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, containing 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 morning 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 deception of Olivia. The realization of his crazy lapse of memory was a sobering shock. Never before had he lost grip of himself. 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 contemplation of which the only thrill he experienced was one of profound disgust. To enter whatever sphere of life 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 disappeared from the face of the earth. It was therefore essential to avoid hotels where Alexis Triona might possibly 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 chauffeur’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 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 Eternal 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 unforgivable 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 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 dismal 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 unpolluted 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.
“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 automaton 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 awakened 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.
“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. Without 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 disappear. Merely leaving Olivia and setting up for himself 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 himself 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 himself, a man must live. During moments of his madness he had dallied with wild thoughts of suicide. His fundamental sanity had rejected them. He was no coward. Whatever punishment was in store for him, good God! he was man enough to face it.
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 hi............