THE next morning Stella was putting on her hat, a foamy thing of white tulle and pink roses, before her mirror, when an audacious thought came dancing into her head. It dizzied her for a moment, and took away her breath. With throbbing heart, she stood looking into her own wide eyes, which were filled with delicious excitement.
It would be a great adventure. Why should she not embark on it? She was free till luncheon, her uncle and aunt having gone out on their own errands and left her to the rest they supposed she needed. But she felt strong, pulsatingly strong. She looked out of the window. The June sunshine allured her. Why should she sit indoors on such a morning? There was not the faintest shadow of a reason. But how should she reach her destination? Her mind worked swiftly. Sir Oliver had set out on foot, bound for Bond Street and Piccadilly. Lady Blount had declared her intention to renew the joys of her youth, and go about in a hansom, which had been procured for her with some difficulty by the magnificent commissionnaire. The motor was at Stella's service. She had only to order it, and it would come to the front door and carry her whithersoever she desired.
It would be a wild adventure to feel herself alone and independent in this welter of London, and then, more thrilling still, to burst in upon her Great High Belovedest, not in his palace,—that, alas! he had given, up,—but in his Great High Mansion at Kilburn.
Where Kilburn was she had not the remotest idea; but it was somewhere in Fairy-land. The chauffeur would know; he seemed to know everything. The temptation overpowered her. She yielded. Orders were given to a bewildered and protesting maid. What would Lady Blount say?
“That 's a matter between Lady Blount and myself,” said Stella.
“Can't I come with you, miss?”
“I am going alone, Morris.” She had the gracious, but imperative, way of princesses. Morris dared argue no more. She attended her mistress to the door of the motor, and saw her driven away in prodigious state.
It was a glorious adventure. How could she have spoiled it by allowing the protection of a prosaic serving-maid? Hitherto she had not strayed alone beyond the confines of the gardens of the Channel House. Now she had the thrill of the first mariner who lost sight of land. She was on an unknown sea, bound for a port of dreams. Of the port she knew nothing definite. Since the dispersion of the apocryphal palace household, John had told her little of his domestic life. The old habit of deception had been too strong, and her other intimates had entered into the conspiracy of silence. Why trouble her with accounts of his Aunt Gladys, of whom she had never heard; of Unity, of whom it were best that she should not hear; of the poor, little, economical establishment,—Unity at the head, watching the pennies—which, together with the one in Fulham, was all that his means allowed him to maintain? All her life he had been to Stellamaris the prince eating off gold plate.Cui bono, to whose advantage and to what end, should he break the illusion and confess to chipped earthenware? Although she now recognized (to her sadness) the palace story as overlapping the fable, and set Lilias and Niphetos side by side with the cat Bast and the dog Anubis in the shrine of myth, yet her ingenuous fancy still pictured Risca as the writer of compelling utterances which caused ministers of state to clutch their salaries with trembling fingers and potentates to quake on their thrones. And she still imagined a fitting environment for such a magnifico. On his private life during the week, outside his work, she scarcely speculated. For her it was spent at Southcliff from Saturday to Monday. It was difficult to realize that Southcliff was not the world.
The car sped like an Arabian-Nights carpet through wide thoroughfares thronged with traffic, up the wider, more peaceful, and leafy Maida Vale, passing broad avenues to right and left, and then, making a sudden turn, halted before the shabbiest of a row of shabby, detached little villas. The chauffeur descended, and opened the door of the car.
“Why have you stopped here?”
“It's the address you gave me, miss.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure, miss,” smiled the chauffeur. “Fairmount, Ossington Road, Kilburn, London, NorthWest.”
Fairmont had been to her a mount of beauty on the summit of which stretched the abode of her Belovedest. The chauffeur, still smiling,—for who could talk sour-faced to Stellamaris?—pointed to the gate.
“There it is written, miss,—'Fairmont.' ”
She alighted, tears very near her eyes, and passing through the gates and tiny front garden, rang the bell. The door was opened by a common-looking, undersized girl of about her own age, dressed in a tartan blouse and a brown stuff skirt. Her nose was snub, her mouth wide, her forehead bulged, and her skimpy hair was buckled up tight with combs on the top of her head. There was a moment's breathless silence as the two girls stared at each other. At last Unity's face broke into a miracle of gladness, which transfigured her plain features. She retreated a step or two along the passage.
“Miss Stella! Miss Stella!” she gasped, and as Stella, still more amazed and bewildered, said nothing, she drew nearer. “It is Miss Stella, is n't it?” she asked.
“Yes,” Stella answered. She paused; then, recovering herself, went on rather hurriedly: “I 've seen you before. You are the girl who came once into my room—I remember—Constable tore my jacket—you were mending it—”
“Yes, miss,” said the other, forgetful, in the sudden excitement of again seeing her goddess face to face, of the precepts of gentility in which Miss Lindon had trained her.
“It all comes back, though it was long, long ago—ever so many years ago. Your name is Unity.”
“Yes, Miss Stella.”
“But what in the world are you doing here?”
“Mr. Risca is my guardian. I keep house for him—I and Aunt Gladys.”
“Aunt Gladys?”
“Mr. Risca's aunt, Miss Stella.” It was sweet to pronounce the beautiful name.
Stella's knees grew weak, and she leaned against the wall. Here were mysteries of which John had left her in ignorance. She felt guilty of unwarrantable intrusion. The joy of her adventure was blotted out. The shabby villa; the poverty-stricken passage; the glimpse through an open door into a gimcrack parlour, all bamboo and ribbons; Unity, the little sewing-girl who was John's ward; the unheard of Aunt Gladys—all was shock, sending dreams into limbo, startling an unready mind into a whirling chaos of conjecture. Too late she realized that, had he wanted her there, he would have invited her. He would be vexed at her coming. Her cheeks burned.
“Is he at home?” she faltered.
She heard with incredible relief that he had gone into town on business. Miss Lindon happening to be in bed with a slight cold, the duties of hospitality devolved on Unity.
“Won't you come in and sit down for a minute, Miss Stella?”
“I am afraid I must n't.”
“Oh, why? Do come.”
Unity stretched out her hand timidly. The gesture and the pleading in the girl's eyes made a strong appeal. Youth also called to youth.
“Just for a minute. It would make me so happy.”
Stella could not refuse. They entered the little drawing-room. Stella had never seen such a funny, prim room before. She sat down on the slippery sofa. Unity fixed on her the eyes of a spaniel brought into the presence of a long-lost mistress.
“I think you 're even more beautiful than when I saw you before,” she said, abruptly.
Somewhat confused, Stella smiled. “I am well now, like other people, so that's perhaps why I look better.”
“When I heard of it, I cried with joy.”
“You, my dear? Why?”
“I 'd been thinking of you all the time—all the time.”
And Stella had never given a thought to Unity, though dramatic incidents at the Channel House had not been so frequent that the sight of Unity had not, brought back to her mind the circumstances of the episode. Stay, had she remembered all the circumstances?
“My dear,” she said, moved by the girl's almost passionate sincerity, “I remember you well. I wanted you so much to come back and talk to me, and I asked for you; but they told me that you went away that afternoon. What were you doing at the Channel House?”
“I had been ill, and my guardian asked her ladyship to let me stay there for a bit.”
“But they told me,” cried Stella, the missing circumstance coming in a flash, “that you were a village girl who had been brought in for a day's sewing.”
Unity flushed brick-red, realizing her indiscretion. She knew well enough now why she had been forbidden the sea-chamber.
“I was a noisy, horrid, badly-brought-up child,” she said, “and they were afraid I should worry you. That was why,” she said, with a slight air of defiance.
Stella was not convinced; the story lacked the ring of truth that characterized Unity's other statements. She felt that for some unknown reason they had lied to her, and that in order to bear them out Unity was lying. Her loyalty and delicacy forbade her questioning Unity further.
“If you were horrid, you would n't have remembered me all this time,” she said, with a smile.
“That 's just how you looked when I called you 'my lady,' “ said Unity. “How do you think one could forget you? Besides, Mr. Herold is always talking about you.”
Stella opened her eyes. “Do you know Mr. Herold, too?”
“Of course. He's my guardian's dearest friend.”
Stella's heart sank lower. Her Great High Favourite, too, was in this conspiracy of concealment.
“Does—does your guardian ever speak of me?”
“Why should he?” asked Unity.
The queer retort puzzled Stella.
The other, seeing the implied question in her glance, continued: “I should n't dare to ask him. He's too great and wonderful.” Again the transfiguring light swept over her coarse features. “It 's beautiful of him to let me do things for him.”
“What do you do?”
“I look after his clothes, mend and darn and buy things for him, and I dust his books and see that he has what he likes to eat and, oh, hundreds of things—just so that he sha'n't have any worry at all.”
A new pain began to creep round Stella's heart, one she had never felt before, one that frightened her.
“Tell me some more,” she said.
And Unity, her tongue loosened as it was with no one else in the world save Walter Herold, talked of the trivial round of her days and the Olympian majesty of John Risca.
“You must love him very much,” said Stella.
A glow came into her patient eyes as she nodded and fixed them on Stellamaris; and then a tear started.
“Does n't everybody love him?”
She rose abruptly. “Would you like me to show you his room, Miss Stella—the room he works in?”
Stella rose, too. “He might not like it,” she said.
This was a point of view incomprehensible to Unity. Even the all-great master must bow to the sanctification brought into the house by Stella's feet. She said softly:
“He worships the ground you tread on. Don't you know that?”
Stella flushed, and evaded the question.
“You think that if I'm afraid to go into his room, I don't care for him? It is n't that. I—I love him more than anything else in the world. I—” she stopped short, and the flush deepened, for she realized what she was saying. “It is something I can't quite explain to you,” she continued, after a pause. “In fact, I ought n't to stay any longer.”
Despite unregenerate Fatima temptation, despite a girl's romantic desire to see the table at which the dear one writes his immortal prose, she could pry no further into her Great Belovedest's home. She had pried too much already for her peace of mind.
She put out her hand. Unity took it, and, holding it, looked up into her face. She was squat and undersized; Stella was slim and tall.
“I thought I should never see you again,” she said, in a low voice.
“I hope now we shall see each other often,” replied Stella, and drawn toward the girl by the magnetism of her love, she kissed her on both cheeks.
But she drove away in the magnificent limousine very heavy-hearted, out of tune with life. She seemed to be living in an atmosphere of lies, from which her candid soul passionately revolted. She met them at every turn. Once more the world became the Threatening Land full of hidden ugliness, only awaiting opportunity to be revealed. The glamour of the last day or two in London had gone. When John Risca, truly her belovedest, when Walter Herold, whom in her simplicity she had regarded all her life less as a man than as a kind of Adonaïs spirit, when all, all she loved had lied to her persistently for years, to whom and to what could she pin her faith? Who would guide her through this land of which she was so ignorant, this land so thickly set with cruel traps?
John was poor and struggling and lived in a shabby little house. Had she known it, the fact would have made him all the dearer. But why had he given her to believe that he lived in fantastic luxury? Why had he lied? Why had he not told her of Unity—Unity who was so interwoven in his life, Unity who looked after his very clothes? A sudden thought smote her, and a scalding wave of shame lapped her from head to foot. She had proposed to buy his ties. She hated herself for the proposal, and she hated herself for starting on this lamentable adventure of indiscretion. She became aware that the new, frightening pain that had crept round her heart was jealousy, and she hated herself for the ignoble passion. She felt it like a stain upon her.
A slight smirch upon a gown of gray (such as most of us wear) escapes notice; but on a robe of white it stands out in hideous accusation.
The butterfly that had left the hotel so gaily returned with sorry wings from which the gossamer had been rubbed. She crept into her bedroom, where Lady Blount, coming in a while later, found her lying somewhat feverish on the bed. At the sight of her aunt, she sprang up to make instant and spirited confession.
“Do you know what I 've done this morning? I thought I would give John a surprise and I took the car to Kilburn. He was not at home, but I saw the girl Unity, his ward.”
Lady Blount looked at her in terrible dismay.
“My darling, you ought n't to have done it.”
“I know, Auntie. And when you see John, will you tell him how sorry I am, and give him my apologies.”
“Apologies?”
“Yes. It was ill-breeding on my part. He has a perfect right to keep his home affairs to himself, and I should not have intruded. You must apologize for me.”
It was a very proud and dignified Stella that spoke, a spot of red burning on each cheek, and her slim figure held very erect.
“I hope, my darling,” said Lady Blount, longing to ask a more direct question—“I hope that girl was n't rude to you.”
“Unity rude?” Stella knitted her brow. The idea was ludicrous. “On the contrary, like the rest of you, she is far too fond of me. I don't know why; it 's very odd. And she is devoted body and soul to John. She has a fine, great, generous nature.”
The stain of jealousy should be wiped away, if she could possibly manage it.
“I believe she is a very good girl, though I have n't seen her—”
“Since she stayed at Southcliff?” said Stella with steady eyes.
“I—I was just going to say so,” Lady Blount stammered. The situation was perplexing. “And John does n't often speak of her.” She made rather a failure of a smile. “And what did the two of you talk about?”
The bitter knowledge of good and evil was coming fast to Stellamaris. A little while ago her innocence would have taken the question at its face-value; now, perhaps for the first time in her life to suspect disingenuousness, she penetrated to the poor little diplomacy lying beneath.
“Chiefly of John and myself—of nothing very particular,” she replied. “I did n't stay long.”
She saw the repression of Lady Blount's sigh of relief. Swiftly she drew her deductions. They were all concealing something from her, and the fact of their concealment proved it to be something shameful and abominable. Her bosom rose in revolt against the world. Lift but a corner of the fairest thing in life, and you found the ugliness below.
She sat on the bed by the foot-rail, and rested her throbbing head on her hand.
“Your little escapade has upset you, darling,” said Lady Blount, weakly; “but it was nothing very serious, after all. If John's furious when he hears of it, it 'll only be because he was not there to welcome you himself.”
“I 'm not afraid of John being furious, Auntie,” said Stella. “It 's not that at all. You don't understand.”
“I don't think I do, dear,” said poor Lady Blount. She sat down beside the girl and put a loving arm round her. “Tell me what it is.”
But this was more than Stella could do. To speak would be to accuse and reproach, and she could not accuse or reproach any of her dear ones. Yet she needed the comfort like any other young and suffering soul. She surrendered to the elder woman's caress, feeling very weary.
“Perhaps I 'm not as strong as I thought I was, Auntie,” she said.
The confession stirred all the mothering instincts in Lady Blount. With physical things she could grapple. She tended her with her thin, deft hands and persuaded her to lie down.
“My poor lamb, London is too much for you. Never mind. We 're going home to-morrow.”
“I shall never want to leave home again,” said Stella.
It was half-past one. Sir Oliver was lunching and spending the afternoon at his club. A tray was brought to Stella's bed, and Lady Blount pecked at a flustered woman's meal in the sitting-room.
“What about John and the pictures, darling?” she asked when she rejoined Stella. It had been arranged for John to call for them at three o'clock and take them to the Royal Academy.
“I don't think I feel equal to it,” said Stella, truly. She was not yet quite “like every one else.” Her sensitive nature also shrank from meeting John. Before him she would shrivel up with shame. “You go with him, Auntie; I 'll rest here and read.”
On the stroke of three came John, who, having been detained on his business in town, had not gone home for luncheon. It was therefore from Lady Blount that he heard of Stella's adventure. He listened with his heavy frown, moving restlessly about the room, his hands in his pockets.
“I would give a thousand pounds for it not to have happened,” said he.
“It's done now. We must make the best of it.”
“Unity was discreet? Are you sure?”
“Quite sure.”
He walked about for a while in silence.
“Perhaps it's just as well Stella should know so much,” he conceded, “though I would rather she had learned it differently. I suppose she was somewhat upset?”
“She's still delicate,” said Lady Blount, “and she's all sensitiveness—always has been, as you know. I have made her lie down.”
He swung round sharply.
“She's not ill?” he asked.
“No, not ill; but exertion easily tires her. And she's afraid you 'll be angry with her, and miserable because she thinks she did an ill-bred thing in intruding on your privacy. She 's deeply ashamed; she feels acutely. She's not like other girls. We've got to realize it. She wants me to apologize to you—”
“Stella apologize to me! Stella!” he shouted in amazement and indignation. “We 'll soon see about that!”
He strode toward the door leading into Stella's room. Lady Blount checked him.
“Don't, John. I would n't see her now.”
“Do you think I 'd leave her a minute to suffer fear and misery and shame?”
“You exaggerate, dear.”
“Those were your words. No, Julia. I must set this right.”
Stellamaris suffering, afraid of him, miserable, and ashamed! As well say Stella beaten, Stella thumb-screwed, Stella thrown to wolves! It was intolerable. He forgot his resolutions.
With rough gentleness he thrust Lady Blount aside and, opening the door, slightly ajar, caught sight of Stella lying, wrapper-clad, upon the bed. He entered in his impetuous fashion and slammed the door behind him.
“Darling, don't worry. Julia has told me. It 's only you that could have had the beautiful idea of coming to see me. I love you for it, and I could kick myself for not being at home.”
Instinctively and unthinkingly, as if he had been in the sea-chamber, he sat down heavily beside her and took her two hands. Her brown eyes looked piteously into his.
“Stella, darling, it 's I that must ask for forgiveness for not having prepared you. Years ago, when you were little, I began the silly story of the palace to amuse and interest you; and I had a lot of troubles, dear, and it helped me to bear them to come to you and live with you in a fairy-tale. And then it was so hard to undeceive you when I found you believed it. I tried—you must remember.”
“Yes, dear,” she said, feeling very weak and foolishly comforted by the nervous grasp of his great hands. “Yes, I remember.”
“You were there on your bed by the window,” he continued, “and every one thought you would never rise from it. So what was the good of telling you just the weary prose of life? What place could it have in the poetry of yours? And I was selfish, Stella darling; I used to come to you for something sweet and pure and lovely that the wide wide world could n't give me. And I got it, and it sent me away strong for the battle; and I 've had to fight, dear—to fight hard sometimes. And when you got well and came out into the world, I felt it was necessary to tell you something more about myself—that there never had been a palace; that I was just a poor, hard-working journalist; that I had adopted a little girl called Unity, whose life had not been of the happiest; that she and an old aunt of mine kept house for me: but our old life went on so smoothly, and I still got the help and courage and faith I needed from you, that I put off telling you from week to week. That's the explanation, darling. And now I'm glad, more than glad, you came to-day. Don't you believe me?”
“Yes, Belovedest,” she sighed. “I believe you.”
He went on, finding in her presence his old power of artistic expression. In the overwhelming desire to bring back the laughter to those wonderful eyes that met his he forgot prudence, forgot the fact that he was making a passionate appeal. He was pleading her cause with happiness, not his own. It was the purest in the love of the man that spoke. Again he wound up by claiming her faith. And again, this time with soft, melting eyes, she said, “Yes, Belovedest, I believe you.”
What else could she say, poor child? Here was her hero among men belittling himself just for her glorification. Here was his strong, beloved face wrought into an intensity of pleading. Here he was using tones of his deep voice that made every chord in her vibrate. Cloud-compeller, he cleared her overcast horizon to radiance. Is there a woman breathing, be she never so cynical, who, in the sunshine of her heart, does not believe in the sun?
She laughed and drew his hands to her face. “So you think I 've been making mountains out of molehills?”
“Out of molecules,” said he.
She laughed one of her adorable, childish little laughs. But the woman whispered, “Forgive me, Belovedest.”
Time has invented but one proof of forgiveness in such a case, and eternity will not find a substitute. Obeying the everlasting law, he proved his forgiveness; but he mastered himself sufficiently to draw back the moment their lips had touched. He rose to his feet.
“Now we 're quite happy, are n't we?”
A little murmur signified assent. Then she sat up, and swung her legs daintily over the side of the bed, and, flushed, happy, and adorably dishevelled, looked at him.
0260
“And now,” she cried gaily, “if you 'll let me put on my frock, I 'll come with you and auntie to see the pictures.”
He remonstrated. She was tired out; she must rest. But she stood up and faced him.
“I want to be happy to-day. Tiredness does n't count. I shall be at the Channel House to-morrow, and I can rest for a month.”
She put her hand on his shoulder and led him to the door. In the next room Lady Blount was anxiously awaiting him. He took her lean shoulders in his bear's hug.
“All right, Julia. She's perfectly happy, and she's coming with us to the Royal Academy.”
So once more that day was the limousine ordered to the hotel entrance, and once more Stellamaris entered it with a sense of high, but now delectably safe, adventure, this time helped in by John as tenderly as though she were a thing of spun glass and moonbeams. And they drove away joyously to see one of the most beautiful, but at the same time, one of the saddest sights of the world—the aspiring, yet fettered, souls, the unrealized dreams, the agonized hopes, individually concrete, of thousands of God's elect on this imperfect earth.
John Risca, absorbed in the laughter he had brought back to precious eyes, did not see a thin-lipped woman dressed in black slip behind one of the porphyry columns of the portico as they drove out. And the woman meant that he should not see, as she had meant it hundreds of times before during the last six years. Had he done so, there would have been an end to the intense, relentless, and diabolically patient purpose of her life.
CONSTABLE, dragging the feet of an old hound, mounted the stairs behind Stellamaris and followed her into the sea-chamber, and to the south window, whither she went instinctively to gaze out over her beloved sea, now gray and choppy, as the sky was overcast and a fresh breeze was blowing. He had been the most unhappy dog alive, they told her, during her absence. Since his dim, far-away puppy-hood not a day had passed without his spending hours in her company. She had been the reason of his existence. The essential one gone, there was nothing to live for; so at first he had wandered round in a bewildered way looking for her, and then, not finding her, he had refused food and pined, and, had she stayed away much longer, would have died of a broken heart, after the manner of deep-natured dogs. When she arrived, he was at the gate to meet her. At her magical appearance he tried to prance as in his youthful days, and lashed the whip of his tail against the iron railings so that it bled. Sobered by age, he had not had what Stella used to call a “bluggy” tail (the disability of his race) for years. But as prancing and tail-lashing and whinnying do not accord with the muscles and wind of an old dog, and as his heart was full, he had lain down at her feet, his snout beyond his paws, trembling all through his great bulk. And it was only after she had knelt on the ground beside him, thereby blocking the path to Sir Oliver and Lady Blount, to say nothing of Morris, the maid, and Simmons, the gardener, and the hand luggage, and had caressed and kissed him, that he had found strength to stagger to his feet and make way for his fellow-humans. After that he had not left her for a second. Who could tell but that she might vanish again into thin air, this time not to be reincarnated? Descartes, who said that the lower animals were automata, could never have known the wonder of a dog's love.
Constable followed Stella to the window and snuggled his great head into the curve of her waist. Her arm, soft and precious, drooped about his neck. Constable and the sea and herself had been secret-sharing companions since the world was young. So she stood for a long time by the open window, drinking in the salt of the sea-breeze, and communing, in her own way, with the elemental spirit of the waters. Presently she turned with a sigh, bent down, and took the old hound's slobbering chaps between her hands and looked into his patient eyes.
“Are you glad I'm back, dear High Constable darling? Very glad? Not gladder than I am, dear. No; you can't be. You've never been to London. Oh, you would hate it. It pretends to be a beautiful place, but it is n't. It 's a sham, dear. I'm sure you 've never heard of a whited sepulchre; but that's what it is. And London's the world, my precious, and the world is n't a bit like what you and I were led to expect. It 's full of ugliness and wickedness, and nobody can get at the truth of anything.” Still fondling him, she sat on the window-seat. “Yes; you and I are very much better off here. If you went abroad, you 'd be such a miserable Constable. You would, darling.” She looked tragically at him, and he, responsive to the doleful tones of her voice, regarded her in mournful sympathy.
Then she laughed, and kissed him between the eyes.
“But I do so want to be happy. I 'll tell you a secret—oh, a great, great secret—that no one knows.” She lifted the velvet flap of his ear and whispered something below her breath, which Constable must have understood, for he laid his cheek against hers; and so they stayed until Morris, intent on unpacking, disturbed their peace.
Then came a day or two of rest during which she strove to reconcile the irreconcilable,—her dreams in the sea-chamber and the realities outside,—using her newly found love for talisman. And just as she was trying to forget the ugliness of the world, a domestic incident cast her back into gloom and doubt.
One morning she entered the morning-room on a scene of tragedy. Sir Oliver stood with his back to the fire, looking weakly fierce and twirling his white moustache; Lady Blount sat stern and upright in a chair. A bulky policeman, bare-headed, stood at attention in the corner,—there is something terrifically intimate about an unhelmeted policeman,—while, in front of them all, a kitchen-maid in a pink cotton dress sobbed bitterly into a smudgy apron.
Stella paused astonished on the threshold. “Why—” she began.
“My dear,” said Sir Oliver, “will you kindly leave us?”
But Stella; advanced into the room. “What is Mr. Withers doing here?”
Mr. Withers was the policeman, and a valued acquaintance of Stellamaris.
“Go away, darling,” said Lady Blount. “This has nothing to do with you.”
But Stella had been accustomed to rule in that house. Anything that happened in it was her concern. Besides, she would have ugly things hidden away from her no longer; and here was obviously an ugly thing.
“No, my dears,” she said in her clear voice; “I must stay. Tell me, why is Eliza crying?”
“She's a wicked thief,” said Lady Blount.
Then Stella caught sight of a couple of rings and a brooch and a five-pound note lying on a table.
“Did she steal those?”
Sir Oliver explained. The articles had been stolen during their absence in town. He had applied to the police, with the result that the theft had been traced to Eliza.
So that was a thief—that miserable, broad-faced girl. Stella looked at her with fearful curiosity. She had heard of thieves and conceived them to be desperate outcasts herding in the sunless alleys of great cities, their hideous faces pitted with crime, as with smallpox; she never imagined that they came into sheltered homes.
“What is Mr. Withers going to do with her?”
“Take her to prison,” said Sir Oliver, whereat the culprit wailed louder.
“What is prison?” asked Stella.
“A place where they lock you up for months, sometimes for years, in a stone cell, and make you sleep on a plank bed, and you have to pick oakum all day long, and are known by a number, and—er—”
“Please, Oliver!” remonstrated Lady Blount.
“I want to know, Auntie,” said Stella, a gracious, white-clad figure standing in the midst of them. She turned to the policeman.
“Are you going to take her to prison?”
“If Sir Oliver charges her, miss.”
“Of course I 'm going to charge her,” cried Sir Oliver. “It 's my duty.” He drew himself up. “I should be failing in it if I did n't.”
“Then it depends on you, Uncle, whether she is locked up or goes free?”
“That's so, miss,” replied the policeman. “I can't arrest her unless some one charges her.”
“What do you say, Auntie?”
“It 's very painful, dear. That is why I did n't want you to come in. But people who do these things have to be punished.”
“But why have they to be punished?” Stella asked, feeling curiously calm and remote from them all.
“They must be made examples of, dear. They must n't be let loose on society,” said Sir Oliver. “It's a duty to one's country, a duty to one's neighbours. I 'm afraid you don't understand, Stella. I implore you to leave this matter in our hands.”
It was strange how the girl whom they had reared in blank ignorance of life remained supreme arbiter of the situation. She said:
“You are afraid that if she were set free, she would rob somebody else?”
“Of course she would,” said Sir Oliver, testily.
“Would you, Eliza?” asked Stellamaris.
Thus appealed to, the guilty little wretch threw herself on the ground, in horrible abasement, at Stella's feet.
“Oh, Miss Stella, don't let them put me in prison! For God's sake! don't let them put me in prison! I 'll never do it again. I swear I won't. Save me, Miss Stella!”—She clutched the white skirts—“Don't let them send me to prison.”
She continued in terrified reiteration. Stella felt an icicle in her bosom in place of a heart. She had never before seen humanity lowered to the depths.
“Why did you do it?”
The crouching thing did not know. The drawer of the dressing-table had been left unlocked. She had been tempted. It was the first time she had stole anything. She would never do it again. And then she cried again, “Don't let them send me to prison!”
“Julia, can't you prevent her making such a noise?” said Sir Oliver.
The bulky policeman, desiring to carry out Sir Oliver's wishes, came forward and laid his hand on the girl's shoulder. She screamed. Stella touched him on the arm, and he stood up straight. Then she opened the door.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Withers, for your trouble; but we are not going to have this girl put in prison.”
The kitchen-maid lay a huddled, sobbing mass on the floor.
“You 're doing a very foolish thing, Stella,” said Sir Oliver.
“You had much better let your uncle and me deal with this,” said Lady Blount.
“My dears,” said Stella, very white, very dispassionate, cold steel from head to foot, “if you put this girl in prison, I shall go mad. All the things you have taught me would have no meaning. We say every day, 'Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.' ”
“But, my darling child, that's quite different,” said Sir Oliver. “That 's a form of words referring to spiritual things. This is practical life.”
“Is that true, Auntie?”
“No, dear, not quite. It's most difficult to know how to act,” replied Lady Blount, resting her weary old head on her hand. “Do as you like, child. What you do can't be wrong.”
Stella turned to the policeman, who had been looking from one to the other and wondering from whom he should take his final instructions.
“We sha'n't need you any more, Mr. Withers.”
“Very good, miss.”
He saluted and went away. Stella shook the girl by the arm.
“Get up,” she commanded, “and go to your room. Don't speak. I can't bear it. Go.”
The maid picked herself up and rushed out of the room. Stella confronted the two old people. The morning sun streamed through the casement window, and the light fell full on Sir Oliver's wrinkled old face and spare form, and Stella, through the semi-military jauntiness and aristocratic air of command produced by the thin features and white moustache and imperial, saw, as by means of X-rays, all the weakness, the foolishness, the pomposity, the vanity, that lay beneath. And yet she knew that he loved her more dearly than any one in the world. She looked at her aunt, and, in the awful flash of revelation that at times sweeps through the young soul, she knew her to be a woman of little intelligence, of narrow judgment, of limited sympathies; and yet, she, too, loved her more dearly than any one in the world. Over them, she, Stella, had achieved a tranquil victory. Ashamed and hurt to her inmost heart by the stabbing consciousness of the humiliation she must have brought on these two poor ones so dear to her, she had not a word to say. Nor could they speak a word. There was a tense silence. Then reaction came. All the love of a lifetime flooded Stella's heart, and she threw herself by the side of Lady Blount and, her head in the old woman's lap, burst into a passion of tears. Sir Oliver, with a palsied gesture of his hand, left the women to themselves.
Once more poor Lady Blount, with her commonplace little platitudes, preaching obedience to the law, tried to comfort Stellamaris, whose intelligence had been scrupulously trained to the understanding of nothing but obedience to the spirit. And once more Stellamaris went away uncomforted. Guilt must be punished—a proposition which she found it hard to accept; but, accepted as a basis of argument, was it not punishment enough to reduce a human being to such grovelling degradation? Did not the declared intention of sending that wretched girl to prison imply pitilessness? Thenceforward hardness and suspicion began to creep into Stella's judgments. Dreams of evil began to haunt her sleep, and brooding by her window, she began to lose the consolation of the sea.
Three week-ends passed, and John did not come to the Channel House, making varied excuses for his defection. He wrote cheerily enough, but Stella, with poor human longing for the magic word that would set her heart beating, found a lack of something, she scarce knew what, in his letters. Her own, once so spontaneous, so sparkling with bubbles of fancy, grew constrained and self-conscious. John seemed to be eluding her. One of the Sundays Herold came down. The Blounts told him of the episode of the kitchen-maid and of the way in which Stella had taken the law into her own hands.
“I never imagined she had such a spirit,” Sir Oliver declared. “Egad! she stood up against us all like a little reigning princess.”
“But she broke down afterward, poor darling!” said Lady Blount.
Herold tried to question Stella on the subject, but met with no response.
“Let us talk of pleasant things,” she pleaded.
He went away sorrowful, knowing the conflict in her soul—knowing, too, that the strong soul has to fight its battles unaided.
Meanwhile Stella put on a smiling face to the world,—for, after all, the world smiled on her,—and she was gentle with Sir Oliver and Lady Blount. She mingled in such social life as the neighbourhood afforded—a luncheon party, a garden party, where young men fell at her feet in polite adoration, and young women put their arms round her waist and talked to her of hats. She liked them all well enough, but shyly evaded intimacy. They belonged to a race of beings with whom she was unfamiliar, having passed their lives in a different spiritual sphere. They frightened her ever so little; why, she did not know, for her unused power of self-analysis was not sufficiently strong to enable her to realize the instinctive shrinking from those, strangers to her, who had been drenched from childhood in the mysterious and dreadful knowledge of evil. She met them only on the common ground of youth and talked of superficial things, fearing to inquire more deeply into their thoughts and lives.
“I love to see her enjoying herself,” said Lady Blount.
Sir Oliver rubbed his hands, and agreed for once with his wife.
“There's nothing like a little harmless gaiety for a girl,” said he. “She has been shut up with us old fogies too long.”
“She's beginning to realize now,” said Lady Blount, “the happiness that lies before her in the new condition of things.”
ONE day when Stella was returning, unattended, from a small shopping excursion in the village, a thin-lipped woman in black crossed the road just before the turn that led to the gate to the Channel House and accosted her.
“Miss Blount?”
“Yes,” said Stella, coming to a halt.
She had noticed the woman for some little time walking on the opposite side of the way, and had been struck by a catlike stealthiness in her gait. Now, face to face with the woman, she met a pair of pale-green, almost expressionless eyes fixed on her with an odd relentlessness. The woman's lips were twisted into the convention of a smile.
“Could I have the pleasure of a few words with you?”
“Certainly,” said Stella. “Will you come into the house with me? We are almost there.”
“If you will excuse me, Miss Blount,” said the woman, holding up a deprecating hand,—she was well-gloved and was dressed like a lady,—“I would rather not go in with you. I have my reasons. I must speak with you entirely in private. If we go round here, there is a comfortable seat.”
Near the point at which they were standing the road up the cliff diverged into two forks. The upper fork led to the gate of the Channel House. The lower one was a pathway round the breast of the cliff. The woman pointed to the latter. Stella hesitated.
“What have you so private to tell me that we can't talk in the garden?”
“It's something about John Risca,” said the woman with the thin lips.
Stella put her hand to her heart. “John—Mr. Risca? What is the matter? Has anything happened to him?”
“Oh, he's in perfect health. Don't be alarmed. I only don't want us to be interrupted by Sir Oliver or Lady Blount. Do come with me. I assure you it's something quite important.”
She moved in the direction of the lone path, and Stella, drawn against her will, followed. They, reached the seat. Below sank sheer cliff to the rocks on the shore. Above sheer cliff rose to the crest on which stood the Channel House. The sea sparkled in the sunshine. In the far distance a great steamer, her two funnels plumed with gray, sped majestically down Channel. The woman looked about her with nervous swiftness. They were out of sight of human creature. Then she turned, and the cold face changed, and Stella shrank from its sudden malignity. The woman clutched the girl by her arm.
“Now, my lady, do you know who I am?”
“No,” said Stella, shrinking back terrified, and striving to wrench herself free.
“I am John Risca's wife.”
Stella looked at her for an agonized moment, then, as white as paper, collapsed on the seat, the woman still gripping her arm.
“John—married—you—his wife!” she stammered incoherently.
Louisa Risca bent down and scrutinized the white face.
“Do you mean to say you did n't know?”
Stella shook her head in frightened negation. Her ignorance was obvious, even to the criminal woman now on the point of carrying out the fixed idea of years. Gradually the grasp on her arm relaxed, and the woman stood upright.
“You did n't know he was a rotter, did you?”
The word smote Stellamaris like a foul thing. She shivered. Mrs. Risca kept her eyes fixed on her for a few seconds until, as it were, some inspired thought flashed into them a gleam of joy.
“It 's jolly lucky for you that you did n't know. There 's a nice little drop from here down to the rocks. I 've been here often before.”
Stella sprang to her feet and thrust her hands against the woman's breast. .
“Let me pass! Let me pass!” she cried wildly.
But the woman barred the downward path. A few steps beyond the bench it narrowed quickly upward until it merged into the cliff-side.
“I'm not going to. You've got to stay here,” said Mrs. Risca, seizing Stella's wrists in a grip in which the girl's frail strength was powerless. “If you struggle and make a fuss, you 'll have us both chucked over. Don't be silly.”
Then Stella, calling to her aid her pride and courage, drew herself up and looked the evil woman in the face.
“Very well. Say what you have to say. I will listen to you.”
“That 's sensible,” said Mrs. Risca, dropping her wrists. “I don't see why you should have gone on so. I only wanted to speak to you for your good and your happiness. You sit down there, and I 'll sit here, and we 'll have a nice, long talk about John.”
Stella sat on the extreme upper edge of the bench, Mrs. Risca on the lower, and smiled on her victim, who drew a convulsive breath.
“He has been making love to you, has n't he?” she asked, enjoying the flicker of pain that passed over the delicate features.
“Go on, if I must hear,” said Stella.
“And all the while he's been a married man, and I'm his shamefully neglected and deserted wife.”
“How am I to know that you 're his wife?” said Stella.
“I thought you'd ask that, so I've brought proof.”
She drew two papers from a little bag slung over her arm, and handed one to Stella. It was a certified copy of the marriage-certificate. Stella glanced over it. Ignorant as she was in things of the world, she recognized the genuineness of the official document. Her eyes were too dazed, however, to appreciate the date. She passed the slip of blue paper back without a word.
“Here's something else.”
Mrs. Risca gave her a discoloured letter, one which she had kept, Heaven knows why, perhaps in the vague hope that it might one day be turned into an instrument against her husband. It was an old, old, violently passionate love-letter. Stella's eyes met a few flaming words in John's unmistakable handwriting, and with a shudder she threw the letter, like something unclean, away from her. Mrs. Risca picked it up from the path and restored it, with the marriage-certificate, to her bag.
“He 's a pretty fellow, is n't he? Fancy his kidding you all the time that he was a single man. And you believed him and thought him such a noble gentleman. Oh, he can come the noble gentleman when he likes. I know him. I 'm his wife. He wants to be taken for a rough diamond, he does. And he's never tired of showing you what a diamond he is. And for all his rough diamondness, he 's as vain as a peacock. Have n't you noticed it, darling?”
She paused, and smiled horribly on Stellamaris. Stellamaris, from whose brown pools of eyes all translucency had gone, looked at her steadily. The girl's face was pinched into a haggard mask.
“I don't think you need tell me any more. Will you please let me go.”
“I have n't nearly finished, darling,” replied Mrs. Risca, finding a keener and purer delight in this vista of exquisite torture that in the half-confessed intention of throwing the innocent interloper over the cliff. “I want to be your friend and warn you against our dear John. He 's the kind of male brute, dear, that any silly young girl falls in love with. I know I did. He has a way of putting his great arms around you and hugging you, so that your senses are all in a whirl and you think him some godlike animal.”
Stella shuddered through all her frame at a memory hitherto holy, and clenched her teeth so that no cry could escape. But the woman gloated over the setting of the jaw and the tense silence.
“That 's John, my pretty pet. And he likes us young. He took me young, and because I would n't hear of anything but marriage, he married me, and then threw me over, and deserted me, and brought me into terrible trouble, and all that he or any one else may say against me is a lie. Oh! I know all about you. This is n't the first time I've been to Southcliff. And as soon as you could get up and go about,—he knew all along that you would n't lie on your back forever—trust him,—he comes and makes love to you and kisses you, does n't he? And he can't marry you, because he's already married.”
Stella rose, and straightened her slim figure, and threw up her delicate head.
“I have heard enough. I order you to let me pass.” But the woman laughed at the childish imperiousness. She knew herself to be of wiry physical strength. To catch up that light body and send it hurtling into space would be as easy as kicking a Yorkshire terrier over the edge of a pier. She had once done that.
“You 'd make your fortune as a tragedy queen. Why don't you ask Mr. Herold to get you on the stage? Sit down again, darling, and don't be a little fool. I've got lots more to tell you.”
“I prefer to stand,” said Stella.
“It does n't matter to me whether you stand or sit, my precious pet,” said Mrs. Risca. “I only want to tell you all about your dearly beloved John. Oh, he 's a daisy! They 'll tell you all sorts of things about me—about me and Unity—”
“Unity?” cried Stella, taken off her guard.
“Yes, darling. You went and saw her the other day, did n't you? Oh, no matter how I know. I only mention it to let you see that I 'm telling the truth. They 'll tell you all sorts of things about me and her; but they 're all lying. What do you think of our friend John's relations with Unity?”
“Mr. Risca is Unity's guardian,” said Stella in a cold voice.
The woman laughed again. “You little fool! She's his mistress.”
Unity again, with the baffling mystery surrounding her! The woman spoke directly, as if in complete revelation. Yet Stella was still in darkness, and the uncontrollable feminine groped toward the light.
“I don't understand what you mean,” she said haughtily.
“You mean to tell me you don't understand what a man's mistress is?”
It took her a few moments to appreciate the virginal innocence of the white and rigid thing in woman's guise. When she did appreciate it, she laughed aloud.
“You pretty lamb, don't you know what a wife is?”
Stella stood, the cliff above her, the cliff below, midway between her sky and her beloved and dancing sea, a hard-eyed statue. The supreme and deliciously unexpected moment of the criminal woman's life had come. She rose and held Stellamaris with her pale-green eyes, and in a few brutal words she scorched her soul.