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, ph?nix-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.
