IN after-time Herold's memory of that disastrous night and the succeeding days was that of a peculiarly lucid nightmare in which he seemed to have acted without volition or consciousness of motive. He ate, dressed, drove through the streets on unhappy missions, gave orders, directions, consoled, like an automaton, and sometimes slept exhaustedly. So it seemed to him, looking back. He spared John the first night of misery. The man with his bandaged head slept like a log, and Herold did not wake him. All that could be done he himself had done. It was better for John to gather strength in sleep to face the tragedy on the morrow. And when the morrow came, and Herold broke the news to him, the big man gave way under the shock, and became gentle, and obeyed Herold like a child. Thereafter, for many days, he sat for the hour together with his old aunt, curiously dependent on her; and she, through her deep affection for him, grew singularly silent and practical.
In her unimaginative placidity lay her strength. She mourned for Unity as for her own flesh and blood; but the catastrophe did not shake her even mind, and when John laid his head in her lap and sobbed, all that was beautiful in the woman flowed through the comforting tips of her helpless fingers.
From Herold he learned the unsuspected reason of Unity's crime and sacrifice; and from Unity, too, for a poor little pencil scrawl found in her pocket and addressed to him told him of her love and of her intention to clear the way for his happiness. And when the inquest was over and Unity's body was brought to Kilburn and laid in its coffin in her little room, he watched by it in dumb stupor of anguish.
Herold roused him now and then. Action—nominal action at least—had to be taken by him as surviving protagonist of the tragedy. The morning after the deed the newspapers shrieked the news, giving names in full, raking up memories of the hideous case. They dug, not deep, for motive, and found long-smouldering vengeance. Unity was blackened. John responded to Herold's lash. This must not be. Unity must not go to her grave in public dishonour; truth must be told. So at the inquest, John wild, uncouth, with great strips of sticking-plaster on his head, told truth, and gave a romantic story to a hungry press. It was hateful to lay bare the inmost sacredness and the inmost suffering of his soul to the world's cold and curious gaze, but it had to be done. Unity's name was cleared. When he sat down by Herold's side, the latter grasped his hand, and it was clammy and cold, and he shook throughout his great frame.
Then Herold, driven to mechanical action, as it seemed to him afterward, by a compelling force, dragged John to an inquiry into the evil woman's life. It was Mrs. Oscraft, the full-blown, blowzy bookmaker's wife, the woman's intimate associate for many years, who gave the necessary clue. Horrified by the discovery of the identity of her friend and by the revelation of further iniquities, she lost her head when the men sternly questioned her. She had used her intimacy with Mrs. Risca to cover from her own husband an intrigue of many years' standing. In return, Mrs. Risca had confessed to an intrigue of her own, and demanded, and readily obtained, Mrs. Oscraft's protection. The women worked together. They were inseparable in their outgoings and incomings, but abroad each went her separate way. That was why, ignorant of the truth, Mrs. Oscraft had lied loyally when John Risca had burst into her flat long ago. She had thought she was merely shielding her fellow-sinner from the wrath of a jealous husband. Thus for years, with her cunning, Mrs. Risca had thrown dust in the eyes both of her friend and of the feared and hated wardress whom John had set over her. Under the double cloak she had used her hours of liberty to carry out the set, relentless purpose of her life. To spy on him with exquisite craft had been her secret passion, to strike when the time came the very meaning of her criminal existence.
“And for the last two or three years she gave no trouble and was as gentle as a lamb, so how could I suspect?” Mrs. Bence lamented.
“It 's all over,” said John, stupidly; “it's all over. Nothing matters now.”
To Herold, in after-time, the memories of these days were as those of the doings of another man in his outer semblance. His essential self had been the crazy being who had marched through the mellow Kensington streets with fantastic dreams of murder in his head. At the sight of Unity and the woman lying ghastly on the floor something seemed to snap in his brain, and all the cloudy essence that was he vanished, and a perfect mechanism took its place. When John with wearisome reiteration said: “God bless you, Wallie! God knows what I should have done without you,” it was hard to realize that he had done anything deserving thanks. He was inclined to regard himself—when he had a fugitive moment to regard himself—with abhorrence. He had talked; Unity had acted. And deep down in his soul, only once afterwards in his life to be confessed, dwelt an awful remorse for his responsibility in the matter of Unity's death. But in simple fact no man in times of great convulsion knows himself. He looks back on the man who acted and wonders. The man, surviving the wreck of earthquake, if he be weak, lies prone and calls on God and man to help him; if he be strong, he devotes the intensity of his faculties to the work of rescue, of clearing up debris, of temporary reconstruction, and has no time for self-analysis. It is in reality the essential man in his vigour and courage and nobility and disdain who acts, and the bruised and shattered about him who profit by his help look rightly upon him as a god.
It was only after John had visited the house of death, where, according to law, the bodies both of slayer and slain had to lie, and had seen the pinched, common face, swathed in decent linen, of the girl who for his sake had charged her soul with murder and taken her own life, and after he had driven away, stunned with grief and carrying with him, at his feet in the taxi-cab, the useless kit-bag packed by the poor child with Heaven knows what idea of its getting to its destination, and had staggered to the comfort of the foolish old lady's outstretched arms and received her benediction, futilely spoken, divinely unspoken—it was only then that, raising haggard eyes, all the more haggard under the brow-reaching bandage he still wore, he asked the question:
“What about Stella? She is bound to learn.”
“I wrote to her last night,” said Herold. “I prepared her for the shock as best I could.”
A gleam of rational thought flitted across John Risca's mind.
“You remembered her at such a time, with all you had to do? You 're a wonderful man, Wallie. No one else would have done it.”
“Are you in a fit state of mind,” said Herold, “to understand what has happened? I tried to tell you this morning,”—as he had done fitfully,—“but it was no use. You grasped nothing.”
“Go on now,” said John. “I 'm listening.”
So Herold, amid the fripperies of Miss Lindon's drawing-room, told the story of his summons to the Channel House some time ago—Good God!—He caught himself up sharply—it was only yesterday! and of his talk with Stellamaris in the garden, and of her encounter with the evil woman, and of the poison that had crept to the roots of Stella's being.
John shivered, and clenched impotent fists. Stella left alone on the cliff-edge with that murderous hag! Stella's ears polluted by that infamous tale! If only he had known it! Why did she hide it from him?
It was well the murderess was dead, but, merciful Heaven, at what a price!
“Listen,” said Herold, gravely, checking his outburst; and he told of his meetings with Unity,—it was essential that John should know,—of her almost mystical worship of Stellamaris, of their discovery of the revolver—
“Poor child!” cried John, “I bought it soon after I went to Kilburn. I took it out the other day and played with a temptation I knew I should n't succumb to. I should never have had the pluck.”
Herold continued, telling him all he knew—all save that of which he stood self-accused, and which for the present was a matter between him and his Maker. And Miss Lindon, fondling on her lap a wheezy pug, the successor to the Dandy of former days who had been gathered to his fathers long ago, listened in placid bewilderment to the strange story of love and crime.
“I 'm sure I don't understand how people think of such things, let alone do them,” she sighed.
“You must accept the fact, dear Miss Lindon,” said Herold, gently.
“God's will be done,” she murmured, which in the circumstances was as relevant a thing as the poor lady could have uttered. But John sat hunched up in a bamboo chair that creaked under his weight, and scarcely spoke a word. He felt very unimportant by the side of Unity—Unity with whose strong, passionate soul he had dwelt in blind ignorance. And Unity was dead, lying stark and white in the alien house.
After a long silence he roused himself.
“You wrote to Stella, you said?”
“Yes,” replied Herold.
“What will happen to her?”
“I don't know.”
John groaned. “If only I had protected her as I ought to have done! If only I had protected both of them!”
He relapsed again into silence, burying his face in his hands. Presently Miss Lindon put the pug tenderly on the ground, rose, and stood by his chair.
“My poor boy,” she said, “do you love her so much?”
“She's dead,” said John.
Herold shook him by the shoulder. “Nonsense, man. Pull yourself together.”
John raised a drawn face.
“What did you ask? I was thinking about Unity.”
That day, the day after the tragedy, Stellamaris faced life, in its nakedness, stripped, so it appeared to her, of every rag of mystery.
She had breakfasted as usual in her room, bathed and dressed, and looked wistfully over her disowning sea. Then, as she was preparing to go downstairs, Morris had brought in Herold's letter, scribbled so nervously and shakenly that at first she was at a loss to decipher it. Gradually it became terribly clear: Unity was dead; the woman was dead; Unity had killed the woman and then killed herself.
“Details of everything but the truth will be given in the morning papers,” Herold wrote; “but you must know the truth from the first—as I know it. Unity has given her life to save those she loved—you and John—from the woman. She has laid down her life for you. Never forget that as long as you live.”
She sat for some moments quite still, paralyzed by the new horror that had sprung from this false, flower-decked earth to shake her by the throat. The world was terrifyingly relentless. She read the awful words again. Bit by bit feeling returned. Her flesh was constricted in a cold and finely wrought net. She grew faint, put her hand to her brow and found it damp. She stumbled to her bed by the great west window and threw herself down. Constable, lying on the hearth-rug, staggered to his feet and thrust his old head on her bosom and regarded her with mournful and inquiring eyes. She caressed him mechanically. Suddenly she sprang up as a swift memory smote her. Once she lay there by the window, and the dog was there by the bed, and there by the door stood the ungainly figure of a girl of her own age. Was it possible that that ungainly child whom she had seen and talked to then, whom a few weeks ago she had kissed, could have committed this deed of blood? She rose again to her feet, pushed the old dog aside blindly, and hid her eyes from the light of day. The girl was human, utterly human at those two meetings. Of what unknown, devastating forces, were human beings, then, composed?
She took up the letter again. “Unity has given her life to save those she loved—you and John—from the woman. She has laid down her life for you. Never forget that as long as you live.”
Walter Herold said that. It must be true. Through all of yesterday's welter of misery, after he had left her, she had clung despairingly to him. There was no God, but there was Walter Herold. Her pride had dismissed him with profession of disbelief, but in her heart she had believed him. Not that she had pardoned John Risca, not that she had recovered her faith in him, not that she had believed in Unity. Her virginal soul, tainted by the woman, had shrunk from thoughts of the pair; but despite her fierce determination to believe in neither God nor man, she had been compelled to believe in Herold. She had stood up against him and fought with him and had bitten and rent him, and he had conquered, and she had felt maddenedly angered, triumphantly glad. The whole world could be as false as hell, but in it there was one clear spirit speaking truth.
She went to the southern window, rested her elbows on the sill, and pressed the finger-tips of both hands against her forehead. The soft south-west wind, bringing the salt from the dancing sea, played about her hair. Unity had laid down her life to save those she loved. So had Christ done—given his life for humanity. But Christ had not killed a human being, no matter how murderous, and had not taken his own life. No, no; she must not mix up things irreconcilable. She faced the room again. What did people do when they killed? What were the common, practical steps that they took to gain their ends? Her mind suddenly grew vague. Herold had spoken of newspapers. She must see them; she must know everything. Life was deadly conflict, and knowledge the only weapon. For a few seconds she stood in the middle of the room, her young bosom heaving, her dark eyes wide with the diamond glints in their depths. Life was a deadly conflict. She would fight, she would conquer. Others miserably weaker than herself survived. Pride and race and splendid purity of soul sheathed her in cold armour. A jingle, separated from context, came into her mind, and in many ways it was a child's mind:
Then spake Sir Thomas Howard,
“ 'Fore God, I am no coward.”
“'Fore God, I am no coward,” she repeated, and with her delicate head erect she went out and down the stairs and entered the dining-room.
There she found Sir Oliver and Lady Blount sitting at a neglected breakfast. The old faces strove pitifully to smile. Stella kissed them in turn, and with her hand lingering on the old man's arm, she gave him Herold's letter.
“Is it in the newspapers?” she asked.
“What, what, my dear?” said Sir Oliver, adjusting his glasses on his nose with fumbling fingers.
She looked from one to the other. Then her eyes fell on the morning papers lying on the table. They were folded so that a great head-line stared hideously.
“Oh, darling, don't read it—for Heaven's sake do n't read it,” cried Lady Blount, clutching the nearer newspaper.
But Stella took up the other. “I must, dearest,” she said very gently. “Walter has written to me; but he could not tell me everything.”
She moved to the window that overlooked the pleasant garden, and with steady eyes read the vulgar and soul-withering report, while the two old people, head to head, puzzled out Herold's scrawl.
When she had finished, she laid the paper quietly at the foot of the table and came and stood between them, revolted by the callous publication of names, almost physically sickened by the realistic picture of the scene, her head whirling. She caught hold of the back of Sir Oliver's chair.
“The newspaper lies,” she said, “but it does n't know any better. Walter tells us why she did it.”
Sir Oliver, elbow on table, held the letter in his shaking grasp. It dropped, and his head sank on his hand.
“It's too horrible!” he said in a weak voice. “I don't understand anything at all about it. I don't understand what Walter means. And all that old beastly story revived. It's damnable!”
He looked quite broken, his querulous self-assertion gone. Lady Blount, too, gave way, and stretched out an imploring and pathetic arm, which, as Stella moved a step or two toward her, fell around the slim, standing figure. She laid her cheek against Stella and cried miserably.
“O my darling, my precious one, if we could only spare you all this! Walter should n't have written. O my darling, what are we to do! What are we to do!”
And then Stellamaris saw once more that Great High Excellency and Most Exquisite Auntship, for all their love of her, were of the weak ones of the world, and she looked down with a new and life-giving feeling of pity upon the bowed gray heads.
0350
Once,—was it yesterday or weeks or months or years ago? She could not tell,—but once, to her later pain and remorse, she had commanded, and they had obeyed; now she knew that she had to comfort, protect, determine. And in a bewildering flash came the revelation that knowledge was a weapon not only to fight her own way through the evil of the world, but to defend the defenceless.
“I wish Walter was here,” she whispered, her hand against the withered, wet cheek.
“Why Walter, dear?”
“He is strong and true,” said Stellamaris.
“Why not John, darling?”
Yes, why not John? Stella drew a sharp breath. Sir Oliver saved her an answer.
“John has enough to look to, poor chap. He has got everything about his ears. Stella's right. We want Walter. He's young. He's a good fellow, is Walter. I must be getting old, my dear,—” He raised his face, and, with a sudden forlorn hope of dignity, twirled his white moustache,—“A year ago I should n't have wanted Walter or anybody. It 's only you, my child, that your aunt and I are thinking of. We've tried to do our duty by you, have n't we, Julia? And God knows we love you. You 're the only thing in the world left to us. It is n't our fault that you are drawn into this ghastliness. It is n't, God knows it is n't. Only, my dear,”—there was a catch in his voice,—“you 're not able to bear it. For us old folks who have knocked about the world—well, we 're used to—to this sort of thing. I 've had to send men to the gallows in my time—once twenty men to be shot. The paltry fellows at the Colonial Office did n't see things as I did, but that's another matter. We 're used to these things, dear; we 're hardened—”
“If I have got to live in the world, dear Excellency,” said Stella, feeling that there were some sort of flood-gates between the tumultuous flow of her being and the still waters of pity in which for the moment her consciousness acted, “it seems that I must get used to it, like every one else.”
“But what shall we do, darling?” cried Lady Blount, clinging pathetically to the child of sea foam, from whom all knowledge of the perilous world had been hidden.
“Anything but worry Walter to come down here.”
“I thought you wanted him?”
“I do,” said Stella, with her hand on her bosom; “but that is only selfishness. He is needed more in London. I think we ought to go up and see if we can help in any way.”
“Go up to London!” echoed Sir Oliver.
“Yes, if you 'll take me, Uncle dear.”
The old man looked at his wife, who looked helplessly at him. Through the open window came the late, mellow notes of a thrush and the sunshine that flooded the summer garden.
“I am going to send Walter a telegram,” said Stella, moving gently away.
She left the room with the newly awakened consciousness that she was absolute mistress of her destiny. Love, devotion, service, anything she might require from the two old people, were hers for the claiming—anything in the world but guidance and help. She stood alone before the dragons of a world, no longer the vague Threatening Land, but a world of fierce passions and bloody deeds. Herold's words flamed before her: “Unity had given her life for those she loved.” Had she, Stellamaris, a spirit so much weaker than Unity's?
She advanced an eager step or two along the garden walk, clenching her delicate fists, and the fiery dragons retreated backward. She could give, too, as well as Unity, her life if need be. If that was not required, at least whatever could be demanded of her for those she loved. Again she read the letter. Underlying it was tenderest anxiety lest she should be stricken down by the ghastly knowledge. With the personal motive, the intense and omnipotent motive of her sex, unconsciously dominating her, she murmured half articulately:
“He thinks I'm a weak child. I 'll show him that I am a woman. He shall see that I'm not afraid of life.”
So when Walter Herold went home late that night,—the theatre being out of the question, he had stayed at Kilburn until John had been persuaded to go to bed,—he found a telegram from Stellamaris.
“Coming to London to see if I can be of any help. My dear love to John in his terrible trouble. Tell me when I had better come.”
The next day, when they met before the inquest, he showed the telegram to John, who, after glancing at it, thrust it back into his hand with a deprecating gesture.
“No; let her stay there. What is she to do in this wilderness of horror?”
“I have already written,” said Herold.
“To keep away?”
“To come.”
“You know best,” said John, hopelessly. “At any rate the news has n't killed her. I feared it would. I had long letters from Oliver and Julia this morning.”
“What do they say?”
John put his hand to his head. “I forget,” said he.
OUTSIDE the house in Kilbum were stationed a hearse and two carriages, stared at by a knot of idlers. Within was felt the pervasive presence of a noiselessly moving, black-attired man of oiled tongue. Up-stairs in the little room rested on its trestles the flower-covered coffin wherein all that remained of Unity lay. The blinds of the gimcrack drawing-room were lowered, and the company sat waiting—John, Miss Lindon, and Herold, Sir Oliver, Lady Blount, and Stellamaris.
Although Stella had been in London for a day or two, this was the first time that John had seen her since the riotous June day when he had waved farewell to the train carrying her back to Southcliff. He had gone to the front gate to meet her in his ill-fitting, outgrown frock-coat, sticking-plaster still hiding the wounds on his scalp, and his heavy face white and drawn. She, in her black dress, looked a startling lily enveloped by night; her great eyes had softened from diamond into starshine. Behind her came the old people, attendant ghosts. John folded her hand in his.
“Stella dear, how good of you to come!”
She said in a low voice:
“It is to ask forgiveness from you and her.”
He bowed over her hand. She passed into the house, where Miss Lindon received her.
“My dear,” she said, holding Stella's hand. “I think our poor darling will go to her grave very happy. She was always talking of you, ever since she came to live here, and if you wonder what has become of the beautiful lilies you sent, it's because I have put them inside with her, knowing that there's where she would wish them to be. And now you 've come yourself, and I'm sure she would n't ask for more.”
The weak mouth, set in the full, foolish face crowned with white hair, worked dolorously. Stella, with a sudden movement, threw her arm round her neck and broke into uncontrollable sobbing. A soul pure and beautiful beyond question spoke to Stellamaris in simple words and in silly yet exquisite sentiment. She clung very close,—why, the unsuspecting and innocent lady never guessed,—but it made her broad bosom swell with an emotion hitherto unknown to have a girl lay her head there and sob and seem to find comfort; and, as she clung, the lingering poison of the evil woman melted forever from Stella's heart, and she knew that the place whereon she stood, where Unity and she had talked, that gimcrack, tawdry, bamboo drawing-room, was holy ground.
She had come, poor child, full of her fierce and jealous maiden pride—she was only twenty, and life had been revealed to her of late as a tumultuous conflict of men with devils,—she had come highly wrought for battles with the Apollyons that straddled across the path; she had come with high hopes of bringing help to the faint-hearted, solace to the afflicted, of proving to her tiny world that she was the help-giver instead of the help-seeker; she had come on the wings of conquest; and she fluttered down like a tired bird to the surrender of herself on the bosom of the simplest and, in the eyes of men, the least important creature on God's earth.
She drew gently away and dried her eyes, and while Miss Lindon spoke a few words to Lady Blount, she went somewhat shyly up to John.
“You should have let me know Miss Lindon long ago,” she said.
“I should have done many things long ago,” he replied. “But I myself have known my aunt only the last few days.”
She regarded him somewhat incredulously.
“Yes,” he said, “it's true. The last few days have taught me all kinds of things. I never knew what she was”—he made a vague gesture—“until it was too late. I think, Stella dear, I have gone through life with my heart shut.”
“Except to me,” said Stellamaris.
“That's different,” he said, with a turn of his great shoulders.
He left her abruptly and joined the group of the three elders by the window. She came to Herold, who had been standing with his back against the empty fire-place.
“You must be very tired.”
He saw her brows knit in their familiar little fairy wrinkles as she anxiously scanned his face. Indeed, he was very weary, and his eyes and cheeks showed it.
“There has been a lot not only to do, but to feel of late,” he said.
She put out a timid hand and touched his sleeve.
“You must n't do and feel too much, or you 'll break down.”
“Why should I, if you have n't?” he asked with a faint smile.
“I think it cowardly to break down when one ought to be strong,” she said.
“Are you afraid of my being a coward, Stella?”
She uttered a little cry, and her touch became a grasp.
“You! Oh, no! You? You 'vebeenstrong. There 's no need for you to do any more. You 've got to live your own life and not that of other people—”
“The only life left to me,” he said in a low voice, “is that of those dear to me.”
John lumbered up gloomily. “You must persuade him to take a rest, Stella. He has been driving himself to death.” He laid a heavy hand on his friend. “God knows what I should have done without him all this time. Wait,” he said suddenly, with the other hand uplifted.
And all were silent when to a scuffle of feet succeeded a measured tramp of steps descending the stairs. The bearers passed along the passage by the door of the drawing-room. Unity was going forth on her last journey through the familiar Kilburn streets.
The little crowd on the pavement had swelled. The case and all about it had been manna to hungry July reporters, and all the world knew of Unity and judged her this way and that, according to individual prejudice. But the male part of the crowd uncovered as the coffin and afterward the little group of mourners passed through. John and Miss Lindon and Lady Blount went in the first carriage; Stella, Sir Oliver, and Herold in the second. Sir Oliver, as is the way of Sir Olivers all the world over, spoke of funerals he had attended in years and latitudes both remote. Poor Roddy Greenwood—best fellow that ever lived—it was in Berbice, Demerara—God bless his soul, it was in '68—he had left him at six in the morning after a night's loo—good game loo; no one ever played it these days—and he had followed him to his grave that day before sunset. Then there was Freddy Nicol—they brought it in accidental because he was cleaning his gun—there were the rags and oil and things about him; but it was odd, devilish odd, that it should have happened the day after Kitty Green married that fellow What 's-his-name? Tut! tut! he would remember it in a minute. Now, what the Dickens was the name of the fellow Kitty Green married? But as Kitty Green and her obscure and unremembered spouse were young in the days when Sir Oliver was young, and at the best and happiest were both wrinkled, uninteresting ancients, the baffling question did not stir the pulses of his hearers.
“Anyhow,” said Sir Oliver, summing up, “death is a devilish funny business. I 've seen lots of it.”
“And you who have seen so much of it, dear,” said Stellamaris, very seriously, “what do you think of death?”
“I 've told you, my child; I 've told you. It 's devilish funny—odd—here to-day and gone to-morrow. Devilish funny.”
They arrived at the cemetery. In the bare mortuary chapel Stella knelt and heard for the first time in her life the beautiful words of the service for the burial of the dead. And there in front of her, covered with poor, vain flowers, was the coffin containing the clay of one whom man with his opportunist laws against murder and self-slaughter was powerless to judge. At the appointed time they went out into the summer air and walked in forlorn procession behind the hearse, through the startling city in whose tenements of stone and marble no mortal could dwell; in which there was no fevered strife as in the cities of men; in which all the inhabitants slept far beneath their stately domes or humble monoliths, at peace with mankind, themselves, and God. And green grass grew between the graves, and sweet flowers bloomed and seemed to say, “Why weep, since we are here?” But for the faint grinding of the hearse wheels on the gravelled path and the steps of the followers all was still. Stellamaris clung to Herold's arm.
“I can't believe they are all dead,” she whispered. “The whole place seems alive. I think they are waiting for Unity. They will take her by the hand and make her one of themselves.”
“And bow down before her,” said Herold. “It is only the dead that know the great souls that pass from the earth.”
They reached the graveside. The surpliced chaplain stood a pace or two apart. The dismal men in black deposited the coffin by the yellow, upturned earth. The group of six gathered close together. The July sunshine streamed down, casting a queer projection of shadow from the coffin-end.
“Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.”
Stella heard the chaplain's voice as in a dream. The rattle of the earth on the coffin-lid—“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust”—roused her with a shock. Below, deep in the grave, lay Unity—Unity, who had taken a human life, and had taken her own for the sake of those she loved; Unity, who in the approach to her murderous and suicidal end was all but unfathomable to her; Unity, whom she had read and thought enough to know to be condemned by the general judgment of mankind. There, in that oak coffin, lay all that remained of the common little girl, with the lilies she herself had sent on her bosom. The lilies she had seen, pure white, with their pistils of golden hope; the dead white face she had not seen. Yet her lilies were looking into the dead face, and the dead face was near the lilies, down there, underneath the baffling, oaken coffin-lid.... She became aware of words sharp and clear cutting the still air.
“Who shall change our vile body that it may be like unto his glorious body; according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all things to Himself.... I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, Write, From henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord: even so saith the Spirit; for they rest from their labours.”
Stellamaris stood tense until the end. A great peace had fallen upon her. “Blessed are those that die in the Lord.” The simple words held a mystic significance. They reiterated themselves in her brain. Young, emotional, inexperienced, overwhelmed by the shattering collapse of the exquisite, cloud-capped towers of her faith, she found in them an unquestioned truth. By that grave-side, in the sacred presence of the dead, not only of “the dear sister here departed,” but of the inhabitants of all the gleaming stone and marble tenements around, there could be no lying; such was the unargued conviction of her candid soul. A voice, coming not from the commonplace, white-robed man, but from the blue vault of heaven, proclaimed that Unity had died in the Lord and that she was blessed. The message was one of unutterable consolation. Unity had died in the Lord. The comforting acceptance of the message indicated the restoration of Stella's faith in God.
The mind of the child-woman is a warp of innocence shot with the woof of knowledge, and the resultant fabric is a thing no man born can seize and put upon canvas, and, for the matter of that, no woman, when she has ceased to be a child.
John stood for a while looking down into the grave, and gently dropped a wreath which he held in his hand. Then he turned gloomily away, and the others followed him, and the grave-diggers' spadefuls of earth rattled down on the coffin with a sound of dreadful finality.
STELLA's heart had softened toward John. Herold had told her how he had nearly come by his death on the rocks below the Channel House. It had moved her to the depths. And now she saw that he was bowed down with grief for Unity. All resentment against him had died. She recovered her faith, not perhaps in the wonder of the Great High Belovedest of the past, but in the integrity of the suffering man. When they reached and had re-entered the house, she took an opportunity of being alone with him. The two elder ladies were up-stairs, and Walter and Sir Oliver had gone out to smoke in the little front garden. Then she said with shy gentleness:
“This must be very desolate for you, dear. Won't Miss Lindon and you come down with us to Southcliff? I have fallen in love with her. I wonder whether I dare ask her. The sea air would do her good.”
“She would be delighted, I'm sure; but would you like me to come, too?” he said, bending his heavy brows.
“Of course,” replied Stella. She flushed slightly and lowered her eyes.
“I'm afraid I'm not a very gay companion, Stella. In fact, I don't think I ever was one—except in the days when I used to tell you fairy-tales about the palace—”
“Oh, don't!” She could not restrain the quick little cry and gesture. “We must n't talk about that any more. We 've got the future to think of. Reconstruction—is n't that what they call it? We have got to look at things as they are, and laugh sometimes.”
“I feel,” said he, “as though I could never laugh again.”
“Yet Unity meant to make you happy and not miserable,” said Stella.
“I know,” said he, “and that's the devil of it.”
He paused for a moment, his hands thrust deep in his trousers' pockets, and his heel on the fender. At last he said: “It would be the best thing in the world for the dear old lady. And God knows it will be good for me. So if you 'll have us for a week or two, we 'll be glad to get away from here.”
“I 'll ask Miss Lindon when she comes down.”
And Miss Lindon, coming down soon afterwards with Lady Blount, received and accepted the invitation. Sir Oliver, summoned from the garden, expressed his approval.
“My boy,” said he, “we've been perfectly wretched without you. Make him put in a long time with us, Miss Lindon. We three old folks will join forces.”
Stella slipped out by the front door and stood by Herold, who was leaning over the gate. Of course he too must come to the Channel House. He smiled rather wearily and shook his head.
“Not just now, dear,” said he. “I have a week's business to do in London, settling my autumn arrangements—I'm going into management, you know—and then I must run away for a bit—abroad somewhere, a little mild climbing in Switzerland, perhaps.”
Stella's face fell. “Going abroad?” she echoed. “For how long?”
“A month or so, if I can manage it. I want a rest rather badly.”
“Of course you do; but I was hoping,” she faltered, “that you could find rest at Southcliff.”
“It's good of you, dear,” said he, “to think of me. For Heaven knows how many years I've looked upon the Channel House as a second home; you can never realize what it has meant to me. But I need a complete change, a sort of medicine I must take, no matter how nasty it may be. Besides,” he added with a smile, “you will have John now.”
“John is John, and you are you,” said Stella. There was a little pause. Then after a glance at his tired face, she said in a low voice: “You 're right, Walter; you must go away and get strong again. I spoke very selfishly. I 've not been accustomed to think much of other people.”
“Stellamaris dear,” he said, “if I thought I could serve you by staying, I would stay. But there's nothing for me to do, is there? The—the what shall I say—the veil between John and you has been cut in twain, as it were, by a flaming sword. Perhaps Unity did it. But there's no veil now. The only thing that has to be done is to bring back the sunshine into John's life. That's for you to do, not for me.”
She looked at him queerly. Her face was so white, her dress so black. The only gleam about her was in her eyes.
“I know that,” she said. “But who is going to bring back the sunshine into your life?”
He leaned against the wooden gate and gripped the top bar tight. What did she mean? Was she a woman or, after all, only the old fancied child of sea-foam and cloud?
“When I can eat like a pig and sleep like a dog,” he said lightly, “and feel physically fit, I shall be all right.” He smiled, and took her black-gloved hand. “And when I see the roses in your cheeks and hear you laugh as you used to laugh—that fascinating little laugh like a peal of low silver bells—that I 'll be the Princess Stellamaris's court jester again.”
She smiled wanly. “You were never court jester; you were Great High Favourite.” She sighed. “How far off those childish days are!”
“They 'll return as soon as you 're happy.”
“Life is too full of pain for me to find happiness in superficial things,” said Stella.
For all his wretchedness he could have laughed, with a man's sweet pity, at the tone of conviction in her philosophic but childish utterance.
“You must look for it and find it in the deep things,” said he.
She made no reply, but stood thoughtfully by his side, and drew with her fingers little lines in the summer dust on the upper surface of the bar of the gate.
“There 's something silly I want to say to you, Walter,” she murmured at last, “and I don't quite know how to say it. It 's about the sea. I think you can understand. You always used to. Our long talks—you remember? Since all this has happened, the sea seems to have no meaning for me.”
“It will all come back, dear,” said Herold, “with your faith in God and the essential beauty of the world.”
“But what is the essential beauty of the world?”
“My dear,” he laughed, “you must n't ask a poor man such conundrums and expect an instantaneous answer. I should say roughly it was strength and sacrifice and love.” He took a cigarette from his case and lit it. “You 'll find the comfort of the sea again. I think it will have quite a new meaning for you, a deeper meaning, when you sit by it with the man whom you love and who loves you, as you know he loves you, and all the past has become sacred, and there's no longer a shadow between you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure. You see, Stellamaris dear,” he added after a second or two, “you don't need me any longer. Your happiness, as well as John's happiness, is in your own hands. I can go away with an easy mind. And when I come back—”
“Yes? And when you come back?”
Pain started through his eyes. When he came back? What would be left for him? His art, his ambitions? What were they? A child's vain toys cumbering his feet. His soul was set on the slip of pale girlhood, startlingly black and white, with her mass of soft hair beneath the plain, black hat, and her great pools of eyes, no longer agates or diamonds, but aglow with remote flames, who, in poor common earthliness, stood by his side, but in maddening reality was pinnacled on inaccessible heights by the love between her and the man they both loved. He felt that the pure had an unsuspected power of torture.
“When I come back? Well—” he broke off lamely. And they looked at each other without speaking until they became aware of a human presence. They turned and saw John, his huge bulk in the frame of the doorway, watching them dully beneath his heavy brows.
AT the Channel House Stella's health began to mend. The black shadows disappeared from beneath her eyes, and her lips caught the lost trick of a smile. She no longer wandered desolate about house and garden, but sought the companionship of those about her. The old folks discussed and wrangled over the change.
“One would have thought,” said Lady Blount, “that this terrible affair would have crushed her altogether.”
“Any one who did n't know her might have thought so,” replied Sir Oliver; “but I 've watched her. I sized her up long ago. It 's astonishing how little you know of her, Julia. She has lots of pluck—the right stuff in her. And now John 's free and he 's down here. What more can she want?”
“Poor fellow! He does n't seem to be much the happier for it.”
“You don't expect him to go about grinning as if nothing had happened, do you?” said Sir Oliver. “Can't you understand that the man has had a devil of a shock? He 'll get over it one of these days.”
“I don't want him to grin; but I'd like him to look a little more cheerful,” said Lady Blount.
But cheerfulness and John Risca were strangers. Even when he and Stellamaris were alone together, looking at the moonlit sea from the terrace outside the drawing-room windows, or in the sunshine of the sweet cliff garden, the cloud did not lift from his brow. Unless they talked of Unity,—and it relieved his heart to do so, and Stellamaris loved to listen to the brave little chronicles of her life,—long silences marked their intercourse. To get back to the old plane was impossible. They could find no new one on which to meet. She gave him all her pity, for he was a man who had suffered greatly, and in a way it was she herself who had brought the suffering on him. Her heart ached to say or do something that would rekindle the old light in his rugged face; but an unconquerable shyness held her back. If he had thrown his great arm around her and held her tight and uttered broken words of love, pity would have flamed passionate in surrender. If he had pleaded for comfort, pity would have melted warm over his soul. But he made no appeal. Both were burningly aware that Unity had died so that they could be free, no barrier between them. Yet barrier there seemed to be, invisible, inscrutable.
Once Sir Oliver, who had joined them in the garden, asked:
“What are your plans for the future, my boy?”
“Plans? I have none. Just the same old round of work.”
“I mean your domestic arrangements.”
“I 'll go on living with my old aunt. We 're a queer couple, I suppose, but we understand each other.”
“Humph!” grunted Sir Oliver, and he went away to tie up a drooping rose.
They walked on in dead silence, which was broken at last by John, who made a remark as to Constable's growing infirmities.
So the visit came to an end without a word having been said, and John went back to his desolate house, physically rested and able to take up the routine of his working life. Herold in Switzerland wrote letters about snows and glaciers and crystal air. The calm tenor of existence was resumed at the Channel House. Incidentally Stella found an occupation. Old Dr. Ransome, in casual talk, mentioned a case of great poverty and sickness in the village. Stella, followed by Morris bearing baskets of luxuries, presented herself at the poor house in the character of Lady Bountiful. At the sight that met her eyes she wept and went away sorrowful, and then it dawned upon her inexperienced soul that gifts costing her nothing, although they had their use, might be supplemented by something vastly more efficacious. She consulted the hard-worked district nurse, and, visiting the house again, learned how to tend the sick woman and wash the babies and bring cleanliness and air and comfort into the miserable place. And having made in this way the discovery that all through her life she had accepted service from all and sundry and had never done a hand's turn for anybody, she plunged with young shame and enthusiasm into the new work.
Afraid lest convalescence on the part of the patient would throw her back into idleness, she ingenuously asked the nurse if there were other poor people in Southcliff who needed help. The nurse smiled. Even at Southcliff there was enough work among the poor and needy for every day in the week the whole year round.
“I 'm glad,” said Stellamaris. Then she checked herself. “No, I can't be. I 'm dreadfully sorry.” The little lines of complexity knit themselves on her brow. “It 's a confusing world, is n't it?”
The state of mind of Stellamaris at this period may be best described as one of suspended judgment. It was a confusing world. She could not pronounce a more definite opinion. The Land of Illusion was a lost Atlantis of which not a speck remained. On the other hand, the world was no longer the mere abode of sin and ugliness and horror to which she had gradually awakened. Unity had taught her that. What, then, was this mysterious complication of life in which she found herself involved? It no longer frightened her. It interested her curiously.
“Excellency dear,” she said one day, “are there any books about life?”
He stared at her, covering his non-comprehension with the usual military twirl of his moustache.
“Millions. What kind of life?”
“Life itself. The meaning of it.”
“Religious books? I'm afraid they 're not in my line, my dear.”
“I don't think it 's religious books I want,” said Stella.
“Philosophy, then. Kant, Schopenhauer,—um—er,”—he hooked a name from the depths of his memory—“Bain, and all those fellows. I could never make head or tail of them myself, so I don't suppose you could, dear.”
“Did you say Kant? I think I've seen a book of his in the library.”
She pulled down a dusty volume of the “Critique of Pure Reason” from a top shelf and puzzled her young brains over it. It seemed to be dealing with vital questions, but, like Sir Oliver, she was hopelessly befogged. She asked the old doctor. He had a glimmering of her meaning. “The best book in the world, my dear,”—he waved a hand,—“is life itself.”
“But I can't read it without a dictionary, Doctor,” she objected.
“Your heart, my child,” said he.
This was pretty, but not satisfactory. “Walter could tell me,” she said to herself, and forthwith wrote him a long letter.
She lived in a state not only of suspended judgment, but also of suspended emotion. The latter hung in the more delicate balance. Her maidenhood realized it vaguely. She had half expected John to speak of his love for her; at the same time she had dreaded the moment of declaration; and, at the same time also, she had felt that beneath the shadow of the wings of death it behoved mortal passion to lie still and veiled. The anguish of the weeks preceding the tragedy had passed away. She had no pain save that of yearning pity for an agonized world. The old people in their dependence on her and in the pathos of their limited vision once more became inexpressibly dear. The childish titles were invested in a new beauty. Her pretty labours in sorrow-stricken cottages, amateurish as they were, held a profound significance. Unlike the thousands of sweet English girls up and down the land who are bred in the practice of philanthropy and think no more of it than of its concomitant tennis-parties and flirtations, she had come upon it unawares, and it had all the thrill of a discovery. It was one little piece fitted certainly into the baffling puzzle of life.
John came down again for the week-end. Stella found him gentle, less gloomy, but oddly remote from her—remoter even than when he lay crushed beneath the tragedy. Now and again she caught him looking at her wistfully, whereupon she turned her eyes away in a distress which she could not explain. Gradually she became aware that the Great High Belovedest of the past had vanished into nothingness, with so many other illusory things. The awakening kiss that he had given her as he carried her in his arms faded into the far-off dreamland. On the Sunday night they lingered in the drawing-room for a moment after the old people had retired to bed.
“I must be going back by the early train in the morning, and sha'n't see you,” said he, “so I 'll say good-by now.”
“I'm sorry, dear.” She put out her hand. “I hope the little change has done you good.”
For answer he bent down and touched her forehead with his lips. Then he held the door open for her to pass out.
“God bless you, dear,” said he.
She went up-stairs, feeling in a half-scared way that something, she knew not what, had happened, and she cried herself to sleep.