The Tale of Triona. William John Locke

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СКАЧАТЬ persisted in walking about the draper’s shop in Old Street, established by his grandfather, his family consorted, not with the gentry of the neighbourhood, but with the “homely folk” such as the Trivetts and the Gales. His daughter, Lydia, and Olivia had been friends in the far-off days, although Lydia was five years older. She was tall and creamy and massive and capable, and had a rich contralto voice; and Olivia, very young and eager, had, for a brief period, sat adoring at her feet. Then Lydia had married a young officer of Territorials who had been billeted on her father, and Olivia had seen her no more. As a young war-wife she pursued all kinds of interesting avocations remote from Medlow, and, as a young war-widow, had set up a hat shop in Maddox Street. Rumour had it that she prospered. The best of relations apparently existed between herself and old John Freke, who put up the capital for her venture, and desultory correspondence had kept her in touch with Olivia. The fine frenzy of girlish worship had been cured long ago by Lydia’s cruel lack of confidence during her courtship. The announcement of the engagement had been a shock; the engagement itself a revelation of selfish preoccupation. A plain young sister had been sole bridesmaid at the wedding, and the only sign of Lydia’s life during the honeymoon had been a picture postcard on the correspondence space of which was scrawled “This is a heavenly place. Lydia Dawlish.” Then had followed the years of sorrow and stress, during which Olivia’s hurt at the other’s gracelessness had passed, like a childish thing, away.

      Lydia’s succeeding letters, mainly of condolence, had, however, kept unbroken the fragile thread of friendship. The last, especially, written after Mrs. Gale’s death, gave evidence of sincere feeling, and emboldened Olivia, who knew no other mortal soul in London—the real London, which did not embrace the Clapham aunt and uncle—to seek her practical advice. In the voluminous response she recognized the old capable Lydia. Letter followed letter until, with Mr. Trivett’s professional assistance, she found herself the lucky tenant of a little suite in a set of service flats in Victoria Street.

      She entered into possession a fortnight after her interview with Blaise Olifant, who was to take up residence at “The Towers” the following day. Mr. Trivett and his wife, Mr. Fenmarch and Mr. Freke, and the elder Miss Freke, who kept house for her father, saw her off at the station, covering her with their protective wings to the last moment. Each elderly gentleman drew her aside, and, with wagging of benevolent head, offered help in time of trouble. They all seemed to think she was making for disaster.

      But their solicitude touched her deeply. The lump that had arisen in her throat when she had passed out across the threshold of her old home swelled uncomfortably, and, when the train moved off and she responded to waving hands and hats on the platform, tears stood in her eyes. Presently she recovered.

      “Why should things so dear be so dismal?”

      Myra, exhibiting no symptoms of exhilaration, did not reply. As they approached London, Olivia’s spirits rose. At last the dream of the past weeks was about to be realized. When she stepped out of the train at Paddington, it was with the throb of the conqueror setting foot, for the first time on coveted territory. She devoured with her eyes, through the taxi windows, the shops and sights and the movement of the great thoroughfares through which they passed on their way to Victoria Mansions, where her fifth-floor eyrie was situated. Once there, Myra, accustomed to the spacious family house, sniffed at the exiguous accommodation and sarcastically remarked that it would have been better if air were laid on like gas. But Olivia paid little heed to her immediate surroundings. The cramped flat was but the campaigner’s tent. Her sphere of action lay limitless beyond the conventional walls. The walls, however, bounded the sphere of Myra, who had no conception of glorious adventure. The rapidly ascending lift had caused qualms in an unaccustomed stomach, and she felt uneasy at living at such a height above the ground. Why Olivia could not have carried on for indefinite years in the comfort and security of “The Towers” she was at a loss to imagine. Why give up the ease of a big house for poky lodgings halfway up to the sky. A sitting-room, a bedroom, a slip with a bed in it for herself, a bathroom—Myra thanked goodness both of them were slim—and that was the London of Olivia’s promise. She sighed. At last put down Olivia’s aberration to the war. The war, in those days, explained everything.

      Meanwhile Olivia had thrown up the sash of the sitting-room window and was gazing down at the ceaseless traffic in the street far below—gazing down on the roofs of the taxis and automobiles which sped like swift flat beetles, on the dwarfed yet monstrous insects that were the motor-buses, on the foreshortened dots of the hurrying ant-like swarms of pedestrians. It was gathering dusk, and already a few lights gleamed from the masses of buildings across the way. Soon the street lamps sprang into successive points of illumination. She stood fascinated, watching the rapid change from December day into December night, until at last the distant road seemed but a fantastic medley of ever-dying, ever-recurring sounds and flashes of white and red. Yet it was not fantastic chaos—her heart leapt at the thought—it was pregnant with significance. All that rumble and hooting and darting light proclaimed human purpose and endeavour, mysterious, breath-catching in its unknown and vast corporate intensity. Shivers of ecstasy ran through her. At last she herself was a unit in this eager life of London. She would have her place in the absorbing yet perplexing drama into the midst of which she had stepped with no key to its meaning. But she would pick up the threads, learn what had gone before—of that she felt certain—and then—she laughed—she would play her part with the best of them. To-morrow she would be scurrying about among them, with her definite human aims. Why not to-night? Delirious thought! She was free. She could walk out into the throbbing thoroughfares and who could say her nay? She put her hand to her bosom and felt the crackle of ten five-pound notes. To emotional girlhood the feel of money, money not to hoard and make-do for weeks and weeks with the spectre of want ever in attendance, but money to fling recklessly about, has its barbaric thrill. Suppose she let slip from her fingers one of the notes and it swayed and fluttered down, down, down, until at last it reached the pavement, and suppose a poor starving girl picked it up and carried it home to her invalid mother. … But, on the other hand, suppose—and her profound and cynical knowledge of human chances assured her that it would be a thousand to one probability—supposing it fell on the silk hat of a corpulent profiteer! No. She was not going to shower promiscuous five-pound notes over London. But still the crackling wad meant power. She was free to go forth there and then and purchase all the joys, for herself and others, hovering over there in that luminous haze over the Westminster towers of the magical city of dreams.

      She withdrew from the window and stood in the dark room, a light in her eyes, and clenched her hands. Yes. She would go out, now, and walk and walk, and fill her soul with the wonder of it all.

      And then practical memory administered a prosaic jog to her aspiring spirit. Lydia Dawlish was coming to dine with her in the common dining-room or restaurant downstairs. Shivering with cold, she shut the window, turned on the light and sat by the fire, and ordered tea in the most matter-of-fact way in the world.

      Lydia Dawlish appeared a couple of hours afterwards—fair, plump, and prosperous, attired in one of her own dashing creations of hats set at a rakish angle on her blond hair, and a vast coat of dark fur. Olivia, in her simple black semi-evening frock run up by an agitated Medlow dressmaker, felt a poor little dot of a thing before this regal personage. And when the guest threw off the coat, the flowered silk lining of which was a dazing joy to starved feminine eyes, and revealed the slate-blue dinner gown from which creamy neck and shapely arms emerged insolent, Olivia could do nothing but stare open-mouthed, until power came to gasp her wonder and admiration.

      “It’s only an old thing,” said Lydia. “I had to put on a compromise between downstairs and Percy’s.”

      “Percy’s?”

      “Yes—don’t you know? The night club. I’m going on afterwards.”

      Olivia’s face fell. “I thought you were going to spend the evening with me.”

      “Of course I am, silly child. Night clubs СКАЧАТЬ