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.”
“It’s like you to say that,” cried Triona. “I shall always 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 pleasure. 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 Medlow 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 claustrophobia. 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 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 subconscious 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 shoulders 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 follower of Faith had he not proclaimed its guidance to the Land of Promise?
Three days before he had seen her. He had been impelled 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 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 machines. 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 purchase made, the order given, they wandered idly through the great establishment. They were prisoners, the outside world being weltering deluge. For once in his lifetime, thought Triona, the elements warred on his side. A wringing machine, before which he paused in wonderment 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, exquisite 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 whipping of his wit. They stumbled into the department of 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 impeccable. 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 decoration 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 mackintoshed commissionaire secured a taxi. Triona accompanied 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 farewell was characteristic. What could one expect of her but the unexpected?
That was three days ago. The image of her unconsciously 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 Victoria 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 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. Triona, suspecting an accident, quickened his pace instinctively into a run and joined the group.
“What’s up?”
But as the instinctive words passed his lips he became amazedly conscious of Olivia standing there, quivering, as white as the white dress and cloak she wore, her eyes ablaze. She flashed on him a half-hysterical recognition 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 me, God, if a copper comes in sight I’ll murder you.”
“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 protectingly 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 Terrace.”
“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 happened 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 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, uneven step, and glancing down instinctively at her feet, “what has become of your shoe?”
“My slipper—why, of course——” She halted, suddenly aware of the loss. “I must have left it in the cab. I stuck up my foot and reached for it and broke the window 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 [know] 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. Tired, 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. 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 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 seem 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 enraptured ............