of the sort from his letter. Has he told you of certain dispositions?”
She fenced. “I don’t quite follow you.”
“This letter——?”
He handed her the letter of instructions with regard to payment of royalties which he had received from Triona. She glanced through it.
“That’s all right,” she said.
He drew a breath of relief. “I’m glad you know. I had a sort of idea—anyhow, no matter how important his business is, it’s essential that he should come back at once.”
“Why?” she asked.
But she had a sickening prescience of the answer. The kindly gentleman passed his hand over his forehead.
“It’s just a business complication, my dear Mrs. Triona,” he said.
She rose. He too, courteously.
“Is it to do with anything that happened on the night of your dinner-party?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Colonel Onslow and Captain Wedderburn?”
He met her eyes.
“Yes,” said he.
“They’ve come to you with all sorts of lies about Alexis.”
“I would give ten years of my life not to wound you, Mrs. Triona,” he said, in great distress. “I didn’t sleep a wink last night. My honour as a publisher is involved. But let that pass. I’m thinking more of you. You only can help me—and your husband. These two gentlemen have come to me with a challenge. Your husband’s good faith. They ask ‘IsThrough Blood and Snowa bona-fide personal record?’ ”
“It is,” said Olivia, with her back to the wall.
“He’ll have to prove it.”
“He will,” said Olivia proudly. “What do they propose to do?”
“Have the whole thing cleared up in public—in the Press. My dear Mrs. Triona,” he said after a few moments’ hesitation, “don’t you see the false position I’m in? This letter I’ve shown you—it looks like running away—forgive me if I wound you. But on the face of it, it does. I daren’t tell them. But of course, if Mr. Triona comes back, he’ll be able to give all the explanation in the world. I haven’t the remotest doubt of it—not the remotest doubt. So, whatever his business is, you must recall him. You see the importance?”
“Yes, I see,” said Olivia tonelessly.
“So will you write and tell him this?”
The truth had to come out. She said:
“As a matter of fact, I don’t know where he is. I can’t communicate with him.”
She hated the look of incredulous surmise on Rowington’s face. “As soon as I can, I’ll let him know.”
“Yes, yes,” said Rowington. “You must. You see, don’t you, that both Onslow and Wedderbum feel it to be their public duty.”
“But they’re both men of decent feeling,” said Olivia. “They wouldn’t attack a man when they knew he wasn’t here to defend himself.”
“I hope not, my dear Mrs. Triona,” said Rowington. “I sincerely hope not. I’ll see them again. Indeed, I tried to put them off the whole thing. I did my best.”
“What’s the exact charge they make against my husband?”
To her utmost power she would defend him. Let her know facts.
He explained. There was a mysterious period of ten months. Captain Wedderburn asserted that for four of those months her husband was with the Armoured Column, and for the remaining six he lay wounded in a Russian hospital. Colonel Onslow maintained that those ten months—he had his dates exact—are covered in the book by Alexis Triona’s adventures in Farthest Russia—and that these adventures are identical with those of another man who related them to him in person.
“That’s definite, at any rate,” said Olivia. “But it’s a monstrous absurdity all the same. My husband denied the Russian hospital in my presence. You can tell these gentlemen that what they propose to do is infamous—especially when they learn he is not here. Will you give them my message? To hit a man behind his back is not English.”
Rowington saw burning eyes in a dead white face, and a slim, dark figure drawn up tragically tense. He went home miserably with this picture in his mind. For all her bravery she had not restored his drooping faith in Triona.
And Olivia sat, when he had left her, staring at public disgrace. Against that she could not fight. The man she had loved was a shadow, a non-existent thing; but she bore his name. She had sworn to keep bright the honour of the name before the world. And now the world would sweep it into the dustbin of ignominy. A maddening sense of helplessness, growing into a great terror, got possession of her.
The next morning, when Myra brought in her letters, she felt ill and feverish after a restless night. One of the envelopes bore Triona’s familiar handwriting. She seized it eagerly. It would give some address, so that she could summon him back to make a fight for his honour. But there was no address. She read it through, and then broke into shrill harsh laughter.
“He says he’s going out this morning to fight for the sacred cause of Poland.”
Myra, who was pottering about the room, turned on her sharply. As soon as Olivia was quieter, she sent for the doctor. Later in the day, there came a nurse, and Myra was banished most of the day from the beloved bedside.
Thus it came about that the next morning no correspondence or morning papers were brought into Olivia’s room. And that is why Myra, who preferred the chatty paragraphs to leaders and political news, said nothing to her mistress of a paragraph stuck away in the corner of the paper. It was only a few lines—issued by the police—though Myra did not know that—to the effect that a well-dressed man with papers on him giving the name of John Briggs had been knocked over by a motor-lorry the previous morning and had been taken unconscious to University College Hospital.
MYRAstood by the screened-off bed in the long ward and looked unemotionally at the unconscious man.
“Yes,” she said to the Sister, “that is Mr. John Briggs. I know him intimately.”
“Are you a relative?”
“He has no relatives.”
“You see, in a case like this, we have to report to the police. It’s their business to find somebody responsible.”
“I’m responsible,” said Myra.
The Sister looked at the tall, lean woman, so dignified in her well-made iron grey coat and skirt and plain black hat, and was puzzled to place her socially. She might be an austere lady of high degree; on the other hand, she spoke with an odd, country accent. It was, at any rate, nine hundred and ninety-nine to one that she was a genuine friend of the patient; but there was the remaining one in a thousand that she belonged to the race of cranks not unfamiliar in London hospitals.
“It’s only a matter of formality,” said the Sister, “but one must have some proof.”
So Myra drew her bow at a venture.
“Mr. Briggs was going abroad—to Poland.”
The Sister smiled with relief. In his pocket-book had been found railway tickets and unsealed letters to people in Prague and Warsaw. So long as they found some one responsible, it was all that mattered. She proceeded to explain the case. A broken thigh, broken ribs, and severe concussion. Possibly internal injuries. The surgeons could not tell, yet.
Myra scanned again the peaked bit of face beneath the headbandages, which was all that was visible of Alexis Triona, and asked:
“Can he live?”
“It’s doubtful,” said the Sister.
They moved away to the centre of the ward aisle. The Sister talked of the accident, of the patient’s position.
“He’s a rich man,” said Myra.
“So we gathered,” replied the Sister, who had in her keeping his pocket-book, stuffed with English bank-notes of high value.
“If anything should happen, you of course will let me know.”
“Your name and address?”
She gave it. The sister wrote it down on a note-pad.
“Could I see him just once more?” Myra asked.
“Certainly.”
They went round the screen. Myra stood looking down on the bit she could see of the man who had brought catastrophe on her beloved. The shock of recognition, although expected, aroused her pity. Then her heart surged with fierce resentment. Serve the lying rascal right. Why hadn’t the motor-lorry finished the business right away? For all her cultivated impassivity of demeanour, she stood trembling by the bedside, scarcely knowing whether she wished him to die or live. Had he crossed her path unrelated to Olivia, she would have succumbed to his boyish charm. He had ever been courteous, grasping with his subtle tact the nature of the bond between her mistress and herself. So she half-loved, half-loathed him. And yet, all this considered, it would be better for Olivia and for himself if he were to die. She glanced swiftly around. The Sister had been called away for a second. She was alone behind the screen. She knew that if she could take that bandaged head in her gloved hands and shake it, he would die, and Olivia would be free. She shivered at the extraordinary temptation. Then reaction came and sped her from his side.
She met the Sister.
“Can I come again to see how he is getting on?”
“By all means.”
“I shouldn’t like him to die,” said Myra.
Said the Sister, somewhat mystified at this negative pronouncement:
“You may be sure we’ll do all we can.”
“I know,” said Myra.
Of these proceedings, and of these conflicting emotions, she said nothing to Olivia. Nor did she say anything of subsequent visits to the hospital where Triona still lay unconscious.
In a short time Olivia recovered sufficiently to dispense with the nurse. The doctor prescribed change of air. Olifant once more suggested Medlow, and this time she yielded. But on the afternoon before her departure, while they were packing, she had a strange conversation with Myra.
She held in her hand, uncertain whether to burn it, the last wild letter of Alexis.
“I’m glad he’s gone to Poland,” she said reflectively.
“Why?” asked Myra, not looking up from the trunk by which she was kneeling.
“It’s a man’s work, after all,” said Olivia.
“So’s digging potatoes.”
“I suppose you’re right,” said Olivia.
She tore up the letter and threw the fragments into the fire.
“What a hell marriage can be.”
“It can,” said Myra.
“You’re lucky. You’ve escaped.”
“Have I?” asked Myra intent on the packing of underwear.
At her tone Olivia started. “What do you mean?”
Myra looked up, sitting back on her heels.
“Do you suppose, dearie, you’re the only woman in trouble in the world?”
Olivia moved a step towards her.
“Are you too in trouble, Myra?”
“I’ve been in trouble for the last twenty years, ever since I left your mother’s house to be married to him.”
Olivia stared at her open-mouthed, lost in amazement. This prim, puritanical, predestined spinster of a Myra——
“You—married?”
She swerved back into a chair, reeling ever so little under this new shock. If there had been one indubitable, solid fact in her world, one that had stood out absolute during all the disillusions of the past year, it was Myra’s implacable spinsterhood. Why, she had seen Myra every day of her life, ever since she could remember, except for the annual holiday. Yes. Those holidays, always a subject for jest with her father and brothers when they were alive. No one had known whither she had gone, or when she had emerged on her reappearance. She had never given an address—so far as Olivia knew. And yet her plunge into the unknown had received the unquestioned acceptance of the family. Only last November she had gone in her mysterious way, taking, however, only a fortnight instead of her customary month. Olivia, Heaven knew why, had formed the careless impression that she had betaken herself to some tabby-like Home for religious incurables, run by her dissenting organization. And all this time, tabby-like in another sense, she had been stealing back to her husband. Where was Truth in the world? She repeated mechanically:
“You—married?”
Myra rose stiffly, her joints creaking, and stood before her mistress, and perhaps for the first time in her life Olivia saw a gleam of light in the elderly woman’s expressionless pale blue eyes.
“Yes, I’m married. Before the end of my honeymoon, I found he wasn’t in his right mind. I had to shut him up, and come back to your mother. He’s alive still, in the County Asylum. I go to see him every year.”
In a revulsion of feeling, Olivia sprang to her feet and held out both her arms.
“Myra—my dear old Myra——”
Myra suffered the young embrace, and then gently disengaged herself.
“There—there——” she said.
“Why have you never told me?”
“Would it have done you any good?”
“It would have made me much more thoughtful and considerate.”
“I’ve never wanted thought or consideration,” said Myra. “You have. So I say—would it have done you any good? Not a ha’p’orth. I’ve been much more use to you as I am. If you want to serve people, don’t go and throw your private life down their throats. It chokes them. You may think it won’t—but it does.”
“But why,” asked Olivia with moist eyes. “Why should you want to serve me like that—your devotion all these years?”
“My duty,” said Myra. “I told you something of the sort a while ago. What’s the good of repeating things? Besides, there was your mother——”
“Did mother know?”
Myra nodded. “She didn’t know I was going to be married. I was young then, and afraid. Madam took me out of an orphanage, and I thought I was bound for life. . . . He came to Medlow to do thatching. That’s how I met him. His father, one of a large family, had come from Norfolk to settle in the West. The Norfolk thatchers are known all over England. It goes down from father to son. His family had been thatchers in the same village since the Norman Conquest. He was a fine, upstanding man, and in his way an aristocrat—different from the butcher’s boys and baker’s men that came to the back door. I loved him with all my heart. He asked me to marry him. I said ‘Yes.’ We arranged it should be for my next holiday. Up to then, I had spent my holiday at a seaside place connected with the orphanage. One paid a trifle. Instead of going there, I went to his home. It was only when the trouble came that I wrote to your mother. She said the fewer people who knew, the better. I came back as though nothing had happened. Whether she told Mr. Gale or not, I don’t know. I don’t think she did. There was a baby—but, thank God, it was born dead. Your mother arranged it all, so that no one should be the wiser. You yourself were the tiniest tot. Perhaps now you see why I have a duty towards the daughter of an angel from Heaven.”
“And all my life——” Olivia began, but Myra interrupted her unemotionally.
“I didn’t tell you any of this, because, as I said, it could do you no good. And it’s your good I’ve lived for. One must have something to live for, anyway. Some folks live for food, other folks live for religion. I’d have lived for religion if it wasn’t for you. I’ve struggled and prayed to find the Way. Often it has been a question of you and Jesus Christ who has called me to forsake the vain affections of this world. And I’ve chosen you. I may be damned in Hell for it, but I don’t care.”
She went on her knees again by the trunk, and continued to pack dainty underwear.
“I’ve told you now, because it may do you good to see that you’re not the only married woman in trouble. I’d thank you,” she added after a pause, “to leave me alone with this packing.”
And as Olivia, not daring to yield the fullness of her heart to this strange, impassive creature, lingered by the door, Myra said:
“You’d best go, dearie, and think it out. At any rate, you haven’t got to go through the sorrow of the baby business.”
Whether this was consolation or not, Olivia could not decide. If there had been a child, and it had lived, it might have been a comfort and a blessing. Nothing in its heredity would have marked it with a curse. But still—it would have been a lifelong link with the corporeal man whom she had not married, from whom she shrank, and whom she proclaimed her desire never to see again. On the other hand, Myra’s revelation gave her strength and restored her courage. She shuddered at the thought of the hopeless lunatic in the County Asylum, dragging out dead years of life. At any rate, she was married to a living man.
Her first days in Medlow passed like a dream. The kindest and gentlest of women, Mary Woolcombe, Olifant’s sister, ministered to her wants. Mrs. Woolcombe, too, had made an unhappy marriage, and now lived apart from her husband, the depraved Oxford don. Thus, with her hostess and Myra, Olivia found herself within a little Freemasonry of unsuccessful wives. And one day, when she came to think of it, she laughed out loud.
“We might start a Home,” she said to Myra.
It was only later, when she shook off the strangeness of the dearly familiar, and grew strong enough to venture out into the streets that she found sense of perspective. Not so long ago had she set out on her Great Adventure—only eighteen months. Yet in these she had gathered the experience of eighteen years. . . .
Save for Blaise Olifant’s study, the house was little changed. The oak settle in the hall still showed the marks of the teeth of Barabbas, the bull-terrier pup. The white pane in the blue and red window of the bathroom still accused the youthful Bobby, now asleep for ever beneath the sod of Picardy. Her own old room, used by Mrs. Woolcombe, was practically unaltered. She stared into it as she rambled about the house, and felt that she had done right in not dispossessing its present occupant. All her girlhood was contained within those four walls, and she could not go back to it. The room would be haunted by its inconsiderable ghosts. She preferred her mother’s room, which, though scrupulously kept aired and dusted, had remained under lock and key. There, if ghosts counted for aught, would a spirit pervade of exquisite sympathy.
As Olifant had promised, she found herself in a strange, indefinable way, again mistress of the house, although she could take no part in its practical direction. He had spoken truth of his sister, whom she loved at first sight. Mary Woolcombe was plump, rosy, and brown-haired, with her brother’s dark blue eyes. On their first evening leave-taking, Olivia had been impelled to kiss her, and had felt the responsive warmth of a sisterly bosom.
“I do hope you feel at home,” Olifant asked one day after lunch.
“You seem like guests, not hosts,” replied Olivia.
“It’s dear of you to say so,” said Mary Woolcombe, “but I wish you’d prove it by asking your friends to come and see you.”
“I will,” replied Olivia.
But she flushed scarlet, and, as soon as she was alone, she grappled with realities. And realities nearly always have a nasty element of the ironical. She remembered the first cloud that swept over her serene soul during the honeymoon bliss of The Point. They had discussed their future domicile. Alexis had suggested the common-sense solution—“The Towers” as headquarters. She, with the schoolgirl stigma of Landsdowne House upon her, and possessed by the bitter memory of the nose-in-the-air attitude of the Blair Park crocodile—eternal symbol of social status—had revolted at the suggestion. He, the equal and companion of princes, looked on her—and, if his last crazy letter signified anything—looked still on her, as the high-born lady—the Princess of his dreams. Each, therefore, had deceived the other. She, the daughter of Gale and Trivett, auctioneers and estate agents, and so, by the unwritten law, cut off from the gentry of Medlow, had undergone agony of remorse for the sake of the son of a Tyneside operative, a boy before the mast, a common chauffeur, a man far her inferior in the social scale. No wonder he could not understand her hesitancies. Her resentment against him blazed anew. For his sake she had needlessly soiled her soul with deceit and snobbery. It was well that he had passed out of her life.
“May I invite Mr. Trivett and Mr. Fenmarch to tea?” she asked.
Mary Woolcombe smiled.
“The house is yours, dear. That’s not a Spanish courtesy but an English fact.”
So the two old gentlemen came, and Olivia entertained them in the dining-room, as she had done on the afternoon of her emancipation. She sat at the end of the comfortably laid table, and the dusty Fenmarch, with the face of an old moulting badger, drank tea, while, as before, the stout, red-gilled Trivett drank whisky and soda with his hot scones. This time, the latter explained that the whisky was a treat—forbidden by Mrs. Trivett at the domestic tea-table. They welcomed her back in the kindness of their simple hearts. They knew nothing of her separation from Triona. She had been ill and come down for rest and change.
“And you look as if you need it, my dear,” said Mr. Trivett. “And some of your good father’s old port. There should still be a dozen or two of Cockburn’s ‘70 in the cellar at the present moment—unless Major Olifant has drunk it all.”
Olivia laughed, for it was humorously meant. Mr. Fenmarch in the act of raising his teacup to his lips, put it down again with a sigh and shook his dusty head.
“It was a great wine,” he said with a look backward into the past.
“We’ll have a bottle up,” cried Olivia.
In spite of polite protests, she rang for Myra, and to Myra she gave instructions. And presently Myra, trained from girlhood in the nice conduct of wine, appeared with the cob-webbed bottle, white splash uppermost, tenderly tilted in unshaking hands. Trivett took it from her reverently while she sought corkscrew and napkin and glasses, and when she placed the napkin pad on the table, and Trivett took the corkscrew, Fenmarch, with the air of one participating in a holy rite, laid both hands on the sacred bottle and watched the extraction of the cork as one who awaits the manifestation of the god. The brows of both men were bent, and they held their breaths. Then the cork came out clear and true, and the broad red face of Trivett was irradiated by an all-pervading smile. It faded into an instant’s seriousness while he smelled the cork—it reappeared triumphant as he held the corkscrew, with cork impaled, beneath the nostrils of Fenmarch. Fenmarch sniffed and smiled and bowed.
“Olivia, my dear——” said Trivett with a gesture.
Olivia, understanding, held the wine-glasses. The wine flowed clear, gold dissolved in rubies—is there a colour on earth like the colour of old port?
“Stop! Only a sip for me,” she laughed.
“Nonsense. It was only for the sake of her health that we let her open it—eh, Fenmarch?”
But Fenmarch, eager on the pouring, cried:
“Don’t move your glass, for God’s sake, Olivia. You’ll waste it.”
But Trivett, with a false air of chivalry, let her off with half a glass. Fenmarch refolded the napkin, so as to give the temporarily abandoned bottle a higher tilt. The two men smelled the wine. For the first time since the awful night of disillusion, Olivia felt happy. These old dears! It was like stuffing greedy children with chocolates.
The two elderly gentlemen raised their glasses and bowed to her. Then sipped.
“Ah!” said Fenmarch.
“H’m,” said Trivett, with the knitted brow of puzzlement.
Then, suddenly the grey, badgery little man who had never been known to laugh violently, gave Olivia the shock of her life. He thrust his chair from the table and smacked his thigh and exploded in a high-pitched cackle of hilarity.
“He can’t taste it! He’s been drinking whisky! He has paralysed his palate. I’ve been waiting for it!” He beat the air with his hands. “Oh Lord! That’s good!”
Trivett’s fat jowl fell.
“——” he gasped, regardless of Olivia. “So I have.”
“Moral——” cried the delighted Fenmarch. “Never try to steal a march on your wife—it doesn’t pay, my boy. It doesn’t pay.”
And he inhaled the aroma of the Heaven-given wine, and drank with the serenity of the man who has never offended the high gods.
Olivia, anxious to console, said to Mr. Trivett:
“I’ll send you some round to-morrow.”
Trivett spread out his great arms.
“My dear, it’ll have to settle. If moved, it won’t be fit to drink for a couple of months.”
Eventually he reconciled himself to the loss of the subtler shades of flavour, and he shared with Fenmarch the drinkable remainder of the carefully handled bottle.
But it was not for this genial orgy that Olivia had convened the meeting.
“I owe you two dears an apology,” she said.
They protested. An impossibility.
“I do,” she asserted. “The last time you were here, you gave me good advice, which I rejected, like a little fool. I insisted on going up to London with all my money tied up in a bundle, to seek my fortune.”
“Well, my dear,” said Trivett, “haven’t you found it?”
She looked from one to the other, and their wine-cheered faces grew serious as she slowly shook her head.
“I want to tell you something in confidence. It mustn’t get round the town—at any rate, not yet. My husband and I aren’t going to live together any more.”
“God bless my soul!” said Fenmarch.
“So,” she continued, “I’m where I was when I left you. And I don’t want any more adventures. And if you’d take back my bag of gold—there isn’t so much in it now—and advise me what to do with it, I should be very grateful.”
It had cost her some sacrifice of pride to make this little speech. She had rehearsed it; put it off and off during the pleasant wine-drinking. She had flouted them once for two unimaginative ancients, and now dreaded, the possible grudge they might have against her. “If you had only listened to us,” they might say, with ill-concealed triumph. If they had done so, she would have accepted it as punishment for her overbearing conceit and for her snobbery. But they received her news with a consternation so affectionate and so genuine that her eyes filled with tears.
“You won’t ask me why,” she said. “It’s a complicated story—and painful. But it has nothing whatever to do with—with things people are divorced for. I should like you to understand that.”
“Then surely,” said the old lawyer, “as the usual barrier to a reconciliation doesn’t exist, there may still be hopes——”
“None,” said Olivia. “My husband has done the right thing. He has gone away—abroad—for ever, and has made it impossible for me to find out his address.”
“My dear,” said Mr. Trivett, his red face growing redder, “I don’t want to know none of your private affairs—” he lost hold of grammar sometimes when deeply moved “—it’s enough for me that you’re in trouble. I’ve known you ever since you were born, and I loved your father, who was the honestest man God ever made.” He stretched out his great, sunglazed hand. “And so, if old Luke Trivett’s any good to you, my dear, you can count on him as long as he’s this side of the daisies.”
“And I’m your good friend, too,” said Mr. Fenmarch in his dustiest manner.
When they had gone, Olivia sat for a long while alone in the dining-room. And she felt as though she had returned to the strong and dear realities of life after a feverish wandering among shadows.