MRS. PETTILAND met her at the foot of the stairs. She beamed rosily beneath the gas jet. “Myra is so much better, Madam, after her sleep. The doctor came while you were out. I’m to make her some chicken broth.”
Olivia mounted the stairs and entered the sick-room.
“Well dearie?”
She turned to the gaunt waxen face on the pillow.
“I’m so glad to hear the doctor’s good report.”
She forced herself to linger, speaking the commonplaces of the sick-room. Then she could bear it no longer.
“I’m dead tired,” she said. “I’ll go to bed. Nurse ought to be here soon. Have you everything you want for the night?”
Myra said in her even tones: “Have you everything you want for the night?” And at Olivia’s quick glance of enquiry: “You look as if you’d seen a ghost. You have. I was afraid of it. I didn’t want them to send for you, but I was too ill to stop them.”
Olivia could not wreak her anger yet on the frail woman. But in her heart burned a furious indignation. She controlled her voice, and said as gently as she could:
“Why have you left me in ignorance for the past year?”
“I was biding my time,” said Myra. “I was waiting for a sign and a token.”
“From me?”
“From you, dearie. I had him here in the hollow of my hand. If you had wanted him, I could have given him to you. But you didn’t want him—so you said. I wasn’t so sure.” She stretched her thin hand on the blanket, but Olivia stood, too much enwrapped in her thoughts to notice the appeal. “When I first saw him in hospital I hoped that he would die and set you free. But when I saw him convalescent, my heart was full of pity for him, and I repented of the sin of committing murder in my heart. And when I heard from my sister in-law that he was facing life like a brave man, I wondered whether I had been wrong and whether you had been wrong. If I say something to you, will you be angry with me?”
Olivia shrugged her shoulders. “Say anything you like.”
The weak, even voice went on. “If Major Olifant hadn’t left us, I should have told you.”
Olivia leaped at the thrust, her cheeks flaming.
“Myra! How dare you?”
The thin lips parted in a half smile.
“Have you ever known me not to dare anything for your good?”
Myra, with all the privileges of illness, had her at a disadvantage. Olivia was silenced. She unpinned her hat and threw it on a chair and sat by the bedside.
“I see that you acted for the best, Myra.”
Not only her cheeks, but her body flamed at what seemed now the humiliating allusion. Myra was fully aware, if not of the actual kiss—oh, no—nothing horrible of servant’s espionage in Myra—at any rate of the emotionality in which it had culminated—on her part sex, sense, the unexpected thrill, the elemental between man and woman, the hunger for she knew not what—but superficial, tearing at her nerves, but never, oh, never touching the bed-rock of her spiritual being. A great passionate love for Blaise, she knew, Myra with her direct vision, would have understood. For the assurance of her life’s happiness Myra would have sacrificed her hope of eternal salvation.
But the worn woman who had had but one’s week’s great fulfilment of love in her life, knew what love meant, and she had sounded the shallows of her pitiful love—if love it could be called—for Blaise Olifant; and now, in her sad, fatalistic way she shewed her the poor markings of the lead.
“So you have seen him?” asked Myra quietly.
“Yes I’ve seen him. God knows how you know.”
“Well?”
Her overstrained soul gave way. She broke into uncontrollable crying and sobbing, her little dark head on the blanket by Myra’s side. And after a little came incoherent words.
“I’ve lost him—He doesn’t care for me any more—He hates me—He tried to kill himself when he saw me—He was driving a car and put it over a precipice—Thank God—a miracle—he wasn’t hurt—But he might have killed himself—He meant to—And it’s all your fault—all your fault—If only you had told me. . . .”
Myra put her thin hand on the dear dark hair and caressed it till the paroxysm was over.
“I loved a thing that was scarcely a man till the day of his death, for I had memories, dearie, of him when he was a man to be loved. You’ve got a living man for a husband. And you loved yours as much as I loved mine. And he’s a living and suffering man. Go to him—” her hand still played feebly caressing the black mass of her hair. “Fate has brought you together again. He’s your man, whom you vowed to help in sickness or in health. I kept mine in sickness. Thank God, your man’s sickness is nothing like mine. Go to him, dearie. Humble yourself if need be . . . I’ve been very ill. I’ve thought and thought and thought—I’ve an idea that illness clears one’s brain—and all my thoughts have been for you. For me there’s nothing left. I’ve thought of him and you. I’ve thought of what he has done and what you have done—And, with all his faults, he’s a bigger human being than you are, dearie. Go to him.”
Olivia raised a tragic face.
“How can I? He doesn’t want me.”
“A man doesn’t try to kill himself for a woman he doesn’t want. You had better go to him.”
And Olivia went. She slipped out of the house at eleven o’clock, after a couple of hours of wrestling with ugly and vain devils. Who was she, after all? What had she done to add a grain to the world’s achievement? What had she found in her adventure into the world that had been worth the having save the love of the man that was her husband? Many phases of existence had passed procession-wise through her life. All hollows and shams. The Lydian galley, with its Mavennas and Bobby Quintons. The mad Blenkirons. The gentle uninspiring circle of little Janet Philimore. The literary and artistic society for the few months of Alexis’s lionization—pleasant, but superficial, always leaving her with the sense of having fallen far short of a communion that might have been. Nothing satisfying but the needs and the childish wants and the work and the uplifting spirit of the one man. And after the great parting what had there been? Her life in Medlow devoid of all meaning—Her six months travel—a feeding of self to no purpose. An existence of negativity. Blaise Olifant. She flamed, conscious of one thing at last positive, and positive for ill. She had played almost deliberately with fire. Otherwise why had she gone back to Medlow? She had brought unhappiness to a very noble gentleman. It had been in his power, as a man, to sweep her off her feet in a weak hour of clamouring sex. He had spared her—and she now was unutterably grateful. For she had never loved him. She could not love him. His long straight nose. She grew half hysterical. Even when he had kissed her she had been conscious of that long straight nose. She withered at the thought.
She slipped out of the house into the soft night. Pendish, with its double line of low, whitewashed, thatched cottages, one a deep shadow, the other clear in the moonlight, lay as still as a ghostly village of the middle ages. The echo of her light footsteps frightened her. Surely windows would fly open and heads peer out challenging the disturber of peace.
She was going to him. Why,............