“What’s the exact charge they make against my husband?”
To her utmost power she would defend him. Let her know facts.
He explained. There was a mysterious period of ten months. Captain Wedderburn asserted that for four of those months her husband was with the Armoured Column, and for the remaining six he lay wounded in a Russian hospital. Colonel Onslow maintained that those ten months—he had his dates exact—are covered in the book by Alexis Triona’s adventures in Farthest Russia—and that these adventures are identical with those of another man who related them to him in person.
“That’s definite, at any rate,” said Olivia. “But it’s a monstrous absurdity all the same. My husband denied the Russian hospital in my presence. You can tell these gentlemen that what they propose to do is infamous—especially when they learn he is not here. Will you give them my message? To hit a man behind his back is not English.”
Rowington saw burning eyes in a dead white face, and a slim, dark figure drawn up tragically tense. He went home miserably with this picture in his mind. For all her bravery she had not restored his drooping faith in Triona.
And Olivia sat, when he had left her, staring at public disgrace. Against that she could not fight. The man she had loved was a shadow, a non-existent thing; but she bore his name. She had sworn to keep bright the honour of the name before the world. And now the world would sweep it into the dustbin of ignominy. A maddening sense of helplessness, growing into a great terror, got possession of her.
The next morning, when Myra brought in her letters, she felt ill and feverish after a restless night. One of the envelopes bore Triona’s familiar handwriting. She seized it eagerly. It would give some address, so that she could summon him back to make a fight for his honour. But there was no address. She read it through, and then broke into shrill harsh laughter.
“He says he’s going out this morning to fight for the sacred cause of Poland.”
Myra, who was pottering about the room, turned on her sharply. As soon as Olivia was quieter, she sent for the doctor. Later in the day, there came a nurse, and Myra was banished most of the day from the beloved bedside.
Thus it came about that the next morning no correspondence or morning papers were brought into Olivia’s room. And that is why Myra, who preferred the chatty paragraphs to leaders and political news, said nothing to her mistress of a paragraph stuck away in the corner of the paper. It was only a few lines—issued by the police—though Myra did not know that—to the effect that a well-dressed man with papers on him giving the name of John Briggs had been knocked over by a motor-lorry the previous morning and had been taken unconscious to University College Hospital.