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.
