OF the death of Myra Stebbings’s husband and of her second appearance in Pendish during his sojourn in the West Country, Triona knew nothing. Again she had forbidden her sister-in-law to give him any information as to her doings. Again she disclaimed interest in the young man. Nor was he aware, a week after the funeral, that Myra, who had stood by the graveside in the pouring rain, and had insisted on jogging back to Pendish wet through, in the undertaker’s brougham, lay dangerously ill in the upstairs bedroom of the little Georgian house. The increasing business of the Quantock Garage diverted his energies from polite tramps into Pendish to enquire into Mrs. Pettiland’s state of health. Also, he was growing morose, his soul feeding on itself, and beginning to develop an unwholesome misanthropy. Like Hamlet, man didn’t delight him; no, nor woman neither. When not working in the garage or driving the old touring-car, he retired to brood in his loft and eschewed the company of his kind. “You’re overdoing it,” said Radnor, a kindly person. “Why not go away on a holiday and have a change?”
“Only one change would do me any good,” he replied gloomily, “and that would be to get out of this particularly vile universe.”
Radnor looked round his well ordered, bustling establishment and smiled.
“It isn’t as bad as all that.”
Triona shrugged his shoulders and spanner in hand turned to the car he was doctoring, without a reply.
A few days afterwards Radnor said:
“We’re going to be married in August, and I don’t mind saying it’s mostly thanks to you.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Triona. “I’ll stick it out till then.”
“And then?”
“I’ll have the change you’ve been talking of.”
Radnor laughed. “You’ll let me have a bit of a honeymoon first, won’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” replied Triona. “You can have your honeymoon.”
The weakening incentive to life would last till September. He would make it last. It was now the beginning of June. Three months or so more wouldn’t matter. To carry on a meaningless existence further would be absurd. Indeed, it would be immoral. Of that, for some time past he had convinced himself.
England ran motor-mad that summer. It awoke to find war restrictions removed, roads free and petrol to be had for the buying. In its eagerness to race through a beloved land closed up for years and view or review historic spots of loveliness, and otherwise to indulge in its national vagabond humour it cared little for the price of petrol. The hiring garages, in anything like tourist centres, found their resources strained. Radnor bought another car, and still had more orders than he could execute. He drove one car himself.
It was a soft June evening. Triona sat at the wheel of the great antiquated touring-car to which he had given its new lease of life, driving homewards from the neighbourhood of the Great Junction Town. He had taken a merry party that day some hundred and fifty miles through the tenderest greenery of early summer, through dark gorges with startling shadows, through cool lanes, over hills in the open sunshine; and, in the sweetness of the evening, he had put them down at the place whence they had started. For all his mood of despair, he had enjoyed the day. The poet in him had responded to the eternal call of the year’s life laughing in its gay insolence of youth. Since nine in the morning the sweet wind of the hills had swept through his lungs and scenes of loveliness had shimmered before his eyes.
Alone at the wheel, he thought of the passing day of beauty. Was it not worth living—just to enjoy it? Was it not worth living—just to translate into words, if only for the sake of the doing, the emotion of that enjoyment? He had passed through a beech wood, a world of pale emerald, like fairy seas, above, and a shimmer of blue-bells below as though the sky had been laid down for a carpet. . . .
He drove slowly and carefully. The car had done its good day’s work. It was knocking a bit, like an old horse wheezing in protest against over-estimation of its enduring powers. He had tried it perhaps too high to-day. He loved the re-created old car, as though it were a living thing. A valiant old car, which had raced over awful roads in Flanders. It was a crazy irritation that he could not pat it into comfort. Nursing it with the mechanician’s queer tenderness, he came to the straight mile, near home, of road on the mountain side, with its sheer drop into the valley, ending at the turn known as Hell’s Corner, at which the overwrought doctor, on the night of mad adventure, had lost his nerve. Just past the corner branched the secondary road to Fanstead, for the great road swept on by the expiring end of Pendish village; but by walking from Pendish, as he had done on the day of the aforesaid adventure, through lanes and fields, one cut off a great bend of road and struck it on the fair-mile beyond the turn. And now a few hundred yards from the corner the engine gave trouble. He descended from his seat and opened the bonnet. He discovered a simple matter, the choking of a plug. The knocking, he knew was in the cardan shaft. He would have to replace the worn pin. While cleaning out the choked plug with a piece of wire and blowing through it to clear it from the last fragment of grit, he wondered how long it would take to have the spare pin made. He was going out again the day after to-morrow. Could he risk the old car? To-morrow he would take her down and see for himself the full extent of the trouble. Meanwhile he screwed the plug on again, shut down the bonnet, cranked up the starting handle and jumped up beside the wheel.
But just as he put in the low gear, his eyes were riveted on a familiar figure some twenty yards away, walking towards him. For a moment or two he remained paralysed, while the old-fashioned gears crunched horribly. There she advanced slim, erect, in Tussore silk coat and skirt, a flash of red bow at the opening of her blouse. The car began to move. At that instant their eyes met. Olivia staggered back, and he read in her bewildered gaze the same horror he had last seen in her eyes.
What she was doing here, on this strip of remote road, he could not understand. Obviously she had not expected to find him, for she looked at him as though he were some awful ghost. He changed gear, went full speed ahead and passed her in a flash. Then suddenly, the command of doom shot through his brain. This was the end. Now was the end that should have come, had he not been a coward, months ago. He deliberately swerved off the road and went hurtling over the hill-side.
Olivia staring, wide-eyed, wondering, at the racing car, saw it happen. It was no accident. It was deliberate. Her brain reeled at the sudden and awful horror. She swayed to the bank and fainted.
A two-seater car, a young man and woman in it, came upon her a few moments later and drew up. The woman ministered to her and presently she revived.
“There has been a horrible accident,” she explained haggardly. “A car went over—you can see the wheel marks—Oh my God!”
She pointed. A column of smoke was rising from the valley into the still evening air. She scrambled to unsteady feet, and started to run. The young man detained her.
“The car will take us quicker. Maggie, you drive. I’ll stand on the footboard.”
They swiftly covered the hundred yards or so to the scene of the catastrophe. And there thirty feet below in the ravine the old car was burning amid the heavy vapour of petrol smoke.
“Quick,” cried Olivia, “let us get down! He may still be alive.”
The young man shook his head. “Not much chance, poor devil.”
“Did you know him?” asked the lady.
“It was my husband,” cried Olivia tragic-eyed.
They all plunged down the slope, the young man going straight in the ruts of the leaping car. Olivia, after a fall or two, ran gropingly to side levels, catching hold of bushes to aid her descent, her brain too scorched with the terror of that which lay below, for coherent thought.
Again her light, high-heeled shoes tripped her on the smooth grass and she slithered down a few yards. And then, as she steadied herself once more on her feet, she heard a voice from behind a clump of gorse:
“Just my damned luck!”
Her knees shook violently. She wanted to shriek, but she controlled herself and, staggering round the gorse bush, came upon Alexis, seated on a hummock, his head between his hands. He looked up at her stupidly; and she, with outspread fingers on panting bosom:
“Thank God, you’re not dead.”
“I don’t know so much about that,” said he, rising to his feet.
The young woman of the car who had been following Olivia more or less in her descent, appeared from behind the bush.
She, too, thanked God. He had been saved by a miracle. How had he escaped?
“A providence which looks after idiots caused me to be hurled out of the car at the first bump. I fell into the gorse. I’m not in the least bit hurt. Please don’t worry about me.”
“You must let us drive you home—I’ll call my husband,” said the young woman.
“Thank you very much,” said he, “but I’m perfectly sound and I’d rather walk; but this lady seems to have had a shock and no doubt——”
The young woman, perplexed, turned to Olivia. “You said this—gentleman—” for Alexis stood trim in brass-buttoned and legginged chauffeur’s livery—“you said he was your husband.”
“A case of mistaken identity,” he replied suavely. Olivia, her brain in a whirl, said nothing. The young woman advanced a few steps and coo-eed to the young man who had just reached the ravine. As he turned on her hail, she halloed the tidings that all was well.
“He’ll be here in a few minutes,” she said.
They stood an embarrassed trio. Alexis explained how the steering-rod, which had given him trouble all day, had suddenly snapped. It had been the affair of a moment. As for the car, it was merely a kind of land ark fitted with a prehistoric internal combustion engine. Insured above its value. The proprietor would be delighted to hear the end of it.
The young man joined them, out of breath. Explanations had to be given da capo. Again Good Samaritan offers to put their two-seater at the disposal of the derelicts. With one in the back seat they could crowd three in front. They were going to Cullenby, twenty miles on, but a few miles out of their way, if need be, were neither here nor there. A very charming, solicitous, well-run young couple. Olivia scarcely knew whether to shriek at them to go away, or to beg them to remain and continue to save a grotesque situation.
Presently Triona repeated his thanks and declined the proffered lift. Walking would do him all the good in the world; would steady his nerves after his calamitous bump. The young man eyed him queerly. It was a strange word for a chauffeur.
“But if you would take this lady,” said Triona again.
Olivia recovered her wits.
“I will walk too, if you don’t mind. I’m only a mile from home. And this gentleman is really my husband.”
“If we can really do nothing more?” The young man raised his hat.
“A thousand thanks for all your kindness,” said Olivia.
The very mystified young couple left them and remounted the hill.
The subjects of their mystification stood for a while in silence. Presently Olivia, whose limbs not yet recovered from the shock trembled so that her knees seemed to give her no support, said:
“Don’t you think we might sit down for a little?”
“As you will,” said Alexis, seating himself on his hummock.
She cast herself down on the slope and closed her eyes for a moment.
“You did that on purpose,” she said at last. “You don’t suppose I believe the story of the broken steering-rod?”
He smiled with some bitterness. Fate was for ever against him. The moment they met in this extravagant way, there started up the barrier of a lie.
“I couldn’t very well scare those young folks with a confession of attempted suicide, could I? After all, the naked truth may at times be positively indecent.”
“Then you intended to do it?”
“Oh, yes,” said he. “But it ended, like every other Great Adventure I’ve attempted in my life, in burlesque. I assure you, that when I found myself pitched into this clump of gorse and able to pick myself up with nothing worse than a gasping for breath, I—well—the humiliation of it!—I cursed the day I was born.”
“Why did you do it?” she asked.
She had scarcely regained balance. The situation seemed unreal. But a few minutes ago he had been far from her thoughts, which were concerned with the woman to whose possibly dying bed she had been summoned, with the dreary days at Medlow now that Blaise Olifant had gone, with the still beauty of the hills and their purple sunset shadows. And now, here she was, alone with him, remote from the world, conversing as dispassionately as though he had returned from the dead&............