mrs. pettiland met her at the foot of the stairs. she beamed rosily beneath the gas jet.
“myra is so much better, madam, after her sleep. the doctor came while you were out. i’m to make her some chicken broth.”
olivia mounted the stairs and entered the sick-room.
“well dearie?”
she turned to the gaunt waxen face on the pillow.
“i’m so glad to hear the doctor’s good report.”
she forced herself to linger, speaking the commonplaces of the sick-room. then she could bear it no longer.
“i’m dead tired,” she said. “i’ll go to bed. nurse ought to be here soon. have you everything you want for the night?”
myra said in her even tones: “have you everything you want for the night?” and at olivia’s quick glance of enquiry: “you look as if you’d seen a ghost. you have. i was afraid of it. i didn’t want them to send for you, but i was too ill to stop them.”
olivia could not wreak her anger yet on the frail woman. but in her heart burned a furious indignation. she controlled her voice, and said as gently as she could:
“why have you left me in ignorance for the past year?”
“i was biding my time,” said myra. “i was waiting for a sign and a token.”
“from me?”
“from you, dearie. i had him here in the hollow of my hand. if you had wanted him, i could have given him to you. but you didn’t want him—so you said. i wasn’t so sure.” she stretched her thin hand on the blanket, but olivia stood, too much enwrapped in her thoughts to notice the appeal. “when i first saw him in hospital i hoped that he would die and set you free. but when i saw him convalescent, my heart was full of pity for him, and i repented of the sin of committing murder in my heart. and when i heard from my sister in-law that he was facing life like a brave man, i wondered whether i had been wrong and whether you had been wrong. if i say something to you, will you be angry with me?”
olivia shrugged her shoulders. “say anything you like.”
the weak, even voice went on. “if major olifant hadn’t left us, i should have told you.”
olivia leaped at the thrust, her cheeks flaming.
“myra! how dare you?”
the thin lips parted in a half smile.
“have you ever known me not to dare anything for your good?”
myra, with all the privileges of illness, had her at a disadvantage. olivia was silenced. she unpinned her hat and threw it on a chair and sat by the bedside.
“i see that you acted for the best, myra.”
not only her cheeks, but her body flamed at what seemed now the humiliating allusion. myra was fully aware, if not of the actual kiss—oh, no—nothing horrible of servant’s espionage in myra—at any rate of the emotionality in which it had culminated—on her part sex, sense, the unexpected thrill, the elemental between man and woman, the hunger for she knew not what—but superficial, tearing at her nerves, but never, oh, never touching the bed-rock of her spiritual being. a great passionate love for blaise, she knew, myra with her direct vision, would have understood. for the assurance of her life’s happiness myra would have sacrificed her hope of eternal salvation.
but the worn woman who had had but one’s week’s great fulfilment of love in her life, knew what love meant, and she had sounded the shallows of her pitiful love—if love it could be called—for blaise olifant; and now, in her sad, fatalistic way she shewed her the poor markings of the lead.
“so you have seen him?” asked myra quietly.
“yes i’ve seen him. god knows how you know.”
“well?”
her overstrained soul gave way. she broke into uncontrollable crying and sobbing, her little dark head on the blanket by myra’s side. and after a little came incoherent words.
“i’ve lost him—he doesn’t care for me any more—he hates me—he tried to kill himself when he saw me—he was driving a car and put it over a precipice—thank god—a miracle—he wasn’t hurt—but he might have killed himself—he meant to—and it’s all your fault—all your fault—if only you had told me. . . .”
myra put her thin hand on the dear dark hair and caressed it till the paroxysm was over.
“i loved a thing that was scarcely a man till the day of his death, for i had memories, dearie, of him when he was a man to be loved. you’ve got a living man for a husband. and you loved yours as much as i loved mine. and he’s a living and suffering man. go to him—” her hand still played feebly caressing the black mass of her hair. “fate has brought you together again. he’s your man, whom you vowed to help in sickness or in health. i kept mine in sickness. thank god, your man’s sickness is nothing like mine. go to him, dearie. humble yourself if need be . . . i’ve been very ill. i’ve thought and thought and thought—i’ve an idea that illness clears one’s brain—and all my thoughts have been for you. for me there’s nothing left. i’ve thought of him and you. i’ve thought of what he has done and what you have done—and, with all his faults, he’s a bigger human being than you are, dearie. go to him.”
olivia raised a tragic face.
“how can i? he doesn’t want me.”
“a man doesn’t try to kill himself for a woman he doesn’t want. you had better go to him.”
and olivia went. she slipped out of the house at eleven o’clock, after a couple of hours of wrestling with ugly and vain devils. who was she, after all? what had she done to add a grain to the world’s achievement? what had she found in her adventure into the world that had been worth the having save the love of the man that was her husband? many phases of existence had passed procession-wise through her life. all hollows and shams. the lydian galley, with its mavennas and bobby quintons. the mad blenkirons. the gentle uninspiring circle of little janet philimore. the literary and artistic society for the few months of alexis’s lionization—pleasant, but superficial, always leaving her with the sense of having fallen far short of a communion that might have been. nothing satisfying but the needs and the childish wants and the work and the uplifting spirit of the one man. and after the great parting what had there been? her life in medlow devoid of all meaning—her six months travel—a feeding of self to no purpose. an existence of negativity. blaise olifant. she flamed, conscious of one thing at last positive, and positive for ill. she had played almost deliberately with fire. otherwise why had she gone back to medlow? she had brought unhappiness to a very noble gentleman. it had been in his power, as a man, to sweep her off her feet in a weak hour of clamouring sex. he had spared her—and she now was unutterably grateful. for she had never loved him. she could not love him. his long straight nose. she grew half hysterical. even when he had kissed her she had been conscious of that long straight nose. she withered at the thought.
she slipped out of the house into the soft night. pendish, with its double line of low, whitewashed, thatched cottages, one a deep shadow, the other clear in the moonlight, lay as still as a ghostly village of the middle ages. the echo of her light footsteps frightened her. surely windows would fly open and heads peer out challenging the disturber of peace.
she was going to him. why, she scarcely knew. perhaps through obedience to myra. myra’s bloodless lips, working in the waxen, immobile face lit, if dull glimmer could be called light, by the cold china blue eyes, had uttered words little less than oracular. myra had been waiting for a sign or a token from her that had never come. she walked through the splendid silence of the country road, beneath the radiance of a moon above the hills illuminating a mystery of upland and vale shrouded in the vaporous garments of the land asleep. hurrying along the white ribbon of road she was but a little dark dot on the surface of a serenely scornful universe.
she was going to him. he was her man. all that she knew of the meaning of existence came from him. moonlight and starlight and the mystery of the night shimmering through its veil of enchantment faded from her eyes. she felt nervous arms around her and kisses on her lips, and she heard him speaking the winged words of imagination, lifting her into his world of genius.
“a man doesn’t try to kill himself for a woman he doesn’t want.”
so spake myra. olivia walked, the dull tones in which the words were uttered thudding in her ears. it was her one hope of salvation. kill himself! this was not a falsehood. she had seen the act with her own horror-stricken eyes. she remembered a phrase of blaise olifant’s: “he is being blackmailed by one lie.”
she realized, with sudden shock, her insignificant loneliness in the midst of this vast moonlit silence of the earth. in presence of the immensities she was of no account. for the first time she became aware of her own failure. she had been weighed in the balance of her love for her husband and had been found wanting. in the hour of his bitter trial, she had failed him. in the hour when a word of love, of understanding, which meant forgiveness, would have saved him, she had put him from her. she had lived on her own little vanities without thought of the man’s torture. she had failed him then. she had failed him to-day.
“a man doesn’t try to kill himself for a woman he doesn’t want.”
she strode on, her cheeks burning. all that of extravagance which he had done this past year had been for her sake. for all wrong he had done her, he had sought the final expiation in death. she had failed him again in this supreme crisis. she had whined to myra that he no longer loved her. and she had not given him—that which even myra was waiting for—a sign and a token.
she was going to him, nearing him. already she entered the straggling end of fanstead. how would he receive her? if he cast her off, she would perish in self-contempt. she went on. an unsuspecting mrs. pettiland had told her, in answer to a question which she strove to keep casual, the whereabouts of the quantock garage. the sign above an open gateway broke suddenly on her vision. she entered a silent courtyard. a light was burning in a loft above a closed garage, and a wooden flight of steps ran up to it. the door was open and on the threshold sat a man, his feet on the top stair, his head buried in his hands. she advanced, her heart in her mouth.
the moon shone full on him. she uttered a little whispering cry:
“alexis!”
he started to his feet, gazed at her for a breathless second and scrambled with grotesque speed down the rickety staircase and caught her in his arms.
she mounted the stairs to his loft, furnished with pallet bed and camp washing apparatus, a wooden chair, a table bearing unsightly remains of crust and cheese, and littered with books in corners and on the uncarpeted floor. all her remorse and pity and love gushed over him—over the misery of the life to which she had condemned him by her littleness of soul and her hardness of heart. she did not spare herself; but of this profanity he would hear nothing. she had come to him. she had forgiven him. the celestial hierarchy would be darkened by the presence of one so radiantly angelic.
she clutched him tight to her. “oh, my god, if you had been killed!”
exultant, he cried in his old way: “nothing could kill me, for i was born for your love.”
they talked through the night into the sweet-scented june dawn. they would face the world fearlessly together. first the onslow and wedderburn challenge to be taken up. she would stand by his side through all the obloquy. that was the newer meaning of her life. if they were outcasts what did it matter? they could not be other than splendidly outcast. he responded in his eager way to her enthusiasm. magna est veritas et pr?valebit. with never a shadow between them, what ecstasy would be existence.
they crept downstairs like children into the summer morning.
but as they had planned so did it not turn out. rowington gave news that onslow and wedderburn had dropped the question. why revive dead controversy? but triona and olivia insisted. the letter on the origin of through blood and snow, signed “john briggs” appeared in the times. a few references to it appeared in the next weekly press. but that was all. no one was interested. through blood and snow was forgotten. the events of 1917 in russia were ancient history. as well worry over fresh scandals concerning catherine the great. what did the reading world care what alexis triona’s real name was, or how he had obtained the material for his brilliant book?
this summary of the effect of attempted literary and social suicide was put clearly before them in a long letter from rowington a month or so afterwards.
“but we want another novel from alexis triona. when are we going to get it?”
they had stayed on indefinitely at pendish, ostensibly awaiting myra’s complete convalescence, and incidentally, as they told themselves, having their second honeymoon. at first she took it for granted that he would resign his post at the quantock garage.
“i’m not going to begin life again by breaking my word,” said he. “i promised to see him over his honeymoon.”
“that’s a bit mad and quixotic,” said olivia.
“so’s all that’s worth having in life, my dear,” said he.
so she had settled down for the time with her chauffeur husband, and meanwhile had been feeding him into health.
they read the letter together.
“it’s no use,” wrote rowington, “to start again under the briggs name. you’ve told the world that triona is a pseudonym. alexis triona means something. john briggs doesn’t.”
“he’s quite right,” said olivia.
“as you will,” he said. “i give in. but you can’t say i’ve not done my very best to kill alexis triona.”
“and you can’t. fate again. and—alexis dear—i never knew john briggs.”
they were in the sea-haunted parlour. after a while he took up the pink conch-shell and fingered it lovingly. then, with a laugh, he put it to her ear.
“what does it say?”
she listened a while, handed him back the shell and looking up at him out of her dark eyes, laughed the laugh of deep happiness.
“i’ll go with you, dear—to any south sea island you like.”
“will you?” he cried. “we’ll go. and i’ll write a novel full of the beauty of god’s universe and you.”
myra came in to lay the luncheon table. olivia leaped up and threw her arms around the thin shoulders.
“myra dear, you’ll have to pack up quick. we’re going to honolulu to-morrow.”
“you must make it the day after,” said myra. “the laundry doesn’t come till to-morrow night.”
