MYRA stood by the screened-off bed in the long ward and looked unemotionally at the unconscious 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 genuine 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 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 recognition, 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 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 temptation. 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.
“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 underwear.
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 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 unquestioned acceptance of the family. Only last November 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 organization. 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 expressionless 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 disengaged 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.”
“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 moist 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 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. 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 interrupted 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 continued 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 business.”
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 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............