THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT
 
 THE TALE OF 
 TRIONA
 
 BY THE SAME A UTHOR 
 
 IDOLS 
 
 JAFFERY 
 
 VIVIETTE 
 
 SEPTIMUS 
 
 DERELICTS 
 
 THE USURPER 
 
 STELLA MARIS 
 
 WHERE LOVE IS 
 
 THE ROUGH ROAD 
 
 THE MOUNTEBANK 
 
 THE RED PLANET 
 
 THE WHITE DOVE 
 
 F.AR-AWAY STORIES 
 
 SIMON THE JESTER 
 
 A STUDY IN SHADOWS 
 
 A CHRISTMAS MYSTERY 
 
 THE WONDERFUL YEAR 
 
 THE HOUSE OF BALTAZAR 
 
 THE FORTUNATE YOUTH 
 
 THE BELOVED VAGABOND 
 
 AT THE GATE OF SAMARIA 
 
 THE GLORY OF CLEMENTINA 
 
 THE MORALS OF MARCUS ORDEYNE 
 
 THE DEMAGOGUE AND LADY PHAYRE 
 
 THE JOYOUS ADVENTURES OF ARISTIDE PUJOL
 
 THE TALE OF 
 TRIONA 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM J. LOCKE 
 
 Author of "THE BELOVED VAGABOND," "THE MORALS OF 
 MARCUS ORDEYNE," etc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 1922
 
 OOPTBIGHT, 1922 
 
 BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. 
 
 FEINTED IN TT. S. A.
 
 THE TALE OF 
 TRIONA
 
 FK 
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 OLIVIA GALE leaned back in her chair at the 
 end of the dining-room table, and looked first 
 at the elderly gentleman on her right, and then 
 at the elderly gentleman on her left. 
 
 "You're both of you as kind as can be, and I'm more 
 than grateful for all you've done; but I do wish you'd 
 see that it's no use arguing. It only hurts and makes 
 us tired. Do help yourself, Mr. Trivett. And another 
 cup of tea, Mr. Fenmarch?" 
 
 Mr. Fenmarch, on her left, passed his cup with a sigh. 
 He was a dusty, greyish man, his face covered with an 
 indeterminate growth of thin short hair. His eyes were 
 of a dull, unspeculative blue. 
 
 "As your solicitor, my dear Olivia," said he, "I can 
 only obey instructions. As the friend of your family, 
 I venture to give you advice." 
 
 "Why the deuce your father didn't tie you up in a 
 trusteeship till you were twenty-five, at any rate," said 
 Mr. Trivett on her right, helping himself to whisky 
 and soda the table, covered with a green baize cloth, 
 was littered with papers and afternoon refreshments. 
 
 "Why the dickens " he began again after a sizzling 
 
 gulp. 
 
 "Yes, it's most unfortunate," said Mr. Fenmarch, 
 
 i 
 
 939847
 
 2 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 cutting off his friend's period. "And what you are going 
 to do with yourself, all alone in the world, with this 
 enormous amount of liquid money is more than I can 
 imagine." 
 
 Olivia smiled and tapped the blue-veined hand that 
 set down his teacup. 
 
 "Of course you can't. If imagination ran away with 
 a solicitor, it would land him in the workhouse." 
 
 "That's where it will land you, Olivia," said Mr. Triv- 
 ett. "Common sense is the better mount." 
 
 "That's rather neat," she said. 
 
 "If it wasn't, I wouldn't have said it," retorted Mr. 
 Trivett, sinking his red jowls into his collar, which made 
 them redder than before. 
 
 "You're so quick and clever," said Olivia, "that I can't 
 understand why you won't see things from my point of 
 view." 
 
 "You've got to learn that a man of experience can't 
 take the view of a wrong-headed young woman." 
 
 Mr. Trivett emphasized the asperity of his tone by 
 a thump of his palm on the table. 
 
 As a matter of fact, he was genuinely angry. He was 
 the senior partner in Trivett and Gale, Auctioneers and 
 Estate Agents, in the comfortable little Shropshire town 
 of Medlow; or rather the only surviving partner, for 
 Gale, Olivia's father, and his two sons had one after the 
 other been wiped out in a recent world accident. Olivia's 
 decision, inspired from no other fount he could think of 
 than lunacy, involved the withdrawl of considerable 
 capital from the business. This, of course, being an 
 honourable man, he could not dispute; but here were peace 
 and reconstruction and inflated prices, and heaven knew
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 3 
 
 how much percentage on the middleman's capital, and 
 here was this inexperienced girl throwing away a safe 
 income and clamouring for a settlement in full. They 
 had argued and argued. It may be stated here that 
 Mr. Trivett was the Executor of her father's estate, 
 which made his position the more delicate and exas- 
 perating. 
 
 And now Mr. Trivett's exasperation reached the table- 
 thumping point. 
 
 Olivia smiled wearily. 
 
 "It's such a pity." 
 
 "What's a pity?" 
 
 "Oh, everything. One thing is that there's no more 
 gold. Of course, I know you can't understand. But 
 that's your fault, not mine. I should have liked to real- 
 ize all that I've got in sovereigns. Do you think they'd 
 fill a bath? Have you ever thought how lovely it would 
 be to wallow in a bath of sovereigns? Treasury notes 
 are not the same thing. They're either very dirty and 
 smell of plumbers, or very new and smell of rancid oil. 
 Gold is the real basis of Romance." 
 
 He put her down for a mere female fool, and replied 
 practically: 
 
 "We'll not see a gold coin in England again for the 
 next fifty years." 
 
 "Well, well," she said; "anyhow, there's still some 
 romance in mounting the deadly breech of the bank 
 counter with a drawn checque in one's hand." 
 
 "I'm afraid, my dear Olivia," said Mr. Fenmarch 
 mildly, "I don't quite see what we're talking about." 
 
 "Why, we've discussed it every day for the last three 
 months," cried Olivia, "and now this is the very last end
 
 4 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 of everything. A final settlement, as you call it! That's 
 what you two dears have come for, isn't it?" 
 
 "Unfortunately, yes," said Mr. Fenmarch. 
 
 "Then it's all so simple. You've shown me this" 
 she picked up a foolscap document and dropped it 
 "the full statement of account of my father's estate, and 
 I approve I being the only person concerned. You've 
 got to give me one last cheque for that amount" she 
 tapped the document "and I give you my receipt, 
 signed over a penny stamp you'll have to stand me a 
 penny stamp, for I've only got three-halfpenny ones in 
 the house and there's an end of the matter." 
 
 "My clerk made out the receipt and put the penny 
 stamp on," said Mr. Fenmarch, untroubled by her smile. 
 "Here it is." 
 
 "Solicitors' clerks seem to think of everything," said 
 Olivia. "Fancy his remembering the penny stamp!" 
 
 "It's charged up against you, in Fenmarch's bill item 
 'sundries,' " remarked Mr. Trivett, pointing a fat fore- 
 finger. 
 
 "Why, naturally. Why should Mr. Fenmarch shower 
 pennies on me? It's the delicate thoughtfulness that I 
 admire. I hope you'll raise that young man's salary." 
 
 Mr. Fenmarch looked pained, like a horse to whom one 
 had offered wooden oats, and swung his head away. Mr. 
 Trivett opened his mouth to speak, but before he spoke 
 finished his whisky and soda. 
 
 "My dear Olivia," said he, "I'm sorry to see you so 
 flippant. You've disappointed me and Mrs. Trivett 
 who've known you since you were born, more than I can 
 say. Until your poor mother died God bless her we 
 thought you the most capable, level-headed young woman
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 5 
 
 in this town. But for the last three months you'll for- 
 give my freedom in saying so you have shown yourself 
 to be quite impossible." 
 
 He paused, angry. Olivia smiled and drummed on the 
 table. 
 
 "Have some more whisky." 
 
 "No, I won't," he said in a loud voice. "Whisky's too 
 expensive to ladle out in that offhand fashion. It's a 
 luxury, as you'll jolly well soon discover. I'm talking for 
 your good, Olivia. That's why Fenmarch and I are here. 
 Two minutes will wind up the business. But we have 
 your interests at heart, my girl, and we want to make a 
 last appeal." 
 
 She covered with hers the back of his red-glazed hand 
 and spoke in a softened voice: 
 
 "Yes, I know, I know. I've said already that you and 
 Mr. Fenmarch were dears. But what would you have 
 me do? I'm twenty-three. Alone in the world." 
 
 "You have your uncle and aunt at Clapham," said Mr. 
 Trivett. 
 
 "I've also some sort of relations in the monkey cage 
 at the Zoo," said Olivia. 
 
 The repartee to the effect that it was the fittest home 
 for her only occurring to Mr. Trivett when he was getting 
 into bed that night, he merely stared at her gaspingly. 
 She continued: 
 
 "I'm absolutely alone in the world. Do you think it 
 reasonable for me to stay in this dull old house, in this 
 mouldering old town, where one never sees a man from 
 one year's end to another, living for the rest of my life 
 on the few hundreds a year which I could get if my cap- 
 ital were properly invested?"
 
 6 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "We don't grant your premises, Olivia," said Mr. Fen- 
 march. " The Towers' may be old, but it is not dull. 
 Medlow is not mouldering, but singularly progressive, 
 and the place seems to to pullulate with young men. So 
 I think our advice to you is eminently reasonable." 
 
 "Oh, dear!" sighed Olivia. "That's where all the 
 trouble comes in. Our ideas of dullness, mouldering and 
 pullu what you call it; don't correspond. Mother was 
 very fond of a story of Sydney Smith. Perhaps she told 
 you. He was walking one day with a friend through the 
 slums and came across two women quarrelling across 
 the street, through opposite windows. And Sydney Smith 
 said: They'll never come to an agreement, because they 
 are arguing from different premises.' ' 
 
 There was a silence. 
 
 "I'll have a drop more whisky," said Mr. Trivett. 
 
 "I think I see the point of the remark," said Mr. Fen- 
 march greyly. "It was a play on the two meanings of 
 the word." 
 
 "That was what my mother gave me to understand," 
 said Olivia. 
 
 Then, after another spell of chill silence, she cried, 
 her nerves on edge: 
 
 "Do let us come to the end of it! " 
 
 "We will," said Mr. Trivett impressively. "But not 
 before I've made a few remarks in protest, with Fen- 
 march as witness. I'm sorry there's not another wit- 
 ness " 
 
 "Oh, I'll get one!" cried Olivia. "Myra the faithful 
 Myra." 
 
 "Myra's a servant, also a fool; and you've got her under 
 your thumb," said Mr. Trivett.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 7 
 
 "Well, well," said Olivia, "we'll give Myra a miss. 
 But I know what you're going to say and the kind heart 
 that makes you say it." 
 
 A touch of real tenderness crept into her fine dark 
 eyes and almost softened Mr. Trivett. She looked so 
 young, so slender, so immature in her simple mourning. 
 Her soft black hair clustered over her forehead in a 
 manner which he felt was inconsistent with a woman fight- 
 ing her way alone in the world. She hadn't a bit of 
 colour in her cheeks; wanted feeding up, he thought. She 
 was capable enough in her own sphere, the management 
 of her house, the care of a bedridden mother, the appreci- 
 ation of legal technicalities. Until she had got this bee 
 in her bonnet he had admired her prodigiously; though, 
 with the reserve which every Englishman makes in his 
 admiration, he deplored the shrewdness of her tongue. 
 But this idea of hers, to realize all her money in hard 
 cash at the bank and go off into unknown perils was 
 preposterous. She was not fit for it. You could take 
 her by the neck in one hand and by the waist in another 
 and break her to bits. . . . He was a good, honest man 
 with fatherly instincts developed by the possession of 
 daughters of his own, strapping red-cheeked girls, who 
 had stayed soberly at home until the right young man 
 had come along and carried them off to modest homes of 
 unimpeachable respectability. So when he met the 
 tenderness in Olivia's eyes he mitigated the asperities of 
 his projected discourse and preached her a very human 
 little sermon. While he spoke, Mr. Fenmarch nodded his 
 unhumorous head and stroked the straggling grey hairs 
 on his cheek. When he had ended, Mr. Fenmarch sec- 
 onded, as it were, the resolution.
 
 8 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 Then Olivia thanked them prettily, promised to avoid 
 extravagance, and, in case of difficulty, to come to them 
 for advice. The final cheque was passed over, the final 
 receipt signed across the penny stamp provided with 
 such forethought, and Olivia Gale entered into uncon- 
 trolled possession of her fortune. 
 
 The men rose to take their leave. Olivia held the hand 
 of the burly red-faced man who had been her father's 
 partner and looked up at him. 
 
 "I know, if you could have your way, you would give 
 me a good hiding." 
 
 He laughed grimly. "Not the least doubt of it." Then 
 he patted her roughly on the shoulder. 
 
 "And you, Mr. Fenmarch?" 
 
 He regarded her drearily. "After a long experience 
 in my profession, Olivia, I have come to one conclusion 
 clients are a mistake. Good-bye." 
 
 Left alone, Olivia stood for a moment wondering 
 whether, after all, the dusty lawyer had a jaded sense of 
 humour. Then she turned and caught up the cheque 
 and sketched a few triumphant dancing steps. Suddenly, 
 holding it in her hand, she rushed out into the hall, where 
 the men were putting on their overcoats. 
 
 "We've forgotten the most important thing, Mr. 
 Trivett. You wrote me something about an offer for 
 the house." 
 
 "An enquiry not an offer," replied Mr. Trivett. "Yes. 
 
 I forgot to mention it. A Major somebody. Wait " 
 
 He lugged out a fat pocket-book which he consulted. 
 "That's it. Major Olifant. Coming down here to-mor- 
 row to look over it. Appointment at twelve, if that suits
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 9 
 
 you. Unfortunately, I've an engagement and can't show 
 him round. But I'll send Perkins, if you like." 
 
 "If the Major wants to eat me, he'll eat up poor little 
 Mr. Perkins, too," said Olivia. "So don't worry." 
 
 She waited until Myra, the maid, had helped them into 
 their overcoats and opened the front door. After final 
 leavetakings, they were gone. Olivia put up her hands, 
 one of them still holding the cheque, on Myra's gaunt 
 shoulders and shook her and laughed. 
 
 'I've beaten them at last. I knew I should. Now you 
 and I are going to have the devil's own time." 
 
 "We'll have, Miss Olivia," said Myra, withdrawing 
 like a wooden automaton from the embrace, "the time 
 we'll be deserving." 
 
 Myra was long, lean, and angular, dressed precisely 
 in parlourmaid's black; but the absence of cap on her 
 faultlessly neat iron grey hair and the black apron sug- 
 gested a cross between the housekeeper and personal 
 maid. She shared, with a cook and a vague, print- 
 attired help, the whole service of the house. The fact 
 of Myra had been one of the earliest implanted in the 
 consciousness of Olivia's awakening childhood. Myra 
 was there, perdurable as father and mother, as Polly, the 
 parrot, whose p'Drat the child" of that morning was the 
 same echo of Myra's voice, as it was when, at the age 
 of two, she began to interpret the bird's articulate speech. 
 And, as far as she could remember, Myra had always 
 been the same. Age had not withered her, nor had cus- 
 tom staled her infinite invariability. She had been 
 withered since the beginning of time, and she had been 
 as unchanging in aspect and flavour as Olivia's life-long
 
 10 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 breakfast egg. Myra's origins were hidden in mystery. 
 A family legend declared her a foundling. She had come 
 as a girl from Essex, recommended by a friend, long 
 since dead, of Mrs. Gale. She never spoke of father, 
 mother, sisters, and brothers; but every year, when she 
 took her holiday, she was presumed to return to her native 
 county. With that exception she seemed to have far 
 less of a private life than the household cat. It never 
 occurred to Olivia that she could possibly lead an inde- 
 pendent existence. Her age was about forty-five. 
 
 "They think I'm either mad or immoral," said Olivia. 
 "Thank God, they're not religious, or they'd be holding 
 prayer meetings over me." 
 
 "They might do worse," replied Myra. 
 
 The girl laughed. "So you disapprove, too, do you? 
 Well, you'll have to get over it." 
 
 "I've got over many things one more or less don't 
 matter. And if I were you, Miss, I wouldn't stand in this 
 draughty hall." 
 
 "All that I'm thinking of," said Olivia, in high good 
 humour, "is that, with you as duenna, I shall look too 
 respectable. No one will believe it possible for any one 
 except an adventuress." 
 
 "That's what I gather you're going to be," said Myra. 
 If she had put any sting into her words it would have 
 been a retort. But no one knew what emotions guided 
 Myra's speech. With the same tonelessness she would 
 have proclaimed the house to be on fire, or dinner to be 
 ready, or the day to be fine. 
 
 "Well, if you don't like the prospect, Myra, you 
 needn't come," said Olivia. "I'll easily find something 
 fluffy in short skirts and silk stockings to do for me."
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 11 
 
 "We're wasting gas, Miss," said Myra, pulling the 
 little chain of the bye-pass and thereby plunging the hall 
 in darkness. 
 
 "Oh, bother you!" cried Olivia, stumbling into the 
 passage and knocking against the parrot's cage outside 
 the dining-room door, and Polly shrieked out: 
 
 "Drat the child! Drat the child!" 
 
 Before entering the dining-room she aimed a Parthian 
 shot at Myra. 
 
 "I suppose you agree with the little beast. Well, the 
 two of you'll have to look after each other, and I wish 
 you joy." 
 
 She cleared the dining-room table of the tea things and 
 the whisky and glasses and the superfluous papers, and 
 opened the window to let out the smell of Mr. Trivett's 
 strong cigar, and crossed the passage to the drawing- 
 room opposite, where a small fire was still burning. And 
 there, in spite of the exultation of her triumph over Mr. 
 Trivett and Mr. Fenmarch, she suddenly felt very dread- 
 fully alone; also just a whit frightened. The precious 
 cheque, symbol of independence, which she had taken up, 
 laid down, taken up again, during her little household 
 duties, fell to the ground as she lay in the armchair by 
 the fireside. 
 
 Was her victory, and all it implied, that of a reasonable 
 being and a decent girl, or that of a little fool and a hussy? 
 
 Perhaps the mother whom she worshipped and to whom 
 she had devotedly sacrificed the last four years of her 
 young life was the inspiration of her revolt. For her 
 mother had been a highly bred woman, of a proud old 
 Anglo-Indian family, all Generals and Colonels and Sirs 
 and Ladies, whose names had been involved in the history
 
 12 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 of British India for generations; and when she threw the 
 Anglo-Indian family halo over the windmills and married 
 young Stephen Gale, who used to stand in the market- 
 place of Medlow and bawl out the bidding for pigs and 
 sheep, the family turned her down with the Anglo-Indian 
 thoroughness that had compelled her mother to lose her 
 life in a plague-stricken district and her father to lose 
 his on the North- West Frontier. The family argument 
 was simple. When you or everything mattering that 
 means you have ruled provinces and commanded armies 
 and been Sahibs from the beginning of Anglo-Indian 
 time, you can't go and marry a man who sells pigs at auc- 
 tion, and remain alive. None of the family deigned to 
 gauge the personal value of the pig-seller. The Anglo- 
 Brahmin lost caste. It is true that, afterwards, patroniz- 
 ing efforts were made by Brahminical uncles and aunts 
 and cousins to bridge over the impassable gulf; but Mrs. 
 Gale, very much in love with her pig-selling husband, 
 snapped her fingers at them and told them, in individually 
 opposite terms, to go hang. 
 
 It was a love match right enough. And a love match 
 it remained to the very end of all things; after she had 
 borne him two sons and a daughter; all through the 
 young lives of the children; up to the day when the tele- 
 gram came announcing the death of their elder son the 
 younger had been killed in the curious world accident a 
 month or so before and Stephen Gale stood by her bed- 
 side she had even then succumbed to her incurable 
 malady and said, shaken with an emotion to which one 
 does not refer nowadays: 
 
 "Mary, my dear, what am I to do?" 
 
 And she, the blood in her speaking the blood that had
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 13 
 
 given itself at Agra, Lucknow, Khandahar, Chitral re- 
 plied: 
 
 "Go, dear." 
 
 Olivia, sitting by, gripped her young hands in mingled 
 horror and grief and passionate wonder. And Stephen 
 Gale, just fifty, went out to avenge his sons and do what 
 was right in his wife's eyes for his wife was his country 
 incarnate, her voice, being England's voice. A love match 
 it was and a love match it remained while he stuck it 
 for two or three years an elderly man at an inglorious 
 Base, until he died of pneumonia over there. 
 
 Mrs. Gale had lingered for a year, and, close as their 
 relations had been all Olivia's life, they grew infinitely 
 closer during this period of bereavement. It was only 
 then that the mother gave delicate expression to the nos- 
 talgia of half a lifetime, the longing for her own kind, and 
 the ways and thoughts and imponderable principles of 
 her own caste. And, imperceptibly, Olivia's eyes were 
 opened to the essential differences between her mother 
 and the social circle into which she had married. Olivia, 
 ever since her shrewd child's mind began to appreciate 
 values, knew perfectly well that the Trivetts and the 
 Gales were not accounted as gentlefolk in the town. She 
 early became aware of the socially divided line across 
 which she could not pass so as to enter Blair Park, the 
 high-class girls' school on the hill, but narrowed her to 
 Landsdowne House, where the daughters of the trades- 
 people received their education. And when the two 
 crocodiles happened to pass each other on country walks 
 she hated the smug, stuckup Blair Park girls with their 
 pretty blue and white ribbons round their straw hats, and 
 hated her red ribbon with "LH" embroidered on it, as a
 
 14 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 badge of servitude. When she grew up she accepted 
 countless other social facts as immutable conditions of 
 existence. Mortals were divided by her unquestioning 
 father into three categories "the swells," "homely folk 
 like ourselves," and "common people." So long as each 
 member of the three sections knew his place and respected 
 it, the world was as comfortable a planet as sentient being 
 could desire. That was one factor in his worship of his 
 wife: she had stepped from her higher plane to his and had 
 loyally, unmurmuringly identified herself with it. He had 
 never a notion, good man, of the shocks, the inner wounds, 
 the instinctive revolts, the longings that she hid behind 
 her loving eyes. Nor had Olivia; although as a school- 
 girl she knew and felt proud that her mother really be- 
 longed to Blair Park and not to Landsdowne House. As 
 she grew up, she realized her mother's refining influence, 
 and, as far as young blood would allow, used her as a 
 model of speech and manner. And during the long in- 
 valid years, when she read aloud and discussed a wide 
 range of literature, she received unconsciously a sensitive 
 education. But it was only in this last poignant intimacy, 
 when they were left starkly alone together, that she 
 sounded the depths of the loyal, loving, and yet strangely 
 suffering woman. 
 
 "I remember once, long ago, when you were a mite of 
 five," Mrs. Gale had said in a memorable confidence, "we 
 were staying at a hotel in Eastbourne, and I got into 
 conversation on the verandah with a Colonel somebody 
 I forget his name with whom we had spoken several 
 times before one of those spare brown, blue-eyed men, 
 all leather and taut string, that wear their clothes like 
 uniform. You see, I was born and bred among them,
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 15 
 
 dear. And we talked and we talked and I didn't know 
 how the time flew, and I missed an appointment with 
 your father in the town. And he came and found us to- 
 gether and he was very angry. It was the only time 
 in our lives he said an unkind word to me. It was the 
 only time I gave him any sort of cause for jealousy. But 
 he really hadn't. It was only just the joy of talking to 
 a gentleman again. And I couldn't tell him. It would 
 have broken his dear heart." 
 
 This was the first flashlight across her mother's soul, 
 and in its illumination vanished many obscure and haunt- 
 ing perplexities of her girlhood. Had Mrs. Gale lived 
 the normal life of women, surrounded by those that 
 loved her, she would doubtless have gone to her grave 
 without revealing her inner self to living mortal. But in- 
 finite sorrow and the weakness engendered by constant 
 physical pain had transformed her into a spirituality just 
 breathing the breath of life and regarding her daughter 
 less as a woman than as a kindred essence from whom 
 no secrets could be hid. At her bedside Olivia thus 
 learned the mystery of birth and life and death. Chiefly 
 the mystery of life, which appealed more to her ardent 
 maidenhood. 
 
 So when at last her mother faded out of existence and 
 Olivia's vigil was over, she faced a world of changing 
 values with a new set of values of her own. She could 
 not formulate them; but she was acutely conscious that 
 they were different from those of the good, honest Mr. Tri- 
 vett and the dull and honourable Mr. Fenmarch, and that 
 to all the social circle which these two represented they 
 would be unintelligible. In a way, she found herself 
 possessed of a new calculus in which she trusted to solve
 
 16 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 the problems which defied the simple arithmetic of the 
 homely folk of Medlow. 
 
 All these memories and vague certainties passed through 
 the girl's mind as she sat before the fire in self-examina- 
 tion after her victory, and conflicted with the prosaic 
 and indubitatively common-sense arguments of her late 
 advisers. She knew that father and brothers, all beloved 
 and revered, would have been staunchly on the side of the 
 Trivetts. On the other hand, her mother, as she had 
 said to her husband on the edge of a far, far greater ad- 
 venture, would have said: "Go, dear." Of that she had 
 no doubt. . . . Yet it meant cutting herself adrift from 
 Medlow and all its ways and all its associations. It 
 meant a definite struggle to raise herself from her father's 
 second social category to the first. It meant, therefore, 
 justifying herself against odious insinuations on the part 
 of her scant acquaintance. 
 
 And then the youth in her rose insistent. During all 
 these years of stress and fever which had marked her 
 development from child into woman she had done nothing 
 but remain immured within the walls familiar from her 
 babyhood. Other girls had gone afar, in strange inde- 
 pendence, to vivid scenes, to unforgettable adventures, in 
 the service of their country, in the service of mankind 
 just as her brothers and father had gone and she had 
 stayed there, ineradicable, in that one little tiny spot. 
 The sick-room, the kitchen, the shops in Old Street, where, 
 in defiance of Food Controller, she had fought for cream 
 and butter and eggs and English meat so that her mother 
 could live; the sick-room again, the simple white and 
 green bedroom which meant to her little more than the
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 17 
 
 sleep of exhaustion; the sick-room once more, with its 
 pathos of spiritual love and physical repulsion such had 
 been the iron environment of her life. Sorrow after sor- 
 row, and mourning after mourning had come, and the 
 little gaieties of the "homely folk" of her father's defini- 
 tion had gone on without her participation. And her 
 girl friends of Landsdowne House had either married ris- 
 ing young tradesmen in distant towns, or had found 
 some further scope for their energies at the end of the 
 Great Adventure and were far away. In the meanwhile 
 other homely folk whom she did not know had poured 
 into the town. All kinds of people seemed to be settling 
 there, anyhow, without rhyme or reason. It was only 
 when there was not a house to be rented in the neighbour- 
 hood that she understood why. 
 
 "You have a comfortable home of your own. Why, 
 on earth, don't you stay in it?" Mr. Trivett had asked. 
 
 But she had stayed in it, alone, for the three months 
 since her mother's death, waiting on the law's delays; 
 and those three months had been foretaste enough of 
 the dreary infinite years that would lie before her, should 
 she remain. She was too young, too full of sap, to face 
 the blight of sunlessness. She longed for the sights and 
 the sounds and the freedom of the great world. What 
 she would do when she got into it, she did not exactly 
 know. Possibly she might meet a fairy prince. If such 
 a speculation was that of a hussy, why then, she argued, 
 all women are hussies from birth. As for being a fool 
 for defying advice on the proper investment of her money 
 well, perhaps she was not quite such a fool as Mr. 
 Trivett imagined. If she did not spend her capital, it 
 would be just as safe lying on deposit at the bank as in-
 
 18 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 vested in stocks and shares; safer, for she had lately had 
 wearisome experience of the depreciation of securities. 
 She would not be senselessly extravagant; in fact, with 
 the sanguineness of youth she hoped to be able to live on 
 the interest on her deposit and the rent of the furnished 
 house. But behind her, definite, tangible, uninfluenced 
 by Stock Exchange fluctuations, would be her fortune. 
 And then a contingency which she did not put before 
 Mr. Trivett and Mr. Fenmarch, for a woman seldom dis- 
 closes her main argument to a male adversary there 
 might come a glorious moment in some now unconjectur- 
 able adventure when it might be essential for her to 
 draw cheques for dazzling sums which she could put in 
 her pocket and go over mysterious hills and far away. 
 She stood on the edge of her dull tableland and gazed 
 wide-eyed at the rolling Land of Romance veiled by gold 
 and purple mist. And in that Land, from immemorial 
 time, people carried their money in bags, into which they 
 dipped their hands, as occasion required, and cast the un- 
 meaning counters at the feet of poverty or into the lap of 
 greed. 
 
 When she sat down to her solitary supper, she had de- 
 cided that she was neither hussy nor fool. She held 
 baffling discourse with Myra, who could not be enticed 
 into enthusiasm over the immediate future. Teasing 
 Myra had been her joy from infancy. She sketched their 
 career that of female Don Quixote and Sancho Panza 
 that of knights of old in quest of glorious adventure. 
 She quoted, mock heroically: 
 
 "The ride abroad redressing human wrong." 
 "Better redress the young London women which I see 
 the pictures of in the illustrated papers," said Myra.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 19 
 
 Olivia laughed. "You are a dear old blessing, you 
 know." 
 
 "I'm sure of it," said Myra, with an expressionless face. 
 "Anyways, you're not going to buy one of them things 
 when you get to London." 
 
 "I am," replied Olivia. "And you'll have to help me 
 put it on." 
 
 "You can't help folks put on nothing," said Myra. 
 
 "What do you think you'll do when you're really 
 shocked?" asked Olivia. 
 
 "I never think what I'll do," replied Myra. "It's 
 waste of time." 
 
 Olivia enjoyed her supper.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 IT was only when she waited the next morning for her 
 possible tenant, the Major Olifant of whom Mr. 
 Trivett had spoken, and went through the familiar 
 rooms to see that they were fit for alien inspection, that 
 she realized the sacrilege which she was about to commit. 
 Every room was sacred, inhabited by some beloved ghost. 
 The very furniture bore landmarks of the wear and tear 
 of those that were dead. To say nothing of the beds on 
 which they had slept, the chairs in which they had sat, 
 which still seemed to retain the impress of their forms, 
 there persisted a hundred exquisitely memorable triviali- 
 ties. The arm of the oak settle in the hall still showed 
 the ravages of the teeth of Barabbas, the mongrel bull- 
 terrier pup introduced, fifteen years ago, into the house, 
 by Charles her elder brother; an animal who, from being 
 cursed by the whole family for a pestilential cur, wriggled 
 his way, thanks to his adoration of Charles, into the hearts 
 of them all, and died from old age and perhaps doggy 
 anxiety a few months after Charles had sailed for France. 
 In her father's study, a small room heterogeneously 
 adorned with hunting crops and car accessories and 
 stuffed trout and a large scale map of Medlow and neigh- 
 bourhood and suggestive in no way of a studious habit, 
 the surface of the knee-hole writing table and the ma- 
 hogany mantelpiece were scored with fluted little burns 
 from cigarette-ends, he having been a careless smoker. 
 
 20
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 21 
 
 There was a legend that the family cradle, for many 
 years mouldering in an outhouse, bore the same stigmata. 
 The very bathroom was not free of intimate history. In 
 the midst of the blue and red stained panes on the lower 
 sash stared one of plain ground glass the record of her 
 brother Bobby aged twelve, who, vowing vengeance 
 against an unsympathetic visiting aunt (soon afterwards 
 deceased), had the brilliant idea of catapulting her 
 through the closed window while she was having her 
 bath. And there was her mother's room. . . . 
 
 She could not let all this pass into vulgar hands. The 
 vague plan of letting the house furnished, which had 
 hitherto not been unattractive, now became monstrously 
 definite. She hated the sacrilegious and intrusive Major 
 Olifant. He would bring down a dowdy wife and a cart- 
 load of children to the profanation of these her household 
 gods. She went in search of Myra and found her dusting 
 her own prim little bedroom. 
 
 "I'm going out. When Major Olifant calls, tell him 
 I've changed my mind and the house is not to let." 
 
 Then she put on hat and coat and went downstairs to 
 take the air of the sleepy midday High Street. But as 
 she opened the front door she ran into a man getting 
 out of a two-seater car driven by a chauffeur. He 
 raised his hat. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," said he, "but is this 'The 
 Towers'?" 
 
 "It is," she replied. "I suppose you've you've come 
 with an order to view from Messrs. Trivett and Gale." 
 
 "Quite so," said he pleasantly. "I have an appoint- 
 ment with Miss Gale." 
 
 "I'm Miss Gale," said Olivia.
 
 22 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 She noticed an involuntary twitch of surprise, at once 
 suppressed, pass over his face. 
 
 "And my name's Olifant. Major Olifant." 
 
 She had pictured quite a different would-be intruder, a 
 red-faced, obese, and pushing fellow. Instead, she saw 
 a well-bred, spare man of medium height wearing a 
 stained service Burberry the empty left sleeve of which 
 was pinned in front; a man in his middle thirties, with 
 crisp light brown hair, long, broad forehead characterized 
 by curious bumps over the brows, a very long, straight 
 nose and attractive dark blue eyes which keenly and 
 smilingly held hers without touch of offence. 
 
 "I've decided not to let the house," said Olivia. 
 
 The smile vanished from his eyes. "I'm sorry," said 
 he stiffly. "I was given to understand " 
 
 "Yes, I know," she said quickly. Her conscience 
 getting hold of the missing arm smote her. "Where have 
 you come from?" 
 
 "Oxford." 
 
 She gasped. "Why, that's a hundred miles!" 
 
 "Ninety-four." 
 
 "But you must be perishing with cold," she cried. "Do 
 come in and get warm, at any rate. Perhaps I can ex- 
 plain. And your man, too." She pointed. "Round 
 that way you'll find a garage. I'll send the maid. Please 
 come in, Major Olifant. Oh but you must!" 
 
 She entered the house, leaving him no option but to 
 follow. To divest himself of his Burberry he made 
 curious writhing movements with his shoulders, and 
 swerved aside politely when she offered assistance. 
 
 "Please don't worry. I'm all right. I've all kinds of 
 little stunts of my own invention."
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 23 
 
 And, as he said it, he got clear and threw the mackin- 
 tosh on the oak chest. He rubbed the knuckle of his 
 right hand against the side of his rough tweed jacket. 
 
 "Just five minutes to get warm and I won't trespass 
 further on your hospitality." 
 
 She showed him into the drawing-room, thanked good- 
 ness there was a showy wood-fire burning, and went out 
 after Myra. 
 
 "I thought the house wasn't to be let," said the latter 
 after receiving many instructions. 
 
 "The letting of the house has nothing to do with two 
 cold and hungry men who have motored here on a raw 
 November morning for hundreds of miles on false pre- 
 tences." 
 
 She re-entered the drawing-room with a tray bearing 
 whisky decanter, siphon, and glass, which she set on a 
 side table. 
 
 "I'm alone in the world now, Major Olifant," she said, 
 "but I've lived nearly all my life with men my father 
 
 and two brothers " She felt that the explanation 
 
 was essential. "Please help yourself." 
 
 He met her eyes, which, though defiant, held the menace 
 of tears. He made the vaguest, most delicate of gestures 
 with his right hand his empty sleeve, the air. She 
 moved an assenting head; then swiftly she grasped the 
 decanter. 
 
 "Say when." 
 
 "Just that." 
 
 She squirted the siphon. 
 
 "So?" 
 
 "Perfect. A thousand thanks." 
 
 He took the glass from her and deferentially awaited
 
 24 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 her next movement. Tricksy memory flashed across her 
 mind the picture of the Anglo-Indian colonel of her 
 mother's pathetic little confidence. For a moment or two 
 she stood confused, flushed, self-conscious, suddenly hat- 
 ing herself for not knowing instinctly what to do. In 
 desperation she cried. 
 
 "Oh, please drink it! You must want it awfully." 
 
 He laughed, made a little bow, and drank. 
 
 "Now do sit down near the fire. I'm dreadfully 
 sorry," she continued when they were settled. "Dread- 
 fully sorry you should have had all this journey for noth- 
 ing. As a matter of fact, I wanted to let the house and 
 only changed my mind an hour ago." 
 
 "You have lived here all your life?" he asked. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Please say no more about it," said he courteously. 
 
 She burst at once into explanations. Father, brothers, 
 mother all the dear ghosts, at the last moment, had held 
 out their barring hands. He smiled at her pretty dark- 
 eyed earnestness. 
 
 "There are few houses nowadays without ghosts. But 
 there might be a stranger now and then who would have 
 the tact and understanding to win their confidence." 
 
 This was at the end of a talk which had lasted she 
 knew not how long. The little silence which ensued was 
 broken by the shrill clang of the ormolu clock on the 
 mantelpiece striking one. She sprang to her feet. 
 
 "One o'clock. Why, you must be famished. Seven 
 o'clock breakfast at latest. There'll be something to eat, 
 whatever it is." 
 
 "But, my dear Miss Gale," cried Major Olifant, rising
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 25 
 
 in protest, "I couldn't dream of it there must be an 
 hotel " 
 
 "There isn't," cried Olivia unveraciously, and van- 
 ished. 
 
 Major Olifant, too late to open the door for her, re- 
 traced his steps and stood, back to fire, idly evoking, as a 
 man does, the human purposes that had gone to the mak- 
 ing of the room, and he was puzzled. Some delicate 
 spirit had chosen the old gold curtains which harmonized 
 with the cushions on the plain upholstered settee and with 
 the early Chippendale armchairs and with the Chippen- 
 dale bookcase filled with odds and ends of good china, 
 old Chelsea, Coalport, a bit or two of Sevres and Dresden. 
 Some green chrysanthemums bowed, in dainty ragged- 
 ness, over the edge of a fine cut crystal vase. An ex- 
 quisite water-colour over the piano attracted his atten- 
 tion. He crossed the room to examine it and drew a 
 little breath of surprise to read the signature of Boning- 
 ton a thing beyond price. On a table by the French 
 window, which led into a conservatory and thence into 
 the little garden, stood a box of Persian lacquer. But 
 there, throwing into confusion the charm of all this, a great 
 Victorian mirror in a heavy florid gold frame blared like 
 a German band from over the mantelpiece, and on the 
 opposite wall two huge companion pictures representing 
 in violent colours scenes of smug domestic life, also in 
 gold frames, with a slip of wood let in bearing the legend 
 "Exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1888," screamed like 
 an orchestrion. 
 
 He was looking round for further evidence of obvious 
 conflict of individualities, when Myra appeared to take
 
 26 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 him to get rid of the dust of the journey. When he re- 
 turned to the drawing-room he found Olivia. 
 
 "I can't help feeling an inconscionable intruder," said 
 he. 
 
 "My only concern is that I'll be able to give you 
 something fit to eat." 
 
 He laughed. "The man who has come out of France 
 and Mesopotamia finikin in his food is a fraud." 
 
 "Still," she objected, "I don't want to send you back 
 to Mrs. Olifant racked with indigestion." 
 
 "Mrs. Olifant ?" He wore a look of humorous 
 
 puzzlement. 
 
 "I suppose you have a wife and family?" 
 
 "Good heavens, no!" he cried, with an air of horror. 
 "I'm a bachelor." 
 
 She regarded him for a few seconds, as though from 
 an entirely fresh point of view. 
 
 "But what on earth does a bachelor want with a great 
 big house with ten bedrooms?" 
 
 Has it got ten bedrooms?" 
 
 "I presume Mr. Trivett sent you the particulars: 
 'Desirable Residence, standing in own grounds, three 
 acres. Ten bedrooms, three reception rooms. Bath H. 
 and C.,' and so forth?" 
 
 "The Bath H. and C. was all I worried about." 
 
 They both laughed. Myra announced luncheon. They 
 went into the dining-room. By the side of Major Oli- 
 fant's plate was a leather case. He flashed on her a look 
 of enquiry, at which the blood rose into her pale cheeks. 
 
 "I've been interviewing your man," she said rather 
 defiantly. He produced that from the pocket of the 
 car."
 
 27 
 
 "You overwhelm me with your kindness, Miss Gale," 
 said he. "I should never have had the courage to ask for 
 it." 
 
 The case contained the one-armed man's patent com- 
 bination knife and fork. 
 
 "Courage is such a funny thing," said Olivia. "A 
 man will walk up to a machine-gun in action and knock 
 the gunner out with the butt end of a rifle; but if he's 
 sitting in a draught in a woman's drawing-room and 
 catching his death of cold, he daren't get up and shut 
 the window. These are real eggs, although they're 
 camouflaged in a Chinese scramble. One faithful hen 
 is still doing her one minute day. The others are on 
 strike." 
 
 She felt curiously exhilarated on this first actual oc- 
 casion of asserting her independence. Only once before 
 had she entertained guests at her own table, and these 
 were her uncle and aunt from Clapham, the Edward 
 Gales, who came to her mother's funeral. They were 
 colourless suburban folk who were pained by her polite 
 rejection of their proposal to make her home with them 
 on a paying footing, and reproached her for extravagance 
 in giving them butter (of which, nevertheless, they ate 
 greedily) instead of margarine. Her uncle was a pallid 
 pharmaceutical chemist and lived above the shop, and 
 his wife, a thin-lipped, negative blonde, had few interests 
 in life outside the Nonconformist Communion into which 
 she had dragged him. Olivia had seen them only once 
 before, also at a funeral, that of a younger brother who 
 had died at the age of three. Her robustious country- 
 loving, horse-loving, dog-loving, pig-loving father had 
 never got on with his bloodless brother. A staunch sup-
 
 28 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 porter of the Church of England to the extent of rent- 
 ing a pew in the Parish Church in which, in spite of the 
 best intentions, he had never found time to sit, he con- 
 fessedly hated dissent and all its works, especially those 
 undertaken by Mrs. Edward. His vice of generosity 
 did not accord with their parsimonious virtues. Once, 
 Olivia remembered, he had dined with them at Clapham 
 and returned complaining of starvation. "One kidney be- 
 tween the three of us," he declared. "And they gave 
 me the middle gristly bit!" So Olivia felt no call of the 
 blood to Clapham. And, for all her inherited hospitable 
 impulses, she had been glad when, having critically picked 
 the funeral baked meats to the last bone, they had gone 
 off in sorrow over her wicked prodigality and lack of 
 true Christian feeling. But for their dreary and passing 
 shadows she had eaten alone she caught her breath to 
 think of it ever since her father's last leave shortly 
 before he died at Etaples eighteen months ago. Her 
 hostess-ship at the present moment was a bubbling joy. 
 Only her sense of values restrained her from ordering up 
 a bottle of champagne. She contented herself with a 
 bottle of old Gorton her father had been a judge of 
 full red wines, burgundy and port, and had stocked a 
 small but well-selected cellar, and had taught Olivia what 
 is good that a girl should know concerning them. 
 
 She watched her guest's first sip, as her father had 
 been wont to watch, and flushed with pleasure when he 
 paused, as though taken aback, sniffed, sipped again, 
 and said: 
 
 "Either new conditions are making me take all sorts 
 of geese for swans, or you're giving me a remarkable 
 wine."
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 29 
 
 She burst out radiantly: "How lovely of you to spot 
 it! It's a Gorton, 1887." 
 
 "But forgive me for saying so," he remarked. "It's 
 not a wine you should spill on any casual tramp. Oh, 
 of course," he protested in anticipation. "Your polite- 
 ness will assure me that I'm not a casual tramp. But I 
 am." 
 
 "I owed you something for bringing you on a fool's 
 errand. Besides, I wanted to show you what Todger's 
 could do when it liked!" 
 
 "Todger's is wonderful," he smiled. "And how you 
 could ever have thought of leaving Todger's is more than 
 I can understand." 
 
 "Oh, I'm going to leave it, right enough," she answered. 
 "What on earth do you think a girl all by herself wants 
 with a great big house with ten bedrooms, three reception 
 rooms, bath h. and c., etc., etc.?" 
 
 "It's your home, anyhow." 
 
 "That's why I don't like to let it." 
 
 "Then why go away from it? If it is not an im- 
 pertinent question, what are you going to do?" 
 
 She met his clear blue eyes and laughed. 
 
 "I'm going out into the world to seek adventure. 
 There!" 
 
 "And I," said he, "want to get out of the world and 
 never have another adventure as long as I live. I've had 
 more than enough for one lifetime." 
 
 "But still," she retorted, conscious of his bearing and 
 vigour and other conjectured qualities, "you can't con- 
 template fossilizing here till the end of time." 
 
 "That's what I'm literally thinking of doing," he re- 
 plied.
 
 30 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 She felt the reaction of bitter disappointment. A man 
 like him had no right to throw up the sponge. The 
 sudden blankness of her face betrayed her thoughts. He 
 smiled. 
 
 "I said literally, you know. Fossilizing is the literal 
 and practical sense. Once upon a time I was a geologist. 
 I specialized in certain fossils." 
 
 "Oh," gasped Olivia. "I beg your pardon." 
 
 "Very fascinating little fossils," he went on without 
 reference to her apology, for which Olivia was grateful. 
 "They're called foraminifera. Do you know what they 
 are?" Olivia shook a frankly ignorant head. "They're 
 little tiny weeny shells, and the things once inside them 
 belonged to the protozoa, or first forms of life. They're 
 one of the starting-points to the solution of the riddle of 
 existence. I was dragged away from them to fool about 
 with other kinds of shells, millions of times bigger and 
 millions of times less important. I've got what I think 
 are some new ideas about them, and other things con- 
 nected with them it's a vast subject and so I'm look- 
 ing for a quiet place where I can carry on my work." 
 
 "That's awfully interesting," said Olivia. "But for- 
 give me who pays you for it?" 
 
 "Possibly mankind two hundred years hence," he 
 laughed. "But, if I stick it long enough, they may make 
 me a Fellow of the Royal Society when I'm say 
 seventy-three." 
 
 "I wish you'd tell me some more about these forami 
 funny little things I've never heard of," said Olivia. 
 
 But he answered: "No. If once I began, I would 
 bore you so stiff that you would curse the hour you 
 allowed me to cross your threshold. There are other
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 31 
 
 things just as vital as foraminifera. I've made my con- 
 fession, Miss Gale. Now, won't you make yours? What 
 are you keen on?" 
 
 At the direct question, Olivia passed in review the aims 
 and interests and pleasures of her past young life, and 
 was abashed to find them a row of anaemic little phan- 
 toms. For years her head had been too full of duties. 
 She regarded him for a moment or two in dismay, then 
 she laughed in young defiance. 
 
 "I suppose I'm keen on real live human beings. That's 
 my starting-point to the solution of the riddle of exist- 
 ence." 
 
 "We'll see who gets there first," said he. 
 
 When the meal was over, she stood by the door which 
 he held open for her and hesitated for a moment. 
 
 "I wonder whether you would care to look over the 
 house?" 
 
 "I should immensely. But if you're not going to 
 let it " 
 
 "You'll be able, at any rate, to tell Mr. Trivett that 
 he had no business to send you to such an old rabbit 
 warren," she replied, with some demureness. 
 
 "I'm at your orders," smiled Olifant. 
 
 She played cicerone with her little business-like aiTof 
 dignity, spoke in a learned fashion of water supply, flues, 
 and boilers. Olifant looked wisely at the kitchen range, 
 while Myra stood at impassive attention and the cook 
 took refuge in the scullery. 
 
 "These holes are to put saucepans on, I presume," said 
 he. 
 
 "You've hit it exactly," said Olivia. 
 
 They went upstairs. On the threshold of the best
 
 32 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 bedroom he paused and cried, in some astonishment: 
 
 "What an exquisite room!" 
 
 "It was my mother's," said Olivia. "You can come in. 
 It has a pleasant view over the garden." 
 
 Then Olifant, who had inspected the study, solved the 
 puzzle of the drawing-room. There the man and woman 
 had compromised. She had suffered him to hang his 
 Victorian mirror and his screaming pictures in the midst 
 of her delicate scheme. But here her taste reigned ab- 
 solute. It was all so simple, so exquisite: a few bits of 
 Chippendale and Sheraton, a few water-colours on the 
 walls, a general impression for curtains and upholstery 
 of faded rose brocade. On a table by the bed-head stood 
 a little row of books in an inlaid stand. With the instinct 
 of a bookish man, Olifant bent over to look at their 
 backs, but first turned to Olivia. 
 
 "May I?" 
 
 "Of course." Then she added, with a vague longing 
 to impress on a stranger the wonder and beauty of the 
 spirit that had created these surroundings: "My mother 
 knew them all by heart, I think. Naturally she used to 
 read other things and I used to read aloud to her she 
 was interested in everything till the day of her death 
 but these books were part of her life." 
 
 There were: Marcus Aurelius, Lord Herbert of Cher- 
 bury, The Imitation of Christ, Christina Rossetti, the al- 
 most forgotten early seventeenth century Arthur War- 
 wick ("Spare Minutes; or, Resolved Meditation and Pre- 
 meditated Resolutions"), Crabbe ... a dozen volumes 
 or so. Olifant picked out one. 
 
 "And this, too? The Pensees de Pascal?" 
 
 "She loved it best," said Olivia.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 33 
 
 "It is strange," said he. "My father spent most of his 
 life on a monumental work on Pascal. He was a Pro- 
 fessor of Divinity at a Scotch University, but died long 
 before the monument could be completed. I've got his 
 manuscripts. They're in an awful mess, and it would 
 take another lifetime to get them into order. Anyhow, he 
 took good care that I should remember Pascal as long 
 as I lived." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "He had me christened Blaise." 
 
 "Blaise Olifant," she repeated critically. She laughed, 
 "He might have done worse." 
 
 He turned over the pages. "There's one thing here 
 that my father was always drumming into me. Yes, here 
 it is. It's marked in blue pencil." 
 
 "Then it must have been drummed into me, too," said 
 Olivia. 
 
 " 'On ne consulte que I'oreille, parce qu'on manque de 
 coKur. La regie est I'honnetete.' " 
 
 "Yes," she said, with a sigh. 
 
 He replaced the book. They went in silence out to the 
 landing. After a few seconds of embarrassment they 
 turned and descended to the hall. 
 
 "I can more than understand, Miss Gale, why you feel 
 you can't let the house. But I'm sorry." 
 
 She weakened, foreseeing the house empty and desolate, 
 given over to dust and mice and ghosts. 
 
 "It was the idea of a pack of people, the British Family 
 in all its self-centredness and selfishness, coming in here 
 that I couldn't stand," she confessed. 
 
 "Then is there a chance for me?" he asked, his face 
 brightening. "Look. I'm open to a bargain. The
 
 34 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 house is just what I want. I'm not a recluse. I'm quite 
 human. I should like to have a place where I can put 
 up a man or so for a week-end, and I've a married sister, 
 none too happy, who now and then might like to find 
 a refuge with me. There's also a friend, rather a dis- 
 tinguished fellow, who wants to join me for a few months' 
 quiet and hard work. So, suppose I give you my promise 
 to hold that room sacred, to keep it just as it is and allow 
 no one to go into it except a servant to dust and so forth 
 what would you say? Not now. Think it over and 
 write to me at your convenience." 
 
 His sympathy and comprehension had won her over. 
 He was big and kind and brotherly. Somehow she felt 
 that her mother would have liked him, accepting him 
 without question as one of her own caste, and would 
 have smiled on him as High Priest in charge of the 
 Household Gods. She reflected for a while, then, meet- 
 ing his eyes: 
 
 "You can have the house, Major Olifant," she said 
 seriously. 
 
 He bowed. "I'm sure you will not regret it," said he. 
 "I ought to remind you, however," he added after a pause, 
 "that I may have a stable companion for a few months. 
 The distinguished fellow I mentioned. I wonder whether 
 you've heard of Alexis Triona." 
 
 "The man who wrote Through Blood and Snow?" 
 
 "Have you read it?" 
 
 "Of course I have," cried Olivia. "What do you think 
 I do here all day? Twiddle my thumbs or tell my for- 
 tune by cards?" 
 
 "I hope you think it's a great book," he said, with a 
 smile.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 35 
 
 "An amazing book. And you're going to bring him to 
 live here? What's he like?" 
 
 "It would take days to tell you." 
 
 "Well, compress it into a sort of emergency ration," 
 said Olivia. 
 
 So he sat by her side on the oak settle, near the anthra- 
 cite stove in the hall, and told her what he knew of 
 Alexis Triona.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 "IT TT THAT Blaise Olifant told Olivia about his 
 % /\ I prospective co-inhabitant of The Towers, 
 
 Y T a d what Rowington, the publisher, and one 
 or two others knew about him, amounted to the fol- 
 lowing: 
 
 One morning a motor-car, having the second-hand air 
 of a hiring garage and unoccupied save for the chauffeur, 
 drew up before the door of a great London publishing 
 house. The chauffeur stepped from his seat, collected a 
 brown-paper package from the interior, and entered. 
 
 "Can I see a member of the firm?" 
 
 The clerk in the enquiry office looked surprised. 
 Chauffeurs offering manuscripts on behalf of their em- 
 ployers were plentiful as blackberries in September; 
 but chauffeurs demanding an interview with the august 
 heads of the house were rare as blackberries in March. 
 
 "I'm afraid you can't do that," he replied civilly. "If 
 you leave it here, it will be all right. I'll give you a re- 
 ceipt which you can take back." 
 
 "I want to explain," said the chauffeur. 
 
 Scores of people weekly expressed the same desire. It 
 was the business of the clerk to suppress explanations. 
 
 "It's a manuscript to be submitted? Well, you must 
 tell the author " 
 
 "I am the author," said the chaffeur. 
 
 "Oh!" said the clerk, and his sub-conscious hand 
 
 36
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 37 
 
 pushed the manuscript a millimetre forward on the pol- 
 ished mahogany counter. 
 
 "The circumstances, you see, are exceptional," 
 
 There being something exceptional in the voice and 
 manner of the chauffeur, the clerk regarded him for the 
 first time as a human being. 
 
 "I quite see," said he; "but the rules of the firm are 
 strict. If you will leave the manuscript, it will be read. 
 Oh, I give you my word of honour," he smiled. "Every- 
 thing that comes in is read. We have a staff who do noth- 
 ing else. Is your name and address on it?" He be- 
 gan to untie the string. 
 
 "The name, but not the address." 
 
 On the slip of paper which the clerk pushed across to 
 him he wrote: 
 
 Alexis Triona, 
 
 c/o John Briggs. 
 3 Cherbury Mews, 
 Surrey Gardens, W. 
 
 The clerk scribbled an acknowledgment, the chauffeur 
 thrust it into his pocket, and, driving away, was lost in 
 the traffic of London. 
 
 A fortnight afterwards, Alexis Triona, who, together 
 with John Briggs, as one single and indissoluble chauf- 
 feur, inhabited a little room over the garage in Cherbury 
 Mews, received a letter to the effect that the publishing 
 house, being interested in the MS. "Through Blood and 
 Snow," which he had kindly submitted, would be glad if 
 he would call, with a view to publication. The result was 
 a second visit on the part of the chauffeur to the great 
 firm. The clerk welcomed him with a bland smile,
 
 38 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 and showed him into a comfortably furnished room whose 
 thick Turkey carpet signified the noiseless mystery of 
 many discreet decades, and where a benevolent middle- 
 aged man in gold spectacles stood with his back to the 
 chimney-piece. He advanced with outstretched hand to 
 meet the author. 
 
 "Mr. Triona? I'm glad to meet you. Won't you sit 
 down?" 
 
 He motioned to a chair by the tidy writing table, where 
 he sat and pulled forward the manuscript, which had 
 been placed there in readiness for the interview. He 
 said pleasantly: 
 
 "Well. Let us get to business at once. We should 
 like to publish your book." 
 
 The slight quivering of sensitive nostrils alone betrayed 
 the author's emotion. 
 
 "I'm glad," he replied. "I think it's worth publish- 
 ing." 
 
 Mr. Rowington tapped the MS. in front of him with 
 his forefinger. "Are these your own personal experi- 
 ences?" 
 
 "They are," said the chauffeur. 
 
 "Excuse my questioning you," said the publisher. "Not 
 that it would greatly matter. But one likes to know. 
 We should be inclined to publish it, either as a work of 
 fiction or a work of fact; but the handling of it the 
 method of publicity would be different. Of course, you 
 see," he went on benevolently, "a thing may be ab- 
 solutely true in essence, like lots of the brilliant little 
 war stories that have been written the past few years, 
 but not true in the actual historical sense. Now, your 
 book would have more value if we could say that it is
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 39 
 
 true in this actual historical sense, if we could say that 
 it's an authentic record of personal experiences." 
 
 "You can say that," answered Triona quietly. 
 
 The publisher leaned back in his chair. 
 
 "How a man could have gone through what you have 
 and remained sane passes understanding." 
 
 For the first time the young man's set features relaxed 
 into a smile. 
 
 "I shouldn't like to swear that I am sane," said he. 
 
 "I've heard ex-prisoners say," Mr. Rowington re- 
 marked, "that six months' solitary confinement under such 
 conditions" he patted the manuscript "is as much as 
 the human reason can stand." 
 
 "As soon as hunting and killing vermin ceases to be a 
 passionate interest in life," said Triona. 
 
 They conversed for a while. Stimulated by the pub- 
 lisher's question, Triona supplemented details in the book, 
 described his final adventure, his landing penniless in 
 London, his search for work. At last, said he, he had 
 found a situation as chauffeur in the garage of a motor- 
 hiring company. The publisher glanced at the slip pinned 
 to the cover of the manuscript. 
 
 "And John Briggs?" 
 
 "A pseudonym. Briggs was my mother's name. I am 
 English on both sides, though my great-grandfather's 
 people were Maltese. My father, however, was a nat- 
 uralized Russian. I've mentioned it in the book." 
 
 "Quite so," said the publisher. "I only wanted to get 
 things clear. And now as to terms. Have you any 
 suggestion?" 
 
 Afterwards, Alexis Triona confessed to a wild impulse 
 to ask for a hundred pounds outright sale and to a
 
 40 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 sudden lack of audacity which kept him silent. The 
 terms which the publisher proposed, when the royalty 
 system and the probabilities of such a book's profits were 
 explained to him, made him gasp with wonder. And 
 when, in consideration, said the publisher, of his present 
 impecunious position, he was offered an advance in re- 
 spect of royalties exceeding the hundred pounds of his 
 crazy promptings, his heart thumped until it became an 
 all but intolerable pain. 
 
 "Do you think," he asked, amazed that his work should 
 have such market value, "that I could earn my living by 
 writing?" 
 
 "Undoubtedly." The publisher beamed on the new 
 author. "You have the matter, you have the gift, the 
 style, the humour, the touch. I'm sure I could place 
 things for you. Indeed, it would be to our common ad- 
 yantage, pending publication. Only, of course, you 
 mustn't use any of the matter in the book. You quite 
 understand?" 
 
 Alexis Triona understood. He went away dancing on 
 air. Write? His brain seethed with ideas. That the 
 written expression of them should open the gates of For- 
 tune was a new conception. He had put together the 
 glowing, vivid book impelled by strange, unknown forces. 
 It was, as he had confidently declared, worth publishing. 
 But the possible reward was beyond his dreams. And 
 he could see more visions. . . . 
 
 So he went back to his garage and drove idle people 
 to dinners and theatres, and in his scanty leisure wrote 
 strange romances of love and war in Circassia and Tar- 
 tary, and, through the agency of the powerful publishing 
 house, sold them to solid periodicals, until the public
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 41 
 
 mind became gradually familiarized with his name. It 
 was only when the book was published, and, justifying 
 the confidence of the great firm, blazed into popularity, 
 that Triona discarded his livery and all that appertained 
 to the mythical John Briggs and, arraying himself in the 
 garb of ordinary citizenship, entered to use, with a 
 difference, the famous trope of a departed wit a lion 
 into the den of London's Daniels. For, in their hundreds, 
 they had come to judgment. But knowing very little of 
 the Imperial Russian Secret Service in Turkestan, or the 
 ways of the inhabitants of the Ural Mountains, or, at 
 that time, of Bolshevik horrors in the remote confines of 
 Asia, they tore each other to pieces, while the lion stepped, 
 with serene modesty, in the midst of them. 
 
 It was at Oxford, whither the sudden wave of fame 
 had drifted him, that he met Blaise Olifant, who was 
 living in the house of his sister, the wife of a brilliant, 
 undomesticated and somewhat dissolute professor of polit- 
 ical economy. The Head of a College, interested in 
 Russia, had asked him down to dine and sleep. There 
 was a portentous dinner-party whose conglomerate brain 
 paralyzed the salmon and refroze the imported lamb. 
 They overwhelmed the guest of honour with their learn- 
 ing. They all were bent on probing beneath the surface 
 of his thrilling personal adventures, which he narrated 
 from time to time with attractive modesty. The episode 
 of his reprieve when standing naked beside the steaming 
 chaldron in which he was to be boiled alive caused a 
 shuddering silence. Perhaps it was too realistic for a 
 conventional dinner-party, but he had discounted its 
 ghastliness by a smiling nonchalance, telling it as though
 
 42 THE TALE OF TRiONA 
 
 it had been an amusing misadventure of travel. Very 
 shortly afterwards Mrs. Head of College broke into a 
 disquisition on the continuity of Russian literature from 
 Sumakarov to Chekov. Triona, a profound student of 
 the subject, at last lost interest in the academic socialist 
 and threw up his hands. 
 
 "My dear lady," said he, "there is a theory in the 
 United States accounting for the continued sale of Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin. They say immigrants buy it to familiar- 
 ize themselves with the negro question. Russian litera- 
 ture has just as much to do with the Russia of to-day. 
 It's as purely archaeological as the literature of Ancient 
 Assyria." 
 
 Blaise Olifant, sitting opposite, sympathized with the 
 man of actualities set down in this polite academy. Once 
 he himself had regarded it as the ganglion of the Thought 
 of the Universe; but having recently seen something of 
 the said Universe he had modified his view. Why should 
 these folk not be content with a plain human story of 
 almost fantastic adventure, instead of worrying the un- 
 happy Soldier of Fortune with sociological and meta- 
 physical theories with which he had little time to concern 
 himself? Why embroil him in a discussion on the 
 League of Nations' duty to Lithuania when he was anx- 
 ious to give them interesting pictures of Kurdish family 
 life? He looked round the table somewhat amusedly 
 at the elderly intellectuals of both sexes, and, forgetting 
 for a moment the intellectual years of quiet biological 
 research to which he was about to devote his life, drew 
 an unflattering contrast between the theorists and their 
 alien guest. 
 
 He liked the man. He liked the boyish, clean-shaven
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 43 
 
 face, the broad forehead marked by very thin horizontal 
 lines, the thin brown hair, parted carelessly at the side, 
 and left to do what it liked; the dark grey eyes that 
 sometimes seemed so calm beneath the heavy lids, and 
 yet were capable of sudden illumination; the pleasant, 
 humorous mouth, and the grotesque dimple of a hole in the 
 middle of a long chin. He pitied the man. He pitied 
 him for the hollows in his temples, for the swift flash 
 of furtive glances, for the great sinews that stood out in 
 his lean nervous hands, for the general suggestion of 
 shrunken muscularity in his figure. A stone, or two, 
 thought he, below his normal weight. He liked his 
 voice, its soft foreign intonation; he liked his modesty, 
 his careless air of the slim young man of no account; he 
 liked the courteous patience of his manner. He under- 
 stood his little nervous trick of plucking at his lips. 
 
 In the drawing-room after dinner Mrs. Head of College 
 said to him: 
 
 "A most interesting man but I do wish he would 
 look you in the face when he speaks to you." 
 
 Blaise Olifant suppressed a sigh. These good people 
 were hopeless. They knew nothing. They did not even 
 recognize the unmistakable brand of the prisoner who 
 has suffered agony of body and degradation of soul. No 
 man who has been a tortured slave regains, for years, 
 command of his eyes. Hundreds of such men had Oli- 
 fant seen, and the sight of them still made his heart ache. 
 He explained politely. And with a polite air of uncon- 
 vinced assent, the lady received his explanation. 
 
 He asked Triona to lunch the next day, and under the 
 warmth of his kindly sympathy Triona expanded. He 
 spoke of his boyhood in Moscow, where his father, a
 
 44 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 naturalized Russian, carried on business as a stockbroker; 
 of his travels in England and France with his English 
 mother; of his English tutor; of his promising start in 
 life in a great Russian motor firm an experience that 
 guaranteed his livelihood during his late refuge months 
 in London; of his military service; of his early war days 
 as a Russian officer; of the twists of circumstance that 
 sent him into the Imperial Secret Service; of incredible 
 wanderings to the frontiers of Thibet; of the Revolution; 
 of the murder of father and mother and the disappear- 
 ance of his fortune like a wisp of cloud evaporated by the 
 sun; of many strange and woeful things related in his 
 book; of his escape through Russia; of his creeping as a 
 stowaway into a Swedish timber boat; of his torpedoing 
 by a German submarine and his rescue by a British de- 
 stroyer; of his landing naked save for shirt and trousers, 
 sans money, sans papers, sans everything of value save 
 his English speech; of the Russian Society in London's 
 benevolent aid; of the burning desire, an irresistible 
 flame, to set down on paper all that he had gone through; 
 of the intense nights spent over the book in his tiny ram- 
 shackle room over the garage; and, lastly, of the astound- 
 ing luck that had been dealt him by the capricious Wheel 
 of Fortune. 
 
 In the presence of a sympathetic audience he threw 
 aside the previous evening's cloak of modest imperson- 
 ality. He talked with a vivid picturesqueness that held 
 Olifant spellbound. The furtive look in his eyes dis- 
 appeared. They gleamed like compelling stars. His 
 face lost its ruggedness, transfigured by the born 
 narrator's inspiration. Olifant's sister, Mrs. Woolcombe, 
 a gentle and unassuming woman on whom the learning of
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 45 
 
 Oxford had weighed as heavily as the abominable conduct 
 of her husband, listened with the rapt attention of a 
 modern Desdemona. She gazed at him open eyed, half 
 stupefied as she had gazed lately at a great cinematograph 
 film which had held all London breathless. 
 
 When he had gone she turned to her brother, still under 
 the spell. 
 
 "The boy's a magician." 
 
 Blaise Olifant smiled. "The boy's a man," said he. 
 
 Chance threw them together a while later in London. 
 There they met frequently, became friends. The quiet 
 sincerity of the soldier-scholar that was Blaise Olifant 
 seemed to strike some chord of soothing in the heart of 
 the young magician. Fundamentally ignorant of every 
 geological fact, Triona brought to Olifant's banquet of 
 fossil solvents of the mystery of existence an insatiable 
 appetite for knowledge. He listened to reluctant lectures 
 on elementary phenomena such as ammonites, with the 
 same rapt attention as Olifant listened to his tales of 
 the old Empire of Prester John. The Freemasonry of 
 war, with its common experiences of peril and mutilation 
 once Triona slipped off pump and sock and showed a 
 foot from which three toes had been shot away and an 
 ankle seared with the fester of fetters formed a primary 
 bond of brotherhood. By the Freemasonry of intellect 
 they found themselves members of a Higher Chapter. 
 
 "London is wonderful," said Triona one day. "Lon- 
 don's appreciation of the poor thing I have done is enough 
 to turn anyone's head. But while my head is being 
 turned, in the most delightful way in the world, I can't 
 find time to do any work. And I must write in order to
 
 46 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 live. Do you know a little quiet spot where I could stay 
 for the winter and write this precious novel of mine?" 
 
 Blaise Olifant reflected for a moment. 
 
 "I myself am looking for a sort of hermitage. In fact, 
 I've heard of one in Shropshire which I'm going to look 
 at next week. I want a biggish house," he explained, 
 with a smile "I've had enough of dug-outs and billets 
 in a farmhouse with a hole through the roof to last me 
 my natural life. So there would be room for a guest. If 
 you would care to come and stay with me, wherever I 
 pitch my comfortable tent, and carry on your job while 
 I carry on mine, you would be more than welcome." 
 
 "My dear fellow," cried Triona, impulsively thrusting 
 out both hands to be shaken, "this is unheard-of gener- 
 osity. It means my soul's salvation. Only the horrible 
 dread of loneliness you know the old solitary prisoner's 
 dread has kept me from running down to some little 
 out-of-the-way place say in Cornwall. I've shrunk 
 from it. But London is different. In my chauffeur's 
 days it was different. I had always associates, fares, the 
 multitudinous sights and sounds of the vast city. But 
 solitude in a village! Frankly, I funked it. I've lived 
 so much alone that now I must talk. If I didn't talk I 
 should go mad. Or rather I must feel that I can talk if 
 I want to. I keep hold of myself, however. If I bored 
 you with my loquacity you wouldn't have made me your 
 delightful proposal." 
 
 "Well, you'll come, if I can get the right kind of 
 house?" 
 
 "With all the gratitude in life," cried Triona, his eyes 
 sparkling. "But not as your guest. Some daily, weekly,
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 47 
 
 monthly arrangement, so that we shall both be free you 
 to kick me out I to go " 
 
 "Just as you like," laughed Olifant. "I only should 
 be pleased to have your company." 
 
 "And God knows," cried Triona, "what yours would be 
 to me."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 JOHN FREKE was one of the most highly respected 
 men in Medlow. A great leader in municipal 
 affairs, he had twice been Mayor of the town and 
 was Chairman of the local hospital, President of clubs 
 and associations innumerable, and held Provincial 
 Masonic rank. But as John Freke persisted in walking 
 about the draper's shop in Old Street, established by his 
 grandfather, his family consorted, not with the gentry of 
 the neighbourhood, but with the "homely folk" such as 
 the Trivetts and the Gales. His daughter, Lydia, and 
 Olivia had been friends hi the far-off days, although 
 Lydia was five years older. She was tall and creamy and 
 massive and capable, and had a rich contralto voice; and 
 Olivia, very young and eager, had, for a brief period, sat 
 adoring at her feet. Then Lydia had married a young 
 officer of Territorials who had been billeted on her father, 
 and Olivia had seen her no more. As a young war-wife 
 she pursued all kinds of interesting avocations remote 
 from Medlow, and, as a young war-widow, had set up a 
 hat shop in Maddox Street. Rumour had it that she 
 prospered. The best of relations apparently existed 
 between herself and old John Freke, who put up the 
 capital for her venture, and desultory correspondence had 
 kept her in touch with Olivia. The fine frenzy of girlish 
 worship had been cured long ago by Lydia's cruel lack of 
 confidence during her courtship. The announcement of 
 
 48
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 49 
 
 the engagement had been a shock; the engagement itself 
 a revelation of selfish preoccupation. A plain young 
 sister had been sole bridesmaid at the wedding, and the 
 only sign of Lydia's life during the honeymoon had been 
 a picture postcard on the correspondence space of which 
 was scrawled "This is a heavenly place. Lydia Dawlish." 
 Then had followed the years of sorrow and stress, during 
 which Olivia's hurt at the other's gracelessness had passed, 
 like a childish thing, away. 
 
 Lydia's succeeding letters, mainly of condolence, had, 
 however, kept unbroken the fragile thread of friend- 
 ship. The last, especially, written after Mrs. Gale's 
 death, gave evidence of sincere feeling, and emboldened 
 Olivia, who knew no other mortal soul in London the 
 real London, which did not embrace the Clapham aunt 
 and uncle to seek her practical advice. In the volu- 
 minous response she recognized the old capable Lydia. 
 Letter followed letter until, with Mr. Trivett's pro- 
 fessional assistance, she found herself the lucky tenant of 
 a little suite in a set of service flats in Victoria Street. 
 
 She entered into possession a fortnight after her inter- 
 view with Blaise Olifant, who was to take up residence at 
 "The Towers" the following day. Mr. Trivett and his 
 wife, Mr. Fenmarch and Mr. Freke, and the elder Miss 
 Freke, who kept house for her father, saw her off at the 
 station, covering her with their protective wings to the 
 last moment. Each elderly gentleman drew her aside, 
 and, with wagging of benevolent head, offered help in 
 time of trouble. They all seemed to think she was mak- 
 ing for disaster. . 
 
 But their solicitude touched her deeply. The lump
 
 SO THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 that had arisen in her throat when she had passed out 
 across the threshold of her old home swelled uncomfort- 
 ably, and, when the train moved off and she responded to 
 waving hands and hats on the platform, tears stood in her 
 eyes. Presently she recovered. 
 
 "Why should things so dear be so dismal?" 
 Myra, exhibiting no symptoms of exhilaration, did not 
 reply. As they approached London, Olivia's spirits rose. 
 At last the dream of the past weeks was about to be 
 realized. When she stepped out of the train at Padding- 
 ton, it was with the throb of the conqueror setting foot, for 
 the first time on coveted territory. She devoured with 
 her eyes, through the taxi windows, the shops and sights 
 and the movement of the great thoroughfares through 
 which they passed on their way to Victoria Mansions, 
 where her fifth-floor eyrie was situated. Once there, 
 Myria, accustomed to the spacious family house, sniffed 
 at the exiguous accommodation and sarcastically 
 remarked that it would have been better if air were laid 
 on like gas. But Olivia paid little heed to her immed- 
 iate surroundings. The cramped flat was but the cam- 
 paigner's tent. Her sphere of action lay limitless beyond 
 the conventional walls. The walls, however, bounded 
 the sphere of Myra, who had no conception of glorious 
 adventure. The rapidly ascending lift had caused 
 qualms in an unaccustomed stomach, and she felt 
 uneasy at living at such a height above the ground. Why 
 Olivia could not have carried on for indefinite years 
 in the comfort and security of "The Towers" she was 
 at a loss to imagine. Why give up the ease of a big 
 house for* poky lodgings halfway up to the sky. A 
 sitting-room, a bedroom, a slip with a bed in it for
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 51 
 
 herself, a bathroom Myra thanked goodness both of 
 them were slim and that was the London of Olivia's 
 promise. She sighed. At last put down Olivia's ab- 
 erration to the war. The war, in those days, explained 
 everything. 
 
 Meanwhile Olivia had thrown up the sash of the sitting- 
 room window and was gazing down at the ceaseless 
 traffic in the street far below gazing down on the roofs 
 of the taxis and automobiles which sped like swift 
 flat beetles, on the dwarfed yet monstrous insects 
 that were the motor-buses, on the foreshortened 
 dots of the hurrying ant-like swarms of pedestrians. 
 It was gathering dusk, and already a few lights 
 gleamed from the masses of buildings across the 
 way. Soon the street lamps sprang into successive 
 points of illumination. She stood fascinated, 
 watching the rapid change from December day into 
 December night, until at last the distant road seemed but 
 a fantastic medley of ever-dying, ever-recurring sounds 
 and flashes of white and red. Yet it was not fantastic 
 chaos her heart leapt at the thought it was pregnant 
 with significance. All that rumble and hooting and dart- 
 ing light proclaimed human purpose and endeavour, 
 mysterious, breath-catching in its unknown and vast cor- 
 porate intensity. Shivers of ecstasy ran through her. 
 At last she herself was a unit in this eager life of London. 
 She would have her place in the absorbing yet perplexing 
 drama into the midst of which she had stepped with no 
 key to its meaning. But she would pick up the threads, 
 learn what had gone before of that she felt certain 
 and then she laughed she would play her part with 
 the best of them. To-morrow she would be scurrying
 
 52 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 about among them, with her definite human aims. Why 
 not to-night? Delirious thought! She was free. She 
 could walk out into the throbbing thoroughfares and who 
 could say her nay? She put her hand to her bosom and 
 felt the crackle of ten five-pound notes. To emotional 
 girlhood the feel of money, money not to hoard and make- 
 do for weeks and weeks with the spectre of want ever in 
 attendance, but money to fling recklessly about, has its 
 barbaric thrill. Suppose she let slip from her fingers one 
 of the notes and it swayed and fluttered down, down, 
 down, until at last it reached the pavement, and suppose 
 a poor starving girl picked it up and carried it home to 
 her invalid mother. . . . But, on the other hand, suppose 
 and her profound and cynical knowledge of human 
 chances assured her that it would be a thousand to one 
 probability supposing it fell on the silk hat of a cor- 
 pulent profiteer! No. She was not going to shower 
 promiscuous five-pound notes over London. But still 
 the crackling wad meant power. She was free to go forth 
 there and then and purchase all the joys, for herself and 
 others, hovering over there in that luminous haze over 
 the Westminster towers of the magical city of dreams. 
 
 She withdrew from the window and stood in the dark 
 room, a light in her eyes, and clenched her hands. Yes. 
 She would go out, now, and walk and walk, and fill her 
 soul with the wonder of it all. 
 
 And then practical memory administered a prosaic jog 
 to her aspiring spirit. Lydia Dawlish was coming to 
 dine with her in the common dining-room or restaurant 
 downstairs. Shivering with cold, she shut the window, 
 turned on the light and sat by the fire, and ordered tea in 
 the most matter-of-fact way in the world.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 53 
 
 Lydia Dawlish appeared a couple of hours afterwards 
 fair, plump, and prosperous, attired in one of her own 
 dashing creations of hats set at a rakish angle on her 
 blond hair, and a vast coat of dark fur. Olivia, in her 
 simple black semi-evening frock run up by an agitated 
 Medlow dressmaker, felt a poor little dot of a thing 
 before this regal personage. And when the guest threw 
 off the coat, the flowered silk lining of which was a dazing 
 joy to starved feminine eyes, and revealed the slate-blue 
 dinner gown from which creamy neck and shapely arms 
 emerged insolent, Olivia could do nothing but stare open- 
 mouthed, until power came to gasp her wonder and 
 admiration. 
 
 "It's only an old thing," said Lydia. "I had to put on 
 a compromise between downstairs and Percy's." 
 
 "Percy's?" 
 
 "Yes don't you know? The night club. I'm going 
 on afterwards." 
 
 Olivia's face fell. "I thought you were going to spend 
 the evening with me." 
 
 "Of course I am, silly child. Night clubs don't begin 
 till eleven. A man, Sydney Rooke, is calling for me. 
 Well. How are you? And what are your plans now 
 you've got here?" 
 
 She radiated health and vigour. Also proclaimed sex 
 defiant, vaguely disquieting to the country bred girl. 
 Olivia felt suddenly shy. 
 
 "It will take me a few days to turn round." 
 
 "Also to find clothes to turn round in," said Lydia, with 
 a good-humoured yet comprehensive glance at the funny 
 little black frock. "I hope you haven't been laying in a 
 stock of things like that."
 
 54 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 Olivia smiled. This was but a makeshift. She had 
 been saving up for London. Perhaps Lydia would advise 
 her. She had heard of a good place what did they call 
 it? an enormous shop in Oxford Street. Lydia threw 
 up her white arms. 
 
 "My dear child, you're not going to be a fashionable 
 beauty at subscription dances and whist-drives at Upper 
 Tooting! You're going to live in London. Good God! 
 You can't get clothes in Oxford Street." 
 
 "Where shall I get them, then?" asked Olivia. 
 
 From the illustrated papers she had become aware of 
 the existence of Pacotille and Luquin and other mongers 
 of celestial fripperies; but she had also heard of the Stock 
 Exchange and the Court of St. James's and the Stepney 
 Board of Guardians; and they all seemed equally remote 
 from her sphere of being. 
 
 "I'll take you about with me to-morrow," Lydia 
 declared grandly, "and put you in the way of things. I 
 dare say I can find you a hat or two chez Lydia that's 
 me at cost price." She laughed and put a patronizing 
 arm around Olivia's shoulders. "We'll make a woman of 
 you yet." 
 
 The lift carried them down to the restaurant floor. 
 They dined, not too badly, at a side table from which they 
 could view the small crowded room. Olivia felt dis- 
 appointed. Only a few people were in evening dress. It 
 was rather a dowdy assembly, very much like that in the 
 boarding-house at Llandudno, her father's summer holiday 
 resort for years before the war. Her inexperience had 
 expected the glitter and joy of London. Hospitably she 
 offered wine, champagne, as her father, a lover of celebra- 
 tions, would have done; but Lydia drank nothing with
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 55 
 
 her meals the only way not to get fat, which she dreaded. 
 Olivia drank water. The feast seemed tame, and the 
 imported mutton tough. She reproached herself for 
 inadequate entertainment of her resplendent friend. 
 
 They talked; chiefly Lydia, after she had received 
 Olivia's report on her family's welfare and contemporary 
 Medlow affairs; and Olivia listened contentedly, absorb- 
 ing every minute strange esoteric knowledge of the great 
 London world of which the pulsating centre appeared to 
 be Lydia, Ltd., in Maddox Street. There Duchesses 
 bought hats which their Dukes did not pay for. There 
 Cabinet Ministers' wives, in the hope of getting on the 
 right financial side of Lydia, whispered confidential 
 Cabinet secrets, while Ministers wondered how the 
 deuce things got into the papers. There romantic engage- 
 ments were brought from inception to maturity. There 
 also, had she chosen to keep a record, she could have 
 accumulated enough evidence to bring about the divorces 
 of half the aristocracy of England. She rattled off the 
 names like a machine-gun. She impressed Olivia with 
 the fact that Lydia, Ltd., was not a mere hat shop, but a 
 social institution of which Lydia Dawlish was the creat- 
 ing and inspiring personality. Lydia, it appeared, week- 
 ended at great houses. "You see, my dear, my husband 
 was the son of an Honourable and the grandson of an 
 Earl. He hadn't much money, poor darling, but still he 
 had the connection, most useful to me nowadays. The 
 family buy their hats from me, and spread the glad 
 tidings." She commanded a legion of men who had 
 vowed that she should live, free of charge, on the fat of 
 the land, and should travel whithersoever she desired in 
 swift and luxurious motor-cars.
 
 56 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "Of course, my dear," she said, "it's rather a strain. 
 Men will cart about a stylish, good-looking woman for a 
 certain time, just out of vanity. But if she's a dull dam 
 fool, they're either bored to tears and chuck her, or they'll 
 
 want to well well Anyhow, you've got to keep 
 
 your wits about you and amuse them. You've got to pay 
 for everything in this life or work for the 
 means of paying which comes to the same thing. 
 And I work. I don't say it isn't pleasant work 
 but it's hard work. You go out with a man 
 to dinner, theatre and a night club, and dismiss 
 him at your front door at two o'clock in the morn- 
 ing with the perfectly contented feeling that he has had 
 a perfectly good time and would be an ass to spoil things 
 by hinting at anything different and you've jolly well 
 earned your comfortable, innocent night's rest." 
 
 This explosion of the whole philosphy of modern con- 
 scientious woman came at the end of dinner. Olivia toyed 
 absently with her coffee, watching successive spoonfuls of 
 tepid light-amber coloured liquid fall into her cup. 
 
 "But all these men " she said in a low voice the 
 position was so baffling and so disconcerting. "You are 
 a beautiful and clever woman. Don't they sometimes 
 want to to make love to you?" 
 
 "They all do. What do you think? I, an unattached 
 widow and, as you say, not unattractive. But because 
 I'm clever, I head them off. That's the whole point of 
 what I've been telling you." 
 
 "But, suppose," replied Olivia, still intent on the 
 yellowish water, "suppose you fell in love with one of 
 these men. Women do fall in love, I believe." 
 
 "Why then, I'd marry him the next day," cried Lydia,
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 57 
 
 with a laugh. "But," she added, "that's not the type 
 of man a sensible woman falls in love with." 
 
 Olivia's eyes sought the tablecloth. She was conscious 
 of disturbance and, at the same time, virginal resentment. 
 
 "As far as my limited experience goes a woman isn't 
 always sensible." 
 
 "She has to learn sense. That's the great advantage 
 of modern life. It gives her every opportunity of acquir- 
 ing it from the moment she goes out into the world." 
 
 "And what kind of man does the sensible woman fall 
 in love with?" 
 
 "Somebody comfortable," replied Lydia. "My ideal 
 would be a young, rather lazy and very broad-minded 
 bishop." 
 
 Olivia shook her head. The only time she had seen 
 a bishop was at her confirmation. The encounter did 
 not encourage dreams of romance in episcopal circles. 
 
 "But these men who take you out," Olivia persisted 
 thoughtfully "and do all these wonderful things for you 
 it must cost them a dreadful lot of money what kind 
 of people are they?" 
 
 "All sorts. Some are of the very best the backbone 
 of the nation. They go off and marry nice girls who 
 don't frequent night clubs and settle down for the rest 
 of their lives." 
 
 They drank their coffee and went upstairs, where ques- 
 tions of more immediate practical interest occupied their 
 minds. Olivia's wardrobe was passed in review, while 
 Myra stood impassive like a sergeant at kit inspection. 
 
 "My poor child," said Lydia, "you've not a single 
 article, inside or outside, that is fit to wear. I'll send 
 you a second-hand clothes man who'll buy up the whole
 
 58 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 lot as it stands and give you a good price for it. I don't 
 know yet quite what you're thinking of doing but at 
 any rate you can't do it in these things." 
 
 Olivia looked wistfully at the home-made garments 
 which Lydia cast with scorn across the bed. They, at 
 least, had seemed quite dainty and appropriate. 
 
 "Well," she said, with a sigh, "you know best, Lydia." 
 
 These all important matters held their attention till 
 a quarter past eleven, when Mr. Sydney Rooke was 
 announced. He was an elderly young man in evening 
 dress, with crisp black hair parted in the middle and thin- 
 ning at the temples. A little military moustache gave 
 him an air of youth which was belied by deep lines in 
 his sallow face. His dark eyes were rather tired and his 
 mouth hard. But his manners were perfect. He gave 
 them both to understand that though Lydia was, natur- 
 ally, the lady of his evening's devotion yet his heart was 
 filled with a sense of Olivia's graciousness. Half a 
 dozen words and a bow did it. In a polite phrase, a bow 
 and a gesture he indicated that if Miss Gale would join 
 them, his cup of happiness would overflow. Olivia 
 pleaded fatigue. Then another evening? With Mrs. 
 Dawlish. A pleasant little party, in fact. He would 
 be enchanted. 
 
 "We'll fix it up for about a fortnight hence," said 
 Lydia significantly. "To-morrow, then, dear, at eleven." 
 
 When they had gone Olivia, who had accompanied 
 them to the flat door, threw herself on the sofa and, put- 
 ting her hands behind her head stared over the edge of 
 her own world into a new one, strange and bewildering. 
 
 Myra entered. 
 
 "Are you ever going to bed?"
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 59 
 
 "I suppose I must," said Olivia. 
 "Are dressed-up men like that often coming here?" 
 "God knows," said Olivia, "who are coming here. I 
 don't."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE Odyssey or the Argonautic, or whatever you 
 like to call the epic of the first wild adventure 
 of a young woman into the Infinite of Clothes, 
 has yet to be written. It would need not only a poet, 
 but a master of psychology, to record the myriad vibra- 
 tions of the soul as it reacts to temptations, yieldings, 
 tremulous thrills of the flesh, exquisite apprehensions, 
 fluttering joys, and each last voluptuous plenitude of 
 content. It is an adventure which absorbs every faculty 
 of the will; which ignores hunger and thirst, weariness 
 of limb and ache of head; which makes the day a dream 
 of reality and the night the reality of a dream. Hard- 
 ened women of the world with frock-worn minds are 
 caught at times by the lure of the adventure, even when 
 it is a question of a dress or two and a poor half a dozen 
 hats. But how manifold more potent the spell in the 
 case of one who starts with her young body in Nymph- 
 like innocence and is called upon to clothe it again and 
 again in infinite variety, from toe to head, from inner- 
 most secret daintiness to outward splendour of bravery! 
 Such a record would explain Olivia, not only to the 
 world, but to herself during that first fortnight in Lon- 
 don. Her hours could be reckoned by gasps of wonder. 
 She lost count of time, of money, of human values. 
 Things that had never before entered into her philosophy, 
 such as the subtle shade of silk stockings which would 
 
 60
 
 61 
 
 make or mar a costume, loomed paramount in impor- 
 tance. The after-use scarcely occurred to her. Suffi- 
 cient for the day was the chiffon thereof; also the gradual 
 transformation of herself from the prim slip of a girl 
 with just the pretension (in her own mind) to good looks, 
 into a radiant and somewhat distinguished dark-haired 
 little personage. 
 
 Her shrinkings, her arguments with Lydia Dawlish, 
 her defeats, went all into the melting-pot of her delight. 
 "No bath salts, my dear?" cried Lydia. "Whoever 
 heard of a woman not using bath salts?" So bath salts 
 were ordered. And horrified: "My dear, you don't 
 mean to say you wash your face in soap and water. 
 What will become of your skin?" So Olivia was put 
 under the orders of a West End specialist, who stocked 
 her dressing-table with delectable creams and oils. It 
 was all so new, so unheard of, so wonderful to the girl, 
 an experience worth the living through, even though all 
 thousands at deposit at the bank should vanish at the 
 end of it. Merely to sit in a sensuously furnished room 
 and have beautiful women parade before her, clad in 
 dreams of loveliness any one of which was hers for a 
 scribble on a bit of pink paper evoked within her 
 strange and almost spiritual emotions. Medlow was 
 countless leagues away; this transcended the London 
 even of her most foolish visions. 
 
 Afterwards Olivia, when, sense of values being restored 
 she looked back on this phantasmagoria of dressmakers, 
 milliners, lingerie makers and furriers, said to Lydia 
 Dawlish: 
 
 "It's funny, but the fact that there might be a man 
 or so in the world never entered my head."
 
 62 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 And the wise Lydia answered: "You were too busy 
 turning yourself into a woman." 
 
 Twice or thrice during this chrysalis period she stole 
 out of nights with Myra to the dress circle of a theatre, 
 where, besides ingenuous joy in the drama, she found 
 unconfessed consolation in the company of homely folk 
 like herself girls in clean blouses or simple little frocks 
 like her own, and young men either in well-worn khaki 
 or morning dress. On these occasions she wondered 
 very much what she was about to do in the other galley 
 that of the expensively furred and jewelled haughti- 
 nesses and impudences whom she shouldered in the vesti- 
 bule crush and whom she saw drive away in luxurious 
 limousines. These flashing personalities frightened her 
 with their implied suggestions of worlds beyond her ken. 
 One woman made especial impression on her a woman 
 tall, serene, with a clear-cut face, vaguely familiar, and 
 a beautiful voice; she overheard a commonplace phrase 
 or two addressed to the escorting man. She brushed 
 Olivia's arm and turned with a smile and a word of gra- 
 cious apology and passed on. Olivia caught a whisper 
 behind her. "That's the Marchioness of Aintree. Isn't 
 she lovely?" But she did not need to be told that she 
 had been in contact with a great lady. And she went 
 home doubting exceedingly whether, for all her flourish of 
 social trumpets, Lydia Dawlish's galley was that of Lady 
 Aintree. 
 
 Criticism of Lydia, however, she put behind her as 
 ingratitude, for Lydia made up royally for past negli- 
 gence. Time and energy that ought to have been de- 
 voted to Lydia, Ltd., was diverted to the creation of 
 Olivia.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 63 
 
 "I don't know why you're so good to me," she would 
 say. 
 
 And the other, with a little mocking smile round her 
 lips: "It's worth it. I'm giving myself a new experi- 
 ence." 
 
 The first occasion on which she went out into the great 
 world was that of Sydney Rooke's party. She knew that 
 her low-cut, sleeveless, short-skirted gown of old gold 
 tissue had material existence, but she felt herself half- 
 ashamedly, half-deliciously clad in nothing but a bodily 
 sensation. A faint blush lingered in her cheeks all the 
 evening. Lydia, calling for her in Rooke's car, which 
 had been placed at her disposal, held her at arm's length 
 in sincere and noble admiration, moved by the artist's 
 joy in beholding the finished product of his toil, and 
 embraced her fondly. Then she surveyed her again, 
 from the little gold brocade slippers to the diamond 
 butterfly (one of her mother's bits of jewellery) in her 
 dark wavy hair. 
 
 "You're the daintiest elf in London," she cried. 
 
 To the dinner at the Savoy Sydney Rooke had invited 
 a white-moustached soldier, Major-General Wigram, 
 whose blue undress uniform, to the bedazzlement of 
 Olivia, gleamed with four long rows of multi-coloured 
 ribbon; a vivacious middle-aged woman, Mrs. Fane Syl- 
 vester, who wrote novels, plays, books of travel, and 
 fashion articles in a weekly periodical Olivia learned 
 all this in their first five-minute converse in the lounge; 
 Sir Paul and Lady Barraclough, he a young baronet 
 whose civilian evening dress could not proclaim hard- 
 won distinctions, she a pretty, fair, fragile creature, both
 
 64 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 of them obviously reacting joyously to relaxation of ten- 
 sion; and, last, the Vicomte de Mauregard, of the French 
 Embassy, young, good looking, who spoke polished Eng- 
 lish with a faultless accent. It was, socially, as correct 
 a little party as the brooding, innocent spirit of Mrs. 
 Gale could have desired for her about-to-be prodigal 
 daughter. Olivia sat between her host and Mauregard. 
 On her host's right was Lady Barraclough; then the 
 General, then Lydia, then Sir Paul, facing Rooke at the 
 round table, then Mrs. Fane Sylvester, who was Maure- 
 gard's left-hand neighbour. They were by the terrace 
 windows, far from what Olivia, with her fresh mind play- 
 ing on social phenomena, held then and ever afterwards, 
 most rightly, to be the maddening and human intercourse- 
 destroying band. 
 
 Not that her first entrance down the imposing broad 
 staircase, into the lounge filled with mirifically vestured 
 fellow-creatures, to the accompaniment of a clashing rag- 
 time imbecility, did not set all her young nerves vibrat- 
 ing to the point of delicious agony. It was like a mad 
 fanfare heralding her advent in a new world. But soon 
 she found that the blare of the idiot music deadened all 
 other senses. Before her eyes swayed black-and-white 
 things whom at the back of her mind she recognized as 
 men, and various forms all stark flesh, flashing jewels 
 and a maze of colours, whom she knew to be women. 
 The gathering group of her own party seemed but figures 
 of a dream. Her unaccustomed ears could not catch a 
 word of the conventional gambits of conversation opened, 
 on introduction, by her fellow guests. It was only when 
 they passed between the tables of the great restaurant
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 65 
 
 and the horrible noise of the negroid, syncopated parody 
 of tune grew fainter and fainter, and they reached the 
 peace of the terrace side, that the maddening clatter 
 faded from her ears and consciousness of her surround- 
 ings returned. 
 
 Then she surrendered herself to huge enjoyment. 
 Both her neighbours had been all over the world and seen 
 all sorts and conditions of men. They were vividly 
 aware of current events. Pride would not allow her to 
 betray the fact that often they spoke of matters far be- 
 yond her experience of men and things. Under their 
 stimulus she began to regain the self that, for the past 
 fortnight, the cardboard boxes of London had snowed 
 under. 
 
 "It's no use asking me," she said to Mauregard, 
 "whether I've been to Monte Carlo or Madagascar or 
 Madame Tussaud's, for I haven't. I haven't been any- 
 where. I've somehow existed at the back of Nowhere, 
 and to-night I've come to life." 
 
 "But where did you come from? The sea foam? 
 Venus Anadyomene?" 
 
 "No, I'm of the other kind. I come from far inland. 
 I believe they call it Shropshire. That oughtn't to con- 
 vey anything to you." 
 
 "Indeed it does!" cried Mauregard. "Was I not at 
 school at Shrewsbury. 
 
 "No?" 
 
 "But yes. Three years. So I'm Shropshire, too." 
 
 "That's delightful," she remarked; "but it does 
 away with my little mystery of Nowhere." 
 
 "No, no," he protested, with a laugh. He was a fair,
 
 66 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 bright-eyed boy with a little curled-up moustache which 
 gave him the air of a cherub playfully disguised. "It 
 is the county of mystery. Doesn't your poet say: 
 
 'Once in the wind of morning 
 
 I ranged the thymy wold; 
 The world-wide air was azure 
 
 And all the brooks ran gold.' " 
 
 "That's from A Shropshire Lad," cried Olivia. 
 
 "Of course. So why shouldn't you have come from 
 the wind of morning, the azure world-wide air or the 
 golden brook?" 
 
 "That's beautiful of you," said Olivia. "Well, why 
 shouldn't I? It's more romantic and imaginative than 
 the commonplace old sea. The sea has been overdone. 
 I used to look at it once a year, and, now I come to think 
 of it, it always seemed to be self-conscious, trying to live 
 
 up to its reputation. But 'the wind of the morning ' 
 
 Anyhow, here I am." 
 
 "Blown to London by the wind of a Shropshire morn- 
 ing." 
 
 Olivia's spirit danced in the talk. With his national 
 touch on the lighter emotions, Mauregard drew from her 
 an exposition of the Dryad's sensations on sudden con- 
 frontation with modern life. To talk well is a great 
 gift; to compel others to talk well is a greater; and the 
 latter gift was Mauregard's. Olivia put food into her 
 mouth, but whether it was fish or flesh or fowl she knew 
 not. When her host broke the spell by an announcement 
 in her ear that he had a couple of boxes for "Jazz- Jazz," 
 she became aware that she was eating partridge. 
 
 Mr. Sydney Rooke talked of women's clothes, of which 
 he had an expert knowledge. Lady Barraclough chimed
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 67 
 
 in. Olivia, fresh from the welter, spoke as one in author- 
 ity. Now and again she caught Lydia's eye across the 
 table and received an approving nod. The elderly Gen- 
 eral regarded her with amused admiration. She began to 
 taste the first-fruits of social success. She drove in a taxi 
 to the theatre with the Barracloughs and Mrs. Fane Syl- 
 vester and sat with them in a box during the first act of 
 the gay revue. For the second act there was a change 
 of company and she found herself next to the General. 
 He had served in India and was familiar with the names 
 of her mother's people. What Angle-Indian was not? 
 Long ago he had met an uncle of hers; dead, poor chap. 
 This social placing gave her a throb of pleasure, setting 
 her, at least, in a stranger's eyes, in her mother's sphere. 
 The performance over, they parted great friends. 
 
 General Wigram and Mrs. Fane Sylvester excusing 
 themselves from going on to Percy's, the others crowded 
 into Sydney Rooke's limousine. The crash of jazz 
 music welcomed them. Already a few couples were 
 dancing; others were flocking in from the theatres. 
 They supped merrily. Sydney Rooke pointed out to 
 Olivia's wondering eyes the stars of the theatrical firma- 
 ment who condescended to walk the parquet floor of the 
 famous night club. He also indicated here and there a 
 perfectly attired youth as a professional dancer. 
 
 "On the stage?" 
 
 He explained that they had their professional partners 
 and gave exhibition dances, showing the new steps. 
 They also gave private lessons. It was the way they 
 made their living. Olivia knitted a perplexed brow. 
 
 "It doesn't seem a very noble profession for a young 
 man."
 
 68 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 Sydney Rooke shrugged his shoulders politely. 
 
 "I'm with you a thousand times, my dear Miss Gale. 
 The parasite, per se, isn't a noble object. But what 
 would you have? The noble things of the past few years 
 came to an end a short while ago, and, if I can read the 
 times, reaction has already begun. In six months' time 
 the noble fellow will be a hopeless anachronism." 
 
 "Do you mean," asked Olivia, "that all the young 
 men will be rotten?" 
 
 He smiled. "How direct you are! Disconcerting, if 
 I may say so. So positive; while I was approaching the 
 matter from the negative side. There'll be a universal 
 loss of ideals." 
 
 Olivia protested. "The young man has before him 
 the reconstruction of the world." 
 
 "Oh no," said Rooke. "He has done his bit. He 
 expects other people to carry out the reconstructing busi- 
 ness for him. All he cares about is to find a couple of 
 sixpences to jingle together in his pocket." 
 
 "And have these young men who devote their lives to 
 foxtrotting done their bit?" 
 
 He begged the question. "Pray be guided by my proph- 
 ecy, Miss Gale. Next year you mustn't mention war 
 to ears polite. These young men are alive. They thank 
 God for it. Let you and me do likewise." 
 
 This little supper-table talk was the only cloud on a 
 radiant night. The Vicomte de Mauregard took her to 
 dance. At first she felt awkward, knowing only the 
 simple steps of five years ago. But instinct soon guided 
 her, and for two hours she danced and danced in an un- 
 thinking ecstasy. The clattering and unmeaning din 
 which had dazed her on her entrance to the Savoy was
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 69 
 
 now pregnant with physical significance. The tearing 
 of the strings, the clashing of the cymbals, the barbaric 
 thumping of the drum, the sudden raucous scream from 
 negro throats, set vibrating within her responsive chords 
 of an atavistic savagery. When each nerve-tearing ca- 
 cophony came to its abrupt end, she joined breathlessly 
 with the suddenly halting crow in eager clapping for the 
 encore. And then, when the blood-stirring strings and 
 cymbals crashed out, overpowering the staccato of hand 
 beating hand, she surrendered herself with an indrawn 
 sigh of content to her partner's arm to the rhythm, to 
 the movement, to the mere bodily guidance, half conscious 
 of the proud flexibility of her frame under the man's firm 
 clasp, to something, she knew not what, far remote from 
 previous experience. Strange, too, the personality of the 
 man did not matter. Paul Barraclough, Sydney Rooke, 
 Mauregard, she danced with them all in turn. In her 
 pulsating happiness she mixed them all up together, so 
 that a flashing glance, liable to be misinterpreted, pro- 
 ceeded from a mere impulse of identification. Now and 
 then, in the swimming throng of men and women, and the 
 intoxication of passing raiment impregnated with scent 
 and cigarette smoke, she exchanged an absent smile with 
 Lydia and Lady Barraclough. Otherwise she scarcely 
 realized their existence. She was led panting by Maure- 
 gard to a supper table while he went in search of refresh- 
 ment. He returned with a waiter, apologizing for the 
 abomination of iced ginger ale and curled orange peel, 
 which was all that the laws of the land allowed him to 
 offer. Horse's neck, it was called. She laughed, de- 
 lighted with the name, and, after drinking, laughed again, 
 delighted with the cool liquid so tingling on her palate.
 
 70 
 
 "It's a drink for the gods," she declared. 
 "If you offered it, the unfortunate Bacchus would 
 drink it without a murmur." 
 
 "Do you really think it's so awful?" 
 "Mon Dieu!" replied the young Frenchman. 
 Then Lydia came up with a dark-eyed, good-looking 
 boy in tow, whom she introduced as Mr. Bobbie Quin- 
 ton and Olivia was surprised to recognize as one of the 
 professionals. She accepted, however, his invitation to 
 dance and went off on his arm. She found him a boy 
 of charming manners and agreeable voice, and in the 
 lightness and certainty of his dancing he far outclassed 
 her other partners. He suggested new steps. She tried 
 and blundered. She excused herself. 
 
 "This is the first time I've danced for four years." 
 "It doesn't matter," said he. "You're a born dancer. 
 You only need a few lessons to bring you up to date. 
 What I find in so many of the women I teach is that they 
 not only don't begin to understand what they're trying 
 to do, but that they never try to understand. You, on 
 the other hand, have it instinctively. But, of course, you 
 can't learn steps in a place like this." 
 
 "I wonder if you could give me some lessons?" 
 "With all the pleasure in life, Miss Gale," replied Mr. 
 Bobbie Quinton promptly. 
 
 About two o'clock in the morning Sydney Rooke and 
 Lydia deposited Olivia at the front door of Victoria 
 Mansions. Rooke stood hat in hand as she entered. 
 
 "I hope you've not been too bored by our little eve- 
 ning."
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 71 
 
 "Bored! It has been just one heaven after another 
 opening out before me." 
 
 "But not the seventh. If only I could have provided 
 that!" 
 
 "I'll find it in the happiest and soundest night's rest I 
 ever had," said Olivia.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THIS was life; magical, undreamed of in her wild- 
 est Medlow dreams. And thanks to Lydia, she 
 had plunged into it headlong, after a mere fort- 
 night's probation. There had been no disillusion. She 
 had plunged and emerged into her kingdom. London 
 conspired to strew her path with roses. The Barra- 
 cloughs invited her to a dinner party at their home in 
 Kensington. General Wigram offered her dinner and 
 theatre and convened to meet her an old Indian crony, 
 General Philimore, and his young daughter, Janet. Phili- 
 more had known her grandfather, Bagshawe of the 
 Guides, when he was a subaltern, infinite ages ago. The 
 world was a small place, after all. Olivia, caring little 
 for grandfathers beyond their posthumous social guar- 
 antee, found youth's real sympathy in Janet, who held 
 open for her their flat in Maida Vale. Young Maure- 
 gard, after their first lunch together at the Carlton, 
 seemed prepared to provide her with free meals and 
 amusements for the rest of time. It is true he was madly 
 in love with a Russian dancer, whose eccentric ways 
 and abominable treatment of him formed the staple of 
 the conversation which he poured into her very interested 
 and compassionate ear. And, last, Bobbie Quinton gave 
 her dancing lessons at the flat at the rate of a guinea 
 apiece. 
 
 Christmas caused a break in these social activities. 
 
 72
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 73 
 
 Lydia took her off to Brighton, where, meeting various 
 acquaintances of her chaperone and making others of 
 her own, she motored and danced and danced and mo- 
 tored, and in the pursuit of these delights discovered, 
 with a fearful joy, that she could hold her own in the 
 immemorial conflict of sex. Sydney Rooke, having 
 driven down for the day, occasionally flashed through 
 the hotel, the eternal smile of youth on his dark, lined 
 face and his gestures unceasingly polite. As he passed, 
 the heavens opened and rained champagne and boxes 
 of chocolate and hot-house fruits and flowers and 
 embroidered handbags, and once, a Pekinese dog for 
 Lydia. Once again, an automobile seemed about to 
 fall, but at Lydia's protests it melted in the ether. 
 
 "A dog and a rose and a glass of wine," said she, "are 
 a woman's due for amusing a man. But a motor-car 
 is profiteering. Besides, it's bound to drive you some- 
 where in the end either to the flat of shame or the 
 country house of married respectability: it only depends 
 on who is at the wheel." 
 
 "I see," said Olivia. But she didn't. Sydney Rooke 
 was a mystery; and Lydia's attitude towards him was 
 more than her inexperience could understand. 
 
 Still, there she was in the pleasant galley and she did 
 not question what she was doing in it. In a dim way she 
 regarded it as the inevitable rescue vessel after universal 
 shipwreck. Her eyes were blinded by its glitter and her 
 ears deafened by its music to the welter of the unsalved 
 world. 
 
 Just before New Year she received a letter from Bobby 
 Quinton. It began. "Dearest of Ladies." Never be- 
 fore having been thus apostrophized, she thought it pecu-
 
 74 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 liarly graceful and original. The writing was refined and 
 exquisitely clear. To his dearest of ladies the young man 
 bewailed her absence; life was dreary without her 
 friendship and encouragement; all this Christmastide he 
 was the loneliest thing on earth; he suggested that there 
 was no one to love him no mother or sisters to whom he 
 could apply for comfort; this terrible night life to which 
 he, poor demobilized soldier of fortune, was condemned 
 in order to earn his bread, weighed upon his spirits and 
 affected his health; he envied his dearest of ladies' so- 
 journ by the invigorating sea; he longed for the taste of 
 it; but such health-restoring rapture he gave her, in the 
 most delicate way, to understand, was for fairy prin- 
 cesses and not for the impecunious demobbed; he counted 
 the days till her return and prayed her to bring back 
 a whiff of ozone on her garments to revive the ever faith- 
 ful one who had the temerity to try to teach her to dance. 
 A most piteous epistle. Bobby Quinton, by his in- 
 gratiating ways and his deference and his wit, had effaced 
 her original conception of the type of young men who 
 danced at night clubs for their living. She liked him. 
 He seemed so young and she, through her long companion- 
 ship with sorrow, so old in comparison; he seemed so 
 foolish and impossible, and she so wise; to her, remember- 
 ing the helpless dependence of her father and brothers, 
 he seemed (motherless and sisterless as he was) lost in 
 a hostile world. Besides, he was not a nameless ad- 
 venturer. His father (long since deceased) had been a 
 Colonial Governor. He had been to one of the great 
 public schools. In short, he had the birth and breeding 
 of a gentleman. She slipped on a dressing-gown and went 
 with the letter to Lydia, full of maternal purpose.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 75 
 
 It was nine o'clock in the morning. Their rooms had 
 a communicating door. She found Lydia daintily attired 
 in boudoir cap and dressing-jacket, having breakfast in 
 bed. 
 
 "The poor boy's dying for a breath of sea air. It 
 would do him an enormous amount of good. Do you 
 think we of course, it really would be me but it would 
 be better if it appeared to be a joint affair do you think 
 we could, without offending him, ask him to come down 
 here for a couple of days as our guest?" 
 
 Lydia, who had read the letter with a smile round her 
 lips, replied drily: 
 
 "As far as Bobby is concerned I really think we 
 could." 
 
 "And as far as we are concerned," flashed Olivia, "why 
 should the silly fact of being a woman prevent us from 
 helping a lame dog over a stile?" 
 
 "A he-dog," said Lydia. 
 
 "What does it matter?" Olivia asked stoutly. 
 
 Lydia laughed in her half-cynical, tolerant way. 
 
 "Do as you like, dear. I don't mind. You're out for 
 experience, not I. I'd only have you remark that our 
 he-dog friend Bobby is sitting up and begging for the 
 invitation " 
 
 "Oh! Ah!" cried Olivia, with a fling of her arm, 
 "you're horrid!" 
 
 "Not a bit," smiled Lydia. "I face facts, as you'll 
 have to do, if you want to find comfort in this matter- 
 of-fact world. Have your Bobby down by all means. 
 Only keep your eye on him." 
 
 "He's not my Bobby," said Olivia indignantly.
 
 76 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "Our Bobby, then," said Lydia, with good-natured in- 
 dulgence. 
 
 So Olivia, with the little palpitation of the heart attend- 
 ant on consciousness of adventurous and (in Medlow 
 eyes, preposterous) well-doing, wrote to Bobby Quinton 
 a letter whose gracious delicacy would not have wounded 
 the susceptibilities of a needy Hidalgo or an impoverished 
 Highland chieftain, and received in reply a telegram of 
 eager acceptance. 
 
 Bobby appeared immaculately vestured, his heart over- 
 flowing with gratitude at the amazing sweetness of his two 
 dear ladies. Never had man been blessed with such 
 fairy godmothers. By the fresh frankness of his ap- 
 preciation of their hospitality he disarmed criticism. 
 A younger son hanging on to the court of Louis XIII 
 never received purses of gold from his lady love with 
 less embarrassed grace. He devoted himself to their 
 service. He had the art of tactful effacement, and of ap- 
 pearance at the exact moment of welcome. He en- 
 livened their meals with chatter and a boyish bright- 
 ness that passed for wit. 
 
 To Olivia, the dearest of his dear ladies, he confided 
 the pathetic history of his life. A sunny, sheltered corner 
 of the Pier, both sitting side by side well wrapped in furs, 
 conduced to intimacy. How a young man in such a pre- 
 carious financial position could afford to wear a fur- 
 lined coat with a new astrachan collar it did not strike 
 Olivia to enquire. That he, like herself, was warm on 
 that sun-filled morning, with the sea dancing and sparkling 
 away beyond them, and human types around them ex- 
 uding the prosperity of peace, seemed sufficient for the 
 comfortable hour. He spoke of his early years of ease,
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 77 
 
 of his modest patrimony coming to an end soon after 
 the war broke out; of his commission in a yeomanry 
 regiment; of his heart-break as the months went on and 
 the chance of the regiment being sent to the front grew 
 less and less; of his exchange into a regiment of the line; 
 of the rotten heart that gave out after a month in France; 
 of his grief at being invalided out of the army and his 
 struggles and anxieties when he returned to civil life, 
 branded as physically unfit. He had tried the stage, 
 musical comedy, male youth in the manless chorus being 
 eagerly welcomed; then, after a little training, he found 
 he had the dancer's gift. "So one thing led to another," 
 said he, "and that's my history." 
 
 "But surely," said Olivia, "all this dancing and these 
 late hours must be very bad for your heart." 
 
 He smiled sadly. "What does it matter? I'm no use 
 to anybody, and nobody cares whether I'm dead or alive." 
 
 Olivia protested warmly. "The world is crying out for 
 young men of three-and-twenty. You could be useful 
 in a million ways." 
 
 "Not a crock like me." 
 
 "You could go into an office." 
 
 "Yes. In at one door and out of another. Hope- 
 less." 
 
 He drew from a slim gold case a Turkish cigarette 
 Olivia, minutely hospitable, had put a box of a hundred 
 in his room and tapped it thoughtfully. 
 
 "After all, which is better to carry on with life like 
 a worm which anyhow perisheth, as the Bible tells us 
 or to go out like a butterfly, with a bit of a swagger?" 
 
 "But you mustn't talk of going out," cried Olivia. 
 "It's indecent."
 
 78 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 Bobby lighted his cigarette. "Who would care?" 
 
 "I, for one," she replied. 
 
 Her health and sanity revolted against morbid ideas. 
 He stretched out his hand, and, with the tips of his 
 fingers, touched her coat, and he bent his dark brown 
 eyes upon her. 
 
 "Would you really?" he murmured. 
 
 She flushed, felt angry she scarce knew why, and put 
 herself swiftly on the defensive. 
 
 "I would care for the life of any young man. After 
 a million killed it's precious and every decent girl would 
 care the same as I." 
 
 "You're wonderful ! " he remarked. 
 
 "I'm common sense incarnate," said Olivia. 
 
 "You are. You're right. You're right a thousand 
 times," he replied. "I'll always remember what you have 
 said to me this morning." 
 
 At his surrender she disarmed. A corpulent, opulent 
 couple passed them by, the lady wearing a cheap feathered 
 hat and a rope of pearls outside a Kolinsky coat, the 
 gentleman displaying on an ungloved right hand, which 
 maintained in his mouth a gigantic cigar, an enormous 
 ruby set in a garden border of diamonds. 
 
 "At any rate," said Bobby, "I'm not as some other men 
 are." 
 
 So they laughed and discussed the profiteers and walked 
 back to the hotel for lunch with the sharpened appetites 
 of twenty. 
 
 When Bobby Quinton left them, Olivia reproached 
 herself for lack of sympathy. The boy had done his 
 best. A rotten, and crocky heart, who was she to de- 
 spise? But for circumstance he might have done heroic
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 79 
 
 things. Perhaps in his defiance of physical disability he 
 was doing a heroic thing even now. Still. ... To Lydia, 
 in an ironically teasing mood, she declared: 
 
 "When I do fall in love, it's not going to be with any 
 one like Bobby Quinton. I want a man there would be 
 a devil of a row, of course, if he tried but one capable 
 of beating me," 
 
 "Bobby would do that, right enough, if you gave him 
 the chance," said Lydia. 
 
 Olivia reflected for a while. "Why have you got your 
 knife into him like that?" she asked abruptly. 
 
 "I haven't, my dear child. If I had, do you think I 
 would have allowed him to come down? I live and let 
 live. By letting live, I live very comfortably and man- 
 age, with moderate means, to have a very good time." 
 
 Olivia, already dressed for dinner, looked down on the 
 easy, creamy, handsome, kimono-clad woman, curled up 
 like a vast Angora cat on the hotel bedroom sofa, and once 
 more was dimly conscious of a doubt whether the galley 
 of Lydia Dawlish was the one for her mother's daughter 
 to row in. 
 
 Still, vogue la galore. When she returned to London 
 there was little else to do. Eating and dancing filled 
 many of her days and nights. She tried to recapture the 
 pleasure of books which had been all her recreation for 
 years; but, although her life was not a continuous whirl 
 of engagements for it requires a greater vogue as a 
 pretty and unattached young woman than Olivia pos- 
 sessed to be booked for fourteen meals and seven eve- 
 nings every week of the year she found little time for 
 solitary intelligent occupation. If she was at a loose 
 end, Lydia's hat shop provided an agreeable pastime. Or,
 
 80 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 as a thousand little odds and ends of dress demanded 
 attention, there was always a sensuous hour or two to 
 be spent at Pacotille's and Luquin's or Deville's. Tea 
 companions seldom failed. When she had no evening 
 engagements she was glad to get to bed ; soon after the 
 dinner in the downstairs restaurant, and to sleep the 
 sleep of untroubled youth. And all the time the spell of 
 London still held her captive. To walk the crowded 
 streets, to join the feminine crush before the plate-glass 
 windows of great shops, to watch the strange birds in 
 the ornamental water in St. James's Park, to wander 
 about the Abbey and the Temple Gardens, to enter on 
 the moment's impulse a Bond Street picture gallery or a 
 cinema all was a matter of young joy and thrill. She 
 even spent a reckless and rapturous afternoon at Madame 
 Tussaud's. Sometimes Janet Philimore accompanied her 
 on these excursions round the monuments of London. 
 Janet, who had mild antiquarian tastes and a proletarian 
 knowledge of London traffic, took her by tubes and buses 
 to the old City churches and the Tower, and exhibited 
 to her wondering gaze the Bank of England and the 
 Royal Exchange and Guildhall up the narrow street. For 
 sentimental interest, there was always Bobby Quinton, 
 who continued to maintain himself under her maternal 
 eye. And so the new life went on. 
 
 It was one night in April, while she was standing under 
 the porch of a theatre, Mouregard, her escort, having 
 gone in search of his dinner-and-theatre brougham for 
 those were days when taxis were scarce and drivers 
 haughty that she found herself addressed by a long- 
 nosed, one-armed man, who raised his hat. 
 
 "Miss Gale I'm sure you don't remember me."
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 81 
 
 For a second or two she could not place him. Then she 
 laughed. 
 
 "Why Major Olifant!" She shook hands. "What 
 are you doing here? I thought you were buried among 
 your fossils. Do tell me how are the hot-water pipes? 
 And how is the parrot? Myra has no faith in your 
 bachelor housekeeping and is sure you've eaten him out 
 of desperation." 
 
 He returned a light answer. Then, touching the arm 
 of a man standing by his side: 
 
 "Miss Gale can I introduce Mr. Alexis Triona." 
 
 Triona bowed, stood uncovered while he took the hand 
 which Olivia held out. 
 
 "This is my landlady," said Olifant. 
 
 "He is privileged beyond the common run of mortals," 
 said Triona. 
 
 "That's very pretty," laughed Olivia, with a swift, 
 enveloping glance at the slight, inconspicuous youth who 
 had done such wonderful things. "I've not thought of 
 myself as a landlady before. I hope I don't look like 
 one." 
 
 Visions of myriad Bloomsbury lodging-houses at whose 
 doors he had knocked after he had left the tiny room in 
 Cherbury Mews, and of the strange middle-aged women 
 of faded gentility whom he had interviewed within 
 those doors, rose before Triona's eyes, and he laughed too. 
 For under the strong electric light of the portico, unkind 
 to most of the other waiting women, showing up lines and 
 hollows and artificialities of complexion, she looked as 
 fresh and young as a child on a May morning. The 
 open theatre wrap revealed her slender girlish figure, 
 sketchily clad in a flame-coloured garment; and, with the
 
 82 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 light in her eyes and her little dark head proudly poised, 
 she stood before the man's fancy as the flame of youth. 
 
 She turned to Olifant. 
 
 "Are you in town?" 
 
 "For a few days. Getting rid of cobwebs." 
 
 "I'd lend you quite a nice broom, if you could find 
 time to come and see me. Besides, I do want to hear 
 about my beloved Polly." 
 
 "I shall be delighted," said Olifant. 
 
 They arranged that he should come to tea at the flat 
 the following day. 
 
 "And if so famous a person as Mr. Triona would 
 honour me, too?" 
 
 "Dare I?" he asked. 
 
 "It's on the fifth floor, but there's a lift." 
 
 She saw Mauregard hurrying up. With a "Four- 
 thirty, then," and a smile of adieu, she turned and joined 
 Mauregard. 
 
 "Shall we go on to Percy's?" asked the young French- 
 man, standing at the door of the brougham. 
 
 Olivia conceived a sudden distaste for Percy's. 
 
 "Not unless you particularly want to." 
 
 "I? Good Lord! "said he. 
 
 "Why do you ever go, if it bores you like that?" she 
 asked as the brougham started Victoria-wards: 
 
 "Ce que jemme veut, Mauregard le veut" 
 
 "I suppose that is why you've never made love to me." 
 
 "How?" he asked, surprised out of his perfect English 
 idiom. 
 
 "I've wanted you not to make love to me, and you 
 haven't." 
 
 "But how could I make love to you, when I have been
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 83 
 
 persecuting you with the confessions of my unhappy love 
 affairs?" 
 
 "One can always find a means," said Olivia. "That's 
 why I like you. You are such a good friend." 
 
 "I hope so," said he. Then, after a short silence: 
 "Let me be frank. What is going on at the back of 
 your clever English mind is perfectly accurate. I am 
 tempted to make love to you every time I see you. What 
 man, with a man's blood in his veins, wouldn't be tempted, 
 no matter how much he loved another woman? But I 
 say to myself: 'Lucien, you are French to the marrow 
 of your bones. It is the nature of that marrow not to 
 offend a beautiful woman by not making love to her. 
 But, on the other hand, the Lady Olivia whose finger- 
 tips I am unworthy to kiss' he touched them with his 
 lips, however, in the most charming manner 'is English 
 to the marrow of her bones, and it is the nature of that 
 marrow to be offended if a man makes obviously idle 
 love to her.' So, not wishing to lose my Lady Olivia, 
 whose friendship and sympathy I value so highly, I ac- 
 cept with a grateful heart a position which would be 
 incomprehensible to the vast majority of my fellow- 
 countrymen." 
 
 "I'm so glad we've had this out," said Olivia after a 
 pause. "I've been a bit worried. A girl on her own has 
 got to take care of herself, you know. And you've been 
 so beautifully kind to me " 
 
 "It's because I am proud to call myself your humble 
 and devoted servant," replied Mauregard. 
 
 Olivia went to bed contented with this frank explana- 
 tion. Men had already made love to her in a manner 
 which had ruffled her serene consciousness, and she
 
 84 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 found it, not like Lydia Dawlish, a cynical game of wit, 
 but a disagreeable business, to parry their advances. 
 Bobby Quinton, of course, she could put into a corner 
 like a naughty child, whenever he became foolish. But 
 Mauregard, consistently respectful and entertaining, had 
 been rather a puzzle. Now that way was clear. 
 
 For a while she did not associate her meeting Blaise 
 Olifant with her distaste for the night club. In the 
 flush of her new existence she had almost forgotten him. 
 There had been no reason to correspond. His rent was 
 paid through the Trivett and Gale office. His foraminif- 
 erous pursuits did not appeal to a girl's imagination. 
 Now and then she gave a passing thought to what was 
 happening in her old home, and vaguely remembered that 
 the romantically named traveller was there as a guest. 
 But that was all. Now, the presence of Olifant had 
 suddenly recalled the little scene in her mother's room, 
 when she had suddenly decided to let him have the 
 house; he had brought with him a breath of that room; 
 a swift memory of the delicate water-colours and the books 
 by the bedside, the Pensees de Pascal and The Imitation 
 of Christ. . . . Besides, she had felt a curious attrac- 
 tion towards the companion, the boy with the foreign 
 manner and the glistening eyes and the suffering-stricken 
 face. Both men, as she conceived them, belonged to the 
 higher intellectual type that had their being remote from 
 the inanities of dissipation. So, impelled by a muddled 
 set of motives, she suddenly found herself abhorring 
 Percy's. She read herself into a state of chastened self- 
 approbation, and then to sleep, with Rupert Brooke's 
 poems.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 OLIVIA sat by her little table, dispensing tea and 
 accepting homage with a flutter of pleasure at 
 her heart. She had been oddly nervous she 
 who had entertained the stranger Olifant, at Medlow, 
 with the greatest self-confidence, and had grown to regard 
 tea parties at the flat as commonplaces of existence. The 
 two men had drifted in from another sphere. She had re- 
 viewed her stock of conversation and found it shop-worn 
 after five months' exposure. The most recent of her 
 views on "Hullo, People!" and on the food at the Carlton 
 had appeared unworthy of the notice of the soldier- 
 scientist and the adventurous man of letters. She had 
 received them with unusual self-consciousness. This, 
 however, a few moments of intercourse dispelled. They 
 had come, they had seen and she had conquered. 
 
 "At first I didn't recognize you," said Olifant. "I 
 had to look twice to make sure." 
 
 "Have I changed so much?" she asked. 
 
 "It was a trick of environment," he said, with a smile 
 in his dark blue eyes. 
 
 The feminine in her caught the admiration behind them 
 and delightedly realized his confusion, the night before, at 
 her metamorphosis from the prim little black-frocked 
 Quakeress into the radiant creature in furs and jewels 
 and flame-coloured audacity. 
 
 "And now you're quite sure it is me or I which is 
 it?" 
 
 85
 
 86 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "I'm quite sure it's my charming landlady who for 
 the second time feeds the hungry wanderer. Miss Gale 
 Triona, makes a specialty of it." 
 
 "Then, indeed, I'm peculiarly fortunate," said Triona, 
 taking a tomato sandwich. "Will you feed me again, 
 Miss Gale?" 
 
 "As often as you like," she laughed. 
 
 "That's rather a rash promise to make to a professional 
 vagabond like myself. When he has begged his way 
 for months and months at a time, he comes to regard 
 other people's food as his by divine right." 
 
 "Have you done that?" she asked. 
 
 "Much worse. You don't keep chickens?" 
 
 "Not here." 
 
 "That's a good thing. I think I'm the world's cham- 
 pion chicken-stealer. It's a trick of legerdemain. You 
 dive at a chicken, catch it by its neck, whirl it round 
 and stick it under your jacket all in one action. The 
 unconscious owner has only to turn his back for a second. 
 Then, of course, you hide in a wood and have an orgy." 
 
 "He is not the desperate character he makes himself 
 out to be," said Olifant. "He spent two months with 
 me at 'The Towers' without molesting one of your 
 hens." 
 
 "Then you're not still there?" she asked Triona. 
 
 "Alas, no," he replied. "I suppose I have the fever of 
 perpetual change. I had a letter from Finland saying 
 that my presence might be of use there. So I have spent 
 this spring in Helsingfors. I am only just back." 
 
 "It seems wonderful to go and come among all these 
 strange places," said Olivia. 
 
 "One land is much the same as another in essentials,"
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 87 
 
 replied Triona. "To carry on life you have to eat and 
 sleep. There's no difference between a hard-boiled egg 
 in Somerset and a hard-boiled egg in Tobolsk. And sleep 
 is sleep, whether you're putting up at Claridge's or the 
 Hotel of the Beautiful Star. And human nature, stripped 
 of the externals of habits, customs, traditions, ceremo- 
 nials, is unchanging from one generation, and from one 
 latitude or longitude, to another." 
 
 "But," objected Olivia, with a flash of logic, "if Lon- 
 don's the same as Tobolsk, why yearn for Tobolsk?" 
 
 "It's the hope of finding something different the ignis 
 
 jatuus, the Jack o' Lantern, the Will-o'-the-Wisp " 
 
 He was silent for a moment, and then she caught the 
 flash of his eyes. "It's the only thing that counts in 
 human progress. The Will-o'-the-Wisp. It leaves nine 
 hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand flounder- 
 ing in a bog but the thousandth man wins through to 
 the Land of Promise. There is only one thing in life 
 to do," he continued, clenching his nervous hands and 
 looking into the distance away from Olivia, "and that 
 is never to lose faith in your ignis jatuus to compel it 
 to be your guiding star. Once you've missed grip of it, 
 you're lost." 
 
 "I wish I had your Russian idealism," said Olifant. 
 
 "When will you learn, my dear friend," said Triona 
 quietly, "that I'm not a Russian? I'm as English as you 
 are." 
 
 "It's your idealism that is Russian," said Olivia. 
 
 "Do you think so?" he asked, deferentially. "Well, 
 perhaps it is. In England you keep your ideals hidden 
 until some great catastrophe happens, then you bring 
 them out to help you along. Otherwise it is immodest
 
 88 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 to expose them. In Russia, ideals are exposed all the 
 time, so that when the time for their application comes, 
 they're worn so thin they're useless. Poor Russia," he 
 sighed. "It has idealized itself to extinction. All my 
 boyhood's companions the students, the intelligentsia, 
 as they called themselves, who used to sit and talk and 
 talk for hours of their wonderful theories you in Eng- 
 land have no idea how Russian visionary can talk 
 and I learned to talk with them where are they now? 
 The fortunate were killed in action. The others, either 
 massacred or rotting in prisons, or leading the filthy 
 hunted lives of pariah dogs. The Beast arose like a 
 foul shape from the Witch's cauldron of their talk . . . 
 and devoured them. Yes, perhaps the stolid English way 
 is the better." 
 
 "What about your Will-o'-the-Wisp theory?" asked 
 Olivia. 
 
 He threw out his hands. "Ah! That is the secret. 
 Keep it to yourself. Don't point it out to a thousand 
 people, and say: 'Join me in the chase of the Will-o'- 
 the-Wisp.' For the thousand other people will each see 
 an ignis fatuus of their own and point it out, so that there 
 are myriads of them, and your brain reels, and you're 
 swallowed up in the bog to a dead certainty. In plain 
 words, every human being must have his own individual 
 and particular guiding star which he must follow stead- 
 fastly. My guiding star is not yours, Miss Gale, nor 
 Olifant's. We each have our own." 
 
 Olifant smiled indulgently. "Moscovus loquitur," he 
 murmured. 
 
 "What's that?" asked Olivia.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 89 
 
 "He says, my dear Miss Gale, that the Russian will 
 ever be talking." 
 
 "I'm not so sure that I don't approve," said she. 
 
 Triona laid his hand on his heart and made a little 
 bow. She went on, casting a rebuking glance at Olifant, 
 who had begun to laugh: 
 
 "After all, it's more entertaining and stimulating to 
 talk about ideas than about stupid facts. Most people 
 seem to regard an idea as a disease. They shy at it as if 
 it were smallpox." 
 
 Olifant protested. He was capable of playing football 
 with ideas as any man. Self-satirical, he asked was he 
 not of Balliol? Olivia, remembering opportunely a recent 
 Cambridge dinner neighbour's criticism of the famous 
 Oxford College at the time it had bored her indifferent 
 mind and an anecdote with which he drove home his 
 remarks, that of a sixth-form contemporary who had 
 written to him in the prime flush of his freshman's term: 
 "Balliol is not a college; it is a School of Thought," cried 
 out: 
 
 "Isn't that rather a crude metaphor for Balliol?" 
 
 They quarrelled, drifted away from the point, swept 
 Triona into a laughing argument on she knew not what. 
 All she knew was that these two men were giving her the 
 best of themselves; these two picked men of thought and 
 action; that they were eager to interest her, to catch her 
 word of approval; that some dancing thing within her 
 brain played on their personalities and kept them at 
 concert pitch. 
 
 She was conscious of a new joy, a new sense of power, 
 when the door opened and Myra showed in Lydia Daw-
 
 90 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 lish. She entered, enveloped in an atmosphere of furs 
 and creamy worldliness. Aware of the effect of implicit 
 scorn of snobbery, she besought Olifant for news of Med- 
 low, dear Sleepy Hollow, which she had not seen for 
 years. Had he come across her beloved eccentric of a 
 father old John Freke? Olifant gave her the best of 
 news. He had lately joined the committee of the local 
 hospital, of which Mr. Freke was Chairman; professed 
 admiration for John Freke's exceptional gifts. 
 
 "If he had gone out into the world, he might have been 
 a great man," said Lydia. 
 
 "He is a great man," replied Olifant. 
 
 "What's the good of being great hi an overlooked 
 chunk of the Stone Age like Medlow?" 
 
 She spoke with her lazy vivacity, obviously, to Olivia's 
 observant eye, seeking to establish herself with the two 
 men. But the spell of the afternoon was broken. As 
 soon as politeness allowed, Olifant and Triona took their 
 leave. Had it not been for Lydia they would have stayed 
 on indefinitely, forgetful of time, showing unconscious, 
 and thereby all the more flattering, homage to their 
 hostess. In a mild way she anathematized Lydia; but 
 found a compensating tickle of pleasure in the lady's 
 failure to captivate. 
 
 To Olifant she said: 
 
 "Now that you know where your landlady lives, I hope 
 you won't go on neglecting her." 
 
 But she waited for Triona to say: 
 
 "Shall I ever have the pleasure of seeing you again?" 
 
 "It all depends whether you can be communicated 
 with," she replied. "Alexis Triona, Esq., Planet Earth,
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 91 
 
 Solar System, is an imposing address; but it might puzzle 
 the General Post Office." 
 
 "The Vanloo Hotel, South Kensington, is very much 
 more modest." 
 
 "It's well for people to know where they can find 
 one another," said Olivia. 
 
 "That you should do me the honour of the slightest 
 thought of finding me " he began. 
 
 "We'll fix up something soon," Lydia interrupted. 
 "I'm Miss Gale's elderly, adopted aunt." 
 
 Olivia felt a momentary shock, as though a tiny bolt 
 of ice had passed through her. She sped a puzzled glance 
 at a Lydia blandly unconscious of wrong-doing. 
 
 "I shall be delighted," said Triona politely. 
 
 When the door had closed behind the two 
 
 "What nice men," said Lydia. 
 
 "Yes, they're rather nice," replied Olivia, wondering 
 why, in trying to qualify them in her mind, this particular 
 adjective had never occurred to her. They were male, 
 they spoke perfect English, they were well-mannered 
 and so, of course, they were nice. But it was such an in- 
 adequate word, completing no idea. Lydia's atrophied 
 sense of differentiation awoke the laughter in her eyes. 
 Nice! So were Bobby Quinton, Sydney Rooke, Maure- 
 gard, a score of other commonplace types in Lydia's set. 
 But that Blaise Olifant and Alexis Triona should be 
 lumped with them in this vaguely designated category, 
 seemed funny. 
 
 Lydia went on: 
 
 "Major Olifant, of course, I knew from your descrip- 
 tion of him; but the other the young man with the 
 battered face I didn't place him."
 
 92 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "Triona Alexis Triona." 
 
 "I seem to have heard the name," said Lydia. "He 
 writes or paints or lectures on Eugenics or something." 
 
 "He has written a book on Russia, replied Olivia drily. 
 
 "I'm fed up with Russia," said Lydia dismissively. 
 "Even if I wasn't I didn't come here to talk about it. 
 I came in about something quite different. What do you 
 think has happened? Sydney Rooke has asked me to 
 marry him." 
 
 Olivia's eyes flashed with the interest of genuine youth 
 in a romantic proposal of marriage. 
 
 "My dear!" she cried. "How exciting!" 
 
 "I wish it were," said Lydia, in her grey-eyed calmness. 
 "Anyhow, it's a bit upsetting. Of course I knew that 
 he was married separated years and years from his wife. 
 Whether he couldn't catch her out, or she couldn't catch 
 him out, I don't know. But they couldn't get a divorce. 
 She was a Catholic and wouldn't stand for the usual 
 arrangement. Now she's dead. Died a couple of months 
 ago in California. He came in this morning with Lady 
 Northborough introducing her the first time I had seen 
 the woman. And he sat by and gave advice while she 
 chose half a dozen hats. His judgment's infallible, you 
 know. He saw her to her car and came back. 'Now 
 I've done you a good turn,' he said, 'perhaps you'll do 
 me one. Give me five minutes with you in your cubby- 
 hole.' We went into my little office, and then he sprang 
 this on me the death of his wife and the proposal." 
 
 "But it must have been exciting," Olivia protested. 
 "Yet " she knitted her brow, "why the Lady North- 
 borough barrage?" 
 
 "It's his way," said Lydia.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 93 
 
 "What did you tell him?" 
 
 "I said I would give him my answer to-night." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "I don't know. He's charming. He's rolling in money 
 you remember the motor-car I turned down for ob- 
 vious reasons he knows all kinds of nice people he's 
 fifty " 
 
 "Fifty!" cried Olivia, aghast. To three and twenty 
 fifty is senile. 
 
 "The widow's ideal." 
 
 "It's exciting, but not romantic," said Olivia. 
 
 "Romance perished on the eleventh of November, 
 1918. Since then it has been 'Every woman for herself 
 and the Devil take the hindmost.' Are you aware that 
 there are not half enough men to go round? So when a 
 man with twenty thousand a year comes along, a woman 
 has to think like like " 
 
 "Like Aristotle or Herbert Spencer, or the sailor's 
 parrot," said Olivia. "Of course, dear. But is he so 
 dreadfully wealthy as all that? What does he do?" 
 
 "He attends Boards of Directors. As far as I can make 
 out he belongs to a Society for the Promotion of Un- 
 christian Companies." 
 
 "Don't you care for him?" 
 
 Lydia shook her exquisitely picture-hatted head she 
 was a creamy Gainsborough or nothing. 
 
 "In that way, not a bit. Of course, he has been a real 
 good friend to me. But after all marriage it's diffi- 
 cult to explain " 
 
 In spite of her cynicism, Lydia had always respected 
 the girlhood of her friend. But Olivia flung the scorn- 
 ful arm of authority.
 
 94 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "There's no need of explanation. I know all about 
 it." 
 
 "In that case " said Lydia. She paused, lit a 
 
 cigarette, and with her large, feline grace of writhing 
 curves, settled herself more comfortably in the corner 
 of the couch "I thought you would bring a fresh mind 
 to bear upon things. But no matter. In that case, 
 dear, what would you advise?" 
 
 Before the girl's mental vision arose the man in ques- 
 tion the old young man, the man of fifty, with the air 
 and manner and dress of the man of twenty-five; his 
 mark of superficial perfection that hid God knew what 
 strange sins, stoniness of heart and blight of spirit. She 
 saw him in his impeccable devotion to Lydia. But 
 something in the imagined sight of him sent a shiver 
 through her pure, yet not ignorant, maidenhood: some- 
 thing of which the virginal within her defied definition, 
 yet something abhorrent. The motor-car had failed; 
 now the wedding-wing. She recaptured the fleeting, dis- 
 quieting sense of Lydia on her first evening in London 
 the woman's large proclamation of sex. Instinctively 
 she transferred her impression to the man, and threw a 
 swift glance at Lydia lying there, milk and white, recep- 
 tive. 
 
 A word once read and forgotten a word in some 
 French or English novel sprang to her mind, scraped 
 clear from the palimpsest of memory. Desirable. A 
 breath-catching, hateful word. She stood aghast and 
 shrinking on the edge of knowledge. 
 
 "My darling child, what on earth is the matter with 
 you?"
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 95 
 
 Olivia stared at the voice, as thought awakening from 
 a dream. 
 
 "I think it's horrible," she cried. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Marying a man you can no more love than " Ugh! 
 
 I wouldn't marry him for thousands of millions." 
 
 "Why? I want to know." 
 
 But the shiver in the girl's soul could not be expressed 
 in words. 
 
 "It's a question of love," she said lamely. 
 
 Lydia laughed, called her a romantic child. It was 
 not a question of love, but of compatible temperament. 
 Marriage wasn't a week-end, but a life-end, trip. People 
 had to get accustomed to each other in dressing-gowns 
 and undress manners. She herself was sure that Sydney 
 Rooke would wear the most Jermyn Street of dressing- 
 gowns, at any rate. But the manners? 
 
 "They'll always be as polished as his finger-nails," 
 said Olivia. 
 
 "I don't see why you should speak like that of Sydney," 
 cried Lydia, with some show of spirit. "It's rather un- 
 grateful seeing how kind he has been to you." 
 
 Which was true; Olivia admitted it. 
 
 "But the man who is kind to you, in a social way, isn't 
 always the man you would like to marry." 
 
 "But it's I, not you," Lydia protested, "who am 
 going to marry him." 
 
 "Then you are going to marry him?" 
 
 "I don't see anything else to do," replied Lydia, and 
 she went again over the twenty thousand a year argument. 
 Olivia saw that her hesitations were those of a cool brain
 
 96 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 and not of an ardent spirit, and she knew that the brain 
 had already come to a decision. 
 
 "I quite see," said Lydia half apologetically, "that 
 you think I ought to wait until I fall in love with a man. 
 But I should have to wait till Doomsday. I thought I 
 was in love with poor dear Fred. But I wasn't. I'm not 
 that sort. If Fred had gone on living I should have 
 gone on letting him adore me and have been perfectly 
 happy so long as he didn't expect me to adore him." 
 
 "Doesn't Mr. Rooke expect you to adore him?" asked 
 Olivia. 
 
 Lydia laughed, showing her white teeth, and shook a 
 wise and mirthful head. 
 
 "I'm convinced that was the secret of his first un- 
 happy marriage." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "The poor lady adored him and bored him to frenzy." 
 
 The clock on the mantelpiece struck the half-hour after 
 six. Lydia rose. She must go home and dress. She was 
 dining with Rooke at Claridge's at eight. 
 
 "I'm so glad we've had this little talk," she said. "I 
 felt I must tell you." 
 
 "I thought you wanted my advice," said Olivia. 
 
 "Oh, you silly!" answered Lydia, gathering her furs 
 around her. 
 
 They exchanged the conventional parting kiss. Oli- 
 via accompanied her to the landing. When the sum- 
 moned life appeared and its doors clashed open, Lydia 
 said: 
 
 "You wouldn't like to take over that hat shop at a 
 valuation, would you?" 
 
 "Good heavens, no!" cried the astounded Olivia.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 97 
 
 Lydia laughed and waved a grey-gloved hand and dis- 
 appeared downwards, like the Lady of the Venusberg 
 in an antiquated opera. 
 
 Olivia re-entered the flat thoughtfully, and sat down in 
 an arm-chair by the tiny wood fire in the sitting-room 
 grate. Lydia and Lydia's galley, and all that it signified, 
 disturbed her more than ever. They seemed not only 
 to have no ideals even as ballast, but to have flung them 
 overboard like so many curse-ridden Jonahs. To what 
 soulless land 'was she speeding with them? And not 
 only herself, but the England, of which she, as 
 much as any individual, was a representative unit? Was 
 it for the reaching of such a haven that her brothers had 
 given their lives? Was it that she should reach such 
 a haven that her mother, instinct with heroic passion, 
 had sent Stephen Gale forth to death? Was it to guide 
 the world on this Lydian path that Blaise Olifant had 
 given an arm and young Triona had cheerfully endured 
 Dantesque torturings? 
 
 Myra came in and began to remove the tea-things 
 Myra, gaunt, with her impassive, inexpressible face, 
 correct in black; silk blouse, stuff skirt, silk apron. 
 Olivia, disturbed in her efforts to solve the riddle of ex- 
 istence, swerved in her chair and half-humorously sought 
 the first human aid to hand. 
 
 "Myra, tell me. Why do you go on living?" 
 
 Myra made no pause in her methodical activity. 
 
 "God put me into the world to live. It's my duty to 
 live," she replied in her toneless way. "And God or- 
 dained me to live so that I should do my duty." 
 
 "And what do you think is your duty?" Olivia asked. 
 
 "You, of all people in the world, ought to know that,"
 
 98 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 said Myra, holding the door open with her foot, so as to 
 clear a passage for the tea-tray. 
 
 Olivia rested her elbows on the arms of the chair and 
 put her finger-tips to her temples. She felt at once re- 
 buked and informed with knowledge. Never before had 
 the Sphinx-like Myra so revealed herself. Probably she 
 had not had the opportunity, never having found her- 
 self subjected to such direct questioning. Being so sub- 
 jected, she replied with the unhesitating directness of 
 her nature. The grace of humility descended on Olivia. 
 What fine spirit can feel otherwise than humble when 
 confronted with the selfless devotion of a fellow-being? 
 And further humbled was she by the implicit declaration 
 of an ideal, noble and purposeful, such as her mind for 
 the past few months had not conceived. This elderly, 
 spinsterly foundling, child of naught, had, according to 
 her limited horizon, a philosophy nay, more a religion 
 of life which she unswervingly followed. According to 
 the infinite scale whereby human values ultimately are 
 estimated, Olivia judged herself sitting in the galley of 
 Lydia Dawlish as of far less account than Myra, her 
 butt and her slave from earliest infancy. 
 
 She rose and looked around the prettiness of taste and 
 colour with which she had transformed the original dully- 
 furnished room, and threw up her arm in a helpless ges- 
 ture. What did it all mean? What was she doing there? 
 On what was she squandering the golden hours of her 
 youth? To what end was she using such of a mind and 
 such of a soul as God had given her? At last, to sell her- 
 self for furs and food and silk cushions, and for the so- 
 ciety of other women clamorous of nothing but furs and 
 food and silk cushions, to a man like Sydney Rooke
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 99 
 
 without giving him anything in return save her outward 
 shape for him to lay jewels on and exhibit to the unin- 
 spiring world wherein he dwelt? 
 
 Far better return to Medlow and lead the life of a 
 clean woman. 
 
 Myra entered. "You're not dining out to-night?" 
 
 "No, thank God!" said Olivia. "I'll slip on any old 
 thing and go downstairs." 
 
 She dined in her little quiet corner of the restaurant, 
 and after dinner took up Triona's book, Through Blood 
 and Snow, which she had bought that morning, her pre- 
 vious acquaintance with it having been made through a 
 circulating library. In the autumn she had read and been 
 held by its magic; but casually as she had read scores 
 of books. But now it was instinct with a known yet 
 baffling personality. It was two o'clock in the morning 
 before she went to bed.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE tastes of Alexis Triona were not such as to 
 lead him into extravagant living on the fruits of 
 his literary success. To quality of food he was 
 indifferent; wine he neither understood nor cared for; 
 in the use of other forms of alcohol he was abstemious; 
 unlike most men bred in Russia he smoked moderately, 
 preferring the cigarettes he rolled himself from Virginia 
 tobacco to the more expensive Turkish or Egyptian 
 brands. His attire was simple. He would rather walk 
 than be driven; and he regarded his back-bedroom at 
 the top of the Vanloo Hotel as a luxurious habitation. 
 
 He had broken away from the easeful life at Medlow 
 because, as he explained to Blaise Olifant, it frightened 
 him. 
 
 "I'm up against nothing here," said he. 
 
 "You're up against your novel," replied Olifant. "A 
 man's work is always his fiercest enemy." 
 
 Triona would not accept the proposition. He and his 
 novel were one and indivisible. Together they must 
 fight against something he knew not what. Perhaps, 
 fight against time and opportunity. They wanted the 
 tense, stolen half -hours which he and his other book had 
 enjoyed. Would Olifant think him ungrateful if he 
 picked up and went on his mission to Helsingfors? 
 
 "My dear fellow," said Olifant, "the man who resents 
 a friend developing his own personality in his own way 
 doesn't deserve to have a friend." 
 
 IOO
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 101 
 
 "It's like you to say that," cried Triona. "I shall al- 
 ways remember. When I get back I shall let you know." 
 
 So Alexis Triona vanished from a uninspiring Medlow, 
 and two months afterwards gave Olifant his address at 
 the Vanloo Hotel. Olifant, tired by a long spell of close 
 work, went up for an idle week in London. 
 
 "Come back and carry on as before," he suggested. 
 
 But Triona ran his fingers through his brown hair and 
 held out his hand. 
 
 "No. The wise man never tries to repeat a past pleas- 
 ure. As a wise old Russian friend of mine used to say 
 never relight a cigar." 
 
 So after a few days of pleasant companionship in the 
 soberer delights of town, Blaise Olifant returned to Med- 
 low and Triona remained in his little back room in the 
 Vanloo Hotel. 
 
 One night, a week or so after his visit to Olivia Gale, 
 he threw down his pen, read over the last sheet that he 
 had written, and, with a gesture of impatience, tore it 
 up. Suddenly he discovered that he could not breathe 
 in the stuffy bedroom. He drew back the curtains and 
 opened the window and looked out on myriad chimney- 
 pots and a full moon shining on them from a windless 
 sky. The bright air filled his lungs. Desire for wider 
 spaces beneath the moon shook him like a touch of claus- 
 trophobia. He thrust on the coat which he had discarded, 
 seized a hat, and, switching off the light, hurried from the 
 room. He went out into the streets, noiseless save for 
 the rare, swift motors that flashed by like ghosts fleeing 
 terrified from some earthly doom. 
 
 He walked and walked until he suddenly realized that
 
 102 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 he had emerged from Whitehall and faced the moonlight 
 beauty of the Houses of Parliament standing in majestic 
 challenge against the sky, and the Abbey sleeping in its 
 centuries of dreams. 
 
 Away across the Square, by Broad Sanctuary, was the 
 opening of a great thoroughfare, and, as his eyes sought 
 it, he confessed to himself the subconscious impulse that 
 had led him thither. Yet was it not a cheat of a sub- 
 conscious impulse? Had he not gone out from the hotel 
 in Kensington with a definite purpose? As he crossed to 
 Broad Sanctuary and the entrance to Victoria Street, he 
 argued it out with himself. Anyhow, it was the most 
 fool of fool-errands. But yet he shrugged his shoul- 
 ders and laughed. To what errand could a fool's errand 
 be comparable? Only to that of one pixy-led. He 
 laughed at the thought of his disquisition to Olivia on 
 the Will-o'-the-Wisp. In the rare instances of the fol- 
 lower of Faith had he not proclaimed its guidance to the 
 Land of Promise? 
 
 Three days before he had seen her. He had been im- 
 pelled by an irresistible desire to see her. To call on her 
 without shadow of excuse was impossible. To telephone 
 or write an invitation to lunch was an act unsuggested by 
 his limited social experience. Taking his chance that 
 she should emerge between eleven and twelve, he strolled 
 up and down the pavement, so that at last when fate 
 favoured him and he advanced to meet her, they greeted 
 each other with a smiling air of surprise. They explained 
 their respective objectives. She was for buying a patent 
 coffee machine at the Army and Navy Stores, he for 
 catching an undesirable train at Victoria Station. A
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 103 
 
 threatening morning suddenly became a rainy noon. He 
 turned back with her and they fled together and just 
 reached the Stores in time to escape from the full fury of 
 the downpour. There he bent his mind on coffee ma- 
 chines. His masculine ignorance of the whole art of 
 coffee-making, a flannel bag in a jug being his primitive 
 conception, moved her to light-hearted mirth. The pur- 
 chase made, the order given, they wandered idly through 
 the great establishment. They were prisoners, the out- 
 side world being weltering deluge. For once in his life- 
 time, thought Triona, the elements warred on his side. 
 A wringing machine, before which he paused in wonder- 
 ment at its possible use, and an eager description on 
 the part of the salesman, put Olivia on the track of a 
 game into which he entered with devoted fervour. Let 
 them suppose they were going to furnish a house. Oh! 
 a great big palace of a house. In imagination they bought 
 innumerable things, furnishing the mansion chiefly with 
 hammocks and marquees and garden chairs and lawn- 
 mowers and grand pianos and egg-whisks. Her heart, 
 that morning, attuned to laughter, brought colour into 
 her cheeks and brightness into her eyes. To the young 
 man's ear she seemed to have an adorable gift of phrase. 
 She invested a rolling-pin with a humorous individuality. 
 She touched a tray of doughnuts with her fancy and 
 turned them into sacramental bread of Momus, ex- 
 quisite Divinity of Mirth. She was so free, so graceful, 
 so intimate, so irresistible. He followed her, a young man 
 bemused. What he contributed to the game he scarcely 
 knew. He was only conscious of her charm and her whip- 
 ping of his wit. They stumbled into the department of
 
 104 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 men's haberdashery. His brain conceived a daring idea. 
 
 "I've been trying for weeks," said he, "to make up my 
 mind to buy a tie." 
 
 Olivia glanced swiftly round and sped to a counter. 
 
 "Ties, please." 
 
 "What kind?" asked the salesman. 
 
 "Ordinary silk sailor-knot. Show me all you've got." 
 
 Before his entranced eyes she selected half a dozen, 
 with a taste which the artist within him knew was impec- 
 cable. He presented the bill bearing her number at the 
 cashier's pigeon hole, and returning took the neat packet 
 from the salesman with the air of one receiving a decora- 
 tion from royalty. They made their way to the exit. 
 She said: 
 
 "I'm afraid we've been criminally frivolous." 
 
 "If such happiness is a crime I'd willingly swing for it." 
 
 He noted a quick, uncomprehending question in her 
 glance and the colour mounted into his pale cheeks. 
 
 "My English idiom is not yet perfect," he said. "I 
 ought not to have used that expression." 
 
 Olivia laughed at his discomfiture. 
 
 "It's generally used by dreadful people who threaten to 
 do one another in. But the metaphor's thrilling, all the 
 same." 
 
 The rain had ceased. After a few moments the mackin- \ 
 toshed commissionaire secured a taxi. Triona accom- 
 panied her to the door. She thrust out a frank hand. 
 
 "Au revoir. It has been delightful to find you so 
 human." 
 
 She drove off. He stood, with a smile on his lips, 
 watching the vehicle disappear in the traffic. Her fare-
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 105 
 
 well was characteristic. What could one expect of her 
 but the unexpected? 
 
 That was three days ago. The image of her uncon- 
 sciously alluring yet frank to disconcertment, spiritually 
 feminine yet materially impatient of sex ; the image of her 
 in the three separate settings the dark-eyed princess in 
 fur and flame beneath the electric light of the theatre 
 portico; the slim girl in simple blouse and skirt who, over 
 the pretty teacups, held so nice a balance between Olifant 
 and himself; the gay playmate of a rainy hour, in her 
 fawn costume (he still felt the thrill of the friendly touch 
 of her fawn-coloured gloved hands on his sleeve) the 
 composite image and vision of her had filled his sleeping 
 and waking thoughts to the destruction of his peace of 
 mind and the dislocation of his work. 
 
 Thus, on this warm night of spring, he stood, the most 
 foolishly romantical of mortals, at the entrance to Vic- 
 toria Street, and with a shrug of his shoulders proceeded 
 on his errand of mute troubadour. Perhaps the day of 
 rapture might come when he would tell her how he stood 
 in the watches of the night and gazed up at what he 
 had to imagine was her window on the fifth floor of the 
 undistinguished barrack that was her home. It was 
 poetic, fantastic, Russian, at any rate. It would also 
 mark the end of his excursion; it was a fair tramp back 
 to South Kensington. 
 
 An unheeded taxi-cab whizzed past him as he walked; 
 but a few seconds later, the faint sound of splintering 
 glass and then the scrunch of brakes suddenly applied 
 awoke him from his smiling meditations. The cab 
 stopped, sharply outlined in the clear moonlight. The
 
 106 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 driver leaped from his seat and flung open the door. A 
 woman sprang out, followed by a man. Both were in 
 evening dress. Voices rose at once in altercation. Tri- 
 ona, suspecting an accident, quickened his pace instinc- 
 tively into a run and joined the group. 
 
 "What's up?" 
 
 But as the instinctive words passed his lips he be- 
 came amazedly conscious of Olivia standing there, quiver- 
 ing, as white as the white dress and cloak she wore, her 
 eyes ablaze. She flashed on him a half-hysterical rec- 
 ognition and clutched his arm. 
 
 "You?" 
 
 He drew himself up to his slim height and looked first 
 at the taxi driver and then at the heavy, swarthy man in 
 evening dress, and then at her. 
 
 "What's the matter? Tell me," he rapped out. 
 
 "This man tried to insult me," she gasped. 
 
 Olivia never knew how it happened: it happened like 
 some instantaneous visitation of God. The lithe young 
 figure suddenly shot forward and the heavy man rolled 
 yards away on the pavement. 
 
 "Serve him damn well right," said the driver; "but 
 where do I come in with my window broken?" 
 
 "Oh, you shall be paid, you shall be paid," cried Olivia. 
 "Pay him, Mr. Triona, and let us go." 
 
 Triona glanced up and down the street. "No, this 
 gentleman's going to pay," he said quietly and advanced 
 to the heavy man who had scrambled to unsteady feet. 
 
 "Just you settle up with that cabman, quick, do you 
 hear, or I'll knock you down again. I could knock you 
 down sixty times an hour. And so help be, God, if a 
 copper comes in sight I'll murder you."
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 107 
 
 "All right, all right," said the man hurriedly. "I don't 
 want a scandal for the lady's sake." He turned to the 
 taxi man. "How much do you want?" 
 
 "With the damage it'll be a matter of ten pound." 
 
 The swarthy man in evening dress fished out his note- 
 case. 
 
 "Here you are, you blackmailing thief." 
 
 "None of your back-chat, or I'll finish off what this 
 gentleman has begun," said the taxi man, pocketing the 
 money. 
 
 Until he saw summary justice accomplished, Triona 
 stood in the lee of the houses, his arm stretched pro- 
 tectingly in front of Olivia. Then he drew her 
 away. 
 
 "I'll see the lady home. It's only a few steps." 
 
 "Right, sir. Good night, sir," said the taxi man. 
 
 They moved on. Immediately in the silence of the 
 night came the crisp exchange of words. 
 
 "I'll give you a pound to take me to Porchester Ter- 
 race." 
 
 "And I'd give a pound to see you walk there, said 
 the driver, already in his seat. 
 
 He threw in the clutch and with a cheery "Good night" 
 passed the extravagantly encountered pair. 
 
 "They say miracles don't happen, but one has hap- 
 pened now," said Olivia breathlessly. "If you hadn't 
 come out of space " 
 
 "Do tell me something about it," he asked. 
 
 "But don't you know?" 
 
 "You said that profit-merchant had insulted you and 
 that was enough for me." 
 
 "Oh, my God! I'm so ashamed!" she cried, with a
 
 108 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 wild, pretty gesture of her hands. "What will you think 
 of me?" 
 
 Mad words rushed through his brain, but before they 
 found utterance he gripped himself. He had, once more, 
 his hands on the controls. 
 
 "What I think of you, Miss Gale, it would be wiser not 
 to say. I should like to hear what has occurred. But, 
 pardon me," he said abruptly, noticing her curious, un- 
 even step, and glancing down instinctively at her feet, 
 "what has become of your shoe?" 
 
 "My slipper why, of course " She halted, sud- 
 denly aware of the loss. "I must have left it in the cab. 
 I stuck up my foot and reached for it and broke the win- 
 dow with the heel. I also think I hit him in the face." 
 
 "It seems as though he was down and out before I 
 came up," said Triona. 
 
 "If you hadn't I don't how I should have carried on," 
 she confessed. 
 
 They walked down the wide, empty street. The moon 
 shone high above them, the girl in her elegance, the man in 
 his loose grey flannels and soft felt hat, an incongruous 
 couple, save for their common air of alert youth. And 
 while they walked she rapidly told her story. She had 
 been to Percy's with the usual crowd, Lydia Dawlish her 
 nominal chaperone. The man, Edwin Mavenna, a city 
 friend of Sydney Rooke, whom she had met a half a dozen 
 times, had offered to drive her home in his waiting taxi. 
 Tried, dependent for transport on Rooke and Lydia, who 
 desired a further hour of the night club's dismal 
 jocundity, and angry with Bobby Quinton, who seemed 
 to think that her ear had no other function than to listen 
 to tales of sentimenti-financial woe, she had accepted.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 109 
 
 Half-way home she had begun to regret; three-quarters 
 of the way she had been frightened. As they turned into 
 Victoria Street she had managed to free her arm and wield 
 the victorious slipper. 
 
 "I'll never go to that abominable place again as long as 
 I live," she cried. 
 
 "I should, if I were you," he said quietly. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "I'd go once or twice, at any rate. To show yourself 
 independent of it. To prove to yourself that you're not 
 frightened of it." 
 
 "But I am frightened of it. On the outside it's as 
 respectable as Medlow Parish Church on Sunday. But 
 below the surface there's all sorts of hideousness and 
 I'm frightened." 
 
 "You're not," said he. "Things may startle you, 
 infuriate you, put you off your equilibrium; but they 
 don't frighten you. They didn't this evening. I've seen 
 too many people frightened in my time not to know. 
 You're not that sort." 
 
 They had reached the door of the Mansions. She 
 smiled at him, her gaiety returning. 
 
 "You're as comforting and consoling a Knight Errant 
 as one could wish to meet. The damsel in distress is 
 greatly beholden to you. But how the whatever 
 you like you managed to time the rescue is beyond my 
 comprehension." 
 
 "The stars guided me," he replied, with an upward 
 sweep of the hand. "Mortals have striven to comprehend 
 them for thousands of years but without success. I 
 started out to wander about this great city I often do 
 for hours I'm a born wanderer with the vagabond's
 
 110 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 aimlessness and trust in chance, or in the stars and this 
 time the stars brought me where it was decreed that I 
 should be." 
 
 While he was speaking she had opened the door with 
 her latchkey and now stood, shimmering white in the 
 gloom of the entrance. She held out her hand. 
 
 "I'm afraid I've been too much occupied in trying not 
 to seemed frightened and silly to thank you decently for 
 what you've done. But I am grateful. You don't know 
 how grateful. I'll have to tell you some other time." 
 
 "To-morrow?" he asked eagerly. 
 
 She hesitated for a moment. "Yes, to-morrow," she 
 replied softly. "I shall be in all day. Goodnight." 
 
 After the swift handshake the door closed on the enrap- 
 tured young man, and the hard, characterless street, 
 down which he seemed to dance, became transformed 
 into a moonlit glade of fairyland. 
 
 It was four o'clock in the morning when he entered his 
 back-bedroom at the Vanloo Hotel. But he did not sleep. 
 He had no desire for sleep youth resenting the veil 
 drawn across a consciousness so exquisitely alive. Sleep, 
 when the stars in their courses were fighting for him? 
 Impossible, preposterous! Let him rather live, again 
 and again, over the night's crowded adventure. Every 
 detail of it set his pulses throbbing. The mere glorious 
 first recognition of her was the thrill of a lifetime. 
 He constructed and reconstructed the immortal pic- 
 ture. The moonlit, silent street, its high, decorous 
 buildings marked by the feeble gas lamps melting into 
 an indeterminate vanishing point. The clear-cut scene. 
 The taxicab. The three human figures. The stunted 
 driver. The massive, dark man, in silk hat which re-
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 111 
 
 fleeted the moonlight, in black over-coat thrown open, 
 revealing a patch of white shirt and waistcoat; the 
 slender, quivering, white form draped in white fur, white 
 gossamer, white what-not, crowned with dark glory of 
 eyes and hair. The masculine in him exulted in his 
 physical strength and skill in the clean, straight, ele- 
 mentary yet scientific left-hander that got the hulking 
 swine between the eyes and sent him reeling and sprawl- 
 ing and asking for no more punishment. And then oh, 
 it was a great thing to command, to impose his 
 will. To walk in triumph off with the wonderful lady of 
 his dreams. To feel, as she thanked him, that here was 
 something definite that he had done for her, something 
 with a touch of the romantic, the heroic, which, in its 
 trivial way, justified belief in the incidents of his adven- 
 turous career which he had so modestly, yet so vividly 
 described in the book that had brought him fame. 
 
 On this point of justification he was peculiarly sensi- 
 tive. Various Englishmen, soldiers sent out on secret mis- 
 sions to the fringes of the areas of his activities, had ques- 
 tioned many of his statements, both in the book and in 
 descriptive articles which he had written for newspapers 
 and other periodicals, and asked for proofs. And he had 
 replied, most cogently, that the sphere of the Russian 
 Secret Service in which he was employed was, of necessity, 
 beyond the ken of the secret service of any other Power 
 in Europe, and that official proofs were lost in the social 
 and political disintegration of Russia. One man, a great 
 man, speaking with unquestionable authority, silenced 
 the horde of cavillers as far as events prior to 1917 were 
 concerned. But there were still some who barked annoy- 
 ingly at his heels. Proofs, of course, he had none to give.
 
 112 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 How can a man give proofs when he is cast up, practically 
 naked, on the coast of England? He must be believed or 
 not. And it was the haunting terror of this sensitive boy 
 of genius, whose face and eyes bore the ineffaceable marks 
 of suffering, that he should lose the credit which he had 
 gained. 
 
 At all hazards he must allow no doubts to arise in the 
 mind of Olivia. To fight them down he would do all 
 manner of extravagant things. He regretted the pusillan- 
 imous tameness of his late opponent. If the man had 
 only picked himself up and given battle! If only there 
 had been half a dozen abductors or insulters instead of 
 one! His spirits (at seven o'clock) sank at the logical 
 conclusion that the conventional conditions of post-war 
 civilized life afforded a meagre probability of the recur- 
 rence of such another opportunity. He had the tempera- 
 ment of those whose hunger is only whetted by triumph, 
 to whom attainment only gives vision of new heights. 
 When, after tossing sleepless in his bed, he rose and 
 dressed at nine, he had decided that, in knocking down a 
 mere mass of unresisting flesh, he had played a part 
 almost inglorious, such as any stay-at-home embusqui 
 could have played. By not one jot or tittle did his act 
 advance the credibility of his story. And on his story 
 alone could he found his hopes of finding favour in her 
 marvellous eyes. Of the touch of genius that inspired 
 his literary work he thought little. At this stage of his 
 career he was filled with an incredulous wonder at his 
 possession of a knack which converted a page of scribble 
 into a cheque upon a bank. His writing meant money. 
 Not money, wealth, on the grand scale; but money to 
 keep him as a modest gentleman on the social grade to
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 113 
 
 which he had attained, and to save him from the detested 
 livery of the chauffeur. The story which he was telling 
 in the new book was but a means to this end. The 
 story which he had told was life itself. Nay, now it was 
 more: it was love itself; it was a girl who was more than 
 life. 
 
 He called at the Victoria Street flat at twelve o'clock. 
 The austere Myra looked on him disapprovingly. Tea- 
 time was the visiting time for stray young men, and even 
 then she conveyed to them the impression that she let 
 them in on sufferance. 
 
 "What name?" she asked. 
 
 "Mr. Triona." 
 
 "Miss Gale is in, sir," she admitted grudgingly, having 
 received explicit orders from Olivia, "but she is dressing 
 and I don't know whether she can see you." 
 
 "Will you tell Miss Gale that I am entirely at her ser- 
 vice, and if it's inconvenient for her to see me now I'll 
 call later." 
 
 Myra left him standing in the little vestibule and gave 
 the message to Olivia, who, fully dressed, was polishing 
 her nails in her bedroom. 
 
 "You're the most impossible woman on earth," Olivia 
 declared, turning on her. "Is that the way you 
 would treat a man who had delivered you from a 
 dragon?" 
 
 "I don't hold with men and I don't hold with dragons," 
 replied Myra unmoved. "The next time you'll be want- 
 ing me to fall over a dragon who has delivered you from 
 a man!" 
 
 Olivia scarcely listened to the retort. She flew out and 
 carried the waiting Triona into the sitting-room.
 
 114 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "I'm so sorry. My maid's a terror. She bites and 
 doesn't bark. But I guarantee her non-venomous. How 
 good of you to come so early." 
 
 "I was anxious," said Triona. 
 
 "About what?" 
 
 "Last night must have been a shock." 
 
 "Of course it was," she laughed; "but not enough to 
 keep me all day long in fainting fits with doctors and 
 smelling-bottles." 
 
 "I hope you slept all right." 
 
 "No," she replied frankly. "That I didn't do. The 
 adventure was a bit too exciting. Besides " 
 
 "Besides what?" 
 
 "It came into my head to make up my moral balance 
 sheet. Figures of arithmetic always send me to sleep; 
 but figures of well, of that kind of thing, don't you 
 know keep me broad awake." 
 
 Olivia's dark, eager face was of the kind that shows the 
 traces of fatigue in faint shadows under the eyes. He 
 swiftly noted them and cried out: 
 
 "You're dead tired. It's damnable." He rose, sud- 
 denly angry. "You ought to go to bed at once. Your 
 maid was right. I had no business to come at this hour 
 and disturb you." 
 
 "If you hadn't come," said Olivia, inwardly glowing at 
 the tribute paid by the indignant youth, "I should have 
 imagined that you looked on last night's affair as a trum- 
 pery incident in the day's work and went to bed and for- 
 got all about it." 
 
 "That's impossible," said he. "I, too, haven't slept a 
 wink." 
 
 She met and held his eyes longer than she, or anyone
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 115 
 
 else, had held them. Then, half angrily, she felt her 
 cheeks grow hot and red. 
 
 "For you, who have faced death a hundred times, last 
 night, as I've just said, must be even dull. What was 
 it to the night when you you know the sentry when 
 you were unarmed and you fought with him and you 
 killed him with his own bayonet?" 
 
 He snapped his fingers and smiled. "That was unim- 
 portant. Whether I lived or died didn't matter to any- 
 body. It didn't matter much to me. It was sheer 
 animal instinct. But last night it was you. And that 
 makes a universe of difference." 
 
 Olivia rose, and, with a "You're not smoking," offered 
 him a box of cigarettes. 
 
 "Yes," she said, when he had lighted it, with fingers 
 trembling ever so slightly as they held the match, "I sup- 
 pose a woman does make a difference. We're always in 
 the way, somehow. Women and children first. Why 
 they don't throw us overboard at once and let the really 
 useful people save themselves, I could never make out." 
 
 His air of dismay was that of a devotee listening to a 
 saint blaspheme. Her laughter rippled, music to his ears. 
 
 "Do you know what I should like to do? Get out of 
 London for a few hours and fill my lungs with air. Rich- 
 mond Park, for instance." 
 
 "I, too." He sighed. "If only I had a car!" 
 
 "There are such things as motor-buses." 
 
 He sprang to delighted feet. His divinity on a bus top ! 
 It was like the Paphian goddess condescending from her 
 dove-drawn chariot to the joggle of a four-wheeler cab. 
 
 "Would you really go on one?" 
 
 She would. She would start forthwith. The time
 
 116 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 only to put on a hat. She left him to his heart-beats of 
 happiness, presently to reappear, hatted, gloved, and 
 smiling. 
 
 "You're quite sure you would like to come? Your 
 work?" 
 
 "My work needs the open air as much as I do," said 
 he. 
 
 They went forth, boy and girl on a jaunt, and side by 
 side on the top of the omnibus they gave themselves up 
 to the laughter of the pure sunshine. At Richmond they 
 lunched, for youth must be fed, and afterwards went 
 through the streets of the old town, and stood on the 
 bridge watching the exquisite curve of the river embos- 
 omed in the very newest of new greenery, and let its 
 loveliness sink into their hearts. Then they wandered 
 deep into the Park and found a tree from beneath which 
 they could see the deer browsing in the shade; and there 
 they sat, happy in their freedom and isolation. What 
 they said, most of the time, was no great matter. Of 
 the two, perhaps she talked the more; for he had said: 
 
 "I am so tired of talking about myself. I have been 
 obliged to, so that it has become a professional habit. 
 And what there is to be known about me, you know. 
 But you you who have lived such a different life from 
 mine I know so little of you. In fact, I've known noth- 
 ing of English women such as you. You're a mystery. 
 Tell me about yourself." 
 
 So she had begun: 
 
 "Well, I was born I shan't tell you the year of poor 
 but honest parents " 
 
 And then, led on by his eager sympathy and his inti- 
 mate knowledge of her home, she had abandoned the jest-
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 117 
 
 ing note and talked simply and frankly of her secluded 
 and eventless life. With feminine guile, and with last 
 night's newborn mistrust of men, she set a little trap. 
 
 "Did you ever go into my mother's room?" 
 
 "I don't think so. Perhaps that was the one the 
 best bedroom which Olifant always kept locked." 
 
 She felt ashamed of her unworthy suspicion; glad at 
 the loyal keeping of a promise, to the extent of not allow- 
 ing a visitor even a peep inside the forbidden chamber. 
 
 "I thing Blaise Olifant is one of the finest types Eng- 
 land breeds," she said warmly. 
 
 There was a touch of jealous fear in his swift glance; 
 but he replied with equal warmth: 
 
 "You needn't tell me that. Brave, modest, of sensitive 
 honour Ah! A man with a mind so cultivated that he 
 seems to know nothing until you talk with him, and then 
 you find that he knows everything. I love him." 
 
 "I'm glad to hear you say that." 
 
 "Why? Do you admire him so much?" 
 
 "It isn't tha," she parried. "It's on your account. 
 One man's generous praise of another does one's heart 
 good." She threw out her arms as though to embrace 
 the rolling park of infinite sward and majestic trees. "I 
 love big things," she said. 
 
 Whereupon Alexis Triona thanked his stars for having 
 led him along the true path. 
 
 Who can say that, in after years, these twain, when 
 they shall have grown old and have gone through what- 
 ever furnaces Fate either personal destiny or the Fate 
 of Social Institutions may prepare for them, will not 
 retain imperishable memories of the idyll of that sweet 
 spring day? There they sat, youth spiritually commun-
 
 118 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 ing with youth; the girl urged by feminine instinct to 
 love him for the dangers he had passed; the young man 
 aflame with her beauty, her charm, her dryad elusive- 
 ness. Here, for him, was yet another aspect of her, free, 
 unseizable in the woodland setting. And for her, another 
 aspect of him, the simple, clean-cut Englishman, divested 
 of vague and disquieting Russian citizenship, the perfect 
 companion, responsive to every chord struck by the spirit 
 of the magic afternoon. In the years to come, who can 
 say that they will not remember this sweet and delicate 
 adventure of their souls creeping forth in trembling 
 reconnaissance one of the other? Perhaps it will be a 
 more precious memory to the woman than to the man. 
 Men do not lay things up in lavender as women do. 
 
 If he had spoken, declared his passion in lover's set 
 terms, perhaps her heart might have been caught by the 
 glamour of it all, and she might have surrendered to his 
 kisses, and they might have journeyed back to London 
 in a state of unreprehensible yet commonplace beatitude. 
 And the memory would possibly have been marked by a 
 white stone rising stark in an airless distance. But he 
 did not speak, held back by a rare reverence of her maid- 
 enhood and her perfect trust; and in her heart flowered 
 gratitude for his sensitiveness to environment. So easy 
 for a maladroit touch to mar the perfection of an ex- 
 quisite hour of blue mist and mystery. So, again, who 
 knows but that in the years to come the memory will be 
 marked by a fragrance, a shimmer of leaves, a haze over 
 green sward, incorporated impalpably with the dear 
 ghost of an immortal day? 
 
 They returned on the top of the omnibus, rather late, 
 and on the way they spoke little. Now and then he
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 119 
 
 glanced sideways at her and met her eyes and caught her 
 smile, and felt content. At the terminus of the omnibus 
 route, in the raging, busy precincts of the stations of 
 Victoria, they alighted. He walked with her to her door 
 in Victoria Street. 
 
 "Your words have been singing in my ears," said he: 
 " 'I love big things.' To me, to-day has seemed a big 
 thing." 
 
 "And I've loved it," she replied. 
 
 "True?" 
 
 "True." 
 
 She sped up to her room somewhat dazed, conscious ot 
 need to keep her balance. So much had happened in the 
 last four-and-twenty hours. The shudder of the night 
 had still horrified her flesh when she drew the young man 
 out into the wide daylight and the open air; and now it 
 had passed away, as though it had never been, and a new 
 quivering of youth, taking its place, ran like laughter 
 through her bodily frame and her heart and her mind. 
 
 "H'm. Your outing seems to have done you good," 
 said the impassive Myra, letting her in. 
 
 "My first day's escape from a foetid prison," she said. 
 
 "I suppose you know what you're talking about," said 
 Myra. 
 
 Olivia laughed and threw her arm round Myra's lean 
 shoulders. 
 
 "Of course I do." 
 
 "He ain't much to look at." 
 
 Olivia, flushing, turned on her. 
 
 "I never knew a more abominable woman." 
 
 "Then you're lucky," retorted Myra, and faded away 
 into her kitchen.
 
 120 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 Olivia, mirthful, uplifted, danced, as it were, into the 
 sitting-room and began to pull off her gloves. Suddenly 
 her glance fell on a letter lying on her writing table. She 
 frowned slightly as she opened it, and as she read the 
 frown grew deeper. It was from Bobby Quinton. What 
 his dearest of dear ladies would think of him he left on 
 the joint knees of the gods and of his dearest lady but 
 but the wolves were at his heels. He had thrown 
 them all that he possessed fur coat, watch and chain, 
 diamond studs, and, having gulped them all, they were 
 still in fierce pursuit. In a fortnight would he have 
 ample funds to satisfy them. But now he was at bay. 
 He apologized for the mixture of metaphor. But still, 
 there he was aux abois. Fifty pounds, just for a fort- 
 night. Could the dearest of dear ladies see her way ? 
 
 She went to her desk and wrote out a cheque which 
 she enclosed in an envelope. To save her soul alive she 
 could not have written Bobby Quinton an accompanying 
 line.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 HERE, all in a rush of twenty-four hours, was a 
 glut of incident for a young woman out for 
 adventure. Triona had only made his effect 
 on the romantically feminine within Olivia by his trium- 
 phant rescue. As to that he need have no misgivings. 
 So once did Andromeda see young Perseus, calm and 
 assured, deliver her from the monster. Triona's felling 
 of Mavenna appealed to the lingering savage woman 
 fiercely conscious of wrong avenged; but his immediate 
 and careless mastery of the situation struck civilized 
 chords. She could see him dominating the sheepskin-clad 
 tribe in the Urals (see Through Blood and Snow} until 
 he established their independence in their mountain 
 fastness. She could see him, masterful, resourceful, 
 escaping from the Bolshevik prison and making his 
 resistless way across a hostile continent. She could also 
 appreciate, after this wonder-day at Richmond, the 
 suppleness of his simple charm which won him food and 
 shelter where food scarcely existed and shelter to a stran- 
 ger was a matter of shooting or a bashing in of heads. 
 
 As for Mavenna, her flesh still shuddered at the mem- 
 ory of those few moments of insult. What he said she 
 could scarcely remember. The inextricable clutch of 
 his great arms around her body and the detestable kisses 
 eclipsed mere words. Unwittingly his hug had com- 
 pressed her throat so that she could not scream. There 
 had been nothing for it but the slipper unhooked by the 
 
 121
 
 122 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 free arm, and the doughty heel. Had she won through 
 alone to her room, she would have collapsed so she 
 assured herself from sickening horror. But the De- 
 liverer had been there, as in a legend of Greece or 
 Broceliande, and had saved her from the madness of the 
 nymph terror stricken by Satyrs. The two extrava- 
 gances had, in a way, counteracted each other, setting 
 her, by the morning, in a normal equilibrium. She had 
 tried to explain the phenomenon by referring to her hav- 
 ing spent the night in striking a moral balance-sheet. 
 And then had come the day, the wonderful day, in which 
 the Deliverer had proved himself the perfect, gentle 
 Knight. Can it be wondered that her brain swam with 
 him? 
 
 She went the next morning to Lydia's hat shop, and, 
 in the little room which Sydney Brooke had called her 
 cubby hole, a nine-foot-square boudoir office, reeking 
 with Lydia's scent and with Heaven knows what scan- 
 dals and vulgarities and vanities of post-war London, she 
 poured out her tale of outrage. After listening with 
 indulgent patience, Lydia remarked judicially: 
 
 "I told you, my dear child, when you came to London, 
 that the first lesson you had to learn was to take care of 
 yourself." 
 
 Olivia flashed. She had taken care of herself well 
 enough. But that brute Mavenna what about him? 
 
 "Everybody knows Mavenna," replied Lydia. "No 
 girl in her senses would have trusted herself alone with 
 him." 
 
 "And, with that reputation, he's a friend of yours and 
 Sydney's?" 
 
 Lydia shrugged her plump shoulders.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 123 
 
 "Really, my dear, if one exacted certificates of lamb- 
 like innocence, signed by a high celestial official, before 
 you admitted anyone into the circle of your acquaint- 
 ance, you might as well go and live on a desert island." 
 
 "But this man's a beast and you've known it all 
 along!" cried Olivia. 
 
 "Only in one way." 
 
 "But my God! Isn't that enough?" Olivia stood, 
 racked with disgust and amazement, over her mild-eyed, 
 philosophic friend. "What would you have done if 
 you had been in my place?" 
 
 "I could never have been in your place," said Lydia. 
 "I should have been too wise." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "The knowledge of men, my dear, is the beginning of 
 wisdom." 
 
 "And I ought to have known?" 
 
 "Of course. At any rate, you'll know in the future." 
 
 "I shall. You may be dead certain I shall," declared 
 Olivia, in her anger and excitement seizing a puckered 
 and pleated cushion from the divan by which she stood. 
 "And if even I " 
 
 "Don't, darling; you'll tear it," said Lydia calmly. 
 
 Olivia heaved the cushion back impatiently. 
 
 "What I want to know is this. Are you and Sydney 
 going to remain friends with Mavenna?" 
 
 "I'm afraid we'll have to," replied Lydia. "Mavenna 
 and Sydney are in all sorts of big things together." 
 
 "Well, when next you see him, Lydia, look well into 
 his face and ask him what he thinks of the heel of my 
 slipper and Mr. Triona's fist. He's not only a beast.
 
 124 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 He's a worm. When I think of him picking himself up, 
 
 after being knocked down by a man half his size " 
 
 She laughed a bit hysterically. "Oh the creature is 
 outside the pale!" 
 
 Lydia shook her fair head. "I'm sorry for you, my 
 dear. But he's inside all right." 
 
 "Then I'm not going to be inside with him!" cried 
 Olivia. 
 
 And, like a little dark dust storm, she swirled out of 
 the office and, through the shop, into the freedom and 
 spaciousness of the streets. And that, for Olivia, was 
 the end of night clubs and dancing as a serious aim in 
 life, and a host of other vanities. 
 
 A few mornings afterwards Lydia sailed into the flat 
 and greeted Olivia as though nothing had happened. 
 She seemed to base her philosophy of life on obliteration 
 of the past, yesterday being as dead as a winter's day of 
 sixty years ago. Would Olivia lunch with Sydney and 
 herself at some riverside club? Sydney, having collected 
 Mauregard, would be calling for them with the car. The 
 day was fine and warm; the prospect of the cool lawn 
 reaching down to the plashing river allured, and she liked 
 Mauregard. Besides, she had begun to take a humor- 
 ous view of Lydia. She consented. Lydia began to 
 talk of her wedding, fixed for the middle of July, of the 
 clothes that she had and the clothes that she hadn't 
 the ratio of the former to the latter being that of a loin- 
 cloth to the stock of Selfridge's. When she was serious 
 minded, Lydia always expressed herself in terms of rai- 
 ment. 
 
 "And you'll have to get some things, too, as you're 
 going to be bridesmaid."
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 125 
 
 "Am I?" asked Olivia, this being the first she had 
 heard of it. "And who's going to be best man Ma- 
 venna?" 
 
 Lydia looked aghast. So might a band of primitive 
 Christians have received a suggestion of inviting the 
 ghost of Pontius Pilate to a commemorative supper. 
 
 "My dear child, you don't suppose we're going to ask 
 that horror to the wedding?" 
 
 "The other day," Olivia remarked drily, "I under- 
 stood that you and Sydney loved him dearly." 
 
 Lydia sighed. "I'm beginning to believe that you'll 
 never understand anything." 
 
 So the breach, if breach there were, was healed. 
 Olivia, relating the matter to Triona at their next meet- 
 ing, qualified Lydia's attitude as one of callous magna- 
 nimity. 
 
 Meanwhile her intimacy with the young man began to 
 ripen. 
 
 One evening Janet Philimore invited her to dine at the 
 Russian circle of a great womans' club, which was enter- 
 taining Triona at dinner. This was the first time she 
 had seen him in his character of modest lion; the first 
 time, too, she had been in a company of women groping, 
 however clumsily, after ideals in unsyncopated time. 
 The thin girl next to her, pretty enough, thought Olivia, 
 if only she had used a powder puff to mitigate the over- 
 assertiveness of a greasy skin, and had given less the 
 impression of having let out her hair to a bird for nest- 
 ing purposes, and had only seized the vital importance 
 of colour the untrue greeny daffodil of her frock not 
 being the best for a sallow complexion the girl next 
 to her, Agnes Blenkiron, started a hectic conversation
 
 126 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 by enquiring what she was going to do in Baby Week. 
 The more ignorant Olivia professed herself to be of 
 babies and their antecedents, especially the latter, the 
 more indignantly explicit became Miss Blenkiron. Olivia 
 listened until she had creepy sensations around the roots 
 of her hair and put up an instinctive hand to assure her- 
 self that it was not standing on end. Miss Blenkiron 
 talked feminist physiology, psychology, sociological ther- 
 apeutics, until Olivia's brain reeled. Over and over 
 again she tried to turn to her hostess, who fortunately 
 had a pleasant male and middle-aged neighbour, but the 
 fair lady, without mercy, had her in thrall. She learned 
 that all the two or three thousand members of the club 
 were instinct with these theories and their aims. She 
 struggled to free herself from the spell. 
 
 "I thought we were here to talk about Russia," she 
 ventured. 
 
 "But we are talking about Russia." Miss Blenkiron 
 shed on her the lambency of her pale blue eyes. "The 
 future of the human race lies in the hands of the millions 
 of Russian babies lying in the bodies of millions of 
 Russian women just waiting to be born." 
 
 A flash of the devil saved Olivia from madness. 
 
 "That's a gigantic conception," she said. 
 
 "It is," Miss Blenkiron agreed, unhumorously, and 
 continued her work of propaganda, so that by the time 
 the speeches began Olivia found herself committed 
 to the strenuous toil of a lifetime as a member of she 
 knew not what societies. The only clear memory she 
 retained was that of a tea engagement some Sunday in 
 a North London garden city where Miss Blenkiron and
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 127 
 
 her brother frugally entertained the advanced thinkers 
 of the day. 
 
 In spite of the sense of release from something vam- 
 piric, when the speeches hushed general conversation, she 
 recognized that the strange talk had been revealing and 
 stimulating, and she brought a quickened intelligence to 
 the comprehension of the gathering. To all these women 
 the present state of the upheaved world was of vast signif- 
 icance. In Lydia's galley no one cared a pin about it, 
 save Sydney Rooke, who cursed it for its interference 
 with his income. But here, as was clearly conveyed in 
 the opening remarks of the chairwoman, a novelist of 
 distinction, every one was intellectually concerned with 
 its infinite complexity of aspect. To them, the guest 
 of the evening, emerging as he had done from the dizzy- 
 ing profundities of the whirlpool, was a figure of uncanny 
 interest. 
 
 "It's the first-hand knowledge of men like him that 
 is vital," Miss Blenkiron whispered when the chairwoman 
 sat down. "I should so much like to meet him." 
 
 "Would you?" said Olivia. "That's easily managed. 
 He's a great friend of mine." 
 
 And she was subridently conscious of having acquired 
 vast and sudden merit in her neighbour's eyes. 
 
 Triona pleased her beyond expectation. The function, 
 so ordinary to public-dinner-going London, was new to 
 her. She magnified the strain that commonplace, even 
 though sincere, adulation could put upon a guest of 
 honour. She felt a twinge of apprehension when he 
 stood up, in his loose boyish way, and brushing his 
 brown hair from his temples, began to speak. But in a
 
 128 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 moment or two all such feelings vanished. He spoke 
 to this assembly of a hundred, mostly women, much as, 
 in moments of enthusiasm, he would speak to her. And, 
 indeed, often catching her eye, he did speak to her, subtly 
 and flatteringly bringing her to his side. Her heart beat 
 a bit faster when, glancing around and seeing every one 
 hanging on his words, she realized that she alone, of all 
 this little multitude, held a golden key to the mystery 
 of the real man. There he talked, with the familiar 
 sway of the shoulders, and, when seeking for a phrase, 
 with the nervous plucking of his lips; talked in his 
 nervous, picturesque fashion, now and then with a touch 
 of the poet, consistently modest, only alluding to per- 
 sonal experience to illustrate a point or to give verisimili- 
 tude to a jest. He developed his feminist theme logically, 
 dramatically, proving beyond argument that the future 
 of civilization lay in the hands of the women of the civil- 
 ized world. 
 
 He had a great success. Woman, although she knows 
 it perfectly well, loves to be told what she wants and the 
 way to get it: she will never follow the way, of course, 
 having a tortuous, thorny, and enticing way of her own; 
 but that doesn't matter. The principle, the end, that 
 is the thing: it justifies any amazing means. He sat 
 down amid enthusiastic applause. Flushed, he sought 
 Olivia's distant gaze and smiled. Then she felt, thrill- 
 ingly, that he had been speaking for her, for her alone, 
 and her eyes brightened and flashed him a proud mes- 
 sage. 
 
 She met him a while later in the thronged drawing- 
 room of the club, rather a shy and embarrassed young 
 man, heading a distinct course toward her through a
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 129 
 
 swarm of kind yet predatory ladies. She admired the 
 simple craftsmanship of his approach. 
 
 "How are you going to get home?" he asked. 
 
 The adorable carelessness of twenty shrugged its 
 shoulders. 
 
 "I don't know. The Lord will provide." 
 
 "If you can't find a taxi, will you walk?" 
 
 The question implied a hope, so obvious that she 
 laughed gaily. 
 
 "There are buses also and tubes." 
 
 "In which you can't travel alone at this time of night." 
 
 She scoffed: "Oh, can't I?" But his manifest fear 
 that she should encounter satyrs in train or omnibus 
 pleased her greatly. 
 
 "Father's dining at his club close by and is calling 
 for me. He will see that you get home safely," said 
 Janet Philimore. 
 
 "It's miles out of your way, dear," said Olivia. "I'll 
 put myself in the hands of Mr. Triona." 
 
 So, taxis being unfindable, they walked together 
 through the warm London night to Victoria Street. It 
 was then that he spoke of his work, the novel just com- 
 pleted. Of all opinions on earth, hers was the one he 
 most valued. If only he could read it to her and have 
 the priceless benefit of her judgment. Secretly flattered, 
 she modestly depreciated, however, her critical powers. 
 He persisted, attributing to her unsuspected qualities 
 of artistic perception. At last, not reluctantly, she 
 yielded. He could begin the next evening. 
 
 The reading took some days. Olivia, new to creative 
 work, marvelled exceedingly at the magic of the artist's 
 invention. The personages of the drama, imaginary he
 
 130 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 said, lived as real beings. She regarded their creation 
 as uncanny. 
 
 "But how do you know she felt like that?" 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. "I can't 
 conceive her feeling otherwise." 
 
 Yet, for all her wonder, she brought her swift intelli- 
 gence to the task of criticism. Not since her mother's 
 illness had she taken anything so seriously. She lived 
 in the book, walking meanwhile through an unreal world. 
 Her golden words, on the other hand, the young man 
 captured eagerly and set down in the margin of the manu- 
 script. Half-way through the reading, they were on 
 terms of Christian names. Minds so absorbed in an 
 artistic pursuit grew impatient of absurd formalities of 
 address. They slipped almost imperceptibly into the 
 Olivia and Alexis habit. At the end they pulled them- 
 selves up rather sharply, with blank looks at an imme- 
 diate future bereft of common interest. 
 
 "I'll have to begin another, right away, so that you 
 can be with me from the very start," he said. 
 
 "Have you an idea?" 
 
 "Not yet." 
 
 "When will you have one?" 
 
 He didn't know. What man spent with the creative 
 effort of a novel has the vitality to beget another right 
 away? He feels that the very last drop of all that he 
 has known and suffered and enjoyed has been used to 
 the making of the book. For the making of another 
 nothing is left." 
 
 "I suppose I'll have to lie fallow for a week or so," 
 said the young optimist. 
 
 "And as soon as things begin to sprout you'll let me
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 131 
 
 know?" asked Olivia, forgetful that before harvest there 
 must be seed time. 
 
 He promised; went home and cudgelled tired brains; 
 also cudgelled, for different reasons, an untired and rest- 
 less soul. 
 
 Let him make good, not ephemerally as the pictur- 
 esque narrator of personal adventure, but definitely, with 
 this novel as the creative artist the fervent passion of 
 his life and he would establish himself in her eyes, in 
 her mind, in her heart; so that treading solid ground, 
 he could say to her: "This is what I am, and for what 
 I am, take me. All that has gone before was but a crude 
 foundation. I had to take such rubbish and rubble as 
 I could find to hand." But until then, let him regard 
 her as a divinity beyond his reach, rendering her service 
 and worship, but forbearing to soil her white robe with 
 a touch as yet unhallowed. 
 
 Many a time, they could have read no more that day. 
 Just one swift movement, glance or cry on the part of 
 the man, and the pulses of youth would have throbbed 
 wildly together. He knew it. The knowledge was at 
 once his Heaven and his Hell. A less sensitive human 
 being would not have appreciated the quivering and vital 
 equipoise. Many a time he parted from her with the 
 farewell of comradely intimacy on his lips, and when 
 the lift had deposited him on the street level his heart 
 had been like lead and his legs as water, so that he 
 stumbled out into the lamp-lit dark of night like a par- 
 alytic or a drunken man. 
 
 And that which was good in him warred fiercely against 
 temptations more sordid. As far as he knew, she was 
 a woman of fortune. So did her dress, her habit of life,
 
 132 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 her old comfort-filled Medlow home, proclaim her. Of 
 her social standing as the daughter of Stephen Gale who 
 bawled out bids for yelts and rams in the Medlow mar- 
 ket place, he knew or understood very little. Her for- 
 tune was a fact. His own, the few hundreds which he 
 had gained by Through Blood and Snow, was rapidly 
 disappearing. The failure of the new book meant star- 
 vation or reversion to Cherbury News. Married to a 
 woman with money he could snap his fingers at crust or 
 livery. . . . For the time he conquered. 
 
 The end of the reading coincided more or less with 
 Midsummer quarter-day. Bills from every kind of cov- 
 erer or adorner of the feminine human frame fell upon 
 her like a shower of autumn leaves. She sat at her small 
 writing desk, jotted down the amounts, and added them 
 up with a much sucked pencil point. The total was 
 incredible. With fear at her heart she rushed round to 
 her bank for a note of her balance. It had woefully 
 decreased since January. Payment of all these bills 
 would deplete it still more woefully. The rent of "The 
 Towers" and the diminishing income on the deposit 
 account were trivial items set against her expenditure. 
 She summoned Myra. 
 
 "We're heading for bankruptcy." 
 
 "Any fool could see that," said Myra. 
 
 "What are we going to do?" 
 
 "Live like Christians instead of heathens," replied 
 Myra. "If you would come to Chapel with me one Sun- 
 day night you could be taught how." 
 
 Here Myra failed. She belonged to a Primitive Non- 
 Conformist Communion whose austere creed and drab 
 ceremonial had furnished occasion for Olivia's teasing
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 133 
 
 wit since childhood. Heathendom, ever divorced from 
 Lydian pleasures, presented infinitely more reasons for 
 existence than Myra's Calvinism. 
 
 "It seems funny that a dear old thing like you can 
 revel in the idea of Eternal Punishment." 
 
 "I haven't got much else to revel in, have I?" said 
 Myra grimly. 
 
 "I suppose that's true," said Olivia thoughtfully. 
 "But it isn't my fault, is it? If you had wanted to 
 revel, mother and I would have been the last people to 
 prevent you. Why not begin now? Go and have a 
 debauch at the pictures." 
 
 "You began by talking of bankruptcy," said Myra. 
 
 "And you prescribed little Bethel. I'd sooner go 
 broke." 
 
 "You'll have your own way, as usual," said Myra. 
 
 "And if I go broke, what'll you do?", asked Olivia, 
 unregenerately enjoying the conversation. 
 
 "I suppose I'll have to put you together again," replied 
 Myra, with no sign of emotion on her angular, withered 
 face. 
 
 Olivia leaped from her chair. 
 
 "I'm a beast." 
 
 "That can't be," said Myra, "seeing that it was I 
 as brought you up." 
 
 That was the end of the argument. Olivia recognized 
 in Myra every useful quality save that of the financier. 
 She dismissed Myra from her counsels. But the state 
 of her budget cost her a sleepless night or two. At the 
 present rate of expenditure a couple of years would see 
 her penniless. For the first time since her emancipation
 
 134 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 from Medlow fetters she had the feeling of signing her 
 own death-warrant on every cheque. Heroic resolves 
 were born of these days of depression. 
 
 As a climax to her worries, came Bobby Quinton, one 
 afternoon. What had he done to offend his dearest of 
 ladies? Why had she stopped the dancing lessons? 
 Why did Percy's see her no more? 
 
 "I'm fed up with Percy's and the whole gang," said 
 Olivia. 
 
 "Not including me, surely?" cried the young man, with 
 a dog's appeal in his melting brown eyes. 
 
 She was kind. At first, she had not the heart to pack 
 him off to the froth and scum of social life to which he 
 belonged. He had the charm of unsuccessful youth so 
 pathetic in woman's eyes. 
 
 "If you are," said he, "I'm done for. I've no one 
 to look to but you, in the wide world." 
 
 Here was responsibility for the safety of a human soul. 
 Olivia gave him sound advice, repeating many an old 
 argument and feeling enjoyably maternal. But when 
 Bobby grew hysterical, and, with mutation of sex, quoted 
 the Indian Love Lyrics and professed himself prepared 
 to die beneath her chariot wheels, and threatened to do 
 so if she disregarded his burning passion, she admon- 
 ished him after the manner of twentieth-century maiden- 
 hood. 
 
 "My good Bobby, don't be an ass." 
 
 But Bobby persisted in being an ass, with the zeal 
 of the dement. He became the fervent lover of the 
 cinquecento Bandello and, with his dark eyes and hair, 
 looked the part. Imploring he knelt at the feet of the 
 divinity.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 135 
 
 "That's all very well, my dear boy," said Olivia, un- 
 moved by his rhapsody, "all very nice and all very beauti- 
 ful. But what do you want me to do?" 
 
 Of course he wanted her to marry him, there and then: 
 to raise him from the Hell he was in to the Heaven where 
 she had her pure habitation. With her he could do 
 great things. He guaranteed splendid achievements. 
 
 "Before a woman marries a man," said Olivia, "she 
 rather wants an achievement or two on account." 
 
 "Then you don't love me, you don't trust me?" ex- 
 claimed the infatuated young man, ruffling his sleek black 
 hair. 
 
 "I can't say that I do," replied Olivia, growing weary. 
 "If you tell me what sort of fascination you possess, 
 I'll give it due consideration." 
 
 "Then I may as well go away and blow my brains out," 
 he cried tragically. 
 
 "You might better go and use such brains as you have 
 in doing a man's work," retorted Olivia. 
 
 He reproached her mournfully. 
 
 "How unkind you are." 
 
 "If you came here as a window-cleaner or a lift porter 
 I might be kinder. You're quite a nice boy," she went 
 on after a pause, "otherwise I shouldn't have anything 
 to do with you. But you haven't begun to learn the 
 elements of life. You're utterly devoid of the sense of 
 duty or responsibility. Like the criminal, you know. 
 Oh, don't get angry. I'm talking to you for your good. 
 Pretending to teach idle women worthless dancing isn't 
 a career for a man. It's contemptible. Every man 
 especially nowadays ought to pull his weight in the 
 world. The war's not over. The real war is only just
 
 136 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 beginning. Instead of pulling your weight you think it's 
 your right to sit on a cushion, a passenger or a Pekie 
 dog and let other people pull you." 
 
 "You don't understand " 
 
 "Oh, yes I do. One has to live, and at first we take 
 any old means to hand. But you've been going on at 
 this for a couple of years and haven't tried to get out of 
 it. You like it, Bobby " 
 
 "I loathe it." 
 
 "You don't," she went on remorselessly, with her newly 
 acquired knowledge of what a man's life could be. "All 
 you loathe is the work especially when it doesn't 
 bring you in as much money as you want. You hate 
 work." 
 
 Resentment gradually growing out of amusement at 
 his presumptuous proposal had wrought her to a pitch 
 of virtuous indignation. Here was this young man, of 
 cultivated manners, intelligent, able-bodied, attractive, 
 rejecting any kind of mission in existence, and 
 
 "Look here, Bobby," she said, rising from her chair 
 by the tea-table and dominating him with a little gesture, 
 "don't get up. You sit there. You've asked me to marry 
 you, because you think I'm rich. Hold your tongue," 
 she flashed, as he was about to speak. "I'll take all the 
 love and that sort of thing for granted. But if I was 
 poor you wouldn't have thought of it. At the back of 
 your mind you imagine that if I married you, we could 
 lead a life of Percy's and the Savoy and Monte Carlo and 
 the South Sea Islands, and you needn't do another stroke 
 of work all your life long." 
 
 He leaned forward in his chair protesting eagerly that
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 137 
 
 it wasn't true. He would marry her to-morrow were she 
 penniless. She had his salvation soul and body in her 
 hands. He hungered for work; but the coils of his pres- 
 ent life had a strangle-hold on him. Suddenly he rose 
 and advanced a step towards her. 
 
 "Listen, Olivia. If you won't marry me, will you help 
 me in other ways? I'm desperate. You think you know 
 something about the world. But you don't. I'm up 
 against it. It may mean prison. For the love of God 
 lend me a couple of hundred pounds." 
 
 The ugly word prison sent a stab through her heart; 
 but immediately afterwards the common-sense of her 
 Gale ancestry told her either that he was lying, or, if it 
 were true, that he deserved it. She asked coldly: 
 
 "What have you been doing?" 
 
 "I can't tell you," he said. "You must trust me." 
 
 "But I don't and that is why I can't lend you two hun- 
 dred pounds." 
 
 "You refuse?" 
 
 His soft voice became a snarl and his lip curled un- 
 pleasantly back beneath the little silky moustache. 
 
 "Of course I do." 
 
 "I don't know how you dare, after all the encourage- 
 ment you've given me." 
 
 She stared at him aghast. "Encouragement?" 
 
 "Yes. Didn't you make me dance attendance on you 
 at Brighton? Haven't you brought me here over and 
 over again? You've behaved damnably to me. You've 
 made me waste my time. I've turned other women who 
 would have only been too glad " 
 
 In horror, she flew to the door and threw it open.
 
 138 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "Go," she said. 
 
 And speeding across the hall she threw open the flat 
 door. 
 
 "Go," she said again. 
 
 She crossed the landing and rang the lift bell and re- 
 turned to the hall, where he met her and threw himself on 
 his knees and looked up at her with wild, hunted eyes. 
 
 "Forgive me, Olivia. For God's sake forgive me. I 
 was mad. I didn't know what I was saying. Shut that 
 door and I'll tell you everything." 
 
 But Olivia passed him by into the sitting-room, and 
 stood with her back against the door until she heard the 
 clash of the lift gates and the retreating footsteps of 
 Bobby Quinton. 
 
 A short while ago she had nearly quarrelled with 
 Mauregard because, in a wordy dissertation on the 
 modern young men who lived on women, he instanced 
 Bobby as possibly coming within the category. Now she 
 knew that Mauregard was right. She felt sick. Also 
 deadly ashamed of her superior attitude of well-meant 
 reprimand. She burned with the consciousness of tongue 
 in cheek while he listened. Well, that was the end of the 
 Lydian galley. 
 
 She did not recover till the next afternoon, when Triona 
 called to take her to the Blenkirons' Sunday intellectual 
 symposium in Fielder's Park. She welcomed him im- 
 pulsively with both hands outstretched, as a justification 
 of her faith in mankind. 
 
 "You can't tell how glad I am to see you." 
 
 "And you," said he, kissing first one hand and then 
 the other, "can't tell how good I think God is to me."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 HE brought great news. Not only had his pub- 
 lishers thought well of the novel and offered 
 him good terms, including a substantial ad- 
 vance, but they professed themselves able to place it 
 serially in England for a goodly sum. They had also 
 shown him the figures of the half-yearly returns on 
 American sales of Through Blood and Snow which trans- 
 cended his dreams of opulence. 
 
 "I had forgotten America," he said naively. 
 
 "You're nothing, if not original," she laughed. "That's 
 what I like about you." 
 
 He insisted on the wild extravagance of a taxi to the 
 garden city. All that money he declared had gone to 
 his head. He felt the glorious intoxication of wealth. 
 When they were about to turn off the safe highway into 
 devious garden-city paths, he said: 
 
 "Let us change our minds and go straight on to John 
 o' Groats." 
 
 "All right. Let us. We're on the right road." 
 
 He swerved towards her. "Would you? Really?" 
 
 She opened her bag and took out her purse. 
 
 "I've got fifteen and sevenpence. How much have 
 you?" 
 
 "About three pounds ten." 
 
 She sighed. "This unromantic taxi man would charge 
 us at least five pounds to take us there." 
 
 "We can turn back and fill our pockets at the bank." 
 
 139
 
 140 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "It's Sunday." 
 
 "I never before realized the blight of the British Sab- 
 bath." 
 
 "So we're condemned to Fielder's Park." 
 
 "But one of these days we'll go, you and I together, 
 to John o' Groats as far as we can and then " 
 
 "And then?" 
 
 "And then we'll take a ship and sail and sail until we 
 come to the Fortunate Isles." 
 
 "You'll let Myra come too?" said Olivia, deliciously 
 anxious to keep to the playful side of an inevitable road. 
 
 "Of course. We'll find her a husband. The cabin- 
 boy. Pour mousse un cherubin." 
 
 "And when we get to the Fortunate Isles, what should 
 we do there?" 
 
 "We shall fill our souls with sunlight, so that we could 
 use it when we came back to our work in this dark and 
 threatening modern world." 
 
 The girl's heart leapt at the reply. 
 
 "I'll go up to John o' Groats with you whenever you 
 like," she said. 
 
 But the taxi, at that moment drawing up before the 
 detached toy villa, whose "Everdene" painted on the 
 green garden gate proclaimed the home of the Blenk- 
 irons, inhibited Triona's reply. 
 
 They found within an unbeautiful assemblage of hu- 
 mans inextricably mingled with crumbling cake and 
 sloppy cups of tea and cigarette smoke. Agnes, shining 
 with heat and hospitality, gave them effusive welcome 
 and, extricating her brother from a distant welter, intro- 
 duced him to the newcomers. He was a flabby-faced 
 young man with a back-thatch of short rufous hair sur-
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 141 
 
 mounting a bald forehead. By his ears grew little 
 patches of side whiskers. He wore an old unbuttoned 
 Norfolk jacket and a red tie in a soft collar without an 
 under pin. He greeted them with an enveloping clammy 
 hand. 
 
 "So good of you to come, Miss Gale. So glad to meet 
 you, Mr. Triona. We have heard so much about you. 
 You will find us here all very earnest in our endeavour to 
 find a Solution for never has human problem been so 
 intricate that a Solution has not been discovered." 
 
 "What's the problem?" asked Olivia. 
 
 "Why, my dear lady, there's only one. The Way Out 
 or, if you have faith The Way In." He caught a 
 lean, thin-bearded man by the arm. "Dawkins, let me 
 introduce you to Miss Gale. Mr. Dawkins is our rap- 
 porteur." 
 
 "You haven't any tea," said Dawkins rebukingly, as 
 though bidden to a marriage feast she had no wedding 
 garment. "Come with me." 
 
 He frayed her a passage through the chattering swarm 
 that over-filled the little bow-windowed sitting-room and 
 provided her with what seemed to be the tepid symbols of 
 the brotherhood. 
 
 "What did you think of Roger's article in this week's 
 Signal?" 
 
 "Who is Roger, and what is The Signal?" Olivia asked 
 simply. 
 
 Dawkins stared at her for a second and then, deliber- 
 ately turning, wormed his path away. 
 
 Olivia's gasp of surprise was followed by a gurgle of 
 laughter which shook her lifted cup so that it spilled. The 
 sight of a stained skirt drew from her a sharp exclama-
 
 142 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 tion of dismay. Agnes Blenkiron disengaging herself 
 from the cluster round the tea-table came to the rescue. 
 What was the matter? Olivia explained. 
 
 "Oh, my dear," said Agnes, "I ought to have told you. 
 It's my fault. Dawkins is such a touchy old thing. 
 Roger, of course, is my brother didn't you know? And 
 The Signal is our weekly. Dawkins is the editor." 
 
 "I'm awfully sorry," said Olivia, "but ought I to read 
 The Signal?" 
 
 "Why, of course," replied Agnes Blenkiron intensely. 
 "Everybody ought to read it. It's the only periodical 
 that matters in London." 
 
 Olivia felt the remorse of those convicted of an un- 
 pardonable crime. 
 
 "I'll get a copy to-morrow at the bookstall at Victoria 
 Station." 
 
 Agnes smiled in her haggard way. "My dear, an organ 
 like The Signal doesn't lie on the bookstalls, like Comic 
 Cuts or The Fortnightly Review. It's posted to private 
 subscribers, or it's given away at meetings." 
 
 "Who pays for the printing of it?" asked the practical 
 Olivia, who had learned from Triona something of the 
 wild leap in cost of printed matter. 
 
 Aubrey Dawkins finds the money. He gets it in the 
 City. He has given up his heart and soul to The Signal" 
 
 "I've made an enemy for life," said Olivia penitently. 
 
 Miss Blenkiron reassured her. "Oh, no you haven't. 
 We haven't time for enemy making here. Our business is 
 too important." 
 
 Olivia in a maze asked: 
 
 "What is your business?"
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 143 
 
 "Why, my dear child, the Social Revolution. Didn't 
 you know?" 
 
 "Not a bit," said Olivia. 
 
 She learned many astonishing things that afternoon, 
 as she was swayed about from introduction to introduc- 
 tion among the eagerly disputing groups. Hitherto she 
 had thought, with little comprehension, of the world- 
 spread social unrest. Strikes angered her because they 
 interfered with necessary reconstruction and only set the 
 working classes in a vicious circle chasing high wages 
 and being chased in their turn by high prices. At other 
 demands she shuddered, dimly dreading the advent of 
 Bolshevism. And there she left it. She had imagined 
 that revolutionary doctrines were preached to factory 
 hands either secretly by rat-faced agents, or by brass- 
 throated, bull-necked demagogues. That they should be 
 accepted as a common faith by a crowd of people much 
 resembling a fairly well-to-do suburban church congrega- 
 tion stirred her surprise and even dismay. 
 
 "I don't see how intelligent folk can hold such views," 
 she said to Roger Blenkiron, who had been defending 
 the Russian Soviet system as a philosophic experiment in 
 government. 
 
 He smiled indulgently. "Doesn't the fault lie rather 
 in you, dear lady, than in the intelligent folk?" 
 
 "Would that argument stand," she replied, "if you had 
 been maintaining that the earth was flat and stood still in 
 space?" 
 
 "No. The roundness and motion of the earth are as- 
 certained physical facts. But I speak with the greatest 
 deference can you assert it to be a scientific fact that a
 
 144 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 community of human beings are a priori incapable of man- 
 aging their own affairs on a basis of social equality?" 
 
 "Of course I can," Olivia declared, to the gentle 
 amusement of standers-by. "Human nature won't allow 
 it. With inequalities of brain and character social equal- 
 ity is impossible." 
 
 "Dear Lady" she hated the apostrophe as he said it 
 and the lift of the eyebrows which caused an upward ripple 
 that was lost in the far reaches of his bald forehead. 
 "Dear Lady," said he, "in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot 
 you can find every grade of human intellect, from the 
 inbred young aristocrat who is that much removed" he 
 flicked a finger nail "from a congenital idiot to the acute- 
 brained statesman; every grade of human character from 
 the lowest of moral defectives to the highest that the 
 present civilization can produce. And yet they are all on 
 a social equality. And why? They started life on a 
 common plane. The same phenomenon exists in a mass- 
 meeting of working-men in any assemblage of human 
 beings of a particular class who have started life on a 
 common plane. Now, don't you see, that if we abolished 
 all these series of planes and established only one plane, 
 social equality would be inevitable?" 
 
 "I don't see how you're going to do it." 
 
 "Ah! That's another question. Think of what the 
 task is. To make a clean sweep of false principles to 
 which mankind has subscribed for what do I know say 
 eight thousand years. It can't be done in a day. Not 
 even in a generation. If you wish to render a pestilence- 
 stricken area habitable, you must destroy and burn for 
 miles around before you can rebuild. Extend the area 
 to a country to the surface of the civilized globe. That's
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 145 
 
 the philosophic theory of what is vulgarly called Bolshe- 
 vism. Let us lay waste the whole plague-stricken fabric 
 of our civilization, so that the world may arise, a new 
 Phoenix, under our children's hands." 
 
 "You have put the matter to Miss Gale with your 
 usual cogency, my dear Roger," said Dawkins, who had 
 joined the group. "Perhaps now she may take a less 
 flippant view of our activities." 
 
 He smtled, evidently meaning to include the neophyte 
 in the sphere of his kind indulgence. But Olivia flushed 
 at the rudeness of his words. 
 
 Triona who, hidden from Olivia by the standing group, 
 had been stuffed into a sedentary and penitential corner 
 with two assertive women and an earnest young Marxian 
 gasfitter, and had, nevertheless, kept an alert ear on the 
 neighbouring conversation, suddenly appeared once more 
 to her rescue. 
 
 "Pardon me, sir," said he, "but to one who has gone 
 through, as I have done, the Bolshevist horrors which you 
 advocate so complacently, it's your view that hardly seems 
 serious." 
 
 "Atrocities, my dear friend," said the seer-like Daw- 
 kins, "are proverbially exaggerated." 
 
 "There's a fellow like you mentioned in the Bible," 
 retorted Triona. 
 
 "I have always admired Didymus for his scientific 
 mind," said Dawkins. 
 
 Triona pulled up his trouser leg and exposed his ankle. 
 "That's the mark of fetters. There was a chain and a 
 twelve pound shot at the end of it." 
 
 "Doubtless you displeased the authorities," said Daw- 
 kins blandly. "Oh, I've read your book, Mr. Triona.
 
 146 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 But before judging I should like to hear the other side." 
 
 "I'm afraid, Mr. Blenkiron," said Triona, growing 
 white about the nostrils, to his host who stood by in a de- 
 tached sort of manner, with his hands on his hips, "I've 
 unconsciously abused your hospitality." 
 
 Blenkiron protested cheerfully. "Not a bit, my dear 
 fellow. We pride ourselves on our broad mindedness. If 
 you preached reactionary Anglicanism here you would be 
 listened to with respect and interest. On the other hand, 
 we expect the same consideration to be shown to the 
 apostles if you will pardon the word of our advanced 
 thought. Your experiences were, beyond doubt, very 
 terrible. But we admit the necessity of a reign of terror. 
 We shall have it in this country within the next ten 
 years. Possibly probably all of us here and all the 
 little gods we cling to will be swept away like the late 
 Russian aristocracy and intelligentsia. But suppose we 
 are all Dawkins, my sister, and myself prepared to 
 suffer martyrdom for the sake of humanity, what would 
 you have to say against us? Nay you can be quite 
 frank. Words cannot hurt us." 
 
 "I should say you ought to be tied up in Bedlam," 
 said Triona. 
 
 "Do you agree with that, Miss Gale?" said Roger 
 Blenkiron, turning on her suddenly. 
 
 She reflected for a moment. Then she replied: "If 
 you can prove beyond question that in fifty years' time 
 you will create a more beautiful world, there's something 
 in your theories. If you can't, you all ought to be shot." 
 
 He laughed and held out his hand. "That's straight 
 from the shoulder. That's what we like to hear. Shake 
 hands on it." He drew a little book from his pocket and
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 147 
 
 scribbled a memorandum. "You're on the free-list of 
 The Signal. I think Agnes has your address. You'll 
 find in it overwhelming proof. Perhaps, Mr. Triona, too, 
 would like " 
 
 But Triona shook his head. "As a technical alien per- 
 haps it would be inadvisable for me to be in receipt of 
 revolutionary literature." 
 
 "I quite understand," smiled Blenkiron, returning the 
 book to his pocket. 
 
 Dawkins melted away. Other guests took leave of 
 their host. Triona and Olivia, making a suffocating 
 course towards the door, were checked by Agnes Blenk- 
 iron who was eager to introduce them to Tom Pyefinch 
 who, during the war had suffered, at the hands of a capi- 
 talist government, the tortures of the hero too brave to 
 fight. 
 
 "Oh, no, no," cried Olivia horrified. 
 
 Agnes did not hear. But Pyefinch, a pallid young 
 man with a scrubby black moustache, was too greatly oc- 
 cupied with his immediate circle to catch his hotess's eye. 
 From his profane lips Olivia learned that patriotism was 
 the most blatant of superstitions: that the attitude of the 
 fly preening itself over its cesspool was that of the de- 
 praved and mindless being who could take pride in being 
 an Englishman. He was not peculiarly hard on England. 
 All other countries were the mere sewerages of the na- 
 tionalities that inhabited them. The high ideals sup- 
 posed to crystallize a nation's life were but factitious and 
 illusory, propagated by poets and other decadents in the 
 pay of capitalists: in reality, patriotism only meant the 
 common cause of the peoples floundering each in its sepa- 
 rate sewer.
 
 148 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 Mere rats, he declared, changing his metaphor. That 
 was why he and every other intelligent man in the coun- 
 try refused to join in the rat fight which was the late war. 
 
 Olivia clutched Triona's arm. "For God's sake, Alexis, 
 let us get out of this. It makes me sick." 
 
 They drew deep breaths when they escaped into the 
 fresh air. To Olivia, the little overcrowded drawing- 
 room, deafening with loud voices, sour with the smell 
 of milky tea and Virginian tobacco, reeking almost physi- 
 cally with the madness of anarchy, seemed a miniature 
 of the bottomless pit. The irony of the man's talk the 
 need to purify by flame a plague-stricken area ! God once 
 destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Why did He not blast 
 with fire from heaven this House of Pestilence? 
 
 Alexis Triona laughed sympathetically at her out- 
 burst. 
 
 "I confess they're rather trying," he remarked. 
 "Whenever you hear English people say they belong to 
 the intelligentsia, you may be sure they're frightened at 
 common sense as not being intellectual enough. Blenk- 
 iron and Dawkins are fools of the first water; but Pye- 
 finch is dangerous. I am afraid I lost my temper," he 
 added after a few steps. 
 
 "You were splendid," said Olivia. 
 
 More than ever did he seem the one clear-brained, 
 purposeful man of her acquaintance in the confused 
 London world. Rapidly she passed them in review as 
 she walked. Of the others Mauregard was the best ; but 
 he was spending his life on fribbles, his highest heaven 
 being a smile on the lips of a depraved dancing-woman. 
 Then, Sydney Rooke, Mavenna, and, even worse now 
 than Mavenna, the unspeakable Bobby Quinton. So
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 149 
 
 much for the Lydian set of professed materialists and 
 pleasure-seekers. In accepting Agnes Blenkiron's invita- 
 tion she had pleasurable anticipation of entering a sphere 
 of earnest thinkers and social workers who might guide 
 her stumbling footsteps into the path of duty to herself 
 and her kind. And to her dismay she had met Dawkins 
 and Blenkiron and Pyefinch, earnest, indeed, in their 
 sophistry and mad in their theories of destruction. Her 
 brain was in a whirl with the doctrines to which she had 
 listened. She felt terrified at she knew not what. Even 
 Lydia's cynical world was better than this. Yet between 
 these two extremes there must be a world of high en- 
 deavour, of science, art, philanthropy, thought; that in 
 which, she vaguely imagined, Blaise Olifant must have 
 his being; even that of the women at the club dinner. 
 But her mind shook off women as alien to its subconscious 
 argument. In this conjectural London world one man 
 alone stood out typical the man striding loosely by her 
 side. A young careless angel, he had delivered her from 
 Mavenna. A man, he had exorcised her horror of Bobby 
 Quinton. And now, once more, she saw him, in her girl- 
 ish fancy, a heroic figure, sane, calm, and scornful, fac- 
 ing a horde of madmen. 
 
 They walked, occasionally losing their way and being 
 put on it by chance encounters, through the maze of new 
 and distressingly decorous avenues, some finished, others 
 petering out, after a few houses, into placarded building 
 lots or waste land; a wilderness not of the smug villa- 
 dom of old-established suburbs, but of a queer bungalow- 
 dom assertive, in its distinctive architecture, of unreal 
 pursuit of Aspirations in capital letters. Most of the 
 avenues abutted on a main street of shops with pseudo-
 
 150 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 artistic frontages giving the impression that the inhabi- 
 tants of the City could only be induced to satisfy the 
 vulgar needs of their bodies by the lure of the aesthetic. 
 
 "Don't let us judge our late friends too harshly," said 
 Triona waving an arm. "All this is the Land of Self- 
 Consciousness." 
 
 At last they made their way through the solider, stol- 
 ider fringes of the main road, and emerged on the great 
 thoroughfare itself, wide and unbusied on this late sum- 
 mer Sunday afternoon. Prosaically they lingered, wait- 
 ing for an infrequent omnibus. 
 
 "Thank goodness, we're out of the Land of Self- 
 Consciousness," said Olivia. "The Great North Road is 
 too big a thing." 
 
 Their eyes met in a smile. 
 
 "I don't forget your love of big things," said he. "It's 
 inspiring. Yes. It's a big thing. And it doesn't really 
 begin in London. It starts from Land's End and it goes 
 on and on through the heart of England and through 
 the heart of Scotland carrying two nations' history on its 
 flanks, caring for nothing but its appointed task, until 
 it sighs at John o' Groats and says: 'My duty's done.' 
 There's nothing that stirs one's imagination more than a 
 great road or a great river. Somehow I prefer the road." 
 
 "You're nearer to it because it was made by man." 
 
 "How our minds work together!" he cried admiringly. 
 "I only have to say half a thing and you complete it. 
 More than that you give my meaningless ideas meaning. 
 Yes. God's works are great. But we can't measure 
 them. We have no scale for God. But we have for 
 Man, and so Man's big works thrill us and compel us." 
 
 "What big thing could we do?" asked Olivia.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 151 
 
 "Do you mean humanity or you and I together?" 
 
 "Two human beings thinking alike, and free and 
 honest." Instinctively she took his arm and her step 
 danced in time with his. "Oh, you don't know how good 
 it is to feel real. Let us do something big in the world. 
 What can we do?" 
 
 "You can help me to the very biggest thing in all the 
 universe for me," he cried, pressing her arm tight against 
 him. 
 
 Her pulses throbbed. She knew that further argument 
 on her part would be but exquisite playing with words. 
 The hour which, in her maidenly uncertainty she had 
 dreaded, had now come, and all fear had passed away. 
 Yes; now she was real; now she was certain that her 
 love was real. Real man, real woman. Her heart leaped 
 to him with almost the shock of physical pain. Again in 
 a flash she swept the Lydian and the Blenkiron firma- 
 ment and exulted. Yet in her happiness she said with 
 very foolish and with very feminine guile: 
 
 "Ah, my dear Alexis, that's what I've longed for. If 
 only I could be of some little help to you!" 
 
 "Help?" He laughed shortly and halted and swung 
 her round. "Have you ever tried to think what you are 
 to me? Would you like me to tell you?" 
 
 She disengaged herself and walked delicately on. 
 
 "It may pass the time till the bus comes," she said. 
 
 He began to tell her. And three minutes afterwards 
 the noisy, infrequent motor-bus passed them by, unheeded 
 and even unperceived.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 SOMEWHERE on the South Coast, screened from 
 the vulgar by the trap of a huge watering-place, is 
 a long, thin, sandy promontory sticking out to 
 sea, like an innocent rib of wilderness. Here there is no 
 fun of the fair, because there is no fair to provide the 
 fun. There are no taverns, no boarding-houses, no lodg- 
 ings. One exclusive little hotel rules the extreme tip 
 of the tongue of land in consort with the miniature jetty 
 and quay by which, in late exciting times, strange craft 
 were moored, flying the white ensign and hoar with 
 North Sea brine and deadly secrets. The rest of the 
 spit is peppered with a score of little shy houses, each 
 trying to hide itself from its neighbours, in the privacy 
 of its own sandpit. If your house is on the more de- 
 sirable side of it, you can look out over the vastness of 
 the sea with the exhilarating certainty (if your tempera- 
 ment may thereby be exhilarated) that there is nothing 
 but blue water between you and the coast of Africa. 
 If your house is, less fortunately, on the other side, your 
 view commands a spacious isle-studded harbour fringed 
 by distant blue and mysterious hills. But it is given to 
 any one to walk out of the back of his little hermitage, 
 and, standing in the dividing road, to enjoy, in half a min- 
 ute, both aspects at once. It is called esoterically by 
 its frequenters "the Point," so that the profane, map- 
 searching, may not discover its whereabouts. 
 Just high enough to be under the lee of a sand-hill, with 
 
 152
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 153 
 
 its front windows and veranda staring at the African 
 coast, some thousand miles away, stood the tiniest, most 
 fragile and most absurd of the habitations. Its name was 
 "Quien Sabe," suggestive of an imaginative abandonment 
 of search after nomenclature by the original proprietor. 
 
 "A house called 'Quien Sabe' " said Alexis. 
 
 "Is the house for us," cried Olivia, aglow. 
 
 They took it at once, without question. It wasn't as 
 if it were an uncertain sort of place, like "Normanhurst," 
 or "Sea View." The name proclaimed frankly the cer- 
 tainty of venturesomeness. And Alexis Triona, sitting on 
 the scrubby grass and sand, his back against the little 
 veranda, the infinite sea and all the universe enveloped 
 in still moonlight, laughed the laugh of deep happiness 
 at their childish inspiration. He rolled, licked and lit 
 the final cigarette. Tobacco was good. Better was this 
 August night of velvet and diamonds. Below, the little 
 stone groin shone like onyx. The lazy surf of ebb-tide 
 far away on the sand of a tiny bay glimmered like the 
 foam in fairyland. 
 
 Only half the man's consciousness allowed itself to be 
 drenched with the beauty of the night. The other half 
 remained alert to a voice, to a summons, to something 
 more rare and exquisite than the silver air and murmuring 
 sea and the shine of all the stars. A few minutes before, 
 languorous by his side, she had been part and parcel of it 
 all. The retreating ripple of wave had melted into the 
 softness of her voice. Her laughing eyes had gleamed 
 importance in the stellar system. The sweet throb of her 
 body, as she had reclined, his arm about her, was rhythmic 
 with the pulsation of the night. And now she had gone; 
 gone just for a few moments; gone just for a few mo-
 
 154 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 ments until she would divinely break the silence by the 
 little staccato cry of his name; but, nevertheless, her 
 transitory severance had robbed this outer world of half 
 its beauty. He had consciously to incorporate her in 
 order to give meaning to this wonder of amethyst and 
 aquamarine and onyx and diamond and pearl and velvet 
 and the infinite message of the immensities coming through 
 the friendly silence of the moon. 
 
 They had been married all of a sudden, both caught up 
 on the wings of adventure. They were young, free as 
 air. Why should they wait? They kept it secret, a 
 pair of romantics. Only Blaise Olifant, summoned from 
 Medlow, and Janet Philimore were admitted into the 
 conspiracy, and attended the wedding. At first Olivia 
 had twinges of conscience. As a well-conducted young 
 woman she ought to ask her old friend, Mr. Trivett, to 
 stand in loco parentis and give her away. But then there 
 would be Mrs. Trivett and the girls to reckon with. Mr. 
 Fenmarch, left out, might take offence. The news, too, 
 would run through every Medlow parlour. Old John 
 Freke, in his weekly letter to Lydia, would be sure to al- 
 lude to the matter; and it was Lydia and the galley that 
 she most desired to keep in ignorance. So they were mar- 
 ried, by special licence, at the church in Ashley Place, one 
 quiet, sunny morning, in the presence of Myra and the 
 two witnesses they had convened. 
 
 As they emerged into the sunshine after the ceremony, 
 Olifant said to her: 
 
 "I've never been so reluctant to give anything away 
 in my life." 
 
 "She asked a laughing "Why?"
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 155 
 
 "Dog in the manger, I suppose." He smiled whimsi- 
 cally. "I shall feel more of a bachelor than ever when I 
 get back." 
 
 "You needn't, unless you like." She motioned slightly 
 with her head towards Janet, talking to Alexis, a few feet 
 away. "I've not been too busy to think of matchmaking. 
 She's the dearest of girls." 
 
 "But not my landlady." 
 
 Her happy laughter rippled forth, calling the others 
 near. 
 
 "He wants a law forbidding the marriage of landladies. 
 But think of the advantage. Now you can have your 
 landlady to stay with you in strict propriety if you 
 will ask us." 
 
 "We settled that with Alexis last night," said he. 
 
 Three taxis were waiting. One for the bride and 
 bridegroom. One, already piled with luggage, for Myra 
 who after being fervently kissed in the vestry by Olivia, 
 had said by way of congratulation: 
 
 "Well, dearie, it's better than being married in a Regis- 
 try Office," and had gone forth unemotionally to see that 
 the trunks were still there. And one for Olifant and 
 Janet. They drove to the station, to the train which 
 was to take them on their way to the home which in 
 their romanticism they had never troubled to see. 
 
 "I'm sure it's all right," said Janet, who had been re- 
 sponsible for their taking "Quien Sabe." "Father and 
 I'll be at The Point in a fortnight. If you don't want to 
 see us, tie a white satin bow on the gate and we won't 
 mind a bit." 
 
 For General Philimore was the happy owner of one 
 of the little hermitages on The Point, and like a foolish
 
 156 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 old soldier lived there in holiday times, instead of letting 
 it for the few summer weeks at the yearly rental of his 
 London flat; so that Janet assumed the airs of an au- 
 thority on The Point, and wrote stern uncompromising 
 business letters to agents threatening them with the dis- 
 pleasure of the daughter of a Major-General, if a "Quien 
 Sabe" swept, garnished, and perfectly appointed, with a 
 charwoman, ditto, in attendance, did not receive the 
 bridal pair. 
 
 "It's not a palace, Mr. Triona," she said. 
 
 "What has it to do with me?" he answered. "A dream 
 nest in a cliff for this bird wife of mine is all I ask for." 
 
 Olivia's eyes smiled on him. Why was he so different 
 from the rest of men even from so fine a type as Blaise 
 Olifant? She appraised them swiftly. The soldier had 
 not yet been sunk into the scholar. He stood erect, clean 
 built, wearing his perfectly fitting grey suit like uniform, 
 his armless sleeve pinned across his chest, his lip still 
 bearing the smart little military moustache, his soft grey 
 hat at ever so slightly a swaggering angle on his neatly 
 cropped head. A distinguished figure, to which his long 
 straight nose added a curious note of distinction and 
 individuality. But all that he was you saw in a glance: 
 the gentleman, the soldier, the man of intellect. On the 
 other hand, there stood the marvellous man that was 
 her husband, hiding behind the drawn boyish face God 
 knew what memories of pain heroically conquered and 
 God knew what visions of genius. Although he had gone 
 to a good tailor for his blue serge suit she had accom- 
 panied him he had the air of wearing clothes as a con- 
 cession of convention. The lithe frame beneath seemed 
 to be impatient of their restraint. They fitted in an easy
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 157 
 
 sort of way, but were dominated by his nervous eager 
 personality. One flash of a smile illuminating eyes and 
 thin face, one flashing gesture of hand or arm, and for 
 ought any one knew or cared, he might be dressed in chain 
 armour or dungaree. 
 
 The little speech pleased her. She slipped her hand 
 through the crook of his arm in the pride of possession. 
 
 "Did you ever hear such an undomesticated pronounce- 
 ment?" she laughed. "We're going to change all that." 
 
 And the train carried them off to the great wonder and 
 change of their lives. 
 
 The train out of sight, Blaise Olifant stuck in his pocket 
 the handkerchief he had been waving, and turned with a 
 sigh. 
 
 "I hope she'll be happy." 
 
 "Why shouldn't she?" asked Janet Philimore. 
 
 She was a bright-cheeked, brown-eyed, brown-haired 
 girl, with a matter-of-fact manner. . 
 
 "I know of no reason," he replied. "I was expressing 
 a hope." 
 
 He saw her to her homeward-bound omnibus and 
 walked, somewhat moodily, on his road. After a day 
 or two, the pleasures of London proving savourless, he 
 returned to Medlow. But "The Towers" no longer 
 seemed quite the same. He could not tell why. The 
 house had lost fragrance. 
 
 Meanwhile the pair had gone to the little toy home 
 whose questioning name pointed to mystery. There were 
 just three rooms in it, all opening on to a veranda full 
 in sight (save for the configuration of the globe) of the 
 African coast. On this veranda, sitting back, they lost
 
 158 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 sight of the whin-grown slope and the miniature sandy 
 cove beneath; and their world was but a welter of sea, 
 and its inhabitants but a few gulls, sweeping and swirl- 
 ing past them with a shy friendliness in their yellow 
 eyes. In a dip of the sand-hill, just behind this elemen- 
 tary dwelling and communicating with it by a short cov- 
 ered way, stretched an old railway carriage divided into 
 kitchen, pantry, bathroom, and bunks. 
 
 "It's the craziest place I've ever seen," said Myra. 
 "People will be living in old aeroplanes next." 
 
 But the very craziness of the habitation made for their 
 selfish joy. The universe, just for these twain, had gone 
 joyously mad. A cocky little villa made to the model of 
 a million others would have defeated the universe's be- 
 nign intention. Nothing could be nearer to Triona's 
 dream nest in a cliff. Their first half-hour's exploring, 
 hand in hand, was that of children let loose in a fairy 
 tale castle. 
 
 "There's only one egg-cup," croaked Myra, surveying 
 an exiguous row of crockery. 
 
 "How many more do we want?" cried Olivia. "We can 
 only eat one egg at a time." 
 
 They passed out and stood on the edge of their small 
 domain, surveying the sandy beach and the seaweed and 
 shell-encrusted groin and the limitless sea, and breathed 
 in the soft salt wind of all the heavens sweeping through 
 their hair and garments, and he put his arm around her 
 and kissed her and he laughed and said, looking into 
 her eyes: 
 
 "Sweetheart, Heaven is empty and all the angels are 
 here."
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 159 
 
 On sunny days they lived in the sea, drying themselves 
 on their undisturbed half-moon of beach. 
 
 "Where did you learn to swim?" she asked. 
 
 He hesitated for a second, casting at her one of his 
 swift, half furtive glances. Then he replied: 
 
 "In the Volga." 
 
 She laughed. "You're always romantic. I learned at 
 commonplace Llandudno." 
 
 "Where's your sense of relativity, beloved?" said he. 
 "In Central Russia one regards the coast of Wales as 
 fantastic fairyland." 
 
 "Still, you can go to Llandudno to-morrow, if you like 
 taking me with you, of course; but I shall never swim 
 in the Volga, or the Caspian Sea, or Lake Baikal, or any 
 of those places with names that have haunted me since I 
 was a little girl." 
 
 "One of these days we'll go it may be some years, 
 but eventually Russia must have a settled Government 
 and we'll still be young." 
 
 The sun and the hot sand on which she lay, adorable in 
 deep red bathing kit and cap, warmed her through and 
 through, flooding her with the sense of physical well- 
 being. It was impossible that she should ever grow old. 
 
 "It's something to look forward to," she said. 
 
 Sometimes they hired a boat and sailed and fished. 
 She admired his handiness and knowledge and prescience 
 of the weather. Once, as the result of their fishing, they 
 brought in a basket of bass and gar-fish, the latter a 
 strange, dainty silver beast with the body of an eel and 
 the tail of a trout and the beak of a woodcock, and in high 
 spirits they usurped Myra's railway-compartment kitchen,
 
 160 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 while he fried the catch for lunch. Olivia marvelled at 
 his mastery. In spite of her sage and deliberate putting 
 aside of the rose-coloured glasses of infatuation, in what- 
 ever aspect she viewed him, he stood supreme. From the 
 weaving of high romance to the cooking of fish the 
 whole gamut of human activities there was nothing in 
 which he did not excel. Her trust in him was infinite. 
 She lost herself in happiness. 
 
 It took some days to arouse her to a sense of the outer 
 world. A letter from Lydia reminded her of her friend's 
 pleasant ignorance. With the malice of the unregenerate 
 feminine, she wrote: "I'm so sorry I can't be brides- 
 maid as you had arranged. How can I, seeing that I am 
 married myself? It happened all in a hurry, as the 
 beautiful things in life do. The fuss of publicity would 
 have spoilt it. That's why we told nobody. This is 
 much better than Dinard" Sydney Rooke's selection for 
 the honeymoon. "I haven't worn a hat since I've been 
 here, and my way of dressing for dinner is to put on 
 a pair of stockings; sometimes a mackintosh, for we 
 love to dine on the veranda when it rains. It rained 
 so hard last night that we had to fix up an umbrella 
 to the ceiling like a chandelier to catch the water coming 
 through the roof. So you will see that Alexis and I are 
 perfectly happy. By the way, I've not told you what my 
 name is. It is Mrs. Triona. . . ." And so on and so on 
 at the dictate of her dancing gladness, freakishly pictur- 
 ing Lydia's looks of surprise, distaste, and reprobation as 
 she read the letter. Yet she finished graciously, acknowl- 
 edging Lydia's thousand kindnesses, for according to her 
 lights Lydia had done her best to put her on the only path 
 that could be trod by comely and well-dressed woman.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 161 
 
 She sealed up her letter and, coming out on to the ve- 
 randa where Alexis was correcting the proofs of an ar- 
 ticle, told him all about it. 
 
 "Don't you think we ought to please Lydia and go to 
 Dinard and wear wonderful clothes, and mix with fash- 
 ionable folk, and have expensive meals and gamble in the 
 Casino, and dance and do our duty as self-respecting 
 people?" 
 
 "You have but to change yourself into whatever fairy 
 thing you like, my princess," said he, "and I will follow 
 you. Where you are, the world is. Where you are not, 
 there is the blankness of before creation." 
 
 Sitting that night, with his back against the veranda, he 
 thought of this speech of the afternoon. Formulated a 
 bit self-consciously, it was nevertheless true. The 
 landscape, no matter what it was, existed merely as a 
 setting for her. Even in this jewelled wonder of moonlit 
 sea and sky there was the gap of the central gem. 
 
 He rolled and lit another cigarette this time, surely, 
 the very last. Why she took so long to disrobe, he never 
 strove to conjecture. Her exquisite feminine distance 
 from him was a conception too tremulous to be gripped 
 with a rough hand and brutally examined. That was the 
 lure and the delight of her, mystical, paradoxical he 
 could define it only vaguely as the nearness of her set 
 in a far-off mystery. At once she was concrete and 
 strong as the sea, and as elusive as the Will-o'-the-Wisp of 
 his dreams. 
 
 Thus the imaginative lover; the man who, by imagin- 
 ing fantasies to be real, had made them real; who, grasp- 
 ing realities, had woven round them the poet's fantasy.
 
 162 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 And meanwhile Olivia, secure in her happiness, kept 
 him waiting and dreaming because she had made a roman- 
 tic vow to record, before going to sleep, each day's pre- 
 cious happenings in a diary which she kept under lock 
 and key in her dressing-case. She wrote sitting up in bed, 
 and now and then she sniffed and smiled as the soft air 
 came through the open window laden with the perfume of 
 the cigarette.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 IN the course of time, Janet Philimore and her at- 
 tendant father, the General, arrived at their house 
 on The Point, and as Olivia, apprised of their 
 advent, did not tie a white satin bow on her gate, General 
 and Miss Philimore left cards on the newly wedded 
 couple, or, more exactly, a pencilled leaf torn out of a 
 notebook. 
 
 Thus arose a little intimacy which Olivia encouraged 
 on Alexis's account. Had not her father and brothers 
 trained her in the ways of men, one of which vital ways 
 was that which led to the social intercourse of man with 
 man? Besides, it was a law of sex. If she had not a 
 woman to talk to, she declared, she would go crazy. It 
 was much more comforting to powder one's nose in the 
 privacy of the gynaeceum than beneath man's unsympa- 
 thetic stare. Conversely it had been a dictum of her 
 father's that, in order to enjoy port, men must be released 
 from the distracting chatter of women. 
 
 "If I'm not broad-minded, I'm nothing," said Olivia. 
 
 " 'Broad' is inadequate," replied her husband, thrust- 
 ing back his brown hair. "The very wonder of you is 
 that your mind is as wide as the infinite air." 
 
 Which, of course, was as pleasant a piece of informa- 
 tion as any bride could receive. 
 
 The magic of the halcyon days was intensified by the 
 satisfaction of the sex cravings which, by the symbolism 
 of nose-powdering and port-drinking, Olivia had enun- 
 
 163
 
 164 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 ciated. In the deeps of her soul she could find no con- 
 suming passion for sitting scorched in a boat with a 
 baited and contemptuously disregarded line between ex- 
 pectant finger and thumb. She could not really under- 
 stand the men's anxiety to induce a mentally defective 
 fish to make a fool of itself. Yet she would have sat 
 blissfully for hours at his bidding, for the mere joy of 
 doing as she was bidden; but not to be bidden was a great 
 relief. Similarly, Alexis could not vie with Olivia in 
 concentration of being over the selection of material (in 
 the fly-trap of a great watering-place previously men- 
 tioned) and over the pattern and the manufacture by 
 knitting of gaudy hued silk jumpers. His infatuated eye 
 marvelled at the delicate swiftness of her fingers, at the 
 magical development of the web that was to encase her 
 adorable body. But his heart wasn't in it. Janet's was. 
 And General Philimore brought to the hooking of bass 
 the earnest singleness of purpose that, vague years ago, 
 had enabled him to ensnare thousands of Huns in barbed- 
 wire netting. 
 
 The primitive laws of sex asserted themselves, to the 
 common happiness. The men fished; the women fash- 
 ioned garments out of raw material. We can't get away 
 from the essentials of the Stone Age. And why in the 
 world should we? 
 
 But and here comes the delight of the reactions of 
 civilization invariably the last quarter of an hour of 
 these exclusive sex-communings was filled with boredom 
 and impatience. Alone at last, they would throw them- 
 selves into each other's arms with unconscionable grace- 
 lessness and say: "Thank Heaven, they've gone!" And 
 then the sun would shine more brightly and the lap of the
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 165 
 
 waves around them would add buoyancy to their bodies, 
 and Myra, ministering to their table wants, would assume 
 the guise of a high priestess consecrating their intimacy, 
 and the moon would invest herself with a special splen- 
 dour in their honour. 
 
 Now and then the four came together; a picnic lunch 
 at some spot across the bay; a wet after-dinner rubber at 
 bridge, or an hour's gossip of old forgotten far-off things 
 and battles of the day before yesterday, or in the 
 General's house a little idle music. There it was that 
 Olivia discovered another accomplishment in her wonder- 
 ful husband. He could play, sensitively, by ear 
 knowledge of notated music he disclaimed. Having been 
 impressed as a child with the idea that playing from ear 
 was a sin against the holy spirit of musical instruction, 
 and gaining from such instruction (at Landsdowne House 
 how different if she had been trained in the higher 
 spheres of Blair Park!) merely a distaste for mechanical 
 fingering of printed notes, she had given up music with a 
 sigh of relief, mingled with regret, and had remained un- 
 musical. And here was Alexis, who boasted his igno- 
 rance of the difference between a crotchet and an arpeg- 
 gio, racking the air with the poignant melancholy of 
 Russian folk-songs, and, in a Puckish twinkle, setting 
 their pulses dancing with a mad modern rhythm of African 
 savagery. 
 
 "But, dear, what else can you do?" she asked, after the 
 first exhibition of this unsuspected gift. "Tell me; for 
 these shocks aren't good for my health." 
 
 "On the mouth-organ," he laughed, "I've not met any 
 one to touch me." 
 
 It was not idle boasting. On their next rainy-day visit
 
 166 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 to the neighbouring town, Olivia slipped into a toy shop 
 and bought the most swollenly splendid of these instru- 
 ments that she could find, and Alexis played "The Mar- 
 seillaise" upon it with all the blare of a steam orchestrion. 
 
 The happy days sped by in an atmosphere of love and 
 laughter, yet filled not only with the sweet doings of idle- 
 ness. Olivia discovered that the poet-artist must work, 
 impelled thereto by his poet-artistry. He must write of 
 the passing things which touched his imagination and 
 which his imagination, in turn, transmuted into impres- 
 sions of beauty. These were like a painter's sketches, 
 said he, for use in after-time. 
 
 "It's for you, my dear, that I am making a hoard of 
 our golden moments, so that one of these days I may lay 
 them all at your feet." 
 
 And he must read, too. During the years that the 
 lucust of war had eaten, his educational development had 
 stood still. His English literary equipment fell far short 
 of that required by a successful English man of letters. 
 Vast tracts of the most glorious literature in the world 
 he had as yet left unexplored. The great Elizabethan 
 dramatists, for instance. Thick, serious volumes from the 
 London Library strewed the furniture of the wind-swept 
 sitting-room. Olivia, caught by his enthusiasm and 
 proud to identify herself with him in this feeding of the 
 fires of his genius, read with him; and to them together 
 were revealed the clanging majesty of Marlowe, the 
 subtle beauty of Beaumont and Fletcher, the haunting 
 gloom of Webster. In the evenings they would sit, lover- 
 like, the book between them, and read aloud, taking parts; 
 and it never failed to be an astonishment and a thrill to 
 the girl when, declaiming a fervid passage, he seemed for
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 167 
 
 the moment to forget her and to live in the sense of the 
 burning words. It was her joy to force her emotion to 
 his pitch. 
 
 Once, reading Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster, he 
 clutched her tightly with his left arm, while his right 
 hand upstretched, invoked unheeding Heaven, and de- 
 claimed: 
 
 "And then have taken me some mountain girl, 
 Beaten with winds, chaste as the hardened rocks 
 Whereon she dwells; that might have strewn my bed 
 With leaves and reeds, and with the skins o' Beasts, 
 Our neighbours; and have borne at her big breasts 
 My large coarse issue ! This had been a life 
 Free from vexation." 
 
 "But, Alexis, darling, I'm so sorry," she cried. 
 
 "Why? What do you mean?" 
 
 "You said it as if you meant it, as if it was the desire of 
 your heart. I'm not a bit like that." 
 
 They laughed and kissed. A dainty interlude. 
 
 "You've never really felt like that?" 
 
 "Never." 
 
 "The idea isn't even new," exclaimed Olivia, with grand 
 inversion of chronology. "Tennyson has something like 
 it in Locksley Hall. How does it go?" 
 
 With a wrinkling of the brow she quoted: 
 
 "Then the passions cramped no longer shall have scope and 
 
 breathing space 
 I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race. 
 
 "Iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, they shall dive and they shall 
 
 run, 
 
 Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the 
 sun."
 
 168 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "So he did! " cried Triona. "How wonderful of you to 
 remember! Why the dear beautiful old thief!" He 
 forgot the point at issue in contemplation of the literary 
 coincidence of plagiarism. "Well, I'm damned! Such 
 a crib! With the early Victorian veil of prudery over it! 
 Oh, Lord! Give me the Elizabethan, any day. Yet, 
 isn't it funny? The period-spirit? If Tennyson had 
 been an Elizabethan, he would have walked over Beau- 
 mont and Fletcher like a Colossus; but in a world under 
 the awe of Queen Victoria's red flannel petticoat he is 
 reduced to stealing Elizabethan thunder and reproducing 
 it with a bit of sheet iron and a stick." 
 
 "Dear," said Olivia, "we have much to be thankful 
 for." 
 
 "You and I?" he queried. 
 
 "Our generation. We live in the sun. No longer 
 under the shadow of the red flannel petticoat." 
 
 Rapturously he called her a marvel among women. 
 Olivia's common sense discounted the hyperbole; but she 
 loved his tribute to her sally of wit. 
 
 The book slipped to the floor, while she began an argu- 
 ment on the morality of plagiarism. How far was a man 
 justified in stealing another man's idea, working up an- 
 other man's material? 
 
 His sudden and excited defence of the plagiarist sur- 
 prised her. He rose, strode about the room and, talking, 
 grew eloquent; quoted Shakespeare as the great exemplar 
 of the artist who took his goods from everywhere he 
 found them. Olivia, knowing his joy in conversational 
 fence, made smiling attack. 
 
 "In the last three hundred years we have developed a 
 literary conscience."
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 169 
 
 "A commercial matter," he declared. "A question of 
 copyright. I granted that. You have no right to ex- 
 ploit another man's ideas to his material loss. But take 
 a case like this" he paced before her for a few seconds 
 "on the spur of the moment. It must have happened 
 a thousand times in the War. An unknown dead man 
 just a kilometre away from a bleak expanse of waste 
 covered with thousands of dead men. Some one happens 
 upon him. Searches him for identification. Finds noth- 
 ing of any use or interest save a little notebook with 
 leaves of the thinnest paper next his skin. And he 
 glances through the book and sees at once that it is no 
 ordinary diary of war discomfort of billets, so many 
 miles' march, morale of the men and so forth but some- 
 thing quite different. He puts it in his pocket. For all 
 that the modern world is concerned, the dead man is as 
 lost as any skeleton dug up in an ancient Egyptian grave- 
 yard. The living man, when he has leisure, reads the 
 closely written manuscript book, finds it contains rough 
 notes of wonderful experiences, thoughts, imaginings. 
 But all in a jumble, ill expressed, chaotic. Suppose, now, 
 the finder, a man with the story-teller's gift, weaves a 
 wonderful thrilling tale out of this material. Who is 
 injured? Nobody. On the contrary, the world is the 
 richer." 
 
 "If he were honest, he ought to tell the truth in a 
 preface," said Olivia. 
 
 Triona laughed. "Who would believe him? The 
 trick of writing false prefaces in order to give verisimili- 
 tude is so overworked that people won't believe the genu- 
 ine ones." 
 
 "I suppose that's so," she acquiesced. Her interest in
 
 170 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 the argument was only a reflection of his. She was far 
 more eager to resume the interrupted reading of Philaster. 
 
 "It's lovely that we always see things in the same way," 
 said he, sitting down again by her side. 
 
 Besides all this delightful work and play there was the 
 practical future to be considered. They could not live 
 for ever at "Quien Sabe" on The Point, nor could they 
 live at the Lord knows where anywhere else. They must 
 have a home. 
 
 "Before you stole over my being and metamorphosed 
 me, I should have asked why?" he said. "Any old dry 
 hole in a tree would have done for me, untli I got tired of 
 it and flew to another. But now " 
 
 "Now you're dying to live in a nice little house and 
 have your meals regular and pay rates and taxes, and 
 make me a respectable woman." 
 
 They decided that a house was essential. It would 
 have to be furnished. But what was the object of buying 
 new furniture at the present fantastic prices when she 
 had a great house full of it from real Chippendale chairs 
 to sound fish-kettles? The answer was obvious. 
 
 "Why not Medlow? Olifant won't stay there for 
 ever. He hinted as much." 
 
 She shook her head. No. Medlow was excellent for 
 cabbages, but passion-flowers like her Alexis would wilt 
 and die. He besought her with laughing tenderness not 
 to think of him. From her would he drink in far more 
 sunlight and warmth than his passion-flower-like nature 
 could need. Had she not often told him of her love for 
 the quaint old house and its sacred associations? It. 
 would be a joy to him to see her link up the old life with 
 the new.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 171 
 
 "Besides," he urged, attributing ber reluctance to 
 solicitude for his happiness, "it's the common-sense solu- 
 tion. There's our natural headquarters. We needn't 
 stay there all the year round, from year's end to year's 
 end. When we want to throw a leg we can run away, to 
 London, Paris, "Quien Sabe," John o' Groats the wide 
 world's before us." 
 
 But Olivia kept on shaking her head. Abandoning 
 metaphor, she insisted on the necessity of his taking the 
 position he had gained in the social world of art and 
 letters. Hadn't he declared a day or two ago that good 
 talk was one of the most stimulating pleasures in life? 
 What kind of talk could Medlow provide? It was far 
 more sensible, when Major Olifant's tenancy was over, 
 to move the furniture to their new habitation and let 
 "The Towers" unfurnished. 
 
 "As you will, belovedest," he said. "Yet," he added, 
 with a curious note of wistfulness, "I learned to love the 
 house and the sleepy old town and the mouldering castle." 
 
 The practical decision to which she was brought out of 
 honeymoon lotus-land was the first cloud on her married 
 happiness. It had never occurred to her before that 
 she could have anything to conceal from her husband. 
 Not an incident in the Lydian galley had her ingenuous- 
 ness not revealed. But now she felt consciously dis- 
 ingenuous, and it was horrible. How could -she confess 
 the real reason for her refusal to live in Medlow? Was 
 she not to him the Fairy Princess? He had told her so 
 a thousand times. He had pictured his first vision of her 
 glowing flame colour and dusk beneath the theatre portico, 
 his other vision of her exquisite in moonlight and snow- 
 flake in the great silent street. His faith in her based
 
 172 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 itself on the axiom of her regality. Woman-like, she had 
 laughed within herself at his dear illusions. But that 
 was the key of the staggering position; his illusions were 
 inexpressibly dear to her; they were the priceless jewels 
 of her love. With just a little craft, so sweet, so divinely 
 humorous, to exercise she could maintain these illusions 
 to the end of time. . . . 
 
 But not at Medlow. 
 
 She had gone forth from it, on her pilgrimage, in order 
 to establish herself in her mother's caste. And she had 
 succeeded. The name of her grandfather, Bagshawe of 
 the Guides, had been a password to the friendships which 
 now she most valued. Marriage had denned her social 
 ambitions. They were modest, fundamentally sane. 
 Her husband, a man of old family and gentle upbringing, 
 ranked with her mother and General and Janet Philimore. 
 He was a man of genius, too, and his place was among 
 the great ones of the social firmament. 
 
 She thought solely in terms of caste, gentle and intellec- 
 tual. She swept aside the meretricious accessories of the 
 Sydney Rooke gang with a reactionary horror. 
 
 A few days before, Alexis, lyrically lover like, had said: 
 
 "You are so beautiful. If only I could string your neck 
 with pearls, and built you a great palace . . ." etcetera, 
 etcetera, etcetera, in the manner of the adoring, but com- 
 paratively impecunious poet. 
 
 And she had replied: 
 
 "I don't want pearls, palaces or motor-cars. They're 
 all symbols, my dear, of the Unreal. Ordinary comfort 
 of food and warmth and decent clothes yes. But that's 
 all. So long as you string my heart with love and my 
 mind with noble thoughts."
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 173 
 
 She longed passionately to live with him, above herself. 
 And yet, here at the outset, was she living below herself. 
 She would wake in the morning and, sleepless, grow hot 
 and clammy at the thought of her deception. And the 
 whole of her Medlow life drifted miserably through her 
 consciousness: the schoolgirl's bitter resentment of the 
 supercilious nose in the air attitude of the passing 
 crocodile of Blair Park; of the vicar's daughters' con- 
 descending nod he was a Canon of somewhere and an 
 "Honourable" to boot at "that pretty Miss Gale"; her 
 recognition, when she came to years of sense, of the social 
 gulf between her family and the neighbouring gentry 
 whose lives, with their tennis parties and dances and 
 social doings, seemed so desirable and so remote. To 
 bring her wonderful husband into that world of "homely 
 folk," the excellent, but uncultivated Trivetts, the more 
 important tradespeople, the managers of the mills, the 
 masters of the County School, her father's world, and to 
 see him rigidly excluded from that to which her mother 
 and he himself belonged, was more than she could bear. 
 She tortured herself with the new problem of snobbery 
 rating herself, in this respect, beneath Lydia, who was 
 frankly cynical as to both her own antecedents and her 
 late husband's social standing. But for the life of her she 
 could not bring herself to explain to Alexis the real im- 
 possibility of Medlow. When she tried, she found that 
 his foreign upbringing failed to seize the fine shade of her 
 suggestion. 
 
 His gay carelessness eventually lulled her conscience. 
 As soon as Olifant had done with "The Towers," they 
 could transfer the furniture to whatever habitation they 
 chose and let the house.
 
 174 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "I feel you couldn't find it in your heart to sell the old 
 place," he said. "Besides who knows one of these 
 days " 
 
 She thought him the most delicately perceptive of men. 
 
 "No, dear," she said, her cheek against his. "I couldn't 
 sell it." 
 
 Then all Medlow danger was over. She breathed 
 freely. But still the little cloud of deceit hung over her 
 serene mind and cast ever so tiny a shadow over her 
 rapturous life. 
 
 They had been four weeks in the deliciously sure uncer- 
 tainty of "Quien Sabe," when, one noon while they were 
 drying themselves in the hot sand and sunshine of their 
 tiny bay, after a swim, Myra came down gaunt through 
 the whin-covered hill-side with a telegram in her hand. 
 With the perversity of her non-recognition of the house- 
 hold paramountcy of her master, she handed the envelope 
 to Olivia. The name was just "Triona." Olivia was 
 about to open it instinctively when Alexis started to a 
 sitting position, and, with an eager glance, held out his 
 hand. 
 
 "I think it's for me. I was expecting it. Do you 
 mind?" 
 
 She passed it over with a smile. Alexis rose to his 
 feet, tore the envelope open, and moving a few yards away 
 towards the surf read the message. Then slowly he tore 
 it up into the tiniest fragments and scattered them on the 
 last wavelets of the ebb tide, and stood for a second or two, 
 staring across the sea. At last he turned. Olivia rose to 
 meet him. Myra was impassively making her way back 
 up the rough slope. 
 
 "What's the matter?" asked Olivia, puzzled at his
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 175 
 
 scrupulous destruction of the telegram and reading some- 
 thing like fear in his eyes. 
 
 "I've had bad news," he said. He picked up his bath- 
 gown, shook it free from sand, and huddled it around him. 
 "Let us get up to the house." He shivered. "It's cold." 
 
 She followed him wonderingly. 
 
 "What bad news?" she asked. 
 
 He turned his head, with a half-laugh. "Nothing so 
 very desperate. The end of the world hasn't come yet. 
 I'll tell you when I've changed." 
 
 He rushed up the steps of the veranda and into his 
 little dressing-room. Olivia, dry and warm, sat in a sun- 
 beat chair and anxiously waited for him. The instinct of 
 a loving woman, the delicacy of a sensitive soul, forbade 
 her teasing with insistent questions a man thrown for 
 the moment off his balance. Yet she swept the horizon of 
 her mind for reasons. 
 
 A quarter of an hour afterwards it had seemed a 
 quarter of a century he appeared, dressed, not in his 
 customary flannels, but in the blue serge suit of their 
 wedding day. The sight of it struck a chill through her 
 heart. 
 
 "You are going away?" 
 
 He nodded. "Yes, my dear, I have to." 
 
 "Why? What has happened?" 
 
 "I can't tell you, dear. That's the heart-rending part 
 of it. It's secret from the Foreign Office." 
 
 She reacted in laughter. "Oh, my darling how you 
 frightened me. I thought it was something serious." 
 
 "Of course it's serious, if I have to leave you for three 
 or four days perhaps a week." 
 
 "A week!" She stood aghast. It was serious. How
 
 176 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 could she face a lonely epoch of seven days, each count- 
 ing twenty-four thousand halting hours? What did it 
 mean? 
 
 "There are not many men who know Russian as I do. 
 I've been in touch with the Intelligence Department ever 
 since I landed in England. That's why I went to Finland 
 in the autumn. These things bind me to inviolable 
 secrecy, beloved. You understand, don't you?" 
 
 "Of course I understand," she replied proudly. 
 
 "I could refuse if you made a point of it. I'm a free 
 man." 
 
 She put her two hands on his shoulders and ever after 
 he had this one more unforgettable picture of her the 
 red bathing cap knotted in front, dainty, setting off her 
 dark eyes and her little eager face the peignoir, care- 
 lessly loose, revealing the sweet, frank mould of her figure 
 in the red bathing suit. 
 
 "My father and my two brothers gave their lives for 
 England. Do you think I could be so utterly selfish as 
 to grudge my country a week of my husband's society?" 
 
 He took her cheeks in his hands. "More and more do 
 you surpass the Princess of my dreams." 
 
 She laughed. "I'm an Englishwoman." 
 
 "And so, you don't want to know where I'm going?" 
 
 She moved aside. "Of course I do. I shall be in a 
 fever till you come back. But if I'm not to know well 
 I'm not to know. It's enough for me that you're serv- 
 ing your country. Tell me," she said suddenly, catching 
 him by the coat lapels. "There's no danger." 
 
 He smiled. "Not a little tiny bit. Of that you can 
 be assured. The worst is a voyage to Helsingfors and
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 177 
 
 back. So I gathered from the telegram, which was in 
 execrable Foreign Office Russian." 
 "And when are you going?" 
 "By the first train. I must report to-night." 
 "Can't I come with you as far as London?" 
 He considered for a moment. "No," he said. "Where 
 would you sleep? In all probability I shall have to take 
 the midnight boat to Havre." 
 
 An hour later they parted. She returned to the empty 
 house frightened at she knew not what, insecure, terrify- 
 ingly alone; she was fretted by an uncanny sense of hav- 
 ing mated with the inhabitant of another planet who had 
 suddenly taken wing through the vast emptiness to the 
 strange sphere of his birth. She wandered up and down 
 the veranda, in and out of the three intimate rooms, where 
 the traces of his late presence, books, papers, clothes, lay 
 strewn carelessly about. She smiled wanly, reflecting 
 that he wore his surroundings loosely as he did his clothes. 
 Suddenly she uttered a little feminine cry, as her glance 
 fell on his wrist watch lying on the drawing-room mantel- 
 piece. He had forgotten it. She took it up with the 
 impulsive intention of posting it to him at once. But the 
 impulse fell into the nervelessness of death, when she 
 remembered that he had given her no address. She must 
 await his telegram to-morrow, the next day, the day 
 after, he could not say. Meanwhile, he would be chaf- 
 ing at the lack of his watch. She worried herself 
 infinitely over the trifle, unconsciously finding relief in 
 the definite. 
 
 The weary hours till night passed by. She tried to 
 read. She tried to eat. She thought of going over the
 
 178 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 road to the Philimores' for company; but her mood for- 
 bade. For all their delicacy they would ask reasons for 
 this sudden abandonment. She magnified its importance. 
 She could have said: "My husband has gone to London 
 on business." But to her brain, overwrought by sudden 
 emotion, the commonplace excuse seemed inadequate. 
 She shrank from the society of her kind friends, who 
 would regard this interplanetary mystery as a matter of 
 course. 
 
 If only Alexis had taken his watch ! Perhaps he would 
 have time to buy another a consoling thought. Mean- 
 while she strapped it on her own wrist, heroically resolved 
 not to part with it night or day until he returned. 
 
 She sat by the lamp on the sitting-room table, looking 
 out over the veranda at the pitch blackness of a breathless 
 night in which not even the mild beat of the surf could 
 be heard. She might have been in some far Pacific desert 
 island. Her book lay on her lap the second volume of 
 Motley's Dutch Republic. All the Alvas and Williams, 
 all the heroes and villains, all the soldiers and politicians 
 and burghers were comfortably dead hundreds of years 
 ago. What did these dead men matter, when one living 
 man, the equal of them all, had gone forth from her, into 
 the unknowableness of the night? 
 
 Myra came into the room with an amorphous bundle 
 in her hand. 
 
 "The camp bed in the dressing-room isn't very com- 
 fortable but I suppose I can sleep on it." 
 
 Olivia turned swiftly in her chair, startled into human 
 realities. 
 
 "No. It's a beast of a thing. But I should love to
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 179 
 
 have you to be with me. You're a dear. You sleep in 
 my bed and I'll take the dressing-room." 
 
 "You once gave signs of being a woman of sense," said 
 Myra tonelessly. "It seems I was mistaken." 
 
 She disappeared with her bundle. Olivia put out the 
 light and went to bed, where she lay awake all the night, 
 fantastically widowed, striving with every nerve and every 
 brain-cell to picture the contemporaneous situation of her 
 husband. Three o'clock in the morning. He would be 
 in mid-Channel. Had he secured a berth? Or was he 
 forced to walk up and down the steamer's deck? Thank 
 Heaven, it was a black still night. She stole out of bed 
 and looked at the sea. A sea of oil. It was something 
 to be grateful for. But the poor boy without his watch 
 the watch which had marked for him the laggard minutes 
 of captivity, the racing hours of approaching death, the 
 quiet, rhythmic companion and recorder of his amazing 
 life. 
 
 She forced all her will power to sleep; but the blank of 
 him there on the infinite expanse of mattress she felt like 
 a frost. The dawn found her with wide and sleepless 
 eyes. 
 
 And while she was picturing this marvel among men 
 standing by the steamer's side in the night, in communion 
 with the clear and heavy stars, holding in his adventurous 
 grasp the secret of a world's peace, Alexis Triona was 
 speeding northwards, sitting upright in a third-class 
 carriage, to Newcastle-on-Tyne. And at Newcastle he 
 expected no ship to take him to Finland. Lucky if he 
 found a cab in the early morning to take him to his desti- 
 nation three miles away.
 
 180 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 For the telegram which he had torn to pieces had not 
 come from the War Office. It was not written in Russian. 
 It was in good, plain, curt English: 
 
 "Mother dying. Come at once."
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 ATAXICAB took him in dreary rain through the 
 squalor of Tyneside, now following the dismal 
 tram lines, now cutting through mean streets, 
 until they reached a row of low, bow-windows agglutinated 
 little villas with handkerchief of garden separating them 
 from the road. At No. 17 he dismissed the cab and swung 
 wide the flimsy gate. Before he could enter, the house 
 door opened and a woman appeared, worn and elderly, in 
 a cheap, soiled wrapper. 
 
 "I suppose that's you, John. I shouldn't have 
 recognized you." 
 
 She spoke with a harsh, northern accent, and her face 
 betrayed little emotion. 
 
 "You're Ellen," said he. 
 
 "Aye. I'm Ellen. You didn't think I was Jane?" 
 
 She led the way into a narrow passage and then into 
 the diminutive parlour. 
 
 "Of course not," said he. "Jane died three years ago. 
 But you I haven't seen since I was a child." 
 
 She looked him up and down: "Quite the gentleman." 
 
 "I hope so. How's mother?" 
 
 She gave the news dully. The sick woman had passed 
 through the night safely and was now asleep. 
 
 "She had made up her mind to see you before she died 
 she always was strong willed and that has kept her alive. 
 Until I read your telegram I didn't think you would 
 come." 
 
 181
 
 182 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 He flashed one of his quick glances. "Why not? 
 This isn't the first time I've come to see her since my 
 return. If I've made my way in the world, that's no 
 reason for you to call me undutiful." 
 
 "I don't want to quarrel, John," she said wearily. 
 "Yes. I know about your visits and the bit of money 
 you send her. And she's grateful, poor soul." She 
 paused. Then: "You'll be wanting breakfast." 
 
 "Also a wash." 
 
 "Are you too grand for the sink, or must you have hot 
 water in your room?" 
 
 "The sink will do. It will be less trouble for you." 
 
 Alexis Triona followed her down the passage, and hav- 
 ing washed himself with a bit of yellow soap and dried 
 himself on the coarse towel hung on a stretch of string, 
 went into the tidy kitchen, hung with cheap prints and 
 faded photographs of departed Briggses, his coat over his 
 arm, and conversed with his sister in his shirt sleeves 
 while she fried the eggs and bacon for his meal. His 
 readiness to fall into the household ways somewhat 
 mollified her. Her mother had been full of pride in the 
 great man John had become, and she had expected the airs 
 and graces of the upstart. Living at Sunderland with her 
 husband, a foreman riveter, and her children, and going 
 filially to Newcastle only once a year, she had not met 
 him on his previous visits. Now her mother's illness had 
 summoned her three or four days before, when the 
 neighbour's daughter who "did for" Mrs. Briggs, ordi- 
 narily a strong and active woman, found the sudden situa- 
 tion beyond her powers and responsibility. So, until the 
 ailing lady discoursed to her of the paragon, she had 
 scarcely given him a thought for the sixteen years they
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 183 
 
 had been separated. Her memories of him as a child who 
 alternated exasperating mischief with bone-idle fits of 
 reading had not endeared him to her practical mind; and 
 when the impish dreamer disappeared into the vast inane 
 of foreign parts, and when she herself was driven by she 
 knew not what idiot romanticalism into the grey worries 
 of wifehood and motherhood, her consciousness recorded 
 the memory of a brother John, but whether he was alive 
 or dead or happy or miserable was a matter of illimitable 
 unconcern. Now, however, he had come to life, very 
 vivid, impressing her with a certain masterfulness in 
 his manner which had nothing to do with the airs and 
 graces she despised. Yet she still regarded him with sus- 
 picion; even when, seating himself at the roughly laid end 
 of the kitchen table and devouring bacon and eggs with 
 healthy appetite, he enthusiastically praised her cookery. 
 
 "What I can't understand is," she said, standing at the 
 other end of the table and watching him eat, "why the 
 name of John Briggs isn't good enough for you." 
 
 "It's difficult to explain," said he. "You see, I've 
 written a book. Have you read it?" 
 
 She regarded him scornfully. "Do you suppose, with 
 a husband and seven children I've time to waste on 
 books? I've seen it," she admitted. "Mother has it 
 bound in brown paper, by the side of her bed." 
 
 "You must read it," replied Triona, somewhat relieved. 
 "Then you'll see why I've changed my name." He 
 laughed at her uncomprehending face. "I've done noth- 
 ing criminal, you know, and I'm not hiding from justice." 
 
 "I suppose an outlandish name brings in more money," 
 she suggested practically. 
 
 "That's so," said he.
 
 184 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "Fools must be fools." 
 
 He acquiesced gladly, gauging the end of an embarras- 
 sing examination, and turned the conversation to her 
 domestic affairs. 
 
 Breakfast over, he lit a cigarette and watched her clear 
 away, viewing through the smoke the memories of his 
 childhood. Just so, in that very wooden arm-chair, 
 though in another kitchen, used his father to sit, pipe 
 in mouth, while the women did the household work. It 
 was all so familiar, yet so far away. Between then and 
 now stretched a lifetime so it seemed of wide and 
 romantic happenings. There, before him, on the wall 
 hung, as it did years ago, the haunting coloured print, 
 cut from some Christmas Number, of young Amyas 
 Leigh listening to Salvation Yeo. As a child, Salvation 
 Yeo's long arm and finger pointing out to sea had been his 
 inspiration. He had followed it, and gone to distant 
 lands and gone through the promised adventures, and 
 had returned to the picture, wondering whether all that 
 had been was real and not the figment of a dream. 
 
 A little later, after the doctor's visit, he was admitted 
 to his mother's room. For an hour or so he sat with 
 her and gave a human being deep happiness. In the 
 afternoon she lost consciousness. For a day or two she 
 lingered on, and then she died. 
 
 During the dreary interval between his interview and 
 the funeral, Alexis Triona sat for many hours in his 
 father's chair, for the North was smitten with a dismal 
 spell of rain and tempest which discouraged rambling 
 out of doors, reconstructing his life, unweaving fact from 
 fiction, tearing aside the veils of self-deception wherein 
 he had enwrapped his soul. Surely there was some
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 185 
 
 basis of fact in the romantic history of Alexis Triona 
 with which for the past year he had identified himself. 
 Surely a man could not dwell so intensely in an imaginary 
 life if none of it were real. Even while tearing open 
 veils and viewing his soul's nakedness, he sought jus- 
 tification. 
 
 Did he not find it in that eagerness of spirit which 
 had sent him, in obedience to Salvation Yeo's pointing 
 finger, away from the dour and narrow father and the 
 first taste of the Tyneside works, penniless, over the 
 wild North Sea to Archangel, town of fairy wonders, and 
 thence, so as not to be caught on the ship again and 
 taken back to Newcastle, to wanderings he scarce knew 
 whither? Did he not find it in the strange lure of Russia 
 which impelled him, when, after a few voyages, he landed 
 in the port of London, to procure a passport which would 
 make him free for the land of his fascination? Did he 
 not find it in the resourcefulness of brain which, the 
 mariner's life forsaken, first secured him employment in 
 the English racing establishment of a Russian Prince, 
 and then interested recognition by the Princess herself, 
 so that, after a strenuous while he found himself no 
 longer as an inconsiderable stable hand, but as a human 
 being who counted in the world? Did he not find it in 
 his fond ambitions, when the Princess at his request 
 transferred him from stables to garage, from garage 
 to motor- works for higher training; when he set him- 
 self to learn Russian as no Englishman should ever have 
 learned it; when afterwards he steeped his mind in 
 Russian poetry and folk-lore, sleeping four or five hours 
 a night, compelled by dreams of greatness in which there 
 figured as his bride of the golden future the little Princess
 
 186 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 Tania, whose governess-taught English was as pure as 
 the church bells on a frosty night? Did he not find it 
 in those qualities of practical command of circumstance 
 and of poetic vision which had raised him in a few years 
 from the ragged, semi-ignorant, sea-faring English lout 
 alone in Russia to the trusted chief of a Prince's fleet 
 of a dozen cars, to the courier-chauffeur, with all the 
 roads and ways and customs and languages of Russia, 
 from Riga to Tobolsk, and from Tobolsk to Tiflis, and 
 from Tiflis to St. Petersburg, at his finger tips; to the 
 Master of Russian Literature, already something of a 
 published poet, admitted into intellectual companionship 
 by the Prince and thereby given undreamed of leisure 
 for further intellectual development? What were those 
 qualities but the qualities of genius differentiating him 
 from the ordinary run of men and absolving him from 
 such judgments as might be passed upon the errant of 
 them? Without this absolving genius could he have 
 marched in and taken his place in the modern world of 
 English letters? 
 
 Meanwhile, being of frugal tastes, he had grown rich 
 beyond the dream of the Tyneside urchin's avarice. He 
 had visions of great motor-works, the manufacture of 
 an all- Russian car, built up by his own resources. The 
 princely family encouraged him. Negotiations had just 
 begun was his story so devoid of truth? when the 
 great world cataclysm brought more than his schemes 
 for an all-Russian car toppling to the ground. The 
 Prince's household was disintegrated; horses and cars 
 were swallowed up in the great convulsion. 
 
 He found himself driving generals around the shell- 
 scarred front as a volunteer, for being of British nation-
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 187 
 
 ality he had not been called up for military service. 
 With them he served in advances and retreats and saw 
 battles and burnings like many millions of other men, 
 but from the comparative safety of a headquarters car. 
 It was not until he ran into the British Armoured Car 
 Column that his patriotism took fire, and he became a 
 combatant in British uniform. He remained with the 
 Column for most of the campaign. Badly wounded to- 
 wards the end, he was left in a Russian hospital, a 
 British naval rating. He remained there many months; 
 a bullet through his chest had missed a vital part and 
 the wound had soon healed, but his foot had gangrened, 
 and only the star in which he trusted had saved it from 
 amputation. There was no fiction about the three lost 
 toes whose gap he had shown to Olifant. 
 
 So far did Alexis Triona, sitting in the kitchen arm- 
 chair, salve his conscience. In his story had he done more 
 than remodel the contour of fact? Beneath it did not 
 the living essence of truth persist? Was he not a highly 
 educated man? Had he not consorted before the cat- 
 aclysm, and later in the strangely filled hospital with 
 the young Russian intelligentsia, who talked and talked 
 
 and talked ? Who could know better than he how 
 
 Russia had floundered in their tempestuous ocean of 
 talk? And, finally, had he not gone, stout-hearted, 
 through the perils and hardships and exquisite suffer- 
 ings of the cataclysm? 
 
 So far, so good. But what of the rest? For the. rest, 
 was not Fate responsible? 
 
 The Revolution came, and Russian organization 
 crumbled like a castle touched with an enchanter's 
 wand. He went forth healed from the hospital into
 
 188 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 chaos; Petrograd, where his little fortune lay, his ob- 
 jective. Sometimes he found a foothold on an aimless 
 train. Sometimes he jogged weary miles in a peasant's 
 cart. Sometimes he walked. When he learned that 
 British uniform was no longer held in high esteem he 
 changed to peasant's dress. So far his journey through 
 revolutionary Russia was true. But he had enough 
 money in his pocket to keep him from want. 
 
 And then arrived the day which counted most in his 
 life's history, when that which he had recounted to Olivia 
 as a fantastic possibility happened in sober fact. 
 
 He had been given to understand that if he walked 
 to a certain junction he might find a train returning to 
 Petrograd. Tired, he sat by the wayside, and undoing 
 his wallet ate the black bread and dried fish which he 
 had procured at the last village. And, while eating, he 
 became aware of something gleaming in the rank grasses 
 of the ditch something long and pallid and horrible. 
 He slid down and found a dead man, stark naked, lying 
 oh his back with the contused mark of a bullet hole 
 in his chest. A man of fifty, with short-cropped, grizzled 
 hair and moustache, and clear, refined features. He 
 must have been dead two days. There he lay, constricted 
 of limb, stripped of everything that could meaa warmth 
 or comfort or money to his murderers. The living man's 
 short experience told him that such things were not un- 
 common in great revolutions. He was about to leave 
 the corpse for what could he do? when his eyes caught 
 the glint of metal a few feet away. It was a pocket 
 compass. And further on he found at intervals a tooth- 
 brush; a coverless, tattered copy of Tacitus; a little 
 faded snapshot of a woman mounted on cardboard; a
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 189 
 
 vulcanite upper plate of half a dozen false teeth; and 
 a little fat book with curling covers of American cloth. 
 Had he continued his search he might have found many 
 other objects discarded by the robbers as useless. But 
 what was the good of pieces of conviction for a judicial 
 enquiry that would never take place? The little fat 
 book, which on opening he found to be manuscript in 
 minute handwriting, he thrust in his pocket. And so he 
 went his way. 
 
 But on his way, his curiosity being aroused, he read 
 in the little book an absorbing diary of amazing adven- 
 tures, of hardships and prison and tortures unspeak- 
 able; and without a thought of its value, further than 
 its romantic fascination, he grew to regard it during 
 his wanderings as his most precious possession. 
 
 So far again, until he reached Riga, there was truth 
 in the story of his Russian traverse. Had he not prowled 
 suspect about revolutionary Petrograd? Had not the 
 Prince and Princess, the idealized parents of the story, 
 been murdered and their wealth, together with his own 
 few thousand roubles, been confiscated? Was he not a 
 fugitive? Indeed, had he not seen the inside of a hor- 
 rible prison? It is true that after a day or two he man- 
 aged by bribery to escape. But the essence of things 
 was there the grain of fact which, under the sunlight 
 of his genius, expanded into the splendid growth of Truth. 
 And his wit had served him, too. His guards were for 
 taking away the precious book. Knowing them to be 
 illiterate, he declared it to be the manuscript of his re- 
 publican poem. Challenged to read, he recited from 
 memory verses of Shevchenko, until they were convinced, 
 not only of the book's contents, but of his own revolu-
 
 190 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 tionary opinions. This establishment of his orthodoxy, 
 together with a few roubles, assured his escape. And 
 thence had he not gone northwards, hungry and footsore? 
 
 And had he not been torpedoed? Cast ashore in shirt 
 and trousers, penniless? Was not the real truth of this 
 adventure even more to his credit than the fictitious nar- 
 rative? For, a naval rating, he had reported to a British 
 man-of-war, and had spent months in a mine sweeper 
 in the North Sea, until the final catastrophe occurred. 
 Then, after a short time in hospital a kindly medical 
 board found something wrong with his heart and sent 
 him out into the English world, a free man. 
 
 Yes. His real record was one that no man need be 
 ashamed of. Why, then, the fiction? 
 
 Sitting there in the uncompromising reality of his 
 mother's kitchen, he strove for the first time to answer 
 the question. He found an answer in the obsession of 
 the little book. During the scant leisure of his months 
 at sea it had been his breviary. More, it had been a 
 talisman, a secret scroll of enchantment which, wrapped 
 in oilskin, never left his person, save when, beneath the 
 dim lamp of the fo'c'sle, he pored over it, hunched up 
 against a bulkhead. The spirit of the writer whom he 
 had seen dead and naked, seemed to have descended upon 
 him. In the bitter watches of the North Sea he lived 
 through the dead man's life with bewildering intensity. 
 There were times, so he assured himself, when it became 
 a conscious effort to unravel his own experiences from 
 those of the dead man. That he had not lived in remoter 
 Kurdistan was unthinkable. And, surely too, he had 
 been tortured. 
 
 And when, in the attic in Cherbury Mews, impelled
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 191 
 
 by irresistible force, he began to write his fantasia of 
 fact and imagination, the obsession grew mightier. His 
 pen was winged with flame. 
 
 "Why," said he, half aloud, one day, staring into the 
 kitchen fire, "why should it not be a case of psychic ob- 
 session for which I am not responsible?" 
 
 And that was the most comforting solution he could 
 find. 
 
 There was none other. He moved uneasily, changing 
 the crossing of his legs, and threw a freshly rolled and 
 lighted cigarette into the grate. It was a case of psychic 
 obsession. Otherwise he was a barefaced liar, a worm 
 to be despised by his fellow-men. How else to account 
 for the original lie direct, unreserved, to the publisher? 
 Up to then he had no thought of sailing through the 
 world under false colours. He had to give the mysterious 
 dead man some identity. His own unconscious creative 
 self clamoured for expression. He had woven the dead 
 man and himself into a personality to which he had given 
 the name of Alexis Triona. Naturally, for verisimilitude, 
 he had assumed "Alexis Triona" as a pen-name. Be- 
 sides, who would read a new book by one John Briggs? 
 The publisher's first direct question was a blow between 
 the eyes under which he reeled for a few seconds? Then 
 the romantic, the psychic, the whatever you will of the 
 artist's touch of lunacy asserted itself, and John Briggs 
 was consumed in ashes and the Phoenix Alexis Triona 
 arose in his stead. And when the book appeared and 
 the Phoenix leaped into fame, what could the Phoenix 
 do, for the sake of its ordinary credit, but maintain its 
 Phoenixdom? 
 
 Until now it had been the simplest matter in the world,
 
 192 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 seeing that lie half believed in it himself, seeing that the 
 identification of the dead man with himself was so com- 
 plete, that his lies, even to himself, had the generous air 
 of conviction. But now, in the uncompromising John 
 Briggs-dom of his surroundings, things were different. 
 The obsession which still lingered when he bade Olivia 
 adieu had vanished from his spirit. He saw himself 
 naked, a mere impostor. If his past found absolution 
 in the theory of psychic domination, his present was 
 none the less in a parlous state. 
 
 He had no more gone to Helsingfors in the last year's 
 autumn than he had gone there now. What should John 
 Briggs, obscure and demobilized able seaman, have to 
 do in Helingfors? Why the elaborate falsehood? He 
 shrugged his shoulders and made a helpless gesture with 
 his elbows. The obsession again. The quietude of 
 Medlow had got on his nerves. He had to break away, 
 to seek fresh environment. He had invented Helsing- 
 fors; it was dramatic, in his romantic past; it kept up, 
 in the direct mind of Blaise Olifant, the mystery of Alexis 
 Triona; and it gave him freedom. He had spoken truth 
 as to his vagabond humour. He loved the eternal change 
 of the broad highway. The Salvation Yeo inspiration 
 had persisted ever since he had run away from home to 
 the Eldorado beyond the seas. Had he been set down 
 in a torpid household, no matter how princely, sooner 
 or later he would have revolted and have fled, smitten 
 with the wander madness. But the Prince, the nomadic 
 Tartar atavism asserting itself, suffered too much from 
 this unrest; and in their mighty journeyings through 
 Russia, up and down, north and south, east and west, 
 and in the manifold adventures and excitements by the
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 193 
 
 way, the young chief mechanic found the needful satis- 
 faction of his cravings. On leaving Medlow he had 
 started on a tramp, knapsack on back, to the north of 
 Scotland, stopping at his mother's house, en route, and 
 had reached the John o' Groats whither, on an eventful 
 day, Olivia had professed herself ready to accompany 
 him. She had little guessed how well he knew that long, 
 long road. . . . Yet, when he met Blaise Olifant again, 
 and was forced to vague allusion to his mythical travels, 
 he almost persuaded himself that he had just arrived 
 from Finland. 
 
 But now had come an irreparable shifting of psycho- 
 logical values. He could not return to Olivia, eating her 
 heart out for news of him, and persuade himself that he 
 had been to Helsingfors. The lie had been facile enough. 
 How else to account for his absence? His attendance at 
 his mother's death-bed had been imperative: to disregard 
 the summons had never entered his mind. Yet simple 
 avowal would have been pulling down the keystone of 
 the elaborate structure which, to her, represented Alexis 
 Triona. The parting lie had been easy: but the lie on 
 his return the inevitable fabrication of imaginary travel 
 that would be hatefully difficult. For the first time 
 since he had loved her he was smitten with remorse for 
 his deception and with terror of her discovery. 
 
 He could not sleep of nights aching for her, shivering 
 with dread at the possibility of loss of her, picturing her 
 alone in the sweet, wind-swept house, utterly trustful 
 and counting the long hours till he should come again. 
 Still, thank God, this was the last time they would be 
 parted. His mother had been the only link to his John 
 Briggs past.
 
 194 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 There were no testamentary complications, which he 
 had somewhat feared. His mother had only a life in- 
 terest in the tiny estate which went, under his father's 
 will, to his sister Ellen. And Ellen did not count. Ab- 
 sorbed in her family cares, she would pass out of his 
 life for ever without thought of regret. It would be the 
 final falsehood. 
 
 At breakfast, on the morning of the funeral, Ellen 
 said suddenly, in her dour way: 
 
 "I've been reading your book. It's a pack of lies." 
 
 "It would have been if I had signed it John Briggs," 
 he answered. "But everything in it is true about Alexis 
 Triona." 
 
 "Your ways don't seem to be our ways, John," she 
 remarked coldly. 
 
 He felt the words like a slap in the face. He flushed 
 with anger. 
 
 "How dare you?" 
 
 "I'm sorry," she answered. "I oughtn't to have said 
 it with mother lying cold upstairs." 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders, forced to accept the evasive 
 apology. But her challenge rankled. They parted ston- 
 ily after the funeral, with the perfunctory handshake. 
 
 "I don't suppose I shall ever see you again." 
 
 "It's rather unlikely," said he. 
 
 "Well, good-bye." ' 
 
 "Good-bye." 
 
 He threw himself back in the taxi-cab with a great sigh 
 of relief. Thank God the nightmare of the past few 
 days was over. Now to awaken to the real and won- 
 derful things of life the miraculous love of the dark- 
 eyed, quivering princess of his dreams: the work which
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 195 
 
 since he had loved her had grown into the sacred aim of 
 their perfect lives. 
 
 And just as he had wired her from Newcastle announc- 
 ing his sailing, so did he wire her when he reached the 
 railway station. 
 
 "Arrived. All well. Speeding straight to you with 
 love and longing." 
 
 Olivia smiled as she kissed the telegram. No one but 
 her Alexis would have used the word "speeding."
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 SHE was waiting for him at the little South Coast 
 station, where decorum had to cloak the rapture 
 of their meeting. But they sat close together, 
 hand in hand, in the hackney motor-car that took them 
 home. This gave him an intermediary breathing space 
 for explanation; and the explanation was easier than he 
 had feared. Really, his journey had been almost for 
 nothing and had afforded little interest. The agent 
 whom he was to interview having been summoned back 
 to Russia the day before he arrived, he had merely deliv- 
 ered his dispatches to the British authorities and taken 
 the next boat to England. It was just a history of two 
 dull sea vdyages. Nothing more was to be said about 
 it, save that he would go on no more fool's errands for a 
 haphazard government. 
 
 "Besides, it's too dreadful to be away from you." 
 "It has been awful for me, too," said Olivia. "I never 
 imagined what real loneliness could feel like. All the 
 time I thought of the poor solitary little dab the Bryce 
 children showed us the other day in the biscuit-tin of 
 water. Oh, I was the most forsaken little dab." 
 
 He swore that she should never be lonely again; and, 
 by the time they reached their house by the sea, he had 
 half-exultingly dismissed his fictitious mission from his 
 mind. All the apprehensions of the narrow Northern 
 kitchen melted in the joy of her. All danger had van- 
 ished like a naughty black cloud sped to nothing by the 
 
 196
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 197 
 
 sun. The mythical past had to remain; but henceforward 
 his life would be as clear to her as her own exquisite life 
 to him. 
 
 In their wind-swept home they gave themselves up 
 to deferred raptures, kissing and laughing after the fool- 
 ish way of lovers. To grace his return she had filled 
 the rooms with flowers roses and sweet peas which 
 she bought extravagantly in the neighbouring seaside 
 town. The scent of them mingled delicately with the 
 salt of the sea. To her joy he was quick to praise them. 
 She had wondered whether they would be noticed by 
 one so divinely careless of material things. He even 
 found delight in the meal which Myra served soon after 
 their arrival he so indifferent to quality of food. 
 
 "Everything is you/' said he; "scent and taste and 
 sight. You inform the universe and give it meaning." 
 
 Her eyes grew moist as she swiftly laid her hand on 
 his. 
 
 "Am I really all that to you?" She laughed with a 
 little catch in her throat. "How can I live up to it?" 
 
 He raised her hand to his lips. "If only you went 
 on existing like a flower, your beauty and fragrance 
 would be all in all to me. But you are a flower with a 
 bewildering soul. So you merely have to be as you 
 are." 
 
 He was in earnest. Women had played little or no 
 part in his inner life, which, for all his follies, had been 
 lived on a spiritual plane. His young ambitions had 
 been irradiated by dreams of the little Princess Tania, 
 who had represented to him the ever-to-be-striven-for 
 unattainable. On his reaching the age when common 
 sense put its clammy touch on fervid imagination, the
 
 198 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 little Princess had been given away in marriage to a 
 young Russian nobleman of vast fortune, and he him- 
 self had driven her to the wedding with naught but a 
 sentimental pang. But the flower-like, dancing, elusive 
 quality of her had remained in his soul as that which 
 was only desirable and ever to be sought for in woman. 
 And miracle of miracles! he had found it in Olivia. 
 And she was warm and real, the glowing incarnation of 
 the cold but perfect ghost of his boyhood's aspirations. 
 She was verily the Princess of his dream come true. And 
 she had an odd air of the little Princess Tania the 
 same dark, wavy hair and laughing eyes and the same 
 crisp sweetness in her English speech. 
 
 Save for all this rapture of meeting, they took up the 
 thread of their lives where it had been broken, as though 
 no parting had taken place, and their idyll continued to 
 run its magic course. Triona began to write again: some 
 articles, a short story. The shadow shape of a new 
 novel arose in his mind, and, in his long talks with Olivia, 
 gradually attained coherence. This process of creation 
 seemed to her uncanny. Where did the people come 
 from who at first existed as formless spirits and then, 
 in some strange way, developed into living things of 
 flesh and blood more real than the actual folk of her 
 acquaintance? Her intimate association with the novel- 
 ist's gift brought her nearer to him intellectually, but at 
 the same time set him spiritually on unattainable heights. 
 Meanwhile he called her his Inspiration, which filled her 
 with pride and content. 
 
 The lease of "Quien Sabe" all but expired before they 
 had settled on their future house. Medlow was ruled 
 out. So was the immediate question of the Medlow
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 199 
 
 furniture, they having given Blaise Olifant another year's 
 tenancy. 
 
 While discussing this step, he had said: 
 
 "It's for you and you only to decide. Any spot on 
 earth where you are is good enough for me. By instinct 
 I'm a nomad. If I hadn't found you, I should have gone 
 away somewhere to the desert and lived in tents." 
 
 Olivia, who had seen so little of the great world, felt a 
 thrill of pulses and put her hands on his shoulders she 
 was standing behind his chair 
 
 "Why shouldn't we?" 
 
 He shook his head and glanced up at her. The way of 
 the gipsy was too hard for his "English flower. She must 
 dwell in her accustomed garden. In practical terms, 
 they must settle down for her sake. She protested. Of 
 herself she had no thought. He and his work were of 
 paramount importance. Had they not planned the ideal 
 study, the central feature of the house? He had laughed 
 and mangled Omar. A pen and a block of paper . . . 
 and Thou beside me, etcetera, etcetera. 
 
 "I don't believe you want to settle down a bit," she 
 cried. 
 
 He swung his chair and caught her round her slim 
 body. 
 
 "Do you?" 
 
 "Eventually, of course " 
 
 "But, before 'eventually,' don't you want your wan- 
 der-year?" 
 
 "France, Italy " She became breathless. 
 
 "Honolulu, the Pacific, the wide world. Why should 
 we tie ourselves to a house until we have seen it all?" 
 
 "Yes, why? We have all our lives before us." She
 
 200 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 sank on his knee. "How beautiful! Let us make 
 plans." 
 
 So for the next few days they lived in a world of vi- 
 sions, catching enthusiasm one from the other. Again he 
 saw Salvation Yeo's pointing finger; and she, in the sub- 
 conscious relation of her mind with his, saw it too. 
 House and furniture were Olifant's as long as he wanted 
 them. 
 
 "We'll go round the world," Olivia declared. 
 
 With a twirl of his finger "Right round," said he. 
 
 "Which way does one go?" 
 
 He was somewhat vague. An atlas formed no part 
 of their personal equipment or of the hireling penates of 
 "Quien Sabe." 
 
 "I'll write to Cook's." 
 
 "Cook's? My beloved, where is your sense of adven- 
 ture?" 
 
 "We must go by trains and steamers, and Cook's will 
 tell us all about them." 
 
 She had her way. Cook's replied. At the quotation 
 for the minimum aggregate of fares Alexis gasped. 
 
 "There's not so much money in the world." 
 
 "There is," she flashed triumphantly. "On deposit 
 at my bank. Much more." 
 
 Who was right now, she asked herself, she or the 
 prosaic Mr. Trivett and Mr. Fenmarch? She only had 
 to dip her hands into her fortune and withdraw them 
 filled with banknotes enough to take them half a dozen 
 times round the world! 
 
 Inspired by this new simplicity of things, they rushed 
 up to London by an incredibly early train to take tickets 
 then and there for the main routes which circumnavigate
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 201 
 
 the globe. The man at Cook's dashed their ardour. 
 They would have to pencil their passages now and wait 
 for months until their turn on the waiting lists arrived. 
 
 It must be remembered that then were the early days 
 of Peace. 
 
 "But we want to start next week!" cried Olivia in dis- 
 may. 
 
 The young man at Cook's professed polite but wearied 
 sorrow at her disappointment. Forty times a day he had 
 to disillusion eager souls who wanted to start next 
 week for the other side of the globe. 
 
 "It is most inconvenient and annoying for us to change 
 our plans," Olivia declared resentfully. "But," she 
 added, with a smile, "it's not your fault that the world 
 is a perfect beast. We'll talk it over and come to you 
 again." 
 
 So after lunch in town they returned to The Point, 
 richer in their knowledge of the conditions of contem- 
 porary world travel. 
 
 "We'll put things in hand at once and start about 
 Christmas," said Alexis. "Until then " 
 
 "We'll take a furnished flat in London," Olivia decided. 
 
 October found them temporarily settled in a flat in 
 the Buckingham Palace Road, and then began the life 
 which Olivia had schemed for her husband before these 
 disturbing dreams of vagabondage. 
 
 Towards the end of their stay in "Quien Sabe" various 
 letters of enquiry and invitations had been forwarded 
 to Triona from people, back now in London, with whom 
 the success of his book had brought him into contact. 
 These, careless youth, he had been for ignoring, but the
 
 202 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 wiser Olivia had stepped in and dictated tactful and in- 
 formative replies. The result was their welcome in many 
 houses remote from the Lydian galley, the Blenkiron 
 home of Bolshevism and even the easy conservative dull- 
 ness of the circle of Janet Philimore. The world that 
 danced and ate and dressed and thought and felt to the 
 unvarying rhythm of jazz music had passed away like 
 a burnt-up planet. The world which she entered with 
 her husband was astonishingly new with curious ramifica- 
 tions. At the houses of those whose cultivated pleasure 
 in life it is to bring together people worthy of note she 
 met artists, novelists, journalists, actors, publishers, 
 politicians, travellers, and their respective wives or hus- 
 bands. Jealously, at first, she watched the attitude of 
 all these folk towards her husband: in pride and joy she 
 saw him take his easy place among them as an equal. 
 A minority of silly women flattered him to his obvious 
 distaste but the majority accepted him on frank and 
 honourable terms. She loved to watch him, out of the 
 corner of her eye, across the drawing-room, his boyish 
 face flushed and eager, talking in his swift, compelling 
 way. His manners, so simple, so direct, so different from 
 the elaboration of Sidney Rooke, even from the cut-and- 
 dried convention of Mauregard, had a charm entirely 
 individual. There was no one like him in the world. 
 
 In their turn, many of the people of note they met 
 at the houses of the primary entertainers invited them 
 to their homes. Thus, in a brief time, Olivia found her- 
 self swept into as interesting a social circle as the heart 
 of ambitious young woman could crave. How far her 
 own grace and wit contributed to their success it never 
 entered her head to enquire.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 203 
 
 Triona, light-hearted, gave himself up to the pleasure 
 of this new existence. He found in it stimulus to work, 
 being in touch with the thought and the art of the mo- 
 ment. The newness of his Odyssey having worn off, he 
 was no longer compelled to dilate on his extraordinary 
 adventures; people, growing unconsciously impatient of 
 the realistic details of the late cataclysm, conspired to 
 regard him more as a writer than as a heroic personage; 
 wherein he experienced mighty relief. He could talk 
 of other things than the habits of the dwellers round 
 Lake Baikal and the amenities of Bolshevik prisons. 
 When conversation drifted into such channels, he em- 
 ployed a craftiness of escape which he had amused him- 
 self to develop. Freed from the obsession of the little 
 black book, he regarded his Russian life as a phase remote, 
 as a tale that was told. His facile temperament put the 
 whole matter behind him. He lived for the future, when 
 he should be the acknowledged English Master of 
 Romance, and when Olivia's burning faith in his genius 
 should be justified. He threw off memories of Ellen and 
 the kitchen chair and went his way, a man radiant with 
 happiness. Each day intensified the wonder of his wife. 
 From the lips and from the writings of fools and philos- 
 ophers he had heard of the perils of the first year of 
 marriage; of the personal equations that seemed impos- 
 sible of simultaneous solution; of the misunderstandings, 
 cross-purposes, quarrels inevitable to the attempt; of 
 the hidden snags of feminine unreason that shipwrecked 
 logical procedure; of the love-rasping persistence of 
 tricks of manner or speech which either had to be vio- 
 lently broken or to be endured in suffering sullenness. 
 At both fools and philosophers he mocked. A fiction,
 
 204 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 this dogma of inescapable sex warfare. Never for a 
 second had a cloud arisen on their horizon. The flaw- 
 lessness of Olivia he accepted as an axiom. Equally 
 axiomatic was his own faultiness. In their daily lives 
 he was aware of his thousand lapses from her standard 
 of grace, when John Briggs happened to catch Alexis 
 Triona at unguarded moments and threw him from his 
 seat. But, in a flash, the instinctive, the super-instinc- 
 tive, the nothing less than Divine hand, was stretched out 
 to restore him to his throne. As a guide to conduct she 
 became his conscience. 
 
 Work and love and growing friendship filled his care- 
 free days. His novel was running serially in a weekly 
 and attracting attention. It would be published in book- 
 form early in the New Year, and the publishers had no 
 doubt of its success. All was well with the world. 
 
 Meanwhile they concerned themselves busily, like 
 happy children, with their projects of travel. It was a 
 great step to book berths for Bombay by a January boat. 
 They would then cross India, visit Burmah, the Straits 
 Settlements, Australia, Japan, America. All kinds of 
 Companies provided steamers; Providence would procure 
 the accommodation. They planned a detailed six months' 
 itinerary which would take a conscientious globe-trotter 
 a couple of years to execute. Before launching on this 
 eastern voyage they would wander at their ease through 
 France, see Paris and Monte Carlo, and pick up the 
 boat at Marseilles. As the year drew to its close their 
 excitement waxed more unrestrained. They babbled 
 to their envious friends of the wonder-journey before 
 them. 
 
 Blaise Olifant, who, on his periodical visits to London,
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 205 
 
 was a welcome visitor at their flat, was entertained with 
 these anticipations of travel. He listened with the air 
 of elderly indulgence that had been his habit since their 
 marriage. 
 
 "Don't you wish you were coming with us?" asked 
 Olivia. 
 
 He shook his head. "Don't you remember the first 
 time I saw you I said I was done with adventures?" 
 
 "And I said I was going in search of them." 
 
 "So you're each getting your heart's desire," said 
 Triona. 
 
 "Yes, I suppose so," replied Olifant, with a smile. 
 
 There was a touch of sadness in it which did not escape 
 Olivia's shrewd glance. He had grown thinner during 
 the year; his nose seemed half-comically to have grown 
 sharper and longer. In his eyes dwelt a shadow of wist- 
 ful regret. 
 
 "The life of a hermit cabbage isn't good for you," she 
 said. "Give it up and come with us." 
 
 Again he shook his head. No. They did not want 
 such a drag on the wheels of their joyous chariot. Be- 
 sides, he was tied to Medlow as long as she graciously 
 allowed him to live there. His sister had definitely left 
 her dissolute husband and was living under his protection. 
 
 "You should be living under the protection of a wife," 
 Olivia declared. "I've told you so often, haven't I?" 
 
 "And I've always answered that bachelors are born, 
 not made and I'm one born." 
 
 "Predestination! Rubbish!" cried Triona, rising with 
 a laugh. "Your Calvanistic atavism is running away 
 with you. It's time for your national antidote. I'll 
 bring it in."
 
 206 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 He went out of the room, in his boyish way, in search 
 of whisky. Olivia leaned forward in her chair. 
 
 "You may not know it, but from that first day a year 
 ago you made yourself a dear friend so you'll forgive 
 
 me if I " She paused for a second, and went on 
 
 abruptly: "You've changed. Now and then you look 
 so unhappy. I wish I could help you." 
 
 He laughed. "It's very dear of you to think of me, 
 Lady Olivia but the change is not in me. I've re- 
 mained the same. It's your eyes that have grown so 
 accustomed to the radiant gladness of a happy man that 
 they expect the same in any old fossil on the beach." 
 
 "Now you make me feel utterly selfish," she cried. 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "We oughtn't to look so absurdly happy. It's in- 
 decent." 
 
 "But it does one good," said he. 
 
 Triona entered with the tray, and administered whisky 
 and soda to his guest. 
 
 "There! When you've drunk it you'll be ready to 
 come to the Magical Isles with us, where the Lady of 
 Ladies awaits you in an enchanted valley, with hybiscus 
 in her hair." 
 
 The talk grew light, drifted inevitably into the details 
 of their projected wanderings. The evening ended pleas- 
 antly. Olivia bade Olifant farewell, promising, as he 
 would not go in search of her himself, to bring him back 
 the perfect lady of the hybiscus crown. Triona accom- 
 panied him to the landing; and, while they stood awaiting 
 the lift, Olifant said casually: 
 
 "I suppose you've got your passports?" 
 
 "Passports?" The young man knitted his brow in
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 207 
 
 some surprise. "Why, of course. That's to say, I've not 
 bothered about them yet, but they'll be all right. Why 
 do you ask?" 
 
 "You're Russian subjects. There may be difficulties. 
 If there are, I know a man in the Foreign Office who may 
 be of help." 
 
 The lift rose and the gates clashed open, and the 
 attendant came out. 
 
 "Thanks very much," said Triona. "It's awfully 
 good of you." 
 
 They shook hands, wished each other God-speed, and 
 the cage went down, leaving Triona alone on the land- 
 ing, gaping across the well of the lift. 
 
 He was aroused from a semi-stupor by Olivia's voice 
 at the flat door. 
 
 "What on earth are you doing, darling?" 
 
 He realized that he must have been there some appre- 
 ciable time. He turned with a laugh. 
 
 "I was interested in the mechanism of the lift; it has 
 so many possibilities in fiction." 
 
 She laughed. "Think of them to-morrow. It's time 
 for good little novelists to go to bed." 
 
 But that night, while Olivia, blissfully unconscious of 
 trouble, slept the happy sleep of innocence Alexis Triona 
 did not close an eye. 
 
 Passports! He had not given them a thought. Any 
 decent person was entitled to a passport. In the plen- 
 itude of his English content he had forgotten his fictitious 
 Russian citizenship. To attest or even to support this 
 claim there was no creature on God's earth. The details 
 of his story of the torpedoed Swedish timber boat in 
 which he had taken refuge would not bear official exam-
 
 208 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 ination. Application for passport under the name of 
 Alexis Triona, soi-disant Russian subject, would involve 
 an investigation leading to inevitable exposure. His civic 
 status was that of John Briggs, late naval rating. He 
 had all his papers jealously locked up, together with the 
 little black notebook, in his despatch case. As John 
 Briggs, British subject, he was freeman of the civilized 
 world. But John Briggs was dead and done for. It was 
 impossible to wander over the globe as Alexis Triona with 
 a passport bearing the name of John Briggs. He would 
 be held up and turned back at any frontier. And it was 
 beyond his power of deception to induce Olivia to travel 
 with him round the world under the incognito of Mrs. 
 John Briggs. 
 
 Rigid, so that he should not wake the beloved woman, 
 he stared for hours and hours into the darkness, vainly 
 seeking a solution. And there was none. 
 
 He might blind Olivia into the postponement of their 
 adventure, and in the meanwhile change his name by 
 deed poll. But that would involve the statutory pub- 
 licity in the Press. The declaration in The Times that 
 he, John Briggs, would henceforth take the name of 
 Alexis Triona would stultify him in the social and liter- 
 ary world and damn him in the eyes of Olivia. 
 
 In those early days after the War, the Foreign Office 
 granted passports grudgingly. British subjects had to 
 show very adequate reasons for desiring to go abroad, 
 and foreign visas were not over-readily given. In the 
 process of obtaining a passport, a man's identity had to 
 be established beyond question. 
 
 He remembered now having heard vague talk of spies;
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 209 
 
 but he had paid no attention to it. Now he realized that 
 which he had heard was cruelly definite. 
 
 There was no solution. John Briggs was dead, and 
 Alexis Triona had no official existence. 
 
 He could not get as far as Boulogne, let alone Japan. 
 And there was Olivia by his side dreaming of the For- 
 tunate Isles.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 BUT for Olivia's unquestioning faith in him he 
 would not have pulled through this passport 
 quagmire. At every fresh lie he dreaded lest 
 her credulity should reach the breaking point. For he 
 had to lie once more and this time with revulsion and 
 despair. 
 
 He began the abominable campaign the next evening 
 after dinner. He had been absent all day, on the vague 
 plea of business. In reality he had walked through 
 London and wandered about the docks, Ratcliffe High- 
 way, the Isle of Dogs. He had returned physically and 
 spiritually worn out. Her solicitude smote him. It was 
 nothing. A little worry which the sight of her would 
 dispel. They dined and went into the drawing-room. 
 She sat on the arm of his chair. 
 
 "And now the worry, poor boy. Anything I can do?" 
 
 He stared into the fire. "It's our trip." 
 
 "Why, what has gone wrong?" 
 
 "Everything," he groaned. 
 
 "But, darling!" She gripped his shoulder. "What 
 do you mean?" 
 
 "I'm afraid it's a beautiful dream, my dear. We must 
 call it off." 
 
 She uttered a breathless "Why?" 
 
 "It's far beyond our means." 
 
 She broke into her gay laugh and hugged him and 
 called him a silly fellow. Hadn't they settled all that 
 
 210
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 211 
 
 side of it long ago? Her fingers were itching to draw 
 cheques. She had scarcely put pen to pink paper since 
 their marriage. Hadn't he insisted on supporting her?" 
 
 "And I'll go on insisting," said he. "I'm not the man 
 
 to live on my wife's money. No, no " with uplifted 
 
 hand he checked her generous outburst. "I know what 
 you're going to say, sweetheart, but it can't be done. I 
 was willing for you to advance a certain amount. But 
 I would have paid it back well, I would have accepted 
 it if it gave you pleasure. Anyhow, things are different 
 now. Suddenly different." 
 
 He writhed under the half-truths, the half-sincerities 
 he was speaking. In marrying her his conscience ab- 
 solved him of fortune seeking. It had been the pride of 
 his Northumbrian blood to maintain his wife as she 
 should be maintained, out of his earnings this draft on 
 her fortune for the jaunt he had made up a Tyneside 
 mind to repay. Given the passport, the whole thing was 
 as simple as signing a cheque. But no passports to be 
 given, he had to lie. How else, in God's name, to ex- 
 plain? 
 
 "My dear," said he, in answer to her natural ques- 
 tion, "there's one thing about myself I've not told you. 
 It has seemed quite unimportant. In fact, I had prac- 
 tically forgotten it. But this is the story. During my 
 last flight through Russia a friend, one of the old Russian 
 nobility, gave me shelter. He was in hiding, dressed as 
 a peasant. His wife and children had escaped the Rev- 
 olution and were, he was assured, in England. He en- 
 trusted me with a thousand pounds in English bank-notes 
 which he had hidden in a scapulary hanging round his 
 neck, and which I was to give to his family on my arrival.
 
 212 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 I followed his example and hung the few paper roubles 
 I had left, together with his money, round my neck. As 
 you know, I was torpedoed. I was hauled out of the 
 water in shirt and drawers, and landed penniless. The 
 string of the scapulary had broken, and all the money 
 was at the bottom of the North Sea. I went to every 
 conceivable Russian agency in London to get information 
 about the Vronsky family. There was no trace of them. 
 I came to the conclusion that they had never landed 
 in England, and to-day I found I was right. They 
 hadn't. They had disappeared off the face of the 
 earth." 
 
 "To-day?" queried Olivia. 
 
 "This morning. I had a letter from Vronsky for- 
 warded by the publishers." 
 
 "Why didn't you tell me?" cried Olivia. "I had an 
 idea you weren't quite yourself." 
 
 "I didn't want to worry you without due reason," he 
 explained, "and I was upset. It was like a message from 
 the dead. For, not having heard of him all this time, I 
 concluded he had perished, like so many others, at the 
 hands of the Bolsheviks. Anyhow, there he was alive in 
 a little hotel in Bloomsbury. Of course, I had to go and 
 rout him out." 
 
 "Naturally," said Olivia. 
 
 "Well, I found him. He had managed to escape, with 
 the usual difficulties, and was now about to search Europe 
 for his family." 
 
 "What a terrible quest," said Olivia, with a shudder. 
 
 "Yes. It's awful, isn't it?" replied Triona in a voice 
 of deep feeling already half beginning himself to be- 
 lieve in the genuineness of his story "I spent a heart-
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 213 
 
 rending day with him. He had expected to find his 
 family in England." 
 
 "But you wrote to him " 
 
 "Of course. But how many letters to Russia reach 
 their destination? Their letters, too, have miscarried or 
 been seized. He hadn't had news of them since they left 
 Petrograd." 
 
 Carried away by the tragedy of this Wandering Jew 
 hunt for a lost family, Olivia forgot the reason for its 
 recital. She questioned, Triona responded, his pictur- 
 esque invention in excited working. He etched in details. 
 Vronsky's declension from the ruddy, plethoric gentle- 
 man, with good-humoured Tartar face, to the gaunt, hol- 
 low eyed grey-beard, with skinny fingers on which the 
 nails grew long. The gentle charm of the lost Madame 
 Vronsky and the beauty of her two young daughters, 
 Vera and Sonia. The faithful moujik who had accom- 
 panied them on their way and reported that they had 
 sailed on the Olger Danske from Copenhagen for Lon- 
 don. He related their visit to Lloyds, where they had 
 learned that no such ship was known. Certainly at the 
 time of the supposed voyage it had put into no British 
 port. Vronsky was half mad. No wonder. 
 
 "Why did you leave him? Why didn't you bring him 
 here?" asked Olivia, her eyes all pity and her lips parted. 
 
 "I asked him. He wouldn't come. He must begin his 
 search at once take ship for Denmark. . . . Mean- 
 while, dearest," he said after a pause, "being practically 
 without resources, he referred to his thousand pounds. 
 That's where you and I come in. He entrusted me with 
 the money and the accident of losing it could not relieve 
 me of the responsibility could it?"
 
 214 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 He glanced a challenge. Her uprightness waved it 
 aside. 
 
 "Good heavens, no!" 
 
 "Well, I took him to my bank and gave him the thou- 
 sand pounds in Bank of England notes. So, my dear, 
 we're all that to the bad on our balance sheet. We're 
 nearly broke and we'll have to put off our trip round 
 the world to more prosperous tunes." 
 
 Although, womanlike, she tried at first to kick against 
 the pricks, parading the foolish fortune lying idle at the 
 bank, that was the end of the romantic project. Her 
 common sense asserted itself. A thousand pounds, for 
 folks in their position, was a vast sum of money. She 
 resigned herself with laughing grace to the inevitable, and 
 poured on her husband all the consolation for disappoint- 
 ment that her heart could devise. Their pleasant life 
 went on. Deeply interested in Vronsky, she questioned 
 him from time to time. Had he no news of the tragic 
 wanderer? At last, in February, he succumbed to the 
 temptation to finish for ever with these Frankenstein 
 monsters. He came home one afternoon, and after kiss- 
 ing her said with a gay air: 
 
 "I found a letter at Decies Street" the house of his 
 publishers "from whom do you think? From Vron- 
 sky. Just a few lines. He tracked his family to Pa- 
 lermo and they're all as happy as can be. How he did it 
 he doesn't say, which is disconcerting, for one would like 
 to know the ins and outs of his journeyings. But there's 
 the fact, and now we can wipe Vronsky off our slate." 
 
 In March the novel appeared. Reviewers lauded it 
 enthusiastically as a new note in fiction. 
 
 The freshness of subject, outlook, and treatment ap-
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 215 
 
 pealed to the vastly superior youth, the disappointed old, 
 and the scholarly and conscientious few, who write liter- 
 ary criticism. The great firm of publishers smiled ur- 
 banely. Repeat orders on a gratifying scale poured in 
 every day. Triona took Olivia to Decies Street to hear 
 from publishing lips the splendid story. They went 
 home in a taxi-cab, their arms around each other, intoxi- 
 cated with the pride of success and the certainty of their 
 love. And the next day Olivia said: 
 
 "If we can't go round the world, at any rate let us have 
 a holiday. Let us go to Paris. We can afford it." 
 
 And Triona, who for months had foreseen such a rea- 
 sonable proposal, replied: 
 
 "I wish we could. I've been dreaming of it for a long 
 time. In fact I didn't tell you but I went to the 
 Foreign Office a fortnight ago." 
 
 She wrinkled her brow. 
 
 "What's the Foreign Office got to do with it?" 
 
 "They happen to regard me as an exceptional man, 
 my dearest," said he. "I'm still in the Secret Service. 
 I tried last summer to get out of it but they overper- 
 suaded me, promising not to worry me unduly. One can't 
 refuse to serve one's country at a pinch, can one?" 
 No. But why didn't you tell me?" 
 
 She felt hurt at being left out in the cold. She also 
 had a sudden fear of the elusiveness of this husband of 
 hers, hero of so many strange adventures and interests 
 that years would not suffice for their complete revelation. 
 She remembered the dug-up Vronsky romance, in itself 
 one that might supply the ordinary human being with 
 picturesque talk for a lifetime. And now she resented 
 this continued association with the Foreign Office which
 
 216 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 he thought he had severed on his return from Finland. 
 
 "I never imagined they would want me again, after 
 what I told them. But it seems they do. You know 
 the state of things in Russia. Well they may send me 
 or they may not. At any rate, for the next few months 
 I am not to leave the country." 
 
 "I call that idiotic," cried Olivia indignantly. "They 
 could get at you in Paris just as easily as they could in 
 London." 
 
 "They've got the whip hand, confound them," replied 
 Triona. "They grant or refuse passports." 
 
 "The Foreign Office is a beast!" said Olivia. "I'd like 
 to tell them what I think of them." 
 
 "Do," said he with a laugh, "but don't tell anybody 
 else." 
 
 She believed him. He breathed again. The difficulty 
 was over for the present. Meanwhile he called himself 
 a fool for not having given her this simple explanation 
 months ago. Why had he racked his conscience with 
 the outrageous fiction of the Vronskys? 
 
 About this time, too, in her innocence, she raised the 
 question of his technical nationality. It was absurd for 
 him to continue to be a Russian subject. A son of 
 English parents, surely he could easily be naturalized. 
 He groaned inwardly at this fresh complication, and 
 cursed the name of Triona. He put her off with vague in- 
 tentions. One of these days . . . there was no great 
 hurry. She persisted. 
 
 "It's so unlike you," she declared, uncomprehending. 
 "You who do things so swiftly and vividly." 
 
 "I must have some sort of papers establishing my
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 217 
 
 identity/' he explained. "My word won't do. We must 
 wait till there's a settled government in Russia to which 
 I can apply. I know it's an unsatisfactory position for 
 both; but it can't be helped." He smiled wearily. "You 
 mustn't reproach me." 
 
 "Reproach you my dearest ?" 
 
 The idea shocked her. She only had grown impatient 
 of the intangible Russian influences that checked his 
 freedom of action. Sometimes she dreaded them, not 
 knowing how deep or how sinister they might be. Secret 
 agents were sometimes mysteriously assassinated. He 
 laughed at her fears. But what else, she asked herself, 
 could he do but laugh? She was not reassured. 
 
 The naturalization question settled for an indefinite 
 time, he felt once more in clear water. Easter came 
 and went. 
 
 "If I don't move about a little, I shall die," he said. 
 
 "Let us move about a lot," said Olivia. "Let us hire 
 a car and race about Great Britain." 
 
 He waxed instantly enthusiastic. She was splendid. 
 Always the audacious one. A car a little high-pow- 
 ered two-seater. Just they two together. Free of the 
 high road! If they could find no lodgings at inns they 
 could sleep beneath the hedges. They would drive any- 
 where, losing their way, hitting on towns with delicious 
 unexpectancy. The maddest motor tour that was ever 
 unplanned. 
 
 In the excitement of the new idea, the disappointment 
 over the prohibited foreign travel vanished from their 
 hearts. Once more they contemplated their vagabond- 
 age, with the single-mindedness of children.
 
 218 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "We'll start to-morrow," he declared. 
 
 "To-morrow evening is the Rowingtons' dinner-party," 
 Olivia reminded him. 
 
 He confounded Rowington and his dinner-party. Why 
 not send a telegram saying he was down with smallpox? 
 He hated literary dinner-parties. Why should he make 
 an ass of himself in a lion's skin just to gratify the 
 vanity of a publisher? Olivia administered the required 
 corrective. 
 
 "Isn't it rather a case of the lion putting on an ass's 
 skin, my dear? Of course we must go." 
 
 He laughed. "I suppose we must. Anyway, we'll 
 start the day after. I'll see about the car in the morn- 
 ing." 
 
 He went out immediately after breakfast, and in a 
 couple of hours returned radiant. He was in luck, hav- 
 ing found the high-powered two-seater of his dreams, 
 He overwhelmed her with enthusiastic technicalities. 
 
 "You beloved infant," said Olivia. 
 
 But before they could set out in this chariot of force 
 and speed, something happened. It happened at the 
 dinner-party given by Rowington, the active partner 
 in the great publishing house, in honour of their twice- 
 proved successful author. 
 
 The Rowingtons lived in a mansion at the southern end 
 of Portland Place. It had belonged to his father and 
 grandfather before him and the house was filled with 
 inherited and acquired treasures. On entering, Triona 
 had the same sense of luxurious comfort as on that far- 
 off day of the first interview in Decies Street, when his 
 advancing foot stepped so softly on the thick Turkey 
 carpet. A manservant relieved him of his coat and hat,
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 219 
 
 a maid took Olivia for an instant into a side-room whence 
 she reappeared bare-necked, bare-armed, garbed, as her 
 husband whispered, in cobweb swept from Heaven's raft- 
 ers. A manservant at the top of the stairs announced 
 them. Mrs. Rowington, thin, angular, pince-nez'd, and 
 Rowington, middle-aged, regarding the world benevolently 
 through gold spectacles, received them and made the 
 necessary introduction to those already present. There 
 was a judge of the High Court, a well-known novelist, a 
 beautiful and gracious woman whom Olivia, with a little 
 catch of the heart, recognized as the Lady Aintree who 
 had addressed a passing word of apology to her in the 
 outgoing theatre crush in the first week of her emanci- 
 pation. She envied Alexis who stood in talk with her. 
 She herself was trying to correlate the young and modern 
 bishop, in plum-coloured evening dress, with the billow 
 of lawn semi-humanized by a gaunt staring head and a 
 pair of waxen hands which had gone through the dimly 
 comprehended ritual of her confirmation. 
 
 He explained his presence in this brilliant assembly on 
 the ground that once he had written an obscure book of 
 travels in Asia Minor. St. Paul's steps retraced. He had 
 fought with beasts at Ephesus but not of the kind to 
 which the apostle was presumed to refer; disgusting little 
 beasts! He also swore "By Jove!" which she was sure 
 her confirming bishop would never have done. 
 
 A while later, as the room was filling up, she found 
 herself talking to a Colonel Onslow, an authority on Kur- 
 distan, said her hostess, who was anxious to meet her hus- 
 band. She glanced around, her instinctive habit, to 
 place Alexis. He had been torn from Lady Aintree and 
 was standing just behind her by the chimneypiece in
 
 220 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 conversation with a couple of men. His eyes caught 
 the message of love in hers and telegraphed back again. 
 
 He no longer confounded Rowington. The central 
 figure of this distinguished gathering, he glowed with the 
 divine fire of success. He was talking to two elderly 
 men on Russian folk literature. On that he was an au- 
 thority. He knew the inner poignancy of every song, 
 the bitter humour of every tale. Speaking sober truth 
 about Russia he forgot that he had ever lied. 
 
 Suddenly into the little open space about the hearth 
 emerged from the throng, a brisk, wiry man with a keen, 
 clean-shaven, weather-beaten face, who, on catching sight 
 of Triona, paused for a startled second and then darted 
 up to him with outstretched hand; and Triona, taken off 
 his guard, made an eager step to meet him. 
 
 If, for two days, you have faced death alone with a man 
 who has given every proof of indomitable courage and 
 cheerfulness, your heart has an abominable way of leap- 
 ing when suddenly, years afterwards, you are brought with 
 him face to face. 
 
 "You are Briggs! I knew I was right. Fancy run- 
 ning up against you here!" 
 
 Triona 's cheeks burned hot. The buried name seemed 
 to be shrieked to the listening universe. At any rate, 
 Olivia heard; and instinctively she drifted from the side 
 of Colonel Onslow towards Alexis. 
 
 "It's a far cry from Russia," he said. 
 
 "Yes, and a far cry from the lower deck of an armoured 
 car," laughed the other. "Well, I am glad to see you. 
 God knows what has happened to the rest of us. I've 
 been one of the lucky ones. Got a ship soon after-
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 221 
 
 wards. Retired now. Farming. Living on three pigs 
 and a bee. And you" he clapped him on the shoulder 
 "you look flourishing. I used to have an idea there 
 was something behind you." 
 
 It was then that Triona became conscious of Olivia at 
 his elbow. He put on a bold face and laughed in his 
 careless way. 
 
 "I have my wife behind me. My dear this is Captain 
 Wedderburn. We met in Russia." 
 
 "We did more than meet, by George!" cried Wedder- 
 burn breezily. "We were months together in the 
 Column " 
 
 "What Column?" asked Olivia, puzzled. 
 
 "The Armoured Car Column. I forget what the hu- 
 mour of war rated him as. Able Seaman, I think. I was 
 Lieutenant then. It was a picnic, I assure you. And 
 there were the days he and I alone together I'll never 
 forget 'em we got cut off but he has told you all about 
 it." 
 
 "No." 
 
 "My dear Mrs. Briggs " 
 
 "Pardon me," Alexis interrupted hastily. "But that's 
 not my name. It was literally a nom de guerre. My real 
 name is Triona." 
 
 "Eh?" Wedderburn put his hands on his narrow hips 
 and stared at him. "The famous chap I was asked to 
 meet to-night? Mrs. Triona, your husband is a wonder- 
 ful fellow. The months that were the most exciting time 
 in my life, anyhow, he hasn't thought it worth while men- 
 tioning in his book. And yet" his keen eyes swept like 
 searchlights over the other's face "you were knocked
 
 222 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 out. I remember the day. And you must have been a 
 long time in hospital. How the deuce did you manage 
 to work everything in?" 
 
 "I was only scratched," said Triona. "A week or 
 two afterwards I was back in the Russian service." 
 
 "I see," said Wedderburn with unexpected frostiness. 
 
 He turned to greet a woman of his acquaintance stand- 
 ing near, and husband and wife were left for a few sec- 
 onds alone. 
 
 "You never told me about serving with the British 
 forces." 
 
 "It was just an interlude," said he. 
 
 The hostess came up and manoeuvred them apart. 
 Dinner was announced. The company swept downstairs. 
 Olivia sat between her host and Colonel Onslow, Lady 
 Aintree opposite, and next her, Captain Wedderburn. 
 For the first time in her married life Olivia suffered 
 vague disquiet as to her husband's antecedents. The 
 rugged-faced, bright-eyed man on the other side of the 
 table seemed to hold the key to a phase of his life which 
 she had never heard. She wished that he were seated 
 elsewhere, out of sight. It was with a conscious effort 
 that she brought herself to listen intelligently to her host 
 who was describing his first meeting with the now famous 
 Alexis Triona, then valiantly driving hireling motor- 
 cars under the sobriquet of John Briggs. She felt a touch 
 of ice at her heart. For the second time that night she 
 had heard the unfamiliar name. Alexis had told her, it 
 is true, of his early struggles in London while writing 
 Through Blood and Snow, but of John Briggs he had 
 breathed no word. 
 
 The talk drifted into other channels until she turned to
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 223 
 
 her neighbour, Colonel Onslow, who after a while said 
 pleasantly: 
 
 "I'm looking for an opportunity of a chat with your 
 husband, Mrs. Triona. From his book, he seems to have 
 covered a great deal of my ground and it must have been 
 about the same time. It's strange I never came across 
 him." 
 
 "I don't think so," she replied. "His Secret Service 
 work rather depended on his avoidance of other Euro- 
 pean agents." 
 
 Colonel Onslow yielded laughingly to the argument. 
 Of course, that was quite understandable. Every man 
 had his own methods. No game in the world had more 
 elastic rules. 
 
 "On the other hand, I knew a Russian on exactly the 
 same lay as your husband, a fellow Krilov, a fine chap 
 I ran into him several times who was rather keen on 
 taking me into his confidence. And one or two of the 
 things he told me were so identical with your husband's 
 experiences, that it seems they must have hunted in 
 couples." 
 
 "Oh, no, he was on his own, I assure you," said Olivia. 
 
 "Anyhow, I'm keen to meet him," said Onslow, un- 
 aware of the growing fear behind the girl's dark eyes. "I 
 only came home a month ago. Somebody gave me the 
 book. When I read it I went to my friend Rowington 
 and asked about Alexis Triona. That's how I'm here." 
 
 Presently, noticing her air of constraint, he said apolo- 
 getically, "You must be fed up with all this ancient his- 
 tory. A wanderer like myself is apt to forget that the 
 world is supposed to be at peace and is even rather bored 
 with making good the damage of war."
 
 224 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 Olivia answered as well as she could, and for the rest 
 of the interminable meal strove to exhibit her usual gay 
 interest in the talk around. 
 
 But her heart was heavy with she knew not what fore- 
 bodings. She could not see Alexis, who was seated on the 
 same side and at the other end of the long table. She 
 felt as though the benevolent gold-spectacled man had 
 deliberately convened an assembly of Alexis's enemies. 
 It was a blessed relief when the ladies rose and left the 
 men; but in the drawing-room, although she was talking 
 to Lady Aintree, most winningly gracious of women, her 
 glance continuously sought the door by which the men 
 would enter. And when they came in his glance, for 
 the first time in their married life, did not seek or meet 
 hers. She scanned his face anxiously. It was pale and 
 drawn, she thought, and into his eyes had crept the furtive 
 look of a year ago which happiness, she thought, had dis- 
 pelled for ever. He did not come near her; nor did 
 Wedderburn and Onslow; nor did the two latter talk to 
 him; he was swallowed up in a little group at the further 
 end of the room. Meanwhile, the most up-to-date thing 
 in bishops sank smilingly into a chair by her side, and 
 ridden by some ironical Imp of the Inapposite described 
 to her a visit, in the years past, to the Castle of Schwobbe 
 in Hanover, where dwelt the Baron von Munchausen, the 
 lineal descendant of the famous liar. A mythical per- 
 sonage? Not a bit. Munchausen was one of Frederick 
 the Great's generals. He had seen his full-length por- 
 trait in the Rittersaal of the old Schloss. Thence he be- 
 gan to discourse on the great liars of travel. Herodotus, 
 who was coming more and more into his own as a faith- 
 ful historian; John Mandeville; Fernando Mendez Pinto,
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 225 
 
 a name now lorgotten, but for a couple of centuries a by- 
 word of mendacity; Gemelli Carreri, the bed-ridden Nea- 
 politan author of a Voyage Round the World; the Rabbi 
 Benjamin of Tudela who claimed to have ridden a 
 hippogriff to the tomb of Ezekiel; George Psalmanazar, 
 who captivated all London (including so level-headed a 
 man as Samuel Johnson) with his history of the Island 
 of Formosa and his grammar of the Formosan language; 
 de Rougemont, the turtle-riding impostor of recent years; 
 and the later unfortunate gentleman whose claim to have 
 discovered the North Pole was so shockingly discredited. 
 The bishop seemed to have made a hobby of these per- 
 verters of truth and to look on them (as in theological 
 duty bound), wriggling through the lake of fire and brim- 
 stone, in the light of Izaak Walton's counsel concerning 
 the worms threaded on the hook, as if he loved them. 
 Then there were the notorious Blank and Dash and Dot, 
 still living. Types, said he, of the defective criminal 
 mind, by mere chance skirting round the commonly rec- 
 ognized area of crime. 
 
 Olivia, with nerves on edge, welcomed the matronly 
 swoop of Mrs. Rowington. 
 
 "My dear Bishop, I want to introduce you " 
 
 He rose, made a courtly bow to Olivia. 
 
 "I'll read your lordship's next book of travel with great 
 interest," she said. 
 
 As the home-bound taxi drove off: 
 
 "Thank goodness that's over," said Triona. 
 
 She echoed with a sigh: "Yes, thank goodness." 
 
 "All the bores of the earth." 
 
 "Did you have a talk with Colonel Onslow?" she asked.
 
 226 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "The biggest of the lot. I'm sick to death of the Cau- 
 casus," he added with unusual irritation. "I wish I 
 had never been near it. I hate these specially selected 
 dinner parties of people you don't want to meet and will 
 never meet again." He took her hand, which was limp 
 and unresponsive. "Did }^ou have a rotten time, too?" 
 
 "I wish we hadn't gone," she replied, withdrawing her 
 hand under the pretext of pulling her cloak closer round 
 her shoulders. 
 
 He rolled and lit a cigarette and smoked gloomily. At 
 last he said with some impatience: 
 
 "Of course, I didn't mention the little episode with the 
 British Force. It would have been out of the picture. 
 Besides, nothing very much happened. It was a stupid 
 thing to do I had no right. That's why I took an as- 
 sumed name John Briggs." 
 
 "And you used it when you landed in England. Mr. 
 Rowington told me." 
 
 "Of course, dear. Alexis Triona, chauffeur, would have 
 been absurd, wouldn't it?" He turned to her with the 
 old eagerness. 
 
 This time it was she who thrust out a caressing hand, 
 suddenly feeling a guilty horror of the doubts that had 
 beset her. 
 
 "I wish you would tell me everything about yourself 
 the details you think so unimportant. Then I wouldn't 
 be so taken aback as I was this evening, when Captain 
 Wedderburn called me Mrs. Briggs." 
 
 "I'll write you a supplementary volume," said he, "and 
 it shall be entitled Through Love and Sunshine." 
 
 The ring in his voice consoled her. He drew her close 
 to him and they spoke little till they reached their house.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 227 
 
 There, in the dining-room, he poured out a stiff whisky- 
 and-soda and drank it off at a gulp. She uttered a 
 startled, "My dear!" at the unusual breach of abstemious 
 habit. 
 
 "I'm dog-tired," said he. "And I've things to do be- 
 fore I go to bed. Don't wait for me." 
 
 "What things?" 
 
 "To-night has given me an idea for a story. I must 
 get it, dear, and put it down; otherwise you know I 
 shan't sleep." 
 
 She protested. His brain would be fresher in the morn- 
 ing. Such untimely artistic accouchment had, indeed, 
 happened several times before, and, unless given its nat- 
 ural chances had occasioned a night of unrest; but never 
 before had there been this haggardness in his face and 
 eyes. Again the doubts assailed her. Something that 
 evening had occurred to throw him off his balance. 
 
 "If anything's worrying you, dear, do tell me," she 
 urged, her clasp on the lapels of his dress-coat and her 
 eyes searching his. 
 
 He took her wrists, kissed her, and laughed, as she 
 thought, uneasily. Worries? He hadn't an anxiety in 
 the world. But this idea it was the germ of something 
 big. He must tackle it then and there. Led, his arm 
 around her body, to the door, she allowed herself to be 
 convinced. 
 
 "Don't be too long." 
 
 "And you go to sleep. You must be tired." 
 
 Left alone, Triona poured himself out another whisky 
 and soda. In one evening he had suffered two shocks, for 
 neither of which his easy nature had prepared him. The 
 Wedderburn incident he could explain away. But from
 
 228 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 the blind alley into which he was pinned by Colonel On- 
 slow, there had been but a horrible wriggling escape. It 
 was a matter, too, more spiritual even than material. 
 He felt as though he had crawled through a sewer. 
 
 He went to his desk by the window, and from a drawer 
 took out his despatch case, which he unlocked with the 
 key that never left his person; and from it he drew the 
 little black book. There, half-erased, in pencil on the 
 reverse of the cover, was the word, in Russian characters, 
 "Krilov." Hitherto he had regarded this as some unim- 
 portant memorandum of name or place. It had never 
 occurred to him that it was the name of the owner of the 
 diary. But now, it stared at him accusingly as the signa- 
 ture of the dead man whose soul, as it were, he had 
 robbed. 
 
 Krilov. There was no doubt about it. Onslow had 
 known him, that fine-featured grizzled-haired dead man, 
 in his vehement life. He had heard from his lips the wild 
 adventures which he had set down with such official 
 phlegm in the little black book, and which he, Alexis 
 Triona, had credited to himself, and had invested with the 
 wealth of his poet's imagination. Of course, he had 
 lied, on his basis of truth, to Colonel Onslow, disclaimed 
 all knowledge of Krilov. It had been the essence of the 
 old Russian regime that secret agents should have no ac- 
 quaintance one with another. It was a common thing for 
 two men, unsuspectingly, to be employed on an identical 
 mission. The old Imperial service depended on this 
 system of checks. If the missions were identical, the 
 various incidents were bound to be similar. He had de- 
 fended his position with every sophistical argument his 
 alert brain could devise. He drew, as red herrings across
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 229 
 
 the track, the names of obscure chieftains known to 
 Colonel Onslow, whom he had not mentioned in his book; 
 described them one long-nosed, foxy, pitted with small- 
 pox; another obese and oily; to Colonel Onslow's mind 
 irrefutable evidence of his acquaintance with the coun- 
 try. But as to narrated incidents he had seen puzzled 
 incredulity behind the Colonel's eyes and had felt his semi- 
 accusing coldness of manner when their conversation 
 came to an end. 
 
 He replenished a dying fire and sat down in an arm- 
 chair, the despatch case by his side, the book in his hands 
 the little shabby black book that had been his Bible, 
 his mascot, the fount of all his fortunes. His fingers shook 
 with fear as he turned over the familiar pages. The dead 
 man had come to life, and terrifyingly claimed his own. 
 The room was very still. The creak of a piece of furni- 
 ture caused him to swing round with a start, as though 
 apprehensive of Krilov's ghostly presence. He must 
 burn the book, the material evidence of his fraud. But 
 the fire was sulky. He must wait for the blaze, so that 
 there should be no doubt of the book's destruction. 
 Meanwhile his nerves were playing him insane tricks. 
 His ordeal had shaken him. He sought the steadying 
 effect of another whisky. 
 
 He leaned back in his chair. It had been an accursed 
 evening. Once more he had to lie to Olivia, and this 
 time she appeared to be struggling with uncertainty. 
 There had been an unprecedented aloofness in her atti- 
 tude. Yes. He spoke the words aloud, v an unpre- 
 cedented aloofness," at first with strange unsuccess and 
 then with solemn deliberation; and his voice sounded 
 strange to his ears. If she suspected but, no, she could
 
 230 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 not suspect. His head grew heavy, his thoughts con- 
 fused. The fire was taking a devil of a time to burn 
 up. Still, he was beginning to see his way clearer. The 
 whisky was a wonderful help to accurate thinking. What 
 an ass he had been not to recognize the fact before! 
 Besides the roof of his mouth was parched with thirst. 
 
 The diabolical notebook had to be destroyed. But 
 first there must be flame in the grate. That little red 
 glow would do the trick. It was only a question of 
 patience. 
 
 "Just a matter of patience, old man," said he. 
 
 A couple of hours afterwards, Olivia, in nightdress and 
 wrapper, entered the room. The fire had gone out under 
 its too heavy load of coal. Before it sprawled Alexis, 
 asleep. On the small table beside him stood the whisky 
 decanter, whose depleted contents caused Olivia to start 
 with a gasp of dismay. His drunken sleep became ob- 
 vious. She made an instinctive vain effort to arouse 
 him. But the first pang of horror was lost in agonized 
 search for the reason of this amazing debauch. He, the 
 most temperate of men, by choice practically a drinker 
 of water, to have done this! Could the reason lie in 
 the events of the evening which had kept her staringly 
 awake? She cowered under the new storm of doubt. 
 
 On the floor lay open a little dirty-paged book which 
 must have fallen from his hand. She picked it up, 
 glanced through it, could make nothing of it, for it was 
 all in tiny Russian script. The horrible relation be- 
 tween this derelict book and the almost emptied whisky 
 decanter occurred to her oversensitive brain. Then came 
 suddenly the memory of a stupid argument of months
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 231 
 
 ago at The Point and his justification of the plagiarist. 
 Further, his putting of a hypothetical case the finding on 
 the body of a dead man a notebook with leaves of the 
 thinnest paper. . . . She held in her hand such a note- 
 book. It dropped from her nerveless fingers. Suddenly 
 she sprang with a low cry to her husband and shook him 
 by the shoulders. 
 
 "Alexis. Alexis. Wake up. For God's sake." 
 
 But the unaccustomed drug of the alcohol held him in 
 stupor. She tried again, wildly. 
 
 "Alexis, wake up and tell me what I think isn't true." 
 
 At last she realized that he would lie there until the 
 effect of the whisky had worn off. Mechanically, she 
 put a cushion behind his head and adjusted his limbs 
 to a position of comfort. Mechanically, too, she put the 
 stopper in the decanter and replaced the siphon on the 
 silver tray, and with her scrap of a handkerchief tried 
 to remove the ring which the wet siphon had made on the 
 table. Then she looked hopelessly round the otherwise 
 undisturbed and beloved room. What could be done 
 until Alexis should awaken? 
 
 She would go to bed. Perhaps she might sleep. She 
 felt as though she had been beaten from head to foot. 
 
 The despatch box lay open on the hearthrug, the key 
 in the lock. Its secrecy had hitherto been a jest with 
 her. She had sworn it contained locks of hair of Blue- 
 beard victims. He had given out a legend of Secret 
 Service documents of vast importance. Now it was 
 obvious that, at any rate, it was the repository of the little 
 black book. 
 
 She hesitated on the threshold. Her instinct of order 
 forbade her to leave the despatch box open and the book
 
 232 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 trailing about the floor. She would lock the book up in 
 it and put the key in one of Alexis's pockets. But when, 
 having picked up the small leather box and carried it to 
 the desk, she prepared to do this, a name written on a 
 common piece of paper half in print an official form 
 stared brutally at her. And there were others under- 
 neath. And reading them she learned the complete of- 
 ficial history of John Briggs, Able Seaman, from the time 
 of his joining the Armoured Column in Russia to his dis- 
 charge, after his mine-sweeper had been torpedoed in the 
 North Sea. 
 
 Olivia, her dark hair falling about the shoulders of her 
 heliotrope wrap, sat in her husband's writing-chair, staring 
 at him with tragic eyes as he slept, his brown hair care- 
 lessly sweeping his pale brow, and kept a ghastly vigil.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 BLAISE OLIFANT sat over his work in the room 
 which once, for want of a better name, the late 
 Mr. Gale called his study; but it was a room 
 transformed to studious use. The stuffed trout and the 
 large scale-map of the neighbourhood and the country 
 auctioneer's carelessly bestowed oddments had been re- 
 placed by cases of geological specimens and bookshelves 
 filled with a specialist's library. The knee-hole writing- 
 desk, with its cigarette-burned edge, had joined the rest 
 of the old lares and penates in honourable storage, and 
 a long refectory-table, drawn across the window over- 
 looking the garden, and piled with papers, microscopes, 
 and other apparatus, reigned in its stead. Olifant loved 
 the room's pleasant austerity. It symbolized himself, 
 his aims and his life's limitations. A fire burned in the 
 grate, for it was a cold, raw morning, and, outside, miser- 
 able rain defaced the April day. 
 
 He smoked a pipe as he corrected proofs, so absorbed 
 in the minute and half-mechanical task that he did not 
 hear the door open and the quiet entrance of a maid. 
 
 "Mr. Triona, sir." 
 
 The words cut through the silence so that he started 
 and swung round in his chair. 
 
 "Mr. Triona? Where?" 
 
 "In the dining-room." 
 
 "Show him in here." 
 
 The maid retired. Olifant rose and stood before the 
 
 233
 
 234 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 fire with a puzzled expression on his face. Triona in 
 Medlow at ten o'clock in the morning? Something seri- 
 ous must have brought a man, unannounced, from Lon- 
 don to Shropshire. His thoughts flew to Olivia. 
 
 A moment afterwards the dishevelled spectre of Triona 
 burst into the room and closed the door behind him. His 
 coat was wet with rain, his boots and trouser hems 
 muddy. His eyes stared out of a drawn, unshaven face. 
 
 "Thank God I've found you. During the journey I 
 had a sickening dread lest you might be away." 
 
 "But how did you manage to get here at this hour?" 
 asked Olifant, for Medlow is far from London and trains 
 are few. "You must have arrived last night. Why the 
 deuce didn't you come to me?" 
 
 "I got to Worcester by the last train and put up for the 
 night and came on first thing this morning," replied Tri- 
 ona impatiently. 
 
 "And you've walked from the station. You're wet 
 through. Let me get you a jacket." 
 
 Olifant moved to the bell, but Triona arrested him. 
 
 "No no. I'm taking the next train back to London. 
 Don't talk of jackets and foolery. I've left Olivia." 
 
 Olifant made a stride, almost menacing, towards him, 
 the instinctive gesture of his one arm curiously contrast- 
 ing with the stillness of the pinned sleeve of the other. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "What I say," cried Triona. "I've left Olivia. I've 
 left her for ever. I'm cutting myself out of her life." 
 
 "You're mad. Olivia " 
 
 Triona put up a checking hand. "Oh, no, not Olivia." 
 He laughed bitterly at the indignant advocacy in Olifant's 
 tone. "Olivia's there where she always has been
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 235 
 
 among the stars. It's I that have fallen. Good God! 
 like Lucifer. It's I that crawl." He caught an accusing 
 question in the other's hardening eyes. "It isn't what you 
 might naturally think. There's not the ghost of another 
 woman. There never has been never shall be. It's 
 my only clean record. And I love her my God! My 
 soul's in Hell, aching and burning and shrieking for her. 
 I shall live in Hell for the rest of my life." 
 
 Olifant turned, and wheeling round his writing-chair 
 sat down and pointed to an arm-chair by the fire. 
 
 "Sit down and tell me quietly what is the matter." 
 
 But Triona waved aside the invitation and remained 
 standing. "The matter is that I'm an impostor and a 
 liar, and Olivia has found it out. Listen. Don't ask 
 questions until I've done. I'm here for Olivia's sake. 
 You're the only creature in the world that can understand 
 the only one that can help her through. And she 
 couldn't tell you. Her pride wouldn't let her. And if it 
 did, the ordeal for her! You'll be able to go to her now 
 and say, 'I know everything.' " 
 
 "Up to now, my dear fellow," said Olifant, "you've 
 been talking in riddles. But before you begin, let me re- 
 mind you that there are two sides to every story. What 
 I mean is get it into your head that I realize I'm listen- 
 ing to your side." 
 
 "But there aren't two sides," cried Triona. "You 
 don't suppose I've come down here to defend myself! 
 If you see when I've done that I've had some excuse, that 
 there is a grain of saving grace lying somewhere hidden 
 all well and good. But I'm not here to plead a case. 
 Haven't I cleared the ground by telling you I'm a liar and 
 an impostor?"
 
 236 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 Olifant again looked searchingly at the pale and hag- 
 gard-eyed young man, his brown hair unkempt and falling 
 across his broad forehead, his lips twitching nervously; 
 and the elder man's glance turned to one of pitying 
 kindness. He rose, laid his hand on the lapel of the wet 
 coat. 
 
 "You'll take this off, at any rate. There we'll hang 
 it over the fender-seat to dry. Sit beside it and dry 
 your legs. It's no good catching your death of cold." 
 
 Triona submitted to the friendly authority and sat 
 down in his shirt sleeves before the blaze. Olifant, aware 
 of the sedative value of anticlimax, smiled and offered 
 refreshments. Tea coffee a drop of something to keep 
 out the cold. Triona suddenly glanced at him. 
 
 "I'll never touch alcohol again as long as I live." 
 
 A cigarette, then? Olifant handed the box, held a 
 match. Triona smoked. Olifant re-lit his pipe and 
 leaned back in his chair. 
 
 "Now let me have the plain, unvarnished tale." 
 
 They smoked many cigarettes and many pipes during 
 the telling of the amazing story. As his life had unfolded 
 itself in the grimness of the little Newcastle kitchen, 
 so he recounted it to Olifant. In his passionate final 
 grip on Truth, which for the last few months of his 
 awakening had proved so elusive, he tried to lay bare the 
 vain secret of every folly and the root of every lie. The 
 tangled web of the hackneyed aphorism he unwove, 
 tracking every main filament to its centre, every cross- 
 thread from the beginning to end of its vicious circle. 
 
 Plain unvarnished tale it was not in the man's nature 
 to give. Even in his agony of avowal he must be dra- 
 matic, must seize on the picturesque. Now he sat on the
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 237 
 
 narrow leather-covered fender-seat, hunched up, his eyes 
 ablaze, narrating the common actualities of his life; and 
 now he strode about the room, with great gestures of his 
 pink-shirted arms, picturing vividly the conflicting emo- 
 tions of his soul. First he sketched so it seemed to the 
 temperamentally remote Olifant in broad outlines of 
 flame, his true career. Then in strokes, like red-hot wire, 
 he filled in the startling details. The grizzled head and 
 sharp-cut features of the naked body of the dead man 
 Krilov in the ditch the cold grey waste around the find- 
 ing of the odds and ends, the glint of the pocket-compass 
 behind a few spikes of grass, the false teeth, the little 
 black book, the thing of sortilege, of necromantic in- 
 fluence . . . the spell of the book in the night watches 
 in the North Sea, its obsession; his pixy-led infatuation 
 which made him cast aside the slough of John Briggs and 
 sun himself in the summer of the world as the dragon- 
 fly, Alexis Triona. In swift lines, too, of a Will-o'-the- 
 Wisp's dance he revealed the course of his love. Then, 
 unconsciously, before the concentrated gaze of the other 
 man he dropped a baffling gauze curtain, as on a stage, 
 through which his motives and his actions appeared un- 
 certain and unreal. 
 
 Olifant had listened in astounded silence. His first 
 instinct was one of indignation. He had been unfor- 
 givably deceived by this exterior of friendship under false 
 pretences. The blow dealt to unregenerate man's innate 
 vanity hurt like a stab. His own clear soul rose in revolt. 
 The fellow's mendacity, bewildering in its amplitude, 
 would have set Hell agape. He shivered at the cold 
 craft of his imposture; besides, he was a ghoul, a stripper 
 of the dead. He lost the man he had loved in a new
 
 238 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 and incomprehensible monster. But as Triona went on 
 he gradually fell under the spell of his passionate re- 
 morse, and found himself setting the human against the 
 monstrous and wondering which way the balance would 
 turn. And then he became suddenly aware of the impos- 
 tor's real and splendid achievements, and he stood in piti- 
 ful amaze at the futility of the unnecessary fraud. 
 
 "But why, in God's name? Why?" he cried, staring 
 through the baffling curtain. "A man of genius, you 
 would have held your own without all this." 
 
 "I could have done nothing without the help of that 
 damned little black book. Don't you see how the necro- 
 mancy of the thing gripped me how it has got its diaboli- 
 cal revenge? I told you not to ask me questions," Tri- 
 ona burst out fiercely. "You're trying to make me de- 
 fend myself." He swung away, then laughed mirth- 
 lessly. "There seems to be a poetic justice in life. This 
 room in which we have spent so many hours it's filled 
 from floor to ceiling with my lies. Now I come with 
 Truth, a sort of disinfectant. Perhaps I was driven back 
 just to do it." 
 
 Olifant knitted a perplexed brow. Such fantastic psy- 
 chologies were beyond his simple scientific habit of mind. 
 He said: 
 
 "You told me you came here on account of Olivia." 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 "Well I must ask you again the same everlasting 
 'Why?' How could you dare to marry her with this lie 
 on your soul?" 
 
 "Yes. How dared I?" said Triona dejectedly. 
 
 "But wouldn't it have been quite simple to tell her the 
 truth? You could have afforded to make a clean breast of
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 239 
 
 it. You had proved yourself a remarkable man, apart 
 from from the Triona myth. And she is big enough to 
 have stood it. Why, in God's name, didn't you trust 
 her?" 
 
 Triona threw out his hands helplessly. He did not 
 know. Again he pleaded the unseen power that had 
 driven him. When he had tried to resist, it was too late. 
 
 "And now you think me a fool and a knave." 
 
 "I think you're a fool," said Olifant. 
 
 "But not a scoundrel? I should like to know. You 
 were the first man who really held out the hand of 
 friendship to me. Till then people regarded me as an 
 interesting specimen. You took me on my human side. 
 I shall never forget coming to your sister's house at Ox- 
 ford. It was a new and wonderful atmosphere." 
 
 "If that is so," said Olifant, "why didn't it compel 
 confidence something of the real truth? I see you now 
 telling my sister and myself your fairy tale; in the same 
 fervid way as you've been telling me the truth this 
 morning." 
 
 Triona rose and put on his jacket which now was dry. 
 
 "How can I hope to make you understand, when I 
 don't understand myself? Besides," he flashed, after 
 shrugging himself impatiently into the garment, "haven't 
 I said I wasn't seeking condonation or sympathy?" 
 
 "You asked me whether I thought you a scoundrel," 
 said Olifant quietly. 
 
 "Well, do you? Say I am, and have done with it." 
 
 "If I did, I don't see what good it would do," replied 
 Olifant, a vague comprehension of this imaginative alien 
 soul dawning on his mind. "You're out for penance in 
 the same crazy way you've been out for everything else.
 
 240 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 So you hand me the scourge and tell me to lay on. But 
 I won't. Also if I committed myself by calling you an 
 unmitigated blackguard, I couldn't give you the advice 
 that it's in my heart to give you." 
 
 "And what's that?" 
 
 "To go back to Olivia and do your penance with her by 
 telling and living the truth. Magna est veritas et prceval- 
 ebit. Especially with a woman who loves you." 
 
 Triona turned to the table by the window and stared 
 out into the rain-swept garden, and the vision of a girl 
 horror-stricken, frozen, dead, rose before his eyes. Pres- 
 ently he said, his back to the room: 
 
 "You mean kindly and generously. But it's impossible 
 to go back. The man, Alexis Triona, whom she loved, 
 has melted away. He never had real existence. In his 
 place she sees a stranger, one John Briggs, whom she 
 loathes like Hell I've seen it in her eyes. She feels 
 as if she had been contaminated by contact with some un- 
 clean beast." 
 
 Olifant sprang from his chair and, catching him by the 
 shoulder, swung him round. 
 
 "You infernal fool, she doesn't!" 
 
 "I know better," said Triona. 
 
 "I'm beginning to think I know her better," Olifant 
 retorted. 
 
 "Well that is possible," said Triona. "You're of 
 her caste. I'm not. I've pretended to be, and that's 
 how I've come to grief. You're a good fellow, Olifant, 
 straight, just like her; and neither of you can understand 
 the man who runs crooked." 
 
 "Crooked be damned!" exclaimed Olifant. 
 
 But all his condemnation of self-accusing epithets
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 241 
 
 could not dissuade the fate-driven young man from his 
 purpose. Triona repeated the original intention of his 
 visit: to put Olifant in complete possession of facts which 
 Olivia's pride might not allow her to reveal, and to 
 charge him, thus equipped, with Olivia's immediate wel- 
 fare. At last he burst out again: 
 
 "Man alive! Don't torture me. All the devils in Hell 
 are doing it, and they're enough for any man. Have 
 some imagination! Think what it would mean to her to 
 have me crawling about in her path for ever and ever. 
 When love is dead it's dead. There's no resurrection. 
 She loved Alexis Triona. Won't you ever understand? 
 He's dead. The love's dead. If I stayed with her, I 
 should be a kind of living corpse to which she's tied. 
 So I'm going away out of her life altogether." 
 
 "And where are you going?" 
 
 "Just out into the spaciousness of the wide world," 
 replied Triona with a gesture. He looked suddenly at 
 his wrist watch. "Good Lord!" he cried. "I've only 
 just time to catch my train. Good-bye." 
 
 "Wait a minute," said Olifant. "Do you think it fair 
 on a woman? While you disappear for ever into spa- 
 ciousness she'll remain none the less married tied to you 
 for the rest of her life." 
 
 "Oh, don't let her worry about that!" cried Triona. 
 "I'll soon be dead." 
 
 He sped to the door. Olifant clutched at him and for 
 a while held fast. 
 
 "Never mind trains. You'll stay here to-day. I can't 
 let you go in this hysterical state." 
 
 But Triona wrenched himself free. A one-armed man 
 is at a physical disadvantage in a struggle with a wiry two-
 
 242 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 armed opponent. Olifant was pushed staggering back, 
 and, before he could recover himself, Triona had flashed 
 from the room, and a moment later the clang of the front 
 door told him he had left the house. 
 
 Olifant, after a moment's reflection, went to the tele- 
 phone and gave a London number. Then he drew his 
 chair nearer the fire and relit his pipe and waited for the 
 call to come through. Work was impossible. He was 
 in no mood to enter into the gaiety of printers in their 
 dance through the dead languages with which his biological 
 pages were strewn. His heart was exceeding heavy. 
 He stared into the fire and thought of what might have 
 been, had he not been a fool. At any rate, she would 
 have been spared misery such as this. He had loved 
 her from the moment she had opened that untouched 
 room upstairs, and the delicate spirit of one that was 
 dead had touched them with invisible hands. And he had 
 been a fool. Just a dry stick of a tongue-tied, heart- 
 hobbled, British fool. It had only been when another, 
 romantic and unreticent, had carried her off that he re- 
 alized the grotesqueness of his unutterable pain. Well, 
 she was married, and married to the man to whom he had 
 given his rare affection; and, folly of follies, all his in- 
 timacy with her had grown since her marriage. She 
 was inexpressibly dear to him. Her hurt was his hurt. 
 Her happiness all that mattered. And she loved her mad- 
 man of a husband. Deep down in her heart she loved 
 him still, in spite of shock and disillusion. Of that he was 
 certain. He himself forgave him for his wild, boyish 
 lovableness. Olivia abandoned it was unthinkable! 
 
 After an eternity the telephone bell rang. He leaped
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 243 
 
 up. Eventually came the faint, clear notes of a voice 
 which was Olivia's. They established identities. 
 
 "Alexis has been here. Has told me everything. He 
 has left here by the midday train. Of course, I don't 
 know whether you want to see him; but if you do his train 
 gets into Paddington at six-fifteen." 
 
 And the voice came again: 
 
 "Thanks. I'll meet him there." 
 
 And there was silence. 
 
 Olivia and Myra met the train at Paddington. But 
 they sought in vain for Alexis Triona. He had not 
 arrived in London.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 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, con- 
 taining 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 morn- 
 ing 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 reception of Olivia. 
 
 The realization of his crazy lapse of memory was a 
 sobering shock. Never before had he lost grip of him- 
 self. 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 con- 
 templation of which the only thrill he experienced was one 
 of profound disgust. To enter whatever sphere of life 
 
 244
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 245 
 
 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 disap- 
 peared from the face of the earth. It was therefore es- 
 sential to avoid hotels where Alexis Triona might pos- 
 sibly 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 chauf- 
 feur'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
 
 246 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 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 Eter- 
 nal 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 unfor- 
 givable 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
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 247 
 
 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 dis- 
 mal 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 un- 
 polluted 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.
 
 248 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "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 autom- 
 aton 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 awak- 
 ened 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.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 249 
 
 "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. With- 
 out 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 dis- 
 appear. Merely leaving Olivia and setting up for him- 
 self 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 him- 
 self 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 him- 
 self, a man must live. During moments of his madness 
 he had dallied with wild 'thoughts of suicide. His fun- 
 damental sanity had rejected them. He was no coward. 
 Whatever punishment was in store for him, good God! 
 he was man enough to face it.
 
 250 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 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 be- 
 gan 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' bar- 
 rows, 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 puz- 
 zlement 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 chauf- 
 feur-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?"
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 251 
 
 "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 fore- 
 head. 
 
 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 com- 
 panion's arm, he hurried him along the encumbered pave- 
 ment. 
 
 "Why do you Englishmen who have lately died and
 
 252 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 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 Toland, 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 Toland, 
 Poland,' in all the Entente and neutral countries I,
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 253 
 
 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 indi- 
 vidual 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 him-- 
 self 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.
 
 254 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "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 inspira- 
 tion, might possibly have some message for him, spirit- 
 ually 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 estab- 
 lishment with much grace. Triona accepted the cigar- 
 ette, 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
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 255 
 
 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 iiber alles?' Have you seen any en- 
 thusiasm 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 English- 
 man 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 Eng- 
 land'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. Hook 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.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE word was like the lash of a whip. He stared 
 at the patriot open-mouthed. 
 "Yes, Poland," said Boronowski. "Why not? 
 You want to fight for a Great Cause. Is not a free and 
 independent Poland the keystone of the arch of recon- 
 structed Europe? It is a commonplace axiom. Poland 
 otherthrown, overrun with Bolshevism, all Europe 
 crumbles into dust. The world is convulsed. Fighting 
 for Poland is fighting for the salvation of the world. 
 Could there be a greater cause?" 
 
 His dark eyes glowed with compelling inspiration. 
 His outflung arm ended in a pointing finger. And Triona 
 saw it as the finger of Salvation Yeo in his boyhood's 
 picture. 
 
 "Wonderful, wonderful," he said, below his breath. 
 
 "And simple. Come with me to Warsaw. I have 
 friends of some influence. Otherwise I should not be 
 here. The Polish Army would welcome you with open 
 arms." 
 
 Triona thrust out a sudden hand, which the other 
 gripped. 
 
 "By God!" he cried, "I'll come." 
 
 An hour afterwards, his brain dominated by the new 
 idea, he danced his way through the melancholy streets. 
 Here, indeed, was salvation. Here he could live the life 
 of Truth. Here was the glorious chance although he 
 would never see her on earth again of justifying him- 
 
 256
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 257 
 
 self in Olivia's eyes. And in itself it was a marvellous 
 adventure. There would be endless days when he should 
 live for the hour that he was alive, without thought of 
 an unconjecturable to-morrow. Into the cause of Poland 
 he would fling his soul. Yes, Boronowski was right. 
 The sovereign remedy. His individual life what did 
 it matter to him? All the beloved things were past and 
 gone. They lay already on the further side of the Valley 
 of the Shadow of Death. His personality was merged 
 into a self-annihilating creature that would henceforth 
 be the embodiment of a spiritual idea. 
 
 Thus for the rest of the day, and during the night, his 
 mind worked. Arrived in Poland, he would press for 
 the fiercest section of the front. The bullet that killed 
 him would be welcome. He would die gloriously. 
 Olivia should know. 
 
 As John Briggs, with his papers in order, he found his 
 passport a simple matter. Boronowski, with whom he 
 spent most of his time, obtained a speedy visa at the 
 Polish and other Consulates. During the period of wait- 
 ing he went carefully through the contents of the suit- 
 case and removed all traces of the name and initials of 
 Alexis Triona. The little Mack book he burned page 
 by page with matches in the empty grate of his room. 
 When it was consumed, he felt himself rid of an evil 
 thing. In strange East London emporiums, unknown to 
 dwellers in the West End, and discovered by restless 
 wandering, he purchased an elementary kit for the cam- 
 paign. Much of his time he spent in Boronowski's quar- 
 ters in Somers Town, reading propaganda pamphlets 
 and other literature dealing with Polish actualities. 
 When the Polish Army welcomed him with open arms,
 
 258 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 they must find him thoroughly equipped. He bought 
 a Polish grammar, and compiled with Boronowski a 
 phrase-book so as to be prepared with an elementary 
 knowledge of the language. The Pole marvelled at his 
 fervour. 
 
 "You spring at things like an intellectual tiger," said 
 he, "and then fasten on to them with the teeth of a bull- 
 dog." 
 
 "I'm a quick worker when I concentrate," said Triona. 
 
 And for many days he concentrated, sleeping and eat- 
 ing little, till his cheeks grew gaunt and his eyes bright 
 and haggard. In his interminable talks with Boronow- 
 ski, he concentrated all his faculties, until the patriot 
 would laugh and accuse him of a tigerish spring on the 
 secrets of his soul. 
 
 "It's true," cried Triona, "it's the soul of Poland I 
 want to make enter my being. To serve you to any 
 purpose I must see through Polish eyes and feel with a 
 Polish heart, and feel my veins thrill with the spirituality 
 of Poland." 
 
 "Is that possible?" 
 
 "You shall see," answered Triona. 
 
 And just as he had fallen under the obsession of the 
 dead Krilov during the night watches in the North Sea, 
 so did he fall under the obsession of this new Great 
 Cause. Something fundamentally histrionic in his tem- 
 perament flung him into these excesses of impersonation. 
 Already he began to regret his resumption of the plain 
 name of John Briggs. Even in the pre-war Russian days 
 he had seldom been addressed by it. For the first social 
 enquiry in Russia elicited the Christian name of a man's 
 father. And his father's name being Peter, he was called
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 259 
 
 by all and sundry Ivan Petrovitch. So that even then, 
 in his fervent zeal to merge himself into the Russian 
 spirit, he had grown to regard the two downright words 
 of his name as meaningless monosyllables. But he 
 strangled the regret fiercely as soon as it arose. 
 
 "No, by heaven!" said he, "No more lies." 
 
 And yet, in spite of unalterable resolve, as he lay sleep- 
 less with overwrought nerves in the sour room in the 
 Euston Road, he was haunted by lunatic Polish forms, 
 Brigiovski, Brigowski, which he might adopt without 
 breaking his vow; he could not see himself in the part 
 of a Polish patriot labelled as John Briggs; just as 
 well might a great actor seek to identify himself with 
 Hamlet while wearing cricketing flannels and a bowler 
 hat. 
 
 Only once in his talks with Boronowski did he refer 
 to the unhappiness to which he was to apply the sovereign 
 remedy. The days were passing without sign of imme- 
 diate departure. Boronowski, under the orders of his 
 superiors, must await instructions. Triona chafed at the 
 delay. 
 
 Boronowski smiled indulgently. 
 
 "The first element in devotion to a cause, or a woman, 
 is patience. Illimitable patience. The demands of a 
 cause are very much like those of a woman, apparently 
 illogical and capricious, but really inexorable and un- 
 swerving in their purpose." 
 
 "It's all very well to talk of patience," Triona fumed, 
 "but when one is hag-ridden as I am " 
 
 Boronowski smiled again. "Histoire de femme " 
 
 Triona flushed scarlet and sprang to his feet. 
 
 "How dare you twist my words like that?"
 
 260 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 Boronowski looked at him for a puzzled moment, seek- 
 ing the association of ideas. Then, grasping it: 
 
 "Forgive me, my friend," he said courteously. "My 
 English, after all, is that of a foreigner. The word con- 
 nection was far from my mind. I took your speech to 
 mean that you were driven by unhappiness. And the 
 
 unhappiness of a young man is so often Again, I 
 
 beg your pardon." 
 
 Triona passed his hand through his brown hair. 
 
 "All right," he said, "I'm sorry. Yes. If you want 
 to know, it's a woman. She's the day-spring from on 
 high, and I'm damned beyond redemption. The best 
 thing that could happen would be if she knew I were 
 dead." 
 
 Boronowski tugged at his little greyish-red beard. A 
 follower of great causes was never the worse for having 
 the Furies at his heels. But he was a man of kindly 
 nature. 
 
 "No one while he is alive can be damned beyond re- 
 deption," he said. "I don't wish to press my indiscretion 
 further. Yet, as an older man, could I be of service to 
 you in any way?" 
 
 "No, you're very kind, but no one can help me." 
 Then an idea flashed across his excited brain. "Not 
 until I'm dead. Then, perhaps, you might do something 
 for me." 
 
 "You're not going to die yet, my friend." 
 
 "How do we know? I'm going to fight. The first 
 day I may get knocked out. Should anything happen to 
 me, would you kindly communicate with some one?" 
 
 He moved to the paper-littered table and began to 
 scribble.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 261 
 
 "It's all rather premature, my friend," said Boronow- 
 ski. "But as you wish." He took the scrap of paper 
 which bore the name and address of Major Olifant. 
 "This I may be liable to lose. I will enter it in my note- 
 book." He made the entry. Then, "May I say a se- 
 rious word to you?" 
 
 "Anything you like." 
 
 "There is such a thing as the fire of purification. But 
 " he put a hand on the younger man's shoulder, 
 "you can't call it down from Heaven. You must await 
 its coming. So we get back to my original remark. Pa- 
 tience, more patience, and always patience." 
 
 This was consoling for the moment; but after a few 
 days' further grappling with the Polish language, he 
 burst into Boronowski's lodgings and found the patriot 
 at his table, immersed in work. 
 
 "If we don't start soon," he cried, "I'll go mad. I 
 haven't slept for nights and nights. I'll only sleep when 
 we are on our journey, and I know that all this is reality 
 and not a dream." 
 
 "I've just had orders," replied Boronowski. "We start 
 to-morrow morning. Here are our tickets." 
 
 That night, Triona wrote to Olivia. It was an eternal 
 farewell. On the morrow he was leaving England to 
 offer up his unworthy life as a sacrifice to the Great 
 Cause of Poland. The only reparation he could make for 
 the wrong he had done her was to beseech her to look 
 on him as one already dead. It covered many pages. 
 
 When he returned to his musty room after this last 
 hour's heart-breaking communion with her, he sat on 
 his bed overwhelmed by sudden despair. What guar- 
 antee had she of this departure for Poland greater than
 
 262 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 that of his mission to Helsingfors last summer? Would 
 she not throw the letter aside in disgust another roman- 
 tic lie? He wished he had not written. He took faint 
 hope again on the reflection that by posting another 
 letter from Warsaw he could establish his veracity. But 
 why should he keep on worrying her with the details of 
 his miserable existence? Better, far better that she 
 should look on him as dead; better, far better that she 
 should believe him dead, so that she could reconstruct 
 her young and broken life. He might die in battle; but 
 then he might not. He had already carried his life safely 
 through battles by land and sea. Again he might come 
 out unscathed. Even if he was killed, how should she 
 hear of his death? And if he survived, was it fair that 
 she should be bound by law eternally to a living ghost? 
 Somebody had said that before. It was Olifant. Oli- 
 fant, the fool out for Grails, yet speaking the truth of 
 chivalry. Well, this time he summoned up the confi- 
 dence of dismal hope he would make sure that he was 
 dead and that she heard the news. At any rate, he had 
 prepared the ground; Boronowski would communicate 
 with Olifant. 
 
 Then came a knock at his door it was nearly mid- 
 night. The night porter entered. A man downstairs 
 wished to see him a foreigner. A matter of urgent 
 importance. 
 
 "Show him up," said Triona. 
 
 He groaned, put both his hands up to his head. He 
 did not want to see Boronowski to-night. His distraught 
 brain could not stand the patriot's tireless lucidity of 
 purpose. Boronowski belonged to the inhuman band of 
 fanatics, the devotees to one idea, who had nothing per-
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 263 
 
 sonal to sacrifice. Just like lonely old maids who gave 
 themselves up to church-going and good works, and 
 thereby plumed themselves on the acquisition of im- 
 mortal merit. What soul-shattering tragedy had Boro- 
 nowski behind him, any more than the elderly virgins 
 aforesaid? If Boronowski kept him up talking Poland 
 till three o'clock in the morning as he had already done 
 he would go mad. No, not to-night. The mounting 
 steps on the uncarpeted stairs hammered at every nerve 
 in his body. And when the door opened, it was not Bo- 
 ronowski who appeared, but a pallid, swarthy wisp of a 
 man whom Triona recognized as one Klinski, a Jew, 
 and a trusted agent of Boronowski. He was so evilly 
 dressed that the night porter, accustomed to the drab 
 clientele of the sad hostelry, yet thought it his duty to 
 linger by the door. 
 
 Triona dismissed him sharply. 
 
 "What's the matter?" he asked in Russian, for he was 
 aware of the man's scanty English. 
 
 Klinski did not know. He was but the bearer of a 
 letter, a large envelope, which he drew from his breast 
 pocket. Triona tore it open. It contained two envel- 
 opes and a covering letter. The letter ran: 
 
 "MY DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 "A sudden change in the political situation has made 
 it necessary for me to go where I must not tell you. 
 So, to my great regret, I cannot accompany you. You, 
 however, will start by the morning train, as arranged. 
 The route, as you know, is Paris, Zurich, Saltzburg, and 
 Prague. I enclose letters to sound friends in Prague 
 and Warsaw who will relieve you of all worries and
 
 264 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 responsibilities. If you do not hear from me in Prague, 
 where I should like you to remain one week it is a beau- 
 tiful city, and the Czecho-Slovak Republic is one of the 
 most interesting outcomes of the war await instructions 
 at Warsaw. But I anticipate picking you up in Prague. 
 
 "Yours, 
 
 "BORONOWSKI." 
 
 A moment ago, he had dreaded the interruption of Boro- 
 nowski on his nerve-racked vigil. Now the dismayed 
 prospect of a journey across Europe alone awoke within 
 him a sudden yearning for Boronowski's society. A 
 dozen matters could be cleared up in an hour's talk. 
 Suppose Boronowski's return to Warsaw were indefinitely 
 delayed. 
 
 "Thanks very much," he said. "I'll take back the 
 answer to Mr. Boronowski myself." 
 
 "There can be no answer," said Klinski. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Mr. Boronowski left his lodgings early this even- 
 ing, and has gone who knows where?" 
 
 Triona shrugged his shoulders. It was the uncom- 
 fortable way of conspirators all the world over. To him- 
 self he cursed it with heatedness, but to no avail. 
 
 "Why didn't you bring the letter before?" he asked. 
 
 "I have had many messages to deliver to-night, sir," 
 said Klinski, "and I have not finished." 
 
 The stunted, pallid man looked tired out, half-starved. 
 Triona drew from his pocket a ten-shilling note. Klin- 
 ski drew back a step. 
 
 "I thank you. But in the service of my country I can 
 only accept payment from my Government."
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 265 
 
 Triona regarded him in admiration. 
 "It must be a great country!" 
 "It is," said Klinski, with a light in his eyes. 
 "And I'm proud to go and fight for her." 
 "It's a privilege that I envy you," said Klinski. "May 
 God preserve you." 
 
 Driven by the impossibility of sleep in the frowsy 
 room, by the incurable wander-fever which took him at 
 periods of unrest, he found himself an hour later stand- 
 ing before the block of flats in the Buckingham Palace 
 Road, staring up at the windows of his home. In the 
 bedroom was a faint streak of light quite visible from 
 below through a crack in the curtains. He remembered 
 how, a year ago, he had been compelled by a similar 
 impulse, to stand romantically beneath the building which 
 housed her sacredness, and how the gods, smiling on him, 
 had delivered her into his rescuing hands. And now 
 there were no gods or if there were, they did but mock 
 him. No white wraith would appear on the pave- 
 ment, turning to warm flesh and blood, demanding his 
 succour. She was up there, wakeful, behind that streak 
 of light. 
 
 He stood racked by an agony of temptation. The 
 Yale latch key was still at the end of his watch-chain. 
 He was her husband. He had the right of entrance. 
 His being clamoured for her, and found utterance in 
 a horrible little cry. The light invited him like a beacon. 
 Yes. He would cross the road. Perhaps the fool Oli- 
 fant was right. She might yet love him. And then, as 
 if in answer to his half-crazed imaginings, the light went 
 out.
 
 266 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 He turned, and walked wearily back across sleeping 
 London. 
 
 It was four o'clock when the night porter admitted 
 him. He stumbled to his room. As his train left Vic- 
 toria at eight, it would be an absurdity to undress and 
 go to bed. Utterly weary, he threw himself on it as he 
 was, his brain whirling. There could be no question of 
 sleep. 
 
 Yet suddenly he became conscious of daylight. He 
 started up and looked at his watch. It was past seven. 
 He had slept after all. He made a perfunctory toilet 
 and hurriedly completed his neglected packing. The 
 drowsy night porter, on duty till eight, tardily answered 
 his summons, and took his suit-case to the shabby ves- 
 tibule. Triona followed, with heavy great coat and can- 
 vas kit-bag, his purchases for the campaign. The porter 
 suggested breakfast. There was no time. Luckily he 
 had paid his bill the evening before. All he demanded 
 was a taxi. 
 
 But at that early hour of the morning there were none, 
 save a luggage-laden few bound for St. Pancras or King's 
 Cross. 
 
 "I can't leave the hotel, sir/' said the porter, "or I 
 would get you one from Euston." 
 
 "I'll find one, then," said Triona, and putting on the 
 heavy khaki coat and gripping suit-case in one hand 
 and kit-bag in the other, he set off along the Euston Road. 
 As he neared the station entrance, he staggered along, 
 aching and sweating. What a fool he had been not to 
 foresee this idiot difficulty! What a fool he had been 
 to give way to sleep. He came in view of the dock. 
 Given a cab, he would still have time to catch the train
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 267 
 
 at Victoria. He had it on his brain that his salvation 
 depended on his catching the train at Victoria. He 
 stumbled into the outer court, past the hotel wings. An 
 outgoing taxicab swirled towards him. He dropped his 
 burdens and stood in its path with upheld arms. There 
 was a sudden pandemonium of hoarse cries, a sounding 
 of brakes. He glanced round just in time to see, for 
 a fraction of a second, the entering motor-lorry which 
 struck him down.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 OLIVIA struggled for a fortnight against Circum- 
 stance, when Circumstance got the upper hand. 
 But it had been a valiant fight from the 
 moment Myra, on her return to the flat, had delivered 
 Triona's scribbled note, and had given her account of the 
 brief parting interview. 
 
 "It's just as well," she said. "It's the only way out." 
 
 She made a brave show of dining, while Myra waited 
 stoically. At last, impelled to speech, she said: 
 
 "Well, what do you think of it?" 
 
 "How can I think of what I know nothing about?" 
 said Myra. 
 
 "Would you like to know?" 
 
 "My liking has nothing to do with it," said Myra 
 brushing the crumbs off the table. "If you tell me, you 
 tell me because it may help you. But I know it's not 
 a Christian thing to say I'm not likely to forgive the 
 man that has done you an injury." 
 
 "He has done me no injury," said Olivia. "That's 
 what I want you to know. No injury in the ordinary 
 sense of the word." 
 
 She looked up at Myra's impassive face, and met the 
 dull blue eyes, and found it very difficult to tell her, in 
 spite of lifelong intimacy. Yet it was right that Myra 
 should have no false notions. 
 
 "I've discovered that my husband's name is not Alexis 
 Triona. It is John Briggs." 
 
 268
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 269 
 
 "John Briggs," echoed Myra. 
 
 "His father was a labourer in Newcastle. He was a 
 chauffeur in Russia. All that he had said about him- 
 self and written in his book is untrue. When he left us 
 last summer to go to Finland, he really went to New- 
 castle to his mother's death-bed. Everything he has told 
 me has been a lie from beginning to end. He oh, God, 
 Myra " 
 
 She broke down and clutched her face, while her 
 throat was choking with dry sobbing. Myra came 
 swiftly round the table and put her arm about her, and 
 drew the beloved head near to her thin body. 
 
 "There, there, my dear. You can tell me more an- 
 other time." 
 
 Olivia let herself be soothed for a while. Then she 
 pulled herself together and rose. 
 
 "No, I'll tell you everything now. Then we'll never 
 need talk of it again. I'm not going to make a fool of 
 myself." 
 
 She stiffened herself against feminine weakness. At 
 the end of the story, Myra asked her: 
 
 "What are you going to do?" 
 
 "I'm going to carry on as if nothing had happened. 
 At any rate for the present." 
 
 Myra nodded slowly. "You're not the only one who 
 has had to carry on as if nothing had happened." 
 
 "What do you mean?" Olivia asked quickly. 
 
 "Nothing but what I said," replied Myra. "It takes 
 some doing. But you've got to believe in God and be- 
 lieve in yourself." 
 
 "Where did you get your wisdom from, Myra?" asked 
 Olivia wonderingly.
 
 270 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "From life, my dear," replied Myra with unwonted 
 softness. And picking up the last tray of removed din- 
 ner things, she left the room. 
 
 The next afternoon, she said to Myra, "Major Olifant 
 has telephoned me that Mr. Triona is arriving at Pad- 
 dington by a six-fifteen train. I should like you to 
 come with me." 
 
 "Very well," said Myra. 
 
 It was characteristic of their relations that they spoke 
 not a word of Triona during their drive to the station 
 or during their wait on the platform. When the train 
 came in, and they had assured themselves that he had 
 not arrived for they had taken the precaution to sep- 
 arate and each to scan a half -section they re-entered 
 their waiting taxicab and drove home. 
 
 "I hope I shall never see him again," said Olivia, 
 humiliated by this new deception. "He told Major 
 Olifant he was coming straight to town by the train. 
 The truth isn't in him. You mustn't suppose," she 
 turned rather fiercely to Myra, "that I came to meet him 
 with any idea of reconciliation. That's why I brought 
 you with me. But people don't part for ever in this 
 hysterical way. There are decencies of life. There are 
 the commonplace arrangements of a separation." 
 
 She burned with a new sense of wrong. Once more 
 he had eluded her. Now, what she told Myra was true. 
 She wished never to see him again. 
 
 Blaise Olifant came up to town, anxious to be of serv- 
 ice, and found her in this defiant mood. 
 
 "It's impossible for it all to end like this," he said. 
 "You are wounded to the quick. He's in a state of crazy 
 remorse. Time will soften things. He'll come to his
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 271 
 
 senses and return and ask your forgiveness, and you will 
 give it." 
 
 She replied, "My dear Blaise, you don't understand. 
 The man I loved and married doesn't exist." 
 
 "The man of genius exists. Listen," said he. "After 
 he left me, I've done scarcely anything but think of the 
 two of you. He could have put forward a case a very 
 stong case but he didn't." 
 
 "And what was his strong case?" she asked bitterly. 
 
 Olifant put before her his reasoned apologia for the 
 life of Triona. Given the first deception practised under 
 the obsession of the little black book acting on a pecul- 
 iarly sensitive temperament, the rest followed remorse- 
 lessly. 
 
 "He was being blackmailed by one lie." 
 
 "My intelligence grasps what you say," Olivia an- 
 swered, "but my heart doesn't. You're standing away 
 and can see things in the round. I'm in the middle of 
 them, and I can't." 
 
 If she, although his wife, had stood away; if she had 
 been dissociated from his deceptions; if nothing more 
 had occurred than the exposure of the Triona myth, she 
 might have forgiven him. But the deceptions had been 
 interwoven with the sacred threads of her love; she could 
 not forgive that intimate entanglement. To a woman 
 the little things are as children, as the little ones whose of- 
 fenders Christ cursed with the millstone and the sea. 
 She had lain awake, his forgotten wrist-watch on her 
 arm, picturing him tossed by the waves of the North Sea 
 in the execution of her country's errand. She had 
 proudly told a hundred people of the Bolshevist gyve- 
 marks around his ankle. She had been moved to her
 
 272 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 depths by the tragical romance of the fictitious Vronsky. 
 In her heart there had been hot rebellion against a For- 
 eign Office keeping strangle-hold on a heroic servant and 
 restricting his freedom of action. These little sufferings 
 he had caused her she could not forgive. While inflict- 
 ing them, he knew that she suffered. 
 
 In vain did Olifant, unversed in the psychology of 
 woman, plead the cause of the erratic creature that was 
 her husband. In vain did he set out his honourable and 
 uncontested record; that of a man whose response to the 
 call of duty was unquestioned; of whose courage and 
 endurance she had received personal testimony; who had 
 cheerfully suffered wounds, the hardships of flight 
 through Revolutionary Russia, the existence on a mine- 
 sweeper on perilous seas ending in the daily dreaded 
 catastrophe; the record of a man who, apart from his 
 fraud, had justified himself as a queer, imaginative 
 genius, writing of life in a new way, in a new, vibrating 
 style that had compelled the attention of the English- 
 speaking world. In vain did he adduce the boyish charm 
 of the man. Olivia sighed. 
 
 "I don't know him as you see him," she said. 
 
 "Then what can I do?" he asked. 
 
 She shook a despairing head. "Nothing, my dear 
 Blaise." She rubbed the palm of one hand on the back 
 of the other, and turned her great dark eyes on him. 
 "You can't do anything, but you've done something. 
 You've shown me how loyal a man can be." 
 
 He protested vaguely. "My dear Olivia ..." 
 
 "It's true," she said. "And I'll always remember it. 
 And now, don't let us ever talk about this again."
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 273 
 
 "As you will," said he. "But what are you going to 
 do?" 
 
 She replied as she had done to Myra. She would carry 
 on. 
 
 "Until when?" 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders. She 'would carry on in- 
 definitely. To act otherwise would open the door to 
 gossip. She was not going to be done to death by 
 slanderous tongues. She rose and stood before him in 
 slim, rigid dignity. 
 
 "If I can't out-brave the world, I'm a poor thing." 
 
 "You stay here, then?" he asked. 
 
 "Why not? Where else should I go?" 
 
 "I came with a little note from my sister," said Olifant, 
 drawing a letter from his pocket and handing it to her. 
 
 Olivia read it through. Then she said, in a softened 
 voice: 
 
 "You're a dear, kind friend." 
 
 "It's my sister," he smiled; but he could not keep an 
 appeal out of his eyes. "Why shouldn't you?" he asked 
 suddenly. "It will be hateful for you here, for all your 
 courage. And you'll be fighting what? Just shadows, 
 and you'll expend all your strength in it. What good will 
 it do you or anybody? You want rest, real rest, of body 
 and soul." 
 
 She met his eyes. 
 
 "Do I look so woebegone?" 
 
 "The sight of you now is enough to break the heart of 
 any one who cares for you, Olivia," he said soberly. 
 
 "It's merely a question of sleeplessness. That'll pass 
 off."
 
 274 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "It will pass off quicker in the country," he urged. "It 
 will be a break. The house will be yours. Mary and I, 
 the discreetest shadows. You don't know the self-effac- 
 ing dear that Mary is. Besides, she is one of those 
 women who is a living balm for the wounded. To look 
 at her is to draw love and comforting from her." He 
 ventured the tips of his fingers on her slender shoulders. 
 "Do come. Your old room shall be yours, just as you 
 left it. Or the room I have always kept sacred." 
 
 She stood by the fireplace, her arm on the mantelshelf, 
 looking away from him. 
 
 "Or, if you like," he went on, "we'll clear out we 
 only want a few days and give you back your old 
 home all to yourself." 
 
 She stretched out a groping hand; he took it. 
 
 "I know you would," she said. "It's it's beautiful 
 of you. I'm not surprised, because " she swayed head 
 and shoulders a bit, seeking for words, her eyes away 
 from him, " because, after that first day at Medlow, I 
 have never thought of you as doing otherwise than what 
 was beautiful and noble. It sounds silly. But I mean 
 it." 
 
 She withdrew her hand and walked away into the room, 
 her back towards him. He strode after her. 
 
 "That's foolishness. I'm only an ordinary, decent sort 
 of man. In the circumstances, good Lord! I couldn't 
 do less." 
 
 She faced him in the middle of the room. 
 
 "And I as an ordinary, decent woman, couldn't do less 
 than what I've said." 
 
 "Well?" said he.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 275 
 
 They stood for a few seconds eye to eye. A faint 
 colour came into her cheeks, and she smiled. 
 
 "Don't suppose I'm not tempted. I am. But if I 
 came, you'd spoil me. I've got to fight." 
 
 This valiant attitude he could not induce her to aban- 
 don. At last, with a pathetic air of disappointment, he 
 said: 
 
 "If I can help you in any other way, and you won't 
 let me, I shall be hurt." 
 
 "Oh, I'll let you," she cried impulsively. "You may 
 be sure. Who else is there?" 
 
 He went away comforted. Yet he did not return to 
 Medlow. These early days, he argued, were critical. 
 Anything might happen, and it would be well for him to 
 remain within call. 
 
 Of what the future held for her she did not think. 
 Her mind was concentrated on the struggle through the 
 present. She received a woman caller and chattered 
 over tea as though nothing had happened. The effort 
 braced her, and she felt triumphant over self. She went 
 about on her trivial shopping. She remembered a fitting 
 for a coat and skirt which she had resolved to postpone 
 till after the projected motor jaunt. If she was to live 
 in the world, she must have clothes to cover her. One 
 morning, therefore, she journeyed to the dressmaker's 
 in Hanover Street, and, the fitting over, wandered through 
 the square, down Conduit Street into Bond Street. At 
 the corner, she ran into Lydia, expensively dressed, 
 creamy, serene. 
 
 "My dear, you're looking like a ghost. What have 
 you been doing with yourself?"
 
 276 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "Jogging on as usual," said Olivia. 
 
 Their acquaintance had not been entirely broken. A 
 few calls had been exchanged. Once Lydia had lunched 
 with Olivia alone in the Buckingham Palace Road. But 
 they had not met since the early part of the year. They 
 strolled slowly down Bond Street. Lydia was full of 
 news. Bobby Quinton had married Mrs. Bellingham 
 a rich woman twice his age. 
 
 "The way of the transgressor is soft," said Olivia. 
 
 Mauregard was transferred to Rome. His idol, the 
 Russian dancer, had run off with Danimede, the fitter 
 at Luquin's. Hadn't Olivia heard? 
 
 "Where have you been living, my dear child? In a 
 tomb? It has been the talk of London for the past 
 six weeks. They're in Paris now, and they say she lies 
 down on the floor and lets the little beast kick her. She 
 likes it. There's no accounting for tastes. Perhaps 
 that's why she left Mauregard." 
 
 In her serene, worldly way, she went through the 
 scandalous chronicles of her galley. She came at last 
 to Edwin Mavenna. Olivia remembered Mavenna? 
 She laughed indulgently. Olivia shuddered at the mem- 
 ory and gripped her hands tight. Mavenna he mattered 
 little. A beast let loose for a few moments from the 
 darkness. He was eclipsed from her vision by the boy- 
 ish, grey-clad figure in the moonlight. She scarcely 
 heard Lydia's chatter. 
 
 "One must live and let live, you know, in this world. 
 He and Sydney are partners now. I hinted something 
 of the sort at the time. You don't mind now, do you?" 
 
 "Not a bit. Why should I?" said Olivia.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 277 
 
 "That's really why I've not asked you down to our 
 place in Sussex. But if you don't mind meeting him 
 he's quite a good sport really." 
 
 Olivia's eyes wandered up and down the crowded road- 
 way. 
 
 "I wish I could see an empty taxi," she said. 
 
 She had a sudden horror of Lydia a horror queerly 
 mingled with fierce jealousy. Why should Lydia, with 
 her gross materialism, be leading this unruffled existence? 
 
 "Are you in a hurry?" Lydia asked placidly. 
 
 "I've an appointment with my dentist." 
 
 "We'll get in here and wait till we see a taxi," said 
 Lydia. 
 
 They stood in the recess of a private doorway, by the 
 bow-window of a print shop. 
 
 "You're not looking well, my dear," said Lydia quite 
 affectionately. "Marriage doesn't seem to agree with 
 you. What's the matter?" 
 
 Olivia flashed: "Nothing's the matter." 
 
 "How's your husband?" 
 
 "Very well." 
 
 This was intolerable. She strained her eyes for the 
 little red flag of freedom. Then, as she had told her 
 visitor of a day or two before: 
 
 "He's gone abroad on important business." 
 
 "And not taken you with him?" 
 
 "His business isn't ordinary business," she said in- 
 stinctively. Then she recognized she was covering him 
 with his own cloak. Her pale cheeks flushed. 
 
 "So that's it," said Lydia smiling. "You're a poor 
 little grass widow. You want bucking up, my dear. A
 
 278 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 bit 01 old times. Come and do a dinner and a theatre 
 with us. Sydney would love to see you again. We'll 
 steer clear of naughty old Mavenna " 
 
 She had to stop; for Olivia had rushed across the 
 pavement and was holding up her little embroidered bag 
 at arm's length, and the Heaven-sent taxi was drawing 
 up to the kerb. 
 
 Lydia followed her and stood while she entered the 
 cab. 
 
 "You'll come, won't you, dear?" 
 
 "I'll telephone," said Olivia. She put out a hand. 
 "Good-bye. It has been so pleasant seeing you again." 
 
 Lydia shook hands and smiled in her prosperous, con- 
 tented way. Then she said: 
 
 "Where shall he drive to?" 
 
 Olivia had not given the matter a thought. She re- 
 flected swiftly. If she said "Home," Lydia would sus- 
 pect her eagerness to escape. After all, she didn't want 
 to hurt Lydia's feelings. She cried at random: 
 
 "Maryborough Road, St. John's Wood." 
 
 "What a funny place for a dentist to live," said Lydia. 
 
 Anyhow, it was over. She was alone in the taxi, which 
 was proceeding northwards up Bond Street. Of all 
 people in the world Lydia was the one she least had de- 
 sired to meet. Dinner and Revue. Possibly supper and 
 a dance afterwards! Back again to where she had 
 started little over a year ago. She suddenly became 
 aware of herself shrieking with laughter. In horror, she 
 stopped short, and felt a clattering shock all through her 
 frame, like a car going at high speed when, at the in- 
 stant of danger, all the brakes are suddenly applied. She 
 lay back on the cushions, panting. Her brow was moist.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 279 
 
 She put up her hand and found a wisp of hair sticking to 
 her temples. 
 
 The cab went on. Where was she? Where was she 
 going? She looked out of the window and recognized 
 Regent's Park. Then she remembered her wildly- 
 given destination. She put her head through the win- 
 dow. 
 
 "I've changed my mind/' she said to the driver. "Go 
 to Buckingham Palace Mansions." 
 
 The next morning came a letter from Lydia on expen- 
 sive primrose note-paper. Would Friday be convenient? 
 Sydney and herself would call for her at seven. There 
 was a postscript: 
 
 "I hope the St. John's Wood dentist didn't hurt you too 
 much." 
 
 It gave her an idea. She replied: 
 
 "So sorry. The St. John's Wood dentist has made 
 it impossible for me to appear in public for at least a 
 month." 
 
 She checked an impulse of laughter. She must keep 
 hold on herself. 
 
 Olifant came in the afternoon. She told him of a 
 communication she had received from her bank to the 
 effect that Alexis had placed a large sum of money to her 
 account. But she did not tell him of her meeting with 
 Lydia. 
 
 "What's to be done with the money? I don't want it. 
 It had better be retransferred." 
 
 "I'll see what I can do," said Olifant. 
 
 He came back next morning. He had seen the man- 
 ager of Triona's bank. Nothing could be done. Alexis
 
 280 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 had drawn out his balance in cash and closed his ac- 
 count. 
 
 "Let things be at any rate for the present," Olifant 
 counselled. 
 
 When he took his leave, he said, looking down on her 
 from his lean height: 
 
 "I do wish you would come to Medlow." 
 
 She knew that she was ill. She knew that she was 
 looking ill. But her little frame shook with an impatient 
 movement. 
 
 "I'm going to stick it, Blaise. I'm going to stick it 
 if I die for it." 
 
 "It's magnificent, but it isn't war or anything else," 
 said he. 
 
 Then came Rowington. The last straw. The last 
 straw, in the guise of an anxious, kindly, gold-spectacled, 
 clean-shaven, florid-faced philanthropist. First he had 
 asked over the telephone for Triona's address. An ur- 
 gent matter. Olivia replied that his address was secret. 
 Would she kindly forward a letter? She replied that 
 none of her husband's letters were to be forwarded. 
 Would Mrs. Triona see him, then? He would wait on 
 her at any time convenient to her. She fixed the hour. 
 He came on the stroke. 
 
 Olivia, her heart cold, her brain numbed by a hun- 
 dred apprehensions, was waiting for him in the drawing- 
 room. Myra announced him. Olivia rose. 
 
 "My dear Mrs. Triona," said he, emphasizing the con- 
 ventional hand-shake by laying his hand over hers and 
 holding it, "where is that wonderful husband of yours?" 
 
 "He's gone abroad," said Olivia.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 281 
 
 "He must come back," said Rowington. 
 
 "He has gone away for a long time on important 
 business," said Olivia, parrot-wise. 
 
 She motioned him to a chair. They sat down. 
 
 "I gathered something of the sort from his letter. Has 
 he told you of certain dispositions?" 
 
 She fenced. "I don't quite follow you." 
 
 "This letter ?" 
 
 He handed her the letter of instructions with regard to 
 payment of royalties which he had received from Triona. 
 She glanced through it. 
 
 "That's all right," she said. 
 
 He drew a breath of relief. I'm glad you know. I 
 had a sort of idea anyhow, no matter how important his 
 business is, it's essential that he should come back at 
 once." 
 
 "Why?" she asked. 
 
 But she had a sickening prescience of the answer. The 
 kindly gentleman passed his hand over his forehead. 
 
 "It's just .a business complication, my dear Mrs. Tri- 
 ona," he said. 
 
 She rose. He too, courteously. 
 
 "Is it to do with anything that happened on the night 
 of your dinner-party?" 
 
 "I'm afraid so." 
 
 "Colonel Onslow and Captain Wedderburn?" 
 
 He met her eyes. 
 
 "Yes," said he. 
 
 "They've come to you with all sorts of lies about 
 Alexis." 
 
 "I would give ten years of my life not to wound you, 
 Mrs. Triona," he said, in great distress. "I didn't sleep
 
 282 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 a wink last night. My honour as a publisher is involved. 
 But let that pass. I'm thinking more of you. You only 
 can help me and your husband. These two gentlemen 
 have come to me with a challenge. Your husband's good 
 faith. They ask 'Is Through Blood and Snow a bona- 
 fide personal record?" 
 
 "It is," said Olivia, with her back to the wall. 
 
 "He'll have 'to prove it." 
 
 "He will," said Olivia proudly. "What do they pro- 
 pose to do?" 
 
 "Have the whole thing cleared up in public in the 
 Press. My dear Mrs. Triona," he said after a few mo- 
 ments' hesitation, "don't you see the false position I'm in? 
 This letter I've shown you it looks like running away 
 forgive me if I wound you. But on the face of it, it 
 does. I daren't tell them. But of course, if Mr. Triona 
 comes back, he'll be able to give all the explanation in the 
 world. I haven't the remotest doubt of it not the 
 remotest doubt. So, whatever his business is, you must 
 recall him. You see the importance?" 
 
 "Yes, I see," said Olivia tonelessly. 
 
 "So will you write and tell him this?" 
 
 The truth had to come out. She said: 
 
 "As a matter of fact, I don't know where he is. I can't 
 communicate with him." 
 
 She hated the look of incredulous surmise on Row- 
 ington's face. "As soon as I can, I'll let him know." 
 
 "Yes, yes," said Rowington. "You must. You see, 
 don't you, that both Onslow and Wedderburn feel it to 
 be their public duty." 
 
 "But they're both men of decent feeling," said Olivia.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 283 
 
 "They wouldn't attack a man when they knew he wasn't 
 here to defend himself." 
 
 "I hope not, my dear Mrs. Triona," said Rowington. 
 "I sincerely hope not. I'll see them again. Indeed, I 
 tried to put them off the whole thing. I did my best." 
 
 "What's the exact charge they make against my hus- 
 band?" 
 
 To her utmost power she would defend him. Let her 
 know facts. 
 
 He explained. There was a mysterious period of ten 
 months. Captain Wedderburn asserted that for four of 
 those months her husband was with the Armoured Col- 
 umn, and for the remaining six he lay wounded in a 
 Russian hospital. Colonel Onslow maintained that those 
 ten months he had his dates exact are covered in the 
 book by Alexis Triona's adventures in Farthest Russia 
 and that these adventures are identical with those 
 of another man who related them to him in person. 
 
 "That's definite, at any rate," said Olivia. "But it's 
 a monstrous absurdity all the same. My husband denied 
 the Russian hospital in my presence. You can tell these 
 gentlemen that what they propose to do is infamous es- 
 pecially when they learn he is not here. Will you give 
 them my message? To hit a man behind his back is not 
 English." 
 
 Rowington saw burning eyes in a dead white face, and a 
 slim, dark figure drawn up tragically tense. He went 
 home miserably with this picture in his mind. For all 
 her bravery she had not restored his drooping faith in 
 Triona. 
 
 And Olivia sat, when he had left her, staring at public
 
 284 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 disgrace. Against that she could not fight. The man 
 she had loved was a shadow, a non-existent thing; but 
 she bore his name. She had sworn to keep bright the 
 honour of the name before the world. And now the 
 world would sweep it into the dustbin of ignominy. A 
 maddening sense of helplessness, growing into a great 
 terror, got possession of her. 
 
 The next morning, when Myra brought in her letters, 
 she felt ill and feverish after a restless night. One of the 
 envelopes bore Triona's familiar handwriting. She seized 
 it eagerly. It would give some address, so that she 
 could summon him 'back to make a fight for his honour. 
 But there was no address. She read it through, and then 
 broke into shrill harsh laughter. 
 
 "He says he's going out this morning to fight for the 
 sacred cause of Poland." 
 
 Myra, who was pottering about the room, turned on her 
 sharply. As soon as Olivia was quieter, she sent for the 
 doctor. Later in the day, there came a nurse, and Myra 
 was banished most of the day from the beloved bed- 
 side. 
 
 Thus it came about that the next morning no corre- 
 spondence or morning papers were brought into Olivia's 
 room. And that is why Myra, who preferred the chatty 
 paragraphs to leaders and political news, said nothing 
 to her mistress of a paragraph stuck away in the corner 
 of the paper. It was only a few lines issued by the 
 police though Myra did not know that to the effect that 
 a well-dressed man with papers on him giving the name 
 of John Briggs had been knocked over by a motor- 
 lorry the previous morning and had been taken uncon- 
 scious to University College Hospital.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 MYRA stood by the screened-off bed in the long 
 ward and looked unemotionally at the uncon- 
 scious 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 genu- 
 ine 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 
 
 285
 
 286 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 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 rec- 
 ognition, 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
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 287 
 
 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 tempta- 
 tion. 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.
 
 288 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "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 under- 
 wear. 
 
 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
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 289 
 
 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 un- 
 questioned acceptance of the family. Only last Novem- 
 ber 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 organiza- 
 tion. 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 ex- 
 pressionless 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 dis- 
 engaged 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."
 
 290 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "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 moisj 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 1 
 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.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 291 
 
 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 inter- 
 rupted 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 con- 
 tinued 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 busi- 
 ness." 
 
 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
 
 292 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 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, Oli- 
 fant'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 bath- 
 room 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
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 293 
 
 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 pre- 
 ferred 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 per- 
 vade 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,
 
 294 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 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 be- 
 fore the mast, a common chauffeur, a man far her in- 
 ferior in the social scale. No wonder he could not under- 
 stand 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 comfort- 
 ably 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 kind- 
 ness of their simple hearts. They knew nothing of her
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 295 
 
 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, ap- 
 peared with the cob-webbed bottle, white splash upper- 
 most, 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 serious- 
 ness 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.
 
 296 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "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 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 choco- 
 lates. 
 
 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 puzzle- 
 ment. 
 
 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.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 297 
 
 " " 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 con- 
 vened 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
 
 298 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 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 com- 
 plicated 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 af- 
 fairs " 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
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 299 
 
 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 re- 
 turned to the strong and dear realities of life after a fever- 
 ish wandering among shadows.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 AFTER this, Olivia took up her life, as she 
 thought, in firm hands. She had made her rep- 
 aration to her old friends. She joined the fam- 
 ily 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 suf- 
 ficing 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 ad- 
 venturous 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, be- 
 came 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 
 
 300
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 301 
 
 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, Phoenix-like, from its ashes. 
 
 "If he came back a Polish General, all over stars and 
 glory," said Myra, during one of their increasingly inti- 
 mate 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 con- 
 stituted his only merit. In Poland, doing wild things, 
 he was a picturesque and tolerable personage. In her 
 immediate neighbourhood, he became once again a repel- 
 lent 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 Tri- 
 vetts 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. Briggsdom on 
 Medlow she had not the courage. 
 
 She took counsel with Blaise Olifant. In his soldier-
 
 302 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 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 communica- 
 tion 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 re- 
 ceived 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 wist- 
 fully. 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. Sit- 
 ting 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
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 303 
 
 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 
 mutiplication 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 re- 
 main 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 noth- 
 ing. 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 circum- 
 stances, 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
 
 304 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 Towers,' " she laughed, "for I'm not going to inflict my- 
 self 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, con- 
 temporaneous. 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 mat- 
 tered. 
 
 "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 re- 
 fused 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
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 305 
 
 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 in- 
 tangible. 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 underly- 
 ing 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.
 
 306 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "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:
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 307 
 
 "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 explana- 
 tory 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 ac- 
 quaint 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."
 
 308 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "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 per- 
 ished 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
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 309 
 
 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 re- 
 torted 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 char- 
 acter. 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 an-
 
 310 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 other glittering scenario of illusion. And with his re- 
 appearance 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.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 WHEN Triona after many dim day-dreams and 
 relapses into nothingness, at last recovered 
 consciousness, he found himself in a narrow 
 sort of cubicle, staring upwards at a mile away ceiling. 
 He was tightly bound, body and legs. He had a vague 
 memory of a super-juggernaut of a thing killing him; 
 therefore he sagely concluded that he was dead and this 
 was the next world. It occurred to him that the next 
 world had been singularly over-rated, being devoid of 
 any interest for an intelligent being. Later, when the 
 familiar figure of a nurse popped round the screen, he 
 recognized, with some relief, the old universe. He was 
 alive; but where he was, he had no notion. 
 
 Only gradually did he learn what had befallen him; 
 that he had laid for weeks unconscious; that he had a 
 broken thigh and crushed ribs; that most of the time he 
 had hovered between life and death; that even now he 
 was a very sick man who must lie quiet and do exactly 
 what nurses and doctors told "him. This sufficed for a 
 time, while his brain still worked dully. But soon there 
 came a morning when all the memories surged back. He 
 questioned the nurse: 
 
 "When do you think I can start for Poland?" 
 
 "Perhaps in six months," she replied soothingly. 
 
 He groaned. "I want to go there now." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 "To join the Polish Army." 
 
 3"
 
 312 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 She had nursed through the war, and knew that men 
 in his plight were of no further use in armies. Gently 
 she told him so. He stared uncomprehensively on an 
 empty world. 
 
 "What can I do when I leave here?" 
 
 "You must have a long, long rest, and do nothing at 
 all and think of nothing at all." 
 
 He tried to smile at the nurse's pleasant face. "You've 
 done me a bad turn in bringing me back to life," said he. 
 
 When they thought him capable of grappling with his 
 personal affairs, they brought him his bulging pocket- 
 book, and bade him count his money. He laughed. It 
 was quite safe. He handed back the roll of notes into 
 the nurse's keeping. But the other contents of the case 
 he looked at dismally: the passport, with the foreign 
 visas; the railway tickets; the letters to Prague and War- 
 saw. What were the good of them now? He would 
 never go to Poland. When he got strong, all the fighting 
 would be over. And when he did get strong, in a few 
 months or a year, he would probably be lame, with odds 
 and ends of organs gone wrong inside him. He tried to 
 read the letters; but they were written in Polish unin- 
 telligible now in spite of his strenuous short study of the 
 language. They bore a signature which he could not 
 decipher. But it was certainly not Boronowski. His 
 mind soon tired of the puzzle. What was the good of 
 keeping the letters? Drearily he tore them in pieces and 
 gave them to the nurse to dispose of, when she brought 
 him a meal. 
 
 Tired with the effort he slept. He awoke to a sense 
 of something final done, or something important left un- 
 done. As his brain cleared, he realized that subcon-
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 313 
 
 sciously he had been thinking of his duty to Boronowski. 
 Of course, he must be informed at once of the reason for 
 his defection. 
 
 And then dismay overwhelmed him. He had no ad- 
 dress to Boronowski. The only channels of communica- 
 tion with him, the Prague and Warsaw letters, he had 
 destroyed. A happy idea struck him. He toyed with it 
 for what seemed interminable hours until the nurse came 
 to his bedside. He called for writing materials, which 
 were smilingly denied him. He was too weak. But 
 the nurse would write a short letter from dictation. He 
 dictated two identic letters, one to the Polish Legation, 
 one to the Polish Consulate, asking for the address of 
 Mr. Paul Boronowski, late of 21 Hillditch Street, St. 
 Pancras. By return of post came polite replies from 
 Legation and Consulate. Both disclaimed any knowl- 
 edge of the identity of Mr. Paul Boronowski. Legation 
 and Consulate were blandly ignorant of the existence of 
 their confidential agents. Then he remembered the baf- 
 fling signature to the two letters. He laughed some- 
 what bitterly. His life seemed to be involved in a tangle 
 of false names. 
 
 After all, what did it matter? But it did matter, 
 vitally. If ever he had set his soul on a true thing, he had 
 set it on keeping faith with Boronowski. And Boronow- 
 ski like the rest of the world would set him down as an 
 impostor. In his desperate physical weakness the tears 
 rolled down his cheeks; and so the nurse found him, 
 with one of the letters clutched in his thin hand. 
 
 "My only friend in the world," said he. 
 
 "Dead?" asked the nurse. 
 
 "No. Lost."
 
 314 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 He gave her the letter. 
 
 "Surely you have at least one more," she said. "In 
 fact I have written to her to tell her of your recovery." 
 
 "Her?" He looked at the nurse out of ghastly eyes. 
 
 "Miss Myra Stebbings." 
 
 "Oh, my God!" said he, and fainted. 
 
 Whereat the nurse, anxious to bring him comforting 
 tidings was exceedingly troubled. The shock put him 
 back for two or three days. He grew light-headed, and 
 raved about a woman called Olivia, and about aH sorts 
 of strange and incomprehensible things. When he re- 
 gained his senses it was an awakening to a life of even 
 more terrifying consternation than before. Myra, he 
 learned, had called daily at the hospital to be denied ac- 
 cess to him till he should be in a fit state to receive her. 
 The nurse told him of her first visit the morning after 
 the accident and of the newspaper paragraph which she 
 had chanced to read. But if Myra knew, surely Olivia 
 knew. And Olivia, knowing him to have been for weeks 
 at death's door, had treated him, as though he had already 
 passed through that door to the other side. Horror 
 gripped him. He questioned the nurse. This Miss Steb- 
 bings, had she left no message? No, she was a woman of 
 few words. She had said, in an unemotional way: "I'll 
 come in again to-morrow." 
 
 "For God's sake don't let her see me," he cried. 
 
 But after a while he countermanded the request. He 
 would learn the worst, and meet steadily the supreme 
 punishment, the tale of Olivia's implacable hatred. 
 There were degrees in a woman's scorn. Much he knew 
 he had justly incurred; but his sick frame shuddered at 
 this maximum of contempt and loathing. Ill-conditioned
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 315 
 
 dog he avowed himself; yet to let him die, for aught she 
 knew, like a dog, without sign or word of interest . . . 
 it transcended thought. 
 
 "Are you sure there has been no other lady? Not a 
 letter of enquiry? Nothing?" 
 
 "You'll make yourself bad again, if you worry like 
 that," said the nurse. 
 
 "I wish to God I could," said he; "and that would 
 be the end of it all." 
 
 In a large ward of a London hospital, nurses have not 
 much time to devote to the sick fancies of patients. 
 More than enough for them were their physical needs. 
 The crumb of kindly commonplace was all that the nurse 
 could give to the man's hungering soul. He passed the 
 day, staring up at the mile-high ceiling, incurious as to 
 what vista of misery lay beyond the still remaining 
 American-cloth covered screen. 
 
 From the shaft of fierce sunshine on the wall to his 
 right, he gathered that spring had passed into early 
 summer. The outside world was a-riot in the new life of 
 wild flowers and trees and birds and human hopes and 
 loves. Outside that prison of his a whitewashed wall, a 
 screen, a window behind his head reaching sky-high 
 spread this world with whose pulsations his heart had 
 ever throbbed in unison. God! How he had loved it! 
 Every leaf, every crested wave, every patch of sand, 
 every stretch of heat, every rusty horse grazing on a 
 common, every child before a cottage door, every vibrat- 
 ing sound or sight of great cities, every waste in regions 
 of grand desolation, every man with sinews or with pur- 
 pose in his eyes, every woman parading the mystery of 
 her sex, from the tow-haired, dirt-encrusted goose-girl of
 
 316 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 a Russian village to the wonder of ever inscrutable won- 
 ders that was Olivia. 
 
 In all his dreams he inevitably came back to Olivia. 
 Indeed she was the centripetal force of his longings. 
 All that earth held of the rustle of leaves and the mur- 
 mur of waters, the magic of dawn and the roar of town 
 multitudes and the laughter of green forests and the 
 silence of frozen steppes, were incorporated in the woman 
 of his adoration. Through her spoke the voices of the 
 infinite universe. And all that was visible of it, the patch 
 of sunlight on the whitewashed wall, said: 
 
 "She lives and I, a reflected glory of her, live too; but 
 even if you go hence I shall only appear mockingly before 
 you, on prison walls, until you are dead. And you will 
 never find me on the blue seas or the joyous roads or the 
 stone-bounded, clattering haunts of mankind, other than 
 a meaningless mirage, because the inspired meaning of it 
 all which is Olivia, has passed from you for ever- 
 more." 
 
 "Damn you," said he, and turned away his head, for 
 he could not turn his plaster of Paris encased body, and 
 shut out the white line from his burning eyes. 
 
 The next morning Myra came. He had been prepared 
 for her visit. She sat on the cane-bottomed chair by his 
 bedside. As soon as the nurse left them together: 
 
 "I'm glad you are better, Sir," she said. 
 
 "Have you brought me any message from Mrs. 
 Triona?" he asked. 
 
 She looked at him steadily. "You don't suppose Mrs. 
 Triona knows you are here?" 
 
 It was some time before he could appreciate the mean- 
 ing of her words.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 317 
 
 "She thinks I'm in Poland?" 
 
 "She doesn't know you are here," said Myra truthfully* 
 "She doesn't know where you are." 
 
 "Or care?" 
 
 "Or care," said Myra, and her tone was flat like that 
 of a Fate. 
 
 For a while he was silent, accepting the finality of 
 Myra's words. 
 
 " 'You've left her in ignorance of my accident?" 
 
 "Yes," said Myra. "Haven't you done the same since 
 you've recovered your wits?" 
 
 Her dry logic was unanswerable. Yet a man does not 
 expect logic from an elderly waiting- woman. He passed 
 a hand over his eyes and held it there for a long time, 
 while Myra sat patient and unemotional. He understood 
 nothing of her motives. For the moment he did not seek 
 to understand them. One fact alone mattered. Olivia 
 did not know. She had not, with horrible contempt, left 
 him to die like a dog. By the thought of such a possi- 
 bility he had wronged her. She might, with every reason, 
 desire never to set eyes on him again but of active 
 cruelty he should have known her incapable. 
 
 Presently he withdrew his hand and turned to Myra. 
 "My head's not altogether right yet," he said half- 
 apologetically. 
 
 "I can quite believe it," said Myra. 
 
 "Why you should bother with me, I don't understand," 
 he said. 
 
 "Neither do I," she replied in her disconcerting way. 
 "If you had died I shouldn't have been sorry. For her 
 sake. Now you're not going to die, I'm glad. For 
 yours."
 
 318 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "Thank you," said he with a note of irony. And then 
 after a pause: 
 
 "How is your mistress?" 
 
 "She is quite well, sir." 
 
 "And happy?" 
 
 "Begging your pardon, sir," said Myra stiffly, "but I've 
 not come here to be asked questions. I've no intention 
 of your using me as a go-between." 
 
 "It never entered my head," he declared. 
 
 "It might," said Myra. "So I give you warning. 
 Whatever go-between-ing I do will be to keep you apart 
 from Mrs. Triona." 
 
 "Then why are you worrying about me?" he asked. 
 , "Because I've found you in affliction and I'm a Chris- 
 tian woman." 
 
 Neither of them understood the other. He said sud- 
 denly with a flash of the old fire: 
 
 "Will you swear you'll never tell your mistress where 
 I am?" " 
 
 A faint light flickered in her pale eyes. "I'll swear if 
 you like. But haven't you taken in what I've been tell- 
 ing you all the time?" 
 
 "So long as we can trust each other that is all that 
 matters." 
 
 "You can trust me all right," said Myra. 
 
 They talked the ground over again for a while longer. 
 Then he grew tired with the strain, and the nurse put an 
 end to the interview. But Myra came the next day and 
 the day after that, and Triona grew to long for her visit. 
 He became aware of a crabbed kindness in her attitude 
 towards him side by side with her jealous love for Olivia. 
 She was anxious for his welfare within grimly prescribed
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 319 
 
 limitations. His immediate future concerned her. What 
 did he purpose to do with his invalid-dom after his dis- 
 charge from the hospital? He himself, at this stage, had 
 no notion. He confided to her the despair of his active 
 life. The motor-lorry had wrecked his hopes of salva- 
 tion. He told her the whole Boronowski story. Myra 
 nodded; but faithful to the part she had chosen, she said 
 nothing of Boronowski's letter to Major Olifant. Only 
 by keeping the lives of the ill-fated pair in tightly sealed 
 and non-communicable compartments, could she be true 
 to an ethical code formulated by many definite sorrows 
 and many vague, but none the less poignant, spiritual con- 
 flicts. 
 
 "It's funny," said he, "that you're the only human be- 
 ing I should know in the world." 
 
 Her intuition skipped the gap of demonstration of so 
 extraordinary a pronouncement, and followed his flight 
 into the Unknown. 
 
 "It might be luck for you," she said. 
 
 He smiled wistfully on her. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 He hung on her answer which she took some time to 
 give. In the lines on the pallid face, in the dull blue eyes 
 of this sphinx-like woman so correct in her negative at- 
 tire of black coat and skirt and black hat with just a 
 redeeming touch of white, and on the thin, compressed 
 lips, his sick man's brain seemed to read his destiny. 
 She hovered over him, impressive, baffling, ever about- 
 to-be oracular. Combined with her mystery existed the 
 strange fact that she was his sole link with the world, 
 not only the great humming universe of thought and 
 action, but the inner spiritual world in which Olivia
 
 320 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 reigned. He regarded her with superstitious dread and 
 reverence; conscious all the time of the comedy of so 
 regarding the woman whose duty had been to fold up his 
 trousers and set out his underclothes on the hot rail of 
 the bathroom. 
 
 "What are you going to do when you leave?" she asked, 
 and he guessed a purpose behind her question. 
 
 "I must hide until I am strong enough to take up active 
 life again." 
 
 "Where will you hide?" 
 
 He didn't know. He had not thought so remote did 
 the date of his discharge appear. It must be some 
 secluded, man-forgotten spot. 
 
 "If the worst comes to the worst and you need a place 
 where you'll be looked after, I'll give you an address of 
 friends of mine," said Myra. "You'll, maybe, spend the 
 rest of your life on crutches, and have all sorts of things 
 wrong inside you. I shouldn't like you to feel I was 
 abandoning you. If you were broken down and needed 
 help, I suppose you wouldn't write to me, would you?" 
 
 "I most certainly shouldn't," said Triona. 
 
 "I thought so," said Myra. "In that case I'd better 
 give you the address." She scribbled it on the writing pad 
 by his bedside. "There. Take it or leave it. It's the 
 best I can do." 
 
 She left him with an abrupt "Good day, sir," and took 
 the next train back to Medlow. 
 
 "You haven't had a long holiday, Myra," Olivia 
 remarked when she arrived. 
 
 "I didn't say I was going on a holiday." 
 
 "I hope things were all right." 
 
 "As right as they ever can be," replied Myra.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 321 
 
 The weary weeks of convalescence dragged themselves 
 out. Myra did not come again; and of course he had 
 no other visitor. He made casual acquaintances in the 
 ward; here and there an ex-soldier with whom he could 
 exchange reminiscences of warfare. 
 
 Once a discharged sailor in the next bed the screen 
 had long since been removed recovering from an opera- 
 tion, spoke to him of mine-sweeping days, and perils of 
 storm and submarine and he grew to regard him as a 
 brother. Both regretted the deluging waters of the North 
 Sea. The sailor in these times of peace drove a dust 
 cart for the St. Pancras Borough Council. The wages 
 were good but what a life for a seafaring man! He 
 would have stuck to his old job were it not that a wave 
 had washed him down on the slithery deck and had 
 brought his knee-cap up against a stanchion and had 
 stiffened it out so that his career on board-ship was over. 
 But those were good times, weren't they? Oh yes. Of 
 course they groused. But they only groused when 
 they had time. Mostly they hadn't. Dust-collecting 
 was an open-air life, true enough; but there was a differ- 
 ence between the smell of brine and the stench of house 
 refuse. It was in summer that it made him sick. The 
 odours of the fo'c'sle were not those of a hairdresser's shop 
 nothing smelt so fine, he declared, as a hairdresser's 
 shop they were a bit thick, but a man could go on deck 
 and fill his lungs with good salt air. And the grub! 
 What an appetite! He conjured up gargantuan meals 
 in perilous tempests. Nothing of the sort now. Every- 
 thing he ate tasted of sour potato peelings. 
 
 "That's the taste of everything in these post-war days," 
 said Triona, "everything in life sour potato peelings."
 
 322 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 The dustman reckoned he was right. In those old days 
 of mine-sweeping, a man had no anxieties. He had no 
 responsibilities. He was happy as the day was long. 
 Now he was married and already had a couple of kids. 
 Life was just one wearisome worry, a continuous accumu- 
 lation on the debit side of the slate, with few advantages 
 on the credit side to balance. If it wasn't the wife it was 
 the boy; if it wasn't the boy, it was the baby; and if it 
 wasn't them, it was his appendix which had just been 
 removed. Whoever heard of a sailor-man aboard ship 
 getting appendicitis? No, all them things, said he, were 
 blessings of peace. Besides, how was he going to feed 
 his family when they grew older? And clothes, boots, 
 schooling? And he himself limited to beer and such 
 
 beer! He hadn't tasted a drop of rum . Was there 
 
 anything like it? Sometimes he saw it and smelt it in 
 his dreams, but he always woke up before he could put 
 his lips to the pannikin. If only one could get something 
 to hold on to in dreams. He never had need to dream of 
 rum in the navy. So much for peace. Give him the good 
 old war again. 
 
 And when his wife, a thin lipped, scraggy blonde, with 
 a moth-eaten fur stole round her neck (although it was 
 sweltering summer), and a pallid baby in her arms came 
 to visit him, and spoke querulously of domestic affairs, 
 Triona gave him his unreserved sympathy. 
 
 "And it ain't," said the ex-mariner, "as if I couldn't 
 carry on straight and proper in civil life. I wonder how 
 many of my mates are getting what I'm getting. She 
 ought to be proud of me, she ought. Instead of that 
 you heard what she said?" 
 
 Triona had heard. She had upbraided him for his
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 323 
 
 ungenteel occupation, considering herself, the daughter 
 (so Triona learned) of a small sweet-stuff monger in 
 Dover, where they had met during his sea-going days, 
 socially degraded by her marriage with a municipal collec- 
 tor of dust. She had married him, by the by, before his 
 present appointment, while he was drawing out-of-work 
 pay. Apparently he was possessed of some low-comedy 
 histrionic talent, and she was convinced that he could 
 make his fortune as a cinema star. 
 
 "You married?" he asked. 
 
 Not now," said Triona. 
 
 "You've been through it," said the misogynist. 
 "Women! There never was a woman who knew when 
 she was well off! Oh, Gawd! Give me the old days on 
 the Barracouta, where there wasn't any thought of women. 
 That was my last ship. I had nine months in her. There 
 was Barracouta, Annie Sandys, Seahorse. . . ." 
 
 He ran through the names of his squadron, forgetful, in 
 the sudden flush of reminiscence, of domestic cares. 
 
 "And what did you say you were in?" 
 
 "Vestris." 
 
 "Of course. I remember. Torpedoed. But even that 
 was better than this?" 
 
 Triona agreed, and the eternal talk of the sea went on, 
 until the nostalgia for the wide, free spaces of the world 
 gripped his vitals with the pains of hunger. 
 
 "What are you going to do when you come out?" asked 
 the dustman. 
 
 "About the same as you," replied Triona. "What's 
 the good of a man with a game leg?" 
 
 The dustman sighed. "You've got education," said he. 
 
 At first, aware of accent and manner of expression, the
 
 324 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 dustman had taken him for an ex-officer. Only the 
 discharge-papers of John Briggs, able-seaman, convinced 
 him of John Briggs lowly estate. Still, in the Barracouta 
 they had an elderly stoker who had been at Cambridge 
 College. Such a man might be his neighbour. 
 
 "I ran away to sea when I was a boy," said Triona. 
 
 So had the dustman. He waxed more confidential. 
 His name was Josh Bunnings, and he had sailed in every 
 conceivable kind of craft from Alaska to Singapore. 
 But he had found no time for education. How did his 
 neighbour acquire it? Books? He shook his head. He 
 had been cured of books on his first voyage, when the 
 second mate catching him reading a tattered manual on 
 gardening, when he ought to have been washing up in 
 the galley, had kicked and cuffed him round the deck. 
 Triona's mind went back to his boyhood to an almost 
 identical incident. There was much in common between 
 himself and Josh Bunnings. They had started on even 
 terms. They had met on even terms in the foul fo'c'sles 
 on the North Sea. They were on even terms, now, lying 
 side by side, lamed, their life of free adventure a thing 
 of the past. Each dreaded the future; Josh Bunnings 
 condemned to cart refuse beneath the affected nose of 
 a shrew of a wife for the remainder of his days; he, 
 Triona, to deal with such refuse as the world would leave 
 him, but away from the wife who abhorred him and all 
 his works. On the other hand, between him and Josh 
 Bunnings lay a great gulf. He had made himself a man 
 of wide culture. Josh Bunnings had remained abysmally 
 ignorant. But Josh Bunnings had lived his life an hon- 
 ourable man. If he told his story to Josh Bunnings he 
 would be condemned by him, even as he had been con-
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 325 
 
 demned by his sister on the morning of his mother's 
 funeral. So, when the dustman, with another sigh, 
 harked back to his former idea and said: 
 
 "If only I had education." 
 
 "You're a damned sight better man than I am, with- 
 out it," Triona replied bitterly. 
 
 When the three weeks' comradeship came to an end, 
 on the discharge of Josh Bunnings, he found himself lost 
 again in a friendless world. The neighbouring familiar 
 bed was occupied by an ancient man in the throes of 
 some ghastly malady, and around him was stretched the 
 horrible, death-suggesting screen. And behind the screen, 
 a week later, the old man died. It was to relieve the 
 nervous tension of this week that he began a correspond- 
 ence with Josh Bunnings. The writing man's instinct 
 awoke the mania of self-expression. His letters to the 
 dustman, full of the atmosphere of the ward, vivid with 
 lightning sketches of house-surgeons, sisters, nurses and 
 patients, with here and there excursions into contrasting 
 tempests, storms of battle, and everywhere touched with 
 the magic of his queer genius, would, if sent to his liter- 
 ary agents, have gained him a year's subsistence. 
 
 Josh Bunnings visited him occasionally, when freed 
 from municipal, and escaped from domestic, obligations. 
 The visits, he explained, were in return for the letters; 
 for being no scholar, he could not reply. Then one day 
 he appeared and sat on the chair by Triona's bed, with 
 the air of a man about to bring glad tidings. He was 
 rather a heavy, pallid, cleanshaven man, with a curl of 
 black hair sweeping down to his eyebrows. His small 
 dark eyes gleamed. At once he disemburdened his hon- 
 est soul. He was a Church of England man; always held
 
 326 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 with church-going so did his wife; it was the great bond 
 of union between them. So he was on friendly terms 
 with the curate of St. Simon's. And being on friendly 
 terms with the curate, he had shewn him the letters. 
 
 "And, would you believe it, mate?" said he. "Would 
 you believe it? He wants to put them in print in the 
 Parish Magazine. In print! Fancy!" 
 
 He slapped his thigh. Triona stared at him for a mo- 
 ment and then laughed out loud for the first time for 
 many weeks. 
 
 "What are you laughing at?" asked the astonished 
 Bunnings. 
 
 "It seems so funny," said Triona. 
 
 "That's what I thought." 
 
 "And a great honour," said Triona recovering. 
 
 "Of course. Only he said he couldn't print 'em with- 
 out your permission." 
 
 Triona gave permission, stipulating, however, that his 
 name should not be used. His modesty forbade it he 
 explained. Josh Bunnings went away delighted. In the 
 course of a few posts came a grateful letter from the cu- 
 rate. In Mr. Briggs's writing he saw signs of consider- 
 able literary talent which he hoped Mr. Briggs would 
 cultivate. If he could be of help in this way, he put his 
 services at Mr. Briggs's disposal. Triona again laughed, 
 with grim amusement, at a funny, ironical world. 
 
 Then, suddenly, the underlying tragedy of this comic 
 interlude smote him breathless. Alexis Triona was dead 
 and so were his writings, for evermore. But the impulse 
 to write stirred within him so vehemently that even in 
 these idle letters to Josh Bunnings he had put all his 
 vividness of literary expression. The curate's dim
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 327 
 
 recognition of the unusual was a sign and a token. 
 Whatever he wrote would be stamped with his individ- 
 uality and if published, even anonymously, would lead 
 to his identification. The arresting quality of his style 
 had been a main factor in his success. This flashing 
 pictorial way of his he could not change. If he strove 
 self-consciously to write sober prose, he would produce 
 dull, uninspired stuff that no man could read; if he lost 
 self -consciousness, automatically he would betray himself. 
 He would re-appear in the Olivia-dominated world. 
 Every book or article would dance before her eyes like 
 an ignis fatuus, reminding her maddeningly of his exist- 
 ence in her propinquity. 
 
 An ignis fatuus. At this point of his reflection he 
 remembered his first talk with her, wherein he had coun- 
 selled her never to lose faith in her Will-o '-the- Wisp, 
 but to compel it to be her guiding star. More ironical 
 laughter from the high gods! And yet, why not? He 
 wrestled with the temptation. As he lay, convalescent 
 on his back, his brain clear, the sap of youth working in 
 his veins, the uncontrolled fancies of the imaginative 
 writer wove themselves into shreds of fine romance and 
 tapestries of exquisite scenes. Just a little concentration, 
 impossible in the open hospital ward, and all these would 
 blend together into a thing of immortal beauty. He 
 would find a publisher. Nothing easier. No name 
 would appear. Or else, perhaps, as a handle for con- 
 venience sake, he would sign the book "Incognito." It 
 would stir the hearts of men, and they would say: "There 
 is but one man living who could do this and that is Alexis 
 Triona." And Olivia, reading it, and beholding him in 
 it, would find her heart stirred with the rest, yet far far
 
 328 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 more deeply than the rest, and would seek him out, obey- 
 ing his far-off counsel, and believe that, in his essential 
 self and in his infinite love, he was verily her guiding- 
 star. 
 
 But when the hour of exaltation had passed and given 
 way to the dreary commonplace, when the nurse came 
 to wash him like a child, or to chatter pleasantly of the 
 outside world, the revue which she had seen on her free 
 afternoon, or the sentimental novel which had beguiled 
 her scanty leisure, he knew that he had been living in a 
 land of dreams. His real achievement Olivia knew, and 
 by it she was unmoved. Myra had held out to him no 
 chance of hope; only certainty of despair. By no fur- 
 ther achievement could Olivia be persuaded. She re- 
 alized her Will-o'-the-Wisp as what it really was, a 
 miasmatic gas leading her into quagmires. She would 
 bitterly resent his re-appearance. It would be another 
 trick, another way of flaunting before her under false 
 pretences. As well write to her now that he was a 
 mangled wreck in University College Hospital. 
 
 In the course of time he was able to leave his bed and 
 be wheeled about the ward and afterwards to hobble 
 about on a crutch. But the injured leg was just a bit 
 shorter than the other, so that he was condemned to a 
 perpetual limp; and though the ribs were mended, yet 
 their breakage had occasioned internal lesions which 
 would have to be watched for the rest of his life. No 
 more adventures in wide spaces. No more tramps to 
 John o' Groats. 
 
 "But I'm a born wanderer," he cried to the surgeon 
 who made the final pronouncement. "What shall I do 
 when the wander fever is on me?"
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 329 
 
 "Fill yourself up with bromide and stick leeches on 
 your head." 
 
 He laughed into the smiling kindly face, and was silent 
 for a moment. 
 
 "I can drive a car, I suppose?" he said after a while. 
 
 "Safer to drive a horse. You haven't to crank it up." 
 
 "So I'm going out, a hopeless crock." 
 
 "Oh no. There's no reason why you shouldn't live, 
 with reasonable care, to ninety. You're fit for light 
 work. Why not office work? An educated chap like 
 
 you By the way, you were off to Poland, if I 
 
 remember rightly, when you met with your accident. 
 What's your trade or profession?" 
 
 "Before the war, I was a cosmopolitan chauffeur," said 
 Triona. 
 
 "And since?" 
 
 "The damnedest fool God ever made." 
 
 The surgeon asked him no more questions.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 FANSTEAD is a little country town built on the 
 plan of a sparsely equipped herring bone. 
 There is the central High Street, a jumble of old 
 half-timbered houses and staring modern red-brick build- 
 ings, and sprouted from it a series of lateral roads, lanes 
 and alleys, dwindling in importance to the High Street 
 tip, and each petering out into the sweet country vague- 
 ness of hedges and fields. All save two. One of these 
 ends abruptly at an inconveniently distant railway sta- 
 tion. The other, villa bordered, meanders pleasantly 
 for a mile or so to the tiny village of Pendish where it 
 meets at right angles the great high road, and stops mod- 
 estly, confronted all of a sudden with rolling open 
 country, swelling downs patched with meadow and corn- 
 field and crowned with great clumps of woodland. 
 
 Pendish was too small even to have a church. There 
 was a tiny chapel for the convenience of Baptists. But 
 Anglicans tramped into Fanstead or to the larger village 
 of Banton-on-the-Hill, another mile along the great high 
 road. It had a tumbled-down inn, the "Whip and 
 Collar," and a straggling row of thatched cottages, and 
 a tiny red-brick villa labelled as the home of the County 
 Police. But it also had a post-office, which was also a 
 shop; and this was a small, square two-storied Georgian 
 house imposing among its thatched neighbours and main- 
 taining itself with a curious air of dignity, in spite of 
 the front door open to the public during business hours, 
 
 330
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 331 
 
 and the miscellaneous assortment of sweets, tobacco, 
 tapes and picture postcards exposed in what was once the 
 dining-room window. 
 
 It was the freehold of Mrs. Pettiland, a widow of 
 fifty; she had inherited it from her father, a Norfolk 
 thatcher who had brought his mystery to the west and 
 practising it with skill and saving a little fortune brought 
 to him by his wife, had amassed enough to buy the square 
 stone house where he had ended his days. They said 
 in the village that he had never recovered from the shock 
 occasioned by the fate of his son, his apprentice and later 
 his partner, who had gone raving mad a week or two after 
 his marriage and had to be confined in the County 
 Asylum. 
 
 Well, the old man had slept with his fathers for many 
 years; his wife had joined him; the son still lingered on in 
 the madhouse; and Mrs. Pettiland, very much alone in 
 the world, save for her husband's relatives in Fanstead, 
 sold stamps and sweets to the village, and as a very great 
 favour let the best bedroom to an occasional painter with 
 unimpeachable introductions. 
 
 She was dark-haired, fresh-coloured, and buxom; she 
 dressed with neatness, wearing old-fashioned stays that 
 gave her a waist and a high bust; and she was the most 
 considerable personage in Pendish. 
 
 When she had received a letter from her sister-in-law, 
 Myra Stebbings, asking her as a favour to put up a fool- 
 ish young man named Briggs who had got himself run 
 over by a motor-lorry, if ever he should act on her sug- 
 gestion and come to Pendish, she considered it less as an 
 introduction than as a command. Whether she loved 
 Myra or not, she did not know. But she had an immense
 
 332 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 respect for the dry, grey-faced woman who had come 
 every year to stay with her, so that she could visit the 
 brother whom she had loved, in the house of awfulness, 
 five or six miles away. She stood somewhat in awe of 
 Myra. Her own good man had died comfortably in his 
 bed and had gone for ever, after a couple of years of 
 placid content. It was sad; but it was the common lot. 
 The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. But at the 
 idea of a woman's husband being shut off from the world 
 in the living tomb of the County Asylum, she shuddered. 
 Myra always conveyed to her the vague impression, so 
 impossible to be formulated by an uneducated woman 
 ignorant of traditional reference, of a human soul defy- 
 ing the tragedy of existence. 
 
 So when this Mr. Briggs wrote from the hospital in 
 London, she sent him a cordial answer. Any friend of 
 Myra Stebbings was more than welcome. She would not 
 charge him more than out-of-pocket expenses. For she 
 did not know who this foolish young man might be. 
 Myra sphinx-like, as usual, had given no clue. But for 
 Myra to ask a favour was an unprecedented occurrence. 
 She must have far more than ordinary interest in the 
 welfare of the young fellow. Mrs. Pettiland's curiosity 
 was aroused and she awaited the arrival of her new lodger 
 with impatience. 
 
 The station car from the Fanstead garage brought 
 him, on a late summer afternoon, with his brown canvas 
 kit-bag and suit-case and khaki overcoat. She stood in 
 the pedimented doorway, over which was fixed the 
 wooden post-office board, and watched him descend. He 
 faced her for a moment, and raised his hat. 
 
 "Mrs. Pettiland?"
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 333 
 
 She looked at his clear cut face, so boyish in spite of 
 whiteness and haggardness, at his careless brown hair 
 sweeping over his temples, at the lips parted in a smile, 
 at the lithe young figure. She caught the significance of 
 his uplifted hat and the pleasant tone of his voice. In 
 her limited category of values he would be only one thing 
 a gentleman. The manners of an instant charmed her. 
 
 "Mr. Briggs?" 
 
 "I hope I shan't be a dreadful nuisance to you, but I 
 need rest and quiet and Miss Stebbings told me to come. 
 And," he smiled, "What she says generally goes." 
 
 "I see that you know her, sir," said Mrs. Pettiland 
 pleasantly. 
 
 The luggage taken in, the cab dismissed she led him 
 up to his room a large bed-sitting room, looking over 
 a wild garden and a wide expanse of rolling downs, with 
 the faint white ribbon of high road circling in and out 
 and round about them. His meals, she informed him, 
 he could take in the parlour downstairs, without extra 
 charge. 
 
 "But I insist on paying my way," he said. "Unless 
 my staying here is profitable to you, I can't remain. For 
 the present at least, I can well afford it." 
 
 So a modest arrangement was made and Triona settled 
 down in his new home. 
 
 For some days he enjoyed the peace of Pendish. He 
 had brought with him books, ordered from the hospital; 
 books which would take him long to read; some of the 
 interminable modern French novels; a complete Fielding 
 and Smollett; Paradise Lost and The Faerie Queene, 
 neither of which he had as yet had time to go through. 
 He spent hours in the sunny garden riotous with ingenous
 
 334 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 roses and delphinium and Canterbury bells and burning 
 red-hot pokers as they call them in the West. Often he 
 limped along the green lanes that wound between the 
 fields up and down the downs. Becoming aware that 
 he knew nothing of bird-life, he procured through the 
 Fanstead bookshop popular works on British Birds, and 
 sitting under a tree in a corner of a meadow would strive 
 to identify them by their song and plumage and queer 
 individual habits. He talked to the villagers. He talked 
 to Mrs. Pettiland, who told him the tragic story of Myra 
 and the man in the County Asylum. Of Myra's doings 
 all the year round, he found she knew little. She was 
 with her lady whom she had served most of her life and 
 had gone back with her to Medlow. Of the lady herself 
 Myra never spoke. Mrs. Pettiland did not know 
 whether the lady was married or not. That was Myra 
 Stebbings's way. She gave no information and no one 
 dared ask her questions. 
 
 "She never even told me, in her letter, who you were, 
 sir," she added. 
 
 "I am just under her protection," he smiled. "She 
 took me up when I had no one to defend me." 
 
 "She's a curious woman," sighed Mrs. Pettiland. 
 
 "With strange tastes in proteges." He laughed. "To 
 tell you the truth, Mrs. Pettiland, I don't quite know 
 myself what I am. But doubtless sooner or later I'll 
 do something to astonish you." 
 
 The yearning to do this fretted his secret heart. To 
 move about the summer fields when the weather was fine, 
 to lounge in an easy-chair over books in seasons of rain, 
 was all very well for the period of convalescence after 
 the confinement in the hospital ward. But after a while,
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 335 
 
 when his muscles regained strength and the new blood 
 coursing through his veins brought colour to his cheeks, 
 he began to feel the old imperious need of movement and 
 of action. Sometimes he went back, as in his talks with 
 the dustman, to the idyllic tempests in the North Sea; 
 sometimes to the fierce freedom of the speed across the 
 illimitable steppes of Russia; sometimes to his perilous 
 escape to Petrograd; sometimes to his tramps along the 
 safe roads of England; to his wanderings through the 
 dangerous by-ways of the East End. Bitterly he cursed 
 the motor-lorry that had knocked him out of his Polish 
 adventure. Except on Olivia he had never so set his 
 heart on a thing before. Well, he shrugged angry shoul- 
 ders. It was no use thinking of that. Poland had gone, 
 like Olivia, out of his life. And when he came to think 
 of it, so had everything that had made up all that he had 
 known or conceived of life. 
 
 He closed Tom Jones, and stared out of the window on 
 the rain-drenched hills; Tom Jones, with his physical 
 lustiness, his strong animal bravura, was more than he 
 could bear. Tom Jones, no matter in what circumstance 
 he was placed, had all the world before him. His gay 
 confidence offended the lost man. For he was lost. Not 
 a lost soul, he told himself; that was taking an absurd 
 Byronical view of the matter. To pose as a modern 
 Manfred would be contemptible. He went down to bed- 
 rock of commonplace. He was a lost man a fact which 
 was quite serious enough for any human being to con- 
 template with dismay. Lost, tied by a lame leg in a 
 deadly little backwater of the world, where he must re- 
 main till he died. He could write, pour out all the
 
 336 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 fever of his soul into words. But what was the good, 
 if no word of his could be transmitted from this back- 
 water into the haunts of men? Work without hope a 
 verse of Coleridge came vaguely to him was like drain- 
 ing nectar through a sieve. It could only end in heart- 
 break. He stared through the dripping window-pane at 
 the free hills, dim and hopeless in the mist of deluge. 
 Nothingness confronted him. 
 
 He wondered whether Myra, with diabolical insight 
 and deliberate malice, had not lured him hither, so that 
 she could hold him in relentless grip. At any rate she 
 had cast him into this prison. 
 
 He lay awake all that night. The next morning the 
 sky had cleared and the sun shone down on the grate- 
 fully steaming land of green. He breakfasted in the tiny 
 parlour opposite the shop-post-office on the ground floor. 
 The ornaments in it were those of long ago. Prints of 
 the landing of the Guards after the Crimea, of Queen 
 Victoria and the Prince Consort. Curiously carved and 
 polished coconut shells, and a great egg on which a 
 staring mermaid was nudely painted stood on the mantel- 
 piece. On the chiffonier were calabashes, with gaudy 
 figures of indigenous Indians, such as came from the West 
 Indies seventy years ago, and a model of a full-rigged 
 ship under a glass case, and a moulting stuffed toucan, 
 with its great beak and yellow and red plumage. The 
 late Mr. Pettiland's father, he had learned, had followed 
 the sea. So, beside the objects on the crowded mantel- 
 piece and in front of palm-leaf fans were sprigs of white 
 coral and strings of strange beads, and a dumpy, shape- 
 less, wooden Polynesian god. And at the end lay a great
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 337 
 
 conch shell with its wide, pink, curving lips, mysterious 
 and alluring. 
 
 He could scarcely eat. The night had shaken him. 
 He gulped down some food and coffee, lit a pipe and 
 wandered restlessly about the room, looking at these 
 tokens of the lands far away which he had never seen. 
 The coral fascinated him. In the hospital he had read 
 Typee and Oomoo of Herman Melville in Dent's cheap 
 collection of classics. The sight of the coral quickened 
 dormant longings. He took the great conch-shell in his 
 hand wondering at its beauty of curve and colour. And 
 as he did so his mind went back to early childhood to 
 an old aunt whom he occasionally was taken to visit in 
 torturing Sunday clothes sacrosanct from the defilement 
 of jam under dreadful penalties, and who possessed such 
 a shell. He remembered that the shell was the glory that 
 compensated the frigid horror of that house. He would 
 hold it to his ear and listen to the boom of far-off surfs 
 and then go home and mingle the message with the point- 
 ing finger of Salvation Yeo. And now, grown man, 
 inured to adventure, he put the shell to his ear, and the 
 message was the same, vibrating the call of oceans thun- 
 dering on distant beaches through the fibres of his being. 
 
 He went out into the garden and stood in the sun and 
 looked almost unseeingly at the rolling downs. Sud- 
 denly he became aware of the ribbon of road that lost 
 itself not far away, behind a bluff. It was the Great 
 High Road that led eventually to a great western port, 
 where great ships sailed to the South Seas. The Power 
 seemed to impel him, as it had impelled him as a boy 
 to run away from home. By following that road, he 
 would reach the port. At the port he could ship before
 
 338 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 the mast. On board his limp would not matter. For 
 the rest, he was strong, as strong as a lion, in spite of all 
 pronouncements by the doctors. It was the one adven- 
 ture life left open to him. Nay more, the one chance of 
 maintaining his reason. He stood with hands clenched 
 staring at the road, the sweat beading on his forehead. 
 
 To pack up belongings and arrive with genteel suit- 
 case and kit-bag at the dock-side and expect to be taken 
 on as an ordinary hand would be the act of an embecile. 
 He passed his hand mildly through his hair in his instinc- 
 tive gesture. Why not go as he was, a cap on his head, 
 and his money, all he had in the world, in a belt (bought 
 for Poland) round his waist? It was escape from 
 prison. Escape from Myra. The final disappearance 
 from the orbit of Olivia. 
 
 Perhaps it was the maddest thing he had done in his 
 life. But what did it matter? If he crocked up, he 
 crocked up. At least he could try. He went indoors 
 and in the parlour found an old railway time-table. 
 There were only two trains a day from Fanstead to the 
 main-line junction, and the morning train had already 
 gone. Why should he not tramp to the Junction, as in 
 the old days, getting a lift here and there on a cart, and 
 know again the freedom of the vagabond road? 
 
 He went up to his room, put on his belt of money and 
 good thick boots, and made up a bundle of necessaries. 
 On his dressing-table he left a letter addressed to Mrs. 
 Pettiland, enclosing a month's rent. He looked round 
 the room for the last time, as he had looked round so 
 many in his life, and laughed. No books on this journey. 
 As he had not left the Tyneside with books years ago, so 
 would he start now afresh, with the same equipment. He
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 339 
 
 went downstairs with a light heart, and called out to 
 Mrs. Pettiland busy in her post-office. 
 
 "I'm going off on a jaunt so don't expect me till you 
 see me." 
 
 And the answer came: "Don't overdo yourself with 
 your lame leg." 
 
 He laughed at the idea. His leg could bear his whole 
 weight to-day without a twinge. Retracing his steps 
 down the passage, he entered the garden and left the 
 place by the wicket-gate and struck up the winding lanes 
 and across fields to the high road, his stick and bundle 
 over his shoulder. By doing so, instead of taking the 
 road at the end of the village, he could cut off a mile. 
 It was a morning of freshness and inspiration. A cool 
 breeze sent the clouds scurrying across the sky and 
 rustled the leaves of the elms and rippled the surface 
 of the half-grown corn. His spirits rose as he walked, 
 somewhat of a jog-trot walk, it is true, but that would 
 last for the rest of his life; so long as the pain had gone 
 for ever, all was well. He reached the high road and 
 settled down to his tramp, gladdened by the sight of cart 
 and car and cottage gardens flaming with roses and 
 hollyhocks or restful with screens of sweet-peas. In the 
 soft-mannered West-country fashion, folks gave him 
 "good day" as he passed. The road undulated pleas- 
 antly, now and then sweeping round the full bosom of 
 a hill, with a steeply sloping drop of thirty feet to the 
 valley. Such spots were grimly sign-posted for motor- 
 ists; for at one of them, so Mrs. Pettiland had told him, 
 a motor-lorry during the war had slipped over at night 
 and all the occupants had been killed. He regarded it 
 with a chauffeur's eye and smiled contemptuously at the
 
 340 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 inefficiency of the driver. He could race along it at sixty 
 miles an hour. But still, if you did go over there was 
 an end of you. 
 
 By noon he was hungry and ate cold meat and bread 
 at a wayside inn, and smoked contentedly afterwards on 
 the bench outside and talked of crops and licensing laws 
 with the landlord. When he started again he felt stiff 
 from the unaccustomed exercise. Walking would relax 
 his muscles. Yet he began to tire. A while later he 
 came upon a furniture removing van which had broken 
 down. Two men drew their heads from below the bon- 
 net and looked at each other ruefully, and their speech 
 was profane. He asked what was wrong. They didn't 
 know. He threw off his coat, glad to get to an engine 
 again, and in a quarter of an hour had set it going 
 merrily. For two or three miles he sat on the tail-board 
 between the two canvas-aproned packers, enjoying the 
 respite. When they turned off eventually from the main 
 road, and he had to descend, he felt strangely disinclined 
 to walk. The Junction was still a long way off. It 
 would have been better, after all, to wait for the evening 
 train from Fanstead. He was always starting on crazy 
 ventures without counting the cost. But he limped on. 
 
 The road went through a desolate land of abandoned 
 quarry and ragged pine woods. The ascent was steep. 
 Suddenly, as though someone had pierced his leg with hot 
 iron, flamed the unmistakable pain. He stood aghast at 
 the pronouncement of doom. At that moment, while he 
 hung there in agony, a rough figure of a man in old khaki 
 slacks rose from a near hollow in the quarry and, 
 approaching him, asked what time it was. Triona took
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 341 
 
 out his watch, a gold one, the gift of Olivia. It was four 
 o'clock. The man thanked him gruffly and returned to 
 his stony Bethel. Triona hobbled on a few more steps. 
 But the torture was too great. He must rest. The 
 pine-wood's cool quiet invited him. He dragged himself 
 thither wearily, and sat down, his back against the trunk 
 of a tree. He tried to think. Of course the simplest 
 method of extrication was to hail any passing car and 
 beg for a lift, either to the Junction or back to Pendish. 
 Walking was out of the question. But which of those 
 ways should he take? The weight of physical tiredness 
 overwhelmed him and dulled the deciding brain. He had 
 set out at nine in the morning and it was now four o'clock 
 in the afternoon. He had not realized how slow his 
 progress had been. Yes, he was exhausted and sleepy. 
 Nothing mattered. He rolled on his side, stuck his arm 
 under his head and fell into a dead sleep. Thirty yards 
 away, at varying intervals, motor vehicles flashed by. 
 
 He was dreaming of a rabbit running across his throat, 
 when suddenly he awoke to find the rabbit a man's arm. 
 He gripped it, instinctively. It was nearly dark. 
 
 "What the devil are you doing?" 
 
 The man replied: "Why we thought you was dead." 
 
 At the significance of the plural, his grasp relaxed and 
 he sat up, staring at two men who had come upon him in 
 his solitude. They were dirty, unshaven, not nice to look 
 upon. On one of them he noticed a pair of old khaki 
 slacks. As soon as he moved they knelt one on each side 
 of him. 
 
 "And if I'd been dead, you'd have run through my
 
 342 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 pockets wouldn't you?" Suddenly he clapped his hands 
 in front of him. "You swine, you've got my watch and 
 chain." 
 
 He thrust them aside and scrambled anyhow to his feet, 
 and struck instinctively with his left full in the face of 
 the nearest man who had sprung up also. But all his 
 weight was then on his left foot and the flame of agony 
 shot up through his thigh and his leg crumpled up before 
 the blow reached the man. Then the one in the khaki 
 slacks came in with an upper cut on the point of his jaw 
 and he fell senseless. 
 
 When he recovered consciousness a few minutes after- 
 wards, he found himself alone, dazed, rather sick, in an 
 uncomprehended world of gathering darkness. Black 
 clouds had swept over the brow of the quarry hill. A 
 pattering noise some way off struck his ear. He realized 
 it was rain on the road. He drew himself up to a sitting 
 posture and in a moment or two recovered wits and mem- 
 ory. There had been a fight. There was one man in 
 khaki slacks why, that was the man who had asked him 
 the time at four o'clock in the afternoon. He had lain 
 in wait for him and robbed him of his watch and chain. 
 What a fool he had been to parade it in this manner. 
 Well, it was gone. It would teach him a lesson in pru- 
 dence. But the other man? How did he come in? Why 
 did they wait three or four hours before attacking him? 
 Perhaps the man of the khaki slacks had struggled 
 against temptation until a more desperate acquaintance 
 came along. He remembered the landlord of the inn 
 where he had lunched telling him of an ugly quarrying 
 village he would pass through, a nest of out-of-works 
 owing to quarries, unprofitable at the high rate of wages,
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 343 
 
 being closed down living discontented Bolshevik lives on 
 high out-of-work pay. He cursed his leg. If it had not 
 failed him, he would have got home on the first man, as 
 easily as shaking hands the flabby, unguarded face 
 shimmered in front of him; and then he could have turned 
 his attention to the man in khaki slacks, a true loafer 
 type, spiritless when alone the kind of man, who, if he 
 had worn those slacks in the army, would have been in 
 guard-room every week, and would have cowered as a 
 perpetual cleaner of latrines under the eyes of vitriol- 
 tongued sergeants. Far from a fighting man. His imag- 
 ination worked, almost pleasurably, in the reconstitution 
 of the robbery. But for his abominable leg he would 
 have downed both the degenerate scoundrels, and have 
 recovered his precious belongings. He damned them and 
 his leg impartially. The watch and chain were all that 
 he had kept materially of Olivia. In the morning he had 
 hesitated as to the advisability of carrying them with him, 
 gold watches and chains not being customarily accoutre- 
 ments of a common sailor in wind-jammer or tramp 
 steamer fo'c'sle. But sentiment had prevained. He 
 could hide them somewhere, when he reached the port, 
 and at convenient slop-shops he could have reorganized 
 attire and equipment. 
 
 The rain pattering on the open road came dribbling 
 through the branches of the pines. He cursed the rain. 
 He must go on somewhere. Absurd to stay in the wood 
 and get wet through. He struggled to his feet and then 
 for the first time became aware of a looseness around his 
 middle. He looked down. His trousers were unbut- 
 toned, his shirt sagged out immodestly as if the front had 
 been hurriedly tucked in. His hands sought his waist. 
 The belt with all the money he had in the world had gone.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 IT was close on midnight when a car grated and 
 stopped in front of the little Georgian house in Pen- 
 dish, and the truant stumbled through the door, left 
 open, into the presence of Mrs. Pettiland who was 
 anxiously awaiting him. He was wet through, dishev- 
 elled, 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 par- 
 lour. 
 
 "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 en- 
 velope 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. 
 
 344
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 345 
 
 "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 satisfac- 
 tion, 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. Petti- 
 land. 
 
 "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
 
 346 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 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 advanc- 
 ing car would be an act of suicidal desperation. No; he 
 had returned by all sorts of .stages. He had almost for- 
 gotten 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 aban- 
 doned 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 cot- 
 tage? 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 Stans- 
 field 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
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 347 
 
 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 every- 
 thing 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 thermom- 
 eter. 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 order- 
 ing 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 slum- 
 ber he did not regret. His miserable journey back, re- 
 calling 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 ir-
 
 348 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 retrievably. 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 se- 
 rious affair; the stolen belt packed with bank notes, a 
 romantic one. The trial would provide a good newspa- 
 per 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 com- 
 ical end of his pursuit of the ignis jatuus. 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 inexor- 
 able 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 him- 
 self 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 starva-
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 349 
 
 tion 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 under- 
 stand." 
 
 "I was going to run away," he said cheerfully. "To 
 compensate you in that miserable manner for inconven- 
 ience 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 in- 
 credulity. 
 
 "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
 
 350 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 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 'II 
 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 mystifica- 
 tion " the reign of Hetherington is over. Radnor's 
 Garage is going to be the wonder of the country-side." 
 
 He believed it implicitly. Radnor, a mild and worried 
 young man, with quite a sound knowledge of his busi- 
 ness, might struggle along and earn a hand-to-mouth 
 living. But he lacked driving-power. To Triona, dur- 
 ing his two or three interviews with him, that was ob- 
 vious. 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
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 351 
 
 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 in- 
 side 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 pre-
 
 352 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 fer 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
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 353 
 
 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 enthusi- 
 astic 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 imagina- 
 tion. 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 lov- 
 ing 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.
 
 354 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "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 symp- 
 toms 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.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 355 
 
 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 ob- 
 viously 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 incon- 
 sequence: 
 
 "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 every- 
 thing, 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 jatuus of an ideal, he kept his conscience in a state
 
 356 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 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-destroy- 
 ing 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 read- 
 ing. Books grew into great piles in corners of his loft 
 above the garage. But reading awoke him to the poig- 
 nant craving for expression. He had half a dozen tan- 
 talizing plots for novels in his head, a score of great situa- 
 tions, 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.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 357 
 
 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 knowl- 
 edge. 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 con- 
 ception was an agony of the flesh, keeping him awake of
 
 358 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 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 country- 
 side, in his car of resurrection.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 "W" "W" TTHAT was bound to happen had happened. 
 %/\/ Olifant the Galahad, out for grails, as 
 
 ^ y Triona, and indeed as Olivia had pictured 
 him, had lost his head, poured out a flow of mad words, 
 and flung his arm about her and kissed her passionately. 
 She had been caught, had half-surrendered; released, she 
 had put hands to a tumultuous bosom and staggered away 
 from him. And there had followed a scene enacted for 
 the twenty-billionth time on the world's stage. She had 
 grown weak and strong by turns. At last she had said: 
 
 "If you love me, go now and let me think it over and all 
 that it means." 
 
 And he had gone, passion yielding to his courteous con- 
 sideration of her, and she was left alone in the drawing- 
 room, staring through the open French windows at the 
 May garden. 
 
 Since her return from the South of France, she had felt 
 the thing coming. In October, as soon as Myra had 
 returned from her holiday, fear had driven her from 
 Medlow. The hunger in the man's eyes proclaimed an 
 impossible situation. The guest and host position she 
 had changed after the first few weeks. Brother and sister 
 and herself kept house together on the face of it a sen- 
 sible and economical arrangement. Mr. Trivett and Mr. 
 Fenmarch, once more financial advisers, commended it 
 with enthusiasm. The summer had passed happily 
 enough. The modus vivendi with the sections of Medlow 
 
 359
 
 360 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 society respectively symbolized by Landsdowne House 
 and Blair Park had arranged itself automatically. She 
 found conferred upon her the Freedom of each. The 
 essential snobbery of English life is a myth kept alive by 
 our enemies. It is true that the squire and the linen- 
 draper do not ask each other and their families to dinner. 
 Their social worlds are apart. They don't want to ask 
 each other to dinner. They would never dream of asking 
 each other to dinner, one no more than the other; they 
 respect each other too mightily. But a dweller in both 
 worlds, such as Olivia, Trivett-ed and Gale-d though she 
 was on the one side, yet on the other, the wife of the 
 famous Alexis Triona and the friend of the Olifants, folks 
 whose genealogy was lost somewhere in a Pictish bonfire 
 of archives, can wander up and down the whole social 
 gamut at her good pleasure. Besides she herself does not 
 mix the incompatible. A mere question of the art of life, 
 which Olivia, with her London experiences found easy of 
 resolution. So, in the mild and mellow way on which 
 Medlow prided itself, she had danced and tennis-ed and 
 picnic-ed the summer through. On the Blair Park side 
 she wondered laughingly at their unsupercilious noses 
 Blaise Olifant and his sister accompanied her in the gentle 
 festivities. Each day had brought its petty golden dust 
 the futile Church bazaar, the tennis tournament, the 
 whist-drive of which old John Freke, the linen-draper 
 father of Lydia, had made her a lady-patroness, the motor- 
 run into quaint Shrewsbury, on shopping adventure in 
 quest of crab or lobster unobtainable in Medlow a thou- 
 sand trivial activities to the innocent choking of her soul, 
 to use Matthew Arnold's figure, and an inevitable forget- 
 fullness. Everything had gone well until October. Then
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 361 
 
 she had taken prudent flight with Myra to the France and 
 Italy which she had never seen and there she had stayed 
 till the beginning of May. 
 
 It was Mrs. Woolcombe who insisted on her return to 
 Medlow. Where else should she return after her wander- 
 ings but to her own home? At first everything was just 
 as it used to be. Then, on a trivial cause an insult 
 offered her by an Italian in Venice which she had laugh- 
 ingly recounted the passion of Blaise Olifant had sud- 
 denly flamed forth. 
 
 She was frightened, shaken. He had given her 
 the thrill, which, in her early relations with him 
 she had half contemptuously deemed impossible. 
 She found herself free from sense of outrage. She bore 
 him no resentment. Indeed she had responded to his 
 kiss. She was not quite sure, within herself, whether she 
 would not respond again. The communicated thrill 
 completed her original conception of him as the very per- 
 fect gentle knight. For after all, knights without red- 
 blood in their veins might be gentle, but scarcely perfect. 
 
 If she were free, she would marry him out of hand, 
 without further question. He had always dwelt in a 
 tender spot of her heart. Now he had slipped into one 
 more warm, smouldering with strange fires. But she was 
 not free. She stood at once at the parting of the roads. 
 She must go back to a wandering or lonely life, or she 
 must defy conventions. 
 
 She went out into the ivy-walled garden, and walked up 
 the central path, between the beds of wallflowers and for- 
 get-me-nots and the standard roses just bursting into leaf. 
 What could she do? Once she had laughed scornfully at 
 the idea of love playing any part in her life. She had not
 
 362 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 reckoned with her youth. And now she stared aghast 
 at the vista of lonely and loveless years. 
 
 Presently Blaise Olifant came from his study and 
 advanced to meet her. 
 
 He said: "Can you speak to me now?" 
 
 "Yes now," she answered. 
 
 "I've behaved like any blackguard. You must forgive 
 me, if you can. The Italian cad who made me see red 
 was not very much worse than myself." 
 
 There was a smile in her dark eyes as she looked up at 
 him. 
 
 "There's all the difference in the world. I disliked 
 the Italian very much." She touched his sleeve. "You 
 are forgiven, my dear friend. It's all my fault. I 
 oughtn't to have come back." 
 
 "You're the most wonderful of women," said he. 
 
 The most wonderful of women made a little wry move- 
 ment of her lips. 
 
 "It's all a might-be and a can't-be," she said in a low 
 voice. 
 
 "Do you suppose, my dear, I don't know that? If it 
 could be, do you think I should regret losing my self- 
 control?" 
 
 She said. "If it's any consolation to you perhaps I 
 lost mine too. We're both human. Perhaps a woman 
 is even more so than a man. That's why I went away in 
 October things were getting impossible " 
 
 "Good God!" he exclaimed, "I thought you were 
 bored to death!" 
 
 A little laugh could not be restrained. The blindness 
 of man to psychological phenomena is ever a subject for
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 363 
 
 woman's sweet or bitter mirth. But it was not in his 
 heart to respond. 
 
 "Then you do care for me a little?" 
 
 "I shouldn't be standing here with you now, if I didn't. 
 I shouldn't have made the mistake of coming back, if 
 I hadn't wanted to see you." 
 
 "Mistake?" He sighed and turned a step away. 
 "Yes. I suppose it was. I should have been frank with 
 Mary and shewn her that it was impossible for me." 
 
 "It would be best for me to go to-morrow," said Olivia. 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "London. A hotel. Any old branch." She smiled. 
 "I must settle down somewhere sooner or later. The 
 sooner the better." 
 
 "That's monstrous," he declared with a flash in his 
 eyes. "To turn you out of your home I should feel a 
 scoundrel." 
 
 "I don't see how we can go on living together, carry- 
 ing on as usual, as though nothing had happened." 
 
 For a few moments they walked up the gravelled path 
 in silence, both bareheaded in the mild May sunshine. 
 
 "Listen," he said, coming to a pause. "I'm a man who 
 has learned self-control in three hard schools my Scotch 
 father's, science, war. If I swear to you, on my honour, 
 that nothing that has passed between us to-day shall ever 
 be revived by me in look or word or act will you stay 
 with us, and give me your your friendship your com- 
 panionship your presence in the house? It was an 
 aching desert all the time you were away." 
 
 She walked on a pace or two, after a hopeless sigh. 
 Could she never drive into this unworldly head the fact
 
 364 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 that women were not sexless angels? How could their 
 eyes forever meet in the glance of a polite couple discuss- 
 ing the weather across a tea-table? She could not resist 
 a shaft of mockery. 
 
 "For all of your philosopher father and science and 
 war I wonder, my dear Blaise, how much you really 
 know of life?" 
 
 He halted and put a hand on her slim shoulder. 
 
 "I love you so much my dear," said he, "that I should 
 be content to hang crucified before you, so that my eyes 
 could rest upon you till I died." 
 
 He turned and strode fast away. She followed him 
 crying "Blaise! Blaise!" He half turned with an ar- 
 resting arm and even at that moment she was touched 
 by the pathos of the other empty sleeve 
 
 "No, don't please." 
 
 She ran hard and facing him blocked his way. 
 
 "But what of me? What of my feelings while I saw 
 you hanging crucified?" 
 
 That point of view had not occurred to him. He 
 looked at her embarrassed. His Scottish veracity as- 
 serted itself. 
 
 "When a man's mad in love," said he, "he can't think 
 of everything." 
 
 She took his arm and led him up the gravelled path 
 again. 
 
 "Don't you see, dear, how impossible it all is?" 
 
 "Yes. I suppose so. It must be one thing or the 
 other. And all that is good and true and honourable 
 makes it the other." 
 
 Tears came at the hopelessness of it. She seized his 
 hand in both of hers.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 365 
 
 "What you said just now is a thing no woman could 
 forget to the day of her death." 
 
 She kissed the hand and let it drop, stirred to the in- 
 most. What was she, ineffectual failure, to command the 
 love of such a man? He stood for a while looking into 
 the vacancy of the pale blue sky over the ivy-clad wall. 
 Before her eyes garden and house and wall and sky were 
 blotted out; and only the one tall figure existed in the 
 scene. Her heart beat. It was a moment of peril, and 
 the moment seemed like an hour. 
 
 At last he turned and looked at her with his grave 
 smile. She put her hand on her heart not knowing 
 whether to cry or laugh at the relaxation of tension. 
 
 "You stay here with Mary," he said gently. "I'll go 
 away for a change a holiday. I need one. There's an 
 old uncle of mine in Scotland. I've neglected him and 
 his salmon-fishing shamefully for years. How I can fish 
 with one arm, heaven only knows. I've learned to do 
 most things. It'll be a new experience. As a matter of 
 fact, I should have gone last month, if the temptation to 
 wait for you hadn't been so strong. It's up in the wilds 
 of Inverness " 
 
 She made feeble protest. It was she who drove him 
 out of his home. Far better for her to cut herself adrift 
 from Medlow. But he prevailed. He would go. In the 
 meantime things might right themselves. 
 
 He departed the following morning, leaving Olivia to 
 a new sense of loneliness and unrest. She lived con- 
 stantly in the tense moment, catching her breath at the 
 significance of its possibilities. Unbidden and hateful 
 the question recurred: if positions had been reversed; 
 if Blaise had been the lost husband and Alexis the lover,
 
 366 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 would Alexis have let her go? Certainly not Alexis. 
 And yet deep down in her heart she was grateful that she 
 had come scathless through the moment. 
 
 The little round of country gaieties went on and caught 
 her up in its mild gyrations. Mrs. Woolcombe deplored 
 her brother's absence. He had been looking forward 
 to the social life with Olivia, especially the tennis parties. 
 It was wonderful how he had overcome the handicap of 
 his one arm; the effectual service he had perfected, toss- 
 ing up the ball with his racket and smiting it at the dead 
 point of ascent. It had all been due to Olivia's encour- 
 agement the previous summer; for till then he had not 
 played for years. But he had been sadly overworked. 
 When a man cannot sleep and rises up in the morning 
 with a band of iron round his head, it is obvious that he 
 needs a change. It was the best thing for Blaise, un- 
 doubtedly; but it must be dull for Olivia. So spake 
 Mary Woolcombe, unaware of kisses and tense moments. 
 
 Olivia said to Myra: "This is an idle, meaningless life. 
 We'll go back to London and settle down." 
 
 "Will life mean much more when you get there?" 
 asked Myra. 
 
 "I can do something." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "How do I know? Why are you so irritating, Myra?" 
 
 "It isn't me," said Myra. 
 
 "What is it, then?" 
 
 "A woman wants a man to look after," said Myra in 
 her unimpassioned way. "If she can't get a man she 
 wants a woman. I've got you, so I'm not irritated. You 
 haven't got either, so you are." 
 
 Olivia flushed angrily and swerved round in her chair
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 367 
 
 before the mirror on her toilet-table Myra was drying 
 her hair as she had dried it from days before Olivia 
 could remember. 
 
 "That's a liberty, Myra, which you oughtn't to have 
 taken." 
 
 "I dare say, dearie," replied Myra unmoved, "but it's 
 good for you that somebody now and then should tell 
 you the truth." 
 
 "I want neither man nor woman," Olivia declared. 
 
 Myra gently squared her mistress's shoulders to the 
 mirror and went on with her task. 
 
 "I wonder," she said. 
 
 "I think you're hateful," said Olivia. 
 
 "Maybe. But I've got common-sense. If you think 
 you're going to London to stand for Parliament or write 
 poetry and get it printed or run a Home for Incurable 
 Camels, you're mistaken, dear. And you'll have no truck 
 with women. You've never had a woman friend in the 
 world anyone you'd die for." 
 
 "Of course I haven't," snapped Olivia. 
 
 "It's a man's woman you are," continued Myra. 
 "You've looked after men ever since your dear mother 
 was taken ill. It's what God meant you to do. It's all 
 you can do. And you haven't got a man and that's 
 what's making you unhappy." 
 
 Olivia sprang from her chair, looking with her long 
 black hair ruffled and frizzed and spreading out around 
 her warm oval face, like an angry sea-nymph on a rock 
 disputed by satyrs. 
 
 "I hate men and everything connected with them." 
 
 "You still hate your husband?" asked Myra looking at 
 her with cold pale eyes.
 
 368 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "I loathe him. How dare you? Haven't I forbidden 
 you to mention his name?" 
 
 "I didn't mention his name," said Myra. "But if you 
 like, I won't refer to him again. Sit down and let me 
 put on the electric dryer. Your hair's still wringing wet." 
 
 She yielded, not with good grace. Myra had her at 
 her mercy. Dignity counselled instant dismissal of Myra 
 from her presence. But the washing and drying of her 
 long thick hair had ever been a problem; so dignity gave 
 way to comfort. 
 
 She was furious with Myra. We all are with people 
 who confront us with the naked truth about ourselves. 
 That was all she was fit for; all that life had taught her; 
 to look after a man. She stared at the blatant proposi- 
 tion in the grimness of the night-watches. What else, in 
 God's name, was she capable of doing for an inch 
 advancement of humanity? She had gone forth long ago 
 so it seemed from Medlow, to open the mysterious 
 mysteries of the world. She had opened them and all 
 the pearls, good, bad and indifferent, were men. All the 
 ideals; all the colour and music and gorgeous edifices of 
 life; all the world vibration of thought and action and 
 joy of which she had dreamed, every manifold thrill that 
 had run through her being from feet to hair on that first 
 night in London when she had leaned out of her Victoria 
 Street flat and opened her young soul to the informing 
 spirit of the vast city of mystery the whole spiritual 
 meaning, nay, the whole material reason for her existence, 
 was resolved into one exquisitely pure, bafflingly translu- 
 cent in its mystery of shooting flames, utterly elemental 
 crystal of sex. Sex, in its supreme purity; but sex all the 
 same.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 369 
 
 She was a man's woman. It was at once a glory and 
 a degradation. Myra was right. What woman, in the 
 course of her life, had she cared a scrap for? Her 
 mother. Her mother was a religion. And men? Her 
 chastity revolted. When had she sought to attract men? 
 Her conscience was clear. But men had been the terror, 
 the interest, the delight of her life from the moment she 
 had left the cloistral walls of her home. And even before 
 that, on a different plane, had she not, while keeping 
 house for father and brothers, always thought in terms 
 of man? 
 
 And now she was doing the same. The emptiness of 
 her prospective life in London appalled her. The mad 
 liar, her husband, an unseizable, unknown entity, of 
 whom she thought with shivering repulsion, was away 
 somewhere, living a strange, unveracious life. The 
 soldier, scholar and gentleman, who loved her, into whose 
 arms, into whose life, she had all but fallen, had fled, 
 saving her from perils. Before he returned she must, in 
 decency and honour, take up her solitary abode elsewhere. 
 Or else she could terminate his tenancy of "The Towers" 
 and carry on an old-maidish life in Medlow for evermore. 
 Anyway, a useless sexless thing for all eternity. 
 
 The second post had brought her some letters, a few 
 bills and receipts, a note from Janet Philimore with 
 whom she kept up a casual correspondence, and a long 
 untidy screed from Lydia. Lydia had conceived the idea 
 of visiting Medlow. Her father, old John Freke, whom 
 she had not seen for years, was ailing. What did Olivia 
 think of the notion? Olivia, sitting in the little ivy-clad
 
 370 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 summer-house at the end of the garden, thought less of 
 the notion than of the amazing lady. To ask her, an 
 outsider, whether she should come to her father's bed of 
 sickness! She made up her mind to write: "Oh, yes, 
 come at once, but wear the thickest of black veils, so 
 that no one will recognize you." Her mind wandered 
 away from the hypothetical visit London and Lydia 
 again! Just where she was when she started. Life 
 seemed a hopeless muddle. 
 
 "I'm sorry," said Myra's voice breaking suddenly on 
 her meditations. She looked up and beheld Myra more 
 than usually grave and cold. "I'm sorry to disturb you. 
 But I've just had a letter. He's dead." 
 
 Olivia, with a shock through all her being, started to 
 her feet. 
 
 "Dead. My husband?" 
 
 "No," said Myra. "Mine." 
 
 "Oh!" said Olivia somewhat breathless and sank on 
 the bench again. She recovered herself quickly. 
 
 "I'm sorry, Myra. But after all, it's a merciful 
 release." 
 
 "God's mercies are inscrutable," said Myra. 
 
 So, thought Olivia, was Myra's remark. 
 
 "I've always loved him, you see," said Myra. "I sup- 
 pose you'll have no objections to my going to bury him?" 
 
 "My dear old Myra," cried Olivia. "Of course, my 
 dear, you can go go whenever you like." 
 
 "I'll come back as soon as it's over," said Myra. 
 
 She turned and walked away, and Olivia saw her lean 
 and unexpressive shoulders rise as though a sob had 
 shaken her.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 OF the death of Myra Stebbings's husband and 
 of her second appearance in Pendish during his 
 sojourn in the West Country, Triona knew noth- 
 ing. Again she had forbidden her sister-in-law to give 
 him any information as to her doings. Again she dis- 
 claimed interest in the young man. Nor was he aware, 
 a week after the funeral, that Myra, who had stood by 
 the graveside in the pouring rain, and had insisted on 
 jogging back to Pendish wet through, in the undertaker's 
 brougham, lay dangerously ill in the upstairs bedroom 
 of the little Georgian house. The increasing business of 
 the Quantock Garage diverted his energies from polite 
 tramps into Pendish to enquire into Mrs. Pettiland's 
 state of health. Also, he was growing morose, his soul 
 feeding on itself, and beginning to develop an unwhole- 
 some misanthropy. Like Hamlet, man didn't delight 
 him; no, nor woman neither. When not working in the 
 garage or driving the old touring-car, he retired to brood 
 in his loft and eschewed the company of his kind. 
 
 "You're overdoing it," said Radnor, a kindly person. 
 "Why not go away on a holiday and have a change?" 
 
 "Only one change would do me any good," he replied 
 gloomily, "and that would be to get out of this partic- 
 ularly vile universe." 
 
 Radnor looked round his well ordered, bustling estab- 
 lishment and smiled. 
 
 "It isn't as bad as all that." 
 
 37i
 
 372 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 Triona shrugged his shoulders and spanner in hand 
 turned to the car he was doctoring, without a reply. 
 
 A few days afterwards Radnor said: 
 
 "We're going to be married in August, and I don't 
 mind saying it's mostly thanks to you." 
 
 "I'm glad to hear it," said Triona. "I'll stick it out 
 till then." 
 
 "And then?" 
 
 "I'll have the change you've been talking of." 
 
 Radnor laughed. "You'll let me have a bit of a 
 honeymoon first, won't you?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," replied Triona. "You can have your 
 honeymoon. 
 
 The weakening incentive to life would last till Sep- 
 tember. He would make it last. It was now the be- 
 ginning of June. Three months or so more wouldn't 
 matter. To carry on a meaningless existence further 
 would be absurd. Indeed, it would be immoral. Of 
 that, for some time past he had convinced himself. 
 
 England ran motor-mad that summer. It awoke to find 
 war restrictions removed, roads free and petrol to be 
 had for the buying. In its eagerness to race through a 
 beloved land closed up for years and view or re-view 
 historic spots of loveliness, and otherwise to indulge in 
 its national vagabond humour it cared little for the price 
 of petrol. The hiring garages, in anything like tourist 
 centres, found their resources strained. Radnor bought 
 another car, and still had more orders than he could 
 execute. He drove one car himself. 
 
 It was a soft June evening. Triona sat at the wheel 
 of the great antiquated touring-car to which he had given
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 373 
 
 its new lease of life, driving homewards from the neigh- 
 bourhood of the Great Junction Town. He had taken a 
 merry party that day some hundred and fifty miles 
 through the tenderest greenery of early summer, through 
 dark gorges with startling shadows, through cool lanes, 
 over hills in the open sunshine; and, in the sweetness of 
 the evening, he had put them down at the place whence 
 they had started. For all his mood of despair, he had 
 enjoyed the day. The poet in him had responded to the 
 eternal call of the year's life laughing in its gay insolence 
 of youth. Since nine in the morning the sweet wind of 
 the hills had swept through his lungs and scenes of love- 
 liness had shimmered before his eyes. 
 
 Alone at the wheel, he thought of the passing day of 
 beauty. Was it not worth living just to enjoy it? Was 
 it not worth living just to translate into words, if only 
 for the sake of the doing, the emotion of that enjoyment? 
 He had passed through a beech wood, a world of pale 
 emerald, like fairy seas, above, and a shimmer of blue- 
 bells below as though the sky had been laid down for a 
 carpet. . . . 
 
 He drove slowly and carefully. The car had done 
 its good day's work. It was knocking a bit, like an old 
 horse wheezing in protest against over-estimation of its 
 enduring powers. He had tried it perhaps too high to- 
 day. He loved the re-created old car, as though it were 
 a living thing. A valiant old car, which had raced over 
 awful roads in Flanders. It was a crazy irritation that 
 he could not pat it into comfort. Nursing it with the 
 mechanician's queer tenderness, he came to the straight 
 mile, near home, of road on the mountain side, with its 
 sheer drop into the valley, ending at the turn known as
 
 374 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 Hell's Corner, at which the overwrought doctor, on the 
 night of mad adventure, had lost his nerve. Just past 
 the corner branched the secondary road to Fanstead, 
 for the great road swept on by the expiring end of Pen- 
 dish village; but by walking from Pendish, as he had 
 done on the day of the aforesaid adventure, through 
 lanes and fields, one cut off a great bend of road and 
 struck it on the fair-mile beyond the turn. And now a 
 few hundred yards from the corner the engine gave 
 trouble. He descended from his seat and opened the 
 bonnet. He discovered a simple matter, the choking of a 
 plug. The knocking, he knew was in the cardan shaft. 
 He would have to replace the worn pin. While cleaning 
 out the choked plug with a piece of wire and blowing 
 through it to clear it from the last fragment of grit, he 
 wondered how long it would take to have the spare pin 
 made. He was going out again the day after to-morrow. 
 Could he risk the old car? To-morrow he would take 
 her down and see for himself the full extent of the trouble. 
 Meanwhile he screwed the plug on again, shut down the 
 bonnet, cranked up the starting handle and jumped up 
 beside the wheel. 
 
 But just as he put in the low gear, his eyes were riveted 
 on a familiar figure some twenty yards away, walking 
 towards him. For a moment or two he remained par- 
 alysed, while the old-fashioned gears crunched horribly. 
 There she advanced slim, erect, in Tussore silk coat and 
 skirt, a flash of red bow at the opening of her blouse. 
 The car began to move. At that instant their eyes met. 
 Olivia staggered back, and he read in her bewildered gaze 
 the same horror he had last seen in her eyes. 
 
 What she was doing here, on this strip of remote road,
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 375 
 
 he could not understand. Obviously she had not ex- 
 pected to find him, for she looked at him as though he 
 were some awful ghost. He changed gear, went full 
 speed ahead and passed her in a flash. Then suddenly, 
 the command of doom shot through his brain. This was 
 the end. Now was the end that should have come, had 
 he not been a coward, months ago. He deliberately 
 swerved off the road and went hurtling over the hill-side. 
 
 Olivia staring, wide-eyed, wondering, at the racing car, 
 saw it happen. It was no accident. It was deliberate. 
 Her brain reeled at the sudden and awful horror. She 
 swayed to the bank and fainted. 
 
 A two-seater car, a young man and woman in it, came 
 upon her a few moments later and drew up. The woman 
 ministered to her and presently she revived. 
 
 "There has been a horrible accident," she explained 
 haggardly. "A car went over you can see the wheel 
 marks Oh my God!" 
 
 She pointed. A column of smoke was rising from the 
 valley into the still evening air. She scrambled to un- 
 steady feet, and started to run. The young man de- 
 tained her. 
 
 "The car will take us quicker. Maggie, you drive. 
 I'll stand on the footboard." 
 
 They swiftly covered the hundred yards or so to the 
 scene of the catastrophe. And there thirty feet below in 
 the ravine the old car was burning amid the heavy vapour 
 of petrol smoke. 
 
 "Quick," cried Olivia, "let us get down! He may still 
 be alive." 
 
 The young man shook his head. "Not much chance, 
 poor devil."
 
 376 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "Did you know him?" asked the lady. 
 
 "It was my husband/' cried Olivia tragic-eyed. 
 
 They all plunged down the slope, the young man going 
 straight in the ruts of the leaping car. Olivia, after a 
 fall or two, ran gropingly to side levels, catching hold of 
 bushes to aid her descent, her brain too scorched with 
 the terror of that which lay below, for coherent thought. 
 
 Again her light, high-heeled shoes tripped her on the 
 smooth grass and she slithered down a few yards. And 
 then, as she steadied herself once more on her feet, she 
 heard a voice from behind a clump of gorse: 
 
 "Just my damned luck!" 
 
 Her knees shook violently. She wanted to shriek, but 
 she controlled herself and, staggering round the gorse 
 bush, came upon Alexis, seated on a hummock, his head 
 between his hands. He looked up at her stupidly; and 
 she, with outspread fingers on panting bosom: 
 
 "Thank God, you're not dead." 
 
 "I don't know so much about that," said he, rising to 
 his feet. 
 
 The young woman of the car who had been following 
 Olivia more or less in her descent, appeared from behind 
 the bush. 
 
 She, too, thanked God. He had been saved by a mir- 
 acle. How had he escaped? 
 
 "A providence which looks after idiots caused me to 
 be hurled out of the car at the first bump. I fell into 
 the gorse. I'm not in the least bit hurt. Please don't 
 worry about me." 
 
 "You must let us drive you home I'll call my hus- 
 band," said the young woman. 
 
 "Thank you very much," said he, "but I'm perfectly
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 377 
 
 sound and I'd rather walk; but this lady seems to have 
 had a shock and no doubt " 
 
 The young woman, perplexed, turned to Olivia. "You 
 said this gentleman " for Alexis stood trim in brass- 
 buttoned and legginged chauffeur's livery "you said he 
 was your husband." 
 
 "A case of mistaken identity*" he replied suavely. 
 
 Olivia, her brain in a whirl, said nothing. The young 
 woman advanced a few steps and coo-eed to the young 
 man who had just reached the ravine. As he turned on 
 her hail, she halloed the tidings that all was well. 
 
 "He'll be here in a few minutes," she said. 
 
 They stood an embarrassed trio. Alexis explained 
 how the steering-rod, which had given him trouble all 
 day, had suddenly snapped. It had been the affair of a 
 moment. As for the car, it was merely a kind of land 
 ark fitted with a prehistoric internal combustion engine. 
 Insured above its value. The proprietor would be de- 
 lighted to hear the end of it. 
 
 The young man joined them, out of breath. Explana- 
 tions had to be given da capo. Again Good Samaritan 
 offers to put their two-seater at the disposal of the der- 
 elicts. With one in the back seat they could crowd three 
 in front. They were going to Cullenby, twenty miles on, 
 but a few miles out of their way, if need be, were neither 
 here nor there. A very charming, solicitous, well-run 
 young couple. Olivia scarcely knew whether to shriek at 
 them to go away, or to beg them to remain and continue 
 to save a grotesque situation. 
 
 Presently Triona repeated his thanks and declined the 
 proffered lift. Walking would do him all the good in 
 the world; would steady his nerves after his calamitous
 
 378 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 bump. The young man eyed him queer ly. It was a 
 strange word for a chauffeur. 
 
 "But if you would take this lady," said Triona again. 
 
 Olivia recovered her wits. 
 
 "I will walk too, if you don't mind. I'm only a mile 
 from home. And this gentleman is really my husband." 
 
 "If we can really do nothing more ?" The young 
 
 man raised his hat. 
 
 "A thousand thanks for all your kindness," said Olivia. 
 
 The very mystified young couple left them and re- 
 mounted the hill. 
 
 The subjects of their mystification stood for a while 
 in silence. Presently Olivia, whose limbs not yet re- 
 covered from the shock trembled so that her knees 
 seemed to give her no support, said: 
 
 "Don't you think we might sit down for a little?" 
 
 "As you will," said Alexis, seating himself on his hum- 
 mock. 
 
 She cast herself down on the slope and closed her eyes 
 for a moment. 
 
 "You did that on purpose," she said at last. "You 
 don't suppose I believe the story of the broken steering- 
 rod?" 
 
 He smiled with some bitterness. Fate was for ever 
 against him. The moment they met in this extravagant 
 way, there started up the barrier of a lie. 
 
 "I couldn't very well scare those young folks with a 
 confession of attempted suicide, could I? After all, the 
 naked truth may at times be positively indecent." 
 
 "Then you intended to do it?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," said he. "But it ended, like every other 
 Great Adventure I've attempted in my life, in burlesque.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 379 
 
 I assure you, that when I found myself pitched into this 
 clump of gorse and able to pick myself up with nothing 
 worse than a gasping for breath, I well the humiliation 
 of it! I cursed the day I was born." 
 
 "Why did you do it?" she asked. 
 
 She had scarcely regained balance. The situation 
 seemed unreal. But a few minutes ago he had been far 
 from her thoughts, which were concerned with the woman 
 to whose possibly dying bed she had been summoned, 
 with the dreary days at Medlow now that Blaise Olifant 
 had gone, with the still beauty of the hills and their 
 purple sunset shadows. And now, here she was, alone 
 with him, remote from the world, conversing as dispas- 
 sionately as though he had returned from the dead as 
 indeed he had almost returned. At her question, he 
 threw his chauffeur's cap on the grass and passed his 
 hand over his hair. The familiar gesture, the familiar 
 nervous brown hand brought her a step nearer to reality. 
 
 "If you can't guess, it is useless for me to tell you," 
 he said. "You wouldn't believe me." 
 
 He took out a cigarette. She noted a trembling of 
 the fingers. 
 
 "Do you mind?" She nodded, he lit the cigarette. "I 
 thought here, at any rate, I was hidden from you for 
 the rest of my life. It wouldn't have been very long 
 anyway. I had made up my mind some day soon to set 
 you free of me and to-day or to-morrow what did it 
 matter? I don't ask you to believe that either. I don't 
 see how you can believe a word I say. I gave you to 
 understand, that I was in Poland you find me here. 
 When did Myra tell you I was here?" 
 
 Returning sanity had corrected his first mad impres-
 
 380 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 sion. How could she be a mile from Pendish if she had 
 not heard from Myra? But she regarded him open- 
 mouthed. 
 
 "Myra? What has Myra to do with it? Of course 
 I had no conception you were here? I knew you were 
 not in Poland. A man a Pole I forget his name 
 wrote to Major Olifant, last year, wondering what had 
 become of you. You had never joined him " 
 
 "Boronowski," said Triona. 
 
 "That was the name " 
 
 "And you took it for granted I had lied to him too." 
 
 Her eyes dropped beneath his half sad, half ironic gaze, 
 She made a little despairing gesture. 
 
 "What would you have?" 
 
 "And Myra never told you anything about me?" 
 
 "You haven't answered my question," she said, 
 straightening herself: "Where does Myra come in?" 
 
 "That's rather a long story. I should prefer her to 
 tell it to you. Myra knows everything about me since 
 the day after you received my last letter over a year 
 ago." 
 
 She leaned forward, an angry spot burning on both 
 cheeks. "Myra has been hiding you here all the time 
 and has told me nothing about it!" 
 
 "She has her excellent reasons. She will tell you in a 
 very few words " 
 
 "She can't. At any rate not now. She has been very 
 ill with pneumonia. They thought she was dying and 
 sent for me. Why otherwise should I be here?" 
 
 "Are you staying at Mrs. Pettiland's?" 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 "I didn't even know Myra was in Pendish I'm.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 381 
 
 grieved to hear she's ill. I'm afraid I've neglected Mrs. 
 Pettiland of late. She was very kind to me." He 
 paused and added with a smile, "I see Myra's loyalty. 
 She forbade Mrs. Pettiland to mention the name of the 
 young man called Briggs. You've never heard of such 
 a person at Pendish." 
 
 "Not a word," said Olivia. "But I shall never for- 
 give Myra. Never, never," she cried indignantly. "To 
 fool me like that!" 
 
 He caught sudden hope from the flash in her dark eyes. 
 
 "Would you have liked to know where I was?" 
 
 "I hate duplicity. I thought that Myra, at least my 
 God! Is there anybody in the world one can trust?" 
 
 Suddenly she turned on him. "What are you doing in 
 that absurd livery?" 
 
 "I've been earning my living in it, since last August. 
 I've done it before. It's an honester way than many 
 others." 
 
 "Forgive me, if I don't understand," she said, still 
 half-bewildered. "You have no need to earn your liv- 
 ing by driving a car a common chauffeur unless "" 
 
 She checked herself with a little gasp but his quick 
 brain divined her impulsive thought. 
 
 "Unless I had taken to drink and gone to the bad, et- 
 cetera, etcetera " 
 
 She interrupted him quickly. "No, no. I never 
 thought that. It was a reductio ad absurdum. But on 
 
 what other hypothesis ? You've still your brain, 
 
 your talent, your genius. Your pen " 
 
 "Which is mightier than the wheel," he remarked. 
 
 "I don't know why you didn't go to Poland. Perhaps 
 you'll explain. Anyhow you didn't. You came here to
 
 382 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 the absolute quiet of the country. Why haven't you gone 
 on writing?" 
 
 "For the simple reason," said he, "that Alexis Triona 
 and all his works are dead. Washed out from the Book 
 of Life. That side of me is all over and done with. You 
 who know everything, can't you understand?" 
 
 She caught the note of truth in his words and gradu- 
 ally there began to dawn on her the immensity of his 
 artist's sacrifice. 
 
 "Do you mean that you're never going to write again?" 
 
 "Never," said he. "Does this look like it?" and he 
 touched the brass buttons on his livery. 
 
 She weakened through impatience at his aloofness, 
 craving to know all that had happened to him, to get to 
 the roots of Myra's mysterious intrigue. His fatalistic 
 attitude was maddening. The whole crazy combination 
 of tragedy and farce that had set them down in the 
 gorse-enclosed hollow of the hill-side, as though they 
 were the only people on God's earth, was maddening. 
 The brass buttons were maddening. She flung sudden 
 arms out wide. 
 
 "For God's sake tell me everything that has happened 
 to you." 
 
 "If you'll believe it," said he. 
 
 She sat silent for a moment, feeling as though she were 
 under his rebuke, and gazed over the valley at the hills 
 black beneath the dying green and faded orange of the 
 sunset. The thin smoke of the burned car mounted into 
 the windless air faint with the smell of petrol fumes and 
 scorched woodwork. And Triona looked down too and 
 saw the end of the creation of his resurrection. He 
 pointed to it.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 383 
 
 "That was one of my little dreams," he said gently. 
 "A sort of rat trap on wheels the most hopeless box of 
 antiquated imbecility you can imagine. I took it into 
 my head to recreate it. For a time I devoted my soul to 
 it and I made it a thing of life and speed and obedience. 
 And there it lies dead, a column of smoke, like all dreams 
 and, all my deliberate fault. Every system of philos- 
 ophy, since the world began, has overlooked the ironical 
 symbolism of life. That's one; and my dream smoke." 
 
 She fell under the spell of his voice, although her 
 brain revolted. Yet his note rang sincere in her heart 
 she knew not what to say. The sunset colours over the 
 ridge of hills died into iron blue of the sky. A faint 
 breeze stirred. She shivered with cold in her thin Tus- 
 sore silk. He, watching her, saw the shiver. 
 
 "You're cold, you must be getting back." He rose. 
 
 She sprang to her feet before he could help her to rise. 
 
 "I'll see you to Mrs. Pettiland's." 
 
 They scrambled to the high road above them, and be- 
 gan to walk, in constrained silence. Suddenly she 
 cried: 
 
 "You've hurt yourself. You're limping dreadfully. 
 
 You told me you were unhurt " She clutched his 
 
 arm. "You can't go on like this." 
 
 "I'll go on like this," said he, thrilling under her touch, 
 "to the day of my death. It has nothing to do with this 
 evening's entertainment. I was smashed up by a motor- 
 lorry over a year ago, as Myra will tell you. That's 
 what knocked me out of Poland." 
 
 She echoed his words "Smashed up by a motor- 
 lorry? It might have killed you and I should have 
 never known."
 
 384 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "Myra would have told you. As a matter of fact it 
 very nearly did kill me." 
 
 She turned her head away with a shudder. 
 
 "And just now " 
 
 "I ought to have waited till I had turned the corner " 
 he pointed out the bend a few yards in front of them. 
 "Hell's Corner, they call it hereabouts. Then you 
 wouldn't have seen me go over, and I might have had 
 better luck." 
 
 He saw her turn deadly white, reel, and he tried to 
 support her; but she slipped away from him and sat by 
 the wayside. She thought she was going to faint again. 
 
 "For God's sake, don't talk like that. It's inhuman. 
 It's unlike you. Even if you were a stranger it would be 
 horrible." 
 
 "I'm only apologising for my existence," he said. 
 "Fate has been against me but, believe me, I have done 
 my best." 
 
 After a while she rose, declaring herself better, and 
 they struck off the road down the twisting lane that led to 
 Pendish. The air was fragrant in the dusk. 
 
 "Tell me about that accident how Myra came to 
 know of it. I suppose you sent her word?" 
 
 "Perhaps when you have talked to Myra, you'll credit 
 me at least with sincere intentions. If I had informed 
 her, it would have been an indirect appeal to you." 
 
 "Perhaps it would have been wiser to appeal to me 
 direct," said Olivia tonelessly. "I'm not devoid of com- 
 mon humanity." 
 
 "I couldn't have done that," he said gently. "I lay 
 unconscious for weeks. When I came to my senses I 
 found Myra had come the second morning I was in
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 385 
 
 hospital. I had better begin with my meeting with the 
 Pole, Boronowski it's a simple matter." 
 
 To him, walking with this lost wife of his dreams, in 
 the lovers' lane, the hour seemed fantastic. His voice 
 sounded unreal in his ears. His heart lying heavy as 
 lead within him was not the heart that he had thought 
 would beat furiously at the ravishing sight of her. He 
 told his story badly; just the salient facts, uninspired by 
 the dramatic instinct which had made him colour so 
 vividly the narration, a year ago, to Mrs. Pettiland, of 
 his ridiculous adventure. This he barely sketched. For 
 truth's sake he must tell her of the robbery and account 
 for his penniless condition. It was not himself talking. 
 It was not Olivia to whom he talked. One stranger's 
 personality was talking through him to another's. At 
 the end of the tale: 
 
 "You have changed greatly," she said. 
 
 "That's very possible." There was a pause. He con- 
 tinued. "And you? Forgive me. I haven't even asked 
 whether you are well " 
 
 "Oh, I've been all right. I spent the winter abroad, 
 and now I'm staying with Mrs. Woolcombe at 'The 
 Towers.' Major Olifant is away." 
 
 They came up suddenly against the wicket-gate of 
 Mrs. Pettiland's garden. A light shone through the yet 
 undrawn curtains in his old bedroom. He raised an 
 enquiring hand. 
 
 "Myra?" 
 
 "Yes. I'm in Mrs. Pettiland's room in the front. She 
 would give it up to me. I've been helping to nurse as 
 well as I can. I've been in all day. That's why I came 
 out for a walk this evening."
 
 386 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "You must be tired." 
 
 "I am." 
 
 He waited, hoping against hope, for a word revoking 
 his sentence. None came. The steel sinew that ran 
 through him, and was answerable for all his accomplish- 
 ment, stiffened. He would make no appeal dd misericor- 
 diam. He had suffered enough in expiation. He had 
 come to the end of his tether. For pity masking the last 
 year's hatred and contempt he had no use. He opened 
 the gate for her. She passed in and he closed it and the 
 click of the latch sounded like the crack of finality; for 
 Olivia, taken almost unawares, as for Triona. They 
 stood for a while, the wooden barrier between them, in 
 the gathering darkness. 
 
 Impulsively she exclaimed: "We can't part like this, 
 with a thousand things unexplained." 
 
 "I'm at your orders, Olivia," he replied. 
 
 She caught her breath and stiffened. "We must talk 
 to-morrow when we have both recovered." 
 
 "I'll be here any hour you name," said Alexis. Rad- 
 nor and his garage could go to the devil. 
 
 "Nine o'clock?" 
 
 "Nine o'clock," said he. "Good night, Olivia." 
 
 "Wait." 
 
 The memory of the scandal crashed down on her. . . . 
 
 "I may as well tell you now the night may bring 
 counsel I'm in a terrible position. Wedderburn and 
 Onslow you remember?" 
 
 "I do," he said. 
 
 She told him rapidly of her pledge. 
 
 "It doesn't matter a scrap to me, but it's a damnable 
 thing for you," said he.
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 387 
 
 "What answer would you make?" 
 
 "A clean breast of everything. Could you wish me to 
 do anything else?" 
 
 "I don't know," she replied. "Give me time to think." 
 
 "My time is yours, Olivia." 
 
 She paused for a moment irresolute. There was a 
 question she wished to put, but the thought of it made her 
 feel sick and faint again. 
 
 "You'll not do anything foolish, till I see you?" 
 
 "Nor anything wise," said he. "I promise." 
 
 Again there came between them a long embarrassed 
 silence. At last 
 
 "Good night," she said. 
 
 "Good night, Olivia." 
 
 She flung an angry hand in the darkness and slipped 
 away into the house.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 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." 
 
 388
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 389 
 
 "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 bed-side. 
 
 "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 emo-
 
 390 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 tionality 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 su- 
 perficial, tearing at her nerves, but never, oh, never touch- 
 ing the bed-rock of her spiritual being. A great pas- 
 sionate 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 mark- 
 ings 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 un- 
 controllable crying and sobbing, her little dark head on 
 the blanket by Myra's side. And after a little came in- 
 coherent 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
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 391 
 
 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. Hum- 
 ble yourself if need be ... I've been very ill. I've 
 thought and thought and thought I've an idea that ill- 
 ness 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 Quin- 
 tons. The mad Blenkirons. The gentle uninspiring 
 circle of little Janet Philimore. The literary and artistic 
 society for the few months of Alexis's lionization pleas- 
 ant, but superficial, always leaving her with the sense
 
 392 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 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 un- 
 happiness 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 with- 
 ered at the thought. 
 
 She slipped out of the house into the soft night. Pend- 
 ish, 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. Per- 
 haps 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
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 393 
 
 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. Moon- 
 light and starlight and the mystery of the night shimmer- 
 ing 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 imagina- 
 tion, 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 Oli- 
 f ant's: "He is being blackmailed by one lie." 
 
 She realized, with sudden shock, her insignificant lone- 
 liness in the midst of this vast moonlit silence of the 
 earth. In presence of the immensities she was of no ac- 
 count. 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.
 
 394 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 "A man doesn't try to kill himself for a woman he 
 doesn't want." 
 
 She strode on, her cheeks burning. All that of ex- 
 travagance 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 en- 
 tered 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. Petti- 
 land 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 sud- 
 denly 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 whis- 
 pering 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
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 395 
 
 bearing unsightly remains of crust and cheese, and lit- 
 tered 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 to- 
 gether. 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 
 prcEvalebit. 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. Row- 
 ington gave news that Onslow and Wedderburn had drop- 
 ped 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.
 
 396 THE TALE OF TRIONA 
 
 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 mate- 
 rial 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 honey- 
 moon." 
 
 "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 chauf- 
 feur 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
 
 THE TALE OF TRIONA 397 
 
 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." 
 
 THE END
 
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