“On the other hand, I knew a Russian on exactly the same lay as your husband, a fellow Krilov, a fine chap—I ran into him several times—who was rather keen on taking me into his confidence. And one or two of the things he told me were so identical with your husband’s experiences, that it seems they must have hunted in couples.”
“Oh, no, he was on his own, I assure you,” said Olivia.
“Anyhow, I’m keen to meet him,” said Onslow, unaware of the growing fear behind the girl’s dark eyes. “I only came home a month ago. Somebody gave me the book. When I read it I went to my friend Rowington and asked about Alexis Triona. That’s how I’m here.”
Presently, noticing her air of constraint, he said apologetically, “You must be fed up with all this ancient history. A wanderer like myself is apt to forget that the world is supposed to be at peace and is even rather bored with making good the damage of war.”
Olivia answered as well as she could, and for the rest of the interminable meal strove to exhibit her usual gay interest in the talk around.
But her heart was heavy with she knew not what forebodings. She could not see Alexis, who was seated on the same side and at the other end of the long table. She felt as though the benevolent gold-spectacled man had deliberately convened an assembly of Alexis’s enemies. It was a blessed relief when the ladies rose and left the men; but in the drawing-room, although she was talking to Lady Aintree, most winningly gracious of women, her glance continuously sought the door by which the men would enter. And when they came in his glance, for the first time in their married life, did not seek or meet hers. She scanned his face anxiously. It was pale and drawn, she thought, and into his eyes had crept the furtive look of a year ago which happiness, she thought, had dispelled for ever. He did not come near her; nor did Wedderburn and Onslow; nor did the two latter talk to him; he was swallowed up in a little group at the further end of the room. Meanwhile, the most up-to-date thing in bishops sank smilingly into a chair by her side, and ridden by some ironical Imp of the Inapposite described to her a visit, in the years past, to the Castle of Schwöbbe in Hanover, where dwelt the Baron von Munchausen, the lineal descendant of the famous liar. A mythical personage? Not a bit. Munchausen was one of Frederick the Great’s generals. He had seen his full-length portrait in the Rittersaal of the old Schloss. Thence he began to discourse on the great liars of travel. Herodotus, who was coming more and more into his own as a faithful historian; John Mandeville; Fernando Mendez Pinto, a name now forgotten, but for a couple of centuries a byword of mendacity; Gemelli Carreri, the bed-ridden Neapolitan author of a Voyage Round the World; the Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela who claimed to have ridden a hippogriff to the tomb of Ezekiel; George Psalmanazar, who captivated all London (including so level-headed a man as Samuel Johnson) with his history of the Island of Formosa and his grammar of the Formosan language; de Rougemont, the turtle-riding impostor of recent years; and the later unfortunate gentleman whose claim to have discovered the North Pole was so shockingly discredited. The bishop seemed to have made a hobby of these perverters of truth and to look on them (as in theological duty bound), wriggling through the lake of fire and brimstone, in the light of Izaak Walton’s counsel concerning the worms threaded on the hook, as if he loved them. Then there were the notorious Blank and Dash and Dot, still living. Types, said he, of the defective criminal mind, by mere chance skirting round the commonly recognized area of crime.
Olivia, with nerves on edge, welcomed the matronly swoop of Mrs. Rowington.
“My dear Bishop, I want to introduce you——”
He rose, made a courtly bow to Olivia.
“I’ll read your lordship’s next book of travel with great interest,” she said.