WINTER came and melted into spring. Physically Stella had progressed beyond all hopes. Like the Lady in “The Sensitive Plant,” she walked a ruling grace about the garden of the Channel House, and nursed the daffodils and narcissi and tulips with tender hands. In these she took a passionate joy curiously exceeding that in other revelations of the great world. Indeed, during most of the winter, she had shrunk from mingling with humanity. Her zest for the new life had been dulled. She found excuses for not going beyond the garden gate, and of her own free will did not seek the society of those dear to her. The windows of her sea-chamber once more afforded her the accustomed outlook, and the gulls wheeling high in the wintry gusts again became her companions.
The Blounts let her have her way,—was she not autocrat?—putting down her hesitations and cravings for solitude to a young girl's delicate whimsies of which they could not divine the motive; for she, who had once been expansive, now had grown strangely reticent. Even Herold, who used to accompany her into the Land That Never Was, did not gain her confidence. Into those mystic regions she could admit him freely; but the Threatening Land that lay beyond the threshold of her sea-chamber a heart-gripping shyness forced her to tread alone.
“Life has frightened you,” he said one day.
“How do you know that?” she asked, with a quick glance.
He smiled.
“You are like an Æolian harp set in the wind, my dear.”
“Only you can hear it.”
“Every one hears it.”
She shook her head.
“No; only you.”
“That's as may be,” he said, with a laugh. “Anyhow, something has frightened you. What is it?”
Stella rose—she had learned to walk; the hours of her exercises had been the gayest in her day—and touched him lightly with her fingers on the shoulder, and went and stood by the great window of the drawing-room and looked out at her sky and sea. The Great High Favourite, with his uncanny insight, had read her truly. Womanlike, she did not know whether to resent his surprising of her innermost secret or to love him for it. She was understood; that was balm. Yet what right had he to understand? The question was a drop of gall. The pure spirit of her flew to the chosen companion of her dreams; something—the nature of which she was unaware—sex-instinct—forbade too close an intimacy in things real and tangible. And there was a touch of resentment, too, in an outer circle of her mind. Why had he given her no warning of the Threatening Land? He had allowed her to step ignorantly upon its thorns, and her feet still bled.
Herold turned in his chair and glanced at her slim figure framed by the window. Then he went softly to her side.
“Stellamaris, you are dearer to me than anything on God's earth. Tell me what frightens you. Maybe I can help you.”
But Stella shook her head. She had been accustomed from childhood to lavish terms of endearment from her little band of intimates, and her woman's nature was as yet not enough awakened to catch the new and subtle appeal. A girl's pride froze her. The wounds that he had allowed her to receive she would cure by herself. She touched his hand, however, to show that she appreciated his affection. The touch sent a thrill to his heart.
“Stella, dear!” he whispered.
Then, as a note struck on a piano causes the harmonic on the violin to vibrate, so did his tone stir a chord in the girl's nature, occasioning an absurd little flutter of trepidation. She laughed, and threw wide the folding-doors that opened upon the lawn.
“Don't let us talk of bogies on such a beautiful day. I want to show you my crocuses.”
It was her sovereign pleasure to break off the conversation. He dared not press her. She took him out among her crocuses and daffodils, and became the Stella he had always known, with the exception that now she dwelt in a spring flower's bloom instead of in a bit of silver in the flying scud. They talked eternal verities concerning the souls of flowers.
After this unsatisfactory and, to, a certain extent, baffling visit, Herold went back to London with a heartache, which induced an unaccustomed moodiness. At the theatre that night, Miss Leonora Gurney took him to task. Now, Miss Gurney (Mrs. Hetherington in private life; she had divorced the disreputable Hetherington years ago, and had not remarried) was a very important and captivating person. She was a woman of genius, a favourite of the London public, a figure of society, in management on her own account, wherein she showed shrewd business ability, and very much in love with Walter Herold, wherein she showed much of the weakness of Eve. This season Herold was her leading man.
To say that Herold had wrapped himself up in his Joseph's garment (not the one of many colours, but the other one equally famous) during all his stage career would be mendacious folly. Many a ball had come to him at the bound, and he had returned it gaily. He had laughed an honest way through innumerable love-affairs—things of the moment, things of the fancy, things of no importance whatsoever. Many maidens, and some matrons, had wept for him, but none bitterly. He had established a reputation for lack of seriousness in matters of the heart. His bright, blue eyes would flash at you, and his low, musical voice would murmur no matter what, even were it the Lord's Prayer backward, and you caught your breath, and lost your head, and were perfectly ready to say if he asked you, and sometimes even if he did n't ask you: “Take me, I am yours.” But whatever he did, he never rose to the passionate height, or sank to the unromantic depth, of the situation. Which things were a mystery.
To qualify what might appear to be a sweeping proposition, it may be stated that there are certain phases in certain women's lives when they make straight for the mystery surrounding a man, as moth does for candle, and singe their wings in so doing. Thus singed were the chaste and charming wings of Leonora Gurney. Herold, no more aware of an aura of mystery than of a halo, received the lady's advances in his frank, laughing way. She had the raven hair, dark, blue eyes, and white skin of an Irish ancestry. She was exceedingly attractive. She played her love-scenes with him—his part in the piece was that of a broken-down solicitor's clerk who entertained an angel unawares—with an artistic sympathy that is the rare joy of the actor, when he feels, like one who has the perfect partner in a waltz, that he merges his own individuality into a divine union. At the end of the third act the curtain came down on the angel bending over his chair, her hand in his. It remained there, a warm and human thing, and her breath was on his cheek, for a long time, while the curtain went up and down. It was by no means disagreeable to hold Leonora's hand and feel her breath on his cheek, after the common emotion of the swinging scene. Hundreds of men would have given their ears to have done the same without any swinging scene at all.
Herold certainly took the lady by the tips of her fingers and adventured with her into the Land of Tenderness—thePays du Tendreof the old French romanticists. How could mortal man help it? The theatre and the theatrical world clacked with gossip. The unapproachable Leonora, the elusive Herold: it was brilliant high-comedy marriage. Already those not bound by romance criticized the possibilities of a joint management. Could he always play lead to her? Was not his scope, exquisite in it though he was, too limited? She was the Juliet of her generation. Would he be content to play the Apothecary? Sooner or later there would be the devil to pay. To the onlookers who see most of the game and to the overhearers who hear ever so much more, the affair between the two was a concluded matter; but the parties to the supposed contract still wandered in the sweet pastures of the indefinite. And this was through no fault of the lady. She did her best, as far as lay in the power of modest woman, to lead him to the precise highroad; but Herold remained as elusive as a will-o'-the-wisp.
“You 're not very responsive to-night, Walter,” she said during a wait in the first act, which they generally spent on the stairs leading from stage to dressing-rooms.
In the intimate world of the theatre the use of the Christian name is a commonplace signifying nothing; but a trick of voice may make it signify a great deal. Herold, sensitive, caught her tone and bit his lip.
“The actor's Monday slackness,” said he.
“Where have you been week-ending?”
“Nowhere in particular.”
“And you refused Lady Luxmore's invitation, knowing that I was to be there, in order to go nowhere in particular?”
“The floor of that house is littered with duchesses,” said he. “Its untidiness gets on my nerves.”
“That's too flippant, Walter. Why not say at once that you went to Southcliff?”
“That's nowhere in particular,” said he. “It's my second home.”
“And you come back from it as merry as a young gentleman in a Hauptmann play. You are barely civil.”
“My dear Leonora!” he protested.
She looked him straight in the eye and shook her head.
“Barely civil. What have I done to you?”
“You have always shown yourself to be the sweetest of women,” said he.
“Then why not treat me as such?”
She stood near him on the narrow stair, alluring, reproachful, menacing, yet ready to be submissive. Despite her make-up, her proud beauty shone replendent. If she had been a wise woman, she would have let him answer the challenge. But a woman in love is an idiot; Heaven forbid that she should be otherwise! So is a man, for the matter of that; but he obeys an elementary instinct of self-protection. Woman essentially disobedient (cf. Rex Mundi vs. Eve) does not. Hence storms and tempests and cataclysms. Seeing him hesitate, she added jealously:
“I believe there is more attraction in the shadow-child at Southcliff than I have been led to suppose.” A man of the world, he ignored the challenge, and turned off the innuendo with a laugh.
“Who can say what is shadow and what is substance here below? Kant will tell you that nothing exists save as an idea in our minds.”
“I don't seem to exist in yours at all.”
“There you wrong me,” he cried.
They fenced as they had fenced before; but on her mention of Stellamaris, Herold had closed against her the outer court of his heart into which she had stepped, and, looking at her, had become frozenly aware that the dark Irish eyes, and the raven hair on a stately head, and the curved, promising lips, and the queenly figure, and the genius and rich womanhood of which these were the investiture of flesh, meant to him nothing and less than nothing. The woman read her sentence in his eyes, and abruptly left him, and stood in the wings until her entrance. And Herold, manlike, gave her no thought; for his head was in a whirl, and his heart afire, with a new and consuming knowledge. The splendour of all the Leonora Gurneys, of all the splendid women of the earth, faded into a pale glimmer before the starry eyes of one girl.
As a wonder-child, as a thing of sea-foam and sunset cloud, she had crept into his soul and had taken up therein her everlasting habitation. She was the very music of his being, an indissoluble essence of himself. He wondered, as men untouched by love do wonder, why no woman had done more than stir the surface of emotion. Now he knew. He had loved her in her exquisite ideality with a love that was more than love. Now, in her magical transformation, he loved her with love itself.
Stella Maris, star of the sea! Stella Herold, star of that which is greater than all the multitudinous seas of earth, the soul of a man!
He dreamed his dreams, and gave that evening an exceedingly bad performance.
Soon afterwards, with drums playing and colours flying, Stella came with her retinue to London. She had rooms in a magnificent hostelry, a magnificent hired motor-car to transport her, and as magnificent raiment, chosen by her own delicate self, as any young woman could desire. But despite all this magnificence, she wept over many a lost illusion. Where were the music-haunted streets, the golden pavements, the gorgeous castles, the joyous throngs of which John, years ago, had fed the swift imagination of the child?
On their way from Victoria' Station they passed through St. James's Park.
“That's Buckingham Palace,” said Sir Oliver, with more pride than if he owned it.
“That?”
Her heart sank like a stone dropped down a well: That dingy, black barrack the stately home of the king? And when they swung up Constitution Hill and lined up in the traffic by Hyde Park Corner, “This,” said Sir Oliver, “is Piccadilly.”
What she had expected, poor child, to find in Piccadilly, she scarcely knew; but from infancy, the name had a sweet and mystic significance. It connoted beauty and grandeur; it was associated in her mind with silk and gold and marble. It was what a street in the New Jerusalem might have been had John of Patmos had the training of a star reporter. Poor Piccadilly! To the Englishman the most beauteous, the most seductive, the fullest of meaning of all the thoroughfares of the cities of the world, to the disillusioned girl it was only a dismal, clattering, shrieking ravine. Why had they lied to her? She could not understand.
The first evening she was overstrained, and went to bed early; but the next night they took her to see the play in which Herold was acting.
“I 'll bring her round between the acts,” said John to Herold, during a discussion of the adventure.
“You 'll do nothing of the sort,” said Herold.
“It will interest her tremendously to go behind.”
“And see all the tinsel and make-believe? What a fool you are, John!”
“Well, anyhow, we 'll come and see you in your dressing-room,” said John, who recognized some reason in his friend's objection. “We can get round without crossing the stage.”
Herold put his hands on John's great shoulders.
“My dear John,” said he, “I love my profession very dearly, but there's one thing in it which I loathe, and that is having to paint my face.”
He said no more; but John understood, though he thought it somewhat finicking of Herold to shrink from meeting Stella in his make-up. He had seen him talk thus to dames and damsels of the most exalted station without a shadow of false shame.
So Stella went to the play without peeping behind the scenes; and then, indeed, she once more lived in her Land of Illusion. The hushed house, spectral in the dim light, seemed part of a dream-world. On the stage, life real and vibrating passed before her enraptured eyes. During the first part of the play she squeezed John's hand tight, and during the intervals said very little. She did not question the means by which Herold transformed himself into the broken-down solicitor's clerk. He was the solicitor's clerk, and no longer Herold. His love for the beautiful woman, at first so hopeless, wrung her heart. Then the response of the woman set her pulses throbbing. The third act, an admirable piece of crescendo, reached a height of passion which held her tense. Love the Conqueror, the almighty, spread his compelling pinions over the breathless house. It was a revelation. She had never suspected the existence of such a tumultuous phenomenon. Love she had heard of, the love of Prince Charming for Princess Rose; but it had meant no more to her than the loves of butterflies. This was different. It explained things she had not understood in music. It opened up the world that had lain hidden beyond the crimson of her sunsets.
When the curtain came down on the end of the great love-scene she was too much overwrought to applaud. She sat pale, shaken, limp, with only one great desire—that all surroundings would vanish and that she could find herself by her window looking out over the moonlit sea. There, she felt, she could weep her heart out; here her eyes were intolerably dry.
Sir Oliver rose and stretched himself at the back of the box.
“Devilish good! Splendid! Never thought Walter could touch it. Miss Gurney, too, immense. Puts one in mind of Adelaide Neilson. Best Juliet there has ever been. Before your time, John. Jolly good job, however, people don't go on like that in real life.”
Stella turned her head quickly.
“What do you mean, Uncle?”
“People go a bit quieter, my dear,” he laughed.
“Gad! If that sort of thing became popular, it would tear us all to bits.”
He went out to smoke, dragging John with him. Stella put a wistful little gloved hand on Lady Blount's knee.
“Is that true, Auntie?”
Lady Blount sighed. Such storms of emotion had not come her way. She looked backward over the dreary vista of sixty barren years. One such hour of madness, and what a difference in her memories!
“I can't tell you, darling. Perhaps not, if two people love each other very, very dearly; but they must do that—and love is n't given to every one.”
An ingenuous question rose to the girl's lips, but it died there, poisoned by the remembrance of vile words of hatred. Instead, she asked:
“How many people, then, love like those two in the play?”
“About one in a million,” replied Lady Blount.
And Stella, with the young girl's sweet and natural wonder whether she might possibly be one of the million, felt the hot blood rise to neck and cheek. Ashamed, she held her fan before her face and, leaning over the front of the box, watched the shimmering stalls.
The play over, they drove home in the magnificent motor-car. Supper awaited them in their sitting-room, where Herold was to join them later. Stella lay back on the luxurious seat, nestling by Lady Blount, languid, with closed eyes. The others, thinking that she was physically fatigued, said little. They did not realize the soul-shaking effect of the revelation of human passion on their pure star of the sea. It was not given them to divine the tempest—such a one, perhaps, as that which rocks the bee on its flower, though a storm all the same—that raged beneath the mask of the delicate face. They thought she was fatigued, and because they loved her they did not weary her with speech.
She was indeed tired, desperately tired, by the time they arrived at the hotel. She could scarcely walk up the steps. John supported her to the lift. When they reached their landing, he took her bodily in his arms and carried her down the corridor, Sir Oliver and Lady Blount hurrying on in front, so as to open the sitting-room door and turn on the lights. Stella's head lay on John's shoulder, an arm, for security's sake, instinctively round his neck. The way was long, the lift serving the wing wherein their apartments were situated being out of working order, and John lingered on the delicious journey.
“Poor darling! We 've exhausted you,” he whispered.
She shook her head and smiled wanly. “It was wonderful.” And after a second she said: “And this is wonderful, too. How strong you are, Belovedest.”
“Do you like me to carry you?”
She opened her eyes and they looked dreamily into his. He laughed, and bent his head, and kissed her. He had kissed her thousands of times before, but this time her soft lips met his for an instant, and when they parted, her eyes closed again, and she lay back very white in his arms. And John, too, was shaken, and held the delicate body very tight against him and quickened his pace.
He laid her gently on a couch in the sitting-room. Lady Blount was all for her going then and there to bed; but she pleaded for a sight of Herold. He came in a few moments afterwards. She roused herself, thanked him in her gracious way for the evening of delight.
“To-morrow, dear, I 'll tell you all about it. I am just a little bit dazed now.”
“Has it been a great adventure?” he asked, with a laugh.
Involuntarily she glanced at John and saw his eyes fixed on her. She flushed slightly.
“Perhaps the greatest of all,” she said.
The men walked together the common part of their homeward journey. John slipped his arm through his friend's, a rare demonstration of affection.
“Wallie, old man,” said he, “I 'm in hell again. I 've got to get out. I must n't see any more of Stella.”
“Why not?”
“Just that. I must get out of her life somehow. Things have changed. It's too horrible to think of.” Herold shook himself free and halted.
“My God!” he cried, “you?”
John threw up his arms in a gesture of despair. “Can I help it? It is n't given to man to help these things.”
“And Stella?”
“I must get out of her life,” said John.
“It will be difficult.”
“What can you suggest?”
“Nothing,” said Herold—“nothing now.”
They moved on, and walked in dead silence to the parting of their ways.
THE making and the executing of a good resolution are two entirely different actions. The former is a process as instantaneous as you please—one born of passion, heaven-sent inspiration, alcohol, or New Year hysteria; the latter one of practical handling conditioned by the entanglement of a thousand circumstances. If a man carried out with lightning rapidity every good resolution he formed, he would inevitably make marmalade of his affairs, and clog therein the feet and bodies of many innocent people as though they were wasps. With evil resolutions it is another matter. You want to play the devil, and the sooner and more completely you do it, the nearer do you approximate to your ideal. But it is very dangerous to do good, and involves a vast amount of weary thought and trouble.
It was all very well for John Risca to resolve to go out of the life of Stellamaris, but how could he do so without committing the manifest absurdity of taking a ticket for equatorial Africa? He was beset by forbidding circumstances. There was his work; there was Unity; there was his aunt; there was Stellamaris herself; and, chief of all, there was the baleful figure of the woman who went about with murderous hatpins. Thus in an ironical way did history repeat herself. Six years before he was all for flying to the antipodes on account of his wife, and was restrained by consideration of Stellamaris; and now, when it would be the heroical proceeding to fly to the ends of the earth from Stellamaris, he was restrained by considerations in which his wife was a most important factor.
He lay stark awake all night, wondering how he could carry out his resolve. At dawn he came to the only sane conclusion. He could not carry it out at all, at least in no desperate or brutal fashion. When he got up and faced the daylight world, he scorned himself for a fool. The soft clinging of her lips had transmuted the worship of years into the fine gold of love. That was true, maddeningly true. His being was aflame with the new and wondrous thing. But Stellamaris? To her the kiss that she gave had been one of gratitude, affection, trust, weariness. She had lain in his arms and had felt safe and sheltered, and so had kissed him, the Great High Belovedest of her childhood. To her the kiss had meant nothing. How could it? How could passion touch the creature of sea-foam and cloud? And even allowing such an extravagant possibility, how could he, great, rough, elderly, ugly bear that he was, inspire such a feeling in a young girl's heart? He a romantic figure! He, with the pachydermatous mug that offended his eyes as he shaved! He denounced the monstrous insolence of his overnight fancy. He would keep tight grip on himself. She should never know. As far as the infinitely precious one was concerned, all would be well. So argued the human ostrich.
After his morning's work at the office of the weekly review, he went to the Carlton, where the party of intimates had arranged to lunch. He arrived early, but found Herold, who was earlier, waiting in the palm court.
“Look here, old man,” said he as he sat down by his side, “forget the fool nonsense I talked last night.”
“Did n't you mean it?” asked Herold.
“Yes,” said John, bluntly. “I did n't sleep a wink. But forget it all the same. Things have got to go on outwardly just as they are.”
“As you like,” said Herold. He lit a cigarette, and after a whiff or two, added: “I must repeat what I hinted at and what you seemed to reply to. What about Stella?”
“It's absurd to think of her suspecting,” said John.
Herold's nervous fingers snapped the cigarette in two.
“She must never suspect,” said he.
“Do you think I'm a devil?” said John.
“No. You 're a good fellow. Who knows it better than I? But you 're passionate and impulsive. You must be on your guard—not for the next two or three days, but for ever and ever.”
“All right,” said John. “Now put the matter out of your mind.”
Herold nodded, squeezed the burning end of his broken cigarette into an ash-tray, and lit another.
“You 're looking fagged out, Wallie,” said John, after a while. “What have you been doing?”
“Nothing in particular. This part is rather trying, and I've not had a holiday for a couple of years. I want one rather badly. I don't complain,” he added, with a smile, glad to get away from the torturing talk of Stellamaris. “During the two years I 've been working, scores of better actors than I have n't been able to get an engagement. I'm a spoilt child of fortune. My time will come, I suppose, when they no longer want me.”
The talk drifted to the precariousness of the actor's calling. Even men in demand from every management found a difficulty in making a living. Herold instanced Brownlow, one of the fewjeunes premiersof the stage, who had slaved every day for a year, and having been in four or five successive failures, found himself, at the end of it, the recipient of three months' salary. Six weeks' slavery at rehearsal for nothing, and a two weeks' run! The system ought to be changed. John agreed, as he had agreed to the same argument a thousand times before.
“But I don't like to see you so pulled down,” said he, affectionately.
Herold smiled and shrugged his shoulders. He, too, had not slept; but he did not inform John of the fact. It was a significant aspect of their friendship, if not of their respective temperaments, that John received few of Herold's confidences. The essential sympathizers among men are mute as to their own cares. Divine selfishness or a pride equally noble seals their lips. John Risca, with a cut finger, would have held it up for the commiseration of Herold, cursing heft and blade, and everything cursable connected with the knife; but Herold, with a broken heart, would have held his smiling peace.
For a moment he was convinced of John's faith in Stella's ignorance; but only for a moment. When she entered the palm court with Sir Oliver and Lady Blount, and he saw her eyes, dewy with a new happiness, rest on John, he felt that, awakened or unawakened, Stellamaris loved not him, Herold, but his friend. And when she came up to him in her frank, gracious way, and let her gloved little hand linger in his, he laughed and praised her radiance with a jest, and not one of the four dreamed of the pain in the man's heart.
They took their seats in the gay and crowded restaurant.
“This is really a palace!” cried Stella, in great delight. “Why can't every place be as beautiful as this?”
She had recovered from the emotional fatigue of the night before, having slept the sound sleep of happy girlhood, and awakened to the shy consciousness of impending change. The pink of health was in her cheeks.
Sir Oliver replied to her question.
“It takes a deuce of a lot of money to run such a concern.”
“But why has n't every one got money?”
“That's what these confounded socialist fellows are asking,” replied Sir Oliver, helping himself largely to anchovies and mayonnaise of egg.
But Stella scarcely heard. She remembered the tramp who had not a penny and the misery that had met her eyes during her rides abroad, and a momentary shadow fell on her.
“I think there 's a great deal to be said for the socialists,” remarked Lady Julia.
Sir Oliver laid down his fork and stared less at his wife than at the blasphemy.
“There 's nothing to be said for 'em; nothing at all.”
“You 'll admit the uneven distribution of wealth,” said Lady Blount, drawing herself up. She was rather proud of the phrase.
“Lazy dogs—all to get and nothing to do. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Julia.”
“Oh, darlings, don't get cross with me!” cried Stella, in distress. The observance of the Unwritten Law had imperceptibly grown less strict as the influence of the sea-chamber had waned, and the poor quarrelsome pair were not at their old pains to hide their differences. “I never meant to talk socialism.”
“My precious dove!” cried Sir Oliver, “who in the world said you did? It was your aunt.”
“I believe it's John who is at the bottom of it, because he 's wearing a red tie,” Herold interposed, with a laugh. “Oh, John, where did you find it?”
“I think it suits him beautifully,” declared Stella, quick to follow the red herring of a cravat. “It 's when he wears mauve or light blue or green striped with yellow that he goes wrong. Belovedest,—” she turned to him tenderly; she was placed between him and Sir Oliver,—“now that I am like everybody else,”—her favorite euphemism,—“do let me choose your ties for you.”
“Of course, dear; of course,” said John, who had been eatinghors d'ouvrein glum silence. “Who is there with taste like you?”
It would be entrancingly delectable to wear ties chosen by Stellamaris. Why, it would be coiling her sweet thoughts about his neck! This concession at least was harmless. Then suddenly he remembered that for the last two or three years Unity had taken charge of such details of his wardrobe, and he had sufficient glimmering of insight into feminine nature to know that between Unity with her domestic rights and a tigress with cubs there was remarkably little difference. How was he to abrogate one of her privileges? The gadfly question worried him. With such trumpery concerns are the deepest emotions of human life complicated. He who does not recognize them has no sense of values.
The conjugal wrangle having been checked, the meal proceeded gaily enough. Stella spoke of the play and praised Herold's acting, but with curious shyness avoided discussion of the theme. Herold noticed her adroit detours. He also noticed, with a sensitive man's pain, many other little things indicative of the awakening of Stellamaris. Once he saw her lay her hand impulsively on John's, as she had been wont to do since her childhood, and draw it quickly away, while a flush, like a rose-edged fairy cloud, came and went in her cheek. He also caught her glancing covertly at John, her brow knitted in a tiny frown, as though she wondered at his unusual silence.
When the party broke up, John leaving early, owing to pressure of work at the office, she said:
“I shall see you to-night, of course?”
“I'm afraid not. I have to see the review through the press.”
Her face fell piteously.
“Oh, Belovedest!” she cried. “And I can't have Walter, because he's tied to his theatre.”
But the disappointment was on account of John, not on account of Herold.
“You 'll have Walter most of the afternoon,” remarked Lady Blount.
Stella laughed. “But I want everybody always,” she said disingenuously.
It had been arranged that while Sir Oliver should go to his longed-for and seldom-used club, and Lady Blount visit certain cronies, Herold should take Stella to the Zoological Gardens.
She turned to John.
“Are you quite sure you can't come too, dear?”
He shook his head. “A newspaper office is a remorseless machine—just like a theatre. I must work.”
“I'm beginning to be frightfully jealous of work,” she said, with a laugh.
“It 's the noblest thing a man can do,” said Sir Oliver.
At the zoo, Stella found a world of wonder, which drove disappointment from her mind, and in her childlike gaiety and enthusiasm Herold forgot his heartache for a while. Sufficient for the moment was the joy of her exquisite presence, of her animated cheeks and dancing eyes, of her beautiful voice rippling into exclamations of rapture at monkey or secretary-bird or hippopotamus.
“These are springbok,” said Herold, in front of an inclosure.
Stella's brows knitted themselves into their customary network of perplexity.
“But I 've read that men go out to shoot springboks.”
“I'm afraid they do,” said Herold.
“Men deliberately kill these beautiful, harmless things, with their melting eyes?” Her own filled with moisture. “Oh, Walter! How can men be so vile?” She knelt on the ground, and spoke to one, which poked its sensitive nose through the railing. “Oh, you dear! Oh, you perfectly lovely dear!”
Then she rose and took Herold by the arm, and a little shiver ran through her shoulders. “I suppose men kill everything. I 've found out they even kill one another. Would you or John kill creatures that did you no harm?”
She looked at him straight, with the searching candour of a spotless soul.
“I've shot birds which were afterwards eaten,” he replied uncomfortably. “You see, dear, you eat partridges and pheasants, don't you? Well, they have to be killed, just like sheep or oxen. Often in South Africa men's lives depend on the supply of springbok meat they can obtain.”
“And does John shoot little birds?”
“John has n't had the opportunity of going about to shooting parties. All his life he has had to work too hard.”
“I'm glad,” said Stella, curtly, and for a while she walked on in silence, and poor Herold felt like an unhanged wallower in innocent gore.
At last she said, “Are n't there any lions and tigers?”
“Of course.”
“Why have n't we seen them?”
“They roar dreadfully, and they're rather fierce and terrible, Stellamaris.”
“Are you afraid of them?”
He noted the feminine, quasi-logical touch of scorn, and laughed with a wry face.
“They 're behind bars, dear. But I thought they might possibly frighten you.”
“Frighten me? Let us go and see them.”
So, seeing that Stellamaris was a young woman of intrepid and imperious disposition, Herold dutifully took her to the Great Cat's House, where again the child in her was enraptured by the splendour of the striped and tawny brutes. She lingered in front of the lion's cage. The four-o'clock meal was over. The lioness lay asleep in the corner, but her mate sat up, with his head near to the bars, an enormous, cleaned bone between his paws. The absurd and useless animal had struck a photographic pose at which Herold, with a more sophisticated companion, would have laughed. But Stellamaris took the lion too seriously. He fulfilled all her dreams of a lion. She looked in breathless admiration at the lion, and the lion, choke-full of food, regarded her with grave benevolence. Again she pressed Herold's arm.
“How noble! How kingly!”
He assented. The lion was certainly doing his best to warrant the impression.
“He is just like John,” said Stellamaris.
“Something,” said Herold, leading her out into the fresh air and sunshine.
“That fearless, royal look,” said Stella—“don't you think so?”
Before replying, he took her to a shady bench where they both sat down.
“John's the finest and the best and the bravest fellow in the world,” said he, loyally.
Her eyes shone. She put out her gloved little hand in her familiar, caressing way and pressed his gently. Her maidenhood did not glow at the sisterly touch.
“I 'm so happy, my Great High Favourite, dear,” she said.
“Why? Why now more than usual?” He smiled wistfully.
The sky was blue, and the trees were heavy with leafage, and she had just seen the king of beasts in his most kingly aspect, and he reminded her of the man she loved, and her heart was young and innocent. Herold once more became her chosen companion in the Land That Never Was. She dropped her voice to a whisper, for staring people strolled along the path ten yards away. Besides, there are times when the sound of one's own voice is embarrassing.
“You love John, don't you, dear? You love him dearly, dearly, dearly, as he deserves to be loved?”
“I would lay down my life for him,” said Herold, gravely.
She gripped his hand. “I know. He would do the same for you. Do you think, Walter dear—” she paused and lowered her eyelids, “do you think there's a more splendid man than John in the world?”
“I am his friend, Stellamaris, and I'm prejudiced,—Love is blind, you know,—but I don't think so.”
She leaned back in her seat and meditated. Then she said:
“I wish you and I were sitting by my window. You and I understand each other, but I miss the sea. You and I and the sea understand one another better. Can't you see it this lovely afternoon? It 's quite calm, but there 's a little kissing breath of wind, which makes it dance and sparkle in the sun. It 's laughing with gladness. Trees are beautiful, but they don't laugh.”
“They whisper eternal things,” said Herold.
“What?”
“The rhythm of life—fulfilment, as now, winter's decay, and the everlasting rebirth of spring.”
“They don't tell me that. I don't understand their language,” replied Stella. “To-day I want the sea, just with you—just you and I and the sea.”
“And then you think I should understand all that the pink sea-shell that is you is trying to tell me?”
She laughed. “I could tell the sea, and the sea could tell you.”
Secret de Polichitielle!Had she not been telling him all the time, as implicitly as maidenhood could tell man, of the great and wonderful adventure of her soul? He was exquisitely near,—that he knew,—nearer, indeed, to the roots of her being than the leonine hero of her dreams. He alone of mortals was privileged to receive and treasure the overflow of her heart. With him as joint trustee was the eternal ocean. He winced at the irony of it all.
Presently she asked:
“Have you ever loved any one?”
He answered as he had done years before:
“I have loved dreams.”
She retorted in his own words:
“One can't marry a dream.” He shrugged his shoulders.
“You will love some one some day, and then you will want to marry her,” she continued, with her direct simplicity. “And when you do, you 'll come and tell me, dear, for I shall understand.”
“I 'll tell you, Stellamaris,” he promised. Then he sprang to his feet. The pain had grown intolerable, “We have n't seen the giraffes,” said he.
The child in her once more came to the surface. “I 've longed to see a giraffe all my life,” she cried, and she accompanied him blissfully.
After leaving her at the hotel, Herold went home and suffered the torments of a soul on fire. Tragedy lay ahead. Stellamaris, star of the sea, steadfast as a star—he knew her. Love had come to her not in the fluttering Cupid guise in which he visits most of the sweet maidens among mortals, but in the strong, godlike essence in which alone he dare approach the great ones. The sea-foam and mist formed but a garment for this creature of infinite sky and eternal sea. They but shrouded or touched to glamour the elemental strength.
She had given her love to John Risca, her Great High Belovedest. God knows what dreams she had woven about him; the man's fine loyalty asserted his friend's worthiness of any woman's dreams. The only, and the hideous, consideration was the fact of John being tied for life to the unspeakable. Himself and the pain of his love he put aside. What were the unimportant sufferings of a thousand such as he compared with one pang that might shoot through the bosom of Stellamaris? What could be done to avert the tragedy? His faith in John Risca was absolute. But John had shut his eyes to the glory shimmering in front of them. His eyes must be opened. Stellamaris must be told. All foundations of the Unwritten Law would have to be swept away, and she would survey in terror the piteous wreckage of the whole fabric of her life.
How could he save her? How could he save her from inevitable pain?