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.