CHAPTER L.It was mid-day in Berlin on the last day of February. After a succession of stormy days of unusual severity a hard frost set in, which had lasted now nearly a week. The Thiergarten, all save the footpaths, was deep in snow, crisp, glittering, and frozen over. The trees, to the tips of the slenderest twigs, were thickly frosted, and gleaming in their coating of unspotted purity. But the keen, clear sky, which had lent such brilliancy to the frost for some days, was now completely overcast. Another storm was evidently gathering. The heavens wondrously low down were unbroken in their heavy sombreness—a sullen background piled up with heavy banks of purplish-black clouds and vapoury masses of dun-coloured smoke. There was not a break nor a rift—not even a tone of paler gray or lead colour—to show where behind all the sun must somewhere be shining.The contrast between the lowering sky and the trees in their gleaming delicate white splendour made up a wonderful scene for eyes that had never before seen any of the moods of a northern winter. Stella, who had by this time passed the first stage of convalescence, sat by one of the large double windows of their sitting-room in the Eisengau pension looking at the scene with an impassive gaze. A book lay open on a table near her—some needlework had fallen to her feet, where Dustiefoot lay, alternately dozing off into a light slumber, and looking up at his mistress as if longing for some sign of recognition.Ritchie sat near the open fireplace, the only one in the house, and constructed for an English invalid who had stayed there for a couple of years some time previously. There was a glowing coal fire whose lambent flames were joyously thrown back by blue-and-white tiles that lined the fireplace, each with figures more or less classic or symbolical. Ritchie looked up from the sporting newspaper he was reading and stared into the fire for some time with knitted brows. Then his eyes rested on some of these figures with a look of marked disapproval.'I say, Stella.'She turned round with a start.'I wish you would come and tell me what some of these old hags are doing, or what they mean. Just look at this one with a stick something like a stock-whip handle, and a shock of wool on it.'He placed a chair for Stella, and she looked at the figure he pointed out with a slow smile breaking on her face.'Why, that is Clotho, one of the Parcæ—the inexorable sisters, the daughters of night and darkness——''Well, that is all Greek to me. Why do people put three sulky-looking females round a fireplace—one with a rum sort of stick, the other with a ball of twine, and this savage-looking old party with a pair of shears, as if she were going to cut a fellow's jugular vein?''That is hermétier—her trade. You must know the old Greeks had many tales and symbols of man's life. These are the three Fates—mysterious women who preside over our destinies. Clotho with her spindle spins the thread of life, Lachesis measures its length, and Atropos with the abhorred shears cuts it short.''Then, according to that, this is the old vixen who nearly did for you, Stella. Look at the squint of the old banshee.... Thank God she didn't have a snip at you with her shears this time, Stella.''But it would have been so much easier to die than come back bit by bit so weak and shaken. I remember I had an old doll once I was very fond of. Its hair fell off, and the blue came out of its eyes, and its complexion disappeared altogether. Last of all, a kangaroo pup of Tom's ran away with it, and took its head off, and I never found it again. But I got the head of another defunct doll, and I got Tom to fasten it on to Sheba somehow. I feel just as she must have felt. Ted, are you sure that Dr. Seemann did not screw someone else's head on me?''When you talk to me a little I am quite sure he didn't. But, by Jove! Stella, it was an awful close shave. I had just got hack from the old man's funeral, and was going into the dining-room to hear the will read when I got the telegram Maisie' sent, and for a bit I thought to myself, "It's all U P, old man." For though I didn't say much, I could see you were awfully ill all the time. Once on board ship a fellow who was very ill—he hadn't come out of his cabin the first two weeks—was with me on the deck the first day he came up. We had got pretty chummy, for his cabin was next to mine, and I often did little things for him—roused up the doctor once when poor old Lakemann seemed to be choking. Well, we were walking up and down, and he spied you sitting back and looking away over the sea—one of the Miss O'Briens near you. "Who is that lady?" says he, and I saw he was looking at you. "That is my wife," said I. "No," said he, "I don't mean that lively-looking young lady. I could almost tell without being told she is your wife. I mean that one leaning back, looking exactly like a sleep-walker. She must have seen a ghost some time." He would hardly believe I wasn't putting a hoax on him when I said you were my wife, and not Miss Harry O'Brien. Many a time after that I thought you did just look as if you were awake in your sleep—no, sleeping awake. Oh bother, you know what I mean.''Yes; but you must think of something more lively to tell me. I am very tired of myself, Ted.''Oh, but I want to talk a little about yourself, Stella. Always when I want to talk to you, since you got well enough to speak, someone is in the way, or you are not up, or you have gone to bed, or there is a silent fit on you—and old Seemann said to me: "Don't make her talk when she doesn't want to till she is built up"—as if you were a wall or a chimney.''Has it been very dull for you in Berlin all these weeks, Ted?''Well, it didn't matter to me a straw where I was while you were so ill, Stella. But since you've been out of danger I've been toddling round. You see, I know several fellows now. The Avenells came across in the same boat with me. Dick, the eldest of them, is in the British embassy—an attaché they call it. He speaks of his duties, but as far as I can make out, his work is to always wear a neat suit and a flower in his buttonhole, and play scat and billiards. Of course he has to go to dinner-parties and balls, and the worst of it is he often has to dance attendance on a fat old frump half the night, instead of looking after some pretty girl. That's the very worst aspect of diplomacy, he says. And then Farningham here is very good company—at any rate, he's the sort I get on with. And you like Mrs. Farningham?''Yes, very much,' returned Stella, but her voice all the time was perfectly level and emotionless.'Is it Farningham or his wife that is related to the old Professor you met at Dr. Stein's?''It is Mrs. Farningham. Her mother is married to the Professor.''And there was a Dr. Langdale—who came from the Professor's every day, sometimes twice, to ask for you, till you were out of danger—isn't he another relation of Mrs. Farningham's?''Her brother.' She shivered a little as if she were cold, and Ted heaped more coal on the fire.'Ah, now I begin to get things a little straight. I've sometimes been most awfully mixed up. "My wife's father-in-law," Farningham says, "my stepchildren," "my wife's stepfather," "my mother-in-law," "my wife's mother-in-law," "my brother-in-law," "my wife's brother-in-law," just like one of those affairs like a little telescope you turn round, and see different snaps of things spluttering at you every blessed shake. You see Mrs. Farningham's first husband's people are here from America in shoals. It's a jolly good thing there wasn't room for many of them in this pension.''Why—don't you like them?''Oh, I'd like them well enough, if there weren't so many women among them, with not a blessed turn to do but ask a fellow questions—clatter-clatter all the time, like a bell on a runaway steer. There's one of them a tall, thin woman, with eyes like knitting-pins. She's got about twenty hairs on her scalp, and twenty skewers to keep them in a tiny bob on top of her head, leaving her long, lean neck perfectly bare. I'm not what you'd call a prude, you know, but, by George, the nakedness of that neck gives me a sort of a turn! She writes for two newspapers, and she has a red morocco sort of book, with an indelible pencil, and sometimes she stops in the middle of eating her soup to put something down in this. "I dare not trust my memory, it's so treacherous," she says. "By the Lord," thinks I to myself, "I wish it were so treacherous you'd forget to ask me questions!" Yes, I sit next to her at the table-d'hôte, and there she goes at me hammer and tongs. And the less I know about the things she's interested in, the more I catch her using the indelible pencil on the sly. "Now, Mr. Ritchie, you are laughing at me, when you say youneverheard of Raphael or Michael Angelo," she'll say, screwing her long neck round above my head, like a native companion in a fit. Ah, she's yards taller than I am. Wait till you see her. And there Farningham sits on the opposite side of the table, grinning at me like a negro minstrel. Let me see, she's his wife's first husband's first cousin's aunt once removed. Now what relation would you say she is to Farningham?''I really haven't the faintest conception,' returned Stella, with a little smile.'No more has he. But she calls him Charles, and speaks to him solemnly about the privileged classes in England. You know he is to be Sir Charles F. when his governor dies. And then she reminds him of things that happened to his wife's first husband, as if he were the one, you know. Now, I call that deuced awkward; at any rate, it might be in many cases. I dare say it would be more damaging to the other fellow though, if Farningham had been the first husband. They say Mrs. Farningham's eldest boy by her first husband will be a millionaire when he is twenty-one; but he is a delicate little chap. Am I talking too much, Stella?''Oh no; it's rather amusing. I thought by something Mrs. Farningham let fall that some of her American connections were a little trying. But she did not say much; she's very loyal to them.''She's a regular trump. She says the right thing to everybody; and she's like you, Stella, she never gets the least ruffled—never sticks her back up, but takes everything as if it were rather fun. She had a bad illness in Dresden, but she has got over it so well—she's better than she was before. I wish you were like that. What does old Seemann mean by some mischief before the fever came on? Was it—was it that shock, Stella? You know what I mean.'She put up her hands to her head wearily. 'I know what you mean, Ted. But there was something besides that: and the day I was taken ill it came all over again, but worse; only nothing seems very bad now. I do not think I should talk about things that used to hurt me. It cannot be helped any more; nothing can that has gone really wrong.' She gave a long, low sigh, and lay back with closed eyes.'Don't say that, Stella, please,' said Ted gently. 'It was awfully steep to think I was the cause of all when your life hung on a thread. I used to go to the opera and places; but often I didn't know whether I was standing on my head or my heels.''You are not to blame for my illness, Ted. If anyone is to blame, it is Laurette; but I myself most of all. Oh, I don't mean what she concealed about you.'Ted looked perplexed, but he would ask no questions; and, indeed, he attributed Stella's words to some confusion left by the fever. It may be noted in passing, that Stella did not once suspect him of any complicity in the imposition that had wrecked her life. Only at this period she would have rejected the word 'wrecked' as being too strong. Everything had shrunk so inconceivably. It was as though nothing mattered very much, if only one were left in perfect quiet.'Dr. Seemann is to come only every second day now, he told me,' said Ted, in a cheerful voice. 'What a stunning old chap he is! The best fever doctor in Berlin, they say; and you can't easily beat that. It was the Professor who saw to his attending you.'There was silence for a few moments, and then Stella said very slowly:'Do you know when Dr. Langdale came to Berlin?' She named him without the least tremor.'No; but I remember the first time I noticed him particularly. It was two weeks after I came back. I was at the opera-house, with Dick Avenell. We went out into the wide passage behind the boxes, and there Dick met a couple of very lively little French ladies. I don't think they were any better than they ought to be, you know—nothing but a couple of roses and a dagger with diamonds in the handle by way of a bodice. Dick swore I had just come from New Caledonia, and had brought a message from some of their friends there. After a little time, he dodged round a pillar all at once, and left me talking to them alone; at least, they were jabbering away, half in French; and I put in a word edgeways, now and then, in English, but I'm blessed if I could tell what any of us were saying. In the middle of it, who should come round but this Dr. Langdale, with his mother! I had seen him once or twice when he came to inquire after you for the Kellwitzes, and he stared hard at me, I can tell you. I didn't know his name till Farningham told me. It seems he's been in Australia for a little time; and he has been a good deal off colour, too, in Berlin. He went to Vienna last week, to see a chum of his who is making a great noise with some operations on eyes, so Farningham told me. It was lucky the Farninghams came here, a few days after I got back from London. I've gone about with him a good deal, and with Dick and his brother Minimus—comical name, isn't it? Comes of three brothers being at a public school together. Now, why do you suppose Dick left me in the lurch like that? He told me plump it was because he saw an old dowager-aunt of a girl he's sweet on, coming our way, and he couldn't afford to be seen with the little Frenchies. A married man, said he, with no end of tin, can stand any racket; but a penniless attaché has to be deuced proper when on parade. Wasn't that a friendly trick to play a fellow? But he and Minimus are awful fun sometimes. Minimus is supposed to be studying Oriental languages for a "diplomatic career" in India. "People teach languages so much better in Germany," he says; and he goes once a month, perhaps, to an old chap, who swears at him because he is an idle young dog, and makes an appointment with him to come next week to learn some alphabet; but Min. doesn't, as a rule, turn up. He says I'd better give him a billet on my run; he thinks it would be much jollier than spoiling his eyes over rubbishy Eastern pot-hooks. I've often been more miserable than a tuckerless dingo; but still I went to theatres and things. I couldn't nurse you, Stella, you see!''Of course not. It was much better you should go about.''But now I can look after you a bit, Stella; and that little Maisie—by George, she's worth her weight in gold!'There was a knock at the door; and in response to Ritchie's robust invitation to come in, a fair, youthful-looking man entered, slight, and rather under the middle height.'Are you allowed to see people so early in the day, Mrs. Ritchie? Why, this is quite the Darby-and-Joan business—and an open fireplace, I declare!''Yes; and the three inexorable sisters—daughters of Night and Darkness—with the spindle-and-shears business, Farningham!' said Ted, with a dignified wave of his hand towards the tiles.'Why, Ritchie, old fellow, you're coming it strong with the classics. Do tell that to Miss Caroline Sendler. You must know, Mrs. Ritchie, that your husband is carrying on a barefaced flirtation with an elderly lady from America—one related to me in some mystical way!''I remember. She's your wife's first——''Don't—don't, my dear fellow. Let it remain with the dark riddles of a world not realized. You are really making progress now, Mrs. Ritchie?''Oh yes, thank you. To-day, I quite know the people from the trees.''And do you eat anything? Because I have heard dreadful tales on that score.''Now, Stella, tell the truth. Yesterday, you looked at the thigh of a pigeon, and said, "Oh, take it away—it looks so dreadfully pathetic!" And that was your dinner. Yes, upon my honour, Farningham, I had to take it away; and a little while afterwards, when Fräulein—what's her name, the nurse you know?—came in with a little soup, Signora here said, without blinking, "But I've had dinner, you know!"''Ah, but that sort of thing will never do. My wife declares she ate all day when she was getting well. And that reminds me why I came!''Now you really wound me. I thought it was to find out whether I ate anything,' said Stella, with a little of her old sprightliness.'So it was; but merely to knock at the door and inquire, and then ask if my wife might come. But this young man was too lazy to open the door, as Fräulein Hennig does. And you look so jolly and cosy, one can't tear one's self away. Now I know why Amalie and I have given up being domesticated. It's the absence of an open fireplace!'At this juncture another knock was heard at the door, which was speedily opened.'May I come in?' said a flute-like woman's voice.It was Mrs. Farningbam: a tall, graceful woman, with dark eyes and hair, a clear pale skin, a delicately aquiline nose, and an exquisitely chiselled mouth. In feature there was a strong resemblance between her and Langdale, and also at times in expression.'Ah, you are really better this morning!' she said, taking Stella's hand, and giving Ted a friendly nod.'I was on the eve of coming to tell you,' said her husband. 'But I suppose I'd better stay a little longer, and then our family circle will be completed by the babies and—collateral branches! You'd better send me away, Mrs. Ritchie; for I assure you there is absolutely no end to us! And will you forgive me if I carry your husband off? I am always hiring or buying or exchanging horses; and I always get "choused," he says, if I am alone!''Hadn't I better take Dustiefoot for a run, Stella? ... Lose him? That's more than my place is worth. You may be sure I won't come back without him. Out, boy, out!'But though Dustiefoot rose up with alacrity at the sound, he got no farther than the door, till he ran back, and put his head on his mistress's lap, looking up fondly into her face.'Out, Dustiefoot—out!' said Stella; and on this the dog trotted away.When the two men were gone, Mrs. Farningham drew her chair nearer Stella's, saying;'How did you sleep last night, dear?''Tolerably well, thank you, for two or three hours.''And after that?''Oh, then it was the old stupid story. Endless processions of people filing by, as if I were a mummy holding a levée.''And that chamber into which you dare not peep—does it still remain?''Yes; and myriads of voices high and low telling me to pass in—but they get fainter night by night. Now, when I waken up in the soft light and see Fräulein Hennig's quiet face, I do not any longer feel like a terrified child that covers its head and trembles because of ghost stories it has heard.''Ah, that is a great stage. This is your first serious illness. For the first time you know something of the terror of demoralized nerves. But now that you begin to regain tranquillity the worst is over.''Do you think so? I am glad to feel so unmoved; but sometimes—I hardly know why—it frightens me a little that all which used to be so much to me seems so incredibly remote.''Oh, that is merely brain exhaustion. As you get stronger—as you are "built up," to use Dr. Seemann'a words—the old interests will revive.'CHAPTER LI.Mrs. Farningham's prediction was, unfortunately, not verified. Stella's strength slowly returned, but her mental condition remained much the same. As the weeks went on she became, if anything, more silent, more apathetic. The first event that roused her had also the effect of bringing on a feverish attack. It was a great concert given in the Philharmonic Hall in Bernburger Strasse. The conductor and violin soloist were the first of Germany, supported by the full strength of the Philharmonic orchestra. But what made this concert especially interesting was that a 'Sinfonische Dichtung,' the composition of an Italian musician, was to be rendered for the first time—the music being, in fact, still unpublished.The theme is taken from the 'Divine Comedy.' It is the love-tragedy of Francesca Polenta, named da Rimini, and of Paolo Malatesta. It begins in the second circle of hell, guarded by Minos, who, at the entrance, weighs each transgression, and fixes the grade to which the ill-fated spirit shall be thrust. Deep, slow, mysterious waves of music thrilled the mind with a sudden apprehension of the gloom unpenetrated by the faintest ray of light. Then very slowly there rose, as if in the far distance, the howling of that terrible storm of hell—growing fierce and wild and discordant, as if the sea were riven into mountains and abysmal depths by two opposing tempests, and high above all the cries of lost souls.After the storm of the elements and of tortured souls falls shudderingly into silence, the compassionate voice of the poet arises as he asks the two who clung together even in hell itself, 'O anime affannate, venite a noi parlar, s'altri vol niega'—'O ye tired souls, come speak to us, if no one doth forbid it.' Then came the low, anguished, wailing sound of a woman's voice telling her sinful love-story in eternal torment. No sound in life or Nature can surely ever reproduce the piercing pathos of a human voice in hopeless misery like the violin under the touch of a great master.'There is no deeper sorrow than to recall in misery a happy time.' There were many eyes dimmed among the audience when the heart-broken confession was translated into passionate, shuddering music. The symphony from beginning to end made a strange impression upon Stella. And as in the leading theme the musician had cunningly woven the story of Lancelot, whose love, too skilfully told by the old romancer, had been such dangerous reading, so, through all the storm of darkness and despair, through the inexorable remembrance of an hour when overmastering passion trampled duty under foot, Stella was conscious of piercing recollections rising in her brain, which since her illness had no more power to move her than if they were idle spiders' strings. But now they were aflame with vivid terrible life. That woman's voice, pleading, broken, despairing, arose in fitful tones, making the blood start vehemently in her veins—making her shrink and tremble like a creature upon whom suddenly a great burden has been laid.'It has been too much for you,' whispered Mrs. Farningham. 'Let me take you home now....''Yes, I really want to leave before anything else drives away the memory of this.'That night Stella woke, weeping bitterly. In her dreams by night she had been listening over again to the hopeless wailing story told by Francesca to Dante. For days afterwards the fever burned in her veins; and when this passed away she began to avoid people—to shrink from meeting them. She began to walk out a little; but she preferred to go alone to the Thiergarten, with only Dustiefoot as a companion. Even Maisie's presence seemed a trouble to her. When she was with others she had the air of one trying unsuccessfully to understand what was going on around her. She sometimes fell asleep in the daytime, and seemed to wander for years in a strange dark land beset with vague shapes of dread, and then woke up with a start to find her momentary slumbers had not been noticed. She began to confound events with visions of the night. Things that had been said or done in the morning would seem at nightfall to be separated from her by vast tracts of time. She began to have a dread that she could not grasp what people said to her.One forenoon, as she was alone in the Thiergarten, near the great monument of the nation's victory over France, she suddenly met Professor and Mrs. Kellwitz. She looked so timid and startled—almost so confused—on seeing them, that Mrs. Kellwitz's motherly heart was wrung with a sudden dread. She knew that Farningham, her son-in-law, and Ritchie had gone to Homburg together for a week. Yet no one who knew the position of affairs could charge Ted with neglect. He was simply like one who looked on helpless and perplexed. He was always ready at Stella's command; but she had none to give. He was anxious to take her anywhere and everywhere; but she had no wishes except to be left alone. Even a man more gifted with insight and with resources in himself than Ted had ever been, might be excused for taking refuge in the companionship and recreations that were open to him. He was in a foreign land with no occupation beyond amusing himself. And though this is a position that tests the calibre of minds more strongly fortified against the baser temptations of life, yet to one who observed Ritchie closely at this time it would become apparent that the excesses into which he had earlier fallen were due less to inherent weakness than to that Nemesis power which nature often puts forth when but a small part of man's faculties are touched by his daily life.At this time, also, Mrs. Farningham was much engaged among the poor. She had endeavoured, but unsuccessfully, to lead Stella to resume her interest in those she had befriended. But though she gave money lavishly, herself she would not give. She had become conscious of some imminent danger that threatened to engulf her. She avoided contact with all that might arouse her. The chief aim that swayed her at this time was to spare herself morally—to shirk those stormy depths in her nature which threatened ever and anon to surge up and bear her she knew not whither. But on this day Mrs. Kellwitz, struck with a sudden fear, would listen to no excuses. 'You must come home with me,' she said decisively. And then, when they reached the house, she sent a messenger for Maisie, and to tell the Baroness that Mrs. Ritchie was to be her guest for a few days to come.During the day she talked to Stella of many things—of books and pictures and music. Once only the girl showed a dawning interest, a little tremor of emotion, and that was when the Italian composer's 'Sinfonische Dichtung' was named. Towards evening Mrs. Kellwitz made her lie down to rest in her own cosy sitting-room. After a little she fell fast asleep, and the wide dark circles round the eyes, the noble sweep of the brow, the thin outlines of the cheeks, and the lines round the mouth, all bore the stamp of mental languor, of pain temporarily at bay, but not vanquished. Mrs. Kellwitz softly closed the door behind her, and a few minutes afterwards her son Anselm came home.He, also, was much changed. His face had, in the last few months, grown grave and sad—almost stern in repose. Through his stepfather's intimacy with Dr. Seemann, Anselm knew the various phases of Stella's dangerous illness. He knew that latterly the physician was puzzled at the mental rigidity which had fallen on her. He had often seen her at a little distance when she walked in the Thiergarten, and had kept aloof for fear of causing her pain while she was still weak, and also because of the cruel perplexity which entangled their further meeting. Once, indeed, Dustiefoot nearly betrayed him as he sat at a little distance from the bench on which Stella rested—a book in her hand, but not reading. The dog recognised Anselm, and rushed up to him with signs of delight which he would never have bestowed on a stranger. He even rushed backwards and forwards between the two in a joyous way, as if anxious to tell his mistress that an old Lullaboolagana friend was near. But she did not heed Dustiefoot's movements. She sat pale and motionless, with downcast eyes, oblivious to all around her. The sight was more than Langdale could bear. He would have laid down his life to serve her, and yet he dared not speak to her, being in fear lest his face and the sound of his voice would do her harm, and not good. He suffered horribly. Yet he knew that hers was the more intolerable burden. For through all he had work to do, and he was in constant intercourse with people whose knowledge in some one direction exceeded his own—circumstances which serve to make life coherent to the lover of knowledge, even when it has lost its best savour.To-day, when he came in, his mother observed with concern that the fagged, strained look with which she had been struck on first seeing him when she returned with her daughter from Dresden had deepened rather than become less.'You are working too hard, Anselm,' she said, looking at him keenly. 'You are as greedy as ever after knowledge. Those lectures of Virchow at the University, and the honorary work at the hospital, and your writing, and all the rest of it, do not make much of a holiday.''You forget, mother, that I had a long one——''Oh, in Australia! I hope you don't think of going back there. I think there must be something insidious in the climate—something that undermines the constitution. There is that young lady the Professor met there and found so charming. You met her here, did you not?—Mrs. Ritchie, you know——''Yes—what of her?''Well, I should very much like to have your opinion of her. I have made her come here for a few days. She is sleeping just now. I am exceedingly afraid that there is something very much amiss.'Langdale felt a terror of what fresh catastrophe might be in store. The fixed look in Stella's face the last time he saw her at a little distance had haunted him night and day.There is always a shock in hearing our worst fears put into bald, uncompromising words. This Langdale experienced when his mother went on:'It is not her body now, it is her mind. I am sure of that. Perhaps she would have more confidence in an English doctor. If you would see her here in an informal way—she and your stepfather were so friendly, and Amalie, too, is very fond of her. I hardly know what to think of her husband. Amalie says he is devoted to her—but, if that is the case, she cannot be devoted to him. There must be something very much amiss when two young people drift so far apart at a time like this.'Poor Langdale! Few situations could have been more ironical in a quiet, unaggressive way than to sit listening to his mother while she calmly discussed the situation which was the very core of the keenest sorrows and interests in his life. So far nothing could have been gained by taking his mother or sister into his confidence as to the relations which had at one time existed between himself and Stella, and the treachery that had come between them. But he was prepared at any moment to tell them all, and to seek their help in somehow averting that darkest of all misfortunes which seemed stealthily creeping nearer. In the meantime he kept silence. He absented himself from home that evening. Next morning he saw Stella alone in the library which had witnessed their first strange meeting in the Old World.CHAPTER LII.She knew he had returned from Vienna some weeks previously, and she was in a manner prepared to see him in his mother's house. Yet, when they stood face to face, something akin to fear was visible in her manner. Otherwise, he was more agitated than she was. They touched each other's hands, and then they sat facing each other in a silence full of ghost-like memories. Stella was the first to speak.'You have been away, I think,' she said, without looking at him.He told her something of his journey, of his old friend Max, and his rising renown as an oculist. He noticed that her attention wandered, and that she kept nervously playing with her wedding-ring, which hung looser than ever on her finger. There was a pause.'Yes, it must have been very interesting,' she said, looking up—a remark that had no direct relation to what he had last said.Something clutched at his throat and gave him a horrible, choking sensation.She looked into his face fixedly.'Don't, Anselm—don't say anything. I cannot bear it. You do not know. I can bear to speak to you now, because everything is all over and done with. But there are times: you do not know——'She spoke in a low, imploring voice, and then suddenly broke off.'What do I not know, Stella?' he said, mastering himself with a violent effort, and speaking in a calm, unmoved tone.'Oh, it would be stupid to tell you. Let us talk of something else—the weather, for instance.'This little attempt at recovering something of her old gaiety smote him to the heart.'No, I cannot talk of anything else, Stella. I want you to speak to me of yourself. You know, in the old days, we agreed to be friends. We can at least be friends.''Yes, yes; we can be friends,' she said, and then she suddenly began to sob.He kept perfectly silent. When she had recovered composure, he went on in the same calm voice as before.'You know, Stella, friends should help one another. I think there is something you dread. Tell me what it is. I may be able to help you.''Are you afraid, too?' she said quickly. He did not reply immediately. He felt like one groping in the dark, afraid to move too quickly lest harm should be done. Then she added hesitatingly: 'I have been afraid for some time. The voices and the faces have gone away. But there is a silence coming round me, and every day I am more alone—an abyss between me and everyone that none can cross.''No, no, Stella; not so. How many care for you!''But I cannot care for them—not in the old way. There is a strange vacancy, an apathy; it comes creeping, creeping. It is like the tide rising round a ship that has been stranded. O my God, it is horrible—it is horrible!' She covered her face with her hands, and as he looked at her in tearless agony, he trembled as if in an ague fit. 'Do you know what I keep thinking of sometimes?' she said, suddenly looking up. 'Of some old story in Ovid, where one says: "Give me your hand before I am a serpent all over." Those old stories where people were turned into birds, and trees, and reptiles, they are not so terrible as—as some other things.''No, they are not. Only when we see a great danger, the very fact that we see it shows we may try to avoid it.' His voice almost failed him once or twice, for there was something in her tone and manner, even more than in her words, which confirmed his worst fears.'You still keep up your old habit of taking a book with you when you go out,' he said presently, in a lighter tone.'Yes, but I cannot read; is it not strange?' she said, looking at him with wide-opened eyes.'Ah, these times come to one,' he answered. 'Now I am going to tell you something about myself—may I?''Oh, of course,' she said, with more animation than she had yet shown.'Well, I have finished that treatise I was writing at Minjah—about the conditions of factory labour. There is some other work I want to do; and, besides, I have gone quite blunt over the thing. The facts, and I believe their inferences, are correct; but the style I am sure is odious. Now, will you go over the MS. for me?'It was some little time before she spoke, and then it was in a hesitating, broken way, which was quite foreign to her old, quick, spontaneous manner.'I would be so glad to do it, but I lose things so dreadfully—things I have been thinking of. It is as though—I hardly know how to explain it—as if I came on blank spaces in my mind. Words and thoughts drop away out of reach quite suddenly. I am almost afraid to speak to people, lest I might not know what they say. I was afraid even of you. And yet how kind you have always been—except that one letter. But it was because it was wickedly—hurt—and the other one I never got. No, I never got it—never.''But about this work I want you to do for me, Stella?' he answered. The clear, harmonious intonations of his voice were lost in a constrained huskiness; but though his heart was throbbing wildly with fierce and contending emotions, his self-possession was outwardly unbroken. 'It is very important I should get the help of some friend; and there is no one whose aid I care to ask but yours. It does not in the least matter about your taking a long while over it. Do only a page or two at a time.''I will try to do it: but I will not let anyone see it, for fear it may be wrong. I will try not to make mistakes; but I do not know. It is what you were writing at Lullaboolagana?''Yes; and there is one thing more I am going to ask you. There is a convalescent home for little children on the northern outskirts of the town. My mother knows it. Will you let her take you there?''Oh, Anselm—no! They will be pale and miserable. They will hurt me; and when things hurt me.... Ah, you do not know how dreadful it is!' and a look of helpless fear came into her face, which pierced him like a sword.Before he could trust himself to answer this objection, she went on, sometimes speaking in a low, hurried voice, at others very slowly, with a curious hesitation, as if the words she sought eluded her, while often she used terms that but approximately expressed what she meant.'Sometimes at night I keep thinking of a poor half-crazy Welshwoman who used to wander about, some years ago. She had a great dislike to staying in houses. She always said there were adders in them. She was not so—so badly hurt in her mind, you know, that she ought to be locked up. You know, Anselm, it is true, when people lose everything—when they forget the meaning of all around them—they are locked away like the dead; only they are not quite like the dead. Johanna, that was her name.... Sometimes she came to Fairacre, and mother and Kirsty were very kind to her.'She broke off abruptly, and gave a long shuddering sigh.'Ah, after all, you have never been at Fairacre!' she said, fixing her great mournful eyes on his face, after a pause. 'It was near the vine-arcade the scarlet fairy roses grew I was to wear the day you came, when thePâquerettereached port. You always liked me to wear roses; and when I flew up to meet you, a bird began to sing as if it were wild with joy.... Have I hurt you?' she said falteringly, as he rose and turned away abruptly, his lips trembling and ashy pale. He could not speak.She stole up to him with a frightened air, and, looking into his face, she saw that his eyes were wet. She gave a little low moan, and put her hand on his arm.'Anselm, what can I say to make you glad? You were always so serene end hopeful.... Do you remember what I said when I sent you those dreadful letters that have been burnt into my brain?—or did I dream it? I shall do what you think is right.... I am not dreaming now!'He turned quickly, raising his hands to draw her to him; but with a strong effort he resisted the impulse. He noticed that, since she began to speak to him, something of the tension in her face had relaxed.'Tell me about this poor woman, Stella, who used to come to Fairacre,' he said, in as calm a voice as was possible to him.'About Johanna? The last time she came, she was very strange. She said that when she stayed inside speckled adders crawled round her at night, saying, "'Drown yourself—drown yourself!' There are three under the table now!" That was what she said, and then mother tried to soothe her. She said if they were there, we would see them. But Johanna laughed: it was such a sharp—no, a shrill laugh. I laughed like her the other night, and it sounded horrible in the silence. Poor Dustiefoot was frightened; he began to growl at my door. He lies on the mat outside.... You are not angry with me, are you?' She looked in his face with confused timidity.'Ah, no, Stella; why should I be?' he said in a choked voice.She passed her hand wearily over her eyes.'Well, I have not finished. There is some reason why I began to tell you. Ah, it was about poor Johanna. Yes, she laughed and said the adders wouldn't let anyone like mother see them. They were no fools. "Does it not say in the Word of God, 'Be ye wise as serpents'?" That was what she said. "The way they all came staring at me!" she said. "You see, adders have a great advantage over us in that way, ma'am, having no eyelashes. If I prayed at all, I think I would pray that these beasties might be kept from me." Then mother held her hand, and said, "But you do still pray, I hope?" "Well, no, ma'am," she said, "not lately. You see, there's some that the Lord lets off His hands altogether. If they pray, He turns a deaf ear to them; if they are in want or sickness, He gives them no wine or mead out of a crystal cup." ... She did drown herself at last,' she ended, in an awe-stricken tone, looking into Anselm's face with startled, wide-opened eyes.'Yes, but about the convalescent children?' he said gently.'Oh, I know now why I told you about this poor woman,' she answered quickly. 'I am terrified of being hurt, because when I am, as I was so badly with the music at the Philharmonic Hall, I—I think it would be better—oh, so much better—to be quite at rest. Some days ago I walked by the canal——' She suddenly stopped, a half-guilty look in her face.'You have been awake very much of late, Stella,' he said, betraying no sign of anguish, save in the constrained accents of his voice.'Yes; but that is better than to be made to sleep. Often when I am asleep, everything I touch falls in atoms—everything crumbles away. Then I dream something dreadful has happened, and I am glad to wake. But when I am wide awake, it is worse—oh, much worse—than any dream!''But, Stella, these children are not miserable and wretched. It is not a great hospital; there are never more than fourteen. It is a private place, founded by seven ladies—my mother is one of them—for children who have all but recovered from illness. The greatest joy you could give them would be to tell them a little Australian story, or take them out for a drive in the country two or three at a time. My mother and I took four of them up to Treptow the other day. It is on the river, and there is a large coffee-room quite close to the Spree. They sat by the window eating cakes and seeing the boats and barges sail by, and then we went out into the wood behind Treptow, and every little weed they saw gave them joy. You have plenty of time.''Plenty of time,' she repeated vacantly, and then a little afterwards, as if the meaning of the words had gradually dawned on her, 'There is endless time—and it is all empty and terrible, and full of crumbling things. I like to go outside because I feel as if I were then away from the corridor—the dreadful corridor. You do not know what I mean by that.''No; but you can explain it to me, Stella.'His calm, even voice seemed to allay her rising agitation. She passed her hand slowly over her brow before answering.'You know, for weeks back when I try to read, or write, or even sew—whatever it is I try to do slips away from me; even when people talk round me their voices go a long way off. And then I am in a wide, great, empty corridor, where my footsteps make a strange sound. But I do not mind that. It is the long, dark passages that wind out of it. I feel as if I were dragged along them against my will, and at the end there are great cages with iron bars in front, strong iron bars, for there are wild creatures behind them.'She looked up into his face with a terror in her eyes that made the perspiration stand out in cold drops on his forehead.'Dear Stella, do not think of them,' he said in a low, imploring voice.'Ah, but you do not know—they are not savage creatures out of the woods. They are human beings—they are women, some of them; but they beat at the bars and shriek to get out. When I hear them I feel as if I must shriek too. They are mad—they must be kept there because they are more dangerous than wild beasts. Ah, my God! how they terrify me! I keep silent. I say nothing of all this, because people would be afraid of me as I am of these cages, and—and those that are in them.''No, no, Stella. That is only how people feel after they have had a terrible illness like yours. To-morrow you must come to see these children——''Ah, the children. They have been ill. You are nursing them back to life again—how cruel that is often! They might have died while the world seemed still beautiful, and they could pray to God, "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name." Think what it is, Anselm, to outlive all that—to know that there is no Father in heaven—that there are people who must be put into iron cages—that you see it coming nearer every day—a terror you cannot name!''Stella, Stella, think how wrong it would be to let ourselves sink under one idea—one aspect of life in that way! It is only because your illness still hangs about you that you can have such strange thoughts. If these children were neglected now, when their parents are unable to care for them properly, their constitutions might be injured—impaired for life. It is not that they would die—for most creatures, having once gained a footing in the world, make up their minds to stay if possible. It is that the seeds would be laid for lingering maladies—perhaps for madness itself. That is what you can do, Stella—help to save some people from the wretchedness of lives hopelessly mutilated by disease. I know there are some forms of misery we can do nothing to lessen. It is all the more shame to us if we do not help in things within our reach.'There was a little touch of sternness in his voice. It hurt him to assume it, but the tone seemed to bring his words home to her more directly.'You wish me to go to see them? Ah, you think I can speak to them—that they will love me as the children used to——''I do not think it—I know it. Once you told me that you were wilful. I did not quite believe it then, but now you are, a little—only you will not persist. Now let me tell you about some of these little ones.'He made her sit in a large armchair, and placed a cushion under her head, and then sat on a low chair facing her, and told her one or two of those commonplace, everyday incidents in the annals of the poor which come within the ken of all who visit or work among them.Only he did not let his narrations drop into monologues. He put them in a way that made her ask questions, that roused and interested her. The last child he spoke of was a little one named Gretchen. She had been run over in the streets, taken into one of the hospitals, and discharged while still very weak. At home she was inadequately fed, and when his mother found out about her a tumour had formed under one knee, which threatened to cripple her for life. This had been removed, and she was now in the Home—a plump, merry little thing, who gave names of her own to everyone.'What do you suppose she calls me, Stella?' he asked.She smiled. 'One who knows how to scold sometimes?''No; something with more unconscious irony than that. "The doctor who has no medicine." Of course a doctor of that sort is all the more welcome to Greta; but, still, the title has its own little stroke of malice when one knows how applicable it often is. And then my mother has a distinctive name, too. One of the other little ones said one day enthusiastically: "Oh, she is an angel!" "Yes, she is," answered Greta; "an angel with a basket." The matron overheard them and told my mother, who is very proud of the definition, for, after all, as she says, how much better it is to have a basket in this world, if you are an angel, than a pair of wings! Yes, she is a child, take her all in all, out of a thousand. So tender, and bright, and unselfish. She has the gift of a sunny nature, and yet she has so much imagination, and she can do so many things—and, by this time, if no one had helped her, she would be either dead or a cripple for life.''How old is the dear little thing?''Nine last month. My mother has insisted on her staying a few more weeks, so that she may be quite strong. She is knitting a pair of long stockings for Karl, a younger brother. "He is so good and strong, and already he can do many more things than a girl," she told me quite lately. I asked her if she would like to be a boy, and after meditating a little, she said: "No." "Why?" I said. "Because the dear God made me a girl," she answered; and then she added: "And I would wear out my boots so much faster."''I must go to see Greta,' said Stella, smiling. 'Yes, it would have been dreadful if her health had been spoiled,' she said reflectively, after a little pause.Presently Mrs. Kellwitz came in, knitting; and when Stella found that some of the convalescent children were badly in need of clothing, she began to make some garments which Mrs. Kellwitz cut out for her. That evening, when she bade Langdale good-night, she said softly:'I am not going to be wilful. I will do what you wish.'He stood for some moments motionless, while the quick flush that had risen in his face died away. And then he recalled her face and tones during their early interview that day. It was one of those terrible hours which all through a lifetime remain in the memory as if stamped on it by a process apart from ordinary recollection.He took a letter out of his pocket-book that he had received on the preceding day from Mrs. Tareling. He had written to her through a lawyer, stating that he had possession of one of the letters he had left in her hands for Miss Stella Courtland—naming the day and even the hour. One had been mutilated, the other stolen, and a fraudulent document had been put with the falsified one she had delivered. He awaited any explanation she might have to offer before putting the matter into the hands of an eminent firm of Melbourne lawyers for prosecution. The reply was an abject confession. Of course, it was quite false—as abject confessions extorted by fear are apt to be. It was her overwhelming love for her only brother—the adjective 'only' twice underlined. He had loved Stella Courtland passionately from boyhood. She had at one time favoured his suit. (N.B.—It is curious to notice how naturally people slip into this kind of English when they are telling lies.) Then she had at a moment's caprice rejected him. The effect on the only brother was terrible. But still he had ample grounds for hope. Then came Miss Courtland's visit to Lullaboolagana, her return to Monico Lodge. In picturesque English came a graphic description of the terrible temptation to remove a rival from her brother's path. Laurette rose to the occasion. She spoke in such exaggerated accents of remorse, one might imagine she had used a poisoned bowl. Yes, she had been weak—desperately weak and erring, as only a poor foolish woman can be when blinded by affection, etc., etc. But, after all, the past was irrevocable. What but harm could come of stirring up strife?Langdale asked himself the same question with a sinking heart. Here were full and clear proofs of the treachery by which they had been betrayed. But what could any exposure of this base crime avail? It meant vengeance—nothing more. Publicity could not save them a single pang, nor make the future more hopeful, nor help to divert the doom, worse than death, with which he saw Stella threatened. He paced up and down the room, his sight dimmed, a dull throbbing in his temples, as he recalled her looks and tones in the earlier part of their interview. 'I will do what you wish.' His heart gave a leap as he recalled the words. What action should he take to save her from the wild, dark morass into which her life had been turned?He had written, sending his letter through an eminent English lawyer, on the morning that Stella forwarded him those fatal documents—one unsigned, cunningly devised to support the lies that were conveyed by the fragments, diabolically falsified, of his own letter, with the purpose of extorting an admission of guilt. But since then all other thoughts had been lost in agonizing anxiety as to the issue of Stella's illness. That had passed, but a worse calamity threatened her. Could he not save her? Could he not stem the bitter waters that had swept away all the joy and pleasantness of her life, and now menaced reason itself? He had resolved to urge no claim—to make no appeal to the love which he knew was still the strongest emotion that swayed her—while any weakness of shattered health clouded or warped her judgment. But now it seemed as if every day, in which she was left at the mercy of the grief and dark fear that had lodged in her mind, rendered ultimate recovery more doubtful. And what prospect did the future hold for her? Was not the slow, dull contagion of this union, so fraudulently compassed, a greater evil than any alternative that lay open to her? And yet, to a proud, sensitive man whose own experience of life had been early dashed with a woman's infidelity, how unendurable was the thought of any stigma cast on the girl whose honour was more sacred to him than aught else in the world! But, then, there are passages in life of so vital a nature that they must be judged wholly apart from the common ineffectual criticism of common minds. It was one of those subtle and cruel complications in human lives in which no action seems possible that is not charged with evil. At last, in despair, he told himself that he would do what he could, and live from hand to mouth; for the present make no plans beyond the passing day—only, as far as lay in his power, he would watch over and shield Stella from harm—seek to guard her from the stealthy foe that had already sapped some of the outworks of the citadel of reason.Next morning when he went into his mother's sitting-room he found the two in cheerful converse.'Stella is coming with me to our convalescent children this afternoon,' his mother said briskly. She was one of those generous-minded, whole-hearted, actively kind women whose mere presence throws discredit on the darker evils of the world. 'See how rapidly the child sews!' she said, holding up a small garment which Stella had already completed. 'My dear, it is fatal when I find that people can work like this. I am always turning up with a little bundle of second-hand flannel or calico to be made into small petticoats and knickerbockers.''An angel with a basket, in fact, mother,' said her son. And at this they all laughed a little. Langdale noted, with a thrill of gladness, that something of the old look of vivid life had come back into Stella's face.To do some work, and for his sake, because he wished it—this was the chord that had been struck, and gave a quick response. The mere fact of giving expression to the dread that had so long passed 'in smother,' and begun habitually to haunt her, served to lessen her fears. After this, Stella went almost daily to the convalescent children. And daily she went over some of Langdale's MS., altering a word here and there, now and then putting in a different phrase. She feared at first to trust her own judgment, when she felt inclined to make changes, but she gained confidence as she went on. And then something of the fascination of brain-work, of that preoccupation with ideas which takes the mind out of itself, laid hold of her.To think too exclusively of ourselves or our own concerns, even under our best aspects, is, as a rule, to become sad, weary, and discouraged. But to be immured in such thoughts, when the thrill and joy of life are gone, when its best promises are mildewed with disillusion and disappointment, is to poison the very source of sane existence and healthy endeavour. It had been so with Stella, and in the lowest deep of her unhappiness there yet opened the lower deep, that the misery which had overtaken her like a flood was so largely her own doing.Yes; gradually she crept back from the gulf that had threatened to close over her. The little ones that gathered round her, their faces lighting up with pleasure, drew her to them from day to day, and then they would shyly ask for stories of Australia—that strange, far-away land with strange birds and beasts, and unknown trees that never lost their leaves. Sometimes she would write out beforehand one of the little twilight stories she had told at Lullaboolagana, so that she might not hesitate and be at a loss for words when her little audience clustered breathlessly around her. 'The dear lady'—that was the name by which they learned to call her.And then it began to be spring once more—the spring of a northern climate, when Nature gradually wakens from her rigid sleep, when the first early blossoms and the first returning birds—those timid evangels of quickening life—thrill the air with messages, which the heart understands but does not put into words.It was one day early in April. The air had lost its barbarous keenness. The sun shone as if it was getting warm. There were dun-coloured clouds over part of the sky, but between them a wistful azure showed itself, and on the tall, slender birch in the Thiergarten that was opposite Stella's sitting-room a swallow and some linnets were carolling as if they were bent on being marked as the first choristers of the season. Stella had returned from a visit to one of the museums with Professor Kellwitz, and sat by the window as she had entered, in her sealskin coat and toque. As they returned they met Langdale, and he accompanied them as far as the Pension Eisengau. The incident had brought back the first day they met in Berlin with startling distinctness. They had exchanged few words beyond the ordinary salutations. Mrs. Kellwitz and Stella were often together, but she and Langdale met seldomer, and but for a few minutes. Yet these accidental brief meetings surrounded the day on which they took place with an aureole. Stella now sat with lips slightly parted, her hands folded in her lap, looking fixedly before her with a half-startled, dawning sort of expression. Ritchie entered at that moment, and was struck with the air of vividness in her face.'Why, Stella, you will soon be quite yourself again,' he said, leaning against the mantelpiece near where she sat.The colour slowly deepened in her cheeks, and she took off her toque.He suddenly stooped over her, and touched her forehead with his lips. She started as if she were stung. 'You must not do that,' she said, in a peremptory tone.He was deeply wounded, and drew back, looking at her with a startled expression. 'Perhaps I had better not come into the same sitting-room you are in,' he said, in a rougher voice than he had ever used to her before. A look of cold displeasure settled on her face, but she said nothing.'While you were so ill,' he went on in a gentler tone, 'and seemed more miserable if I were about, I kept out of the way. Then, as you got better you were kinder to me; you sometimes drove out with me, and let me do things for you. But now again you hardly speak to me once in two days; and as for laughing or joking——' He noticed a look almost akin to terror creeping into her face, and stopped abruptly. 'Forgive me, Stella, if I have been rough,' he said after a little.Stella had rung the bell, and when Maisie came in she gave her her toque and coat to put away, and asked for her writing-desk. Before she returned an answer to Ted's apology there was a tap at the door, and Mrs. Farningham came in.'Now this is fortunate! I wanted to find you both in,' she said. 'You know, Stella, that my mother and step-father are going to the East about the beginning of May. Anselm tells me that Johnny's lungs need special care. Well, I mean only to stay in England till the beginning of June; I will then join my mother in Egypt. Now, had you not better come with me? You know how these two men will haunt the racecourses from Dan to Beersheba—from May to October.'It had been for some time arranged that the Farninghams and Ritchies would leave Berlin together. The two men were anxious to be in England through the racing season; and their wives, who were neither of them supremely interested in the turf, would thus bear each other company.Stella became very pale and grave.'Well, I think that would be far the best arrangement,' said Ritchie.But Stella did not at once reply.'You see, they could join us in Palestine or Egypt as soon as the St. Leger or whatever the last races they wanted to see were over,' went on Mrs. Farningham. She watched Stella a little curiously, and seeing the anxious, perplexed look in her face, she added, lightly turning to Ted, 'You see, Mr. Ritchie, your wife is not disposed to lose sight of you for so long—but you think the matter over.'And with that she left the two alone once more.'You had better go, Stella,' said Ritchie after a pause.'I do not know,' she answered slowly. She was like one roughly aroused out of a gentle morning dream. A flood of conjectures, of questions, poured in on her; and the old tormenting habit of finding the train of thought suddenly swamped reasserted itself. But one conviction was clear and steady: if she and Ritchie parted, she would never come back to him again.He, poor fellow! was touched, thinking her hesitation was due to concern at the prospect of leaving him to his own devices for so long a period.'Don't be afraid about me, Stella,' he said. 'I made a promise that I would never forget myself in drink again; and I don't mean to put a knife in the contract. I don't take much credit to myself for that; for the more you see of the world, the more there is to open your eyes. We get into a beastly habit of drinking spirits in Australia; but a bottle of good Château Lafite beats such stuff hollow. You sip glass after glass, and, instead of getting stupider, you are more alive.... And then, Stella, while matters are as they are between us, it's easier for me to be out of your sight. You see, if Farningham and I are in England till the end of September, why the year would be up by the time I came to—Palestine, is it? Isn't that the place where the Jews used to play up so before they discovered the Christians? By Jove, you should hear Minimus Avenell talk about the Hebrews!' and Ted laughed at sundry reminiscences.Somehow the sight of Stella so perplexed and silent at the prospect of parting from him for four or five months raised his spirits.
CHAPTER L.
It was mid-day in Berlin on the last day of February. After a succession of stormy days of unusual severity a hard frost set in, which had lasted now nearly a week. The Thiergarten, all save the footpaths, was deep in snow, crisp, glittering, and frozen over. The trees, to the tips of the slenderest twigs, were thickly frosted, and gleaming in their coating of unspotted purity. But the keen, clear sky, which had lent such brilliancy to the frost for some days, was now completely overcast. Another storm was evidently gathering. The heavens wondrously low down were unbroken in their heavy sombreness—a sullen background piled up with heavy banks of purplish-black clouds and vapoury masses of dun-coloured smoke. There was not a break nor a rift—not even a tone of paler gray or lead colour—to show where behind all the sun must somewhere be shining.
The contrast between the lowering sky and the trees in their gleaming delicate white splendour made up a wonderful scene for eyes that had never before seen any of the moods of a northern winter. Stella, who had by this time passed the first stage of convalescence, sat by one of the large double windows of their sitting-room in the Eisengau pension looking at the scene with an impassive gaze. A book lay open on a table near her—some needlework had fallen to her feet, where Dustiefoot lay, alternately dozing off into a light slumber, and looking up at his mistress as if longing for some sign of recognition.
Ritchie sat near the open fireplace, the only one in the house, and constructed for an English invalid who had stayed there for a couple of years some time previously. There was a glowing coal fire whose lambent flames were joyously thrown back by blue-and-white tiles that lined the fireplace, each with figures more or less classic or symbolical. Ritchie looked up from the sporting newspaper he was reading and stared into the fire for some time with knitted brows. Then his eyes rested on some of these figures with a look of marked disapproval.
'I say, Stella.'
She turned round with a start.
'I wish you would come and tell me what some of these old hags are doing, or what they mean. Just look at this one with a stick something like a stock-whip handle, and a shock of wool on it.'
He placed a chair for Stella, and she looked at the figure he pointed out with a slow smile breaking on her face.
'Why, that is Clotho, one of the Parcæ—the inexorable sisters, the daughters of night and darkness——'
'Well, that is all Greek to me. Why do people put three sulky-looking females round a fireplace—one with a rum sort of stick, the other with a ball of twine, and this savage-looking old party with a pair of shears, as if she were going to cut a fellow's jugular vein?'
'That is hermétier—her trade. You must know the old Greeks had many tales and symbols of man's life. These are the three Fates—mysterious women who preside over our destinies. Clotho with her spindle spins the thread of life, Lachesis measures its length, and Atropos with the abhorred shears cuts it short.'
'Then, according to that, this is the old vixen who nearly did for you, Stella. Look at the squint of the old banshee.... Thank God she didn't have a snip at you with her shears this time, Stella.'
'But it would have been so much easier to die than come back bit by bit so weak and shaken. I remember I had an old doll once I was very fond of. Its hair fell off, and the blue came out of its eyes, and its complexion disappeared altogether. Last of all, a kangaroo pup of Tom's ran away with it, and took its head off, and I never found it again. But I got the head of another defunct doll, and I got Tom to fasten it on to Sheba somehow. I feel just as she must have felt. Ted, are you sure that Dr. Seemann did not screw someone else's head on me?'
'When you talk to me a little I am quite sure he didn't. But, by Jove! Stella, it was an awful close shave. I had just got hack from the old man's funeral, and was going into the dining-room to hear the will read when I got the telegram Maisie' sent, and for a bit I thought to myself, "It's all U P, old man." For though I didn't say much, I could see you were awfully ill all the time. Once on board ship a fellow who was very ill—he hadn't come out of his cabin the first two weeks—was with me on the deck the first day he came up. We had got pretty chummy, for his cabin was next to mine, and I often did little things for him—roused up the doctor once when poor old Lakemann seemed to be choking. Well, we were walking up and down, and he spied you sitting back and looking away over the sea—one of the Miss O'Briens near you. "Who is that lady?" says he, and I saw he was looking at you. "That is my wife," said I. "No," said he, "I don't mean that lively-looking young lady. I could almost tell without being told she is your wife. I mean that one leaning back, looking exactly like a sleep-walker. She must have seen a ghost some time." He would hardly believe I wasn't putting a hoax on him when I said you were my wife, and not Miss Harry O'Brien. Many a time after that I thought you did just look as if you were awake in your sleep—no, sleeping awake. Oh bother, you know what I mean.'
'Yes; but you must think of something more lively to tell me. I am very tired of myself, Ted.'
'Oh, but I want to talk a little about yourself, Stella. Always when I want to talk to you, since you got well enough to speak, someone is in the way, or you are not up, or you have gone to bed, or there is a silent fit on you—and old Seemann said to me: "Don't make her talk when she doesn't want to till she is built up"—as if you were a wall or a chimney.'
'Has it been very dull for you in Berlin all these weeks, Ted?'
'Well, it didn't matter to me a straw where I was while you were so ill, Stella. But since you've been out of danger I've been toddling round. You see, I know several fellows now. The Avenells came across in the same boat with me. Dick, the eldest of them, is in the British embassy—an attaché they call it. He speaks of his duties, but as far as I can make out, his work is to always wear a neat suit and a flower in his buttonhole, and play scat and billiards. Of course he has to go to dinner-parties and balls, and the worst of it is he often has to dance attendance on a fat old frump half the night, instead of looking after some pretty girl. That's the very worst aspect of diplomacy, he says. And then Farningham here is very good company—at any rate, he's the sort I get on with. And you like Mrs. Farningham?'
'Yes, very much,' returned Stella, but her voice all the time was perfectly level and emotionless.
'Is it Farningham or his wife that is related to the old Professor you met at Dr. Stein's?'
'It is Mrs. Farningham. Her mother is married to the Professor.'
'And there was a Dr. Langdale—who came from the Professor's every day, sometimes twice, to ask for you, till you were out of danger—isn't he another relation of Mrs. Farningham's?'
'Her brother.' She shivered a little as if she were cold, and Ted heaped more coal on the fire.
'Ah, now I begin to get things a little straight. I've sometimes been most awfully mixed up. "My wife's father-in-law," Farningham says, "my stepchildren," "my wife's stepfather," "my mother-in-law," "my wife's mother-in-law," "my brother-in-law," "my wife's brother-in-law," just like one of those affairs like a little telescope you turn round, and see different snaps of things spluttering at you every blessed shake. You see Mrs. Farningham's first husband's people are here from America in shoals. It's a jolly good thing there wasn't room for many of them in this pension.'
'Why—don't you like them?'
'Oh, I'd like them well enough, if there weren't so many women among them, with not a blessed turn to do but ask a fellow questions—clatter-clatter all the time, like a bell on a runaway steer. There's one of them a tall, thin woman, with eyes like knitting-pins. She's got about twenty hairs on her scalp, and twenty skewers to keep them in a tiny bob on top of her head, leaving her long, lean neck perfectly bare. I'm not what you'd call a prude, you know, but, by George, the nakedness of that neck gives me a sort of a turn! She writes for two newspapers, and she has a red morocco sort of book, with an indelible pencil, and sometimes she stops in the middle of eating her soup to put something down in this. "I dare not trust my memory, it's so treacherous," she says. "By the Lord," thinks I to myself, "I wish it were so treacherous you'd forget to ask me questions!" Yes, I sit next to her at the table-d'hôte, and there she goes at me hammer and tongs. And the less I know about the things she's interested in, the more I catch her using the indelible pencil on the sly. "Now, Mr. Ritchie, you are laughing at me, when you say youneverheard of Raphael or Michael Angelo," she'll say, screwing her long neck round above my head, like a native companion in a fit. Ah, she's yards taller than I am. Wait till you see her. And there Farningham sits on the opposite side of the table, grinning at me like a negro minstrel. Let me see, she's his wife's first husband's first cousin's aunt once removed. Now what relation would you say she is to Farningham?'
'I really haven't the faintest conception,' returned Stella, with a little smile.
'No more has he. But she calls him Charles, and speaks to him solemnly about the privileged classes in England. You know he is to be Sir Charles F. when his governor dies. And then she reminds him of things that happened to his wife's first husband, as if he were the one, you know. Now, I call that deuced awkward; at any rate, it might be in many cases. I dare say it would be more damaging to the other fellow though, if Farningham had been the first husband. They say Mrs. Farningham's eldest boy by her first husband will be a millionaire when he is twenty-one; but he is a delicate little chap. Am I talking too much, Stella?'
'Oh no; it's rather amusing. I thought by something Mrs. Farningham let fall that some of her American connections were a little trying. But she did not say much; she's very loyal to them.'
'She's a regular trump. She says the right thing to everybody; and she's like you, Stella, she never gets the least ruffled—never sticks her back up, but takes everything as if it were rather fun. She had a bad illness in Dresden, but she has got over it so well—she's better than she was before. I wish you were like that. What does old Seemann mean by some mischief before the fever came on? Was it—was it that shock, Stella? You know what I mean.'
She put up her hands to her head wearily. 'I know what you mean, Ted. But there was something besides that: and the day I was taken ill it came all over again, but worse; only nothing seems very bad now. I do not think I should talk about things that used to hurt me. It cannot be helped any more; nothing can that has gone really wrong.' She gave a long, low sigh, and lay back with closed eyes.
'Don't say that, Stella, please,' said Ted gently. 'It was awfully steep to think I was the cause of all when your life hung on a thread. I used to go to the opera and places; but often I didn't know whether I was standing on my head or my heels.'
'You are not to blame for my illness, Ted. If anyone is to blame, it is Laurette; but I myself most of all. Oh, I don't mean what she concealed about you.'
Ted looked perplexed, but he would ask no questions; and, indeed, he attributed Stella's words to some confusion left by the fever. It may be noted in passing, that Stella did not once suspect him of any complicity in the imposition that had wrecked her life. Only at this period she would have rejected the word 'wrecked' as being too strong. Everything had shrunk so inconceivably. It was as though nothing mattered very much, if only one were left in perfect quiet.
'Dr. Seemann is to come only every second day now, he told me,' said Ted, in a cheerful voice. 'What a stunning old chap he is! The best fever doctor in Berlin, they say; and you can't easily beat that. It was the Professor who saw to his attending you.'
There was silence for a few moments, and then Stella said very slowly:
'Do you know when Dr. Langdale came to Berlin?' She named him without the least tremor.
'No; but I remember the first time I noticed him particularly. It was two weeks after I came back. I was at the opera-house, with Dick Avenell. We went out into the wide passage behind the boxes, and there Dick met a couple of very lively little French ladies. I don't think they were any better than they ought to be, you know—nothing but a couple of roses and a dagger with diamonds in the handle by way of a bodice. Dick swore I had just come from New Caledonia, and had brought a message from some of their friends there. After a little time, he dodged round a pillar all at once, and left me talking to them alone; at least, they were jabbering away, half in French; and I put in a word edgeways, now and then, in English, but I'm blessed if I could tell what any of us were saying. In the middle of it, who should come round but this Dr. Langdale, with his mother! I had seen him once or twice when he came to inquire after you for the Kellwitzes, and he stared hard at me, I can tell you. I didn't know his name till Farningham told me. It seems he's been in Australia for a little time; and he has been a good deal off colour, too, in Berlin. He went to Vienna last week, to see a chum of his who is making a great noise with some operations on eyes, so Farningham told me. It was lucky the Farninghams came here, a few days after I got back from London. I've gone about with him a good deal, and with Dick and his brother Minimus—comical name, isn't it? Comes of three brothers being at a public school together. Now, why do you suppose Dick left me in the lurch like that? He told me plump it was because he saw an old dowager-aunt of a girl he's sweet on, coming our way, and he couldn't afford to be seen with the little Frenchies. A married man, said he, with no end of tin, can stand any racket; but a penniless attaché has to be deuced proper when on parade. Wasn't that a friendly trick to play a fellow? But he and Minimus are awful fun sometimes. Minimus is supposed to be studying Oriental languages for a "diplomatic career" in India. "People teach languages so much better in Germany," he says; and he goes once a month, perhaps, to an old chap, who swears at him because he is an idle young dog, and makes an appointment with him to come next week to learn some alphabet; but Min. doesn't, as a rule, turn up. He says I'd better give him a billet on my run; he thinks it would be much jollier than spoiling his eyes over rubbishy Eastern pot-hooks. I've often been more miserable than a tuckerless dingo; but still I went to theatres and things. I couldn't nurse you, Stella, you see!'
'Of course not. It was much better you should go about.'
'But now I can look after you a bit, Stella; and that little Maisie—by George, she's worth her weight in gold!'
There was a knock at the door; and in response to Ritchie's robust invitation to come in, a fair, youthful-looking man entered, slight, and rather under the middle height.
'Are you allowed to see people so early in the day, Mrs. Ritchie? Why, this is quite the Darby-and-Joan business—and an open fireplace, I declare!'
'Yes; and the three inexorable sisters—daughters of Night and Darkness—with the spindle-and-shears business, Farningham!' said Ted, with a dignified wave of his hand towards the tiles.
'Why, Ritchie, old fellow, you're coming it strong with the classics. Do tell that to Miss Caroline Sendler. You must know, Mrs. Ritchie, that your husband is carrying on a barefaced flirtation with an elderly lady from America—one related to me in some mystical way!'
'I remember. She's your wife's first——'
'Don't—don't, my dear fellow. Let it remain with the dark riddles of a world not realized. You are really making progress now, Mrs. Ritchie?'
'Oh yes, thank you. To-day, I quite know the people from the trees.'
'And do you eat anything? Because I have heard dreadful tales on that score.'
'Now, Stella, tell the truth. Yesterday, you looked at the thigh of a pigeon, and said, "Oh, take it away—it looks so dreadfully pathetic!" And that was your dinner. Yes, upon my honour, Farningham, I had to take it away; and a little while afterwards, when Fräulein—what's her name, the nurse you know?—came in with a little soup, Signora here said, without blinking, "But I've had dinner, you know!"'
'Ah, but that sort of thing will never do. My wife declares she ate all day when she was getting well. And that reminds me why I came!'
'Now you really wound me. I thought it was to find out whether I ate anything,' said Stella, with a little of her old sprightliness.
'So it was; but merely to knock at the door and inquire, and then ask if my wife might come. But this young man was too lazy to open the door, as Fräulein Hennig does. And you look so jolly and cosy, one can't tear one's self away. Now I know why Amalie and I have given up being domesticated. It's the absence of an open fireplace!'
At this juncture another knock was heard at the door, which was speedily opened.
'May I come in?' said a flute-like woman's voice.
It was Mrs. Farningbam: a tall, graceful woman, with dark eyes and hair, a clear pale skin, a delicately aquiline nose, and an exquisitely chiselled mouth. In feature there was a strong resemblance between her and Langdale, and also at times in expression.
'Ah, you are really better this morning!' she said, taking Stella's hand, and giving Ted a friendly nod.
'I was on the eve of coming to tell you,' said her husband. 'But I suppose I'd better stay a little longer, and then our family circle will be completed by the babies and—collateral branches! You'd better send me away, Mrs. Ritchie; for I assure you there is absolutely no end to us! And will you forgive me if I carry your husband off? I am always hiring or buying or exchanging horses; and I always get "choused," he says, if I am alone!'
'Hadn't I better take Dustiefoot for a run, Stella? ... Lose him? That's more than my place is worth. You may be sure I won't come back without him. Out, boy, out!'
But though Dustiefoot rose up with alacrity at the sound, he got no farther than the door, till he ran back, and put his head on his mistress's lap, looking up fondly into her face.
'Out, Dustiefoot—out!' said Stella; and on this the dog trotted away.
When the two men were gone, Mrs. Farningham drew her chair nearer Stella's, saying;
'How did you sleep last night, dear?'
'Tolerably well, thank you, for two or three hours.'
'And after that?'
'Oh, then it was the old stupid story. Endless processions of people filing by, as if I were a mummy holding a levée.'
'And that chamber into which you dare not peep—does it still remain?'
'Yes; and myriads of voices high and low telling me to pass in—but they get fainter night by night. Now, when I waken up in the soft light and see Fräulein Hennig's quiet face, I do not any longer feel like a terrified child that covers its head and trembles because of ghost stories it has heard.'
'Ah, that is a great stage. This is your first serious illness. For the first time you know something of the terror of demoralized nerves. But now that you begin to regain tranquillity the worst is over.'
'Do you think so? I am glad to feel so unmoved; but sometimes—I hardly know why—it frightens me a little that all which used to be so much to me seems so incredibly remote.'
'Oh, that is merely brain exhaustion. As you get stronger—as you are "built up," to use Dr. Seemann'a words—the old interests will revive.'
CHAPTER LI.
Mrs. Farningham's prediction was, unfortunately, not verified. Stella's strength slowly returned, but her mental condition remained much the same. As the weeks went on she became, if anything, more silent, more apathetic. The first event that roused her had also the effect of bringing on a feverish attack. It was a great concert given in the Philharmonic Hall in Bernburger Strasse. The conductor and violin soloist were the first of Germany, supported by the full strength of the Philharmonic orchestra. But what made this concert especially interesting was that a 'Sinfonische Dichtung,' the composition of an Italian musician, was to be rendered for the first time—the music being, in fact, still unpublished.
The theme is taken from the 'Divine Comedy.' It is the love-tragedy of Francesca Polenta, named da Rimini, and of Paolo Malatesta. It begins in the second circle of hell, guarded by Minos, who, at the entrance, weighs each transgression, and fixes the grade to which the ill-fated spirit shall be thrust. Deep, slow, mysterious waves of music thrilled the mind with a sudden apprehension of the gloom unpenetrated by the faintest ray of light. Then very slowly there rose, as if in the far distance, the howling of that terrible storm of hell—growing fierce and wild and discordant, as if the sea were riven into mountains and abysmal depths by two opposing tempests, and high above all the cries of lost souls.
After the storm of the elements and of tortured souls falls shudderingly into silence, the compassionate voice of the poet arises as he asks the two who clung together even in hell itself, 'O anime affannate, venite a noi parlar, s'altri vol niega'—'O ye tired souls, come speak to us, if no one doth forbid it.' Then came the low, anguished, wailing sound of a woman's voice telling her sinful love-story in eternal torment. No sound in life or Nature can surely ever reproduce the piercing pathos of a human voice in hopeless misery like the violin under the touch of a great master.
'There is no deeper sorrow than to recall in misery a happy time.' There were many eyes dimmed among the audience when the heart-broken confession was translated into passionate, shuddering music. The symphony from beginning to end made a strange impression upon Stella. And as in the leading theme the musician had cunningly woven the story of Lancelot, whose love, too skilfully told by the old romancer, had been such dangerous reading, so, through all the storm of darkness and despair, through the inexorable remembrance of an hour when overmastering passion trampled duty under foot, Stella was conscious of piercing recollections rising in her brain, which since her illness had no more power to move her than if they were idle spiders' strings. But now they were aflame with vivid terrible life. That woman's voice, pleading, broken, despairing, arose in fitful tones, making the blood start vehemently in her veins—making her shrink and tremble like a creature upon whom suddenly a great burden has been laid.
'It has been too much for you,' whispered Mrs. Farningham. 'Let me take you home now....'
'Yes, I really want to leave before anything else drives away the memory of this.'
That night Stella woke, weeping bitterly. In her dreams by night she had been listening over again to the hopeless wailing story told by Francesca to Dante. For days afterwards the fever burned in her veins; and when this passed away she began to avoid people—to shrink from meeting them. She began to walk out a little; but she preferred to go alone to the Thiergarten, with only Dustiefoot as a companion. Even Maisie's presence seemed a trouble to her. When she was with others she had the air of one trying unsuccessfully to understand what was going on around her. She sometimes fell asleep in the daytime, and seemed to wander for years in a strange dark land beset with vague shapes of dread, and then woke up with a start to find her momentary slumbers had not been noticed. She began to confound events with visions of the night. Things that had been said or done in the morning would seem at nightfall to be separated from her by vast tracts of time. She began to have a dread that she could not grasp what people said to her.
One forenoon, as she was alone in the Thiergarten, near the great monument of the nation's victory over France, she suddenly met Professor and Mrs. Kellwitz. She looked so timid and startled—almost so confused—on seeing them, that Mrs. Kellwitz's motherly heart was wrung with a sudden dread. She knew that Farningham, her son-in-law, and Ritchie had gone to Homburg together for a week. Yet no one who knew the position of affairs could charge Ted with neglect. He was simply like one who looked on helpless and perplexed. He was always ready at Stella's command; but she had none to give. He was anxious to take her anywhere and everywhere; but she had no wishes except to be left alone. Even a man more gifted with insight and with resources in himself than Ted had ever been, might be excused for taking refuge in the companionship and recreations that were open to him. He was in a foreign land with no occupation beyond amusing himself. And though this is a position that tests the calibre of minds more strongly fortified against the baser temptations of life, yet to one who observed Ritchie closely at this time it would become apparent that the excesses into which he had earlier fallen were due less to inherent weakness than to that Nemesis power which nature often puts forth when but a small part of man's faculties are touched by his daily life.
At this time, also, Mrs. Farningham was much engaged among the poor. She had endeavoured, but unsuccessfully, to lead Stella to resume her interest in those she had befriended. But though she gave money lavishly, herself she would not give. She had become conscious of some imminent danger that threatened to engulf her. She avoided contact with all that might arouse her. The chief aim that swayed her at this time was to spare herself morally—to shirk those stormy depths in her nature which threatened ever and anon to surge up and bear her she knew not whither. But on this day Mrs. Kellwitz, struck with a sudden fear, would listen to no excuses. 'You must come home with me,' she said decisively. And then, when they reached the house, she sent a messenger for Maisie, and to tell the Baroness that Mrs. Ritchie was to be her guest for a few days to come.
During the day she talked to Stella of many things—of books and pictures and music. Once only the girl showed a dawning interest, a little tremor of emotion, and that was when the Italian composer's 'Sinfonische Dichtung' was named. Towards evening Mrs. Kellwitz made her lie down to rest in her own cosy sitting-room. After a little she fell fast asleep, and the wide dark circles round the eyes, the noble sweep of the brow, the thin outlines of the cheeks, and the lines round the mouth, all bore the stamp of mental languor, of pain temporarily at bay, but not vanquished. Mrs. Kellwitz softly closed the door behind her, and a few minutes afterwards her son Anselm came home.
He, also, was much changed. His face had, in the last few months, grown grave and sad—almost stern in repose. Through his stepfather's intimacy with Dr. Seemann, Anselm knew the various phases of Stella's dangerous illness. He knew that latterly the physician was puzzled at the mental rigidity which had fallen on her. He had often seen her at a little distance when she walked in the Thiergarten, and had kept aloof for fear of causing her pain while she was still weak, and also because of the cruel perplexity which entangled their further meeting. Once, indeed, Dustiefoot nearly betrayed him as he sat at a little distance from the bench on which Stella rested—a book in her hand, but not reading. The dog recognised Anselm, and rushed up to him with signs of delight which he would never have bestowed on a stranger. He even rushed backwards and forwards between the two in a joyous way, as if anxious to tell his mistress that an old Lullaboolagana friend was near. But she did not heed Dustiefoot's movements. She sat pale and motionless, with downcast eyes, oblivious to all around her. The sight was more than Langdale could bear. He would have laid down his life to serve her, and yet he dared not speak to her, being in fear lest his face and the sound of his voice would do her harm, and not good. He suffered horribly. Yet he knew that hers was the more intolerable burden. For through all he had work to do, and he was in constant intercourse with people whose knowledge in some one direction exceeded his own—circumstances which serve to make life coherent to the lover of knowledge, even when it has lost its best savour.
To-day, when he came in, his mother observed with concern that the fagged, strained look with which she had been struck on first seeing him when she returned with her daughter from Dresden had deepened rather than become less.
'You are working too hard, Anselm,' she said, looking at him keenly. 'You are as greedy as ever after knowledge. Those lectures of Virchow at the University, and the honorary work at the hospital, and your writing, and all the rest of it, do not make much of a holiday.'
'You forget, mother, that I had a long one——'
'Oh, in Australia! I hope you don't think of going back there. I think there must be something insidious in the climate—something that undermines the constitution. There is that young lady the Professor met there and found so charming. You met her here, did you not?—Mrs. Ritchie, you know——'
'Yes—what of her?'
'Well, I should very much like to have your opinion of her. I have made her come here for a few days. She is sleeping just now. I am exceedingly afraid that there is something very much amiss.'
Langdale felt a terror of what fresh catastrophe might be in store. The fixed look in Stella's face the last time he saw her at a little distance had haunted him night and day.
There is always a shock in hearing our worst fears put into bald, uncompromising words. This Langdale experienced when his mother went on:
'It is not her body now, it is her mind. I am sure of that. Perhaps she would have more confidence in an English doctor. If you would see her here in an informal way—she and your stepfather were so friendly, and Amalie, too, is very fond of her. I hardly know what to think of her husband. Amalie says he is devoted to her—but, if that is the case, she cannot be devoted to him. There must be something very much amiss when two young people drift so far apart at a time like this.'
Poor Langdale! Few situations could have been more ironical in a quiet, unaggressive way than to sit listening to his mother while she calmly discussed the situation which was the very core of the keenest sorrows and interests in his life. So far nothing could have been gained by taking his mother or sister into his confidence as to the relations which had at one time existed between himself and Stella, and the treachery that had come between them. But he was prepared at any moment to tell them all, and to seek their help in somehow averting that darkest of all misfortunes which seemed stealthily creeping nearer. In the meantime he kept silence. He absented himself from home that evening. Next morning he saw Stella alone in the library which had witnessed their first strange meeting in the Old World.
CHAPTER LII.
She knew he had returned from Vienna some weeks previously, and she was in a manner prepared to see him in his mother's house. Yet, when they stood face to face, something akin to fear was visible in her manner. Otherwise, he was more agitated than she was. They touched each other's hands, and then they sat facing each other in a silence full of ghost-like memories. Stella was the first to speak.
'You have been away, I think,' she said, without looking at him.
He told her something of his journey, of his old friend Max, and his rising renown as an oculist. He noticed that her attention wandered, and that she kept nervously playing with her wedding-ring, which hung looser than ever on her finger. There was a pause.
'Yes, it must have been very interesting,' she said, looking up—a remark that had no direct relation to what he had last said.
Something clutched at his throat and gave him a horrible, choking sensation.
She looked into his face fixedly.
'Don't, Anselm—don't say anything. I cannot bear it. You do not know. I can bear to speak to you now, because everything is all over and done with. But there are times: you do not know——'
She spoke in a low, imploring voice, and then suddenly broke off.
'What do I not know, Stella?' he said, mastering himself with a violent effort, and speaking in a calm, unmoved tone.
'Oh, it would be stupid to tell you. Let us talk of something else—the weather, for instance.'
This little attempt at recovering something of her old gaiety smote him to the heart.
'No, I cannot talk of anything else, Stella. I want you to speak to me of yourself. You know, in the old days, we agreed to be friends. We can at least be friends.'
'Yes, yes; we can be friends,' she said, and then she suddenly began to sob.
He kept perfectly silent. When she had recovered composure, he went on in the same calm voice as before.
'You know, Stella, friends should help one another. I think there is something you dread. Tell me what it is. I may be able to help you.'
'Are you afraid, too?' she said quickly. He did not reply immediately. He felt like one groping in the dark, afraid to move too quickly lest harm should be done. Then she added hesitatingly: 'I have been afraid for some time. The voices and the faces have gone away. But there is a silence coming round me, and every day I am more alone—an abyss between me and everyone that none can cross.'
'No, no, Stella; not so. How many care for you!'
'But I cannot care for them—not in the old way. There is a strange vacancy, an apathy; it comes creeping, creeping. It is like the tide rising round a ship that has been stranded. O my God, it is horrible—it is horrible!' She covered her face with her hands, and as he looked at her in tearless agony, he trembled as if in an ague fit. 'Do you know what I keep thinking of sometimes?' she said, suddenly looking up. 'Of some old story in Ovid, where one says: "Give me your hand before I am a serpent all over." Those old stories where people were turned into birds, and trees, and reptiles, they are not so terrible as—as some other things.'
'No, they are not. Only when we see a great danger, the very fact that we see it shows we may try to avoid it.' His voice almost failed him once or twice, for there was something in her tone and manner, even more than in her words, which confirmed his worst fears.
'You still keep up your old habit of taking a book with you when you go out,' he said presently, in a lighter tone.
'Yes, but I cannot read; is it not strange?' she said, looking at him with wide-opened eyes.
'Ah, these times come to one,' he answered. 'Now I am going to tell you something about myself—may I?'
'Oh, of course,' she said, with more animation than she had yet shown.
'Well, I have finished that treatise I was writing at Minjah—about the conditions of factory labour. There is some other work I want to do; and, besides, I have gone quite blunt over the thing. The facts, and I believe their inferences, are correct; but the style I am sure is odious. Now, will you go over the MS. for me?'
It was some little time before she spoke, and then it was in a hesitating, broken way, which was quite foreign to her old, quick, spontaneous manner.
'I would be so glad to do it, but I lose things so dreadfully—things I have been thinking of. It is as though—I hardly know how to explain it—as if I came on blank spaces in my mind. Words and thoughts drop away out of reach quite suddenly. I am almost afraid to speak to people, lest I might not know what they say. I was afraid even of you. And yet how kind you have always been—except that one letter. But it was because it was wickedly—hurt—and the other one I never got. No, I never got it—never.'
'But about this work I want you to do for me, Stella?' he answered. The clear, harmonious intonations of his voice were lost in a constrained huskiness; but though his heart was throbbing wildly with fierce and contending emotions, his self-possession was outwardly unbroken. 'It is very important I should get the help of some friend; and there is no one whose aid I care to ask but yours. It does not in the least matter about your taking a long while over it. Do only a page or two at a time.'
'I will try to do it: but I will not let anyone see it, for fear it may be wrong. I will try not to make mistakes; but I do not know. It is what you were writing at Lullaboolagana?'
'Yes; and there is one thing more I am going to ask you. There is a convalescent home for little children on the northern outskirts of the town. My mother knows it. Will you let her take you there?'
'Oh, Anselm—no! They will be pale and miserable. They will hurt me; and when things hurt me.... Ah, you do not know how dreadful it is!' and a look of helpless fear came into her face, which pierced him like a sword.
Before he could trust himself to answer this objection, she went on, sometimes speaking in a low, hurried voice, at others very slowly, with a curious hesitation, as if the words she sought eluded her, while often she used terms that but approximately expressed what she meant.
'Sometimes at night I keep thinking of a poor half-crazy Welshwoman who used to wander about, some years ago. She had a great dislike to staying in houses. She always said there were adders in them. She was not so—so badly hurt in her mind, you know, that she ought to be locked up. You know, Anselm, it is true, when people lose everything—when they forget the meaning of all around them—they are locked away like the dead; only they are not quite like the dead. Johanna, that was her name.... Sometimes she came to Fairacre, and mother and Kirsty were very kind to her.'
She broke off abruptly, and gave a long shuddering sigh.
'Ah, after all, you have never been at Fairacre!' she said, fixing her great mournful eyes on his face, after a pause. 'It was near the vine-arcade the scarlet fairy roses grew I was to wear the day you came, when thePâquerettereached port. You always liked me to wear roses; and when I flew up to meet you, a bird began to sing as if it were wild with joy.... Have I hurt you?' she said falteringly, as he rose and turned away abruptly, his lips trembling and ashy pale. He could not speak.
She stole up to him with a frightened air, and, looking into his face, she saw that his eyes were wet. She gave a little low moan, and put her hand on his arm.
'Anselm, what can I say to make you glad? You were always so serene end hopeful.... Do you remember what I said when I sent you those dreadful letters that have been burnt into my brain?—or did I dream it? I shall do what you think is right.... I am not dreaming now!'
He turned quickly, raising his hands to draw her to him; but with a strong effort he resisted the impulse. He noticed that, since she began to speak to him, something of the tension in her face had relaxed.
'Tell me about this poor woman, Stella, who used to come to Fairacre,' he said, in as calm a voice as was possible to him.
'About Johanna? The last time she came, she was very strange. She said that when she stayed inside speckled adders crawled round her at night, saying, "'Drown yourself—drown yourself!' There are three under the table now!" That was what she said, and then mother tried to soothe her. She said if they were there, we would see them. But Johanna laughed: it was such a sharp—no, a shrill laugh. I laughed like her the other night, and it sounded horrible in the silence. Poor Dustiefoot was frightened; he began to growl at my door. He lies on the mat outside.... You are not angry with me, are you?' She looked in his face with confused timidity.
'Ah, no, Stella; why should I be?' he said in a choked voice.
She passed her hand wearily over her eyes.
'Well, I have not finished. There is some reason why I began to tell you. Ah, it was about poor Johanna. Yes, she laughed and said the adders wouldn't let anyone like mother see them. They were no fools. "Does it not say in the Word of God, 'Be ye wise as serpents'?" That was what she said. "The way they all came staring at me!" she said. "You see, adders have a great advantage over us in that way, ma'am, having no eyelashes. If I prayed at all, I think I would pray that these beasties might be kept from me." Then mother held her hand, and said, "But you do still pray, I hope?" "Well, no, ma'am," she said, "not lately. You see, there's some that the Lord lets off His hands altogether. If they pray, He turns a deaf ear to them; if they are in want or sickness, He gives them no wine or mead out of a crystal cup." ... She did drown herself at last,' she ended, in an awe-stricken tone, looking into Anselm's face with startled, wide-opened eyes.
'Yes, but about the convalescent children?' he said gently.
'Oh, I know now why I told you about this poor woman,' she answered quickly. 'I am terrified of being hurt, because when I am, as I was so badly with the music at the Philharmonic Hall, I—I think it would be better—oh, so much better—to be quite at rest. Some days ago I walked by the canal——' She suddenly stopped, a half-guilty look in her face.
'You have been awake very much of late, Stella,' he said, betraying no sign of anguish, save in the constrained accents of his voice.
'Yes; but that is better than to be made to sleep. Often when I am asleep, everything I touch falls in atoms—everything crumbles away. Then I dream something dreadful has happened, and I am glad to wake. But when I am wide awake, it is worse—oh, much worse—than any dream!'
'But, Stella, these children are not miserable and wretched. It is not a great hospital; there are never more than fourteen. It is a private place, founded by seven ladies—my mother is one of them—for children who have all but recovered from illness. The greatest joy you could give them would be to tell them a little Australian story, or take them out for a drive in the country two or three at a time. My mother and I took four of them up to Treptow the other day. It is on the river, and there is a large coffee-room quite close to the Spree. They sat by the window eating cakes and seeing the boats and barges sail by, and then we went out into the wood behind Treptow, and every little weed they saw gave them joy. You have plenty of time.'
'Plenty of time,' she repeated vacantly, and then a little afterwards, as if the meaning of the words had gradually dawned on her, 'There is endless time—and it is all empty and terrible, and full of crumbling things. I like to go outside because I feel as if I were then away from the corridor—the dreadful corridor. You do not know what I mean by that.'
'No; but you can explain it to me, Stella.'
His calm, even voice seemed to allay her rising agitation. She passed her hand slowly over her brow before answering.
'You know, for weeks back when I try to read, or write, or even sew—whatever it is I try to do slips away from me; even when people talk round me their voices go a long way off. And then I am in a wide, great, empty corridor, where my footsteps make a strange sound. But I do not mind that. It is the long, dark passages that wind out of it. I feel as if I were dragged along them against my will, and at the end there are great cages with iron bars in front, strong iron bars, for there are wild creatures behind them.'
She looked up into his face with a terror in her eyes that made the perspiration stand out in cold drops on his forehead.
'Dear Stella, do not think of them,' he said in a low, imploring voice.
'Ah, but you do not know—they are not savage creatures out of the woods. They are human beings—they are women, some of them; but they beat at the bars and shriek to get out. When I hear them I feel as if I must shriek too. They are mad—they must be kept there because they are more dangerous than wild beasts. Ah, my God! how they terrify me! I keep silent. I say nothing of all this, because people would be afraid of me as I am of these cages, and—and those that are in them.'
'No, no, Stella. That is only how people feel after they have had a terrible illness like yours. To-morrow you must come to see these children——'
'Ah, the children. They have been ill. You are nursing them back to life again—how cruel that is often! They might have died while the world seemed still beautiful, and they could pray to God, "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name." Think what it is, Anselm, to outlive all that—to know that there is no Father in heaven—that there are people who must be put into iron cages—that you see it coming nearer every day—a terror you cannot name!'
'Stella, Stella, think how wrong it would be to let ourselves sink under one idea—one aspect of life in that way! It is only because your illness still hangs about you that you can have such strange thoughts. If these children were neglected now, when their parents are unable to care for them properly, their constitutions might be injured—impaired for life. It is not that they would die—for most creatures, having once gained a footing in the world, make up their minds to stay if possible. It is that the seeds would be laid for lingering maladies—perhaps for madness itself. That is what you can do, Stella—help to save some people from the wretchedness of lives hopelessly mutilated by disease. I know there are some forms of misery we can do nothing to lessen. It is all the more shame to us if we do not help in things within our reach.'
There was a little touch of sternness in his voice. It hurt him to assume it, but the tone seemed to bring his words home to her more directly.
'You wish me to go to see them? Ah, you think I can speak to them—that they will love me as the children used to——'
'I do not think it—I know it. Once you told me that you were wilful. I did not quite believe it then, but now you are, a little—only you will not persist. Now let me tell you about some of these little ones.'
He made her sit in a large armchair, and placed a cushion under her head, and then sat on a low chair facing her, and told her one or two of those commonplace, everyday incidents in the annals of the poor which come within the ken of all who visit or work among them.
Only he did not let his narrations drop into monologues. He put them in a way that made her ask questions, that roused and interested her. The last child he spoke of was a little one named Gretchen. She had been run over in the streets, taken into one of the hospitals, and discharged while still very weak. At home she was inadequately fed, and when his mother found out about her a tumour had formed under one knee, which threatened to cripple her for life. This had been removed, and she was now in the Home—a plump, merry little thing, who gave names of her own to everyone.
'What do you suppose she calls me, Stella?' he asked.
She smiled. 'One who knows how to scold sometimes?'
'No; something with more unconscious irony than that. "The doctor who has no medicine." Of course a doctor of that sort is all the more welcome to Greta; but, still, the title has its own little stroke of malice when one knows how applicable it often is. And then my mother has a distinctive name, too. One of the other little ones said one day enthusiastically: "Oh, she is an angel!" "Yes, she is," answered Greta; "an angel with a basket." The matron overheard them and told my mother, who is very proud of the definition, for, after all, as she says, how much better it is to have a basket in this world, if you are an angel, than a pair of wings! Yes, she is a child, take her all in all, out of a thousand. So tender, and bright, and unselfish. She has the gift of a sunny nature, and yet she has so much imagination, and she can do so many things—and, by this time, if no one had helped her, she would be either dead or a cripple for life.'
'How old is the dear little thing?'
'Nine last month. My mother has insisted on her staying a few more weeks, so that she may be quite strong. She is knitting a pair of long stockings for Karl, a younger brother. "He is so good and strong, and already he can do many more things than a girl," she told me quite lately. I asked her if she would like to be a boy, and after meditating a little, she said: "No." "Why?" I said. "Because the dear God made me a girl," she answered; and then she added: "And I would wear out my boots so much faster."'
'I must go to see Greta,' said Stella, smiling. 'Yes, it would have been dreadful if her health had been spoiled,' she said reflectively, after a little pause.
Presently Mrs. Kellwitz came in, knitting; and when Stella found that some of the convalescent children were badly in need of clothing, she began to make some garments which Mrs. Kellwitz cut out for her. That evening, when she bade Langdale good-night, she said softly:
'I am not going to be wilful. I will do what you wish.'
He stood for some moments motionless, while the quick flush that had risen in his face died away. And then he recalled her face and tones during their early interview that day. It was one of those terrible hours which all through a lifetime remain in the memory as if stamped on it by a process apart from ordinary recollection.
He took a letter out of his pocket-book that he had received on the preceding day from Mrs. Tareling. He had written to her through a lawyer, stating that he had possession of one of the letters he had left in her hands for Miss Stella Courtland—naming the day and even the hour. One had been mutilated, the other stolen, and a fraudulent document had been put with the falsified one she had delivered. He awaited any explanation she might have to offer before putting the matter into the hands of an eminent firm of Melbourne lawyers for prosecution. The reply was an abject confession. Of course, it was quite false—as abject confessions extorted by fear are apt to be. It was her overwhelming love for her only brother—the adjective 'only' twice underlined. He had loved Stella Courtland passionately from boyhood. She had at one time favoured his suit. (N.B.—It is curious to notice how naturally people slip into this kind of English when they are telling lies.) Then she had at a moment's caprice rejected him. The effect on the only brother was terrible. But still he had ample grounds for hope. Then came Miss Courtland's visit to Lullaboolagana, her return to Monico Lodge. In picturesque English came a graphic description of the terrible temptation to remove a rival from her brother's path. Laurette rose to the occasion. She spoke in such exaggerated accents of remorse, one might imagine she had used a poisoned bowl. Yes, she had been weak—desperately weak and erring, as only a poor foolish woman can be when blinded by affection, etc., etc. But, after all, the past was irrevocable. What but harm could come of stirring up strife?
Langdale asked himself the same question with a sinking heart. Here were full and clear proofs of the treachery by which they had been betrayed. But what could any exposure of this base crime avail? It meant vengeance—nothing more. Publicity could not save them a single pang, nor make the future more hopeful, nor help to divert the doom, worse than death, with which he saw Stella threatened. He paced up and down the room, his sight dimmed, a dull throbbing in his temples, as he recalled her looks and tones in the earlier part of their interview. 'I will do what you wish.' His heart gave a leap as he recalled the words. What action should he take to save her from the wild, dark morass into which her life had been turned?
He had written, sending his letter through an eminent English lawyer, on the morning that Stella forwarded him those fatal documents—one unsigned, cunningly devised to support the lies that were conveyed by the fragments, diabolically falsified, of his own letter, with the purpose of extorting an admission of guilt. But since then all other thoughts had been lost in agonizing anxiety as to the issue of Stella's illness. That had passed, but a worse calamity threatened her. Could he not save her? Could he not stem the bitter waters that had swept away all the joy and pleasantness of her life, and now menaced reason itself? He had resolved to urge no claim—to make no appeal to the love which he knew was still the strongest emotion that swayed her—while any weakness of shattered health clouded or warped her judgment. But now it seemed as if every day, in which she was left at the mercy of the grief and dark fear that had lodged in her mind, rendered ultimate recovery more doubtful. And what prospect did the future hold for her? Was not the slow, dull contagion of this union, so fraudulently compassed, a greater evil than any alternative that lay open to her? And yet, to a proud, sensitive man whose own experience of life had been early dashed with a woman's infidelity, how unendurable was the thought of any stigma cast on the girl whose honour was more sacred to him than aught else in the world! But, then, there are passages in life of so vital a nature that they must be judged wholly apart from the common ineffectual criticism of common minds. It was one of those subtle and cruel complications in human lives in which no action seems possible that is not charged with evil. At last, in despair, he told himself that he would do what he could, and live from hand to mouth; for the present make no plans beyond the passing day—only, as far as lay in his power, he would watch over and shield Stella from harm—seek to guard her from the stealthy foe that had already sapped some of the outworks of the citadel of reason.
Next morning when he went into his mother's sitting-room he found the two in cheerful converse.
'Stella is coming with me to our convalescent children this afternoon,' his mother said briskly. She was one of those generous-minded, whole-hearted, actively kind women whose mere presence throws discredit on the darker evils of the world. 'See how rapidly the child sews!' she said, holding up a small garment which Stella had already completed. 'My dear, it is fatal when I find that people can work like this. I am always turning up with a little bundle of second-hand flannel or calico to be made into small petticoats and knickerbockers.'
'An angel with a basket, in fact, mother,' said her son. And at this they all laughed a little. Langdale noted, with a thrill of gladness, that something of the old look of vivid life had come back into Stella's face.
To do some work, and for his sake, because he wished it—this was the chord that had been struck, and gave a quick response. The mere fact of giving expression to the dread that had so long passed 'in smother,' and begun habitually to haunt her, served to lessen her fears. After this, Stella went almost daily to the convalescent children. And daily she went over some of Langdale's MS., altering a word here and there, now and then putting in a different phrase. She feared at first to trust her own judgment, when she felt inclined to make changes, but she gained confidence as she went on. And then something of the fascination of brain-work, of that preoccupation with ideas which takes the mind out of itself, laid hold of her.
To think too exclusively of ourselves or our own concerns, even under our best aspects, is, as a rule, to become sad, weary, and discouraged. But to be immured in such thoughts, when the thrill and joy of life are gone, when its best promises are mildewed with disillusion and disappointment, is to poison the very source of sane existence and healthy endeavour. It had been so with Stella, and in the lowest deep of her unhappiness there yet opened the lower deep, that the misery which had overtaken her like a flood was so largely her own doing.
Yes; gradually she crept back from the gulf that had threatened to close over her. The little ones that gathered round her, their faces lighting up with pleasure, drew her to them from day to day, and then they would shyly ask for stories of Australia—that strange, far-away land with strange birds and beasts, and unknown trees that never lost their leaves. Sometimes she would write out beforehand one of the little twilight stories she had told at Lullaboolagana, so that she might not hesitate and be at a loss for words when her little audience clustered breathlessly around her. 'The dear lady'—that was the name by which they learned to call her.
And then it began to be spring once more—the spring of a northern climate, when Nature gradually wakens from her rigid sleep, when the first early blossoms and the first returning birds—those timid evangels of quickening life—thrill the air with messages, which the heart understands but does not put into words.
It was one day early in April. The air had lost its barbarous keenness. The sun shone as if it was getting warm. There were dun-coloured clouds over part of the sky, but between them a wistful azure showed itself, and on the tall, slender birch in the Thiergarten that was opposite Stella's sitting-room a swallow and some linnets were carolling as if they were bent on being marked as the first choristers of the season. Stella had returned from a visit to one of the museums with Professor Kellwitz, and sat by the window as she had entered, in her sealskin coat and toque. As they returned they met Langdale, and he accompanied them as far as the Pension Eisengau. The incident had brought back the first day they met in Berlin with startling distinctness. They had exchanged few words beyond the ordinary salutations. Mrs. Kellwitz and Stella were often together, but she and Langdale met seldomer, and but for a few minutes. Yet these accidental brief meetings surrounded the day on which they took place with an aureole. Stella now sat with lips slightly parted, her hands folded in her lap, looking fixedly before her with a half-startled, dawning sort of expression. Ritchie entered at that moment, and was struck with the air of vividness in her face.
'Why, Stella, you will soon be quite yourself again,' he said, leaning against the mantelpiece near where she sat.
The colour slowly deepened in her cheeks, and she took off her toque.
He suddenly stooped over her, and touched her forehead with his lips. She started as if she were stung. 'You must not do that,' she said, in a peremptory tone.
He was deeply wounded, and drew back, looking at her with a startled expression. 'Perhaps I had better not come into the same sitting-room you are in,' he said, in a rougher voice than he had ever used to her before. A look of cold displeasure settled on her face, but she said nothing.
'While you were so ill,' he went on in a gentler tone, 'and seemed more miserable if I were about, I kept out of the way. Then, as you got better you were kinder to me; you sometimes drove out with me, and let me do things for you. But now again you hardly speak to me once in two days; and as for laughing or joking——' He noticed a look almost akin to terror creeping into her face, and stopped abruptly. 'Forgive me, Stella, if I have been rough,' he said after a little.
Stella had rung the bell, and when Maisie came in she gave her her toque and coat to put away, and asked for her writing-desk. Before she returned an answer to Ted's apology there was a tap at the door, and Mrs. Farningham came in.
'Now this is fortunate! I wanted to find you both in,' she said. 'You know, Stella, that my mother and step-father are going to the East about the beginning of May. Anselm tells me that Johnny's lungs need special care. Well, I mean only to stay in England till the beginning of June; I will then join my mother in Egypt. Now, had you not better come with me? You know how these two men will haunt the racecourses from Dan to Beersheba—from May to October.'
It had been for some time arranged that the Farninghams and Ritchies would leave Berlin together. The two men were anxious to be in England through the racing season; and their wives, who were neither of them supremely interested in the turf, would thus bear each other company.
Stella became very pale and grave.
'Well, I think that would be far the best arrangement,' said Ritchie.
But Stella did not at once reply.
'You see, they could join us in Palestine or Egypt as soon as the St. Leger or whatever the last races they wanted to see were over,' went on Mrs. Farningham. She watched Stella a little curiously, and seeing the anxious, perplexed look in her face, she added, lightly turning to Ted, 'You see, Mr. Ritchie, your wife is not disposed to lose sight of you for so long—but you think the matter over.'
And with that she left the two alone once more.
'You had better go, Stella,' said Ritchie after a pause.
'I do not know,' she answered slowly. She was like one roughly aroused out of a gentle morning dream. A flood of conjectures, of questions, poured in on her; and the old tormenting habit of finding the train of thought suddenly swamped reasserted itself. But one conviction was clear and steady: if she and Ritchie parted, she would never come back to him again.
He, poor fellow! was touched, thinking her hesitation was due to concern at the prospect of leaving him to his own devices for so long a period.
'Don't be afraid about me, Stella,' he said. 'I made a promise that I would never forget myself in drink again; and I don't mean to put a knife in the contract. I don't take much credit to myself for that; for the more you see of the world, the more there is to open your eyes. We get into a beastly habit of drinking spirits in Australia; but a bottle of good Château Lafite beats such stuff hollow. You sip glass after glass, and, instead of getting stupider, you are more alive.... And then, Stella, while matters are as they are between us, it's easier for me to be out of your sight. You see, if Farningham and I are in England till the end of September, why the year would be up by the time I came to—Palestine, is it? Isn't that the place where the Jews used to play up so before they discovered the Christians? By Jove, you should hear Minimus Avenell talk about the Hebrews!' and Ted laughed at sundry reminiscences.
Somehow the sight of Stella so perplexed and silent at the prospect of parting from him for four or five months raised his spirits.