Her overstrained soul gave way. She broke into uncontrollable crying and sobbing, her little dark head on the blanket by Myra’s side. And after a little came incoherent words.
“I’ve lost him—He doesn’t care for me any more—He hates me—He tried to kill himself when he saw me—He was driving a car and put it over a precipice—Thank God—a miracle—he wasn’t hurt—But he might have killed himself—He meant to—And it’s all your fault—all your fault—If only you had told me. . . .”
Myra put her thin hand on the dear dark hair and caressed it till the paroxysm was over.
“I loved a thing that was scarcely a man till the day of his death, for I had memories, dearie, of him when he was a man to be loved. You’ve got a living man for a husband. And you loved yours as much as I loved mine. And he’s a living and suffering man. Go to him—” her hand still played feebly caressing the black mass of her hair. “Fate has brought you together again. He’s your man, whom you vowed to help in sickness or in health. I kept mine in sickness. Thank God, your man’s sickness is nothing like mine. Go to him, dearie. Humble yourself if need be . . . I’ve been very ill. I’ve thought and thought and thought—I’ve an idea that illness clears one’s brain—and all my thoughts have been for you. For me there’s nothing left. I’ve thought of him and you. I’ve thought of what he has done and what you have done—And, with all his faults, he’s a bigger human being than you are, dearie. Go to him.”
Olivia raised a tragic face.
“How can I? He doesn’t want me.”
“A man doesn’t try to kill himself for a woman he doesn’t want. You had better go to him.”
And Olivia went. She slipped out of the house at eleven o’clock, after a couple of hours of wrestling with ugly and vain devils. Who was she, after all? What had she done to add a grain to the world’s achievement? What had she found in her adventure into the world that had been worth the having save the love of the man that was her husband? Many phases of existence had passed procession-wise through her life. All hollows and shams. The Lydian galley, with its Mavennas and Bobby Quintons. The mad Blenkirons. The gentle uninspiring circle of little Janet Philimore. The literary and artistic society for the few months of Alexis’s lionization—pleasant, but superficial, always leaving her with the sense of having fallen far short of a communion that might have been. Nothing satisfying but the needs and the childish wants and the work and the uplifting spirit of the one man. And after the great parting what had there been? Her life in Medlow devoid of all meaning—Her six months travel—a feeding of self to no purpose. An existence of negativity. Blaise Olifant. She flamed, conscious of one thing at last positive, and positive for ill. She had played almost deliberately with fire. Otherwise why had she gone back to Medlow? She had brought unhappiness to a very noble gentleman. It had been in his power, as a man, to sweep her off her feet in a weak hour of clamouring sex. He had spared her—and she now was unutterably grateful. For she had never loved him. She could not love him. His long straight nose. She grew half hysterical. Even when he had kissed her she had been conscious of that long straight nose. She withered at the thought.
She slipped out of the house into the soft night. Pendish, with its double line of low, whitewashed, thatched cottages, one a deep shadow, the other clear in the moonlight, lay as still as a ghostly village of the middle ages. The echo of her light footsteps frightened her. Surely windows would fly open and heads peer out challenging the disturber of peace.
She was going to him. Why, she scarcely knew. Perhaps through obedience to Myra. Myra’s bloodless lips, working in the waxen, immobile face lit, if dull glimmer could be called light, by the cold china blue eyes, had uttered words little less than oracular. Myra had been waiting for a sign or a token from her that had never come. She walked through the splendid silence of the country road, beneath the radiance of a moon above the hills illuminating a mystery of upland and vale shrouded in the vaporous garments of the land asleep. Hurrying along the white ribbon of road she was but a little dark dot on the surface of a serenely scornful universe.