NOT WANTED!
In the train Calaiswards, Rivière felt as though he had just plunged
into an ice-cold lake fed by torrents from the snow-peaks, and had
emerged tingling in every fibre with the glow of health.
The course before him was straight; the issue clean-cut. He had only to
confront Lars Larssen to bring the latter to his knees. If there were
opposition, the threat of a public prosecution would brush it aside.
He must resume the personality of Clifford Matheson; return to Olive;
settle a generous income on Elaine. He must wind up his financial
affairs and devote himself to the scientific research he had planned.
A straight, clean course.
He looked forward eagerly to the moment when he would walk into
Larssen's private office and smash a fist through his hoped-for control
of Hudson Bay. Until that moment, he would keep outwardly to the
identity of John Rivière. But already he was feeling himself back in the
personality of Clifford Matheson--the hard, firm lines had set again
around his mouth, the look of masterfulness was in his eye.
* * * * *
The Channel was in its sullen mood.
Overhead, skies were grey with ragged, shapeless cloud; below, the
waters were the colour of slag and slapping angrily against the plates
of the starboard bow under the drive of a wind from the north-east. The
ashen cliffs of Dover came to meet the packet reluctant and
inhospitable. By the harbour-entrance, a petulant squall of rain beat
upon them as though to shoo them away. The landing-stage was slippery
and slimy with rain, soot, and petrol drippings from the motor-cars
shipped to and fro. Customs-house officers eyed them with tired
suspicion; porters took their money and hastened away with the curtest
of acknowledgments; an engine panted sullenly as it waited for
never-ending mail-bags to be hauled up from the bowels of the packets
and dumped into the mail-van.
England had no welcome for Rivière at her front door.
Through the Weald of Kent, where spring comes early, this April
afternoon showed the land still naked and cold. On the coppices,
dispirited catkins drooped their tassels from the wet branches of the
undergrowth, but the young leaves lurked within their brown coverings as
though they shivered at the thought of venturing out into the bleak air.
On the oaks, dead leaves from the past autumn clung obstinately to their
mother-branches. The hop-lands were a dreary drab; hop-poles huddled
against one another for warmth; streams ran swollen and muddy and
rebellious.
"The Garden of England" had no welcome for Rivière.
They swerved through Tonbridge Junction, glistening sootily under a
drizzle of rain, and dived into the yawning tunnel of River Hill as
though into refuge from the bleakness of the open country. Two
fellow-travellers with Rivière were discussing the gloomy outlook of a
threatened railway strike which rumbled through the daily papers like
distant thunder. Fragment of talk came to his ears:--
"Minimum wage.... Damned insolence.... Tie up the whole country.... Have
them all flogged to work.... Not a statesman in the House.... Weak-kneed
set of vote-snatchers.... If I had my way...."
The train ran them roof-high through endless vistas of the mean grey
streets of south-east London, where the street-lamps were beginning to
throw out a yellow haze against the murky drizzle of the late afternoon;
slowed to a crawl in obedience to the raised arms of imperious signals;
stopped over viaducts for long wearisome minutes while flaunting
sky-signs drummed into the passengers the superabundant merits of
Somebody's Whisky or Somebodyelse's Soap.
Half-an-hour late at the terminus, Rivière had his valise sent to the
Avon Hotel, hailed a taxi, and told the man to drive as fast as possible
to Leadenhall Street. In that narrow canon of commerce was a large,
substantial building bearing the simple sign--a sign ostentatious in its
simplicity--of "Lars Larssen--Shipping."
"Tell Mr Larssen that Mr John Rivière wishes to see him," he said to a
clerk at the inquiry desk.
"I'm sorry, sir, but Mr Larssen left the office not ten minutes ago."
"Can you tell me where he went to?"
"If you'll wait a moment, sir, I'll send up an inquiry to his secretary.
What name did you say?"
"Rivière--John Rivière. The brother of Mr Clifford Matheson."
Presently the answer came down the house 'phone that Mr Larssen had gone
to his home in Hampstead.
Rivière re-entered the taxi and gave an address on the Heath. He wanted
to thrash out the matter with Larssen with the least possible delay. He
would have preferred to confront the shipowner in his office, but since
that plan had miscarried, he would seek him out in his private house.
Near King's Cross another taxi coming out from a cross-street skidded as
it swerved around the corner, and jolted into his own with a crash of
glass and a crumple of mudguards. Delay followed while the two
chauffeurs upbraided one another with crimson epithets, and gave rival
versions of the incident to a gravely impartial policeman. When Rivière
at length reached Hampstead Heath, it was to find that the shipowner had
just left the house.
Rivière explained to the butler that it was very important he should
reach Larssen without delay, and his personality impressed the servant
as that of a visitor of standing. He therefore told Rivière what he
knew.
"Mr Larssen changed into evening dress, sir, and went off in his small
covered car. I don't know where he's gone, sir, but he told me if
anything important arose I was to ring him up at P. O. Richmond, 2882."
That telephone number happened to be quite familiar to Rivière. It was
the number of his own house at Roehampton.
He jumped into the waiting taxi once again, and ordered the chauffeur to
drive across London to Barnes Common and Roehampton. If he could not
confront Larssen at office or house, he would run him to earth that
evening in his own home. No doubt Larssen was going there to talk
business with Sir Francis.
Roehampton is a country village held within the octopus arms of Greater
London. Round it are a number of large houses with fine, spacious
grounds--country estates they were when Queen Victoria ascended the
throne of England. At Olive's special choice, her husband had purchased
one of the mansions and had it re-decorated for her in modern style. She
liked its nearness to London proper--it gave her touch with Bond Street
and theatreland in half-an-hour by fast car. She liked its spacious
lawns and its terraced Italian garden--they were so admirable for garden
parties and open-air theatricals. She liked the useless size of the
house--it ministered to her love of opulence.
Rivière had grown to hate it in the last few years.
The name of the estate was "Thornton Chase." The approach lay through a
winding drive bordered by giant beeches, and passed one of the
box-hedged lawns to curl before a front door on the further side of the
house.
When at the very gates another delay in that evening of delays occurred.
This time it was a tyre-burst. Rivière, impatient of further waste of
time, paid off the chauffeur and started on foot along the entrance
drive. The drizzle of the afternoon had ceased, and a few stars shone
halfheartedly through rents in the ragged curtain of cloud, as though
performing a duty against their will.
When passing through the box-hedged lawn as a short cut to the front
door, one of the curtains of the lighted drawing-room was suddenly
thrown back, and the broad figure of man stood framed in a golden panel
of light. It was Lars Larssen.
Rivière stopped involuntarily. It was as though his antagonist had
divined his presence and had come boldly forward to meet him. And,
indeed, that was not far from the fact. Larssen, waiting alone in the
drawing-room, had had one of his strange intuitive impulses to throw
wide the curtain and look out into the night. Such an impulse he never
opposed. He had learnt by long experience that there were centres of
perception within him, uncharted by science, which gathered impressions
too vague to put a name to, and yet vitally real. He always gave rein to
his intuition and let it lead him where it chose.
Looking out into the night, the shipowner could not see Rivière, who had
stopped motionless in the shadow of a giant box clipped to the shape of
a peacock standing on a broad pedestal.
Rivière waited.
Presently Larssen turned abruptly as though someone had entered the
room. A smile of welcome was on his lips. Olive swept in, close-gowned
in black with silvery scales. She offered her hand with a radiant smile,
and Larssen took it masterfully and raised it to his lips. Rivière noted
that it was not the shipowner who had moved forward to meet Olive, but
Olive who had come gladly to him.
They stood by the fireplace, and Olive chatted animatedly to her guest.
Rivière scarcely recognized his wife in this transformation of spirit.
With him she was cold and abrupt, and captious, eyes half-lidded and
cheeks white and mask-like. Now her eyes flashed and sparkled, and there
was warm colour in her cheeks.
Of what Olive and Larssen said to one another, no word came to Rivière.
But attitude and gesture told him more than words could have done. It
was as though he were a spectator of a bioscope drama, standing in
darkness while a scene was being pictured for him in remorseless detail
behind the lighted window. That Olive's feeling for Larssen had grown
beyond mere friendship was plain beyond question. She was infatuated
with the man; and he was playing with her infatuation.
For a moment Rivière's fist clenched; then his fingers loosened, and he
watched without stirring. Larssen must, in view of his action on the
Hudson Bay coup, believe Matheson to be dead. To him, Olive was now a
widow. Therefore Rivière had no quarrel with the shipowner on the ground
of what he was now witnessing. His desire to crumple Larssen in the
hollow of his hand and fling him into the mud at his feet was based on
very different grounds.
On the other hand, Olive must believe Matheson to be alive. Larssen
would have told her that her husband was away in Canada on business for
a few weeks, and he would keep up the fiction until the Hudson Bay
scheme were floated to a public issue.
That Rivière could watch the scene pictured before him without
stirring--could watch in silence the spectacle of his wife's infatuation
for another man--might seem superficially as the height of cynical
cold-bloodedness. Yet nothing could be farther from the truth. Rivière
was a man of very deep and very strong feelings held habitually under a
rigid control. Self-control is very often mistaken superficially for
cold-bloodedness, just as heartiness is mistaken for big-heartedness.
He was balanced enough to hold no blame for Olive. Within two years of
marriage he had plumbed her to the depths. It was not in her to be more
than a reckless spender of other people's money and other people's
lives. She was born to waste just as another is born to create. The way
in which she was throwing herself at Larssen during his absence for a
few weeks was typical of her inborn character, which nothing could
uproot.
It was clear beyond doubt that Olive did not want him back. She
preferred him out of her way. If he could disappear for ever, leaving
his fortune in her hands, she would unquestionably be glad of it. What
he had in fact brought about by taking up the personality of John
Rivière was what she seemed most to desire.
He was coming home as an intruder. Even in his own house there would be
no welcome for him. _He was not wanted._
There was a sudden stiffening on the part of Olive, as though she heard
someone about to enter the room. Sir Francis came in, shook hands
cordially with Larssen, and all three made their way to dinner.
Rivière was left looking into an empty room. With sudden decision he
made his way out of the grounds of Thornton Chase. He would see the
shipowner to-morrow in his office at Leadenhall Street rather than
thrash out the coming quarrel in front of Olive and Sir Francis.
His duty lay in taking up once more the role of Clifford Matheson and
returning to Olive's side. Though what he had seen that evening made the
duty trebly distasteful, he must carry it out to the end. Yet to himself
he was glad of the short respite. For one night more he would breathe
freedom as John Rivière.
Only one night more!
For the moment, time was no object to him, and he proceeded on foot
through Roehampton village and by the sodden coppices of Putney Heath to
the Portsmouth high road and the railway station of East Putney.
He waited at the station until an underground train snaked its way in
like a giant blindworm, and went with it to the Temple and so to the
quiet hotel he had chosen in Lincoln's Inn Fields. On his way, he sent
off a telegram to the shipowner stating that John Rivière would call at
Leadenhall Street at eleven o'clock in the morning.
In the coffee-room of the Avon Hotel he sat down to write a long letter
to Elaine which would explain all that had been hidden from her. Without
sparing himself one jot he told her of the circumstances of his life
since the crucial night of March 14th, and of the deception he carried
out with her as well as with the rest of the world. It was long past
midnight before he put to the letter the signature of "Clifford
Matheson."
And then with a stab of pain he remembered that Elaine could not read
it. There were passages in the letter which must not be read to her by
any outside person. It was evident that what he had to tell her would
have to be said by word of mouth.
Rivière tore up his letter into small fragments and burnt them carefully
in the grate.