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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aede1e0 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #60122 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60122) diff --git a/old/60122-0.txt b/old/60122-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index df603aa..0000000 --- a/old/60122-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,12970 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Tale of Triona, by William J. Locke - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Tale of Triona - -Author: William J. Locke - -Release Date: August 18, 2019 [EBook #60122] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TALE OF TRIONA *** - - - - -Produced by Marcia Brooks, Al Haines, Jen Haines & the -online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at -http://www.pgdpcanada.net - - - - - - - - - - - [Cover Illustration] - - - - - THE TALE OF TRIONA - - - - - =_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_= -IDOLS -JAFFERY -VIVIETTE -SEPTIMUS -DERELICTS -THE USURPER -STELLA MARIS -WHERE LOVE IS -THE ROUGH ROAD -THE MOUNTEBANK -THE RED PLANET -THE WHITE DOVE -FAR-AWAY STORIES -SIMON THE JESTER -A STUDY IN SHADOWS -A CHRISTMAS MYSTERY -THE WONDERFUL YEAR -THE HOUSE OF BALTAZAR -THE FORTUNATE YOUTH -THE BELOVÈD VAGABOND -AT THE GATE OF SAMARIA -THE GLORY OF CLEMENTINA -THE MORALS OF MARCUS ORDEYNE -THE DEMAGOGUE AND LADY PHAYRE -THE JOYOUS ADVENTURES OF ARISTIDE PUJOL - - - - - THE TALE OF TRIONA - - - BY - WILLIAM J. LOCKE - - Author of “The Belovèd Vagabond,” “The Morals of - Marcus Ordeyne,” etc. - - - [Illustration] - - NEW YORK - DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY - 1922 - - - - - Copyright, 1922 - By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. - PRINTED IN U. S. A. - - - - - THE TALE OF TRIONA - - - - - THE TALE OF TRIONA - - - CHAPTER I - -OLIVIA GALE leaned back in her chair at the end of the dining-room -table, and looked first at the elderly gentleman on her right, and then -at the elderly gentleman on her left. - -“You’re both of you as kind as can be, and I’m more than grateful for -all you’ve done; but I do wish you’d see that it’s no use arguing. It -only hurts and makes us tired. Do help yourself, Mr. Trivett. -And—another cup of tea, Mr. Fenmarch?” - -Mr. Fenmarch, on her left, passed his cup with a sigh. He was a dusty, -greyish man, his face covered with an indeterminate growth of thin short -hair. His eyes were of a dull, unspeculative blue. - -“As your solicitor, my dear Olivia,” said he, “I can only obey -instructions. As the friend of your family, I venture to give you -advice.” - -“Why the deuce your father didn’t tie you up in a trusteeship till you -were twenty-five, at any rate,” said Mr. Trivett on her right, helping -himself to whisky and soda—the table, covered with a green baize cloth, -was littered with papers and afternoon refreshments. “Why the -dickens——” he began again after a sizzling gulp. - -“Yes, it’s most unfortunate,” said Mr. Fenmarch, cutting off his -friend’s period. “And what you are going to do with yourself, all alone -in the world, with this enormous amount of liquid money is more than I -can imagine.” - -Olivia smiled and tapped the blue-veined hand that set down his teacup. - -“Of course you can’t. If imagination ran away with a solicitor, it would -land him in the workhouse.” - -“That’s where it will land you, Olivia,” said Mr. Trivett. “Common sense -is the better mount.” - -“That’s rather neat,” she said. - -“If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have said it,” retorted Mr. Trivett, sinking -his red jowls into his collar, which made them redder than before. - -“You’re so quick and clever,” said Olivia, “that I can’t understand why -you won’t see things from my point of view.” - -“You’ve got to learn that a man of experience can’t take the view of a -wrong-headed young woman.” - -Mr. Trivett emphasized the asperity of his tone by a thump of his palm -on the table. - -As a matter of fact, he was genuinely angry. He was the senior partner -in Trivett and Gale, Auctioneers and Estate Agents, in the comfortable -little Shropshire town of Medlow; or rather the only surviving partner, -for Gale, Olivia’s father, and his two sons had one after the other been -wiped out in a recent world accident. Olivia’s decision, inspired from -no other fount he could think of than lunacy, involved the withdrawal of -considerable capital from the business. This, of course, being an -honourable man, he could not dispute; but here were peace and -reconstruction and inflated prices, and heaven knew how much percentage -on the middleman’s capital, and here was this inexperienced girl -throwing away a safe income and clamouring for a settlement in full. -They had argued and argued. It may be stated here that Mr. Trivett was -the Executor of her father’s estate, which made his position the more -delicate and exasperating. - -And now Mr. Trivett’s exasperation reached the table-thumping point. - -Olivia smiled wearily. - -“It’s such a pity.” - -“What’s a pity?” - -“Oh, everything. One thing is that there’s no more gold. Of course, I -know you can’t understand. But that’s your fault, not mine. I should -have liked to realize all that I’ve got in sovereigns. Do you think -they’d fill a bath? Have you ever thought how lovely it would be to -wallow in a bath of sovereigns? Treasury notes are not the same thing. -They’re either very dirty and smell of plumbers, or very new and smell -of rancid oil. Gold is the real basis of Romance.” - -He put her down for a mere female fool, and replied practically: - -“We’ll not see a gold coin in England again for the next fifty years.” - -“Well, well,” she said; “anyhow, there’s still some romance in mounting -the deadly breech of the bank counter with a drawn cheque in one’s -hand.” - -“I’m afraid, my dear Olivia,” said Mr. Fenmarch mildly, “I don’t quite -see what we’re talking about.” - -“Why, we’ve discussed it every day for the last three months,” cried -Olivia, “and now this is the very last end of everything. A final -settlement, as you call it! That’s what you two dears have come for, -isn’t it?” - -“Unfortunately, yes,” said Mr. Fenmarch. - -“Then it’s all so simple. You’ve shown me this”—she picked up a -foolscap document and dropped it—“the full statement of account of my -father’s estate, and I approve—I being the only person concerned. -You’ve got to give me one last cheque for that amount”—she tapped the -document—“and I give you my receipt, signed over a penny stamp—you’ll -have to stand me a penny stamp, for I’ve only got three-halfpenny ones -in the house—and there’s an end of the matter.” - -“My clerk made out the receipt and put the penny stamp on,” said Mr. -Fenmarch, untroubled by her smile. “Here it is.” - -“Solicitors’ clerks seem to think of everything,” said Olivia. “Fancy -his remembering the penny stamp!” - -“It’s charged up against you, in Fenmarch’s bill—item ‘sundries,’” -remarked Mr. Trivett, pointing a fat forefinger. - -“Why, naturally. Why should Mr. Fenmarch shower pennies on me? It’s the -delicate thoughtfulness that I admire. I hope you’ll raise that young -man’s salary.” - -Mr. Fenmarch looked pained, like a horse to whom one had offered wooden -oats, and swung his head away. Mr. Trivett opened his mouth to speak, -but before he spoke finished his whisky and soda. - -“My dear Olivia,” said he, “I’m sorry to see you so flippant. You’ve -disappointed me and Mrs. Trivett who’ve known you since you were born, -more than I can say. Until your poor mother died—God bless her—we -thought you the most capable, level-headed young woman in this town. But -for the last three months—you’ll forgive my freedom in saying so—you -have shown yourself to be quite impossible.” - -He paused, angry. Olivia smiled and drummed on the table. - -“Have some more whisky.” - -“No, I won’t,” he said in a loud voice. “Whisky’s too expensive to ladle -out in that offhand fashion. It’s a luxury, as you’ll jolly well soon -discover. I’m talking for your good, Olivia. That’s why Fenmarch and I -are here. Two minutes will wind up the business. But we have your -interests at heart, my girl, and we want to make a last appeal.” - -She covered with hers the back of his red-glazed hand and spoke in a -softened voice:— - -“Yes, I know, I know. I’ve said already that you and Mr. Fenmarch were -dears. But what would you have me do? I’m twenty-three. Alone in the -world.” - -“You have your uncle and aunt at Clapham,” said Mr. Trivett. - -“I’ve also some sort of relations in the monkey cage at the Zoo,” said -Olivia. - -The repartee to the effect that it was the fittest home for her only -occurring to Mr. Trivett when he was getting into bed that night, he -merely stared at her gaspingly. She continued: - -“I’m absolutely alone in the world. Do you think it reasonable for me to -stay in this dull old house, in this mouldering old town, where one -never sees a man from one year’s end to another, living for the rest of -my life on the few hundreds a year which I could get if my capital were -properly invested?” - -“We don’t grant your premises, Olivia,” said Mr. Fenmarch. “‘The Towers’ -may be old, but it is not dull. Medlow is not mouldering, but singularly -progressive, and the place seems to—to pullulate with young men. So I -think our advice to you is eminently reasonable.” - -“Oh, dear!” sighed Olivia. “That’s where all the trouble comes in. Our -ideas of dullness, mouldering and pullu—what you call it; don’t -correspond. Mother was very fond of a story of Sydney Smith. Perhaps she -told you. He was walking one day with a friend through the slums and -came across two women quarrelling across the street, through opposite -windows. And Sydney Smith said: ‘They’ll never come to an agreement, -because they are arguing from different premises.’” - -There was a silence. - -“I’ll have a drop more whisky,” said Mr. Trivett. - -“I think I see the point of the remark,” said Mr. Fenmarch greyly. “It -was a play on the two meanings of the word.” - -“That was what my mother gave me to understand,” said Olivia. - -Then, after another spell of chill silence, she cried, her nerves on -edge: - -“Do let us come to the end of it!” - -“We will,” said Mr. Trivett impressively. “But not before I’ve made a -few remarks in protest, with Fenmarch as witness. I’m sorry there’s not -another witness——” - -“Oh, I’ll get one!” cried Olivia. “Myra—the faithful Myra.” - -“Myra’s a servant, also a fool; and you’ve got her under your thumb,” -said Mr. Trivett. - -“Well, well,” said Olivia, “we’ll give Myra a miss. But I know what -you’re going to say—and the kind heart that makes you say it.” - -A touch of real tenderness crept into her fine dark eyes and almost -softened Mr. Trivett. She looked so young, so slender, so immature in -her simple mourning. Her soft black hair clustered over her forehead in -a manner which he felt was inconsistent with a woman fighting her way -alone in the world. She hadn’t a bit of colour in her cheeks; wanted -feeding up, he thought. She was capable enough in her own sphere, the -management of her house, the care of a bed-ridden mother, the -appreciation of legal technicalities. Until she had got this bee in her -bonnet he had admired her prodigiously; though, with the reserve which -every Englishman makes in his admiration, he deplored the shrewdness of -her tongue. But this idea of hers, to realize all her money in hard cash -at the bank and go off into unknown perils was preposterous. She was not -fit for it. You could take her by the neck in one hand and by the waist -in another and break her to bits. . . . He was a good, honest man with -fatherly instincts developed by the possession of daughters of his own, -strapping red-cheeked girls, who had stayed soberly at home until the -right young man had come along and carried them off to modest homes of -unimpeachable respectability. So when he met the tenderness in Olivia’s -eyes he mitigated the asperities of his projected discourse and preached -her a very human little sermon. While he spoke, Mr. Fenmarch nodded his -unhumorous head and stroked the straggling grey hairs on his cheek. When -he had ended, Mr. Fenmarch seconded, as it were, the resolution. - -Then Olivia thanked them prettily, promised to avoid extravagance, and, -in case of difficulty, to come to them for advice. The final cheque was -passed over, the final receipt signed across the penny stamp provided -with such forethought, and Olivia Gale entered into uncontrolled -possession of her fortune. - -The men rose to take their leave. Olivia held the hand of the burly -red-faced man who had been her father’s partner and looked up at him. - -“I know, if you could have your way, you would give me a good hiding.” - -He laughed grimly. “Not the least doubt of it.” Then he patted her -roughly on the shoulder. - -“And you, Mr. Fenmarch?” - -He regarded her drearily. “After a long experience in my profession, -Olivia, I have come to one conclusion—clients are a mistake. Good-bye.” - -Left alone, Olivia stood for a moment wondering whether, after all, the -dusty lawyer had a jaded sense of humour. Then she turned and caught up -the cheque and sketched a few triumphant dancing steps. Suddenly, -holding it in her hand, she rushed out into the hall, where the men were -putting on their overcoats. - -“We’ve forgotten the most important thing, Mr. Trivett. You wrote me -something about an offer for the house.” - -“An enquiry—not an offer,” replied Mr. Trivett. “Yes. I forgot to -mention it. A Major somebody. Wait——” He lugged out a fat pocket-book -which he consulted. “That’s it. Major Olifant. Coming down here -to-morrow to look over it. Appointment at twelve, if that suits you. -Unfortunately, I’ve an engagement and can’t show him round. But I’ll -send Perkins, if you like.” - -“If the Major wants to eat me, he’ll eat up poor little Mr. Perkins, -too,” said Olivia. “So don’t worry.” - -She waited until Myra, the maid, had helped them into their overcoats -and opened the front door. After final leavetakings, they were gone. -Olivia put up her hands, one of them still holding the cheque, on Myra’s -gaunt shoulders and shook her and laughed. - -“I’ve beaten them at last. I knew I should. Now you and I are going to -have the devil’s own time.” - -“We’ll have, Miss Olivia,” said Myra, withdrawing like a wooden -automaton from the embrace, “the time we’ll be deserving.” - -Myra was long, lean, and angular, dressed precisely in parlourmaid’s -black; but the absence of cap on her faultlessly neat iron grey hair and -the black apron suggested a cross between the housekeeper and personal -maid. She shared, with a cook and a vague, print-attired help, the whole -service of the house. The fact of Myra had been one of the earliest -implanted in the consciousness of Olivia’s awakening childhood. Myra was -there, perdurable as father and mother, as Polly, the parrot, whose -“Drat the child” of that morning was the same echo of Myra’s voice, as -it was when, at the age of two, she began to interpret the bird’s -articulate speech. And, as far as she could remember, Myra had always -been the same. Age had not withered her, nor had custom staled her -infinite invariability. She had been withered since the beginning of -time, and she had been as unchanging in aspect and flavour as Olivia’s -lifelong breakfast egg. Myra’s origins were hidden in mystery. A family -legend declared her a foundling. She had come as a girl from Essex, -recommended by a friend, long since dead, of Mrs. Gale. She never spoke -of father, mother, sisters, and brothers; but every year, when she took -her holiday, she was presumed to return to her native county. With that -exception she seemed to have far less of a private life than the -household cat. It never occurred to Olivia that she could possibly lead -an independent existence. Her age was about forty-five. - -“They think I’m either mad or immoral,” said Olivia. “Thank God, they’re -not religious, or they’d be holding prayer meetings over me.” - -“They might do worse,” replied Myra. - -The girl laughed. “So you disapprove, too, do you? Well, you’ll have to -get over it.” - -“I’ve got over many things—one more or less don’t matter. And if I were -you, Miss, I wouldn’t stand in this draughty hall.” - -“All that I’m thinking of,” said Olivia, in high good humour, “is that, -with you as duenna, I shall look too respectable. No one will believe it -possible for any one except an adventuress.” - -“That’s what I gather you’re going to be,” said Myra. If she had put any -sting into her words it would have been a retort. But no one knew what -emotions guided Myra’s speech. With the same tonelessness she would have -proclaimed the house to be on fire, or dinner to be ready, or the day to -be fine. - -“Well, if you don’t like the prospect, Myra, you needn’t come,” said -Olivia. “I’ll easily find something fluffy in short skirts and silk -stockings to do for me.” - -“We’re wasting gas, Miss,” said Myra, pulling the little chain of the -bye-pass and thereby plunging the hall in darkness. - -“Oh, bother you!” cried Olivia, stumbling into the passage and knocking -against the parrot’s cage outside the dining-room door, and Polly -shrieked out: - -“Drat the child! Drat the child!” - -Before entering the dining-room she aimed a Parthian shot at Myra. - -“I suppose you agree with the little beast. Well, the two of you’ll have -to look after each other, and I wish you joy.” - -She cleared the dining-room table of the tea things and the whisky and -glasses and the superfluous papers, and opened the window to let out the -smell of Mr. Trivett’s strong cigar, and crossed the passage to the -drawing-room opposite, where a small fire was still burning. And there, -in spite of the exultation of her triumph over Mr. Trivett and Mr. -Fenmarch, she suddenly felt very dreadfully alone; also just a whit -frightened. The precious cheque, symbol of independence, which she had -taken up, laid down, taken up again, during her little household duties, -fell to the ground as she lay in the arm-chair by the fireside. - -Was her victory, and all it implied, that of a reasonable being and a -decent girl, or that of a little fool and a hussy? - -Perhaps the mother whom she worshipped and to whom she had devotedly -sacrificed the last four years of her young life was the inspiration of -her revolt. For her mother had been a highly bred woman, of a proud old -Anglo-Indian family, all Generals and Colonels and Sirs and Ladies, -whose names had been involved in the history of British India for -generations; and when she threw the Anglo-Indian family halo over the -windmills and married young Stephen Gale, who used to stand in the -market-place of Medlow and bawl out the bidding for pigs and sheep, the -family turned her down with the Anglo-Indian thoroughness that had -compelled her mother to lose her life in a plague-stricken district and -her father to lose his on the North-West Frontier. The family argument -was simple. When you—or everything mattering that means you—have ruled -provinces and commanded armies and been Sahibs from the beginning of -Anglo-Indian time, you can’t go and marry a man who sells pigs at -auction, and remain alive. None of the family deigned to gauge the -personal value of the pig-seller. The Anglo-Brahmin lost caste. It is -true that, afterwards, patronizing efforts were made by Brahminical -uncles and aunts and cousins to bridge over the impassable gulf; but -Mrs. Gale, very much in love with her pig-selling husband, snapped her -fingers at them and told them, in individually opposite terms, to go -hang. - -It was a love match right enough. And a love match it remained to the -very end of all things; after she had borne him two sons and a daughter; -all through the young lives of the children; up to the day when the -telegram came announcing the death of their elder son—the younger had -been killed in the curious world accident a month or so before—and -Stephen Gale stood by her bedside—she had even then succumbed to her -incurable malady—and said, shaken with an emotion to which one does not -refer nowadays: - -“Mary, my dear, what am I to do?” - -And she, the blood in her speaking—the blood that had given itself at -Agra, Lucknow, Khandahar, Chitral—replied: - -“Go, dear.” - -Olivia, sitting by, gripped her young hands in mingled horror and grief -and passionate wonder. And Stephen Gale, just fifty, went out to avenge -his sons and do what was right in his wife’s eyes—for his wife was his -country incarnate, her voice, being England’s voice. A love match it was -and a love match it remained while he stuck it for two or three -years—an elderly man at an inglorious Base, until he died of -pneumonia—over there. - -Mrs. Gale had lingered for a year, and, close as their relations had -been all Olivia’s life, they grew infinitely closer during this period -of bereavement. It was only then that the mother gave delicate -expression to the nostalgia of half a lifetime, the longing for her own -kind, and the ways and thoughts and imponderable principles of her own -caste. And, imperceptibly, Olivia’s eyes were opened to the essential -differences between her mother and the social circle into which she had -married. Olivia, ever since her shrewd child’s mind began to appreciate -values, knew perfectly well that the Trivetts and the Gales were not -accounted as gentlefolk in the town. She early became aware of the -socially divided line across which she could not pass so as to enter -Blair Park, the high-class girls’ school on the hill, but narrowed her -to Landsdowne House, where the daughters of the tradespeople received -their education. And when the two crocodiles happened to pass each other -on country walks she hated the smug, stuckup Blair Park girls with their -pretty blue and white ribbons round their straw hats, and hated her red -ribbon with “LH” embroidered on it, as a badge of servitude. When she -grew up she accepted countless other social facts as immutable -conditions of existence. Mortals were divided by her unquestioning -father into three categories—“the swells,” “homely folk like -ourselves,” and “common people.” So long as each member of the three -sections knew his place and respected it, the world was as comfortable a -planet as sentient being could desire. That was one factor in his -worship of his wife: she had stepped from her higher plane to his and -had loyally, unmurmuringly identified herself with it. He had never a -notion, good man, of the shocks, the inner wounds, the instinctive -revolts, the longings that she hid behind her loving eyes. Nor had -Olivia; although as a schoolgirl she knew and felt proud that her mother -really belonged to Blair Park and not to Landsdowne House. As she grew -up, she realized her mother’s refining influence, and, as far as young -blood would allow, used her as a model of speech and manner. And during -the long invalid years, when she read aloud and discussed a wide range -of literature, she received unconsciously a sensitive education. But it -was only in this last poignant intimacy, when they were left starkly -alone together, that she sounded the depths of the loyal, loving, and -yet strangely suffering woman. - -“I remember once, long ago, when you were a mite of five,” Mrs. Gale had -said in a memorable confidence, “we were staying at a hotel in -Eastbourne, and I got into conversation on the verandah with a Colonel -somebody—I forget his name—with whom we had spoken several times -before—one of those spare brown, blue-eyed men, all leather and taut -string, that wear their clothes like uniform. You see, I was born and -bred among them, dear. And we talked and we talked and I didn’t know how -the time flew, and I missed an appointment with your father in the town. -And he came and found us together—and he was very angry. It was the -only time in our lives he said an unkind word to me. It was the only -time I gave him any sort of cause for jealousy. But he really hadn’t. It -was only just the joy of talking to a gentleman again. And I couldn’t -tell him. It would have broken his dear heart.” - -This was the first flashlight across her mother’s soul, and in its -illumination vanished many obscure and haunting perplexities of her -girlhood. Had Mrs. Gale lived the normal life of women, surrounded by -those that loved her, she would doubtless have gone to her grave without -revealing her inner self to living mortal. But infinite sorrow and the -weakness engendered by constant physical pain had transformed her into a -spirituality just breathing the breath of life and regarding her -daughter less as a woman than as a kindred essence from whom no secrets -could be hid. At her bedside Olivia thus learned the mystery of birth -and life and death. Chiefly the mystery of life, which appealed more to -her ardent maidenhood. - -So when at last her mother faded out of existence and Olivia’s vigil was -over, she faced a world of changing values with a new set of values of -her own. She could not formulate them; but she was acutely conscious -that they were different from those of the good, honest Mr. Trivett and -the dull and honourable Mr. Fenmarch, and that to all the social circle -which these two represented they would be unintelligible. In a way, she -found herself possessed of a new calculus in which she trusted to solve -the problems which defied the simple arithmetic of the homely folk of -Medlow. - - * * * * * - -All these memories and vague certainties passed through the girl’s mind -as she sat before the fire in self-examination after her victory, and -conflicted with the prosaic and indicatively common-sense arguments of -her late advisers. She knew that father and brothers, all beloved and -revered, would have been staunchly on the side of the Trivetts. On the -other hand, her mother, as she had said to her husband on the edge of a -far, far greater adventure, would have said: “Go, dear.” Of that she had -no doubt. . . . Yet it meant cutting herself adrift from Medlow and all -its ways and all its associations. It meant a definite struggle to raise -herself from her father’s second social category to the first. It meant, -therefore, justifying herself against odious insinuations on the part of -her scant acquaintance. - -And then the youth in her rose insistent. During all these years of -stress and fever which had marked her development from child into woman -she had done nothing but remain immured within the walls familiar from -her babyhood. Other girls had gone afar, in strange independence, to -vivid scenes, to unforgettable adventures, in the service of their -country, in the service of mankind—just as her brothers and father had -gone—and she had stayed there, ineradicable, in that one little tiny -spot. The sick-room, the kitchen, the shops in Old Street, where, in -defiance of Food Controller, she had fought for cream and butter and -eggs and English meat so that her mother could live; the sick-room -again, the simple white and green bedroom which meant to her little more -than the sleep of exhaustion; the sick-room once more, with its pathos -of spiritual love and physical repulsion—such had been the iron -environment of her life. Sorrow after sorrow, and mourning after -mourning had come, and the little gaieties of the “homely folk” of her -father’s definition had gone on without her participation. And her girl -friends of Landsdowne House had either married rising young tradesmen in -distant towns, or had found some further scope for their energies at the -end of the Great Adventure and were far away. In the meanwhile other -homely folk whom she did not know had poured into the town. All kinds of -people seemed to be settling there, anyhow, without rhyme or reason. It -was only when there was not a house to be rented in the neighbourhood -that she understood why. - -“You have a comfortable home of your own. Why, on earth, don’t you stay -in it?” Mr. Trivett had asked. - -But she had stayed in it, alone, for the three months since her mother’s -death, waiting on the law’s delays; and those three months had been -foretaste enough of the dreary infinite years that would lie before her, -should she remain. She was too young, too full of sap, to face the -blight of sunlessness. She longed for the sights and the sounds and the -freedom of the great world. What she would do when she got into it, she -did not exactly know. Possibly she might meet a fairy prince. If such a -speculation was that of a hussy, why then, she argued, all women are -hussies from birth. As for being a fool for defying advice on the proper -investment of her money—well, perhaps she was not quite such a fool as -Mr. Trivett imagined. If she did not spend her capital, it would be just -as safe lying on deposit at the bank as invested in stocks and shares; -safer, for she had lately had wearisome experience of the depreciation -of securities. She would not be senselessly extravagant; in fact, with -the sanguineness of youth she hoped to be able to live on the interest -on her deposit and the rent of the furnished house. But behind her, -definite, tangible, uninfluenced by Stock Exchange fluctuations, would -be her fortune. And then—a contingency which she did not put before Mr. -Trivett and Mr. Fenmarch, for a woman seldom discloses her main argument -to a male adversary—there might come a glorious moment in some now -unconjecturable adventure when it might be essential for her to draw -cheques for dazzling sums which she could put in her pocket and go over -mysterious hills and far away. She stood on the edge of her dull -tableland and gazed wide-eyed at the rolling Land of Romance veiled by -gold and purple mist. And in that Land, from immemorial time, people -carried their money in bags, into which they dipped their hands, as -occasion required, and cast the unmeaning counters at the feet of -poverty or into the lap of greed. - -When she sat down to her solitary supper, she had decided that she was -neither hussy nor fool. She held baffling discourse with Myra, who could -not be enticed into enthusiasm over the immediate future. Teasing Myra -had been her joy from infancy. She sketched their career—that of female -Don Quixote and Sancho Panza—that of knights of old in quest of -glorious adventure. She quoted, mock heroically: - -“The ride abroad redressing human wrong.” - -“Better redress the young London women which I see the pictures of in -the illustrated papers,” said Myra. - -Olivia laughed. “You are a dear old blessing, you know.” - -“I’m sure of it,” said Myra, with an expressionless face. “Anyways, -you’re not going to buy one of them things when you get to London.” - -“I am,” replied Olivia. “And you’ll have to help me put it on.” - -“You can’t help folks put on nothing,” said Myra. - -“What do you think you’ll do when you’re really shocked?” asked Olivia. - -“I never think what I’ll do,” replied Myra. “It’s waste of time.” - -Olivia enjoyed her supper. - - - CHAPTER II - -IT was only when she waited the next morning for her possible tenant, -the Major Olifant of whom Mr. Trivett had spoken, and went through the -familiar rooms to see that they were fit for alien inspection, that she -realized the sacrilege which she was about to commit. Every room was -sacred, inhabited by some beloved ghost. The very furniture bore -landmarks of the wear and tear of those that were dead. To say nothing -of the beds on which they had slept, the chairs in which they had sat, -which still seemed to retain the impress of their forms, there persisted -a hundred exquisitely memorable trivialities. The arm of the oak settle -in the hall still showed the ravages of the teeth of Barabbas, the -mongrel bull-terrier pup introduced, fifteen years ago, into the house, -by Charles her elder brother; an animal who, from being cursed by the -whole family for a pestilential cur, wriggled his way, thanks to his -adoration of Charles, into the hearts of them all, and died from old age -and perhaps doggy anxiety a few months after Charles had sailed for -France. In her father’s study, a small room heterogeneously adorned with -hunting crops and car accessories and stuffed trout and a large scale -map of Medlow and neighbourhood and suggestive in no way of a studious -habit, the surface of the knee-hole writing table and the mahogany -mantelpiece were scored with fluted little burns from cigarette-ends, he -having been a careless smoker. There was a legend that the family -cradle, for many years mouldering in an outhouse, bore the same -stigmata. The very bathroom was not free of intimate history. In the -midst of the blue and red stained panes on the lower sash stared one of -plain ground glass—the record of her brother Bobby aged twelve, who, -vowing vengeance against an unsympathetic visiting aunt (soon afterwards -deceased), had the brilliant idea of catapulting her through the closed -window while she was having her bath. And there was her mother’s -room. . . . - -She could not let all this pass into vulgar hands. The vague plan of -letting the house furnished, which had hitherto not been unattractive, -now became monstrously definite. She hated the sacrilegious and -intrusive Major Olifant. He would bring down a dowdy wife and a cartload -of children to the profanation of these her household gods. She went in -search of Myra and found her dusting her own prim little bedroom. - -“I’m going out. When Major Olifant calls, tell him I’ve changed my mind -and the house is not to let.” - -Then she put on hat and coat and went downstairs to take the air of the -sleepy midday High Street. But as she opened the front door she ran into -a man getting out of a two-seater car driven by a chauffeur. He raised -his hat. - -“I beg your pardon,” said he, “but is this ‘The Towers’?” - -“It is,” she replied. “I suppose you’ve—you’ve come with an order to -view from Messrs. Trivett and Gale.” - -“Quite so,” said he pleasantly. “I have an appointment with Miss Gale.” - -“I’m Miss Gale,” said Olivia. - -She noticed an involuntary twitch of surprise, at once suppressed, pass -over his face. - -“And my name’s Olifant. Major Olifant.” - -She had pictured quite a different would-be intruder, a red-faced, -obese, and pushing fellow. Instead, she saw a well-bred, spare man of -medium height wearing a stained service Burberry the empty left sleeve -of which was pinned in front; a man in his middle thirties, with crisp -light brown hair, long, broad forehead characterized by curious bumps -over the brows, a very long, straight nose and attractive dark blue eyes -which keenly and smilingly held hers without touch of offence. - -“I’ve decided not to let the house,” said Olivia. - -The smile vanished from his eyes. “I’m sorry,” said he stiffly. “I was -given to understand——” - -“Yes, I know,” she said quickly. Her conscience getting hold of the -missing arm smote her. “Where have you come from?” - -“Oxford.” - -She gasped. “Why, that’s a hundred miles!” - -“Ninety-four.” - -“But you must be perishing with cold,” she cried. “Do come in and get -warm, at any rate. Perhaps I can explain. And your man, too.” She -pointed. “Round that way you’ll find a garage. I’ll send the maid. -Please come in, Major Olifant. Oh—but you must!” - -She entered the house, leaving him no option but to follow. To divest -himself of his Burberry he made curious writhing movements with his -shoulders, and swerved aside politely when she offered assistance. - -“Please don’t worry. I’m all right. I’ve all kinds of little stunts of -my own invention.” - -And, as he said it, he got clear and threw the mackintosh on the oak -chest. He rubbed the knuckle of his right hand against the side of his -rough tweed jacket. - -“Just five minutes to get warm and I won’t trespass further on your -hospitality.” - -She showed him into the drawing-room, thanked goodness there was a showy -wood-fire burning, and went out after Myra. - -“I thought the house wasn’t to be let,” said the latter after receiving -many instructions. - -“The letting of the house has nothing to do with two cold and hungry men -who have motored here on a raw November morning for hundreds of miles on -false pretences.” - -She re-entered the drawing-room with a tray bearing whisky decanter, -siphon, and glass, which she set on a side table. - -“I’m alone in the world now, Major Olifant,” she said, “but I’ve lived -nearly all my life with men—my father and two brothers——” She felt -that the explanation was essential. “Please help yourself.” - -He met her eyes, which, though defiant, held the menace of tears. He -made the vaguest, most delicate of gestures with his right hand—his -empty sleeve, the air. She moved an assenting head; then swiftly she -grasped the decanter. - -“Say when.” - -“Just that.” - -She squirted the siphon. - -“So?” - -“Perfect. A thousand thanks.” - -He took the glass from her and deferentially awaited her next movement. -Tricksy memory flashed across her mind the picture of the Anglo-Indian -colonel of her mother’s pathetic little confidence. For a moment or two -she stood confused, flushed, self-conscious, suddenly hating herself for -not knowing instinctly what to do. In desperation she cried. - -“Oh, please drink it! You must want it awfully.” - -He laughed, made a little bow, and drank. - -“Now do sit down near the fire. I’m dreadfully sorry,” she continued -when they were settled. “Dreadfully sorry you should have had all this -journey for nothing. As a matter of fact, I wanted to let the house and -only changed my mind an hour ago.” - -“You have lived here all your life?” he asked. - -“Yes.” - -“Please say no more about it,” said he courteously. - -She burst at once into explanations. Father, brothers, mother—all the -dear ghosts, at the last moment, had held out their barring hands. He -smiled at her pretty dark-eyed earnestness. - -“There are few houses nowadays without ghosts. But there might be a -stranger now and then who would have the tact and understanding to win -their confidence.” - -This was at the end of a talk which had lasted she knew not how long. -The little silence which ensued was broken by the shrill clang of the -ormolu clock on the mantelpiece striking one. She sprang to her feet. - -“One o’clock. Why, you must be famished. Seven o’clock breakfast at -latest. There’ll be something to eat, whatever it is.” - -“But, my dear Miss Gale,” cried Major Olifant, rising in protest, “I -couldn’t dream of it—there must be an hotel——” - -“There isn’t,” cried Olivia unveraciously, and vanished. - -Major Olifant, too late to open the door for her, retraced his steps and -stood, back to fire, idly evoking, as a man does, the human purposes -that had gone to the making of the room, and he was puzzled. Some -delicate spirit had chosen the old gold curtains which harmonized with -the cushions on the plain upholstered settee and with the early -Chippendale armchairs and with the Chippendale bookcase filled with odds -and ends of good china, old Chelsea, Coalport, a bit or two of Sèvres -and Dresden. Some green chrysanthemums bowed, in dainty raggedness, over -the edge of a fine cut crystal vase. An exquisite water-colour over the -piano attracted his attention. He crossed the room to examine it and -drew a little breath of surprise to read the signature of Bonington—a -thing beyond price. On a table by the French window, which led into a -conservatory and thence into the little garden, stood a box of Persian -lacquer. But there, throwing into confusion the charm of all this, a -great Victorian mirror in a heavy florid gold frame blared like a German -band from over the mantelpiece, and on the opposite wall two huge -companion pictures representing in violent colours scenes of smug -domestic life, also in gold frames, with a slip of wood let in bearing -the legend “Exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1888,” screamed like an -orchestrion. - -He was looking round for further evidence of obvious conflict of -individualities, when Myra appeared to take him to get rid of the dust -of the journey. When he returned to the drawing-room he found Olivia. - -“I can’t help feeling an inconscionable intruder,” said he. - -“My only concern is that I’ll be able to give you something fit to eat.” - -He laughed. “The man who has come out of France and Mesopotamia finikin -in his food is a fraud.” - -“Still,” she objected, “I don’t want to send you back to Mrs. Olifant -racked with indigestion.” - -“Mrs. Olifant?” He wore a look of humorous puzzlement. - -“I suppose you have a wife and family?” - -“Good heavens, no!” he cried, with an air of horror. “I’m a bachelor.” - -She regarded him for a few seconds, as though from an entirely fresh -point of view. - -“But what on earth does a bachelor want with a great big house—with ten -bedrooms?” - -“Has it got ten bedrooms?” - -“I presume Mr. Trivett sent you the particulars: ‘Desirable Residence, -standing in own grounds, three acres. Ten bedrooms, three reception -rooms. Bath H. and C.,’ and so forth?” - -“The Bath H. and C. was all I worried about.” - -They both laughed. Myra announced luncheon. They went into the -dining-room. By the side of Major Olifant’s plate was a leather case. He -flashed on her a look of enquiry, at which the blood rose into her pale -cheeks. - -“I’ve been interviewing your man,” she said rather defiantly. “He -produced that from the pocket of the car.” - -“You overwhelm me with your kindness, Miss Gale,” said he. “I should -never have had the courage to ask for it.” - -The case contained the one-armed man’s patent combination knife and -fork. - -“Courage is such a funny thing,” said Olivia. “A man will walk up to a -machine-gun in action and knock the gunner out with the butt end of a -rifle; but if he’s sitting in a draught in a woman’s drawing-room and -catching his death of cold, he daren’t get up and shut the window. These -are real eggs, although they’re camouflaged in a Chinese scramble. One -faithful hen is still doing her one minute day. The others are on -strike.” - -She felt curiously exhilarated on this first actual occasion of -asserting her independence. Only once before had she entertained guests -at her own table, and these were her uncle and aunt from Clapham, the -Edward Gales, who came to her mother’s funeral. They were colourless -suburban folk who were pained by her polite rejection of their proposal -to make her home with them on a paying footing, and reproached her for -extravagance in giving them butter (of which, nevertheless, they ate -greedily) instead of margarine. Her uncle was a pallid pharmaceutical -chemist and lived above the shop, and his wife, a thin-lipped, negative -blonde, had few interests in life outside the Nonconformist Communion -into which she had dragged him. Olivia had seen them only once before, -also at a funeral, that of a younger brother who had died at the age of -three. Her robustious country-loving, horse-loving, dog-loving, -pig-loving father had never got on with his bloodless brother. A staunch -supporter of the Church of England to the extent of renting a pew in the -Parish Church in which, in spite of the best intentions, he had never -found time to sit, he confessedly hated dissent and all its works, -especially those undertaken by Mrs. Edward. His vice of generosity did -not accord with their parsimonious virtues. Once, Olivia remembered, he -had dined with them at Clapham and returned complaining of starvation. -“One kidney between the three of us,” he declared. “And they gave me the -middle gristly bit!” So Olivia felt no call of the blood to Clapham. -And, for all her inherited hospitable impulses, she had been glad when, -having critically picked the funeral baked meats to the last bone, they -had gone off in sorrow over her wicked prodigality and lack of true -Christian feeling. But for their dreary and passing shadows she had -eaten alone—she caught her breath to think of it—ever since her -father’s last leave—shortly before he died at Etaples—eighteen months -ago. Her hostess-ship at the present moment was a bubbling joy. Only her -sense of values restrained her from ordering up a bottle of champagne. -She contented herself with a bottle of old Corton—her father had been a -judge of full red wines, burgundy and port, and had stocked a small but -well-selected cellar, and had taught Olivia what is good that a girl -should know concerning them. - -She watched her guest’s first sip, as her father had been wont to watch, -and flushed with pleasure when he paused, as though taken aback, -sniffed, sipped again, and said: - -“Either new conditions are making me take all sorts of geese for swans, -or you’re giving me a remarkable wine.” - -She burst out radiantly: “How lovely of you to spot it! It’s a Corton, -1887.” - -“But forgive me for saying so,” he remarked. “It’s not a wine you should -spill on any casual tramp. Oh, of course,” he protested in anticipation. -“Your politeness will assure me that I’m not a casual tramp. But I am.” - -“I owed you something for bringing you on a fool’s errand. Besides, I -wanted to show you what Todger’s could do when it liked!” - -“Todger’s is wonderful,” he smiled. “And how you could ever have thought -of leaving Todger’s is more than I can understand.” - -“Oh, I’m going to leave it, right enough,” she answered. “What on earth -do you think a girl all by herself wants with a great big house with ten -bedrooms, three reception rooms, bath h. and c., etc., etc.?” - -“It’s your home, anyhow.” - -“That’s why I don’t like to let it.” - -“Then why go away from it? If it is not an impertinent question, what -are you going to do?” - -She met his clear blue eyes and laughed. - -“I’m going out into the world to seek adventure. There!” - -“And I,” said he, “want to get out of the world and never have another -adventure as long as I live. I’ve had more than enough for one -lifetime.” - -“But still,” she retorted, conscious of his bearing and vigour and other -conjectured qualities, “you can’t contemplate fossilizing here till the -end of time.” - -“That’s what I’m literally thinking of doing,” he replied. - -She felt the reaction of bitter disappointment. A man like him had no -right to throw up the sponge. The sudden blankness of her face betrayed -her thoughts. He smiled. - -“I said literally, you know. Fossilizing in the literal and practical -sense. Once upon a time I was a geologist. I specialized in certain -fossils.” - -“Oh,” gasped Olivia. “I beg your pardon.” - -“Very fascinating little fossils,” he went on without reference to her -apology, for which Olivia was grateful. “They’re called foraminifera. Do -you know what they are?” Olivia shook a frankly ignorant head. “They’re -little tiny weeny shells, and the things once inside them belonged to -the protozoa, or first forms of life. They’re one of the starting-points -to the solution of the riddle of existence. I was dragged away from them -to fool about with other kinds of shells, millions of times bigger and -millions of times less important. I’ve got what I think are some new -ideas about them, and other things connected with them—it’s a vast -subject—and so I’m looking for a quiet place where I can carry on my -work.” - -“That’s awfully interesting,” said Olivia. “But—forgive me—who pays -you for it?” - -“Possibly mankind two hundred years hence,” he laughed. “But, if I stick -it long enough, they may make me a Fellow of the Royal Society when -I’m—say—seventy-three.” - -“I wish you’d tell me some more about these forami—funny little things -I’ve never heard of,” said Olivia. - -But he answered: “No. If once I began, I would bore you so stiff that -you would curse the hour you allowed me to cross your threshold. There -are other things just as vital as foraminifera. I’ve made my confession, -Miss Gale. Now, won’t you make yours? What are you keen on?” - -At the direct question, Olivia passed in review the aims and interests -and pleasures of her past young life, and was abashed to find them a row -of anæmic little phantoms. For years her head had been too full of -duties. She regarded him for a moment or two in dismay, then she laughed -in young defiance. - -“I suppose I’m keen on real live human beings. That’s my starting-point -to the solution of the riddle of existence.” - -“We’ll see who gets there first,” said he. - -When the meal was over, she stood by the door which he held open for her -and hesitated for a moment. - -“I wonder whether you would care to look over the house?” - -“I should immensely. But—if you’re not going to let it——” - -“You’ll be able, at any rate, to tell Mr. Trivett that he had no -business to send you to such an old rabbit warren,” she replied, with -some demureness. - -“I’m at your orders,” smiled Olifant. - -She played cicerone with her little business-like air of dignity, spoke -in a learned fashion of water supply, flues, and boilers. Olifant looked -wisely at the kitchen range, while Myra stood at impassive attention and -the cook took refuge in the scullery. - -“These holes are to put saucepans on, I presume,” said he. - -“You’ve hit it exactly,” said Olivia. - -They went upstairs. On the threshold of the best bedroom he paused and -cried, in some astonishment: “What an exquisite room!” - -“It was my mother’s,” said Olivia. “You can come in. It has a pleasant -view over the garden.” - -Then Olifant, who had inspected the study, solved the puzzle of the -drawing-room. There the man and woman had compromised. She had suffered -him to hang his Victorian mirror and his screaming pictures in the midst -of her delicate scheme. But here her taste reigned absolute. It was all -so simple, so exquisite: a few bits of Chippendale and Sheraton, a few -water-colours on the walls, a general impression for curtains and -upholstery of faded rose brocade. On a table by the bed-head stood a -little row of books in an inlaid stand. With the instinct of a bookish -man, Olifant bent over to look at their backs, but first turned to -Olivia. - -“May I?” - -“Of course.” Then she added, with a vague longing to impress on a -stranger the wonder and beauty of the spirit that had created these -surroundings: “My mother knew them all by heart, I think. Naturally she -used to read other things and I used to read aloud to her—she was -interested in everything till the day of her death—but these books were -part of her life.” - -There were: _Marcus Aurelius_, _Lord Herbert of Cherbury_, _The -Imitation of Christ_, _Christina Rossetti_, the almost forgotten early -seventeenth century _Arthur Warwick_ (“_Spare Minutes; or, Resolved -Meditation and Premeditated Resolutions_”), _Crabbe_ . . . a dozen -volumes or so. Olifant picked out one. - -“And this, too? The _Pensées de Pascal_?” - -“She loved it best,” said Olivia. - -“It is strange,” said he. “My father spent most of his life on a -monumental work on Pascal. He was a Professor of Divinity at a Scotch -University, but died long before the monument could be completed. I’ve -got his manuscripts. They’re in an awful mess, and it would take another -lifetime to get them into order. Anyhow, he took good care that I should -remember Pascal as long as I lived.” - -“How?” - -“He had me christened Blaise.” - -“Blaise Olifant,” she repeated critically. She laughed. “He might have -done worse.” - -He turned over the pages. “There’s one thing here that my father was -always drumming into me. Yes, here it is. It’s marked in blue pencil.” - -“Then it must have been drummed into me, too,” said Olivia. - -“‘_On ne consulte que l’oreille, parce qu’on manque de cœur. La règle -est l’honnêteté._´” - -“Yes,” she said, with a sigh. - -He replaced the book. They went in silence out to the landing. After a -few seconds of embarrassment they turned and descended to the hall. - -“I can more than understand, Miss Gale, why you feel you can’t let the -house. But I’m sorry.” - -She weakened, foreseeing the house empty and desolate, given over to -dust and mice and ghosts. - -“It was the idea of a pack of people, the British Family in all its -self-centredness and selfishness, coming in here that I couldn’t stand,” -she confessed. - -“Then is there a chance for me?” he asked, his face brightening. “Look. -I’m open to a bargain. The house is just what I want. I’m not a recluse. -I’m quite human. I should like to have a place where I can put up a man -or so for a week-end, and I’ve a married sister, none too happy, who now -and then might like to find a refuge with me. There’s also a friend, -rather a distinguished fellow, who wants to join me for a few months’ -quiet and hard work. So, suppose I give you my promise to hold that room -sacred, to keep it just as it is and allow no one to go into it except a -servant to dust and so forth—what would you say? Not now. Think it over -and write to me at your convenience.” - -His sympathy and comprehension had won her over. He was big and kind and -brotherly. Somehow she felt that her mother would have liked him, -accepting him without question as one of her own caste, and would have -smiled on him as High Priest in charge of the Household Gods. She -reflected for a while, then, meeting his eyes: - -“You can have the house, Major Olifant,” she said seriously. - -He bowed. “I’m sure you will not regret it,” said he. “I ought to remind -you, however,” he added after a pause, “that I may have a stable -companion for a few months. The distinguished fellow I mentioned. I -wonder whether you’ve heard of Alexis Triona.” - -“The man who wrote _Through Blood and Snow_?” - -“Have you read it?” - -“Of course I have,” cried Olivia. “What do you think I do here all day? -Twiddle my thumbs or tell my fortune by cards?” - -“I hope you think it’s a great book,” he said, with a smile. - -“An amazing book. And you’re going to bring him to live here? What’s he -like?” - -“It would take days to tell you.” - -“Well, compress it into a sort of emergency ration,” said Olivia. - -So he sat by her side on the oak settle, near the anthracite stove in -the hall, and told her what he knew of Alexis Triona. - - - CHAPTER III - -WHAT Blaise Olifant told Olivia about his prospective co-inhabitant of -The Towers, and what Rowington, the publisher, and one or two others -knew about him, amounted to the following: - -One morning a motor-car, having the second-hand air of a hiring garage -and unoccupied save for the chauffeur, drew up before the door of a -great London publishing house. The chauffeur stepped from his seat, -collected a brown-paper package from the interior, and entered. - -“Can I see a member of the firm?” - -The clerk in the enquiry office looked surprised. Chauffeurs offering -manuscripts on behalf of their employers were plentiful as blackberries -in September; but chauffeurs demanding an interview with the august -heads of the house were rare as blackberries in March. - -“I’m afraid you can’t do that,” he replied civilly. “If you leave it -here, it will be all right. I’ll give you a receipt which you can take -back.” - -“I want to explain,” said the chauffeur. - -Scores of people weekly expressed the same desire. It was the business -of the clerk to suppress explanations. - -“It’s a manuscript to be submitted? Well, you must tell the author——” - -“I am the author,” said the chauffeur. - -“Oh!” said the clerk, and his subconscious hand pushed the manuscript a -millimetre forward on the polished mahogany counter. - -“The circumstances, you see, are exceptional.” - -There being something exceptional in the voice and manner of the -chauffeur, the clerk regarded him for the first time as a human being. - -“I quite see,” said he; “but the rules of the firm are strict. If you -will leave the manuscript, it will be read. Oh, I give you my word of -honour,” he smiled. “Everything that comes in is read. We have a staff -who do nothing else. Is your name and address on it?” He began to untie -the string. - -“The name, but not the address.” - -On the slip of paper which the clerk pushed across to him he wrote: - - Alexis Triona, - c/o John Briggs. - 3 Cherbury Mews, - Surrey Gardens, W. - -The clerk scribbled an acknowledgment, the chauffeur thrust it into his -pocket, and, driving away, was lost in the traffic of London. - -A fortnight afterwards, Alexis Triona, who, together with John Briggs, -as one single and indissoluble chauffeur, inhabited a little room over -the garage in Cherbury Mews, received a letter to the effect that the -publishing house, being interested in the MS. “_Through Blood and -Snow_,” which he had kindly submitted, would be glad if he would call, -with a view to publication. The result was a second visit on the part of -the chauffeur to the great firm. The clerk welcomed him with a bland -smile, and showed him into a comfortably furnished room whose thick -Turkey carpet signified the noiseless mystery of many discreet decades, -and where a benevolent middle-aged man in gold spectacles stood with his -back to the chimney-piece. He advanced with outstretched hand to meet -the author. - -“Mr. Triona? I’m glad to meet you. Won’t you sit down?” - -He motioned to a chair by the tidy writing table, where he sat and -pulled forward the manuscript, which had been placed there in readiness -for the interview. He said pleasantly: - -“Well. Let us get to business at once. We should like to publish your -book.” - -The slight quivering of sensitive nostrils alone betrayed the author’s -emotion. - -“I’m glad,” he replied. “I think it’s worth publishing.” - -Mr. Rowington tapped the MS. in front of him with his forefinger. “Are -these your own personal experiences?” - -“They are,” said the chauffeur. - -“Excuse my questioning you,” said the publisher. “Not that it would -greatly matter. But one likes to know. We should be inclined to publish -it, either as a work of fiction or a work of fact; but the handling of -it—the method of publicity—would be different. Of course, you see,” he -went on benevolently, “a thing may be absolutely true in essence, like -lots of the brilliant little war stories that have been written the past -few years, but not true in the actual historical sense. Now, your book -would have more value if we could say that it is true in this actual -historical sense, if we could say that it’s an authentic record of -personal experiences.” - -“You can say that,” answered Triona quietly. - -The publisher leaned back in his chair. - -“How a man could have gone through what you have and remained sane -passes understanding.” - -For the first time the young man’s set features relaxed into a smile. - -“I shouldn’t like to swear that I am sane,” said he. - -“I’ve heard ex-prisoners say,” Mr. Rowington remarked, “that six months’ -solitary confinement under such conditions”—he patted the -manuscript—“is as much as the human reason can stand.” - -“As soon as hunting and killing vermin ceases to be a passionate -interest in life,” said Triona. - -They conversed for a while. Stimulated by the publisher’s question, -Triona supplemented details in the book, described his final adventure, -his landing penniless in London, his search for work. At last, said he, -he had found a situation as chauffeur in the garage of a motor-hiring -company. The publisher glanced at the slip pinned to the cover of the -manuscript. - -“And John Briggs?” - -“A pseudonym. Briggs was my mother’s name. I am English on both sides, -though my great-grandfather’s people were Maltese. My father, however, -was a naturalized Russian. I’ve mentioned it in the book.” - -“Quite so,” said the publisher. “I only wanted to get things clear. And -now as to terms. Have you any suggestion?” - -Afterwards, Alexis Triona confessed to a wild impulse to ask for a -hundred pounds—outright sale—and to a sudden lack of audacity which -kept him silent. The terms which the publisher proposed, when the -royalty system and the probabilities of such a book’s profits were -explained to him, made him gasp with wonder. And when, in consideration, -said the publisher, of his present impecunious position, he was offered -an advance in respect of royalties exceeding the hundred pounds of his -crazy promptings, his heart thumped until it became an all but -intolerable pain. - -“Do you think,” he asked, amazed that his work should have such market -value, “that I could earn my living by writing?” - -“Undoubtedly.” The publisher beamed on the new author. “You have the -matter, you have the gift, the style, the humour, the touch. I’m sure I -could place things for you. Indeed, it would be to our common advantage, -pending publication. Only, of course, you mustn’t use any of the matter -in the book. You quite understand?” - -Alexis Triona understood. He went away dancing on air. Write? His brain -seethed with ideas. That the written expression of them should open the -gates of Fortune was a new conception. He had put together the glowing, -vivid book impelled by strange, unknown forces. It was, as he had -confidently declared, worth publishing. But the possible reward was -beyond his dreams. And he could see more visions. . . . - -So he went back to his garage and drove idle people to dinners and -theatres, and in his scanty leisure wrote strange romances of love and -war in Circassia and Tartary, and, through the agency of the powerful -publishing house, sold them to solid periodicals, until the public mind -became gradually familiarized with his name. It was only when the book -was published, and, justifying the confidence of the great firm, blazed -into popularity, that Triona discarded his livery and all that -appertained to the mythical John Briggs and, arraying himself in the -garb of ordinary citizenship, entered—to use, with a difference, the -famous trope of a departed wit—a lion into the den of London’s Daniels. -For, in their hundreds, they had come to judgment. But knowing very -little of the Imperial Russian Secret Service in Turkestan, or the ways -of the inhabitants of the Ural Mountains, or, at that time, of Bolshevik -horrors in the remote confines of Asia, they tore each other to pieces, -while the lion stepped, with serene modesty, in the midst of them. - - * * * * * - -It was at Oxford, whither the sudden wave of fame had drifted him, that -he met Blaise Olifant, who was living in the house of his sister, the -wife of a brilliant, undomesticated and somewhat dissolute professor of -political economy. The Head of a College, interested in Russia, had -asked him down to dine and sleep. There was a portentous dinner-party -whose conglomerate brain paralyzed the salmon and refroze the imported -lamb. They overwhelmed the guest of honour with their learning. They all -were bent on probing beneath the surface of his thrilling personal -adventures, which he narrated from time to time with attractive modesty. -The episode of his reprieve when standing naked beside the steaming -chaldron in which he was to be boiled alive caused a shuddering silence. -Perhaps it was too realistic for a conventional dinner-party, but he had -discounted its ghastliness by a smiling nonchalance, telling it as -though it had been an amusing misadventure of travel. Very shortly -afterwards Mrs. Head of College broke into a disquisition on the -continuity of Russian literature from Sumakarov to Chekov. Triona, a -profound student of the subject, at last lost interest in the academic -socialist and threw up his hands. - -“My dear lady,” said he, “there is a theory in the United States -accounting for the continued sale of _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_. They say -immigrants buy it to familiarize themselves with the negro question. -Russian literature has just as much to do with the Russia of to-day. -It’s as purely archæological as the literature of Ancient Assyria.” - -Blaise Olifant, sitting opposite, sympathized with the man of -actualities set down in this polite academy. Once he himself had -regarded it as the ganglion of the Thought of the Universe; but having -recently seen something of the said Universe he had modified his view. -Why should these folk not be content with a plain human story of almost -fantastic adventure, instead of worrying the unhappy Soldier of Fortune -with sociological and metaphysical theories with which he had little -time to concern himself? Why embroil him in a discussion on the League -of Nations’ duty to Lithuania when he was anxious to give them -interesting pictures of Kurdish family life? He looked round the table -somewhat amusedly at the elderly intellectuals of both sexes, and, -forgetting for a moment the intellectual years of quiet biological -research to which he was about to devote his life, drew an unflattering -contrast between the theorists and their alien guest. - -He liked the man. He liked the boyish, clean-shaven face, the broad -forehead marked by very thin horizontal lines, the thin brown hair, -parted carelessly at the side, and left to do what it liked; the dark -grey eyes that sometimes seemed so calm beneath the heavy lids, and yet -were capable of sudden illumination; the pleasant, humorous mouth, and -the grotesque dimple of a hole in the middle of a long chin. He pitied -the man. He pitied him for the hollows in his temples, for the swift -flash of furtive glances, for the great sinews that stood out in his -lean nervous hands, for the general suggestion of shrunken muscularity -in his figure. A stone, or two, thought he, below his normal weight. He -liked his voice, its soft foreign intonation; he liked his modesty, his -careless air of the slim young man of no account; he liked the courteous -patience of his manner. He understood his little nervous trick of -plucking at his lips. - -In the drawing-room after dinner Mrs. Head of College said to him: - -“A most interesting man—but I do wish he would look you in the face -when he speaks to you.” - -Blaise Olifant suppressed a sigh. These good people were hopeless. They -knew nothing. They did not even recognize the unmistakable brand of the -prisoner who has suffered agony of body and degradation of soul. No man -who has been a tortured slave regains, for years, command of his eyes. -Hundreds of such men had Olifant seen, and the sight of them still made -his heart ache. He explained politely. And with a polite air of -unconvinced assent, the lady received his explanation. - -He asked Triona to lunch the next day, and under the warmth of his -kindly sympathy Triona expanded. He spoke of his boyhood in Moscow, -where his father, a naturalized Russian, carried on business as a -stockbroker; of his travels in England and France with his English -mother; of his English tutor; of his promising start in life in a great -Russian motor firm—an experience that guaranteed his livelihood during -his late refuge months in London; of his military service; of his early -war days as a Russian officer; of the twists of circumstance that sent -him into the Imperial Secret Service; of incredible wanderings to the -frontiers of Thibet; of the Revolution; of the murder of father and -mother and the disappearance of his fortune like a wisp of cloud -evaporated by the sun; of many strange and woeful things related in his -book; of his escape through Russia; of his creeping as a stowaway into a -Swedish timber boat; of his torpedoing by a German submarine and his -rescue by a British destroyer; of his landing naked save for shirt and -trousers, sans money, sans papers, sans everything of value save his -English speech; of the Russian Society in London’s benevolent aid; of -the burning desire, an irresistible flame, to set down on paper all that -he had gone through; of the intense nights spent over the book in his -tiny ramshackle room over the garage; and, lastly, of the astounding -luck that had been dealt him by the capricious Wheel of Fortune. - -In the presence of a sympathetic audience he threw aside the previous -evening’s cloak of modest impersonality. He talked with a vivid -picturesqueness that held Olifant spellbound. The furtive look in his -eyes disappeared. They gleamed like compelling stars. His face lost its -ruggedness, transfigured by the born narrator’s inspiration. Olifant’s -sister, Mrs. Woolcombe, a gentle and unassuming woman on whom the -learning of Oxford had weighed as heavily as the abominable conduct of -her husband, listened with the rapt attention of a modern Desdemona. She -gazed at him open eyed, half stupefied as she had gazed lately at a -great cinematograph film which had held all London breathless. - -When he had gone she turned to her brother, still under the spell. - -“The boy’s a magician.” - -Blaise Olifant smiled. “The boy’s a man,” said he. - - * * * * * - -Chance threw them together a while later in London. There they met -frequently, became friends. The quiet sincerity of the soldier-scholar -that was Blaise Olifant seemed to strike some chord of soothing in the -heart of the young magician. Fundamentally ignorant of every geological -fact, Triona brought to Olifant’s banquet of fossil solvents of the -mystery of existence an insatiable appetite for knowledge. He listened -to reluctant lectures on elementary phenomena such as ammonites, with -the same rapt attention as Olifant listened to his tales of the old -Empire of Prester John. The Freemasonry of war, with its common -experiences of peril and mutilation—once Triona slipped off pump and -sock and showed a foot from which three toes had been shot away and an -ankle seared with the fester of fetters—formed a primary bond of -brotherhood. By the Freemasonry of intellect they found themselves -members of a Higher Chapter. - -“London is wonderful,” said Triona one day. “London’s appreciation of -the poor thing I have done is enough to turn anyone’s head. But while my -head is being turned, in the most delightful way in the world, I can’t -find time to do any work. And I must write in order to live. Do you know -a little quiet spot where I could stay for the winter and write this -precious novel of mine?” - -Blaise Olifant reflected for a moment. - -“I myself am looking for a sort of hermitage. In fact, I’ve heard of one -in Shropshire which I’m going to look at next week. I want a biggish -house,” he explained, with a smile—“I’ve had enough of dug-outs and -billets in a farmhouse with a hole through the roof to last me my -natural life. So there would be room for a guest. If you would care to -come and stay with me, wherever I pitch my comfortable tent, and carry -on your job while I carry on mine, you would be more than welcome.” - -“My dear fellow,” cried Triona, impulsively thrusting out both hands to -be shaken, “this is unheard-of generosity. It means my soul’s salvation. -Only the horrible dread of loneliness—you know the old solitary -prisoner’s dread—has kept me from running down to some little -out-of-the-way place—say in Cornwall. I’ve shrunk from it. But London -is different. In my chauffeur’s days it was different. I had always -associates, fares, the multitudinous sights and sounds of the vast city. -But solitude in a village! Frankly, I funked it. I’ve lived so much -alone that now I must talk. If I didn’t talk I should go mad. Or rather -I must feel that I can talk if I want to. I keep hold of myself, -however. If I bored you with my loquacity you wouldn’t have made me your -delightful proposal.” - -“Well, you’ll come, if I can get the right kind of house?” - -“With all the gratitude in life,” cried Triona, his eyes sparkling. “But -not as your guest. Some daily, weekly, monthly arrangement, so that we -shall both be free—you to kick me out—I to go——” - -“Just as you like,” laughed Olifant. “I only should be pleased to have -your company.” - -“And God knows,” cried Triona, “what yours would be to me.” - - - CHAPTER IV - -JOHN FREKE was one of the most highly respected men in Medlow. A great -leader in municipal affairs, he had twice been Mayor of the town and was -Chairman of the local hospital, President of clubs and associations -innumerable, and held Provincial Masonic rank. But as John Freke -persisted in walking about the draper’s shop in Old Street, established -by his grandfather, his family consorted, not with the gentry of the -neighbourhood, but with the “homely folk” such as the Trivetts and the -Gales. His daughter, Lydia, and Olivia had been friends in the far-off -days, although Lydia was five years older. She was tall and creamy and -massive and capable, and had a rich contralto voice; and Olivia, very -young and eager, had, for a brief period, sat adoring at her feet. Then -Lydia had married a young officer of Territorials who had been billeted -on her father, and Olivia had seen her no more. As a young war-wife she -pursued all kinds of interesting avocations remote from Medlow, and, as -a young war-widow, had set up a hat shop in Maddox Street. Rumour had it -that she prospered. The best of relations apparently existed between -herself and old John Freke, who put up the capital for her venture, and -desultory correspondence had kept her in touch with Olivia. The fine -frenzy of girlish worship had been cured long ago by Lydia’s cruel lack -of confidence during her courtship. The announcement of the engagement -had been a shock; the engagement itself a revelation of selfish -preoccupation. A plain young sister had been sole bridesmaid at the -wedding, and the only sign of Lydia’s life during the honeymoon had been -a picture postcard on the correspondence space of which was scrawled -“This is a heavenly place. Lydia Dawlish.” Then had followed the years -of sorrow and stress, during which Olivia’s hurt at the other’s -gracelessness had passed, like a childish thing, away. - -Lydia’s succeeding letters, mainly of condolence, had, however, kept -unbroken the fragile thread of friendship. The last, especially, written -after Mrs. Gale’s death, gave evidence of sincere feeling, and -emboldened Olivia, who knew no other mortal soul in London—the real -London, which did not embrace the Clapham aunt and uncle—to seek her -practical advice. In the voluminous response she recognized the old -capable Lydia. Letter followed letter until, with Mr. Trivett’s -professional assistance, she found herself the lucky tenant of a little -suite in a set of service flats in Victoria Street. - - * * * * * - -She entered into possession a fortnight after her interview with Blaise -Olifant, who was to take up residence at “The Towers” the following day. -Mr. Trivett and his wife, Mr. Fenmarch and Mr. Freke, and the elder Miss -Freke, who kept house for her father, saw her off at the station, -covering her with their protective wings to the last moment. Each -elderly gentleman drew her aside, and, with wagging of benevolent head, -offered help in time of trouble. They all seemed to think she was making -for disaster. - -But their solicitude touched her deeply. The lump that had arisen in her -throat when she had passed out across the threshold of her old home -swelled uncomfortably, and, when the train moved off and she responded -to waving hands and hats on the platform, tears stood in her eyes. -Presently she recovered. - -“Why should things so dear be so dismal?” - -Myra, exhibiting no symptoms of exhilaration, did not reply. As they -approached London, Olivia’s spirits rose. At last the dream of the past -weeks was about to be realized. When she stepped out of the train at -Paddington, it was with the throb of the conqueror setting foot, for the -first time on coveted territory. She devoured with her eyes, through the -taxi windows, the shops and sights and the movement of the great -thoroughfares through which they passed on their way to Victoria -Mansions, where her fifth-floor eyrie was situated. Once there, Myra, -accustomed to the spacious family house, sniffed at the exiguous -accommodation and sarcastically remarked that it would have been better -if air were laid on like gas. But Olivia paid little heed to her -immediate surroundings. The cramped flat was but the campaigner’s tent. -Her sphere of action lay limitless beyond the conventional walls. The -walls, however, bounded the sphere of Myra, who had no conception of -glorious adventure. The rapidly ascending lift had caused qualms in an -unaccustomed stomach, and she felt uneasy at living at such a height -above the ground. Why Olivia could not have carried on for indefinite -years in the comfort and security of “The Towers” she was at a loss to -imagine. Why give up the ease of a big house for poky lodgings halfway -up to the sky. A sitting-room, a bedroom, a slip with a bed in it for -herself, a bathroom—Myra thanked goodness both of them were slim—and -that was the London of Olivia’s promise. She sighed. At last put down -Olivia’s aberration to the war. The war, in those days, explained -everything. - -Meanwhile Olivia had thrown up the sash of the sitting-room window and -was gazing down at the ceaseless traffic in the street far below—gazing -down on the roofs of the taxis and automobiles which sped like swift -flat beetles, on the dwarfed yet monstrous insects that were the -motor-buses, on the foreshortened dots of the hurrying ant-like swarms -of pedestrians. It was gathering dusk, and already a few lights gleamed -from the masses of buildings across the way. Soon the street lamps -sprang into successive points of illumination. She stood fascinated, -watching the rapid change from December day into December night, until -at last the distant road seemed but a fantastic medley of ever-dying, -ever-recurring sounds and flashes of white and red. Yet it was not -fantastic chaos—her heart leapt at the thought—it was pregnant with -significance. All that rumble and hooting and darting light proclaimed -human purpose and endeavour, mysterious, breath-catching in its unknown -and vast corporate intensity. Shivers of ecstasy ran through her. At -last she herself was a unit in this eager life of London. She would have -her place in the absorbing yet perplexing drama into the midst of which -she had stepped with no key to its meaning. But she would pick up the -threads, learn what had gone before—of that she felt certain—and -then—she laughed—she would play her part with the best of them. -To-morrow she would be scurrying about among them, with her definite -human aims. Why not to-night? Delirious thought! She was free. She could -walk out into the throbbing thoroughfares and who could say her nay? She -put her hand to her bosom and felt the crackle of ten five-pound notes. -To emotional girlhood the feel of money, money not to hoard and make-do -for weeks and weeks with the spectre of want ever in attendance, but -money to fling recklessly about, has its barbaric thrill. Suppose she -let slip from her fingers one of the notes and it swayed and fluttered -down, down, down, until at last it reached the pavement, and suppose a -poor starving girl picked it up and carried it home to her invalid -mother. . . . But, on the other hand, suppose—and her profound and -cynical knowledge of human chances assured her that it would be a -thousand to one probability—supposing it fell on the silk hat of a -corpulent profiteer! No. She was not going to shower promiscuous -five-pound notes over London. But still the crackling wad meant power. -She was free to go forth there and then and purchase all the joys, for -herself and others, hovering over there in that luminous haze over the -Westminster towers of the magical city of dreams. - -She withdrew from the window and stood in the dark room, a light in her -eyes, and clenched her hands. Yes. She would go out, now, and walk and -walk, and fill her soul with the wonder of it all. - -And then practical memory administered a prosaic jog to her aspiring -spirit. Lydia Dawlish was coming to dine with her in the common -dining-room or restaurant downstairs. Shivering with cold, she shut the -window, turned on the light and sat by the fire, and ordered tea in the -most matter-of-fact way in the world. - -Lydia Dawlish appeared a couple of hours afterwards—fair, plump, and -prosperous, attired in one of her own dashing creations of hats set at a -rakish angle on her blond hair, and a vast coat of dark fur. Olivia, in -her simple black semi-evening frock run up by an agitated Medlow -dressmaker, felt a poor little dot of a thing before this regal -personage. And when the guest threw off the coat, the flowered silk -lining of which was a dazing joy to starved feminine eyes, and revealed -the slate-blue dinner gown from which creamy neck and shapely arms -emerged insolent, Olivia could do nothing but stare open-mouthed, until -power came to gasp her wonder and admiration. - -“It’s only an old thing,” said Lydia. “I had to put on a compromise -between downstairs and Percy’s.” - -“Percy’s?” - -“Yes—don’t you know? The night club. I’m going on afterwards.” - -Olivia’s face fell. “I thought you were going to spend the evening with -me.” - -“Of course I am, silly child. Night clubs don’t begin till eleven. A -man, Sydney Rooke, is calling for me. Well. How are you? And what are -your plans now you’ve got here?” - -She radiated health and vigour. Also proclaimed sex defiant, vaguely -disquieting to the country bred girl. Olivia felt suddenly shy. - -“It will take me a few days to turn round.” - -“Also to find clothes to turn round in,” said Lydia, with a -good-humoured yet comprehensive glance at the funny little black frock. -“I hope you haven’t been laying in a stock of things like that.” - -Olivia smiled. This was but a makeshift. She had been saving up for -London. Perhaps Lydia would advise her. She had heard of a good -place—what did they call it?—an enormous shop in Oxford Street. Lydia -threw up her white arms. - -“My dear child, you’re not going to be a fashionable beauty at -subscription dances and whist-drives at Upper Tooting! You’re going to -live in London. Good God! You can’t get clothes in Oxford Street.” - -“Where shall I get them, then?” asked Olivia. - -From the illustrated papers she had become aware of the existence of -Pacotille and Luquin and other mongers of celestial fripperies; but she -had also heard of the Stock Exchange and the Court of St. James’s and -the Stepney Board of Guardians; and they all seemed equally remote from -her sphere of being. - -“I’ll take you about with me to-morrow,” Lydia declared grandly, “and -put you in the way of things. I dare say I can find you a hat or two -chez Lydia—that’s me—at cost price.” She laughed and put a patronizing -arm around Olivia’s shoulders. “We’ll make a woman of you yet.” - -The lift carried them down to the restaurant floor. They dined, not too -badly, at a side table from which they could view the small crowded -room. Olivia felt disappointed. Only a few people were in evening dress. -It was rather a dowdy assembly, very much like that in the -boarding-house at Llandudno, her father’s summer holiday resort for -years before the war. Her inexperience had expected the glitter and joy -of London. Hospitably she offered wine, champagne, as her father, a -lover of celebrations, would have done; but Lydia drank nothing with her -meals—the only way not to get fat, which she dreaded. Olivia drank -water. The feast seemed tame, and the imported mutton tough. She -reproached herself for inadequate entertainment of her resplendent -friend. - -They talked; chiefly Lydia, after she had received Olivia’s report on -her family’s welfare and contemporary Medlow affairs; and Olivia -listened contentedly, absorbing every minute strange esoteric knowledge -of the great London world of which the pulsating centre appeared to be -Lydia, Ltd., in Maddox Street. There Duchesses bought hats which their -Dukes did not pay for. There Cabinet Ministers’ wives, in the hope of -getting on the right financial side of Lydia, whispered confidential -Cabinet secrets, while Ministers wondered how the deuce things got into -the papers. There romantic engagements were brought from inception to -maturity. There also, had she chosen to keep a record, she could have -accumulated enough evidence to bring about the divorces of half the -aristocracy of England. She rattled off the names like a machine-gun. -She impressed Olivia with the fact that Lydia, Ltd., was not a mere hat -shop, but a social institution of which Lydia Dawlish was the creating -and inspiring personality. Lydia, it appeared, weekended at great -houses. “You see, my dear, my husband was the son of an Honourable and -the grandson of an Earl. He hadn’t much money, poor darling, but still -he had the connection, most useful to me nowadays. The family buy their -hats from me, and spread the glad tidings.” She commanded a legion of -men who had vowed that she should live, free of charge, on the fat of -the land, and should travel whithersoever she desired in swift and -luxurious motor-cars. - -“Of course, my dear,” she said, “it’s rather a strain. Men will cart -about a stylish, good-looking woman for a certain time, just out of -vanity. But if she’s a dull damn fool, they’re either bored to tears and -chuck her, or they’ll want to—well—well—— Anyhow, you’ve got to keep -your wits about you and amuse them. You’ve got to pay for everything in -this life—or work for the means of paying—which comes to the same -thing. And I work. I don’t say it isn’t pleasant work—but it’s hard -work. You go out with a man to dinner, theatre and a night club, and -dismiss him at your front door at two o’clock in the morning with the -perfectly contented feeling that he has had a perfectly good time and -would be an ass to spoil things by hinting at anything different—and -you’ve jolly well earned your comfortable, innocent night’s rest.” - -This explosion of the whole philosophy of modern conscientious woman -came at the end of dinner. Olivia toyed absently with her coffee, -watching successive spoonfuls of tepid light-amber coloured liquid fall -into her cup. - -“But—all these men—” she said in a low voice—the position was so -baffling and so disconcerting. “You are a beautiful and clever woman. -Don’t they sometimes want to—to make love to you?” - -“They all do. What do you think? I, an unattached widow and, as you say, -not unattractive. But because I’m clever, I head them off. That’s the -whole point of what I’ve been telling you.” - -“But, suppose,” replied Olivia, still intent on the yellowish water, -“suppose you fell in love with one of these men. Women do fall in love, -I believe.” - -“Why then, I’d marry him the next day,” cried Lydia, with a laugh. -“But,” she added, “that’s not the type of man a sensible woman falls in -love with.” - -Olivia’s eyes sought the tablecloth. She was conscious of disturbance -and, at the same time, virginal resentment. - -“As far as my limited experience goes—a woman isn’t always sensible.” - -“She has to learn sense. That’s the great advantage of modern life. It -gives her every opportunity of acquiring it from the moment she goes out -into the world.” - -“And what kind of man does the sensible woman fall in love with?” - -“Somebody comfortable,” replied Lydia. “My ideal would be a young, -rather lazy and very broad-minded bishop.” - -Olivia shook her head. The only time she had seen a bishop was at her -confirmation. The encounter did not encourage dreams of romance in -episcopal circles. - -“But these men who take you out,” Olivia persisted thoughtfully “and do -all these wonderful things for you—it must cost them a dreadful lot of -money—what kind of people are they?” - -“All sorts. Some are of the very best—the backbone of the nation. They -go off and marry nice girls who don’t frequent night clubs and settle -down for the rest of their lives.” - -They drank their coffee and went upstairs, where questions of more -immediate practical interest occupied their minds. Olivia’s wardrobe was -passed in review, while Myra stood impassive like a sergeant at kit -inspection. - -“My poor child,” said Lydia, “you’ve not a single article, inside or -outside, that is fit to wear. I’ll send you a second-hand clothes man -who’ll buy up the whole lot as it stands and give you a good price for -it. I don’t know yet quite what you’re thinking of doing—but at any -rate you can’t do it in these things.” - -Olivia looked wistfully at the home-made garments which Lydia cast with -scorn across the bed. They, at least, had seemed quite dainty and -appropriate. - -“Well,” she said, with a sigh, “you know best, Lydia.” - -These all-important matters held their attention till a quarter past -eleven, when Mr. Sydney Rooke was announced. He was an elderly young man -in evening dress, with crisp black hair parted in the middle and -thinning at the temples. A little military moustache gave him an air of -youth which was belied by deep lines in his sallow face. His dark eyes -were rather tired and his mouth hard. But his manners were perfect. He -gave them both to understand that though Lydia was, naturally, the lady -of his evening’s devotion yet his heart was filled with a sense of -Olivia’s graciousness. Half a dozen words and a bow did it. In a polite -phrase, a bow and a gesture he indicated that if Miss Gale would join -them, his cup of happiness would overflow. Olivia pleaded fatigue. Then -another evening? With Mrs. Dawlish. A pleasant little party, in fact. He -would be enchanted. - -“We’ll fix it up for about a fortnight hence,” said Lydia significantly. -“To-morrow, then, dear, at eleven.” - -When they had gone Olivia, who had accompanied them to the flat door, -threw herself on the sofa and, putting her hands behind her head stared -over the edge of her own world into a new one, strange and bewildering. - -Myra entered. - -“Are you ever going to bed?” - -“I suppose I must,” said Olivia. - -“Are dressed-up men like that often coming here?” - -“God knows,” said Olivia, “who are coming here. I don’t.” - - - CHAPTER V - -THE Odyssey or the Argonautic, or whatever you like to call the epic of -the first wild adventure of a young woman into the Infinite of Clothes, -has yet to be written. It would need not only a poet, but a master of -psychology, to record the myriad vibrations of the soul as it reacts to -temptations, yieldings, tremulous thrills of the flesh, exquisite -apprehensions, fluttering joys, and each last voluptuous plenitude of -content. It is an adventure which absorbs every faculty of the will; -which ignores hunger and thirst, weariness of limb and ache of head; -which makes the day a dream of reality and the night the reality of a -dream. Hardened women of the world with frock-worn minds are caught at -times by the lure of the adventure, even when it is a question of a -dress or two and a poor half a dozen hats. But how manifold more potent -the spell in the case of one who starts with her young body in -Nymph-like innocence and is called upon to clothe it again and again in -infinite variety, from toe to head, from innermost secret daintiness to -outward splendour of bravery! - -Such a record would explain Olivia, not only to the world, but to -herself during that first fortnight in London. Her hours could be -reckoned by gasps of wonder. She lost count of time, of money, of human -values. Things that had never before entered into her philosophy, such -as the subtle shade of silk stockings which would make or mar a costume, -loomed paramount in importance. The after-use scarcely occurred to her. -Sufficient for the day was the chiffon thereof; also the gradual -transformation of herself from the prim slip of a girl with just the -pretension (in her own mind) to good looks, into a radiant and somewhat -distinguished dark-haired little personage. - -Her shrinkings, her arguments with Lydia Dawlish, her defeats, went all -into the melting-pot of her delight. “No bath salts, my dear?” cried -Lydia. “Whoever heard of a woman not using bath salts?” So bath salts -were ordered. And—horrified: “My dear, you don’t mean to say you wash -your face in soap and water. What will become of your skin?” So Olivia -was put under the orders of a West End specialist, who stocked her -dressing-table with delectable creams and oils. It was all so new, so -unheard of, so wonderful to the girl, an experience worth the living -through, even though all thousands at deposit at the bank should vanish -at the end of it. Merely to sit in a sensuously furnished room and have -beautiful women parade before her, clad in dreams of loveliness—any one -of which was hers for a scribble on a bit of pink paper—evoked within -her strange and almost spiritual emotions. Medlow was countless leagues -away; this transcended the London even of her most foolish visions. - -Afterwards Olivia, when, sense of values being restored she looked back -on this phantasmagoria of dressmakers, milliners, lingerie makers and -furriers, said to Lydia Dawlish: - -“It’s funny, but the fact that there might be a man or so in the world -never entered my head.” - -And the wise Lydia answered: “You were too busy turning yourself into a -woman.” - -Twice or thrice during this chrysalis period she stole out of nights -with Myra to the dress circle of a theatre, where, besides ingenuous joy -in the drama, she found unconfessed consolation in the company of homely -folk like herself—girls in clean blouses or simple little frocks like -her own, and young men either in well-worn khaki or morning dress. On -these occasions she wondered very much what she was about to do in the -other galley—that of the expensively furred and jewelled haughtinesses -and impudences whom she shouldered in the vestibule crush and whom she -saw drive away in luxurious limousines. These flashing personalities -frightened her with their implied suggestions of worlds beyond her ken. -One woman made especial impression on her—a woman tall, serene, with a -clear-cut face, vaguely familiar, and a beautiful voice; she overheard a -commonplace phrase or two addressed to the escorting man. She brushed -Olivia’s arm and turned with a smile and a word of gracious apology and -passed on. Olivia caught a whisper behind her. “That’s the Marchioness -of Aintree. Isn’t she lovely?” But she did not need to be told that she -had been in contact with a great lady. And she went home doubting -exceedingly whether, for all her flourish of social trumpets, Lydia -Dawlish’s galley was that of Lady Aintree. - -Criticism of Lydia, however, she put behind her as ingratitude, for -Lydia made up royally for past negligence. Time and energy that ought to -have been devoted to Lydia, Ltd., was diverted to the creation of -Olivia. - -“I don’t know why you’re so good to me,” she would say. - -And the other, with a little mocking smile round her lips: “It’s worth -it. I’m giving myself a new experience.” - - * * * * * - -The first occasion on which she went out into the great world was that -of Sydney Rooke’s party. She knew that her low-cut, sleeveless, -short-skirted gown of old gold tissue had material existence, but she -felt herself half-ashamedly, half-deliciously clad in nothing but a -bodily sensation. A faint blush lingered in her cheeks all the evening. -Lydia, calling for her in Rooke’s car, which had been placed at her -disposal, held her at arm’s length in sincere and noble admiration, -moved by the artist’s joy in beholding the finished product of his toil, -and embraced her fondly. Then she surveyed her again, from the little -gold brocade slippers to the diamond butterfly (one of her mother’s bits -of jewellery) in her dark wavy hair. - -“You’re the daintiest elf in London,” she cried. - -To the dinner at the Savoy Sydney Rooke had invited a white-moustached -soldier, Major-General Wigram, whose blue undress uniform, to the -bedazzlement of Olivia, gleamed with four long rows of multi-coloured -ribbon; a vivacious middle-aged woman, Mrs. Fane Sylvester, who wrote -novels, plays, books of travel, and fashion articles in a weekly -periodical—Olivia learned all this in their first five-minute converse -in the lounge; Sir Paul and Lady Barraclough, he a young baronet whose -civilian evening dress could not proclaim hard-won distinctions, she a -pretty, fair, fragile creature, both of them obviously reacting joyously -to relaxation of tension; and, last, the Vicomte de Mauregard, of the -French Embassy, young, good looking, who spoke polished English with a -faultless accent. It was, socially, as correct a little party as the -brooding, innocent spirit of Mrs. Gale could have desired for her -about-to-be prodigal daughter. Olivia sat between her host and -Mauregard. On her host’s right was Lady Barraclough; then the General, -then Lydia, then Sir Paul, facing Rooke at the round table, then Mrs. -Fane Sylvester, who was Mauregard’s left-hand neighbour. They were by -the terrace windows, far from what Olivia, with her fresh mind playing -on social phenomena, held then and ever afterwards, most rightly, to be -the maddening and human intercourse-destroying band. - -Not that her first entrance down the imposing broad staircase, into the -lounge filled with mirifically vestured fellow-creatures, to the -accompaniment of a clashing rag-time imbecility, did not set all her -young nerves vibrating to the point of delicious agony. It was like a -mad fanfare heralding her advent in a new world. But soon she found that -the blare of the idiot music deadened all other senses. Before her eyes -swayed black-and-white things whom at the back of her mind she -recognized as men, and various forms all stark flesh, flashing jewels -and a maze of colours, whom she knew to be women. The gathering group of -her own party seemed but figures of a dream. Her unaccustomed ears could -not catch a word of the conventional gambits of conversation opened, on -introduction, by her fellow guests. It was only when they passed between -the tables of the great restaurant and the horrible noise of the -negroid, syncopated parody of tune grew fainter and fainter, and they -reached the peace of the terrace side, that the maddening clatter faded -from her ears and consciousness of her surroundings returned. - -Then she surrendered herself to huge enjoyment. Both her neighbours had -been all over the world and seen all sorts and conditions of men. They -were vividly aware of current events. Pride would not allow her to -betray the fact that often they spoke of matters far beyond her -experience of men and things. Under their stimulus she began to regain -the self that, for the past fortnight, the cardboard boxes of London had -snowed under. - -“It’s no use asking me,” she said to Mauregard, “whether I’ve been to -Monte Carlo or Madagascar or Madame Tussaud’s, for I haven’t. I haven’t -been anywhere. I’ve somehow existed at the back of Nowhere, and to-night -I’ve come to life.” - -“But where did you come from? The sea foam? Venus Anadyomene?” - -“No, I’m of the other kind. I come from far inland. I believe they call -it Shropshire. That oughtn’t to convey anything to you.” - -“Indeed it does!” cried Mauregard. “Was I not at school at Shrewsbury?” - -“No?” - -“But yes. Three years. So I’m Shropshire, too.” - -“That’s delightful,” she remarked; “but it does away with my little -mystery of Nowhere.” - -“No, no,” he protested, with a laugh. He was a fair, bright-eyed boy -with a little curled-up moustache which gave him the air of a cherub -playfully disguised. “It is the county of mystery. Doesn’t your poet -say: - - ‘Once in the wind of morning - I ranged the thymy wold; - The world-wide air was azure - And all the brooks ran gold.’” - -“That’s from _A Shropshire Lad_,” cried Olivia. - -“Of course. So why shouldn’t you have come from the wind of morning, the -azure world-wide air or the golden brook?” - -“That’s beautiful of you,” said Olivia. “Well, why shouldn’t I? It’s -more romantic and imaginative than the commonplace old sea. The sea has -been overdone. I used to look at it once a year, and, now I come to -think of it, it always seemed to be self-conscious, trying to live up to -its reputation. But ‘the wind of the morning——’ Anyhow, here I am.” - -“Blown to London by the wind of a Shropshire morning.” - -Olivia’s spirit danced in the talk. With his national touch on the -lighter emotions, Mauregard drew from her an exposition of the Dryad’s -sensations on sudden confrontation with modern life. To talk well is a -great gift; to compel others to talk well is a greater; and the latter -gift was Mauregard’s. Olivia put food into her mouth, but whether it was -fish or flesh or fowl she knew not. When her host broke the spell by an -announcement in her ear that he had a couple of boxes for “Jazz-Jazz,” -she became aware that she was eating partridge. - -Mr. Sydney Rooke talked of women’s clothes, of which he had an expert -knowledge. Lady Barraclough chimed in. Olivia, fresh from the welter, -spoke as one in authority. Now and again she caught Lydia’s eye across -the table and received an approving nod. The elderly General regarded -her with amused admiration. She began to taste the first-fruits of -social success. She drove in a taxi to the theatre with the Barracloughs -and Mrs. Fane Sylvester and sat with them in a box during the first act -of the gay revue. For the second act there was a change of company and -she found herself next to the General. He had served in India and was -familiar with the names of her mother’s people. What Anglo-Indian was -not? Long ago he had met an uncle of hers; dead, poor chap. This social -placing gave her a throb of pleasure, setting her, at least, in a -stranger’s eyes, in her mother’s sphere. The performance over, they -parted great friends. - -General Wigram and Mrs. Fane Sylvester excusing themselves from going on -to Percy’s, the others crowded into Sydney Rooke’s limousine. The crash -of jazz music welcomed them. Already a few couples were dancing; others -were flocking in from the theatres. They supped merrily. Sydney Rooke -pointed out to Olivia’s wondering eyes the stars of the theatrical -firmament who condescended to walk the parquet floor of the famous night -club. He also indicated here and there a perfectly attired youth as a -professional dancer. - -“On the stage?” - -He explained that they had their professional partners and gave -exhibition dances, showing the new steps. They also gave private -lessons. It was the way they made their living. Olivia knitted a -perplexed brow. - -“It doesn’t seem a very noble profession for a young man.” - -Sydney Rooke shrugged his shoulders politely. - -“I’m with you a thousand times, my dear Miss Gale. The parasite, _per -se_, isn’t a noble object. But what would you have? The noble things of -the past few years came to an end a short while ago, and, if I can read -the times, reaction has already begun. In six months’ time the noble -fellow will be a hopeless anachronism.” - -“Do you mean,” asked Olivia, “that all the young men will be rotten?” - -He smiled. “How direct you are! Disconcerting, if I may say so. So -positive; while I was approaching the matter from the negative side. -There’ll be a universal loss of ideals.” - -Olivia protested. “The young man has before him the reconstruction of -the world.” - -“Oh no,” said Rooke. “He has done his bit. He expects other people to -carry out the reconstructing business for him. All he cares about is to -find a couple of sixpences to jingle together in his pocket.” - -“And have these young men who devote their lives to foxtrotting done -their bit?” - -He begged the question. “Pray be guided by my prophecy, Miss Gale. Next -year you mustn’t mention war to ears polite. These young men are alive. -They thank God for it. Let you and me do likewise.” - -This little supper-table talk was the only cloud on a radiant night. The -Vicomte de Mauregard took her to dance. At first she felt awkward, -knowing only the simple steps of five years ago. But instinct soon -guided her, and for two hours she danced and danced in an unthinking -ecstasy. The clattering and unmeaning din which had dazed her on her -entrance to the Savoy was now pregnant with physical significance. The -tearing of the strings, the clashing of the cymbals, the barbaric -thumping of the drum, the sudden raucous scream from negro throats, set -vibrating within her responsive chords of an atavistic savagery. When -each nerve-tearing cacophony came to its abrupt end, she joined -breathlessly with the suddenly halting crow in eager clapping for the -encore. And then, when the blood-stirring strings and cymbals crashed -out, overpowering the staccato of hand beating hand, she surrendered -herself with an indrawn sigh of content to her partner’s arm—to the -rhythm, to the movement, to the mere bodily guidance, half conscious of -the proud flexibility of her frame under the man’s firm clasp, to -something, she knew not what, far remote from previous experience. -Strange, too, the personality of the man did not matter. Paul -Barraclough, Sydney Rooke, Mauregard, she danced with them all in turn. -In her pulsating happiness she mixed them all up together, so that a -flashing glance, liable to be misinterpreted, proceeded from a mere -impulse of identification. Now and then, in the swimming throng of men -and women, and the intoxication of passing raiment impregnated with -scent and cigarette smoke, she exchanged an absent smile with Lydia and -Lady Barraclough. Otherwise she scarcely realized their existence. She -was led panting by Mauregard to a supper table while he went in search -of refreshment. He returned with a waiter, apologizing for the -abomination of iced ginger ale and curled orange peel, which was all -that the laws of the land allowed him to offer. Horse’s neck, it was -called. She laughed, delighted with the name, and, after drinking, -laughed again, delighted with the cool liquid so tingling on her palate. - -“It’s a drink for the gods,” she declared. - -“If you offered it, the unfortunate Bacchus would drink it without a -murmur.” - -“Do you really think it’s so awful?” - -“_Mon Dieu!_” replied the young Frenchman. - -Then Lydia came up with a dark-eyed, good-looking boy in tow, whom she -introduced, as Mr. Bobbie Quinton and Olivia was surprised to recognize -as one of the professionals. She accepted, however, his invitation to -dance and went off on his arm. She found him a boy of charming manners -and agreeable voice, and in the lightness and certainty of his dancing -he far outclassed her other partners. He suggested new steps. She tried -and blundered. She excused herself. - -“This is the first time I’ve danced for four years.” - -“It doesn’t matter,” said he. “You’re a born dancer. You only need a few -lessons to bring you up to date. What I find in so many of the women I -teach is that they not only don’t begin to understand what they’re -trying to do, but that they never try to understand. You, on the other -hand, have it instinctively. But, of course, you can’t learn steps in a -place like this.” - -“I wonder if you could give me some lessons?” - -“With all the pleasure in life, Miss Gale,” replied Mr. Bobbie Quinton -promptly. - - * * * * * - -About two o’clock in the morning Sydney Rooke and Lydia deposited Olivia -at the front door of Victoria Mansions. Rooke stood hat in hand as she -entered. - -“I hope you’ve not been too bored by our little evening.” - -“Bored! It has been just one heaven after another opening out before -me.” - -“But not the seventh. If only I could have provided that!” - -“I’ll find it in the happiest and soundest night’s rest I ever had,” -said Olivia. - - - CHAPTER VI - -THIS was life; magical, undreamed of in her wildest Medlow dreams. And -thanks to Lydia, she had plunged into it headlong, after a mere -fortnight’s probation. There had been no disillusion. She had plunged -and emerged into her kingdom. London conspired to strew her path with -roses. The Barracloughs invited her to a dinner party at their home in -Kensington. General Wigram offered her dinner and theatre and convened -to meet her an old Indian crony, General Philimore, and his young -daughter, Janet. Philimore had known her grandfather, Bagshawe of the -Guides, when he was a subaltern, infinite ages ago. The world was a -small place, after all. Olivia, caring little for grandfathers beyond -their posthumous social guarantee, found youth’s real sympathy in Janet, -who held open for her their flat in Maida Vale. Young Mauregard, after -their first lunch together at the Carlton, seemed prepared to provide -her with free meals and amusements for the rest of time. It is true he -was madly in love with a Russian dancer, whose eccentric ways and -abominable treatment of him formed the staple of the conversation which -he poured into her very interested and compassionate ear. And, last, -Bobbie Quinton gave her dancing lessons at the flat at the rate of a -guinea apiece. - -Christmas caused a break in these social activities. Lydia took her off -to Brighton, where, meeting various acquaintances of her chaperone and -making others of her own, she motored and danced and danced and motored, -and in the pursuit of these delights discovered, with a fearful joy, -that she could hold her own in the immemorial conflict of sex. Sydney -Rooke, having driven down for the day, occasionally flashed through the -hotel, the eternal smile of youth on his dark, lined face and his -gestures unceasingly polite. As he passed, the heavens opened and rained -champagne and boxes of chocolate and hot-house fruits and flowers and -embroidered handbags, and once, a Pekinese dog for Lydia. Once again, an -automobile seemed about to fall, but at Lydia’s protests it melted in -the ether. - -“A dog and a rose and a glass of wine,” said she, “are a woman’s due for -amusing a man. But a motor-car is profiteering. Besides, it’s bound to -drive you somewhere in the end—either to the flat of shame or the -country house of married respectability: it only depends on who is at -the wheel.” - -“I see,” said Olivia. But she didn’t. Sydney Rooke was a mystery; and -Lydia’s attitude towards him was more than her inexperience could -understand. - -Still, there she was in the pleasant galley and she did not question -what she was doing in it. In a dim way she regarded it as the inevitable -rescue vessel after universal shipwreck. Her eyes were blinded by its -glitter and her ears deafened by its music to the welter of the unsalved -world. - -Just before New Year she received a letter from Bobby Quinton. It began: -“Dearest of Ladies.” Never before having been thus apostrophized, she -thought it peculiarly graceful and original. The writing was refined and -exquisitely clear. To his dearest of ladies the young man bewailed her -absence; life was dreary without her friendship and encouragement; all -this Christmastide he was the loneliest thing on earth; he suggested -that there was no one to love him—no mother or sisters to whom he could -apply for comfort; this terrible night life to which he, poor -demobilized soldier of fortune, was condemned in order to earn his -bread, weighed upon his spirits and affected his health; he envied his -dearest of ladies’ sojourn by the invigorating sea; he longed for the -taste of it; but such health-restoring rapture he gave her, in the most -delicate way, to understand, was for fairy princesses and not for the -impecunious demobbed; he counted the days till her return and prayed her -to bring back a whiff of ozone on her garments to revive the ever -faithful one who had the temerity to try to teach her to dance. - -A most piteous epistle. Bobby Quinton, by his ingratiating ways and his -deference and his wit, had effaced her original conception of the type -of young men who danced at night clubs for their living. She liked him. -He seemed so young and she, through her long companionship with sorrow, -so old in comparison; he seemed so foolish and impossible, and she so -wise; to her, remembering the helpless dependence of her father and -brothers, he seemed (motherless and sisterless as he was) lost in a -hostile world. Besides, he was not a nameless adventurer. His father -(long since deceased) had been a Colonial Governor. He had been to one -of the great public schools. In short, he had the birth and breeding of -a gentleman. She slipped on a dressing-gown and went with the letter to -Lydia, full of maternal purpose. - -It was nine o’clock in the morning. Their rooms had a communicating -door. She found Lydia daintily attired in boudoir cap and -dressing-jacket, having breakfast in bed. - -“The poor boy’s dying for a breath of sea air. It would do him an -enormous amount of good. Do you think we—of course, it really would be -me—but it would be better if it appeared to be a joint affair—do you -think we could, without offending him, ask him to come down here for a -couple of days as our guest?” - -Lydia, who had read the letter with a smile round her lips, replied -drily: - -“As far as Bobby is concerned—I really think we could.” - -“And as far as we are concerned,” flashed Olivia, “why should the silly -fact of being a woman prevent us from helping a lame dog over a stile?” - -“A he-dog,” said Lydia. - -“What does it matter?” Olivia asked stoutly. - -Lydia laughed in her half-cynical, tolerant way. - -“Do as you like, dear. I don’t mind. You’re out for experience, not I. -I’d only have you remark that our he-dog friend Bobby is sitting up and -begging for the invitation——” - -“Oh! Ah!” cried Olivia, with a fling of her arm, “you’re horrid!” - -“Not a bit,” smiled Lydia. “I face facts, as you’ll have to do, if you -want to find comfort in this matter-of-fact world. Have your Bobby down -by all means. Only keep your eye on him.” - -“He’s not my Bobby,” said Olivia indignantly. - -“Our Bobby, then,” said Lydia, with good-natured indulgence. - -So Olivia, with the little palpitation of the heart attendant on -consciousness of adventurous and (in Medlow eyes, preposterous) -well-doing, wrote to Bobby Quinton a letter whose gracious delicacy -would not have wounded the susceptibilities of a needy Hidalgo or an -impoverished Highland chieftain, and received in reply a telegram of -eager acceptance. - -Bobby appeared immaculately vestured, his heart overflowing with -gratitude at the amazing sweetness of his two dear ladies. Never had man -been blessed with such fairy godmothers. By the fresh frankness of his -appreciation of their hospitality he disarmed criticism. A younger son -hanging on to the court of Louis XIII never received purses of gold from -his lady love with less embarrassed grace. He devoted himself to their -service. He had the art of tactful effacement, and of appearance at the -exact moment of welcome. He enlivened their meals with chatter and a -boyish brightness that passed for wit. - -To Olivia, the dearest of his dear ladies, he confided the pathetic -history of his life. A sunny, sheltered corner of the Pier, both sitting -side by side well wrapped in furs, conduced to intimacy. How a young man -in such a precarious financial position could afford to wear a fur-lined -coat with a new astrachan collar it did not strike Olivia to enquire. -That he, like herself, was warm on that sun-filled morning, with the sea -dancing and sparkling away beyond them, and human types around them -exuding the prosperity of peace, seemed sufficient for the comfortable -hour. He spoke of his early years of ease, of his modest patrimony -coming to an end soon after the war broke out; of his commission in a -yeomanry regiment; of his heart-break as the months went on and the -chance of the regiment being sent to the front grew less and less; of -his exchange into a regiment of the line; of the rotten heart that gave -out after a month in France; of his grief at being invalided out of the -army and his struggles and anxieties when he returned to civil life, -branded as physically unfit. He had tried the stage, musical comedy, -male youth in the manless chorus being eagerly welcomed; then, after a -little training, he found he had the dancer’s gift. “So one thing led to -another,” said he, “and that’s my history.” - -“But surely,” said Olivia, “all this dancing and these late hours must -be very bad for your heart.” - -He smiled sadly. “What does it matter? I’m no use to anybody, and nobody -cares whether I’m dead or alive.” - -Olivia protested warmly. “The world is crying out for young men of -three-and-twenty. You could be useful in a million ways.” - -“Not a crock like me.” - -“You could go into an office.” - -“Yes. In at one door and out of another. Hopeless.” - -He drew from a slim gold case a Turkish cigarette—Olivia, minutely -hospitable, had put a box of a hundred in his room—and tapped it -thoughtfully. - -“After all, which is better—to carry on with life like a worm—which -anyhow perisheth, as the Bible tells us—or to go out like a butterfly, -with a bit of a swagger?” - -“But you mustn’t talk of going out,” cried Olivia. “It’s indecent.” - -Bobby lighted his cigarette. “Who would care?” - -“I, for one,” she replied. - -Her health and sanity revolted against morbid ideas. He stretched out -his hand, and, with the tips of his fingers, touched her coat, and he -bent his dark brown eyes upon her. - -“Would you really?” he murmured. - -She flushed, felt angry she scarce knew why, and put herself swiftly on -the defensive. - -“I would care for the life of any young man. After a million killed it’s -precious—and every decent girl would care the same as I.” - -“You’re wonderful!” he remarked. - -“I’m common sense incarnate,” said Olivia. - -“You are. You’re right. You’re right a thousand times,” he replied. -“I’ll always remember what you have said to me this morning.” - -At his surrender she disarmed. A corpulent, opulent couple passed them -by, the lady wearing a cheap feathered hat and a rope of pearls outside -a Kolinsky coat, the gentleman displaying on an ungloved right hand, -which maintained in his mouth a gigantic cigar, an enormous ruby set in -a garden border of diamonds. - -“At any rate,” said Bobby, “I’m not as some other men are.” - -So they laughed and discussed the profiteers and walked back to the -hotel for lunch with the sharpened appetites of twenty. - -When Bobby Quinton left them, Olivia reproached herself for lack of -sympathy. The boy had done his best. A rotten, and crocky heart, who was -she to despise? But for circumstance he might have done heroic things. -Perhaps in his defiance of physical disability he was doing a heroic -thing even now. Still. . . . To Lydia, in an ironically teasing mood, -she declared: - -“When I do fall in love, it’s not going to be with any one like Bobby -Quinton. I want a man—there would be a devil of a row, of course, if he -tried—but one capable of beating me.” - -“Bobby would do that, right enough, if you gave him the chance,” said -Lydia. - -Olivia reflected for a while. “Why have you got your knife into him like -that?” she asked abruptly. - -“I haven’t, my dear child. If I had, do you think I would have allowed -him to come down? I live and let live. By letting live, I live very -comfortably and manage, with moderate means, to have a very good time.” - -Olivia, already dressed for dinner, looked down on the easy, creamy, -handsome, kimono-clad woman, curled up like a vast Angora cat on the -hotel bedroom sofa, and once more was dimly conscious of a doubt whether -the galley of Lydia Dawlish was the one for her mother’s daughter to row -in. - -Still, _vogue la galère_. When she returned to London there was little -else to do. Eating and dancing filled many of her days and nights. She -tried to recapture the pleasure of books which had been all her -recreation for years; but, although her life was not a continuous whirl -of engagements—for it requires a greater vogue as a pretty and -unattached young woman than Olivia possessed to be booked for fourteen -meals and seven evenings every week of the year—she found little time -for solitary intelligent occupation. If she was at a loose end, Lydia’s -hat shop provided an agreeable pastime. Or, as a thousand little odds -and ends of dress demanded attention, there was always a sensuous hour -or two to be spent at Pacotille’s and Luquin’s or Deville’s. Tea -companions seldom failed. When she had no evening engagements she was -glad to get to bed, soon after the dinner in the downstairs restaurant, -and to sleep the sleep of untroubled youth. And all the time the spell -of London still held her captive. To walk the crowded streets, to join -the feminine crush before the plate-glass windows of great shops, to -watch the strange birds in the ornamental water in St. James’s Park, to -wander about the Abbey and the Temple Gardens, to enter on the moment’s -impulse a Bond Street picture gallery or a cinema—all was a matter of -young joy and thrill. She even spent a reckless and rapturous afternoon -at Madame Tussaud’s. Sometimes Janet Philimore accompanied her on these -excursions round the monuments of London. Janet, who had mild -antiquarian tastes and a proletarian knowledge of London traffic, took -her by tubes and buses to the old City churches and the Tower, and -exhibited to her wondering gaze the Bank of England and the Royal -Exchange and Guildhall up the narrow street. For sentimental interest, -there was always Bobby Quinton, who continued to maintain himself under -her maternal eye. And so the new life went on. - -It was one night in April, while she was standing under the porch of a -theatre, Mouregard, her escort, having gone in search of his -dinner-and-theatre brougham—for those were days when taxis were scarce -and drivers haughty—that she found herself addressed by a long-nosed, -one-armed man, who raised his hat. - -“Miss Gale—I’m sure you don’t remember me.” - -For a second or two she could not place him. Then she laughed. - -“Why—Major Olifant!” She shook hands. “What are you doing here? I -thought you were buried among your fossils. Do tell me—how are the -hot-water pipes? And how is the parrot? Myra has no faith in your -bachelor housekeeping and is sure you’ve eaten him out of desperation.” - -He returned a light answer. Then, touching the arm of a man standing by -his side: - -“Miss Gale—can I introduce Mr. Alexis Triona.” - -Triona bowed, stood uncovered while he took the hand which Olivia held -out. - -“This is my landlady,” said Olifant. - -“He is privileged beyond the common run of mortals,” said Triona. - -“That’s very pretty,” laughed Olivia, with a swift, enveloping glance at -the slight, inconspicuous youth who had done such wonderful things. -“I’ve not thought of myself as a landlady before. I hope I don’t look -like one.” - -Visions of myriad Bloomsbury lodging-houses at whose doors he had -knocked after he had left the tiny room in Cherbury Mews, and of the -strange middle-aged women of faded gentility whom he had interviewed -within those doors, rose before Triona’s eyes, and he laughed too. For -under the strong electric light of the portico, unkind to most of the -other waiting women, showing up lines and hollows and artificialities of -complexion, she looked as fresh and young as a child on a May morning. -The open theatre wrap revealed her slender girlish figure, sketchily -clad in a flame-coloured garment; and, with the light in her eyes and -her little dark head proudly poised, she stood before the man’s fancy as -the flame of youth. - -She turned to Olifant. - -“Are you in town?” - -“For a few days. Getting rid of cobwebs.” - -“I’d lend you quite a nice broom, if you could find time to come and see -me. Besides, I do want to hear about my beloved Polly.” - -“I shall be delighted,” said Olifant. - -They arranged that he should come to tea at the flat the following day. - -“And if so famous a person as Mr. Triona would honour me, too?” - -“Dare I?” he asked. - -“It’s on the fifth floor, but there’s a lift.” - -She saw Mauregard hurrying up. With a “Four-thirty, then,” and a smile -of adieu, she turned and joined Mauregard. - -“Shall we go on to Percy’s?” asked the young Frenchman, standing at the -door of the brougham. - -Olivia conceived a sudden distaste for Percy’s. - -“Not unless you particularly want to.” - -“I? Good Lord!” said he. - -“Why do you ever go, if it bores you like that?” she asked as the -brougham started Victoria-wards. - -“_Ce que femme veut, Mauregard le veut._” - -“I suppose that is why you’ve never made love to me.” - -“How?” he asked, surprised out of his perfect English idiom. - -“I’ve wanted you not to make love to me, and you haven’t.” - -“But how could I make love to you, when I have been persecuting you with -the confessions of my unhappy love affairs?” - -“One can always find a means,” said Olivia. “That’s why I like you. You -are such a good friend.” - -“I hope so,” said he. Then, after a short silence: “Let me be frank. -What is going on at the back of your clever English mind is perfectly -accurate. I am tempted to make love to you every time I see you. What -man, with a man’s blood in his veins, wouldn’t be tempted, no matter how -much he loved another woman? But I say to myself: ‘Lucien, you are -French to the marrow of your bones. It is the nature of that marrow not -to offend a beautiful woman by not making love to her. But, on the other -hand, the Lady Olivia whose finger-tips I am unworthy to kiss’—he -touched them with his lips, however, in the most charming manner—‘is -English to the marrow of _her_ bones, and it is the nature of that -marrow to be offended if a man makes obviously idle love to her.’ So, -not wishing to lose my Lady Olivia, whose friendship and sympathy I -value so highly, I accept with a grateful heart a position which would -be incomprehensible to the vast majority of my fellow-countrymen.” - -“I’m so glad we’ve had this out,” said Olivia after a pause. “I’ve been -a bit worried. A girl on her own has got to take care of herself, you -know. And you’ve been so beautifully kind to me——” - -“It’s because I am proud to call myself your humble and devoted -servant,” replied Mauregard. - -Olivia went to bed contented with this frank explanation. Men had -already made love to her in a manner which had ruffled her serene -consciousness, and she found it, not like Lydia Dawlish, a cynical game -of wit, but a disagreeable business, to parry their advances. Bobby -Quinton, of course, she could put into a corner like a naughty child, -whenever he became foolish. But Mauregard, consistently respectful and -entertaining, had been rather a puzzle. Now that way was clear. - -For a while she did not associate her meeting Blaise Olifant with her -distaste for the night club. In the flush of her new existence she had -almost forgotten him. There had been no reason to correspond. His rent -was paid through the Trivett and Gale office. His foraminiferous -pursuits did not appeal to a girl’s imagination. Now and then she gave a -passing thought to what was happening in her old home, and vaguely -remembered that the romantically named traveller was there as a guest. -But that was all. Now, the presence of Olifant had suddenly recalled the -little scene in her mother’s room, when she had suddenly decided to let -him have the house; he had brought with him a breath of that room; a -swift memory of the delicate water-colours and the books by the bedside, -the _Pensées de Pascal_ and _The Imitation of Christ_. . . . Besides, -she had felt a curious attraction towards the companion, the boy with -the foreign manner and the glistening eyes and the suffering-stricken -face. Both men, as she conceived them, belonged to the higher -intellectual type that had their being remote from the inanities of -dissipation. So, impelled by a muddled set of motives, she suddenly -found herself abhorring Percy’s. She read herself into a state of -chastened self-approbation, and then to sleep, with Rupert Brooke’s -poems. - - - CHAPTER VII - -OLIVIA sat by her little table, dispensing tea and accepting homage with -a flutter of pleasure at her heart. She had been oddly nervous—she who -had entertained the stranger Olifant, at Medlow, with the greatest -self-confidence, and had grown to regard tea parties at the flat as -commonplaces of existence. The two men had drifted in from another -sphere. She had reviewed her stock of conversation and found it -shop-worn after five months’ exposure. The most recent of her views on -“Hullo, People!” and on the food at the Carlton had appeared unworthy of -the notice of the soldier-scientist and the adventurous man of letters. -She had received them with unusual self-consciousness. This, however, a -few moments of intercourse dispelled. They had come, they had seen and -she had conquered. - -“At first I didn’t recognize you,” said Olifant. “I had to look twice to -make sure.” - -“Have I changed so much?” she asked. - -“It was a trick of environment,” he said, with a smile in his dark blue -eyes. - -The feminine in her caught the admiration behind them and delightedly -realized his confusion, the night before, at her metamorphosis from the -prim little black-frocked quakeress into the radiant creature in furs -and jewels and flame-coloured audacity. - -“And now you’re quite sure it is me—or I—which is it?” - -“I’m quite sure it’s my charming landlady who for the second time feeds -the hungry wanderer. Miss Gale, Triona, makes a specialty of it.” - -“Then, indeed, I’m peculiarly fortunate,” said Triona, taking a tomato -sandwich. “Will you feed me again, Miss Gale?” - -“As often as you like,” she laughed. - -“That’s rather a rash promise to make to a professional vagabond like -myself. When he has begged his way for months and months at a time, he -comes to regard other people’s food as his by divine right.” - -“Have you done that?” she asked. - -“Much worse. You don’t keep chickens?” - -“Not here.” - -“That’s a good thing. I think I’m the world’s champion chicken-stealer. -It’s a trick of legerdemain. You dive at a chicken, catch it by its -neck, whirl it round and stick it under your jacket all in one action. -The unconscious owner has only to turn his back for a second. Then, of -course, you hide in a wood and have an orgy.” - -“He is not the desperate character he makes himself out to be,” said -Olifant. “He spent two months with me at ‘The Towers’ without molesting -one of your hens.” - -“Then you’re not still there?” she asked Triona. - -“Alas, no,” he replied. “I suppose I have the fever of perpetual change. -I had a letter from Finland saying that my presence might be of use -there. So I have spent this spring in Helsingfors. I am only just back.” - -“It seems wonderful to go and come among all these strange places,” said -Olivia. - -“One land is much the same as another in essentials,” replied Triona. -“To carry on life you have to eat and sleep. There’s no difference -between a hard-boiled egg in Somerset and a hard-boiled egg in Tobolsk. -And sleep is sleep, whether you’re putting up at Claridge’s or the Hotel -of the Beautiful Star. And human nature, stripped of the externals of -habits, customs, traditions, ceremonials, is unchanging from one -generation, and from one latitude or longitude, to another.” - -“But,” objected Olivia, with a flash of logic, “if London’s the same as -Tobolsk, why yearn for Tobolsk?” - -“It’s the hope of finding something different—the _ignis fatuus_, the -Jack o’ Lantern, the Will-o’-the-Wisp——” He was silent for a moment, -and then she caught the flash of his eyes. “It’s the only thing that -counts in human progress. The Will-o’-the-Wisp. It leaves nine hundred -and ninety-nine men out of a thousand floundering in a bog—but the -thousandth man wins through to the Land of Promise. There is only one -thing in life to do,” he continued, clenching his nervous hands and -looking into the distance away from Olivia, “and that is never to lose -faith in your _ignis fatuus_—to compel it to be your guiding star. Once -you’ve missed grip of it, you’re lost.” - -“I wish I had your Russian idealism,” said Olifant. - -“When will you learn, my dear friend,” said Triona quietly, “that I’m -not a Russian? I’m as English as you are.” - -“It’s your idealism that is Russian,” said Olivia. - -“Do you think so?” he asked, deferentially. “Well, perhaps it is. In -England you keep your ideals hidden until some great catastrophe -happens, then you bring them out to help you along. Otherwise it is -immodest to expose them. In Russia, ideals are exposed all the time, so -that when the time for their application comes, they’re worn so thin -they’re useless. Poor Russia,” he sighed. “It has idealized itself to -extinction. All my boyhood’s companions—the students, the -_intelligentsia_, as they called themselves, who used to sit and talk -and talk for hours of their wonderful theories—you in England have no -idea how Russian visionary can talk—and I learned to talk with -them—where are they now? The fortunate were killed in action. The -others, either massacred or rotting in prisons, or leading the filthy -hunted lives of pariah dogs. The Beast arose like a foul shape from the -Witch’s cauldron of their talk . . . and devoured them. Yes, perhaps the -stolid English way is the better.” - -“What about your Will-o’-the-Wisp theory?” asked Olivia. - -He threw out his hands. “Ah! That is the secret. Keep it to yourself. -Don’t point it out to a thousand people, and say: ‘Join me in the chase -of the Will-o’-the-Wisp.’ For the thousand other people will each see an -_ignis fatuus_ of their own and point it out, so that there are myriads -of them, and your brain reels, and you’re swallowed up in the bog to a -dead certainty. In plain words, every human being must have his own -individual and particular guiding star which he must follow steadfastly. -My guiding star is not yours, Miss Gale, nor Olifant’s. We each have our -own.” - -Olifant smiled indulgently. “_Moscovus loquitur_,” he murmured. - -“What’s that?” asked Olivia. - -“He says, my dear Miss Gale, that the Russian will ever be talking.” - -“I’m not so sure that I don’t approve,” said she. - -Triona laid his hand on his heart and made a little bow. She went on, -casting a rebuking glance at Olifant, who had begun to laugh: - -“After all, it’s more entertaining and stimulating to talk about ideas -than about stupid facts. Most people seem to regard an idea as a -disease. They shy at it as if it were smallpox.” - -Olifant protested. He was capable of playing football with ideas as any -man. Self-satirical, he asked was he not of Balliol? Olivia, remembering -opportunely a recent Cambridge dinner neighbour’s criticism of the -famous Oxford College—at the time it had bored her indifferent -mind—and an anecdote with which he drove home his remarks, that of a -sixth-form contemporary who had written to him in the prime flush of his -freshman’s term: “Balliol is not a college; it is a School of Thought,” -cried out: - -“Isn’t that rather a crude metaphor for Balliol?” - -They quarrelled, drifted away from the point, swept Triona into a -laughing argument on she knew not what. All she knew was that these two -men were giving her the best of themselves; these two picked men of -thought and action; that they were eager to interest her, to catch her -word of approval; that some dancing thing within her brain played on -their personalities and kept them at concert pitch. - -She was conscious of a new joy, a new sense of power, when the door -opened and Myra showed in Lydia Dawlish. She entered, enveloped in an -atmosphere of furs and creamy worldliness. Aware of the effect of -implicit scorn of snobbery, she besought Olifant for news of Medlow, -dear Sleepy Hollow, which she had not seen for years. Had he come across -her beloved eccentric of a father—old John Freke? Olifant gave her the -best of news. He had lately joined the committee of the local hospital, -of which Mr. Freke was Chairman; professed admiration for John Freke’s -exceptional gifts. - -“If he had gone out into the world, he might have been a great man,” -said Lydia. - -“He _is_ a great man,” replied Olifant. - -“What’s the good of being great in an overlooked chunk of the Stone Age -like Medlow?” - -She spoke with her lazy vivacity, obviously, to Olivia’s observant eye, -seeking to establish herself with the two men. But the spell of the -afternoon was broken. As soon as politeness allowed, Olifant and Triona -took their leave. Had it not been for Lydia they would have stayed on -indefinitely, forgetful of time, showing unconscious, and thereby all -the more flattering, homage to their hostess. In a mild way she -anathematized Lydia; but found a compensating tickle of pleasure in the -lady’s failure to captivate. - -To Olifant she said: - -“Now that you know where your landlady lives, I hope you won’t go on -neglecting her.” - -But she waited for Triona to say: - -“Shall I ever have the pleasure of seeing you again?” - -“It all depends whether you can be communicated with,” she replied. -“Alexis Triona, Esq., Planet Earth, Solar System, is an imposing -address; but it might puzzle the General Post Office.” - -“The Vanloo Hotel, South Kensington, is very much more modest.” - -“It’s well for people to know where they can find one another,” said -Olivia. - -“That you should do me the honour of the slightest thought of finding -me——” he began. - -“We’ll fix up something soon,” Lydia interrupted. “I’m Miss Gale’s -elderly, adopted aunt.” - -Olivia felt a momentary shock, as though a tiny bolt of ice had passed -through her. She sped a puzzled glance at a Lydia blandly unconscious of -wrong-doing. - -“I shall be delighted,” said Triona politely. - -When the door had closed behind the two— - -“What nice men,” said Lydia. - -“Yes, they’re rather—nice,” replied Olivia, wondering why, in trying to -qualify them in her mind, this particular adjective had never occurred -to her. They were male, they spoke perfect English, they were -well-mannered—and so, of course, they were nice. But it was such an -inadequate word, completing no idea. Lydia’s atrophied sense of -differentiation awoke the laughter in her eyes. Nice! So were Bobby -Quinton, Sydney Rooke, Mauregard, a score of other commonplace types in -Lydia’s set. But that Blaise Olifant and Alexis Triona should be lumped -with them in this vaguely designated category, seemed funny. - -Lydia went on: - -“Major Olifant, of course, I knew from your description of him; but the -other—the young man with the battered face—I didn’t place him.” - -“Triona—Alexis Triona.” - -“I seem to have heard the name,” said Lydia. “He writes or paints or -lectures on Eugenics or something.” - -“He has written a book on Russia,” replied Olivia drily. - -“I’m fed up with Russia,” said Lydia dismissively. “Even if I wasn’t—I -didn’t come here to talk about it. I came in about something quite -different. What do you think has happened? Sydney Rooke has asked me to -marry him.” - -Olivia’s eyes flashed with the interest of genuine youth in a romantic -proposal of marriage. - -“My dear!” she cried. “How exciting!” - -“I wish it were,” said Lydia, in her grey-eyed calmness. “Anyhow, it’s a -bit upsetting. Of course I knew that he was married—separated years and -years from his wife. Whether he couldn’t catch her out, or she couldn’t -catch him out, I don’t know. But they couldn’t get a divorce. She was a -Catholic and wouldn’t stand for the usual arrangement. Now she’s dead. -Died a couple of months ago in California. He came in this morning with -Lady Northborough—introducing her—the first time I had seen the woman. -And he sat by and gave advice while she chose half a dozen hats. His -judgment’s infallible, you know. He saw her to her car and came back. -‘Now I’ve done you a good turn,’ he said, ‘perhaps you’ll do me one. -Give me five minutes with you in your cubby-hole.’ We went into my -little office, and then he sprang this on me—the death of his wife and -the proposal.” - -“But it _must_ have been exciting,” Olivia protested. “Yet——” she -knitted her brow, “why the Lady Northborough barrage?” - -“It’s his way,” said Lydia. - -“What did you tell him?” - -“I said I would give him my answer to-night.” - -“Well?” - -“I don’t know. He’s charming. He’s rolling in money—you remember the -motor-car I turned down for obvious reasons—he knows all kinds of nice -people—he’s fifty——” - -“Fifty!” cried Olivia, aghast. To three and twenty fifty is senile. - -“The widow’s ideal.” - -“It’s exciting, but not romantic,” said Olivia. - -“Romance perished on the eleventh of November, 1918. Since then it has -been ‘Every woman for herself and the Devil take the hindmost.’ Are you -aware that there are not half enough men to go round? So when a man with -twenty thousand a year comes along, a woman has to think like—like——” - -“Like Aristotle or Herbert Spencer, or the sailor’s parrot,” said -Olivia. “Of course, dear. But is he so dreadfully wealthy as all that? -What does he do?” - -“He attends Boards of Directors. As far as I can make out he belongs to -a Society for the Promotion of Un-christian Companies.” - -“Don’t you care for him?” - -Lydia shook her exquisitely picture-hatted head—she was a creamy -Gainsborough or nothing. - -“In that way, not a bit. Of course, he has been a real good friend to -me. But after all—marriage—it’s difficult to explain——” - -In spite of her cynicism, Lydia had always respected the girlhood of her -friend. But Olivia flung the scornful arm of authority. - -“There’s no need of explanation. I know all about it.” - -“In that case——” said Lydia. She paused, lit a cigarette, and with her -large, feline grace of writhing curves, settled herself more comfortably -in the corner of the couch—“I thought you would bring a fresh mind to -bear upon things. But no matter. In that case, dear, what would you -advise?” - -Before the girl’s mental vision arose the man in question—the old young -man, the man of fifty, with the air and manner and dress of the man of -twenty-five; his mark of superficial perfection that hid God knew what -strange sins, stoniness of heart and blight of spirit. She saw him in -his impeccable devotion to Lydia. But something in the imagined sight of -him sent a shiver through her pure, yet not ignorant, maidenhood: -something of which the virginal within her defied definition, yet -something abhorrent. The motor-car had failed; now the wedding-ring. She -recaptured the fleeting, disquieting sense of Lydia on her first evening -in London—the woman’s large proclamation of sex. Instinctively she -transferred her impression to the man, and threw a swift glance at Lydia -lying there, milk and white, receptive. - -A word once read and forgotten—a word in some French or English -novel—sprang to her mind, scraped clear from the palimpsest of memory. -Desirable. A breath-catching, hateful word. She stood aghast and -shrinking on the edge of knowledge. - -“My darling child, what on earth is the matter with you?” - -Olivia started at the voice, as though awakening from a dream. - -“I think it’s horrible,” she cried. - -“What?” - -“Marrying a man you can no more love than—— Ugh! I wouldn’t marry him -for thousands of millions.” - -“Why? I want to know.” - -But the shiver in the girl’s soul could not be expressed in words. - -“It’s a question of love,” she said lamely. - -Lydia laughed, called her a romantic child. It was not a question of -love, but of compatible temperament. Marriage wasn’t a week-end, but a -life-end, trip. People had to get accustomed to each other in -dressing-gowns and undress manners. She herself was sure that Sydney -Rooke would wear the most Jermyn Street of dressing-gowns, at any rate. -But the manners? - -“They’ll always be as polished as his finger-nails,” said Olivia. - -“I don’t see why you should speak like that of Sydney,” cried Lydia, -with some show of spirit. “It’s rather ungrateful seeing how kind he has -been to you.” - -Which was true; Olivia admitted it. - -“But the man who is kind to you, in a social way, isn’t always the man -you would like to marry.” - -“But it’s I, not you,” Lydia protested, “who am going to marry him.” - -“Then you are going to marry him?” - -“I don’t see anything else to do,” replied Lydia, and she went again -over the twenty thousand a year argument. Olivia saw that her -hesitations were those of a cool brain and not of an ardent spirit, and -she knew that the brain had already come to a decision. - -“I quite see,” said Lydia half apologetically, “that you think I ought -to wait until I fall in love with a man. But I should have to wait till -Doomsday. I thought I was in love with poor dear Fred. But I wasn’t. I’m -not that sort. If Fred had gone on living I should have gone on letting -him adore me and have been perfectly happy—so long as he didn’t expect -me to adore him.” - -“Doesn’t Mr. Rooke expect you to adore him?” asked Olivia. - -Lydia laughed, showing her white teeth, and shook a wise and mirthful -head. - -“I’m convinced that was the secret of his first unhappy marriage.” - -“What?” - -“The poor lady adored him and bored him to frenzy.” - -The clock on the mantelpiece struck the half-hour after six. Lydia rose. -She must go home and dress. She was dining with Rooke at Claridge’s at -eight. - -“I’m so glad we’ve had this little talk,” she said. “I felt I must tell -you.” - -“I thought you wanted my advice,” said Olivia. - -“Oh, you silly!” answered Lydia, gathering her furs around her. - -They exchanged the conventional parting kiss. Olivia accompanied her to -the landing. When the summoned lift appeared and its doors clashed open, -Lydia said: - -“You wouldn’t like to take over that hat shop at a valuation, would -you?” - -“Good heavens, no!” cried the astounded Olivia. - -Lydia laughed and waved a grey-gloved hand and disappeared downwards, -like the Lady of the Venusberg in an antiquated opera. - -Olivia re-entered the flat thoughtfully, and sat down in an arm-chair by -the tiny wood fire in the sitting-room grate. Lydia and Lydia’s galley, -and all that it signified, disturbed her more than ever. They seemed not -only to have no ideals even as ballast, but to have flung them overboard -like so many curse-ridden Jonahs. To what soulless land was she speeding -with them? And not only herself, but the England, of which she, as much -as any individual, was a representative unit? Was it for the reaching of -such a haven that her brothers had given their lives? Was it that she -should reach such a haven that her mother, instinct with heroic passion, -had sent Stephen Gale forth to death? Was it to guide the world on this -Lydian path that Blaise Olifant had given an arm and young Triona had -cheerfully endured Dantesque torturings? - -Myra came in and began to remove the tea-things—Myra, gaunt, with her -impassive, inexpressible face, correct in black; silk blouse, stuff -skirt, silk apron. Olivia, disturbed in her efforts to solve the riddle -of existence, swerved in her chair and half-humorously sought the first -human aid to hand. - -“Myra, tell me. Why do you go on living?” - -Myra made no pause in her methodical activity. - -“God put me into the world to live. It’s my duty to live,” she replied -in her toneless way. “And God ordained me to live so that I should do my -duty.” - -“And what do you think is your duty?” Olivia asked. - -“You, of all people in the world, ought to know that,” said Myra, -holding the door open with her foot, so as to clear a passage for the -tea-tray. - -Olivia rested her elbows on the arms of the chair and put her -finger-tips to her temples. She felt at once rebuked and informed with -knowledge. Never before had the Sphinx-like Myra so revealed herself. -Probably she had not had the opportunity, never having found herself -subjected to such direct questioning. Being so subjected, she replied -with the unhesitating directness of her nature. The grace of humility -descended on Olivia. What fine spirit can feel otherwise than humble -when confronted with the selfless devotion of a fellow-being? And -further humbled was she by the implicit declaration of an ideal, noble -and purposeful, such as her mind for the past few months had not -conceived. This elderly, spinsterly foundling, child of naught, had, -according to her limited horizon, a philosophy—nay, more—a religion of -life which she unswervingly followed. According to the infinite scale -whereby human values ultimately are estimated, Olivia judged herself -sitting in the galley of Lydia Dawlish as of far less account than Myra, -her butt and her slave from earliest infancy. - -She rose and looked around the prettiness of taste and colour with which -she had transformed the original dully-furnished room, and threw up her -arm in a helpless gesture. What did it all mean? What was she doing -there? On what was she squandering the golden hours of her youth? To -what end was she using such of a mind and such of a soul as God had -given her? At last, to sell herself for furs and food and silk cushions, -and for the society of other women clamorous of nothing but furs and -food and silk cushions, to a man like Sydney Rooke—without giving him -anything in return save her outward shape for him to lay jewels on and -exhibit to the uninspiring world wherein he dwelt? - -Far better return to Medlow and lead the life of a clean woman. - -Myra entered. “You’re not dining out to-night?” - -“No, thank God!” said Olivia. “I’ll slip on any old thing and go -downstairs.” - -She dined in her little quiet corner of the restaurant, and after dinner -took up Triona’s book, _Through Blood and Snow_, which she had bought -that morning, her previous acquaintance with it having been made through -a circulating library. In the autumn she had read and been held by its -magic; but casually as she had read scores of books. But now it was -instinct with a known yet baffling personality. It was two o’clock in -the morning before she went to bed. - - - CHAPTER VIII - -THE tastes of Alexis Triona were not such as to lead him into -extravagant living on the fruits of his literary success. To quality of -food he was indifferent; wine he neither understood nor cared for; in -the use of other forms of alcohol he was abstemious; unlike most men -bred in Russia he smoked moderately, preferring the cigarettes he rolled -himself from Virginia tobacco to the more expensive Turkish or Egyptian -brands. His attire was simple. He would rather walk than be driven; and -he regarded his back-bedroom at the top of the Vanloo Hotel as a -luxurious habitation. - -He had broken away from the easeful life at Medlow because, as he -explained to Blaise Olifant, it frightened him. - -“I’m up against nothing here,” said he. - -“You’re up against your novel,” replied Olifant. “A man’s work is always -his fiercest enemy.” - -Triona would not accept the proposition. He and his novel were one and -indivisible. Together they must fight against something—he knew not -what. Perhaps, fight against time and opportunity. They wanted the -tense, stolen half-hours which he and his other book had enjoyed. Would -Olifant think him ungrateful if he picked up and went on his mission to -Helsingfors? - -“My dear fellow,” said Olifant, “the man who resents a friend developing -his own personality in his own way doesn’t deserve to have a friend.” - -“It’s like you to say that,” cried Triona. “I shall always remember. -When I get back I shall let you know.” - -So Alexis Triona vanished from a uninspiring Medlow, and two months -afterwards gave Olifant his address at the Vanloo Hotel. Olifant, tired -by a long spell of close work, went up for an idle week in London. - -“Come back and carry on as before,” he suggested. - -But Triona ran his fingers through his brown hair and held out his hand. - -“No. The wise man never tries to repeat a past pleasure. As a wise old -Russian friend of mine used to say—never relight a cigar.” - -So after a few days of pleasant companionship in the soberer delights of -town, Blaise Olifant returned to Medlow and Triona remained in his -little back room in the Vanloo Hotel. - - * * * * * - -One night, a week or so after his visit to Olivia Gale, he threw down -his pen, read over the last sheet that he had written, and, with a -gesture of impatience, tore it up. Suddenly he discovered that he could -not breathe in the stuffy bedroom. He drew back the curtains and opened -the window and looked out on myriad chimney-pots and a full moon shining -on them from a windless sky. The bright air filled his lungs. Desire for -wider spaces beneath the moon shook him like a touch of claustrophobia. -He thrust on the coat which he had discarded, seized a hat, and, -switching off the light, hurried from the room. He went out into the -streets, noiseless save for the rare, swift motors that flashed by like -ghosts fleeing terrified from some earthly doom. - -He walked and walked until he suddenly realized that he had emerged from -Whitehall and faced the moonlight beauty of the Houses of Parliament -standing in majestic challenge against the sky, and the Abbey sleeping -in its centuries of dreams. - -Away across the Square, by Broad Sanctuary, was the opening of a great -thoroughfare, and, as his eyes sought it, he confessed to himself the -subconscious impulse that had led him thither. Yet was it not a cheat of -a subconscious impulse? Had he not gone out from the hotel in Kensington -with a definite purpose? As he crossed to Broad Sanctuary and the -entrance to Victoria Street, he argued it out with himself. Anyhow, it -was the most fool of fool-errands. But yet—he shrugged his shoulders -and laughed. To what errand could a fool’s errand be comparable? Only to -that of one pixy-led. He laughed at the thought of his disquisition to -Olivia on the Will-o’-the-Wisp. In the rare instances of the follower of -Faith had he not proclaimed its guidance to the Land of Promise? - -Three days before he had seen her. He had been impelled by an -irresistible desire to see her. To call on her without shadow of excuse -was impossible. To telephone or write an invitation to lunch was an act -unsuggested by his limited social experience. Taking his chance that she -should emerge between eleven and twelve, he strolled up and down the -pavement, so that at last when fate favoured him and he advanced to meet -her, they greeted each other with a smiling air of surprise. They -explained their respective objectives. She was for buying a patent -coffee machine at the Army and Navy Stores, he for catching an -undesirable train at Victoria Station. A threatening morning suddenly -became a rainy noon. He turned back with her and they fled together and -just reached the Stores in time to escape from the full fury of the -downpour. There he bent his mind on coffee machines. His masculine -ignorance of the whole art of coffee-making, a flannel bag in a jug -being his primitive conception, moved her to light-hearted mirth. The -purchase made, the order given, they wandered idly through the great -establishment. They were prisoners, the outside world being weltering -deluge. For once in his lifetime, thought Triona, the elements warred on -his side. A wringing machine, before which he paused in wonderment at -its possible use, and an eager description on the part of the salesman, -put Olivia on the track of a game into which he entered with devoted -fervour. Let them suppose they were going to furnish a house. Oh! a -great big palace of a house. In imagination they bought innumerable -things, furnishing the mansion chiefly with hammocks and marquees and -garden chairs and lawn-mowers and grand pianos and egg-whisks. Her -heart, that morning, attuned to laughter, brought colour into her cheeks -and brightness into her eyes. To the young man’s ear she seemed to have -an adorable gift of phrase. She invested a rolling-pin with a humorous -individuality. She touched a tray of doughnuts with her fancy and turned -them into sacramental bread of Momus, exquisite Divinity of Mirth. She -was so free, so graceful, so intimate, so irresistible. He followed her, -a young man bemused. What he contributed to the game he scarcely knew. -He was only conscious of her charm and her whipping of his wit. They -stumbled into the department of men’s haberdashery. His brain conceived -a daring idea. - -“I’ve been trying for weeks,” said he, “to make up my mind to buy a -tie.” - -Olivia glanced swiftly round and sped to a counter. - -“Ties, please.” - -“What kind?” asked the salesman. - -“Ordinary silk—sailor-knot. Show me all you’ve got.” - -Before his entranced eyes she selected half a dozen, with a taste which -the artist within him knew was impeccable. He presented the bill bearing -her number at the cashier’s pigeon hole, and returning took the neat -packet from the salesman with the air of one receiving a decoration from -royalty. They made their way to the exit. She said: - -“I’m afraid we’ve been criminally frivolous.” - -“If such happiness is a crime I’d willingly swing for it.” - -He noted a quick, uncomprehending question in her glance and the colour -mounted into his pale cheeks. - -“My English idiom is not yet perfect,” he said. “I ought not to have -used that expression.” - -Olivia laughed at his discomfiture. - -“It’s generally used by dreadful people who threaten to do one another -in. But the metaphor’s thrilling, all the same.” - -The rain had ceased. After a few moments the mackintoshed commissionaire -secured a taxi. Triona accompanied her to the door. She thrust out a -frank hand. - -“Au revoir. It has been delightful to find you so human.” - -She drove off. He stood, with a smile on his lips, watching the vehicle -disappear in the traffic. Her farewell was characteristic. What could -one expect of her but the unexpected? - -That was three days ago. The image of her unconsciously alluring yet -frank to disconcertment, spiritually feminine yet materially impatient -of sex; the image of her in the three separate settings—the dark-eyed -princess in fur and flame beneath the electric light of the theatre -portico; the slim girl in simple blouse and skirt who, over the pretty -teacups, held so nice a balance between Olifant and himself; the gay -playmate of a rainy hour, in her fawn costume (he still felt the thrill -of the friendly touch of her fawn-coloured gloved hands on his -sleeve)—the composite image and vision of her had filled his sleeping -and waking thoughts to the destruction of his peace of mind and the -dislocation of his work. - -Thus, on this warm night of spring, he stood, the most foolishly -romantical of mortals, at the entrance to Victoria Street, and with a -shrug of his shoulders proceeded on his errand of mute troubadour. -Perhaps the day of rapture might come when he would tell her how he -stood in the watches of the night and gazed up at what he had to imagine -was her window on the fifth floor of the undistinguished barrack that -was her home. It was poetic, fantastic, Russian, at any rate. It would -also mark the end of his excursion; it was a fair tramp back to South -Kensington. - -An unheeded taxi-cab whizzed past him as he walked; but a few seconds -later, the faint sound of splintering glass and then the scrunch of -brakes suddenly applied awoke him from his smiling meditations. The cab -stopped, sharply outlined in the clear moonlight. The driver leaped from -his seat and flung open the door. A woman sprang out, followed by a man. -Both were in evening dress. Voices rose at once in altercation. Triona, -suspecting an accident, quickened his pace instinctively into a run and -joined the group. - -“What’s up?” - -But as the instinctive words passed his lips he became amazedly -conscious of Olivia standing there, quivering, as white as the white -dress and cloak she wore, her eyes ablaze. She flashed on him a -half-hysterical recognition and clutched his arm. - -“You?” - -He drew himself up to his slim height and looked first at the taxi -driver and then at the heavy, swarthy man in evening dress, and then at -her. - -“What’s the matter? Tell me,” he rapped out. - -“This man tried to insult me,” she gasped. - -Olivia never knew how it happened: it happened like some instantaneous -visitation of God. The lithe young figure suddenly shot forward and the -heavy man rolled yards away on the pavement. - -“Serve him damn well right,” said the driver; “but where do I come in -with my window broken?” - -“Oh, you shall be paid, you shall be paid,” cried Olivia. “Pay him, Mr. -Triona, and let us go.” - -Triona glanced up and down the street. “No, this gentleman’s going to -pay,” he said quietly and advanced to the heavy man who had scrambled to -unsteady feet. - -“Just you settle up with that cabman, quick, do you hear, or I’ll knock -you down again. I could knock you down sixty times an hour. And so help -me, God, if a copper comes in sight I’ll murder you.” - -“All right, all right,” said the man hurriedly. “I don’t want a scandal -for the lady’s sake.” He turned to the taxi man. “How much do you want?” - -“With the damage it’ll be a matter of ten pound.” - -The swarthy man in evening dress fished out his note-case. - -“Here you are, you blackmailing thief.” - -“None of your back-chat, or I’ll finish off what this gentleman has -begun,” said the taxi man, pocketing the money. - -Until he saw summary justice accomplished, Triona stood in the lee of -the houses, his arm stretched protectingly in front of Olivia. Then he -drew her away. - -“I’ll see the lady home. It’s only a few steps.” - -“Right, sir. Good night, sir,” said the taxi man. - -They moved on. Immediately in the silence of the night came the crisp -exchange of words. - -“I’ll give you a pound to take me to Porchester Terrace.” - -“And I’d give a pound to see you walk there,” said the driver, already -in his seat. - -He threw in the clutch and with a cheery “Good night” passed the -extravagantly encountered pair. - -“They say miracles don’t happen, but one has happened now,” said Olivia -breathlessly. “If you hadn’t come out of space——” - -“Do tell me something about it,” he asked. - -“But don’t you know?” - -“You said that profit-merchant had insulted you and that was enough for -me.” - -“Oh, my God! I’m so ashamed!” she cried, with a wild, pretty gesture of -her hands. “What will you think of me?” - -Mad words rushed through his brain, but before they found utterance he -gripped himself. He had, once more, his hands on the controls. - -“What I think of you, Miss Gale, it would be wiser not to say. I should -like to hear what has occurred. But, pardon me,” he said abruptly, -noticing her curious, uneven step, and glancing down instinctively at -her feet, “what has become of your shoe?” - -“My slipper—why, of course——” She halted, suddenly aware of the loss. -“I must have left it in the cab. I stuck up my foot and reached for it -and broke the window with the heel. I also think I hit him in the face.” - -“It seems as though he was down and out before I came up,” said Triona. - -“If you hadn’t I don’t [know] how I should have carried on,” she -confessed. - -They walked down the wide, empty street. The moon shone high above them, -the girl in her elegance, the man in his loose grey flannels and soft -felt hat, an incongruous couple, save for their common air of alert -youth. And while they walked she rapidly told her story. She had been to -Percy’s with the usual crowd, Lydia Dawlish her nominal chaperone. The -man, Edwin Mavenna, a city friend of Sydney Rooke, whom she had met a -half a dozen times, had offered to drive her home in his waiting taxi. -Tired, dependent for transport on Rooke and Lydia, who desired a further -hour of the night club’s dismal jocundity, and angry with Bobby Quinton, -who seemed to think that her ear had no other function than to listen to -tales of sentimenti-financial woe, she had accepted. Half-way home she -had begun to regret; three-quarters of the way she had been frightened. -As they turned into Victoria Street she had managed to free her arm and -wield the victorious slipper. - -“I’ll never go to that abominable place again as long as I live,” she -cried. - -“I should, if I were you,” he said quietly. - -“Why?” - -“I’d go once or twice, at any rate. To show yourself independent of it. -To prove to yourself that you’re not frightened of it.” - -“But I am frightened of it. On the outside it’s as respectable as Medlow -Parish Church on Sunday. But below the surface there’s all sorts of -hideousness—and I’m frightened.” - -“You’re not,” said he. “Things may startle you, infuriate you, put you -off your equilibrium; but they don’t frighten you. They didn’t this -evening. I’ve seen too many people frightened in my time not to know. -You’re not that sort.” - -They had reached the door of the Mansions. She smiled at him, her gaiety -returning. - -“You’re as comforting and consoling a Knight Errant as one could wish to -meet. The damsel in distress is greatly beholden to you. But how -the—whatever you like—you managed to time the rescue is beyond my -comprehension.” - -“The stars guided me,” he replied, with an upward sweep of the hand. -“Mortals have striven to comprehend them for thousands of years—but -without success. I started out to wander about this great city—I often -do for hours—I’m a born wanderer—with the vagabond’s aimlessness and -trust in chance, or in the stars—and this time the stars brought me -where it was decreed that I should be.” - -While he was speaking she had opened the door with her latchkey and now -stood, shimmering white in the gloom of the entrance. She held out her -hand. - -“I’m afraid I’ve been too much occupied in trying not to seem frightened -and silly to thank you decently for what you’ve done. But I am grateful. -You don’t know how grateful. I’ll have to tell you some other time.” - -“To-morrow?” he asked eagerly. - -She hesitated for a moment. “Yes, to-morrow,” she replied softly. “I -shall be in all day. Goodnight.” - -After the swift handshake the door closed on the enraptured young man, -and the hard, characterless street, down which he seemed to dance, -became transformed into a moonlit glade of fairyland. - -It was four o’clock in the morning when he entered his back-bedroom at -the Vanloo Hotel. But he did not sleep. He had no desire for -sleep—youth resenting the veil drawn across a consciousness so -exquisitely alive. Sleep, when the stars in their courses were fighting -for him? Impossible, preposterous! Let him rather live, again and again, -over the night’s crowded adventure. Every detail of it set his pulses -throbbing. The mere glorious first recognition of her was the thrill of -a lifetime. He constructed and reconstructed the immortal picture. The -moonlit, silent street, its high, decorous buildings marked by the -feeble gas lamps melting into an indeterminate vanishing point. The -clear-cut scene. The taxi-cab. The three human figures. The stunted -driver. The massive, dark man, in silk hat which reflected the -moonlight, in black overcoat thrown open, revealing a patch of white -shirt and waistcoat; the slender, quivering, white form draped in white -fur, white gossamer, white what-not, crowned with dark glory of eyes and -hair. The masculine in him exulted in his physical strength and -skill—in the clean, straight, elementary yet scientific left-hander -that got the hulking swine between the eyes and sent him reeling and -sprawling and asking for no more punishment. And then—oh, it was a -great thing to command, to impose his will. To walk in triumph off with -the wonderful lady of his dreams. To feel, as she thanked him, that here -was something definite that he had done for her, something with a touch -of the romantic, the heroic, which, in its trivial way, justified belief -in the incidents of his adventurous career which he had so modestly, yet -so vividly described in the book that had brought him fame. - -On this point of justification he was peculiarly sensitive. Various -Englishmen, soldiers sent out on secret missions to the fringes of the -areas of his activities, had questioned many of his statements, both in -the book and in descriptive articles which he had written for newspapers -and other periodicals, and asked for proofs. And he had replied, most -cogently, that the sphere of the Russian Secret Service in which he was -employed was, of necessity, beyond the ken of the secret service of any -other Power in Europe, and that official proofs were lost in the social -and political disintegration of Russia. One man, a great man, speaking -with unquestionable authority, silenced the horde of cavillers as far as -events prior to 1917 were concerned. But there were still some who -barked annoyingly at his heels. Proofs, of course, he had none to give. -How can a man give proofs when he is cast up, practically naked, on the -coast of England? He must be believed or not. And it was the haunting -terror of this sensitive boy of genius, whose face and eyes bore the -ineffaceable marks of suffering, that he should lose the credit which he -had gained. - -At all hazards he must allow no doubts to arise in the mind of Olivia. -To fight them down he would do all manner of extravagant things. He -regretted the pusillanimous tameness of his late opponent. If the man -had only picked himself up and given battle! If only there had been half -a dozen abductors or insulters instead of one! His spirits (at seven -o’clock) sank at the logical conclusion that the conventional conditions -of post-war civilized life afforded a meagre probability of the -recurrence of such another opportunity. He had the temperament of those -whose hunger is only whetted by triumph, to whom attainment only gives -vision of new heights. When, after tossing sleepless in his bed, he rose -and dressed at nine, he had decided that, in knocking down a mere mass -of unresisting flesh, he had played a part almost inglorious, such as -any stay-at-home _embusqué_ could have played. By not one jot or tittle -did his act advance the credibility of his story. And on his story alone -could he found his hopes of finding favour in her marvellous eyes. Of -the touch of genius that inspired his literary work he thought little. -At this stage of his career he was filled with an incredulous wonder at -his possession of a knack which converted a page of scribble into a -cheque upon a bank. His writing meant money. Not money, wealth, on the -grand scale; but money to keep him as a modest gentleman on the social -grade to which he had attained, and to save him from the detested livery -of the chauffeur. The story which he was telling in the new book was but -a means to this end. The story which he had told was life itself. Nay, -now it was more: it was love itself; it was a girl who was more than -life. - -He called at the Victoria Street flat at twelve o’clock. The austere -Myra looked on him disapprovingly. Tea-time was the visiting time for -stray young men, and even then she conveyed to them the impression that -she let them in on sufferance. - -“What name?” she asked. - -“Mr. Triona.” - -“Miss Gale is in, sir,” she admitted grudgingly, having received -explicit orders from Olivia, “but she is dressing and I don’t know -whether she can see you.” - -“Will you tell Miss Gale that I am entirely at her service, and if it’s -inconvenient for her to see me now I’ll call later.” - -Myra left him standing in the little vestibule and gave the message to -Olivia, who, fully dressed, was polishing her nails in her bedroom. - -“You’re the most impossible woman on earth,” Olivia declared, turning on -her. “Is that the way you would treat a man who had delivered you from a -dragon?” - -“I don’t hold with men and I don’t hold with dragons,” replied Myra -unmoved. “The next time you’ll be wanting me to fall over a dragon who -has delivered you from a man!” - -Olivia scarcely listened to the retort. She flew out and carried the -waiting Triona into the sitting-room. - -“I’m so sorry. My maid’s a terror. She bites and doesn’t bark. But I -guarantee her non-venomous. How good of you to come so early.” - -“I was anxious,” said Triona. - -“About what?” - -“Last night must have been a shock.” - -“Of course it was,” she laughed; “but not enough to keep me all day long -in fainting fits with doctors and smelling-bottles.” - -“I hope you slept all right.” - -“No,” she replied frankly. “That I didn’t do. The adventure was a bit -too exciting. Besides——” - -“Besides what?” - -“It came into my head to make up my moral balance sheet. Figures of -arithmetic always send me to sleep; but figures of—well, of that kind -of thing, don’t you know—keep me broad awake.” - -Olivia’s dark, eager face was of the kind that shows the traces of -fatigue in faint shadows under the eyes. He swiftly noted them and cried -out: - -“You’re dead tired. It’s damnable.” He rose, suddenly angry. “You ought -to go to bed at once. Your maid was right. I had no business to come at -this hour and disturb you.” - -“If you hadn’t come,” said Olivia, inwardly glowing at the tribute paid -by the indignant youth, “I should have imagined that you looked on last -night’s affair as a trumpery incident in the day’s work and went to bed -and forgot all about it.” - -“That’s impossible,” said he. “I, too, haven’t slept a wink.” - -She met and held his eyes longer than she, or anyone else, had held -them. Then, half angrily, she felt her cheeks grow hot and red. - -“For you, who have faced death a hundred times, last night, as I’ve just -said, must be even dull. What was it to the night when you—you -know—the sentry—when you were unarmed and you fought with him and you -killed him with his own bayonet?” - -He snapped his fingers and smiled. “That was unimportant. Whether I -lived or died didn’t matter to anybody. It didn’t matter much to me. It -was sheer animal instinct. But last night it was you. And that makes a -universe of difference.” - -Olivia rose, and, with a “You’re not smoking,” offered him a box of -cigarettes. - -“Yes,” she said, when he had lighted it, with fingers trembling ever so -slightly as they held the match, “I suppose a woman does make a -difference. We’re always in the way, somehow. Women and children first. -Why they don’t throw us overboard at once and let the really useful -people save themselves, I could never make out.” - -His air of dismay was that of a devotee listening to a saint blaspheme. -Her laughter rippled, music to his ears. - -“Do you know what I should like to do? Get out of London for a few hours -and fill my lungs with air. Richmond Park, for instance.” - -“I, too.” He sighed. “If only I had a car!” - -“There are such things as motor-buses.” - -He sprang to delighted feet. His divinity on a bus top! It was like the -Paphian goddess condescending from her dove-drawn chariot to the joggle -of a four-wheeler cab. - -“Would you really go on one?” - -She would. She would start forthwith. The time only to put on a hat. She -left him to his heart-beats of happiness, presently to re-appear, -hatted, gloved, and smiling. - -“You’re quite sure you would like to come? Your work?” - -“My work needs the open air as much as I do,” said he. - -They went forth, boy and girl on a jaunt, and side by side on the top of -the omnibus they gave themselves up to the laughter of the pure -sunshine. At Richmond they lunched, for youth must be fed, and -afterwards went through the streets of the old town, and stood on the -bridge watching the exquisite curve of the river embosomed in the very -newest of new greenery, and let its loveliness sink into their hearts. -Then they wandered deep into the Park and found a tree from beneath -which they could see the deer browsing in the shade; and there they sat, -happy in their freedom and isolation. What they said, most of the time, -was no great matter. Of the two, perhaps she talked the more; for he had -said: - -“I am so tired of talking about myself. I have been obliged to, so that -it has become a professional habit. And what there is to be known about -me, you know. But you—you who have lived such a different life from -mine—I know so little of you. In fact, I’ve known nothing of English -women such as you. You’re a mystery. Tell me about yourself.” - -So she had begun: - -“Well, I was born—I shan’t tell you the year—of poor but honest -parents——” - -And then, led on by his eager sympathy and his intimate knowledge of her -home, she had abandoned the jesting note and talked simply and frankly -of her secluded and eventless life. With feminine guile, and with last -night’s newborn mistrust of men, she set a little trap. - -“Did you ever go into my mother’s room?” - -“I don’t think so. Perhaps that was the one—the best bedroom—which -Olifant always kept locked.” - -She felt ashamed of her unworthy suspicion; glad at the loyal keeping of -a promise, to the extent of not allowing a visitor even a peep inside -the forbidden chamber. - -“I think Blaise Olifant is one of the finest types England breeds,” she -said warmly. - -There was a touch of jealous fear in his swift glance; but he replied -with equal warmth: - -“You needn’t tell me that. Brave, modest, of sensitive honour—Ah! A man -with a mind so cultivated that he seems to know nothing until you talk -with him, and then you find that he knows everything. I love him.” - -“I’m glad to hear you say that.” - -“Why? Do you admire him so much?” - -“It isn’t that,” she parried. “It’s on your account. One man’s generous -praise of another does one’s heart good.” She threw out her arms as -though to embrace the rolling park of infinite sward and majestic trees. -“I love big things,” she said. - -Whereupon Alexis Triona thanked his stars for having led him along the -true path. - -Who can say that, in after years, these twain, when they shall have -grown old and have gone through whatever furnaces Fate—either personal -destiny or the Fate of Social Institutions—may prepare for them, will -not retain imperishable memories of the idyll of that sweet spring day? -There they sat, youth spiritually communing with youth; the girl urged -by feminine instinct to love him for the dangers he had passed; the -young man aflame with her beauty, her charm, her dryad elusiveness. -Here, for him, was yet another aspect of her, free, unseizable in the -woodland setting. And for her, another aspect of him, the simple, -clean-cut Englishman, divested of vague and disquieting Russian -citizenship, the perfect companion, responsive to every chord struck by -the spirit of the magic afternoon. In the years to come, who can say -that they will not remember this sweet and delicate adventure of their -souls creeping forth in trembling reconnaissance one of the other? -Perhaps it will be a more precious memory to the woman than to the man. -Men do not lay things up in lavender as women do. - -If he had spoken, declared his passion in lover’s set terms, perhaps her -heart might have been caught by the glamour of it all, and she might -have surrendered to his kisses, and they might have journeyed back to -London in a state of unreprehensible yet commonplace beatitude. And the -memory would possibly have been marked by a white stone rising stark in -an airless distance. But he did not speak, held back by a rare reverence -of her maidenhood and her perfect trust; and in her heart flowered -gratitude for his sensitiveness to environment. So easy for a maladroit -touch to mar the perfection of an exquisite hour of blue mist and -mystery. So, again, who knows but that in the years to come the memory -will be marked by a fragrance, a shimmer of leaves, a haze over green -sward, incorporated impalpably with the dear ghost of an immortal day? - -They returned on the top of the omnibus, rather late, and on the way -they spoke little. Now and then he glanced sideways at her and met her -eyes and caught her smile, and felt content. At the terminus of the -omnibus route, in the raging, busy precincts of the stations of -Victoria, they alighted. He walked with her to her door in Victoria -Street. - -“Your words have been singing in my ears,” said he: “‘I love big -things.’ To me, to-day has seemed a big thing.” - -“And I’ve loved it,” she replied. - -“True?” - -“True.” - -She sped up to her room somewhat dazed, conscious of need to keep her -balance. So much had happened in the last four-and-twenty hours. The -shudder of the night had still horrified her flesh when she drew the -young man out into the wide daylight and the open air; and now it had -passed away, as though it had never been, and a new quivering of youth, -taking its place, ran like laughter through her bodily frame and her -heart and her mind. - -“H’m. Your outing seems to have done you good,” said the impassive Myra, -letting her in. - -“My first day’s escape from a fœtid prison,” she said. - -“I suppose you know what you’re talking about,” said Myra. - -Olivia laughed and threw her arm round Myra’s lean shoulders. - -“Of course I do.” - -“He ain’t much to look at.” - -Olivia, flushing, turned on her. - -“I never knew a more abominable woman.” - -“Then you’re lucky,” retorted Myra, and faded away into her kitchen. - -Olivia, mirthful, uplifted, danced, as it were, into the sitting-room -and began to pull off her gloves. Suddenly her glance fell on a letter -lying on her writing table. She frowned slightly as she opened it, and -as she read the frown grew deeper. It was from Bobby Quinton. What his -dearest of dear ladies would think of him he left on the joint knees of -the gods and of his dearest lady—but—but the wolves were at his heels. -He had thrown them all that he possessed—fur coat, watch and chain, -diamond studs, and, having gulped them all, they were still in fierce -pursuit. In a fortnight would he have ample funds to satisfy them. But -now he was at bay. He apologized for the mixture of metaphor. But still, -there he was _aux abois_. Fifty pounds, just for a fortnight. Could the -dearest of dear ladies see her way——-? - -She went to her desk and wrote out a cheque which she enclosed in an -envelope. To save her soul alive she could not have written Bobby -Quinton an accompanying line. - - - CHAPTER IX - -HERE, all in a rush of twenty-four hours, was a glut of incident for a -young woman out for adventure. Triona had only made his effect on the -romantically feminine within Olivia by his triumphant rescue. As to that -he need have no misgivings. So once did Andromeda see young Perseus, -calm and assured, deliver her from the monster. Triona’s felling of -Mavenna appealed to the lingering savage woman fiercely conscious of -wrong avenged; but his immediate and careless mastery of the situation -struck civilized chords. She could see him dominating the sheepskin-clad -tribe in the Urals (see _Through Blood and Snow_) until he established -their independence in their mountain fastness. She could see him, -masterful, resourceful, escaping from the Bolshevik prison and making -his resistless way across a hostile continent. She could also -appreciate, after this wonder-day at Richmond, the suppleness of his -simple charm which won him food and shelter where food scarcely existed -and shelter to a stranger was a matter of shooting or a bashing in of -heads. - -As for Mavenna, her flesh still shuddered at the memory of those few -moments of insult. What he said she could scarcely remember. The -inextricable clutch of his great arms around her body and the detestable -kisses eclipsed mere words. Unwittingly his hug had compressed her -throat so that she could not scream. There had been nothing for it but -the slipper unhooked by the free arm, and the doughty heel. Had she won -through alone to her room, she would have collapsed—so she assured -herself—from sickening horror. But the Deliverer had been there, as in -a legend of Greece or Broceliande, and had saved her from the madness of -the nymph terror stricken by Satyrs. The two extravagances had, in a -way, counteracted each other, setting her, by the morning, in a normal -equilibrium. She had tried to explain the phenomenon by referring to her -having spent the night in striking a moral balance-sheet. And then had -come the day, the wonderful day, in which the Deliverer had proved -himself the perfect, gentle Knight. Can it be wondered that her brain -swam with him? - -She went the next morning to Lydia’s hat shop, and, in the little room -which Sydney Brooke had called her cubby hole, a nine-foot-square -boudoir office, reeking with Lydia’s scent and with Heaven knows what -scandals and vulgarities and vanities of post-war London, she poured out -her tale of outrage. After listening with indulgent patience, Lydia -remarked judicially: - -“I told you, my dear child, when you came to London, that the first -lesson you had to learn was to take care of yourself.” - -Olivia flashed. She had taken care of herself well enough. But that -brute Mavenna—what about him? - -“Everybody knows Mavenna,” replied Lydia. “No girl in her senses would -have trusted herself alone with him.” - -“And, with that reputation, he’s a friend of yours and Sydney’s?” - -Lydia shrugged her plump shoulders. - -“Really, my dear, if one exacted certificates of lamb-like innocence, -signed by a high celestial official, before you admitted anyone into the -circle of your acquaintance, you might as well go and live on a desert -island.” - -“But this man’s a beast and you’ve known it all along!” cried Olivia. - -“Only in one way.” - -“But—my God! Isn’t that enough?” Olivia stood, racked with disgust and -amazement, over her mild-eyed, philosophic friend. “What would you have -done if you had been in my place?” - -“I could never have been in your place,” said Lydia. “I should have been -too wise.” - -“How?” - -“The knowledge of men, my dear, is the beginning of wisdom.” - -“And I ought to have known?” - -“Of course. At any rate, you’ll know in the future.” - -“I shall. You may be dead certain I shall,” declared Olivia, in her -anger and excitement seizing a puckered and pleated cushion from the -divan by which she stood. “And if even I—−-” - -“Don’t, darling; you’ll tear it,” said Lydia calmly. - -Olivia heaved the cushion back impatiently. - -“What I want to know is this. Are you and Sydney going to remain friends -with Mavenna?” - -“I’m afraid we’ll have to,” replied Lydia. “Mavenna and Sydney are in -all sorts of big things together.” - -“Well, when next you see him, Lydia, look well into his face and ask him -what he thinks of the heel of my slipper and Mr. Triona’s fist. He’s not -only a beast. He’s a worm. When I think of him picking himself up, after -being knocked down by a man half his size——” She laughed a bit -hysterically. “Oh—the creature is outside the pale!” - -Lydia shook her fair head. “I’m sorry for you, my dear. But he’s inside -all right.” - -“Then I’m not going to be inside with him!” cried Olivia. - -And, like a little dark dust storm, she swirled out of the office and, -through the shop, into the freedom and spaciousness of the streets. And -that, for Olivia, was the end of night clubs and dancing as a serious -aim in life, and a host of other vanities. - -A few mornings afterwards Lydia sailed into the flat and greeted Olivia -as though nothing had happened. She seemed to base her philosophy of -life on obliteration of the past, yesterday being as dead as a winter’s -day of sixty years ago. Would Olivia lunch with Sydney and herself at -some riverside club? Sydney, having collected Mauregard, would be -calling for them with the car. The day was fine and warm; the prospect -of the cool lawn reaching down to the plashing river allured, and she -liked Mauregard. Besides, she had begun to take a humorous view of -Lydia. She consented. Lydia began to talk of her wedding, fixed for the -middle of July, of the clothes that she had and the clothes that she -hadn’t—the ratio of the former to the latter being that of a loin-cloth -to the stock of Selfridge’s. When she was serious minded, Lydia always -expressed herself in terms of raiment. - -“And you’ll have to get some things, too, as you’re going to be -bridesmaid.” - -“Am I?” asked Olivia, this being the first she had heard of it. “And -who’s going to be best man—Mavenna?” - -Lydia looked aghast. So might a band of primitive Christians have -received a suggestion of inviting the ghost of Pontius Pilate to a -commemorative supper. - -“My dear child, you don’t suppose we’re going to ask that horror to the -wedding?” - -“The other day,” Olivia remarked drily, “I understood that you and -Sydney loved him dearly.” - -Lydia sighed. “I’m beginning to believe that you’ll never understand -anything.” - -So the breach, if breach there were, was healed. Olivia, relating the -matter to Triona at their next meeting, qualified Lydia’s attitude as -one of callous magnanimity. - -Meanwhile her intimacy with the young man began to ripen. - -One evening Janet Philimore invited her to dine at the Russian circle of -a great womans’ club, which was entertaining Triona at dinner. This was -the first time she had seen him in his character of modest lion; the -first time, too, she had been in a company of women groping, however -clumsily, after ideals in unsyncopated time. The thin girl next to her, -pretty enough, thought Olivia, if only she had used a powder puff to -mitigate the over-assertiveness of a greasy skin, and had given less the -impression of having let out her hair to a bird for nesting purposes, -and had only seized the vital importance of colour—the untrue greeny -daffodil of her frock not being the best for a sallow complexion—the -girl next to her, Agnes Blenkiron, started a hectic conversation by -enquiring what she was going to do in Baby Week. The more ignorant -Olivia professed herself to be of babies and their antecedents, -especially the latter, the more indignantly explicit became Miss -Blenkiron. Olivia listened until she had creepy sensations around the -roots of her hair and put up an instinctive hand to assure herself that -it was not standing on end. Miss Blenkiron talked feminist physiology, -psychology, sociological therapeutics, until Olivia’s brain reeled. Over -and over again she tried to turn to her hostess, who fortunately had a -pleasant male and middle-aged neighbour, but the fair lady, without -mercy, had her in thrall. She learned that all the two or three thousand -members of the club were instinct with these theories and their aims. -She struggled to free herself from the spell. - -“I thought we were here to talk about Russia,” she ventured. - -“But we are talking about Russia.” Miss Blenkiron shed on her the -lambency of her pale blue eyes. “The future of the human race lies in -the hands of the millions of Russian babies lying in the bodies of -millions of Russian women just waiting to be born.” - -A flash of the devil saved Olivia from madness. - -“That’s a gigantic conception,” she said. - -“It is,” Miss Blenkiron agreed, unhumorously, and continued her work of -propaganda, so that by the time the speeches began Olivia found herself -committed to the strenuous toil of a lifetime as a member of she knew -not what societies. The only clear memory she retained was that of a tea -engagement some Sunday in a North London garden city where Miss -Blenkiron and her brother frugally entertained the advanced thinkers of -the day. - -In spite of the sense of release from something vampiric, when the -speeches hushed general conversation, she recognized that the strange -talk had been revealing and stimulating, and she brought a quickened -intelligence to the comprehension of the gathering. To all these women -the present state of the upheaved world was of vast significance. In -Lydia’s galley no one cared a pin about it, save Sydney Rooke, who -cursed it for its interference with his income. But here, as was clearly -conveyed in the opening remarks of the chairwoman, a novelist of -distinction, every one was intellectually concerned with its infinite -complexity of aspect. To them, the guest of the evening, emerging as he -had done from the dizzying profundities of the whirlpool, was a figure -of uncanny interest. - -“It’s the first-hand knowledge of men like him that is vital,” Miss -Blenkiron whispered when the chairwoman sat down. “I should so much like -to meet him.” - -“Would you?” said Olivia. “That’s easily managed. He’s a great friend of -mine.” - -And she was subridently conscious of having acquired vast and sudden -merit in her neighbour’s eyes. - -Triona pleased her beyond expectation. The function, so ordinary to -public-dinner-going London, was new to her. She magnified the strain -that commonplace, even though sincere, adulation could put upon a guest -of honour. She felt a twinge of apprehension when he stood up, in his -loose boyish way, and brushing his brown hair from his temples, began to -speak. But in a moment or two all such feelings vanished. He spoke to -this assembly of a hundred, mostly women, much as, in moments of -enthusiasm, he would speak to her. And, indeed, often catching her eye, -he did speak to her, subtly and flatteringly bringing her to his side. -Her heart beat a bit faster when, glancing around and seeing every one -hanging on his words, she realized that she alone, of all this little -multitude, held a golden key to the mystery of the real man. There he -talked, with the familiar sway of the shoulders, and, when seeking for a -phrase, with the nervous plucking of his lips; talked in his nervous, -picturesque fashion, now and then with a touch of the poet, consistently -modest, only alluding to personal experience to illustrate a point or to -give verisimilitude to a jest. He developed his feminist theme -logically, dramatically, proving beyond argument that the future of -civilization lay in the hands of the women of the civilized world. - -He had a great success. Woman, although she knows it perfectly well, -loves to be told what she wants and the way to get it: she will never -follow the way, of course, having a tortuous, thorny, and enticing way -of her own; but that doesn’t matter. The principle, the end, that is the -thing: it justifies any amazing means. He sat down amid enthusiastic -applause. Flushed, he sought Olivia’s distant gaze and smiled. Then she -felt, thrillingly, that he had been speaking for her, for her alone, and -her eyes brightened and flashed him a proud message. - -She met him a while later in the thronged drawing-room of the club, -rather a shy and embarrassed young man, heading a distinct course toward -her through a swarm of kind yet predatory ladies. She admired the simple -craftsmanship of his approach. - -“How are you going to get home?” he asked. - -The adorable carelessness of twenty shrugged its shoulders. - -“I don’t know. The Lord will provide.” - -“If you can’t find a taxi, will you walk?” - -The question implied a hope, so obvious that she laughed gaily. - -“There are buses also and tubes.” - -“In which you can’t travel alone at this time of night.” - -She scoffed: “Oh, can’t I?” But his manifest fear that she should -encounter satyrs in train or omnibus pleased her greatly. - -“Father’s dining at his club close by and is calling for me. He will see -that you get home safely,” said Janet Philimore. - -“It’s miles out of your way, dear,” said Olivia. “I’ll put myself in the -hands of Mr. Triona.” - -So, taxis being unfindable, they walked together through the warm London -night to Victoria Street. It was then that he spoke of his work, the -novel just completed. Of all opinions on earth, hers was the one he most -valued. If only he could read it to her and have the priceless benefit -of her judgment. Secretly flattered, she modestly depreciated, however, -her critical powers. He persisted, attributing to her unsuspected -qualities of artistic perception. At last, not reluctantly, she yielded. -He could begin the next evening. - -The reading took some days. Olivia, new to creative work, marvelled -exceedingly at the magic of the artist’s invention. The personages of -the drama, imaginary he said, lived as real beings. She regarded their -creation as uncanny. - -“But how do you know she felt like that?” - -He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “I can’t conceive her feeling -otherwise.” - -Yet, for all her wonder, she brought her swift intelligence to the task -of criticism. Not since her mother’s illness had she taken anything so -seriously. She lived in the book, walking meanwhile through an unreal -world. Her golden words, on the other hand, the young man captured -eagerly and set down in the margin of the manuscript. Half-way through -the reading, they were on terms of Christian names. Minds so absorbed in -an artistic pursuit grew impatient of absurd formalities of address. -They slipped almost imperceptibly into the Olivia and Alexis habit. At -the end they pulled themselves up rather sharply, with blank looks at an -immediate future bereft of common interest. - -“I’ll have to begin another, right away, so that you can be with me from -the very start,” he said. - -“Have you an idea?” - -“Not yet.” - -“When will you have one?” - -He didn’t know. What man spent with the creative effort of a novel has -the vitality to beget another right away? He feels that the very last -drop of all that he has known and suffered and enjoyed has been used to -the making of the book. For the making of another nothing is left. - -“I suppose I’ll have to lie fallow for a week or so,” said the young -optimist. - -“And as soon as things begin to sprout you’ll let me know?” asked -Olivia, forgetful that before harvest there must be seed time. - -He promised; went home and cudgelled tired brains; also cudgelled, for -different reasons, an untired and restless soul. - -Let him make good, not ephemerally as the picturesque narrator of -personal adventure, but definitely, with this novel as the creative -artist—the fervent passion of his life—and he would establish himself -in her eyes, in her mind, in her heart; so that treading solid ground, -he could say to her: “This is what I am, and for what I am, take me. All -that has gone before was but a crude foundation. I had to take such -rubbish and rubble as I could find to hand.” But until then, let him -regard her as a divinity beyond his reach, rendering her service and -worship, but forbearing to soil her white robe with a touch as yet -unhallowed. - -Many a time, they could have read no more that day. Just one swift -movement, glance or cry on the part of the man, and the pulses of youth -would have throbbed wildly together. He knew it. The knowledge was at -once his Heaven and his Hell. A less sensitive human being would not -have appreciated the quivering and vital equipoise. Many a time he -parted from her with the farewell of comradely intimacy on his lips, and -when the lift had deposited him on the street level his heart had been -like lead and his legs as water, so that he stumbled out into the -lamp-lit dark of night like a paralytic or a drunken man. - -And that which was good in him warred fiercely against temptations more -sordid. As far as he knew, she was a woman of fortune. So did her dress, -her habit of life, her old comfort-filled Medlow home, proclaim her. Of -her social standing as the daughter of Stephen Gale who bawled out bids -for yelts and rams in the Medlow market place, he knew or understood -very little. Her fortune was a fact. His own, the few hundreds which he -had gained by _Through Blood and Snow_, was rapidly disappearing. The -failure of the new book meant starvation or reversion to Cherbury Mews. -Married to a woman with money he could snap his fingers at crust or -livery. . . . For the time he conquered. - -The end of the reading coincided more or less with Midsummer -quarter-day. Bills from every kind of coverer or adorner of the feminine -human frame fell upon her like a shower of autumn leaves. She sat at her -small writing desk, jotted down the amounts, and added them up with a -much sucked pencil point. The total was incredible. With fear at her -heart she rushed round to her bank for a note of her balance. It had -woefully decreased since January. Payment of all these bills would -deplete it still more woefully. The rent of “The Towers” and the -diminishing income on the deposit account were trivial items set against -her expenditure. She summoned Myra. - -“We’re heading for bankruptcy.” - -“Any fool could see that,” said Myra. - -“What are we going to do?” - -“Live like Christians instead of heathens,” replied Myra. “If you would -come to Chapel with me one Sunday night you could be taught how.” - -Here Myra failed. She belonged to a Primitive Non-Conformist Communion -whose austere creed and drab ceremonial had furnished occasion for -Olivia’s teasing wit since childhood. Heathendom, ever divorced from -Lydian pleasures, presented infinitely more reasons for existence than -Myra’s Calvinism. - -“It seems funny that a dear old thing like you can revel in the idea of -Eternal Punishment.” - -“I haven’t got much else to revel in, have I?” said Myra grimly. - -“I suppose that’s true,” said Olivia thoughtfully. “But it isn’t my -fault, is it? If you had wanted to revel, mother and I would have been -the last people to prevent you. Why not begin now? Go and have a debauch -at the pictures.” - -“You began by talking of bankruptcy,” said Myra. - -“And you prescribed little Bethel. I’d sooner go broke.” - -“You’ll have your own way, as usual,” said Myra. - -“And if I go broke, what’ll you do?” asked Olivia, unregenerately -enjoying the conversation. - -“I suppose I’ll have to put you together again,” replied Myra, with no -sign of emotion on her angular, withered face. - -Olivia leaped from her chair. - -“I’m a beast.” - -“That can’t be,” said Myra, “seeing that it was I as brought you up.” - - * * * * * - -That was the end of the argument. Olivia recognized in Myra every useful -quality save that of the financier. She dismissed Myra from her -counsels. But the state of her budget cost her a sleepless night or two. -At the present rate of expenditure a couple of years would see her -penniless. For the first time since her emancipation from Medlow fetters -she had the feeling of signing her own death-warrant on every cheque. -Heroic resolves were born of these days of depression. - -As a climax to her worries, came Bobby Quinton, one afternoon. What had -he done to offend his dearest of ladies? Why had she stopped the dancing -lessons? Why did Percy’s see her no more? - -“I’m fed up with Percy’s and the whole gang,” said Olivia. - -“Not including me, surely?” cried the young man, with a dog’s appeal in -his melting brown eyes. - -She was kind. At first, she had not the heart to pack him off to the -froth and scum of social life to which he belonged. He had the charm of -unsuccessful youth so pathetic in woman’s eyes. - -“If you are,” said he, “I’m done for. I’ve no one to look to but you, in -the wide world.” - -Here was responsibility for the safety of a human soul. Olivia gave him -sound advice, repeating many an old argument and feeling enjoyably -maternal. But when Bobby grew hysterical, and, with mutation of sex, -quoted the Indian Love Lyrics and professed himself prepared to die -beneath her chariot wheels, and threatened to do so if she disregarded -his burning passion, she admonished him after the manner of -twentieth-century maidenhood. - -“My good Bobby, don’t be an ass.” - -But Bobby persisted in being an ass, with the zeal of the dement. He -became the fervent lover of the cinquecento Bandello—and, with his dark -eyes and hair, looked the part. Imploring he knelt at the feet of the -divinity. - -“That’s all very well, my dear boy,” said Olivia, unmoved by his -rhapsody, “all very nice and all very beautiful. But what do you want me -to do?” - -Of course he wanted her to marry him, there and then: to raise him from -the Hell he was in to the Heaven where she had her pure habitation. With -her he could do great things. He guaranteed splendid achievements. - -“Before a woman marries a man,” said Olivia, “she rather wants an -achievement or two on account.” - -“Then you don’t love me, you don’t trust me?” exclaimed the infatuated -young man, ruffling his sleek black hair. - -“I can’t say that I do,” replied Olivia, growing weary. “If you tell me -what sort of fascination you possess, I’ll give it due consideration.” - -“Then I may as well go away and blow my brains out,” he cried -tragically. - -“You might better go and use such brains as you have in doing a man’s -work,” retorted Olivia. - -He reproached her mournfully. - -“How unkind you are.” - -“If you came here as a window-cleaner or a lift porter I might be -kinder. You’re quite a nice boy,” she went on after a pause, “otherwise -I shouldn’t have anything to do with you. But you haven’t begun to learn -the elements of life. You’re utterly devoid of the sense of duty or -responsibility. Like the criminal, you know. Oh, don’t get angry. I’m -talking to you for your good. Pretending to teach idle women worthless -dancing isn’t a career for a man. It’s contemptible. Every -man—especially nowadays—ought to pull his weight in the world. The -war’s not over. The real war is only just beginning. Instead of pulling -your weight you think it’s your right to sit on a cushion, a -passenger—or a Pekie dog—and let other people pull you.” - -“You don’t understand——” - -“Oh, yes I do. One has to live, and at first we take any old means to -hand. But you’ve been going on at this for a couple of years and haven’t -tried to get out of it. You like it, Bobby——” - -“I loathe it.” - -“You don’t,” she went on remorselessly, with her newly acquired -knowledge of what a man’s life could be. “All you loathe is the -work—especially when it doesn’t bring you in as much money as you want. -You hate work.” - -Resentment gradually growing out of amusement at his presumptuous -proposal had wrought her to a pitch of virtuous indignation. Here was -this young man, of cultivated manners, intelligent, able-bodied, -attractive, rejecting any kind of mission in existence, and—— - -“Look here, Bobby,” she said, rising from her chair by the tea-table and -dominating him with a little gesture, “don’t get up. You sit there. -You’ve asked me to marry you, because you think I’m rich. Hold your -tongue,” she flashed, as he was about to speak. “I’ll take all the love -and that sort of thing for granted. But if I was poor you wouldn’t have -thought of it. At the back of your mind you imagine that if I married -you, we could lead a life of Percy’s and the Savoy and Monte Carlo and -the South Sea Islands, and you needn’t do another stroke of work all -your life long.” - -He leaned forward in his chair protesting eagerly that it wasn’t true. -He would marry her to-morrow were she penniless. She had his salvation -soul and body in her hands. He hungered for work; but the coils of his -present life had a strangle-hold on him. Suddenly he rose and advanced a -step towards her. - -“Listen, Olivia. If you won’t marry me, will you help me in other ways? -I’m desperate. You think you know something about the world. But you -don’t. I’m up against it. It may mean prison. For the love of God lend -me a couple of hundred pounds.” - -The ugly word prison sent a stab through her heart; but immediately -afterwards the common-sense of her Gale ancestry told her either that he -was lying, or, if it were true, that he deserved it. She asked coldly: - -“What have you been doing?” - -“I can’t tell you,” he said. “You must trust me.” - -“But I don’t and that is why I can’t lend you two hundred pounds.” - -“You refuse?” - -His soft voice became a snarl and his lip curled unpleasantly back -beneath the little silky moustache. - -“Of course I do.” - -“I don’t know how you dare, after all the encouragement you’ve given -me.” - -She stared at him aghast. “Encouragement?” - -“Yes. Didn’t you make me dance attendance on you at Brighton? Haven’t -you brought me here over and over again? You’ve behaved damnably to me. -You’ve made me waste my time. I’ve turned other women who would have -only been too glad——” - -In horror, she flew to the door and threw it open. - -“Go,” she said. - -And speeding across the hall she threw open the flat door. - -“Go,” she said again. - -She crossed the landing and rang the lift bell and returned to the hall, -where he met her and threw himself on his knees and looked up at her -with wild, hunted eyes. - -“Forgive me, Olivia. For God’s sake forgive me. I was mad. I didn’t know -what I was saying. Shut that door and I’ll tell you everything.” - -But Olivia passed him by into the sitting-room, and stood with her back -against the door until she heard the clash of the lift gates and the -retreating footsteps of Bobby Quinton. - -A short while ago she had nearly quarrelled with Mauregard because, in a -wordy dissertation on the modern young men who lived on women, he -instanced Bobby as possibly coming within the category. Now she knew -that Mauregard was right. She felt sick. Also deadly ashamed of her -superior attitude of well-meant reprimand. She burned with the -consciousness of tongue in cheek while he listened. Well, that was the -end of the Lydian galley. - -She did not recover till the next afternoon, when Triona called to take -her to the Blenkirons’ Sunday intellectual symposium in Fielder’s Park. -She welcomed him impulsively with both hands outstretched, as a -justification of her faith in mankind. - -“You can’t tell how glad I am to see you.” - -“And you,” said he, kissing first one hand and then the other, “can’t -tell how good I think God is to me.” - - - CHAPTER X - -HE brought great news. Not only had his publishers thought well of the -novel and offered him good terms, including a substantial advance, but -they professed themselves able to place it serially in England for a -goodly sum. They had also shown him the figures of the half-yearly -returns on American sales of _Through Blood and Snow_ which transcended -his dreams of opulence. - -“I had forgotten America,” he said naïvely. - -“You’re nothing, if not original,” she laughed. “That’s what I like -about you.” - -He insisted on the wild extravagance of a taxi to the garden city. All -that money he declared had gone to his head. He felt the glorious -intoxication of wealth. When they were about to turn off the safe -highway into devious garden-city paths, he said: - -“Let us change our minds and go straight on to John o’ Groats.” - -“All right. Let us. We’re on the right road.” - -He swerved towards her. “Would you? Really?” - -She opened her bag and took out her purse. - -“I’ve got fifteen and sevenpence. How much have you?” - -“About three pounds ten.” - -She sighed. “This unromantic taxi man would charge us at least five -pounds to take us there.” - -“We can turn back and fill our pockets at the bank.” - -“It’s Sunday.” - -“I never before realized the blight of the British Sabbath.” - -“So we’re condemned to Fielder’s Park.” - -“But one of these days we’ll go, you and I together, to John o’ -Groats—as far as we can and then——” - -“And then?” - -“And then we’ll take a ship and sail and sail until we come to the -Fortunate Isles.” - -“You’ll let Myra come too?” said Olivia, deliciously anxious to keep to -the playful side of an inevitable road. - -“Of course. We’ll find her a husband. The cabin-boy. _Pour mousse un -chérubin._” - -“And when we get to the Fortunate Isles, what should we do there?” - -“We shall fill our souls with sunlight, so that we could use it when we -came back to our work in this dark and threatening modern world.” - -The girl’s heart leapt at the reply. - -“I’ll go up to John o’ Groats with you whenever you like,” she said. - -But the taxi, at that moment drawing up before the detached toy villa, -whose “Everdene” painted on the green garden gate proclaimed the home of -the Blenkirons, inhibited Triona’s reply. - -They found within an unbeautiful assemblage of humans inextricably -mingled with crumbling cake and sloppy cups of tea and cigarette smoke. -Agnes, shining with heat and hospitality, gave them effusive welcome -and, extricating her brother from a distant welter, introduced him to -the newcomers. He was a flabby-faced young man with a back-thatch of -short rufous hair surmounting a bald forehead. By his ears grew little -patches of side whiskers. He wore an old unbuttoned Norfolk jacket and a -red tie in a soft collar without an under pin. He greeted them with an -enveloping clammy hand. - -“So good of you to come, Miss Gale. So glad to meet you, Mr. Triona. We -have heard so much about you. You will find us here all very earnest in -our endeavour to find a Solution—for never has human problem been so -intricate that a Solution has not been discovered.” - -“What’s the problem?” asked Olivia. - -“Why, my dear lady, there’s only one. The Way Out—or, if you have -faith—The Way In.” He caught a lean, thin-bearded man by the arm. -“Dawkins, let me introduce you to Miss Gale. Mr. Dawkins is our -_rapporteur_.” - -“You haven’t any tea,” said Dawkins rebukingly, as though bidden to a -marriage feast she had no wedding garment. “Come with me.” - -He frayed her a passage through the chattering swarm that over-filled -the little bow-windowed sitting-room and provided her with what seemed -to be the tepid symbols of the brotherhood. - -“What did you think of Roger’s article in this week’s _Signal_?” - -“Who is Roger, and what is _The Signal_?” Olivia asked simply. - -Dawkins stared at her for a second and then, deliberately turning, -wormed his path away. - -Olivia’s gasp of surprise was followed by a gurgle of laughter which -shook her lifted cup so that it spilled. The sight of a stained skirt -drew from her a sharp exclamation of dismay. Agnes Blenkiron disengaging -herself from the cluster round the tea-table came to the rescue. What -was the matter? Olivia explained. - -“Oh, my dear,” said Agnes, “I ought to have told you. It’s my fault. -Dawkins is such a touchy old thing. Roger, of course, is my -brother—didn’t you know? And _The Signal_ is our weekly. Dawkins is the -editor.” - -“I’m awfully sorry,” said Olivia, “but ought I to read _The Signal_?” - -“Why, of course,” replied Agnes Blenkiron intensely. “Everybody ought to -read it. It’s the only periodical that matters in London.” - -Olivia felt the remorse of those convicted of an unpardonable crime. - -“I’ll get a copy to-morrow at the bookstall at Victoria Station.” - -Agnes smiled in her haggard way. “My dear, an organ like _The Signal_ -doesn’t lie on the bookstalls, like _Comic Cuts_ or _The Fortnightly -Review_. It’s posted to private subscribers, or it’s given away at -meetings.” - -“Who pays for the printing of it?” asked the practical Olivia, who had -learned from Triona something of the wild leap in cost of printed -matter. - -“Aubrey Dawkins finds the money. He gets it in the City. He has given up -his heart and soul to _The Signal_.” - -“I’ve made an enemy for life,” said Olivia penitently. - -Miss Blenkiron reassured her. “Oh, no you haven’t. We haven’t time for -enemy making here. Our business is too important.” - -Olivia in a maze asked: - -“What is your business?” - -“Why, my dear child, the Social Revolution. Didn’t you know?” - -“Not a bit,” said Olivia. - -She learned many astonishing things that afternoon, as she was swayed -about from introduction to introduction among the eagerly disputing -groups. Hitherto she had thought, with little comprehension, of the -world-spread social unrest. Strikes angered her because they interfered -with necessary reconstruction and only set the working classes in a -vicious circle chasing high wages and being chased in their turn by high -prices. At other demands she shuddered, dimly dreading the advent of -Bolshevism. And there she left it. She had imagined that revolutionary -doctrines were preached to factory hands either secretly by rat-faced -agents, or by brass-throated, bull-necked demagogues. That they should -be accepted as a common faith by a crowd of people much resembling a -fairly well-to-do suburban church congregation stirred her surprise and -even dismay. - -“I don’t see how intelligent folk can hold such views,” she said to -Roger Blenkiron, who had been defending the Russian Soviet system as a -philosophic experiment in government. - -He smiled indulgently. “Doesn’t the fault lie rather in you, dear lady, -than in the intelligent folk?” - -“Would that argument stand,” she replied, “if you had been maintaining -that the earth was flat and stood still in space?” - -“No. The roundness and motion of the earth are ascertained physical -facts. But—I speak with the greatest deference—can you assert it to be -a scientific fact that a community of human beings are _a priori_ -incapable of managing their own affairs on a basis of social equality?” - -“Of course I can,” Olivia declared, to the gentle amusement of -standers-by. “Human nature won’t allow it. With inequalities of brain -and character social equality is impossible.” - -“Dear Lady”—she hated the apostrophe as he said it and the lift of the -eyebrows which caused an upward ripple that was lost in the far reaches -of his bald forehead. “Dear Lady,” said he, “in the Royal Enclosure at -Ascot you can find every grade of human intellect, from the inbred young -aristocrat who is that much removed”—he flicked a finger nail—“from a -congenital idiot to the acute-brained statesman; every grade of human -character from the lowest of moral defectives to the highest that the -present civilization can produce. And yet they are all on a social -equality. And why? They started life on a common plane. The same -phenomenon exists in a mass-meeting of working-men—in any assemblage of -human beings of a particular class who have started life on a common -plane. Now, don’t you see, that if we abolished all these series of -planes and established only one plane, social equality would be -inevitable?” - -“I don’t see how you’re going to do it.” - -“Ah! That’s another question. Think of what the task is. To make a clean -sweep of false principles to which mankind has subscribed for—what do I -know—say—eight thousand years. It can’t be done in a day. Not even in -a generation. If you wish to render a pestilence-stricken area -habitable, you must destroy and burn for miles around before you can -rebuild. Extend the area to a country—to the surface of the civilized -globe. That’s the philosophic theory of what is vulgarly called -Bolshevism. Let us lay waste the whole plague-stricken fabric of our -civilization, so that the world may arise, a new Phœnix, under our -children’s hands.” - -“You have put the matter to Miss Gale with your usual cogency, my dear -Roger,” said Dawkins, who had joined the group. “Perhaps now she may -take a less flippant view of our activities.” - -He smiled, evidently meaning to include the neophyte in the sphere of -his kind indulgence. But Olivia flushed at the rudeness of his words. - -Triona who, hidden from Olivia by the standing group, had been stuffed -into a sedentary and penitential corner with two assertive women and an -earnest young Marxian gasfitter, and had, nevertheless, kept an alert -ear on the neighbouring conversation, suddenly appeared once more to her -rescue. - -“Pardon me, sir,” said he, “but to one who has gone through, as I have -done, the Bolshevist horrors which you advocate so complacently, it’s -your view that hardly seems serious.” - -“Atrocities, my dear friend,” said the seer-like Dawkins, “are -proverbially exaggerated.” - -“There’s a fellow like you mentioned in the Bible,” retorted Triona. - -“I have always admired Didymus for his scientific mind,” said Dawkins. - -Triona pulled up his trouser leg and exposed his ankle. “That’s the mark -of fetters. There was a chain and a twelve pound shot at the end of it.” - -“Doubtless you displeased the authorities,” said Dawkins blandly. “Oh, -I’ve read your book, Mr. Triona. But before judging I should like to -hear the other side.” - -“I’m afraid, Mr. Blenkiron,” said Triona, growing white about the -nostrils, to his host who stood by in a detached sort of manner, with -his hands on his hips, “I’ve unconsciously abused your hospitality.” - -Blenkiron protested cheerfully. “Not a bit, my dear fellow. We pride -ourselves on our broad mindedness. If you preached reactionary -Anglicanism here you would be listened to with respect and interest. On -the other hand, we expect the same consideration to be shown to the -apostles—if you will pardon the word—of our advanced thought. Your -experiences were, beyond doubt, very terrible. But we admit the -necessity of a reign of terror. We shall have it in this country within -the next ten years. Possibly—probably—all of us here and all the -little gods we cling to will be swept away like the late Russian -aristocracy and _intelligentsia_. But suppose we are all—Dawkins, my -sister, and myself—prepared to suffer martyrdom for the sake of -humanity, what would you have to say against us? Nay—you can be quite -frank. Words cannot hurt us.” - -“I should say you ought to be tied up in Bedlam,” said Triona. - -“Do you agree with that, Miss Gale?” said Roger Blenkiron, turning on -her suddenly. - -She reflected for a moment. Then she replied: “If you can prove beyond -question that in fifty years’ time you will create a more beautiful -world, there’s something in your theories. If you can’t, you all ought -to be shot.” - -He laughed and held out his hand. “That’s straight from the shoulder. -That’s what we like to hear. Shake hands on it.” He drew a little book -from his pocket and scribbled a memorandum. “You’re on the free-list of -_The Signal_. I think Agnes has your address. You’ll find in it -overwhelming proof. Perhaps, Mr. Triona, too, would like——” - -But Triona shook his head. “As a technical alien perhaps it would be -inadvisable for me to be in receipt of revolutionary literature.” - -“I quite understand,” smiled Blenkiron, returning the book to his -pocket. - -Dawkins melted away. Other guests took leave of their host. Triona and -Olivia, making a suffocating course towards the door, were checked by -Agnes Blenkiron who was eager to introduce them to Tom Pyefinch who, -during the war had suffered, at the hands of a capitalist government, -the tortures of the hero too brave to fight. - -“Oh, no, no,” cried Olivia horrified. - -Agnes did not hear. But Pyefinch, a pallid young man with a scrubby -black moustache, was too greatly occupied with his immediate circle to -catch his hostess’s eye. From his profane lips Olivia learned that -patriotism was the most blatant of superstitions: that the attitude of -the fly preening itself over its cesspool was that of the depraved and -mindless being who could take pride in being an Englishman. He was not -peculiarly hard on England. All other countries were the mere sewerages -of the nationalities that inhabited them. The high ideals supposed to -crystallize a nation’s life were but factitious and illusory, propagated -by poets and other decadents in the pay of capitalists: in reality, -patriotism only meant the common cause of the peoples floundering each -in its separate sewer. . . . - -Mere rats, he declared, changing his metaphor. That was why he and every -other intelligent man in the country refused to join in the rat fight -which was the late war. - -Olivia clutched Triona’s arm. “For God’s sake, Alexis, let us get out of -this. It makes me sick.” - -They drew deep breaths when they escaped into the fresh air. To Olivia, -the little overcrowded drawing-room, deafening with loud voices, sour -with the smell of milky tea and Virginian tobacco, reeking almost -physically with the madness of anarchy, seemed a miniature of the -bottomless pit. The irony of the man’s talk—the need to purify by flame -a plague-stricken area! God once destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Why did -He not blast with fire from heaven this House of Pestilence? - -Alexis Triona laughed sympathetically at her outburst. - -“I confess they’re rather trying,” he remarked. “Whenever you hear -English people say they belong to the _intelligentsia_, you may be sure -they’re frightened at common sense as not being intellectual enough. -Blenkiron and Dawkins are fools of the first water; but Pyefinch is -dangerous. I am afraid I lost my temper,” he added after a few steps. - -“You were splendid,” said Olivia. - -More than ever did he seem the one clear-brained, purposeful man of her -acquaintance in the confused London world. Rapidly she passed them in -review as she walked. Of the others Mauregard was the best; but he was -spending his life on fribbles, his highest heaven being a smile on the -lips of a depraved dancing-woman. Then, Sydney Rooke, Mavenna, and, even -worse now than Mavenna, the unspeakable Bobby Quinton. So much for the -Lydian set of professed materialists and pleasure-seekers. In accepting -Agnes Blenkiron’s invitation she had pleasurable anticipation of -entering a sphere of earnest thinkers and social workers who might guide -her stumbling footsteps into the path of duty to herself and her kind. -And to her dismay she had met Dawkins and Blenkiron and Pyefinch, -earnest, indeed, in their sophistry and mad in their theories of -destruction. Her brain was in a whirl with the doctrines to which she -had listened. She felt terrified at she knew not what. Even Lydia’s -cynical world was better than this. Yet between these two extremes there -must be a world of high endeavour, of science, art, philanthropy, -thought; that in which, she vaguely imagined, Blaise Olifant must have -his being; even that of the women at the club dinner. But her mind shook -off women as alien to its subconscious argument. In this conjectural -London world one man alone stood out typical—the man striding loosely -by her side. A young careless angel, he had delivered her from Mavenna. -A man, he had exorcised her horror of Bobby Quinton. And now, once more, -she saw him, in her girlish fancy, a heroic figure, sane, calm, and -scornful, facing a horde of madmen. - -They walked, occasionally losing their way and being put on it by chance -encounters, through the maze of new and distressingly decorous avenues, -some finished, others petering out, after a few houses, into placarded -building lots or waste land; a wilderness not of the smug villa-dom of -old-established suburbs, but of a queer bungalow-dom assertive, in its -distinctive architecture, of unreal pursuit of Aspirations in capital -letters. Most of the avenues abutted on a main street of shops with -pseudo-artistic frontages giving the impression that the inhabitants of -the City could only be induced to satisfy the vulgar needs of their -bodies by the lure of the æsthetic. - -“Don’t let us judge our late friends too harshly,” said Triona waving an -arm. “All this is the Land of Self-Consciousness.” - -At last they made their way through the solider, stolider fringes of the -main road, and emerged on the great thoroughfare itself, wide and -unbusied on this late summer Sunday afternoon. Prosaically they -lingered, waiting for an infrequent omnibus. - -“Thank goodness, we’re out of the Land of Self-Consciousness,” said -Olivia. “The Great North Road is too big a thing.” - -Their eyes met in a smile. - -“I don’t forget your love of big things,” said he. “It’s inspiring. Yes. -It’s a big thing. And it doesn’t really begin in London. It starts from -Land’s End—and it goes on and on through the heart of England and -through the heart of Scotland carrying two nations’ history on its -flanks, caring for nothing but its appointed task, until it sighs at -John o’ Groats and says: ‘My duty’s done.’ There’s nothing that stirs -one’s imagination more than a great road or a great river. Somehow I -prefer the road.” - -“You’re nearer to it because it was made by man.” - -“How our minds work together!” he cried admiringly “I only have to say -half a thing and you complete it. More than that—you give my -meaningless ideas meaning. Yes. God’s works are great. But we can’t -measure them. We have no scale for God, But we have for Man, and so -Man’s big works thrill us and compel us.” - -“What big thing could we do?” asked Olivia. - -“Do you mean humanity—or you and I together?” - -“Two human beings thinking alike, and free and honest.” Instinctively -she took his arm and her step danced in time with his. “Oh, you don’t -know how good it is to feel real. Let us do something big in the world. -What can we do?” - -“You can help me to the very biggest thing in all the universe—for me,” -he cried, pressing her arm tight against him. - -Her pulses throbbed. She knew that further argument on her part would be -but exquisite playing with words. The hour which, in her maidenly -uncertainty she had dreaded, had now come, and all fear had passed away. -Yes; now she was real; now she was certain that her love was real. Real -man, real woman. Her heart leaped to him with almost the shock of -physical pain. Again in a flash she swept the Lydian and the Blenkiron -firmament and exulted. Yet in her happiness she said with very foolish -and with very feminine guile: - -“Ah, my dear Alexis, that’s what I’ve longed for. If only I could be of -some little help to you!” - -“Help?” He laughed shortly and halted and swung her round. “Have you -ever tried to think what you are to me? Would you like me to tell you?” - -She disengaged herself and walked delicately on. - -“It may pass the time till the bus comes,” she said. - -He began to tell her. And three minutes afterwards the noisy, infrequent -motor-bus passed them by, unheeded and even unperceived. - - - CHAPTER XI - -SOMEWHERE on the South Coast, screened from the vulgar by the trap of a -huge watering-place, is a long, thin, sandy promontory sticking out to -sea, like an innocent rib of wilderness. Here there is no fun of the -fair, because there is no fair to provide the fun. There are no taverns, -no boarding-houses, no lodgings. One exclusive little hotel rules the -extreme tip of the tongue of land in consort with the miniature jetty -and quay by which, in late exciting times, strange craft were moored, -flying the white ensign and hoar with North Sea brine and deadly -secrets. The rest of the spit is peppered with a score of little shy -houses, each trying to hide itself from its neighbours, in the privacy -of its own sandpit. If your house is on the more desirable side of it, -you can look out over the vastness of the sea with the exhilarating -certainty (if your temperament may thereby be exhilarated) that there is -nothing but blue water between you and the coast of Africa. If your -house is, less fortunately, on the other side, your view commands a -spacious isle-studded harbour fringed by distant blue and mysterious -hills. But it is given to any one to walk out of the back of his little -hermitage, and, standing in the dividing road, to enjoy, in half a -minute, both aspects at once. It is called esoterically by its -frequenters “the Point,” so that the profane, map-searching, may not -discover its whereabouts. - -Just high enough to be under the lee of a sand-hill, with its front -windows and veranda staring at the African coast, some thousand miles -away, stood the tiniest, most fragile and most absurd of the -habitations. Its name was “Quien Sabe,” suggestive of an imaginative -abandonment of search after nomenclature by the original proprietor. - -“A house called ‘Quien Sabe’——” said Alexis. - -“Is the house for us,” cried Olivia, aglow. - -They took it at once, without question. It wasn’t as if it were an -uncertain sort of place, like “Normanhurst,” or “Sea View.” The name -proclaimed frankly the certainty of venturesomeness. And Alexis Triona, -sitting on the scrubby grass and sand, his back against the little -veranda, the infinite sea and all the universe enveloped in still -moonlight, laughed the laugh of deep happiness at their childish -inspiration. He rolled, licked and lit the final cigarette. Tobacco was -good. Better was this August night of velvet and diamonds. Below, the -little stone groin shone like onyx. The lazy surf of ebb-tide far away -on the sand of a tiny bay glimmered like the foam in fairyland. - -Only half the man’s consciousness allowed itself to be drenched with the -beauty of the night. The other half remained alert to a voice, to a -summons, to something more rare and exquisite than the silver air and -murmuring sea and the shine of all the stars. A few minutes before, -languorous by his side, she had been part and parcel of it all. The -retreating ripple of wave had melted into the softness of her voice. Her -laughing eyes had gleamed importance in the stellar system. The sweet -throb of her body, as she had reclined, his arm about her, was rhythmic -with the pulsation of the night. And now she had gone; gone just for a -few moments; gone just for a few moments until she would divinely break -the silence by the little staccato cry of his name; but, nevertheless, -her transitory severance had robbed this outer world of half its beauty. -He had consciously to incorporate her in order to give meaning to this -wonder of amethyst and aquamarine and onyx and diamond and pearl and -velvet and the infinite message of the immensities coming through the -friendly silence of the moon. - - * * * * * - -They had been married all of a sudden, both caught up on the wings of -adventure. They were young, free as air. Why should they wait? They kept -it secret, a pair of romantics. Only Blaise Olifant, summoned from -Medlow, and Janet Philimore were admitted into the conspiracy, and -attended the wedding. At first Olivia had twinges of conscience. As a -well-conducted young woman she ought to ask her old friend, Mr. Trivett, -to stand _in loco parentis_ and give her away. But then there would be -Mrs. Trivett and the girls to reckon with. Mr. Fenmarch, left out, might -take offence. The news, too, would run through every Medlow parlour. Old -John Freke, in his weekly letter to Lydia, would be sure to allude to -the matter; and it was Lydia and the galley that she most desired to -keep in ignorance. So they were married, by special licence, at the -church in Ashley Place, one quiet, sunny morning, in the presence of -Myra and the two witnesses they had convened. - -As they emerged into the sunshine after the ceremony, Olifant said to -her: - -“I’ve never been so reluctant to give anything away in my life.” - -She asked a laughing “Why?” - -“Dog in the manger, I suppose.” He smiled whimsically. “I shall feel -more of a bachelor than ever when I get back.” - -“You needn’t, unless you like.” She motioned slightly with her head -towards Janet, talking to Alexis, a few feet away. “I’ve not been too -busy to think of matchmaking. She’s the dearest of girls.” - -“But not my landlady.” - -Her happy laughter rippled forth, calling the others near. - -“He wants a law forbidding the marriage of landladies. But think of the -advantage. Now you can have your landlady to stay with you—in strict -propriety—if you will ask us.” - -“We settled that with Alexis last night,” said he. - -Three taxis were waiting. One for the bride and bridegroom. One, already -piled with luggage, for Myra who after being fervently kissed in the -vestry by Olivia, had said by way of congratulation: - -“Well, dearie, it’s better than being married in a Registry Office,” and -had gone forth unemotionally to see that the trunks were still there. -And one for Olifant and Janet. They drove to the station, to the train -which was to take them on their way to the home which in their -romanticism they had never troubled to see. - -“I’m sure it’s all right,” said Janet, who had been responsible for -their taking “Quien Sabe.” “Father and I’ll be at The Point in a -fortnight. If you don’t want to see us, tie a white satin bow on the -gate and we won’t mind a bit.” - -For General Philimore was the happy owner of one of the little -hermitages on The Point, and like a foolish old soldier lived there in -holiday times, instead of letting it for the few summer weeks at the -yearly rental of his London flat; so that Janet assumed the airs of an -authority on The Point, and wrote stern uncompromising business letters -to agents threatening them with the displeasure of the daughter of a -Major-General, if a “Quien Sabe” swept, garnished, and perfectly -appointed, with a charwoman, ditto, in attendance, did not receive the -bridal pair. - -“It’s not a palace, Mr. Triona,” she said. - -“What has it to do with me?” he answered. “A dream nest in a cliff for -this bird wife of mine is all I ask for.” - -Olivia’s eyes smiled on him. Why was he so different from the rest of -men—even from so fine a type as Blaise Olifant? She appraised them -swiftly. The soldier had not yet been sunk into the scholar. He stood -erect, clean built, wearing his perfectly fitting grey suit like -uniform, his armless sleeve pinned across his chest, his lip still -bearing the smart little military moustache, his soft grey hat at ever -so slightly a swaggering angle on his neatly cropped head. A -distinguished figure, to which his long straight nose added a curious -note of distinction and individuality. But all that he was you saw in a -glance: the gentleman, the soldier, the man of intellect. On the other -hand, there stood the marvellous man that was her husband, hiding behind -the drawn boyish face God knew what memories of pain heroically -conquered and God knew what visions of genius. Although he had gone to a -good tailor for his blue serge suit—she had accompanied him—he had the -air of wearing clothes as a concession of convention. The lithe frame -beneath seemed to be impatient of their restraint. They fitted in an -easy sort of way, but were dominated by his nervous eager personality. -One flash of a smile illuminating eyes and thin face, one flashing -gesture of hand or arm, and for ought any one knew or cared, he might be -dressed in chain armour or dungaree. - -The little speech pleased her. She slipped her hand through the crook of -his arm in the pride of possession. - -“Did you ever hear such an undomesticated pronouncement?” she laughed. -“We’re going to change all that.” - -And the train carried them off to the great wonder and change of their -lives. - -The train out of sight, Blaise Olifant stuck in his pocket the -handkerchief he had been waving, and turned with a sigh. - -“I hope she’ll be happy.” - -“Why shouldn’t she?” asked Janet Philimore. - -She was a bright-cheeked, brown-eyed, brown-haired girl, with a -matter-of-fact manner. - -“I know of no reason,” he replied. “I was expressing a hope.” - -He saw her to her homeward-bound omnibus and walked, somewhat moodily, -on his road. After a day or two, the pleasures of London proving -savourless, he returned to Medlow. But “The Towers” no longer seemed -quite the same. He could not tell why. The house had lost fragrance. - - * * * * * - -Meanwhile the pair had gone to the little toy home whose questioning -name pointed to mystery. There were just three rooms in it, all opening -on to a veranda full in sight (save for the configuration of the globe) -of the African coast. On this veranda, sitting back, they lost sight of -the whin-grown slope and the miniature sandy cove beneath; and their -world was but a welter of sea, and its inhabitants but a few gulls, -sweeping and swirling past them with a shy friendliness in their yellow -eyes. In a dip of the sand-hill, just behind this elementary dwelling -and communicating with it by a short covered way, stretched an old -railway carriage divided into kitchen, pantry, bathroom, and bunks. - -“It’s the craziest place I’ve ever seen,” said Myra. “People will be -living in old aeroplanes next.” - -But the very craziness of the habitation made for their selfish joy. The -universe, just for these twain, had gone joyously mad. A cocky little -villa made to the model of a million others would have defeated the -universe’s benign intention. Nothing could be nearer to Triona’s dream -nest in a cliff. Their first half-hour’s exploring, hand in hand, was -that of children let loose in a fairy tale castle. - -“There’s only one egg-cup,” croaked Myra, surveying an exiguous row of -crockery. - -“How many more do we want?” cried Olivia. “We can only eat one egg at a -time.” - -They passed out and stood on the edge of their small domain, surveying -the sandy beach and the seaweed and shell-encrusted groin and the -limitless sea, and breathed in the soft salt wind of all the heavens -sweeping through their hair and garments, and he put his arm around her -and kissed her—and he laughed and said, looking into her eyes: - -“Sweetheart, Heaven is empty and all the angels are here.” - -On sunny days they lived in the sea, drying themselves on their -undisturbed half-moon of beach. - -“Where did you learn to swim?” she asked. - -He hesitated for a second, casting at her one of his swift, half furtive -glances. Then he replied: - -“In the Volga.” - -She laughed. “You’re always romantic. I learned at commonplace -Llandudno.” - -“Where’s your sense of relativity, beloved?” said he. “In Central Russia -one regards the coast of Wales as fantastic fairyland.” - -“Still, you can go to Llandudno to-morrow, if you like—taking me with -you, of course; but I shall never swim in the Volga, or the Caspian Sea, -or Lake Baikal, or any of those places with names that have haunted me -since I was a little girl.” - -“One of these days we’ll go—it may be some years, but eventually Russia -must have a settled Government—and we’ll still be young.” - -The sun and the hot sand on which she lay, adorable in deep red bathing -kit and cap, warmed her through and through, flooding her with the sense -of physical well-being. It was impossible that she should ever grow old. - -“It’s something to look forward to,” she said. - -Sometimes they hired a boat and sailed and fished. She admired his -handiness and knowledge and prescience of the weather. Once, as the -result of their fishing, they brought in a basket of bass and gar-fish, -the latter a strange, dainty silver beast with the body of an eel and -the tail of a trout and the beak of a woodcock, and in high spirits they -usurped Myra’s railway-compartment kitchen, while he fried the catch for -lunch. Olivia marvelled at his mastery. In spite of her sage and -deliberate putting aside of the rose-coloured glasses of infatuation, in -whatever aspect she viewed him, he stood supreme. From the weaving of -high romance to the cooking of fish—the whole gamut of human -activities—there was nothing in which he did not excel. Her trust in -him was infinite. She lost herself in happiness. - -It took some days to arouse her to a sense of the outer world. A letter -from Lydia reminded her of her friend’s pleasant ignorance. With the -malice of the unregenerate feminine, she wrote: “I’m so sorry I can’t be -bridesmaid as you had arranged. How can I, seeing that I am married -myself? It happened all in a hurry, as the beautiful things in life do. -The fuss of publicity would have spoilt it. That’s why we told nobody. -This is much better than Dinard”—Sydney Rooke’s selection for the -honeymoon. “I haven’t worn a hat since I’ve been here, and my way of -dressing for dinner is to put on a pair of stockings; sometimes a -mackintosh, for we love to dine on the veranda when it rains. It rained -so hard last night that we had to fix up an umbrella to the ceiling like -a chandelier to catch the water coming through the roof. So you will see -that Alexis and I are perfectly happy. By the way, I’ve not told you -what my name is. It is Mrs. Triona. . . .” And so on and so on at the -dictate of her dancing gladness, freakishly picturing Lydia’s looks of -surprise, distaste, and reprobation as she read the letter. Yet she -finished graciously, acknowledging Lydia’s thousand kindnesses, for -according to her lights Lydia had done her best to put her on the only -path that could be trod by comely and well-dressed woman. - -She sealed up her letter and, coming out on to the veranda where Alexis -was correcting the proofs of an article, told him all about it. - -“Don’t you think we ought to please Lydia and go to Dinard and wear -wonderful clothes, and mix with fashionable folk, and have expensive -meals and gamble in the Casino, and dance and do our duty as -self-respecting people?” - -“You have but to change yourself into whatever fairy thing you like, my -princess,” said he, “and I will follow you. Where you are, the world is. -Where you are not, there is the blankness of before creation.” - - * * * * * - -Sitting that night, with his back against the veranda, he thought of -this speech of the afternoon. Formulated a bit self-consciously, it was -nevertheless true. The landscape, no matter what it was, existed merely -as a setting for her. Even in this jewelled wonder of moonlit sea and -sky there was the gap of the central gem. - -He rolled and lit another cigarette—this time, surely, the very last. -Why she took so long to disrobe, he never strove to conjecture. Her -exquisite feminine distance from him was a conception too tremulous to -be gripped with a rough hand and brutally examined. That was the lure -and the delight of her, mystical, paradoxical—he could define it only -vaguely as the nearness of her set in a far-off mystery. At once she was -concrete and strong as the sea, and as elusive as the Will-o’-the-Wisp -of his dreams. - -Thus the imaginative lover; the man who, by imagining fantasies to be -real, had made them real; who, grasping realities, had woven round them -the poet’s fantasy. - -And meanwhile Olivia, secure in her happiness, kept him waiting and -dreaming because she had made a romantic vow to record, before going to -sleep, each day’s precious happenings in a diary which she kept under -lock and key in her dressing-case. She wrote sitting up in bed, and now -and then she sniffed and smiled as the soft air came through the open -window laden with the perfume of the cigarette. - - - CHAPTER XII - -IN the course of time, Janet Philimore and her attendant father, the -General, arrived at their house on The Point, and as Olivia, apprised of -their advent, did not tie a white satin bow on her gate, General and -Miss Philimore left cards on the newly wedded couple, or, more exactly, -a pencilled leaf torn out of a notebook. - -Thus arose a little intimacy which Olivia encouraged on Alexis’s -account. Had not her father and brothers trained her in the ways of men, -one of which vital ways was that which led to the social intercourse of -man with man? Besides, it was a law of sex. If she had not a woman to -talk to, she declared, she would go crazy. It was much more comforting -to powder one’s nose in the privacy of the gynæceum than beneath man’s -unsympathetic stare. Conversely it had been a dictum of her father’s -that, in order to enjoy port, men must be released from the distracting -chatter of women. - -“If I’m not broad-minded, I’m nothing,” said Olivia. - -“‘Broad’ is inadequate,” replied her husband, thrusting back his brown -hair. “The very wonder of you is that your mind is as wide as the -infinite air.” - -Which, of course, was as pleasant a piece of information as any bride -could receive. - -The magic of the halcyon days was intensified by the satisfaction of the -sex cravings which, by the symbolism of nose-powdering and -port-drinking, Olivia had enunciated. In the deeps of her soul she could -find no consuming passion for sitting scorched in a boat with a baited -and contemptuously disregarded line between expectant finger and thumb. -She could not really understand the men’s anxiety to induce a mentally -defective fish to make a fool of itself. Yet she would have sat -blissfully for hours at his bidding, for the mere joy of doing as she -was bidden; but not to be bidden was a great relief. Similarly, Alexis -could not vie with Olivia in concentration of being over the selection -of material (in the fly-trap of a great watering-place previously -mentioned) and over the pattern and the manufacture by knitting of gaudy -hued silk jumpers. His infatuated eye marvelled at the delicate -swiftness of her fingers, at the magical development of the web that was -to encase her adorable body. But his heart wasn’t in it. Janet’s was. -And General Philimore brought to the hooking of bass the earnest -singleness of purpose that, vague years ago, had enabled him to ensnare -thousands of Huns in barbed-wire netting. - -The primitive laws of sex asserted themselves, to the common happiness. -The men fished; the women fashioned garments out of raw material. We -can’t get away from the essentials of the Stone Age. And why in the -world should we? - -But—and here comes the delight of the reactions of -civilization—invariably the last quarter of an hour of these exclusive -sex-communings was filled with boredom and impatience. Alone at last, -they would throw themselves into each other’s arms with unconscionable -gracelessness and say: “Thank Heaven, they’ve gone!” And then the sun -would shine more brightly and the lap of the waves around them would add -buoyancy to their bodies, and Myra, ministering to their table wants, -would assume the guise of a high priestess consecrating their intimacy, -and the moon would invest herself with a special splendour in their -honour. - -Now and then the four came together; a picnic lunch at some spot across -the bay; a wet after-dinner rubber at bridge, or an hour’s gossip of old -forgotten far-off things and battles of the day before yesterday, or—in -the General’s house—a little idle music. There it was that Olivia -discovered another accomplishment in her wonderful husband. He could -play, sensitively, by ear—knowledge of notated music he disclaimed. -Having been impressed as a child with the idea that playing from ear was -a sin against the holy spirit of musical instruction, and gaining from -such instruction (at Landsdowne House—how different if she had been -trained in the higher spheres of Blair Park!) merely a distaste for -mechanical fingering of printed notes, she had given up music with a -sigh of relief, mingled with regret, and had remained unmusical. And -here was Alexis, who boasted his ignorance of the difference between a -crotchet and an arpeggio, racking the air with the poignant melancholy -of Russian folk-songs, and, in a Puckish twinkle, setting their pulses -dancing with a mad modern rhythm of African savagery. - -“But, dear, what else can you do?” she asked, after the first exhibition -of this unsuspected gift. “Tell me; for these shocks aren’t good for my -health.” - -“On the mouth-organ,” he laughed, “I’ve not met any one to touch me.” - -It was not idle boasting. On their next rainy-day visit to the -neighbouring town, Olivia slipped into a toy shop and bought the most -swollenly splendid of these instruments that she could find, and Alexis -played “The Marseillaise” upon it with all the blare of a steam -orchestrion. - -The happy days sped by in an atmosphere of love and laughter, yet filled -not only with the sweet doings of idleness. Olivia discovered that the -poet-artist must work, impelled thereto by his poet-artistry. He must -write of the passing things which touched his imagination and which his -imagination, in turn, transmuted into impressions of beauty. These were -like a painter’s sketches, said he, for use in after-time. - -“It’s for you, my dear, that I am making a hoard of our golden moments, -so that one of these days I may lay them all at your feet.” - -And he must read, too. During the years that the locust of war had -eaten, his educational development had stood still. His English literary -equipment fell far short of that required by a successful English man of -letters. Vast tracts of the most glorious literature in the world he had -as yet left unexplored. The great Elizabethan dramatists, for instance. -Thick, serious volumes from the London Library strewed the furniture of -the wind-swept sitting-room. Olivia, caught by his enthusiasm and proud -to identify herself with him in this feeding of the fires of his genius, -read with him; and to them together were revealed the clanging majesty -of Marlowe, the subtle beauty of Beaumont and Fletcher, the haunting -gloom of Webster. In the evenings they would sit, lover-like, the book -between them, and read aloud, taking parts; and it never failed to be an -astonishment and a thrill to the girl when, declaiming a fervid passage, -he seemed for the moment to forget her and to live in the sense of the -burning words. It was her joy to force her emotion to his pitch. - -Once, reading Beaumont and Fletcher’s _Philaster_, he clutched her -tightly with his left arm, while his right hand upstretched, invoked -unheeding Heaven, and declaimed: - - “And then have taken me some mountain girl, - Beaten with winds, chaste as the hardened rocks - Whereon she dwells; that might have strewn my bed - With leaves and reeds, and with the skins o’ Beasts, - Our neighbours; and have borne at her big breasts - My large coarse issue! This had been a life - Free from vexation.” - -“But, Alexis, darling, I’m so sorry,” she cried. - -“Why? What do you mean?” - -“You said it as if you meant it, as if it was the desire of your heart. -I’m not a bit like that.” - -They laughed and kissed. A dainty interlude. - -“You’ve never really felt like that?” - -“Never.” - -“The idea isn’t even new,” exclaimed Olivia, with grand inversion of -chronology. “Tennyson has something like it in _Locksley Hall_. How does -it go?” - -With a wrinkling of the brow she quoted: - -“Then the passions cramped no longer shall have scope and breathing space -I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race. - -“Iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, they shall dive and they shall run, -Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun.” - -“So he did!” cried Triona. “How wonderful of you to remember! Why—the -dear beautiful old thief!” He forgot the point at issue in contemplation -of the literary coincidence of plagiarism. “Well, I’m damned! Such a -crib! With the early Victorian veil of prudery over it! Oh, Lord! Give -me the Elizabethan, any day. Yet, isn’t it funny? The period-spirit? If -Tennyson had been an Elizabethan, he would have walked over Beaumont and -Fletcher like a Colossus; but in a world under the awe of Queen -Victoria’s red flannel petticoat he is reduced to stealing Elizabethan -thunder and reproducing it with a bit of sheet iron and a stick.” - -“Dear,” said Olivia, “we have much to be thankful for.” - -“You and I?” he queried. - -“Our generation. We live in the sun. No longer under the shadow of the -red flannel petticoat.” - -Rapturously he called her a marvel among women. Olivia’s common sense -discounted the hyperbole; but she loved his tribute to her sally of wit. - -The book slipped to the floor, while she began an argument on the -morality of plagiarism. How far was a man justified in stealing another -man’s idea, working up another man’s material? - -His sudden and excited defence of the plagiarist surprised her. He rose, -strode about the room and, talking, grew eloquent; quoted Shakespeare as -the great exemplar of the artist who took his goods from everywhere he -found them. Olivia, knowing his joy in conversational fence, made -smiling attack. - -“In the last three hundred years we have developed a literary -conscience.” - -“A commercial matter,” he declared. “A question of copyright. I granted -that. You have no right to exploit another man’s ideas to his material -loss. But take a case like this”—he paced before her for a few -seconds—“on the spur of the moment. It must have happened a thousand -times in the War. An unknown dead man just a kilometre away from a bleak -expanse of waste covered with thousands of dead men. Some one happens -upon him. Searches him for identification. Finds nothing of any use or -interest save a little notebook with leaves of the thinnest paper next -his skin. And he glances through the book and sees at once that it is no -ordinary diary of war—discomfort of billets, so many miles’ march, -morale of the men and so forth—but something quite different. He puts -it in his pocket. For all that the modern world is concerned, the dead -man is as lost as any skeleton dug up in an ancient Egyptian grave-yard. -The living man, when he has leisure, reads the closely written -manuscript book, finds it contains rough notes of wonderful experiences, -thoughts, imaginings. But all in a jumble, ill expressed, chaotic. -Suppose, now, the finder, a man with the story-teller’s gift, weaves a -wonderful thrilling tale out of this material. Who is injured? Nobody. -On the contrary, the world is the richer.” - -“If he were honest, he ought to tell the truth in a preface,” said -Olivia. - -Triona laughed. “Who would believe him? The trick of writing false -prefaces in order to give verisimilitude is so overworked that people -won’t believe the genuine ones.” - -“I suppose that’s so,” she acquiesced. Her interest in the argument was -only a reflection of his. She was far more eager to resume the -interrupted reading of _Philaster_. - -“It’s lovely that we always see things in the same way,” said he, -sitting down again by her side. - -Besides all this delightful work and play there was the practical future -to be considered. They could not live for ever at “Quien Sabe” on The -Point, nor could they live at the Lord knows where anywhere else. They -must have a home. - -“Before you stole over my being and metamorphosed me, I should have -asked—why?” he said. “Any old dry hole in a tree would have done for -me, until I got tired of it and flew to another. But now——” - -“Now you’re dying to live in a nice little house and have your meals -regular and pay rates and taxes, and make me a respectable woman.” - -They decided that a house was essential. It would have to be furnished. -But what was the object of buying new furniture at the present fantastic -prices when she had a great house full of it—from real Chippendale -chairs to sound fish-kettles? The answer was obvious. - -“Why not Medlow? Olifant won’t stay there for ever. He hinted as much.” - -She shook her head. No. Medlow was excellent for cabbages, but -passion-flowers like her Alexis would wilt and die. He besought her with -laughing tenderness not to think of him. From her would he drink in far -more sunlight and warmth than his passion-flower-like nature could need. -Had she not often told him of her love for the quaint old house and its -sacred associations? It would be a joy to him to see her link up the old -life with the new. - -“Besides,” he urged, attributing her reluctance to solicitude for his -happiness, “it’s the common-sense solution. There’s our natural -headquarters. We needn’t stay there all the year round, from year’s end -to year’s end. When we want to throw a leg we can run away, to London, -Paris, “Quien Sabe,” John o’ Groats—the wide world’s before us.” - -But Olivia kept on shaking her head. Abandoning metaphor, she insisted -on the necessity of his taking the position he had gained in the social -world of art and letters. Hadn’t he declared a day or two ago that good -talk was one of the most stimulating pleasures in life? What kind of -talk could Medlow provide? It was far more sensible, when Major -Olifant’s tenancy was over, to move the furniture to their new -habitation and let “The Towers” unfurnished. - -“As you will, belovedest,” he said. “Yet,” he added, with a curious note -of wistfulness, “I learned to love the house and the sleepy old town and -the mouldering castle.” The practical decision to which she was brought -out of honeymoon lotus-land was the first cloud on her married -happiness. It had never occurred to her before that she could have -anything to conceal from her husband. Not an incident in the Lydian -galley had her ingenuousness not revealed. But now she felt consciously -disingenuous, and it was horrible. How could she confess the real reason -for her refusal to live in Medlow? Was she not to him the Fairy -Princess? He had told her so a thousand times. He had pictured his first -vision of her glowing flame colour and dusk beneath the theatre portico, -his other vision of her exquisite in moonlight and snowflake in the -great silent street. His faith in her based itself on the axiom of her -regality. Woman-like, she had laughed within herself at his dear -illusions. But that was the key of the staggering position; his -illusions were inexpressibly dear to her; they were the priceless jewels -of her love. With just a little craft, so sweet, so divinely humorous, -to exercise she could maintain these illusions to the end of time. . . . - -But not at Medlow. - -She had gone forth from it, on her pilgrimage, in order to establish -herself in her mother’s caste. And she had succeeded. The name of her -grandfather, Bagshawe of the Guides, had been a password to the -friendships which now she most valued. Marriage had defined her social -ambitions. They were modest, fundamentally sane. Her husband, a man of -old family and gentle upbringing, ranked with her mother and General and -Janet Philimore. He was a man of genius, too, and his place was among -the great ones of the social firmament. - -She thought solely in terms of caste, gentle and intellectual. She swept -aside the meretricious accessories of the Sydney Rooke gang with a -reactionary horror. - -A few days before, Alexis, lyrically lover like, had said: - -“You are so beautiful. If only I could string your neck with pearls, and -build you a great palace . . .” etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, in the -manner of the adoring, but comparatively impecunious poet. - -And she had replied: - -“I don’t want pearls, palaces or motor-cars. They’re all symbols, my -dear, of the Unreal. Ordinary comfort of food and warmth and decent -clothes—yes. But that’s all. So long as you string my heart with -love—and my mind with noble thoughts.” - -She longed passionately to live with him, above herself. And yet, here -at the outset, was she living below herself. She would wake in the -morning and, sleepless, grow hot and clammy at the thought of her -deception. And the whole of her Medlow life drifted miserably through -her consciousness: the schoolgirl’s bitter resentment of the -supercilious nose in the air attitude of the passing crocodile of Blair -Park; of the vicar’s daughters’ condescending nod—he was a Canon of -somewhere and an “Honourable” to boot—at “that pretty Miss Gale”; her -recognition, when she came to years of sense, of the social gulf between -her family and the neighbouring gentry whose lives, with their tennis -parties and dances and social doings, seemed so desirable and so remote. -To bring her wonderful husband into that world of “homely folk,” the -excellent, but uncultivated Trivetts, the more important tradespeople, -the managers of the mills, the masters of the County School, her -father’s world, and to see him rigidly excluded from that to which her -mother and he himself belonged, was more than she could bear. She -tortured herself with the new problem of snobbery—rating herself, in -this respect, beneath Lydia, who was frankly cynical as to both her own -antecedents and her late husband’s social standing. But for the life of -her she could not bring herself to explain to Alexis the real -impossibility of Medlow. When she tried, she found that his foreign -upbringing failed to seize the fine shade of her suggestion. - -His gay carelessness eventually lulled her conscience. As soon as -Olifant had done with “The Towers,” they could transfer the furniture to -whatever habitation they chose and let the house. - -“I feel you couldn’t find it in your heart to sell the old place,” he -said. “Besides—who knows—one of these days——” - -She thought him the most delicately perceptive of men. - -“No, dear,” she said, her cheek against his. “I couldn’t sell it.” - -Then all Medlow danger was over. She breathed freely. But still—the -little cloud of deceit hung over her serene mind and cast ever so tiny a -shadow over her rapturous life. - -They had been four weeks in the deliciously sure uncertainty of “Quien -Sabe,” when, one noon while they were drying themselves in the hot sand -and sunshine of their tiny bay, after a swim, Myra came down gaunt -through the whin-covered hill-side with a telegram in her hand. With the -perversity of her non-recognition of the household paramountcy of her -master, she handed the envelope to Olivia. The name was just “Triona.” -Olivia was about to open it instinctively when Alexis started to a -sitting position, and, with an eager glance, held out his hand. - -“I think it’s for me. I was expecting it. Do you mind?” - -She passed it over with a smile. Alexis rose to his feet, tore the -envelope open, and moving a few yards away towards the surf read the -message. Then slowly he tore it up into the tiniest fragments and -scattered them on the last wavelets of the ebb tide, and stood for a -second or two, staring across the sea. At last he turned. Olivia rose to -meet him. Myra was impassively making her way back up the rough slope. - -“What’s the matter?” asked Olivia, puzzled at his scrupulous destruction -of the telegram and reading something like fear in his eyes. - -“I’ve had bad news,” he said. He picked up his bath-gown, shook it free -from sand, and huddled it around him. “Let us get up to the house.” He -shivered. “It’s cold.” - -She followed him wonderingly. - -“What bad news?” she asked. - -He turned his head, with a half-laugh. “Nothing so very desperate. The -end of the world hasn’t come yet. I’ll tell you when I’ve changed.” - -He rushed up the steps of the veranda and into his little dressing-room. -Olivia, dry and warm, sat in a sun-beat chair and anxiously waited for -him. The instinct of a loving woman, the delicacy of a sensitive soul, -forbade her teasing with insistent questions a man thrown for the moment -off his balance. Yet she swept the horizon of her mind for reasons. - -A quarter of an hour afterwards—it had seemed a quarter of a -century—he appeared, dressed, not in his customary flannels, but in the -blue serge suit of their wedding day. The sight of it struck a chill -through her heart. - -“You are going away?” - -He nodded. “Yes, my dear, I have to.” - -“Why? What has happened?” - -“I can’t tell you, dear. That’s the heart-rending part of it. It’s -secret—from the Foreign Office.” - -She reacted in laughter. “Oh, my darling—how you frightened me. I -thought it was something serious.” - -“Of course it’s serious, if I have to leave you for three or four -days—perhaps a week.” - -“A week!” She stood aghast. It was serious. How could she face a lonely -epoch of seven days, each counting twenty-four thousand halting hours? -What did it mean? - -“There are not many men who know Russian as I do. I’ve been in touch -with the Intelligence Department ever since I landed in England. That’s -why I went to Finland in the autumn. These things bind me to inviolable -secrecy, beloved. You understand, don’t you?” - -“Of course I understand,” she replied proudly. - -“I could refuse—if you made a point of it. I’m a free man.” - -She put her two hands on his shoulders—and ever after he had this one -more unforgettable picture of her—the red bathing cap knotted in front, -dainty, setting off her dark eyes and her little eager face—the -peignoir, carelessly loose, revealing the sweet, frank mould of her -figure in the red bathing suit. - -“My father and my two brothers gave their lives for England. Do you -think I could be so utterly selfish as to grudge my country a week of my -husband’s society?” - -He took her cheeks in his hands. “More and more do you surpass the -Princess of my dreams.” - -She laughed. “I’m an Englishwoman.” - -“And so, you don’t want to know where I’m going?” - -She moved aside. “Of course I do. I shall be in a fever till you come -back. But if I’m not to know—well—I’m not to know. It’s enough for me -that you’re serving your country. Tell me,” she said suddenly, catching -him by the coat lapels. “There’s no danger.” - -He smiled. “Not a little tiny bit. Of that you can be assured. The worst -is a voyage to Helsingfors and back. So I gathered from the telegram, -which was in execrable Foreign Office Russian.” - -“And when are you going?” - -“By the first train. I must report to-night.” - -“Can’t I come with you—as far as London?” - -He considered for a moment. “No,” he said. “Where would you sleep? In -all probability I shall have to take the midnight boat to Havre.” - -An hour later they parted. She returned to the empty house frightened at -she knew not what, insecure, terrifyingly alone; she was fretted by an -uncanny sense of having mated with the inhabitant of another planet who -had suddenly taken wing through the vast emptiness to the strange sphere -of his birth. She wandered up and down the veranda, in and out of the -three intimate rooms, where the traces of his late presence, books, -papers, clothes, lay strewn carelessly about. She smiled wanly, -reflecting that he wore his surroundings loosely as he did his clothes. -Suddenly she uttered a little feminine cry, as her glance fell on his -wrist watch lying on the drawing-room mantelpiece. He had forgotten it. -She took it up with the impulsive intention of posting it to him at -once. But the impulse fell into the nervelessness of death, when she -remembered that he had given her no address. She must await his -telegram—to-morrow, the next day, the day after, he could not say. -Meanwhile, he would be chafing at the lack of his watch. She worried -herself infinitely over the trifle, unconsciously finding relief in the -definite. - -The weary hours till night passed by. She tried to read. She tried to -eat. She thought of going over the road to the Philimores’ for company; -but her mood forbade. For all their delicacy they would ask reasons for -this sudden abandonment. She magnified its importance. She could have -said: “My husband has gone to London on business.” But to her brain, -overwrought by sudden emotion, the commonplace excuse seemed inadequate. -She shrank from the society of her kind friends, who would regard this -interplanetary mystery as a matter of course. - -If only Alexis had taken his watch! Perhaps he would have time to buy -another—a consoling thought. Meanwhile she strapped it on her own -wrist, heroically resolved not to part with it night or day until he -returned. - -She sat by the lamp on the sitting-room table, looking out over the -veranda at the pitch blackness of a breathless night in which not even -the mild beat of the surf could be heard. She might have been in some -far Pacific desert island. Her book lay on her lap—the second volume of -Motley’s _Dutch Republic_. All the Alvas and Williams, all the heroes -and villains, all the soldiers and politicians and burghers were -comfortably dead hundreds of years ago. What did these dead men matter, -when one living man, the equal of them all, had gone forth from her, -into the unknowableness of the night? - -Myra came into the room with an amorphous bundle in her hand. - -“The camp bed in the dressing-room isn’t very comfortable—but I suppose -I can sleep on it.” - -Olivia turned swiftly in her chair, startled into human realities. - -“No. It’s a beast of a thing. But I should love to have you to be with -me. You’re a dear. You sleep in my bed and I’ll take the dressing-room.” - -“You once gave signs of being a woman of sense,” said Myra tonelessly. -“It seems I was mistaken.” - -She disappeared with her bundle. Olivia put out the light and went to -bed, where she lay awake all the night, fantastically widowed, striving -with every nerve and every brain-cell to picture the contemporaneous -situation of her husband. Three o’clock in the morning. He would be in -mid-Channel. Had he secured a berth? Or was he forced to walk up and -down the steamer’s deck? Thank Heaven, it was a black still night. She -stole out of bed and looked at the sea. A sea of oil. It was something -to be grateful for. But the poor boy without his watch—the watch which -had marked for him the laggard minutes of captivity, the racing hours of -approaching death, the quiet, rhythmic companion and recorder of his -amazing life. - -She forced all her will power to sleep; but the blank of him there on -the infinite expanse of mattress she felt like a frost. The dawn found -her with wide and sleepless eyes. - -And while she was picturing this marvel among men standing by the -steamer’s side in the night, in communion with the clear and heavy -stars, holding in his adventurous grasp the secret of a world’s peace, -Alexis Triona was speeding northwards, sitting upright in a third-class -carriage, to Newcastle-on-Tyne. And at Newcastle he expected no ship to -take him to Finland. Lucky if he found a cab in the early morning to -take him to his destination three miles away. - -For the telegram which he had torn to pieces had not come from the War -Office. It was not written in Russian. It was in good, plain, curt -English: - -“Mother dying. Come at once.” - - - CHAPTER XIII - -A TAXICAB took him in dreary rain through the squalor of Tyneside, now -following the dismal tram lines, now cutting through mean streets, until -they reached a row of low, bow-windows agglutinated little villas with -handkerchief of garden separating them from the road. At No. 17 he -dismissed the cab and swung wide the flimsy gate. Before he could enter, -the house door opened and a woman appeared, worn and elderly, in a -cheap, soiled wrapper. - -“I suppose that’s you, John. I shouldn’t have recognized you.” - -She spoke with a harsh, northern accent, and her face betrayed little -emotion. - -“You’re Ellen,” said he. - -“Aye. I’m Ellen. You didn’t think I was Jane?” - -She led the way into a narrow passage and then into the diminutive -parlour. - -“Of course not,” said he. “Jane died three years ago. But you I haven’t -seen since I was a child.” - -She looked him up and down: “Quite the gentleman.” - -“I hope so. How’s mother?” - -She gave the news dully. The sick woman had passed through the night -safely and was now asleep. - -“She had made up her mind to see you before she died—she always was -strong willed—and that has kept her alive. Until I read your telegram I -didn’t think you would come.” - -He flashed one of his quick glances. “Why not? This isn’t the first time -I’ve come to see her since my return. If I’ve made my way in the world, -that’s no reason for you to call me undutiful.” - -“I don’t want to quarrel, John,” she said wearily. “Yes. I know about -your visits and the bit of money you send her. And she’s grateful, poor -soul.” She paused. Then: “You’ll be wanting breakfast.” - -“Also a wash.” - -“Are you too grand for the sink, or must you have hot water in your -room?” - -“The sink will do. It will be less trouble for you.” - -Alexis Triona followed her down the passage, and having washed himself -with a bit of yellow soap and dried himself on the coarse towel hung on -a stretch of string, went into the tidy kitchen, hung with cheap prints -and faded photographs of departed Briggses, his coat over his arm, and -conversed with his sister in his shirt sleeves while she fried the eggs -and bacon for his meal. His readiness to fall into the household ways -somewhat mollified her. Her mother had been full of pride in the great -man John had become, and she had expected the airs and graces of the -upstart. Living at Sunderland with her husband, a foreman riveter, and -her children, and going filially to Newcastle only once a year, she had -not met him on his previous visits. Now her mother’s illness had -summoned her three or four days before, when the neighbour’s daughter -who “did for” Mrs. Briggs, ordinarily a strong and active woman, found -the sudden situation beyond her powers and responsibility. So, until the -ailing lady discoursed to her of the paragon, she had scarcely given him -a thought for the sixteen years they had been separated. Her memories of -him as a child who alternated exasperating mischief with bone-idle fits -of reading had not endeared him to her practical mind; and when the -impish dreamer disappeared into the vast inane of foreign parts, and -when she herself was driven by she knew not what idiot romanticalism -into the grey worries of wifehood and motherhood, her consciousness -recorded the memory of a brother John, but whether he was alive or dead -or happy or miserable was a matter of illimitable unconcern. Now, -however, he had come to life, very vivid, impressing her with a certain -masterfulness in his manner which had nothing to do with the airs and -graces she despised. Yet she still regarded him with suspicion; even -when, seating himself at the roughly laid end of the kitchen table and -devouring bacon and eggs with healthy appetite, he enthusiastically -praised her cookery. - -“What I can’t understand is,” she said, standing at the other end of the -table and watching him eat, “why the name of John Briggs isn’t good -enough for you.” - -“It’s difficult to explain,” said he. “You see, I’ve written a book. -Have you read it?” - -She regarded him scornfully. “Do you suppose, with a husband and seven -children I’ve time to waste on books? I’ve seen it,” she admitted. -“Mother has it bound in brown paper, by the side of her bed.” - -“You must read it,” replied Triona, somewhat relieved. “Then you’ll see -why I’ve changed my name.” He laughed at her uncomprehending face. “I’ve -done nothing criminal, you know, and I’m not hiding from justice.” - -“I suppose an outlandish name brings in more money,” she suggested -practically. - -“That’s so,” said he. - -“Fools must be fools.” - -He acquiesced gladly, gauging the end of an embarrassing examination, -and turned the conversation to her domestic affairs. - -Breakfast over, he lit a cigarette and watched her clear away, viewing -through the smoke the memories of his childhood. Just so, in that very -wooden arm-chair, though in another kitchen, used his father to sit, -pipe in mouth, while the women did the household work. It was all so -familiar, yet so far away. Between then and now stretched a lifetime—so -it seemed—of wide and romantic happenings. There, before him, on the -wall hung, as it did years ago, the haunting coloured print, cut from -some Christmas Number, of young Amyas Leigh listening to Salvation Yeo. -As a child, Salvation Yeo’s long arm and finger pointing out to sea had -been his inspiration. He had followed it, and gone to distant lands and -gone through the promised adventures, and had returned to the picture, -wondering whether all that had been was real and not the figment of a -dream. - -A little later, after the doctor’s visit, he was admitted to his -mother’s room. For an hour or so he sat with her and gave a human being -deep happiness. In the afternoon she lost consciousness. For a day or -two she lingered on, and then she died. - -During the dreary interval between his interview and the funeral, Alexis -Triona sat for many hours in his father’s chair, for the North was -smitten with a dismal spell of rain and tempest which discouraged -rambling out of doors, reconstructing his life, unweaving fact from -fiction, tearing aside the veils of self-deception wherein he had -enwrapped his soul. Surely there was some basis of fact in the romantic -history of Alexis Triona with which for the past year he had identified -himself. Surely a man could not dwell so intensely in an imaginary life -if none of it were real. Even while tearing open veils and viewing his -soul’s nakedness, he sought justification. - -Did he not find it in that eagerness of spirit which had sent him, in -obedience to Salvation Yeo’s pointing finger, away from the dour and -narrow father and the first taste of the Tyneside works, penniless, over -the wild North Sea to Archangel, town of fairy wonders, and thence, so -as not to be caught on the ship again and taken back to Newcastle, to -wanderings he scarce knew whither? Did he not find it in the strange -lure of Russia which impelled him, when, after a few voyages, he landed -in the port of London, to procure a passport which would make him free -for the land of his fascination? Did he not find it in the -resourcefulness of brain which, the mariner’s life forsaken, first -secured him employment in the English racing establishment of a Russian -Prince, and then interested recognition by the Princess herself, so -that, after a strenuous while he found himself no longer as an -inconsiderable stable hand, but as a human being who counted in the -world? Did he not find it in his fond ambitions, when the Princess at -his request transferred him from stables to garage, from garage to -motor-works for higher training; when he set himself to learn Russian as -no Englishman should ever have learned it; when afterwards he steeped -his mind in Russian poetry and folk-lore, sleeping four or five hours a -night, compelled by dreams of greatness in which there figured as his -bride of the golden future the little Princess Tania, whose -governess-taught English was as pure as the church bells on a frosty -night? Did he not find it in those qualities of practical command of -circumstance and of poetic vision which had raised him in a few years -from the ragged, semi-ignorant, sea-faring English lout alone in Russia -to the trusted chief of a Prince’s fleet of a dozen cars, to the -courier-chauffeur, with all the roads and ways and customs and languages -of Russia, from Riga to Tobolsk, and from Tobolsk to Tiflis, and from -Tiflis to St. Petersburg, at his finger tips; to the Master of Russian -Literature, already something of a published poet, admitted into -intellectual companionship by the Prince and thereby given undreamed of -leisure for further intellectual development? What were those qualities -but the qualities of genius differentiating him from the ordinary run of -men and absolving him from such judgments as might be passed upon the -errant of them? Without this absolving genius could he have marched in -and taken his place in the modern world of English letters? - -Meanwhile, being of frugal tastes, he had grown rich beyond the dream of -the Tyneside urchin’s avarice. He had visions of great motor-works, the -manufacture of an all-Russian car, built up by his own resources. The -princely family encouraged him. Negotiations had just begun—was his -story so devoid of truth?—when the great world cataclysm brought more -than his schemes for an all-Russian car toppling to the ground. The -Prince’s household was disintegrated; horses and cars were swallowed up -in the great convulsion. - -He found himself driving generals around the shell-scarred front as a -volunteer, for being of British nationality he had not been called up -for military service. With them he served in advances and retreats and -saw battles and burnings like many millions of other men, but from the -comparative safety of a headquarters car. It was not until he ran into -the British Armoured Car Column that his patriotism took fire, and he -became a combatant in British uniform. He remained with the Column for -most of the campaign. Badly wounded towards the end, he was left in a -Russian hospital, a British naval rating. He remained there many months; -a bullet through his chest had missed a vital part and the wound had -soon healed, but his foot had gangrened, and only the star in which he -trusted had saved it from amputation. There was no fiction about the -three lost toes whose gap he had shown to Olifant. - -So far did Alexis Triona, sitting in the kitchen arm-chair, salve his -conscience. In his story had he done more than remodel the contour of -fact? Beneath it did not the living essence of truth persist? Was he not -a highly educated man? Had he not consorted—before the cataclysm, and -later in the strangely filled hospital—with the young Russian -_intelligentsia_, who talked and talked and talked——? Who could know -better than he how Russia had floundered in their tempestuous ocean of -talk? And, finally, had he not gone, stout-hearted, through the perils -and hardships and exquisite sufferings of the cataclysm? - -So far, so good. But what of the rest? For the rest, was not Fate -responsible? - -The Revolution came, and Russian organization crumbled like a castle -touched with an enchanter’s wand. He went forth healed from the hospital -into chaos; Petrograd, where his little fortune lay, his objective. -Sometimes he found a foothold on an aimless train. Sometimes he jogged -weary miles in a peasant’s cart. Sometimes he walked. When he learned -that British uniform was no longer held in high esteem he changed to -peasant’s dress. So far his journey through revolutionary Russia was -true. But he had enough money in his pocket to keep him from want. - -And then arrived the day which counted most in his life’s history, when -that which he had recounted to Olivia as a fantastic possibility -happened in sober fact. - -He had been given to understand that if he walked to a certain junction -he might find a train returning to Petrograd. Tired, he sat by the -wayside, and undoing his wallet ate the black bread and dried fish which -he had procured at the last village. And, while eating, he became aware -of something gleaming in the rank grasses of the ditch—something long -and pallid and horrible. He slid down and found a dead man, stark naked, -lying on his back with the contused mark of a bullet hole in his chest. -A man of fifty, with short-cropped, grizzled hair and moustache, and -clear, refined features. He must have been dead two days. There he lay, -constricted of limb, stripped of everything that could mean warmth or -comfort or money to his murderers. The living man’s short experience -told him that such things were not uncommon in great revolutions. He was -about to leave the corpse—for what could he do?—when his eyes caught -the glint of metal a few feet away. It was a pocket compass. And further -on he found at intervals a toothbrush; a coverless, tattered copy of -Tacitus; a little faded snapshot of a woman mounted on cardboard; a -vulcanite upper plate of half a dozen false teeth; and a little fat book -with curling covers of American cloth. Had he continued his search he -might have found many other objects discarded by the robbers as useless. -But what was the good of pieces of conviction for a judicial enquiry -that would never take place? The little fat book, which on opening he -found to be manuscript in minute handwriting, he thrust in his pocket. -And so he went his way. - -But on his way, his curiosity being aroused, he read in the little book -an absorbing diary of amazing adventures, of hardships and prison and -tortures unspeakable; and without a thought of its value, further than -its romantic fascination, he grew to regard it during his wanderings as -his most precious possession. - -So far again, until he reached Riga, there was truth in the story of his -Russian traverse. Had he not prowled suspect about revolutionary -Petrograd? Had not the Prince and Princess, the idealized parents of the -story, been murdered and their wealth, together with his own few -thousand roubles, been confiscated? Was he not a fugitive? Indeed, had -he not seen the inside of a horrible prison? It is true that after a day -or two he managed by bribery to escape. But the essence of things was -there—the grain of fact which, under the sunlight of his genius, -expanded into the splendid growth of Truth. And his wit had served him, -too. His guards were for taking away the precious book. Knowing them to -be illiterate, he declared it to be the manuscript of his republican -poem. Challenged to read, he recited from memory verses of Shevchenko, -until they were convinced, not only of the book’s contents, but of his -own revolutionary opinions. This establishment of his orthodoxy, -together with a few roubles, assured his escape. And thence had he not -gone northwards, hungry and footsore? - -And had he not been torpedoed? Cast ashore in shirt and trousers, -penniless? Was not the real truth of this adventure even more to his -credit than the fictitious narrative? For, a naval rating, he had -reported to a British man-of-war, and had spent months in a mine sweeper -in the North Sea, until the final catastrophe occurred. Then, after a -short time in hospital a kindly medical board found something wrong with -his heart and sent him out into the English world, a free man. - -Yes. His real record was one that no man need be ashamed of. Why, then, -the fiction? - -Sitting there in the uncompromising reality of his mother’s kitchen, he -strove for the first time to answer the question. He found an answer in -the obsession of the little book. During the scant leisure of his months -at sea it had been his breviary. More, it had been a talisman, a secret -scroll of enchantment which, wrapped in oilskin, never left his person, -save when, beneath the dim lamp of the fo’c’sle, he pored over it, -hunched up against a bulkhead. The spirit of the writer whom he had seen -dead and naked, seemed to have descended upon him. In the bitter watches -of the North Sea he lived through the dead man’s life with bewildering -intensity. There were times, so he assured himself, when it became a -conscious effort to unravel his own experiences from those of the dead -man. That he had not lived in remoter Kurdistan was unthinkable. And, -surely too, he had been tortured. - -And when, in the attic in Cherbury Mews, impelled by irresistible force, -he began to write his fantasia of fact and imagination, the obsession -grew mightier. His pen was winged with flame. - -“Why,” said he, half aloud, one day, staring into the kitchen fire, “why -should it not be a case of psychic obsession for which I am not -responsible?” - -And that was the most comforting solution he could find. - -There was none other. He moved uneasily, changing the crossing of his -legs, and threw a freshly rolled and lighted cigarette into the grate. -It was a case of psychic obsession. Otherwise he was a barefaced liar, a -worm to be despised by his fellow-men. How else to account for the -original lie direct, unreserved, to the publisher? Up to then he had no -thought of sailing through the world under false colours. He had to give -the mysterious dead man some identity. His own unconscious creative self -clamoured for expression. He had woven the dead man and himself into a -personality to which he had given the name of Alexis Triona. Naturally, -for verisimilitude, he had assumed “Alexis Triona” as a pen-name. -Besides, who would read a new book by one John Briggs? The publisher’s -first direct question was a blow between the eyes under which he reeled -for a few seconds. Then the romantic, the psychic, the whatever you will -of the artist’s touch of lunacy asserted itself, and John Briggs was -consumed in ashes and the Phœnix Alexis Triona arose in his stead. And -when the book appeared and the Phœnix leaped into fame, what could the -Phœnix do, for the sake of its ordinary credit, but maintain its -Phœnixdom? - -Until now it had been the simplest matter in the world, seeing that he -half believed in it himself, seeing that the identification of the dead -man with himself was so complete, that his lies, even to himself, had -the generous air of conviction. But now, in the uncompromising John -Briggs-dom of his surroundings, things were different. The obsession -which still lingered when he bade Olivia adieu had vanished from his -spirit. He saw himself naked, a mere impostor. If his past found -absolution in the theory of psychic domination, his present was none the -less in a parlous state. - -He had no more gone to Helsingfors in the last year’s autumn than he had -gone there now. What should John Briggs, obscure and demobilized able -seaman, have to do in Helsingfors? Why the elaborate falsehood? He -shrugged his shoulders and made a helpless gesture with his elbows. The -obsession again. The quietude of Medlow had got on his nerves. He had to -break away, to seek fresh environment. He had invented Helsingfors; it -was dramatic, in his romantic past; it kept up, in the direct mind of -Blaise Olifant, the mystery of Alexis Triona; and it gave him freedom. -He had spoken truth as to his vagabond humour. He loved the eternal -change of the broad highway. The Salvation Yeo inspiration had persisted -ever since he had run away from home to the El Dorado beyond the seas. -Had he been set down in a torpid household, no matter how princely, -sooner or later he would have revolted and have fled, smitten with the -wander madness. But the Prince, the nomadic Tartar atavism asserting -itself, suffered too much from this unrest; and in their mighty -journeyings through Russia, up and down, north and south, east and west, -and in the manifold adventures and excitements by the way, the young -chief mechanic found the needful satisfaction of his cravings. On -leaving Medlow he had started on a tramp, knapsack on back, to the north -of Scotland, stopping at his mother’s house, _en route_, and had reached -the John o’ Groats whither, on an eventful day, Olivia had professed -herself ready to accompany him. She had little guessed how well he knew -that long, long road. . . . Yet, when he met Blaise Olifant again, and -was forced to vague allusion to his mythical travels, he almost -persuaded himself that he had just arrived from Finland. - -But now had come an irreparable shifting of psychological values. He -could not return to Olivia, eating her heart out for news of him, and -persuade himself that he had been to Helsingfors. The lie had been -facile enough. How else to account for his absence? His attendance at -his mother’s death-bed had been imperative: to disregard the summons had -never entered his mind. Yet simple avowal would have been pulling down -the keystone of the elaborate structure which, to her, represented -Alexis Triona. The parting lie had been easy: but the lie on his -return—the inevitable fabrication of imaginary travel—that would be -hatefully difficult. For the first time since he had loved her he was -smitten with remorse for his deception and with terror of her discovery. - -He could not sleep of nights aching for her, shivering with dread at the -possibility of loss of her, picturing her alone in the sweet, wind-swept -house, utterly trustful and counting the long hours till he should come -again. Still, thank God, this was the last time they would be parted. -His mother had been the only link to his John Briggs past. - -There were no testamentary complications, which he had somewhat feared. -His mother had only a life interest in the tiny estate which went, under -his father’s will, to his sister Ellen. And Ellen did not count. -Absorbed in her family cares, she would pass out of his life for ever -without thought of regret. It would be the final falsehood. - -At breakfast, on the morning of the funeral, Ellen said suddenly, in her -dour way: - -“I’ve been reading your book. It’s a pack of lies.” - -“It would have been if I had signed it John Briggs,” he answered. “But -everything in it is true about Alexis Triona.” - -“Your ways don’t seem to be our ways, John,” she remarked coldly. - -He felt the words like a slap in the face. He flushed with anger. - -“How dare you?” - -“I’m sorry,” she answered. “I oughtn’t to have said it with mother lying -cold upstairs.” - -He shrugged his shoulders, forced to accept the evasive apology. But her -challenge rankled. They parted stonily after the funeral, with the -perfunctory handshake. - -“I don’t suppose I shall ever see you again.” - -“It’s rather unlikely,” said he. - -“Well, good-bye.” - -“Good-bye.” - -He threw himself back in the taxi-cab with a great sigh of relief. Thank -God the nightmare of the past few days was over. Now to awaken to the -real and wonderful things of life—the miraculous love of the dark-eyed, -quivering princess of his dreams: the work which since he had loved her -had grown into the sacred aim of their perfect lives. - -And just as he had wired her from Newcastle announcing his sailing, so -did he wire her when he reached the railway station. - -“Arrived. All well. Speeding straight to you with love and longing.” - -Olivia smiled as she kissed the telegram. No one but her Alexis would -have used the word “speeding.” - - - CHAPTER XIV - -SHE was waiting for him at the little South Coast station, where decorum -had to cloak the rapture of their meeting. But they sat close together, -hand in hand, in the hackney motor-car that took them home. This gave -him an intermediary breathing space for explanation; and the explanation -was easier than he had feared. Really, his journey had been almost for -nothing and had afforded little interest. The agent whom he was to -interview having been summoned back to Russia the day before he arrived, -he had merely delivered his dispatches to the British authorities and -taken the next boat to England. It was just a history of two dull sea -voyages. Nothing more was to be said about it, save that he would go on -no more fool’s errands for a haphazard government. - -“Besides, it’s too dreadful to be away from you.” - -“It has been awful for me, too,” said Olivia. “I never imagined what -real loneliness could feel like. All the time I thought of the poor -solitary little dab the Bryce children showed us the other day in the -biscuit-tin of water. Oh, I was the most forsaken little dab.” - -He swore that she should never be lonely again; and, by the time they -reached their house by the sea, he had half-exultingly dismissed his -fictitious mission from his mind. All the apprehensions of the narrow -Northern kitchen melted in the joy of her. All danger had vanished like -a naughty black cloud sped to nothing by the sun. The mythical past had -to remain; but henceforward his life would be as clear to her as her own -exquisite life to him. - -In their wind-swept home they gave themselves up to deferred raptures, -kissing and laughing after the foolish way of lovers. To grace his -return she had filled the rooms with flowers—roses and sweet -peas—which she bought extravagantly in the neighbouring seaside town. -The scent of them mingled delicately with the salt of the sea. To her -joy he was quick to praise them. She had wondered whether they would be -noticed by one so divinely careless of material things. He even found -delight in the meal which Myra served soon after their arrival—he so -indifferent to quality of food. - -“Everything is you,” said he; “scent and taste and sight. You inform the -universe and give it meaning.” - -Her eyes grew moist as she swiftly laid her hand on his. - -“Am I really all that to you?” She laughed with a little catch in her -throat. “How can I live up to it?” - -He raised her hand to his lips. “If only you went on existing like a -flower, your beauty and fragrance would be all in all to me. But you are -a flower with a bewildering soul. So you merely have to be as you are.” - -He was in earnest. Women had played little or no part in his inner life, -which, for all his follies, had been lived on a spiritual plane. His -young ambitions had been irradiated by dreams of the little Princess -Tania, who had represented to him the ever-to-be-striven-for -unattainable. On his reaching the age when common sense put its clammy -touch on fervid imagination, the little Princess had been given away in -marriage to a young Russian nobleman of vast fortune, and he himself had -driven her to the wedding with naught but a sentimental pang. But the -flower-like, dancing, elusive quality of her had remained in his soul as -that which was only desirable and ever to be sought for in woman. -And—miracle of miracles!—he had found it in Olivia. And she was warm -and real, the glowing incarnation of the cold but perfect ghost of his -boyhood’s aspirations. She was verily the Princess of his dream come -true. And she had an odd air of the little Princess Tania—the same -dark, wavy hair and laughing eyes and the same crisp sweetness in her -English speech. - -Save for all this rapture of meeting, they took up the thread of their -lives where it had been broken, as though no parting had taken place, -and their idyll continued to run its magic course. Triona began to write -again: some articles, a short story. The shadow shape of a new novel -arose in his mind, and, in his long talks with Olivia, gradually -attained coherence. This process of creation seemed to her uncanny. -Where did the people come from who at first existed as formless spirits -and then, in some strange way, developed into living things of flesh and -blood more real than the actual folk of her acquaintance? Her intimate -association with the novelist’s gift brought her nearer to him -intellectually, but at the same time set him spiritually on unattainable -heights. Meanwhile he called her his Inspiration, which filled her with -pride and content. - -The lease of “Quien Sabe” all but expired before they had settled on -their future house. Medlow was ruled out. So was the immediate question -of the Medlow furniture, they having given Blaise Olifant another year’s -tenancy. - -While discussing this step, he had said: - -“It’s for you and you only to decide. Any spot on earth where you are is -good enough for me. By instinct I’m a nomad. If I hadn’t found you, I -should have gone away somewhere to the desert and lived in tents.” - -Olivia, who had seen so little of the great world, felt a thrill of -pulses and put her hands on his shoulders—she was standing behind his -chair— - -“Why shouldn’t we?” - -He shook his head and glanced up at her. The way of the gipsy was too -hard for his English flower. She must dwell in her accustomed garden. In -practical terms, they must settle down for her sake. She protested. Of -herself she had no thought. He and his work were of paramount -importance. Had they not planned the ideal study, the central feature of -the house? He had laughed and mangled Omar. A pen and a block of paper -. . . and Thou beside me, etcetera, etcetera. - -“I don’t believe you want to settle down a bit,” she cried. - -He swung his chair and caught her round her slim body. - -“Do you?” - -“Eventually, of course——” - -“But, before ‘eventually,’ don’t you want your wander-year?” - -“France, Italy——” She became breathless. - -“Honolulu, the Pacific, the wide world. Why should we tie ourselves to a -house until we have seen it all?” - -“Yes, why? We have all our lives before us.” She sank on his knee. “How -beautiful! Let us make plans.” - -So for the next few days they lived in a world of visions, catching -enthusiasm one from the other. Again he saw Salvation Yeo’s pointing -finger; and she, in the subconscious relation of her mind with his, saw -it too. House and furniture were Olifant’s as long as he wanted them. - -“We’ll go round the world,” Olivia declared. - -With a twirl of his finger—“Right round,” said he. - -“Which way does one go?” - -He was somewhat vague. An atlas formed no part of their personal -equipment or of the hireling penates of “Quien Sabe.” - -“I’ll write to Cook’s.” - -“Cook’s? My beloved, where is your sense of adventure?” - -“We must go by trains and steamers, and Cook’s will tell us all about -them.” - -She had her way. Cook’s replied. At the quotation for the minimum -aggregate of fares Alexis gasped. - -“There’s not so much money in the world.” - -“There is,” she flashed triumphantly. “On deposit at my bank. Much -more.” - -Who was right now, she asked herself, she or the prosaic Mr. Trivett and -Mr. Fenmarch? She only had to dip her hands into her fortune and -withdraw them filled with bank-notes enough to take them half a dozen -times round the world! - -Inspired by this new simplicity of things, they rushed up to London by -an incredibly early train to take tickets, then and there for the main -routes which circumnavigate the globe. The man at Cook’s dashed their -ardour. They would have to pencil their passages now and wait for months -until their turn on the waiting lists arrived. - -It must be remembered that then were the early days of Peace. - -“But we want to start next week!” cried Olivia in dismay. - -The young man at Cook’s professed polite but wearied sorrow at her -disappointment. Forty times a day he had to disillusion eager souls who -wanted to start next week for the other side of the globe. - -“It is most inconvenient and annoying for us to change our plans,” -Olivia declared resentfully. “But,” she added, with a smile, “it’s not -your fault that the world is a perfect beast. We’ll talk it over and -come to you again.” - -So after lunch in town they returned to The Point, richer in their -knowledge of the conditions of contemporary world travel. - -“We’ll put things in hand at once and start about Christmas,” said -Alexis. “Until then——” - -“We’ll take a furnished flat in London,” Olivia decided. - - * * * * * - -October found them temporarily settled in a flat in the Buckingham -Palace Road, and then began the life which Olivia had schemed for her -husband before these disturbing dreams of vagabondage. - -Towards the end of their stay in “Quien Sabe” various letters of enquiry -and invitations had been forwarded to Triona from people, back now in -London, with whom the success of his book had brought him into contact. -These, careless youth, he had been for ignoring, but the wiser Olivia -had stepped in and dictated tactful and informative replies. The result -was their welcome in many houses remote from the Lydian galley, the -Blenkiron home of Bolshevism and even the easy conservative dullness of -the circle of Janet Philimore. The world that danced and ate and dressed -and thought and felt to the unvarying rhythm of jazz music had passed -away like a burnt-up planet. The world which she entered with her -husband was astonishingly new with curious ramifications. At the houses -of those whose cultivated pleasure in life it is to bring together -people worthy of note she met artists, novelists, journalists, actors, -publishers, politicians, travellers, and their respective wives or -husbands. Jealously, at first, she watched the attitude of all these -folk towards her husband: in pride and joy she saw him take his easy -place among them as an equal. A minority of silly women flattered -him—to his obvious distaste—but the majority accepted him on frank and -honourable terms. She loved to watch him, out of the corner of her eye, -across the drawing-room, his boyish face flushed and eager, talking in -his swift, compelling way. His manners, so simple, so direct, so -different from the elaboration of Sidney Rooke, even from the -cut-and-dried convention of Mauregard, had a charm entirely individual. -There was no one like him in the world. - -In their turn, many of the people of note they met at the houses of the -primary entertainers invited them to their homes. Thus, in a brief time, -Olivia found herself swept into as interesting a social circle as the -heart of ambitious young woman could crave. How far her own grace and -wit contributed to their success it never entered her head to enquire. - -Triona, light-hearted, gave himself up to the pleasure of this new -existence. He found in it stimulus to work, being in touch with the -thought and the art of the moment. The newness of his Odyssey having -worn off, he was no longer compelled to dilate on his extraordinary -adventures; people, growing unconsciously impatient of the realistic -details of the late cataclysm, conspired to regard him more as a writer -than as a heroic personage; wherein he experienced mighty relief. He -could talk of other things than the habits of the dwellers round Lake -Baikal and the amenities of Bolshevik prisons. When conversation drifted -into such channels, he employed a craftiness of escape which he had -amused himself to develop. Freed from the obsession of the little black -book, he regarded his Russian life as a phase remote, as a tale that was -told. His facile temperament put the whole matter behind him. He lived -for the future, when he should be the acknowledged English Master of -Romance, and when Olivia’s burning faith in his genius should be -justified. He threw off memories of Ellen and the kitchen chair and went -his way, a man radiant with happiness. Each day intensified the wonder -of his wife. From the lips and from the writings of fools and -philosophers he had heard of the perils of the first year of marriage; -of the personal equations that seemed impossible of simultaneous -solution; of the misunderstandings, cross-purposes, quarrels inevitable -to the attempt; of the hidden snags of feminine unreason that -shipwrecked logical procedure; of the love-rasping persistence of tricks -of manner or speech which either had to be violently broken or to be -endured in suffering sullenness. At both fools and philosophers he -mocked. A fiction, this dogma of inescapable sex warfare. Never for a -second had a cloud arisen on their horizon. The flawlessness of Olivia -he accepted as an axiom. Equally axiomatic was his own faultiness. In -their daily lives he was aware of his thousand lapses from her standard -of grace, when John Briggs happened to catch Alexis Triona at unguarded -moments and threw him from his seat. But, in a flash, the instinctive, -the super-instinctive, the nothing less than Divine hand, was stretched -out to restore him to his throne. As a guide to conduct she became his -conscience. - -Work and love and growing friendship filled his care-free days. His -novel was running serially in a weekly and attracting attention. It -would be published in book-form early in the New Year, and the -publishers had no doubt of its success. All was well with the world. - -Meanwhile they concerned themselves busily, like happy children, with -their projects of travel. It was a great step to book berths for Bombay -by a January boat. They would then cross India, visit Burmah, the -Straits Settlements, Australia, Japan, America. All kinds of Companies -provided steamers; Providence would procure the accommodation. They -planned a detailed six months’ itinerary which would take a -conscientious globe-trotter a couple of years to execute. Before -launching on this eastern voyage they would wander at their ease through -France, see Paris and Monte Carlo, and pick up the boat at Marseilles. -As the year drew to its close their excitement waxed more unrestrained. -They babbled to their envious friends of the wonder-journey before them. - -Blaise Olifant, who, on his periodical visits to London, was a welcome -visitor at their flat, was entertained with these anticipations of -travel. He listened with the air of elderly indulgence that had been his -habit since their marriage. - -“Don’t you wish you were coming with us?” asked Olivia. - -He shook his head. “Don’t you remember the first time I saw you I said I -was done with adventures?” - -“And I said I was going in search of them.” - -“So you’re each getting your heart’s desire,” said Triona. - -“Yes, I suppose so,” replied Olifant, with a smile. - -There was a touch of sadness in it which did not escape Olivia’s shrewd -glance. He had grown thinner during the year; his nose seemed -half-comically to have grown sharper and longer. In his eyes dwelt a -shadow of wistful regret. - -“The life of a hermit cabbage isn’t good for you,” she said. “Give it up -and come with us.” - -Again he shook his head. No. They did not want such a drag on the wheels -of their joyous chariot. Besides, he was tied to Medlow as long as she -graciously allowed him to live there. His sister had definitely left her -dissolute husband and was living under his protection. - -“You should be living under the protection of a wife,” Olivia declared. -“I’ve told you so often, haven’t I?” - -“And I’ve always answered that bachelors are born, not made—and I’m one -born.” - -“Predestination! Rubbish!” cried Triona, rising with a laugh. “Your -Calvinistic atavism is running away with you. It’s time for your -national antidote. I’ll bring it in.” - -He went out of the room, in his boyish way, in search of whisky. Olivia -leaned forward in her chair. - -“You may not know it, but from that first day a year ago you made -yourself a dear friend—so you’ll forgive me if I——” She paused for a -second, and went on abruptly: “You’ve changed. Now and then you look so -unhappy. I wish I could help you.” - -He laughed. “It’s very dear of you to think of me, Lady Olivia—but the -change is not in me. I’ve remained the same. It’s your eyes that have -grown so accustomed to the radiant gladness of a happy man that they -expect the same in any old fossil on the beach.” - -“Now you make me feel utterly selfish,” she cried. - -“How?” - -“We oughtn’t to look so absurdly happy. It’s indecent.” - -“But it does one good,” said he. - -Triona entered with the tray, and administered whisky and soda to his -guest. - -“There! When you’ve drunk it you’ll be ready to come to the Magical -Isles with us, where the Lady of Ladies awaits you in an enchanted -valley, with hybiscus in her hair.” - -The talk grew light, drifted inevitably into the details of their -projected wanderings. The evening ended pleasantly. Olivia bade Olifant -farewell, promising, as he would not go in search of her himself, to -bring him back the perfect lady of the hybiscus crown. Triona -accompanied him to the landing; and, while they stood awaiting the lift, -Olifant said casually: - -“I suppose you’ve got your passports?” - -“Passports?” The young man knitted his brow in some surprise. “Why, of -course. That’s to say, I’ve not bothered about them yet, but they’ll be -all right. Why do you ask?” - -“You’re Russian subjects. There may be difficulties. If there are, I -know a man in the Foreign Office who may be of help.” - -The lift rose and the gates clashed open, and the attendant came out. - -“Thanks very much,” said Triona. “It’s awfully good of you.” - -They shook hands, wished each other God-speed, and the cage went down, -leaving Triona alone on the landing, gaping across the well of the lift. - -He was aroused from a semi-stupor by Olivia’s voice at the flat door. - -“What on earth are you doing, darling?” - -He realized that he must have been there some appreciable time. He -turned with a laugh. - -“I was interested in the mechanism of the lift; it has so many -possibilities in fiction.” - -She laughed. “Think of them to-morrow. It’s time for good little -novelists to go to bed.” - -But that night, while Olivia, blissfully unconscious of trouble, slept -the happy sleep of innocence Alexis Triona did not close an eye. - -Passports! He had not given them a thought. Any decent person was -entitled to a passport. In the plenitude of his English content he had -forgotten his fictitious Russian citizenship. To attest or even to -support this claim there was no creature on God’s earth. The details of -his story of the torpedoed Swedish timber boat in which he had taken -refuge would not bear official examination. Application for passport -under the name of Alexis Triona, soi-disant Russian subject, would -involve an investigation leading to inevitable exposure. His civic -status was that of John Briggs, late naval rating. He had all his papers -jealously locked up, together with the little black notebook, in his -despatch case. As John Briggs, British subject, he was freeman of the -civilized world. But John Briggs was dead and done for. It was -impossible to wander over the globe as Alexis Triona with a passport -bearing the name of John Briggs. He would be held up and turned back at -any frontier. And it was beyond his power of deception to induce Olivia -to travel with him round the world under the incognito of Mrs. John -Briggs. - -Rigid, so that he should not wake the beloved woman, he stared for hours -and hours into the darkness, vainly seeking a solution. And there was -none. - -He might blind Olivia into the postponement of their adventure, and in -the meanwhile change his name by deed poll. But that would involve the -statutory publicity in the Press. The declaration in _The Times_ that -he, John Briggs, would henceforth take the name of Alexis Triona would -stultify him in the social and literary world—and damn him in the eyes -of Olivia. - -In those early days after the War, the Foreign Office granted passports -grudgingly. British subjects had to show very adequate reasons for -desiring to go abroad, and foreign visas were not over-readily given. In -the process of obtaining a passport, a man’s identity had to be -established beyond question. - -He remembered now having heard vague talk of spies; but he had paid no -attention to it. Now he realized that which he had heard was cruelly -definite. - -There was no solution. John Briggs was dead, and Alexis Triona had no -official existence. - -He could not get as far as Boulogne, let alone Japan. And there was -Olivia by his side dreaming of the Fortunate Isles. - - - CHAPTER XV - -BUT for Olivia’s unquestioning faith in him he would not have pulled -through this passport quagmire. At every fresh lie he dreaded lest her -credulity should reach the breaking point. For he had to lie once -more—and this time with revulsion and despair. - -He began the abominable campaign the next evening after dinner. He had -been absent all day, on the vague plea of business. In reality he had -walked through London and wandered about the docks, Ratcliffe Highway, -the Isle of Dogs. He had returned physically and spiritually worn out. -Her solicitude smote him. It was nothing. A little worry which the sight -of her would dispel. They dined and went into the drawing-room. She sat -on the arm of his chair. - -“And now the worry, poor boy. Anything I can do?” - -He stared into the fire. “It’s our trip.” - -“Why, what has gone wrong?” - -“Everything,” he groaned. - -“But, darling!” She gripped his shoulder. “What do you mean?” - -“I’m afraid it’s a beautiful dream, my dear. We must call it off.” - -She uttered a breathless “Why?” - -“It’s far beyond our means.” - -She broke into her gay laugh and hugged him and called him a silly -fellow. Hadn’t they settled all that side of it long ago? Her fingers -were itching to draw cheques. She had scarcely put pen to pink paper -since their marriage. Hadn’t he insisted on supporting her? - -“And I’ll go on insisting,” said he. “I’m not the man to live on my -wife’s money. No, no——” with uplifted hand he checked her generous -outburst. “I know what you’re going to say, sweetheart, but it can’t be -done. I was willing for you to advance a certain amount. But I would -have paid it back—well, I would have accepted it if it gave you -pleasure. Anyhow, things are different now. Suddenly different.” - -He writhed under the half-truths, the half-sincerities he was speaking. -In marrying her his conscience absolved him of fortune seeking. It had -been the pride of his Northumbrian blood to maintain his wife as she -should be maintained, out of his earnings—this draft on her fortune for -the jaunt he had made up a Tyneside mind to repay. Given the passport, -the whole thing was as simple as signing a cheque. But no passports to -be given, he had to lie. How else, in God’s name, to explain? - -“My dear,” said he, in answer to her natural question, “there’s one -thing about myself I’ve not told you. It has seemed quite unimportant. -In fact, I had practically forgotten it. But this is the story. During -my last flight through Russia a friend, one of the old Russian nobility, -gave me shelter. He was in hiding, dressed as a peasant. His wife and -children had escaped the Revolution and were, he was assured, in -England. He entrusted me with a thousand pounds in English bank-notes -which he had hidden in a scapulary hanging round his neck, and which I -was to give to his family on my arrival. I followed his example and hung -the few paper roubles I had left, together with his money, round my -neck. As you know, I was torpedoed. I was hauled out of the water in -shirt and drawers, and landed penniless. The string of the scapulary had -broken, and all the money was at the bottom of the North Sea. I went to -every conceivable Russian agency in London to get information about the -Vronsky family. There was no trace of them. I came to the conclusion -that they had never landed in England, and to-day I found I was right. -They hadn’t. They had disappeared off the face of the earth.” - -“To-day?” queried Olivia. - -“This morning. I had a letter from Vronsky forwarded by the publishers.” - -“Why didn’t you tell me?” cried Olivia. “I had an idea you weren’t quite -yourself.” - -“I didn’t want to worry you without due reason,” he explained, “and I -was upset. It was like a message from the dead. For, not having heard of -him all this time, I concluded he had perished, like so many others, at -the hands of the Bolsheviks. Anyhow, there he was alive in a little -hotel in Bloomsbury. Of course, I had to go and rout him out.” - -“Naturally,” said Olivia. - -“Well, I found him. He had managed to escape, with the usual -difficulties, and was now about to search Europe for his family.” - -“What a terrible quest,” said Olivia, with a shudder. - -“Yes. It’s awful, isn’t it?” replied Triona in a voice of deep -feeling—already half beginning himself to believe in the genuineness of -his story—“I spent a heart-rending day with him. He had expected to -find his family in England.” - -“But you wrote to him——” - -“Of course. But how many letters to Russia reach their destination? -Their letters, too, have miscarried or been seized. He hadn’t had news -of them since they left Petrograd.” - -Carried away by the tragedy of this Wandering Jew hunt for a lost -family, Olivia forgot the reason for its recital. She questioned, Triona -responded, his picturesque invention in excited working. He etched in -details. Vronsky’s declension from the ruddy, plethoric gentleman, with -good-humoured Tartar face, to the gaunt, hollow-eyed grey-beard, with -skinny fingers on which the nails grew long. The gentle charm of the -lost Madame Vronsky and the beauty of her two young daughters, Vera and -Sonia. The faithful moujik who had accompanied them on their way and -reported that they had sailed on the _Olger Danske_ from Copenhagen for -London. He related their visit to Lloyds, where they had learned that no -such ship was known. Certainly at the time of the supposed voyage it had -put into no British port. Vronsky was half mad. No wonder. - -“Why did you leave him? Why didn’t you bring him here?” asked Olivia, -her eyes all pity and her lips parted. - -“I asked him. He wouldn’t come. He must begin his search at once—take -ship for Denmark. . . . Meanwhile, dearest,” he said after a pause, -“being practically without resources, he referred to his thousand -pounds. That’s where you and I come in. He entrusted me with the money -and the accident of losing it could not relieve me of the -responsibility—could it?” - -He glanced a challenge. Her uprightness waved it aside. - -“Good heavens, no!” - -“Well, I took him to my bank and gave him the thousand pounds in Bank of -England notes. So, my dear, we’re all that to the bad on our balance -sheet. We’re nearly broke—and we’ll have to put off our trip round the -world to more prosperous times.” - -Although, womanlike, she tried at first to kick against the pricks, -parading the foolish fortune lying idle at the bank, that was the end of -the romantic project. Her common sense asserted itself. A thousand -pounds, for folks in their position, was a vast sum of money. She -resigned herself with laughing grace to the inevitable, and poured on -her husband all the consolation for disappointment that her heart could -devise. Their pleasant life went on. Deeply interested in Vronsky, she -questioned him from time to time. Had he no news of the tragic wanderer? -At last, in February, he succumbed to the temptation to finish for ever -with these Frankenstein monsters. He came home one afternoon, and after -kissing her said with a gay air: - -“I found a letter at Decies Street”—the house of his publishers—“from -whom do you think? From Vronsky. Just a few lines. He tracked his family -to Palermo and they’re all as happy as can be. How he did it he doesn’t -say, which is disconcerting, for one would like to know the ins and outs -of his journeyings. But there’s the fact, and now we can wipe Vronsky -off our slate.” - -In March the novel appeared. Reviewers lauded it enthusiastically as a -new note in fiction. - -The freshness of subject, outlook, and treatment appealed to the vastly -superior youth, the disappointed old, and the scholarly and -conscientious few, who write literary criticism. The great firm of -publishers smiled urbanely. Repeat orders on a gratifying scale poured -in every day. Triona took Olivia to Decies Street to hear from -publishing lips the splendid story. They went home in a taxi-cab, their -arms around each other, intoxicated with the pride of success and the -certainty of their love. And the next day Olivia said: - -“If we can’t go round the world, at any rate let us have a holiday. Let -us go to Paris. We can afford it.” - -And Triona, who for months had foreseen such a reasonable proposal, -replied: - -“I wish we could. I’ve been dreaming of it for a long time. In fact—I -didn’t tell you—but I went to the Foreign Office a fortnight ago.” - -She wrinkled her brow. - -“What’s the Foreign Office got to do with it?” - -“They happen to regard me as an exceptional man, my dearest,” said he. -“I’m still in the Secret Service. I tried last summer to get out of -it—but they overpersuaded me, promising not to worry me unduly. One -can’t refuse to serve one’s country at a pinch, can one?” - -“No. But why didn’t you tell me?” - -She felt hurt at being left out in the cold. She also had a sudden fear -of the elusiveness of this husband of hers, hero of so many strange -adventures and interests that years would not suffice for their complete -revelation. She remembered the dug-up Vronsky romance, in itself one -that might supply the ordinary human being with picturesque talk for a -lifetime. And now she resented this continued association with the -Foreign Office which he thought he had severed on his return from -Finland. - -“I never imagined they would want me again, after what I told them. But -it seems they do. You know the state of things in Russia. Well—they may -send me or they may not. At any rate, for the next few months I am not -to leave the country.” - -“I call that idiotic,” cried Olivia indignantly. “They could get at you -in Paris just as easily as they could in London.” - -“They’ve got the whip hand, confound them,” replied Triona. “They grant -or refuse passports.” - -“The Foreign Office is a beast!” said Olivia. “I’d like to tell them -what I think of them.” - -“Do,” said he with a laugh, “but don’t tell anybody else.” - -She believed him. He breathed again. The difficulty was over for the -present. Meanwhile he called himself a fool for not having given her -this simple explanation months ago. Why had he racked his conscience -with the outrageous fiction of the Vronskys? - -About this time, too, in her innocence, she raised the question of his -technical nationality. It was absurd for him to continue to be a Russian -subject. A son of English parents, surely he could easily be -naturalized. He groaned inwardly at this fresh complication, and cursed -the name of Triona. He put her off with vague intentions. One of these -days . . . there was no great hurry. She persisted. - -“It’s so unlike you,” she declared, uncomprehending. “You who do things -so swiftly and vividly.” - -“I must have some sort of papers establishing my identity,” he -explained. “My word won’t do. We must wait till there’s a settled -government in Russia to which I can apply. I know it’s an unsatisfactory -position for both; but it can’t be helped.” He smiled wearily. “You -mustn’t reproach me.” - -“Reproach you—my dearest——?” - -The idea shocked her. She only had grown impatient of the intangible -Russian influences that checked his freedom of action. Sometimes she -dreaded them, not knowing how deep or how sinister they might be. Secret -agents were sometimes mysteriously assassinated. He laughed at her -fears. But what else, she asked herself, could he do but laugh? She was -not reassured. - -The naturalization question settled for an indefinite time, he felt once -more in clear water. Easter came and went. - -“If I don’t move about a little, I shall die,” he said. - -“Let us move about a lot,” said Olivia. “Let us hire a car and race -about Great Britain.” - -He waxed instantly enthusiastic. She was splendid. Always the audacious -one. A car—a little high-powered two-seater. Just they two together. -Free of the high road! If they could find no lodgings at inns they could -sleep beneath the hedges. They would drive anywhere, losing their way, -hitting on towns with delicious unexpectancy. The maddest motor tour -that was ever unplanned. - -In the excitement of the new idea, the disappointment over the -prohibited foreign travel vanished from their hearts. Once more they -contemplated their vagabondage, with the single-mindedness of children. - -“We’ll start to-morrow,” he declared. - -“To-morrow evening is the Rowingtons’ dinner-party,” Olivia reminded -him. - -He confounded Rowington and his dinner-party. Why not send a telegram -saying he was down with smallpox? He hated literary dinner-parties. Why -should he make an ass of himself in a lion’s skin—just to gratify the -vanity of a publisher? Olivia administered the required corrective. - -“Isn’t it rather a case of the lion putting on an ass’s skin, my dear? -Of course we must go.” - -He laughed. “I suppose we must. Anyway, we’ll start the day after. I’ll -see about the car in the morning.” - -He went out immediately after breakfast, and in a couple of hours -returned radiant. He was in luck, having found the high-powered -two-seater of his dreams. He overwhelmed her with enthusiastic -technicalities. - -“You beloved infant,” said Olivia. - -But before they could set out in this chariot of force and speed, -something happened. It happened at the dinner-party given by Rowington, -the active partner in the great publishing house, in honour of their -twice-proved successful author. - -The Rowingtons lived in a mansion at the southern end of Portland Place. -It had belonged to his father and grandfather before him and the house -was filled with inherited and acquired treasures. On entering, Triona -had the same sense of luxurious comfort as on that far-off day of the -first interview in Decies Street, when his advancing foot stepped so -softly on the thick Turkey carpet. A manservant relieved him of his coat -and hat, a maid took Olivia for an instant into a side-room whence she -reappeared bare-necked, bare-armed, garbed, as her husband whispered, in -cobweb swept from Heaven’s rafters. A manservant at the top of the -stairs announced them. Mrs. Rowington, thin, angular, pince-nez’d, and -Rowington, middle-aged, regarding the world benevolently through gold -spectacles, received them and made the necessary introduction to those -already present. There was a judge of the High Court, a well-known -novelist, a beautiful and gracious woman whom Olivia, with a little -catch of the heart, recognized as the Lady Aintree who had addressed a -passing word of apology to her in the outgoing theatre crush in the -first week of her emancipation. She envied Alexis who stood in talk with -her. She herself was trying to correlate the young and modern bishop, in -plum-coloured evening dress, with the billow of lawn semi-humanized by a -gaunt staring head and a pair of waxen hands which had gone through the -dimly comprehended ritual of her confirmation. - -He explained his presence in this brilliant assembly on the ground that -once he had written an obscure book of travels in Asia Minor. St. Paul’s -steps retraced. He had fought with beasts at Ephesus—but not of the -kind to which the apostle was presumed to refer; disgusting little -beasts! He also swore “By Jove!” which she was sure her confirming -bishop would never have done. - -A while later, as the room was filling up, she found herself talking to -a Colonel Onslow, an authority on Kurdistan, said her hostess, who was -anxious to meet her husband. She glanced around, her instinctive habit, -to place Alexis. He had been torn from Lady Aintree and was standing -just behind her by the chimney-piece in conversation with a couple of -men. His eyes caught the message of love in hers and telegraphed back -again. - -He no longer confounded Rowington. The central figure of this -distinguished gathering, he glowed with the divine fire of success. He -was talking to two elderly men on Russian folk literature. On that he -was an authority. He knew the inner poignancy of every song, the bitter -humour of every tale. Speaking sober truth about Russia he forgot that -he had ever lied. - -Suddenly into the little open space about the hearth emerged from the -throng, a brisk, wiry man with a keen, clean-shaven, weather-beaten -face, who, on catching sight of Triona, paused for a startled second and -then darted up to him with outstretched hand; and Triona, taken off his -guard, made an eager step to meet him. - -If, for two days, you have faced death alone with a man who has given -every proof of indomitable courage and cheerfulness, your heart has an -abominable way of leaping when suddenly, years afterwards, you are -brought with him face to face. - -“You are Briggs! I knew I was right. Fancy running up against you here!” - -Triona’s cheeks burned hot. The buried name seemed to be shrieked to the -listening universe. At any rate, Olivia heard; and instinctively she -drifted from the side of Colonel Onslow towards Alexis. - -“It’s a far cry from Russia,” he said. - -“Yes, and a far cry from the lower deck of an armoured car,” laughed the -other. “Well, I am glad to see you. God knows what has happened to the -rest of us. I’ve been one of the lucky ones. Got a ship soon afterwards. -Retired now. Farming. Living on three pigs and a bee. And you”—he -clapped him on the shoulder—“you look flourishing. I used to have an -idea there was something behind you.” - -It was then that Triona became conscious of Olivia at his elbow. He put -on a bold face and laughed in his careless way. - -“I have my wife behind me. My dear—this is Captain Wedderburn. We met -in Russia.” - -“We did more than meet, by George!” cried Wedderburn breezily. “We were -months together in the Column——” - -“What Column?” asked Olivia, puzzled. - -“The Armoured Car Column. I forget what the humour of war rated him as. -Able Seaman, I think. I was Lieutenant then. It was a picnic, I assure -you. And there were the days—he and I alone together—I’ll never forget -’em—we got cut off—but he has told you all about it.” - -“No.” - -“My dear Mrs. Briggs——” - -“Pardon me,” Alexis interrupted hastily. “But that’s not my name. It was -literally a _nom de guerre_. My real name is Triona.” - -“Eh?” Wedderburn put his hands on his narrow hips and stared at him. -“The famous chap I was asked to meet to-night? Mrs. Triona, your husband -is a wonderful fellow. The months that were the most exciting time in my -life, anyhow, he hasn’t thought it worth while mentioning in his book. -And yet”—his keen eyes swept like searchlights over the other’s -face—“you were knocked out. I remember the day. And you must have been -a long time in hospital. How the deuce did you manage to work everything -in?” - -“I was only scratched,” said Triona. “A week or two afterwards I was -back in the Russian service.” - -“I see,” said Wedderburn with unexpected frostiness. - -He turned to greet a woman of his acquaintance standing near, and -husband and wife were left for a few seconds alone. - -“You never told me about serving with the British forces.” - -“It was just an interlude,” said he. - -The hostess came up and manœuvred them apart. Dinner was announced. The -company swept downstairs. Olivia sat between her host and Colonel -Onslow, Lady Aintree opposite, and next her, Captain Wedderburn. For the -first time in her married life Olivia suffered vague disquiet as to her -husband’s antecedents. The rugged-faced, bright-eyed man on the other -side of the table seemed to hold the key to a phase of his life which -she had never heard. She wished that he were seated elsewhere, out of -sight. It was with a conscious effort that she brought herself to listen -intelligently to her host who was describing his first meeting with the -now famous Alexis Triona, then valiantly driving hireling motor-cars -under the sobriquet of John Briggs. She felt a touch of ice at her -heart. For the second time that night she had heard the unfamiliar name. -Alexis had told her, it is true, of his early struggles in London while -writing _Through Blood and Snow_, but of John Briggs he had breathed no -word. - -The talk drifted into other channels until she turned to her neighbour, -Colonel Onslow, who after a while said pleasantly: - -“I’m looking for an opportunity of a chat with your husband, Mrs. -Triona. From his book, he seems to have covered a great deal of my -ground—and it must have been about the same time. It’s strange I never -came across him.” - -“I don’t think so,” she replied. “His Secret Service work rather -depended on his avoidance of other European agents.” - -Colonel Onslow yielded laughingly to the argument. Of course, that was -quite understandable. Every man had his own methods. No game in the -world had more elastic rules. - -“On the other hand, I knew a Russian on exactly the same lay as your -husband, a fellow Krilov, a fine chap—I ran into him several times—who -was rather keen on taking me into his confidence. And one or two of the -things he told me were so identical with your husband’s experiences, -that it seems they must have hunted in couples.” - -“Oh, no, he was on his own, I assure you,” said Olivia. - -“Anyhow, I’m keen to meet him,” said Onslow, unaware of the growing fear -behind the girl’s dark eyes. “I only came home a month ago. Somebody -gave me the book. When I read it I went to my friend Rowington and asked -about Alexis Triona. That’s how I’m here.” - -Presently, noticing her air of constraint, he said apologetically, “You -must be fed up with all this ancient history. A wanderer like myself is -apt to forget that the world is supposed to be at peace and is even -rather bored with making good the damage of war.” - -Olivia answered as well as she could, and for the rest of the -interminable meal strove to exhibit her usual gay interest in the talk -around. - -But her heart was heavy with she knew not what forebodings. She could -not see Alexis, who was seated on the same side and at the other end of -the long table. She felt as though the benevolent gold-spectacled man -had deliberately convened an assembly of Alexis’s enemies. It was a -blessed relief when the ladies rose and left the men; but in the -drawing-room, although she was talking to Lady Aintree, most winningly -gracious of women, her glance continuously sought the door by which the -men would enter. And when they came in his glance, for the first time in -their married life, did not seek or meet hers. She scanned his face -anxiously. It was pale and drawn, she thought, and into his eyes had -crept the furtive look of a year ago which happiness, she thought, had -dispelled for ever. He did not come near her; nor did Wedderburn and -Onslow; nor did the two latter talk to him; he was swallowed up in a -little group at the further end of the room. Meanwhile, the most -up-to-date thing in bishops sank smilingly into a chair by her side, and -ridden by some ironical Imp of the Inapposite described to her a visit, -in the years past, to the Castle of Schwöbbe in Hanover, where dwelt the -Baron von Munchausen, the lineal descendant of the famous liar. A -mythical personage? Not a bit. Munchausen was one of Frederick the -Great’s generals. He had seen his full-length portrait in the Rittersaal -of the old Schloss. Thence he began to discourse on the great liars of -travel. Herodotus, who was coming more and more into his own as a -faithful historian; John Mandeville; Fernando Mendez Pinto, a name now -forgotten, but for a couple of centuries a byword of mendacity; Gemelli -Carreri, the bed-ridden Neapolitan author of a _Voyage Round the World_; -the Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela who claimed to have ridden a hippogriff to -the tomb of Ezekiel; George Psalmanazar, who captivated all London -(including so level-headed a man as Samuel Johnson) with his history of -the Island of Formosa and his grammar of the Formosan language; de -Rougemont, the turtle-riding impostor of recent years; and the later -unfortunate gentleman whose claim to have discovered the North Pole was -so shockingly discredited. The bishop seemed to have made a hobby of -these perverters of truth and to look on them (as in theological duty -bound), wriggling through the lake of fire and brimstone, in the light -of Izaak Walton’s counsel concerning the worms threaded on the hook, as -if he loved them. Then there were the notorious Blank and Dash and Dot, -still living. Types, said he, of the defective criminal mind, by mere -chance skirting round the commonly recognized area of crime. - -Olivia, with nerves on edge, welcomed the matronly swoop of Mrs. -Rowington. - -“My dear Bishop, I want to introduce you——” - -He rose, made a courtly bow to Olivia. - -“I’ll read your lordship’s next book of travel with great interest,” she -said. - - * * * * * - -As the home-bound taxi drove off: - -“Thank goodness that’s over,” said Triona. - -She echoed with a sigh: “Yes, thank goodness.” - -“All the bores of the earth.” - -“Did you have a talk with Colonel Onslow?” she asked. - -“The biggest of the lot. I’m sick to death of the Caucasus,” he added -with unusual irritation. “I wish I had never been near it. I hate these -specially selected dinner parties of people you don’t want to meet and -will never meet again.” He took her hand, which was limp and -unresponsive. “Did you have a rotten time, too?” - -“I wish we hadn’t gone,” she replied, withdrawing her hand under the -pretext of pulling her cloak closer round her shoulders. - -He rolled and lit a cigarette and smoked gloomily. At last he said with -some impatience: - -“Of course, I didn’t mention the little episode with the British Force. -It would have been out of the picture. Besides, nothing very much -happened. It was a stupid thing to do—I had no right. That’s why I took -an assumed name—John Briggs.” - -“And you used it when you landed in England. Mr. Rowington told me.” - -“Of course, dear. Alexis Triona, chauffeur, would have been absurd, -wouldn’t it?” He turned to her with the old eagerness. - -This time it was she who thrust out a caressing hand, suddenly feeling a -guilty horror of the doubts that had beset her. - -“I wish you would tell me everything about yourself—the details you -think so unimportant. Then I wouldn’t be so taken aback as I was this -evening, when Captain Wedderburn called me Mrs. Briggs.” - -“I’ll write you a supplementary volume,” said he, “and it shall be -entitled _Through Love and Sunshine_.” - -The ring in his voice consoled her. He drew her close to him and they -spoke little till they reached their house. There, in the dining-room, -he poured out a stiff whisky-and-soda and drank it off at a gulp. She -uttered a startled, “My dear!” at the unusual breach of abstemious -habit. - -“I’m dog-tired,” said he. “And I’ve things to do before I go to bed. -Don’t wait for me.” - -“What things?” - -“To-night has given me an idea for a story. I must get it, dear, and put -it down; otherwise—you know—I shan’t sleep.” - -She protested. His brain would be fresher in the morning. Such untimely -artistic accouchment had, indeed, happened several times before, and, -unless given its natural chances had occasioned a night of unrest; but -never before had there been this haggardness in his face and eyes. Again -the doubts assailed her. Something that evening had occurred to throw -him off his balance. - -“If anything’s worrying you, dear, do tell me,” she urged, her clasp on -the lapels of his dress-coat and her eyes searching his. - -He took her wrists, kissed her, and laughed, as she thought, uneasily. -Worries? He hadn’t an anxiety in the world. But this idea—it was the -germ of something big. He must tackle it then and there. Led, his arm -around her body, to the door, she allowed herself to be convinced. - -“Don’t be too long.” - -“And you go to sleep. You must be tired.” - -Left alone, Triona poured himself out another whisky and soda. In one -evening he had suffered two shocks, for neither of which his easy nature -had prepared him. The Wedderburn incident he could explain away. But -from the blind alley into which he was pinned by Colonel Onslow, there -had been but a horrible wriggling escape. It was a matter, too, more -spiritual even than material. He felt as though he had crawled through a -sewer. - -He went to his desk by the window, and from a drawer took out his -despatch case, which he unlocked with the key that never left his -person; and from it he drew the little black book. There, half-erased, -in pencil on the reverse of the cover, was the word, in Russian -characters, “Krilov.” Hitherto he had regarded this as some unimportant -memorandum of name or place. It had never occurred to him that it was -the name of the owner of the diary. But now, it stared at him accusingly -as the signature of the dead man whose soul, as it were, he had robbed. - -Krilov. There was no doubt about it. Onslow had known him, that -fine-featured grizzled-haired dead man, in his vehement life. He had -heard from his lips the wild adventures which he had set down with such -official phlegm in the little black book, and which he, Alexis Triona, -had credited to himself, and had invested with the wealth of his poet’s -imagination. Of course, he had lied, on his basis of truth, to Colonel -Onslow, disclaimed all knowledge of Krilov. It had been the essence of -the old Russian régime that secret agents should have no acquaintance -one with another. It was a common thing for two men, unsuspectingly, to -be employed on an identical mission. The old Imperial service depended -on this system of checks. If the missions were identical, the various -incidents were bound to be similar. He had defended his position with -every sophistical argument his alert brain could devise. He drew, as red -herrings across the track, the names of obscure chieftains known to -Colonel Onslow, whom he had not mentioned in his book; described -them—one long-nosed, foxy, pitted with smallpox; another obese and -oily; to Colonel Onslow’s mind irrefutable evidence of his acquaintance -with the country. But as to narrated incidents he had seen puzzled -incredulity behind the Colonel’s eyes and had felt his semi-accusing -coldness of manner when their conversation came to an end. - -He replenished a dying fire and sat down in an arm-chair, the despatch -case by his side, the book in his hands—the little shabby black book -that had been his Bible, his mascot, the fount of all his fortunes. His -fingers shook with fear as he turned over the familiar pages. The dead -man had come to life, and terrifyingly claimed his own. The room was -very still. The creak of a piece of furniture caused him to swing round -with a start, as though apprehensive of Krilov’s ghostly presence. He -must burn the book, the material evidence of his fraud. But the fire was -sulky. He must wait for the blaze, so that there should be no doubt of -the book’s destruction. Meanwhile his nerves were playing him insane -tricks. His ordeal had shaken him. He sought the steadying effect of -another whisky. - -He leaned back in his chair. It had been an accursed evening. Once more -he had to lie to Olivia, and this time she appeared to be struggling -with uncertainty. There had been an unprecedented aloofness in her -attitude. Yes. He spoke the words aloud, “an unprecedented aloofness,” -at first with strange unsuccess and then with solemn deliberation; and -his voice sounded strange to his ears. If she suspected—but, no, she -could not suspect. His head grew heavy, his thoughts confused. The fire -was taking a devil of a time to burn up. Still, he was beginning to see -his way clearer. The whisky was a wonderful help to accurate thinking. -What an ass he had been not to recognize the fact before! Besides—the -roof of his mouth was parched with thirst. - -The diabolical notebook had to be destroyed. But first there must be -flame in the grate. That little red glow would do the trick. It was only -a question of patience. - -“Just a matter of patience, old man,” said he. - - * * * * * - -A couple of hours afterwards, Olivia, in nightdress and wrapper, entered -the room. The fire had gone out under its too heavy load of coal. Before -it sprawled Alexis, asleep. On the small table beside him stood the -whisky decanter, whose depleted contents caused Olivia to start with a -gasp of dismay. His drunken sleep became obvious. She made an -instinctive vain effort to arouse him. But the first pang of horror was -lost in agonized search for the reason of this amazing debauch. He, the -most temperate of men, by choice practically a drinker of water, to have -done this! Could the reason lie in the events of the evening which had -kept her staringly awake? She cowered under the new storm of doubt. - -On the floor lay open a little dirty-paged book which must have fallen -from his hand. She picked it up, glanced through it, could make nothing -of it, for it was all in tiny Russian script. The horrible relation -between this derelict book and the almost emptied whisky decanter -occurred to her oversensitive brain. Then came suddenly the memory of a -stupid argument of months ago at The Point and his justification of the -plagiarist. Further, his putting of a hypothetical case—the finding on -the body of a dead man a notebook with leaves of the thinnest -paper. . . . She held in her hand such a notebook. It dropped from her -nerveless fingers. Suddenly she sprang with a low cry to her husband and -shook him by the shoulders. - -“Alexis. Alexis. Wake up. For God’s sake.” - -But the unaccustomed drug of the alcohol held him in stupor. She tried -again, wildly. - -“Alexis, wake up and tell me what I think isn’t true.” - -At last she realized that he would lie there until the effect of the -whisky had worn off. Mechanically, she put a cushion behind his head and -adjusted his limbs to a position of comfort. Mechanically, too, she put -the stopper in the decanter and replaced the siphon on the silver tray, -and with her scrap of a handkerchief tried to remove the ring which the -wet siphon had made on the table. Then she looked hopelessly round the -otherwise undisturbed and beloved room. What could be done until Alexis -should awaken? - -She would go to bed. Perhaps she might sleep. She felt as though she had -been beaten from head to foot. - -The despatch box lay open on the hearthrug, the key in the lock. Its -secrecy had hitherto been a jest with her. She had sworn it contained -locks of hair of Bluebeard victims. He had given out a legend of Secret -Service documents of vast importance. Now it was obvious that, at any -rate, it was the repository of the little black book. - -She hesitated on the threshold. Her instinct of order forbade her to -leave the despatch box open and the book trailing about the floor. She -would lock the book up in it and put the key in one of Alexis’s pockets. -But when, having picked up the small leather box and carried it to the -desk, she prepared to do this, a name written on a common piece of paper -half in print—an official form—stared brutally at her. And there were -others underneath. And reading them she learned the complete official -history of John Briggs, Able Seaman, from the time of his joining the -Armoured Column in Russia to his discharge, after his mine-sweeper had -been torpedoed in the North Sea. - -Olivia, her dark hair falling about the shoulders of her heliotrope -wrap, sat in her husband’s writing-chair, staring at him with tragic -eyes as he slept, his brown hair carelessly sweeping his pale brow, and -kept a ghastly vigil. - - - CHAPTER XVI - -BLAISE OLIFANT sat over his work in the room which once, for want of a -better name, the late Mr. Gale called his study; but it was a room -transformed to studious use. The stuffed trout and the large scale-map -of the neighbourhood and the country auctioneer’s carelessly bestowed -oddments had been replaced by cases of geological specimens and -bookshelves filled with a specialist’s library. The knee-hole -writing-desk, with its cigarette-burned edge, had joined the rest of the -old lares and penates in honourable storage, and a long refectory-table, -drawn across the window overlooking the garden, and piled with papers, -microscopes, and other apparatus, reigned in its stead. Olifant loved -the room’s pleasant austerity. It symbolized himself, his aims and his -life’s limitations. A fire burned in the grate, for it was a cold, raw -morning, and, outside, miserable rain defaced the April day. - -He smoked a pipe as he corrected proofs, so absorbed in the minute and -half-mechanical task that he did not hear the door open and the quiet -entrance of a maid. - -“Mr. Triona, sir.” - -The words cut through the silence so that he started and swung round in -his chair. - -“Mr. Triona? Where?” - -“In the dining-room.” - -“Show him in here.” - -The maid retired. Olifant rose and stood before the fire with a puzzled -expression on his face. Triona in Medlow at ten o’clock in the morning? -Something serious must have brought a man, unannounced, from London to -Shropshire. His thoughts flew to Olivia. - -A moment afterwards the dishevelled spectre of Triona burst into the -room and closed the door behind him. His coat was wet with rain, his -boots and trouser hems muddy. His eyes stared out of a drawn, unshaven -face. - -“Thank God I’ve found you. During the journey I had a sickening dread -lest you might be away.” - -“But how did you manage to get here at this hour?” asked Olifant, for -Medlow is far from London and trains are few. “You must have arrived -last night. Why the deuce didn’t you come to me?” - -“I got to Worcester by the last train and put up for the night and came -on first thing this morning,” replied Triona impatiently. - -“And you’ve walked from the station. You’re wet through. Let me get you -a jacket.” - -Olifant moved to the bell, but Triona arrested him. - -“No—no. I’m taking the next train back to London. Don’t talk of jackets -and foolery. I’ve left Olivia.” - -Olifant made a stride, almost menacing, towards him, the instinctive -gesture of his one arm curiously contrasting with the stillness of the -pinned sleeve of the other. - -“What?” - -“What I say,” cried Triona. “I’ve left Olivia. I’ve left her for ever. -I’m cutting myself out of her life.” - -“You’re mad. Olivia——” - -Triona put up a checking hand. “Oh, no, not Olivia.” He laughed bitterly -at the indignant advocacy in Olifant’s tone. “Olivia’s there—where she -always has been—among the stars. It’s I that have fallen. Good God! -like Lucifer. It’s I that crawl.” He caught an accusing question in the -other’s hardening eyes. “It isn’t what you might naturally think. -There’s not the ghost of another woman. There never has been—never -shall be. It’s my only clean record. And I love her—my God! My soul’s -in Hell, aching and burning and shrieking for her. I shall live in Hell -for the rest of my life.” - -Olifant turned, and wheeling round his writing-chair sat down and -pointed to an arm-chair by the fire. - -“Sit down and tell me quietly what is the matter.” - -But Triona waved aside the invitation and remained standing. “The matter -is that I’m an impostor and a liar, and Olivia has found it out. Listen. -Don’t ask questions until I’ve done. I’m here for Olivia’s sake. You’re -the only creature in the world that can understand—the only one that -can help her through. And she couldn’t tell you. Her pride wouldn’t let -her. And if it did, the ordeal for her! You’ll be able to go to her now -and say, ‘I know everything.’” - -“Up to now, my dear fellow,” said Olifant, “you’ve been talking in -riddles. But before you begin, let me remind you that there are two -sides to every story. What I mean is—get it into your head that I -realize I’m listening to your side.” - -“But there aren’t two sides,” cried Triona. “You don’t suppose I’ve come -down here to defend myself! If you see when I’ve done that I’ve had some -excuse, that there is a grain of saving grace lying somewhere -hidden—all well and good. But I’m not here to plead a case. Haven’t I -cleared the ground by telling you I’m a liar and an impostor?” - -Olifant again looked searchingly at the pale and haggard-eyed young man, -his brown hair unkempt and falling across his broad forehead, his lips -twitching nervously; and the elder man’s glance turned to one of pitying -kindness. He rose, laid his hand on the lapel of the wet coat. - -“You’ll take this off, at any rate. There—we’ll hang it over the -fender-seat to dry. Sit beside it and dry your legs. It’s no good -catching your death of cold.” - -Triona submitted to the friendly authority and sat down in his shirt -sleeves before the blaze. Olifant, aware of the sedative value of -anticlimax, smiled and offered refreshments. Tea—coffee—a drop of -something to keep out the cold. Triona suddenly glanced at him. - -“I’ll never touch alcohol again as long as I live.” - -A cigarette, then? Olifant handed the box, held a match. Triona smoked. -Olifant re-lit his pipe and leaned back in his chair. - -“Now let me have the plain, unvarnished tale.” - -They smoked many cigarettes and many pipes during the telling of the -amazing story. As his life had unfolded itself in the grimness of the -little Newcastle kitchen, so he recounted it to Olifant. In his -passionate final grip on Truth, which for the last few months of his -awakening had proved so elusive, he tried to lay bare the vain secret of -every folly and the root of every lie. The tangled web of the hackneyed -aphorism he unwove, tracking every main filament to its centre, every -cross-thread from the beginning to end of its vicious circle. - -Plain unvarnished tale it was not in the man’s nature to give. Even in -his agony of avowal he must be dramatic, must seize on the picturesque. -Now he sat on the narrow leather-covered fender-seat, hunched up, his -eyes ablaze, narrating the common actualities of his life; and now he -strode about the room, with great gestures of his pink-shirted arms, -picturing vividly the conflicting emotions of his soul. First he -sketched—so it seemed to the temperamentally remote Olifant—in broad -outlines of flame, his true career. Then in strokes, like red-hot wire, -he filled in the startling details. The grizzled head and sharp-cut -features of the naked body of the dead man Krilov in the ditch—the cold -grey waste around—the finding of the odds and ends, the glint of the -pocket-compass behind a few spikes of grass, the false teeth, the little -black book, the thing of sortilege, of necromantic influence . . . the -spell of the book in the night watches in the North Sea, its obsession; -his pixy-led infatuation which made him cast aside the slough of John -Briggs and sun himself in the summer of the world as the dragonfly, -Alexis Triona. In swift lines, too, of a Will-o’-the-Wisp’s dance he -revealed the course of his love. Then, unconsciously, before the -concentrated gaze of the other man he dropped a baffling gauze curtain, -as on a stage, through which his motives and his actions appeared -uncertain and unreal. - -Olifant had listened in astounded silence. His first instinct was one of -indignation. He had been unforgivably deceived by this exterior of -friendship under false pretences. The blow dealt to unregenerate man’s -innate vanity hurt like a stab. His own clear soul rose in revolt. The -fellow’s mendacity, bewildering in its amplitude, would have set Hell -agape. He shivered at the cold craft of his imposture; besides, he was a -ghoul, a stripper of the dead. He lost the man he had loved in a new and -incomprehensible monster. But as Triona went on he gradually fell under -the spell of his passionate remorse, and found himself setting the human -against the monstrous and wondering which way the balance would turn. -And then he became suddenly aware of the impostor’s real and splendid -achievements, and he stood in pitiful amaze at the futility of the -unnecessary fraud. - -“But why, in God’s name? Why?” he cried, staring through the baffling -curtain. “A man of genius, you would have held your own without all -this.” - -“I could have done nothing without the help of that damned little black -book. Don’t you see how the necromancy of the thing gripped me—how it -has got its diabolical revenge? I told you not to ask me questions,” -Triona burst out fiercely. “You’re trying to make me defend myself.” He -swung away, then laughed mirthlessly. “There seems to be a poetic -justice in life. This room in which we have spent so many hours—it’s -filled from floor to ceiling with my lies. Now I come with Truth, a sort -of disinfectant. Perhaps I was driven back just to do it.” - -Olifant knitted a perplexed brow. Such fantastic psychologies were -beyond his simple scientific habit of mind. He said: - -“You told me you came here on account of Olivia.” - -“Of course.” - -“Well—I must ask you again the same everlasting ‘Why?’ How could you -dare to marry her with this lie on your soul?” - -“Yes. How dared I?” said Triona dejectedly. - -“But wouldn’t it have been quite simple to tell her the truth? You could -have afforded to make a clean breast of it. You had proved yourself a -remarkable man, apart from—from the Triona myth. And she is big enough -to have stood it. Why, in God’s name, didn’t you trust her?” - -Triona threw out his hands helplessly. He did not know. Again he pleaded -the unseen power that had driven him. When he had tried to resist, it -was too late. - -“And now you think me a fool and a knave.” - -“I think you’re a fool,” said Olifant. - -“But not a scoundrel? I should like to know. You were the first man who -really held out the hand of friendship to me. Till then people regarded -me as an interesting specimen. You took me on my human side. I shall -never forget coming to your sister’s house at Oxford. It was a new and -wonderful atmosphere.” - -“If that is so,” said Olifant, “why didn’t it compel -confidence—something of the real truth? I see you now telling my sister -and myself your fairy tale; in the same fervid way as you’ve been -telling me the truth this morning.” - -Triona rose and put on his jacket which now was dry. - -“How can I hope to make you understand, when I don’t understand myself? -Besides,” he flashed, after shrugging himself impatiently into the -garment, “haven’t I said I wasn’t seeking condonation or sympathy?” - -“You asked me whether I thought you a scoundrel,” said Olifant quietly. - -“Well, do you? Say I am, and have done with it.” - -“If I did, I don’t see what good it would do,” replied Olifant, a vague -comprehension of this imaginative alien soul dawning on his mind. -“You’re out for penance in the same crazy way you’ve been out for -everything else. So you hand me the scourge and tell me to lay on. But I -won’t. Also—if I committed myself by calling you an unmitigated -blackguard, I couldn’t give you the advice that it’s in my heart to give -you.” - -“And what’s that?” - -“To go back to Olivia and do your penance with her by telling and living -the truth. _Magna est veritas et prævalebit._ Especially with a woman -who loves you.” - -Triona turned to the table by the window and stared out into the -rain-swept garden, and the vision of a girl horror-stricken, frozen, -dead, rose before his eyes. Presently he said, his back to the room: - -“You mean kindly and generously. But it’s impossible to go back. The -man, Alexis Triona, whom she loved, has melted away. He never had real -existence. In his place she sees a stranger, one John Briggs, whom she -loathes like Hell—I’ve seen it in her eyes. She feels as if she had -been contaminated by contact with some unclean beast.” - -Olifant sprang from his chair and, catching him by the shoulder, swung -him round. - -“You infernal fool, she doesn’t!” - -“I know better,” said Triona. - -“I’m beginning to think I know _her_ better,” Olifant retorted. - -“Well—that is possible,” said Triona. “You’re of her caste. I’m not. -I’ve pretended to be, and that’s how I’ve come to grief. You’re a good -fellow, Olifant, straight, just like her; and neither of you can -understand the man who runs crooked.” - -“Crooked be damned!” exclaimed Olifant. - -But all his condemnation of self-accusing epithets could not dissuade -the fate-driven young man from his purpose. Triona repeated the original -intention of his visit: to put Olifant in complete possession of facts -which Olivia’s pride might not allow her to reveal, and to charge him, -thus equipped, with Olivia’s immediate welfare. At last he burst out -again: - -“Man alive! Don’t torture me. All the devils in Hell are doing it, and -they’re enough for any man. Have some imagination! Think what it would -mean to her to have me crawling about in her path for ever and ever. -When love is dead it’s dead. There’s no resurrection. She loved Alexis -Triona. Won’t you ever understand? He’s dead. The love’s dead. If I -stayed with her, I should be a kind of living corpse to which she’s -tied. So I’m going away—out of her life altogether.” - -“And where are you going?” - -“Just out into the spaciousness of the wide world,” replied Triona with -a gesture. He looked suddenly at his wrist watch. “Good Lord!” he cried. -“I’ve only just time to catch my train. Good-bye.” - -“Wait a minute,” said Olifant. “Do you think it fair on a woman? While -you disappear for ever into spaciousness she’ll remain none the less -married—tied to you for the rest of her life.” - -“Oh, don’t let her worry about that!” cried Triona. “I’ll soon be dead.” - -He sped to the door. Olifant clutched at him and for a while held fast. - -“Never mind trains. You’ll stay here to-day. I can’t let you go—in this -hysterical state.” - -But Triona wrenched himself free. A one-armed man is at a physical -disadvantage in a struggle with a wiry two-armed opponent. Olifant was -pushed staggering back, and, before he could recover himself, Triona had -flashed from the room, and a moment later the clang of the front door -told him he had left the house. - -Olifant, after a moment’s reflection, went to the telephone and gave a -London number. Then he drew his chair nearer the fire and re-lit his -pipe and waited for the call to come through. Work was impossible. He -was in no mood to enter into the gaiety of printers in their dance -through the dead languages with which his biological pages were strewn. -His heart was exceeding heavy. He stared into the fire and thought of -what might have been, had he not been a fool. At any rate, she would -have been spared misery such as this. He had loved her from the moment -she had opened that untouched room upstairs, and the delicate spirit of -one that was dead had touched them with invisible hands. And he had been -a fool. Just a dry stick of a tongue-tied, heart-hobbled, British fool. -It had only been when another, romantic and unreticent, had carried her -off that he realized the grotesqueness of his unutterable pain. Well, -she was married, and married to the man to whom he had given his rare -affection; and, folly of follies, all his intimacy with her had grown -since her marriage. She was inexpressibly dear to him. Her hurt was his -hurt. Her happiness all that mattered. And she loved her madman of a -husband. Deep down in her heart she loved him still, in spite of shock -and disillusion. Of that he was certain. He himself forgave him for his -wild, boyish lovableness. Olivia abandoned—it was unthinkable! - -After an eternity the telephone bell rang. He leaped up. Eventually came -the faint, clear notes of a voice which was Olivia’s. They established -identities. - -“Alexis has been here. Has told me everything. He has left here by the -midday train. Of course, I don’t know whether you want to see him; but -if you do his train gets into Paddington at six-fifteen.” - -And the voice came again: - -“Thanks. I’ll meet him there.” - -And there was silence. - - * * * * * - -Olivia and Myra met the train at Paddington. But they sought in vain for -Alexis Triona. He had not arrived in London. - - - CHAPTER XVII - -THE unhappy young man rushed through the train to the railway station, -goaded by the new passion of remorse and frantic with the despair which -had driven him from the accusing horror in Olivia’s eyes. It was only -when he waited on the platform at Worcester, where he must change to the -main line, that he became suddenly aware of loss of sanity. His -suit-case, containing all the belongings which he had taken from the -flat, was lying a mile or so away at the inn where he had spent the -night. He had not slept, not even gone to bed, not even opened the -suit-case. He had dashed out before the inn was awake to catch the -earliest morning train to Medlow. And from that moment to this, just as -the London train was steaming in, both luggage and unpaid bill had -vanished from his mind. There was nothing to do but go to the inn and -proceed to London by a later train. Thus, Fate had stage-managed for him -another deception of Olivia. - -The realization of his crazy lapse of memory was a sobering shock. Never -before had he lost grip of himself. Hitherto, the tighter the -corner—and he had found himself in many—the clearer had been his -brain. The consciousness of the working of a cool intellect had given a -pleasurable thrill to danger. Now, for over twenty-four hours, he had -been acting like a madman, in contemplation of which the only thrill he -experienced was one of profound disgust. To enter whatever sphere of -life the effacement of Alexis Triona should render necessary, raving -like a maniac would be absurd. It would need all his wit. - -His retrieved suit-case in the rack of the third-class carriage, the -paid hotel bill in his pocket, and food, up to then forgotten, in his -stomach, he fortified himself in this decision, until exhausted nature -claimed profound and untroubled sleep. - -He awoke at Paddington, homeless for the night. Now his brain worked -normally. Alexis Triona had disappeared from the face of the earth. It -was therefore essential to avoid hotels where Alexis Triona might -possibly be recognized. Besides, he knew that West End hotels were -congested, that the late-comers to London had been glad to find a couch -at a Turkish Bath. His chauffeur’s knowledge of London came to his aid. -He drove to a mouldy hotel in the purlieus of the Euston Road, and there -found a frowzy room. The contrast between the bed, its dingy counterpane -sagging into the worn hollow of the mattress beneath, the threadbare -rugs askew on the oilcloth, the blistered deal washstand and -dressing-table, the damp, dirty paper, the bleak blinds, and the sweet -and dainty appointments of the home he had left smote him till he could -have groaned aloud. Not that he gave a thought to such things in -themselves. Physical comfort meant little to him. But the lost -daintiness signified Olivia; this abominable room, the negation of her. - -He sat on the bed, rolled a cigarette, and began to think clearly. That -he had for ever forfeited Olivia’s affection it never entered his head -to doubt. He saw her face grow more cold and tragic, and her eyes more -horror-stricken at every fresh revelation of mendacity. Loathing -himself, he had not pleaded for forgiveness; he had done penance, -applied the lash, blackening himself unmercifully. He had lost sense of -actual things in his cold romance of deception. He stood before her -self-proclaimed, a monster of lies. Now he saw himself an unholy -stranger profaning the sanctity of her life. He had fought for Heaven -with Hell’s weapons, and Eternal Justice had hurled him back into the -abyss. In the abyss he must remain, leaving her to tread the stars. - -The exposure of the Vronsky myth had hurt her as much as anything. - -“Vronsky?” She put her hands, fingers apart, to her temples. “But you -made me give my heart to Vronsky!” - -Yes, surely he had committed towards her the unforgivable sin. He was -damned—at any rate, in this world. To rid her irremediably of his -pestilent existence was the only hope of salvation. Olifant was a fool, -speaking according to the folly of an honourable gentleman. He clenched -his teeth and gripped his hands. If only he could have been such a fool! -To appear the kind of man that Olifant easily, naturally, was had been -his gnawing ambition from his first insight into gentle life, long ago, -in the Prince’s household. But, all the same, Olifant was a fool—a sort -of Galahad out for Grails, and remote from the baseness in which he had -wallowed. - -“Go to Olivia. She loves you.” - -Chivalrous imbecile! He had not seen Olivia’s great staring dark eyes -with rims around them, and the awful little drawn face. - -He was right—it was the only way out. - -Yet, during all this interview with Olivia, he had been quite sane. He -had indulged in no histrionics. He had not declaimed, and flung his arms -about, as he had done in Olifant’s study. He had felt himself talking -like a dead man immersed up to the neck in the flames of Hell, but -possessed of a cold clear intellect. In a way, he was proud of this. To -have made an emotional appeal would have obscured the issue towards -which his new-found honesty was striving. - -His last words to Olivia were: - -“And the future?” - -She said hopelessly: “Is there a future?” - -Then she drew a deep breath and passed her fingers across her face. - -“Don’t talk to me any more, for heaven’s sake. I must be alone. I must -have air. I must walk.” - -She shrank wide of him as he opened the door for her, and she passed -out, her eyes remote. - -It was then that the poet-charlatan became suddenly aware of his -sentence. If the Avengers, or what not uncheerful personages of Greek -Tragedy had surrounded him with their ghastly shapes and had chanted -their dismal Choric Ode of Doom, his inmost soul could not have been -more convinced of that which he must forthwith do. He never thought of -questioning the message. He faced the absolute. - -Waiting until he heard the click of the outer door of the flat -announcing Olivia’s departure in quest of unpolluted air, he went into -his dressing-room and packed a suit-case with necessaries, including the -despatch-case which contained his John Briggs papers and the accursed -little black book. - -He met Myra in the hall, impassive. - -“If you had told me you were going on a journey, I would have packed for -you. Does Mrs. Triona know?” - -“No,” said he. “She doesn’t. Wait.” - -He left her, and returned a few moments afterwards with a note he had -scribbled. After all, Olivia must suffer no uncertainty. She must not -dread his possible return. - -“Give that to Mrs. Triona.” - -“Are you coming back?” - -He looked at her as at a Fate in a black gown relieved by two solitary -patches of white at the wrists. - -“Why do you ask me that?” - -“You look as if you weren’t,” said Myra. “I know there has been trouble -to-day.” - -He had always stood in some awe of this efficient automaton of a woman, -who had never given him a shadow of offence, but in whom he had divined -a jealousy which he had always striven to propitiate. But now she -awakened a forlorn sense of dignity. - -He picked up his suit-case. - -“What has that got to do with you, Myra?” - -“If Mrs. Triona’s room was on fire and I rushed in through the flames to -save her, would you ask me what business it was of mine?” - -The artist in him wondered for a moment at her even, undramatic -presentation of the hypothesis. He could not argue the point, however, -knowing her life’s devotion to Olivia. So yielding to the unlit, pale -blue eyes in the woman’s unemotional face, he said: - -“Yes. There is trouble. Deadly trouble. It’s all my doing. You quite -understand that?” - -“It couldn’t be anything else, sir,” said Myra. - -“And so I’m going away and never coming back.” - -He moved to the door. She made the swift pace or two of the trained -servant to open it for him. She stood for a few seconds quite rigid, her -hand on the door-knob. Their eyes met. He saw in hers a cold hostility. -Without a word he passed her, and heard the door slam behind him. - -It was when he reached the pavement, derelict on the wastes of the -world, that his nerves gave way. Until the click of his brain at -Worcester station, he had been demented. - -“Never again,” said he. - - * * * * * - -He undressed and went to bed. It was some hours before he could sleep. -But sleep came at last, and he woke in the morning refreshed physically, -and feeling capable of facing the unknown future. As yet he had no -definite plan. All he knew was that he must disappear. Merely leaving -Olivia and setting up for himself elsewhere as Alexis Triona was not to -be thought of. Alexis Triona and all that his name stood for—good and -evil—must be blotted out of human ken. He must seek fortune again in a -foreign country. Why not America? Writing under a fresh pseudonym, he -could maintain himself with his pen. Bare livelihood was all that -mattered. Even in this earthly Lake of Fire and Brimstone to which, as a -liar, he had apocalyptically condemned himself, a man must live. During -moments of his madness he had dallied with wild thoughts of suicide. His -fundamental sanity had rejected them. He was no coward. Whatever -punishment was in store for him, good God! he was man enough to face it. - -In his swift packing he had seized a clump of his headed note-paper. A -sheet of this he took when, after breakfast, he had remounted to his -frowzy room, and wrote a letter to his publishers informing them that he -was suddenly summoned abroad, and instructing them to pay, till further -notice, all sums accruing to him into Olivia’s banking account. -Consulting his pass-book, he drew a cheque in Olivia’s favour, which he -enclosed with a covering letter to Olivia’s bankers. Then, driving to -his own bank, he cashed a cheque for the balance of some hundreds of -pounds. With this, he prepared to start life in some new world. -Restless, he drove back to his hotel. Restless still, he obeyed the -instinct of his life, and began to wander; not about any such haunts as -might be frequented by his acquaintances, but through the dingy purlieus -of the vague region north of the line of Euston and King’s Cross -Stations. - - * * * * * - -It was in a mean street in Somers Town, a hopeless, littered street of -little despairing shops, and costers’ barrows, and tousled women and -unclean children, that they met. They came up against each other face to -face, and recoiled a step or two, each scanning the other in a -puzzlement of recognition. Then Triona cried: - -“Yes, of course—you’re Boronowski.” - -“And you—the name escapes me—” the other tapped his forehead with a -fat, pallid hand “—you’re the chauffeur-mechanic of Prince——” - -“Briggs,” said Triona. - -“Briggs—yes. The only man who knew more than I of Ukranian -literature—I a Pole and you an Englishman. Ah, my friend, what has -happened since those days?” - -“A hell of a lot,” said Triona. - -“You may indeed say so,” replied Boronowski. He smiled. “Well?” - -“Well?” said Triona. - -“What are you, well-dressed and looking prosperous, doing in this—” he -waved a hand “—in this sordidity?” - -Triona responded with a smile—but at the foreign coinage of a word. - -“I’m just wandering about. And you?” - -“I’m living here for the moment. Living is costly and funds are scarce. -I go back to Warsaw to-morrow—next week—a fortnight——” - -“Poland’s a bit upset these days,” said Triona. - -“That is why I am here—and that is why I am going back, my friend,” -said the Pole. - -He was a stout man, nearing forty, with dark eyes and a straggly red -moustache and beard already grizzled. His grey suit was stained with -wear; on his jacket a spike of thread showing where a button was -missing. He wore an old black felt hat stuck far back on his head, -revealing signs of baldness above an intellectual forehead. - -Triona laughed. “Was there ever a Pole who was not a conspirator?” - -“Say rather, was there ever a Pole who did not love his country more -than his life?” - -“Yes. I must say, you Poles are patriotic,” said Triona. - -Boronowski’s dark eyes flashed, and seizing his companion’s arm, he -hurried him along the encumbered pavement. - -“Why do you Englishmen who have lately died and bled in millions for -your country, always have a little laugh, a little sneer, at patriotism? -To listen to you, one would think you cared nothing for your country’s -welfare.” - -“We’ve been so sure of it, you see.” - -“But we Poles have not. For two centuries we have not had a country. For -two centuries we have dreamed of it, and now we have got it at last, and -our blood sings in our veins, and we have no other interest on earth. -And just as we are beginning to realize the wonder of it, we find -ourselves enmeshed in German intrigue, with our promised way to the sea -blocked, with the Powers saying: ‘No Ukraine, no Galicia,’ and with the -Russian Red Army attacking us. Ah, no. We are not so assured of our -country’s welfare that we can afford to depreciate patriotism.” - -“What are you doing here in England?” asked Triona. - -“Breaking my heart,” cried Boronowski passionately. “I come for help, -and find only fair words. I ask for money for guns and munitions for the -enforcement of the Treaty of Versailles, and they reply, ‘Oh, we can’t -do that. Our Labour Party wouldn’t allow us to do that. But we’ll tell -those naughty Bolshevists to leave you alone.’ So I return, my mission a -failure. Oh, I play a very humble part. I do not wish to magnify myself. -Those with me have failed. We are cast on our own resources. We are -fighting for our new national life. And as the blood in our hearts and -the thought in our brains cry ‘Poland, Poland,’ so shall the words be -ever loud in our mouths. And look. If we did not cry out, who would -listen to us? And we are crying our ‘Poland, Poland,’ in all the Entente -and neutral countries—I, Boronowski, the most unimportant of all. -Perhaps we are voices crying in the wilderness. But one Voice, once on a -time, was heard—and revolutionized the world.” - -The man’s voice, crying in the wilderness of the sordid Somers Town -street, awoke at any rate a responsive chord in the sensitive creature -by his side. - -“Of course, I understand,” said he. “Forgive my idle speech. But I am in -great personal trouble, and I spoke with the edge of my lips.” - -Boronowski flashed a glance at him. - -“Do you know the remedy? The remedy for silly unhappinesses that affect -you here and here—” he swung a hand, touching forehead and heart “—the -little things——” - -“I’m damned if they’re little,” said Triona. - -“Yes, my friend,” exclaimed the Pole, halting suddenly in front of a -wilting greengrocer’s shop, and holding him by the lapel of his coat. -“Procure for yourself a sense of proportion. In the myriad of animated -beings, what is the individual but an insignificant atom? What are your -sufferings in the balance of the world’s sufferings? Yes. Yes. Of course -you feel them—the toothache, the heartache, the agony of soul. But I -claim that the individual has a remedy.” - -“What is that?” asked Triona. - -“He must cast off the individual, merge his pain in the common sorrow of -humanity. He must strip himself free of self, and identify himself with -a great cause.” - -A rusty virago, carrying a straw marketing bag, pushed him rudely aside, -for he was blocking the entrance to the shop. - -“We can’t talk here,” he said, recovering his balance. “Do you want to -talk?” he asked abruptly. - -“Very much,” replied Triona, suddenly aware that this commonplace -looking prophet, vibrating with inspiration, might possibly have some -message for him, spiritually derelict. - -“Then come up to my rooms.” - -To Triona’s surprise, he plunged into the crowded greengrocer’s shop, -turned into an evil-smelling, basket-littered passage at the back, -mounted a couple of flights of unclean stairs, and unlocked and threw -open the door of an untidy sitting-room looking out on to the noisy -street. He swung a wooden chair from a little deal table strewn with -paper, and pointed to a musty sofa. - -“That,” said he courteously, “is the more comfortable. Pray be seated.” - -He picked a depopulated packet of cigarettes from the table. - -“Will you smoke? For refreshment, I can offer you tea—” he pointed to a -spirit-lamp and poor tea equipage in a corner. He did the honours of his -mildewed establishment with much grace. Triona accepted the cigarette, -but declined the tea. Boronowski seated himself on the wooden chair. -Having taken off his hat, he revealed himself entirely bald, save for a -longish grizzling red fringe at the back, from ear-tip to ear-tip. The -quick rites of hospitality performed, he plunged again into impatient -speech, recapitulating what he had said before and ending in the same -peroration. - -“Salvation lies in a man’s effacement of himself, and his identification -with a great cause.” - -“But, my dear man,” cried Triona feverishly, “what great cause is there -in the world for an Englishman of the present day to devote himself to? -Look at the damned country. You’re living in it. Is there a cry -anywhere, ‘_England über alles?_’ Have you seen any enthusiasm for any -kind of idea? Of course I love my country. I’ve fought for her on land -and sea. I’ve been wounded. I’ve been torpedoed. And I’d go through it -all over again if my country called. But my country doesn’t call.” - -He rose from the sofa and walked up and down the little room, throwing -about his arms, less like an Englishman than his Polish host, who, -keeping his eyes on him, nodded his head in amazed approbation as he -developed his thesis—that of the fervid creature eager to fight -England’s battles, but confronted with England’s negation of any battles -to fight. - -“The only positive ideal in England at the present moment is Bolshevism. -The only flag waved in this war-wearied country is the red flag. All the -rest is negative. Not what we can do—but what we can prevent. And you, -Boronowski, a professor of history, know very well that no Gospel of -Negation has ever succeeded since the world began. Look at me,” he said, -standing before the Pole, with wide, outstretched arms, “young, fit, -with a brain that has proved itself—I won’t tell you how—and eager to -throw my personal sufferings into the world’s melting-pot—to live, my -dear fellow, to work, to devote myself to some ideal. I must do that, or -die. It’s all very well for you to theorize. You do it beautifully. -There’s not a word wrong in anything you say. But what is the Great -Cause that I can devote myself to?” - -“Poland,” said Boronowski. - - - CHAPTER XVIII - -THE word was like the lash of a whip. He stared at the patriot -open-mouthed. - -“Yes, Poland,” said Boronowski. “Why not? You want to fight for a Great -Cause. Is not a free and independent Poland the keystone of the arch of -reconstructed Europe? It is a commonplace axiom. Poland overthrown, -overrun with Bolshevism, all Europe crumbles into dust. The world is -convulsed. Fighting for Poland is fighting for the salvation of the -world. Could there be a greater cause?” - -His dark eyes glowed with compelling inspiration. His outflung arm ended -in a pointing finger. And Triona saw it as the finger of Salvation Yeo -in his boyhood’s picture. - -“Wonderful, wonderful,” he said, below his breath. - -“And simple. Come with me to Warsaw. I have friends of some influence. -Otherwise I should not be here. The Polish Army would welcome you with -open arms.” - -Triona thrust out a sudden hand, which the other gripped. - -“By God!” he cried, “I’ll come.” - -An hour afterwards, his brain dominated by the new idea, he danced his -way through the melancholy streets. Here, indeed, was salvation. Here he -could live the life of Truth. Here was the glorious chance—although he -would never see her on earth again—of justifying himself in Olivia’s -eyes. And in itself it was a marvellous adventure. There would be -endless days when he should live for the hour that he was alive, without -thought of an unconjecturable to-morrow. Into the cause of Poland he -would fling his soul. Yes, Boronowski was right. The sovereign remedy. -His individual life—what did it matter to him? All the beloved things -were past and gone. They lay already on the further side of the Valley -of the Shadow of Death. His personality was merged into a -self-annihilating creature that would henceforth be the embodiment of a -spiritual idea. - -Thus for the rest of the day, and during the night, his mind worked. -Arrived in Poland, he would press for the fiercest section of the front. -The bullet that killed him would be welcome. He would die gloriously. -Olivia should know. - -As John Briggs, with his papers in order, he found his passport a simple -matter. Boronowski, with whom he spent most of his time, obtained a -speedy visa at the Polish and other Consulates. During the period of -waiting he went carefully through the contents of the suit-case and -removed all traces of the name and initials of Alexis Triona. The little -black book he burned page by page with matches in the empty grate of his -room. When it was consumed, he felt himself rid of an evil thing. In -strange East London emporiums, unknown to dwellers in the West End, and -discovered by restless wandering, he purchased an elementary kit for the -campaign. Much of his time he spent in Boronowski’s quarters in Somers -Town, reading propaganda pamphlets and other literature dealing with -Polish actualities. When the Polish Army welcomed him with open arms, -they must find him thoroughly equipped. He bought a Polish grammar, and -compiled with Boronowski a phrase-book so as to be prepared with an -elementary knowledge of the language. The Pole marvelled at his fervour. - -“You spring at things like an intellectual tiger,” said he, “and then -fasten on to them with the teeth of a bulldog.” - -“I’m a quick worker when I concentrate,” said Triona. - -And for many days he concentrated, sleeping and eating little, till his -cheeks grew gaunt and his eyes bright and haggard. In his interminable -talks with Boronowski, he concentrated all his faculties, until the -patriot would laugh and accuse him of a tigerish spring on the secrets -of his soul. - -“It’s true,” cried Triona, “it’s the soul of Poland I want to make enter -my being. To serve you to any purpose I must see through Polish eyes and -feel with a Polish heart, and feel my veins thrill with the spirituality -of Poland.” - -“Is that possible?” - -“You shall see,” answered Triona. - -And just as he had fallen under the obsession of the dead Krilov during -the night watches in the North Sea, so did he fall under the obsession -of this new Great Cause. Something fundamentally histrionic in his -temperament flung him into these excesses of impersonation. Already he -began to regret his resumption of the plain name of John Briggs. Even in -the pre-war Russian days he had seldom been addressed by it. For the -first social enquiry in Russia elicited the Christian name of a man’s -father. And his father’s name being Peter, he was called by all and -sundry Ivan Petrovitch. So that even then, in his fervent zeal to merge -himself into the Russian spirit, he had grown to regard the two -downright words of his name as meaningless monosyllables. But he -strangled the regret fiercely as soon as it arose. - -“No, by heaven!” said he, “No more lies.” - -And yet, in spite of unalterable resolve, as he lay sleepless with -overwrought nerves in the sour room in the Euston Road, he was haunted -by lunatic Polish forms, Brigiovski, Brigowski, which he might adopt -without breaking his vow; he could not see himself in the part of a -Polish patriot labelled as John Briggs; just as well might a great actor -seek to identify himself with Hamlet while wearing cricketing flannels -and a bowler hat. - -Only once in his talks with Boronowski did he refer to the unhappiness -to which he was to apply the sovereign remedy. The days were passing -without sign of immediate departure. Boronowski, under the orders of his -superiors, must await instructions. Triona chafed at the delay. - -Boronowski smiled indulgently. - -“The first element in devotion to a cause, or a woman, is patience. -Illimitable patience. The demands of a cause are very much like those of -a woman, apparently illogical and capricious, but really inexorable and -unswerving in their purpose.” - -“It’s all very well to talk of patience,” Triona fumed, “but when one is -hag-ridden as I am——” - -Boronowski smiled again. “_Histoire de femme——_” - -Triona flushed scarlet and sprang to his feet. - -“How dare you twist my words like that?” - -Boronowski looked at him for a puzzled moment, seeking the association -of ideas. Then, grasping it: - -“Forgive me, my friend,” he said courteously. “My English, after all, is -that of a foreigner. The word connection was far from my mind. I took -your speech to mean that you were driven by unhappiness. And the -unhappiness of a young man is so often—— Again, I beg your pardon.” - -Triona passed his hand through his brown hair. - -“All right,” he said, “I’m sorry. Yes. If you want to know, it’s a -woman. She’s the day-spring from on high, and I’m damned beyond -redemption. The best thing that could happen would be if she knew I were -dead.” - -Boronowski tugged at his little greyish-red beard. A follower of great -causes was never the worse for having the Furies at his heels. But he -was a man of kindly nature. - -“No one while he is alive can be damned beyond redemption,” he said. “I -don’t wish to press my indiscretion further. Yet, as an older man, could -I be of service to you in any way?” - -“No, you’re very kind, but no one can help me.” Then an idea flashed -across his excited brain. “Not until I’m dead. Then, perhaps, you might -do something for me.” - -“You’re not going to die yet, my friend.” - -“How do we know? I’m going to fight. The first day I may get knocked -out. Should anything happen to me, would you kindly communicate with -some one?” - -He moved to the paper-littered table and began to scribble. - -“It’s all rather premature, my friend,” said Boronowski. “But as you -wish.” He took the scrap of paper which bore the name and address of -Major Olifant. “This I may be liable to lose. I will enter it in my -notebook.” He made the entry. Then, “May I say a serious word to you?” - -“Anything you like.” - -“There is such a thing as the fire of purification. But—” he put a hand -on the younger man’s shoulder, “you can’t call it down from Heaven. You -must await its coming. So we get back to my original remark. Patience, -more patience, and always patience.” - -This was consoling for the moment; but after a few days’ further -grappling with the Polish language, he burst into Boronowski’s lodgings -and found the patriot at his table, immersed in work. - -“If we don’t start soon,” he cried, “I’ll go mad. I haven’t slept for -nights and nights. I’ll only sleep when we are on our journey, and I -know that all this is reality and not a dream.” - -“I’ve just had orders,” replied Boronowski. “We start to-morrow morning. -Here are our tickets.” - -That night, Triona wrote to Olivia. It was an eternal farewell. On the -morrow he was leaving England to offer up his unworthy life as a -sacrifice to the Great Cause of Poland. The only reparation he could -make for the wrong he had done her was to beseech her to look on him as -one already dead. It covered many pages. - -When he returned to his musty room after this last hour’s heart-breaking -communion with her, he sat on his bed overwhelmed by sudden despair. -What guarantee had she of this departure for Poland greater than that of -his mission to Helsingfors last summer? Would she not throw the letter -aside in disgust—another romantic lie? He wished he had not written. He -took faint hope again on the reflection that by posting another letter -from Warsaw he could establish his veracity. But why should he keep on -worrying her with the details of his miserable existence? Better, far -better that she should look on him as dead; better, far better that she -should believe him dead, so that she could reconstruct her young and -broken life. He might die in battle; but then he might not. He had -already carried his life safely through battles by land and sea. Again -he might come out unscathed. Even if he was killed, how should she hear -of his death? And if he survived, was it fair that she should be bound -by law eternally to a living ghost? Somebody had said that before. It -was Olifant. Olifant, the fool out for Grails, yet speaking the truth of -chivalry. Well, this time—he summoned up the confidence of dismal -hope—he would make sure that he was dead and that she heard the news. -At any rate, he had prepared the ground; Boronowski would communicate -with Olifant. - -Then came a knock at his door—it was nearly midnight. The night porter -entered. A man downstairs wished to see him—a foreigner. A matter of -urgent importance. - -“Show him up,” said Triona. - -He groaned, put both his hands up to his head. He did not want to see -Boronowski to-night. His distraught brain could not stand the patriot’s -tireless lucidity of purpose. Boronowski belonged to the inhuman band of -fanatics, the devotees to one idea, who had nothing personal to -sacrifice. Just like lonely old maids who gave themselves up to -church-going and good works, and thereby plumed themselves on the -acquisition of immortal merit. What soul-shattering tragedy had -Boronowski behind him, any more than the elderly virgins aforesaid? If -Boronowski kept him up talking Poland till three o’clock in the -morning—as he had already done—he would go mad. No, not to-night. The -mounting steps on the uncarpeted stairs hammered at every nerve in his -body. And when the door opened, it was not Boronowski who appeared, but -a pallid, swarthy wisp of a man whom Triona recognized as one Klinski, a -Jew, and a trusted agent of Boronowski. He was so evilly dressed that -the night porter, accustomed to the drab clientele of the sad hostelry, -yet thought it his duty to linger by the door. - -Triona dismissed him sharply. - -“What’s the matter?” he asked in Russian, for he was aware of the man’s -scanty English. - -Klinski did not know. He was but the bearer of a letter, a large -envelope, which he drew from his breast pocket. Triona tore it open. It -contained two envelopes and a covering letter. The letter ran: - - “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. - - - CHAPTER XIX - -OLIVIA struggled 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 ‘Is _Through -Blood and Snow_ a 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. - - - CHAPTER XX - -MYRA stood 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. - - - CHAPTER XXI - -AFTER this, Olivia took up her life, as she thought, in firm hands. She -had made her reparation to her old friends. She joined the family party -of the Trivetts at dinner, and mixed with the “homely folk” that -assembled around old John Freke’s tea table. She lived in a glow of -contrition for past snobberies. The vague story of her separation from -Triona which she had told to the two old men not sufficing Medlow -curiosity, she told what she believed to be the truth. - -“My husband has gone to Poland to fight against the Russian Reds.” - -And thereby she gave the impression that the cause of the break up of -her married life was the incurable adventurous spirit of her husband. -The suggestion fitted in with the town’s idea of the romance of her -marriage and the legendary character of Alexis Triona, which had -originally been inspired by the local bookseller eager to sell copies of -Triona’s books. She herself, therefore, became invested in a gossamer -garment of mystery, which she wore with becoming grace. Her homecoming -was a triumph. - -As the days passed and brought no news of Alexis, she grew convinced of -the honesty of his last letter. His real achievements in the past -confirmed her conviction. He was the born adventurer. It was like him to -have sought the only field of mad action open at that hour of -frantically guarded peace. He had gone to Poland. In her heart she -rejoiced. She saw him striving to burn a past record and rise, -Phœnix-like, from its ashes. - -“If he came back a Polish General, all over stars and glory,” said Myra, -during one of their increasingly intimate conversations, “would you take -up with him again?” - -Olivia reddened. “I should be glad for his sake.” - -“I don’t see that you’re answering my question,” said Myra. - -“I’ve told you once and for all,” flashed Olivia, “that I’ll have -nothing more to do with him as long as I live.” - -She meant it with all that she knew of her soul. His fraud was -unforgivable; his perfect recognition of it constituted his only merit. -In Poland, doing wild things, he was a picturesque and tolerable -personage. In her immediate neighbourhood, he became once again a -repellent figure. As far as she could, she blotted him out of her -thoughts. - -The threat of exposure at the hands of Onslow and Wedderburn still hung -over her head. The disgrace of it would react on her innocent self. The -laughter of the Lydian galley rang in her ears. She guessed the cynical -gossip of the newer London world. That was hateful enough. She need -never return to either. But it would follow her to Medlow. She would be -pitied by the Trivetts and the Frekes, and the parents of the present -generation of Landsdowne House. They would wonder why, in the face of -the revelations, she still called herself “Mrs. Triona.” To spring her -plain Mrs. Briggs-dom on Medlow she had not the courage. - -She took counsel with Blaise Olifant. In his soldier-scholar protecting -way he seemed a rock of refuge. He said: - -“Write to them through Rowington and ask them to hold their hands until -you can put them into communication with your husband, which you give -your word of honour to do as soon as you learn his address.” - -She did so. The bargain was accepted. When she received Rowington’s -letter, she danced into Olifant’s study, and, sitting on the corner of -his table, flourished it in his face. - -“Oh, the relief of it! I feel ten years younger. I was on the verge of -becoming an old woman. Now it will never come out.” - -Olifant leaned back in his chair and looked at her wistfully. A faint -flush coloured her cheeks, and her eyes were lit with the gladness of -hundreds of days ago. Her lips were parted, showing the white, girlish -teeth. Sitting there, vividly alive, in the intimate attitude, smiling -on him, she was infinitely desirable. - -“No,” said he. “It will never come out.” - -A cloud passed over her face. “Still, one never knows——” - -“I have faith in Alexis,” said he. “He’s a man of his word.” - -“I think you’re the loyalest creature that ever lived.” - -He raised a deprecating hand. “I would I were,” said he. - -“What do you mean by that?” she asked pleasantly. - -“If I were,” said he, his nose seeming to lengthen over the wry smile of -his lips, “if I were, I would go out into the world and not rest till I -brought him back to you.” - -She slid to her feet. “With a barber’s basin for a helmet, and the rest -of the equipment. If you did such an idiot thing, I should hate you. -Don’t you understand that he has gone out of my life altogether?” - -“Life is a long, long time to look forward to, for a woman so young as -yourself.” - -“You mean, I might fall in love with somebody else, and there would be -horrid complications?” She laughed in the cocksureness of youth. “Oh, -no, my dear Blaise. Once bitten, twice shy. Three times, four times, all -the multiplication table times shy.” - -Though impelled by primitive instinct, he could not press her further. -He found himself in a position of poignant absurdity, compensated by the -sweetness of their daily companionship. Sometimes he wondered how it -could be that an awakened woman like Olivia could remain in calm -ignorance of his love. Yet she gave never a sign of knowledge. She -accepted friendship with full hands and gave it with full heart. Beyond -that—nothing. From his sensitive point of view, it was all for the -best. If, like a lean spider, he sat down beside her and talked of love, -he would indubitably frighten Miss Muffet away from Medlow. Further, she -would hold him in detestation for intentions which, in the queer -circumstances, had no chance of being what the world calls honourable. -He therefore put up with what he could get. The proclamation of her -eternal man-shyness sounded like her final word on her future existence. -So he came back to Rowington. - -“I’m glad that’s all settled,” said he. “Now you can take up the threads -of life again.” - -“What do you think I can make of them?” she asked. - -“I can’t sit here idle all my life—not here, at ‘The Towers,’” she -laughed, “for I’m not going to inflict myself on you for a lifetime—but -here, in the world.” - -He had no practical suggestion to make; but he spoke from the sincerity -of his tradition. - -“A woman like you fulfils her destiny by being her best self.” - -“But being good is scarcely an occupation.” - -He smiled. “I give it up, my dear. If you like, I can teach you -geology——” - -She laughed. Geology had to do with dead things. She cared not a hang -for the past. She wanted to forget it. The epoch of the dynosaurus and -the period of the past year were, save for a few hundreds of centuries, -contemporaneous. No past, thank you. The present and the future for her. -The present was mere lotus-eating; delightful, but demoralising. It was -the future that mattered. - -“If only you were an astrologer, and could bind me apprentice,” she -said. “No,” she added after a pause. “There’s nothing for it. I must do -something. I think I’ll go in for Infant Welfare and breed bull-dogs.” - -She watched him as he laboriously stuffed his pipe with his one hand by -means of a little winch fixed to the refectory table and lit it by a -match struck on a heavy mat stand; refraining from helping him, although -all the woman in her longed to do so, for she knew his foibles. The very -first time he had entered the house, he had refused her offer of help -with his Burberry. He needed a woman to look after him; not a sister; -not a landlady-lodger friend; a wife, in fact, whose arm and hand he -would accept unquestionably, in lieu of his own. A great pity sprung in -her heart. Why had no woman claimed him—a man stainless in honour, -exquisite in thought, loyal of heart, and—not the least qualification -for the perfect gentle knight in a woman’s eyes—soldier-like in -bearing? There was something missing. That was all the answer she could -give herself. Something intangible. Something magnetic, possessed by the -liar and scamp who had been her husband. She could live with Blaise -Olifant for a hundred years in perfect amity, in perfect sympathy . . . -but with never a thrill. - -She knew well enough the basis of sentiment underlying his friendship. -If she were free to marry, he would declare himself in his restrained -and dignified way. But with the barrier of the living Alexis between -them, she laughed at the possibility of such a declaration. And yet, her -inward laughter was tinged with bitterness. What kind of a man was it, -who, loving a woman, did not catch her round the waist and swing her on -his horse and ride away with her? Of course, she herself would have -something to say in the matter. She would fight tooth and nail. She -would fling the ravisher to Kingdom Come. But still her sex would have -the gratification of being madly desired. - -In some such confused way, she thought; the horror of Mavenna, and the -romantic mastery of Alexis arising in comparison and contrast. To say -nothing of Bobby Quinton. . . . - -“I wonder how you can put up with me,” she said when he had set his pipe -comfortably going. - -“Put up with you? What do you mean?” - -“You and I are so different.” - -He had some glimmer of the things working behind her dark eyes. - -“Do you still want adventures? Medlow is too dull for you?” - -She felt guilty, and cried impulsively: “Oh, no, no. This is peace. This -is Heaven. This is all I want.” - -And for a time she persuaded herself that it was so. - -Then there came a day when the lilac and the laburnum were out in the -garden behind the house, and the row of beeches screening it from the -east wind were all a riot of tender green, and Olivia was sitting with a -book in the noon sunshine; and the book lay unread on her lap, for her -thoughts went back to a magical day of greenery in Richmond Park; an -imperishable memory. Her eyes filled with tears. For a few moments, she -had recaptured the lost Alexis in that remembered hour of blue mist and -mystery. And now, he was in Poland. Doing what? - -The French window of Olifant’s study opened, and he came down the -gravelled path towards her, a letter in his hand. His face was serious. -She rose to meet him. - -“I don’t know whether I ought to show you this—but, perhaps later you -might blame me if I didn’t.” - -She uttered a little cry which stuck in her throat. - -“Alexis?” - -“Yes.” - -The eagerness with which she grasped the letter brought a touch of pain -into his eyes. Surely she loved the man still. - -“I’m afraid it gives less than news of him,” said he. - -But, already reading the letter, she gave no heed to his words. - -The letter was from Warsaw, and it ran: - - “Sir, “I was commissioned by my friend, Mr. John Briggs, to - communicate with you should anything befall him. Now something - must have befallen him, because he has failed to keep with me - very definite engagements into which he had entered with the - utmost good faith and enthusiasm. He was to start on his journey - hither, to join the Polish service, on a certain day. He was - furnished with railway tickets and passports; also, on the night - before his departure, with a letter to friends in Prague where - he was to await my coming, and with a letter to friends in - Warsaw, in case political exigencies should delay my arrival in - Prague. The Prague letter has not been delivered, nor has Mr. - Briggs appeared in Warsaw. Nor have I received from him any - explanatory communication. That he should have changed his mind - at the last moment is incredible, as his more than zealous - intentions cannot be questioned. - - This letter, therefore, has a double object; first to acquaint - you with these facts: and secondly to beg you of your courtesy - to give me any information you may possess as to the fate of one - whom I learned to hold in affectionate esteem. - - Yours faithfully, - “Paul Boronowski.” - -Olivia grew very pale. Her hand shook as she gave the letter back to -Olifant. - -“Something must have happened to him,” he said. - -“What has always happened to him,” she replied bitterly. “He says one -thing and does another. One more senseless extravagant lie.” - -“He was obviously going to Poland,” said Olifant. - -“But he never started!” - -Olifant persisted: “How do you know?” - -“What can one ever know about him except that truth has no meaning for -him? If you suggest that he has perished by the way on a railway journey -between here and Prague—” she laughed scornfully. “Really, my dear -Blaise, you’re too good for this world. If you caught a man with his -hand in your waistcoat pocket, and he told you he only wanted to see the -time by your watch, you’d believe him! Haven’t I been through this -before? All this elaborate preparation for missions abroad which never -came off? Didn’t he leave you here to go off to Helsingfors, and John o’ -Groats was the nearest to it he got?” - -“Then where do you think he is now?” - -“Anywhere, except in Poland. It was the last place he had any intention -of going to.” - -“He might have written you a false account of his movements,” Olifant -argued, “but why should he have deceived this good Polish gentleman?” - -“It’s his way,” she replied wearily. “Oh, don’t you see? He’s always -acting to himself. He can’t help leading a fictitious life. I can guess -the whole thing. He goes to this Mr. Boronowski—one of his stray -Russo-Polish acquaintances—with the idea in his head of putting me off -his scent. Poland still is romantic and a terribly long way off. He -can’t do a thing simply. He must do it fantastically. It’s not enough -that I should think he was going to Poland. Mr. Boronowski must think -so, too. He throws his arms about, persuading himself and everybody else -that he is a Paladin going to fight for the sacred cause of an oppressed -nationality. When the thing’s done, and the letter to me written, the -curtain comes down on the comedy, and Alexis takes off his war paint and -starts off for Pernambuco—or Haverstock Hill.” - -“I think you’re unjust, Olivia,” said Olifant. - -“And I think you’re too good to be true,” she retorted angrily, and she -left him and went down the garden path into the house. - -In her room, her mother’s room, with the old rose curtains and -Chippendale and water colours, she rang the bell. Myra appeared. - -“You know so much already, Myra,” she said in her defiant way, “that I -think you ought to know everything. I’ve just heard that Mr. Triona -never went to Poland.” - -“Indeed?” said Myra impassively. “Do you know where he is?” - -“No. And I don’t want to.” - -“I can’t quite understand,” said Myra. - -“I wish you would take some interest in the matter.” - -“My interest is your interest. If you never want to see him again, what -does it matter where he is? Perhaps you’re afraid he’ll come back to -you?” - -At the elder woman’s suggestion, the fear gripped her with dreadful -suddenness. There had not yet been time for thought of such a -possibility. If he had lied about fighting for Polish freedom, what -truth was there in his perfervid declaration of the severance of his -life from hers? She had been right in her analysis of his character. The -curtain down on whatever comedy he might be now enacting, he would -present himself unexpectedly before her with specious explanations of -the past, and another glittering scenario of illusion. And with his -reappearance would come exposure. She had pledged her word to Rowington. - -She seized Myra by the wrist. “Do you think he will?” - -“You are afraid,” said Myra. - -“Yes. Dreadfully afraid.” - -“I don’t think you need be,” said Myra. - -Olivia flung away. “You take his part, just like Major Olifant. Neither -of you seem to understand.” She turned. “Don’t you see the horror of -it?” - -“I’ve seen lots of horrors in my time,” replied Myra placidly. “But I -shan’t see this one. He’s gone for good, dearie. You may be sure of -that.” - -“I wish I could think so,” said Olivia. - -It was nearly lunch time. Myra went out and returned with a can of hot -water. - -“You’ll not see him so long as I’m about to look after you,” she -remarked. - -And Olivia laughed at the dragon of her childhood. - -Some mornings afterwards, Myra came to her mistress. - -“If it’s convenient to you, I should like a few days’ leave. I’ve had a -letter.” - -“Nothing serious, I hope?” asked Olivia, whose thoughts flew to the -madman in the County Asylum. - -“I don’t know,” said Myra. “Can I go?” - -“Of course,” said Olivia. - -So Myra packed her worn valise and left Medlow by the first available -train. But the Asylum was not her destination. The next day saw her -seeking admittance to University College Hospital, London. - - - CHAPTER XXII - -WHEN Triona after many dim day-dreams and relapses into nothingness, at -last recovered consciousness, he found himself in a narrow sort of -cubicle, staring upwards at a mile away ceiling. He was tightly bound, -body and legs. He had a vague memory of a super-juggernaut of a thing -killing him; therefore he sagely concluded that he was dead and this was -the next world. It occurred to him that the next world had been -singularly over-rated, being devoid of any interest for an intelligent -being. Later, when the familiar figure of a nurse popped round the -screen, he recognized, with some relief, the old universe. He was alive; -but where he was, he had no notion. - -Only gradually did he learn what had befallen him; that he had laid for -weeks unconscious; that he had a broken thigh and crushed ribs; that -most of the time he had hovered between life and death; that even now he -was a very sick man who must lie quiet and do exactly what nurses and -doctors told him. This sufficed for a time, while his brain still worked -dully. But soon there came a morning when all the memories surged back. -He questioned the nurse: - -“When do you think I can start for Poland?” - -“Perhaps in six months,” she replied soothingly. - -He groaned. “I want to go there now.” - -“What for?” - -“To join the Polish Army.” - -She had nursed through the war, and knew that men in his plight were of -no further use in armies. Gently she told him so. He stared -uncomprehensively on an empty world. - -“What can I do when I leave here?” - -“You must have a long, long rest, and do nothing at all and think of -nothing at all.” - -He tried to smile at the nurse’s pleasant face. “You’ve done me a bad -turn in bringing me back to life,” said he. - -When they thought him capable of grappling with his personal affairs, -they brought him his bulging pocket-book, and bade him count his money. -He laughed. It was quite safe. He handed back the roll of notes into the -nurse’s keeping. But the other contents of the case he looked at -dismally: the passport, with the foreign visas; the railway tickets; the -letters to Prague and Warsaw. What were the good of them now? He would -never go to Poland. When he got strong, all the fighting would be over. -And when he did get strong, in a few months or a year, he would probably -be lame, with odds and ends of organs gone wrong inside him. He tried to -read the letters; but they were written in Polish—unintelligible now in -spite of his strenuous short study of the language. They bore a -signature which he could not decipher. But it was certainly not -Boronowski. His mind soon tired of the puzzle. What was the good of -keeping the letters? Drearily he tore them in pieces and gave them to -the nurse to dispose of, when she brought him a meal. - -Tired with the effort he slept. He awoke to a sense of something final -done, or something important left undone. As his brain cleared, he -realized that subconsciously he had been thinking of his duty to -Boronowski. Of course, he must be informed at once of the reason for his -defection. - -And then dismay overwhelmed him. He had no address to Boronowski. The -only channels of communication with him, the Prague and Warsaw letters, -he had destroyed. A happy idea struck him. He toyed with it for what -seemed interminable hours until the nurse came to his bedside. He called -for writing materials, which were smilingly denied him. He was too weak. -But the nurse would write a short letter from dictation. He dictated two -identical letters, one to the Polish Legation, one to the Polish -Consulate, asking for the address of Mr. Paul Boronowski, late of 21 -Hillditch Street, St. Pancras. By return of post came polite replies -from Legation and Consulate. Both disclaimed any knowledge of the -identity of Mr. Paul Boronowski. Legation and Consulate were blandly -ignorant of the existence of their confidential agents. Then he -remembered the baffling signature to the two letters. He laughed -somewhat bitterly. His life seemed to be involved in a tangle of false -names. - -After all, what did it matter? But it did matter, vitally. If ever he -had set his soul on a true thing, he had set it on keeping faith with -Boronowski. And Boronowski like the rest of the world would set him down -as an impostor. In his desperate physical weakness the tears rolled down -his cheeks; and so the nurse found him, with one of the letters clutched -in his thin hand. - -“My only friend in the world,” said he. - -“Dead?” asked the nurse. - -“No. Lost.” - -He gave her the letter. - -“Surely you have at least one more,” she said. “In fact I have written -to her to tell her of your recovery.” - -“_Her?_” He looked at the nurse out of ghastly eyes. - -“Miss Myra Stebbings.” - -“Oh, my God!” said he, and fainted. - -Whereat the nurse, anxious to bring him comforting tidings was -exceedingly troubled. The shock put him back for two or three days. He -grew light-headed, and raved about a woman called Olivia, and about all -sorts of strange and incomprehensible things. When he regained his -senses it was an awakening to a life of even more terrifying -consternation than before. Myra, he learned, had called daily at the -hospital—to be denied access to him till he should be in a fit state to -receive her. The nurse told him of her first visit the morning after the -accident and of the newspaper paragraph which she had chanced to read. -But if Myra knew, surely Olivia knew. And Olivia, knowing him to have -been for weeks at death’s door, had treated him, as though he had -already passed through that door to the other side. Horror gripped him. -He questioned the nurse. This Miss Stebbings, had she left no message? -No, she was a woman of few words. She had said, in an unemotional way: -“I’ll come in again to-morrow.” - -“For God’s sake don’t let her see me,” he cried. - -But after a while he countermanded the request. He would learn the -worst, and meet steadily the supreme punishment, the tale of Olivia’s -implacable hatred. There were degrees in a woman’s scorn. Much he knew -he had justly incurred; but his sick frame shuddered at this maximum of -contempt and loathing. Ill-conditioned dog he avowed himself; yet to let -him die, for aught she knew, like a dog, without sign or word of -interest . . . it transcended thought. - -“Are you sure there has been no other lady? Not a letter of enquiry? -Nothing?” - -“You’ll make yourself bad again, if you worry like that,” said the -nurse. - -“I wish to God I could,” said he; “and that would be the end of it all.” - -In a large ward of a London hospital, nurses have not much time to -devote to the sick fancies of patients. More than enough for them were -their physical needs. The crumb of kindly commonplace was all that the -nurse could give to the man’s hungering soul. He passed the day, staring -up at the mile-high ceiling, incurious as to what vista of misery lay -beyond the still remaining American-cloth covered screen. - -From the shaft of fierce sunshine on the wall to his right, he gathered -that spring had passed into early summer. The outside world was a-riot -in the new life of wild flowers and trees and birds and human hopes and -loves. Outside that prison of his—a whitewashed wall, a screen, a -window behind his head reaching sky-high—spread this world with whose -pulsations his heart had ever throbbed in unison. God! How he had loved -it! Every leaf, every crested wave, every patch of sand, every stretch -of heat, every rusty horse grazing on a common, every child before a -cottage door, every vibrating sound or sight of great cities, every -waste in regions of grand desolation, every man with sinews or with -purpose in his eyes, every woman parading the mystery of her sex, from -the tow-haired, dirt-encrusted goose-girl of a Russian village to the -wonder of ever inscrutable wonders that was Olivia. - -In all his dreams he inevitably came back to Olivia. Indeed she was the -centripetal force of his longings. All that earth held of the rustle of -leaves and the murmur of waters, the magic of dawn and the roar of town -multitudes and the laughter of green forests and the silence of frozen -steppes, were incorporated in the woman of his adoration. Through her -spoke the voices of the infinite universe. And all that was visible of -it, the patch of sunlight on the whitewashed wall, said: - -“She lives and I, a reflected glory of her, live too; but even if you go -hence I shall only appear mockingly before you, on prison walls, until -you are dead. And you will never find me on the blue seas or the joyous -roads or the stone-bounded, clattering haunts of mankind, other than a -meaningless mirage, because the inspired meaning of it all which is -Olivia, has passed from you for evermore.” - -“Damn you,” said he, and turned away his head, for he could not turn his -plaster of Paris encased body, and shut out the white line from his -burning eyes. - -The next morning Myra came. He had been prepared for her visit. She sat -on the cane-bottomed chair by his bedside. As soon as the nurse left -them together: - -“I’m glad you are better, Sir,” she said. - -“Have you brought me any message from Mrs. Triona?” he asked. - -She looked at him steadily. “You don’t suppose Mrs. Triona knows you are -here?” - -It was some time before he could appreciate the meaning of her words. - -“She thinks I’m in Poland?” - -“She doesn’t know you are here,” said Myra truthfully. “She doesn’t know -where you are.” - -“Or care?” - -“Or care,” said Myra, and her tone was flat like that of a Fate. - -For a while he was silent, accepting the finality of Myra’s words. - -“You’ve left her in ignorance of my accident?” - -“Yes,” said Myra. “Haven’t you done the same since you’ve recovered your -wits?” - -Her dry logic was unanswerable. Yet a man does not expect logic from an -elderly waiting-woman. He passed a hand over his eyes and held it there -for a long time, while Myra sat patient and unemotional. He understood -nothing of her motives. For the moment he did not seek to understand -them. One fact alone mattered. Olivia did not know. She had not, with -horrible contempt, left him to die like a dog. By the thought of such a -possibility he had wronged her. She might, with every reason, desire -never to set eyes on him again—but of active cruelty he should have -known her incapable. - -Presently he withdrew his hand and turned to Myra. “My head’s not -altogether right yet,” he said half-apologetically. - -“I can quite believe it,” said Myra. - -“Why you should bother with me, I don’t understand,” he said. - -“Neither do I,” she replied in her disconcerting way. “If you had died I -shouldn’t have been sorry. For her sake. Now you’re not going to die, -I’m glad. For yours.” - -“Thank you,” said he with a note of irony. And then after a pause: - -“How is your mistress?” - -“She is quite well, sir.” - -“And happy?” - -“Begging your pardon, sir,” said Myra stiffly, “but I’ve not come here -to be asked questions. I’ve no intention of your using me as a -go-between.” - -“It never entered my head,” he declared. - -“It might,” said Myra. “So I give you warning. Whatever go-between-ing I -do will be to keep you apart from Mrs. Triona.” - -“Then why are you worrying about me?” he asked. - -“Because I’ve found you in affliction and I’m a Christian woman.” - -Neither of them understood the other. He said suddenly with a flash of -the old fire: - -“Will you swear you’ll never tell your mistress where I am?” - -A faint light flickered in her pale eyes. “I’ll swear if you like. But -haven’t you taken in what I’ve been telling you all the time?” - -“So long as we can trust each other—that is all that matters.” - -“You can trust me all right,” said Myra. - -They talked the ground over again for a while longer. Then he grew tired -with the strain, and the nurse put an end to the interview. But Myra -came the next day and the day after that, and Triona grew to long for -her visit. He became aware of a crabbed kindness in her attitude towards -him side by side with her jealous love for Olivia. She was anxious for -his welfare within grimly prescribed limitations. His immediate future -concerned her. What did he purpose to do with his invalid-dom after his -discharge from the hospital? He himself, at this stage, had no notion. -He confided to her the despair of his active life. The motor-lorry had -wrecked his hopes of salvation. He told her the whole Boronowski story. -Myra nodded; but faithful to the part she had chosen, she said nothing -of Boronowski’s letter to Major Olifant. Only by keeping the lives of -the ill-fated pair in tightly sealed and non-communicable compartments, -could she be true to an ethical code formulated by many definite sorrows -and many vague, but none the less poignant, spiritual conflicts. - -“It’s funny,” said he, “that you’re the only human being I should know -in the world.” - -Her intuition skipped the gap of demonstration of so extraordinary a -pronouncement, and followed his flight into the Unknown. - -“It might be luck for you,” she said. - -He smiled wistfully on her. - -“Why?” - -He hung on her answer which she took some time to give. In the lines on -the pallid face, in the dull blue eyes of this sphinx-like woman so -correct in her negative attire of black coat and skirt and black hat -with just a redeeming touch of white, and on the thin, compressed lips, -his sick man’s brain seemed to read his destiny. She hovered over him, -impressive, baffling, ever about-to-be oracular. Combined with her -mystery existed the strange fact that she was his sole link with the -world, not only the great humming universe of thought and action, but -the inner spiritual world in which Olivia reigned. He regarded her with -superstitious dread and reverence; conscious all the time of the comedy -of so regarding the woman whose duty had been to fold up his trousers -and set out his underclothes on the hot rail of the bathroom. - -“What are you going to do when you leave?” she asked, and he guessed a -purpose behind her question. - -“I must hide until I am strong enough to take up active life again.” - -“Where will you hide?” - -He didn’t know. He had not thought—so remote did the date of his -discharge appear. It must be some secluded, man-forgotten spot. - -“If the worst comes to the worst and you need a place where you’ll be -looked after, I’ll give you an address of friends of mine,” said Myra. -“You’ll, maybe, spend the rest of your life on crutches, and have all -sorts of things wrong inside you. I shouldn’t like you to feel I was -abandoning you. If you were broken down and needed help, I suppose you -wouldn’t write to me, would you?” - -“I most certainly shouldn’t,” said Triona. - -“I thought so,” said Myra. “In that case I’d better give you the -address.” She scribbled it on the writing pad by his bedside. “There. -Take it or leave it. It’s the best I can do.” - -She left him with an abrupt “Good day, sir,” and took the next train -back to Medlow. - -“You haven’t had a long holiday, Myra,” Olivia remarked when she -arrived. - -“I didn’t say I was going on a holiday.” - -“I hope things were all right.” - -“As right as they ever can be,” replied Myra. - -The weary weeks of convalescence dragged themselves out. Myra did not -come again; and of course he had no other visitor. He made casual -acquaintances in the ward; here and there an ex-soldier with whom he -could exchange reminiscences of warfare. - -Once a discharged sailor in the next bed—the screen had long since been -removed—recovering from an operation, spoke to him of mine-sweeping -days, and perils of storm and submarine and he grew to regard him as a -brother. Both regretted the deluging waters of the North Sea. The sailor -in these times of peace drove a dust cart for the St. Pancras Borough -Council. The wages were good—but what a life for a sea-faring man! He -would have stuck to his old job were it not that a wave had washed him -down on the slithery deck and had brought his knee-cap up against a -stanchion and had stiffened it out so that his career on board-ship was -over. But those were good times, weren’t they? Oh yes. Of course they -groused. But they only groused when they had time. Mostly they hadn’t. -Dust-collecting was an open-air life, true enough; but there was a -difference between the smell of brine and the stench of house refuse. It -was in summer that it made him sick. The odours of the fo’c’sle were not -those of a hairdresser’s shop—nothing smelt so fine, he declared, as a -hairdresser’s shop—they were a bit thick, but a man could go on deck -and fill his lungs with good salt air. And the grub! What an appetite! -He conjured up gargantuan meals in perilous tempests. Nothing of the -sort now. Everything he ate tasted of sour potato peelings. - -“That’s the taste of everything in these post-war days,” said Triona, -“everything in life—sour potato peelings.” - -The dustman reckoned he was right. In those old days of mine-sweeping, a -man had no anxieties. He had no responsibilities. He was happy as the -day was long. Now he was married and already had a couple of kids. Life -was just one wearisome worry, a continuous accumulation on the debit -side of the slate, with few advantages on the credit side to balance. If -it wasn’t the wife it was the boy; if it wasn’t the boy, it was the -baby; and if it wasn’t them, it was his appendix which had just been -removed. Whoever heard of a sailor-man aboard ship getting appendicitis? -No, all them things, said he, were blessings of peace. Besides, how was -he going to feed his family when they grew older? And clothes, boots, -schooling? And he himself—limited to beer—and such beer! He hadn’t -tasted a drop of rum——. Was there anything like it? Sometimes he saw -it and smelt it in his dreams, but he always woke up before he could put -his lips to the pannikin. If only one could get something to hold on to -in dreams. He never had need to dream of rum in the navy. So much for -peace. Give him the good old war again. - -And when his wife, a thin lipped, scraggy blonde, with a moth-eaten fur -stole round her neck (although it was sweltering summer), and a pallid -baby in her arms came to visit him, and spoke querulously of domestic -affairs, Triona gave him his unreserved sympathy. - -“And it ain’t,” said the ex-mariner, “as if I couldn’t carry on straight -and proper in civil life. I wonder how many of my mates are getting what -I’m getting. She ought to be proud of me, she ought. Instead of -that—you heard what she said?” - -Triona had heard. She had upbraided him for his ungenteel occupation, -considering herself, the daughter (so Triona learned) of a small -sweet-stuff monger in Dover, where they had met during his sea-going -days, socially degraded by her marriage with a municipal collector of -dust. She had married him, by the by, before his present appointment, -while he was drawing out-of-work pay. Apparently he was possessed of -some low-comedy histrionic talent, and she was convinced that he could -make his fortune as a cinema star. - -“You married?” he asked. - -“Not now,” said Triona. - -“You’ve been through it,” said the misogynist. “Women! There never was a -woman who knew when she was well off! Oh, Gawd! Give me the old days on -the _Barracouta_, where there wasn’t any thought of women. That was my -last ship. I had nine months in her. There was _Barracouta_, _Annie -Sandys_, _Seahorse_. . . .” - -He ran through the names of his squadron, forgetful, in the sudden flush -of reminiscence, of domestic cares. - -“And what did you say you were in?” - -“_Vestris._” - -“Of course. I remember. Torpedoed. But even that was better than this?” - -Triona agreed, and the eternal talk of the sea went on, until the -nostalgia for the wide, free spaces of the world gripped his vitals with -the pains of hunger. - -“What are you going to do when you come out?” asked the dustman. - -“About the same as you,” replied Triona. “What’s the good of a man with -a game leg?” - -The dustman sighed. “You’ve got education,” said he. - -At first, aware of accent and manner of expression, the dustman had -taken him for an ex-officer. Only the discharge-papers of John Briggs, -able-seaman, convinced him of John Briggs lowly estate. Still, in the -_Barracouta_ they had an elderly stoker who had been at Cambridge -College. Such a man might be his neighbour. - -“I ran away to sea when I was a boy,” said Triona. - -So had the dustman. He waxed more confidential. His name was Josh -Bunnings, and he had sailed in every conceivable kind of craft from -Alaska to Singapore. But he had found no time for education. How did his -neighbour acquire it? Books? He shook his head. He had been cured of -books on his first voyage, when the second mate catching him reading a -tattered manual on gardening, when he ought to have been washing up in -the galley, had kicked and cuffed him round the deck. Triona’s mind went -back to his boyhood—to an almost identical incident. There was much in -common between himself and Josh Bunnings. They had started on even -terms. They had met on even terms in the foul fo’c’sles on the North -Sea. They were on even terms, now, lying side by side, lamed, their life -of free adventure a thing of the past. Each dreaded the future; Josh -Bunnings condemned to cart refuse beneath the affected nose of a shrew -of a wife for the remainder of his days; he, Triona, to deal with such -refuse as the world would leave him, but away from the wife who abhorred -him and all his works. On the other hand, between him and Josh Bunnings -lay a great gulf. He had made himself a man of wide culture. Josh -Bunnings had remained abysmally ignorant. But Josh Bunnings had lived -his life an honourable man. If he told his story to Josh Bunnings he -would be condemned by him, even as he had been condemned by his sister -on the morning of his mother’s funeral. So, when the dustman, with -another sigh, harked back to his former idea and said: - -“If only I had education.” - -“You’re a damned sight better man than I am, without it,” Triona replied -bitterly. - -When the three weeks’ comradeship came to an end, on the discharge of -Josh Bunnings, he found himself lost again in a friendless world. The -neighbouring familiar bed was occupied by an ancient man in the throes -of some ghastly malady, and around him was stretched the horrible, -death-suggesting screen. And behind the screen, a week later, the old -man died. It was to relieve the nervous tension of this week that he -began a correspondence with Josh Bunnings. The writing man’s instinct -awoke—the mania of self-expression. His letters to the dustman, full of -the atmosphere of the ward, vivid with lightning sketches of -house-surgeons, sisters, nurses and patients, with here and there -excursions into contrasting tempests, storms of battle, and everywhere -touched with the magic of his queer genius, would, if sent to his -literary agents, have gained him a year’s subsistence. - -Josh Bunnings visited him occasionally, when freed from municipal, and -escaped from domestic, obligations. The visits, he explained, were in -return for the letters; for being no scholar, he could not reply. Then -one day he appeared and sat on the chair by Triona’s bed, with the air -of a man about to bring glad tidings. He was rather a heavy, pallid, -clean-shaven man, with a curl of black hair sweeping down to his -eyebrows. His small dark eyes gleamed. At once he disemburdened his -honest soul. He was a Church of England man; always held with -church-going—so did his wife; it was the great bond of union between -them. So he was on friendly terms with the curate of St. Simon’s. And -being on friendly terms with the curate, he had shewn him the letters. - -“And, would you believe it, mate?” said he. “Would you believe it? He -wants to put them in print in the Parish Magazine. In print! Fancy!” - -He slapped his thigh. Triona stared at him for a moment and then laughed -out loud for the first time for many weeks. - -“What are you laughing at?” asked the astonished Bunnings. - -“It seems so funny,” said Triona. - -“That’s what I thought.” - -“And a great honour,” said Triona recovering. - -“Of course. Only he said he couldn’t print ’em without your permission.” - -Triona gave permission, stipulating, however, that his name should not -be used. His modesty forbade it he explained. Josh Bunnings went away -delighted. In the course of a few posts came a grateful letter from the -curate. In Mr. Briggs’s writing he saw signs of considerable literary -talent which he hoped Mr. Briggs would cultivate. If he could be of help -in this way, he put his services at Mr. Briggs’s disposal. Triona again -laughed, with grim amusement, at a funny, ironical world. - -Then, suddenly, the underlying tragedy of this comic interlude smote him -breathless. Alexis Triona was dead and so were his writings, for -evermore. But the impulse to write stirred within him so vehemently that -even in these idle letters to Josh Bunnings he had put all his vividness -of literary expression. The curate’s dim recognition of the unusual was -a sign and a token. Whatever he wrote would be stamped with his -individuality and if published, even anonymously, would lead to his -identification. The arresting quality of his style had been a main -factor in his success. This flashing pictorial way of his he could not -change. If he strove self-consciously to write sober prose, he would -produce dull, uninspired stuff that no man could read; if he lost -self-consciousness, automatically he would betray himself. He would -re-appear in the Olivia-dominated world. Every book or article would -dance before her eyes like an _ignis fatuus_, reminding her maddeningly -of his existence in her propinquity. - -An _ignis fatuus_. At this point of his reflection he remembered his -first talk with her, wherein he had counselled her never to lose faith -in her Will-o’-the-Wisp, but to compel it to be her guiding star. More -ironical laughter from the high gods! And yet, why not? He wrestled with -the temptation. As he lay, convalescent on his back, his brain clear, -the sap of youth working in his veins, the uncontrolled fancies of the -imaginative writer wove themselves into shreds of fine romance and -tapestries of exquisite scenes. Just a little concentration, impossible -in the open hospital ward, and all these would blend together into a -thing of immortal beauty. He would find a publisher. Nothing easier. No -name would appear. Or else, perhaps, as a handle for convenience sake, -he would sign the book “Incognito.” It would stir the hearts of men, and -they would say: “There is but one man living who could do this and that -is Alexis Triona.” And Olivia, reading it, and beholding him in it, -would find her heart stirred with the rest, yet far far more deeply than -the rest, and would seek him out, obeying his far-off counsel, and -believe that, in his essential self and in his infinite love, he was -verily her guiding-star. - -But when the hour of exaltation had passed and given way to the dreary -commonplace, when the nurse came to wash him like a child, or to chatter -pleasantly of the outside world, the revue which she had seen on her -free afternoon, or the sentimental novel which had beguiled her scanty -leisure, he knew that he had been living in a land of dreams. His real -achievement Olivia knew, and by it she was unmoved. Myra had held out to -him no chance of hope; only certainty of despair. By no further -achievement could Olivia be persuaded. She realized her Will-o’-the-Wisp -as what it really was, a miasmatic gas leading her into quagmires. She -would bitterly resent his reappearance. It would be another trick, -another way of flaunting before her under false pretences. As well write -to her now that he was a mangled wreck in University College Hospital. - -In the course of time he was able to leave his bed and be wheeled about -the ward and afterwards to hobble about on a crutch. But the injured leg -was just a bit shorter than the other, so that he was condemned to a -perpetual limp; and though the ribs were mended, yet their breakage had -occasioned internal lesions which would have to be watched for the rest -of his life. No more adventures in wide spaces. No more tramps to John -o’ Groats. - -“But I’m a born wanderer,” he cried to the surgeon who made the final -pronouncement. “What shall I do when the wander fever is on me?” - -“Fill yourself up with bromide and stick leeches on your head.” - -He laughed into the smiling kindly face, and was silent for a moment. - -“I can drive a car, I suppose?” he said after a while. - -“Safer to drive a horse. You haven’t to crank it up.” - -“So I’m going out, a hopeless crock.” - -“Oh no. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t live, with reasonable care, -to ninety. You’re fit for light work. Why not office work? An educated -chap like you——By the way, you were off to Poland, if I remember -rightly, when you met with your accident. What’s your trade or -profession?” - -“Before the war, I was a cosmopolitan chauffeur,” said Triona. - -“And since?” - -“The damnedest fool God ever made.” - -The surgeon asked him no more questions. - - - CHAPTER XXIII - -FANSTEAD is a little country town built on the plan of a sparsely -equipped herring bone. There is the central High Street, a jumble of old -half-timbered houses and staring modern red-brick buildings, and -sprouted from it a series of lateral roads, lanes and alleys, dwindling -in importance to the High Street tip, and each petering out into the -sweet country vagueness of hedges and fields. All save two. One of these -ends abruptly at an inconveniently distant railway station. The other, -villa bordered, meanders pleasantly for a mile or so to the tiny village -of Pendish where it meets at right angles the great high road, and stops -modestly, confronted all of a sudden with rolling open country, swelling -downs patched with meadow and corn-field and crowned with great clumps -of woodland. - -Pendish was too small even to have a church. There was a tiny chapel for -the convenience of Baptists. But Anglicans tramped into Fanstead or to -the larger village of Banton-on-the-Hill, another mile along the great -high road. It had a tumbled-down inn, the “Whip and Collar,” and a -straggling row of thatched cottages, and a tiny red-brick villa labelled -as the home of the County Police. But it also had a post-office, which -was also a shop; and this was a small, square two-storied Georgian house -imposing among its thatched neighbours and maintaining itself with a -curious air of dignity, in spite of the front door open to the public -during business hours, and the miscellaneous assortment of sweets, -tobacco, tapes and picture postcards exposed in what was once the -dining-room window. - -It was the freehold of Mrs. Pettiland, a widow of fifty; she had -inherited it from her father, a Norfolk thatcher who had brought his -mystery to the west and practising it with skill and saving a little -fortune brought to him by his wife, had amassed enough to buy the square -stone house where he had ended his days. They said in the village that -he had never recovered from the shock occasioned by the fate of his son, -his apprentice and later his partner, who had gone raving mad a week or -two after his marriage and had to be confined in the County Asylum. - -Well, the old man had slept with his fathers for many years; his wife -had joined him; the son still lingered on in the madhouse; and Mrs. -Pettiland, very much alone in the world, save for her husband’s -relatives in Fanstead, sold stamps and sweets to the village, and as a -very great favour let the best bedroom to an occasional painter with -unimpeachable introductions. - -She was dark-haired, fresh-coloured, and buxom; she dressed with -neatness, wearing old-fashioned stays that gave her a waist and a high -bust; and she was the most considerable personage in Pendish. - -When she had received a letter from her sister-in-law, Myra Stebbings, -asking her as a favour to put up a foolish young man named Briggs who -had got himself run over by a motor-lorry, if ever he should act on her -suggestion and come to Pendish, she considered it less as an -introduction than as a command. Whether she loved Myra or not, she did -not know. But she had an immense respect for the dry, grey-faced woman -who had come every year to stay with her, so that she could visit the -brother whom she had loved, in the house of awfulness, five or six miles -away. She stood somewhat in awe of Myra. Her own good man had died -comfortably in his bed and had gone for ever, after a couple of years of -placid content. It was sad; but it was the common lot. The Lord giveth -and the Lord taketh away. But at the idea of a woman’s husband being -shut off from the world in the living tomb of the County Asylum, she -shuddered. Myra always conveyed to her the vague impression, so -impossible to be formulated by an uneducated woman ignorant of -traditional reference, of a human soul defying the tragedy of existence. - -So when this Mr. Briggs wrote from the hospital in London, she sent him -a cordial answer. Any friend of Myra Stebbings was more than welcome. -She would not charge him more than out-of-pocket expenses. For she did -not know who this foolish young man might be. Myra sphinx-like, as -usual, had given no clue. But for Myra to ask a favour was an -unprecedented occurrence. She must have far more than ordinary interest -in the welfare of the young fellow. Mrs. Pettiland’s curiosity was -aroused and she awaited the arrival of her new lodger with impatience. - -The station car from the Fanstead garage brought him, on a late summer -afternoon, with his brown canvas kit-bag and suit-case and khaki -overcoat. She stood in the pedimented doorway, over which was fixed the -wooden post-office board, and watched him descend. He faced her for a -moment, and raised his hat. - -“Mrs. Pettiland?” - -She looked at his clear cut face, so boyish in spite of whiteness and -haggardness, at his careless brown hair sweeping over his temples, at -the lips parted in a smile, at the lithe young figure. She caught the -significance of his uplifted hat and the pleasant tone of his voice. In -her limited category of values he would be only one thing—a gentleman. -The manners of an instant charmed her. - -“Mr. Briggs?” - -“I hope I shan’t be a dreadful nuisance to you, but I need rest and -quiet and Miss Stebbings told me to come. And,” he smiled, “What she -says generally goes.” - -“I see that you know her, sir,” said Mrs. Pettiland pleasantly. - -The luggage taken in, the cab dismissed she led him up to his room—a -large bed-sitting room, looking over a wild garden and a wide expanse of -rolling downs, with the faint white ribbon of high road circling in and -out and round about them. His meals, she informed him, he could take in -the parlour downstairs, without extra charge. - -“But I insist on paying my way,” he said. “Unless my staying here is -profitable to you, I can’t remain. For the present at least, I can well -afford it.” - -So a modest arrangement was made and Triona settled down in his new -home. - -For some days he enjoyed the peace of Pendish. He had brought with him -books, ordered from the hospital; books which would take him long to -read; some of the interminable modern French novels; a complete Fielding -and Smollett; _Paradise Lost_ and _The Faerie Queene_, neither of which -he had as yet had time to go through. He spent hours in the sunny garden -riotous with ingenous roses and delphinium and Canterbury bells and -burning red-hot pokers as they call them in the West. Often he limped -along the green lanes that wound between the fields up and down the -downs. Becoming aware that he knew nothing of bird-life, he procured -through the Fanstead bookshop popular works on British Birds, and -sitting under a tree in a corner of a meadow would strive to identify -them by their song and plumage and queer individual habits. He talked to -the villagers. He talked to Mrs. Pettiland, who told him the tragic -story of Myra and the man in the County Asylum. Of Myra’s doings all the -year round, he found she knew little. She was with her lady whom she had -served most of her life and had gone back with her to Medlow. Of the -lady herself Myra never spoke. Mrs. Pettiland did not know whether the -lady was married or not. That was Myra Stebbings’s way. She gave no -information and no one dared ask her questions. - -“She never even told me, in her letter, who you were, sir,” she added. - -“I am just under her protection,” he smiled. “She took me up when I had -no one to defend me.” - -“She’s a curious woman,” sighed Mrs. Pettiland. - -“With strange tastes in protégés.” He laughed. “To tell you the truth, -Mrs. Pettiland, I don’t quite know myself what I am. But doubtless -sooner or later I’ll do something to astonish you.” - -The yearning to do this fretted his secret heart. To move about the -summer fields when the weather was fine, to lounge in an easy-chair over -books in seasons of rain, was all very well for the period of -convalescence after the confinement in the hospital ward. But after a -while, when his muscles regained strength and the new blood coursing -through his veins brought colour to his cheeks, he began to feel the old -imperious need of movement and of action. Sometimes he went back, as in -his talks with the dustman, to the idyllic tempests in the North Sea; -sometimes to the fierce freedom of the speed across the illimitable -steppes of Russia; sometimes to his perilous escape to Petrograd; -sometimes to his tramps along the safe roads of England; to his -wanderings through the dangerous by-ways of the East End. Bitterly he -cursed the motor-lorry that had knocked him out of his Polish adventure. -Except on Olivia he had never so set his heart on a thing before. Well, -he shrugged angry shoulders. It was no use thinking of that. Poland had -gone, like Olivia, out of his life. And when he came to think of it, so -had everything that had made up all that he had known or conceived of -life. - - * * * * * - -He closed _Tom Jones_, and stared out of the window on the rain-drenched -hills; Tom Jones, with his physical lustiness, his strong animal -bravura, was more than he could bear. Tom Jones, no matter in what -circumstance he was placed, had all the world before him. His gay -confidence offended the lost man. For he was lost. Not a lost soul, he -told himself; that was taking an absurd Byronical view of the matter. To -pose as a modern Manfred would be contemptible. He went down to bed-rock -of commonplace. He was a lost man—a fact which was quite serious enough -for any human being to contemplate with dismay. Lost, tied by a lame leg -in a deadly little backwater of the world, where he must remain till he -died. He could write, pour out all the fever of his soul into words. But -what was the good, if no word of his could be transmitted from this -backwater into the haunts of men? Work without hope—a verse of -Coleridge came vaguely to him—was like draining nectar through a sieve. -It could only end in heart-break. He stared through the dripping -window-pane at the free hills, dim and hopeless in the mist of deluge. -Nothingness confronted him. - -He wondered whether Myra, with diabolical insight and deliberate malice, -had not lured him hither, so that she could hold him in relentless grip. -At any rate she had cast him into this prison. - -He lay awake all that night. The next morning the sky had cleared and -the sun shone down on the gratefully steaming land of green. He -breakfasted in the tiny parlour opposite the shop-post-office on the -ground floor. The ornaments in it were those of long ago. Prints of the -landing of the Guards after the Crimea, of Queen Victoria and the Prince -Consort. Curiously carved and polished coconut shells, and a great egg -on which a staring mermaid was nudely painted stood on the mantelpiece. -On the chiffonier were calabashes, with gaudy figures of indigenous -Indians, such as came from the West Indies seventy years ago, and a -model of a full-rigged ship under a glass case, and a moulting stuffed -toucan, with its great beak and yellow and red plumage. The late Mr. -Pettiland’s father, he had learned, had followed the sea. So, beside the -objects on the crowded mantelpiece and in front of palm-leaf fans were -sprigs of white coral and strings of strange beads, and a dumpy, -shapeless, wooden Polynesian god. And at the end lay a great conch shell -with its wide, pink, curving lips, mysterious and alluring. - -He could scarcely eat. The night had shaken him. He gulped down some -food and coffee, lit a pipe and wandered restlessly about the room, -looking at these tokens of the lands far away which he had never seen. -The coral fascinated him. In the hospital he had read _Typee_ and -_Oomoo_ of Herman Melville in Dent’s cheap collection of classics. The -sight of the coral quickened dormant longings. He took the great -conch-shell in his hand wondering at its beauty of curve and colour. And -as he did so his mind went back to early childhood—to an old aunt whom -he occasionally was taken to visit in torturing Sunday clothes -sacrosanct from the defilement of jam under dreadful penalties, and who -possessed such a shell. He remembered that the shell was the glory that -compensated the frigid horror of that house. He would hold it to his ear -and listen to the boom of far-off surfs and then go home and mingle the -message with the pointing finger of Salvation Yeo. And now, grown man, -inured to adventure, he put the shell to his ear, and the message was -the same, vibrating the call of oceans thundering on distant beaches -through the fibres of his being. - -He went out into the garden and stood in the sun and looked almost -unseeingly at the rolling downs. Suddenly he became aware of the ribbon -of road that lost itself not far away, behind a bluff. It was the Great -High Road that led eventually to a great western port, where great ships -sailed to the South Seas. The Power seemed to impel him, as it had -impelled him as a boy to run away from home. By following that road, he -would reach the port. At the port he could ship before the mast. On -board his limp would not matter. For the rest, he was strong, as strong -as a lion, in spite of all pronouncements by the doctors. It was the one -adventure life left open to him. Nay more, the one chance of maintaining -his reason. He stood with hands clenched staring at the road, the sweat -beading on his forehead. - -To pack up belongings and arrive with genteel suit-case and kit-bag at -the dock-side and expect to be taken on as an ordinary hand would be the -act of an embecile. He passed his hand mildly through his hair in his -instinctive gesture. Why not go as he was, a cap on his head, and his -money, all he had in the world, in a belt (bought for Poland) round his -waist? It was escape from prison. Escape from Myra. The final -disappearance from the orbit of Olivia. - -Perhaps it was the maddest thing he had done in his life. But what did -it matter? If he crocked up, he crocked up. At least he could try. He -went indoors and in the parlour found an old railway timetable. There -were only two trains a day from Fanstead to the main-line junction, and -the morning train had already gone. Why should he not tramp to the -Junction, as in the old days, getting a lift here and there on a cart, -and know again the freedom of the vagabond road? - -He went up to his room, put on his belt of money and good thick boots, -and made up a bundle of necessaries. On his dressing-table he left a -letter addressed to Mrs. Pettiland, enclosing a month’s rent. He looked -round the room for the last time, as he had looked round so many in his -life, and laughed. No books on this journey. As he had not left the -Tyneside with books years ago, so would he start now afresh, with the -same equipment. He went downstairs with a light heart, and called out to -Mrs. Pettiland busy in her post-office. - -“I’m going off on a jaunt—so don’t expect me till you see me.” - -And the answer came: “Don’t overdo yourself with your lame leg.” - -He laughed at the idea. His leg could bear his whole weight to-day -without a twinge. Retracing his steps down the passage, he entered the -garden and left the place by the wicket-gate and struck up the winding -lanes and across fields to the high road, his stick and bundle over his -shoulder. By doing so, instead of taking the road at the end of the -village, he could cut off a mile. It was a morning of freshness and -inspiration. A cool breeze sent the clouds scurrying across the sky and -rustled the leaves of the elms and rippled the surface of the half-grown -corn. His spirits rose as he walked, somewhat of a jog-trot walk, it is -true, but that would last for the rest of his life; so long as the pain -had gone for ever, all was well. He reached the high road and settled -down to his tramp, gladdened by the sight of cart and car and cottage -gardens flaming with roses and hollyhocks or restful with screens of -sweet-peas. In the soft-mannered West-country fashion, folks gave him -“good day” as he passed. The road undulated pleasantly, now and then -sweeping round the full bosom of a hill, with a steeply sloping drop of -thirty feet to the valley. Such spots were grimly sign-posted for -motorists; for at one of them, so Mrs. Pettiland had told him, a -motor-lorry during the war had slipped over at night and all the -occupants had been killed. He regarded it with a chauffeur’s eye and -smiled contemptuously at the inefficiency of the driver. He could race -along it at sixty miles an hour. But still, if you did go over—there -was an end of you. - -By noon he was hungry and ate cold meat and bread at a wayside inn, and -smoked contentedly afterwards on the bench outside and talked of crops -and licensing laws with the landlord. When he started again he felt -stiff from the unaccustomed exercise. Walking would relax his muscles. -Yet he began to tire. A while later he came upon a furniture removing -van which had broken down. Two men drew their heads from below the -bonnet and looked at each other ruefully, and their speech was profane. -He asked what was wrong. They didn’t know. He threw off his coat, glad -to get to an engine again, and in a quarter of an hour had set it going -merrily. For two or three miles he sat on the tailboard between the two -canvas-aproned packers, enjoying the respite. When they turned off -eventually from the main road, and he had to descend, he felt strangely -disinclined to walk. The Junction was still a long way off. It would -have been better, after all, to wait for the evening train from -Fanstead. He was always starting on crazy ventures without counting the -cost. But he limped on. - -The road went through a desolate land of abandoned quarry and ragged -pine woods. The ascent was steep. Suddenly, as though someone had -pierced his leg with hot iron, flamed the unmistakable pain. He stood -aghast at the pronouncement of doom. At that moment, while he hung there -in agony, a rough figure of a man in old khaki slacks rose from a near -hollow in the quarry and, approaching him, asked what time it was. -Triona took out his watch, a gold one, the gift of Olivia. It was four -o’clock. The man thanked him gruffly and returned to his stony Bethel. -Triona hobbled on a few more steps. But the torture was too great. He -must rest. The pine-wood’s cool quiet invited him. He dragged himself -thither wearily, and sat down, his back against the trunk of a tree. He -tried to think. Of course the simplest method of extrication was to hail -any passing car and beg for a lift, either to the Junction or back to -Pendish. Walking was out of the question. But which of those ways should -he take? The weight of physical tiredness overwhelmed him and dulled the -deciding brain. He had set out at nine in the morning and it was now -four o’clock in the afternoon. He had not realized how slow his progress -had been. Yes, he was exhausted and sleepy. Nothing mattered. He rolled -on his side, stuck his arm under his head and fell into a dead sleep. -Thirty yards away, at varying intervals, motor vehicles flashed by. - - * * * * * - -He was dreaming of a rabbit running across his throat, when suddenly he -awoke to find the rabbit a man’s arm. He gripped it, instinctively. It -was nearly dark. - -“What the devil are you doing?” - -The man replied: “Why we thought you was dead.” - -At the significance of the plural, his grasp relaxed and he sat up, -staring at two men who had come upon him in his solitude. They were -dirty, unshaven, not nice to look upon. On one of them he noticed a pair -of old khaki slacks. As soon as he moved they knelt one on each side of -him. - -“And if I’d been dead, you’d have run through my pockets wouldn’t you?” -Suddenly he clapped his hands in front of him. “You swine, you’ve got my -watch and chain.” - -He thrust them aside and scrambled anyhow to his feet, and struck -instinctively with his left full in the face of the nearest man who had -sprung up also. But all his weight was then on his left foot and the -flame of agony shot up through his thigh and his leg crumpled up before -the blow reached the man. Then the one in the khaki slacks came in with -an upper cut on the point of his jaw and he fell senseless. - -When he recovered consciousness a few minutes afterwards, he found -himself alone, dazed, rather sick, in an uncomprehended world of -gathering darkness. Black clouds had swept over the brow of the quarry -hill. A pattering noise some way off struck his ear. He realized it was -rain on the road. He drew himself up to a sitting posture and in a -moment or two recovered wits and memory. There had been a fight. There -was one man in khaki slacks—why, that was the man who had asked him the -time at four o’clock in the afternoon. He had lain in wait for him and -robbed him of his watch and chain. What a fool he had been to parade it -in this manner. Well, it was gone. It would teach him a lesson in -prudence. But the other man? How did he come in? Why did they wait three -or four hours before attacking him? Perhaps the man of the khaki slacks -had struggled against temptation until a more desperate acquaintance -came along. He remembered the landlord of the inn where he had lunched -telling him of an ugly quarrying village he would pass through, a nest -of out-of-works—owing to quarries, unprofitable at the high rate of -wages, being closed down—living discontented Bolshevik lives on high -out-of-work pay. He cursed his leg. If it had not failed him, he would -have got home on the first man, as easily as shaking hands—the flabby, -unguarded face shimmered in front of him; and then he could have turned -his attention to the man in khaki slacks, a true loafer type, spiritless -when alone—the kind of man, who, if he had worn those slacks in the -army, would have been in guard-room every week, and would have cowered -as a perpetual cleaner of latrines under the eyes of vitriol-tongued -sergeants. Far from a fighting man. His imagination worked, almost -pleasurably, in the reconstitution of the robbery. But for his -abominable leg he would have downed both the degenerate scoundrels, and -have recovered his precious belongings. He damned them and his leg -impartially. The watch and chain were all that he had kept materially of -Olivia. In the morning he had hesitated as to the advisability of -carrying them with him, gold watches and chains not being customarily -accoutrements of a common sailor in wind-jammer or tramp steamer -fo’c’sle. But sentiment had prevailed. He could hide them somewhere, -when he reached the port, and at convenient slop-shops he could have -reorganized attire and equipment. - -The rain pattering on the open road came dribbling through the branches -of the pines. He cursed the rain. He must go on somewhere. Absurd to -stay in the wood and get wet through. He struggled to his feet and then -for the first time became aware of a looseness around his middle. He -looked down. His trousers were unbuttoned, his shirt sagged out -immodestly as if the front had been hurriedly tucked in. His hands -sought his waist. The belt with all the money he had in the world had -gone. - - - CHAPTER XXIV - -IT was close on midnight when a car grated and stopped in front of the -little Georgian house in Pendish, and the truant stumbled through the -door, left open, into the presence of Mrs. Pettiland who was anxiously -awaiting him. He was wet through, dishevelled, exhausted. He was -shivering with cold and his face was like the mask of a ghost. She met -him in the passage and dragged him into the little sea-haunted parlour. - -“Oh, what have you been doing?” - -She had been worried all day, unable to account for the money, a month’s -rent and board in advance, in the envelope addressed to her. - -“Didn’t I tell you not to overdo yourself?” - -He greeted her upbraidings with a laugh of bravado. - -“I set out to-day on my last adventure. This is the end of it. I’m here -for the rest of time.” - -“You’ll be in the churchyard for the rest of eternity, if you don’t go -to bed at once,” she declared. - -She packed him to his room; fussed motherwise about him; dosed him with -ammoniated quinine; stuck hot-water bottles in his bed; stood over him -with hot Bovril with an egg in it. She prescribed whisky, also hot; but -since the fatal night at Rowington’s dinner party, he had abjured -alcohol. - -“Now perhaps you’ll tell me what has happened,” she said. - -“My game leg gave out when I got to some quarries. I believe the beastly -place is called Woorow——” - -“Woorow! Why that’s the other side of the county!” She looked at him -aghast. “Do you mean to say that you walked to Woorow in your state? -Really men oughtn’t to be allowed to run about loose.” - -“I’ve run about loose since I was fourteen,” said he. - -“And a pretty mess you seem to have made of it. And then what did you -do?” - -She took away the cup of Bovril and poached egg which he had devoured -ravenously, to her womanly satisfaction, and handed him another. He -continued his story, recounting it, between spoonfulls, in his -imaginative way. When he found he could go no further he curled up to -sleep in a wood. When things went wrong, he assured her, there was -nothing like going to sleep in a wood. All the pixies and elves and -rabbits and stoats and weasels came and sat round you in a magic circle, -shielding you from harm. What would have happened to the Babes in the -Wood, he cried, if it hadn’t been for the robins? - -“I wonder what your temperature is,” said Mrs. Pettiland. - -“Normal,” said he. “This is the first hour I’ve been normal for months.” - -“I’ll take it before I leave you,” she said. “Well, you went to sleep?” - -Yes. He slept like an enchanted dog. He woke up four hours afterwards to -find it pouring with rain. What could he do? He had to get back. -Walking, with his rotten old leg, was out of the question. In the -daytime a decent looking pedestrian may have the chance of stopping a -motoring Good Samaritan and, with a tale of sudden lameness, get a lift -by the side of the chauffeur. But at night it was impossible. To stand -with arresting arms outspread in front of the hell-lamps of an advancing -car would be an act of suicidal desperation. No; he had returned by all -sorts of stages. He had almost forgotten them. A manure cart had brought -him some way. Then he had gone dot and carry one for a mile. Then -something else. He could only hail slow moving traffic in the wet and -darkness. Then he spent an endless time in the cab of a steam traction -engine which he had abandoned on seeing a two-seater car with flaring -head-lamps, stationed at a cottage gate. - -“The old campaigner’s instinct, Mrs. Pettiland. What should it be but a -doctor’s car, outside a poor little cottage? And as the head-lamps were -pointing to where I had come from, I concluded he had drawn up and would -turn round and go where I wanted to get to.” - -“And was it a doctor?” - -He laughed. Of course it was. He had taken shelter from the rain under -the hood of the car for an hour. Then, when the cottage door opened, he -had scrambled out and waited for the owner. There had been a few words -of explanation. By luck, it was Doctor Stansfield of Fanstead—— - -“Dr. Stansfield—why——” - -“Why of course. He knows you inside and out. A charming fellow. He -dropped me here, or rather I dropped him.” - -“And he never came in to look after you—a man in your condition? I’ll -give him a piece of my mind when I see him.” - -He soothed the indignant lady. The good doctor was unaware that anything -particular was wrong with him. Poor man, he had been on the go since -five o’clock the previous morning—human beings are born inconsiderate -of the feelings of others—and he was dog-tired. Too dog-tired even to -argue. He would have given a lift to Judas Iscariot, or the Leper of -Aosta, so long as he wasn’t worried. - -“He nearly pitched us over, at a curve called Hell’s Corner—you know. -The near front wheel was just an inch off the edge. And then he stopped -dead and flung his hands over his eyes and said: ‘Oh, my God!’ He had -lost his nerve. Then when I told his I had driven everything from a -General’s Rolls Royce to an armoured car all over Russia in the war, he -let me take the wheel. And that’s the whole thing.” - -He chatted boyishly, in high spirits, and smoked a cigarette. Mrs. -Pettiland went for a clinical thermometer. To her secret disappointment, -his temperature was only just above normal. She would have loved to keep -him in bed a few days and have the proper ordering of him. A woman loves -to have an amazing fool of a man at her mercy, especially if she is -gifted with a glimmer of humour. When she left him, he laughed out loud. -Well, he had had his adventure with a vengeance. A real old -Will-o’-the-Wisp chase, which had landed him, as ever, into disaster. -Yet it had been worth it, every bit, until his leg gave out on the -quarry hill. Even his slumber he did not regret. His miserable journey -back, recalling old days, had its points. It was good to get the better -of circumstances. - -As to his money which was to have started him in life among coral reefs -and conch-shells, that had gone irretrievably. Of course, he could have -gone to the nearest police-station. But if the miscreants were arrested, -he would have to prosecute. Highway robbery was a serious affair; the -stolen belt packed with bank notes, a romantic one. The trial would -provide a good newspaper story. There would be most undesirable -publicity; and publicity is the last thing a man dead to the world would -desire. He shrugged philosophic shoulders. Let the money go. The humour -of the situation tickled his vagabond fancy. He was penniless. That was -the comical end of his pursuit of the _ignis fatuus_. The freak finality -and inevitability of it stimulated his sense of the romantic. If he had -been possessed of real courage, he would have made over all his money, -months ago, to Olivia and disappeared, as he was now, into the unknown. -His experience of life ought to have taught him the inexorable fatality -of compromise. What would he do? He did not know. Drowsy after the day’s -fatigue, and very warm and comfortable, he did not care. He curled -himself up in the bed and went to sleep. - - * * * * * - -One afternoon, a week afterwards, he limped into Mrs. Pettiland’s -post-office with a gay air. - -“Mrs. Pettiland,” said he, “at last I have found my true vocation.” - -“I’m glad to hear it, sir,” she replied undisturbed in her official -duties which consisted in taking the coppers from a small child in -payment for two stamps. “You’ve been rather restless these last few -days.” - -Triona watched the child depart, clasping the stamps in a clammy hand. - -“When one hasn’t a penny in the world and starvation stares you in the -face, one may be excused for busy search for a means of livelihood.” - -“You’ve got plenty of money.” - -“I haven’t.” - -“You paid me a month’s board and lodging in advance, the other -day—though why you did it, I can’t understand.” - -“I was going to run away,” he said cheerfully. “To compensate you in -that miserable manner for inconvenience was the least I could do. But -the gods rightly stepped in and hauled me back.” He swung himself on the -counter and smiled at her. “I’m a fraud, you know.” - -The plump and decorous lady could not realize his earnestness. Behind -his words lay some jest which she could not fathom. - -“You don’t believe me?” - -He sighed. If he had told her a fairy tale she, like all the rest of the -world in his past life, would have believed him. Now that he told the -truth, he met with blank incredulity. - -“I’m going to earn my living. I’m taking on a job as chauffeur.” - -She stared at him. “A chauffeur—you?” - -“Yes. Why not?” - -Her mind ran over his intellectual face, his clothes, his manners, his -talk—free and sometimes disconcertingly allusive, like that of the rare -and impeccably introduced artists whom she had lodged—his books . . . - -“Why—you’re a gentleman,” she gasped. - -“Oh no. Not really. I’ve been all kinds of things in my time. Among them -I’ve passed as a gentleman. But by trade I’m a chauffeur. I practically -started life as a chauffeur—in Russia. For years I drove a Russian -Prince all over Europe. Now there aren’t any more Russian Princes I’m -going to drive the good people of Fanstead to railway stations and -dinner parties.” - -“Well, I never,” said Mrs. Pettiland. - -“There’s a young man—an ex-officer—Radnor by name, in Fanstead—who -has just set up a motor garage.” “He’ll fail,” said Mrs. Pettiland. -“They all do. Old Hetherington of ‘The Bull’ has all the custom.” - -“With one rickety death-trap for hire and a fool of a mechanic who has -wrecked every car sent in for repairs for a radius of thirty miles. I -offered Hetherington to teach him his business. You might as well sing -‘Il Trovatore’ to a mule. So I went to Radnor. He had just sacked a man, -and with my invariable luck, I stepped in at the right moment. No, Mrs. -Pettiland—” he swung his sound leg and looked at her, enjoying her -mystification “—the reign of Hetherington is over. Radnor’s Garage is -going to be the wonder of the countryside.” - -He believed it implicitly. Radnor, a mild and worried young man, with -quite a sound knowledge of his business, might struggle along and earn a -hand-to-mouth living. But he lacked driving-power. To Triona, during his -two or three interviews with him, that was obvious. He had sufficient -capital for a start, a good garage equipment, a fairly modern 25 h.p. -utility car and was trying to make up his mind to buy another. Triona -divined his irresolution. He would be at the mercy of unscrupulous -mechanics and chauffeurs. His spirit seemed to have been broken by two -years imprisonment in Germany. He had lost the secret of command. And, -by nature, a modest, retiring gentleman. Triona pitied him. He had -wandered through the West of England seeking a pitch where the -competition was not too fierce, and finding unprogressive Fanstead, had -invested all his capital in the business. He had been there a couple of -months during which very little work had come in. He could stick it out -for six months more. After that the deluge. - -“Give me four pounds a week as head mechanic and chauffeur,” said -Triona, “and the deluge will be golden rain.” - -This was after the exhibition of John Briggs’ papers—Armoured Car -Column and Minesweeper—and the tale of his Russian chauffeurdom. He had -also worked magic, having a diagnostician’s second sight into the inside -of a car’s mechanism, with a mysteriously broken down 40 h.p. foreign -car, the only one in the garage for repairs, which, apparently flawless, -owner and chauffeur and Radnor himself regarded with hebetude. - -“I’ll take you on all right,” said Radnor. “But, surely a man like you -ought to be running a show of his own.” - -“I haven’t a cent in the world,” replied Triona. “So I can’t!” - -All this he told Mrs. Pettiland, swinging his sound leg, as he sat on -the counter. - -“The only fly in the ointment,” said he, “is that I shall have to move.” - -“From here? Whatever for?” - -“Chauffeurs don’t have luxurious bed-sitting-rooms with specially -designed scenery for views. They can’t afford it. Besides, they’re not -desirable lodgers.” - -She flushed indignantly. If he thought she would prefer his room to his -company, because he drove a car, he was very much mistaken. The -implication hurt. Even suppose he was fit to look after a car, he was -not yet fit to look after himself. Witness his folly of a week ago. He -would pay her whatever he could afford and she would be more than -contented. - -“What wonderful people there are in the world,” he sighed. - -But he withstood her generous blandishments. No, there was an eternal -fitness of things. Besides, he must live at the garage, ready to attend -telephone calls by day or by night. He couldn’t be hobbling backwards -and forwards between Fanstead and Pendish. Against this practical side -of the question there could be no argument. - -“And what shall I do with the money you’ve paid in advance?” - -“Keep it for a while,” said he. “Perhaps Randor will give me the sack -and I’ll come creeping back to you.” - -Thus did Triona, with bag and baggage take up his quarters in an attic -loft in the garage yard at Fanstead. - -Not since his flight from Olivia had he felt so free of care. Fate had -condemned him to the backwater and in the backwater he would pass his -contented life, a life of truth and honesty. And he had before him an -essential to his soul’s health—an ideal. He would inspire the -spiritless with spirit, the ineffectual with efficiency, the sick heart -with health. The man Radnor had deserved well of his country through -gallant service, wounds and imprisonment. His country had given him the -military Cross and a lieutenant’s gratuity, and told him not to worry it -any more. If Mrs. Pettiland’s prophecy came true and he failed, he would -be cast upon a country that wouldn’t be worried. Triona swore that he -should pull through. He would save a fellow-man from shipwreck, without -his knowledge. It was something to live for. He became once more the -perfect chauffeur, the enthusiastic motor-man, dreaming of a great -garage—a sort of Palace of Automobiles for the West of England. - -And as he dreamed, so did it begin to come to pass. The efficiency of -the Quantock Garage became known for miles around. Owners of valuable -cars forsook the professional wreckers in the great junction town and -sent them to Fanstead. Radnor soon bought his second car; by the end of -the autumn a third car; and increased his staff. Triona was foreman -mechanician. Had he not so desired, he need not have driven. Nor need he -have driven in the brass-buttoned livery on which he insisted that -Radnor’s chauffeurs should be attired. Smartness, he argued rightly, -caught the eye and imagination. But he loved the wheel. Driving cooled -the vagabond fire in his veins. There was an old touring-car of high -horse-power, excellent when nursed with loving hand and understanding -heart, but a box of dismal caprice to the inexpert, which he would allow -no one to drive but himself. Radnor held the thing in horror and wanted -to sell it as a bad bargain. He had had it out once and it had broken -down ten miles from home and had suffered the ignominy of a tow back. -Triona wrought at it for three weeks, conjuring up spare parts from -nowhere, and fitting to it new devices, and turned out a going concern -in which he took inordinate pride. He whirled touring parties prodigious -distances in this once rickety creature of his adoption. He could get -thirty-five or forty out of her easily. - -“All right. It’s your funeral, not mine,” said Radnor during one of -their discussions. - -It was a healthy life. His lameness did not matter. Whatever internal -lesions he suffered from gave no symptoms of existence. His face lost -its lines of suffering, his eyes their shifty haggardness. He put on -flesh, as far as is possible for a naturally spare-built man. Randor, an -honourable soul, when the business in the new year shewed proof of -immense development, offered him a substantial increase in salary. But -Triona refused. - -“What do I want with money, my dear fellow? If I had more I’d only spend -it for books. And I’ve more of them now than I know where to put them. -No; keep all you can for capital in the business. Or stick it into an -advertisement scheme I’ve been working out—” - -“You’re an odd devil, Briggs,” said Radnor. He was a small dark man with -great mournful eyes and a little clipped moustache over a timorous -mouth, and his lips were always twitching. “A queer devil. What I should -have done without you, I don’t know. If I could do what I want, I should -offer you a partnership.” - -“Don’t be a damned fool,” said Triona. “A partner puts in money and I -haven’t a bean. Besides if I were a partner, the whole show would go to -hell.” - -“Why?” - -“I should immediately want to go and do something else,” replied Triona. - -“I give it up,” said Radnor. - -“Best thing you can do,” said Triona. - -How could the very grateful young proprietor divine the spiritual -crankiness of his foreman? He went through the English equivalent of -shoulder shrugging. - -Briggs, from the business point of view, was a treasure fallen from -Heaven. And Briggs was a mystery. He didn’t begin to pretend to -understand Briggs. Briggs obviously didn’t want to be understood. Radnor -was a gentleman. He could press the matter no further. - -“Let us get this business up to a net profit of three thousand a year -and then we may talk,” said Triona. - -“Three thou—! Good God, man, I couldn’t talk. I’d slobber and gibber!” - -“That’s where I’ll come in,” laughed Triona. - -He had set his heart on this wash-out from the war making good. Just -before Christmas he had an added incentive. A melancholy lady and a -wistful pretty girl had flashed for a week end through Fanstead. They -had come from London and had put up at The King’s Head. Radnor had made -the tour of the proprietor through the garage. - -“This is Mr. Briggs, my foreman, whom I’ve so often told you about.” - -And afterwards, to Triona, with an air of inconsequence: - -“A kind of aunt and cousin of mine who wanted to see how I was getting -on.” - -Poor old chap! Of course they wanted to see how he was getting on. The -girl’s assessing eyes took in everything, himself included. - -The unbidden phrase flashed through his brain. - -“He shall marry the girl by Michaelmas Day!” - -The sudden impishness of it delighted him. - -“By God, he shall!” he swore to himself. - -So he refused an increase of salary and, by following an _ignis fatuus_ -of an ideal, he kept his conscience in a state of interested amusement -at the mystification of his employer. - -April came and found the Quantock Garage in full tide of business. -Hetherington of “The Bull” had long since given up his wheezy station -car and the motor-destroying works in which he housed it. Triona -laboured from morning to night, for a while content to see the wheels of -an efficient establishment go round. And then he began to grow restless. -He had set Radnor permanently on his feet. If he left, the business -would go on by its own momentum. Nothing more was needed than Radnor’s -own conscientious plodding. Why should he stay? He had achieved his -purpose. Radnor would surely be in a financial position warranting him -to marry the girl by Michaelmas. - -“I’ll see him through,” he vowed, and stayed on. “And then——” - -And then? Life once more became a blank. Of late he had drugged lonely -and despairing thoughts by reading. Books grew into great piles in -corners of his loft above the garage. But reading awoke him to the -poignant craving for expression. He had half a dozen tantalizing plots -for novels in his head, a score of great situations, a novelist’s -gallery of vivid personalities. As to the latter, he had a superstition. -If he gave one a name it would arise in flesh and blood, insistent on -having its story told. So he shut tempting names resolutely from his -brain; for he had made up his queer mind never to write another line of -romance. - -The spring stirred the sap within him. It was a year now since he had -fled from Olivia. What was she doing, what feeling? Occasionally he -called on Mrs. Pettiland. - -Myra, he learned, had paid her weekly visit in October, had occupied his -old room, had gone to visit her lunatic husband, had maintained her -impenetrable silence as to her mistress’s doings. When Mrs. Pettiland -had reported his chauffeur activities, Myra had said: - -“I’m glad he has got honest employment.” - -“Shall I let him know that you’re here?” Mrs. Pettiland had asked. - -Myra had answered in her final way: - -“I’ve no desire to see him and he certainly has no desire to see me.” - -Myra, therefore, had come and gone without his knowledge. Often he -wished that he had met her and wrung some information from her unwilling -lips. And now, with his purpose accomplished, his heart aching for -change, his spirit craving to pour itself out in tumultuous words, and -his soul crying for her that was lost, the thought that had haunted the -back of his mind for the past year stood out grimly spectre-wise. What -right had he to live? Olifant had spoken truly. What right had he to -compel her to perpetual widowhood that was no widowhood? She was tied to -him, a husband lost, as far as she was concerned, to human ken, never to -cross her path again; tied to him as much as Myra was tied to the poor -wretch in the madhouse. And as Myra had grown soured and hard, so might -Olivia grow. Olivia so young now, with all the joy of life before her. -He gone, she could marry again. There was Olifant, that model of men, -whom he guessed to have supplanted. With him she could be happy until -her life’s end. Once more she could be Lady Bountiful of “The Towers.” -. . . The conception was an agony of the flesh, keeping him awake of -nights on the hard little camp-bed in the loft. He grappled with the -torture, resolved to triumph over it, as he had gritted his teeth and -triumphed over physical pain in hospitals. The knife was essential, he -told himself. It was for her sake. It was his duty to put himself out of -the world. - -And yet the days went on, and he felt the lust of life in his blood. The -question tauntingly arose: Is it braver to die than to live? Is it more -cowardly to live than to die? He couldn’t answer it. - -In the meantime he went on mending broken-down motor-engines and driving -gay tourists about the countryside, in his car of resurrection. - - - CHAPTER XXV - -WHAT was bound to happen had happened. Olifant the Galahad, out for -grails, as Triona, and indeed as Olivia had pictured him, had lost his -head, poured out a flow of mad words, and flung his arm about her and -kissed her passionately. She had been caught, had half-surrendered; -released, she had put hands to a tumultuous bosom and staggered away -from him. And there had followed a scene enacted for the -twenty-billionth time on the world’s stage. She had grown weak and -strong by turns. At last she had said: “If you love me, go now and let -me think it over and all that it means.” - -And he had gone, passion yielding to his courteous consideration of her, -and she was left alone in the drawing-room, staring through the open -French windows at the May garden. - -Since her return from the South of France, she had felt the thing -coming. In October, as soon as Myra had returned from her holiday, fear -had driven her from Medlow. The hunger in the man’s eyes proclaimed an -impossible situation. The guest and host position she had changed after -the first few weeks. Brother and sister and herself kept house -together—on the face of it a sensible and economical arrangement. Mr. -Trivett and Mr. Fenmarch, once more financial advisers, commended it -with enthusiasm. The summer had passed happily enough. The _modus -vivendi_ with the sections of Medlow society respectively symbolized by -Landsdowne House and Blair Park had arranged itself automatically. She -found conferred upon her the Freedom of each. The essential snobbery of -English life is a myth kept alive by our enemies. It is true that the -squire and the linen-draper do not ask each other and their families to -dinner. Their social worlds are apart. They don’t want to ask each other -to dinner. They would never dream of asking each other to dinner, one no -more than the other; they respect each other too mightily. But a dweller -in both worlds, such as Olivia, Trivett-ed and Gale-d though she was on -the one side, yet on the other, the wife of the famous Alexis Triona and -the friend of the Olifants, folks whose genealogy was lost somewhere in -a Pictish bonfire of archives, can wander up and down the whole social -gamut at her good pleasure. Besides she herself does not mix the -incompatible. A mere question of the art of life, which Olivia, with her -London experiences found easy of resolution. So, in the mild and mellow -way on which Medlow prided itself, she had danced and tennis-ed and -picnic-ed the summer through. On the Blair Park side—she wondered -laughingly at their unsupercilious noses—Blaise Olifant and his sister -accompanied her in the gentle festivities. Each day had brought its -petty golden dust—the futile Church bazaar, the tennis tournament, the -whist-drive of which old John Freke, the linen-draper father of Lydia, -had made her a lady-patroness, the motor-run into quaint Shrewsbury, on -shopping adventure in quest of crab or lobster unobtainable in Medlow—a -thousand trivial activities—to the innocent choking of her soul, to use -Matthew Arnold’s figure, and an inevitable forgetfullness. Everything -had gone well until October. Then she had taken prudent flight with Myra -to the France and Italy which she had never seen—and there she had -stayed till the beginning of May. - -It was Mrs. Woolcombe who insisted on her return to Medlow. Where else -should she return after her wanderings but to her own home? At first -everything was just as it used to be. Then, on a trivial cause—an -insult offered her by an Italian in Venice which she had laughingly -recounted—the passion of Blaise Olifant had suddenly flamed forth. - -She was frightened, shaken. He had given her the thrill, which, in her -early relations with him she had half contemptuously deemed impossible. -She found herself free from sense of outrage. She bore him no -resentment. Indeed she had responded to his kiss. She was not quite -sure, within herself, whether she would not respond again. The -communicated thrill completed her original conception of him as the very -perfect gentle knight. For after all, knights without red-blood in their -veins might be gentle, but scarcely perfect. - -If she were free, she would marry him out of hand, without further -question. He had always dwelt in a tender spot of her heart. Now he had -slipped into one more warm, smouldering with strange fires. But she was -not free. She stood at once at the parting of the roads. She must go -back to a wandering or lonely life, or she must defy conventions. - -She went out into the ivy-walled garden, and walked up the central path, -between the beds of wallflowers and forget-me-nots and the standard -roses just bursting into leaf. What could she do? Once she had laughed -scornfully at the idea of love playing any part in her life. She had not -reckoned with her youth. And now she stared aghast at the vista of -lonely and loveless years. - -Presently Blaise Olifant came from his study and advanced to meet her. - -He said: “Can you speak to me now?” - -“Yes—now,” she answered. - -“I’ve behaved like any blackguard. You must forgive me, if you can. The -Italian cad who made me see red was not very much worse than myself.” - -There was a smile in her dark eyes as she looked up at him. - -“There’s all the difference in the world. I disliked the Italian very -much.” She touched his sleeve. “You are forgiven, my dear friend. It’s -all my fault. I oughtn’t to have come back.” - -“You’re the most wonderful of women,” said he. - -The most wonderful of women made a little wry movement of her lips. - -“It’s all a might-be and a can’t-be,” she said in a low voice. - -“Do you suppose, my dear, I don’t know that? If it could be, do you -think I should regret losing my self-control?” - -She said. “If it’s any consolation to you—perhaps I lost mine too. -We’re both human. Perhaps a woman is even more so than a man. That’s why -I went away in October—things were getting impossible——” - -“Good God!” he exclaimed, “I thought you were bored to death!” - -A little laugh could not be restrained. The blindness of man to -psychological phenomena is ever a subject for woman’s sweet or bitter -mirth. But it was not in his heart to respond. - -“Then you do care for me a little?” - -“I shouldn’t be standing here with you now, if I didn’t. I shouldn’t -have made the mistake of coming back, if I hadn’t wanted to see you.” - -“Mistake?” He sighed and turned a step away. “Yes. I suppose it was. I -should have been frank with Mary and shewn her that it was -impossible—for me.” - -“It would be best for me to go to-morrow,” said Olivia. - -“Where?” - -“London. A hotel. Any old branch.” She smiled. “I must settle down -somewhere sooner or later. The sooner the better.” - -“That’s monstrous,” he declared with a flash in his eyes. “To turn you -out of your home—I should feel a scoundrel.” - -“I don’t see how we can go on living together, carrying on as usual, as -though nothing had happened.” - -For a few moments they walked up the gravelled path in silence, both -bareheaded in the mild May sunshine. - -“Listen,” he said, coming to a pause. “I’m a man who has learned -self-control in three hard schools—my Scotch father’s, science, war. If -I swear to you, on my honour, that nothing that has passed between us -to-day shall ever be revived by me in look or word or act—will you stay -with us, and give me your—your friendship—your companionship—your -presence in the house? It was an aching desert all the time you were -away.” - -She walked on a pace or two, after a hopeless sigh. Could she never -drive into this unworldly head the fact that women were not sexless -angels? How could their eyes forever meet in the glance of a polite -couple discussing the weather across a tea-table? She could not resist a -shaft of mockery. - -“For all of your philosopher father and science and war—I wonder, my -dear Blaise, how much you really know of life?” - -He halted and put a hand on her slim shoulder. - -“I love you so much my dear,” said he, “that I should be content to hang -crucified before you, so that my eyes could rest upon you till I died.” - -He turned and strode fast away. She followed him crying “Blaise! -Blaise!” He half turned with an arresting arm—and even at that moment -she was touched by the pathos of the other empty sleeve—— - -“No, don’t—please.” - -She ran hard and facing him blocked his way. - -“But what of me? What of my feelings while I saw you hanging crucified?” - -That point of view had not occurred to him. He looked at her -embarrassed. His Scottish veracity asserted itself. - -“When a man’s mad in love,” said he, “he can’t think of everything.” - -She took his arm and led him up the gravelled path again. - -“Don’t you see, dear, how impossible it all is?” - -“Yes. I suppose so. It must be one thing or the other. And all that is -good and true and honourable makes it the other.” - -Tears came at the hopelessness of it. She seized his hand in both of -hers. - -“What you said just now is a thing no woman could forget to the day of -her death.” - -She kissed the hand and let it drop, stirred to the inmost. What was -she, ineffectual failure, to command the love of such a man? He stood -for a while looking into the vacancy of the pale blue sky over the -ivy-clad wall. Before her eyes garden and house and wall and sky were -blotted out; and only the one tall figure existed in the scene. Her -heart beat. It was a moment of peril, and the moment seemed like an -hour. - -At last he turned and looked at her with his grave smile. She put her -hand on her heart not knowing whether to cry or laugh at the relaxation -of tension. - -“You stay here with Mary,” he said gently. “I’ll go away for a change—a -holiday. I need one. There’s an old uncle of mine in Scotland. I’ve -neglected him and his salmon-fishing shamefully for years. How I can -fish with one arm, heaven only knows. I’ve learned to do most things. -It’ll be a new experience. As a matter of fact, I should have gone last -month, if the temptation to wait for you hadn’t been so strong. It’s up -in the wilds of Inverness——” - -She made feeble protest. It was she who drove him out of his home. Far -better for her to cut herself adrift from Medlow. But he prevailed. He -would go. In the meantime things might right themselves. - -He departed the following morning, leaving Olivia to a new sense of -loneliness and unrest. She lived constantly in the tense moment, -catching her breath at the significance of its possibilities. Unbidden -and hateful the question recurred: if positions had been reversed; if -Blaise had been the lost husband and Alexis the lover, would Alexis have -let her go? Certainly not Alexis. And yet deep down in her heart she was -grateful that she had come scathless through the moment. - -The little round of country gaieties went on and caught her up in its -mild gyrations. Mrs. Woolcombe deplored her brother’s absence. He had -been looking forward to the social life with Olivia, especially the -tennis parties. It was wonderful how he had overcome the handicap of his -one arm; the effectual service he had perfected, tossing up the ball -with his racket and smiting it at the dead point of ascent. It had all -been due to Olivia’s encouragement the previous summer; for till then he -had not played for years. But he had been sadly overworked. When a man -cannot sleep and rises up in the morning with a band of iron round his -head, it is obvious that he needs a change. It was the best thing for -Blaise, undoubtedly; but it must be dull for Olivia. So spake Mary -Woolcombe, unaware of kisses and tense moments. - -Olivia said to Myra: “This is an idle, meaningless life. We’ll go back -to London and settle down.” - -“Will life mean much more when you get there?” asked Myra. - -“I can do something.” - -“What?” - -“How do I know? Why are you so irritating, Myra?” - -“It isn’t me,” said Myra. - -“What is it, then?” - -“A woman wants a man to look after,” said Myra in her unimpassioned way. -“If she can’t get a man she wants a woman. I’ve got you, so I’m not -irritated. You haven’t got either, so you are.” - -Olivia flushed angrily and swerved round in her chair before the mirror -on her toilet-table—Myra was drying her hair—as she had dried it from -days before Olivia could remember. - -“That’s a liberty, Myra, which you oughtn’t to have taken.” - -“I dare say, dearie,” replied Myra unmoved, “but it’s good for you that -somebody now and then should tell you the truth.” - -“I want neither man nor woman,” Olivia declared. Myra gently squared her -mistress’s shoulders to the mirror and went on with her task. - -“I wonder,” she said. - -“I think you’re hateful,” said Olivia. - -“Maybe. But I’ve got common-sense. If you think you’re going to London -to stand for Parliament or write poetry and get it printed or run a Home -for Incurable Camels, you’re mistaken, dear. And you’ll have no truck -with women. You’ve never had a woman friend in the world—anyone you’d -die for.” - -“Of course I haven’t,” snapped Olivia. - -“It’s a man’s woman you are,” continued Myra. “You’ve looked after men -ever since your dear mother was taken ill. It’s what God meant you to -do. It’s all you can do. And you haven’t got a man and that’s what’s -making you unhappy.” - -Olivia sprang from her chair, looking with her long black hair ruffled -and frizzed and spreading out around her warm oval face, like an angry -sea-nymph on a rock disputed by satyrs. - -“I hate men and everything connected with them.” - -“You still hate your husband?” asked Myra looking at her with cold pale -eyes. - -“I loathe him. How dare you? Haven’t I forbidden you to mention his -name?” - -“I didn’t mention his name,” said Myra. “But if you like, I won’t refer -to him again. Sit down and let me put on the electric dryer. Your hair’s -still wringing wet.” She yielded, not with good grace. Myra had her at -her mercy. Dignity counselled instant dismissal of Myra from her -presence. But the washing and drying of her long thick hair had ever -been a problem; so dignity gave way to comfort. - -She was furious with Myra. We all are with people who confront us with -the naked truth about ourselves. That was all she was fit for; all that -life had taught her; to look after a man. She stared at the blatant -proposition in the grimness of the night-watches. What else, in God’s -name, was she capable of doing for an inch advancement of humanity? She -had gone forth long ago—so it seemed—from Medlow, to open the -mysterious mysteries of the world. She had opened them—and all the -pearls, good, bad and indifferent, were men. All the ideals; all the -colour and music and gorgeous edifices of life; all the world vibration -of thought and action and joy of which she had dreamed, every manifold -thrill that had run through her being from feet to hair on that first -night in London when she had leaned out of her Victoria Street flat and -opened her young soul to the informing spirit of the vast city of -mystery—the whole spiritual meaning, nay, the whole material reason for -her existence, was resolved into one exquisitely pure, bafflingly -translucent in its mystery of shooting flames, utterly elemental crystal -of sex. Sex, in its supreme purity; but sex all the same. - -She was a man’s woman. It was at once a glory and a degradation. Myra -was right. What woman, in the course of her life, had she cared a scrap -for? Her mother. Her mother was a religion. And men? Her chastity -revolted. When had she sought to attract men? Her conscience was clear. -But men had been the terror, the interest, the delight of her life from -the moment she had left the cloistral walls of her home. And even before -that, on a different plane, had she not, while keeping house for father -and brothers, always thought in terms of man? - -And now she was doing the same. The emptiness of her prospective life in -London appalled her. The mad liar, her husband, an unseizable, unknown -entity, of whom she thought with shivering repulsion, was away -somewhere, living a strange, unveracious life. The soldier, scholar and -gentleman, who loved her, into whose arms, into whose life, she had all -but fallen, had fled, saving her from perils. Before he returned she -must, in decency and honour, take up her solitary abode elsewhere. Or -else she could terminate his tenancy of “The Towers” and carry on an -old-maidish life in Medlow for evermore. Anyway, a useless sexless thing -for all eternity. - - * * * * * - -The second post had brought her some letters, a few bills and receipts, -a note from Janet Philimore with whom she kept up a casual -correspondence, and a long untidy screed from Lydia. Lydia had conceived -the idea of visiting Medlow. Her father, old John Freke, whom she had -not seen for years, was ailing. What did Olivia think of the notion? -Olivia, sitting in the little ivy-clad summer-house at the end of the -garden, thought less of the notion than of the amazing lady. To ask her, -an outsider, whether she should come to her father’s bed of sickness! -She made up her mind to write: “Oh, yes, come at once, but wear the -thickest of black veils, so that no one will recognize you.” Her mind -wandered away from the hypothetical visit—London and Lydia again! Just -where she was when she started. Life seemed a hopeless muddle. - -“I’m sorry,” said Myra’s voice breaking suddenly on her meditations. She -looked up and beheld Myra more than usually grave and cold. “I’m sorry -to disturb you. But I’ve just had a letter. He’s dead.” - -Olivia, with a shock through all her being, started to her feet. - -“Dead. My husband?” - -“No,” said Myra. “Mine.” - -“Oh!” said Olivia somewhat breathless—and sank on the bench again. She -recovered herself quickly. - -“I’m sorry, Myra. But after all, it’s a merciful release.” - -“God’s mercies are inscrutable,” said Myra. - -So, thought Olivia, was Myra’s remark. - -“I’ve always loved him, you see,” said Myra. “I suppose you’ll have no -objections to my going to bury him?” - -“My dear old Myra,” cried Olivia. “Of course, my dear, you can go—go -whenever you like.” - -“I’ll come back as soon as it’s over,” said Myra. - -She turned and walked away, and Olivia saw her lean and unexpressive -shoulders rise as though a sob had shaken her. - - - CHAPTER XXVI - -OF the death of Myra Stebbings’s husband and of her second appearance in -Pendish during his sojourn in the West Country, Triona knew nothing. -Again she had forbidden her sister-in-law to give him any information as -to her doings. Again she disclaimed interest in the young man. Nor was -he aware, a week after the funeral, that Myra, who had stood by the -graveside in the pouring rain, and had insisted on jogging back to -Pendish wet through, in the undertaker’s brougham, lay dangerously ill -in the upstairs bedroom of the little Georgian house. The increasing -business of the Quantock Garage diverted his energies from polite tramps -into Pendish to enquire into Mrs. Pettiland’s state of health. Also, he -was growing morose, his soul feeding on itself, and beginning to develop -an unwholesome misanthropy. Like Hamlet, man didn’t delight him; no, nor -woman neither. When not working in the garage or driving the old -touring-car, he retired to brood in his loft and eschewed the company of -his kind. - -“You’re overdoing it,” said Radnor, a kindly person. “Why not go away on -a holiday and have a change?” - -“Only one change would do me any good,” he replied gloomily, “and that -would be to get out of this particularly vile universe.” - -Radnor looked round his well ordered, bustling establishment and smiled. - -“It isn’t as bad as all that.” - -Triona shrugged his shoulders and spanner in hand turned to the car he -was doctoring, without a reply. - -A few days afterwards Radnor said: - -“We’re going to be married in August, and I don’t mind saying it’s -mostly thanks to you.” - -“I’m glad to hear it,” said Triona. “I’ll stick it out till then.” - -“And then?” - -“I’ll have the change you’ve been talking of.” - -Radnor laughed. “You’ll let me have a bit of a honeymoon first, won’t -you?” - -“Oh, yes,” replied Triona. “You can have your honeymoon.” - -The weakening incentive to life would last till September. He would make -it last. It was now the beginning of June. Three months or so more -wouldn’t matter. To carry on a meaningless existence further would be -absurd. Indeed, it would be immoral. Of that, for some time past he had -convinced himself. - -England ran motor-mad that summer. It awoke to find war restrictions -removed, roads free and petrol to be had for the buying. In its -eagerness to race through a beloved land closed up for years and view or -review historic spots of loveliness, and otherwise to indulge in its -national vagabond humour it cared little for the price of petrol. The -hiring garages, in anything like tourist centres, found their resources -strained. Radnor bought another car, and still had more orders than he -could execute. He drove one car himself. - - * * * * * - -It was a soft June evening. Triona sat at the wheel of the great -antiquated touring-car to which he had given its new lease of life, -driving homewards from the neighbourhood of the Great Junction Town. He -had taken a merry party that day some hundred and fifty miles through -the tenderest greenery of early summer, through dark gorges with -startling shadows, through cool lanes, over hills in the open sunshine; -and, in the sweetness of the evening, he had put them down at the place -whence they had started. For all his mood of despair, he had enjoyed the -day. The poet in him had responded to the eternal call of the year’s -life laughing in its gay insolence of youth. Since nine in the morning -the sweet wind of the hills had swept through his lungs and scenes of -loveliness had shimmered before his eyes. - -Alone at the wheel, he thought of the passing day of beauty. Was it not -worth living—just to enjoy it? Was it not worth living—just to -translate into words, if only for the sake of the doing, the emotion of -that enjoyment? He had passed through a beech wood, a world of pale -emerald, like fairy seas, above, and a shimmer of blue-bells below as -though the sky had been laid down for a carpet. . . . - -He drove slowly and carefully. The car had done its good day’s work. It -was knocking a bit, like an old horse wheezing in protest against -over-estimation of its enduring powers. He had tried it perhaps too high -to-day. He loved the re-created old car, as though it were a living -thing. A valiant old car, which had raced over awful roads in Flanders. -It was a crazy irritation that he could not pat it into comfort. Nursing -it with the mechanician’s queer tenderness, he came to the straight -mile, near home, of road on the mountain side, with its sheer drop into -the valley, ending at the turn known as Hell’s Corner, at which the -overwrought doctor, on the night of mad adventure, had lost his nerve. -Just past the corner branched the secondary road to Fanstead, for the -great road swept on by the expiring end of Pendish village; but by -walking from Pendish, as he had done on the day of the aforesaid -adventure, through lanes and fields, one cut off a great bend of road -and struck it on the fair-mile beyond the turn. And now a few hundred -yards from the corner the engine gave trouble. He descended from his -seat and opened the bonnet. He discovered a simple matter, the choking -of a plug. The knocking, he knew was in the cardan shaft. He would have -to replace the worn pin. While cleaning out the choked plug with a piece -of wire and blowing through it to clear it from the last fragment of -grit, he wondered how long it would take to have the spare pin made. He -was going out again the day after to-morrow. Could he risk the old car? -To-morrow he would take her down and see for himself the full extent of -the trouble. Meanwhile he screwed the plug on again, shut down the -bonnet, cranked up the starting handle and jumped up beside the wheel. - -But just as he put in the low gear, his eyes were riveted on a familiar -figure some twenty yards away, walking towards him. For a moment or two -he remained paralysed, while the old-fashioned gears crunched horribly. -There she advanced slim, erect, in Tussore silk coat and skirt, a flash -of red bow at the opening of her blouse. The car began to move. At that -instant their eyes met. Olivia staggered back, and he read in her -bewildered gaze the same horror he had last seen in her eyes. - -What she was doing here, on this strip of remote road, he could not -understand. Obviously she had not expected to find him, for she looked -at him as though he were some awful ghost. He changed gear, went full -speed ahead and passed her in a flash. Then suddenly, the command of -doom shot through his brain. This was the end. Now was the end that -should have come, had he not been a coward, months ago. He deliberately -swerved off the road and went hurtling over the hill-side. - -Olivia staring, wide-eyed, wondering, at the racing car, saw it happen. -It was no accident. It was deliberate. Her brain reeled at the sudden -and awful horror. She swayed to the bank and fainted. - -A two-seater car, a young man and woman in it, came upon her a few -moments later and drew up. The woman ministered to her and presently she -revived. - -“There has been a horrible accident,” she explained haggardly. “A car -went over—you can see the wheel marks—Oh my God!” - -She pointed. A column of smoke was rising from the valley into the still -evening air. She scrambled to unsteady feet, and started to run. The -young man detained her. - -“The car will take us quicker. Maggie, you drive. I’ll stand on the -footboard.” - -They swiftly covered the hundred yards or so to the scene of the -catastrophe. And there thirty feet below in the ravine the old car was -burning amid the heavy vapour of petrol smoke. - -“Quick,” cried Olivia, “let us get down! He may still be alive.” - -The young man shook his head. “Not much chance, poor devil.” - -“Did you know him?” asked the lady. - -“It was my husband,” cried Olivia tragic-eyed. - -They all plunged down the slope, the young man going straight in the -ruts of the leaping car. Olivia, after a fall or two, ran gropingly to -side levels, catching hold of bushes to aid her descent, her brain too -scorched with the terror of that which lay below, for coherent thought. - -Again her light, high-heeled shoes tripped her on the smooth grass and -she slithered down a few yards. And then, as she steadied herself once -more on her feet, she heard a voice from behind a clump of gorse: - -“Just my damned luck!” - -Her knees shook violently. She wanted to shriek, but she controlled -herself and, staggering round the gorse bush, came upon Alexis, seated -on a hummock, his head between his hands. He looked up at her stupidly; -and she, with outspread fingers on panting bosom: - -“Thank God, you’re not dead.” - -“I don’t know so much about that,” said he, rising to his feet. - -The young woman of the car who had been following Olivia more or less in -her descent, appeared from behind the bush. - -She, too, thanked God. He had been saved by a miracle. How had he -escaped? - -“A providence which looks after idiots caused me to be hurled out of the -car at the first bump. I fell into the gorse. I’m not in the least bit -hurt. Please don’t worry about me.” - -“You must let us drive you home—I’ll call my husband,” said the young -woman. - -“Thank you very much,” said he, “but I’m perfectly sound and I’d rather -walk; but this lady seems to have had a shock and no doubt——” - -The young woman, perplexed, turned to Olivia. “You said -this—gentleman—” for Alexis stood trim in brass-buttoned and legginged -chauffeur’s livery—“you said he was your husband.” - -“A case of mistaken identity,” he replied suavely. Olivia, her brain in -a whirl, said nothing. The young woman advanced a few steps and coo-eed -to the young man who had just reached the ravine. As he turned on her -hail, she halloed the tidings that all was well. - -“He’ll be here in a few minutes,” she said. - -They stood an embarrassed trio. Alexis explained how the steering-rod, -which had given him trouble all day, had suddenly snapped. It had been -the affair of a moment. As for the car, it was merely a kind of land ark -fitted with a prehistoric internal combustion engine. Insured above its -value. The proprietor would be delighted to hear the end of it. - -The young man joined them, out of breath. Explanations had to be given -_da capo_. Again Good Samaritan offers to put their two-seater at the -disposal of the derelicts. With one in the back seat they could crowd -three in front. They were going to Cullenby, twenty miles on, but a few -miles out of their way, if need be, were neither here nor there. A very -charming, solicitous, well-run young couple. Olivia scarcely knew -whether to shriek at them to go away, or to beg them to remain and -continue to save a grotesque situation. - -Presently Triona repeated his thanks and declined the proffered lift. -Walking would do him all the good in the world; would steady his nerves -after his calamitous bump. The young man eyed him queerly. It was a -strange word for a chauffeur. - -“But if you would take this lady,” said Triona again. - -Olivia recovered her wits. - -“I will walk too, if you don’t mind. I’m only a mile from home. And this -gentleman is really my husband.” - -“If we can really do nothing more?” The young man raised his hat. - -“A thousand thanks for all your kindness,” said Olivia. - -The very mystified young couple left them and remounted the hill. - -The subjects of their mystification stood for a while in silence. -Presently Olivia, whose limbs not yet recovered from the shock trembled -so that her knees seemed to give her no support, said: - -“Don’t you think we might sit down for a little?” - -“As you will,” said Alexis, seating himself on his hummock. - -She cast herself down on the slope and closed her eyes for a moment. - -“You did that on purpose,” she said at last. “You don’t suppose I -believe the story of the broken steering-rod?” - -He smiled with some bitterness. Fate was for ever against him. The -moment they met in this extravagant way, there started up the barrier of -a lie. - -“I couldn’t very well scare those young folks with a confession of -attempted suicide, could I? After all, the naked truth may at times be -positively indecent.” - -“Then you intended to do it?” - -“Oh, yes,” said he. “But it ended, like every other Great Adventure I’ve -attempted in my life, in burlesque. I assure you, that when I found -myself pitched into this clump of gorse and able to pick myself up with -nothing worse than a gasping for breath, I—well—the humiliation of -it!—I cursed the day I was born.” - -“Why did you do it?” she asked. - -She had scarcely regained balance. The situation seemed unreal. But a -few minutes ago he had been far from her thoughts, which were concerned -with the woman to whose possibly dying bed she had been summoned, with -the dreary days at Medlow now that Blaise Olifant had gone, with the -still beauty of the hills and their purple sunset shadows. And now, here -she was, alone with him, remote from the world, conversing as -dispassionately as though he had returned from the dead—as indeed he -had almost returned. At her question, he threw his chauffeur’s cap on -the grass and passed his hand over his hair. The familiar gesture, the -familiar nervous brown hand brought her a step nearer to reality. - -“If you can’t guess, it is useless for me to tell you,” he said. “You -wouldn’t believe me.” - -He took out a cigarette. She noted a trembling of the fingers. - -“Do you mind?” She nodded, he lit the cigarette. “I thought here, at any -rate, I was hidden from you for the rest of my life. It wouldn’t have -been very long anyway. I had made up my mind some day soon to set you -free of me—and to-day or to-morrow—what did it matter? I don’t ask you -to believe that either. I don’t see how you can believe a word I say. I -gave you to understand, that I was in Poland—you find me here. When did -Myra tell you I was here?” - -Returning sanity had corrected his first mad impression. How could she -be a mile from Pendish if she had not heard from Myra? But she regarded -him open-mouthed. - -“Myra? What has Myra to do with it? Of course I had no conception you -were here? I knew you were not in Poland. A man—a Pole—I forget his -name—wrote to Major Olifant, last year, wondering what had become of -you. You had never joined him——” - -“Boronowski,” said Triona. - -“That was the name——” - -“And you took it for granted I had lied to him too.” Her eyes dropped -beneath his half sad, half ironic gaze. She made a little despairing -gesture. - -“What would you have?” - -“And Myra never told you anything about me?” - -“You haven’t answered my question,” she said, straightening herself: -“Where does Myra come in?” - -“That’s rather a long story. I should prefer her to tell it to you. Myra -knows everything about me since the day after you received my last -letter over a year ago.” - -She leaned forward, an angry spot burning on both cheeks. “Myra has been -hiding you here all the time and has told me nothing about it!” - -“She has her excellent reasons. She will tell you in a very few -words——” - -“She can’t. At any rate not now. She has been very ill with pneumonia. -They thought she was dying and sent for me. Why otherwise should I be -here?” - -“Are you staying at Mrs. Pettiland’s?” - -“Of course.” - -“I didn’t even know Myra was in Pendish—I’m grieved to hear she’s ill. -I’m afraid I’ve neglected Mrs. Pettiland of late. She was very kind to -me.” He paused and added with a smile, “I see Myra’s loyalty. She -forbade Mrs. Pettiland to mention the name of the young man called -Briggs. You’ve never heard of such a person at Pendish.” - -“Not a word,” said Olivia. “But I shall never forgive Myra. Never, -never,” she cried indignantly. “To fool me like that!” - -He caught sudden hope from the flash in her dark eyes. - -“Would you have liked to know where I was?” - -“I hate duplicity. I thought that Myra, at least—my God! Is there -anybody in the world one can trust?” - -Suddenly she turned on him. “What are you doing in that absurd livery?” - -“I’ve been earning my living in it, since last August. I’ve done it -before. It’s an honester way than many others.” - -“Forgive me, if I don’t understand,” she said, still half-bewildered. -“You have no need to earn your living by driving a car—a common -chauffeur—unless——” - -She checked herself with a little gasp—but his quick brain divined her -impulsive thought. - -“Unless I had taken to drink and gone to the bad, etcetera, -etcetera——” - -She interrupted him quickly. “No, no. I never thought that. It was a -_reductio ad absurdum_. But on what other hypothesis——? You’ve still -your brain, your talent, your genius. Your pen——” - -“Which is mightier than the wheel,” he remarked. - -“I don’t know why you didn’t go to Poland. Perhaps you’ll explain. -Anyhow you didn’t. You came here—to the absolute quiet of the country. -Why haven’t you gone on writing?” - -“For the simple reason,” said he, “that Alexis Triona and all his works -are dead. Washed out from the Book of Life. That side of me is all over -and done with. You who know everything, can’t you understand?” - -She caught the note of truth in his words and gradually there began to -dawn on her the immensity of his artist’s sacrifice. - -“Do you mean that you’re never going to write again?” - -“Never,” said he. “Does this look like it?” and he touched the brass -buttons on his livery. - -She weakened through impatience at his aloofness, craving to know all -that had happened to him, to get to the roots of Myra’s mysterious -intrigue. His fatalistic attitude was maddening. The whole crazy -combination of tragedy and farce that had set them down in the -gorse-enclosed hollow of the hill-side, as though they were the only -people on God’s earth, was maddening. The brass buttons were maddening. -She flung sudden arms out wide. - -“For God’s sake tell me everything that has happened to you.” - -“If you’ll believe it,” said he. - -She sat silent for a moment, feeling as though she were under his -rebuke, and gazed over the valley at the hills black beneath the dying -green and faded orange of the sunset. The thin smoke of the burned car -mounted into the windless air faint with the smell of petrol fumes and -scorched woodwork. And Triona looked down too and saw the end of the -creation of his resurrection. He pointed to it. - -“That was one of my little dreams,” he said gently. “A sort of rat trap -on wheels—the most hopeless box of antiquated imbecility you can -imagine. I took it into my head to recreate it. For a time I devoted my -soul to it—and I made it a thing of life and speed and obedience. And -there it lies dead, a column of smoke, like all dreams and, all my -deliberate fault. Every system of philosophy, since the world began, has -overlooked the ironical symbolism of life. That’s one; and my -dream—smoke.” - -She fell under the spell of his voice, although her brain revolted. Yet -his note rang sincere in her heart—she knew not what to say. The sunset -colours over the ridge of hills died into iron blue of the sky. A faint -breeze stirred. She shivered with cold in her thin Tussore silk. He, -watching her, saw the shiver. - -“You’re cold, you must be getting back.” He rose. - -She sprang to her feet before he could help her to rise. - -“I’ll see you to Mrs. Pettiland’s.” - -They scrambled to the high road above them, and began to walk, in -constrained silence. Suddenly she cried: - -“You’ve hurt yourself. You’re limping dreadfully. You told me you were -unhurt——” She clutched his arm. “You can’t go on like this.” - -“I’ll go on like this,” said he, thrilling under her touch, “to the day -of my death. It has nothing to do with this evening’s entertainment. I -was smashed up by a motor-lorry over a year ago, as Myra will tell you. -That’s what knocked me out of Poland.” - -She echoed his words—“Smashed up by a motor-lorry?—It might have -killed you—and I should have never known.” - -“Myra would have told you. As a matter of fact it very nearly did kill -me.” - -She turned her head away with a shudder. - -“And just now——” - -“I ought to have waited till I had turned the corner—” he pointed out -the bend a few yards in front of them. “Hell’s Corner, they call it -hereabouts. Then you wouldn’t have seen me go over, and I might have had -better luck.” - -He saw her turn deadly white, reel, and he tried to support her; but she -slipped away from him and sat by the wayside. She thought she was going -to faint again. - -“For God’s sake, don’t talk like that. It’s inhuman. It’s unlike you. -Even if you were a stranger it would be horrible.” - -“I’m only apologising for my existence,” he said. “Fate has been against -me—but, believe me, I have done my best.” - -After a while she rose, declaring herself better, and they struck off -the road down the twisting lane that led to Pendish. The air was -fragrant in the dusk. - -“Tell me about that accident—how Myra came to know of it. I suppose you -sent her word?” - -“Perhaps when you have talked to Myra, you’ll credit me at least with -sincere intentions. If I had informed her, it would have been an -indirect appeal to you.” - -“Perhaps it would have been wiser to appeal to me direct,” said Olivia -tonelessly. “I’m not devoid of common humanity.” - -“I couldn’t have done that,” he said gently. “I lay unconscious for -weeks. When I came to my senses I found Myra had come the second morning -I was in hospital. I had better begin with my meeting with the Pole, -Boronowski—it’s a simple matter.” - -To him, walking with this lost wife of his dreams, in the lovers’ lane, -the hour seemed fantastic. His voice sounded unreal in his ears. His -heart lying heavy as lead within him was not the heart that he had -thought would beat furiously at the ravishing sight of her. He told his -story badly; just the salient facts, uninspired by the dramatic instinct -which had made him colour so vividly the narration, a year ago, to Mrs. -Pettiland, of his ridiculous adventure. This he barely sketched. For -truth’s sake he must tell her of the robbery and account for his -penniless condition. It was not himself talking. It was not Olivia to -whom he talked. One stranger’s personality was talking through him to -another’s. At the end of the tale: - -“You have changed greatly,” she said. - -“That’s very possible.” There was a pause. He continued. “And you? -Forgive me. I haven’t even asked whether you are well——” - -“Oh, I’ve been all right. I spent the winter abroad, and now I’m staying -with Mrs. Woolcombe at ‘The Towers.’ Major Olifant is away.” - -They came up suddenly against the wicket-gate of Mrs. Pettiland’s -garden. A light shone through the yet undrawn curtains in his old -bedroom. He raised an enquiring hand. - -“Myra?” - -“Yes. I’m in Mrs. Pettiland’s room in the front. She would give it up to -me. I’ve been helping to nurse—as well as I can. I’ve been in all day. -That’s why I came out for a walk this evening.” - -“You must be tired.” - -“I am.” - -He waited, hoping against hope, for a word revoking his sentence. None -came. The steel sinew that ran through him, and was answerable for all -his accomplishment, stiffened. He would make no appeal _ad -misericordiam_. He had suffered enough in expiation. He had come to the -end of his tether. For pity masking the last year’s hatred and contempt -he had no use. He opened the gate for her. She passed in and he closed -it and the click of the latch sounded like the crack of finality; for -Olivia, taken almost unawares, as for Triona. They stood for a while, -the wooden barrier between them, in the gathering darkness. - -Impulsively she exclaimed: “We can’t part like this, with a thousand -things unexplained.” - -“I’m at your orders, Olivia,” he replied. - -She caught her breath and stiffened. “We must talk to-morrow—when we -have both recovered.” - -“I’ll be here any hour you name,” said Alexis. Radnor and his garage -could go to the devil. - -“Nine o’clock?” - -“Nine o’clock,” said he. “Good night, Olivia.” - -“Wait.” - -The memory of the scandal crashed down on her. . . . - -“I may as well tell you now—the night may bring counsel—I’m in a -terrible position. Wedderburn and Onslow—you remember?” - -“I do,” he said. - -She told him rapidly of her pledge. - -“It doesn’t matter a scrap to me, but it’s a damnable thing for you,” -said he. - -“What answer would you make?” - -“A clean breast of everything. Could you wish me to do anything else?” - -“I don’t know,” she replied. “Give me time to think.” - -“My time is yours, Olivia.” - -She paused for a moment irresolute. There was a question she wished to -put, but the thought of it made her feel sick and faint again. - -“You’ll not do anything foolish, till I see you?” - -“Nor anything wise,” said he. “I promise.” - -Again there came between them a long embarrassed silence. At last—— - -“Good night,” she said. - -“Good night, Olivia.” - -She flung an angry hand in the darkness and slipped away into the house. - - - CHAPTER XXVII - -MRS. PETTILAND met her at the foot of the stairs. She beamed rosily -beneath the gas jet. - -“Myra is so much better, Madam, after her sleep. The doctor came while -you were out. I’m to make her some chicken broth.” - -Olivia mounted the stairs and entered the sick-room. - -“Well dearie?” - -She turned to the gaunt waxen face on the pillow. - -“I’m so glad to hear the doctor’s good report.” - -She forced herself to linger, speaking the commonplaces of the -sick-room. Then she could bear it no longer. - -“I’m dead tired,” she said. “I’ll go to bed. Nurse ought to be here -soon. Have you everything you want for the night?” - -Myra said in her even tones: “Have _you_ everything you want for the -night?” And at Olivia’s quick glance of enquiry: “You look as if you’d -seen a ghost. You have. I was afraid of it. I didn’t want them to send -for you, but I was too ill to stop them.” - -Olivia could not wreak her anger yet on the frail woman. But in her -heart burned a furious indignation. She controlled her voice, and said -as gently as she could: - -“Why have you left me in ignorance for the past year?” - -“I was biding my time,” said Myra. “I was waiting for a sign and a -token.” - -“From me?” - -“From you, dearie. I had him here in the hollow of my hand. If you had -wanted him, I could have given him to you. But you didn’t want him—so -you said. I wasn’t so sure.” She stretched her thin hand on the blanket, -but Olivia stood, too much enwrapped in her thoughts to notice the -appeal. “When I first saw him in hospital I hoped that he would die and -set you free. But when I saw him convalescent, my heart was full of pity -for him, and I repented of the sin of committing murder in my heart. And -when I heard from my sister in-law that he was facing life like a brave -man, I wondered whether I had been wrong and whether you had been wrong. -If I say something to you, will you be angry with me?” - -Olivia shrugged her shoulders. “Say anything you like.” - -The weak, even voice went on. “If Major Olifant hadn’t left us, I should -have told you.” - -Olivia leaped at the thrust, her cheeks flaming. - -“Myra! How dare you?” - -The thin lips parted in a half smile. - -“Have you ever known me not to dare anything for your good?” - -Myra, with all the privileges of illness, had her at a disadvantage. -Olivia was silenced. She unpinned her hat and threw it on a chair and -sat by the bedside. - -“I see that you acted for the best, Myra.” - -Not only her cheeks, but her body flamed at what seemed now the -humiliating allusion. Myra was fully aware, if not of the actual -kiss—oh, no—nothing horrible of servant’s espionage in Myra—at any -rate of the emotionality in which it had culminated—on her part sex, -sense, the unexpected thrill, the elemental between man and woman, the -hunger for she knew not what—but superficial, tearing at her nerves, -but never, oh, never touching the bed-rock of her spiritual being. A -great passionate love for Blaise, she knew, Myra with her direct vision, -would have understood. For the assurance of her life’s happiness Myra -would have sacrificed her hope of eternal salvation. - -But the worn woman who had had but one’s week’s great fulfilment of love -in her life, knew what love meant, and she had sounded the shallows of -her pitiful love—if love it could be called—for Blaise Olifant; and -now, in her sad, fatalistic way she shewed her the poor markings of the -lead. - -“So you have seen him?” asked Myra quietly. - -“Yes I’ve seen him. God knows how you know.” - -“Well?” - -Her overstrained soul gave way. She broke into uncontrollable crying and -sobbing, her little dark head on the blanket by Myra’s side. And after a -little came incoherent words. - -“I’ve lost him—He doesn’t care for me any more—He hates me—He tried -to kill himself when he saw me—He was driving a car and put it over a -precipice—Thank God—a miracle—he wasn’t hurt—But he might have -killed himself—He meant to—And it’s all your fault—all your fault—If -only you had told me. . . .” - -Myra put her thin hand on the dear dark hair and caressed it till the -paroxysm was over. - -“I loved a thing that was scarcely a man till the day of his death, for -I had memories, dearie, of him when he was a man to be loved. You’ve got -a living man for a husband. And you loved yours as much as I loved mine. -And he’s a living and suffering man. Go to him—” her hand still played -feebly caressing the black mass of her hair. “Fate has brought you -together again. He’s your man, whom you vowed to help in sickness or in -health. I kept mine in sickness. Thank God, your man’s sickness is -nothing like mine. Go to him, dearie. Humble yourself if need be . . . -I’ve been very ill. I’ve thought and thought and thought—I’ve an idea -that illness clears one’s brain—and all my thoughts have been for you. -For me there’s nothing left. I’ve thought of him and you. I’ve thought -of what he has done and what you have done—And, with all his faults, -he’s a bigger human being than you are, dearie. Go to him.” - -Olivia raised a tragic face. - -“How can I? He doesn’t want me.” - -“A man doesn’t try to kill himself for a woman he doesn’t want. You had -better go to him.” - -And Olivia went. She slipped out of the house at eleven o’clock, after a -couple of hours of wrestling with ugly and vain devils. Who was she, -after all? What had she done to add a grain to the world’s achievement? -What had she found in her adventure into the world that had been worth -the having save the love of the man that was her husband? Many phases of -existence had passed procession-wise through her life. All hollows and -shams. The Lydian galley, with its Mavennas and Bobby Quintons. The mad -Blenkirons. The gentle uninspiring circle of little Janet Philimore. The -literary and artistic society for the few months of Alexis’s -lionization—pleasant, but superficial, always leaving her with the -sense of having fallen far short of a communion that might have been. -Nothing satisfying but the needs and the childish wants and the work and -the uplifting spirit of the one man. And after the great parting what -had there been? Her life in Medlow devoid of all meaning—Her six months -travel—a feeding of self to no purpose. An existence of negativity. -Blaise Olifant. She flamed, conscious of one thing at last positive, and -positive for ill. She had played almost deliberately with fire. -Otherwise why had she gone back to Medlow? She had brought unhappiness -to a very noble gentleman. It had been in his power, as a man, to sweep -her off her feet in a weak hour of clamouring sex. He had spared -her—and she now was unutterably grateful. For she had never loved him. -She could not love him. His long straight nose. She grew half -hysterical. Even when he had kissed her she had been conscious of that -long straight nose. She withered at the thought. - -She slipped out of the house into the soft night. Pendish, with its -double line of low, whitewashed, thatched cottages, one a deep shadow, -the other clear in the moonlight, lay as still as a ghostly village of -the middle ages. The echo of her light footsteps frightened her. Surely -windows would fly open and heads peer out challenging the disturber of -peace. - -She was going to him. Why, she scarcely knew. Perhaps through obedience -to Myra. Myra’s bloodless lips, working in the waxen, immobile face lit, -if dull glimmer could be called light, by the cold china blue eyes, had -uttered words little less than oracular. Myra had been waiting for a -sign or a token from her that had never come. She walked through the -splendid silence of the country road, beneath the radiance of a moon -above the hills illuminating a mystery of upland and vale shrouded in -the vaporous garments of the land asleep. Hurrying along the white -ribbon of road she was but a little dark dot on the surface of a -serenely scornful universe. - -She was going to him. He was her man. All that she knew of the meaning -of existence came from him. Moonlight and starlight and the mystery of -the night shimmering through its veil of enchantment faded from her -eyes. She felt nervous arms around her and kisses on her lips, and she -heard him speaking the winged words of imagination, lifting her into his -world of genius. - -“A man doesn’t try to kill himself for a woman he doesn’t want.” - -So spake Myra. Olivia walked, the dull tones in which the words were -uttered thudding in her ears. It was her one hope of salvation. Kill -himself! This was not a falsehood. She had seen the act with her own -horror-stricken eyes. She remembered a phrase of Blaise Olifant’s: “He -is being blackmailed by one lie.” - -She realized, with sudden shock, her insignificant loneliness in the -midst of this vast moonlit silence of the earth. In presence of the -immensities she was of no account. For the first time she became aware -of her own failure. She had been weighed in the balance of her love for -her husband and had been found wanting. In the hour of his bitter trial, -she had failed him. In the hour when a word of love, of understanding, -which meant forgiveness, would have saved him, she had put him from her. -She had lived on her own little vanities without thought of the man’s -torture. She had failed him then. She had failed him to-day. - -“A man doesn’t try to kill himself for a woman he doesn’t want.” - -She strode on, her cheeks burning. All that of extravagance which he had -done this past year had been for her sake. For all wrong he had done -her, he had sought the final expiation in death. She had failed him -again in this supreme crisis. She had whined to Myra that he no longer -loved her. And she had not given him—that which even Myra was waiting -for—a sign and a token. - -She was going to him, nearing him. Already she entered the straggling -end of Fanstead. How would he receive her? If he cast her off, she would -perish in self-contempt. She went on. An unsuspecting Mrs. Pettiland had -told her, in answer to a question which she strove to keep casual, the -whereabouts of the Quantock Garage. The sign above an open gateway broke -suddenly on her vision. She entered a silent courtyard. A light was -burning in a loft above a closed garage, and a wooden flight of steps -ran up to it. The door was open and on the threshold sat a man, his feet -on the top stair, his head buried in his hands. She advanced, her heart -in her mouth. - -The moon shone full on him. She uttered a little whispering cry: - -“Alexis!” - -He started to his feet, gazed at her for a breathless second and -scrambled with grotesque speed down the rickety staircase and caught her -in his arms. - - * * * * * - -She mounted the stairs to his loft, furnished with pallet bed and camp -washing apparatus, a wooden chair, a table bearing unsightly remains of -crust and cheese, and littered with books in corners and on the -uncarpeted floor. All her remorse and pity and love gushed over -him—over the misery of the life to which she had condemned him by her -littleness of soul and her hardness of heart. She did not spare herself; -but of this profanity he would hear nothing. She had come to him. She -had forgiven him. The Celestial Hierarchy would be darkened by the -presence of one so radiantly angelic. - -She clutched him tight to her. “Oh, my God, if you had been killed!” - -Exultant, he cried in his old way: “Nothing could kill me, for I was -born for your love.” - -They talked through the night into the sweet-scented June dawn. They -would face the world fearlessly together. First the Onslow and -Wedderburn challenge to be taken up. She would stand by his side through -all the obloquy. That was the newer meaning of her life. If they were -outcasts what did it matter? They could not be other than splendidly -outcast. He responded in his eager way to her enthusiasm. _Magna est -veritas et prævalebit._ With never a shadow between them, what ecstasy -would be existence. - -They crept downstairs like children into the summer morning. - - * * * * * - -But as they had planned so did it not turn out. Rowington gave news that -Onslow and Wedderburn had dropped the question. Why revive dead -controversy? But Triona and Olivia insisted. The letter on the origin of -_Through Blood and Snow_, signed “John Briggs” appeared in _The Times_. -A few references to it appeared in the next weekly Press. But that was -all. No one was interested. _Through Blood and Snow_ was forgotten. The -events of 1917 in Russia were ancient history. As well worry over fresh -scandals concerning Catherine the Great. What did the reading world care -what Alexis Triona’s real name was, or how he had obtained the material -for his brilliant book? - -This summary of the effect of attempted literary and social suicide was -put clearly before them in a long letter from Rowington a month or so -afterwards. - -“But we want another novel from Alexis Triona. When are we going to get -it?” - -They had stayed on indefinitely at Pendish, ostensibly awaiting Myra’s -complete convalescence, and incidentally, as they told themselves, -having their second honeymoon. At first she took it for granted that he -would resign his post at the Quantock Garage. - -“I’m not going to begin life again by breaking my word,” said he. “I -promised to see him over his honeymoon.” - -“That’s a bit mad and Quixotic,” said Olivia. - -“So’s all that’s worth having in life, my dear,” said he. - -So she had settled down for the time with her chauffeur husband, and -meanwhile had been feeding him into health. - -They read the letter together. - -“It’s no use,” wrote Rowington, “to start again under the Briggs name. -You’ve told the world that Triona is a pseudonym. Alexis Triona means -something. John Briggs doesn’t.” - -“He’s quite right,” said Olivia. - -“As you will,” he said. “I give in. But you can’t say I’ve not done my -very best to kill Alexis Triona.” - -“And you can’t. Fate again. And—Alexis dear—I never knew John Briggs.” - -They were in the sea-haunted parlour. After a while he took up the pink -conch-shell and fingered it lovingly. Then, with a laugh, he put it to -her ear. - -“What does it say?” - -She listened a while, handed him back the shell and looking up at him -out of her dark eyes, laughed the laugh of deep happiness. - -“I’ll go with you, dear—to any South Sea Island you like.” - -“Will you?” he cried. “We’ll go. And I’ll write a novel full of the -beauty of God’s Universe and you.” - -Myra came in to lay the luncheon table. Olivia leaped up and threw her -arms around the thin shoulders. - -“Myra dear, you’ll have to pack up quick. We’re going to Honolulu -to-morrow.” - -“You must make it the day after,” said Myra. “The laundry doesn’t come -till to-morrow night.” - - THE END - - TRANSCRIBER NOTES - -Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Inserted word -marked with square bracket around insertion. Where multiple spellings -occur, majority use has been employed. - -Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors -occur. - - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Tale of Triona, by William J. Locke - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TALE OF TRIONA *** - -***** This file should be named 60122-0.txt or 60122-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/1/2/60122/ - -Produced by Marcia Brooks, Al Haines, Jen Haines & the -online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at -http://www.pgdpcanada.net - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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Locke - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Tale of Triona - -Author: William J. Locke - -Release Date: August 18, 2019 [EBook #60122] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TALE OF TRIONA *** - - - - -Produced by Marcia Brooks, Al Haines, Jen Haines & the -online Project Gutenberg team at -http://www.pgdpcanada.net - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class='figcenter'> -<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0000' style='width:70%;height:auto;'/> -</div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='figcenter'> -<img src='images/cover1.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0001' style='width:70%;height:auto;'/> -</div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<p class='line0' style='text-align:center;font-size:2em;'>THE TALE OF TRIONA</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class="bbox"> - -<p class='line0' style='text-align:center;'><span class='ul'><span class='it'>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</span></span></p> - -<p class='line0'>IDOLS</p> -<p class='line0'>JAFFERY</p> -<p class='line0'>VIVIETTE</p> -<p class='line0'>SEPTIMUS</p> -<p class='line0'>DERELICTS</p> -<p class='line0'>THE USURPER</p> -<p class='line0'>STELLA MARIS</p> -<p class='line0'>WHERE LOVE IS</p> -<p class='line0'>THE ROUGH ROAD</p> -<p class='line0'>THE MOUNTEBANK</p> -<p class='line0'>THE RED PLANET</p> -<p class='line0'>THE WHITE DOVE</p> -<p class='line0'>FAR-AWAY STORIES</p> -<p class='line0'>SIMON THE JESTER</p> -<p class='line0'>A STUDY IN SHADOWS</p> -<p class='line0'>A CHRISTMAS MYSTERY</p> -<p class='line0'>THE WONDERFUL YEAR</p> -<p class='line0'>THE HOUSE OF BALTAZAR</p> -<p class='line0'>THE FORTUNATE YOUTH</p> -<p class='line0'>THE BELOVÈD VAGABOND</p> -<p class='line0'>AT THE GATE OF SAMARIA</p> -<p class='line0'>THE GLORY OF CLEMENTINA</p> -<p class='line0'>THE MORALS OF MARCUS ORDEYNE</p> -<p class='line0'>THE DEMAGOGUE AND LADY PHAYRE</p> -<p class='line0'>THE JOYOUS ADVENTURES OF ARISTIDE PUJOL</p> - -</div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line0' style='margin-bottom:3em;font-size:3em;'>THE TALE OF TRIONA</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line0'>BY</p> -<p class='line0' style='font-size:1.5em;'>WILLIAM J. LOCKE</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line0' style='font-size:1em;'>Author of “<span class='sc'>The Belovèd Vagabond</span>,” “<span class='sc'>The Morals of</span></p> -<p class='line0' style='margin-bottom:5em;font-size:1em;'><span class='sc'>Marcus Ordeyne</span>,” etc.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<div class='figcenter'> -<img src='images/logo.png' alt='' id='iid-0002' style='width:15%;height:auto;'/> -</div> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line0' style='margin-top:5em;'>NEW YORK</p> -<p class='line0'>DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY</p> -<p class='line0'>1922</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<p class='line0' style='text-align:center;margin-top:5em;font-size:0.8em;'><span class='sc'>Copyright, 1922</span></p> -<p class='line0' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:5em;font-size:0.8em;'><span class='sc'>By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.</span></p> - -<p class='line0' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:5em;font-size:0.8em;'>PRINTED IN U. S. A.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<p class='line0' style='text-align:center;margin-top:5em;margin-bottom:5em;font-size:3em;'>THE TALE OF TRIONA</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div><h1>THE TALE OF TRIONA</h1></div> - -<h2 class='nobreak'><span class='pageno' title='1' id='Page_1'></span>CHAPTER I</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>O</span><span class='sc'>LIVIA GALE</span> leaned back in her chair at the -end of the dining-room table, and looked first -at the elderly gentleman on her right, and then -at the elderly gentleman on her left.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re both of you as kind as can be, and I’m more -than grateful for all you’ve done; but I do wish you’d -see that it’s no use arguing. It only hurts and makes -us tired. Do help yourself, Mr. Trivett. And—another -cup of tea, Mr. Fenmarch?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mr. Fenmarch, on her left, passed his cup with a sigh. -He was a dusty, greyish man, his face covered with an -indeterminate growth of thin short hair. His eyes were -of a dull, unspeculative blue.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“As your solicitor, my dear Olivia,” said he, “I can -only obey instructions. As the friend of your family, -I venture to give you advice.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why the deuce your father didn’t tie you up in a -trusteeship till you were twenty-five, at any rate,” said -Mr. Trivett on her right, helping himself to whisky -and soda—the table, covered with a green baize cloth, -was littered with papers and afternoon refreshments. -“Why the dickens——” he began again after a sizzling -gulp.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, it’s most unfortunate,” said Mr. Fenmarch, -cutting off his friend’s period. “And what you are going -to do with yourself, all alone in the world, with this -enormous amount of liquid money is more than I can -imagine.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia smiled and tapped the blue-veined hand that -set down his teacup.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course you can’t. If imagination ran away with -a solicitor, it would land him in the workhouse.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s where it will land you, Olivia,” said Mr. Trivett. -“Common sense is the better mount.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s rather neat,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have said it,” retorted Mr. -Trivett, sinking his red jowls into his collar, which made -them redder than before.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re so quick and clever,” said Olivia, “that I can’t -understand why you won’t see things from my point of -view.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ve got to learn that a man of experience can’t -take the view of a wrong-headed young woman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mr. Trivett emphasized the asperity of his tone by -a thump of his palm on the table.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As a matter of fact, he was genuinely angry. He was -the senior partner in Trivett and Gale, Auctioneers and -Estate Agents, in the comfortable little Shropshire town -of Medlow; or rather the only surviving partner, for -Gale, Olivia’s father, and his two sons had one after the -other been wiped out in a recent world accident. Olivia’s -decision, inspired from no other fount he could think of -than lunacy, involved the withdrawal of considerable -capital from the business. This, of course, being an -honourable man, he could not dispute; but here were peace -and reconstruction and inflated prices, and heaven knew -how much percentage on the middleman’s capital, and -here was this inexperienced girl throwing away a safe -income and clamouring for a settlement in full. They -had argued and argued. It may be stated here that -Mr. Trivett was the Executor of her father’s estate, -which made his position the more delicate and exasperating.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And now Mr. Trivett’s exasperation reached the table-thumping -point.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia smiled wearily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s such a pity.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s a pity?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, everything. One thing is that there’s no more -gold. Of course, I know you can’t understand. But -that’s your fault, not mine. I should have liked to realize -all that I’ve got in sovereigns. Do you think they’d -fill a bath? Have you ever thought how lovely it would -be to wallow in a bath of sovereigns? Treasury notes -are not the same thing. They’re either very dirty and -smell of plumbers, or very new and smell of rancid oil. -Gold is the real basis of Romance.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He put her down for a mere female fool, and replied -practically:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ll not see a gold coin in England again for the -next fifty years.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, well,” she said; “anyhow, there’s still some -romance in mounting the deadly breech of the bank -counter with a drawn cheque in one’s hand.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m afraid, my dear Olivia,” said Mr. Fenmarch -mildly, “I don’t quite see what we’re talking about.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, we’ve discussed it every day for the last three -months,” cried Olivia, “and now this is the very last end -of everything. A final settlement, as you call it! That’s -what you two dears have come for, isn’t it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Unfortunately, yes,” said Mr. Fenmarch.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then it’s all so simple. You’ve shown me this”—she -picked up a foolscap document and dropped it—“the -full statement of account of my father’s estate, and -I approve—I being the only person concerned. You’ve -got to give me one last cheque for that amount”—she -tapped the document—“and I give you my receipt, -signed over a penny stamp—you’ll have to stand me a -penny stamp, for I’ve only got three-halfpenny ones in -the house—and there’s an end of the matter.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My clerk made out the receipt and put the penny -stamp on,” said Mr. Fenmarch, untroubled by her smile. -“Here it is.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Solicitors’ clerks seem to think of everything,” said -Olivia. “Fancy his remembering the penny stamp!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s charged up against you, in Fenmarch’s bill—item -‘sundries,’ ” remarked Mr. Trivett, pointing a fat forefinger.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, naturally. Why should Mr. Fenmarch shower -pennies on me? It’s the delicate thoughtfulness that I -admire. I hope you’ll raise that young man’s salary.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mr. Fenmarch looked pained, like a horse to whom one -had offered wooden oats, and swung his head away. Mr. -Trivett opened his mouth to speak, but before he spoke -finished his whisky and soda.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear Olivia,” said he, “I’m sorry to see you so -flippant. You’ve disappointed me and Mrs. Trivett -who’ve known you since you were born, more than I can -say. Until your poor mother died—God bless her—we -thought you the most capable, level-headed young woman -in this town. But for the last three months—you’ll forgive -my freedom in saying so—you have shown yourself -to be quite impossible.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He paused, angry. Olivia smiled and drummed on the -table.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have some more whisky.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I won’t,” he said in a loud voice. “Whisky’s too -expensive to ladle out in that offhand fashion. It’s a -luxury, as you’ll jolly well soon discover. I’m talking for -your good, Olivia. That’s why Fenmarch and I are here. -Two minutes will wind up the business. But we have -your interests at heart, my girl, and we want to make a -last appeal.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She covered with hers the back of his red-glazed hand -and spoke in a softened voice:—</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I know, I know. I’ve said already that you and -Mr. Fenmarch were dears. But what would you have -me do? I’m twenty-three. Alone in the world.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have your uncle and aunt at Clapham,” said Mr. -Trivett.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve also some sort of relations in the monkey cage -at the Zoo,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The repartee to the effect that it was the fittest home -for her only occurring to Mr. Trivett when he was getting -into bed that night, he merely stared at her gaspingly. -She continued:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m absolutely alone in the world. Do you think it -reasonable for me to stay in this dull old house, in this -mouldering old town, where one never sees a man from -one year’s end to another, living for the rest of my life -on the few hundreds a year which I could get if my capital -were properly invested?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We don’t grant your premises, Olivia,” said Mr. Fenmarch. -“ ‘The Towers’ may be old, but it is not dull. -Medlow is not mouldering, but singularly progressive, -and the place seems to—to pullulate with young men. So -I think our advice to you is eminently reasonable.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, dear!” sighed Olivia. “That’s where all the -trouble comes in. Our ideas of dullness, mouldering and -pullu—what you call it; don’t correspond. Mother was -very fond of a story of Sydney Smith. Perhaps she told -you. He was walking one day with a friend through the -slums and came across two women quarrelling across -the street, through opposite windows. And Sydney Smith -said: ‘They’ll never come to an agreement, because they -are arguing from different premises.’ ”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a silence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll have a drop more whisky,” said Mr. Trivett.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think I see the point of the remark,” said Mr. Fenmarch -greyly. “It was a play on the two meanings of -the word.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That was what my mother gave me to understand,” -said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then, after another spell of chill silence, she cried, -her nerves on edge:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do let us come to the end of it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We will,” said Mr. Trivett impressively. “But not -before I’ve made a few remarks in protest, with Fenmarch -as witness. I’m sorry there’s not another witness——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I’ll get one!” cried Olivia. “Myra—the faithful -Myra.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Myra’s a servant, also a fool; and you’ve got her under -your thumb,” said Mr. Trivett.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, well,” said Olivia, “we’ll give Myra a miss. -But I know what you’re going to say—and the kind heart -that makes you say it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A touch of real tenderness crept into her fine dark -eyes and almost softened Mr. Trivett. She looked so -young, so slender, so immature in her simple mourning. -Her soft black hair clustered over her forehead in a -manner which he felt was inconsistent with a woman fighting -her way alone in the world. She hadn’t a bit of -colour in her cheeks; wanted feeding up, he thought. She -was capable enough in her own sphere, the management -of her house, the care of a bed-ridden mother, the appreciation -of legal technicalities. Until she had got this bee -in her bonnet he had admired her prodigiously; though, -with the reserve which every Englishman makes in his -admiration, he deplored the shrewdness of her tongue. -But this idea of hers, to realize all her money in hard -cash at the bank and go off into unknown perils was -preposterous. She was not fit for it. You could take -her by the neck in one hand and by the waist in another -and break her to bits. . . . He was a good, honest man -with fatherly instincts developed by the possession of -daughters of his own, strapping red-cheeked girls, who -had stayed soberly at home until the right young man -had come along and carried them off to modest homes of -unimpeachable respectability. So when he met the -tenderness in Olivia’s eyes he mitigated the asperities of -his projected discourse and preached her a very human -little sermon. While he spoke, Mr. Fenmarch nodded his -unhumorous head and stroked the straggling grey hairs -on his cheek. When he had ended, Mr. Fenmarch seconded, -as it were, the resolution.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then Olivia thanked them prettily, promised to avoid -extravagance, and, in case of difficulty, to come to them -for advice. The final cheque was passed over, the final -receipt signed across the penny stamp provided with -such forethought, and Olivia Gale entered into uncontrolled -possession of her fortune.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The men rose to take their leave. Olivia held the hand -of the burly red-faced man who had been her father’s -partner and looked up at him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know, if you could have your way, you would give -me a good hiding.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He laughed grimly. “Not the least doubt of it.” Then -he patted her roughly on the shoulder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you, Mr. Fenmarch?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He regarded her drearily. “After a long experience -in my profession, Olivia, I have come to one conclusion—clients -are a mistake. Good-bye.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Left alone, Olivia stood for a moment wondering -whether, after all, the dusty lawyer had a jaded sense of -humour. Then she turned and caught up the cheque -and sketched a few triumphant dancing steps. Suddenly, -holding it in her hand, she rushed out into the hall, where -the men were putting on their overcoats.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ve forgotten the most important thing, Mr. -Trivett. You wrote me something about an offer for -the house.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“An enquiry—not an offer,” replied Mr. Trivett. “Yes. -I forgot to mention it. A Major somebody. Wait——” -He lugged out a fat pocket-book which he consulted. -“That’s it. Major Olifant. Coming down here to-morrow -to look over it. Appointment at twelve, if that suits -you. Unfortunately, I’ve an engagement and can’t show -him round. But I’ll send Perkins, if you like.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If the Major wants to eat me, he’ll eat up poor little -Mr. Perkins, too,” said Olivia. “So don’t worry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She waited until Myra, the maid, had helped them into -their overcoats and opened the front door. After final -leavetakings, they were gone. Olivia put up her hands, -one of them still holding the cheque, on Myra’s gaunt -shoulders and shook her and laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve beaten them at last. I knew I should. Now you -and I are going to have the devil’s own time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ll have, Miss Olivia,” said Myra, withdrawing -like a wooden automaton from the embrace, “the time -we’ll be deserving.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Myra was long, lean, and angular, dressed precisely -in parlourmaid’s black; but the absence of cap on her -faultlessly neat iron grey hair and the black apron suggested -a cross between the housekeeper and personal -maid. She shared, with a cook and a vague, print-attired -help, the whole service of the house. The fact -of Myra had been one of the earliest implanted in the -consciousness of Olivia’s awakening childhood. Myra -was there, perdurable as father and mother, as Polly, the -parrot, whose “Drat the child” of that morning was the -same echo of Myra’s voice, as it was when, at the age -of two, she began to interpret the bird’s articulate speech. -And, as far as she could remember, Myra had always -been the same. Age had not withered her, nor had custom -staled her infinite invariability. She had been -withered since the beginning of time, and she had been -as unchanging in aspect and flavour as Olivia’s lifelong -breakfast egg. Myra’s origins were hidden in mystery. -A family legend declared her a foundling. She had come -as a girl from Essex, recommended by a friend, long -since dead, of Mrs. Gale. She never spoke of father, -mother, sisters, and brothers; but every year, when she -took her holiday, she was presumed to return to her native -county. With that exception she seemed to have far -less of a private life than the household cat. It never -occurred to Olivia that she could possibly lead an independent -existence. Her age was about forty-five.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They think I’m either mad or immoral,” said Olivia. -“Thank God, they’re not religious, or they’d be holding -prayer meetings over me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They might do worse,” replied Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The girl laughed. “So you disapprove, too, do you? -Well, you’ll have to get over it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve got over many things—one more or less don’t -matter. And if I were you, Miss, I wouldn’t stand in this -draughty hall.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All that I’m thinking of,” said Olivia, in high good -humour, “is that, with you as duenna, I shall look too -respectable. No one will believe it possible for any one -except an adventuress.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s what I gather you’re going to be,” said Myra. -If she had put any sting into her words it would have -been a retort. But no one knew what emotions guided -Myra’s speech. With the same tonelessness she would -have proclaimed the house to be on fire, or dinner to be -ready, or the day to be fine.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, if you don’t like the prospect, Myra, you -needn’t come,” said Olivia. “I’ll easily find something -fluffy in short skirts and silk stockings to do for me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’re wasting gas, Miss,” said Myra, pulling the -little chain of the bye-pass and thereby plunging the hall -in darkness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, bother you!” cried Olivia, stumbling into the -passage and knocking against the parrot’s cage outside -the dining-room door, and Polly shrieked out:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Drat the child! Drat the child!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Before entering the dining-room she aimed a Parthian -shot at Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose you agree with the little beast. Well, the -two of you’ll have to look after each other, and I wish -you joy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She cleared the dining-room table of the tea things and -the whisky and glasses and the superfluous papers, and -opened the window to let out the smell of Mr. Trivett’s -strong cigar, and crossed the passage to the drawing-room -opposite, where a small fire was still burning. And -there, in spite of the exultation of her triumph over Mr. -Trivett and Mr. Fenmarch, she suddenly felt very dreadfully -alone; also just a whit frightened. The precious -cheque, symbol of independence, which she had taken up, -laid down, taken up again, during her little household -duties, fell to the ground as she lay in the arm-chair by -the fireside.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Was her victory, and all it implied, that of a reasonable -being and a decent girl, or that of a little fool and a hussy?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Perhaps the mother whom she worshipped and to whom -she had devotedly sacrificed the last four years of her -young life was the inspiration of her revolt. For her -mother had been a highly bred woman, of a proud old -Anglo-Indian family, all Generals and Colonels and Sirs -and Ladies, whose names had been involved in the history -of British India for generations; and when she threw the -Anglo-Indian family halo over the windmills and married -young Stephen Gale, who used to stand in the market-place -of Medlow and bawl out the bidding for pigs and -sheep, the family turned her down with the Anglo-Indian -thoroughness that had compelled her mother to lose her -life in a plague-stricken district and her father to lose -his on the North-West Frontier. The family argument -was simple. When you—or everything mattering that -means you—have ruled provinces and commanded armies -and been Sahibs from the beginning of Anglo-Indian -time, you can’t go and marry a man who sells pigs at auction, -and remain alive. None of the family deigned to -gauge the personal value of the pig-seller. The Anglo-Brahmin -lost caste. It is true that, afterwards, patronizing -efforts were made by Brahminical uncles and aunts -and cousins to bridge over the impassable gulf; but Mrs. -Gale, very much in love with her pig-selling husband, -snapped her fingers at them and told them, in individually -opposite terms, to go hang.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was a love match right enough. And a love match -it remained to the very end of all things; after she had -borne him two sons and a daughter; all through the -young lives of the children; up to the day when the telegram -came announcing the death of their elder son—the -younger had been killed in the curious world accident a -month or so before—and Stephen Gale stood by her bedside—she -had even then succumbed to her incurable -malady—and said, shaken with an emotion to which one -does not refer nowadays:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mary, my dear, what am I to do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And she, the blood in her speaking—the blood that had -given itself at Agra, Lucknow, Khandahar, Chitral—replied:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Go, dear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia, sitting by, gripped her young hands in mingled -horror and grief and passionate wonder. And Stephen -Gale, just fifty, went out to avenge his sons and do what -was right in his wife’s eyes—for his wife was his country -incarnate, her voice, being England’s voice. A love match -it was and a love match it remained while he stuck it -for two or three years—an elderly man at an inglorious -Base, until he died of pneumonia—over there.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Gale had lingered for a year, and, close as their -relations had been all Olivia’s life, they grew infinitely -closer during this period of bereavement. It was only -then that the mother gave delicate expression to the nostalgia -of half a lifetime, the longing for her own kind, and -the ways and thoughts and imponderable principles of -her own caste. And, imperceptibly, Olivia’s eyes were -opened to the essential differences between her mother -and the social circle into which she had married. Olivia, -ever since her shrewd child’s mind began to appreciate -values, knew perfectly well that the Trivetts and the -Gales were not accounted as gentlefolk in the town. She -early became aware of the socially divided line across -which she could not pass so as to enter Blair Park, the -high-class girls’ school on the hill, but narrowed her to -Landsdowne House, where the daughters of the tradespeople -received their education. And when the two -crocodiles happened to pass each other on country walks -she hated the smug, stuckup Blair Park girls with their -pretty blue and white ribbons round their straw hats, and -hated her red ribbon with “LH” embroidered on it, as a -badge of servitude. When she grew up she accepted -countless other social facts as immutable conditions of -existence. Mortals were divided by her unquestioning -father into three categories—“the swells,” “homely folk -like ourselves,” and “common people.” So long as each -member of the three sections knew his place and respected -it, the world was as comfortable a planet as sentient being -could desire. That was one factor in his worship of his -wife: she had stepped from her higher plane to his and had -loyally, unmurmuringly identified herself with it. He had -never a notion, good man, of the shocks, the inner wounds, -the instinctive revolts, the longings that she hid behind -her loving eyes. Nor had Olivia; although as a schoolgirl -she knew and felt proud that her mother really belonged -to Blair Park and not to Landsdowne House. As -she grew up, she realized her mother’s refining influence, -and, as far as young blood would allow, used her as a -model of speech and manner. And during the long invalid -years, when she read aloud and discussed a wide -range of literature, she received unconsciously a sensitive -education. But it was only in this last poignant intimacy, -when they were left starkly alone together, that she -sounded the depths of the loyal, loving, and yet strangely -suffering woman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I remember once, long ago, when you were a mite of -five,” Mrs. Gale had said in a memorable confidence, “we -were staying at a hotel in Eastbourne, and I got into -conversation on the verandah with a Colonel somebody—I -forget his name—with whom we had spoken several -times before—one of those spare brown, blue-eyed men, -all leather and taut string, that wear their clothes like -uniform. You see, I was born and bred among them, -dear. And we talked and we talked and I didn’t know -how the time flew, and I missed an appointment with -your father in the town. And he came and found us together—and -he was very angry. It was the only time -in our lives he said an unkind word to me. It was the -only time I gave him any sort of cause for jealousy. But -he really hadn’t. It was only just the joy of talking to -a gentleman again. And I couldn’t tell him. It would -have broken his dear heart.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This was the first flashlight across her mother’s soul, -and in its illumination vanished many obscure and haunting -perplexities of her girlhood. Had Mrs. Gale lived -the normal life of women, surrounded by those that -loved her, she would doubtless have gone to her grave -without revealing her inner self to living mortal. But infinite -sorrow and the weakness engendered by constant -physical pain had transformed her into a spirituality just -breathing the breath of life and regarding her daughter -less as a woman than as a kindred essence from whom -no secrets could be hid. At her bedside Olivia thus -learned the mystery of birth and life and death. Chiefly -the mystery of life, which appealed more to her ardent -maidenhood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So when at last her mother faded out of existence and -Olivia’s vigil was over, she faced a world of changing -values with a new set of values of her own. She could -not formulate them; but she was acutely conscious that -they were different from those of the good, honest Mr. Trivett -and the dull and honourable Mr. Fenmarch, and that -to all the social circle which these two represented they -would be unintelligible. In a way, she found herself -possessed of a new calculus in which she trusted to solve -the problems which defied the simple arithmetic of the -homely folk of Medlow.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>All these memories and vague certainties passed through -the girl’s mind as she sat before the fire in self-examination -after her victory, and conflicted with the prosaic -and indicatively common-sense arguments of her late -advisers. She knew that father and brothers, all beloved -and revered, would have been staunchly on the side of the -Trivetts. On the other hand, her mother, as she had -said to her husband on the edge of a far, far greater adventure, -would have said: “Go, dear.” Of that she had -no doubt. . . . Yet it meant cutting herself adrift from -Medlow and all its ways and all its associations. It -meant a definite struggle to raise herself from her father’s -second social category to the first. It meant, therefore, -justifying herself against odious insinuations on the part -of her scant acquaintance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then the youth in her rose insistent. During all -these years of stress and fever which had marked her -development from child into woman she had done nothing -but remain immured within the walls familiar from her -babyhood. Other girls had gone afar, in strange independence, -to vivid scenes, to unforgettable adventures, in -the service of their country, in the service of mankind—just -as her brothers and father had gone—and she had -stayed there, ineradicable, in that one little tiny spot. -The sick-room, the kitchen, the shops in Old Street, where, -in defiance of Food Controller, she had fought for cream -and butter and eggs and English meat so that her mother -could live; the sick-room again, the simple white and -green bedroom which meant to her little more than the -sleep of exhaustion; the sick-room once more, with its -pathos of spiritual love and physical repulsion—such had -been the iron environment of her life. Sorrow after sorrow, -and mourning after mourning had come, and the -little gaieties of the “homely folk” of her father’s definition -had gone on without her participation. And her -girl friends of Landsdowne House had either married rising -young tradesmen in distant towns, or had found -some further scope for their energies at the end of the -Great Adventure and were far away. In the meanwhile -other homely folk whom she did not know had poured -into the town. All kinds of people seemed to be settling -there, anyhow, without rhyme or reason. It was only -when there was not a house to be rented in the neighbourhood -that she understood why.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have a comfortable home of your own. Why, -on earth, don’t you stay in it?” Mr. Trivett had asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But she had stayed in it, alone, for the three months -since her mother’s death, waiting on the law’s delays; -and those three months had been foretaste enough of -the dreary infinite years that would lie before her, should -she remain. She was too young, too full of sap, to face -the blight of sunlessness. She longed for the sights and -the sounds and the freedom of the great world. What -she would do when she got into it, she did not exactly -know. Possibly she might meet a fairy prince. If such -a speculation was that of a hussy, why then, she argued, -all women are hussies from birth. As for being a fool -for defying advice on the proper investment of her money—well, -perhaps she was not quite such a fool as Mr. -Trivett imagined. If she did not spend her capital, it -would be just as safe lying on deposit at the bank as invested -in stocks and shares; safer, for she had lately had -wearisome experience of the depreciation of securities. -She would not be senselessly extravagant; in fact, with -the sanguineness of youth she hoped to be able to live on -the interest on her deposit and the rent of the furnished -house. But behind her, definite, tangible, uninfluenced -by Stock Exchange fluctuations, would be her fortune. -And then—a contingency which she did not put before -Mr. Trivett and Mr. Fenmarch, for a woman seldom discloses -her main argument to a male adversary—there -might come a glorious moment in some now unconjecturable -adventure when it might be essential for her to -draw cheques for dazzling sums which she could put in -her pocket and go over mysterious hills and far away. -She stood on the edge of her dull tableland and gazed -wide-eyed at the rolling Land of Romance veiled by gold -and purple mist. And in that Land, from immemorial -time, people carried their money in bags, into which they -dipped their hands, as occasion required, and cast the unmeaning -counters at the feet of poverty or into the lap of -greed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When she sat down to her solitary supper, she had decided -that she was neither hussy nor fool. She held -baffling discourse with Myra, who could not be enticed -into enthusiasm over the immediate future. Teasing -Myra had been her joy from infancy. She sketched their -career—that of female Don Quixote and Sancho Panza—that -of knights of old in quest of glorious adventure. -She quoted, mock heroically:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The ride abroad redressing human wrong.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Better redress the young London women which I see -the pictures of in the illustrated papers,” said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia laughed. “You are a dear old blessing, you -know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m sure of it,” said Myra, with an expressionless face. -“Anyways, you’re not going to buy one of them things -when you get to London.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am,” replied Olivia. “And you’ll have to help me -put it on.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can’t help folks put on nothing,” said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What do you think you’ll do when you’re really -shocked?” asked Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I never think what I’ll do,” replied Myra. “It’s -waste of time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia enjoyed her supper.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='20' id='Page_20'></span>CHAPTER II</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>I</span><span class='sc'>T</span> was only when she waited the next morning for her -possible tenant, the Major Olifant of whom Mr. -Trivett had spoken, and went through the familiar -rooms to see that they were fit for alien inspection, that -she realized the sacrilege which she was about to commit. -Every room was sacred, inhabited by some beloved ghost. -The very furniture bore landmarks of the wear and tear -of those that were dead. To say nothing of the beds on -which they had slept, the chairs in which they had sat, -which still seemed to retain the impress of their forms, -there persisted a hundred exquisitely memorable trivialities. -The arm of the oak settle in the hall still showed -the ravages of the teeth of Barabbas, the mongrel bull-terrier -pup introduced, fifteen years ago, into the house, -by Charles her elder brother; an animal who, from being -cursed by the whole family for a pestilential cur, wriggled -his way, thanks to his adoration of Charles, into the hearts -of them all, and died from old age and perhaps doggy -anxiety a few months after Charles had sailed for France. -In her father’s study, a small room heterogeneously -adorned with hunting crops and car accessories and -stuffed trout and a large scale map of Medlow and neighbourhood -and suggestive in no way of a studious habit, -the surface of the knee-hole writing table and the mahogany -mantelpiece were scored with fluted little burns -from cigarette-ends, he having been a careless smoker. -There was a legend that the family cradle, for many -years mouldering in an outhouse, bore the same stigmata. -The very bathroom was not free of intimate history. In -the midst of the blue and red stained panes on the lower -sash stared one of plain ground glass—the record of her -brother Bobby aged twelve, who, vowing vengeance -against an unsympathetic visiting aunt (soon afterwards -deceased), had the brilliant idea of catapulting her -through the closed window while she was having her -bath. And there was her mother’s room. . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She could not let all this pass into vulgar hands. The -vague plan of letting the house furnished, which had -hitherto not been unattractive, now became monstrously -definite. She hated the sacrilegious and intrusive Major -Olifant. He would bring down a dowdy wife and a cartload -of children to the profanation of these her household -gods. She went in search of Myra and found her dusting -her own prim little bedroom.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m going out. When Major Olifant calls, tell him -I’ve changed my mind and the house is not to let.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she put on hat and coat and went downstairs to -take the air of the sleepy midday High Street. But as -she opened the front door she ran into a man getting -out of a two-seater car driven by a chauffeur. He -raised his hat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I beg your pardon,” said he, “but is this ‘The -Towers’?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is,” she replied. “I suppose you’ve—you’ve come -with an order to view from Messrs. Trivett and Gale.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quite so,” said he pleasantly. “I have an appointment -with Miss Gale.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m Miss Gale,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She noticed an involuntary twitch of surprise, at once -suppressed, pass over his face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And my name’s Olifant. Major Olifant.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had pictured quite a different would-be intruder, a -red-faced, obese, and pushing fellow. Instead, she saw -a well-bred, spare man of medium height wearing a -stained service Burberry the empty left sleeve of which -was pinned in front; a man in his middle thirties, with -crisp light brown hair, long, broad forehead characterized -by curious bumps over the brows, a very long, straight -nose and attractive dark blue eyes which keenly and -smilingly held hers without touch of offence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve decided not to let the house,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The smile vanished from his eyes. “I’m sorry,” said -he stiffly. “I was given to understand——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I know,” she said quickly. Her conscience -getting hold of the missing arm smote her. “Where have -you come from?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oxford.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gasped. “Why, that’s a hundred miles!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ninety-four.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you must be perishing with cold,” she cried. “Do -come in and get warm, at any rate. Perhaps I can explain. -And your man, too.” She pointed. “Round -that way you’ll find a garage. I’ll send the maid. Please -come in, Major Olifant. Oh—but you must!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She entered the house, leaving him no option but to -follow. To divest himself of his Burberry he made -curious writhing movements with his shoulders, and -swerved aside politely when she offered assistance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Please don’t worry. I’m all right. I’ve all kinds of -little stunts of my own invention.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And, as he said it, he got clear and threw the mackintosh -on the oak chest. He rubbed the knuckle of his -right hand against the side of his rough tweed jacket.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just five minutes to get warm and I won’t trespass -further on your hospitality.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She showed him into the drawing-room, thanked goodness -there was a showy wood-fire burning, and went out -after Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I thought the house wasn’t to be let,” said the latter -after receiving many instructions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The letting of the house has nothing to do with two -cold and hungry men who have motored here on a raw -November morning for hundreds of miles on false pretences.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She re-entered the drawing-room with a tray bearing -whisky decanter, siphon, and glass, which she set on a -side table.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m alone in the world now, Major Olifant,” she said, -“but I’ve lived nearly all my life with men—my father -and two brothers——” She felt that the explanation -was essential. “Please help yourself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He met her eyes, which, though defiant, held the menace -of tears. He made the vaguest, most delicate of gestures -with his right hand—his empty sleeve, the air. She -moved an assenting head; then swiftly she grasped the -decanter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Say when.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She squirted the siphon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perfect. A thousand thanks.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He took the glass from her and deferentially awaited -her next movement. Tricksy memory flashed across her -mind the picture of the Anglo-Indian colonel of her -mother’s pathetic little confidence. For a moment or two -she stood confused, flushed, self-conscious, suddenly hating -herself for not knowing instinctly what to do. In -desperation she cried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, please drink it! You must want it awfully.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He laughed, made a little bow, and drank.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now do sit down near the fire. I’m dreadfully -sorry,” she continued when they were settled. “Dreadfully -sorry you should have had all this journey for nothing. -As a matter of fact, I wanted to let the house and -only changed my mind an hour ago.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have lived here all your life?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Please say no more about it,” said he courteously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She burst at once into explanations. Father, brothers, -mother—all the dear ghosts, at the last moment, had held -out their barring hands. He smiled at her pretty dark-eyed -earnestness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There are few houses nowadays without ghosts. But -there might be a stranger now and then who would have -the tact and understanding to win their confidence.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This was at the end of a talk which had lasted she -knew not how long. The little silence which ensued was -broken by the shrill clang of the ormolu clock on the -mantelpiece striking one. She sprang to her feet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“One o’clock. Why, you must be famished. Seven -o’clock breakfast at latest. There’ll be something to eat, -whatever it is.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, my dear Miss Gale,” cried Major Olifant, rising -in protest, “I couldn’t dream of it—there must be an -hotel——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There isn’t,” cried Olivia unveraciously, and vanished.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Major Olifant, too late to open the door for her, retraced -his steps and stood, back to fire, idly evoking, as a -man does, the human purposes that had gone to the making -of the room, and he was puzzled. Some delicate -spirit had chosen the old gold curtains which harmonized -with the cushions on the plain upholstered settee and with -the early Chippendale armchairs and with the Chippendale -bookcase filled with odds and ends of good china, -old Chelsea, Coalport, a bit or two of Sèvres and Dresden. -Some green chrysanthemums bowed, in dainty raggedness, -over the edge of a fine cut crystal vase. An exquisite -water-colour over the piano attracted his attention. -He crossed the room to examine it and drew a -little breath of surprise to read the signature of Bonington—a -thing beyond price. On a table by the French -window, which led into a conservatory and thence into -the little garden, stood a box of Persian lacquer. But -there, throwing into confusion the charm of all this, a great -Victorian mirror in a heavy florid gold frame blared like -a German band from over the mantelpiece, and on the -opposite wall two huge companion pictures representing -in violent colours scenes of smug domestic life, also in -gold frames, with a slip of wood let in bearing the legend -“Exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1888,” screamed like -an orchestrion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was looking round for further evidence of obvious -conflict of individualities, when Myra appeared to take -him to get rid of the dust of the journey. When he returned -to the drawing-room he found Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t help feeling an inconscionable intruder,” said -he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My only concern is that I’ll be able to give you -something fit to eat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He laughed. “The man who has come out of France -and Mesopotamia finikin in his food is a fraud.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Still,” she objected, “I don’t want to send you back -to Mrs. Olifant racked with indigestion.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mrs. Olifant?” He wore a look of humorous -puzzlement.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose you have a wife and family?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good heavens, no!” he cried, with an air of horror. -“I’m a bachelor.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She regarded him for a few seconds, as though from -an entirely fresh point of view.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But what on earth does a bachelor want with a great -big house—with ten bedrooms?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Has it got ten bedrooms?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I presume Mr. Trivett sent you the particulars: -‘Desirable Residence, standing in own grounds, three -acres. Ten bedrooms, three reception rooms. Bath H. -and C.,’ and so forth?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The Bath H. and C. was all I worried about.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They both laughed. Myra announced luncheon. They -went into the dining-room. By the side of Major Olifant’s -plate was a leather case. He flashed on her a look -of enquiry, at which the blood rose into her pale cheeks.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve been interviewing your man,” she said rather -defiantly. “He produced that from the pocket of the -car.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You overwhelm me with your kindness, Miss Gale,” -said he. “I should never have had the courage to ask for -it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The case contained the one-armed man’s patent combination -knife and fork.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Courage is such a funny thing,” said Olivia. “A -man will walk up to a machine-gun in action and knock -the gunner out with the butt end of a rifle; but if he’s -sitting in a draught in a woman’s drawing-room and -catching his death of cold, he daren’t get up and shut -the window. These are real eggs, although they’re -camouflaged in a Chinese scramble. One faithful hen -is still doing her one minute day. The others are on -strike.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt curiously exhilarated on this first actual occasion -of asserting her independence. Only once before -had she entertained guests at her own table, and these -were her uncle and aunt from Clapham, the Edward -Gales, who came to her mother’s funeral. They were -colourless suburban folk who were pained by her polite -rejection of their proposal to make her home with them -on a paying footing, and reproached her for extravagance -in giving them butter (of which, nevertheless, they ate -greedily) instead of margarine. Her uncle was a pallid -pharmaceutical chemist and lived above the shop, and -his wife, a thin-lipped, negative blonde, had few interests -in life outside the Nonconformist Communion into which -she had dragged him. Olivia had seen them only once -before, also at a funeral, that of a younger brother who -had died at the age of three. Her robustious country-loving, -horse-loving, dog-loving, pig-loving father had -never got on with his bloodless brother. A staunch supporter -of the Church of England to the extent of renting -a pew in the Parish Church in which, in spite of the -best intentions, he had never found time to sit, he confessedly -hated dissent and all its works, especially those -undertaken by Mrs. Edward. His vice of generosity -did not accord with their parsimonious virtues. Once, -Olivia remembered, he had dined with them at Clapham -and returned complaining of starvation. “One kidney between -the three of us,” he declared. “And they gave -me the middle gristly bit!” So Olivia felt no call of the -blood to Clapham. And, for all her inherited hospitable -impulses, she had been glad when, having critically picked -the funeral baked meats to the last bone, they had gone -off in sorrow over her wicked prodigality and lack of -true Christian feeling. But for their dreary and passing -shadows she had eaten alone—she caught her breath to -think of it—ever since her father’s last leave—shortly -before he died at Etaples—eighteen months ago. Her -hostess-ship at the present moment was a bubbling joy. -Only her sense of values restrained her from ordering up -a bottle of champagne. She contented herself with a -bottle of old Corton—her father had been a judge of -full red wines, burgundy and port, and had stocked a -small but well-selected cellar, and had taught Olivia what -is good that a girl should know concerning them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She watched her guest’s first sip, as her father had -been wont to watch, and flushed with pleasure when he -paused, as though taken aback, sniffed, sipped again, -and said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Either new conditions are making me take all sorts -of geese for swans, or you’re giving me a remarkable -wine.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She burst out radiantly: “How lovely of you to spot -it! It’s a Corton, 1887.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But forgive me for saying so,” he remarked. “It’s -not a wine you should spill on any casual tramp. Oh, -of course,” he protested in anticipation. “Your politeness -will assure me that I’m not a casual tramp. But I -am.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I owed you something for bringing you on a fool’s -errand. Besides, I wanted to show you what Todger’s -could do when it liked!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Todger’s is wonderful,” he smiled. “And how you -could ever have thought of leaving Todger’s is more than -I can understand.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I’m going to leave it, right enough,” she answered. -“What on earth do you think a girl all by herself wants -with a great big house with ten bedrooms, three reception -rooms, bath h. and c., etc., etc.?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s your home, anyhow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s why I don’t like to let it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then why go away from it? If it is not an impertinent -question, what are you going to do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She met his clear blue eyes and laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m going out into the world to seek adventure. -There!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I,” said he, “want to get out of the world and -never have another adventure as long as I live. I’ve had -more than enough for one lifetime.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But still,” she retorted, conscious of his bearing and -vigour and other conjectured qualities, “you can’t contemplate -fossilizing here till the end of time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s what I’m literally thinking of doing,” he replied.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt the reaction of bitter disappointment. A man -like him had no right to throw up the sponge. The -sudden blankness of her face betrayed her thoughts. He -smiled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I said literally, you know. Fossilizing in the literal -and practical sense. Once upon a time I was a geologist. -I specialized in certain fossils.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh,” gasped Olivia. “I beg your pardon.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very fascinating little fossils,” he went on without -reference to her apology, for which Olivia was grateful. -“They’re called foraminifera. Do you know what they -are?” Olivia shook a frankly ignorant head. “They’re -little tiny weeny shells, and the things once inside them -belonged to the protozoa, or first forms of life. They’re -one of the starting-points to the solution of the riddle of -existence. I was dragged away from them to fool about -with other kinds of shells, millions of times bigger and -millions of times less important. I’ve got what I think -are some new ideas about them, and other things connected -with them—it’s a vast subject—and so I’m looking -for a quiet place where I can carry on my work.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s awfully interesting,” said Olivia. “But—forgive -me—who pays you for it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Possibly mankind two hundred years hence,” he -laughed. “But, if I stick it long enough, they may make -me a Fellow of the Royal Society when I’m—say—seventy-three.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wish you’d tell me some more about these forami—funny -little things I’ve never heard of,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But he answered: “No. If once I began, I would -bore you so stiff that you would curse the hour you -allowed me to cross your threshold. There are other -things just as vital as foraminifera. I’ve made my confession, -Miss Gale. Now, won’t you make yours? What -are you keen on?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the direct question, Olivia passed in review the aims -and interests and pleasures of her past young life, and -was abashed to find them a row of anæmic little phantoms. -For years her head had been too full of duties. -She regarded him for a moment or two in dismay, then -she laughed in young defiance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose I’m keen on real live human beings. That’s -my starting-point to the solution of the riddle of existence.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ll see who gets there first,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When the meal was over, she stood by the door which -he held open for her and hesitated for a moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wonder whether you would care to look over the -house?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I should immensely. But—if you’re not going to -let it——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll be able, at any rate, to tell Mr. Trivett that -he had no business to send you to such an old rabbit -warren,” she replied, with some demureness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m at your orders,” smiled Olifant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She played cicerone with her little business-like air of -dignity, spoke in a learned fashion of water supply, flues, -and boilers. Olifant looked wisely at the kitchen range, -while Myra stood at impassive attention and the cook -took refuge in the scullery.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“These holes are to put saucepans on, I presume,” said -he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ve hit it exactly,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They went upstairs. On the threshold of the best -bedroom he paused and cried, in some astonishment: -“What an exquisite room!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was my mother’s,” said Olivia. “You can come in. -It has a pleasant view over the garden.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then Olifant, who had inspected the study, solved the -puzzle of the drawing-room. There the man and woman -had compromised. She had suffered him to hang his -Victorian mirror and his screaming pictures in the midst -of her delicate scheme. But here her taste reigned absolute. -It was all so simple, so exquisite: a few bits of -Chippendale and Sheraton, a few water-colours on the -walls, a general impression for curtains and upholstery -of faded rose brocade. On a table by the bed-head stood -a little row of books in an inlaid stand. With the instinct -of a bookish man, Olifant bent over to look at their -backs, but first turned to Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“May I?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course.” Then she added, with a vague longing -to impress on a stranger the wonder and beauty of the -spirit that had created these surroundings: “My mother -knew them all by heart, I think. Naturally she used to -read other things and I used to read aloud to her—she -was interested in everything till the day of her death—but -these books were part of her life.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There were: <span class='it'>Marcus Aurelius</span>, <span class='it'>Lord Herbert of Cherbury</span>, -<span class='it'>The Imitation of Christ</span>, <span class='it'>Christina Rossetti</span>, the almost -forgotten early seventeenth century <span class='it'>Arthur Warwick</span> -(“<span class='it'>Spare Minutes; or, Resolved Meditation and Premeditated -Resolutions</span>”), <span class='it'>Crabbe</span> . . . a dozen volumes -or so. Olifant picked out one.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And this, too? The <span class='it'>Pensées de Pascal</span>?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She loved it best,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is strange,” said he. “My father spent most of his -life on a monumental work on Pascal. He was a Professor -of Divinity at a Scotch University, but died long -before the monument could be completed. I’ve got his -manuscripts. They’re in an awful mess, and it would -take another lifetime to get them into order. Anyhow, he -took good care that I should remember Pascal as long -as I lived.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He had me christened Blaise.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Blaise Olifant,” she repeated critically. She laughed. -“He might have done worse.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned over the pages. “There’s one thing here -that my father was always drumming into me. Yes, here -it is. It’s marked in blue pencil.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then it must have been drummed into me, too,” said -Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“ ‘<span class='it'>On ne consulte que l’oreille, parce qu’on manque de -cœur. La règle est l’honnêteté.</span>´”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” she said, with a sigh.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He replaced the book. They went in silence out to the -landing. After a few seconds of embarrassment they -turned and descended to the hall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can more than understand, Miss Gale, why you feel -you can’t let the house. But I’m sorry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She weakened, foreseeing the house empty and desolate, -given over to dust and mice and ghosts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was the idea of a pack of people, the British Family -in all its self-centredness and selfishness, coming in here -that I couldn’t stand,” she confessed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then is there a chance for me?” he asked, his face -brightening. “Look. I’m open to a bargain. The -house is just what I want. I’m not a recluse. I’m quite -human. I should like to have a place where I can put -up a man or so for a week-end, and I’ve a married sister, -none too happy, who now and then might like to find -a refuge with me. There’s also a friend, rather a distinguished -fellow, who wants to join me for a few months’ -quiet and hard work. So, suppose I give you my promise -to hold that room sacred, to keep it just as it is and allow -no one to go into it except a servant to dust and so forth—what -would you say? Not now. Think it over and -write to me at your convenience.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His sympathy and comprehension had won her over. -He was big and kind and brotherly. Somehow she felt -that her mother would have liked him, accepting him -without question as one of her own caste, and would -have smiled on him as High Priest in charge of the -Household Gods. She reflected for a while, then, meeting -his eyes:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can have the house, Major Olifant,” she said -seriously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He bowed. “I’m sure you will not regret it,” said he. -“I ought to remind you, however,” he added after a pause, -“that I may have a stable companion for a few months. -The distinguished fellow I mentioned. I wonder whether -you’ve heard of Alexis Triona.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The man who wrote <span class='it'>Through Blood and Snow</span>?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have you read it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course I have,” cried Olivia. “What do you think -I do here all day? Twiddle my thumbs or tell my fortune -by cards?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope you think it’s a great book,” he said, with a -smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“An amazing book. And you’re going to bring him to -live here? What’s he like?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It would take days to tell you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, compress it into a sort of emergency ration,” -said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So he sat by her side on the oak settle, near the anthracite -stove in the hall, and told her what he knew of -Alexis Triona.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='36' id='Page_36'></span>CHAPTER III</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>W</span><span class='sc'>HAT</span> Blaise Olifant told Olivia about his -prospective co-inhabitant of The Towers, -and what Rowington, the publisher, and one -or two others knew about him, amounted to the following:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>One morning a motor-car, having the second-hand air -of a hiring garage and unoccupied save for the chauffeur, -drew up before the door of a great London publishing -house. The chauffeur stepped from his seat, collected a -brown-paper package from the interior, and entered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Can I see a member of the firm?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The clerk in the enquiry office looked surprised. -Chauffeurs offering manuscripts on behalf of their employers -were plentiful as blackberries in September; -but chauffeurs demanding an interview with the august -heads of the house were rare as blackberries in March.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m afraid you can’t do that,” he replied civilly. “If -you leave it here, it will be all right. I’ll give you a receipt -which you can take back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want to explain,” said the chauffeur.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Scores of people weekly expressed the same desire. It -was the business of the clerk to suppress explanations.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s a manuscript to be submitted? Well, you must -tell the author——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am the author,” said the chauffeur.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh!” said the clerk, and his subconscious hand -pushed the manuscript a millimetre forward on the polished -mahogany counter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The circumstances, you see, are exceptional.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There being something exceptional in the voice and -manner of the chauffeur, the clerk regarded him for the -first time as a human being.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I quite see,” said he; “but the rules of the firm are -strict. If you will leave the manuscript, it will be read. -Oh, I give you my word of honour,” he smiled. “Everything -that comes in is read. We have a staff who do nothing -else. Is your name and address on it?” He began -to untie the string.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The name, but not the address.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>On the slip of paper which the clerk pushed across to -him he wrote:</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Alexis Triona,</p> -<p class='line0'>   c/o John Briggs.</p> -<p class='line0'>      3 Cherbury Mews,</p> -<p class='line0'>         Surrey Gardens, W.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>The clerk scribbled an acknowledgment, the chauffeur -thrust it into his pocket, and, driving away, was lost in -the traffic of London.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A fortnight afterwards, Alexis Triona, who, together -with John Briggs, as one single and indissoluble chauffeur, -inhabited a little room over the garage in Cherbury -Mews, received a letter to the effect that the publishing -house, being interested in the MS. “<span class='it'>Through Blood and -Snow</span>,” which he had kindly submitted, would be glad if -he would call, with a view to publication. The result was -a second visit on the part of the chauffeur to the great -firm. The clerk welcomed him with a bland smile, -and showed him into a comfortably furnished room whose -thick Turkey carpet signified the noiseless mystery of -many discreet decades, and where a benevolent middle-aged -man in gold spectacles stood with his back to the -chimney-piece. He advanced with outstretched hand to -meet the author.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mr. Triona? I’m glad to meet you. Won’t you sit -down?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He motioned to a chair by the tidy writing table, where -he sat and pulled forward the manuscript, which had -been placed there in readiness for the interview. He -said pleasantly:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well. Let us get to business at once. We should -like to publish your book.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The slight quivering of sensitive nostrils alone betrayed -the author’s emotion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m glad,” he replied. “I think it’s worth publishing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mr. Rowington tapped the MS. in front of him with -his forefinger. “Are these your own personal experiences?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They are,” said the chauffeur.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Excuse my questioning you,” said the publisher. “Not -that it would greatly matter. But one likes to know. -We should be inclined to publish it, either as a work of -fiction or a work of fact; but the handling of it—the -method of publicity—would be different. Of course, you -see,” he went on benevolently, “a thing may be absolutely -true in essence, like lots of the brilliant little -war stories that have been written the past few years, -but not true in the actual historical sense. Now, your -book would have more value if we could say that it is -true in this actual historical sense, if we could say that -it’s an authentic record of personal experiences.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can say that,” answered Triona quietly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The publisher leaned back in his chair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How a man could have gone through what you have -and remained sane passes understanding.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For the first time the young man’s set features relaxed -into a smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shouldn’t like to swear that I am sane,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve heard ex-prisoners say,” Mr. Rowington remarked, -“that six months’ solitary confinement under such -conditions”—he patted the manuscript—“is as much as -the human reason can stand.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“As soon as hunting and killing vermin ceases to be a -passionate interest in life,” said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They conversed for a while. Stimulated by the publisher’s -question, Triona supplemented details in the book, -described his final adventure, his landing penniless in -London, his search for work. At last, said he, he had -found a situation as chauffeur in the garage of a motor-hiring -company. The publisher glanced at the slip pinned -to the cover of the manuscript.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And John Briggs?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A pseudonym. Briggs was my mother’s name. I am -English on both sides, though my great-grandfather’s -people were Maltese. My father, however, was a naturalized -Russian. I’ve mentioned it in the book.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quite so,” said the publisher. “I only wanted to get -things clear. And now as to terms. Have you any -suggestion?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Afterwards, Alexis Triona confessed to a wild impulse -to ask for a hundred pounds—outright sale—and to a -sudden lack of audacity which kept him silent. The -terms which the publisher proposed, when the royalty -system and the probabilities of such a book’s profits were -explained to him, made him gasp with wonder. And -when, in consideration, said the publisher, of his present -impecunious position, he was offered an advance in respect -of royalties exceeding the hundred pounds of his -crazy promptings, his heart thumped until it became an -all but intolerable pain.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you think,” he asked, amazed that his work should -have such market value, “that I could earn my living by -writing?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Undoubtedly.” The publisher beamed on the new -author. “You have the matter, you have the gift, the -style, the humour, the touch. I’m sure I could place -things for you. Indeed, it would be to our common advantage, -pending publication. Only, of course, you -mustn’t use any of the matter in the book. You quite -understand?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alexis Triona understood. He went away dancing on -air. Write? His brain seethed with ideas. That the -written expression of them should open the gates of Fortune -was a new conception. He had put together the -glowing, vivid book impelled by strange, unknown forces. -It was, as he had confidently declared, worth publishing. -But the possible reward was beyond his dreams. And -he could see more visions. . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So he went back to his garage and drove idle people -to dinners and theatres, and in his scanty leisure wrote -strange romances of love and war in Circassia and Tartary, -and, through the agency of the powerful publishing -house, sold them to solid periodicals, until the public -mind became gradually familiarized with his name. It -was only when the book was published, and, justifying -the confidence of the great firm, blazed into popularity, -that Triona discarded his livery and all that appertained -to the mythical John Briggs and, arraying himself in the -garb of ordinary citizenship, entered—to use, with a -difference, the famous trope of a departed wit—a lion -into the den of London’s Daniels. For, in their hundreds, -they had come to judgment. But knowing very little of -the Imperial Russian Secret Service in Turkestan, or the -ways of the inhabitants of the Ural Mountains, or, at -that time, of Bolshevik horrors in the remote confines of -Asia, they tore each other to pieces, while the lion stepped, -with serene modesty, in the midst of them.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>It was at Oxford, whither the sudden wave of fame -had drifted him, that he met Blaise Olifant, who was -living in the house of his sister, the wife of a brilliant, -undomesticated and somewhat dissolute professor of political -economy. The Head of a College, interested in -Russia, had asked him down to dine and sleep. There -was a portentous dinner-party whose conglomerate brain -paralyzed the salmon and refroze the imported lamb. -They overwhelmed the guest of honour with their learning. -They all were bent on probing beneath the surface -of his thrilling personal adventures, which he narrated -from time to time with attractive modesty. The episode -of his reprieve when standing naked beside the steaming -chaldron in which he was to be boiled alive caused a -shuddering silence. Perhaps it was too realistic for a -conventional dinner-party, but he had discounted its -ghastliness by a smiling nonchalance, telling it as though -it had been an amusing misadventure of travel. Very -shortly afterwards Mrs. Head of College broke into a -disquisition on the continuity of Russian literature from -Sumakarov to Chekov. Triona, a profound student of -the subject, at last lost interest in the academic socialist -and threw up his hands.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear lady,” said he, “there is a theory in the -United States accounting for the continued sale of <span class='it'>Uncle -Tom’s Cabin</span>. They say immigrants buy it to familiarize -themselves with the negro question. Russian literature -has just as much to do with the Russia of to-day. -It’s as purely archæological as the literature of Ancient -Assyria.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Blaise Olifant, sitting opposite, sympathized with the -man of actualities set down in this polite academy. Once -he himself had regarded it as the ganglion of the Thought -of the Universe; but having recently seen something of -the said Universe he had modified his view. Why should -these folk not be content with a plain human story of -almost fantastic adventure, instead of worrying the unhappy -Soldier of Fortune with sociological and metaphysical -theories with which he had little time to concern -himself? Why embroil him in a discussion on the -League of Nations’ duty to Lithuania when he was anxious -to give them interesting pictures of Kurdish family -life? He looked round the table somewhat amusedly -at the elderly intellectuals of both sexes, and, forgetting -for a moment the intellectual years of quiet biological -research to which he was about to devote his life, drew -an unflattering contrast between the theorists and their -alien guest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He liked the man. He liked the boyish, clean-shaven -face, the broad forehead marked by very thin horizontal -lines, the thin brown hair, parted carelessly at the side, -and left to do what it liked; the dark grey eyes that -sometimes seemed so calm beneath the heavy lids, and -yet were capable of sudden illumination; the pleasant, -humorous mouth, and the grotesque dimple of a hole in the -middle of a long chin. He pitied the man. He pitied -him for the hollows in his temples, for the swift flash -of furtive glances, for the great sinews that stood out in -his lean nervous hands, for the general suggestion of -shrunken muscularity in his figure. A stone, or two, -thought he, below his normal weight. He liked his -voice, its soft foreign intonation; he liked his modesty, -his careless air of the slim young man of no account; he -liked the courteous patience of his manner. He understood -his little nervous trick of plucking at his lips.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the drawing-room after dinner Mrs. Head of College -said to him:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A most interesting man—but I do wish he would -look you in the face when he speaks to you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Blaise Olifant suppressed a sigh. These good people -were hopeless. They knew nothing. They did not even -recognize the unmistakable brand of the prisoner who -has suffered agony of body and degradation of soul. No -man who has been a tortured slave regains, for years, -command of his eyes. Hundreds of such men had Olifant -seen, and the sight of them still made his heart ache. -He explained politely. And with a polite air of unconvinced -assent, the lady received his explanation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He asked Triona to lunch the next day, and under the -warmth of his kindly sympathy Triona expanded. He -spoke of his boyhood in Moscow, where his father, a -naturalized Russian, carried on business as a stockbroker; -of his travels in England and France with his English -mother; of his English tutor; of his promising start in -life in a great Russian motor firm—an experience that -guaranteed his livelihood during his late refuge months -in London; of his military service; of his early war days -as a Russian officer; of the twists of circumstance that -sent him into the Imperial Secret Service; of incredible -wanderings to the frontiers of Thibet; of the Revolution; -of the murder of father and mother and the disappearance -of his fortune like a wisp of cloud evaporated by the -sun; of many strange and woeful things related in his -book; of his escape through Russia; of his creeping as a -stowaway into a Swedish timber boat; of his torpedoing -by a German submarine and his rescue by a British destroyer; -of his landing naked save for shirt and trousers, -sans money, sans papers, sans everything of value save -his English speech; of the Russian Society in London’s -benevolent aid; of the burning desire, an irresistible -flame, to set down on paper all that he had gone through; -of the intense nights spent over the book in his tiny ramshackle -room over the garage; and, lastly, of the astounding -luck that had been dealt him by the capricious Wheel -of Fortune.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the presence of a sympathetic audience he threw -aside the previous evening’s cloak of modest impersonality. -He talked with a vivid picturesqueness that held -Olifant spellbound. The furtive look in his eyes disappeared. -They gleamed like compelling stars. His -face lost its ruggedness, transfigured by the born -narrator’s inspiration. Olifant’s sister, Mrs. Woolcombe, -a gentle and unassuming woman on whom the learning of -Oxford had weighed as heavily as the abominable conduct -of her husband, listened with the rapt attention of a -modern Desdemona. She gazed at him open eyed, half -stupefied as she had gazed lately at a great cinematograph -film which had held all London breathless.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When he had gone she turned to her brother, still under -the spell.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The boy’s a magician.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Blaise Olifant smiled. “The boy’s a man,” said he.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>Chance threw them together a while later in London. -There they met frequently, became friends. The quiet -sincerity of the soldier-scholar that was Blaise Olifant -seemed to strike some chord of soothing in the heart of -the young magician. Fundamentally ignorant of every -geological fact, Triona brought to Olifant’s banquet of -fossil solvents of the mystery of existence an insatiable -appetite for knowledge. He listened to reluctant lectures -on elementary phenomena such as ammonites, with the -same rapt attention as Olifant listened to his tales of -the old Empire of Prester John. The Freemasonry of -war, with its common experiences of peril and mutilation—once -Triona slipped off pump and sock and showed a -foot from which three toes had been shot away and an -ankle seared with the fester of fetters—formed a primary -bond of brotherhood. By the Freemasonry of intellect -they found themselves members of a Higher Chapter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“London is wonderful,” said Triona one day. “London’s -appreciation of the poor thing I have done is enough -to turn anyone’s head. But while my head is being -turned, in the most delightful way in the world, I can’t -find time to do any work. And I must write in order to -live. Do you know a little quiet spot where I could stay -for the winter and write this precious novel of mine?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Blaise Olifant reflected for a moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I myself am looking for a sort of hermitage. In fact, -I’ve heard of one in Shropshire which I’m going to look -at next week. I want a biggish house,” he explained, -with a smile—“I’ve had enough of dug-outs and billets -in a farmhouse with a hole through the roof to last me -my natural life. So there would be room for a guest. If -you would care to come and stay with me, wherever I -pitch my comfortable tent, and carry on your job while -I carry on mine, you would be more than welcome.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear fellow,” cried Triona, impulsively thrusting -out both hands to be shaken, “this is unheard-of generosity. -It means my soul’s salvation. Only the horrible -dread of loneliness—you know the old solitary prisoner’s -dread—has kept me from running down to some little -out-of-the-way place—say in Cornwall. I’ve shrunk -from it. But London is different. In my chauffeur’s -days it was different. I had always associates, fares, the -multitudinous sights and sounds of the vast city. But -solitude in a village! Frankly, I funked it. I’ve lived -so much alone that now I must talk. If I didn’t talk I -should go mad. Or rather I must feel that I can talk if -I want to. I keep hold of myself, however. If I bored -you with my loquacity you wouldn’t have made me your -delightful proposal.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, you’ll come, if I can get the right kind of -house?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“With all the gratitude in life,” cried Triona, his eyes -sparkling. “But not as your guest. Some daily, weekly, -monthly arrangement, so that we shall both be free—you -to kick me out—I to go——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just as you like,” laughed Olifant. “I only should -be pleased to have your company.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And God knows,” cried Triona, “what yours would be -to me.”</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='XXX' id='Page_XXX'></span>CHAPTER IV</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>J</span><span class='sc'>OHN FREKE</span> was one of the most highly respected -men in Medlow. A great leader in municipal -affairs, he had twice been Mayor of the town and -was Chairman of the local hospital, President of clubs -and associations innumerable, and held Provincial -Masonic rank. But as John Freke persisted in walking -about the draper’s shop in Old Street, established by his -grandfather, his family consorted, not with the gentry of -the neighbourhood, but with the “homely folk” such as -the Trivetts and the Gales. His daughter, Lydia, and -Olivia had been friends in the far-off days, although -Lydia was five years older. She was tall and creamy and -massive and capable, and had a rich contralto voice; and -Olivia, very young and eager, had, for a brief period, sat -adoring at her feet. Then Lydia had married a young -officer of Territorials who had been billeted on her father, -and Olivia had seen her no more. As a young war-wife -she pursued all kinds of interesting avocations remote -from Medlow, and, as a young war-widow, had set up a -hat shop in Maddox Street. Rumour had it that she -prospered. The best of relations apparently existed -between herself and old John Freke, who put up the -capital for her venture, and desultory correspondence had -kept her in touch with Olivia. The fine frenzy of girlish -worship had been cured long ago by Lydia’s cruel lack of -confidence during her courtship. The announcement of -the engagement had been a shock; the engagement itself -a revelation of selfish preoccupation. A plain young -sister had been sole bridesmaid at the wedding, and the -only sign of Lydia’s life during the honeymoon had been -a picture postcard on the correspondence space of which -was scrawled “This is a heavenly place. Lydia Dawlish.” -Then had followed the years of sorrow and stress, during -which Olivia’s hurt at the other’s gracelessness had passed, -like a childish thing, away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lydia’s succeeding letters, mainly of condolence, had, -however, kept unbroken the fragile thread of friendship. -The last, especially, written after Mrs. Gale’s -death, gave evidence of sincere feeling, and emboldened -Olivia, who knew no other mortal soul in London—the -real London, which did not embrace the Clapham aunt -and uncle—to seek her practical advice. In the voluminous -response she recognized the old capable Lydia. -Letter followed letter until, with Mr. Trivett’s professional -assistance, she found herself the lucky tenant of -a little suite in a set of service flats in Victoria Street.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>She entered into possession a fortnight after her interview -with Blaise Olifant, who was to take up residence at -“The Towers” the following day. Mr. Trivett and his -wife, Mr. Fenmarch and Mr. Freke, and the elder Miss -Freke, who kept house for her father, saw her off at the -station, covering her with their protective wings to the -last moment. Each elderly gentleman drew her aside, -and, with wagging of benevolent head, offered help in -time of trouble. They all seemed to think she was making -for disaster.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But their solicitude touched her deeply. The lump -that had arisen in her throat when she had passed out -across the threshold of her old home swelled uncomfortably, -and, when the train moved off and she responded to -waving hands and hats on the platform, tears stood in her -eyes. Presently she recovered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why should things so dear be so dismal?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Myra, exhibiting no symptoms of exhilaration, did not -reply. As they approached London, Olivia’s spirits rose. -At last the dream of the past weeks was about to be -realized. When she stepped out of the train at Paddington, -it was with the throb of the conqueror setting foot, for -the first time on coveted territory. She devoured with -her eyes, through the taxi windows, the shops and sights -and the movement of the great thoroughfares through -which they passed on their way to Victoria Mansions, -where her fifth-floor eyrie was situated. Once there, -Myra, accustomed to the spacious family house, sniffed -at the exiguous accommodation and sarcastically -remarked that it would have been better if air were laid -on like gas. But Olivia paid little heed to her immediate -surroundings. The cramped flat was but the campaigner’s -tent. Her sphere of action lay limitless beyond -the conventional walls. The walls, however, bounded -the sphere of Myra, who had no conception of glorious -adventure. The rapidly ascending lift had caused -qualms in an unaccustomed stomach, and she felt -uneasy at living at such a height above the ground. Why -Olivia could not have carried on for indefinite years -in the comfort and security of “The Towers” she was -at a loss to imagine. Why give up the ease of a big -house for poky lodgings halfway up to the sky. A -sitting-room, a bedroom, a slip with a bed in it for -herself, a bathroom—Myra thanked goodness both of -them were slim—and that was the London of Olivia’s -promise. She sighed. At last put down Olivia’s aberration -to the war. The war, in those days, explained -everything.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile Olivia had thrown up the sash of the sitting-room -window and was gazing down at the ceaseless -traffic in the street far below—gazing down on the roofs -of the taxis and automobiles which sped like swift -flat beetles, on the dwarfed yet monstrous insects -that were the motor-buses, on the foreshortened -dots of the hurrying ant-like swarms of pedestrians. -It was gathering dusk, and already a few lights -gleamed from the masses of buildings across the -way. Soon the street lamps sprang into successive -points of illumination. She stood fascinated, -watching the rapid change from December day into -December night, until at last the distant road seemed but -a fantastic medley of ever-dying, ever-recurring sounds -and flashes of white and red. Yet it was not fantastic -chaos—her heart leapt at the thought—it was pregnant -with significance. All that rumble and hooting and darting -light proclaimed human purpose and endeavour, -mysterious, breath-catching in its unknown and vast corporate -intensity. Shivers of ecstasy ran through her. -At last she herself was a unit in this eager life of London. -She would have her place in the absorbing yet perplexing -drama into the midst of which she had stepped with no -key to its meaning. But she would pick up the threads, -learn what had gone before—of that she felt certain—and -then—she laughed—she would play her part with -the best of them. To-morrow she would be scurrying -about among them, with her definite human aims. Why -not to-night? Delirious thought! She was free. She -could walk out into the throbbing thoroughfares and who -could say her nay? She put her hand to her bosom and -felt the crackle of ten five-pound notes. To emotional -girlhood the feel of money, money not to hoard and make-do -for weeks and weeks with the spectre of want ever in -attendance, but money to fling recklessly about, has its -barbaric thrill. Suppose she let slip from her fingers one -of the notes and it swayed and fluttered down, down, -down, until at last it reached the pavement, and suppose -a poor starving girl picked it up and carried it home to -her invalid mother. . . . But, on the other hand, suppose—and -her profound and cynical knowledge of human -chances assured her that it would be a thousand to one -probability—supposing it fell on the silk hat of a corpulent -profiteer! No. She was not going to shower -promiscuous five-pound notes over London. But still -the crackling wad meant power. She was free to go forth -there and then and purchase all the joys, for herself and -others, hovering over there in that luminous haze over -the Westminster towers of the magical city of dreams.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She withdrew from the window and stood in the dark -room, a light in her eyes, and clenched her hands. Yes. -She would go out, now, and walk and walk, and fill her -soul with the wonder of it all.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then practical memory administered a prosaic jog -to her aspiring spirit. Lydia Dawlish was coming to -dine with her in the common dining-room or restaurant -downstairs. Shivering with cold, she shut the window, -turned on the light and sat by the fire, and ordered tea in -the most matter-of-fact way in the world.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lydia Dawlish appeared a couple of hours afterwards—fair, -plump, and prosperous, attired in one of her own -dashing creations of hats set at a rakish angle on her -blond hair, and a vast coat of dark fur. Olivia, in her -simple black semi-evening frock run up by an agitated -Medlow dressmaker, felt a poor little dot of a thing -before this regal personage. And when the guest threw -off the coat, the flowered silk lining of which was a dazing -joy to starved feminine eyes, and revealed the slate-blue -dinner gown from which creamy neck and shapely arms -emerged insolent, Olivia could do nothing but stare open-mouthed, -until power came to gasp her wonder and -admiration.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s only an old thing,” said Lydia. “I had to put on -a compromise between downstairs and Percy’s.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Percy’s?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes—don’t you know? The night club. I’m going -on afterwards.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia’s face fell. “I thought you were going to spend -the evening with me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course I am, silly child. Night clubs don’t begin -till eleven. A man, Sydney Rooke, is calling for me. -Well. How are you? And what are your plans now -you’ve got here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She radiated health and vigour. Also proclaimed sex -defiant, vaguely disquieting to the country bred girl. -Olivia felt suddenly shy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It will take me a few days to turn round.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Also to find clothes to turn round in,” said Lydia, with -a good-humoured yet comprehensive glance at the funny -little black frock. “I hope you haven’t been laying in a -stock of things like that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia smiled. This was but a makeshift. She had -been saving up for London. Perhaps Lydia would advise -her. She had heard of a good place—what did they call -it?—an enormous shop in Oxford Street. Lydia threw -up her white arms.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear child, you’re not going to be a fashionable -beauty at subscription dances and whist-drives at Upper -Tooting! You’re going to live in London. Good God! -You can’t get clothes in Oxford Street.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where shall I get them, then?” asked Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From the illustrated papers she had become aware of -the existence of Pacotille and Luquin and other mongers -of celestial fripperies; but she had also heard of the Stock -Exchange and the Court of St. James’s and the Stepney -Board of Guardians; and they all seemed equally remote -from her sphere of being.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll take you about with me to-morrow,” Lydia -declared grandly, “and put you in the way of things. I -dare say I can find you a hat or two chez Lydia—that’s -me—at cost price.” She laughed and put a patronizing -arm around Olivia’s shoulders. “We’ll make a woman of -you yet.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The lift carried them down to the restaurant floor. -They dined, not too badly, at a side table from which they -could view the small crowded room. Olivia felt disappointed. -Only a few people were in evening dress. It -was rather a dowdy assembly, very much like that in the -boarding-house at Llandudno, her father’s summer holiday -resort for years before the war. Her inexperience had -expected the glitter and joy of London. Hospitably she -offered wine, champagne, as her father, a lover of celebrations, -would have done; but Lydia drank nothing with -her meals—the only way not to get fat, which she dreaded. -Olivia drank water. The feast seemed tame, and the -imported mutton tough. She reproached herself for -inadequate entertainment of her resplendent friend.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They talked; chiefly Lydia, after she had received -Olivia’s report on her family’s welfare and contemporary -Medlow affairs; and Olivia listened contentedly, absorbing -every minute strange esoteric knowledge of the great -London world of which the pulsating centre appeared to -be Lydia, Ltd., in Maddox Street. There Duchesses -bought hats which their Dukes did not pay for. There -Cabinet Ministers’ wives, in the hope of getting on the -right financial side of Lydia, whispered confidential -Cabinet secrets, while Ministers wondered how the -deuce things got into the papers. There romantic engagements -were brought from inception to maturity. There -also, had she chosen to keep a record, she could have -accumulated enough evidence to bring about the divorces -of half the aristocracy of England. She rattled off the -names like a machine-gun. She impressed Olivia with -the fact that Lydia, Ltd., was not a mere hat shop, but a -social institution of which Lydia Dawlish was the creating -and inspiring personality. Lydia, it appeared, weekended -at great houses. “You see, my dear, my husband -was the son of an Honourable and the grandson of an -Earl. He hadn’t much money, poor darling, but still he -had the connection, most useful to me nowadays. The -family buy their hats from me, and spread the glad -tidings.” She commanded a legion of men who had -vowed that she should live, free of charge, on the fat of -the land, and should travel whithersoever she desired in -swift and luxurious motor-cars.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course, my dear,” she said, “it’s rather a strain. -Men will cart about a stylish, good-looking woman for a -certain time, just out of vanity. But if she’s a dull damn -fool, they’re either bored to tears and chuck her, or they’ll -want to—well—well—— Anyhow, you’ve got to keep -your wits about you and amuse them. You’ve got to pay -for everything in this life—or work for the -means of paying—which comes to the same thing. -And I work. I don’t say it isn’t pleasant work—but -it’s hard work. You go out with a man -to dinner, theatre and a night club, and dismiss -him at your front door at two o’clock in the morning -with the perfectly contented feeling that he has had -a perfectly good time and would be an ass to spoil things -by hinting at anything different—and you’ve jolly well -earned your comfortable, innocent night’s rest.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This explosion of the whole philosophy of modern conscientious -woman came at the end of dinner. Olivia toyed -absently with her coffee, watching successive spoonfuls of -tepid light-amber coloured liquid fall into her cup.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But—all these men—” she said in a low voice—the -position was so baffling and so disconcerting. “You are -a beautiful and clever woman. Don’t they sometimes -want to—to make love to you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They all do. What do you think? I, an unattached -widow and, as you say, not unattractive. But because -I’m clever, I head them off. That’s the whole point of -what I’ve been telling you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, suppose,” replied Olivia, still intent on the -yellowish water, “suppose you fell in love with one of -these men. Women do fall in love, I believe.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why then, I’d marry him the next day,” cried Lydia, -with a laugh. “But,” she added, “that’s not the type -of man a sensible woman falls in love with.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia’s eyes sought the tablecloth. She was conscious -of disturbance and, at the same time, virginal resentment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“As far as my limited experience goes—a woman isn’t -always sensible.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She has to learn sense. That’s the great advantage -of modern life. It gives her every opportunity of acquiring -it from the moment she goes out into the world.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what kind of man does the sensible woman fall -in love with?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Somebody comfortable,” replied Lydia. “My ideal -would be a young, rather lazy and very broad-minded -bishop.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia shook her head. The only time she had seen -a bishop was at her confirmation. The encounter did -not encourage dreams of romance in episcopal circles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But these men who take you out,” Olivia persisted -thoughtfully “and do all these wonderful things for you—it -must cost them a dreadful lot of money—what kind -of people are they?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All sorts. Some are of the very best—the backbone -of the nation. They go off and marry nice girls who -don’t frequent night clubs and settle down for the rest -of their lives.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They drank their coffee and went upstairs, where questions -of more immediate practical interest occupied their -minds. Olivia’s wardrobe was passed in review, while -Myra stood impassive like a sergeant at kit inspection.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My poor child,” said Lydia, “you’ve not a single -article, inside or outside, that is fit to wear. I’ll send -you a second-hand clothes man who’ll buy up the whole -lot as it stands and give you a good price for it. I don’t -know yet quite what you’re thinking of doing—but at -any rate you can’t do it in these things.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia looked wistfully at the home-made garments -which Lydia cast with scorn across the bed. They, at -least, had seemed quite dainty and appropriate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well,” she said, with a sigh, “you know best, Lydia.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>These all-important matters held their attention till -a quarter past eleven, when Mr. Sydney Rooke was -announced. He was an elderly young man in evening -dress, with crisp black hair parted in the middle and thinning -at the temples. A little military moustache gave -him an air of youth which was belied by deep lines in -his sallow face. His dark eyes were rather tired and his -mouth hard. But his manners were perfect. He gave -them both to understand that though Lydia was, naturally, -the lady of his evening’s devotion yet his heart was -filled with a sense of Olivia’s graciousness. Half a -dozen words and a bow did it. In a polite phrase, a bow -and a gesture he indicated that if Miss Gale would join -them, his cup of happiness would overflow. Olivia -pleaded fatigue. Then another evening? With Mrs. -Dawlish. A pleasant little party, in fact. He would -be enchanted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ll fix it up for about a fortnight hence,” said -Lydia significantly. “To-morrow, then, dear, at eleven.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When they had gone Olivia, who had accompanied -them to the flat door, threw herself on the sofa and, putting -her hands behind her head stared over the edge of -her own world into a new one, strange and bewildering.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Myra entered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you ever going to bed?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose I must,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are dressed-up men like that often coming here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“God knows,” said Olivia, “who are coming here. I -don’t.”</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='60' id='Page_60'></span>CHAPTER V</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>T</span><span class='sc'>HE</span> Odyssey or the Argonautic, or whatever you -like to call the epic of the first wild adventure -of a young woman into the Infinite of Clothes, -has yet to be written. It would need not only a poet, -but a master of psychology, to record the myriad vibrations -of the soul as it reacts to temptations, yieldings, -tremulous thrills of the flesh, exquisite apprehensions, -fluttering joys, and each last voluptuous plenitude of -content. It is an adventure which absorbs every faculty -of the will; which ignores hunger and thirst, weariness -of limb and ache of head; which makes the day a dream -of reality and the night the reality of a dream. Hardened -women of the world with frock-worn minds are -caught at times by the lure of the adventure, even when -it is a question of a dress or two and a poor half a dozen -hats. But how manifold more potent the spell in the -case of one who starts with her young body in Nymph-like -innocence and is called upon to clothe it again and -again in infinite variety, from toe to head, from innermost -secret daintiness to outward splendour of bravery!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Such a record would explain Olivia, not only to the -world, but to herself during that first fortnight in London. -Her hours could be reckoned by gasps of wonder. -She lost count of time, of money, of human values. -Things that had never before entered into her philosophy, -such as the subtle shade of silk stockings which would -make or mar a costume, loomed paramount in importance. -The after-use scarcely occurred to her. Sufficient -for the day was the chiffon thereof; also the gradual -transformation of herself from the prim slip of a girl -with just the pretension (in her own mind) to good looks, -into a radiant and somewhat distinguished dark-haired -little personage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her shrinkings, her arguments with Lydia Dawlish, -her defeats, went all into the melting-pot of her delight. -“No bath salts, my dear?” cried Lydia. “Whoever -heard of a woman not using bath salts?” So bath salts -were ordered. And—horrified: “My dear, you don’t -mean to say you wash your face in soap and water. -What will become of your skin?” So Olivia was put -under the orders of a West End specialist, who stocked -her dressing-table with delectable creams and oils. It -was all so new, so unheard of, so wonderful to the girl, -an experience worth the living through, even though all -thousands at deposit at the bank should vanish at the -end of it. Merely to sit in a sensuously furnished room -and have beautiful women parade before her, clad in -dreams of loveliness—any one of which was hers for a -scribble on a bit of pink paper—evoked within her -strange and almost spiritual emotions. Medlow was -countless leagues away; this transcended the London -even of her most foolish visions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Afterwards Olivia, when, sense of values being restored -she looked back on this phantasmagoria of dressmakers, -milliners, lingerie makers and furriers, said to Lydia -Dawlish:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s funny, but the fact that there might be a man -or so in the world never entered my head.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And the wise Lydia answered: “You were too busy -turning yourself into a woman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Twice or thrice during this chrysalis period she stole -out of nights with Myra to the dress circle of a theatre, -where, besides ingenuous joy in the drama, she found -unconfessed consolation in the company of homely folk -like herself—girls in clean blouses or simple little frocks -like her own, and young men either in well-worn khaki -or morning dress. On these occasions she wondered -very much what she was about to do in the other galley—that -of the expensively furred and jewelled haughtinesses -and impudences whom she shouldered in the vestibule -crush and whom she saw drive away in luxurious -limousines. These flashing personalities frightened her -with their implied suggestions of worlds beyond her ken. -One woman made especial impression on her—a woman -tall, serene, with a clear-cut face, vaguely familiar, and -a beautiful voice; she overheard a commonplace phrase -or two addressed to the escorting man. She brushed -Olivia’s arm and turned with a smile and a word of gracious -apology and passed on. Olivia caught a whisper -behind her. “That’s the Marchioness of Aintree. Isn’t -she lovely?” But she did not need to be told that she -had been in contact with a great lady. And she went -home doubting exceedingly whether, for all her flourish of -social trumpets, Lydia Dawlish’s galley was that of Lady -Aintree.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Criticism of Lydia, however, she put behind her as -ingratitude, for Lydia made up royally for past negligence. -Time and energy that ought to have been devoted -to Lydia, Ltd., was diverted to the creation of -Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know why you’re so good to me,” she would -say.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And the other, with a little mocking smile round her -lips: “It’s worth it. I’m giving myself a new experience.”</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>The first occasion on which she went out into the great -world was that of Sydney Rooke’s party. She knew that -her low-cut, sleeveless, short-skirted gown of old gold -tissue had material existence, but she felt herself half-ashamedly, -half-deliciously clad in nothing but a bodily -sensation. A faint blush lingered in her cheeks all the -evening. Lydia, calling for her in Rooke’s car, which -had been placed at her disposal, held her at arm’s length -in sincere and noble admiration, moved by the artist’s -joy in beholding the finished product of his toil, and -embraced her fondly. Then she surveyed her again, -from the little gold brocade slippers to the diamond -butterfly (one of her mother’s bits of jewellery) in her -dark wavy hair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re the daintiest elf in London,” she cried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To the dinner at the Savoy Sydney Rooke had invited -a white-moustached soldier, Major-General Wigram, -whose blue undress uniform, to the bedazzlement of -Olivia, gleamed with four long rows of multi-coloured -ribbon; a vivacious middle-aged woman, Mrs. Fane Sylvester, -who wrote novels, plays, books of travel, and -fashion articles in a weekly periodical—Olivia learned -all this in their first five-minute converse in the lounge; -Sir Paul and Lady Barraclough, he a young baronet -whose civilian evening dress could not proclaim hard-won -distinctions, she a pretty, fair, fragile creature, both -of them obviously reacting joyously to relaxation of tension; -and, last, the Vicomte de Mauregard, of the French -Embassy, young, good looking, who spoke polished English -with a faultless accent. It was, socially, as correct -a little party as the brooding, innocent spirit of Mrs. -Gale could have desired for her about-to-be prodigal -daughter. Olivia sat between her host and Mauregard. -On her host’s right was Lady Barraclough; then the -General, then Lydia, then Sir Paul, facing Rooke at the -round table, then Mrs. Fane Sylvester, who was Mauregard’s -left-hand neighbour. They were by the terrace -windows, far from what Olivia, with her fresh mind playing -on social phenomena, held then and ever afterwards, -most rightly, to be the maddening and human intercourse-destroying -band.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Not that her first entrance down the imposing broad -staircase, into the lounge filled with mirifically vestured -fellow-creatures, to the accompaniment of a clashing rag-time -imbecility, did not set all her young nerves vibrating -to the point of delicious agony. It was like a mad -fanfare heralding her advent in a new world. But soon -she found that the blare of the idiot music deadened all -other senses. Before her eyes swayed black-and-white -things whom at the back of her mind she recognized as -men, and various forms all stark flesh, flashing jewels -and a maze of colours, whom she knew to be women. -The gathering group of her own party seemed but figures -of a dream. Her unaccustomed ears could not catch a -word of the conventional gambits of conversation opened, -on introduction, by her fellow guests. It was only when -they passed between the tables of the great restaurant -and the horrible noise of the negroid, syncopated parody -of tune grew fainter and fainter, and they reached the -peace of the terrace side, that the maddening clatter -faded from her ears and consciousness of her surroundings -returned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she surrendered herself to huge enjoyment. -Both her neighbours had been all over the world and seen -all sorts and conditions of men. They were vividly -aware of current events. Pride would not allow her to -betray the fact that often they spoke of matters far beyond -her experience of men and things. Under their -stimulus she began to regain the self that, for the past -fortnight, the cardboard boxes of London had snowed -under.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s no use asking me,” she said to Mauregard, -“whether I’ve been to Monte Carlo or Madagascar or -Madame Tussaud’s, for I haven’t. I haven’t been anywhere. -I’ve somehow existed at the back of Nowhere, -and to-night I’ve come to life.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But where did you come from? The sea foam? -Venus Anadyomene?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I’m of the other kind. I come from far inland. -I believe they call it Shropshire. That oughtn’t to convey -anything to you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Indeed it does!” cried Mauregard. “Was I not at -school at Shrewsbury?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But yes. Three years. So I’m Shropshire, too.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s delightful,” she remarked; “but it does -away with my little mystery of Nowhere.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, no,” he protested, with a laugh. He was a fair, -bright-eyed boy with a little curled-up moustache which -gave him the air of a cherub playfully disguised. “It -is the county of mystery. Doesn’t your poet say:</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>‘Once in the wind of morning</p> -<p class='line0'>  I ranged the thymy wold;</p> -<p class='line0'>The world-wide air was azure</p> -<p class='line0'>  And all the brooks ran gold.’ ”</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s from <span class='it'>A Shropshire Lad</span>,” cried Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course. So why shouldn’t you have come from -the wind of morning, the azure world-wide air or the -golden brook?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s beautiful of you,” said Olivia. “Well, why -shouldn’t I? It’s more romantic and imaginative than -the commonplace old sea. The sea has been overdone. -I used to look at it once a year, and, now I come to think -of it, it always seemed to be self-conscious, trying to live -up to its reputation. But ‘the wind of the morning——’ -Anyhow, here I am.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Blown to London by the wind of a Shropshire morning.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia’s spirit danced in the talk. With his national -touch on the lighter emotions, Mauregard drew from her -an exposition of the Dryad’s sensations on sudden confrontation -with modern life. To talk well is a great -gift; to compel others to talk well is a greater; and the -latter gift was Mauregard’s. Olivia put food into her -mouth, but whether it was fish or flesh or fowl she knew -not. When her host broke the spell by an announcement -in her ear that he had a couple of boxes for “Jazz-Jazz,” -she became aware that she was eating partridge.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mr. Sydney Rooke talked of women’s clothes, of which -he had an expert knowledge. Lady Barraclough chimed -in. Olivia, fresh from the welter, spoke as one in authority. -Now and again she caught Lydia’s eye across the -table and received an approving nod. The elderly General -regarded her with amused admiration. She began to -taste the first-fruits of social success. She drove in a taxi -to the theatre with the Barracloughs and Mrs. Fane Sylvester -and sat with them in a box during the first act of -the gay revue. For the second act there was a change -of company and she found herself next to the General. -He had served in India and was familiar with the names -of her mother’s people. What Anglo-Indian was not? -Long ago he had met an uncle of hers; dead, poor chap. -This social placing gave her a throb of pleasure, setting -her, at least, in a stranger’s eyes, in her mother’s sphere. -The performance over, they parted great friends.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>General Wigram and Mrs. Fane Sylvester excusing -themselves from going on to Percy’s, the others crowded -into Sydney Rooke’s limousine. The crash of jazz -music welcomed them. Already a few couples were -dancing; others were flocking in from the theatres. -They supped merrily. Sydney Rooke pointed out to -Olivia’s wondering eyes the stars of the theatrical firmament -who condescended to walk the parquet floor of the -famous night club. He also indicated here and there a -perfectly attired youth as a professional dancer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“On the stage?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He explained that they had their professional partners -and gave exhibition dances, showing the new steps. -They also gave private lessons. It was the way they -made their living. Olivia knitted a perplexed brow.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It doesn’t seem a very noble profession for a young -man.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sydney Rooke shrugged his shoulders politely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m with you a thousand times, my dear Miss Gale. -The parasite, <span class='it'>per se</span>, isn’t a noble object. But what -would you have? The noble things of the past few years -came to an end a short while ago, and, if I can read the -times, reaction has already begun. In six months’ time -the noble fellow will be a hopeless anachronism.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you mean,” asked Olivia, “that all the young -men will be rotten?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He smiled. “How direct you are! Disconcerting, if -I may say so. So positive; while I was approaching the -matter from the negative side. There’ll be a universal -loss of ideals.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia protested. “The young man has before him -the reconstruction of the world.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh no,” said Rooke. “He has done his bit. He -expects other people to carry out the reconstructing business -for him. All he cares about is to find a couple of -sixpences to jingle together in his pocket.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And have these young men who devote their lives to -foxtrotting done their bit?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He begged the question. “Pray be guided by my prophecy, -Miss Gale. Next year you mustn’t mention war -to ears polite. These young men are alive. They thank -God for it. Let you and me do likewise.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This little supper-table talk was the only cloud on a -radiant night. The Vicomte de Mauregard took her to -dance. At first she felt awkward, knowing only the -simple steps of five years ago. But instinct soon guided -her, and for two hours she danced and danced in an unthinking -ecstasy. The clattering and unmeaning din -which had dazed her on her entrance to the Savoy was -now pregnant with physical significance. The tearing -of the strings, the clashing of the cymbals, the barbaric -thumping of the drum, the sudden raucous scream from -negro throats, set vibrating within her responsive chords -of an atavistic savagery. When each nerve-tearing cacophony -came to its abrupt end, she joined breathlessly -with the suddenly halting crow in eager clapping for the -encore. And then, when the blood-stirring strings and -cymbals crashed out, overpowering the staccato of hand -beating hand, she surrendered herself with an indrawn -sigh of content to her partner’s arm—to the rhythm, to -the movement, to the mere bodily guidance, half conscious -of the proud flexibility of her frame under the man’s firm -clasp, to something, she knew not what, far remote from -previous experience. Strange, too, the personality of the -man did not matter. Paul Barraclough, Sydney Rooke, -Mauregard, she danced with them all in turn. In her -pulsating happiness she mixed them all up together, so -that a flashing glance, liable to be misinterpreted, proceeded -from a mere impulse of identification. Now and -then, in the swimming throng of men and women, and the -intoxication of passing raiment impregnated with scent -and cigarette smoke, she exchanged an absent smile with -Lydia and Lady Barraclough. Otherwise she scarcely -realized their existence. She was led panting by Mauregard -to a supper table while he went in search of refreshment. -He returned with a waiter, apologizing for the -abomination of iced ginger ale and curled orange peel, -which was all that the laws of the land allowed him to -offer. Horse’s neck, it was called. She laughed, delighted -with the name, and, after drinking, laughed again, -delighted with the cool liquid so tingling on her palate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s a drink for the gods,” she declared.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If you offered it, the unfortunate Bacchus would -drink it without a murmur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you really think it’s so awful?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Mon Dieu!</span>” replied the young Frenchman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then Lydia came up with a dark-eyed, good-looking -boy in tow, whom she introduced, as Mr. Bobbie Quinton -and Olivia was surprised to recognize as one of the -professionals. She accepted, however, his invitation to -dance and went off on his arm. She found him a boy -of charming manners and agreeable voice, and in the -lightness and certainty of his dancing he far outclassed -her other partners. He suggested new steps. She tried -and blundered. She excused herself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This is the first time I’ve danced for four years.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It doesn’t matter,” said he. “You’re a born dancer. -You only need a few lessons to bring you up to date. -What I find in so many of the women I teach is that they -not only don’t begin to understand what they’re trying -to do, but that they never try to understand. You, on -the other hand, have it instinctively. But, of course, you -can’t learn steps in a place like this.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wonder if you could give me some lessons?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“With all the pleasure in life, Miss Gale,” replied Mr. -Bobbie Quinton promptly.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>About two o’clock in the morning Sydney Rooke and -Lydia deposited Olivia at the front door of Victoria -Mansions. Rooke stood hat in hand as she entered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope you’ve not been too bored by our little evening.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bored! It has been just one heaven after another -opening out before me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But not the seventh. If only I could have provided -that!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll find it in the happiest and soundest night’s rest I -ever had,” said Olivia.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='72' id='Page_72'></span>CHAPTER VI</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>T</span><span class='sc'>HIS</span> was life; magical, undreamed of in her wildest -Medlow dreams. And thanks to Lydia, she -had plunged into it headlong, after a mere fortnight’s -probation. There had been no disillusion. She -had plunged and emerged into her kingdom. London -conspired to strew her path with roses. The Barracloughs -invited her to a dinner party at their home in -Kensington. General Wigram offered her dinner and -theatre and convened to meet her an old Indian crony, -General Philimore, and his young daughter, Janet. Philimore -had known her grandfather, Bagshawe of the -Guides, when he was a subaltern, infinite ages ago. The -world was a small place, after all. Olivia, caring little -for grandfathers beyond their posthumous social guarantee, -found youth’s real sympathy in Janet, who held -open for her their flat in Maida Vale. Young Mauregard, -after their first lunch together at the Carlton, -seemed prepared to provide her with free meals and -amusements for the rest of time. It is true he was madly -in love with a Russian dancer, whose eccentric ways -and abominable treatment of him formed the staple of -the conversation which he poured into her very interested -and compassionate ear. And, last, Bobbie Quinton gave -her dancing lessons at the flat at the rate of a guinea -apiece.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Christmas caused a break in these social activities. -Lydia took her off to Brighton, where, meeting various -acquaintances of her chaperone and making others of -her own, she motored and danced and danced and motored, -and in the pursuit of these delights discovered, -with a fearful joy, that she could hold her own in the -immemorial conflict of sex. Sydney Rooke, having -driven down for the day, occasionally flashed through -the hotel, the eternal smile of youth on his dark, lined -face and his gestures unceasingly polite. As he passed, -the heavens opened and rained champagne and boxes -of chocolate and hot-house fruits and flowers and -embroidered handbags, and once, a Pekinese dog for -Lydia. Once again, an automobile seemed about to -fall, but at Lydia’s protests it melted in the ether.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A dog and a rose and a glass of wine,” said she, “are -a woman’s due for amusing a man. But a motor-car -is profiteering. Besides, it’s bound to drive you somewhere -in the end—either to the flat of shame or the -country house of married respectability: it only depends -on who is at the wheel.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I see,” said Olivia. But she didn’t. Sydney Rooke -was a mystery; and Lydia’s attitude towards him was -more than her inexperience could understand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Still, there she was in the pleasant galley and she did -not question what she was doing in it. In a dim way she -regarded it as the inevitable rescue vessel after universal -shipwreck. Her eyes were blinded by its glitter and her -ears deafened by its music to the welter of the unsalved -world.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Just before New Year she received a letter from Bobby -Quinton. It began: “Dearest of Ladies.” Never before -having been thus apostrophized, she thought it peculiarly -graceful and original. The writing was refined and -exquisitely clear. To his dearest of ladies the young man -bewailed her absence; life was dreary without her -friendship and encouragement; all this Christmastide he -was the loneliest thing on earth; he suggested that there -was no one to love him—no mother or sisters to whom he -could apply for comfort; this terrible night life to which -he, poor demobilized soldier of fortune, was condemned -in order to earn his bread, weighed upon his spirits and -affected his health; he envied his dearest of ladies’ sojourn -by the invigorating sea; he longed for the taste of -it; but such health-restoring rapture he gave her, in the -most delicate way, to understand, was for fairy princesses -and not for the impecunious demobbed; he counted -the days till her return and prayed her to bring back -a whiff of ozone on her garments to revive the ever faithful -one who had the temerity to try to teach her to dance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A most piteous epistle. Bobby Quinton, by his ingratiating -ways and his deference and his wit, had effaced -her original conception of the type of young men who -danced at night clubs for their living. She liked him. -He seemed so young and she, through her long companionship -with sorrow, so old in comparison; he seemed so -foolish and impossible, and she so wise; to her, remembering -the helpless dependence of her father and brothers, -he seemed (motherless and sisterless as he was) lost in -a hostile world. Besides, he was not a nameless adventurer. -His father (long since deceased) had been a -Colonial Governor. He had been to one of the great -public schools. In short, he had the birth and breeding -of a gentleman. She slipped on a dressing-gown and went -with the letter to Lydia, full of maternal purpose.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was nine o’clock in the morning. Their rooms had -a communicating door. She found Lydia daintily attired -in boudoir cap and dressing-jacket, having breakfast in -bed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The poor boy’s dying for a breath of sea air. It -would do him an enormous amount of good. Do you -think we—of course, it really would be me—but it would -be better if it appeared to be a joint affair—do you think -we could, without offending him, ask him to come down -here for a couple of days as our guest?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lydia, who had read the letter with a smile round her -lips, replied drily:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“As far as Bobby is concerned—I really think we -could.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And as far as we are concerned,” flashed Olivia, “why -should the silly fact of being a woman prevent us from -helping a lame dog over a stile?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A he-dog,” said Lydia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What does it matter?” Olivia asked stoutly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lydia laughed in her half-cynical, tolerant way.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do as you like, dear. I don’t mind. You’re out for -experience, not I. I’d only have you remark that our -he-dog friend Bobby is sitting up and begging for the -invitation——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh! Ah!” cried Olivia, with a fling of her arm, -“you’re horrid!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not a bit,” smiled Lydia. “I face facts, as you’ll -have to do, if you want to find comfort in this matter-of-fact -world. Have your Bobby down by all means. -Only keep your eye on him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s not my Bobby,” said Olivia indignantly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Our Bobby, then,” said Lydia, with good-natured indulgence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So Olivia, with the little palpitation of the heart attendant -on consciousness of adventurous and (in Medlow -eyes, preposterous) well-doing, wrote to Bobby Quinton -a letter whose gracious delicacy would not have wounded -the susceptibilities of a needy Hidalgo or an impoverished -Highland chieftain, and received in reply a telegram of -eager acceptance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bobby appeared immaculately vestured, his heart overflowing -with gratitude at the amazing sweetness of his two -dear ladies. Never had man been blessed with such -fairy godmothers. By the fresh frankness of his appreciation -of their hospitality he disarmed criticism. -A younger son hanging on to the court of Louis XIII -never received purses of gold from his lady love with -less embarrassed grace. He devoted himself to their -service. He had the art of tactful effacement, and of appearance -at the exact moment of welcome. He enlivened -their meals with chatter and a boyish brightness -that passed for wit.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To Olivia, the dearest of his dear ladies, he confided -the pathetic history of his life. A sunny, sheltered corner -of the Pier, both sitting side by side well wrapped in furs, -conduced to intimacy. How a young man in such a precarious -financial position could afford to wear a fur-lined -coat with a new astrachan collar it did not strike -Olivia to enquire. That he, like herself, was warm on -that sun-filled morning, with the sea dancing and sparkling -away beyond them, and human types around them exuding -the prosperity of peace, seemed sufficient for the -comfortable hour. He spoke of his early years of ease, -of his modest patrimony coming to an end soon after -the war broke out; of his commission in a yeomanry -regiment; of his heart-break as the months went on and -the chance of the regiment being sent to the front grew -less and less; of his exchange into a regiment of the line; -of the rotten heart that gave out after a month in France; -of his grief at being invalided out of the army and his -struggles and anxieties when he returned to civil life, -branded as physically unfit. He had tried the stage, -musical comedy, male youth in the manless chorus being -eagerly welcomed; then, after a little training, he found -he had the dancer’s gift. “So one thing led to another,” -said he, “and that’s my history.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But surely,” said Olivia, “all this dancing and these -late hours must be very bad for your heart.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He smiled sadly. “What does it matter? I’m no use -to anybody, and nobody cares whether I’m dead or alive.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia protested warmly. “The world is crying out for -young men of three-and-twenty. You could be useful -in a million ways.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not a crock like me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You could go into an office.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. In at one door and out of another. Hopeless.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He drew from a slim gold case a Turkish cigarette—Olivia, -minutely hospitable, had put a box of a hundred -in his room—and tapped it thoughtfully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“After all, which is better—to carry on with life like -a worm—which anyhow perisheth, as the Bible tells us—or -to go out like a butterfly, with a bit of a swagger?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you mustn’t talk of going out,” cried Olivia. -“It’s indecent.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bobby lighted his cigarette. “Who would care?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I, for one,” she replied.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her health and sanity revolted against morbid ideas. -He stretched out his hand, and, with the tips of his -fingers, touched her coat, and he bent his dark brown -eyes upon her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Would you really?” he murmured.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She flushed, felt angry she scarce knew why, and put -herself swiftly on the defensive.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I would care for the life of any young man. After -a million killed it’s precious—and every decent girl would -care the same as I.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re wonderful!” he remarked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m common sense incarnate,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are. You’re right. You’re right a thousand -times,” he replied. “I’ll always remember what you have -said to me this morning.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At his surrender she disarmed. A corpulent, opulent -couple passed them by, the lady wearing a cheap feathered -hat and a rope of pearls outside a Kolinsky coat, the -gentleman displaying on an ungloved right hand, which -maintained in his mouth a gigantic cigar, an enormous -ruby set in a garden border of diamonds.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“At any rate,” said Bobby, “I’m not as some other men -are.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So they laughed and discussed the profiteers and walked -back to the hotel for lunch with the sharpened appetites -of twenty.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When Bobby Quinton left them, Olivia reproached -herself for lack of sympathy. The boy had done his -best. A rotten, and crocky heart, who was she to despise? -But for circumstance he might have done heroic -things. Perhaps in his defiance of physical disability he -was doing a heroic thing even now. Still. . . . To Lydia, -in an ironically teasing mood, she declared:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When I do fall in love, it’s not going to be with any -one like Bobby Quinton. I want a man—there would be -a devil of a row, of course, if he tried—but one capable -of beating me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bobby would do that, right enough, if you gave him -the chance,” said Lydia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia reflected for a while. “Why have you got your -knife into him like that?” she asked abruptly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I haven’t, my dear child. If I had, do you think I -would have allowed him to come down? I live and let -live. By letting live, I live very comfortably and manage, -with moderate means, to have a very good time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia, already dressed for dinner, looked down on the -easy, creamy, handsome, kimono-clad woman, curled up -like a vast Angora cat on the hotel bedroom sofa, and once -more was dimly conscious of a doubt whether the galley -of Lydia Dawlish was the one for her mother’s daughter -to row in.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Still, <span class='it'>vogue la galère</span>. When she returned to London -there was little else to do. Eating and dancing filled -many of her days and nights. She tried to recapture the -pleasure of books which had been all her recreation for -years; but, although her life was not a continuous whirl -of engagements—for it requires a greater vogue as a -pretty and unattached young woman than Olivia possessed -to be booked for fourteen meals and seven evenings -every week of the year—she found little time for -solitary intelligent occupation. If she was at a loose -end, Lydia’s hat shop provided an agreeable pastime. Or, -as a thousand little odds and ends of dress demanded -attention, there was always a sensuous hour or two to -be spent at Pacotille’s and Luquin’s or Deville’s. Tea -companions seldom failed. When she had no evening -engagements she was glad to get to bed, soon after the -dinner in the downstairs restaurant, and to sleep the -sleep of untroubled youth. And all the time the spell of -London still held her captive. To walk the crowded -streets, to join the feminine crush before the plate-glass -windows of great shops, to watch the strange birds in -the ornamental water in St. James’s Park, to wander -about the Abbey and the Temple Gardens, to enter on -the moment’s impulse a Bond Street picture gallery or a -cinema—all was a matter of young joy and thrill. She -even spent a reckless and rapturous afternoon at Madame -Tussaud’s. Sometimes Janet Philimore accompanied her -on these excursions round the monuments of London. -Janet, who had mild antiquarian tastes and a proletarian -knowledge of London traffic, took her by tubes and buses -to the old City churches and the Tower, and exhibited -to her wondering gaze the Bank of England and the -Royal Exchange and Guildhall up the narrow street. For -sentimental interest, there was always Bobby Quinton, -who continued to maintain himself under her maternal -eye. And so the new life went on.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was one night in April, while she was standing under -the porch of a theatre, Mouregard, her escort, having -gone in search of his dinner-and-theatre brougham—for -those were days when taxis were scarce and drivers -haughty—that she found herself addressed by a long-nosed, -one-armed man, who raised his hat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Miss Gale—I’m sure you don’t remember me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For a second or two she could not place him. Then she -laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why—Major Olifant!” She shook hands. “What -are you doing here? I thought you were buried among -your fossils. Do tell me—how are the hot-water pipes? -And how is the parrot? Myra has no faith in your -bachelor housekeeping and is sure you’ve eaten him out -of desperation.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He returned a light answer. Then, touching the arm -of a man standing by his side:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Miss Gale—can I introduce Mr. Alexis Triona.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona bowed, stood uncovered while he took the hand -which Olivia held out.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This is my landlady,” said Olifant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is privileged beyond the common run of mortals,” -said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s very pretty,” laughed Olivia, with a swift, -enveloping glance at the slight, inconspicuous youth who -had done such wonderful things. “I’ve not thought of -myself as a landlady before. I hope I don’t look like -one.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Visions of myriad Bloomsbury lodging-houses at whose -doors he had knocked after he had left the tiny room in -Cherbury Mews, and of the strange middle-aged women -of faded gentility whom he had interviewed within -those doors, rose before Triona’s eyes, and he laughed too. -For under the strong electric light of the portico, unkind -to most of the other waiting women, showing up lines and -hollows and artificialities of complexion, she looked as -fresh and young as a child on a May morning. The -open theatre wrap revealed her slender girlish figure, -sketchily clad in a flame-coloured garment; and, with the -light in her eyes and her little dark head proudly poised, -she stood before the man’s fancy as the flame of youth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She turned to Olifant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you in town?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“For a few days. Getting rid of cobwebs.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’d lend you quite a nice broom, if you could find -time to come and see me. Besides, I do want to hear -about my beloved Polly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall be delighted,” said Olifant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They arranged that he should come to tea at the flat -the following day.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And if so famous a person as Mr. Triona would -honour me, too?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dare I?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s on the fifth floor, but there’s a lift.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She saw Mauregard hurrying up. With a “Four-thirty, -then,” and a smile of adieu, she turned and joined -Mauregard.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Shall we go on to Percy’s?” asked the young Frenchman, -standing at the door of the brougham.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia conceived a sudden distaste for Percy’s.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not unless you particularly want to.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I? Good Lord!” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why do you ever go, if it bores you like that?” she -asked as the brougham started Victoria-wards.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Ce que femme veut, Mauregard le veut.</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose that is why you’ve never made love to me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How?” he asked, surprised out of his perfect English -idiom.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve wanted you not to make love to me, and you -haven’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But how could I make love to you, when I have been -persecuting you with the confessions of my unhappy love -affairs?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“One can always find a means,” said Olivia. “That’s -why I like you. You are such a good friend.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope so,” said he. Then, after a short silence: -“Let me be frank. What is going on at the back of -your clever English mind is perfectly accurate. I am -tempted to make love to you every time I see you. What -man, with a man’s blood in his veins, wouldn’t be tempted, -no matter how much he loved another woman? But I -say to myself: ‘Lucien, you are French to the marrow -of your bones. It is the nature of that marrow not to -offend a beautiful woman by not making love to her. -But, on the other hand, the Lady Olivia whose finger-tips -I am unworthy to kiss’—he touched them with his -lips, however, in the most charming manner—‘is English -to the marrow of <span class='it'>her</span> bones, and it is the nature of that -marrow to be offended if a man makes obviously idle -love to her.’ So, not wishing to lose my Lady Olivia, -whose friendship and sympathy I value so highly, I accept -with a grateful heart a position which would be -incomprehensible to the vast majority of my fellow-countrymen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m so glad we’ve had this out,” said Olivia after a -pause. “I’ve been a bit worried. A girl on her own has -got to take care of herself, you know. And you’ve been -so beautifully kind to me——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s because I am proud to call myself your humble -and devoted servant,” replied Mauregard.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia went to bed contented with this frank explanation. -Men had already made love to her in a manner -which had ruffled her serene consciousness, and she -found it, not like Lydia Dawlish, a cynical game of wit, -but a disagreeable business, to parry their advances. -Bobby Quinton, of course, she could put into a corner -like a naughty child, whenever he became foolish. But -Mauregard, consistently respectful and entertaining, had -been rather a puzzle. Now that way was clear.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For a while she did not associate her meeting Blaise -Olifant with her distaste for the night club. In the -flush of her new existence she had almost forgotten him. -There had been no reason to correspond. His rent was -paid through the Trivett and Gale office. His foraminiferous -pursuits did not appeal to a girl’s imagination. -Now and then she gave a passing thought to what was -happening in her old home, and vaguely remembered that -the romantically named traveller was there as a guest. -But that was all. Now, the presence of Olifant had -suddenly recalled the little scene in her mother’s room, -when she had suddenly decided to let him have the -house; he had brought with him a breath of that room; -a swift memory of the delicate water-colours and the books -by the bedside, the <span class='it'>Pensées de Pascal</span> and <span class='it'>The Imitation -of Christ</span>. . . . Besides, she had felt a curious attraction -towards the companion, the boy with the foreign -manner and the glistening eyes and the suffering-stricken -face. Both men, as she conceived them, belonged to the -higher intellectual type that had their being remote from -the inanities of dissipation. So, impelled by a muddled -set of motives, she suddenly found herself abhorring -Percy’s. She read herself into a state of chastened self-approbation, -and then to sleep, with Rupert Brooke’s -poems.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='85' id='Page_85'></span>CHAPTER VII</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>O</span><span class='sc'>LIVIA</span> sat by her little table, dispensing tea and -accepting homage with a flutter of pleasure at -her heart. She had been oddly nervous—she -who had entertained the stranger Olifant, at Medlow, -with the greatest self-confidence, and had grown to regard -tea parties at the flat as commonplaces of existence. The -two men had drifted in from another sphere. She had reviewed -her stock of conversation and found it shop-worn -after five months’ exposure. The most recent of her -views on “Hullo, People!” and on the food at the Carlton -had appeared unworthy of the notice of the soldier-scientist -and the adventurous man of letters. She had -received them with unusual self-consciousness. This, -however, a few moments of intercourse dispelled. They -had come, they had seen and she had conquered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“At first I didn’t recognize you,” said Olifant. “I -had to look twice to make sure.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have I changed so much?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was a trick of environment,” he said, with a smile -in his dark blue eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The feminine in her caught the admiration behind them -and delightedly realized his confusion, the night before, at -her metamorphosis from the prim little black-frocked -quakeress into the radiant creature in furs and jewels -and flame-coloured audacity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And now you’re quite sure it is me—or I—which is -it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m quite sure it’s my charming landlady who for -the second time feeds the hungry wanderer. Miss Gale, -Triona, makes a specialty of it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then, indeed, I’m peculiarly fortunate,” said Triona, -taking a tomato sandwich. “Will you feed me again, -Miss Gale?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“As often as you like,” she laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s rather a rash promise to make to a professional -vagabond like myself. When he has begged his way -for months and months at a time, he comes to regard -other people’s food as his by divine right.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have you done that?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Much worse. You don’t keep chickens?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s a good thing. I think I’m the world’s champion -chicken-stealer. It’s a trick of legerdemain. You -dive at a chicken, catch it by its neck, whirl it round -and stick it under your jacket all in one action. The -unconscious owner has only to turn his back for a second. -Then, of course, you hide in a wood and have an orgy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is not the desperate character he makes himself -out to be,” said Olifant. “He spent two months with -me at ‘The Towers’ without molesting one of your -hens.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then you’re not still there?” she asked Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Alas, no,” he replied. “I suppose I have the fever of -perpetual change. I had a letter from Finland saying -that my presence might be of use there. So I have spent -this spring in Helsingfors. I am only just back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It seems wonderful to go and come among all these -strange places,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“One land is much the same as another in essentials,” -replied Triona. “To carry on life you have to eat and -sleep. There’s no difference between a hard-boiled egg -in Somerset and a hard-boiled egg in Tobolsk. And sleep -is sleep, whether you’re putting up at Claridge’s or the -Hotel of the Beautiful Star. And human nature, stripped -of the externals of habits, customs, traditions, ceremonials, -is unchanging from one generation, and from one -latitude or longitude, to another.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But,” objected Olivia, with a flash of logic, “if London’s -the same as Tobolsk, why yearn for Tobolsk?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s the hope of finding something different—the <span class='it'>ignis -fatuus</span>, the Jack o’ Lantern, the Will-o’-the-Wisp——” -He was silent for a moment, and then she caught the -flash of his eyes. “It’s the only thing that counts in -human progress. The Will-o’-the-Wisp. It leaves nine -hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand floundering -in a bog—but the thousandth man wins through to -the Land of Promise. There is only one thing in life -to do,” he continued, clenching his nervous hands and -looking into the distance away from Olivia, “and that -is never to lose faith in your <span class='it'>ignis fatuus</span>—to compel it -to be your guiding star. Once you’ve missed grip of it, -you’re lost.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wish I had your Russian idealism,” said Olifant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When will you learn, my dear friend,” said Triona -quietly, “that I’m not a Russian? I’m as English as you -are.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s your idealism that is Russian,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you think so?” he asked, deferentially. “Well, -perhaps it is. In England you keep your ideals hidden -until some great catastrophe happens, then you bring -them out to help you along. Otherwise it is immodest -to expose them. In Russia, ideals are exposed all the -time, so that when the time for their application comes, -they’re worn so thin they’re useless. Poor Russia,” he -sighed. “It has idealized itself to extinction. All my -boyhood’s companions—the students, the <span class='it'>intelligentsia</span>, -as they called themselves, who used to sit and talk and -talk for hours of their wonderful theories—you in England -have no idea how Russian visionary can talk—and -I learned to talk with them—where are they now? -The fortunate were killed in action. The others, either -massacred or rotting in prisons, or leading the filthy -hunted lives of pariah dogs. The Beast arose like a -foul shape from the Witch’s cauldron of their talk . . . and -devoured them. Yes, perhaps the stolid English way -is the better.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What about your Will-o’-the-Wisp theory?” asked -Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He threw out his hands. “Ah! That is the secret. -Keep it to yourself. Don’t point it out to a thousand -people, and say: ‘Join me in the chase of the Will-o’-the-Wisp.’ -For the thousand other people will each see -an <span class='it'>ignis fatuus</span> of their own and point it out, so that there -are myriads of them, and your brain reels, and you’re -swallowed up in the bog to a dead certainty. In plain -words, every human being must have his own individual -and particular guiding star which he must follow steadfastly. -My guiding star is not yours, Miss Gale, nor -Olifant’s. We each have our own.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olifant smiled indulgently. “<span class='it'>Moscovus loquitur</span>,” he -murmured.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s that?” asked Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He says, my dear Miss Gale, that the Russian will -ever be talking.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m not so sure that I don’t approve,” said she.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona laid his hand on his heart and made a little -bow. She went on, casting a rebuking glance at Olifant, -who had begun to laugh:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“After all, it’s more entertaining and stimulating to -talk about ideas than about stupid facts. Most people -seem to regard an idea as a disease. They shy at it as if -it were smallpox.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olifant protested. He was capable of playing football -with ideas as any man. Self-satirical, he asked was he -not of Balliol? Olivia, remembering opportunely a recent -Cambridge dinner neighbour’s criticism of the famous -Oxford College—at the time it had bored her indifferent -mind—and an anecdote with which he drove home his -remarks, that of a sixth-form contemporary who had -written to him in the prime flush of his freshman’s term: -“Balliol is not a college; it is a School of Thought,” cried -out:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Isn’t that rather a crude metaphor for Balliol?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They quarrelled, drifted away from the point, swept -Triona into a laughing argument on she knew not what. -All she knew was that these two men were giving her the -best of themselves; these two picked men of thought and -action; that they were eager to interest her, to catch her -word of approval; that some dancing thing within her -brain played on their personalities and kept them at -concert pitch.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was conscious of a new joy, a new sense of power, -when the door opened and Myra showed in Lydia Dawlish. -She entered, enveloped in an atmosphere of furs -and creamy worldliness. Aware of the effect of implicit -scorn of snobbery, she besought Olifant for news of Medlow, -dear Sleepy Hollow, which she had not seen for -years. Had he come across her beloved eccentric of a -father—old John Freke? Olifant gave her the best of -news. He had lately joined the committee of the local -hospital, of which Mr. Freke was Chairman; professed -admiration for John Freke’s exceptional gifts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If he had gone out into the world, he might have been -a great man,” said Lydia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He <span class='it'>is</span> a great man,” replied Olifant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s the good of being great in an overlooked -chunk of the Stone Age like Medlow?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She spoke with her lazy vivacity, obviously, to Olivia’s -observant eye, seeking to establish herself with the two -men. But the spell of the afternoon was broken. As -soon as politeness allowed, Olifant and Triona took their -leave. Had it not been for Lydia they would have stayed -on indefinitely, forgetful of time, showing unconscious, -and thereby all the more flattering, homage to their -hostess. In a mild way she anathematized Lydia; but -found a compensating tickle of pleasure in the lady’s -failure to captivate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To Olifant she said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now that you know where your landlady lives, I hope -you won’t go on neglecting her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But she waited for Triona to say:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Shall I ever have the pleasure of seeing you again?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It all depends whether you can be communicated -with,” she replied. “Alexis Triona, Esq., Planet Earth, -Solar System, is an imposing address; but it might puzzle -the General Post Office.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The Vanloo Hotel, South Kensington, is very much -more modest.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s well for people to know where they can find -one another,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That you should do me the honour of the slightest -thought of finding me——” he began.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ll fix up something soon,” Lydia interrupted. -“I’m Miss Gale’s elderly, adopted aunt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia felt a momentary shock, as though a tiny bolt -of ice had passed through her. She sped a puzzled glance -at a Lydia blandly unconscious of wrong-doing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall be delighted,” said Triona politely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When the door had closed behind the two—</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What nice men,” said Lydia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, they’re rather—nice,” replied Olivia, wondering -why, in trying to qualify them in her mind, this particular -adjective had never occurred to her. They were male, -they spoke perfect English, they were well-mannered—and -so, of course, they were nice. But it was such an inadequate -word, completing no idea. Lydia’s atrophied -sense of differentiation awoke the laughter in her eyes. -Nice! So were Bobby Quinton, Sydney Rooke, Mauregard, -a score of other commonplace types in Lydia’s set. -But that Blaise Olifant and Alexis Triona should be -lumped with them in this vaguely designated category, -seemed funny.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lydia went on:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Major Olifant, of course, I knew from your description -of him; but the other—the young man with the -battered face—I didn’t place him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Triona—Alexis Triona.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I seem to have heard the name,” said Lydia. “He -writes or paints or lectures on Eugenics or something.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He has written a book on Russia,” replied Olivia drily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m fed up with Russia,” said Lydia dismissively. -“Even if I wasn’t—I didn’t come here to talk about it. -I came in about something quite different. What do you -think has happened? Sydney Rooke has asked me to -marry him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia’s eyes flashed with the interest of genuine youth -in a romantic proposal of marriage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear!” she cried. “How exciting!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wish it were,” said Lydia, in her grey-eyed calmness. -“Anyhow, it’s a bit upsetting. Of course I knew that -he was married—separated years and years from his wife. -Whether he couldn’t catch her out, or she couldn’t catch -him out, I don’t know. But they couldn’t get a divorce. -She was a Catholic and wouldn’t stand for the usual -arrangement. Now she’s dead. Died a couple of months -ago in California. He came in this morning with Lady -Northborough—introducing her—the first time I had seen -the woman. And he sat by and gave advice while she -chose half a dozen hats. His judgment’s infallible, you -know. He saw her to her car and came back. ‘Now -I’ve done you a good turn,’ he said, ‘perhaps you’ll do -me one. Give me five minutes with you in your cubby-hole.’ -We went into my little office, and then he sprang -this on me—the death of his wife and the proposal.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it <span class='it'>must</span> have been exciting,” Olivia protested. -“Yet——” she knitted her brow, “why the Lady Northborough -barrage?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s his way,” said Lydia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What did you tell him?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I said I would give him my answer to-night.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know. He’s charming. He’s rolling in money—you -remember the motor-car I turned down for obvious -reasons—he knows all kinds of nice people—he’s -fifty——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Fifty!” cried Olivia, aghast. To three and twenty -fifty is senile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The widow’s ideal.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s exciting, but not romantic,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Romance perished on the eleventh of November, -1918. Since then it has been ‘Every woman for herself -and the Devil take the hindmost.’ Are you aware that -there are not half enough men to go round? So when a -man with twenty thousand a year comes along, a woman -has to think like—like——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Like Aristotle or Herbert Spencer, or the sailor’s -parrot,” said Olivia. “Of course, dear. But is he so -dreadfully wealthy as all that? What does he do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He attends Boards of Directors. As far as I can make -out he belongs to a Society for the Promotion of Un-christian -Companies.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t you care for him?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lydia shook her exquisitely picture-hatted head—she -was a creamy Gainsborough or nothing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In that way, not a bit. Of course, he has been a real -good friend to me. But after all—marriage—it’s difficult -to explain——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In spite of her cynicism, Lydia had always respected -the girlhood of her friend. But Olivia flung the scornful -arm of authority.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s no need of explanation. I know all about -it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In that case——” said Lydia. She paused, lit a -cigarette, and with her large, feline grace of writhing -curves, settled herself more comfortably in the corner -of the couch—“I thought you would bring a fresh mind -to bear upon things. But no matter. In that case, -dear, what would you advise?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Before the girl’s mental vision arose the man in question—the -old young man, the man of fifty, with the air -and manner and dress of the man of twenty-five; his -mark of superficial perfection that hid God knew what -strange sins, stoniness of heart and blight of spirit. She -saw him in his impeccable devotion to Lydia. But -something in the imagined sight of him sent a shiver -through her pure, yet not ignorant, maidenhood: something -of which the virginal within her defied definition, -yet something abhorrent. The motor-car had failed; -now the wedding-ring. She recaptured the fleeting, disquieting -sense of Lydia on her first evening in London—the -woman’s large proclamation of sex. Instinctively -she transferred her impression to the man, and threw a -swift glance at Lydia lying there, milk and white, receptive.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A word once read and forgotten—a word in some -French or English novel—sprang to her mind, scraped -clear from the palimpsest of memory. Desirable. A -breath-catching, hateful word. She stood aghast and -shrinking on the edge of knowledge.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My darling child, what on earth is the matter with -you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia started at the voice, as though awakening from -a dream.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think it’s horrible,” she cried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Marrying a man you can no more love than—— Ugh! -I wouldn’t marry him for thousands of millions.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why? I want to know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the shiver in the girl’s soul could not be expressed -in words.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s a question of love,” she said lamely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lydia laughed, called her a romantic child. It was -not a question of love, but of compatible temperament. -Marriage wasn’t a week-end, but a life-end, trip. People -had to get accustomed to each other in dressing-gowns -and undress manners. She herself was sure that Sydney -Rooke would wear the most Jermyn Street of dressing-gowns, -at any rate. But the manners?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They’ll always be as polished as his finger-nails,” -said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t see why you should speak like that of Sydney,” -cried Lydia, with some show of spirit. “It’s rather ungrateful -seeing how kind he has been to you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Which was true; Olivia admitted it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But the man who is kind to you, in a social way, isn’t -always the man you would like to marry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it’s I, not you,” Lydia protested, “who am -going to marry him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then you are going to marry him?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t see anything else to do,” replied Lydia, and -she went again over the twenty thousand a year argument. -Olivia saw that her hesitations were those of a cool brain -and not of an ardent spirit, and she knew that the brain -had already come to a decision.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I quite see,” said Lydia half apologetically, “that -you think I ought to wait until I fall in love with a man. -But I should have to wait till Doomsday. I thought I -was in love with poor dear Fred. But I wasn’t. I’m not -that sort. If Fred had gone on living I should have -gone on letting him adore me and have been perfectly -happy—so long as he didn’t expect me to adore him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Doesn’t Mr. Rooke expect you to adore him?” asked -Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lydia laughed, showing her white teeth, and shook a -wise and mirthful head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m convinced that was the secret of his first unhappy -marriage.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The poor lady adored him and bored him to frenzy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The clock on the mantelpiece struck the half-hour after -six. Lydia rose. She must go home and dress. She was -dining with Rooke at Claridge’s at eight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m so glad we’ve had this little talk,” she said. “I -felt I must tell you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I thought you wanted my advice,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, you silly!” answered Lydia, gathering her furs -around her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They exchanged the conventional parting kiss. Olivia -accompanied her to the landing. When the summoned -lift appeared and its doors clashed open, Lydia -said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You wouldn’t like to take over that hat shop at a -valuation, would you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good heavens, no!” cried the astounded Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lydia laughed and waved a grey-gloved hand and disappeared -downwards, like the Lady of the Venusberg -in an antiquated opera.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia re-entered the flat thoughtfully, and sat down in -an arm-chair by the tiny wood fire in the sitting-room -grate. Lydia and Lydia’s galley, and all that it signified, -disturbed her more than ever. They seemed not only -to have no ideals even as ballast, but to have flung them -overboard like so many curse-ridden Jonahs. To what -soulless land was she speeding with them? And not -only herself, but the England, of which she, as -much as any individual, was a representative unit? Was -it for the reaching of such a haven that her brothers had -given their lives? Was it that she should reach such -a haven that her mother, instinct with heroic passion, -had sent Stephen Gale forth to death? Was it to guide -the world on this Lydian path that Blaise Olifant had -given an arm and young Triona had cheerfully endured -Dantesque torturings?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Myra came in and began to remove the tea-things—Myra, -gaunt, with her impassive, inexpressible face, -correct in black; silk blouse, stuff skirt, silk apron. -Olivia, disturbed in her efforts to solve the riddle of existence, -swerved in her chair and half-humorously sought -the first human aid to hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Myra, tell me. Why do you go on living?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Myra made no pause in her methodical activity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“God put me into the world to live. It’s my duty to -live,” she replied in her toneless way. “And God ordained -me to live so that I should do my duty.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what do you think is your duty?” Olivia asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You, of all people in the world, ought to know that,” -said Myra, holding the door open with her foot, so as to -clear a passage for the tea-tray.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia rested her elbows on the arms of the chair and -put her finger-tips to her temples. She felt at once rebuked -and informed with knowledge. Never before had -the Sphinx-like Myra so revealed herself. Probably she -had not had the opportunity, never having found herself -subjected to such direct questioning. Being so subjected, -she replied with the unhesitating directness of -her nature. The grace of humility descended on Olivia. -What fine spirit can feel otherwise than humble when -confronted with the selfless devotion of a fellow-being? -And further humbled was she by the implicit declaration -of an ideal, noble and purposeful, such as her mind for -the past few months had not conceived. This elderly, -spinsterly foundling, child of naught, had, according to -her limited horizon, a philosophy—nay, more—a religion -of life which she unswervingly followed. According to -the infinite scale whereby human values ultimately are -estimated, Olivia judged herself sitting in the galley of -Lydia Dawlish as of far less account than Myra, her -butt and her slave from earliest infancy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She rose and looked around the prettiness of taste and -colour with which she had transformed the original dully-furnished -room, and threw up her arm in a helpless gesture. -What did it all mean? What was she doing there? -On what was she squandering the golden hours of her -youth? To what end was she using such of a mind and -such of a soul as God had given her? At last, to sell herself -for furs and food and silk cushions, and for the society -of other women clamorous of nothing but furs and -food and silk cushions, to a man like Sydney Rooke—without -giving him anything in return save her outward -shape for him to lay jewels on and exhibit to the uninspiring -world wherein he dwelt?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Far better return to Medlow and lead the life of a -clean woman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Myra entered. “You’re not dining out to-night?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, thank God!” said Olivia. “I’ll slip on any old -thing and go downstairs.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She dined in her little quiet corner of the restaurant, -and after dinner took up Triona’s book, <span class='it'>Through Blood -and Snow</span>, which she had bought that morning, her previous -acquaintance with it having been made through a -circulating library. In the autumn she had read and been -held by its magic; but casually as she had read scores -of books. But now it was instinct with a known yet -baffling personality. It was two o’clock in the morning -before she went to bed.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='100' id='Page_100'></span>CHAPTER VIII</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>T</span><span class='sc'>HE</span> tastes of Alexis Triona were not such as to -lead him into extravagant living on the fruits of -his literary success. To quality of food he was -indifferent; wine he neither understood nor cared for; -in the use of other forms of alcohol he was abstemious; -unlike most men bred in Russia he smoked moderately, -preferring the cigarettes he rolled himself from Virginia -tobacco to the more expensive Turkish or Egyptian -brands. His attire was simple. He would rather walk -than be driven; and he regarded his back-bedroom at -the top of the Vanloo Hotel as a luxurious habitation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had broken away from the easeful life at Medlow -because, as he explained to Blaise Olifant, it frightened -him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m up against nothing here,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re up against your novel,” replied Olifant. “A -man’s work is always his fiercest enemy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona would not accept the proposition. He and his -novel were one and indivisible. Together they must -fight against something—he knew not what. Perhaps, -fight against time and opportunity. They wanted the -tense, stolen half-hours which he and his other book had -enjoyed. Would Olifant think him ungrateful if he -picked up and went on his mission to Helsingfors?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear fellow,” said Olifant, “the man who resents -a friend developing his own personality in his own way -doesn’t deserve to have a friend.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s like you to say that,” cried Triona. “I shall always -remember. When I get back I shall let you know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So Alexis Triona vanished from a uninspiring Medlow, -and two months afterwards gave Olifant his address at -the Vanloo Hotel. Olifant, tired by a long spell of close -work, went up for an idle week in London.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come back and carry on as before,” he suggested.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Triona ran his fingers through his brown hair and -held out his hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. The wise man never tries to repeat a past pleasure. -As a wise old Russian friend of mine used to say—never -relight a cigar.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So after a few days of pleasant companionship in the -soberer delights of town, Blaise Olifant returned to Medlow -and Triona remained in his little back room in the -Vanloo Hotel.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>One night, a week or so after his visit to Olivia Gale, -he threw down his pen, read over the last sheet that he -had written, and, with a gesture of impatience, tore it -up. Suddenly he discovered that he could not breathe -in the stuffy bedroom. He drew back the curtains and -opened the window and looked out on myriad chimney-pots -and a full moon shining on them from a windless -sky. The bright air filled his lungs. Desire for wider -spaces beneath the moon shook him like a touch of claustrophobia. -He thrust on the coat which he had discarded, -seized a hat, and, switching off the light, hurried from the -room. He went out into the streets, noiseless save for -the rare, swift motors that flashed by like ghosts fleeing -terrified from some earthly doom.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He walked and walked until he suddenly realized that -he had emerged from Whitehall and faced the moonlight -beauty of the Houses of Parliament standing in majestic -challenge against the sky, and the Abbey sleeping in its -centuries of dreams.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Away across the Square, by Broad Sanctuary, was the -opening of a great thoroughfare, and, as his eyes sought -it, he confessed to himself the subconscious impulse that -had led him thither. Yet was it not a cheat of a subconscious -impulse? Had he not gone out from the hotel -in Kensington with a definite purpose? As he crossed to -Broad Sanctuary and the entrance to Victoria Street, he -argued it out with himself. Anyhow, it was the most -fool of fool-errands. But yet—he shrugged his shoulders -and laughed. To what errand could a fool’s errand -be comparable? Only to that of one pixy-led. He -laughed at the thought of his disquisition to Olivia on -the Will-o’-the-Wisp. In the rare instances of the follower -of Faith had he not proclaimed its guidance to the -Land of Promise?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Three days before he had seen her. He had been impelled -by an irresistible desire to see her. To call on her -without shadow of excuse was impossible. To telephone -or write an invitation to lunch was an act unsuggested by -his limited social experience. Taking his chance that -she should emerge between eleven and twelve, he strolled -up and down the pavement, so that at last when fate -favoured him and he advanced to meet her, they greeted -each other with a smiling air of surprise. They explained -their respective objectives. She was for buying a patent -coffee machine at the Army and Navy Stores, he for -catching an undesirable train at Victoria Station. A -threatening morning suddenly became a rainy noon. He -turned back with her and they fled together and just -reached the Stores in time to escape from the full fury of -the downpour. There he bent his mind on coffee machines. -His masculine ignorance of the whole art of -coffee-making, a flannel bag in a jug being his primitive -conception, moved her to light-hearted mirth. The purchase -made, the order given, they wandered idly through -the great establishment. They were prisoners, the outside -world being weltering deluge. For once in his lifetime, -thought Triona, the elements warred on his side. -A wringing machine, before which he paused in wonderment -at its possible use, and an eager description on -the part of the salesman, put Olivia on the track of a -game into which he entered with devoted fervour. Let -them suppose they were going to furnish a house. Oh! -a great big palace of a house. In imagination they bought -innumerable things, furnishing the mansion chiefly with -hammocks and marquees and garden chairs and lawn-mowers -and grand pianos and egg-whisks. Her heart, -that morning, attuned to laughter, brought colour into -her cheeks and brightness into her eyes. To the young -man’s ear she seemed to have an adorable gift of phrase. -She invested a rolling-pin with a humorous individuality. -She touched a tray of doughnuts with her fancy and -turned them into sacramental bread of Momus, exquisite -Divinity of Mirth. She was so free, so graceful, -so intimate, so irresistible. He followed her, a young man -bemused. What he contributed to the game he scarcely -knew. He was only conscious of her charm and her whipping -of his wit. They stumbled into the department of -men’s haberdashery. His brain conceived a daring idea.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve been trying for weeks,” said he, “to make up my -mind to buy a tie.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia glanced swiftly round and sped to a counter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ties, please.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What kind?” asked the salesman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ordinary silk—sailor-knot. Show me all you’ve got.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Before his entranced eyes she selected half a dozen, -with a taste which the artist within him knew was impeccable. -He presented the bill bearing her number at the -cashier’s pigeon hole, and returning took the neat packet -from the salesman with the air of one receiving a decoration -from royalty. They made their way to the exit. -She said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m afraid we’ve been criminally frivolous.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If such happiness is a crime I’d willingly swing for it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He noted a quick, uncomprehending question in her -glance and the colour mounted into his pale cheeks.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My English idiom is not yet perfect,” he said. “I -ought not to have used that expression.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia laughed at his discomfiture.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s generally used by dreadful people who threaten to -do one another in. But the metaphor’s thrilling, all the -same.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The rain had ceased. After a few moments the mackintoshed -commissionaire secured a taxi. Triona accompanied -her to the door. She thrust out a frank hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Au revoir. It has been delightful to find you so -human.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She drove off. He stood, with a smile on his lips, -watching the vehicle disappear in the traffic. Her farewell -was characteristic. What could one expect of her -but the unexpected?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That was three days ago. The image of her unconsciously -alluring yet frank to disconcertment, spiritually -feminine yet materially impatient of sex; the image of her -in the three separate settings—the dark-eyed princess in -fur and flame beneath the electric light of the theatre -portico; the slim girl in simple blouse and skirt who, over -the pretty teacups, held so nice a balance between Olifant -and himself; the gay playmate of a rainy hour, in her -fawn costume (he still felt the thrill of the friendly touch -of her fawn-coloured gloved hands on his sleeve)—the -composite image and vision of her had filled his sleeping -and waking thoughts to the destruction of his peace of -mind and the dislocation of his work.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Thus, on this warm night of spring, he stood, the most -foolishly romantical of mortals, at the entrance to Victoria -Street, and with a shrug of his shoulders proceeded -on his errand of mute troubadour. Perhaps the day of -rapture might come when he would tell her how he stood -in the watches of the night and gazed up at what he -had to imagine was her window on the fifth floor of the -undistinguished barrack that was her home. It was -poetic, fantastic, Russian, at any rate. It would also -mark the end of his excursion; it was a fair tramp back -to South Kensington.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>An unheeded taxi-cab whizzed past him as he walked; -but a few seconds later, the faint sound of splintering -glass and then the scrunch of brakes suddenly applied -awoke him from his smiling meditations. The cab -stopped, sharply outlined in the clear moonlight. The -driver leaped from his seat and flung open the door. A -woman sprang out, followed by a man. Both were in -evening dress. Voices rose at once in altercation. Triona, -suspecting an accident, quickened his pace instinctively -into a run and joined the group.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s up?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But as the instinctive words passed his lips he became -amazedly conscious of Olivia standing there, quivering, -as white as the white dress and cloak she wore, her -eyes ablaze. She flashed on him a half-hysterical recognition -and clutched his arm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He drew himself up to his slim height and looked first -at the taxi driver and then at the heavy, swarthy man in -evening dress, and then at her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s the matter? Tell me,” he rapped out.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This man tried to insult me,” she gasped.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia never knew how it happened: it happened like -some instantaneous visitation of God. The lithe young -figure suddenly shot forward and the heavy man rolled -yards away on the pavement.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Serve him damn well right,” said the driver; “but -where do I come in with my window broken?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, you shall be paid, you shall be paid,” cried Olivia. -“Pay him, Mr. Triona, and let us go.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona glanced up and down the street. “No, this -gentleman’s going to pay,” he said quietly and advanced -to the heavy man who had scrambled to unsteady feet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just you settle up with that cabman, quick, do you -hear, or I’ll knock you down again. I could knock you -down sixty times an hour. And so help me, God, if a -copper comes in sight I’ll murder you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right, all right,” said the man hurriedly. “I don’t -want a scandal for the lady’s sake.” He turned to the -taxi man. “How much do you want?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“With the damage it’ll be a matter of ten pound.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The swarthy man in evening dress fished out his note-case.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here you are, you blackmailing thief.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“None of your back-chat, or I’ll finish off what this -gentleman has begun,” said the taxi man, pocketing the -money.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Until he saw summary justice accomplished, Triona -stood in the lee of the houses, his arm stretched protectingly -in front of Olivia. Then he drew her -away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll see the lady home. It’s only a few steps.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Right, sir. Good night, sir,” said the taxi man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They moved on. Immediately in the silence of the -night came the crisp exchange of words.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll give you a pound to take me to Porchester Terrace.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I’d give a pound to see you walk there,” said -the driver, already in his seat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He threw in the clutch and with a cheery “Good night” -passed the extravagantly encountered pair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They say miracles don’t happen, but one has happened -now,” said Olivia breathlessly. “If you hadn’t -come out of space——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do tell me something about it,” he asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But don’t you know?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You said that profit-merchant had insulted you and -that was enough for me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, my God! I’m so ashamed!” she cried, with a -wild, pretty gesture of her hands. “What will you think -of me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mad words rushed through his brain, but before they -found utterance he gripped himself. He had, once more, -his hands on the controls.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What I think of you, Miss Gale, it would be wiser not -to say. I should like to hear what has occurred. But, -pardon me,” he said abruptly, noticing her curious, uneven -step, and glancing down instinctively at her feet, -“what has become of your shoe?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My slipper—why, of course——” She halted, suddenly -aware of the loss. “I must have left it in the cab. -I stuck up my foot and reached for it and broke the window -with the heel. I also think I hit him in the face.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It seems as though he was down and out before I -came up,” said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If you hadn’t I don’t [know] how I should have carried on,” -she confessed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They walked down the wide, empty street. The moon -shone high above them, the girl in her elegance, the man in -his loose grey flannels and soft felt hat, an incongruous -couple, save for their common air of alert youth. And -while they walked she rapidly told her story. She had -been to Percy’s with the usual crowd, Lydia Dawlish her -nominal chaperone. The man, Edwin Mavenna, a city -friend of Sydney Rooke, whom she had met a half a dozen -times, had offered to drive her home in his waiting taxi. -Tired, dependent for transport on Rooke and Lydia, who -desired a further hour of the night club’s dismal -jocundity, and angry with Bobby Quinton, who seemed -to think that her ear had no other function than to listen -to tales of sentimenti-financial woe, she had accepted. -Half-way home she had begun to regret; three-quarters -of the way she had been frightened. As they turned into -Victoria Street she had managed to free her arm and wield -the victorious slipper.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll never go to that abominable place again as long as -I live,” she cried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I should, if I were you,” he said quietly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’d go once or twice, at any rate. To show yourself -independent of it. To prove to yourself that you’re not -frightened of it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I am frightened of it. On the outside it’s as -respectable as Medlow Parish Church on Sunday. But -below the surface there’s all sorts of hideousness—and -I’m frightened.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re not,” said he. “Things may startle you, -infuriate you, put you off your equilibrium; but they -don’t frighten you. They didn’t this evening. I’ve seen -too many people frightened in my time not to know. -You’re not that sort.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had reached the door of the Mansions. She -smiled at him, her gaiety returning.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re as comforting and consoling a Knight Errant -as one could wish to meet. The damsel in distress is -greatly beholden to you. But how the—whatever -you like—you managed to time the rescue is beyond my -comprehension.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The stars guided me,” he replied, with an upward -sweep of the hand. “Mortals have striven to comprehend -them for thousands of years—but without success. I -started out to wander about this great city—I often do -for hours—I’m a born wanderer—with the vagabond’s -aimlessness and trust in chance, or in the stars—and this -time the stars brought me where it was decreed that I -should be.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>While he was speaking she had opened the door with -her latchkey and now stood, shimmering white in the -gloom of the entrance. She held out her hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m afraid I’ve been too much occupied in trying not -to seem frightened and silly to thank you decently for -what you’ve done. But I am grateful. You don’t know -how grateful. I’ll have to tell you some other time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To-morrow?” he asked eagerly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She hesitated for a moment. “Yes, to-morrow,” she -replied softly. “I shall be in all day. Goodnight.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After the swift handshake the door closed on the enraptured -young man, and the hard, characterless street, -down which he seemed to dance, became transformed -into a moonlit glade of fairyland.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was four o’clock in the morning when he entered his -back-bedroom at the Vanloo Hotel. But he did not sleep. -He had no desire for sleep—youth resenting the veil -drawn across a consciousness so exquisitely alive. Sleep, -when the stars in their courses were fighting for him? -Impossible, preposterous! Let him rather live, again -and again, over the night’s crowded adventure. Every -detail of it set his pulses throbbing. The mere glorious -first recognition of her was the thrill of a lifetime. -He constructed and reconstructed the immortal picture. -The moonlit, silent street, its high, decorous -buildings marked by the feeble gas lamps melting into -an indeterminate vanishing point. The clear-cut scene. -The taxi-cab. The three human figures. The stunted -driver. The massive, dark man, in silk hat which reflected -the moonlight, in black overcoat thrown open, -revealing a patch of white shirt and waistcoat; the -slender, quivering, white form draped in white fur, white -gossamer, white what-not, crowned with dark glory of -eyes and hair. The masculine in him exulted in his -physical strength and skill—in the clean, straight, elementary -yet scientific left-hander that got the hulking -swine between the eyes and sent him reeling and sprawling -and asking for no more punishment. And then—oh, -it was a great thing to command, to impose his -will. To walk in triumph off with the wonderful lady of -his dreams. To feel, as she thanked him, that here was -something definite that he had done for her, something -with a touch of the romantic, the heroic, which, in its -trivial way, justified belief in the incidents of his adventurous -career which he had so modestly, yet so vividly -described in the book that had brought him fame.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>On this point of justification he was peculiarly sensitive. -Various Englishmen, soldiers sent out on secret missions -to the fringes of the areas of his activities, had questioned -many of his statements, both in the book and in -descriptive articles which he had written for newspapers -and other periodicals, and asked for proofs. And he had -replied, most cogently, that the sphere of the Russian -Secret Service in which he was employed was, of necessity, -beyond the ken of the secret service of any other Power -in Europe, and that official proofs were lost in the social -and political disintegration of Russia. One man, a great -man, speaking with unquestionable authority, silenced -the horde of cavillers as far as events prior to 1917 were -concerned. But there were still some who barked annoyingly -at his heels. Proofs, of course, he had none to give. -How can a man give proofs when he is cast up, practically -naked, on the coast of England? He must be believed or -not. And it was the haunting terror of this sensitive boy -of genius, whose face and eyes bore the ineffaceable marks -of suffering, that he should lose the credit which he had -gained.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At all hazards he must allow no doubts to arise in the -mind of Olivia. To fight them down he would do all -manner of extravagant things. He regretted the pusillanimous -tameness of his late opponent. If the man had -only picked himself up and given battle! If only there -had been half a dozen abductors or insulters instead of -one! His spirits (at seven o’clock) sank at the logical -conclusion that the conventional conditions of post-war -civilized life afforded a meagre probability of the recurrence -of such another opportunity. He had the temperament -of those whose hunger is only whetted by triumph, -to whom attainment only gives vision of new heights. -When, after tossing sleepless in his bed, he rose and -dressed at nine, he had decided that, in knocking down a -mere mass of unresisting flesh, he had played a part -almost inglorious, such as any stay-at-home <span class='it'>embusqué</span> -could have played. By not one jot or tittle did his act -advance the credibility of his story. And on his story -alone could he found his hopes of finding favour in her -marvellous eyes. Of the touch of genius that inspired -his literary work he thought little. At this stage of his -career he was filled with an incredulous wonder at his -possession of a knack which converted a page of scribble -into a cheque upon a bank. His writing meant money. -Not money, wealth, on the grand scale; but money to -keep him as a modest gentleman on the social grade to -which he had attained, and to save him from the detested -livery of the chauffeur. The story which he was telling -in the new book was but a means to this end. The -story which he had told was life itself. Nay, now it was -more: it was love itself; it was a girl who was more than -life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He called at the Victoria Street flat at twelve o’clock. -The austere Myra looked on him disapprovingly. Tea-time -was the visiting time for stray young men, and even -then she conveyed to them the impression that she let -them in on sufferance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What name?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mr. Triona.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Miss Gale is in, sir,” she admitted grudgingly, having -received explicit orders from Olivia, “but she is dressing -and I don’t know whether she can see you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Will you tell Miss Gale that I am entirely at her service, -and if it’s inconvenient for her to see me now I’ll -call later.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Myra left him standing in the little vestibule and gave -the message to Olivia, who, fully dressed, was polishing -her nails in her bedroom.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re the most impossible woman on earth,” Olivia -declared, turning on her. “Is that the way you -would treat a man who had delivered you from a -dragon?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t hold with men and I don’t hold with dragons,” -replied Myra unmoved. “The next time you’ll be wanting -me to fall over a dragon who has delivered you from -a man!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia scarcely listened to the retort. She flew out and -carried the waiting Triona into the sitting-room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m so sorry. My maid’s a terror. She bites and -doesn’t bark. But I guarantee her non-venomous. How -good of you to come so early.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was anxious,” said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“About what?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Last night must have been a shock.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course it was,” she laughed; “but not enough to -keep me all day long in fainting fits with doctors and -smelling-bottles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope you slept all right.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No,” she replied frankly. “That I didn’t do. The -adventure was a bit too exciting. Besides——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Besides what?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It came into my head to make up my moral balance -sheet. Figures of arithmetic always send me to sleep; -but figures of—well, of that kind of thing, don’t you -know—keep me broad awake.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia’s dark, eager face was of the kind that shows the -traces of fatigue in faint shadows under the eyes. He -swiftly noted them and cried out:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re dead tired. It’s damnable.” He rose, suddenly -angry. “You ought to go to bed at once. Your -maid was right. I had no business to come at this hour -and disturb you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If you hadn’t come,” said Olivia, inwardly glowing at -the tribute paid by the indignant youth, “I should have -imagined that you looked on last night’s affair as a trumpery -incident in the day’s work and went to bed and forgot -all about it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s impossible,” said he. “I, too, haven’t slept a -wink.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She met and held his eyes longer than she, or anyone -else, had held them. Then, half angrily, she felt her -cheeks grow hot and red.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“For you, who have faced death a hundred times, last -night, as I’ve just said, must be even dull. What was -it to the night when you—you know—the sentry—when -you were unarmed and you fought with him and you -killed him with his own bayonet?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He snapped his fingers and smiled. “That was unimportant. -Whether I lived or died didn’t matter to anybody. -It didn’t matter much to me. It was sheer -animal instinct. But last night it was you. And that -makes a universe of difference.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia rose, and, with a “You’re not smoking,” offered -him a box of cigarettes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” she said, when he had lighted it, with fingers -trembling ever so slightly as they held the match, “I suppose -a woman does make a difference. We’re always in -the way, somehow. Women and children first. Why -they don’t throw us overboard at once and let the really -useful people save themselves, I could never make out.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His air of dismay was that of a devotee listening to a -saint blaspheme. Her laughter rippled, music to his ears.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you know what I should like to do? Get out of -London for a few hours and fill my lungs with air. Richmond -Park, for instance.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I, too.” He sighed. “If only I had a car!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There are such things as motor-buses.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He sprang to delighted feet. His divinity on a bus top! -It was like the Paphian goddess condescending from her -dove-drawn chariot to the joggle of a four-wheeler cab.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Would you really go on one?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She would. She would start forthwith. The time -only to put on a hat. She left him to his heart-beats of -happiness, presently to re-appear, hatted, gloved, and -smiling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re quite sure you would like to come? Your -work?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My work needs the open air as much as I do,” said -he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They went forth, boy and girl on a jaunt, and side by -side on the top of the omnibus they gave themselves up -to the laughter of the pure sunshine. At Richmond they -lunched, for youth must be fed, and afterwards went -through the streets of the old town, and stood on the -bridge watching the exquisite curve of the river embosomed -in the very newest of new greenery, and let its -loveliness sink into their hearts. Then they wandered -deep into the Park and found a tree from beneath which -they could see the deer browsing in the shade; and there -they sat, happy in their freedom and isolation. What -they said, most of the time, was no great matter. Of -the two, perhaps she talked the more; for he had said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am so tired of talking about myself. I have been -obliged to, so that it has become a professional habit. -And what there is to be known about me, you know. -But you—you who have lived such a different life from -mine—I know so little of you. In fact, I’ve known nothing -of English women such as you. You’re a mystery. -Tell me about yourself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So she had begun:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I was born—I shan’t tell you the year—of poor -but honest parents——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then, led on by his eager sympathy and his intimate -knowledge of her home, she had abandoned the jesting -note and talked simply and frankly of her secluded -and eventless life. With feminine guile, and with last -night’s newborn mistrust of men, she set a little trap.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did you ever go into my mother’s room?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t think so. Perhaps that was the one—the -best bedroom—which Olifant always kept locked.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt ashamed of her unworthy suspicion; glad at -the loyal keeping of a promise, to the extent of not allowing -a visitor even a peep inside the forbidden chamber.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think Blaise Olifant is one of the finest types England -breeds,” she said warmly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a touch of jealous fear in his swift glance; -but he replied with equal warmth:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You needn’t tell me that. Brave, modest, of sensitive -honour—Ah! A man with a mind so cultivated that he -seems to know nothing until you talk with him, and then -you find that he knows everything. I love him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m glad to hear you say that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why? Do you admire him so much?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It isn’t that,” she parried. “It’s on your account. -One man’s generous praise of another does one’s heart -good.” She threw out her arms as though to embrace -the rolling park of infinite sward and majestic trees. “I -love big things,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Whereupon Alexis Triona thanked his stars for having -led him along the true path.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Who can say that, in after years, these twain, when -they shall have grown old and have gone through whatever -furnaces Fate—either personal destiny or the Fate -of Social Institutions—may prepare for them, will not -retain imperishable memories of the idyll of that sweet -spring day? There they sat, youth spiritually communing -with youth; the girl urged by feminine instinct to -love him for the dangers he had passed; the young man -aflame with her beauty, her charm, her dryad elusiveness. -Here, for him, was yet another aspect of her, free, -unseizable in the woodland setting. And for her, another -aspect of him, the simple, clean-cut Englishman, divested -of vague and disquieting Russian citizenship, the perfect -companion, responsive to every chord struck by the spirit -of the magic afternoon. In the years to come, who can -say that they will not remember this sweet and delicate -adventure of their souls creeping forth in trembling -reconnaissance one of the other? Perhaps it will be a -more precious memory to the woman than to the man. -Men do not lay things up in lavender as women do.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If he had spoken, declared his passion in lover’s set -terms, perhaps her heart might have been caught by the -glamour of it all, and she might have surrendered to his -kisses, and they might have journeyed back to London -in a state of unreprehensible yet commonplace beatitude. -And the memory would possibly have been marked by a -white stone rising stark in an airless distance. But he -did not speak, held back by a rare reverence of her maidenhood -and her perfect trust; and in her heart flowered -gratitude for his sensitiveness to environment. So easy -for a maladroit touch to mar the perfection of an exquisite -hour of blue mist and mystery. So, again, who -knows but that in the years to come the memory will be -marked by a fragrance, a shimmer of leaves, a haze over -green sward, incorporated impalpably with the dear -ghost of an immortal day?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They returned on the top of the omnibus, rather late, -and on the way they spoke little. Now and then he -glanced sideways at her and met her eyes and caught her -smile, and felt content. At the terminus of the omnibus -route, in the raging, busy precincts of the stations of -Victoria, they alighted. He walked with her to her door -in Victoria Street.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your words have been singing in my ears,” said he: -“ ‘I love big things.’ To me, to-day has seemed a big -thing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I’ve loved it,” she replied.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“True?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“True.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sped up to her room somewhat dazed, conscious of -need to keep her balance. So much had happened in the -last four-and-twenty hours. The shudder of the night -had still horrified her flesh when she drew the young man -out into the wide daylight and the open air; and now it -had passed away, as though it had never been, and a new -quivering of youth, taking its place, ran like laughter -through her bodily frame and her heart and her mind.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“H’m. Your outing seems to have done you good,” -said the impassive Myra, letting her in.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My first day’s escape from a fœtid prison,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose you know what you’re talking about,” said -Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia laughed and threw her arm round Myra’s lean -shoulders.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course I do.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He ain’t much to look at.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia, flushing, turned on her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I never knew a more abominable woman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then you’re lucky,” retorted Myra, and faded away -into her kitchen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia, mirthful, uplifted, danced, as it were, into the -sitting-room and began to pull off her gloves. Suddenly -her glance fell on a letter lying on her writing table. She -frowned slightly as she opened it, and as she read the -frown grew deeper. It was from Bobby Quinton. What -his dearest of dear ladies would think of him he left on -the joint knees of the gods and of his dearest lady—but—but -the wolves were at his heels. He had thrown -them all that he possessed—fur coat, watch and chain, -diamond studs, and, having gulped them all, they were -still in fierce pursuit. In a fortnight would he have -ample funds to satisfy them. But now he was at bay. -He apologized for the mixture of metaphor. But still, -there he was <span class='it'>aux abois</span>. Fifty pounds, just for a fortnight. -Could the dearest of dear ladies see her way——-?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She went to her desk and wrote out a cheque which -she enclosed in an envelope. To save her soul alive she -could not have written Bobby Quinton an accompanying -line.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='121' id='Page_121'></span>CHAPTER IX</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>H</span><span class='sc'>ERE</span>, all in a rush of twenty-four hours, was a -glut of incident for a young woman out for -adventure. Triona had only made his effect -on the romantically feminine within Olivia by his triumphant -rescue. As to that he need have no misgivings. -So once did Andromeda see young Perseus, calm and -assured, deliver her from the monster. Triona’s felling -of Mavenna appealed to the lingering savage woman -fiercely conscious of wrong avenged; but his immediate -and careless mastery of the situation struck civilized -chords. She could see him dominating the sheepskin-clad -tribe in the Urals (see <span class='it'>Through Blood and Snow</span>) until -he established their independence in their mountain -fastness. She could see him, masterful, resourceful, -escaping from the Bolshevik prison and making his -resistless way across a hostile continent. She could also -appreciate, after this wonder-day at Richmond, the -suppleness of his simple charm which won him food and -shelter where food scarcely existed and shelter to a stranger -was a matter of shooting or a bashing in of heads.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As for Mavenna, her flesh still shuddered at the memory -of those few moments of insult. What he said she -could scarcely remember. The inextricable clutch of -his great arms around her body and the detestable kisses -eclipsed mere words. Unwittingly his hug had compressed -her throat so that she could not scream. There -had been nothing for it but the slipper unhooked by the -free arm, and the doughty heel. Had she won through -alone to her room, she would have collapsed—so she -assured herself—from sickening horror. But the Deliverer -had been there, as in a legend of Greece or -Broceliande, and had saved her from the madness of the -nymph terror stricken by Satyrs. The two extravagances -had, in a way, counteracted each other, setting -her, by the morning, in a normal equilibrium. She had -tried to explain the phenomenon by referring to her having -spent the night in striking a moral balance-sheet. -And then had come the day, the wonderful day, in which -the Deliverer had proved himself the perfect, gentle -Knight. Can it be wondered that her brain swam with -him?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She went the next morning to Lydia’s hat shop, and, -in the little room which Sydney Brooke had called her -cubby hole, a nine-foot-square boudoir office, reeking -with Lydia’s scent and with Heaven knows what scandals -and vulgarities and vanities of post-war London, she -poured out her tale of outrage. After listening with -indulgent patience, Lydia remarked judicially:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I told you, my dear child, when you came to London, -that the first lesson you had to learn was to take care of -yourself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia flashed. She had taken care of herself well -enough. But that brute Mavenna—what about him?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Everybody knows Mavenna,” replied Lydia. “No -girl in her senses would have trusted herself alone with -him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And, with that reputation, he’s a friend of yours and -Sydney’s?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lydia shrugged her plump shoulders.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Really, my dear, if one exacted certificates of lamb-like -innocence, signed by a high celestial official, before -you admitted anyone into the circle of your acquaintance, -you might as well go and live on a desert island.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But this man’s a beast and you’ve known it all -along!” cried Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Only in one way.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But—my God! Isn’t that enough?” Olivia stood, -racked with disgust and amazement, over her mild-eyed, -philosophic friend. “What would you have done if -you had been in my place?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I could never have been in your place,” said Lydia. -“I should have been too wise.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The knowledge of men, my dear, is the beginning of -wisdom.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I ought to have known?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course. At any rate, you’ll know in the future.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall. You may be dead certain I shall,” declared -Olivia, in her anger and excitement seizing a puckered -and pleated cushion from the divan by which she stood. -“And if even I—−-”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t, darling; you’ll tear it,” said Lydia calmly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia heaved the cushion back impatiently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What I want to know is this. Are you and Sydney -going to remain friends with Mavenna?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m afraid we’ll have to,” replied Lydia. “Mavenna -and Sydney are in all sorts of big things together.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, when next you see him, Lydia, look well into -his face and ask him what he thinks of the heel of my -slipper and Mr. Triona’s fist. He’s not only a beast. -He’s a worm. When I think of him picking himself up, -after being knocked down by a man half his size——” -She laughed a bit hysterically. “Oh—the creature is -outside the pale!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lydia shook her fair head. “I’m sorry for you, my -dear. But he’s inside all right.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then I’m not going to be inside with him!” cried -Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And, like a little dark dust storm, she swirled out of -the office and, through the shop, into the freedom and -spaciousness of the streets. And that, for Olivia, was -the end of night clubs and dancing as a serious aim in -life, and a host of other vanities.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A few mornings afterwards Lydia sailed into the flat -and greeted Olivia as though nothing had happened. -She seemed to base her philosophy of life on obliteration -of the past, yesterday being as dead as a winter’s day of -sixty years ago. Would Olivia lunch with Sydney and -herself at some riverside club? Sydney, having collected -Mauregard, would be calling for them with the car. The -day was fine and warm; the prospect of the cool lawn -reaching down to the plashing river allured, and she liked -Mauregard. Besides, she had begun to take a humorous -view of Lydia. She consented. Lydia began to -talk of her wedding, fixed for the middle of July, of the -clothes that she had and the clothes that she hadn’t—the -ratio of the former to the latter being that of a loin-cloth -to the stock of Selfridge’s. When she was serious -minded, Lydia always expressed herself in terms of raiment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you’ll have to get some things, too, as you’re -going to be bridesmaid.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Am I?” asked Olivia, this being the first she had -heard of it. “And who’s going to be best man—Mavenna?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lydia looked aghast. So might a band of primitive -Christians have received a suggestion of inviting the -ghost of Pontius Pilate to a commemorative supper.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear child, you don’t suppose we’re going to ask -that horror to the wedding?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The other day,” Olivia remarked drily, “I understood -that you and Sydney loved him dearly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lydia sighed. “I’m beginning to believe that you’ll -never understand anything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So the breach, if breach there were, was healed. -Olivia, relating the matter to Triona at their next meeting, -qualified Lydia’s attitude as one of callous magnanimity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile her intimacy with the young man began to -ripen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>One evening Janet Philimore invited her to dine at the -Russian circle of a great womans’ club, which was entertaining -Triona at dinner. This was the first time she -had seen him in his character of modest lion; the first -time, too, she had been in a company of women groping, -however clumsily, after ideals in unsyncopated time. -The thin girl next to her, pretty enough, thought Olivia, -if only she had used a powder puff to mitigate the over-assertiveness -of a greasy skin, and had given less the -impression of having let out her hair to a bird for nesting -purposes, and had only seized the vital importance -of colour—the untrue greeny daffodil of her frock not -being the best for a sallow complexion—the girl next -to her, Agnes Blenkiron, started a hectic conversation -by enquiring what she was going to do in Baby Week. -The more ignorant Olivia professed herself to be of -babies and their antecedents, especially the latter, the -more indignantly explicit became Miss Blenkiron. Olivia -listened until she had creepy sensations around the roots -of her hair and put up an instinctive hand to assure herself -that it was not standing on end. Miss Blenkiron -talked feminist physiology, psychology, sociological therapeutics, -until Olivia’s brain reeled. Over and over -again she tried to turn to her hostess, who fortunately -had a pleasant male and middle-aged neighbour, but the -fair lady, without mercy, had her in thrall. She learned -that all the two or three thousand members of the club -were instinct with these theories and their aims. She -struggled to free herself from the spell.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I thought we were here to talk about Russia,” she -ventured.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But we are talking about Russia.” Miss Blenkiron -shed on her the lambency of her pale blue eyes. “The -future of the human race lies in the hands of the millions -of Russian babies lying in the bodies of millions of -Russian women just waiting to be born.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A flash of the devil saved Olivia from madness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s a gigantic conception,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is,” Miss Blenkiron agreed, unhumorously, and -continued her work of propaganda, so that by the time -the speeches began Olivia found herself committed -to the strenuous toil of a lifetime as a member of she -knew not what societies. The only clear memory she -retained was that of a tea engagement some Sunday in -a North London garden city where Miss Blenkiron and -her brother frugally entertained the advanced thinkers -of the day.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In spite of the sense of release from something vampiric, -when the speeches hushed general conversation, she -recognized that the strange talk had been revealing and -stimulating, and she brought a quickened intelligence to -the comprehension of the gathering. To all these women -the present state of the upheaved world was of vast significance. -In Lydia’s galley no one cared a pin about it, -save Sydney Rooke, who cursed it for its interference -with his income. But here, as was clearly conveyed in -the opening remarks of the chairwoman, a novelist of -distinction, every one was intellectually concerned with -its infinite complexity of aspect. To them, the guest -of the evening, emerging as he had done from the dizzying -profundities of the whirlpool, was a figure of uncanny -interest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s the first-hand knowledge of men like him that -is vital,” Miss Blenkiron whispered when the chairwoman -sat down. “I should so much like to meet him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Would you?” said Olivia. “That’s easily managed. -He’s a great friend of mine.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And she was subridently conscious of having acquired -vast and sudden merit in her neighbour’s eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona pleased her beyond expectation. The function, -so ordinary to public-dinner-going London, was new to -her. She magnified the strain that commonplace, even -though sincere, adulation could put upon a guest of -honour. She felt a twinge of apprehension when he -stood up, in his loose boyish way, and brushing his -brown hair from his temples, began to speak. But in a -moment or two all such feelings vanished. He spoke -to this assembly of a hundred, mostly women, much as, -in moments of enthusiasm, he would speak to her. And, -indeed, often catching her eye, he did speak to her, subtly -and flatteringly bringing her to his side. Her heart beat -a bit faster when, glancing around and seeing every one -hanging on his words, she realized that she alone, of all -this little multitude, held a golden key to the mystery -of the real man. There he talked, with the familiar -sway of the shoulders, and, when seeking for a phrase, -with the nervous plucking of his lips; talked in his -nervous, picturesque fashion, now and then with a touch -of the poet, consistently modest, only alluding to personal -experience to illustrate a point or to give verisimilitude -to a jest. He developed his feminist theme logically, -dramatically, proving beyond argument that the future -of civilization lay in the hands of the women of the civilized -world.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had a great success. Woman, although she knows -it perfectly well, loves to be told what she wants and the -way to get it: she will never follow the way, of course, -having a tortuous, thorny, and enticing way of her own; -but that doesn’t matter. The principle, the end, that -is the thing: it justifies any amazing means. He sat -down amid enthusiastic applause. Flushed, he sought -Olivia’s distant gaze and smiled. Then she felt, thrillingly, -that he had been speaking for her, for her alone, -and her eyes brightened and flashed him a proud message.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She met him a while later in the thronged drawing-room -of the club, rather a shy and embarrassed young -man, heading a distinct course toward her through a -swarm of kind yet predatory ladies. She admired the -simple craftsmanship of his approach.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How are you going to get home?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The adorable carelessness of twenty shrugged its -shoulders.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know. The Lord will provide.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If you can’t find a taxi, will you walk?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The question implied a hope, so obvious that she -laughed gaily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There are buses also and tubes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In which you can’t travel alone at this time of night.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She scoffed: “Oh, can’t I?” But his manifest fear -that she should encounter satyrs in train or omnibus -pleased her greatly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Father’s dining at his club close by and is calling -for me. He will see that you get home safely,” said -Janet Philimore.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s miles out of your way, dear,” said Olivia. “I’ll -put myself in the hands of Mr. Triona.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So, taxis being unfindable, they walked together -through the warm London night to Victoria Street. It -was then that he spoke of his work, the novel just completed. -Of all opinions on earth, hers was the one he -most valued. If only he could read it to her and have -the priceless benefit of her judgment. Secretly flattered, -she modestly depreciated, however, her critical powers. -He persisted, attributing to her unsuspected qualities -of artistic perception. At last, not reluctantly, she -yielded. He could begin the next evening.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The reading took some days. Olivia, new to creative -work, marvelled exceedingly at the magic of the artist’s -invention. The personages of the drama, imaginary he -said, lived as real beings. She regarded their creation -as uncanny.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But how do you know she felt like that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “I can’t -conceive her feeling otherwise.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet, for all her wonder, she brought her swift intelligence -to the task of criticism. Not since her mother’s -illness had she taken anything so seriously. She lived -in the book, walking meanwhile through an unreal world. -Her golden words, on the other hand, the young man -captured eagerly and set down in the margin of the manuscript. -Half-way through the reading, they were on -terms of Christian names. Minds so absorbed in an -artistic pursuit grew impatient of absurd formalities of -address. They slipped almost imperceptibly into the -Olivia and Alexis habit. At the end they pulled themselves -up rather sharply, with blank looks at an immediate -future bereft of common interest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll have to begin another, right away, so that you -can be with me from the very start,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have you an idea?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not yet.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When will you have one?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He didn’t know. What man spent with the creative -effort of a novel has the vitality to beget another right -away? He feels that the very last drop of all that he -has known and suffered and enjoyed has been used to -the making of the book. For the making of another -nothing is left.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose I’ll have to lie fallow for a week or so,” -said the young optimist.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And as soon as things begin to sprout you’ll let me -know?” asked Olivia, forgetful that before harvest there -must be seed time.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He promised; went home and cudgelled tired brains; -also cudgelled, for different reasons, an untired and restless -soul.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Let him make good, not ephemerally as the picturesque -narrator of personal adventure, but definitely, with -this novel as the creative artist—the fervent passion of -his life—and he would establish himself in her eyes, in -her mind, in her heart; so that treading solid ground, -he could say to her: “This is what I am, and for what -I am, take me. All that has gone before was but a crude -foundation. I had to take such rubbish and rubble as -I could find to hand.” But until then, let him regard -her as a divinity beyond his reach, rendering her service -and worship, but forbearing to soil her white robe with -a touch as yet unhallowed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Many a time, they could have read no more that day. -Just one swift movement, glance or cry on the part of -the man, and the pulses of youth would have throbbed -wildly together. He knew it. The knowledge was at -once his Heaven and his Hell. A less sensitive human -being would not have appreciated the quivering and vital -equipoise. Many a time he parted from her with the -farewell of comradely intimacy on his lips, and when -the lift had deposited him on the street level his heart -had been like lead and his legs as water, so that he -stumbled out into the lamp-lit dark of night like a paralytic -or a drunken man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And that which was good in him warred fiercely against -temptations more sordid. As far as he knew, she was -a woman of fortune. So did her dress, her habit of life, -her old comfort-filled Medlow home, proclaim her. Of -her social standing as the daughter of Stephen Gale who -bawled out bids for yelts and rams in the Medlow market -place, he knew or understood very little. Her fortune -was a fact. His own, the few hundreds which he -had gained by <span class='it'>Through Blood and Snow</span>, was rapidly -disappearing. The failure of the new book meant starvation -or reversion to Cherbury Mews. Married to a -woman with money he could snap his fingers at crust or -livery. . . . For the time he conquered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The end of the reading coincided more or less with -Midsummer quarter-day. Bills from every kind of coverer -or adorner of the feminine human frame fell upon -her like a shower of autumn leaves. She sat at her small -writing desk, jotted down the amounts, and added them -up with a much sucked pencil point. The total was -incredible. With fear at her heart she rushed round to -her bank for a note of her balance. It had woefully -decreased since January. Payment of all these bills -would deplete it still more woefully. The rent of “The -Towers” and the diminishing income on the deposit -account were trivial items set against her expenditure. -She summoned Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’re heading for bankruptcy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Any fool could see that,” said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What are we going to do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Live like Christians instead of heathens,” replied -Myra. “If you would come to Chapel with me one Sunday -night you could be taught how.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Here Myra failed. She belonged to a Primitive Non-Conformist -Communion whose austere creed and drab -ceremonial had furnished occasion for Olivia’s teasing -wit since childhood. Heathendom, ever divorced from -Lydian pleasures, presented infinitely more reasons for -existence than Myra’s Calvinism.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It seems funny that a dear old thing like you can -revel in the idea of Eternal Punishment.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I haven’t got much else to revel in, have I?” said -Myra grimly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose that’s true,” said Olivia thoughtfully. -“But it isn’t my fault, is it? If you had wanted to -revel, mother and I would have been the last people to -prevent you. Why not begin now? Go and have a -debauch at the pictures.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You began by talking of bankruptcy,” said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you prescribed little Bethel. I’d sooner go -broke.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll have your own way, as usual,” said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And if I go broke, what’ll you do?” asked Olivia, -unregenerately enjoying the conversation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose I’ll have to put you together again,” replied -Myra, with no sign of emotion on her angular, withered -face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia leaped from her chair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m a beast.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That can’t be,” said Myra, “seeing that it was I -as brought you up.”</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>That was the end of the argument. Olivia recognized -in Myra every useful quality save that of the financier. -She dismissed Myra from her counsels. But the state -of her budget cost her a sleepless night or two. At the -present rate of expenditure a couple of years would see -her penniless. For the first time since her emancipation -from Medlow fetters she had the feeling of signing her -own death-warrant on every cheque. Heroic resolves -were born of these days of depression.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As a climax to her worries, came Bobby Quinton, one -afternoon. What had he done to offend his dearest of -ladies? Why had she stopped the dancing lessons? -Why did Percy’s see her no more?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m fed up with Percy’s and the whole gang,” said -Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not including me, surely?” cried the young man, with -a dog’s appeal in his melting brown eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was kind. At first, she had not the heart to pack -him off to the froth and scum of social life to which he -belonged. He had the charm of unsuccessful youth so -pathetic in woman’s eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If you are,” said he, “I’m done for. I’ve no one -to look to but you, in the wide world.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Here was responsibility for the safety of a human soul. -Olivia gave him sound advice, repeating many an old -argument and feeling enjoyably maternal. But when -Bobby grew hysterical, and, with mutation of sex, quoted -the Indian Love Lyrics and professed himself prepared -to die beneath her chariot wheels, and threatened to do -so if she disregarded his burning passion, she admonished -him after the manner of twentieth-century maidenhood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My good Bobby, don’t be an ass.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Bobby persisted in being an ass, with the zeal -of the dement. He became the fervent lover of the -cinquecento Bandello—and, with his dark eyes and hair, -looked the part. Imploring he knelt at the feet of the -divinity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s all very well, my dear boy,” said Olivia, unmoved -by his rhapsody, “all very nice and all very beautiful. -But what do you want me to do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Of course he wanted her to marry him, there and then: -to raise him from the Hell he was in to the Heaven where -she had her pure habitation. With her he could do -great things. He guaranteed splendid achievements.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Before a woman marries a man,” said Olivia, “she -rather wants an achievement or two on account.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then you don’t love me, you don’t trust me?” exclaimed -the infatuated young man, ruffling his sleek black -hair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t say that I do,” replied Olivia, growing weary. -“If you tell me what sort of fascination you possess, -I’ll give it due consideration.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then I may as well go away and blow my brains out,” -he cried tragically.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You might better go and use such brains as you have -in doing a man’s work,” retorted Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He reproached her mournfully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How unkind you are.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If you came here as a window-cleaner or a lift porter -I might be kinder. You’re quite a nice boy,” she went -on after a pause, “otherwise I shouldn’t have anything -to do with you. But you haven’t begun to learn the -elements of life. You’re utterly devoid of the sense of -duty or responsibility. Like the criminal, you know. -Oh, don’t get angry. I’m talking to you for your good. -Pretending to teach idle women worthless dancing isn’t -a career for a man. It’s contemptible. Every man—especially -nowadays—ought to pull his weight in the -world. The war’s not over. The real war is only just -beginning. Instead of pulling your weight you think it’s -your right to sit on a cushion, a passenger—or a Pekie -dog—and let other people pull you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t understand——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, yes I do. One has to live, and at first we take -any old means to hand. But you’ve been going on at -this for a couple of years and haven’t tried to get out of -it. You like it, Bobby——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I loathe it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t,” she went on remorselessly, with her newly -acquired knowledge of what a man’s life could be. “All -you loathe is the work—especially when it doesn’t -bring you in as much money as you want. You hate -work.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Resentment gradually growing out of amusement at -his presumptuous proposal had wrought her to a pitch -of virtuous indignation. Here was this young man, of -cultivated manners, intelligent, able-bodied, attractive, -rejecting any kind of mission in existence, and——</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Look here, Bobby,” she said, rising from her chair -by the tea-table and dominating him with a little gesture, -“don’t get up. You sit there. You’ve asked me to marry -you, because you think I’m rich. Hold your tongue,” -she flashed, as he was about to speak. “I’ll take all the -love and that sort of thing for granted. But if I was -poor you wouldn’t have thought of it. At the back of -your mind you imagine that if I married you, we could -lead a life of Percy’s and the Savoy and Monte Carlo and -the South Sea Islands, and you needn’t do another stroke -of work all your life long.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He leaned forward in his chair protesting eagerly that -it wasn’t true. He would marry her to-morrow were she -penniless. She had his salvation soul and body in her -hands. He hungered for work; but the coils of his present -life had a strangle-hold on him. Suddenly he rose -and advanced a step towards her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Listen, Olivia. If you won’t marry me, will you help -me in other ways? I’m desperate. You think you know -something about the world. But you don’t. I’m up -against it. It may mean prison. For the love of God -lend me a couple of hundred pounds.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The ugly word prison sent a stab through her heart; -but immediately afterwards the common-sense of her -Gale ancestry told her either that he was lying, or, if it -were true, that he deserved it. She asked coldly:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What have you been doing?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t tell you,” he said. “You must trust me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I don’t and that is why I can’t lend you two hundred -pounds.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You refuse?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His soft voice became a snarl and his lip curled unpleasantly -back beneath the little silky moustache.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course I do.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know how you dare, after all the encouragement -you’ve given me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stared at him aghast. “Encouragement?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. Didn’t you make me dance attendance on you -at Brighton? Haven’t you brought me here over and -over again? You’ve behaved damnably to me. You’ve -made me waste my time. I’ve turned other women who -would have only been too glad——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In horror, she flew to the door and threw it open.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Go,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And speeding across the hall she threw open the flat -door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Go,” she said again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She crossed the landing and rang the lift bell and returned -to the hall, where he met her and threw himself on -his knees and looked up at her with wild, hunted eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Forgive me, Olivia. For God’s sake forgive me. I -was mad. I didn’t know what I was saying. Shut that -door and I’ll tell you everything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Olivia passed him by into the sitting-room, and -stood with her back against the door until she heard the -clash of the lift gates and the retreating footsteps of -Bobby Quinton.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A short while ago she had nearly quarrelled with -Mauregard because, in a wordy dissertation on the -modern young men who lived on women, he instanced -Bobby as possibly coming within the category. Now she -knew that Mauregard was right. She felt sick. Also -deadly ashamed of her superior attitude of well-meant -reprimand. She burned with the consciousness of tongue -in cheek while he listened. Well, that was the end of the -Lydian galley.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She did not recover till the next afternoon, when Triona -called to take her to the Blenkirons’ Sunday intellectual -symposium in Fielder’s Park. She welcomed him impulsively -with both hands outstretched, as a justification -of her faith in mankind.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can’t tell how glad I am to see you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you,” said he, kissing first one hand and then -the other, “can’t tell how good I think God is to me.”</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='139' id='Page_139'></span>CHAPTER X</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>H</span><span class='sc'>E</span> brought great news. Not only had his publishers -thought well of the novel and offered -him good terms, including a substantial advance, -but they professed themselves able to place it -serially in England for a goodly sum. They had also -shown him the figures of the half-yearly returns on -American sales of <span class='it'>Through Blood and Snow</span> which transcended -his dreams of opulence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had forgotten America,” he said naïvely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re nothing, if not original,” she laughed. “That’s -what I like about you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He insisted on the wild extravagance of a taxi to the -garden city. All that money he declared had gone to -his head. He felt the glorious intoxication of wealth. -When they were about to turn off the safe highway into -devious garden-city paths, he said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let us change our minds and go straight on to John -o’ Groats.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right. Let us. We’re on the right road.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He swerved towards her. “Would you? Really?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She opened her bag and took out her purse.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve got fifteen and sevenpence. How much have -you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“About three pounds ten.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sighed. “This unromantic taxi man would charge -us at least five pounds to take us there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We can turn back and fill our pockets at the bank.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s Sunday.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I never before realized the blight of the British Sabbath.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So we’re condemned to Fielder’s Park.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But one of these days we’ll go, you and I together, -to John o’ Groats—as far as we can and then——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And then?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And then we’ll take a ship and sail and sail until we -come to the Fortunate Isles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll let Myra come too?” said Olivia, deliciously -anxious to keep to the playful side of an inevitable road.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course. We’ll find her a husband. The cabin-boy. -<span class='it'>Pour mousse un chérubin.</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And when we get to the Fortunate Isles, what should -we do there?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We shall fill our souls with sunlight, so that we could -use it when we came back to our work in this dark and -threatening modern world.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The girl’s heart leapt at the reply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll go up to John o’ Groats with you whenever you -like,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the taxi, at that moment drawing up before the -detached toy villa, whose “Everdene” painted on the -green garden gate proclaimed the home of the Blenkirons, -inhibited Triona’s reply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They found within an unbeautiful assemblage of humans -inextricably mingled with crumbling cake and -sloppy cups of tea and cigarette smoke. Agnes, shining -with heat and hospitality, gave them effusive welcome -and, extricating her brother from a distant welter, introduced -him to the newcomers. He was a flabby-faced -young man with a back-thatch of short rufous hair surmounting -a bald forehead. By his ears grew little -patches of side whiskers. He wore an old unbuttoned -Norfolk jacket and a red tie in a soft collar without an -under pin. He greeted them with an enveloping clammy -hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So good of you to come, Miss Gale. So glad to meet -you, Mr. Triona. We have heard so much about you. -You will find us here all very earnest in our endeavour to -find a Solution—for never has human problem been so -intricate that a Solution has not been discovered.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s the problem?” asked Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, my dear lady, there’s only one. The Way Out—or, -if you have faith—The Way In.” He caught a -lean, thin-bearded man by the arm. “Dawkins, let me -introduce you to Miss Gale. Mr. Dawkins is our <span class='it'>rapporteur</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You haven’t any tea,” said Dawkins rebukingly, as -though bidden to a marriage feast she had no wedding -garment. “Come with me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He frayed her a passage through the chattering swarm -that over-filled the little bow-windowed sitting-room and -provided her with what seemed to be the tepid symbols of -the brotherhood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What did you think of Roger’s article in this week’s -<span class='it'>Signal</span>?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who is Roger, and what is <span class='it'>The Signal</span>?” Olivia asked -simply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Dawkins stared at her for a second and then, deliberately -turning, wormed his path away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia’s gasp of surprise was followed by a gurgle of -laughter which shook her lifted cup so that it spilled. The -sight of a stained skirt drew from her a sharp exclamation -of dismay. Agnes Blenkiron disengaging herself -from the cluster round the tea-table came to the rescue. -What was the matter? Olivia explained.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, my dear,” said Agnes, “I ought to have told you. -It’s my fault. Dawkins is such a touchy old thing. -Roger, of course, is my brother—didn’t you know? And -<span class='it'>The Signal</span> is our weekly. Dawkins is the editor.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m awfully sorry,” said Olivia, “but ought I to read -<span class='it'>The Signal</span>?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, of course,” replied Agnes Blenkiron intensely. -“Everybody ought to read it. It’s the only periodical -that matters in London.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia felt the remorse of those convicted of an unpardonable -crime.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll get a copy to-morrow at the bookstall at Victoria -Station.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Agnes smiled in her haggard way. “My dear, an organ -like <span class='it'>The Signal</span> doesn’t lie on the bookstalls, like <span class='it'>Comic -Cuts</span> or <span class='it'>The Fortnightly Review</span>. It’s posted to private -subscribers, or it’s given away at meetings.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who pays for the printing of it?” asked the practical -Olivia, who had learned from Triona something of the -wild leap in cost of printed matter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Aubrey Dawkins finds the money. He gets it in the -City. He has given up his heart and soul to <span class='it'>The Signal</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve made an enemy for life,” said Olivia penitently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Miss Blenkiron reassured her. “Oh, no you haven’t. -We haven’t time for enemy making here. Our business is -too important.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia in a maze asked:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is your business?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, my dear child, the Social Revolution. Didn’t -you know?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not a bit,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She learned many astonishing things that afternoon, -as she was swayed about from introduction to introduction -among the eagerly disputing groups. Hitherto she -had thought, with little comprehension, of the world-spread -social unrest. Strikes angered her because they -interfered with necessary reconstruction and only set the -working classes in a vicious circle chasing high wages -and being chased in their turn by high prices. At other -demands she shuddered, dimly dreading the advent of -Bolshevism. And there she left it. She had imagined -that revolutionary doctrines were preached to factory -hands either secretly by rat-faced agents, or by brass-throated, -bull-necked demagogues. That they should be -accepted as a common faith by a crowd of people much -resembling a fairly well-to-do suburban church congregation -stirred her surprise and even dismay.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t see how intelligent folk can hold such views,” -she said to Roger Blenkiron, who had been defending -the Russian Soviet system as a philosophic experiment in -government.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He smiled indulgently. “Doesn’t the fault lie rather -in you, dear lady, than in the intelligent folk?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Would that argument stand,” she replied, “if you had -been maintaining that the earth was flat and stood still in -space?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. The roundness and motion of the earth are ascertained -physical facts. But—I speak with the greatest -deference—can you assert it to be a scientific fact that a -community of human beings are <span class='it'>a priori</span> incapable of managing -their own affairs on a basis of social equality?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course I can,” Olivia declared, to the gentle -amusement of standers-by. “Human nature won’t allow -it. With inequalities of brain and character social equality -is impossible.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dear Lady”—she hated the apostrophe as he said it -and the lift of the eyebrows which caused an upward ripple -that was lost in the far reaches of his bald forehead. -“Dear Lady,” said he, “in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot -you can find every grade of human intellect, from the -inbred young aristocrat who is that much removed”—he -flicked a finger nail—“from a congenital idiot to the acute-brained -statesman; every grade of human character from -the lowest of moral defectives to the highest that the -present civilization can produce. And yet they are all on -a social equality. And why? They started life on a -common plane. The same phenomenon exists in a mass-meeting -of working-men—in any assemblage of human -beings of a particular class who have started life on a -common plane. Now, don’t you see, that if we abolished -all these series of planes and established only one plane, -social equality would be inevitable?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t see how you’re going to do it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah! That’s another question. Think of what the -task is. To make a clean sweep of false principles to -which mankind has subscribed for—what do I know—say—eight -thousand years. It can’t be done in a day. Not -even in a generation. If you wish to render a pestilence-stricken -area habitable, you must destroy and burn for -miles around before you can rebuild. Extend the area -to a country—to the surface of the civilized globe. That’s -the philosophic theory of what is vulgarly called Bolshevism. -Let us lay waste the whole plague-stricken fabric -of our civilization, so that the world may arise, a new -Phœnix, under our children’s hands.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have put the matter to Miss Gale with your -usual cogency, my dear Roger,” said Dawkins, who had -joined the group. “Perhaps now she may take a less -flippant view of our activities.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He smiled, evidently meaning to include the neophyte -in the sphere of his kind indulgence. But Olivia flushed -at the rudeness of his words.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona who, hidden from Olivia by the standing group, -had been stuffed into a sedentary and penitential corner -with two assertive women and an earnest young Marxian -gasfitter, and had, nevertheless, kept an alert ear on the -neighbouring conversation, suddenly appeared once more -to her rescue.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Pardon me, sir,” said he, “but to one who has gone -through, as I have done, the Bolshevist horrors which you -advocate so complacently, it’s your view that hardly seems -serious.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Atrocities, my dear friend,” said the seer-like Dawkins, -“are proverbially exaggerated.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s a fellow like you mentioned in the Bible,” -retorted Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have always admired Didymus for his scientific -mind,” said Dawkins.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona pulled up his trouser leg and exposed his ankle. -“That’s the mark of fetters. There was a chain and a -twelve pound shot at the end of it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Doubtless you displeased the authorities,” said Dawkins -blandly. “Oh, I’ve read your book, Mr. Triona. -But before judging I should like to hear the other side.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m afraid, Mr. Blenkiron,” said Triona, growing -white about the nostrils, to his host who stood by in a detached -sort of manner, with his hands on his hips, “I’ve -unconsciously abused your hospitality.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Blenkiron protested cheerfully. “Not a bit, my dear -fellow. We pride ourselves on our broad mindedness. If -you preached reactionary Anglicanism here you would be -listened to with respect and interest. On the other hand, -we expect the same consideration to be shown to the -apostles—if you will pardon the word—of our advanced -thought. Your experiences were, beyond doubt, very -terrible. But we admit the necessity of a reign of terror. -We shall have it in this country within the next ten -years. Possibly—probably—all of us here and all the -little gods we cling to will be swept away like the late -Russian aristocracy and <span class='it'>intelligentsia</span>. But suppose we -are all—Dawkins, my sister, and myself—prepared to -suffer martyrdom for the sake of humanity, what would -you have to say against us? Nay—you can be quite -frank. Words cannot hurt us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I should say you ought to be tied up in Bedlam,” -said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you agree with that, Miss Gale?” said Roger -Blenkiron, turning on her suddenly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She reflected for a moment. Then she replied: “If -you can prove beyond question that in fifty years’ time -you will create a more beautiful world, there’s something -in your theories. If you can’t, you all ought to be shot.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He laughed and held out his hand. “That’s straight -from the shoulder. That’s what we like to hear. Shake -hands on it.” He drew a little book from his pocket and -scribbled a memorandum. “You’re on the free-list of -<span class='it'>The Signal</span>. I think Agnes has your address. You’ll -find in it overwhelming proof. Perhaps, Mr. Triona, too, -would like——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Triona shook his head. “As a technical alien perhaps -it would be inadvisable for me to be in receipt of -revolutionary literature.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I quite understand,” smiled Blenkiron, returning the -book to his pocket.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Dawkins melted away. Other guests took leave of -their host. Triona and Olivia, making a suffocating -course towards the door, were checked by Agnes Blenkiron -who was eager to introduce them to Tom Pyefinch -who, during the war had suffered, at the hands of a capitalist -government, the tortures of the hero too brave to -fight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, no, no,” cried Olivia horrified.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Agnes did not hear. But Pyefinch, a pallid young -man with a scrubby black moustache, was too greatly occupied -with his immediate circle to catch his hostess’s eye. -From his profane lips Olivia learned that patriotism was -the most blatant of superstitions: that the attitude of the -fly preening itself over its cesspool was that of the depraved -and mindless being who could take pride in being -an Englishman. He was not peculiarly hard on England. -All other countries were the mere sewerages of the nationalities -that inhabited them. The high ideals supposed -to crystallize a nation’s life were but factitious and -illusory, propagated by poets and other decadents in the -pay of capitalists: in reality, patriotism only meant the -common cause of the peoples floundering each in its separate -sewer. . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mere rats, he declared, changing his metaphor. That -was why he and every other intelligent man in the country -refused to join in the rat fight which was the late war.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia clutched Triona’s arm. “For God’s sake, Alexis, -let us get out of this. It makes me sick.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They drew deep breaths when they escaped into the -fresh air. To Olivia, the little overcrowded drawing-room, -deafening with loud voices, sour with the smell -of milky tea and Virginian tobacco, reeking almost physically -with the madness of anarchy, seemed a miniature -of the bottomless pit. The irony of the man’s talk—the -need to purify by flame a plague-stricken area! God once -destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Why did He not blast -with fire from heaven this House of Pestilence?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alexis Triona laughed sympathetically at her outburst.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I confess they’re rather trying,” he remarked. -“Whenever you hear English people say they belong to -the <span class='it'>intelligentsia</span>, you may be sure they’re frightened at -common sense as not being intellectual enough. Blenkiron -and Dawkins are fools of the first water; but Pyefinch -is dangerous. I am afraid I lost my temper,” he -added after a few steps.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You were splendid,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>More than ever did he seem the one clear-brained, -purposeful man of her acquaintance in the confused -London world. Rapidly she passed them in review as -she walked. Of the others Mauregard was the best; but -he was spending his life on fribbles, his highest heaven -being a smile on the lips of a depraved dancing-woman. -Then, Sydney Rooke, Mavenna, and, even worse now -than Mavenna, the unspeakable Bobby Quinton. So -much for the Lydian set of professed materialists and -pleasure-seekers. In accepting Agnes Blenkiron’s invitation -she had pleasurable anticipation of entering a sphere -of earnest thinkers and social workers who might guide -her stumbling footsteps into the path of duty to herself -and her kind. And to her dismay she had met Dawkins -and Blenkiron and Pyefinch, earnest, indeed, in their -sophistry and mad in their theories of destruction. Her -brain was in a whirl with the doctrines to which she had -listened. She felt terrified at she knew not what. Even -Lydia’s cynical world was better than this. Yet between -these two extremes there must be a world of high endeavour, -of science, art, philanthropy, thought; that in -which, she vaguely imagined, Blaise Olifant must have -his being; even that of the women at the club dinner. -But her mind shook off women as alien to its subconscious -argument. In this conjectural London world one man -alone stood out typical—the man striding loosely by her -side. A young careless angel, he had delivered her from -Mavenna. A man, he had exorcised her horror of Bobby -Quinton. And now, once more, she saw him, in her girlish -fancy, a heroic figure, sane, calm, and scornful, facing -a horde of madmen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They walked, occasionally losing their way and being -put on it by chance encounters, through the maze of new -and distressingly decorous avenues, some finished, others -petering out, after a few houses, into placarded building -lots or waste land; a wilderness not of the smug villa-dom -of old-established suburbs, but of a queer bungalow-dom -assertive, in its distinctive architecture, of unreal -pursuit of Aspirations in capital letters. Most of the -avenues abutted on a main street of shops with pseudo-artistic -frontages giving the impression that the inhabitants -of the City could only be induced to satisfy the -vulgar needs of their bodies by the lure of the æsthetic.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t let us judge our late friends too harshly,” said -Triona waving an arm. “All this is the Land of Self-Consciousness.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At last they made their way through the solider, stolider -fringes of the main road, and emerged on the great -thoroughfare itself, wide and unbusied on this late summer -Sunday afternoon. Prosaically they lingered, waiting -for an infrequent omnibus.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thank goodness, we’re out of the Land of Self-Consciousness,” -said Olivia. “The Great North Road is -too big a thing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Their eyes met in a smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t forget your love of big things,” said he. “It’s -inspiring. Yes. It’s a big thing. And it doesn’t really -begin in London. It starts from Land’s End—and it goes -on and on through the heart of England and through -the heart of Scotland carrying two nations’ history on its -flanks, caring for nothing but its appointed task, until -it sighs at John o’ Groats and says: ‘My duty’s done.’ -There’s nothing that stirs one’s imagination more than a -great road or a great river. Somehow I prefer the road.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re nearer to it because it was made by man.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How our minds work together!” he cried admiringly -“I only have to say half a thing and you complete it. -More than that—you give my meaningless ideas meaning. -Yes. God’s works are great. But we can’t measure -them. We have no scale for God, But we have for -Man, and so Man’s big works thrill us and compel us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What big thing could we do?” asked Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you mean humanity—or you and I together?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Two human beings thinking alike, and free and -honest.” Instinctively she took his arm and her step -danced in time with his. “Oh, you don’t know how good -it is to feel real. Let us do something big in the world. -What can we do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can help me to the very biggest thing in all the -universe—for me,” he cried, pressing her arm tight against -him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her pulses throbbed. She knew that further argument -on her part would be but exquisite playing with words. -The hour which, in her maidenly uncertainty she had -dreaded, had now come, and all fear had passed away. -Yes; now she was real; now she was certain that her -love was real. Real man, real woman. Her heart leaped -to him with almost the shock of physical pain. Again in -a flash she swept the Lydian and the Blenkiron firmament -and exulted. Yet in her happiness she said with -very foolish and with very feminine guile:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, my dear Alexis, that’s what I’ve longed for. If -only I could be of some little help to you!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Help?” He laughed shortly and halted and swung -her round. “Have you ever tried to think what you are -to me? Would you like me to tell you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She disengaged herself and walked delicately on.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It may pass the time till the bus comes,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He began to tell her. And three minutes afterwards -the noisy, infrequent motor-bus passed them by, unheeded -and even unperceived.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='152' id='Page_152'></span>CHAPTER XI</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>S</span><span class='sc'>OMEWHERE</span> on the South Coast, screened from -the vulgar by the trap of a huge watering-place, is -a long, thin, sandy promontory sticking out to -sea, like an innocent rib of wilderness. Here there is no -fun of the fair, because there is no fair to provide the -fun. There are no taverns, no boarding-houses, no lodgings. -One exclusive little hotel rules the extreme tip -of the tongue of land in consort with the miniature jetty -and quay by which, in late exciting times, strange craft -were moored, flying the white ensign and hoar with -North Sea brine and deadly secrets. The rest of the -spit is peppered with a score of little shy houses, each -trying to hide itself from its neighbours, in the privacy -of its own sandpit. If your house is on the more desirable -side of it, you can look out over the vastness of -the sea with the exhilarating certainty (if your temperament -may thereby be exhilarated) that there is nothing -but blue water between you and the coast of Africa. -If your house is, less fortunately, on the other side, your -view commands a spacious isle-studded harbour fringed -by distant blue and mysterious hills. But it is given to -any one to walk out of the back of his little hermitage, -and, standing in the dividing road, to enjoy, in half a minute, -both aspects at once. It is called esoterically by -its frequenters “the Point,” so that the profane, map-searching, -may not discover its whereabouts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Just high enough to be under the lee of a sand-hill, with -its front windows and veranda staring at the African -coast, some thousand miles away, stood the tiniest, most -fragile and most absurd of the habitations. Its name was -“Quien Sabe,” suggestive of an imaginative abandonment -of search after nomenclature by the original proprietor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A house called ‘Quien Sabe’——” said Alexis.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is the house for us,” cried Olivia, aglow.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They took it at once, without question. It wasn’t as -if it were an uncertain sort of place, like “Normanhurst,” -or “Sea View.” The name proclaimed frankly the certainty -of venturesomeness. And Alexis Triona, sitting on -the scrubby grass and sand, his back against the little -veranda, the infinite sea and all the universe enveloped -in still moonlight, laughed the laugh of deep happiness -at their childish inspiration. He rolled, licked and lit -the final cigarette. Tobacco was good. Better was this -August night of velvet and diamonds. Below, the little -stone groin shone like onyx. The lazy surf of ebb-tide -far away on the sand of a tiny bay glimmered like the -foam in fairyland.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Only half the man’s consciousness allowed itself to be -drenched with the beauty of the night. The other half -remained alert to a voice, to a summons, to something -more rare and exquisite than the silver air and murmuring -sea and the shine of all the stars. A few minutes before, -languorous by his side, she had been part and parcel of it -all. The retreating ripple of wave had melted into the -softness of her voice. Her laughing eyes had gleamed -importance in the stellar system. The sweet throb of her -body, as she had reclined, his arm about her, was rhythmic -with the pulsation of the night. And now she had gone; -gone just for a few moments; gone just for a few moments -until she would divinely break the silence by the -little staccato cry of his name; but, nevertheless, her -transitory severance had robbed this outer world of half -its beauty. He had consciously to incorporate her in -order to give meaning to this wonder of amethyst and -aquamarine and onyx and diamond and pearl and velvet -and the infinite message of the immensities coming through -the friendly silence of the moon.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>They had been married all of a sudden, both caught up -on the wings of adventure. They were young, free as -air. Why should they wait? They kept it secret, a -pair of romantics. Only Blaise Olifant, summoned from -Medlow, and Janet Philimore were admitted into the -conspiracy, and attended the wedding. At first Olivia -had twinges of conscience. As a well-conducted young -woman she ought to ask her old friend, Mr. Trivett, to -stand <span class='it'>in loco parentis</span> and give her away. But then there -would be Mrs. Trivett and the girls to reckon with. Mr. -Fenmarch, left out, might take offence. The news, too, -would run through every Medlow parlour. Old John -Freke, in his weekly letter to Lydia, would be sure to allude -to the matter; and it was Lydia and the galley that -she most desired to keep in ignorance. So they were married, -by special licence, at the church in Ashley Place, one -quiet, sunny morning, in the presence of Myra and the -two witnesses they had convened.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As they emerged into the sunshine after the ceremony, -Olifant said to her:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve never been so reluctant to give anything away -in my life.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She asked a laughing “Why?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dog in the manger, I suppose.” He smiled whimsically. -“I shall feel more of a bachelor than ever when I -get back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You needn’t, unless you like.” She motioned slightly -with her head towards Janet, talking to Alexis, a few feet -away. “I’ve not been too busy to think of matchmaking. -She’s the dearest of girls.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But not my landlady.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her happy laughter rippled forth, calling the others -near.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He wants a law forbidding the marriage of landladies. -But think of the advantage. Now you can have your -landlady to stay with you—in strict propriety—if you -will ask us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We settled that with Alexis last night,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Three taxis were waiting. One for the bride and -bridegroom. One, already piled with luggage, for Myra -who after being fervently kissed in the vestry by Olivia, -had said by way of congratulation:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, dearie, it’s better than being married in a Registry -Office,” and had gone forth unemotionally to see that -the trunks were still there. And one for Olifant and -Janet. They drove to the station, to the train which -was to take them on their way to the home which in -their romanticism they had never troubled to see.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m sure it’s all right,” said Janet, who had been responsible -for their taking “Quien Sabe.” “Father and -I’ll be at The Point in a fortnight. If you don’t want to -see us, tie a white satin bow on the gate and we won’t -mind a bit.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For General Philimore was the happy owner of one -of the little hermitages on The Point, and like a foolish -old soldier lived there in holiday times, instead of letting -it for the few summer weeks at the yearly rental of his -London flat; so that Janet assumed the airs of an authority -on The Point, and wrote stern uncompromising -business letters to agents threatening them with the displeasure -of the daughter of a Major-General, if a “Quien -Sabe” swept, garnished, and perfectly appointed, with a -charwoman, ditto, in attendance, did not receive the -bridal pair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s not a palace, Mr. Triona,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What has it to do with me?” he answered. “A dream -nest in a cliff for this bird wife of mine is all I ask for.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia’s eyes smiled on him. Why was he so different -from the rest of men—even from so fine a type as Blaise -Olifant? She appraised them swiftly. The soldier had -not yet been sunk into the scholar. He stood erect, clean -built, wearing his perfectly fitting grey suit like uniform, -his armless sleeve pinned across his chest, his lip still -bearing the smart little military moustache, his soft grey -hat at ever so slightly a swaggering angle on his neatly -cropped head. A distinguished figure, to which his long -straight nose added a curious note of distinction and -individuality. But all that he was you saw in a glance: -the gentleman, the soldier, the man of intellect. On the -other hand, there stood the marvellous man that was -her husband, hiding behind the drawn boyish face God -knew what memories of pain heroically conquered and -God knew what visions of genius. Although he had gone -to a good tailor for his blue serge suit—she had accompanied -him—he had the air of wearing clothes as a concession -of convention. The lithe frame beneath seemed -to be impatient of their restraint. They fitted in an easy -sort of way, but were dominated by his nervous eager -personality. One flash of a smile illuminating eyes and -thin face, one flashing gesture of hand or arm, and for -ought any one knew or cared, he might be dressed in chain -armour or dungaree.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The little speech pleased her. She slipped her hand -through the crook of his arm in the pride of possession.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did you ever hear such an undomesticated pronouncement?” -she laughed. “We’re going to change all that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And the train carried them off to the great wonder and -change of their lives.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The train out of sight, Blaise Olifant stuck in his pocket -the handkerchief he had been waving, and turned with a -sigh.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope she’ll be happy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why shouldn’t she?” asked Janet Philimore.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was a bright-cheeked, brown-eyed, brown-haired -girl, with a matter-of-fact manner.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know of no reason,” he replied. “I was expressing -a hope.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He saw her to her homeward-bound omnibus and -walked, somewhat moodily, on his road. After a day -or two, the pleasures of London proving savourless, he -returned to Medlow. But “The Towers” no longer -seemed quite the same. He could not tell why. The -house had lost fragrance.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile the pair had gone to the little toy home -whose questioning name pointed to mystery. There were -just three rooms in it, all opening on to a veranda full -in sight (save for the configuration of the globe) of the -African coast. On this veranda, sitting back, they lost -sight of the whin-grown slope and the miniature sandy -cove beneath; and their world was but a welter of sea, -and its inhabitants but a few gulls, sweeping and swirling -past them with a shy friendliness in their yellow -eyes. In a dip of the sand-hill, just behind this elementary -dwelling and communicating with it by a short covered -way, stretched an old railway carriage divided into -kitchen, pantry, bathroom, and bunks.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s the craziest place I’ve ever seen,” said Myra. -“People will be living in old aeroplanes next.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the very craziness of the habitation made for their -selfish joy. The universe, just for these twain, had gone -joyously mad. A cocky little villa made to the model of -a million others would have defeated the universe’s benign -intention. Nothing could be nearer to Triona’s -dream nest in a cliff. Their first half-hour’s exploring, -hand in hand, was that of children let loose in a fairy -tale castle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s only one egg-cup,” croaked Myra, surveying -an exiguous row of crockery.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How many more do we want?” cried Olivia. “We can -only eat one egg at a time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They passed out and stood on the edge of their small -domain, surveying the sandy beach and the seaweed and -shell-encrusted groin and the limitless sea, and breathed -in the soft salt wind of all the heavens sweeping through -their hair and garments, and he put his arm around her -and kissed her—and he laughed and said, looking into -her eyes:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sweetheart, Heaven is empty and all the angels are -here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>On sunny days they lived in the sea, drying themselves -on their undisturbed half-moon of beach.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where did you learn to swim?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He hesitated for a second, casting at her one of his -swift, half furtive glances. Then he replied:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In the Volga.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She laughed. “You’re always romantic. I learned at -commonplace Llandudno.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where’s your sense of relativity, beloved?” said he. -“In Central Russia one regards the coast of Wales as -fantastic fairyland.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Still, you can go to Llandudno to-morrow, if you like—taking -me with you, of course; but I shall never swim -in the Volga, or the Caspian Sea, or Lake Baikal, or any -of those places with names that have haunted me since I -was a little girl.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“One of these days we’ll go—it may be some years, -but eventually Russia must have a settled Government—and -we’ll still be young.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The sun and the hot sand on which she lay, adorable in -deep red bathing kit and cap, warmed her through and -through, flooding her with the sense of physical well-being. -It was impossible that she should ever grow old.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s something to look forward to,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sometimes they hired a boat and sailed and fished. -She admired his handiness and knowledge and prescience -of the weather. Once, as the result of their fishing, they -brought in a basket of bass and gar-fish, the latter a -strange, dainty silver beast with the body of an eel and -the tail of a trout and the beak of a woodcock, and in high -spirits they usurped Myra’s railway-compartment kitchen, -while he fried the catch for lunch. Olivia marvelled at -his mastery. In spite of her sage and deliberate putting -aside of the rose-coloured glasses of infatuation, in whatever -aspect she viewed him, he stood supreme. From the -weaving of high romance to the cooking of fish—the -whole gamut of human activities—there was nothing in -which he did not excel. Her trust in him was infinite. -She lost herself in happiness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It took some days to arouse her to a sense of the outer -world. A letter from Lydia reminded her of her friend’s -pleasant ignorance. With the malice of the unregenerate -feminine, she wrote: “I’m so sorry I can’t be bridesmaid -as you had arranged. How can I, seeing that I am -married myself? It happened all in a hurry, as the -beautiful things in life do. The fuss of publicity would -have spoilt it. That’s why we told nobody. This is -much better than Dinard”—Sydney Rooke’s selection for -the honeymoon. “I haven’t worn a hat since I’ve been -here, and my way of dressing for dinner is to put on -a pair of stockings; sometimes a mackintosh, for we -love to dine on the veranda when it rains. It rained -so hard last night that we had to fix up an umbrella -to the ceiling like a chandelier to catch the water coming -through the roof. So you will see that Alexis and I are -perfectly happy. By the way, I’ve not told you what my -name is. It is Mrs. Triona. . . .” And so on and so on -at the dictate of her dancing gladness, freakishly picturing -Lydia’s looks of surprise, distaste, and reprobation as -she read the letter. Yet she finished graciously, acknowledging -Lydia’s thousand kindnesses, for according to her -lights Lydia had done her best to put her on the only path -that could be trod by comely and well-dressed woman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sealed up her letter and, coming out on to the veranda -where Alexis was correcting the proofs of an article, -told him all about it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t you think we ought to please Lydia and go to -Dinard and wear wonderful clothes, and mix with fashionable -folk, and have expensive meals and gamble in the -Casino, and dance and do our duty as self-respecting -people?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have but to change yourself into whatever fairy -thing you like, my princess,” said he, “and I will follow -you. Where you are, the world is. Where you are not, -there is the blankness of before creation.”</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>Sitting that night, with his back against the veranda, he -thought of this speech of the afternoon. Formulated a -bit self-consciously, it was nevertheless true. The -landscape, no matter what it was, existed merely as a -setting for her. Even in this jewelled wonder of moonlit -sea and sky there was the gap of the central gem.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He rolled and lit another cigarette—this time, surely, -the very last. Why she took so long to disrobe, he never -strove to conjecture. Her exquisite feminine distance -from him was a conception too tremulous to be gripped -with a rough hand and brutally examined. That was the -lure and the delight of her, mystical, paradoxical—he -could define it only vaguely as the nearness of her set -in a far-off mystery. At once she was concrete and -strong as the sea, and as elusive as the Will-o’-the-Wisp of -his dreams.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Thus the imaginative lover; the man who, by imagining -fantasies to be real, had made them real; who, grasping -realities, had woven round them the poet’s fantasy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And meanwhile Olivia, secure in her happiness, kept -him waiting and dreaming because she had made a romantic -vow to record, before going to sleep, each day’s precious -happenings in a diary which she kept under lock -and key in her dressing-case. She wrote sitting up in bed, -and now and then she sniffed and smiled as the soft air -came through the open window laden with the perfume of -the cigarette.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='163' id='Page_163'></span>CHAPTER XII</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>I</span><span class='sc'>N</span> the course of time, Janet Philimore and her attendant -father, the General, arrived at their house -on The Point, and as Olivia, apprised of their -advent, did not tie a white satin bow on her gate, General -and Miss Philimore left cards on the newly wedded -couple, or, more exactly, a pencilled leaf torn out of a -notebook.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Thus arose a little intimacy which Olivia encouraged -on Alexis’s account. Had not her father and brothers -trained her in the ways of men, one of which vital ways -was that which led to the social intercourse of man with -man? Besides, it was a law of sex. If she had not a -woman to talk to, she declared, she would go crazy. It -was much more comforting to powder one’s nose in the -privacy of the gynæceum than beneath man’s unsympathetic -stare. Conversely it had been a dictum of her -father’s that, in order to enjoy port, men must be released -from the distracting chatter of women.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If I’m not broad-minded, I’m nothing,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“ ‘Broad’ is inadequate,” replied her husband, thrusting -back his brown hair. “The very wonder of you is -that your mind is as wide as the infinite air.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Which, of course, was as pleasant a piece of information -as any bride could receive.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The magic of the halcyon days was intensified by the -satisfaction of the sex cravings which, by the symbolism -of nose-powdering and port-drinking, Olivia had enunciated. -In the deeps of her soul she could find no consuming -passion for sitting scorched in a boat with a -baited and contemptuously disregarded line between expectant -finger and thumb. She could not really understand -the men’s anxiety to induce a mentally defective -fish to make a fool of itself. Yet she would have sat -blissfully for hours at his bidding, for the mere joy of -doing as she was bidden; but not to be bidden was a great -relief. Similarly, Alexis could not vie with Olivia in -concentration of being over the selection of material (in -the fly-trap of a great watering-place previously mentioned) -and over the pattern and the manufacture by -knitting of gaudy hued silk jumpers. His infatuated eye -marvelled at the delicate swiftness of her fingers, at the -magical development of the web that was to encase her -adorable body. But his heart wasn’t in it. Janet’s was. -And General Philimore brought to the hooking of bass -the earnest singleness of purpose that, vague years ago, -had enabled him to ensnare thousands of Huns in barbed-wire -netting.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The primitive laws of sex asserted themselves, to the -common happiness. The men fished; the women fashioned -garments out of raw material. We can’t get away -from the essentials of the Stone Age. And why in the -world should we?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But—and here comes the delight of the reactions of -civilization—invariably the last quarter of an hour of -these exclusive sex-communings was filled with boredom -and impatience. Alone at last, they would throw themselves -into each other’s arms with unconscionable gracelessness -and say: “Thank Heaven, they’ve gone!” And -then the sun would shine more brightly and the lap of the -waves around them would add buoyancy to their bodies, -and Myra, ministering to their table wants, would assume -the guise of a high priestess consecrating their intimacy, -and the moon would invest herself with a special splendour -in their honour.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now and then the four came together; a picnic lunch -at some spot across the bay; a wet after-dinner rubber at -bridge, or an hour’s gossip of old forgotten far-off things -and battles of the day before yesterday, or—in the -General’s house—a little idle music. There it was that -Olivia discovered another accomplishment in her wonderful -husband. He could play, sensitively, by ear—knowledge -of notated music he disclaimed. Having been -impressed as a child with the idea that playing from ear -was a sin against the holy spirit of musical instruction, -and gaining from such instruction (at Landsdowne House—how -different if she had been trained in the higher -spheres of Blair Park!) merely a distaste for mechanical -fingering of printed notes, she had given up music with a -sigh of relief, mingled with regret, and had remained unmusical. -And here was Alexis, who boasted his ignorance -of the difference between a crotchet and an arpeggio, -racking the air with the poignant melancholy of -Russian folk-songs, and, in a Puckish twinkle, setting -their pulses dancing with a mad modern rhythm of African -savagery.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, dear, what else can you do?” she asked, after the -first exhibition of this unsuspected gift. “Tell me; for -these shocks aren’t good for my health.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“On the mouth-organ,” he laughed, “I’ve not met any -one to touch me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was not idle boasting. On their next rainy-day visit -to the neighbouring town, Olivia slipped into a toy shop -and bought the most swollenly splendid of these instruments -that she could find, and Alexis played “The Marseillaise” -upon it with all the blare of a steam orchestrion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The happy days sped by in an atmosphere of love and -laughter, yet filled not only with the sweet doings of idleness. -Olivia discovered that the poet-artist must work, -impelled thereto by his poet-artistry. He must write of -the passing things which touched his imagination and -which his imagination, in turn, transmuted into impressions -of beauty. These were like a painter’s sketches, -said he, for use in after-time.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s for you, my dear, that I am making a hoard of -our golden moments, so that one of these days I may lay -them all at your feet.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And he must read, too. During the years that the -locust of war had eaten, his educational development had -stood still. His English literary equipment fell far short -of that required by a successful English man of letters. -Vast tracts of the most glorious literature in the world -he had as yet left unexplored. The great Elizabethan -dramatists, for instance. Thick, serious volumes from the -London Library strewed the furniture of the wind-swept -sitting-room. Olivia, caught by his enthusiasm and -proud to identify herself with him in this feeding of the -fires of his genius, read with him; and to them together -were revealed the clanging majesty of Marlowe, the -subtle beauty of Beaumont and Fletcher, the haunting -gloom of Webster. In the evenings they would sit, lover-like, -the book between them, and read aloud, taking parts; -and it never failed to be an astonishment and a thrill to -the girl when, declaiming a fervid passage, he seemed for -the moment to forget her and to live in the sense of the -burning words. It was her joy to force her emotion to -his pitch.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Once, reading Beaumont and Fletcher’s <span class='it'>Philaster</span>, he -clutched her tightly with his left arm, while his right -hand upstretched, invoked unheeding Heaven, and declaimed:</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>“And then have taken me some mountain girl,</p> -<p class='line0'>Beaten with winds, chaste as the hardened rocks</p> -<p class='line0'>Whereon she dwells; that might have strewn my bed</p> -<p class='line0'>With leaves and reeds, and with the skins o’ Beasts,</p> -<p class='line0'>Our neighbours; and have borne at her big breasts</p> -<p class='line0'>My large coarse issue! This had been a life</p> -<p class='line0'>Free from vexation.”</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, Alexis, darling, I’m so sorry,” she cried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why? What do you mean?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You said it as if you meant it, as if it was the desire of -your heart. I’m not a bit like that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They laughed and kissed. A dainty interlude.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ve never really felt like that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Never.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The idea isn’t even new,” exclaimed Olivia, with grand -inversion of chronology. “Tennyson has something like -it in <span class='it'>Locksley Hall</span>. How does it go?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With a wrinkling of the brow she quoted:</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>“Then the passions cramped no longer shall have scope and breathing space</p> -<p class='line0'>I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>“Iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, they shall dive and they shall run,</p> -<p class='line0'>Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun.”</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>“So he did!” cried Triona. “How wonderful of you to -remember! Why—the dear beautiful old thief!” He -forgot the point at issue in contemplation of the literary -coincidence of plagiarism. “Well, I’m damned! Such -a crib! With the early Victorian veil of prudery over it! -Oh, Lord! Give me the Elizabethan, any day. Yet, -isn’t it funny? The period-spirit? If Tennyson had -been an Elizabethan, he would have walked over Beaumont -and Fletcher like a Colossus; but in a world under -the awe of Queen Victoria’s red flannel petticoat he is -reduced to stealing Elizabethan thunder and reproducing -it with a bit of sheet iron and a stick.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dear,” said Olivia, “we have much to be thankful -for.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You and I?” he queried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Our generation. We live in the sun. No longer -under the shadow of the red flannel petticoat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Rapturously he called her a marvel among women. -Olivia’s common sense discounted the hyperbole; but she -loved his tribute to her sally of wit.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The book slipped to the floor, while she began an argument -on the morality of plagiarism. How far was a man -justified in stealing another man’s idea, working up another -man’s material?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His sudden and excited defence of the plagiarist surprised -her. He rose, strode about the room and, talking, -grew eloquent; quoted Shakespeare as the great exemplar -of the artist who took his goods from everywhere he -found them. Olivia, knowing his joy in conversational -fence, made smiling attack.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In the last three hundred years we have developed a -literary conscience.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A commercial matter,” he declared. “A question of -copyright. I granted that. You have no right to exploit -another man’s ideas to his material loss. But take -a case like this”—he paced before her for a few seconds—“on -the spur of the moment. It must have happened -a thousand times in the War. An unknown dead man -just a kilometre away from a bleak expanse of waste -covered with thousands of dead men. Some one happens -upon him. Searches him for identification. Finds nothing -of any use or interest save a little notebook with -leaves of the thinnest paper next his skin. And he -glances through the book and sees at once that it is no -ordinary diary of war—discomfort of billets, so many -miles’ march, morale of the men and so forth—but something -quite different. He puts it in his pocket. For all -that the modern world is concerned, the dead man is as -lost as any skeleton dug up in an ancient Egyptian grave-yard. -The living man, when he has leisure, reads the -closely written manuscript book, finds it contains rough -notes of wonderful experiences, thoughts, imaginings. -But all in a jumble, ill expressed, chaotic. Suppose, now, -the finder, a man with the story-teller’s gift, weaves a -wonderful thrilling tale out of this material. Who is -injured? Nobody. On the contrary, the world is the -richer.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If he were honest, he ought to tell the truth in a -preface,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona laughed. “Who would believe him? The -trick of writing false prefaces in order to give verisimilitude -is so overworked that people won’t believe the genuine -ones.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose that’s so,” she acquiesced. Her interest in -the argument was only a reflection of his. She was far -more eager to resume the interrupted reading of <span class='it'>Philaster</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s lovely that we always see things in the same way,” -said he, sitting down again by her side.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Besides all this delightful work and play there was the -practical future to be considered. They could not live -for ever at “Quien Sabe” on The Point, nor could they -live at the Lord knows where anywhere else. They must -have a home.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Before you stole over my being and metamorphosed -me, I should have asked—why?” he said. “Any old dry -hole in a tree would have done for me, until I got tired of -it and flew to another. But now——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now you’re dying to live in a nice little house and -have your meals regular and pay rates and taxes, and -make me a respectable woman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They decided that a house was essential. It would -have to be furnished. But what was the object of buying -new furniture at the present fantastic prices when she -had a great house full of it—from real Chippendale chairs -to sound fish-kettles? The answer was obvious.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why not Medlow? Olifant won’t stay there for -ever. He hinted as much.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She shook her head. No. Medlow was excellent for -cabbages, but passion-flowers like her Alexis would wilt -and die. He besought her with laughing tenderness not -to think of him. From her would he drink in far more -sunlight and warmth than his passion-flower-like nature -could need. Had she not often told him of her love for -the quaint old house and its sacred associations? It -would be a joy to him to see her link up the old life with -the new.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Besides,” he urged, attributing her reluctance to -solicitude for his happiness, “it’s the common-sense solution. -There’s our natural headquarters. We needn’t -stay there all the year round, from year’s end to year’s -end. When we want to throw a leg we can run away, to -London, Paris, “Quien Sabe,” John o’ Groats—the wide -world’s before us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Olivia kept on shaking her head. Abandoning -metaphor, she insisted on the necessity of his taking the -position he had gained in the social world of art and -letters. Hadn’t he declared a day or two ago that good -talk was one of the most stimulating pleasures in life? -What kind of talk could Medlow provide? It was far -more sensible, when Major Olifant’s tenancy was over, -to move the furniture to their new habitation and let -“The Towers” unfurnished.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“As you will, belovedest,” he said. “Yet,” he added, -with a curious note of wistfulness, “I learned to love the -house and the sleepy old town and the mouldering castle.” -The practical decision to which she was brought out of -honeymoon lotus-land was the first cloud on her married -happiness. It had never occurred to her before that -she could have anything to conceal from her husband. -Not an incident in the Lydian galley had her ingenuousness -not revealed. But now she felt consciously disingenuous, -and it was horrible. How could she confess -the real reason for her refusal to live in Medlow? Was -she not to him the Fairy Princess? He had told her so -a thousand times. He had pictured his first vision of her -glowing flame colour and dusk beneath the theatre portico, -his other vision of her exquisite in moonlight and snowflake -in the great silent street. His faith in her based -itself on the axiom of her regality. Woman-like, she had -laughed within herself at his dear illusions. But that -was the key of the staggering position; his illusions were -inexpressibly dear to her; they were the priceless jewels -of her love. With just a little craft, so sweet, so divinely -humorous, to exercise she could maintain these illusions -to the end of time. . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But not at Medlow.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had gone forth from it, on her pilgrimage, in order -to establish herself in her mother’s caste. And she had -succeeded. The name of her grandfather, Bagshawe of -the Guides, had been a password to the friendships which -now she most valued. Marriage had defined her social -ambitions. They were modest, fundamentally sane. -Her husband, a man of old family and gentle upbringing, -ranked with her mother and General and Janet Philimore. -He was a man of genius, too, and his place was among -the great ones of the social firmament.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She thought solely in terms of caste, gentle and intellectual. -She swept aside the meretricious accessories of the -Sydney Rooke gang with a reactionary horror.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A few days before, Alexis, lyrically lover like, had said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are so beautiful. If only I could string your neck -with pearls, and build you a great palace . . .” etcetera, -etcetera, etcetera, in the manner of the adoring, but comparatively -impecunious poet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And she had replied:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t want pearls, palaces or motor-cars. They’re -all symbols, my dear, of the Unreal. Ordinary comfort -of food and warmth and decent clothes—yes. But that’s -all. So long as you string my heart with love—and my -mind with noble thoughts.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She longed passionately to live with him, above herself. -And yet, here at the outset, was she living below herself. -She would wake in the morning and, sleepless, grow hot -and clammy at the thought of her deception. And the -whole of her Medlow life drifted miserably through her -consciousness: the schoolgirl’s bitter resentment of the -supercilious nose in the air attitude of the passing -crocodile of Blair Park; of the vicar’s daughters’ condescending -nod—he was a Canon of somewhere and an -“Honourable” to boot—at “that pretty Miss Gale”; her -recognition, when she came to years of sense, of the social -gulf between her family and the neighbouring gentry -whose lives, with their tennis parties and dances and -social doings, seemed so desirable and so remote. To -bring her wonderful husband into that world of “homely -folk,” the excellent, but uncultivated Trivetts, the more -important tradespeople, the managers of the mills, the -masters of the County School, her father’s world, and to -see him rigidly excluded from that to which her mother -and he himself belonged, was more than she could bear. -She tortured herself with the new problem of snobbery—rating -herself, in this respect, beneath Lydia, who was -frankly cynical as to both her own antecedents and her -late husband’s social standing. But for the life of her she -could not bring herself to explain to Alexis the real impossibility -of Medlow. When she tried, she found that -his foreign upbringing failed to seize the fine shade of her -suggestion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His gay carelessness eventually lulled her conscience. -As soon as Olifant had done with “The Towers,” they -could transfer the furniture to whatever habitation they -chose and let the house.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I feel you couldn’t find it in your heart to sell the old -place,” he said. “Besides—who knows—one of these -days——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She thought him the most delicately perceptive of men.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, dear,” she said, her cheek against his. “I couldn’t -sell it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then all Medlow danger was over. She breathed -freely. But still—the little cloud of deceit hung over her -serene mind and cast ever so tiny a shadow over her -rapturous life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had been four weeks in the deliciously sure uncertainty -of “Quien Sabe,” when, one noon while they were -drying themselves in the hot sand and sunshine of their -tiny bay, after a swim, Myra came down gaunt through -the whin-covered hill-side with a telegram in her hand. -With the perversity of her non-recognition of the household -paramountcy of her master, she handed the envelope -to Olivia. The name was just “Triona.” Olivia was -about to open it instinctively when Alexis started to a -sitting position, and, with an eager glance, held out his -hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think it’s for me. I was expecting it. Do you -mind?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She passed it over with a smile. Alexis rose to his -feet, tore the envelope open, and moving a few yards away -towards the surf read the message. Then slowly he tore -it up into the tiniest fragments and scattered them on the -last wavelets of the ebb tide, and stood for a second or two, -staring across the sea. At last he turned. Olivia rose to -meet him. Myra was impassively making her way back -up the rough slope.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s the matter?” asked Olivia, puzzled at his -scrupulous destruction of the telegram and reading something -like fear in his eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve had bad news,” he said. He picked up his bath-gown, -shook it free from sand, and huddled it around him. -“Let us get up to the house.” He shivered. “It’s cold.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She followed him wonderingly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What bad news?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned his head, with a half-laugh. “Nothing so -very desperate. The end of the world hasn’t come yet. -I’ll tell you when I’ve changed.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He rushed up the steps of the veranda and into his -little dressing-room. Olivia, dry and warm, sat in a sun-beat -chair and anxiously waited for him. The instinct of -a loving woman, the delicacy of a sensitive soul, forbade -her teasing with insistent questions a man thrown for -the moment off his balance. Yet she swept the horizon of -her mind for reasons.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A quarter of an hour afterwards—it had seemed a -quarter of a century—he appeared, dressed, not in his -customary flannels, but in the blue serge suit of their -wedding day. The sight of it struck a chill through her -heart.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are going away?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He nodded. “Yes, my dear, I have to.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why? What has happened?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t tell you, dear. That’s the heart-rending part -of it. It’s secret—from the Foreign Office.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She reacted in laughter. “Oh, my darling—how you -frightened me. I thought it was something serious.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course it’s serious, if I have to leave you for three -or four days—perhaps a week.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A week!” She stood aghast. It was serious. How -could she face a lonely epoch of seven days, each counting -twenty-four thousand halting hours? What did it -mean?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There are not many men who know Russian as I do. -I’ve been in touch with the Intelligence Department ever -since I landed in England. That’s why I went to Finland -in the autumn. These things bind me to inviolable -secrecy, beloved. You understand, don’t you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course I understand,” she replied proudly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I could refuse—if you made a point of it. I’m a free -man.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She put her two hands on his shoulders—and ever after -he had this one more unforgettable picture of her—the -red bathing cap knotted in front, dainty, setting off her -dark eyes and her little eager face—the peignoir, carelessly -loose, revealing the sweet, frank mould of her figure -in the red bathing suit.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My father and my two brothers gave their lives for -England. Do you think I could be so utterly selfish as -to grudge my country a week of my husband’s society?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He took her cheeks in his hands. “More and more do -you surpass the Princess of my dreams.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She laughed. “I’m an Englishwoman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And so, you don’t want to know where I’m going?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She moved aside. “Of course I do. I shall be in a -fever till you come back. But if I’m not to know—well—I’m -not to know. It’s enough for me that you’re serving -your country. Tell me,” she said suddenly, catching -him by the coat lapels. “There’s no danger.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He smiled. “Not a little tiny bit. Of that you can -be assured. The worst is a voyage to Helsingfors and -back. So I gathered from the telegram, which was in -execrable Foreign Office Russian.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And when are you going?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“By the first train. I must report to-night.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Can’t I come with you—as far as London?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He considered for a moment. “No,” he said. “Where -would you sleep? In all probability I shall have to take -the midnight boat to Havre.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>An hour later they parted. She returned to the empty -house frightened at she knew not what, insecure, terrifyingly -alone; she was fretted by an uncanny sense of having -mated with the inhabitant of another planet who had -suddenly taken wing through the vast emptiness to the -strange sphere of his birth. She wandered up and down -the veranda, in and out of the three intimate rooms, where -the traces of his late presence, books, papers, clothes, lay -strewn carelessly about. She smiled wanly, reflecting -that he wore his surroundings loosely as he did his clothes. -Suddenly she uttered a little feminine cry, as her glance -fell on his wrist watch lying on the drawing-room mantelpiece. -He had forgotten it. She took it up with the -impulsive intention of posting it to him at once. But the -impulse fell into the nervelessness of death, when she -remembered that he had given her no address. She must -await his telegram—to-morrow, the next day, the day -after, he could not say. Meanwhile, he would be chafing -at the lack of his watch. She worried herself -infinitely over the trifle, unconsciously finding relief in -the definite.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The weary hours till night passed by. She tried to -read. She tried to eat. She thought of going over the -road to the Philimores’ for company; but her mood forbade. -For all their delicacy they would ask reasons for -this sudden abandonment. She magnified its importance. -She could have said: “My husband has gone to London -on business.” But to her brain, overwrought by sudden -emotion, the commonplace excuse seemed inadequate. -She shrank from the society of her kind friends, who -would regard this interplanetary mystery as a matter of -course.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If only Alexis had taken his watch! Perhaps he would -have time to buy another—a consoling thought. Meanwhile -she strapped it on her own wrist, heroically resolved -not to part with it night or day until he returned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sat by the lamp on the sitting-room table, looking -out over the veranda at the pitch blackness of a breathless -night in which not even the mild beat of the surf could -be heard. She might have been in some far Pacific desert -island. Her book lay on her lap—the second volume of -Motley’s <span class='it'>Dutch Republic</span>. All the Alvas and Williams, -all the heroes and villains, all the soldiers and politicians -and burghers were comfortably dead hundreds of years -ago. What did these dead men matter, when one living -man, the equal of them all, had gone forth from her, into -the unknowableness of the night?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Myra came into the room with an amorphous bundle -in her hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The camp bed in the dressing-room isn’t very comfortable—but -I suppose I can sleep on it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia turned swiftly in her chair, startled into human -realities.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. It’s a beast of a thing. But I should love to -have you to be with me. You’re a dear. You sleep in -my bed and I’ll take the dressing-room.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You once gave signs of being a woman of sense,” said -Myra tonelessly. “It seems I was mistaken.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She disappeared with her bundle. Olivia put out the -light and went to bed, where she lay awake all the night, -fantastically widowed, striving with every nerve and every -brain-cell to picture the contemporaneous situation of her -husband. Three o’clock in the morning. He would be -in mid-Channel. Had he secured a berth? Or was he -forced to walk up and down the steamer’s deck? Thank -Heaven, it was a black still night. She stole out of bed -and looked at the sea. A sea of oil. It was something -to be grateful for. But the poor boy without his watch—the -watch which had marked for him the laggard minutes -of captivity, the racing hours of approaching death, the -quiet, rhythmic companion and recorder of his amazing -life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She forced all her will power to sleep; but the blank of -him there on the infinite expanse of mattress she felt like -a frost. The dawn found her with wide and sleepless -eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And while she was picturing this marvel among men -standing by the steamer’s side in the night, in communion -with the clear and heavy stars, holding in his adventurous -grasp the secret of a world’s peace, Alexis Triona was -speeding northwards, sitting upright in a third-class -carriage, to Newcastle-on-Tyne. And at Newcastle he -expected no ship to take him to Finland. Lucky if he -found a cab in the early morning to take him to his destination -three miles away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For the telegram which he had torn to pieces had not -come from the War Office. It was not written in Russian. -It was in good, plain, curt English:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mother dying. Come at once.”</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='181' id='Page_181'></span>CHAPTER XIII</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>A</span> <span class='sc'>TAXICAB</span> took him in dreary rain through the -squalor of Tyneside, now following the dismal -tram lines, now cutting through mean streets, -until they reached a row of low, bow-windows agglutinated -little villas with handkerchief of garden separating them -from the road. At No. 17 he dismissed the cab and swung -wide the flimsy gate. Before he could enter, the house -door opened and a woman appeared, worn and elderly, in -a cheap, soiled wrapper.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose that’s you, John. I shouldn’t have -recognized you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She spoke with a harsh, northern accent, and her face -betrayed little emotion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re Ellen,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Aye. I’m Ellen. You didn’t think I was Jane?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She led the way into a narrow passage and then into -the diminutive parlour.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course not,” said he. “Jane died three years ago. -But you I haven’t seen since I was a child.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked him up and down: “Quite the gentleman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope so. How’s mother?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gave the news dully. The sick woman had passed -through the night safely and was now asleep.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She had made up her mind to see you before she died—she -always was strong willed—and that has kept her alive. -Until I read your telegram I didn’t think you would -come.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He flashed one of his quick glances. “Why not? -This isn’t the first time I’ve come to see her since my -return. If I’ve made my way in the world, that’s no -reason for you to call me undutiful.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t want to quarrel, John,” she said wearily. -“Yes. I know about your visits and the bit of money -you send her. And she’s grateful, poor soul.” She -paused. Then: “You’ll be wanting breakfast.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Also a wash.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you too grand for the sink, or must you have hot -water in your room?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The sink will do. It will be less trouble for you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alexis Triona followed her down the passage, and having -washed himself with a bit of yellow soap and dried -himself on the coarse towel hung on a stretch of string, -went into the tidy kitchen, hung with cheap prints and -faded photographs of departed Briggses, his coat over his -arm, and conversed with his sister in his shirt sleeves -while she fried the eggs and bacon for his meal. His -readiness to fall into the household ways somewhat -mollified her. Her mother had been full of pride in the -great man John had become, and she had expected the airs -and graces of the upstart. Living at Sunderland with her -husband, a foreman riveter, and her children, and going -filially to Newcastle only once a year, she had not met -him on his previous visits. Now her mother’s illness had -summoned her three or four days before, when the -neighbour’s daughter who “did for” Mrs. Briggs, ordinarily -a strong and active woman, found the sudden situation -beyond her powers and responsibility. So, until the -ailing lady discoursed to her of the paragon, she had -scarcely given him a thought for the sixteen years they -had been separated. Her memories of him as a child who -alternated exasperating mischief with bone-idle fits of -reading had not endeared him to her practical mind; and -when the impish dreamer disappeared into the vast inane -of foreign parts, and when she herself was driven by she -knew not what idiot romanticalism into the grey worries -of wifehood and motherhood, her consciousness recorded -the memory of a brother John, but whether he was alive -or dead or happy or miserable was a matter of illimitable -unconcern. Now, however, he had come to life, very -vivid, impressing her with a certain masterfulness in -his manner which had nothing to do with the airs and -graces she despised. Yet she still regarded him with suspicion; -even when, seating himself at the roughly laid end -of the kitchen table and devouring bacon and eggs with -healthy appetite, he enthusiastically praised her cookery.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What I can’t understand is,” she said, standing at the -other end of the table and watching him eat, “why the -name of John Briggs isn’t good enough for you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s difficult to explain,” said he. “You see, I’ve -written a book. Have you read it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She regarded him scornfully. “Do you suppose, with -a husband and seven children I’ve time to waste on -books? I’ve seen it,” she admitted. “Mother has it -bound in brown paper, by the side of her bed.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must read it,” replied Triona, somewhat relieved. -“Then you’ll see why I’ve changed my name.” He -laughed at her uncomprehending face. “I’ve done nothing -criminal, you know, and I’m not hiding from justice.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose an outlandish name brings in more money,” -she suggested practically.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s so,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Fools must be fools.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He acquiesced gladly, gauging the end of an embarrassing -examination, and turned the conversation to her -domestic affairs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Breakfast over, he lit a cigarette and watched her clear -away, viewing through the smoke the memories of his -childhood. Just so, in that very wooden arm-chair, -though in another kitchen, used his father to sit, pipe -in mouth, while the women did the household work. It -was all so familiar, yet so far away. Between then and -now stretched a lifetime—so it seemed—of wide and -romantic happenings. There, before him, on the wall -hung, as it did years ago, the haunting coloured print, -cut from some Christmas Number, of young Amyas -Leigh listening to Salvation Yeo. As a child, Salvation -Yeo’s long arm and finger pointing out to sea had been his -inspiration. He had followed it, and gone to distant -lands and gone through the promised adventures, and -had returned to the picture, wondering whether all that -had been was real and not the figment of a dream.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A little later, after the doctor’s visit, he was admitted -to his mother’s room. For an hour or so he sat with -her and gave a human being deep happiness. In the -afternoon she lost consciousness. For a day or two she -lingered on, and then she died.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>During the dreary interval between his interview and -the funeral, Alexis Triona sat for many hours in his -father’s chair, for the North was smitten with a dismal -spell of rain and tempest which discouraged rambling -out of doors, reconstructing his life, unweaving fact from -fiction, tearing aside the veils of self-deception wherein -he had enwrapped his soul. Surely there was some -basis of fact in the romantic history of Alexis Triona -with which for the past year he had identified himself. -Surely a man could not dwell so intensely in an imaginary -life if none of it were real. Even while tearing open -veils and viewing his soul’s nakedness, he sought justification.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Did he not find it in that eagerness of spirit which -had sent him, in obedience to Salvation Yeo’s pointing -finger, away from the dour and narrow father and the -first taste of the Tyneside works, penniless, over the -wild North Sea to Archangel, town of fairy wonders, and -thence, so as not to be caught on the ship again and -taken back to Newcastle, to wanderings he scarce knew -whither? Did he not find it in the strange lure of Russia -which impelled him, when, after a few voyages, he landed -in the port of London, to procure a passport which would -make him free for the land of his fascination? Did he -not find it in the resourcefulness of brain which, the -mariner’s life forsaken, first secured him employment in -the English racing establishment of a Russian Prince, -and then interested recognition by the Princess herself, -so that, after a strenuous while he found himself no -longer as an inconsiderable stable hand, but as a human -being who counted in the world? Did he not find it in -his fond ambitions, when the Princess at his request -transferred him from stables to garage, from garage -to motor-works for higher training; when he set himself -to learn Russian as no Englishman should ever have -learned it; when afterwards he steeped his mind in -Russian poetry and folk-lore, sleeping four or five hours -a night, compelled by dreams of greatness in which there -figured as his bride of the golden future the little Princess -Tania, whose governess-taught English was as pure as -the church bells on a frosty night? Did he not find it -in those qualities of practical command of circumstance -and of poetic vision which had raised him in a few years -from the ragged, semi-ignorant, sea-faring English lout -alone in Russia to the trusted chief of a Prince’s fleet -of a dozen cars, to the courier-chauffeur, with all the -roads and ways and customs and languages of Russia, -from Riga to Tobolsk, and from Tobolsk to Tiflis, and -from Tiflis to St. Petersburg, at his finger tips; to the -Master of Russian Literature, already something of a -published poet, admitted into intellectual companionship -by the Prince and thereby given undreamed of leisure -for further intellectual development? What were those -qualities but the qualities of genius differentiating him -from the ordinary run of men and absolving him from -such judgments as might be passed upon the errant of -them? Without this absolving genius could he have -marched in and taken his place in the modern world of -English letters?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile, being of frugal tastes, he had grown rich -beyond the dream of the Tyneside urchin’s avarice. He -had visions of great motor-works, the manufacture of -an all-Russian car, built up by his own resources. The -princely family encouraged him. Negotiations had just -begun—was his story so devoid of truth?—when the -great world cataclysm brought more than his schemes -for an all-Russian car toppling to the ground. The -Prince’s household was disintegrated; horses and cars -were swallowed up in the great convulsion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He found himself driving generals around the shell-scarred -front as a volunteer, for being of British nationality -he had not been called up for military service. -With them he served in advances and retreats and saw -battles and burnings like many millions of other men, -but from the comparative safety of a headquarters car. -It was not until he ran into the British Armoured Car -Column that his patriotism took fire, and he became a -combatant in British uniform. He remained with the -Column for most of the campaign. Badly wounded towards -the end, he was left in a Russian hospital, a -British naval rating. He remained there many months; -a bullet through his chest had missed a vital part and -the wound had soon healed, but his foot had gangrened, -and only the star in which he trusted had saved it from -amputation. There was no fiction about the three lost -toes whose gap he had shown to Olifant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So far did Alexis Triona, sitting in the kitchen arm-chair, -salve his conscience. In his story had he done more -than remodel the contour of fact? Beneath it did not -the living essence of truth persist? Was he not a highly -educated man? Had he not consorted—before the cataclysm, -and later in the strangely filled hospital—with -the young Russian <span class='it'>intelligentsia</span>, who talked and talked -and talked——? Who could know better than he how -Russia had floundered in their tempestuous ocean of -talk? And, finally, had he not gone, stout-hearted, -through the perils and hardships and exquisite sufferings -of the cataclysm?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So far, so good. But what of the rest? For the rest, -was not Fate responsible?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Revolution came, and Russian organization -crumbled like a castle touched with an enchanter’s -wand. He went forth healed from the hospital into -chaos; Petrograd, where his little fortune lay, his objective. -Sometimes he found a foothold on an aimless -train. Sometimes he jogged weary miles in a peasant’s -cart. Sometimes he walked. When he learned that -British uniform was no longer held in high esteem he -changed to peasant’s dress. So far his journey through -revolutionary Russia was true. But he had enough -money in his pocket to keep him from want.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then arrived the day which counted most in his -life’s history, when that which he had recounted to Olivia -as a fantastic possibility happened in sober fact.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had been given to understand that if he walked -to a certain junction he might find a train returning to -Petrograd. Tired, he sat by the wayside, and undoing -his wallet ate the black bread and dried fish which he -had procured at the last village. And, while eating, he -became aware of something gleaming in the rank grasses -of the ditch—something long and pallid and horrible. -He slid down and found a dead man, stark naked, lying -on his back with the contused mark of a bullet hole -in his chest. A man of fifty, with short-cropped, grizzled -hair and moustache, and clear, refined features. He -must have been dead two days. There he lay, constricted -of limb, stripped of everything that could mean warmth -or comfort or money to his murderers. The living man’s -short experience told him that such things were not uncommon -in great revolutions. He was about to leave -the corpse—for what could he do?—when his eyes caught -the glint of metal a few feet away. It was a pocket -compass. And further on he found at intervals a toothbrush; -a coverless, tattered copy of Tacitus; a little -faded snapshot of a woman mounted on cardboard; a -vulcanite upper plate of half a dozen false teeth; and -a little fat book with curling covers of American cloth. -Had he continued his search he might have found many -other objects discarded by the robbers as useless. But -what was the good of pieces of conviction for a judicial -enquiry that would never take place? The little fat -book, which on opening he found to be manuscript in -minute handwriting, he thrust in his pocket. And so he -went his way.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But on his way, his curiosity being aroused, he read -in the little book an absorbing diary of amazing adventures, -of hardships and prison and tortures unspeakable; -and without a thought of its value, further than -its romantic fascination, he grew to regard it during -his wanderings as his most precious possession.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So far again, until he reached Riga, there was truth -in the story of his Russian traverse. Had he not prowled -suspect about revolutionary Petrograd? Had not the -Prince and Princess, the idealized parents of the story, -been murdered and their wealth, together with his own -few thousand roubles, been confiscated? Was he not a -fugitive? Indeed, had he not seen the inside of a horrible -prison? It is true that after a day or two he managed -by bribery to escape. But the essence of things -was there—the grain of fact which, under the sunlight -of his genius, expanded into the splendid growth of Truth. -And his wit had served him, too. His guards were for -taking away the precious book. Knowing them to be -illiterate, he declared it to be the manuscript of his republican -poem. Challenged to read, he recited from -memory verses of Shevchenko, until they were convinced, -not only of the book’s contents, but of his own revolutionary -opinions. This establishment of his orthodoxy, -together with a few roubles, assured his escape. And -thence had he not gone northwards, hungry and footsore?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And had he not been torpedoed? Cast ashore in shirt -and trousers, penniless? Was not the real truth of this -adventure even more to his credit than the fictitious narrative? -For, a naval rating, he had reported to a British -man-of-war, and had spent months in a mine sweeper -in the North Sea, until the final catastrophe occurred. -Then, after a short time in hospital a kindly medical -board found something wrong with his heart and sent -him out into the English world, a free man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yes. His real record was one that no man need be -ashamed of. Why, then, the fiction?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sitting there in the uncompromising reality of his -mother’s kitchen, he strove for the first time to answer -the question. He found an answer in the obsession of -the little book. During the scant leisure of his months -at sea it had been his breviary. More, it had been a -talisman, a secret scroll of enchantment which, wrapped -in oilskin, never left his person, save when, beneath the -dim lamp of the fo’c’sle, he pored over it, hunched up -against a bulkhead. The spirit of the writer whom he -had seen dead and naked, seemed to have descended upon -him. In the bitter watches of the North Sea he lived -through the dead man’s life with bewildering intensity. -There were times, so he assured himself, when it became -a conscious effort to unravel his own experiences from -those of the dead man. That he had not lived in remoter -Kurdistan was unthinkable. And, surely too, he had -been tortured.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And when, in the attic in Cherbury Mews, impelled -by irresistible force, he began to write his fantasia of -fact and imagination, the obsession grew mightier. His -pen was winged with flame.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why,” said he, half aloud, one day, staring into the -kitchen fire, “why should it not be a case of psychic obsession -for which I am not responsible?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And that was the most comforting solution he could -find.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was none other. He moved uneasily, changing -the crossing of his legs, and threw a freshly rolled and -lighted cigarette into the grate. It was a case of psychic -obsession. Otherwise he was a barefaced liar, a worm -to be despised by his fellow-men. How else to account -for the original lie direct, unreserved, to the publisher? -Up to then he had no thought of sailing through the -world under false colours. He had to give the mysterious -dead man some identity. His own unconscious creative -self clamoured for expression. He had woven the dead -man and himself into a personality to which he had given -the name of Alexis Triona. Naturally, for verisimilitude, -he had assumed “Alexis Triona” as a pen-name. Besides, -who would read a new book by one John Briggs? -The publisher’s first direct question was a blow between -the eyes under which he reeled for a few seconds. Then -the romantic, the psychic, the whatever you will of the -artist’s touch of lunacy asserted itself, and John Briggs -was consumed in ashes and the Phœnix Alexis Triona -arose in his stead. And when the book appeared and -the Phœnix leaped into fame, what could the Phœnix -do, for the sake of its ordinary credit, but maintain its -Phœnixdom?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Until now it had been the simplest matter in the world, -seeing that he half believed in it himself, seeing that the -identification of the dead man with himself was so complete, -that his lies, even to himself, had the generous air -of conviction. But now, in the uncompromising John -Briggs-dom of his surroundings, things were different. -The obsession which still lingered when he bade Olivia -adieu had vanished from his spirit. He saw himself -naked, a mere impostor. If his past found absolution -in the theory of psychic domination, his present was -none the less in a parlous state.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had no more gone to Helsingfors in the last year’s -autumn than he had gone there now. What should John -Briggs, obscure and demobilized able seaman, have to -do in Helsingfors? Why the elaborate falsehood? He -shrugged his shoulders and made a helpless gesture with -his elbows. The obsession again. The quietude of -Medlow had got on his nerves. He had to break away, -to seek fresh environment. He had invented Helsingfors; -it was dramatic, in his romantic past; it kept up, -in the direct mind of Blaise Olifant, the mystery of Alexis -Triona; and it gave him freedom. He had spoken truth -as to his vagabond humour. He loved the eternal change -of the broad highway. The Salvation Yeo inspiration -had persisted ever since he had run away from home to -the El Dorado beyond the seas. Had he been set down -in a torpid household, no matter how princely, sooner -or later he would have revolted and have fled, smitten -with the wander madness. But the Prince, the nomadic -Tartar atavism asserting itself, suffered too much from -this unrest; and in their mighty journeyings through -Russia, up and down, north and south, east and west, -and in the manifold adventures and excitements by the -way, the young chief mechanic found the needful satisfaction -of his cravings. On leaving Medlow he had -started on a tramp, knapsack on back, to the north of -Scotland, stopping at his mother’s house, <span class='it'>en route</span>, and -had reached the John o’ Groats whither, on an eventful -day, Olivia had professed herself ready to accompany -him. She had little guessed how well he knew that long, -long road. . . . Yet, when he met Blaise Olifant again, -and was forced to vague allusion to his mythical travels, -he almost persuaded himself that he had just arrived -from Finland.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But now had come an irreparable shifting of psychological -values. He could not return to Olivia, eating her -heart out for news of him, and persuade himself that he -had been to Helsingfors. The lie had been facile enough. -How else to account for his absence? His attendance at -his mother’s death-bed had been imperative: to disregard -the summons had never entered his mind. Yet simple -avowal would have been pulling down the keystone of -the elaborate structure which, to her, represented Alexis -Triona. The parting lie had been easy: but the lie on -his return—the inevitable fabrication of imaginary travel—that -would be hatefully difficult. For the first time -since he had loved her he was smitten with remorse for -his deception and with terror of her discovery.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He could not sleep of nights aching for her, shivering -with dread at the possibility of loss of her, picturing her -alone in the sweet, wind-swept house, utterly trustful -and counting the long hours till he should come again. -Still, thank God, this was the last time they would be -parted. His mother had been the only link to his John -Briggs past.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There were no testamentary complications, which he -had somewhat feared. His mother had only a life interest -in the tiny estate which went, under his father’s -will, to his sister Ellen. And Ellen did not count. Absorbed -in her family cares, she would pass out of his -life for ever without thought of regret. It would be the -final falsehood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At breakfast, on the morning of the funeral, Ellen -said suddenly, in her dour way:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve been reading your book. It’s a pack of lies.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It would have been if I had signed it John Briggs,” -he answered. “But everything in it is true about Alexis -Triona.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your ways don’t seem to be our ways, John,” she -remarked coldly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He felt the words like a slap in the face. He flushed -with anger.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How dare you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m sorry,” she answered. “I oughtn’t to have said -it with mother lying cold upstairs.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He shrugged his shoulders, forced to accept the evasive -apology. But her challenge rankled. They parted stonily -after the funeral, with the perfunctory handshake.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t suppose I shall ever see you again.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s rather unlikely,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, good-bye.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good-bye.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He threw himself back in the taxi-cab with a great sigh -of relief. Thank God the nightmare of the past few -days was over. Now to awaken to the real and wonderful -things of life—the miraculous love of the dark-eyed, -quivering princess of his dreams: the work which -since he had loved her had grown into the sacred aim of -their perfect lives.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And just as he had wired her from Newcastle announcing -his sailing, so did he wire her when he reached the -railway station.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Arrived. All well. Speeding straight to you with -love and longing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia smiled as she kissed the telegram. No one but -her Alexis would have used the word “speeding.”</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='196' id='Page_196'></span>CHAPTER XIV</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>S</span><span class='sc'>HE</span> was waiting for him at the little South Coast -station, where decorum had to cloak the rapture -of their meeting. But they sat close together, -hand in hand, in the hackney motor-car that took them -home. This gave him an intermediary breathing space -for explanation; and the explanation was easier than he -had feared. Really, his journey had been almost for -nothing and had afforded little interest. The agent -whom he was to interview having been summoned back -to Russia the day before he arrived, he had merely delivered -his dispatches to the British authorities and taken -the next boat to England. It was just a history of two -dull sea voyages. Nothing more was to be said about -it, save that he would go on no more fool’s errands for a -haphazard government.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Besides, it’s too dreadful to be away from you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It has been awful for me, too,” said Olivia. “I never -imagined what real loneliness could feel like. All the -time I thought of the poor solitary little dab the Bryce -children showed us the other day in the biscuit-tin of -water. Oh, I was the most forsaken little dab.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He swore that she should never be lonely again; and, -by the time they reached their house by the sea, he had -half-exultingly dismissed his fictitious mission from his -mind. All the apprehensions of the narrow Northern -kitchen melted in the joy of her. All danger had vanished -like a naughty black cloud sped to nothing by the -sun. The mythical past had to remain; but henceforward -his life would be as clear to her as her own exquisite life -to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In their wind-swept home they gave themselves up -to deferred raptures, kissing and laughing after the foolish -way of lovers. To grace his return she had filled -the rooms with flowers—roses and sweet peas—which -she bought extravagantly in the neighbouring seaside -town. The scent of them mingled delicately with the -salt of the sea. To her joy he was quick to praise them. -She had wondered whether they would be noticed by -one so divinely careless of material things. He even -found delight in the meal which Myra served soon after -their arrival—he so indifferent to quality of food.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Everything is you,” said he; “scent and taste and -sight. You inform the universe and give it meaning.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her eyes grew moist as she swiftly laid her hand on -his.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Am I really all that to you?” She laughed with a -little catch in her throat. “How can I live up to it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He raised her hand to his lips. “If only you went -on existing like a flower, your beauty and fragrance -would be all in all to me. But you are a flower with a -bewildering soul. So you merely have to be as you -are.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was in earnest. Women had played little or no -part in his inner life, which, for all his follies, had been -lived on a spiritual plane. His young ambitions had -been irradiated by dreams of the little Princess Tania, -who had represented to him the ever-to-be-striven-for -unattainable. On his reaching the age when common -sense put its clammy touch on fervid imagination, the -little Princess had been given away in marriage to a -young Russian nobleman of vast fortune, and he himself -had driven her to the wedding with naught but a -sentimental pang. But the flower-like, dancing, elusive -quality of her had remained in his soul as that which -was only desirable and ever to be sought for in woman. -And—miracle of miracles!—he had found it in Olivia. -And she was warm and real, the glowing incarnation of -the cold but perfect ghost of his boyhood’s aspirations. -She was verily the Princess of his dream come true. And -she had an odd air of the little Princess Tania—the -same dark, wavy hair and laughing eyes and the same -crisp sweetness in her English speech.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Save for all this rapture of meeting, they took up the -thread of their lives where it had been broken, as though -no parting had taken place, and their idyll continued to -run its magic course. Triona began to write again: some -articles, a short story. The shadow shape of a new -novel arose in his mind, and, in his long talks with Olivia, -gradually attained coherence. This process of creation -seemed to her uncanny. Where did the people come -from who at first existed as formless spirits and then, -in some strange way, developed into living things of -flesh and blood more real than the actual folk of her -acquaintance? Her intimate association with the novelist’s -gift brought her nearer to him intellectually, but at -the same time set him spiritually on unattainable heights. -Meanwhile he called her his Inspiration, which filled her -with pride and content.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The lease of “Quien Sabe” all but expired before they -had settled on their future house. Medlow was ruled -out. So was the immediate question of the Medlow -furniture, they having given Blaise Olifant another year’s -tenancy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>While discussing this step, he had said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s for you and you only to decide. Any spot on -earth where you are is good enough for me. By instinct -I’m a nomad. If I hadn’t found you, I should have gone -away somewhere to the desert and lived in tents.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia, who had seen so little of the great world, felt a -thrill of pulses and put her hands on his shoulders—she -was standing behind his chair—</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why shouldn’t we?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He shook his head and glanced up at her. The way of -the gipsy was too hard for his English flower. She must -dwell in her accustomed garden. In practical terms, -they must settle down for her sake. She protested. Of -herself she had no thought. He and his work were of -paramount importance. Had they not planned the ideal -study, the central feature of the house? He had laughed -and mangled Omar. A pen and a block of paper . . . and -Thou beside me, etcetera, etcetera.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t believe you want to settle down a bit,” she -cried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He swung his chair and caught her round her slim -body.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Eventually, of course——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, before ‘eventually,’ don’t you want your wander-year?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“France, Italy——” She became breathless.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Honolulu, the Pacific, the wide world. Why should -we tie ourselves to a house until we have seen it all?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, why? We have all our lives before us.” She -sank on his knee. “How beautiful! Let us make -plans.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So for the next few days they lived in a world of visions, -catching enthusiasm one from the other. Again he -saw Salvation Yeo’s pointing finger; and she, in the subconscious -relation of her mind with his, saw it too. -House and furniture were Olifant’s as long as he wanted -them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ll go round the world,” Olivia declared.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With a twirl of his finger—“Right round,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Which way does one go?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was somewhat vague. An atlas formed no part -of their personal equipment or of the hireling penates of -“Quien Sabe.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll write to Cook’s.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Cook’s? My beloved, where is your sense of adventure?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We must go by trains and steamers, and Cook’s will -tell us all about them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had her way. Cook’s replied. At the quotation -for the minimum aggregate of fares Alexis gasped.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s not so much money in the world.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is,” she flashed triumphantly. “On deposit -at my bank. Much more.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Who was right now, she asked herself, she or the -prosaic Mr. Trivett and Mr. Fenmarch? She only had -to dip her hands into her fortune and withdraw them -filled with bank-notes enough to take them half a dozen -times round the world!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Inspired by this new simplicity of things, they rushed -up to London by an incredibly early train to take tickets, -then and there for the main routes which circumnavigate -the globe. The man at Cook’s dashed their ardour. -They would have to pencil their passages now and wait -for months until their turn on the waiting lists arrived.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It must be remembered that then were the early days -of Peace.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But we want to start next week!” cried Olivia in dismay.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The young man at Cook’s professed polite but wearied -sorrow at her disappointment. Forty times a day he had -to disillusion eager souls who wanted to start next -week for the other side of the globe.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is most inconvenient and annoying for us to change -our plans,” Olivia declared resentfully. “But,” she -added, with a smile, “it’s not your fault that the world -is a perfect beast. We’ll talk it over and come to you -again.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So after lunch in town they returned to The Point, -richer in their knowledge of the conditions of contemporary -world travel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ll put things in hand at once and start about -Christmas,” said Alexis. “Until then——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ll take a furnished flat in London,” Olivia decided.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>October found them temporarily settled in a flat in -the Buckingham Palace Road, and then began the life -which Olivia had schemed for her husband before these -disturbing dreams of vagabondage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Towards the end of their stay in “Quien Sabe” various -letters of enquiry and invitations had been forwarded -to Triona from people, back now in London, with whom -the success of his book had brought him into contact. -These, careless youth, he had been for ignoring, but the -wiser Olivia had stepped in and dictated tactful and informative -replies. The result was their welcome in many -houses remote from the Lydian galley, the Blenkiron -home of Bolshevism and even the easy conservative dullness -of the circle of Janet Philimore. The world that -danced and ate and dressed and thought and felt to the -unvarying rhythm of jazz music had passed away like -a burnt-up planet. The world which she entered with -her husband was astonishingly new with curious ramifications. -At the houses of those whose cultivated pleasure -in life it is to bring together people worthy of note she -met artists, novelists, journalists, actors, publishers, -politicians, travellers, and their respective wives or husbands. -Jealously, at first, she watched the attitude of -all these folk towards her husband: in pride and joy she -saw him take his easy place among them as an equal. -A minority of silly women flattered him—to his obvious -distaste—but the majority accepted him on frank and -honourable terms. She loved to watch him, out of the -corner of her eye, across the drawing-room, his boyish -face flushed and eager, talking in his swift, compelling -way. His manners, so simple, so direct, so different from -the elaboration of Sidney Rooke, even from the cut-and-dried -convention of Mauregard, had a charm entirely -individual. There was no one like him in the world.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In their turn, many of the people of note they met -at the houses of the primary entertainers invited them -to their homes. Thus, in a brief time, Olivia found herself -swept into as interesting a social circle as the heart -of ambitious young woman could crave. How far her -own grace and wit contributed to their success it never -entered her head to enquire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona, light-hearted, gave himself up to the pleasure -of this new existence. He found in it stimulus to work, -being in touch with the thought and the art of the moment. -The newness of his Odyssey having worn off, he -was no longer compelled to dilate on his extraordinary -adventures; people, growing unconsciously impatient of -the realistic details of the late cataclysm, conspired to -regard him more as a writer than as a heroic personage; -wherein he experienced mighty relief. He could talk -of other things than the habits of the dwellers round -Lake Baikal and the amenities of Bolshevik prisons. -When conversation drifted into such channels, he employed -a craftiness of escape which he had amused himself -to develop. Freed from the obsession of the little -black book, he regarded his Russian life as a phase remote, -as a tale that was told. His facile temperament put the -whole matter behind him. He lived for the future, when -he should be the acknowledged English Master of -Romance, and when Olivia’s burning faith in his genius -should be justified. He threw off memories of Ellen and -the kitchen chair and went his way, a man radiant with -happiness. Each day intensified the wonder of his wife. -From the lips and from the writings of fools and philosophers -he had heard of the perils of the first year of -marriage; of the personal equations that seemed impossible -of simultaneous solution; of the misunderstandings, -cross-purposes, quarrels inevitable to the attempt; of -the hidden snags of feminine unreason that shipwrecked -logical procedure; of the love-rasping persistence of -tricks of manner or speech which either had to be violently -broken or to be endured in suffering sullenness. -At both fools and philosophers he mocked. A fiction, -this dogma of inescapable sex warfare. Never for a -second had a cloud arisen on their horizon. The flawlessness -of Olivia he accepted as an axiom. Equally -axiomatic was his own faultiness. In their daily lives -he was aware of his thousand lapses from her standard -of grace, when John Briggs happened to catch Alexis -Triona at unguarded moments and threw him from his -seat. But, in a flash, the instinctive, the super-instinctive, -the nothing less than Divine hand, was stretched out -to restore him to his throne. As a guide to conduct she -became his conscience.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Work and love and growing friendship filled his care-free -days. His novel was running serially in a weekly -and attracting attention. It would be published in book-form -early in the New Year, and the publishers had no -doubt of its success. All was well with the world.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile they concerned themselves busily, like -happy children, with their projects of travel. It was a -great step to book berths for Bombay by a January boat. -They would then cross India, visit Burmah, the Straits -Settlements, Australia, Japan, America. All kinds of -Companies provided steamers; Providence would procure -the accommodation. They planned a detailed six months’ -itinerary which would take a conscientious globe-trotter -a couple of years to execute. Before launching on this -eastern voyage they would wander at their ease through -France, see Paris and Monte Carlo, and pick up the -boat at Marseilles. As the year drew to its close their -excitement waxed more unrestrained. They babbled -to their envious friends of the wonder-journey before -them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Blaise Olifant, who, on his periodical visits to London, -was a welcome visitor at their flat, was entertained with -these anticipations of travel. He listened with the air -of elderly indulgence that had been his habit since their -marriage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t you wish you were coming with us?” asked -Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He shook his head. “Don’t you remember the first -time I saw you I said I was done with adventures?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I said I was going in search of them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So you’re each getting your heart’s desire,” said -Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I suppose so,” replied Olifant, with a smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a touch of sadness in it which did not escape -Olivia’s shrewd glance. He had grown thinner during -the year; his nose seemed half-comically to have grown -sharper and longer. In his eyes dwelt a shadow of wistful -regret.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The life of a hermit cabbage isn’t good for you,” she -said. “Give it up and come with us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again he shook his head. No. They did not want -such a drag on the wheels of their joyous chariot. Besides, -he was tied to Medlow as long as she graciously -allowed him to live there. His sister had definitely left -her dissolute husband and was living under his protection.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You should be living under the protection of a wife,” -Olivia declared. “I’ve told you so often, haven’t I?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I’ve always answered that bachelors are born, -not made—and I’m one born.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Predestination! Rubbish!” cried Triona, rising with -a laugh. “Your Calvinistic atavism is running away -with you. It’s time for your national antidote. I’ll -bring it in.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He went out of the room, in his boyish way, in search -of whisky. Olivia leaned forward in her chair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You may not know it, but from that first day a year -ago you made yourself a dear friend—so you’ll forgive -me if I——” She paused for a second, and went on -abruptly: “You’ve changed. Now and then you look -so unhappy. I wish I could help you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He laughed. “It’s very dear of you to think of me, -Lady Olivia—but the change is not in me. I’ve remained -the same. It’s your eyes that have grown so -accustomed to the radiant gladness of a happy man that -they expect the same in any old fossil on the beach.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now you make me feel utterly selfish,” she cried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We oughtn’t to look so absurdly happy. It’s indecent.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it does one good,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona entered with the tray, and administered whisky -and soda to his guest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There! When you’ve drunk it you’ll be ready to -come to the Magical Isles with us, where the Lady of -Ladies awaits you in an enchanted valley, with hybiscus -in her hair.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The talk grew light, drifted inevitably into the details -of their projected wanderings. The evening ended pleasantly. -Olivia bade Olifant farewell, promising, as he -would not go in search of her himself, to bring him back -the perfect lady of the hybiscus crown. Triona accompanied -him to the landing; and, while they stood awaiting -the lift, Olifant said casually:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose you’ve got your passports?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Passports?” The young man knitted his brow in -some surprise. “Why, of course. That’s to say, I’ve not -bothered about them yet, but they’ll be all right. Why -do you ask?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re Russian subjects. There may be difficulties. -If there are, I know a man in the Foreign Office who may -be of help.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The lift rose and the gates clashed open, and the -attendant came out.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thanks very much,” said Triona. “It’s awfully -good of you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They shook hands, wished each other God-speed, and -the cage went down, leaving Triona alone on the landing, -gaping across the well of the lift.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was aroused from a semi-stupor by Olivia’s voice -at the flat door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What on earth are you doing, darling?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He realized that he must have been there some appreciable -time. He turned with a laugh.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was interested in the mechanism of the lift; it has -so many possibilities in fiction.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She laughed. “Think of them to-morrow. It’s time -for good little novelists to go to bed.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But that night, while Olivia, blissfully unconscious of -trouble, slept the happy sleep of innocence Alexis Triona -did not close an eye.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Passports! He had not given them a thought. Any -decent person was entitled to a passport. In the plenitude -of his English content he had forgotten his fictitious -Russian citizenship. To attest or even to support this -claim there was no creature on God’s earth. The details -of his story of the torpedoed Swedish timber boat in -which he had taken refuge would not bear official examination. -Application for passport under the name of -Alexis Triona, soi-disant Russian subject, would involve -an investigation leading to inevitable exposure. His civic -status was that of John Briggs, late naval rating. He -had all his papers jealously locked up, together with the -little black notebook, in his despatch case. As John -Briggs, British subject, he was freeman of the civilized -world. But John Briggs was dead and done for. It was -impossible to wander over the globe as Alexis Triona with -a passport bearing the name of John Briggs. He would -be held up and turned back at any frontier. And it was -beyond his power of deception to induce Olivia to travel -with him round the world under the incognito of Mrs. -John Briggs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Rigid, so that he should not wake the beloved woman, -he stared for hours and hours into the darkness, vainly -seeking a solution. And there was none.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He might blind Olivia into the postponement of their -adventure, and in the meanwhile change his name by -deed poll. But that would involve the statutory publicity -in the Press. The declaration in <span class='it'>The Times</span> that -he, John Briggs, would henceforth take the name of -Alexis Triona would stultify him in the social and literary -world—and damn him in the eyes of Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In those early days after the War, the Foreign Office -granted passports grudgingly. British subjects had to -show very adequate reasons for desiring to go abroad, -and foreign visas were not over-readily given. In the -process of obtaining a passport, a man’s identity had to -be established beyond question.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He remembered now having heard vague talk of spies; -but he had paid no attention to it. Now he realized that -which he had heard was cruelly definite.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was no solution. John Briggs was dead, and -Alexis Triona had no official existence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He could not get as far as Boulogne, let alone Japan. -And there was Olivia by his side dreaming of the Fortunate -Isles.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='210' id='Page_210'></span>CHAPTER XV</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>B</span><span class='sc'>UT</span> for Olivia’s unquestioning faith in him he -would not have pulled through this passport -quagmire. At every fresh lie he dreaded lest -her credulity should reach the breaking point. For he -had to lie once more—and this time with revulsion and -despair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He began the abominable campaign the next evening -after dinner. He had been absent all day, on the vague -plea of business. In reality he had walked through -London and wandered about the docks, Ratcliffe Highway, -the Isle of Dogs. He had returned physically and -spiritually worn out. Her solicitude smote him. It was -nothing. A little worry which the sight of her would -dispel. They dined and went into the drawing-room. -She sat on the arm of his chair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And now the worry, poor boy. Anything I can do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He stared into the fire. “It’s our trip.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, what has gone wrong?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Everything,” he groaned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, darling!” She gripped his shoulder. “What -do you mean?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m afraid it’s a beautiful dream, my dear. We must -call it off.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She uttered a breathless “Why?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s far beyond our means.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She broke into her gay laugh and hugged him and -called him a silly fellow. Hadn’t they settled all that -side of it long ago? Her fingers were itching to draw -cheques. She had scarcely put pen to pink paper since -their marriage. Hadn’t he insisted on supporting her?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I’ll go on insisting,” said he. “I’m not the man -to live on my wife’s money. No, no——” with uplifted -hand he checked her generous outburst. “I know what -you’re going to say, sweetheart, but it can’t be done. I -was willing for you to advance a certain amount. But -I would have paid it back—well, I would have accepted -it if it gave you pleasure. Anyhow, things are different -now. Suddenly different.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He writhed under the half-truths, the half-sincerities -he was speaking. In marrying her his conscience absolved -him of fortune seeking. It had been the pride of -his Northumbrian blood to maintain his wife as she -should be maintained, out of his earnings—this draft on -her fortune for the jaunt he had made up a Tyneside -mind to repay. Given the passport, the whole thing was -as simple as signing a cheque. But no passports to be -given, he had to lie. How else, in God’s name, to explain?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear,” said he, in answer to her natural question, -“there’s one thing about myself I’ve not told you. -It has seemed quite unimportant. In fact, I had practically -forgotten it. But this is the story. During my -last flight through Russia a friend, one of the old Russian -nobility, gave me shelter. He was in hiding, dressed as -a peasant. His wife and children had escaped the Revolution -and were, he was assured, in England. He entrusted -me with a thousand pounds in English bank-notes -which he had hidden in a scapulary hanging round his -neck, and which I was to give to his family on my arrival. -I followed his example and hung the few paper roubles -I had left, together with his money, round my neck. As -you know, I was torpedoed. I was hauled out of the -water in shirt and drawers, and landed penniless. The -string of the scapulary had broken, and all the money -was at the bottom of the North Sea. I went to every -conceivable Russian agency in London to get information -about the Vronsky family. There was no trace of them. -I came to the conclusion that they had never landed -in England, and to-day I found I was right. They -hadn’t. They had disappeared off the face of the -earth.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To-day?” queried Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This morning. I had a letter from Vronsky forwarded -by the publishers.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why didn’t you tell me?” cried Olivia. “I had an -idea you weren’t quite yourself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I didn’t want to worry you without due reason,” he -explained, “and I was upset. It was like a message from -the dead. For, not having heard of him all this time, I -concluded he had perished, like so many others, at the -hands of the Bolsheviks. Anyhow, there he was alive in -a little hotel in Bloomsbury. Of course, I had to go and -rout him out.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Naturally,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I found him. He had managed to escape, with -the usual difficulties, and was now about to search Europe -for his family.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a terrible quest,” said Olivia, with a shudder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. It’s awful, isn’t it?” replied Triona in a voice -of deep feeling—already half beginning himself to believe -in the genuineness of his story—“I spent a heart-rending -day with him. He had expected to find his -family in England.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you wrote to him——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course. But how many letters to Russia reach -their destination? Their letters, too, have miscarried or -been seized. He hadn’t had news of them since they left -Petrograd.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Carried away by the tragedy of this Wandering Jew -hunt for a lost family, Olivia forgot the reason for its -recital. She questioned, Triona responded, his picturesque -invention in excited working. He etched in details. -Vronsky’s declension from the ruddy, plethoric gentleman, -with good-humoured Tartar face, to the gaunt, hollow-eyed -grey-beard, with skinny fingers on which the -nails grew long. The gentle charm of the lost Madame -Vronsky and the beauty of her two young daughters, -Vera and Sonia. The faithful moujik who had accompanied -them on their way and reported that they had -sailed on the <span class='it'>Olger Danske</span> from Copenhagen for London. -He related their visit to Lloyds, where they had -learned that no such ship was known. Certainly at the -time of the supposed voyage it had put into no British -port. Vronsky was half mad. No wonder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why did you leave him? Why didn’t you bring him -here?” asked Olivia, her eyes all pity and her lips parted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I asked him. He wouldn’t come. He must begin his -search at once—take ship for Denmark. . . . Meanwhile, -dearest,” he said after a pause, “being practically -without resources, he referred to his thousand pounds. -That’s where you and I come in. He entrusted me with -the money and the accident of losing it could not relieve -me of the responsibility—could it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He glanced a challenge. Her uprightness waved it -aside.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good heavens, no!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I took him to my bank and gave him the thousand -pounds in Bank of England notes. So, my dear, -we’re all that to the bad on our balance sheet. We’re -nearly broke—and we’ll have to put off our trip round -the world to more prosperous times.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Although, womanlike, she tried at first to kick against -the pricks, parading the foolish fortune lying idle at the -bank, that was the end of the romantic project. Her -common sense asserted itself. A thousand pounds, for -folks in their position, was a vast sum of money. She -resigned herself with laughing grace to the inevitable, and -poured on her husband all the consolation for disappointment -that her heart could devise. Their pleasant life -went on. Deeply interested in Vronsky, she questioned -him from time to time. Had he no news of the tragic -wanderer? At last, in February, he succumbed to the -temptation to finish for ever with these Frankenstein -monsters. He came home one afternoon, and after kissing -her said with a gay air:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I found a letter at Decies Street”—the house of his -publishers—“from whom do you think? From Vronsky. -Just a few lines. He tracked his family to Palermo -and they’re all as happy as can be. How he did it -he doesn’t say, which is disconcerting, for one would like -to know the ins and outs of his journeyings. But there’s -the fact, and now we can wipe Vronsky off our slate.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In March the novel appeared. Reviewers lauded it -enthusiastically as a new note in fiction.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The freshness of subject, outlook, and treatment appealed -to the vastly superior youth, the disappointed old, -and the scholarly and conscientious few, who write literary -criticism. The great firm of publishers smiled urbanely. -Repeat orders on a gratifying scale poured in -every day. Triona took Olivia to Decies Street to hear -from publishing lips the splendid story. They went -home in a taxi-cab, their arms around each other, intoxicated -with the pride of success and the certainty of their -love. And the next day Olivia said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If we can’t go round the world, at any rate let us have -a holiday. Let us go to Paris. We can afford it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Triona, who for months had foreseen such a reasonable -proposal, replied:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wish we could. I’ve been dreaming of it for a long -time. In fact—I didn’t tell you—but I went to the -Foreign Office a fortnight ago.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She wrinkled her brow.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s the Foreign Office got to do with it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They happen to regard me as an exceptional man, -my dearest,” said he. “I’m still in the Secret Service. -I tried last summer to get out of it—but they overpersuaded -me, promising not to worry me unduly. One can’t -refuse to serve one’s country at a pinch, can one?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. But why didn’t you tell me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt hurt at being left out in the cold. She also -had a sudden fear of the elusiveness of this husband of -hers, hero of so many strange adventures and interests -that years would not suffice for their complete revelation. -She remembered the dug-up Vronsky romance, in itself -one that might supply the ordinary human being with -picturesque talk for a lifetime. And now she resented -this continued association with the Foreign Office which -he thought he had severed on his return from Finland.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I never imagined they would want me again, after -what I told them. But it seems they do. You know -the state of things in Russia. Well—they may send me -or they may not. At any rate, for the next few months -I am not to leave the country.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I call that idiotic,” cried Olivia indignantly. “They -could get at you in Paris just as easily as they could in -London.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They’ve got the whip hand, confound them,” replied -Triona. “They grant or refuse passports.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The Foreign Office is a beast!” said Olivia. “I’d like -to tell them what I think of them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do,” said he with a laugh, “but don’t tell anybody -else.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She believed him. He breathed again. The difficulty -was over for the present. Meanwhile he called himself -a fool for not having given her this simple explanation -months ago. Why had he racked his conscience with -the outrageous fiction of the Vronskys?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>About this time, too, in her innocence, she raised the -question of his technical nationality. It was absurd for -him to continue to be a Russian subject. A son of -English parents, surely he could easily be naturalized. -He groaned inwardly at this fresh complication, and -cursed the name of Triona. He put her off with vague intentions. -One of these days . . . there was no great -hurry. She persisted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s so unlike you,” she declared, uncomprehending. -“You who do things so swiftly and vividly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I must have some sort of papers establishing my -identity,” he explained. “My word won’t do. We must -wait till there’s a settled government in Russia to which -I can apply. I know it’s an unsatisfactory position for -both; but it can’t be helped.” He smiled wearily. “You -mustn’t reproach me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Reproach you—my dearest——?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The idea shocked her. She only had grown impatient -of the intangible Russian influences that checked his -freedom of action. Sometimes she dreaded them, not -knowing how deep or how sinister they might be. Secret -agents were sometimes mysteriously assassinated. He -laughed at her fears. But what else, she asked herself, -could he do but laugh? She was not reassured.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The naturalization question settled for an indefinite -time, he felt once more in clear water. Easter came -and went.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If I don’t move about a little, I shall die,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let us move about a lot,” said Olivia. “Let us hire -a car and race about Great Britain.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He waxed instantly enthusiastic. She was splendid. -Always the audacious one. A car—a little high-powered -two-seater. Just they two together. Free of the -high road! If they could find no lodgings at inns they -could sleep beneath the hedges. They would drive anywhere, -losing their way, hitting on towns with delicious -unexpectancy. The maddest motor tour that was ever -unplanned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the excitement of the new idea, the disappointment -over the prohibited foreign travel vanished from their -hearts. Once more they contemplated their vagabondage, -with the single-mindedness of children.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ll start to-morrow,” he declared.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To-morrow evening is the Rowingtons’ dinner-party,” -Olivia reminded him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He confounded Rowington and his dinner-party. Why -not send a telegram saying he was down with smallpox? -He hated literary dinner-parties. Why should he make -an ass of himself in a lion’s skin—just to gratify the -vanity of a publisher? Olivia administered the required -corrective.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Isn’t it rather a case of the lion putting on an ass’s -skin, my dear? Of course we must go.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He laughed. “I suppose we must. Anyway, we’ll -start the day after. I’ll see about the car in the morning.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He went out immediately after breakfast, and in a -couple of hours returned radiant. He was in luck, having -found the high-powered two-seater of his dreams. -He overwhelmed her with enthusiastic technicalities.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You beloved infant,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But before they could set out in this chariot of force -and speed, something happened. It happened at the -dinner-party given by Rowington, the active partner -in the great publishing house, in honour of their twice-proved -successful author.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Rowingtons lived in a mansion at the southern end -of Portland Place. It had belonged to his father and -grandfather before him and the house was filled with -inherited and acquired treasures. On entering, Triona -had the same sense of luxurious comfort as on that far-off -day of the first interview in Decies Street, when his -advancing foot stepped so softly on the thick Turkey -carpet. A manservant relieved him of his coat and hat, -a maid took Olivia for an instant into a side-room whence -she reappeared bare-necked, bare-armed, garbed, as her -husband whispered, in cobweb swept from Heaven’s rafters. -A manservant at the top of the stairs announced -them. Mrs. Rowington, thin, angular, pince-nez’d, and -Rowington, middle-aged, regarding the world benevolently -through gold spectacles, received them and made the -necessary introduction to those already present. There -was a judge of the High Court, a well-known novelist, a -beautiful and gracious woman whom Olivia, with a little -catch of the heart, recognized as the Lady Aintree who -had addressed a passing word of apology to her in the -outgoing theatre crush in the first week of her emancipation. -She envied Alexis who stood in talk with her. -She herself was trying to correlate the young and modern -bishop, in plum-coloured evening dress, with the billow -of lawn semi-humanized by a gaunt staring head and a -pair of waxen hands which had gone through the dimly -comprehended ritual of her confirmation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He explained his presence in this brilliant assembly on -the ground that once he had written an obscure book of -travels in Asia Minor. St. Paul’s steps retraced. He had -fought with beasts at Ephesus—but not of the kind to -which the apostle was presumed to refer; disgusting little -beasts! He also swore “By Jove!” which she was sure -her confirming bishop would never have done.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A while later, as the room was filling up, she found -herself talking to a Colonel Onslow, an authority on Kurdistan, -said her hostess, who was anxious to meet her husband. -She glanced around, her instinctive habit, to -place Alexis. He had been torn from Lady Aintree and -was standing just behind her by the chimney-piece in -conversation with a couple of men. His eyes caught -the message of love in hers and telegraphed back again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He no longer confounded Rowington. The central -figure of this distinguished gathering, he glowed with the -divine fire of success. He was talking to two elderly -men on Russian folk literature. On that he was an authority. -He knew the inner poignancy of every song, -the bitter humour of every tale. Speaking sober truth -about Russia he forgot that he had ever lied.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Suddenly into the little open space about the hearth -emerged from the throng, a brisk, wiry man with a keen, -clean-shaven, weather-beaten face, who, on catching sight -of Triona, paused for a startled second and then darted -up to him with outstretched hand; and Triona, taken off -his guard, made an eager step to meet him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If, for two days, you have faced death alone with a man -who has given every proof of indomitable courage and -cheerfulness, your heart has an abominable way of leaping -when suddenly, years afterwards, you are brought with -him face to face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are Briggs! I knew I was right. Fancy running -up against you here!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona’s cheeks burned hot. The buried name seemed -to be shrieked to the listening universe. At any rate, -Olivia heard; and instinctively she drifted from the side -of Colonel Onslow towards Alexis.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s a far cry from Russia,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, and a far cry from the lower deck of an armoured -car,” laughed the other. “Well, I am glad to see you. -God knows what has happened to the rest of us. I’ve -been one of the lucky ones. Got a ship soon afterwards. -Retired now. Farming. Living on three pigs -and a bee. And you”—he clapped him on the shoulder—“you -look flourishing. I used to have an idea there -was something behind you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was then that Triona became conscious of Olivia at -his elbow. He put on a bold face and laughed in his -careless way.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have my wife behind me. My dear—this is Captain -Wedderburn. We met in Russia.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We did more than meet, by George!” cried Wedderburn -breezily. “We were months together in the Column——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What Column?” asked Olivia, puzzled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The Armoured Car Column. I forget what the humour -of war rated him as. Able Seaman, I think. I was -Lieutenant then. It was a picnic, I assure you. And -there were the days—he and I alone together—I’ll never -forget ’em—we got cut off—but he has told you all about -it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear Mrs. Briggs——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Pardon me,” Alexis interrupted hastily. “But that’s -not my name. It was literally a <span class='it'>nom de guerre</span>. My real -name is Triona.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Eh?” Wedderburn put his hands on his narrow hips -and stared at him. “The famous chap I was asked to -meet to-night? Mrs. Triona, your husband is a wonderful -fellow. The months that were the most exciting time -in my life, anyhow, he hasn’t thought it worth while mentioning -in his book. And yet”—his keen eyes swept like -searchlights over the other’s face—“you were knocked -out. I remember the day. And you must have been a -long time in hospital. How the deuce did you manage -to work everything in?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was only scratched,” said Triona. “A week or -two afterwards I was back in the Russian service.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I see,” said Wedderburn with unexpected frostiness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned to greet a woman of his acquaintance standing -near, and husband and wife were left for a few seconds -alone.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You never told me about serving with the British -forces.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was just an interlude,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The hostess came up and manœuvred them apart. -Dinner was announced. The company swept downstairs. -Olivia sat between her host and Colonel Onslow, Lady -Aintree opposite, and next her, Captain Wedderburn. -For the first time in her married life Olivia suffered -vague disquiet as to her husband’s antecedents. The -rugged-faced, bright-eyed man on the other side of the -table seemed to hold the key to a phase of his life which -she had never heard. She wished that he were seated -elsewhere, out of sight. It was with a conscious effort -that she brought herself to listen intelligently to her host -who was describing his first meeting with the now famous -Alexis Triona, then valiantly driving hireling motor-cars -under the sobriquet of John Briggs. She felt a touch -of ice at her heart. For the second time that night she -had heard the unfamiliar name. Alexis had told her, it -is true, of his early struggles in London while writing -<span class='it'>Through Blood and Snow</span>, but of John Briggs he had -breathed no word.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The talk drifted into other channels until she turned to -her neighbour, Colonel Onslow, who after a while said -pleasantly:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m looking for an opportunity of a chat with your -husband, Mrs. Triona. From his book, he seems to have -covered a great deal of my ground—and it must have been -about the same time. It’s strange I never came across -him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t think so,” she replied. “His Secret Service -work rather depended on his avoidance of other European -agents.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Colonel Onslow yielded laughingly to the argument. -Of course, that was quite understandable. Every man -had his own methods. No game in the world had more -elastic rules.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“On the other hand, I knew a Russian on exactly the -same lay as your husband, a fellow Krilov, a fine chap—I -ran into him several times—who was rather keen on -taking me into his confidence. And one or two of the -things he told me were so identical with your husband’s -experiences, that it seems they must have hunted in -couples.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, no, he was on his own, I assure you,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Anyhow, I’m keen to meet him,” said Onslow, unaware -of the growing fear behind the girl’s dark eyes. “I -only came home a month ago. Somebody gave me the -book. When I read it I went to my friend Rowington -and asked about Alexis Triona. That’s how I’m here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Presently, noticing her air of constraint, he said apologetically, -“You must be fed up with all this ancient history. -A wanderer like myself is apt to forget that the -world is supposed to be at peace and is even rather bored -with making good the damage of war.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia answered as well as she could, and for the rest -of the interminable meal strove to exhibit her usual gay -interest in the talk around.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But her heart was heavy with she knew not what forebodings. -She could not see Alexis, who was seated on the -same side and at the other end of the long table. She -felt as though the benevolent gold-spectacled man had -deliberately convened an assembly of Alexis’s enemies. -It was a blessed relief when the ladies rose and left the -men; but in the drawing-room, although she was talking -to Lady Aintree, most winningly gracious of women, her -glance continuously sought the door by which the men -would enter. And when they came in his glance, for -the first time in their married life, did not seek or meet -hers. She scanned his face anxiously. It was pale and -drawn, she thought, and into his eyes had crept the furtive -look of a year ago which happiness, she thought, had dispelled -for ever. He did not come near her; nor did -Wedderburn and Onslow; nor did the two latter talk to -him; he was swallowed up in a little group at the further -end of the room. Meanwhile, the most up-to-date thing -in bishops sank smilingly into a chair by her side, and -ridden by some ironical Imp of the Inapposite described -to her a visit, in the years past, to the Castle of Schwöbbe -in Hanover, where dwelt the Baron von Munchausen, the -lineal descendant of the famous liar. A mythical personage? -Not a bit. Munchausen was one of Frederick -the Great’s generals. He had seen his full-length portrait -in the Rittersaal of the old Schloss. Thence he began -to discourse on the great liars of travel. Herodotus, -who was coming more and more into his own as a faithful -historian; John Mandeville; Fernando Mendez Pinto, -a name now forgotten, but for a couple of centuries a byword -of mendacity; Gemelli Carreri, the bed-ridden Neapolitan -author of a <span class='it'>Voyage Round the World</span>; the Rabbi -Benjamin of Tudela who claimed to have ridden a -hippogriff to the tomb of Ezekiel; George Psalmanazar, -who captivated all London (including so level-headed a -man as Samuel Johnson) with his history of the Island -of Formosa and his grammar of the Formosan language; -de Rougemont, the turtle-riding impostor of recent years; -and the later unfortunate gentleman whose claim to have -discovered the North Pole was so shockingly discredited. -The bishop seemed to have made a hobby of these perverters -of truth and to look on them (as in theological -duty bound), wriggling through the lake of fire and brimstone, -in the light of Izaak Walton’s counsel concerning -the worms threaded on the hook, as if he loved them. -Then there were the notorious Blank and Dash and Dot, -still living. Types, said he, of the defective criminal -mind, by mere chance skirting round the commonly recognized -area of crime.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia, with nerves on edge, welcomed the matronly -swoop of Mrs. Rowington.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear Bishop, I want to introduce you——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He rose, made a courtly bow to Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll read your lordship’s next book of travel with great -interest,” she said.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>As the home-bound taxi drove off:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thank goodness that’s over,” said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She echoed with a sigh: “Yes, thank goodness.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All the bores of the earth.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did you have a talk with Colonel Onslow?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The biggest of the lot. I’m sick to death of the Caucasus,” -he added with unusual irritation. “I wish I -had never been near it. I hate these specially selected -dinner parties of people you don’t want to meet and will -never meet again.” He took her hand, which was limp -and unresponsive. “Did you have a rotten time, too?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wish we hadn’t gone,” she replied, withdrawing her -hand under the pretext of pulling her cloak closer round -her shoulders.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He rolled and lit a cigarette and smoked gloomily. At -last he said with some impatience:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course, I didn’t mention the little episode with the -British Force. It would have been out of the picture. -Besides, nothing very much happened. It was a stupid -thing to do—I had no right. That’s why I took an assumed -name—John Briggs.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you used it when you landed in England. Mr. -Rowington told me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course, dear. Alexis Triona, chauffeur, would have -been absurd, wouldn’t it?” He turned to her with the -old eagerness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This time it was she who thrust out a caressing hand, -suddenly feeling a guilty horror of the doubts that had -beset her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wish you would tell me everything about yourself—the -details you think so unimportant. Then I wouldn’t -be so taken aback as I was this evening, when Captain -Wedderburn called me Mrs. Briggs.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll write you a supplementary volume,” said he, “and -it shall be entitled <span class='it'>Through Love and Sunshine</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The ring in his voice consoled her. He drew her close -to him and they spoke little till they reached their house. -There, in the dining-room, he poured out a stiff whisky-and-soda -and drank it off at a gulp. She uttered a -startled, “My dear!” at the unusual breach of abstemious -habit.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m dog-tired,” said he. “And I’ve things to do before -I go to bed. Don’t wait for me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What things?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To-night has given me an idea for a story. I must -get it, dear, and put it down; otherwise—you know—I -shan’t sleep.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She protested. His brain would be fresher in the morning. -Such untimely artistic accouchment had, indeed, -happened several times before, and, unless given its natural -chances had occasioned a night of unrest; but never -before had there been this haggardness in his face and -eyes. Again the doubts assailed her. Something that -evening had occurred to throw him off his balance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If anything’s worrying you, dear, do tell me,” she -urged, her clasp on the lapels of his dress-coat and her -eyes searching his.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He took her wrists, kissed her, and laughed, as she -thought, uneasily. Worries? He hadn’t an anxiety in -the world. But this idea—it was the germ of something -big. He must tackle it then and there. Led, his arm -around her body, to the door, she allowed herself to be -convinced.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t be too long.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you go to sleep. You must be tired.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Left alone, Triona poured himself out another whisky -and soda. In one evening he had suffered two shocks, for -neither of which his easy nature had prepared him. The -Wedderburn incident he could explain away. But from -the blind alley into which he was pinned by Colonel Onslow, -there had been but a horrible wriggling escape. It -was a matter, too, more spiritual even than material. -He felt as though he had crawled through a sewer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He went to his desk by the window, and from a drawer -took out his despatch case, which he unlocked with the -key that never left his person; and from it he drew the -little black book. There, half-erased, in pencil on the -reverse of the cover, was the word, in Russian characters, -“Krilov.” Hitherto he had regarded this as some unimportant -memorandum of name or place. It had never -occurred to him that it was the name of the owner of the -diary. But now, it stared at him accusingly as the signature -of the dead man whose soul, as it were, he had -robbed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Krilov. There was no doubt about it. Onslow had -known him, that fine-featured grizzled-haired dead man, -in his vehement life. He had heard from his lips the wild -adventures which he had set down with such official -phlegm in the little black book, and which he, Alexis -Triona, had credited to himself, and had invested with the -wealth of his poet’s imagination. Of course, he had -lied, on his basis of truth, to Colonel Onslow, disclaimed -all knowledge of Krilov. It had been the essence of the -old Russian régime that secret agents should have no acquaintance -one with another. It was a common thing for -two men, unsuspectingly, to be employed on an identical -mission. The old Imperial service depended on this -system of checks. If the missions were identical, the -various incidents were bound to be similar. He had defended -his position with every sophistical argument his -alert brain could devise. He drew, as red herrings across -the track, the names of obscure chieftains known to -Colonel Onslow, whom he had not mentioned in his book; -described them—one long-nosed, foxy, pitted with smallpox; -another obese and oily; to Colonel Onslow’s mind -irrefutable evidence of his acquaintance with the country. -But as to narrated incidents he had seen puzzled -incredulity behind the Colonel’s eyes and had felt his semi-accusing -coldness of manner when their conversation -came to an end.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He replenished a dying fire and sat down in an arm-chair, -the despatch case by his side, the book in his hands—the -little shabby black book that had been his Bible, -his mascot, the fount of all his fortunes. His fingers shook -with fear as he turned over the familiar pages. The dead -man had come to life, and terrifyingly claimed his own. -The room was very still. The creak of a piece of furniture -caused him to swing round with a start, as though -apprehensive of Krilov’s ghostly presence. He must -burn the book, the material evidence of his fraud. But -the fire was sulky. He must wait for the blaze, so that -there should be no doubt of the book’s destruction. -Meanwhile his nerves were playing him insane tricks. -His ordeal had shaken him. He sought the steadying -effect of another whisky.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He leaned back in his chair. It had been an accursed -evening. Once more he had to lie to Olivia, and this -time she appeared to be struggling with uncertainty. -There had been an unprecedented aloofness in her attitude. -Yes. He spoke the words aloud, “an unprecedented -aloofness,” at first with strange unsuccess and -then with solemn deliberation; and his voice sounded -strange to his ears. If she suspected—but, no, she could -not suspect. His head grew heavy, his thoughts confused. -The fire was taking a devil of a time to burn -up. Still, he was beginning to see his way clearer. The -whisky was a wonderful help to accurate thinking. What -an ass he had been not to recognize the fact before! -Besides—the roof of his mouth was parched with thirst.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The diabolical notebook had to be destroyed. But -first there must be flame in the grate. That little red -glow would do the trick. It was only a question of -patience.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just a matter of patience, old man,” said he.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>A couple of hours afterwards, Olivia, in nightdress and -wrapper, entered the room. The fire had gone out under -its too heavy load of coal. Before it sprawled Alexis, -asleep. On the small table beside him stood the whisky -decanter, whose depleted contents caused Olivia to start -with a gasp of dismay. His drunken sleep became obvious. -She made an instinctive vain effort to arouse -him. But the first pang of horror was lost in agonized -search for the reason of this amazing debauch. He, the -most temperate of men, by choice practically a drinker -of water, to have done this! Could the reason lie in -the events of the evening which had kept her staringly -awake? She cowered under the new storm of doubt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>On the floor lay open a little dirty-paged book which -must have fallen from his hand. She picked it up, -glanced through it, could make nothing of it, for it was -all in tiny Russian script. The horrible relation between -this derelict book and the almost emptied whisky -decanter occurred to her oversensitive brain. Then came -suddenly the memory of a stupid argument of months -ago at The Point and his justification of the plagiarist. -Further, his putting of a hypothetical case—the finding on -the body of a dead man a notebook with leaves of the -thinnest paper. . . . She held in her hand such a notebook. -It dropped from her nerveless fingers. Suddenly -she sprang with a low cry to her husband and shook him -by the shoulders.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Alexis. Alexis. Wake up. For God’s sake.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the unaccustomed drug of the alcohol held him in -stupor. She tried again, wildly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Alexis, wake up and tell me what I think isn’t true.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At last she realized that he would lie there until the -effect of the whisky had worn off. Mechanically, she -put a cushion behind his head and adjusted his limbs -to a position of comfort. Mechanically, too, she put the -stopper in the decanter and replaced the siphon on the -silver tray, and with her scrap of a handkerchief tried -to remove the ring which the wet siphon had made on the -table. Then she looked hopelessly round the otherwise -undisturbed and beloved room. What could be done -until Alexis should awaken?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She would go to bed. Perhaps she might sleep. She -felt as though she had been beaten from head to foot.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The despatch box lay open on the hearthrug, the key -in the lock. Its secrecy had hitherto been a jest with -her. She had sworn it contained locks of hair of Bluebeard -victims. He had given out a legend of Secret -Service documents of vast importance. Now it was -obvious that, at any rate, it was the repository of the little -black book.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She hesitated on the threshold. Her instinct of order -forbade her to leave the despatch box open and the book -trailing about the floor. She would lock the book up in -it and put the key in one of Alexis’s pockets. But when, -having picked up the small leather box and carried it to -the desk, she prepared to do this, a name written on a -common piece of paper half in print—an official form—stared -brutally at her. And there were others underneath. -And reading them she learned the complete official -history of John Briggs, Able Seaman, from the time -of his joining the Armoured Column in Russia to his discharge, -after his mine-sweeper had been torpedoed in the -North Sea.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia, her dark hair falling about the shoulders of her -heliotrope wrap, sat in her husband’s writing-chair, staring -at him with tragic eyes as he slept, his brown hair carelessly -sweeping his pale brow, and kept a ghastly vigil.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='233' id='Page_233'></span>CHAPTER XVI</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>B</span><span class='sc'>LAISE OLIFANT</span> sat over his work in the room -which once, for want of a better name, the late -Mr. Gale called his study; but it was a room -transformed to studious use. The stuffed trout and the -large scale-map of the neighbourhood and the country -auctioneer’s carelessly bestowed oddments had been replaced -by cases of geological specimens and bookshelves -filled with a specialist’s library. The knee-hole writing-desk, -with its cigarette-burned edge, had joined the rest -of the old lares and penates in honourable storage, and -a long refectory-table, drawn across the window overlooking -the garden, and piled with papers, microscopes, -and other apparatus, reigned in its stead. Olifant loved -the room’s pleasant austerity. It symbolized himself, -his aims and his life’s limitations. A fire burned in the -grate, for it was a cold, raw morning, and, outside, miserable -rain defaced the April day.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He smoked a pipe as he corrected proofs, so absorbed -in the minute and half-mechanical task that he did not -hear the door open and the quiet entrance of a maid.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mr. Triona, sir.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The words cut through the silence so that he started -and swung round in his chair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mr. Triona? Where?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In the dining-room.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Show him in here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The maid retired. Olifant rose and stood before the -fire with a puzzled expression on his face. Triona in -Medlow at ten o’clock in the morning? Something serious -must have brought a man, unannounced, from London -to Shropshire. His thoughts flew to Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A moment afterwards the dishevelled spectre of Triona -burst into the room and closed the door behind him. His -coat was wet with rain, his boots and trouser hems -muddy. His eyes stared out of a drawn, unshaven face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thank God I’ve found you. During the journey I -had a sickening dread lest you might be away.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But how did you manage to get here at this hour?” -asked Olifant, for Medlow is far from London and trains -are few. “You must have arrived last night. Why the -deuce didn’t you come to me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I got to Worcester by the last train and put up for the -night and came on first thing this morning,” replied Triona -impatiently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you’ve walked from the station. You’re wet -through. Let me get you a jacket.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olifant moved to the bell, but Triona arrested him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—no. I’m taking the next train back to London. -Don’t talk of jackets and foolery. I’ve left Olivia.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olifant made a stride, almost menacing, towards him, -the instinctive gesture of his one arm curiously contrasting -with the stillness of the pinned sleeve of the other.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What I say,” cried Triona. “I’ve left Olivia. I’ve -left her for ever. I’m cutting myself out of her life.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re mad. Olivia——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona put up a checking hand. “Oh, no, not Olivia.” -He laughed bitterly at the indignant advocacy in Olifant’s -tone. “Olivia’s there—where she always has been—among -the stars. It’s I that have fallen. Good God! -like Lucifer. It’s I that crawl.” He caught an accusing -question in the other’s hardening eyes. “It isn’t what you -might naturally think. There’s not the ghost of another -woman. There never has been—never shall be. It’s -my only clean record. And I love her—my God! My -soul’s in Hell, aching and burning and shrieking for her. -I shall live in Hell for the rest of my life.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olifant turned, and wheeling round his writing-chair -sat down and pointed to an arm-chair by the fire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sit down and tell me quietly what is the matter.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Triona waved aside the invitation and remained -standing. “The matter is that I’m an impostor and a -liar, and Olivia has found it out. Listen. Don’t ask -questions until I’ve done. I’m here for Olivia’s sake. -You’re the only creature in the world that can understand—the -only one that can help her through. And she -couldn’t tell you. Her pride wouldn’t let her. And if it -did, the ordeal for her! You’ll be able to go to her now -and say, ‘I know everything.’ ”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Up to now, my dear fellow,” said Olifant, “you’ve -been talking in riddles. But before you begin, let me remind -you that there are two sides to every story. What -I mean is—get it into your head that I realize I’m listening -to your side.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But there aren’t two sides,” cried Triona. “You -don’t suppose I’ve come down here to defend myself! -If you see when I’ve done that I’ve had some excuse, that -there is a grain of saving grace lying somewhere hidden—all -well and good. But I’m not here to plead a case. -Haven’t I cleared the ground by telling you I’m a liar and -an impostor?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olifant again looked searchingly at the pale and haggard-eyed -young man, his brown hair unkempt and falling -across his broad forehead, his lips twitching nervously; -and the elder man’s glance turned to one of pitying -kindness. He rose, laid his hand on the lapel of the wet -coat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll take this off, at any rate. There—we’ll hang -it over the fender-seat to dry. Sit beside it and dry -your legs. It’s no good catching your death of cold.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona submitted to the friendly authority and sat -down in his shirt sleeves before the blaze. Olifant, aware -of the sedative value of anticlimax, smiled and offered -refreshments. Tea—coffee—a drop of something to keep -out the cold. Triona suddenly glanced at him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll never touch alcohol again as long as I live.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A cigarette, then? Olifant handed the box, held a -match. Triona smoked. Olifant re-lit his pipe and -leaned back in his chair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now let me have the plain, unvarnished tale.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They smoked many cigarettes and many pipes during -the telling of the amazing story. As his life had unfolded -itself in the grimness of the little Newcastle kitchen, -so he recounted it to Olifant. In his passionate final -grip on Truth, which for the last few months of his -awakening had proved so elusive, he tried to lay bare the -vain secret of every folly and the root of every lie. The -tangled web of the hackneyed aphorism he unwove, -tracking every main filament to its centre, every cross-thread -from the beginning to end of its vicious circle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Plain unvarnished tale it was not in the man’s nature -to give. Even in his agony of avowal he must be dramatic, -must seize on the picturesque. Now he sat on the -narrow leather-covered fender-seat, hunched up, his eyes -ablaze, narrating the common actualities of his life; and -now he strode about the room, with great gestures of his -pink-shirted arms, picturing vividly the conflicting emotions -of his soul. First he sketched—so it seemed to the -temperamentally remote Olifant—in broad outlines of -flame, his true career. Then in strokes, like red-hot wire, -he filled in the startling details. The grizzled head and -sharp-cut features of the naked body of the dead man -Krilov in the ditch—the cold grey waste around—the finding -of the odds and ends, the glint of the pocket-compass -behind a few spikes of grass, the false teeth, the little -black book, the thing of sortilege, of necromantic influence . . . the -spell of the book in the night watches -in the North Sea, its obsession; his pixy-led infatuation -which made him cast aside the slough of John Briggs and -sun himself in the summer of the world as the dragonfly, -Alexis Triona. In swift lines, too, of a Will-o’-the-Wisp’s -dance he revealed the course of his love. Then, -unconsciously, before the concentrated gaze of the other -man he dropped a baffling gauze curtain, as on a stage, -through which his motives and his actions appeared uncertain -and unreal.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olifant had listened in astounded silence. His first -instinct was one of indignation. He had been unforgivably -deceived by this exterior of friendship under false -pretences. The blow dealt to unregenerate man’s innate -vanity hurt like a stab. His own clear soul rose in revolt. -The fellow’s mendacity, bewildering in its amplitude, -would have set Hell agape. He shivered at the cold -craft of his imposture; besides, he was a ghoul, a stripper -of the dead. He lost the man he had loved in a new -and incomprehensible monster. But as Triona went on -he gradually fell under the spell of his passionate remorse, -and found himself setting the human against the -monstrous and wondering which way the balance would -turn. And then he became suddenly aware of the impostor’s -real and splendid achievements, and he stood in pitiful -amaze at the futility of the unnecessary fraud.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But why, in God’s name? Why?” he cried, staring -through the baffling curtain. “A man of genius, you -would have held your own without all this.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I could have done nothing without the help of that -damned little black book. Don’t you see how the necromancy -of the thing gripped me—how it has got its diabolical -revenge? I told you not to ask me questions,” Triona -burst out fiercely. “You’re trying to make me defend -myself.” He swung away, then laughed mirthlessly. -“There seems to be a poetic justice in life. This -room in which we have spent so many hours—it’s filled -from floor to ceiling with my lies. Now I come with -Truth, a sort of disinfectant. Perhaps I was driven back -just to do it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olifant knitted a perplexed brow. Such fantastic psychologies -were beyond his simple scientific habit of mind. -He said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You told me you came here on account of Olivia.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well—I must ask you again the same everlasting -‘Why?’ How could you dare to marry her with this lie -on your soul?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. How dared I?” said Triona dejectedly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But wouldn’t it have been quite simple to tell her the -truth? You could have afforded to make a clean breast of -it. You had proved yourself a remarkable man, apart -from—from the Triona myth. And she is big enough to -have stood it. Why, in God’s name, didn’t you trust -her?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona threw out his hands helplessly. He did not -know. Again he pleaded the unseen power that had -driven him. When he had tried to resist, it was too late.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And now you think me a fool and a knave.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think you’re a fool,” said Olifant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But not a scoundrel? I should like to know. You -were the first man who really held out the hand of -friendship to me. Till then people regarded me as an -interesting specimen. You took me on my human side. -I shall never forget coming to your sister’s house at Oxford. -It was a new and wonderful atmosphere.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If that is so,” said Olifant, “why didn’t it compel -confidence—something of the real truth? I see you now -telling my sister and myself your fairy tale; in the same -fervid way as you’ve been telling me the truth this -morning.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona rose and put on his jacket which now was dry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How can I hope to make you understand, when I -don’t understand myself? Besides,” he flashed, after -shrugging himself impatiently into the garment, “haven’t -I said I wasn’t seeking condonation or sympathy?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You asked me whether I thought you a scoundrel,” -said Olifant quietly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, do you? Say I am, and have done with it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If I did, I don’t see what good it would do,” replied -Olifant, a vague comprehension of this imaginative alien -soul dawning on his mind. “You’re out for penance in -the same crazy way you’ve been out for everything else. -So you hand me the scourge and tell me to lay on. But -I won’t. Also—if I committed myself by calling you an -unmitigated blackguard, I couldn’t give you the advice -that it’s in my heart to give you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what’s that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To go back to Olivia and do your penance with her by -telling and living the truth. <span class='it'>Magna est veritas et prævalebit.</span> -Especially with a woman who loves you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona turned to the table by the window and stared -out into the rain-swept garden, and the vision of a girl -horror-stricken, frozen, dead, rose before his eyes. Presently -he said, his back to the room:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You mean kindly and generously. But it’s impossible -to go back. The man, Alexis Triona, whom she loved, -has melted away. He never had real existence. In his -place she sees a stranger, one John Briggs, whom she -loathes like Hell—I’ve seen it in her eyes. She feels -as if she had been contaminated by contact with some unclean -beast.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olifant sprang from his chair and, catching him by the -shoulder, swung him round.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You infernal fool, she doesn’t!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know better,” said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m beginning to think I know <span class='it'>her</span> better,” Olifant -retorted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well—that is possible,” said Triona. “You’re of -her caste. I’m not. I’ve pretended to be, and that’s -how I’ve come to grief. You’re a good fellow, Olifant, -straight, just like her; and neither of you can understand -the man who runs crooked.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Crooked be damned!” exclaimed Olifant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But all his condemnation of self-accusing epithets -could not dissuade the fate-driven young man from his -purpose. Triona repeated the original intention of his -visit: to put Olifant in complete possession of facts which -Olivia’s pride might not allow her to reveal, and to -charge him, thus equipped, with Olivia’s immediate welfare. -At last he burst out again:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Man alive! Don’t torture me. All the devils in Hell -are doing it, and they’re enough for any man. Have -some imagination! Think what it would mean to her to -have me crawling about in her path for ever and ever. -When love is dead it’s dead. There’s no resurrection. -She loved Alexis Triona. Won’t you ever understand? -He’s dead. The love’s dead. If I stayed with her, I -should be a kind of living corpse to which she’s tied. -So I’m going away—out of her life altogether.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And where are you going?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just out into the spaciousness of the wide world,” -replied Triona with a gesture. He looked suddenly at -his wrist watch. “Good Lord!” he cried. “I’ve only -just time to catch my train. Good-bye.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Wait a minute,” said Olifant. “Do you think it fair -on a woman? While you disappear for ever into spaciousness -she’ll remain none the less married—tied to you -for the rest of her life.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, don’t let her worry about that!” cried Triona. -“I’ll soon be dead.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He sped to the door. Olifant clutched at him and for -a while held fast.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Never mind trains. You’ll stay here to-day. I can’t -let you go—in this hysterical state.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Triona wrenched himself free. A one-armed man -is at a physical disadvantage in a struggle with a wiry two-armed -opponent. Olifant was pushed staggering back, -and, before he could recover himself, Triona had flashed -from the room, and a moment later the clang of the front -door told him he had left the house.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olifant, after a moment’s reflection, went to the telephone -and gave a London number. Then he drew his -chair nearer the fire and re-lit his pipe and waited for the -call to come through. Work was impossible. He was -in no mood to enter into the gaiety of printers in their -dance through the dead languages with which his biological -pages were strewn. His heart was exceeding heavy. -He stared into the fire and thought of what might have -been, had he not been a fool. At any rate, she would -have been spared misery such as this. He had loved -her from the moment she had opened that untouched -room upstairs, and the delicate spirit of one that was -dead had touched them with invisible hands. And he had -been a fool. Just a dry stick of a tongue-tied, heart-hobbled, -British fool. It had only been when another, -romantic and unreticent, had carried her off that he realized -the grotesqueness of his unutterable pain. Well, -she was married, and married to the man to whom he had -given his rare affection; and, folly of follies, all his intimacy -with her had grown since her marriage. She -was inexpressibly dear to him. Her hurt was his hurt. -Her happiness all that mattered. And she loved her madman -of a husband. Deep down in her heart she loved -him still, in spite of shock and disillusion. Of that he was -certain. He himself forgave him for his wild, boyish -lovableness. Olivia abandoned—it was unthinkable!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After an eternity the telephone bell rang. He leaped -up. Eventually came the faint, clear notes of a voice -which was Olivia’s. They established identities.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Alexis has been here. Has told me everything. He -has left here by the midday train. Of course, I don’t -know whether you want to see him; but if you do his train -gets into Paddington at six-fifteen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And the voice came again:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thanks. I’ll meet him there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And there was silence.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia and Myra met the train at Paddington. But -they sought in vain for Alexis Triona. He had not -arrived in London.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='244' id='Page_244'></span>CHAPTER XVII</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>T</span><span class='sc'>HE</span> unhappy young man rushed through the train -to the railway station, goaded by the new passion -of remorse and frantic with the despair which had -driven him from the accusing horror in Olivia’s eyes. -It was only when he waited on the platform at Worcester, -where he must change to the main line, that he became -suddenly aware of loss of sanity. His suit-case, containing -all the belongings which he had taken from the -flat, was lying a mile or so away at the inn where he -had spent the night. He had not slept, not even gone -to bed, not even opened the suit-case. He had dashed -out before the inn was awake to catch the earliest morning -train to Medlow. And from that moment to this, just -as the London train was steaming in, both luggage and -unpaid bill had vanished from his mind. There was -nothing to do but go to the inn and proceed to London by -a later train. Thus, Fate had stage-managed for him -another deception of Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The realization of his crazy lapse of memory was a -sobering shock. Never before had he lost grip of himself. -Hitherto, the tighter the corner—and he had found -himself in many—the clearer had been his brain. The -consciousness of the working of a cool intellect had given -a pleasurable thrill to danger. Now, for over twenty-four -hours, he had been acting like a madman, in contemplation -of which the only thrill he experienced was one -of profound disgust. To enter whatever sphere of life -the effacement of Alexis Triona should render necessary, -raving like a maniac would be absurd. It would need all -his wit.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His retrieved suit-case in the rack of the third-class -carriage, the paid hotel bill in his pocket, and food, up -to then forgotten, in his stomach, he fortified himself in -this decision, until exhausted nature claimed profound -and untroubled sleep.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He awoke at Paddington, homeless for the night. Now -his brain worked normally. Alexis Triona had disappeared -from the face of the earth. It was therefore essential -to avoid hotels where Alexis Triona might possibly -be recognized. Besides, he knew that West End -hotels were congested, that the late-comers to London had -been glad to find a couch at a Turkish Bath. His chauffeur’s -knowledge of London came to his aid. He drove -to a mouldy hotel in the purlieus of the Euston Road, -and there found a frowzy room. The contrast between -the bed, its dingy counterpane sagging into the worn -hollow of the mattress beneath, the threadbare rugs -askew on the oilcloth, the blistered deal washstand and -dressing-table, the damp, dirty paper, the bleak blinds, -and the sweet and dainty appointments of the home he -had left smote him till he could have groaned aloud. -Not that he gave a thought to such things in themselves. -Physical comfort meant little to him. But the lost -daintiness signified Olivia; this abominable room, the -negation of her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He sat on the bed, rolled a cigarette, and began to -think clearly. That he had for ever forfeited Olivia’s -affection it never entered his head to doubt. He saw -her face grow more cold and tragic, and her eyes more -horror-stricken at every fresh revelation of mendacity. -Loathing himself, he had not pleaded for forgiveness; he -had done penance, applied the lash, blackening himself -unmercifully. He had lost sense of actual things in his -cold romance of deception. He stood before her self-proclaimed, -a monster of lies. Now he saw himself an -unholy stranger profaning the sanctity of her life. He -had fought for Heaven with Hell’s weapons, and Eternal -Justice had hurled him back into the abyss. In the -abyss he must remain, leaving her to tread the stars.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The exposure of the Vronsky myth had hurt her as -much as anything.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Vronsky?” She put her hands, fingers apart, to her -temples. “But you made me give my heart to Vronsky!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yes, surely he had committed towards her the unforgivable -sin. He was damned—at any rate, in this world. -To rid her irremediably of his pestilent existence was the -only hope of salvation. Olifant was a fool, speaking -according to the folly of an honourable gentleman. He -clenched his teeth and gripped his hands. If only he -could have been such a fool! To appear the kind of -man that Olifant easily, naturally, was had been his -gnawing ambition from his first insight into gentle life, -long ago, in the Prince’s household. But, all the same, -Olifant was a fool—a sort of Galahad out for Grails, and -remote from the baseness in which he had wallowed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Go to Olivia. She loves you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Chivalrous imbecile! He had not seen Olivia’s great -staring dark eyes with rims around them, and the awful -little drawn face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was right—it was the only way out.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet, during all this interview with Olivia, he had been -quite sane. He had indulged in no histrionics. He had -not declaimed, and flung his arms about, as he had done -in Olifant’s study. He had felt himself talking like a dead -man immersed up to the neck in the flames of Hell, but -possessed of a cold clear intellect. In a way, he was -proud of this. To have made an emotional appeal would -have obscured the issue towards which his new-found -honesty was striving.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His last words to Olivia were:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And the future?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She said hopelessly: “Is there a future?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she drew a deep breath and passed her fingers -across her face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t talk to me any more, for heaven’s sake. I -must be alone. I must have air. I must walk.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She shrank wide of him as he opened the door for her, -and she passed out, her eyes remote.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was then that the poet-charlatan became suddenly -aware of his sentence. If the Avengers, or what not -uncheerful personages of Greek Tragedy had surrounded -him with their ghastly shapes and had chanted their dismal -Choric Ode of Doom, his inmost soul could not have -been more convinced of that which he must forthwith do. -He never thought of questioning the message. He faced -the absolute.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Waiting until he heard the click of the outer door of -the flat announcing Olivia’s departure in quest of unpolluted -air, he went into his dressing-room and packed -a suit-case with necessaries, including the despatch-case -which contained his John Briggs papers and the accursed -little black book.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He met Myra in the hall, impassive.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If you had told me you were going on a journey, I -would have packed for you. Does Mrs. Triona know?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No,” said he. “She doesn’t. Wait.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He left her, and returned a few moments afterwards -with a note he had scribbled. After all, Olivia must -suffer no uncertainty. She must not dread his possible -return.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Give that to Mrs. Triona.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you coming back?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked at her as at a Fate in a black gown relieved -by two solitary patches of white at the wrists.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why do you ask me that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You look as if you weren’t,” said Myra. “I know -there has been trouble to-day.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had always stood in some awe of this efficient automaton -of a woman, who had never given him a shadow -of offence, but in whom he had divined a jealousy which -he had always striven to propitiate. But now she awakened -a forlorn sense of dignity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He picked up his suit-case.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What has that got to do with you, Myra?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If Mrs. Triona’s room was on fire and I rushed in -through the flames to save her, would you ask me what -business it was of mine?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The artist in him wondered for a moment at her even, -undramatic presentation of the hypothesis. He could -not argue the point, however, knowing her life’s devotion -to Olivia. So yielding to the unlit, pale blue eyes in the -woman’s unemotional face, he said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. There is trouble. Deadly trouble. It’s all my -doing. You quite understand that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It couldn’t be anything else, sir,” said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And so I’m going away and never coming back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He moved to the door. She made the swift pace or -two of the trained servant to open it for him. She stood -for a few seconds quite rigid, her hand on the door-knob. -Their eyes met. He saw in hers a cold hostility. Without -a word he passed her, and heard the door slam behind -him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was when he reached the pavement, derelict on the -wastes of the world, that his nerves gave way. Until -the click of his brain at Worcester station, he had been -demented.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Never again,” said he.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>He undressed and went to bed. It was some hours -before he could sleep. But sleep came at last, and he -woke in the morning refreshed physically, and feeling -capable of facing the unknown future. As yet he had -no definite plan. All he knew was that he must disappear. -Merely leaving Olivia and setting up for himself -elsewhere as Alexis Triona was not to be thought of. -Alexis Triona and all that his name stood for—good and -evil—must be blotted out of human ken. He must seek -fortune again in a foreign country. Why not America? -Writing under a fresh pseudonym, he could maintain himself -with his pen. Bare livelihood was all that mattered. -Even in this earthly Lake of Fire and Brimstone to -which, as a liar, he had apocalyptically condemned himself, -a man must live. During moments of his madness -he had dallied with wild thoughts of suicide. His fundamental -sanity had rejected them. He was no coward. -Whatever punishment was in store for him, good God! -he was man enough to face it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In his swift packing he had seized a clump of his -headed note-paper. A sheet of this he took when, after -breakfast, he had remounted to his frowzy room, and -wrote a letter to his publishers informing them that he -was suddenly summoned abroad, and instructing them -to pay, till further notice, all sums accruing to him into -Olivia’s banking account. Consulting his pass-book, he -drew a cheque in Olivia’s favour, which he enclosed with -a covering letter to Olivia’s bankers. Then, driving to -his own bank, he cashed a cheque for the balance of some -hundreds of pounds. With this, he prepared to start life -in some new world. Restless, he drove back to his hotel. -Restless still, he obeyed the instinct of his life, and began -to wander; not about any such haunts as might be -frequented by his acquaintances, but through the dingy -purlieus of the vague region north of the line of Euston -and King’s Cross Stations.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>It was in a mean street in Somers Town, a hopeless, -littered street of little despairing shops, and costers’ barrows, -and tousled women and unclean children, that they -met. They came up against each other face to face, and -recoiled a step or two, each scanning the other in a puzzlement -of recognition. Then Triona cried:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, of course—you’re Boronowski.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you—the name escapes me—” the other tapped -his forehead with a fat, pallid hand “—you’re the chauffeur-mechanic -of Prince——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Briggs,” said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Briggs—yes. The only man who knew more than I -of Ukranian literature—I a Pole and you an Englishman. -Ah, my friend, what has happened since those days?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A hell of a lot,” said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You may indeed say so,” replied Boronowski. He -smiled. “Well?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well?” said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What are you, well-dressed and looking prosperous, -doing in this—” he waved a hand “—in this sordidity?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona responded with a smile—but at the foreign -coinage of a word.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m just wandering about. And you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m living here for the moment. Living is costly -and funds are scarce. I go back to Warsaw to-morrow—next -week—a fortnight——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Poland’s a bit upset these days,” said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is why I am here—and that is why I am going -back, my friend,” said the Pole.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was a stout man, nearing forty, with dark eyes and -a straggly red moustache and beard already grizzled. -His grey suit was stained with wear; on his jacket a -spike of thread showing where a button was missing. He -wore an old black felt hat stuck far back on his head, -revealing signs of baldness above an intellectual forehead.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona laughed. “Was there ever a Pole who was not -a conspirator?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Say rather, was there ever a Pole who did not love -his country more than his life?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. I must say, you Poles are patriotic,” said -Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Boronowski’s dark eyes flashed, and seizing his companion’s -arm, he hurried him along the encumbered pavement.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why do you Englishmen who have lately died and -bled in millions for your country, always have a little -laugh, a little sneer, at patriotism? To listen to you, -one would think you cared nothing for your country’s -welfare.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ve been so sure of it, you see.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But we Poles have not. For two centuries we have -not had a country. For two centuries we have dreamed -of it, and now we have got it at last, and our blood sings -in our veins, and we have no other interest on earth. -And just as we are beginning to realize the wonder of it, -we find ourselves enmeshed in German intrigue, with -our promised way to the sea blocked, with the Powers -saying: ‘No Ukraine, no Galicia,’ and with the Russian -Red Army attacking us. Ah, no. We are not so assured -of our country’s welfare that we can afford to depreciate -patriotism.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What are you doing here in England?” asked Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Breaking my heart,” cried Boronowski passionately. -“I come for help, and find only fair words. I ask for -money for guns and munitions for the enforcement of -the Treaty of Versailles, and they reply, ‘Oh, we can’t -do that. Our Labour Party wouldn’t allow us to do that. -But we’ll tell those naughty Bolshevists to leave you -alone.’ So I return, my mission a failure. Oh, I play a -very humble part. I do not wish to magnify myself. -Those with me have failed. We are cast on our own -resources. We are fighting for our new national life. -And as the blood in our hearts and the thought in our -brains cry ‘Poland, Poland,’ so shall the words be ever -loud in our mouths. And look. If we did not cry out, -who would listen to us? And we are crying our ‘Poland, -Poland,’ in all the Entente and neutral countries—I, -Boronowski, the most unimportant of all. Perhaps we -are voices crying in the wilderness. But one Voice, once -on a time, was heard—and revolutionized the world.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The man’s voice, crying in the wilderness of the sordid -Somers Town street, awoke at any rate a responsive -chord in the sensitive creature by his side.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course, I understand,” said he. “Forgive my idle -speech. But I am in great personal trouble, and I spoke -with the edge of my lips.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Boronowski flashed a glance at him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you know the remedy? The remedy for silly -unhappinesses that affect you here and here—” he -swung a hand, touching forehead and heart “—the little -things——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m damned if they’re little,” said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, my friend,” exclaimed the Pole, halting suddenly -in front of a wilting greengrocer’s shop, and holding him -by the lapel of his coat. “Procure for yourself a sense -of proportion. In the myriad of animated beings, what -is the individual but an insignificant atom? What are -your sufferings in the balance of the world’s sufferings? -Yes. Yes. Of course you feel them—the toothache, the -heartache, the agony of soul. But I claim that the individual -has a remedy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is that?” asked Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He must cast off the individual, merge his pain in the -common sorrow of humanity. He must strip himself -free of self, and identify himself with a great -cause.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A rusty virago, carrying a straw marketing bag, pushed -him rudely aside, for he was blocking the entrance to the -shop.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We can’t talk here,” he said, recovering his balance. -“Do you want to talk?” he asked abruptly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very much,” replied Triona, suddenly aware that -this commonplace looking prophet, vibrating with inspiration, -might possibly have some message for him, spiritually -derelict.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then come up to my rooms.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To Triona’s surprise, he plunged into the crowded -greengrocer’s shop, turned into an evil-smelling, basket-littered -passage at the back, mounted a couple of flights -of unclean stairs, and unlocked and threw open the door -of an untidy sitting-room looking out on to the noisy -street. He swung a wooden chair from a little deal table -strewn with paper, and pointed to a musty sofa.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That,” said he courteously, “is the more comfortable. -Pray be seated.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He picked a depopulated packet of cigarettes from -the table.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Will you smoke? For refreshment, I can offer you -tea—” he pointed to a spirit-lamp and poor tea equipage -in a corner. He did the honours of his mildewed establishment -with much grace. Triona accepted the cigarette, -but declined the tea. Boronowski seated himself -on the wooden chair. Having taken off his hat, he -revealed himself entirely bald, save for a longish grizzling -red fringe at the back, from ear-tip to ear-tip. The -quick rites of hospitality performed, he plunged again -into impatient speech, recapitulating what he had said -before and ending in the same peroration.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Salvation lies in a man’s effacement of himself, and -his identification with a great cause.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, my dear man,” cried Triona feverishly, “what -great cause is there in the world for an Englishman of -the present day to devote himself to? Look at the -damned country. You’re living in it. Is there a cry -anywhere, ‘<span class='it'>England über alles?</span>’ Have you seen any enthusiasm -for any kind of idea? Of course I love my -country. I’ve fought for her on land and sea. I’ve -been wounded. I’ve been torpedoed. And I’d go -through it all over again if my country called. But my -country doesn’t call.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He rose from the sofa and walked up and down the -little room, throwing about his arms, less like an Englishman -than his Polish host, who, keeping his eyes on him, -nodded his head in amazed approbation as he developed -his thesis—that of the fervid creature eager to fight England’s -battles, but confronted with England’s negation of -any battles to fight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The only positive ideal in England at the present -moment is Bolshevism. The only flag waved in this war-wearied -country is the red flag. All the rest is negative. -Not what we can do—but what we can prevent. And -you, Boronowski, a professor of history, know very well -that no Gospel of Negation has ever succeeded since the -world began. Look at me,” he said, standing before the -Pole, with wide, outstretched arms, “young, fit, with a -brain that has proved itself—I won’t tell you how—and -eager to throw my personal sufferings into the world’s -melting-pot—to live, my dear fellow, to work, to devote -myself to some ideal. I must do that, or die. It’s all -very well for you to theorize. You do it beautifully. -There’s not a word wrong in anything you say. But -what is the Great Cause that I can devote myself to?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Poland,” said Boronowski.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='256' id='Page_256'></span>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>T</span><span class='sc'>HE</span> word was like the lash of a whip. He stared -at the patriot open-mouthed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, Poland,” said Boronowski. “Why not? -You want to fight for a Great Cause. Is not a free and -independent Poland the keystone of the arch of reconstructed -Europe? It is a commonplace axiom. Poland -overthrown, overrun with Bolshevism, all Europe -crumbles into dust. The world is convulsed. Fighting -for Poland is fighting for the salvation of the world. -Could there be a greater cause?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His dark eyes glowed with compelling inspiration. -His outflung arm ended in a pointing finger. And Triona -saw it as the finger of Salvation Yeo in his boyhood’s -picture.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Wonderful, wonderful,” he said, below his breath.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And simple. Come with me to Warsaw. I have -friends of some influence. Otherwise I should not be -here. The Polish Army would welcome you with open -arms.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona thrust out a sudden hand, which the other -gripped.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“By God!” he cried, “I’ll come.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>An hour afterwards, his brain dominated by the new -idea, he danced his way through the melancholy streets. -Here, indeed, was salvation. Here he could live the life -of Truth. Here was the glorious chance—although he -would never see her on earth again—of justifying himself -in Olivia’s eyes. And in itself it was a marvellous -adventure. There would be endless days when he should -live for the hour that he was alive, without thought of -an unconjecturable to-morrow. Into the cause of Poland -he would fling his soul. Yes, Boronowski was right. -The sovereign remedy. His individual life—what did -it matter to him? All the beloved things were past and -gone. They lay already on the further side of the Valley -of the Shadow of Death. His personality was merged -into a self-annihilating creature that would henceforth -be the embodiment of a spiritual idea.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Thus for the rest of the day, and during the night, his -mind worked. Arrived in Poland, he would press for -the fiercest section of the front. The bullet that killed -him would be welcome. He would die gloriously. -Olivia should know.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As John Briggs, with his papers in order, he found his -passport a simple matter. Boronowski, with whom he -spent most of his time, obtained a speedy visa at the -Polish and other Consulates. During the period of waiting -he went carefully through the contents of the suit-case -and removed all traces of the name and initials of -Alexis Triona. The little black book he burned page -by page with matches in the empty grate of his room. -When it was consumed, he felt himself rid of an evil -thing. In strange East London emporiums, unknown to -dwellers in the West End, and discovered by restless -wandering, he purchased an elementary kit for the campaign. -Much of his time he spent in Boronowski’s quarters -in Somers Town, reading propaganda pamphlets -and other literature dealing with Polish actualities. -When the Polish Army welcomed him with open arms, -they must find him thoroughly equipped. He bought -a Polish grammar, and compiled with Boronowski a -phrase-book so as to be prepared with an elementary -knowledge of the language. The Pole marvelled at his -fervour.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You spring at things like an intellectual tiger,” said -he, “and then fasten on to them with the teeth of a bulldog.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m a quick worker when I concentrate,” said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And for many days he concentrated, sleeping and eating -little, till his cheeks grew gaunt and his eyes bright -and haggard. In his interminable talks with Boronowski, -he concentrated all his faculties, until the patriot -would laugh and accuse him of a tigerish spring on the -secrets of his soul.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s true,” cried Triona, “it’s the soul of Poland I -want to make enter my being. To serve you to any -purpose I must see through Polish eyes and feel with a -Polish heart, and feel my veins thrill with the spirituality -of Poland.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is that possible?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You shall see,” answered Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And just as he had fallen under the obsession of the -dead Krilov during the night watches in the North Sea, -so did he fall under the obsession of this new Great -Cause. Something fundamentally histrionic in his temperament -flung him into these excesses of impersonation. -Already he began to regret his resumption of the plain -name of John Briggs. Even in the pre-war Russian days -he had seldom been addressed by it. For the first social -enquiry in Russia elicited the Christian name of a man’s -father. And his father’s name being Peter, he was called -by all and sundry Ivan Petrovitch. So that even then, -in his fervent zeal to merge himself into the Russian -spirit, he had grown to regard the two downright words -of his name as meaningless monosyllables. But he -strangled the regret fiercely as soon as it arose.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, by heaven!” said he, “No more lies.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And yet, in spite of unalterable resolve, as he lay sleepless -with overwrought nerves in the sour room in the -Euston Road, he was haunted by lunatic Polish forms, -Brigiovski, Brigowski, which he might adopt without -breaking his vow; he could not see himself in the part -of a Polish patriot labelled as John Briggs; just as -well might a great actor seek to identify himself with -Hamlet while wearing cricketing flannels and a bowler -hat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Only once in his talks with Boronowski did he refer -to the unhappiness to which he was to apply the sovereign -remedy. The days were passing without sign of immediate -departure. Boronowski, under the orders of his -superiors, must await instructions. Triona chafed at the -delay.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Boronowski smiled indulgently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The first element in devotion to a cause, or a woman, -is patience. Illimitable patience. The demands of a -cause are very much like those of a woman, apparently -illogical and capricious, but really inexorable and unswerving -in their purpose.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s all very well to talk of patience,” Triona fumed, -“but when one is hag-ridden as I am——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Boronowski smiled again. “<span class='it'>Histoire de femme——</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona flushed scarlet and sprang to his feet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How dare you twist my words like that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Boronowski looked at him for a puzzled moment, seeking -the association of ideas. Then, grasping it:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Forgive me, my friend,” he said courteously. “My -English, after all, is that of a foreigner. The word connection -was far from my mind. I took your speech to -mean that you were driven by unhappiness. And the -unhappiness of a young man is so often—— Again, I -beg your pardon.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona passed his hand through his brown hair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right,” he said, “I’m sorry. Yes. If you want -to know, it’s a woman. She’s the day-spring from on -high, and I’m damned beyond redemption. The best -thing that could happen would be if she knew I were -dead.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Boronowski tugged at his little greyish-red beard. A -follower of great causes was never the worse for having -the Furies at his heels. But he was a man of kindly -nature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No one while he is alive can be damned beyond redemption,” -he said. “I don’t wish to press my indiscretion -further. Yet, as an older man, could I be of service to -you in any way?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, you’re very kind, but no one can help me.” -Then an idea flashed across his excited brain. “Not -until I’m dead. Then, perhaps, you might do something -for me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re not going to die yet, my friend.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How do we know? I’m going to fight. The first -day I may get knocked out. Should anything happen to -me, would you kindly communicate with some one?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He moved to the paper-littered table and began to -scribble.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s all rather premature, my friend,” said Boronowski. -“But as you wish.” He took the scrap of paper -which bore the name and address of Major Olifant. -“This I may be liable to lose. I will enter it in my notebook.” -He made the entry. Then, “May I say a serious -word to you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Anything you like.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is such a thing as the fire of purification. But—” -he put a hand on the younger man’s shoulder, -“you can’t call it down from Heaven. You must await -its coming. So we get back to my original remark. Patience, -more patience, and always patience.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This was consoling for the moment; but after a few -days’ further grappling with the Polish language, he -burst into Boronowski’s lodgings and found the patriot -at his table, immersed in work.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If we don’t start soon,” he cried, “I’ll go mad. I -haven’t slept for nights and nights. I’ll only sleep when -we are on our journey, and I know that all this is reality -and not a dream.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve just had orders,” replied Boronowski. “We start -to-morrow morning. Here are our tickets.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That night, Triona wrote to Olivia. It was an eternal -farewell. On the morrow he was leaving England to -offer up his unworthy life as a sacrifice to the Great -Cause of Poland. The only reparation he could make for -the wrong he had done her was to beseech her to look -on him as one already dead. It covered many pages.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When he returned to his musty room after this last -hour’s heart-breaking communion with her, he sat on -his bed overwhelmed by sudden despair. What guarantee -had she of this departure for Poland greater than -that of his mission to Helsingfors last summer? Would -she not throw the letter aside in disgust—another romantic -lie? He wished he had not written. He took faint -hope again on the reflection that by posting another -letter from Warsaw he could establish his veracity. But -why should he keep on worrying her with the details of -his miserable existence? Better, far better that she -should look on him as dead; better, far better that she -should believe him dead, so that she could reconstruct -her young and broken life. He might die in battle; but -then he might not. He had already carried his life safely -through battles by land and sea. Again he might come -out unscathed. Even if he was killed, how should she -hear of his death? And if he survived, was it fair that -she should be bound by law eternally to a living ghost? -Somebody had said that before. It was Olifant. Olifant, -the fool out for Grails, yet speaking the truth of -chivalry. Well, this time—he summoned up the confidence -of dismal hope—he would make sure that he was -dead and that she heard the news. At any rate, he had -prepared the ground; Boronowski would communicate -with Olifant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then came a knock at his door—it was nearly midnight. -The night porter entered. A man downstairs -wished to see him—a foreigner. A matter of urgent -importance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Show him up,” said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He groaned, put both his hands up to his head. He -did not want to see Boronowski to-night. His distraught -brain could not stand the patriot’s tireless lucidity of -purpose. Boronowski belonged to the inhuman band of -fanatics, the devotees to one idea, who had nothing personal -to sacrifice. Just like lonely old maids who gave -themselves up to church-going and good works, and -thereby plumed themselves on the acquisition of immortal -merit. What soul-shattering tragedy had Boronowski -behind him, any more than the elderly virgins -aforesaid? If Boronowski kept him up talking Poland -till three o’clock in the morning—as he had already done—he -would go mad. No, not to-night. The mounting -steps on the uncarpeted stairs hammered at every nerve -in his body. And when the door opened, it was not Boronowski -who appeared, but a pallid, swarthy wisp of a -man whom Triona recognized as one Klinski, a Jew, -and a trusted agent of Boronowski. He was so evilly -dressed that the night porter, accustomed to the drab -clientele of the sad hostelry, yet thought it his duty to -linger by the door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona dismissed him sharply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s the matter?” he asked in Russian, for he was -aware of the man’s scanty English.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Klinski did not know. He was but the bearer of a -letter, a large envelope, which he drew from his breast -pocket. Triona tore it open. It contained two envelopes -and a covering letter. The letter ran:</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='sc'>My Dear Friend</span>,</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.</p> - -</div> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:4em;'>“Yours,</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:1em;'>“<span class='sc'>Boronowski</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thanks very much,” he said. “I’ll take back the -answer to Mr. Boronowski myself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There can be no answer,” said Klinski.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mr. Boronowski left his lodgings early this evening, -and has gone—who knows where?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why didn’t you bring the letter before?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have had many messages to deliver to-night, sir,” -said Klinski, “and I have not finished.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The stunted, pallid man looked tired out, half-starved. -Triona drew from his pocket a ten-shilling note. Klinski -drew back a step.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I thank you. But in the service of my country I can -only accept payment from my Government.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona regarded him in admiration.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It must be a great country!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is,” said Klinski, with a light in his eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I’m proud to go and fight for her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s a privilege that I envy you,” said Klinski. “May -God preserve you.”</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned, and walked wearily back across sleeping -London.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But at that early hour of the morning there were none, -save a luggage-laden few bound for St. Pancras or King’s -Cross.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t leave the hotel, sir,” said the porter, “or I -would get you one from Euston.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='268' id='Page_268'></span>CHAPTER XIX</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>O</span><span class='sc'>LIVIA</span> struggled for a fortnight against Circumstance, -when Circumstance got the upper hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s just as well,” she said. “It’s the only way out.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She made a brave show of dining, while Myra waited -stoically. At last, impelled to speech, she said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, what do you think of it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How can I think of what I know nothing about?” -said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Would you like to know?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve discovered that my husband’s name is not Alexis -Triona. It is John Briggs.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“John Briggs,” echoed Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There, there, my dear. You can tell me more another -time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia let herself be soothed for a while. Then she -pulled herself together and rose.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stiffened herself against feminine weakness. At -the end of the story, Myra asked her:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What are you going to do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m going to carry on as if nothing had happened. -At any rate for the present.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Myra nodded slowly. “You’re not the only one who -has had to carry on as if nothing had happened.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What do you mean?” Olivia asked quickly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nothing but what I said,” replied Myra. “It takes -some doing. But you’ve got to believe in God and believe -in yourself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where did you get your wisdom from, Myra?” asked -Olivia wonderingly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“From life, my dear,” replied Myra with unwonted -softness. And picking up the last tray of removed dinner -things, she left the room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very well,” said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Blaise Olifant came up to town, anxious to be of service, -and found her in this defiant mood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She replied, “My dear Blaise, you don’t understand. -The man I loved and married doesn’t exist.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what was his strong case?” she asked bitterly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He was being blackmailed by one lie.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know him as you see him,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then what can I do?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He protested vaguely. “My dear Olivia . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s true,” she said. “And I’ll always remember it. -And now, don’t let us ever talk about this again.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“As you will,” said he. “But what are you going to -do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She replied as she had done to Myra. She would carry -on.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Until when?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If I can’t out-brave the world, I’m a poor thing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You stay here, then?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why not? Where else should I go?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I came with a little note from my sister,” said Olifant, -drawing a letter from his pocket and handing it to her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia read it through. Then she said, in a softened -voice:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re a dear, kind friend.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She met his eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do I look so woebegone?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The sight of you now is enough to break the heart of -any one who cares for you, Olivia,” he said soberly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s merely a question of sleeplessness. That’ll pass -off.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stood by the fireplace, her arm on the mantelshelf, -looking away from him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stretched out a groping hand; he took it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She withdrew her hand and walked away into the room, -her back towards him. He strode after her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s foolishness. I’m only an ordinary, decent sort -of man. In the circumstances, good Lord! I couldn’t -do less.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She faced him in the middle of the room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I as an ordinary, decent woman, couldn’t do less -than what I’ve said.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well?” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They stood for a few seconds eye to eye. A faint -colour came into her cheeks, and she smiled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t suppose I’m not tempted. I am. But if I -came, you’d spoil me. I’ve got to fight.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This valiant attitude he could not induce her to abandon. -At last, with a pathetic air of disappointment, he -said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If I can help you in any other way, and you won’t -let me, I shall be hurt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I’ll let you,” she cried impulsively. “You may -be sure. Who else is there?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear, you’re looking like a ghost. What have -you been doing with yourself?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Jogging on as usual,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The way of the transgressor is soft,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mauregard was transferred to Rome. His idol, the -Russian dancer, had run off with Danimède, the fitter -at Luquin’s. Hadn’t Olivia heard?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not a bit. Why should I?” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia’s eyes wandered up and down the crowded roadway.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wish I could see an empty taxi,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you in a hurry?” Lydia asked placidly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve an appointment with—my dentist.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ll get in here and wait till we see a taxi,” said -Lydia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They stood in the recess of a private doorway, by the -bow-window of a print shop.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re not looking well, my dear,” said Lydia quite -affectionately. “Marriage doesn’t seem to agree with -you. What’s the matter?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia flashed: “Nothing’s the matter.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How’s your husband?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very well.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s gone abroad—on important business.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And not taken you with him?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“His business isn’t ordinary business,” she said instinctively. -Then she recognized she was covering him -with his own cloak. Her pale cheeks flushed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lydia followed her and stood while she entered the -cab.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll come, won’t you, dear?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll telephone,” said Olivia. She put out a hand. -“Good-bye. It has been so pleasant seeing you again.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lydia shook hands and smiled in her prosperous, contented -way. Then she said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where shall he drive to?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Marlborough Road, St. John’s Wood.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a funny place for a dentist to live,” said Lydia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve changed my mind,” she said to the driver. “Go -to Buckingham Palace Mansions.”</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>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:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope the St. John’s Wood dentist didn’t hurt you too -much.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It gave her an idea. She replied:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So sorry. The St. John’s Wood dentist has made -it impossible for me to appear in public for at least a -month.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She checked an impulse of laughter. She must keep -hold on herself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s to be done with the money? I don’t want it. -It had better be retransferred.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll see what I can do,” said Olifant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let things be—at any rate for the present,” Olifant -counselled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When he took his leave, he said, looking down on her -from his lean height:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do wish you would come to Medlow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She knew that she was ill. She knew that she was -looking ill. But her little frame shook with an impatient -movement.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m going to stick it, Blaise. I’m going to stick it -if I die for it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s magnificent, but it isn’t war—or anything else,” -said he.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia, her heart cold, her brain numbed by a hundred -apprehensions, was waiting for him in the drawing-room. -Myra announced him. Olivia rose.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s gone abroad,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He must come back,” said Rowington.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He has gone away for a long time on important -business,” said Olivia, parrot-wise.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She motioned him to a chair. They sat down.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I gathered something of the sort from his letter. Has -he told you of certain dispositions?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She fenced. “I don’t quite follow you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This letter——?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He handed her the letter of instructions with regard to -payment of royalties which he had received from Triona. -She glanced through it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s all right,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But she had a sickening prescience of the answer. The -kindly gentleman passed his hand over his forehead.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s just a business complication, my dear Mrs. Triona,” -he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She rose. He too, courteously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is it to do with anything that happened on the night -of your dinner-party?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m afraid so.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Colonel Onslow and Captain Wedderburn?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He met her eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They’ve come to you with all sorts of lies about -Alexis.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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 ‘Is <span class='it'>Through Blood and Snow</span> a bona-fide -personal record?’ ”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is,” said Olivia, with her back to the wall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’ll have to prove it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He will,” said Olivia proudly. “What do they propose -to do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I see,” said Olivia tonelessly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So will you write and tell him this?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The truth had to come out. She said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“As a matter of fact, I don’t know where he is. I can’t -communicate with him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She hated the look of incredulous surmise on Rowington’s -face. “As soon as I can, I’ll let him know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, yes,” said Rowington. “You must. You see, -don’t you, that both Onslow and Wedderbum feel it to -be their public duty.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s the exact charge they make against my husband?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To her utmost power she would defend him. Let her -know facts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He says he’s going out this morning to fight for the -sacred cause of Poland.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='285' id='Page_285'></span>CHAPTER XX</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>M</span><span class='sc'>YRA</span> stood by the screened-off bed in the long -ward and looked unemotionally at the unconscious -man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” she said to the Sister, “that is Mr. John Briggs. -I know him intimately.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you a relative?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He has no relatives.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You see, in a case like this, we have to report to the -police. It’s their business to find somebody responsible.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m responsible,” said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s only a matter of formality,” said the Sister, “but -one must have some proof.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So Myra drew her bow at a venture.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mr. Briggs was going abroad—to Poland.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Myra scanned again the peaked bit of face beneath the -headbandages, which was all that was visible of Alexis -Triona, and asked:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Can he live?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s doubtful,” said the Sister.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They moved away to the centre of the ward aisle. The -Sister talked of the accident, of the patient’s position.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s a rich man,” said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So we gathered,” replied the Sister, who had in her -keeping his pocket-book, stuffed with English bank-notes -of high value.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If anything should happen, you of course will let me -know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your name and address?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gave it. The sister wrote it down on a note-pad.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Could I see him just once more?” Myra asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Certainly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She met the Sister.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Can I come again to see how he is getting on?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“By all means.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shouldn’t like him to die,” said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Said the Sister, somewhat mystified at this negative -pronouncement:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You may be sure we’ll do all we can.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know,” said Myra.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She held in her hand, uncertain whether to burn it, the -last wild letter of Alexis.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m glad he’s gone to Poland,” she said reflectively.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why?” asked Myra, not looking up from the trunk -by which she was kneeling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s a man’s work, after all,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So’s digging potatoes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose you’re right,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She tore up the letter and threw the fragments into the -fire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a hell marriage can be.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It can,” said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re lucky. You’ve escaped.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have I?” asked Myra intent on the packing of underwear.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At her tone Olivia started. “What do you mean?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Myra looked up, sitting back on her heels.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you suppose, dearie, you’re the only woman in -trouble in the world?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia moved a step towards her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you too in trouble, Myra?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve been in trouble for the last twenty years, ever -since I left your mother’s house to be married to him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia stared at her open-mouthed, lost in amazement. -This prim, puritanical, predestined spinster of a Myra——</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You—married?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You—married?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In a revulsion of feeling, Olivia sprang to her feet and -held out both her arms.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Myra—my dear old Myra——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Myra suffered the young embrace, and then gently disengaged -herself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There—there——” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why have you never told me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Would it have done you any good?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It would have made me much more thoughtful and -considerate.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But why,” asked Olivia with moist eyes. “Why -should you want to serve me like that—your devotion all -these years?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did mother know?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And all my life——” Olivia began, but Myra interrupted -her unemotionally.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She went on her knees again by the trunk, and continued -to pack dainty underwear.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And as Olivia, not daring to yield the fullness of her -heart to this strange, impassive creature, lingered by the -door, Myra said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We might start a Home,” she said to Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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. . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do hope you feel at home,” Olifant asked one day -after lunch.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You seem like guests, not hosts,” replied Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I will,” replied Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“May I invite Mr. Trivett and Mr. Fenmarch to tea?” -she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mary Woolcombe smiled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The house is yours, dear. That’s not a Spanish -courtesy but an English fact.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was a great wine,” he said with a look backward -into the past.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ll have a bottle up,” cried Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Olivia, my dear——” said Trivett with a gesture.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Stop! Only a sip for me,” she laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nonsense. It was only for the sake of her health that -we let her open it—eh, Fenmarch?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Fenmarch, eager on the pouring, cried:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t move your glass, for God’s sake, Olivia. You’ll -waste it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The two elderly gentlemen raised their glasses and -bowed to her. Then sipped.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah!” said Fenmarch.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“H’m,” said Trivett, with the knitted brow of puzzlement.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Trivett’s fat jowl fell.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“——” he gasped, regardless of Olivia. “So I have.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Moral——” cried the delighted Fenmarch. “Never -try to steal a march on your wife—it doesn’t pay, my -boy. It doesn’t pay.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia, anxious to console, said to Mr. Trivett:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll send you some round to-morrow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Trivett spread out his great arms.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear, it’ll have to settle. If moved, it won’t be -fit to drink for a couple of months.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But it was not for this genial orgy that Olivia had convened -the meeting.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I owe you two dears an apology,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They protested. An impossibility.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, my dear,” said Trivett, “haven’t you found it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked from one to the other, and their wine-cheered -faces grew serious as she slowly shook her head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“God bless my soul!” said Fenmarch.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then surely,” said the old lawyer, “as the usual -barrier to a reconciliation doesn’t exist, there may still -be hopes——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“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.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I’m your good friend, too,” said Mr. Fenmarch -in his dustiest manner.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>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.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='300' id='Page_300'></span>CHAPTER XXI</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>A</span><span class='sc'>FTER</span> this, Olivia took up her life, as she -thought, in firm hands. She had made her reparation -to her old friends. She joined the family -party of the Trivetts at dinner, and mixed with the -“homely folk” that assembled around old John Freke’s -tea table. She lived in a glow of contrition for past -snobberies. The vague story of her separation from -Triona which she had told to the two old men not sufficing -Medlow curiosity, she told what she believed to be -the truth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My husband has gone to Poland to fight against the -Russian Reds.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And thereby she gave the impression that the cause of -the break up of her married life was the incurable adventurous -spirit of her husband. The suggestion fitted -in with the town’s idea of the romance of her marriage -and the legendary character of Alexis Triona, which had -originally been inspired by the local bookseller eager to -sell copies of Triona’s books. She herself, therefore, became -invested in a gossamer garment of mystery, which -she wore with becoming grace. Her homecoming was a -triumph.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As the days passed and brought no news of Alexis, she -grew convinced of the honesty of his last letter. His -real achievements in the past confirmed her conviction. -He was the born adventurer. It was like him to have -sought the only field of mad action open at that hour -of frantically guarded peace. He had gone to Poland. -In her heart she rejoiced. She saw him striving to burn -a past record and rise, Phœnix-like, from its ashes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If he came back a Polish General, all over stars and -glory,” said Myra, during one of their increasingly intimate -conversations, “would you take up with him again?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia reddened. “I should be glad for his sake.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t see that you’re answering my question,” said -Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve told you once and for all,” flashed Olivia, “that -I’ll have nothing more to do with him as long as I -live.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She meant it with all that she knew of her soul. His -fraud was unforgivable; his perfect recognition of it constituted -his only merit. In Poland, doing wild things, -he was a picturesque and tolerable personage. In her -immediate neighbourhood, he became once again a repellent -figure. As far as she could, she blotted him out of -her thoughts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The threat of exposure at the hands of Onslow and -Wedderburn still hung over her head. The disgrace of -it would react on her innocent self. The laughter of the -Lydian galley rang in her ears. She guessed the cynical -gossip of the newer London world. That was hateful -enough. She need never return to either. But it would -follow her to Medlow. She would be pitied by the Trivetts -and the Frekes, and the parents of the present -generation of Landsdowne House. They would wonder -why, in the face of the revelations, she still called herself -“Mrs. Triona.” To spring her plain Mrs. Briggs-dom on -Medlow she had not the courage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She took counsel with Blaise Olifant. In his soldier-scholar -protecting way he seemed a rock of refuge. He -said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Write to them through Rowington and ask them to -hold their hands until you can put them into communication -with your husband, which you give your word of -honour to do as soon as you learn his address.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She did so. The bargain was accepted. When she received -Rowington’s letter, she danced into Olifant’s study, -and, sitting on the corner of his table, flourished it in his -face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, the relief of it! I feel ten years younger. I -was on the verge of becoming an old woman. Now it -will never come out.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olifant leaned back in his chair and looked at her wistfully. -A faint flush coloured her cheeks, and her eyes -were lit with the gladness of hundreds of days ago. Her -lips were parted, showing the white, girlish teeth. Sitting -there, vividly alive, in the intimate attitude, smiling -on him, she was infinitely desirable.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No,” said he. “It will never come out.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A cloud passed over her face. “Still, one never -knows——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have faith in Alexis,” said he. “He’s a man of his -word.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think you’re the loyalest creature that ever lived.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He raised a deprecating hand. “I would I were,” said -he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What do you mean by that?” she asked pleasantly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If I were,” said he, his nose seeming to lengthen over -the wry smile of his lips, “if I were, I would go out into -the world and not rest till I brought him back to you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She slid to her feet. “With a barber’s basin for a -helmet, and the rest of the equipment. If you did such -an idiot thing, I should hate you. Don’t you understand -that he has gone out of my life altogether?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Life is a long, long time to look forward to, for a -woman so young as yourself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You mean, I might fall in love with somebody else, -and there would be horrid complications?” She laughed -in the cocksureness of youth. “Oh, no, my dear Blaise. -Once bitten, twice shy. Three times, four times, all the -multiplication table times shy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Though impelled by primitive instinct, he could not -press her further. He found himself in a position of -poignant absurdity, compensated by the sweetness of their -daily companionship. Sometimes he wondered how it -could be that an awakened woman like Olivia could remain -in calm ignorance of his love. Yet she gave never -a sign of knowledge. She accepted friendship with full -hands and gave it with full heart. Beyond that—nothing. -From his sensitive point of view, it was all for the -best. If, like a lean spider, he sat down beside her and -talked of love, he would indubitably frighten Miss Muffet -away from Medlow. Further, she would hold him in -detestation for intentions which, in the queer circumstances, -had no chance of being what the world calls -honourable. He therefore put up with what he could get. -The proclamation of her eternal man-shyness sounded -like her final word on her future existence. So he came -back to Rowington.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m glad that’s all settled,” said he. “Now you can -take up the threads of life again.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What do you think I can make of them?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t sit here idle all my life—not here, at ‘The -Towers,’ ” she laughed, “for I’m not going to inflict myself -on you for a lifetime—but here, in the world.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had no practical suggestion to make; but he spoke -from the sincerity of his tradition.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A woman like you fulfils her destiny by being her -best self.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But being good is scarcely an occupation.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He smiled. “I give it up, my dear. If you like, I -can teach you geology——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She laughed. Geology had to do with dead things. -She cared not a hang for the past. She wanted to forget -it. The epoch of the dynosaurus and the period of the -past year were, save for a few hundreds of centuries, contemporaneous. -No past, thank you. The present and -the future for her. The present was mere lotus-eating; -delightful, but demoralising. It was the future that mattered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If only you were an astrologer, and could bind me -apprentice,” she said. “No,” she added after a pause. -“There’s nothing for it. I must do something. I think -I’ll go in for Infant Welfare and breed bull-dogs.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She watched him as he laboriously stuffed his pipe -with his one hand by means of a little winch fixed to the -refectory table and lit it by a match struck on a heavy -mat stand; refraining from helping him, although all the -woman in her longed to do so, for she knew his foibles. -The very first time he had entered the house, he had refused -her offer of help with his Burberry. He needed a -woman to look after him; not a sister; not a landlady-lodger -friend; a wife, in fact, whose arm and hand he -would accept unquestionably, in lieu of his own. A great -pity sprung in her heart. Why had no woman claimed -him—a man stainless in honour, exquisite in thought, -loyal of heart, and—not the least qualification for the -perfect gentle knight in a woman’s eyes—soldier-like -in bearing? There was something missing. That was -all the answer she could give herself. Something intangible. -Something magnetic, possessed by the liar -and scamp who had been her husband. She could live -with Blaise Olifant for a hundred years in perfect amity, -in perfect sympathy . . . but with never a thrill.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She knew well enough the basis of sentiment underlying -his friendship. If she were free to marry, he would -declare himself in his restrained and dignified way. -But with the barrier of the living Alexis between them, -she laughed at the possibility of such a declaration. And -yet, her inward laughter was tinged with bitterness. -What kind of a man was it, who, loving a woman, did -not catch her round the waist and swing her on his horse -and ride away with her? Of course, she herself would -have something to say in the matter. She would fight -tooth and nail. She would fling the ravisher to Kingdom -Come. But still her sex would have the gratification -of being madly desired.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In some such confused way, she thought; the horror -of Mavenna, and the romantic mastery of Alexis arising -in comparison and contrast. To say nothing of Bobby -Quinton. . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wonder how you can put up with me,” she said when -he had set his pipe comfortably going.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Put up with you? What do you mean?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You and I are so different.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had some glimmer of the things working behind her -dark eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you still want adventures? Medlow is too dull -for you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt guilty, and cried impulsively: “Oh, no, no. -This is peace. This is Heaven. This is all I want.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And for a time she persuaded herself that it was so.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then there came a day when the lilac and the laburnum -were out in the garden behind the house, and the row of -beeches screening it from the east wind were all a riot -of tender green, and Olivia was sitting with a book in the -noon sunshine; and the book lay unread on her lap, for -her thoughts went back to a magical day of greenery in -Richmond Park; an imperishable memory. Her eyes -filled with tears. For a few moments, she had recaptured -the lost Alexis in that remembered hour of blue mist -and mystery. And now, he was in Poland. Doing -what?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The French window of Olifant’s study opened, and he -came down the gravelled path towards her, a letter in -his hand. His face was serious. She rose to meet -him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know whether I ought to show you this—but, -perhaps later you might blame me if I didn’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She uttered a little cry which stuck in her throat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Alexis?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The eagerness with which she grasped the letter brought -a touch of pain into his eyes. Surely she loved the man -still.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m afraid it gives less than news of him,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But, already reading the letter, she gave no heed to -his words.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The letter was from Warsaw, and it ran:</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='sc'>Sir</span>, - “I was commissioned by my friend, Mr. John -Briggs, to communicate with you should anything befall -him. Now something must have befallen him, because -he has failed to keep with me very definite engagements -into which he had entered with the utmost good faith -and enthusiasm. He was to start on his journey hither, -to join the Polish service, on a certain day. He was -furnished with railway tickets and passports; also, on the -night before his departure, with a letter to friends in -Prague where he was to await my coming, and with a -letter to friends in Warsaw, in case political exigencies -should delay my arrival in Prague. The Prague letter -has not been delivered, nor has Mr. Briggs appeared in -Warsaw. Nor have I received from him any explanatory -communication. That he should have changed his -mind at the last moment is incredible, as his more than -zealous intentions cannot be questioned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This letter, therefore, has a double object; first to acquaint -you with these facts: and secondly to beg you of -your courtesy to give me any information you may possess -as to the fate of one whom I learned to hold in affectionate -esteem.</p> - -</div> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:3em;'>Yours faithfully,</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:1em;'>“<span class='sc'>Paul Boronowski</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia grew very pale. Her hand shook as she gave the -letter back to Olifant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Something must have happened to him,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What has always happened to him,” she replied -bitterly. “He says one thing and does another. One -more senseless extravagant lie.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He was obviously going to Poland,” said Olifant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But he never started!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olifant persisted: “How do you know?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What can one ever know about him except that truth -has no meaning for him? If you suggest that he has perished -by the way on a railway journey between here and -Prague—” she laughed scornfully. “Really, my dear -Blaise, you’re too good for this world. If you caught a -man with his hand in your waistcoat pocket, and he told -you he only wanted to see the time by your watch, you’d -believe him! Haven’t I been through this before? All -this elaborate preparation for missions abroad which -never came off? Didn’t he leave you here to go off to -Helsingfors, and John o’ Groats was the nearest to it he -got?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then where do you think he is now?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Anywhere, except in Poland. It was the last place -he had any intention of going to.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He might have written you a false account of his -movements,” Olifant argued, “but why should he have -deceived this good Polish gentleman?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s his way,” she replied wearily. “Oh, don’t you -see? He’s always acting to himself. He can’t help -leading a fictitious life. I can guess the whole thing. -He goes to this Mr. Boronowski—one of his stray Russo-Polish -acquaintances—with the idea in his head of putting -me off his scent. Poland still is romantic and a terribly -long way off. He can’t do a thing simply. He must do -it fantastically. It’s not enough that I should think he -was going to Poland. Mr. Boronowski must think so, -too. He throws his arms about, persuading himself and -everybody else that he is a Paladin going to fight for the -sacred cause of an oppressed nationality. When the -thing’s done, and the letter to me written, the curtain -comes down on the comedy, and Alexis takes off his war -paint and starts off for Pernambuco—or Haverstock -Hill.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think you’re unjust, Olivia,” said Olifant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I think you’re too good to be true,” she retorted -angrily, and she left him and went down the garden -path into the house.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In her room, her mother’s room, with the old rose -curtains and Chippendale and water colours, she rang -the bell. Myra appeared.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You know so much already, Myra,” she said in her -defiant way, “that I think you ought to know everything. -I’ve just heard that Mr. Triona never went to Poland.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Indeed?” said Myra impassively. “Do you know -where he is?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. And I don’t want to.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t quite understand,” said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wish you would take some interest in the matter.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My interest is your interest. If you never want to -see him again, what does it matter where he is? Perhaps -you’re afraid he’ll come back to you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the elder woman’s suggestion, the fear gripped her -with dreadful suddenness. There had not yet been time -for thought of such a possibility. If he had lied about -fighting for Polish freedom, what truth was there in his -perfervid declaration of the severance of his life from -hers? She had been right in her analysis of his character. -The curtain down on whatever comedy he might -be now enacting, he would present himself unexpectedly -before her with specious explanations of the past, and another -glittering scenario of illusion. And with his reappearance -would come exposure. She had pledged -her word to Rowington.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She seized Myra by the wrist. “Do you think he will?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are afraid,” said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. Dreadfully afraid.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t think you need be,” said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia flung away. “You take his part, just like Major -Olifant. Neither of you seem to understand.” She -turned. “Don’t you see the horror of it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve seen lots of horrors in my time,” replied Myra -placidly. “But I shan’t see this one. He’s gone for -good, dearie. You may be sure of that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wish I could think so,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was nearly lunch time. Myra went out and returned -with a can of hot water.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll not see him so long as I’m about to look after -you,” she remarked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Olivia laughed at the dragon of her childhood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Some mornings afterwards, Myra came to her mistress.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If it’s convenient to you, I should like a few days’ -leave. I’ve had a letter.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nothing serious, I hope?” asked Olivia, whose -thoughts flew to the madman in the County Asylum.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know,” said Myra. “Can I go?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So Myra packed her worn valise and left Medlow by -the first available train. But the Asylum was not her -destination. The next day saw her seeking admittance -to University College Hospital, London.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='311' id='Page_311'></span>CHAPTER XXII</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>W</span><span class='sc'>HEN</span> Triona after many dim day-dreams and -relapses into nothingness, at last recovered -consciousness, he found himself in a narrow -sort of cubicle, staring upwards at a mile away ceiling. -He was tightly bound, body and legs. He had a vague -memory of a super-juggernaut of a thing killing him; -therefore he sagely concluded that he was dead and this -was the next world. It occurred to him that the next -world had been singularly over-rated, being devoid of -any interest for an intelligent being. Later, when the -familiar figure of a nurse popped round the screen, he -recognized, with some relief, the old universe. He was -alive; but where he was, he had no notion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Only gradually did he learn what had befallen him; -that he had laid for weeks unconscious; that he had a -broken thigh and crushed ribs; that most of the time he -had hovered between life and death; that even now he -was a very sick man who must lie quiet and do exactly -what nurses and doctors told him. This sufficed for a -time, while his brain still worked dully. But soon there -came a morning when all the memories surged back. He -questioned the nurse:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When do you think I can start for Poland?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps in six months,” she replied soothingly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He groaned. “I want to go there now.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What for?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To join the Polish Army.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had nursed through the war, and knew that men -in his plight were of no further use in armies. Gently -she told him so. He stared uncomprehensively on an -empty world.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What can I do when I leave here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must have a long, long rest, and do nothing at -all and think of nothing at all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He tried to smile at the nurse’s pleasant face. “You’ve -done me a bad turn in bringing me back to life,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When they thought him capable of grappling with his -personal affairs, they brought him his bulging pocket-book, -and bade him count his money. He laughed. It -was quite safe. He handed back the roll of notes into -the nurse’s keeping. But the other contents of the case -he looked at dismally: the passport, with the foreign -visas; the railway tickets; the letters to Prague and Warsaw. -What were the good of them now? He would -never go to Poland. When he got strong, all the fighting -would be over. And when he did get strong, in a few -months or a year, he would probably be lame, with odds -and ends of organs gone wrong inside him. He tried to -read the letters; but they were written in Polish—unintelligible -now in spite of his strenuous short study of the -language. They bore a signature which he could not -decipher. But it was certainly not Boronowski. His -mind soon tired of the puzzle. What was the good of -keeping the letters? Drearily he tore them in pieces and -gave them to the nurse to dispose of, when she brought -him a meal.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Tired with the effort he slept. He awoke to a sense -of something final done, or something important left undone. -As his brain cleared, he realized that subconsciously -he had been thinking of his duty to Boronowski. -Of course, he must be informed at once of the reason for -his defection.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then dismay overwhelmed him. He had no address -to Boronowski. The only channels of communication -with him, the Prague and Warsaw letters, he had -destroyed. A happy idea struck him. He toyed with it -for what seemed interminable hours until the nurse came -to his bedside. He called for writing materials, which -were smilingly denied him. He was too weak. But -the nurse would write a short letter from dictation. He -dictated two identical letters, one to the Polish Legation, -one to the Polish Consulate, asking for the address of -Mr. Paul Boronowski, late of 21 Hillditch Street, St. -Pancras. By return of post came polite replies from -Legation and Consulate. Both disclaimed any knowledge -of the identity of Mr. Paul Boronowski. Legation -and Consulate were blandly ignorant of the existence of -their confidential agents. Then he remembered the baffling -signature to the two letters. He laughed somewhat -bitterly. His life seemed to be involved in a tangle -of false names.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After all, what did it matter? But it did matter, -vitally. If ever he had set his soul on a true thing, he had -set it on keeping faith with Boronowski. And Boronowski -like the rest of the world would set him down as an -impostor. In his desperate physical weakness the tears -rolled down his cheeks; and so the nurse found him, -with one of the letters clutched in his thin hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My only friend in the world,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dead?” asked the nurse.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. Lost.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He gave her the letter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Surely you have at least one more,” she said. “In -fact I have written to her to tell her of your recovery.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Her?</span>” He looked at the nurse out of ghastly eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Miss Myra Stebbings.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, my God!” said he, and fainted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Whereat the nurse, anxious to bring him comforting -tidings was exceedingly troubled. The shock put him -back for two or three days. He grew light-headed, and -raved about a woman called Olivia, and about all sorts -of strange and incomprehensible things. When he regained -his senses it was an awakening to a life of even -more terrifying consternation than before. Myra, he -learned, had called daily at the hospital—to be denied access -to him till he should be in a fit state to receive her. -The nurse told him of her first visit the morning after -the accident and of the newspaper paragraph which she -had chanced to read. But if Myra knew, surely Olivia -knew. And Olivia, knowing him to have been for weeks -at death’s door, had treated him, as though he had already -passed through that door to the other side. Horror -gripped him. He questioned the nurse. This Miss Stebbings, -had she left no message? No, she was a woman of -few words. She had said, in an unemotional way: “I’ll -come in again to-morrow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“For God’s sake don’t let her see me,” he cried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But after a while he countermanded the request. He -would learn the worst, and meet steadily the supreme -punishment, the tale of Olivia’s implacable hatred. -There were degrees in a woman’s scorn. Much he knew -he had justly incurred; but his sick frame shuddered at -this maximum of contempt and loathing. Ill-conditioned -dog he avowed himself; yet to let him die, for aught she -knew, like a dog, without sign or word of interest . . . it -transcended thought.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you sure there has been no other lady? Not a -letter of enquiry? Nothing?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll make yourself bad again, if you worry like -that,” said the nurse.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wish to God I could,” said he; “and that would -be the end of it all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In a large ward of a London hospital, nurses have not -much time to devote to the sick fancies of patients. -More than enough for them were their physical needs. -The crumb of kindly commonplace was all that the nurse -could give to the man’s hungering soul. He passed the -day, staring up at the mile-high ceiling, incurious as to -what vista of misery lay beyond the still remaining -American-cloth covered screen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From the shaft of fierce sunshine on the wall to his -right, he gathered that spring had passed into early -summer. The outside world was a-riot in the new life of -wild flowers and trees and birds and human hopes and -loves. Outside that prison of his—a whitewashed wall, a -screen, a window behind his head reaching sky-high—spread -this world with whose pulsations his heart had -ever throbbed in unison. God! How he had loved it! -Every leaf, every crested wave, every patch of sand, -every stretch of heat, every rusty horse grazing on a -common, every child before a cottage door, every vibrating -sound or sight of great cities, every waste in regions -of grand desolation, every man with sinews or with purpose -in his eyes, every woman parading the mystery of -her sex, from the tow-haired, dirt-encrusted goose-girl of -a Russian village to the wonder of ever inscrutable wonders -that was Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In all his dreams he inevitably came back to Olivia. -Indeed she was the centripetal force of his longings. -All that earth held of the rustle of leaves and the murmur -of waters, the magic of dawn and the roar of town -multitudes and the laughter of green forests and the -silence of frozen steppes, were incorporated in the woman -of his adoration. Through her spoke the voices of the -infinite universe. And all that was visible of it, the patch -of sunlight on the whitewashed wall, said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She lives and I, a reflected glory of her, live too; but -even if you go hence I shall only appear mockingly before -you, on prison walls, until you are dead. And you will -never find me on the blue seas or the joyous roads or the -stone-bounded, clattering haunts of mankind, other than -a meaningless mirage, because the inspired meaning of it -all which is Olivia, has passed from you for evermore.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Damn you,” said he, and turned away his head, for -he could not turn his plaster of Paris encased body, and -shut out the white line from his burning eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The next morning Myra came. He had been prepared -for her visit. She sat on the cane-bottomed chair by his -bedside. As soon as the nurse left them together:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m glad you are better, Sir,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have you brought me any message from Mrs. -Triona?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked at him steadily. “You don’t suppose Mrs. -Triona knows you are here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was some time before he could appreciate the meaning -of her words.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She thinks I’m in Poland?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She doesn’t know you are here,” said Myra truthfully. -“She doesn’t know where you are.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Or care?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Or care,” said Myra, and her tone was flat like that -of a Fate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For a while he was silent, accepting the finality of -Myra’s words.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ve left her in ignorance of my accident?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” said Myra. “Haven’t you done the same since -you’ve recovered your wits?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her dry logic was unanswerable. Yet a man does not -expect logic from an elderly waiting-woman. He passed -a hand over his eyes and held it there for a long time, -while Myra sat patient and unemotional. He understood -nothing of her motives. For the moment he did not seek -to understand them. One fact alone mattered. Olivia -did not know. She had not, with horrible contempt, left -him to die like a dog. By the thought of such a possibility -he had wronged her. She might, with every reason, -desire never to set eyes on him again—but of active -cruelty he should have known her incapable.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Presently he withdrew his hand and turned to Myra. -“My head’s not altogether right yet,” he said half-apologetically.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can quite believe it,” said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why you should bother with me, I don’t understand,” -he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Neither do I,” she replied in her disconcerting way. -“If you had died I shouldn’t have been sorry. For her -sake. Now you’re not going to die, I’m glad. For -yours.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thank you,” said he with a note of irony. And then -after a pause:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How is your mistress?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She is quite well, sir.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And happy?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Begging your pardon, sir,” said Myra stiffly, “but I’ve -not come here to be asked questions. I’ve no intention -of your using me as a go-between.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It never entered my head,” he declared.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It might,” said Myra. “So I give you warning. -Whatever go-between-ing I do will be to keep you apart -from Mrs. Triona.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then why are you worrying about me?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Because I’ve found you in affliction and I’m a Christian -woman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Neither of them understood the other. He said suddenly -with a flash of the old fire:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Will you swear you’ll never tell your mistress where -I am?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A faint light flickered in her pale eyes. “I’ll swear if -you like. But haven’t you taken in what I’ve been telling -you all the time?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So long as we can trust each other—that is all that -matters.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can trust me all right,” said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They talked the ground over again for a while longer. -Then he grew tired with the strain, and the nurse put an -end to the interview. But Myra came the next day and -the day after that, and Triona grew to long for her visit. -He became aware of a crabbed kindness in her attitude -towards him side by side with her jealous love for Olivia. -She was anxious for his welfare within grimly prescribed -limitations. His immediate future concerned her. What -did he purpose to do with his invalid-dom after his discharge -from the hospital? He himself, at this stage, had -no notion. He confided to her the despair of his active -life. The motor-lorry had wrecked his hopes of salvation. -He told her the whole Boronowski story. Myra -nodded; but faithful to the part she had chosen, she said -nothing of Boronowski’s letter to Major Olifant. Only -by keeping the lives of the ill-fated pair in tightly sealed -and non-communicable compartments, could she be true -to an ethical code formulated by many definite sorrows -and many vague, but none the less poignant, spiritual conflicts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s funny,” said he, “that you’re the only human being -I should know in the world.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her intuition skipped the gap of demonstration of so -extraordinary a pronouncement, and followed his flight -into the Unknown.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It might be luck for you,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He smiled wistfully on her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He hung on her answer which she took some time to -give. In the lines on the pallid face, in the dull blue eyes -of this sphinx-like woman so correct in her negative attire -of black coat and skirt and black hat with just a -redeeming touch of white, and on the thin, compressed -lips, his sick man’s brain seemed to read his destiny. -She hovered over him, impressive, baffling, ever about-to-be -oracular. Combined with her mystery existed the -strange fact that she was his sole link with the world, -not only the great humming universe of thought and -action, but the inner spiritual world in which Olivia -reigned. He regarded her with superstitious dread and -reverence; conscious all the time of the comedy of so -regarding the woman whose duty had been to fold up his -trousers and set out his underclothes on the hot rail of -the bathroom.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What are you going to do when you leave?” she asked, -and he guessed a purpose behind her question.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I must hide until I am strong enough to take up active -life again.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where will you hide?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He didn’t know. He had not thought—so remote did -the date of his discharge appear. It must be some -secluded, man-forgotten spot.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If the worst comes to the worst and you need a place -where you’ll be looked after, I’ll give you an address of -friends of mine,” said Myra. “You’ll, maybe, spend the -rest of your life on crutches, and have all sorts of things -wrong inside you. I shouldn’t like you to feel I was -abandoning you. If you were broken down and needed -help, I suppose you wouldn’t write to me, would you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I most certainly shouldn’t,” said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I thought so,” said Myra. “In that case I’d better -give you the address.” She scribbled it on the writing pad -by his bedside. “There. Take it or leave it. It’s the -best I can do.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She left him with an abrupt “Good day, sir,” and took -the next train back to Medlow.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You haven’t had a long holiday, Myra,” Olivia -remarked when she arrived.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I didn’t say I was going on a holiday.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope things were all right.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“As right as they ever can be,” replied Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The weary weeks of convalescence dragged themselves -out. Myra did not come again; and of course he had -no other visitor. He made casual acquaintances in the -ward; here and there an ex-soldier with whom he could -exchange reminiscences of warfare.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Once a discharged sailor in the next bed—the screen -had long since been removed—recovering from an operation, -spoke to him of mine-sweeping days, and perils of -storm and submarine and he grew to regard him as a -brother. Both regretted the deluging waters of the North -Sea. The sailor in these times of peace drove a dust -cart for the St. Pancras Borough Council. The wages -were good—but what a life for a sea-faring man! He -would have stuck to his old job were it not that a wave -had washed him down on the slithery deck and had -brought his knee-cap up against a stanchion and had -stiffened it out so that his career on board-ship was over. -But those were good times, weren’t they? Oh yes. Of -course they groused. But they only groused when -they had time. Mostly they hadn’t. Dust-collecting -was an open-air life, true enough; but there was a difference -between the smell of brine and the stench of house -refuse. It was in summer that it made him sick. The -odours of the fo’c’sle were not those of a hairdresser’s shop—nothing -smelt so fine, he declared, as a hairdresser’s -shop—they were a bit thick, but a man could go on deck -and fill his lungs with good salt air. And the grub! -What an appetite! He conjured up gargantuan meals -in perilous tempests. Nothing of the sort now. Everything -he ate tasted of sour potato peelings.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s the taste of everything in these post-war days,” -said Triona, “everything in life—sour potato peelings.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The dustman reckoned he was right. In those old days -of mine-sweeping, a man had no anxieties. He had no -responsibilities. He was happy as the day was long. -Now he was married and already had a couple of kids. -Life was just one wearisome worry, a continuous accumulation -on the debit side of the slate, with few advantages -on the credit side to balance. If it wasn’t the wife it was -the boy; if it wasn’t the boy, it was the baby; and if it -wasn’t them, it was his appendix which had just been -removed. Whoever heard of a sailor-man aboard ship -getting appendicitis? No, all them things, said he, were -blessings of peace. Besides, how was he going to feed -his family when they grew older? And clothes, boots, -schooling? And he himself—limited to beer—and such -beer! He hadn’t tasted a drop of rum——. Was there -anything like it? Sometimes he saw it and smelt it in -his dreams, but he always woke up before he could put -his lips to the pannikin. If only one could get something -to hold on to in dreams. He never had need to dream of -rum in the navy. So much for peace. Give him the good -old war again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And when his wife, a thin lipped, scraggy blonde, with -a moth-eaten fur stole round her neck (although it was -sweltering summer), and a pallid baby in her arms came -to visit him, and spoke querulously of domestic affairs, -Triona gave him his unreserved sympathy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And it ain’t,” said the ex-mariner, “as if I couldn’t -carry on straight and proper in civil life. I wonder how -many of my mates are getting what I’m getting. She -ought to be proud of me, she ought. Instead of that—you -heard what she said?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona had heard. She had upbraided him for his -ungenteel occupation, considering herself, the daughter -(so Triona learned) of a small sweet-stuff monger in -Dover, where they had met during his sea-going days, -socially degraded by her marriage with a municipal collector -of dust. She had married him, by the by, before his -present appointment, while he was drawing out-of-work -pay. Apparently he was possessed of some low-comedy -histrionic talent, and she was convinced that he could -make his fortune as a cinema star.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You married?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not now,” said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ve been through it,” said the misogynist. -“Women! There never was a woman who knew when -she was well off! Oh, Gawd! Give me the old days on -the <span class='it'>Barracouta</span>, where there wasn’t any thought of women. -That was my last ship. I had nine months in her. There -was <span class='it'>Barracouta</span>, <span class='it'>Annie Sandys</span>, <span class='it'>Seahorse</span>. . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He ran through the names of his squadron, forgetful, in -the sudden flush of reminiscence, of domestic cares.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what did you say you were in?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Vestris.</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course. I remember. Torpedoed. But even that -was better than this?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona agreed, and the eternal talk of the sea went on, -until the nostalgia for the wide, free spaces of the world -gripped his vitals with the pains of hunger.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What are you going to do when you come out?” asked -the dustman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“About the same as you,” replied Triona. “What’s -the good of a man with a game leg?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The dustman sighed. “You’ve got education,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At first, aware of accent and manner of expression, the -dustman had taken him for an ex-officer. Only the -discharge-papers of John Briggs, able-seaman, convinced -him of John Briggs lowly estate. Still, in the <span class='it'>Barracouta</span> -they had an elderly stoker who had been at Cambridge -College. Such a man might be his neighbour.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I ran away to sea when I was a boy,” said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So had the dustman. He waxed more confidential. -His name was Josh Bunnings, and he had sailed in every -conceivable kind of craft from Alaska to Singapore. -But he had found no time for education. How did his -neighbour acquire it? Books? He shook his head. He -had been cured of books on his first voyage, when the -second mate catching him reading a tattered manual on -gardening, when he ought to have been washing up in -the galley, had kicked and cuffed him round the deck. -Triona’s mind went back to his boyhood—to an almost -identical incident. There was much in common between -himself and Josh Bunnings. They had started on even -terms. They had met on even terms in the foul fo’c’sles -on the North Sea. They were on even terms, now, lying -side by side, lamed, their life of free adventure a thing -of the past. Each dreaded the future; Josh Bunnings -condemned to cart refuse beneath the affected nose of -a shrew of a wife for the remainder of his days; he, -Triona, to deal with such refuse as the world would leave -him, but away from the wife who abhorred him and all -his works. On the other hand, between him and Josh -Bunnings lay a great gulf. He had made himself a man -of wide culture. Josh Bunnings had remained abysmally -ignorant. But Josh Bunnings had lived his life an honourable -man. If he told his story to Josh Bunnings he -would be condemned by him, even as he had been condemned -by his sister on the morning of his mother’s -funeral. So, when the dustman, with another sigh, -harked back to his former idea and said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If only I had education.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re a damned sight better man than I am, without -it,” Triona replied bitterly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When the three weeks’ comradeship came to an end, -on the discharge of Josh Bunnings, he found himself lost -again in a friendless world. The neighbouring familiar -bed was occupied by an ancient man in the throes of -some ghastly malady, and around him was stretched the -horrible, death-suggesting screen. And behind the screen, -a week later, the old man died. It was to relieve the -nervous tension of this week that he began a correspondence -with Josh Bunnings. The writing man’s instinct -awoke—the mania of self-expression. His letters to the -dustman, full of the atmosphere of the ward, vivid with -lightning sketches of house-surgeons, sisters, nurses and -patients, with here and there excursions into contrasting -tempests, storms of battle, and everywhere touched with -the magic of his queer genius, would, if sent to his literary -agents, have gained him a year’s subsistence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Josh Bunnings visited him occasionally, when freed -from municipal, and escaped from domestic, obligations. -The visits, he explained, were in return for the letters; -for being no scholar, he could not reply. Then one day -he appeared and sat on the chair by Triona’s bed, with -the air of a man about to bring glad tidings. He was -rather a heavy, pallid, clean-shaven man, with a curl of -black hair sweeping down to his eyebrows. His small -dark eyes gleamed. At once he disemburdened his honest -soul. He was a Church of England man; always held -with church-going—so did his wife; it was the great bond -of union between them. So he was on friendly terms -with the curate of St. Simon’s. And being on friendly -terms with the curate, he had shewn him the letters.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And, would you believe it, mate?” said he. “Would -you believe it? He wants to put them in print in the -Parish Magazine. In print! Fancy!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He slapped his thigh. Triona stared at him for a moment -and then laughed out loud for the first time for -many weeks.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What are you laughing at?” asked the astonished -Bunnings.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It seems so funny,” said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s what I thought.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And a great honour,” said Triona recovering.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course. Only he said he couldn’t print ’em without -your permission.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona gave permission, stipulating, however, that his -name should not be used. His modesty forbade it he -explained. Josh Bunnings went away delighted. In the -course of a few posts came a grateful letter from the curate. -In Mr. Briggs’s writing he saw signs of considerable -literary talent which he hoped Mr. Briggs would -cultivate. If he could be of help in this way, he put his -services at Mr. Briggs’s disposal. Triona again laughed, -with grim amusement, at a funny, ironical world.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then, suddenly, the underlying tragedy of this comic -interlude smote him breathless. Alexis Triona was dead -and so were his writings, for evermore. But the impulse -to write stirred within him so vehemently that even in -these idle letters to Josh Bunnings he had put all his -vividness of literary expression. The curate’s dim -recognition of the unusual was a sign and a token. -Whatever he wrote would be stamped with his individuality -and if published, even anonymously, would lead -to his identification. The arresting quality of his style -had been a main factor in his success. This flashing -pictorial way of his he could not change. If he strove -self-consciously to write sober prose, he would produce -dull, uninspired stuff that no man could read; if he lost -self-consciousness, automatically he would betray himself. -He would re-appear in the Olivia-dominated world. -Every book or article would dance before her eyes like -an <span class='it'>ignis fatuus</span>, reminding her maddeningly of his existence -in her propinquity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>An <span class='it'>ignis fatuus</span>. At this point of his reflection he -remembered his first talk with her, wherein he had counselled -her never to lose faith in her Will-o’-the-Wisp, -but to compel it to be her guiding star. More ironical -laughter from the high gods! And yet, why not? He -wrestled with the temptation. As he lay, convalescent -on his back, his brain clear, the sap of youth working in -his veins, the uncontrolled fancies of the imaginative -writer wove themselves into shreds of fine romance and -tapestries of exquisite scenes. Just a little concentration, -impossible in the open hospital ward, and all these would -blend together into a thing of immortal beauty. He -would find a publisher. Nothing easier. No name -would appear. Or else, perhaps, as a handle for convenience -sake, he would sign the book “Incognito.” It -would stir the hearts of men, and they would say: “There -is but one man living who could do this and that is Alexis -Triona.” And Olivia, reading it, and beholding him in -it, would find her heart stirred with the rest, yet far far -more deeply than the rest, and would seek him out, obeying -his far-off counsel, and believe that, in his essential -self and in his infinite love, he was verily her guiding-star.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But when the hour of exaltation had passed and given -way to the dreary commonplace, when the nurse came -to wash him like a child, or to chatter pleasantly of the -outside world, the revue which she had seen on her free -afternoon, or the sentimental novel which had beguiled -her scanty leisure, he knew that he had been living in a -land of dreams. His real achievement Olivia knew, and -by it she was unmoved. Myra had held out to him no -chance of hope; only certainty of despair. By no further -achievement could Olivia be persuaded. She realized -her Will-o’-the-Wisp as what it really was, a -miasmatic gas leading her into quagmires. She would -bitterly resent his reappearance. It would be another -trick, another way of flaunting before her under false -pretences. As well write to her now that he was a -mangled wreck in University College Hospital.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the course of time he was able to leave his bed and -be wheeled about the ward and afterwards to hobble -about on a crutch. But the injured leg was just a bit -shorter than the other, so that he was condemned to a -perpetual limp; and though the ribs were mended, yet -their breakage had occasioned internal lesions which -would have to be watched for the rest of his life. No -more adventures in wide spaces. No more tramps to -John o’ Groats.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I’m a born wanderer,” he cried to the surgeon -who made the final pronouncement. “What shall I do -when the wander fever is on me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Fill yourself up with bromide and stick leeches on -your head.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He laughed into the smiling kindly face, and was silent -for a moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can drive a car, I suppose?” he said after a while.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Safer to drive a horse. You haven’t to crank it up.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So I’m going out, a hopeless crock.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh no. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t live, -with reasonable care, to ninety. You’re fit for light -work. Why not office work? An educated chap like -you——By the way, you were off to Poland, if I -remember rightly, when you met with your accident. -What’s your trade or profession?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Before the war, I was a cosmopolitan chauffeur,” said -Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And since?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The damnedest fool God ever made.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The surgeon asked him no more questions.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='330' id='Page_330'></span>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>F</span><span class='sc'>ANSTEAD</span> is a little country town built on the -plan of a sparsely equipped herring bone. -There is the central High Street, a jumble of old -half-timbered houses and staring modern red-brick buildings, -and sprouted from it a series of lateral roads, lanes -and alleys, dwindling in importance to the High Street -tip, and each petering out into the sweet country vagueness -of hedges and fields. All save two. One of these -ends abruptly at an inconveniently distant railway station. -The other, villa bordered, meanders pleasantly -for a mile or so to the tiny village of Pendish where it -meets at right angles the great high road, and stops modestly, -confronted all of a sudden with rolling open -country, swelling downs patched with meadow and corn-field -and crowned with great clumps of woodland.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pendish was too small even to have a church. There -was a tiny chapel for the convenience of Baptists. But -Anglicans tramped into Fanstead or to the larger village -of Banton-on-the-Hill, another mile along the great high -road. It had a tumbled-down inn, the “Whip and -Collar,” and a straggling row of thatched cottages, and -a tiny red-brick villa labelled as the home of the County -Police. But it also had a post-office, which was also a -shop; and this was a small, square two-storied Georgian -house imposing among its thatched neighbours and maintaining -itself with a curious air of dignity, in spite of -the front door open to the public during business hours, -and the miscellaneous assortment of sweets, tobacco, -tapes and picture postcards exposed in what was once the -dining-room window.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was the freehold of Mrs. Pettiland, a widow of -fifty; she had inherited it from her father, a Norfolk -thatcher who had brought his mystery to the west and -practising it with skill and saving a little fortune brought -to him by his wife, had amassed enough to buy the square -stone house where he had ended his days. They said -in the village that he had never recovered from the shock -occasioned by the fate of his son, his apprentice and later -his partner, who had gone raving mad a week or two after -his marriage and had to be confined in the County -Asylum.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Well, the old man had slept with his fathers for many -years; his wife had joined him; the son still lingered on in -the madhouse; and Mrs. Pettiland, very much alone in -the world, save for her husband’s relatives in Fanstead, -sold stamps and sweets to the village, and as a very great -favour let the best bedroom to an occasional painter with -unimpeachable introductions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was dark-haired, fresh-coloured, and buxom; she -dressed with neatness, wearing old-fashioned stays that -gave her a waist and a high bust; and she was the most -considerable personage in Pendish.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When she had received a letter from her sister-in-law, -Myra Stebbings, asking her as a favour to put up a foolish -young man named Briggs who had got himself run -over by a motor-lorry, if ever he should act on her suggestion -and come to Pendish, she considered it less as an -introduction than as a command. Whether she loved -Myra or not, she did not know. But she had an immense -respect for the dry, grey-faced woman who had come -every year to stay with her, so that she could visit the -brother whom she had loved, in the house of awfulness, -five or six miles away. She stood somewhat in awe of -Myra. Her own good man had died comfortably in his -bed and had gone for ever, after a couple of years of -placid content. It was sad; but it was the common lot. -The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. But at the -idea of a woman’s husband being shut off from the world -in the living tomb of the County Asylum, she shuddered. -Myra always conveyed to her the vague impression, so -impossible to be formulated by an uneducated woman -ignorant of traditional reference, of a human soul defying -the tragedy of existence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So when this Mr. Briggs wrote from the hospital in -London, she sent him a cordial answer. Any friend of -Myra Stebbings was more than welcome. She would not -charge him more than out-of-pocket expenses. For she -did not know who this foolish young man might be. -Myra sphinx-like, as usual, had given no clue. But for -Myra to ask a favour was an unprecedented occurrence. -She must have far more than ordinary interest in the -welfare of the young fellow. Mrs. Pettiland’s curiosity -was aroused and she awaited the arrival of her new lodger -with impatience.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The station car from the Fanstead garage brought -him, on a late summer afternoon, with his brown canvas -kit-bag and suit-case and khaki overcoat. She stood in -the pedimented doorway, over which was fixed the -wooden post-office board, and watched him descend. He -faced her for a moment, and raised his hat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mrs. Pettiland?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked at his clear cut face, so boyish in spite of -whiteness and haggardness, at his careless brown hair -sweeping over his temples, at the lips parted in a smile, -at the lithe young figure. She caught the significance of -his uplifted hat and the pleasant tone of his voice. In -her limited category of values he would be only one thing—a -gentleman. The manners of an instant charmed her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mr. Briggs?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope I shan’t be a dreadful nuisance to you, but I -need rest and quiet and Miss Stebbings told me to come. -And,” he smiled, “What she says generally goes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I see that you know her, sir,” said Mrs. Pettiland -pleasantly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The luggage taken in, the cab dismissed she led him -up to his room—a large bed-sitting room, looking over -a wild garden and a wide expanse of rolling downs, with -the faint white ribbon of high road circling in and out -and round about them. His meals, she informed him, -he could take in the parlour downstairs, without extra -charge.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I insist on paying my way,” he said. “Unless -my staying here is profitable to you, I can’t remain. For -the present at least, I can well afford it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So a modest arrangement was made and Triona settled -down in his new home.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For some days he enjoyed the peace of Pendish. He -had brought with him books, ordered from the hospital; -books which would take him long to read; some of the -interminable modern French novels; a complete Fielding -and Smollett; <span class='it'>Paradise Lost</span> and <span class='it'>The Faerie Queene</span>, -neither of which he had as yet had time to go through. -He spent hours in the sunny garden riotous with ingenous -roses and delphinium and Canterbury bells and burning -red-hot pokers as they call them in the West. Often he -limped along the green lanes that wound between the -fields up and down the downs. Becoming aware that -he knew nothing of bird-life, he procured through the -Fanstead bookshop popular works on British Birds, and -sitting under a tree in a corner of a meadow would strive -to identify them by their song and plumage and queer -individual habits. He talked to the villagers. He talked -to Mrs. Pettiland, who told him the tragic story of Myra -and the man in the County Asylum. Of Myra’s doings -all the year round, he found she knew little. She was -with her lady whom she had served most of her life and -had gone back with her to Medlow. Of the lady herself -Myra never spoke. Mrs. Pettiland did not know -whether the lady was married or not. That was Myra -Stebbings’s way. She gave no information and no one -dared ask her questions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She never even told me, in her letter, who you were, -sir,” she added.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am just under her protection,” he smiled. “She -took me up when I had no one to defend me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She’s a curious woman,” sighed Mrs. Pettiland.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“With strange tastes in protégés.” He laughed. “To -tell you the truth, Mrs. Pettiland, I don’t quite know -myself what I am. But doubtless sooner or later I’ll -do something to astonish you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The yearning to do this fretted his secret heart. To -move about the summer fields when the weather was fine, -to lounge in an easy-chair over books in seasons of rain, -was all very well for the period of convalescence after -the confinement in the hospital ward. But after a while, -when his muscles regained strength and the new blood -coursing through his veins brought colour to his cheeks, -he began to feel the old imperious need of movement and -of action. Sometimes he went back, as in his talks with -the dustman, to the idyllic tempests in the North Sea; -sometimes to the fierce freedom of the speed across the -illimitable steppes of Russia; sometimes to his perilous -escape to Petrograd; sometimes to his tramps along the -safe roads of England; to his wanderings through the -dangerous by-ways of the East End. Bitterly he cursed -the motor-lorry that had knocked him out of his Polish -adventure. Except on Olivia he had never so set his -heart on a thing before. Well, he shrugged angry shoulders. -It was no use thinking of that. Poland had gone, -like Olivia, out of his life. And when he came to think -of it, so had everything that had made up all that he had -known or conceived of life.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>He closed <span class='it'>Tom Jones</span>, and stared out of the window on -the rain-drenched hills; Tom Jones, with his physical -lustiness, his strong animal bravura, was more than he -could bear. Tom Jones, no matter in what circumstance -he was placed, had all the world before him. His gay -confidence offended the lost man. For he was lost. Not -a lost soul, he told himself; that was taking an absurd -Byronical view of the matter. To pose as a modern -Manfred would be contemptible. He went down to bed-rock -of commonplace. He was a lost man—a fact which -was quite serious enough for any human being to contemplate -with dismay. Lost, tied by a lame leg in a -deadly little backwater of the world, where he must remain -till he died. He could write, pour out all the -fever of his soul into words. But what was the good, -if no word of his could be transmitted from this backwater -into the haunts of men? Work without hope—a -verse of Coleridge came vaguely to him—was like draining -nectar through a sieve. It could only end in heart-break. -He stared through the dripping window-pane at -the free hills, dim and hopeless in the mist of deluge. -Nothingness confronted him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He wondered whether Myra, with diabolical insight -and deliberate malice, had not lured him hither, so that -she could hold him in relentless grip. At any rate she -had cast him into this prison.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He lay awake all that night. The next morning the -sky had cleared and the sun shone down on the gratefully -steaming land of green. He breakfasted in the tiny -parlour opposite the shop-post-office on the ground floor. -The ornaments in it were those of long ago. Prints of -the landing of the Guards after the Crimea, of Queen -Victoria and the Prince Consort. Curiously carved and -polished coconut shells, and a great egg on which a -staring mermaid was nudely painted stood on the mantelpiece. -On the chiffonier were calabashes, with gaudy -figures of indigenous Indians, such as came from the West -Indies seventy years ago, and a model of a full-rigged -ship under a glass case, and a moulting stuffed toucan, -with its great beak and yellow and red plumage. The -late Mr. Pettiland’s father, he had learned, had followed -the sea. So, beside the objects on the crowded mantelpiece -and in front of palm-leaf fans were sprigs of white -coral and strings of strange beads, and a dumpy, shapeless, -wooden Polynesian god. And at the end lay a great -conch shell with its wide, pink, curving lips, mysterious -and alluring.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He could scarcely eat. The night had shaken him. -He gulped down some food and coffee, lit a pipe and -wandered restlessly about the room, looking at these -tokens of the lands far away which he had never seen. -The coral fascinated him. In the hospital he had read -<span class='it'>Typee</span> and <span class='it'>Oomoo</span> of Herman Melville in Dent’s cheap -collection of classics. The sight of the coral quickened -dormant longings. He took the great conch-shell in his -hand wondering at its beauty of curve and colour. And -as he did so his mind went back to early childhood—to -an old aunt whom he occasionally was taken to visit in -torturing Sunday clothes sacrosanct from the defilement -of jam under dreadful penalties, and who possessed such -a shell. He remembered that the shell was the glory that -compensated the frigid horror of that house. He would -hold it to his ear and listen to the boom of far-off surfs -and then go home and mingle the message with the pointing -finger of Salvation Yeo. And now, grown man, -inured to adventure, he put the shell to his ear, and the -message was the same, vibrating the call of oceans thundering -on distant beaches through the fibres of his being.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He went out into the garden and stood in the sun and -looked almost unseeingly at the rolling downs. Suddenly -he became aware of the ribbon of road that lost -itself not far away, behind a bluff. It was the Great -High Road that led eventually to a great western port, -where great ships sailed to the South Seas. The Power -seemed to impel him, as it had impelled him as a boy -to run away from home. By following that road, he -would reach the port. At the port he could ship before -the mast. On board his limp would not matter. For -the rest, he was strong, as strong as a lion, in spite of all -pronouncements by the doctors. It was the one adventure -life left open to him. Nay more, the one chance of -maintaining his reason. He stood with hands clenched -staring at the road, the sweat beading on his forehead.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To pack up belongings and arrive with genteel suit-case -and kit-bag at the dock-side and expect to be taken -on as an ordinary hand would be the act of an embecile. -He passed his hand mildly through his hair in his instinctive -gesture. Why not go as he was, a cap on his head, -and his money, all he had in the world, in a belt (bought -for Poland) round his waist? It was escape from -prison. Escape from Myra. The final disappearance -from the orbit of Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Perhaps it was the maddest thing he had done in his -life. But what did it matter? If he crocked up, he -crocked up. At least he could try. He went indoors -and in the parlour found an old railway timetable. -There were only two trains a day from Fanstead to the -main-line junction, and the morning train had already -gone. Why should he not tramp to the Junction, as in -the old days, getting a lift here and there on a cart, and -know again the freedom of the vagabond road?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He went up to his room, put on his belt of money and -good thick boots, and made up a bundle of necessaries. -On his dressing-table he left a letter addressed to Mrs. -Pettiland, enclosing a month’s rent. He looked round -the room for the last time, as he had looked round so -many in his life, and laughed. No books on this journey. -As he had not left the Tyneside with books years ago, so -would he start now afresh, with the same equipment. He -went downstairs with a light heart, and called out to -Mrs. Pettiland busy in her post-office.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m going off on a jaunt—so don’t expect me till you -see me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And the answer came: “Don’t overdo yourself with -your lame leg.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He laughed at the idea. His leg could bear his whole -weight to-day without a twinge. Retracing his steps -down the passage, he entered the garden and left the -place by the wicket-gate and struck up the winding lanes -and across fields to the high road, his stick and bundle -over his shoulder. By doing so, instead of taking the -road at the end of the village, he could cut off a mile. -It was a morning of freshness and inspiration. A cool -breeze sent the clouds scurrying across the sky and -rustled the leaves of the elms and rippled the surface -of the half-grown corn. His spirits rose as he walked, -somewhat of a jog-trot walk, it is true, but that would -last for the rest of his life; so long as the pain had gone -for ever, all was well. He reached the high road and -settled down to his tramp, gladdened by the sight of cart -and car and cottage gardens flaming with roses and -hollyhocks or restful with screens of sweet-peas. In the -soft-mannered West-country fashion, folks gave him -“good day” as he passed. The road undulated pleasantly, -now and then sweeping round the full bosom of -a hill, with a steeply sloping drop of thirty feet to the -valley. Such spots were grimly sign-posted for motorists; -for at one of them, so Mrs. Pettiland had told him, -a motor-lorry during the war had slipped over at night -and all the occupants had been killed. He regarded it -with a chauffeur’s eye and smiled contemptuously at the -inefficiency of the driver. He could race along it at sixty -miles an hour. But still, if you did go over—there was -an end of you.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>By noon he was hungry and ate cold meat and bread -at a wayside inn, and smoked contentedly afterwards on -the bench outside and talked of crops and licensing laws -with the landlord. When he started again he felt stiff -from the unaccustomed exercise. Walking would relax -his muscles. Yet he began to tire. A while later he -came upon a furniture removing van which had broken -down. Two men drew their heads from below the bonnet -and looked at each other ruefully, and their speech -was profane. He asked what was wrong. They didn’t -know. He threw off his coat, glad to get to an engine -again, and in a quarter of an hour had set it going -merrily. For two or three miles he sat on the tailboard -between the two canvas-aproned packers, enjoying the -respite. When they turned off eventually from the main -road, and he had to descend, he felt strangely disinclined -to walk. The Junction was still a long way off. It -would have been better, after all, to wait for the evening -train from Fanstead. He was always starting on crazy -ventures without counting the cost. But he limped on.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The road went through a desolate land of abandoned -quarry and ragged pine woods. The ascent was steep. -Suddenly, as though someone had pierced his leg with hot -iron, flamed the unmistakable pain. He stood aghast at -the pronouncement of doom. At that moment, while he -hung there in agony, a rough figure of a man in old khaki -slacks rose from a near hollow in the quarry and, -approaching him, asked what time it was. Triona took -out his watch, a gold one, the gift of Olivia. It was four -o’clock. The man thanked him gruffly and returned to -his stony Bethel. Triona hobbled on a few more steps. -But the torture was too great. He must rest. The -pine-wood’s cool quiet invited him. He dragged himself -thither wearily, and sat down, his back against the trunk -of a tree. He tried to think. Of course the simplest -method of extrication was to hail any passing car and -beg for a lift, either to the Junction or back to Pendish. -Walking was out of the question. But which of those -ways should he take? The weight of physical tiredness -overwhelmed him and dulled the deciding brain. He had -set out at nine in the morning and it was now four o’clock -in the afternoon. He had not realized how slow his -progress had been. Yes, he was exhausted and sleepy. -Nothing mattered. He rolled on his side, stuck his arm -under his head and fell into a dead sleep. Thirty yards -away, at varying intervals, motor vehicles flashed by.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>He was dreaming of a rabbit running across his throat, -when suddenly he awoke to find the rabbit a man’s arm. -He gripped it, instinctively. It was nearly dark.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What the devil are you doing?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The man replied: “Why we thought you was dead.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the significance of the plural, his grasp relaxed and -he sat up, staring at two men who had come upon him in -his solitude. They were dirty, unshaven, not nice to look -upon. On one of them he noticed a pair of old khaki -slacks. As soon as he moved they knelt one on each side -of him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And if I’d been dead, you’d have run through my -pockets wouldn’t you?” Suddenly he clapped his hands -in front of him. “You swine, you’ve got my watch and -chain.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He thrust them aside and scrambled anyhow to his feet, -and struck instinctively with his left full in the face of -the nearest man who had sprung up also. But all his -weight was then on his left foot and the flame of agony -shot up through his thigh and his leg crumpled up before -the blow reached the man. Then the one in the khaki -slacks came in with an upper cut on the point of his jaw -and he fell senseless.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When he recovered consciousness a few minutes afterwards, -he found himself alone, dazed, rather sick, in an -uncomprehended world of gathering darkness. Black -clouds had swept over the brow of the quarry hill. A -pattering noise some way off struck his ear. He realized -it was rain on the road. He drew himself up to a sitting -posture and in a moment or two recovered wits and memory. -There had been a fight. There was one man in -khaki slacks—why, that was the man who had asked him -the time at four o’clock in the afternoon. He had lain -in wait for him and robbed him of his watch and chain. -What a fool he had been to parade it in this manner. -Well, it was gone. It would teach him a lesson in prudence. -But the other man? How did he come in? Why -did they wait three or four hours before attacking him? -Perhaps the man of the khaki slacks had struggled -against temptation until a more desperate acquaintance -came along. He remembered the landlord of the inn -where he had lunched telling him of an ugly quarrying -village he would pass through, a nest of out-of-works—owing -to quarries, unprofitable at the high rate of wages, -being closed down—living discontented Bolshevik lives on -high out-of-work pay. He cursed his leg. If it had not -failed him, he would have got home on the first man, as -easily as shaking hands—the flabby, unguarded face -shimmered in front of him; and then he could have turned -his attention to the man in khaki slacks, a true loafer -type, spiritless when alone—the kind of man, who, if he -had worn those slacks in the army, would have been in -guard-room every week, and would have cowered as a -perpetual cleaner of latrines under the eyes of vitriol-tongued -sergeants. Far from a fighting man. His imagination -worked, almost pleasurably, in the reconstitution -of the robbery. But for his abominable leg he would -have downed both the degenerate scoundrels, and have -recovered his precious belongings. He damned them and -his leg impartially. The watch and chain were all that -he had kept materially of Olivia. In the morning he had -hesitated as to the advisability of carrying them with him, -gold watches and chains not being customarily accoutrements -of a common sailor in wind-jammer or tramp -steamer fo’c’sle. But sentiment had prevailed. He -could hide them somewhere, when he reached the port, -and at convenient slop-shops he could have reorganized -attire and equipment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The rain pattering on the open road came dribbling -through the branches of the pines. He cursed the rain. -He must go on somewhere. Absurd to stay in the wood -and get wet through. He struggled to his feet and then -for the first time became aware of a looseness around his -middle. He looked down. His trousers were unbuttoned, -his shirt sagged out immodestly as if the front had -been hurriedly tucked in. His hands sought his waist. -The belt with all the money he had in the world had gone.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='344' id='Page_344'></span>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>I</span><span class='sc'>T</span> was close on midnight when a car grated and -stopped in front of the little Georgian house in Pendish, -and the truant stumbled through the door, left -open, into the presence of Mrs. Pettiland who was -anxiously awaiting him. He was wet through, dishevelled, -exhausted. He was shivering with cold and his -face was like the mask of a ghost. She met him in the -passage and dragged him into the little sea-haunted parlour.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, what have you been doing?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had been worried all day, unable to account for the -money, a month’s rent and board in advance, in the envelope -addressed to her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Didn’t I tell you not to overdo yourself?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He greeted her upbraidings with a laugh of bravado.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I set out to-day on my last adventure. This is the -end of it. I’m here for the rest of time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll be in the churchyard for the rest of eternity, -if you don’t go to bed at once,” she declared.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She packed him to his room; fussed motherwise about -him; dosed him with ammoniated quinine; stuck hot-water -bottles in his bed; stood over him with hot Bovril -with an egg in it. She prescribed whisky, also hot; but -since the fatal night at Rowington’s dinner party, he -had abjured alcohol.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now perhaps you’ll tell me what has happened,” she -said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My game leg gave out when I got to some quarries. -I believe the beastly place is called Woorow——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Woorow! Why that’s the other side of the county!” -She looked at him aghast. “Do you mean to say that -you walked to Woorow in your state? Really men -oughtn’t to be allowed to run about loose.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve run about loose since I was fourteen,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And a pretty mess you seem to have made of it. And -then what did you do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She took away the cup of Bovril and poached egg which -he had devoured ravenously, to her womanly satisfaction, -and handed him another. He continued his story, -recounting it, between spoonfulls, in his imaginative way. -When he found he could go no further he curled up to -sleep in a wood. When things went wrong, he assured -her, there was nothing like going to sleep in a wood. All -the pixies and elves and rabbits and stoats and weasels -came and sat round you in a magic circle, shielding you -from harm. What would have happened to the Babes -in the Wood, he cried, if it hadn’t been for the robins?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wonder what your temperature is,” said Mrs. Pettiland.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Normal,” said he. “This is the first hour I’ve been -normal for months.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll take it before I leave you,” she said. “Well, you -went to sleep?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yes. He slept like an enchanted dog. He woke up -four hours afterwards to find it pouring with rain. What -could he do? He had to get back. Walking, with his -rotten old leg, was out of the question. In the daytime -a decent looking pedestrian may have the chance of -stopping a motoring Good Samaritan and, with a tale of -sudden lameness, get a lift by the side of the chauffeur. -But at night it was impossible. To stand with arresting -arms outspread in front of the hell-lamps of an advancing -car would be an act of suicidal desperation. No; he -had returned by all sorts of stages. He had almost forgotten -them. A manure cart had brought him some way. -Then he had gone dot and carry one for a mile. Then -something else. He could only hail slow moving traffic -in the wet and darkness. Then he spent an endless time -in the cab of a steam traction engine which he had abandoned -on seeing a two-seater car with flaring head-lamps, -stationed at a cottage gate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The old campaigner’s instinct, Mrs. Pettiland. What -should it be but a doctor’s car, outside a poor little cottage? -And as the head-lamps were pointing to where -I had come from, I concluded he had drawn up and would -turn round and go where I wanted to get to.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And was it a doctor?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He laughed. Of course it was. He had taken shelter -from the rain under the hood of the car for an hour. -Then, when the cottage door opened, he had scrambled -out and waited for the owner. There had been a few -words of explanation. By luck, it was Doctor Stansfield -of Fanstead——</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dr. Stansfield—why——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why of course. He knows you inside and out. A -charming fellow. He dropped me here, or rather I -dropped him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And he never came in to look after you—a man in -your condition? I’ll give him a piece of my mind when -I see him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He soothed the indignant lady. The good doctor was -unaware that anything particular was wrong with him. -Poor man, he had been on the go since five o’clock the -previous morning—human beings are born inconsiderate -of the feelings of others—and he was dog-tired. Too -dog-tired even to argue. He would have given a lift to -Judas Iscariot, or the Leper of Aosta, so long as he wasn’t -worried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He nearly pitched us over, at a curve called Hell’s -Corner—you know. The near front wheel was just an -inch off the edge. And then he stopped dead and flung -his hands over his eyes and said: ‘Oh, my God!’ He had -lost his nerve. Then when I told his I had driven everything -from a General’s Rolls Royce to an armoured car -all over Russia in the war, he let me take the wheel. And -that’s the whole thing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He chatted boyishly, in high spirits, and smoked a -cigarette. Mrs. Pettiland went for a clinical thermometer. -To her secret disappointment, his temperature -was only just above normal. She would have loved to -keep him in bed a few days and have the proper ordering -of him. A woman loves to have an amazing fool -of a man at her mercy, especially if she is gifted with a -glimmer of humour. When she left him, he laughed out -loud. Well, he had had his adventure with a vengeance. -A real old Will-o’-the-Wisp chase, which had landed him, -as ever, into disaster. Yet it had been worth it, every bit, -until his leg gave out on the quarry hill. Even his slumber -he did not regret. His miserable journey back, recalling -old days, had its points. It was good to get the -better of circumstances.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As to his money which was to have started him in life -among coral reefs and conch-shells, that had gone irretrievably. -Of course, he could have gone to the nearest -police-station. But if the miscreants were arrested, he -would have to prosecute. Highway robbery was a serious -affair; the stolen belt packed with bank notes, a -romantic one. The trial would provide a good newspaper -story. There would be most undesirable publicity; -and publicity is the last thing a man dead to the world -would desire. He shrugged philosophic shoulders. Let -the money go. The humour of the situation tickled his -vagabond fancy. He was penniless. That was the comical -end of his pursuit of the <span class='it'>ignis fatuus</span>. The freak -finality and inevitability of it stimulated his sense of the -romantic. If he had been possessed of real courage, he -would have made over all his money, months ago, to -Olivia and disappeared, as he was now, into the unknown. -His experience of life ought to have taught him the inexorable -fatality of compromise. What would he do? He -did not know. Drowsy after the day’s fatigue, and very -warm and comfortable, he did not care. He curled himself -up in the bed and went to sleep.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>One afternoon, a week afterwards, he limped into Mrs. -Pettiland’s post-office with a gay air.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mrs. Pettiland,” said he, “at last I have found my -true vocation.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m glad to hear it, sir,” she replied undisturbed in -her official duties which consisted in taking the coppers -from a small child in payment for two stamps. “You’ve -been rather restless these last few days.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona watched the child depart, clasping the stamps -in a clammy hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When one hasn’t a penny in the world and starvation -stares you in the face, one may be excused for busy -search for a means of livelihood.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ve got plenty of money.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I haven’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You paid me a month’s board and lodging in advance, -the other day—though why you did it, I can’t understand.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was going to run away,” he said cheerfully. “To -compensate you in that miserable manner for inconvenience -was the least I could do. But the gods rightly -stepped in and hauled me back.” He swung himself on -the counter and smiled at her. “I’m a fraud, you know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The plump and decorous lady could not realize his -earnestness. Behind his words lay some jest which she -could not fathom.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t believe me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He sighed. If he had told her a fairy tale she, like all -the rest of the world in his past life, would have believed -him. Now that he told the truth, he met with blank incredulity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m going to earn my living. I’m taking on a job as -chauffeur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stared at him. “A chauffeur—you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. Why not?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her mind ran over his intellectual face, his clothes, his -manners, his talk—free and sometimes disconcertingly -allusive, like that of the rare and impeccably introduced -artists whom she had lodged—his books . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why—you’re a gentleman,” she gasped.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh no. Not really. I’ve been all kinds of things in -my time. Among them I’ve passed as a gentleman. But -by trade I’m a chauffeur. I practically started life as a -chauffeur—in Russia. For years I drove a Russian -Prince all over Europe. Now there aren’t any more -Russian Princes I’m going to drive the good people of -Fanstead to railway stations and dinner parties.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I never,” said Mrs. Pettiland.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s a young man—an ex-officer—Radnor by -name, in Fanstead—who has just set up a motor garage.” -“He’ll fail,” said Mrs. Pettiland. “They all do. Old -Hetherington of ‘The Bull’ has all the custom.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“With one rickety death-trap for hire and a fool of a -mechanic who has wrecked every car sent in for repairs -for a radius of thirty miles. I offered Hetherington to -teach him his business. You might as well sing ‘Il -Trovatore’ to a mule. So I went to Radnor. He had just -sacked a man, and with my invariable luck, I stepped in -at the right moment. No, Mrs. Pettiland—” he swung -his sound leg and looked at her, enjoying her mystification -“—the reign of Hetherington is over. Radnor’s -Garage is going to be the wonder of the countryside.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He believed it implicitly. Radnor, a mild and worried -young man, with quite a sound knowledge of his business, -might struggle along and earn a hand-to-mouth -living. But he lacked driving-power. To Triona, during -his two or three interviews with him, that was obvious. -He had sufficient capital for a start, a good garage -equipment, a fairly modern 25 h.p. utility car and was -trying to make up his mind to buy another. Triona -divined his irresolution. He would be at the mercy of -unscrupulous mechanics and chauffeurs. His spirit -seemed to have been broken by two years imprisonment -in Germany. He had lost the secret of command. And, -by nature, a modest, retiring gentleman. Triona pitied -him. He had wandered through the West of England -seeking a pitch where the competition was not too fierce, -and finding unprogressive Fanstead, had invested all his -capital in the business. He had been there a couple of -months during which very little work had come in. He -could stick it out for six months more. After that the -deluge.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Give me four pounds a week as head mechanic and -chauffeur,” said Triona, “and the deluge will be golden -rain.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This was after the exhibition of John Briggs’ papers—Armoured -Car Column and Minesweeper—and the tale -of his Russian chauffeurdom. He had also worked -magic, having a diagnostician’s second sight into the inside -of a car’s mechanism, with a mysteriously broken -down 40 h.p. foreign car, the only one in the garage for -repairs, which, apparently flawless, owner and chauffeur -and Radnor himself regarded with hebetude.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll take you on all right,” said Radnor. “But, -surely a man like you ought to be running a show of his -own.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I haven’t a cent in the world,” replied Triona. “So -I can’t!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>All this he told Mrs. Pettiland, swinging his sound leg, -as he sat on the counter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The only fly in the ointment,” said he, “is that I shall -have to move.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“From here? Whatever for?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Chauffeurs don’t have luxurious bed-sitting-rooms with -specially designed scenery for views. They can’t afford -it. Besides, they’re not desirable lodgers.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She flushed indignantly. If he thought she would prefer -his room to his company, because he drove a car, he -was very much mistaken. The implication hurt. Even -suppose he was fit to look after a car, he was not yet -fit to look after himself. Witness his folly of a week -ago. He would pay her whatever he could afford and she -would be more than contented.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What wonderful people there are in the world,” he -sighed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But he withstood her generous blandishments. No, -there was an eternal fitness of things. Besides, he must -live at the garage, ready to attend telephone calls by day -or by night. He couldn’t be hobbling backwards and -forwards between Fanstead and Pendish. Against this -practical side of the question there could be no argument.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what shall I do with the money you’ve paid in -advance?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Keep it for a while,” said he. “Perhaps Randor will -give me the sack and I’ll come creeping back to you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Thus did Triona, with bag and baggage take up his -quarters in an attic loft in the garage yard at Fanstead.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Not since his flight from Olivia had he felt so free of -care. Fate had condemned him to the backwater and in -the backwater he would pass his contented life, a life of -truth and honesty. And he had before him an essential -to his soul’s health—an ideal. He would inspire the -spiritless with spirit, the ineffectual with efficiency, the -sick heart with health. The man Radnor had deserved -well of his country through gallant service, wounds and -imprisonment. His country had given him the military -Cross and a lieutenant’s gratuity, and told him not to -worry it any more. If Mrs. Pettiland’s prophecy came -true and he failed, he would be cast upon a country that -wouldn’t be worried. Triona swore that he should pull -through. He would save a fellow-man from shipwreck, -without his knowledge. It was something to live for. -He became once more the perfect chauffeur, the enthusiastic -motor-man, dreaming of a great garage—a sort of -Palace of Automobiles for the West of England.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And as he dreamed, so did it begin to come to pass. -The efficiency of the Quantock Garage became known -for miles around. Owners of valuable cars forsook the -professional wreckers in the great junction town and -sent them to Fanstead. Radnor soon bought his second -car; by the end of the autumn a third car; and increased -his staff. Triona was foreman mechanician. Had he -not so desired, he need not have driven. Nor need he -have driven in the brass-buttoned livery on which he -insisted that Radnor’s chauffeurs should be attired. -Smartness, he argued rightly, caught the eye and imagination. -But he loved the wheel. Driving cooled the -vagabond fire in his veins. There was an old touring-car -of high horse-power, excellent when nursed with loving -hand and understanding heart, but a box of dismal -caprice to the inexpert, which he would allow no one to -drive but himself. Radnor held the thing in horror and -wanted to sell it as a bad bargain. He had had it out -once and it had broken down ten miles from home and -had suffered the ignominy of a tow back. Triona -wrought at it for three weeks, conjuring up spare parts -from nowhere, and fitting to it new devices, and turned -out a going concern in which he took inordinate pride. -He whirled touring parties prodigious distances in this -once rickety creature of his adoption. He could get -thirty-five or forty out of her easily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right. It’s your funeral, not mine,” said Radnor -during one of their discussions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was a healthy life. His lameness did not matter. -Whatever internal lesions he suffered from gave no symptoms -of existence. His face lost its lines of suffering, his -eyes their shifty haggardness. He put on flesh, as far -as is possible for a naturally spare-built man. Randor, -an honourable soul, when the business in the new year -shewed proof of immense development, offered him a -substantial increase in salary. But Triona refused.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What do I want with money, my dear fellow? If -I had more I’d only spend it for books. And I’ve more of -them now than I know where to put them. No; keep all -you can for capital in the business. Or stick it into an -advertisement scheme I’ve been working out—”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re an odd devil, Briggs,” said Radnor. He was -a small dark man with great mournful eyes and a little -clipped moustache over a timorous mouth, and his lips -were always twitching. “A queer devil. What I should -have done without you, I don’t know. If I could do what -I want, I should offer you a partnership.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t be a damned fool,” said Triona. “A partner -puts in money and I haven’t a bean. Besides if I were -a partner, the whole show would go to hell.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I should immediately want to go and do something -else,” replied Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I give it up,” said Radnor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Best thing you can do,” said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>How could the very grateful young proprietor divine -the spiritual crankiness of his foreman? He went -through the English equivalent of shoulder shrugging.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Briggs, from the business point of view, was a treasure -fallen from Heaven. And Briggs was a mystery. He -didn’t begin to pretend to understand Briggs. Briggs obviously -didn’t want to be understood. Radnor was a -gentleman. He could press the matter no further.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let us get this business up to a net profit of three -thousand a year and then we may talk,” said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Three thou—! Good God, man, I couldn’t talk. I’d -slobber and gibber!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s where I’ll come in,” laughed Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had set his heart on this wash-out from the war -making good. Just before Christmas he had an added -incentive. A melancholy lady and a wistful pretty girl -had flashed for a week end through Fanstead. They had -come from London and had put up at The King’s Head. -Radnor had made the tour of the proprietor through the -garage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This is Mr. Briggs, my foreman, whom I’ve so often -told you about.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And afterwards, to Triona, with an air of inconsequence:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A kind of aunt and cousin of mine who wanted to see -how I was getting on.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Poor old chap! Of course they wanted to see how he -was getting on. The girl’s assessing eyes took in everything, -himself included.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The unbidden phrase flashed through his brain.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He shall marry the girl by Michaelmas Day!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The sudden impishness of it delighted him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“By God, he shall!” he swore to himself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So he refused an increase of salary and, by following an -<span class='it'>ignis fatuus</span> of an ideal, he kept his conscience in a state -of interested amusement at the mystification of his -employer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>April came and found the Quantock Garage in full tide -of business. Hetherington of “The Bull” had long since -given up his wheezy station car and the motor-destroying -works in which he housed it. Triona laboured from -morning to night, for a while content to see the wheels of -an efficient establishment go round. And then he began -to grow restless. He had set Radnor permanently on -his feet. If he left, the business would go on by its own -momentum. Nothing more was needed than Radnor’s -own conscientious plodding. Why should he stay? He -had achieved his purpose. Radnor would surely be in -a financial position warranting him to marry the girl by -Michaelmas.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll see him through,” he vowed, and stayed on. -“And then——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then? Life once more became a blank. Of late -he had drugged lonely and despairing thoughts by reading. -Books grew into great piles in corners of his loft -above the garage. But reading awoke him to the poignant -craving for expression. He had half a dozen tantalizing -plots for novels in his head, a score of great situations, -a novelist’s gallery of vivid personalities. As to -the latter, he had a superstition. If he gave one a name it -would arise in flesh and blood, insistent on having its -story told. So he shut tempting names resolutely from -his brain; for he had made up his queer mind never to -write another line of romance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The spring stirred the sap within him. It was a year -now since he had fled from Olivia. What was she doing, -what feeling? Occasionally he called on Mrs. Pettiland.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Myra, he learned, had paid her weekly visit in October, -had occupied his old room, had gone to visit her lunatic -husband, had maintained her impenetrable silence as to -her mistress’s doings. When Mrs. Pettiland had reported -his chauffeur activities, Myra had said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m glad he has got honest employment.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Shall I let him know that you’re here?” Mrs. Pettiland -had asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Myra had answered in her final way:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve no desire to see him and he certainly has no desire -to see me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Myra, therefore, had come and gone without his knowledge. -Often he wished that he had met her and wrung -some information from her unwilling lips. And now, -with his purpose accomplished, his heart aching for -change, his spirit craving to pour itself out in tumultuous -words, and his soul crying for her that was lost, the -thought that had haunted the back of his mind for the -past year stood out grimly spectre-wise. What right had -he to live? Olifant had spoken truly. What right had -he to compel her to perpetual widowhood that was no -widowhood? She was tied to him, a husband lost, as far -as she was concerned, to human ken, never to cross her -path again; tied to him as much as Myra was tied to the -poor wretch in the madhouse. And as Myra had grown -soured and hard, so might Olivia grow. Olivia so young -now, with all the joy of life before her. He gone, she -could marry again. There was Olifant, that model of -men, whom he guessed to have supplanted. With him -she could be happy until her life’s end. Once more she -could be Lady Bountiful of “The Towers.” . . . The conception -was an agony of the flesh, keeping him awake of -nights on the hard little camp-bed in the loft. He -grappled with the torture, resolved to triumph over it, as -he had gritted his teeth and triumphed over physical pain -in hospitals. The knife was essential, he told himself. -It was for her sake. It was his duty to put himself out of -the world.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And yet the days went on, and he felt the lust of life -in his blood. The question tauntingly arose: Is it braver -to die than to live? Is it more cowardly to live than to -die? He couldn’t answer it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the meantime he went on mending broken-down -motor-engines and driving gay tourists about the countryside, -in his car of resurrection.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='359' id='Page_359'></span>CHAPTER XXV</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>W</span><span class='sc'>HAT</span> was bound to happen had happened. -Olifant the Galahad, out for grails, as -Triona, and indeed as Olivia had pictured -him, had lost his head, poured out a flow of mad words, -and flung his arm about her and kissed her passionately. -She had been caught, had half-surrendered; released, she -had put hands to a tumultuous bosom and staggered away -from him. And there had followed a scene enacted for -the twenty-billionth time on the world’s stage. She had -grown weak and strong by turns. At last she had said: -“If you love me, go now and let me think it over and all -that it means.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And he had gone, passion yielding to his courteous consideration -of her, and she was left alone in the drawing-room, -staring through the open French windows at the -May garden.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Since her return from the South of France, she had felt -the thing coming. In October, as soon as Myra had -returned from her holiday, fear had driven her from -Medlow. The hunger in the man’s eyes proclaimed an -impossible situation. The guest and host position she -had changed after the first few weeks. Brother and sister -and herself kept house together—on the face of it a sensible -and economical arrangement. Mr. Trivett and Mr. -Fenmarch, once more financial advisers, commended it -with enthusiasm. The summer had passed happily -enough. The <span class='it'>modus vivendi</span> with the sections of Medlow -society respectively symbolized by Landsdowne House -and Blair Park had arranged itself automatically. She -found conferred upon her the Freedom of each. The -essential snobbery of English life is a myth kept alive by -our enemies. It is true that the squire and the linen-draper -do not ask each other and their families to dinner. -Their social worlds are apart. They don’t want to ask -each other to dinner. They would never dream of asking -each other to dinner, one no more than the other; they -respect each other too mightily. But a dweller in both -worlds, such as Olivia, Trivett-ed and Gale-d though she -was on the one side, yet on the other, the wife of the -famous Alexis Triona and the friend of the Olifants, folks -whose genealogy was lost somewhere in a Pictish bonfire -of archives, can wander up and down the whole social -gamut at her good pleasure. Besides she herself does not -mix the incompatible. A mere question of the art of life, -which Olivia, with her London experiences found easy of -resolution. So, in the mild and mellow way on which -Medlow prided itself, she had danced and tennis-ed and -picnic-ed the summer through. On the Blair Park side—she -wondered laughingly at their unsupercilious noses—Blaise -Olifant and his sister accompanied her in the gentle -festivities. Each day had brought its petty golden dust—the -futile Church bazaar, the tennis tournament, the -whist-drive of which old John Freke, the linen-draper -father of Lydia, had made her a lady-patroness, the motor-run -into quaint Shrewsbury, on shopping adventure in -quest of crab or lobster unobtainable in Medlow—a thousand -trivial activities—to the innocent choking of her soul, -to use Matthew Arnold’s figure, and an inevitable forgetfullness. -Everything had gone well until October. Then -she had taken prudent flight with Myra to the France and -Italy which she had never seen—and there she had stayed -till the beginning of May.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was Mrs. Woolcombe who insisted on her return to -Medlow. Where else should she return after her wanderings -but to her own home? At first everything was just -as it used to be. Then, on a trivial cause—an insult -offered her by an Italian in Venice which she had laughingly -recounted—the passion of Blaise Olifant had suddenly -flamed forth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was frightened, shaken. He had given her -the thrill, which, in her early relations with him -she had half contemptuously deemed impossible. -She found herself free from sense of outrage. She bore -him no resentment. Indeed she had responded to his -kiss. She was not quite sure, within herself, whether she -would not respond again. The communicated thrill -completed her original conception of him as the very perfect -gentle knight. For after all, knights without red-blood -in their veins might be gentle, but scarcely perfect.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If she were free, she would marry him out of hand, -without further question. He had always dwelt in a -tender spot of her heart. Now he had slipped into one -more warm, smouldering with strange fires. But she was -not free. She stood at once at the parting of the roads. -She must go back to a wandering or lonely life, or she -must defy conventions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She went out into the ivy-walled garden, and walked up -the central path, between the beds of wallflowers and forget-me-nots -and the standard roses just bursting into leaf. -What could she do? Once she had laughed scornfully at -the idea of love playing any part in her life. She had not -reckoned with her youth. And now she stared aghast -at the vista of lonely and loveless years.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Presently Blaise Olifant came from his study and -advanced to meet her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He said: “Can you speak to me now?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes—now,” she answered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve behaved like any blackguard. You must forgive -me, if you can. The Italian cad who made me see red -was not very much worse than myself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a smile in her dark eyes as she looked up at -him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s all the difference in the world. I disliked -the Italian very much.” She touched his sleeve. “You -are forgiven, my dear friend. It’s all my fault. I -oughtn’t to have come back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re the most wonderful of women,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The most wonderful of women made a little wry movement -of her lips.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s all a might-be and a can’t-be,” she said in a low -voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you suppose, my dear, I don’t know that? If it -could be, do you think I should regret losing my self-control?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She said. “If it’s any consolation to you—perhaps I -lost mine too. We’re both human. Perhaps a woman -is even more so than a man. That’s why I went away in -October—things were getting impossible——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good God!” he exclaimed, “I thought you were -bored to death!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A little laugh could not be restrained. The blindness -of man to psychological phenomena is ever a subject for -woman’s sweet or bitter mirth. But it was not in his -heart to respond.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then you do care for me a little?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shouldn’t be standing here with you now, if I didn’t. -I shouldn’t have made the mistake of coming back, if -I hadn’t wanted to see you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mistake?” He sighed and turned a step away. -“Yes. I suppose it was. I should have been frank with -Mary and shewn her that it was impossible—for me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It would be best for me to go to-morrow,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“London. A hotel. Any old branch.” She smiled. -“I must settle down somewhere sooner or later. The -sooner the better.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s monstrous,” he declared with a flash in his -eyes. “To turn you out of your home—I should feel a -scoundrel.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t see how we can go on living together, carrying -on as usual, as though nothing had happened.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For a few moments they walked up the gravelled path -in silence, both bareheaded in the mild May sunshine.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Listen,” he said, coming to a pause. “I’m a man who -has learned self-control in three hard schools—my Scotch -father’s, science, war. If I swear to you, on my honour, -that nothing that has passed between us to-day shall ever -be revived by me in look or word or act—will you stay -with us, and give me your—your friendship—your companionship—your -presence in the house? It was an -aching desert all the time you were away.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She walked on a pace or two, after a hopeless sigh. -Could she never drive into this unworldly head the fact -that women were not sexless angels? How could their -eyes forever meet in the glance of a polite couple discussing -the weather across a tea-table? She could not resist -a shaft of mockery.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“For all of your philosopher father and science and -war—I wonder, my dear Blaise, how much you really -know of life?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He halted and put a hand on her slim shoulder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I love you so much my dear,” said he, “that I should -be content to hang crucified before you, so that my eyes -could rest upon you till I died.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned and strode fast away. She followed him -crying “Blaise! Blaise!” He half turned with an arresting -arm—and even at that moment she was touched -by the pathos of the other empty sleeve——</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, don’t—please.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She ran hard and facing him blocked his way.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But what of me? What of my feelings while I saw -you hanging crucified?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That point of view had not occurred to him. He -looked at her embarrassed. His Scottish veracity asserted -itself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When a man’s mad in love,” said he, “he can’t think -of everything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She took his arm and led him up the gravelled path -again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t you see, dear, how impossible it all is?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. I suppose so. It must be one thing or the -other. And all that is good and true and honourable -makes it the other.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Tears came at the hopelessness of it. She seized his -hand in both of hers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What you said just now is a thing no woman could -forget to the day of her death.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She kissed the hand and let it drop, stirred to the inmost. -What was she, ineffectual failure, to command the -love of such a man? He stood for a while looking into -the vacancy of the pale blue sky over the ivy-clad wall. -Before her eyes garden and house and wall and sky were -blotted out; and only the one tall figure existed in the -scene. Her heart beat. It was a moment of peril, and -the moment seemed like an hour.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At last he turned and looked at her with his grave -smile. She put her hand on her heart not knowing -whether to cry or laugh at the relaxation of tension.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You stay here with Mary,” he said gently. “I’ll go -away for a change—a holiday. I need one. There’s an -old uncle of mine in Scotland. I’ve neglected him and -his salmon-fishing shamefully for years. How I can fish -with one arm, heaven only knows. I’ve learned to do -most things. It’ll be a new experience. As a matter of -fact, I should have gone last month, if the temptation to -wait for you hadn’t been so strong. It’s up in the wilds -of Inverness——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She made feeble protest. It was she who drove him -out of his home. Far better for her to cut herself adrift -from Medlow. But he prevailed. He would go. In the -meantime things might right themselves.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He departed the following morning, leaving Olivia to -a new sense of loneliness and unrest. She lived constantly -in the tense moment, catching her breath at the -significance of its possibilities. Unbidden and hateful -the question recurred: if positions had been reversed; -if Blaise had been the lost husband and Alexis the lover, -would Alexis have let her go? Certainly not Alexis. -And yet deep down in her heart she was grateful that she -had come scathless through the moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The little round of country gaieties went on and caught -her up in its mild gyrations. Mrs. Woolcombe deplored -her brother’s absence. He had been looking forward -to the social life with Olivia, especially the tennis parties. -It was wonderful how he had overcome the handicap of -his one arm; the effectual service he had perfected, tossing -up the ball with his racket and smiting it at the dead -point of ascent. It had all been due to Olivia’s encouragement -the previous summer; for till then he had not -played for years. But he had been sadly overworked. -When a man cannot sleep and rises up in the morning -with a band of iron round his head, it is obvious that he -needs a change. It was the best thing for Blaise, undoubtedly; -but it must be dull for Olivia. So spake -Mary Woolcombe, unaware of kisses and tense moments.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia said to Myra: “This is an idle, meaningless life. -We’ll go back to London and settle down.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Will life mean much more when you get there?” -asked Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can do something.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How do I know? Why are you so irritating, Myra?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It isn’t me,” said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is it, then?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A woman wants a man to look after,” said Myra in -her unimpassioned way. “If she can’t get a man she -wants a woman. I’ve got you, so I’m not irritated. You -haven’t got either, so you are.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia flushed angrily and swerved round in her chair -before the mirror on her toilet-table—Myra was drying -her hair—as she had dried it from days before Olivia -could remember.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s a liberty, Myra, which you oughtn’t to have -taken.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I dare say, dearie,” replied Myra unmoved, “but it’s -good for you that somebody now and then should tell -you the truth.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want neither man nor woman,” Olivia declared. -Myra gently squared her mistress’s shoulders to the -mirror and went on with her task.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wonder,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think you’re hateful,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Maybe. But I’ve got common-sense. If you think -you’re going to London to stand for Parliament or write -poetry and get it printed or run a Home for Incurable -Camels, you’re mistaken, dear. And you’ll have no truck -with women. You’ve never had a woman friend in the -world—anyone you’d die for.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course I haven’t,” snapped Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s a man’s woman you are,” continued Myra. -“You’ve looked after men ever since your dear mother -was taken ill. It’s what God meant you to do. It’s all -you can do. And you haven’t got a man and that’s -what’s making you unhappy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia sprang from her chair, looking with her long -black hair ruffled and frizzed and spreading out around -her warm oval face, like an angry sea-nymph on a rock -disputed by satyrs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hate men and everything connected with them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You still hate your husband?” asked Myra looking at -her with cold pale eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I loathe him. How dare you? Haven’t I forbidden -you to mention his name?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I didn’t mention his name,” said Myra. “But if you -like, I won’t refer to him again. Sit down and let me -put on the electric dryer. Your hair’s still wringing wet.” -She yielded, not with good grace. Myra had her at -her mercy. Dignity counselled instant dismissal of Myra -from her presence. But the washing and drying of her -long thick hair had ever been a problem; so dignity gave -way to comfort.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was furious with Myra. We all are with people -who confront us with the naked truth about ourselves. -That was all she was fit for; all that life had taught her; -to look after a man. She stared at the blatant proposition -in the grimness of the night-watches. What else, in -God’s name, was she capable of doing for an inch -advancement of humanity? She had gone forth long ago—so -it seemed—from Medlow, to open the mysterious -mysteries of the world. She had opened them—and all -the pearls, good, bad and indifferent, were men. All the -ideals; all the colour and music and gorgeous edifices of -life; all the world vibration of thought and action and -joy of which she had dreamed, every manifold thrill that -had run through her being from feet to hair on that first -night in London when she had leaned out of her Victoria -Street flat and opened her young soul to the informing -spirit of the vast city of mystery—the whole spiritual -meaning, nay, the whole material reason for her existence, -was resolved into one exquisitely pure, bafflingly translucent -in its mystery of shooting flames, utterly elemental -crystal of sex. Sex, in its supreme purity; but sex all the -same.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was a man’s woman. It was at once a glory and -a degradation. Myra was right. What woman, in the -course of her life, had she cared a scrap for? Her -mother. Her mother was a religion. And men? Her -chastity revolted. When had she sought to attract men? -Her conscience was clear. But men had been the terror, -the interest, the delight of her life from the moment she -had left the cloistral walls of her home. And even before -that, on a different plane, had she not, while keeping -house for father and brothers, always thought in terms -of man?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And now she was doing the same. The emptiness of -her prospective life in London appalled her. The mad -liar, her husband, an unseizable, unknown entity, of -whom she thought with shivering repulsion, was away -somewhere, living a strange, unveracious life. The -soldier, scholar and gentleman, who loved her, into whose -arms, into whose life, she had all but fallen, had fled, -saving her from perils. Before he returned she must, in -decency and honour, take up her solitary abode elsewhere. -Or else she could terminate his tenancy of “The Towers” -and carry on an old-maidish life in Medlow for evermore. -Anyway, a useless sexless thing for all eternity.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>The second post had brought her some letters, a few -bills and receipts, a note from Janet Philimore with -whom she kept up a casual correspondence, and a long -untidy screed from Lydia. Lydia had conceived the idea -of visiting Medlow. Her father, old John Freke, whom -she had not seen for years, was ailing. What did Olivia -think of the notion? Olivia, sitting in the little ivy-clad -summer-house at the end of the garden, thought less of -the notion than of the amazing lady. To ask her, an -outsider, whether she should come to her father’s bed of -sickness! She made up her mind to write: “Oh, yes, -come at once, but wear the thickest of black veils, so -that no one will recognize you.” Her mind wandered -away from the hypothetical visit—London and Lydia -again! Just where she was when she started. Life -seemed a hopeless muddle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m sorry,” said Myra’s voice breaking suddenly on -her meditations. She looked up and beheld Myra more -than usually grave and cold. “I’m sorry to disturb you. -But I’ve just had a letter. He’s dead.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia, with a shock through all her being, started to -her feet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dead. My husband?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No,” said Myra. “Mine.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh!” said Olivia somewhat breathless—and sank on -the bench again. She recovered herself quickly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m sorry, Myra. But after all, it’s a merciful -release.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“God’s mercies are inscrutable,” said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So, thought Olivia, was Myra’s remark.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve always loved him, you see,” said Myra. “I suppose -you’ll have no objections to my going to bury him?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear old Myra,” cried Olivia. “Of course, my -dear, you can go—go whenever you like.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll come back as soon as it’s over,” said Myra.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She turned and walked away, and Olivia saw her lean -and unexpressive shoulders rise as though a sob had -shaken her.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='371' id='Page_371'></span>CHAPTER XXVI</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>O</span><span class='sc'>F</span> the death of Myra Stebbings’s husband and -of her second appearance in Pendish during his -sojourn in the West Country, Triona knew nothing. -Again she had forbidden her sister-in-law to give -him any information as to her doings. Again she disclaimed -interest in the young man. Nor was he aware, -a week after the funeral, that Myra, who had stood by -the graveside in the pouring rain, and had insisted on -jogging back to Pendish wet through, in the undertaker’s -brougham, lay dangerously ill in the upstairs bedroom -of the little Georgian house. The increasing business of -the Quantock Garage diverted his energies from polite -tramps into Pendish to enquire into Mrs. Pettiland’s -state of health. Also, he was growing morose, his soul -feeding on itself, and beginning to develop an unwholesome -misanthropy. Like Hamlet, man didn’t delight -him; no, nor woman neither. When not working in the -garage or driving the old touring-car, he retired to brood -in his loft and eschewed the company of his kind.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re overdoing it,” said Radnor, a kindly person. -“Why not go away on a holiday and have a change?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Only one change would do me any good,” he replied -gloomily, “and that would be to get out of this particularly -vile universe.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Radnor looked round his well ordered, bustling establishment -and smiled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It isn’t as bad as all that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Triona shrugged his shoulders and spanner in hand -turned to the car he was doctoring, without a reply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A few days afterwards Radnor said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’re going to be married in August, and I don’t -mind saying it’s mostly thanks to you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m glad to hear it,” said Triona. “I’ll stick it out -till then.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And then?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll have the change you’ve been talking of.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Radnor laughed. “You’ll let me have a bit of a -honeymoon first, won’t you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, yes,” replied Triona. “You can have your -honeymoon.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The weakening incentive to life would last till September. -He would make it last. It was now the beginning -of June. Three months or so more wouldn’t -matter. To carry on a meaningless existence further -would be absurd. Indeed, it would be immoral. Of -that, for some time past he had convinced himself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>England ran motor-mad that summer. It awoke to find -war restrictions removed, roads free and petrol to be -had for the buying. In its eagerness to race through a -beloved land closed up for years and view or review -historic spots of loveliness, and otherwise to indulge in -its national vagabond humour it cared little for the price -of petrol. The hiring garages, in anything like tourist -centres, found their resources strained. Radnor bought -another car, and still had more orders than he could -execute. He drove one car himself.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>It was a soft June evening. Triona sat at the wheel -of the great antiquated touring-car to which he had given -its new lease of life, driving homewards from the neighbourhood -of the Great Junction Town. He had taken a -merry party that day some hundred and fifty miles -through the tenderest greenery of early summer, through -dark gorges with startling shadows, through cool lanes, -over hills in the open sunshine; and, in the sweetness of -the evening, he had put them down at the place whence -they had started. For all his mood of despair, he had -enjoyed the day. The poet in him had responded to the -eternal call of the year’s life laughing in its gay insolence -of youth. Since nine in the morning the sweet wind of -the hills had swept through his lungs and scenes of loveliness -had shimmered before his eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alone at the wheel, he thought of the passing day of -beauty. Was it not worth living—just to enjoy it? Was -it not worth living—just to translate into words, if only -for the sake of the doing, the emotion of that enjoyment? -He had passed through a beech wood, a world of pale -emerald, like fairy seas, above, and a shimmer of blue-bells -below as though the sky had been laid down for a -carpet. . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He drove slowly and carefully. The car had done -its good day’s work. It was knocking a bit, like an old -horse wheezing in protest against over-estimation of its -enduring powers. He had tried it perhaps too high to-day. -He loved the re-created old car, as though it were -a living thing. A valiant old car, which had raced over -awful roads in Flanders. It was a crazy irritation that -he could not pat it into comfort. Nursing it with the -mechanician’s queer tenderness, he came to the straight -mile, near home, of road on the mountain side, with its -sheer drop into the valley, ending at the turn known as -Hell’s Corner, at which the overwrought doctor, on the -night of mad adventure, had lost his nerve. Just past -the corner branched the secondary road to Fanstead, -for the great road swept on by the expiring end of Pendish -village; but by walking from Pendish, as he had -done on the day of the aforesaid adventure, through -lanes and fields, one cut off a great bend of road and -struck it on the fair-mile beyond the turn. And now a -few hundred yards from the corner the engine gave -trouble. He descended from his seat and opened the -bonnet. He discovered a simple matter, the choking of a -plug. The knocking, he knew was in the cardan shaft. -He would have to replace the worn pin. While cleaning -out the choked plug with a piece of wire and blowing -through it to clear it from the last fragment of grit, he -wondered how long it would take to have the spare pin -made. He was going out again the day after to-morrow. -Could he risk the old car? To-morrow he would take -her down and see for himself the full extent of the trouble. -Meanwhile he screwed the plug on again, shut down the -bonnet, cranked up the starting handle and jumped up -beside the wheel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But just as he put in the low gear, his eyes were riveted -on a familiar figure some twenty yards away, walking -towards him. For a moment or two he remained paralysed, -while the old-fashioned gears crunched horribly. -There she advanced slim, erect, in Tussore silk coat and -skirt, a flash of red bow at the opening of her blouse. -The car began to move. At that instant their eyes met. -Olivia staggered back, and he read in her bewildered gaze -the same horror he had last seen in her eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What she was doing here, on this strip of remote road, -he could not understand. Obviously she had not expected -to find him, for she looked at him as though he -were some awful ghost. He changed gear, went full -speed ahead and passed her in a flash. Then suddenly, -the command of doom shot through his brain. This was -the end. Now was the end that should have come, had -he not been a coward, months ago. He deliberately -swerved off the road and went hurtling over the hill-side.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia staring, wide-eyed, wondering, at the racing car, -saw it happen. It was no accident. It was deliberate. -Her brain reeled at the sudden and awful horror. She -swayed to the bank and fainted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A two-seater car, a young man and woman in it, came -upon her a few moments later and drew up. The woman -ministered to her and presently she revived.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There has been a horrible accident,” she explained -haggardly. “A car went over—you can see the wheel -marks—Oh my God!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She pointed. A column of smoke was rising from the -valley into the still evening air. She scrambled to unsteady -feet, and started to run. The young man detained -her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The car will take us quicker. Maggie, you drive. -I’ll stand on the footboard.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They swiftly covered the hundred yards or so to the -scene of the catastrophe. And there thirty feet below in -the ravine the old car was burning amid the heavy vapour -of petrol smoke.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quick,” cried Olivia, “let us get down! He may still -be alive.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The young man shook his head. “Not much chance, -poor devil.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did you know him?” asked the lady.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was my husband,” cried Olivia tragic-eyed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They all plunged down the slope, the young man going -straight in the ruts of the leaping car. Olivia, after a -fall or two, ran gropingly to side levels, catching hold of -bushes to aid her descent, her brain too scorched with -the terror of that which lay below, for coherent thought.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again her light, high-heeled shoes tripped her on the -smooth grass and she slithered down a few yards. And -then, as she steadied herself once more on her feet, she -heard a voice from behind a clump of gorse:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just my damned luck!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her knees shook violently. She wanted to shriek, but -she controlled herself and, staggering round the gorse -bush, came upon Alexis, seated on a hummock, his head -between his hands. He looked up at her stupidly; and -she, with outspread fingers on panting bosom:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thank God, you’re not dead.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know so much about that,” said he, rising to -his feet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The young woman of the car who had been following -Olivia more or less in her descent, appeared from behind -the bush.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She, too, thanked God. He had been saved by a miracle. -How had he escaped?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A providence which looks after idiots caused me to -be hurled out of the car at the first bump. I fell into -the gorse. I’m not in the least bit hurt. Please don’t -worry about me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must let us drive you home—I’ll call my husband,” -said the young woman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thank you very much,” said he, “but I’m perfectly -sound and I’d rather walk; but this lady seems to have -had a shock and no doubt——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The young woman, perplexed, turned to Olivia. “You -said this—gentleman—” for Alexis stood trim in brass-buttoned -and legginged chauffeur’s livery—“you said he -was your husband.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A case of mistaken identity,” he replied suavely. -Olivia, her brain in a whirl, said nothing. The young -woman advanced a few steps and coo-eed to the young -man who had just reached the ravine. As he turned on -her hail, she halloed the tidings that all was well.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’ll be here in a few minutes,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They stood an embarrassed trio. Alexis explained -how the steering-rod, which had given him trouble all -day, had suddenly snapped. It had been the affair of a -moment. As for the car, it was merely a kind of land -ark fitted with a prehistoric internal combustion engine. -Insured above its value. The proprietor would be delighted -to hear the end of it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The young man joined them, out of breath. Explanations -had to be given <span class='it'>da capo</span>. Again Good Samaritan -offers to put their two-seater at the disposal of the derelicts. -With one in the back seat they could crowd three -in front. They were going to Cullenby, twenty miles on, -but a few miles out of their way, if need be, were neither -here nor there. A very charming, solicitous, well-run -young couple. Olivia scarcely knew whether to shriek at -them to go away, or to beg them to remain and continue -to save a grotesque situation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Presently Triona repeated his thanks and declined the -proffered lift. Walking would do him all the good in -the world; would steady his nerves after his calamitous -bump. The young man eyed him queerly. It was a -strange word for a chauffeur.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But if you would take this lady,” said Triona again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia recovered her wits.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I will walk too, if you don’t mind. I’m only a mile -from home. And this gentleman is really my husband.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If we can really do nothing more?” The young -man raised his hat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A thousand thanks for all your kindness,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The very mystified young couple left them and remounted -the hill.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The subjects of their mystification stood for a while -in silence. Presently Olivia, whose limbs not yet recovered -from the shock trembled so that her knees -seemed to give her no support, said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t you think we might sit down for a little?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“As you will,” said Alexis, seating himself on his hummock.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She cast herself down on the slope and closed her eyes -for a moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You did that on purpose,” she said at last. “You -don’t suppose I believe the story of the broken steering-rod?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He smiled with some bitterness. Fate was for ever -against him. The moment they met in this extravagant -way, there started up the barrier of a lie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I couldn’t very well scare those young folks with a -confession of attempted suicide, could I? After all, the -naked truth may at times be positively indecent.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then you intended to do it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, yes,” said he. “But it ended, like every other -Great Adventure I’ve attempted in my life, in burlesque. -I assure you, that when I found myself pitched into this -clump of gorse and able to pick myself up with nothing -worse than a gasping for breath, I—well—the humiliation -of it!—I cursed the day I was born.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why did you do it?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had scarcely regained balance. The situation -seemed unreal. But a few minutes ago he had been far -from her thoughts, which were concerned with the woman -to whose possibly dying bed she had been summoned, -with the dreary days at Medlow now that Blaise Olifant -had gone, with the still beauty of the hills and their -purple sunset shadows. And now, here she was, alone -with him, remote from the world, conversing as dispassionately -as though he had returned from the dead—as -indeed he had almost returned. At her question, he -threw his chauffeur’s cap on the grass and passed his -hand over his hair. The familiar gesture, the familiar -nervous brown hand brought her a step nearer to reality.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If you can’t guess, it is useless for me to tell you,” -he said. “You wouldn’t believe me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He took out a cigarette. She noted a trembling of -the fingers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you mind?” She nodded, he lit the cigarette. “I -thought here, at any rate, I was hidden from you for -the rest of my life. It wouldn’t have been very long -anyway. I had made up my mind some day soon to set -you free of me—and to-day or to-morrow—what did it -matter? I don’t ask you to believe that either. I don’t -see how you can believe a word I say. I gave you to -understand, that I was in Poland—you find me here. -When did Myra tell you I was here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Returning sanity had corrected his first mad impression. -How could she be a mile from Pendish if she had -not heard from Myra? But she regarded him open-mouthed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Myra? What has Myra to do with it? Of course -I had no conception you were here? I knew you were -not in Poland. A man—a Pole—I forget his name—wrote -to Major Olifant, last year, wondering what had -become of you. You had never joined him——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Boronowski,” said Triona.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That was the name——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you took it for granted I had lied to him too.” -Her eyes dropped beneath his half sad, half ironic gaze. -She made a little despairing gesture.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What would you have?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And Myra never told you anything about me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You haven’t answered my question,” she said, -straightening herself: “Where does Myra come in?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s rather a long story. I should prefer her to -tell it to you. Myra knows everything about me since -the day after you received my last letter over a year -ago.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She leaned forward, an angry spot burning on both -cheeks. “Myra has been hiding you here all the time -and has told me nothing about it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She has her excellent reasons. She will tell you in a -very few words——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She can’t. At any rate not now. She has been very -ill with pneumonia. They thought she was dying and -sent for me. Why otherwise should I be here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you staying at Mrs. Pettiland’s?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I didn’t even know Myra was in Pendish—I’m -grieved to hear she’s ill. I’m afraid I’ve neglected Mrs. -Pettiland of late. She was very kind to me.” He -paused and added with a smile, “I see Myra’s loyalty. -She forbade Mrs. Pettiland to mention the name of the -young man called Briggs. You’ve never heard of such -a person at Pendish.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not a word,” said Olivia. “But I shall never forgive -Myra. Never, never,” she cried indignantly. “To -fool me like that!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He caught sudden hope from the flash in her dark eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Would you have liked to know where I was?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hate duplicity. I thought that Myra, at least—my -God! Is there anybody in the world one can trust?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Suddenly she turned on him. “What are you doing in -that absurd livery?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve been earning my living in it, since last August. -I’ve done it before. It’s an honester way than many -others.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Forgive me, if I don’t understand,” she said, still -half-bewildered. “You have no need to earn your living -by driving a car—a common chauffeur—unless——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She checked herself with a little gasp—but his quick -brain divined her impulsive thought.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Unless I had taken to drink and gone to the bad, etcetera, -etcetera——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She interrupted him quickly. “No, no. I never -thought that. It was a <span class='it'>reductio ad absurdum</span>. But on -what other hypothesis——? You’ve still your brain, -your talent, your genius. Your pen——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Which is mightier than the wheel,” he remarked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know why you didn’t go to Poland. Perhaps -you’ll explain. Anyhow you didn’t. You came here—to -the absolute quiet of the country. Why haven’t you gone -on writing?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“For the simple reason,” said he, “that Alexis Triona -and all his works are dead. Washed out from the Book -of Life. That side of me is all over and done with. You -who know everything, can’t you understand?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She caught the note of truth in his words and gradually -there began to dawn on her the immensity of his -artist’s sacrifice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you mean that you’re never going to write again?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Never,” said he. “Does this look like it?” and he -touched the brass buttons on his livery.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She weakened through impatience at his aloofness, -craving to know all that had happened to him, to get to -the roots of Myra’s mysterious intrigue. His fatalistic -attitude was maddening. The whole crazy combination -of tragedy and farce that had set them down in the -gorse-enclosed hollow of the hill-side, as though they -were the only people on God’s earth, was maddening. -The brass buttons were maddening. She flung sudden -arms out wide.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“For God’s sake tell me everything that has happened -to you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If you’ll believe it,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sat silent for a moment, feeling as though she were -under his rebuke, and gazed over the valley at the hills -black beneath the dying green and faded orange of the -sunset. The thin smoke of the burned car mounted into -the windless air faint with the smell of petrol fumes and -scorched woodwork. And Triona looked down too and -saw the end of the creation of his resurrection. He -pointed to it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That was one of my little dreams,” he said gently. -“A sort of rat trap on wheels—the most hopeless box of -antiquated imbecility you can imagine. I took it into -my head to recreate it. For a time I devoted my soul to -it—and I made it a thing of life and speed and obedience. -And there it lies dead, a column of smoke, like all dreams -and, all my deliberate fault. Every system of philosophy, -since the world began, has overlooked the ironical -symbolism of life. That’s one; and my dream—smoke.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She fell under the spell of his voice, although her -brain revolted. Yet his note rang sincere in her heart—she -knew not what to say. The sunset colours over the -ridge of hills died into iron blue of the sky. A faint -breeze stirred. She shivered with cold in her thin Tussore -silk. He, watching her, saw the shiver.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re cold, you must be getting back.” He rose.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sprang to her feet before he could help her to rise.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll see you to Mrs. Pettiland’s.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They scrambled to the high road above them, and began -to walk, in constrained silence. Suddenly she -cried:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ve hurt yourself. You’re limping dreadfully. -You told me you were unhurt——” She clutched his -arm. “You can’t go on like this.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll go on like this,” said he, thrilling under her touch, -“to the day of my death. It has nothing to do with this -evening’s entertainment. I was smashed up by a motor-lorry -over a year ago, as Myra will tell you. That’s -what knocked me out of Poland.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She echoed his words—“Smashed up by a motor-lorry?—It -might have killed you—and I should have -never known.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Myra would have told you. As a matter of fact it -very nearly did kill me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She turned her head away with a shudder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And just now——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I ought to have waited till I had turned the corner—” -he pointed out the bend a few yards in front of them. -“Hell’s Corner, they call it hereabouts. Then you -wouldn’t have seen me go over, and I might have had -better luck.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He saw her turn deadly white, reel, and he tried to -support her; but she slipped away from him and sat by -the wayside. She thought she was going to faint again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“For God’s sake, don’t talk like that. It’s inhuman. -It’s unlike you. Even if you were a stranger it would be -horrible.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m only apologising for my existence,” he said. -“Fate has been against me—but, believe me, I have done -my best.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After a while she rose, declaring herself better, and -they struck off the road down the twisting lane that led to -Pendish. The air was fragrant in the dusk.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tell me about that accident—how Myra came to -know of it. I suppose you sent her word?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps when you have talked to Myra, you’ll credit -me at least with sincere intentions. If I had informed -her, it would have been an indirect appeal to you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps it would have been wiser to appeal to me -direct,” said Olivia tonelessly. “I’m not devoid of common -humanity.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I couldn’t have done that,” he said gently. “I lay -unconscious for weeks. When I came to my senses I -found Myra had come the second morning I was in -hospital. I had better begin with my meeting with the -Pole, Boronowski—it’s a simple matter.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To him, walking with this lost wife of his dreams, in -the lovers’ lane, the hour seemed fantastic. His voice -sounded unreal in his ears. His heart lying heavy as -lead within him was not the heart that he had thought -would beat furiously at the ravishing sight of her. He -told his story badly; just the salient facts, uninspired by -the dramatic instinct which had made him colour so -vividly the narration, a year ago, to Mrs. Pettiland, of -his ridiculous adventure. This he barely sketched. For -truth’s sake he must tell her of the robbery and account -for his penniless condition. It was not himself talking. -It was not Olivia to whom he talked. One stranger’s -personality was talking through him to another’s. At -the end of the tale:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have changed greatly,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s very possible.” There was a pause. He continued. -“And you? Forgive me. I haven’t even asked -whether you are well——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I’ve been all right. I spent the winter abroad, -and now I’m staying with Mrs. Woolcombe at ‘The -Towers.’ Major Olifant is away.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They came up suddenly against the wicket-gate of -Mrs. Pettiland’s garden. A light shone through the yet -undrawn curtains in his old bedroom. He raised an -enquiring hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Myra?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. I’m in Mrs. Pettiland’s room in the front. She -would give it up to me. I’ve been helping to nurse—as -well as I can. I’ve been in all day. That’s why I came -out for a walk this evening.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must be tired.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He waited, hoping against hope, for a word revoking -his sentence. None came. The steel sinew that ran -through him, and was answerable for all his accomplishment, -stiffened. He would make no appeal <span class='it'>ad misericordiam</span>. -He had suffered enough in expiation. He had -come to the end of his tether. For pity masking the last -year’s hatred and contempt he had no use. He opened -the gate for her. She passed in and he closed it and the -click of the latch sounded like the crack of finality; for -Olivia, taken almost unawares, as for Triona. They -stood for a while, the wooden barrier between them, in -the gathering darkness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Impulsively she exclaimed: “We can’t part like this, -with a thousand things unexplained.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m at your orders, Olivia,” he replied.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She caught her breath and stiffened. “We must talk -to-morrow—when we have both recovered.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll be here any hour you name,” said Alexis. Radnor -and his garage could go to the devil.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nine o’clock?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nine o’clock,” said he. “Good night, Olivia.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Wait.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The memory of the scandal crashed down on her. . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I may as well tell you now—the night may bring -counsel—I’m in a terrible position. Wedderburn and -Onslow—you remember?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She told him rapidly of her pledge.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It doesn’t matter a scrap to me, but it’s a damnable -thing for you,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What answer would you make?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A clean breast of everything. Could you wish me to -do anything else?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know,” she replied. “Give me time to think.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My time is yours, Olivia.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She paused for a moment irresolute. There was a -question she wished to put, but the thought of it made her -feel sick and faint again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll not do anything foolish, till I see you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nor anything wise,” said he. “I promise.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again there came between them a long embarrassed -silence. At last——</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good night,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good night, Olivia.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She flung an angry hand in the darkness and slipped -away into the house.</p> - -<h2><span class='pageno' title='388' id='Page_388'></span>CHAPTER XXVII</h2> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='dropcap'>M</span><span class='sc'>RS. PETTILAND</span> met her at the foot of the -stairs. She beamed rosily beneath the gas -jet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Myra is so much better, Madam, after her sleep. -The doctor came while you were out. I’m to make her -some chicken broth.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia mounted the stairs and entered the sick-room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well dearie?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She turned to the gaunt waxen face on the pillow.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m so glad to hear the doctor’s good report.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She forced herself to linger, speaking the commonplaces -of the sick-room. Then she could bear it no longer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m dead tired,” she said. “I’ll go to bed. Nurse -ought to be here soon. Have you everything you want -for the night?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Myra said in her even tones: “Have <span class='it'>you</span> everything -you want for the night?” And at Olivia’s quick glance -of enquiry: “You look as if you’d seen a ghost. You -have. I was afraid of it. I didn’t want them to send -for you, but I was too ill to stop them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia could not wreak her anger yet on the frail -woman. But in her heart burned a furious indignation. -She controlled her voice, and said as gently as she could:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why have you left me in ignorance for the past -year?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was biding my time,” said Myra. “I was waiting -for a sign and a token.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“From me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“From you, dearie. I had him here in the hollow of -my hand. If you had wanted him, I could have given -him to you. But you didn’t want him—so you said. -I wasn’t so sure.” She stretched her thin hand on the -blanket, but Olivia stood, too much enwrapped in her -thoughts to notice the appeal. “When I first saw him -in hospital I hoped that he would die and set you free. -But when I saw him convalescent, my heart was full -of pity for him, and I repented of the sin of committing -murder in my heart. And when I heard from my sister -in-law that he was facing life like a brave man, I -wondered whether I had been wrong and whether you -had been wrong. If I say something to you, will you be -angry with me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia shrugged her shoulders. “Say anything you -like.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The weak, even voice went on. “If Major Olifant -hadn’t left us, I should have told you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia leaped at the thrust, her cheeks flaming.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Myra! How dare you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The thin lips parted in a half smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have you ever known me not to dare anything for -your good?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Myra, with all the privileges of illness, had her at a -disadvantage. Olivia was silenced. She unpinned her -hat and threw it on a chair and sat by the bedside.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I see that you acted for the best, Myra.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Not only her cheeks, but her body flamed at what -seemed now the humiliating allusion. Myra was fully -aware, if not of the actual kiss—oh, no—nothing horrible -of servant’s espionage in Myra—at any rate of the emotionality -in which it had culminated—on her part sex, -sense, the unexpected thrill, the elemental between man -and woman, the hunger for she knew not what—but superficial, -tearing at her nerves, but never, oh, never touching -the bed-rock of her spiritual being. A great passionate -love for Blaise, she knew, Myra with her direct -vision, would have understood. For the assurance of her -life’s happiness Myra would have sacrificed her hope of -eternal salvation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the worn woman who had had but one’s week’s -great fulfilment of love in her life, knew what love meant, -and she had sounded the shallows of her pitiful love—if -love it could be called—for Blaise Olifant; and now, -in her sad, fatalistic way she shewed her the poor markings -of the lead.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So you have seen him?” asked Myra quietly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes I’ve seen him. God knows how you know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her overstrained soul gave way. She broke into uncontrollable -crying and sobbing, her little dark head on -the blanket by Myra’s side. And after a little came incoherent -words.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve lost him—He doesn’t care for me any more—He -hates me—He tried to kill himself when he saw -me—He was driving a car and put it over a precipice—Thank -God—a miracle—he wasn’t hurt—But he might -have killed himself—He meant to—And it’s all your -fault—all your fault—If only you had told me. . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Myra put her thin hand on the dear dark hair and -caressed it till the paroxysm was over.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I loved a thing that was scarcely a man till the day -of his death, for I had memories, dearie, of him when -he was a man to be loved. You’ve got a living man for -a husband. And you loved yours as much as I loved -mine. And he’s a living and suffering man. Go to -him—” her hand still played feebly caressing the black -mass of her hair. “Fate has brought you together again. -He’s your man, whom you vowed to help in sickness or in -health. I kept mine in sickness. Thank God, your man’s -sickness is nothing like mine. Go to him, dearie. Humble -yourself if need be . . . I’ve been very ill. I’ve -thought and thought and thought—I’ve an idea that illness -clears one’s brain—and all my thoughts have been -for you. For me there’s nothing left. I’ve thought of -him and you. I’ve thought of what he has done and -what you have done—And, with all his faults, he’s a -bigger human being than you are, dearie. Go to him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Olivia raised a tragic face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How can I? He doesn’t want me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A man doesn’t try to kill himself for a woman he -doesn’t want. You had better go to him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Olivia went. She slipped out of the house at -eleven o’clock, after a couple of hours of wrestling with -ugly and vain devils. Who was she, after all? What had -she done to add a grain to the world’s achievement? -What had she found in her adventure into the world that -had been worth the having save the love of the man that -was her husband? Many phases of existence had passed -procession-wise through her life. All hollows and shams. -The Lydian galley, with its Mavennas and Bobby Quintons. -The mad Blenkirons. The gentle uninspiring -circle of little Janet Philimore. The literary and artistic -society for the few months of Alexis’s lionization—pleasant, -but superficial, always leaving her with the sense -of having fallen far short of a communion that might -have been. Nothing satisfying but the needs and the -childish wants and the work and the uplifting spirit of -the one man. And after the great parting what had there -been? Her life in Medlow devoid of all meaning—Her -six months travel—a feeding of self to no purpose. -An existence of negativity. Blaise Olifant. She flamed, -conscious of one thing at last positive, and positive for ill. -She had played almost deliberately with fire. Otherwise -why had she gone back to Medlow? She had brought unhappiness -to a very noble gentleman. It had been in his -power, as a man, to sweep her off her feet in a weak hour -of clamouring sex. He had spared her—and she now was -unutterably grateful. For she had never loved him. -She could not love him. His long straight nose. She -grew half hysterical. Even when he had kissed her she -had been conscious of that long straight nose. She withered -at the thought.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She slipped out of the house into the soft night. Pendish, -with its double line of low, whitewashed, thatched -cottages, one a deep shadow, the other clear in the -moonlight, lay as still as a ghostly village of the middle -ages. The echo of her light footsteps frightened her. -Surely windows would fly open and heads peer out -challenging the disturber of peace.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was going to him. Why, she scarcely knew. Perhaps -through obedience to Myra. Myra’s bloodless lips, -working in the waxen, immobile face lit, if dull glimmer -could be called light, by the cold china blue eyes, had -uttered words little less than oracular. Myra had been -waiting for a sign or a token from her that had never -come. She walked through the splendid silence of the -country road, beneath the radiance of a moon above the -hills illuminating a mystery of upland and vale shrouded -in the vaporous garments of the land asleep. Hurrying -along the white ribbon of road she was but a little dark -dot on the surface of a serenely scornful universe.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was going to him. He was her man. All that she -knew of the meaning of existence came from him. Moonlight -and starlight and the mystery of the night shimmering -through its veil of enchantment faded from her eyes. -She felt nervous arms around her and kisses on her lips, -and she heard him speaking the winged words of imagination, -lifting her into his world of genius.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A man doesn’t try to kill himself for a woman he -doesn’t want.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So spake Myra. Olivia walked, the dull tones in which -the words were uttered thudding in her ears. It was her -one hope of salvation. Kill himself! This was not a -falsehood. She had seen the act with her own horror-stricken -eyes. She remembered a phrase of Blaise Olifant’s: “He -is being blackmailed by one lie.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She realized, with sudden shock, her insignificant loneliness -in the midst of this vast moonlit silence of the -earth. In presence of the immensities she was of no account. -For the first time she became aware of her own -failure. She had been weighed in the balance of her -love for her husband and had been found wanting. In -the hour of his bitter trial, she had failed him. In the -hour when a word of love, of understanding, which meant -forgiveness, would have saved him, she had put him from -her. She had lived on her own little vanities without -thought of the man’s torture. She had failed him then. -She had failed him to-day.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A man doesn’t try to kill himself for a woman he -doesn’t want.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She strode on, her cheeks burning. All that of extravagance -which he had done this past year had been -for her sake. For all wrong he had done her, he had -sought the final expiation in death. She had failed him -again in this supreme crisis. She had whined to Myra -that he no longer loved her. And she had not given him—that -which even Myra was waiting for—a sign and a -token.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was going to him, nearing him. Already she entered -the straggling end of Fanstead. How would he -receive her? If he cast her off, she would perish in self-contempt. -She went on. An unsuspecting Mrs. Pettiland -had told her, in answer to a question which she -strove to keep casual, the whereabouts of the Quantock -Garage. The sign above an open gateway broke suddenly -on her vision. She entered a silent courtyard. -A light was burning in a loft above a closed garage, and -a wooden flight of steps ran up to it. The door was open -and on the threshold sat a man, his feet on the top stair, -his head buried in his hands. She advanced, her heart -in her mouth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The moon shone full on him. She uttered a little whispering -cry:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Alexis!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He started to his feet, gazed at her for a breathless -second and scrambled with grotesque speed down the -rickety staircase and caught her in his arms.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>She mounted the stairs to his loft, furnished with pallet -bed and camp washing apparatus, a wooden chair, a table -bearing unsightly remains of crust and cheese, and littered -with books in corners and on the uncarpeted floor. -All her remorse and pity and love gushed over him—over -the misery of the life to which she had condemned -him by her littleness of soul and her hardness of heart. -She did not spare herself; but of this profanity he would -hear nothing. She had come to him. She had forgiven -him. The Celestial Hierarchy would be darkened by -the presence of one so radiantly angelic.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She clutched him tight to her. “Oh, my God, if you -had been killed!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Exultant, he cried in his old way: “Nothing could -kill me, for I was born for your love.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They talked through the night into the sweet-scented -June dawn. They would face the world fearlessly together. -First the Onslow and Wedderburn challenge -to be taken up. She would stand by his side through all -the obloquy. That was the newer meaning of her life. -If they were outcasts what did it matter? They could -not be other than splendidly outcast. He responded in -his eager way to her enthusiasm. <span class='it'>Magna est veritas et -prævalebit.</span> With never a shadow between them, what -ecstasy would be existence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They crept downstairs like children into the summer -morning.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>But as they had planned so did it not turn out. Rowington -gave news that Onslow and Wedderburn had dropped -the question. Why revive dead controversy? But -Triona and Olivia insisted. The letter on the origin of -<span class='it'>Through Blood and Snow</span>, signed “John Briggs” appeared -in <span class='it'>The Times</span>. A few references to it appeared in the -next weekly Press. But that was all. No one was -interested. <span class='it'>Through Blood and Snow</span> was forgotten. -The events of 1917 in Russia were ancient history. -As well worry over fresh scandals concerning Catherine -the Great. What did the reading world care what Alexis -Triona’s real name was, or how he had obtained the material -for his brilliant book?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This summary of the effect of attempted literary and -social suicide was put clearly before them in a long letter -from Rowington a month or so afterwards.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But we want another novel from Alexis Triona. -When are we going to get it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had stayed on indefinitely at Pendish, ostensibly -awaiting Myra’s complete convalescence, and incidentally, -as they told themselves, having their second honeymoon. -At first she took it for granted that he would resign his -post at the Quantock Garage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m not going to begin life again by breaking my -word,” said he. “I promised to see him over his honeymoon.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s a bit mad and Quixotic,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So’s all that’s worth having in life, my dear,” said he.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So she had settled down for the time with her chauffeur -husband, and meanwhile had been feeding him into -health.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They read the letter together.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s no use,” wrote Rowington, “to start again under -the Briggs name. You’ve told the world that Triona -is a pseudonym. Alexis Triona means something. John -Briggs doesn’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s quite right,” said Olivia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“As you will,” he said. “I give in. But you can’t -say I’ve not done my very best to kill Alexis Triona.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you can’t. Fate again. And—Alexis dear—I -never knew John Briggs.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were in the sea-haunted parlour. After a while -he took up the pink conch-shell and fingered it lovingly. -Then, with a laugh, he put it to her ear.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What does it say?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She listened a while, handed him back the shell and -looking up at him out of her dark eyes, laughed the laugh -of deep happiness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll go with you, dear—to any South Sea Island you -like.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Will you?” he cried. “We’ll go. And I’ll write a -novel full of the beauty of God’s Universe and you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Myra came in to lay the luncheon table. Olivia leaped -up and threw her arms around the thin shoulders.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Myra dear, you’ll have to pack up quick. We’re -going to Honolulu to-morrow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must make it the day after,” said Myra. “The -laundry doesn’t come till to-morrow night.”</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:2em;font-size:.8em;'>THE END</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:4em;margin-bottom:2em;font-size:1.2em;'>TRANSCRIBER NOTES</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. -Inserted word marked with square bracket around insertion. -Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been -employed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious -printer errors occur.</p> - - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Tale of Triona, by William J. 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