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 trivialities. 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 neighbourhood and suggestive in no way of a studious habit, the surface of the knee-hole writing table and the mahogany mantelpiece were scored with fluted little burns from cigarette-ends, he having been a careless smoker. 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 cartload 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 appointment with Miss Gale.”
“I’m Miss Gale,” said Olivia.
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 explain. 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.”
And, as he said it, he got clear and threw the mackintosh 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 goodness 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 pretences.”
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 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 hating 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. “Dreadfully sorry you should have had all this journey for nothing. 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 in protest, “I couldn’t dream of it—there must be an hotel——”
“There isn’t,” cried Olivia unveraciously, and vanished.
Major Olifant, too late to open the door for her, retraced his steps and stood, back to fire, idly evoking, as a man does, the human purposes that had gone to the making 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 Chippendale bookcase filled with odds and ends of good china, old Chelsea, Coalport, a bit or two of Sèvres and Dresden. Some green chrysanthemums bowed, in dainty raggedness, over the edge of a fine cut crystal vase. An exquisite water-colour over the piano attracted his attention. He crossed the room to examine it and drew a little breath of surprise to read the signature of Bonington—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 him to get rid of the dust of the journey. When he returned 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 Olifant’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.”
“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 combination 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 occasion 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 supporter of the Church of England to the extent of renting a pew in the Parish Church in which, in spite of the best intentions, he had never found time to sit, he confessedly 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 between 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 Corton—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.”
She burst out radiantly: “How lovely of you to spot it! It’s a Corton, 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 politeness 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 impertinent 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 contemplate fossilizing here till the end of time.”
“That’s what I’m literally thinking of doing,” he replied.
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 in 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 connected with them—it’s a vast subject—and so I’m looking for a quiet place where I can carry on my work.”
“That’s awfully interesting,” said Olivia. “But—forgive 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 things just as vital as foraminifera. I’ve made my confession, 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 an?mic little phantoms. 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 existence.”
“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 air of 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 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 absolute. 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 Cherbury, The Imitation of Christ, Christina Rossetti, the almost forgotten early seventeenth century Arthur Warwick (“Spare Minutes; or, Resolved Meditation and Premeditated Resolutions”), Crabbe . . . a dozen volumes or so. Olifant picked out one.
“And this, too? The Pensées de Pascal?”
“She loved it best,” said Olivia.
“It is strange,” said he. “My father spent most of his life on a monumental work on Pascal. He was a Professor 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 l’oreille, parce qu’on manque de c?ur. La règle est l’honnêteté.′”
“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 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 distinguished 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, meeting 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 fortune by cards?”
“I hope you think it’s a great book,” he said, with a smile.
“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 anthracite stove in the hall, and told her what he knew of Alexis Triona.