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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. 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