The Tale of Triona. William John Locke

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СКАЧАТЬ and break her to bits. … He was a good, honest man with fatherly instincts developed by the possession of daughters of his own, strapping red-cheeked girls, who had stayed soberly at home until the right young man had come along and carried them off to modest homes of unimpeachable respectability. So when he met the tenderness in Olivia’s eyes he mitigated the asperities of his projected discourse and preached her a very human little sermon. While he spoke, Mr. Fenmarch nodded his unhumorous head and stroked the straggling grey hairs on his cheek. When he had ended, Mr. Fenmarch seconded, as it were, the resolution.

      Then Olivia thanked them prettily, promised to avoid extravagance, and, in case of difficulty, to come to them for advice. The final cheque was passed over, the final receipt signed across the penny stamp provided with such forethought, and Olivia Gale entered into uncontrolled possession of her fortune.

      The men rose to take their leave. Olivia held the hand of the burly red-faced man who had been her father’s partner and looked up at him.

      “I know, if you could have your way, you would give me a good hiding.”

      He laughed grimly. “Not the least doubt of it.” Then he patted her roughly on the shoulder.

      “And you, Mr. Fenmarch?”

      He regarded her drearily. “After a long experience in my profession, Olivia, I have come to one conclusion—clients are a mistake. Good-bye.”

      Left alone, Olivia stood for a moment wondering whether, after all, the dusty lawyer had a jaded sense of humour. Then she turned and caught up the cheque and sketched a few triumphant dancing steps. Suddenly, holding it in her hand, she rushed out into the hall, where the men were putting on their overcoats.

      “We’ve forgotten the most important thing, Mr. Trivett. You wrote me something about an offer for the house.”

      “An enquiry—not an offer,” replied Mr. Trivett. “Yes. I forgot to mention it. A Major somebody. Wait——” He lugged out a fat pocket-book which he consulted. “That’s it. Major Olifant. Coming down here to-morrow to look over it. Appointment at twelve, if that suits you. Unfortunately, I’ve an engagement and can’t show him round. But I’ll send Perkins, if you like.”

      “If the Major wants to eat me, he’ll eat up poor little Mr. Perkins, too,” said Olivia. “So don’t worry.”

      She waited until Myra, the maid, had helped them into their overcoats and opened the front door. After final leavetakings, they were gone. Olivia put up her hands, one of them still holding the cheque, on Myra’s gaunt shoulders and shook her and laughed.

      “I’ve beaten them at last. I knew I should. Now you and I are going to have the devil’s own time.”

      “We’ll have, Miss Olivia,” said Myra, withdrawing like a wooden automaton from the embrace, “the time we’ll be deserving.”

      Myra was long, lean, and angular, dressed precisely in parlourmaid’s black; but the absence of cap on her faultlessly neat iron grey hair and the black apron suggested a cross between the housekeeper and personal maid. She shared, with a cook and a vague, print-attired help, the whole service of the house. The fact of Myra had been one of the earliest implanted in the consciousness of Olivia’s awakening childhood. Myra was there, perdurable as father and mother, as Polly, the parrot, whose “Drat the child” of that morning was the same echo of Myra’s voice, as it was when, at the age of two, she began to interpret the bird’s articulate speech. And, as far as she could remember, Myra had always been the same. Age had not withered her, nor had custom staled her infinite invariability. She had been withered since the beginning of time, and she had been as unchanging in aspect and flavour as Olivia’s lifelong breakfast egg. Myra’s origins were hidden in mystery. A family legend declared her a foundling. She had come as a girl from Essex, recommended by a friend, long since dead, of Mrs. Gale. She never spoke of father, mother, sisters, and brothers; but every year, when she took her holiday, she was presumed to return to her native county. With that exception she seemed to have far less of a private life than the household cat. It never occurred to Olivia that she could possibly lead an independent existence. Her age was about forty-five.

      “They think I’m either mad or immoral,” said Olivia. “Thank God, they’re not religious, or they’d be holding prayer meetings over me.”

      “They might do worse,” replied Myra.

      The girl laughed. “So you disapprove, too, do you? Well, you’ll have to get over it.”

      “I’ve got over many things—one more or less don’t matter. And if I were you, Miss, I wouldn’t stand in this draughty hall.”

      “All that I’m thinking of,” said Olivia, in high good humour, “is that, with you as duenna, I shall look too respectable. No one will believe it possible for any one except an adventuress.”

      “That’s what I gather you’re going to be,” said Myra. If she had put any sting into her words it would have been a retort. But no one knew what emotions guided Myra’s speech. With the same tonelessness she would have proclaimed the house to be on fire, or dinner to be ready, or the day to be fine.

      “Well, if you don’t like the prospect, Myra, you needn’t come,” said Olivia. “I’ll easily find something fluffy in short skirts and silk stockings to do for me.”

      “We’re wasting gas, Miss,” said Myra, pulling the little chain of the bye-pass and thereby plunging the hall in darkness.

      “Oh, bother you!” cried Olivia, stumbling into the passage and knocking against the parrot’s cage outside the dining-room door, and Polly shrieked out:

      “Drat the child! Drat the child!”

      Before entering the dining-room she aimed a Parthian shot at Myra.

      “I suppose you agree with the little beast. Well, the two of you’ll have to look after each other, and I wish you joy.”

      She cleared the dining-room table of the tea things and the whisky and glasses and the superfluous papers, and opened the window to let out the smell of Mr. Trivett’s strong cigar, and crossed the passage to the drawing-room opposite, where a small fire was still burning. And there, in spite of the exultation of her triumph over Mr. Trivett and Mr. Fenmarch, she suddenly felt very dreadfully alone; also just a whit frightened. The precious cheque, symbol of independence, which she had taken up, laid down, taken up again, during her little household duties, fell to the ground as she lay in the arm-chair by the fireside.

      Was her victory, and all it implied, that of a reasonable being and a decent girl, or that of a little fool and a hussy?

      Perhaps the mother whom she worshipped and to whom she had devotedly sacrificed the last four years of her young life was the inspiration of her revolt. For her mother had been a highly bred woman, of a proud old Anglo-Indian family, all Generals and Colonels and Sirs and Ladies, whose names had been involved in the history of British India for generations; and when she threw the Anglo-Indian family halo over the windmills and married young Stephen Gale, who used to stand in the market-place of Medlow and bawl out the bidding for pigs and sheep, the family turned her down with the Anglo-Indian thoroughness that had compelled her mother to lose her life in a plague-stricken district and her father to lose his on the North-West Frontier. The family argument was simple. When you—or everything mattering that means you—have ruled provinces and commanded armies and been Sahibs from the beginning of Anglo-Indian time, you can’t go and marry a man who sells СКАЧАТЬ