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.