STELLA MARIS
BY WILLIAM J. LOCKE.
Author of “The Beloved Vagabond,” “The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne,” “Septimus,” “The Glory of Clementina,” etc.
ALTHOUGH Stella had been in London for a day or two, the morning of the funeral 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 wouldn’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 standingwith his back against the empty fireplace.
“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 mustn’t do and feel too much, or you’ll break down.”
“Why should I, if you haven’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.
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 to the grave-side. 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. She 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.
STELLA’Sheart 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 tothe 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 reëntered 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 mustn’t talk about that any more. We’ve got the future to think of. Reconstruction—isn’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 afterward 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 shemean? 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—then I’ll be the Princess Stellamaris’s court jester again.”
She smiled wanly. “You were never court jester; you were Great High Favorite.” 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 mustn’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.
ATthe 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 didn’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 doesn’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 ofa 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, isn’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 mustache.
“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 labors 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 weekend. 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.
ITwas a sullen evening in mid-August, following a breathless day and an angry sunset that had shed a copper-colored glow above a bank of cloud. The great windows of the drawing-room of the Channel House were flung open wide, and on the terrace beneath the starless heaven sat the little group of intimates, which now included the placid lady of the little Kilburn house. Walter Herold, who had returned from Switzerland tanned and strong, told his adventures to Sir Oliver and Dr. Ransome, while John and Stella, a little way apart, listened idly. Lady Blount and Miss Lindon murmured irrelevances concerning the curates of long ago and the present price of beef. They had many points at which the curves of their natures touched, such as mathematicians,with unique spasm of romance, call points of osculation.
But for the voices all was still. From below, at the base of the cliff, came the lazy lapping of the sea against the rocks. Outside the glow of light cast by the illuminated drawing-room the world was pitch black. The air grew more and more oppressive.
“I think there’s going to be thunder,” said Lady Blount.
“I hope not,” said Miss Lindon. “I know John thinks it foolish, but I’m terribly afraid of thunder.”
“So does Sir Oliver; but I don’t care. Whenever there’s a thunder-storm, I go up to my room and put my head under the bedclothes until it’s over.”
“Now isn’t that remarkable, my dear,” said Miss Lindon—“I do exactly the same! I draw down the blinds, and hide scissors away in a drawer, and throw a woolen shawl over the steel fender, and then I put my head under the blankets. My Aunt Margery, I remember, invariably used to go and sit in the coal-cellar. But she was a strong-minded woman, and would put her foot on a black beetle as soon as look at it. I hope I’m fond of most of God’s creatures, but a black beetle frightens me out of my wits.”
“What do you think of thunder-storms, Stella?” John asked, knocking the ashes out of his pipe.
“I’m rather frightened,” she confessed. “Not because I think they’ll hurt me.” She paused and sighed. “I never could understand them.”
“What do you mean by understanding a thunder-storm?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “You either understand things or you don’t.”
Herold broke in to spare her further explanation. “There was a splendid one the week before last in the mountains—a realWalpurgisnacht. It seemed as though hell had broken loose.”
He described it in his vivid way. The elderly ladies looked at the glimmer of white shirt-front and the glowing cigarette-end by which alone he was revealed, and wondered at the heroical, or, as it seemed in the unconfessed depths of their souls, the God-defying qualities of male humanity. A few resounding splashes fell from the sky. The party rose hurriedly.
“Gad! we’re in for it,” cried Sir Oliver. “Let us get indoors.”
A flash of lightning rent the southern sky, and a clap of thunder broke over the channel, and the rain came down like a waterspout. In the drawing-room Lady Blount put her hand before her eyes.
“You must all forgive me. I can’t stand it. I must go up-stairs. Besides, it’s late, very near bed-time. My dear Miss Lindon, shall we go?”
The two old ladies, after hasty good nights, retired to the protection of their respective bedclothes. A great wind arose and swept through the room, blowing over a vase of flowers on the piano. Dr. Ransome, who happened to be standing near, mopped up the water with his handkerchief. Herold sprang to the window and shut it. Stella was by his side. Another flash sped through the blackness, and the thunder followed. They drew near together and waited for the next.
Sir Oliver hospitably pushed John and the old doctor toward the drawing-room door. “There are drinks in the library. It’ll be cozier there, on the other side of the house, away from this confounded racket. Come along, Walter. Stella darling, you had better go to bed. It’s the best place for little girls in a thunder-storm.”
She turned, the breadth of the drawing-room separating Walter Herold and herself from the others.
“I’ll stay up a little longer and look at it, dear Excellency,” she said, with a smile. “I’ll come into the library later and tell you all good night.”
At this announcement, and Stellamaris’s announcements had ever been sovereign decrees, John and Dr. Ransome, standing by the open door, obeyed the courteous wave of Sir Oliver’s hand. The old man waited for Herold, who advanced a pace or two.
“I suppose you’re dying for whisky and soda,” said Stella, resignedly.
He stopped short. “Not in the least. I would far rather look at this,”—he flung a hand toward the window,—“if you would let me.”
“Only for five minutes, Favorite dear; then I’ll send you away.”
Sir Oliver went out, shutting the door behind him. Herold and Stellamaris were alone in the spacious room. Therecame another flash and the thunder peal, and the rain spattered hard on the stone terrace.
“Why shouldn’t we sit down?” he asked, and drew a small settee to the window.
She stood, expectant of the lightning. It came and lit up a suddenly tempestuous sea. With her eyes straining at the blackness, she said in a low voice:
“Turn out the lights. This is all that matters.”
He went to the door, snapped the electric switches, and the darkness was so absolute that he waited for the next flash to see his way across the room. They sat down together side by side. A flash of vehement and reiterated radiance revealed a God’s wrath of spindrift scattered from mountainous waves that tossed in the middle distance the three-masted skeleton of a ship, and blasted the chalk-cliffed promontory to the west into a leprous tongue. They watched in silence for a long, long time. Save for the lightning, pitch blackness enveloped them. The rain swished heavily against the windows, and the surf roared on the rocks below. After a livid revelation of elemental welter and the deafening crash of cataclysm, she clutched his arm. When the peal had rolled away into an angry rumble, he whispered:
“Are you frightened?”
“No,” she replied, also below her breath, “not frightened. It excites me, it makes me feel, it makes me think. I seem to be understanding things I never understood before. Don’t let us speak.”
To remove impression of rebuke, her hand slid down his arm, found his hand, and held it. Neither spoke. After a while he scanned her face by the lightning. It was set, as though she saw a vision, her eyes gleaming, her lips parted. At the thunderclap her grasp involuntarily tightened. Again and again her face was startlingly visible. Herold’s mind went back down the years. He had seen that rapt expression times without number when she lay by the window of her sea-chamber and looked out into the mysteries of sea and sky; and times without number she had held his hand while her spirit, as he had loved fantastically to believe, went forth to dance with her sisters of the foam or to walk secure through the gates of the sunset. And he had loved to believe, too, that his own spirit, in some blind, attendant way, though lagging far behind, followed hers over the borders of the Land That Never Was. Sensitive to her moods, he felt now a strange excitement. She had become once more the Stellamaris of the cloudless and mystical years. The sea that had rejected her had again claimed her for its own, and was delivering into her keeping mysteries such as it had withheld from her even then; for she had found no message in the war of elements, mysteries deep and magnificent. He returned her tense pressure, and followed her spirit out into the vastness.
The storm grew fiercer. Every few moments spasms of livid daylight rent the darkness and dazzlingly illuminated the eager faces of the pair, the window-jambs and transoms, the terrace, the howling waste beyond, the skeleton ship tossing grimly, the promontory, the pitch black of the sky; and the thunder burst in awful detonations over their heads. Unconsciously and instinctively Stellamaris had drawn nearer to him, and her arm rested against his. After a long time, in the stillness of the dark, he spoke like one in a dream:
“The terrible splendor of life, that is the secret—the terrible splendor.”
She awoke almost with a shock, and, turning round, shook him by the lapel of his coat.
“How did you know, Walter? How did you know?”
Her voice quavered; he felt that she was trembling. A flash showed her straining her eyes into his face. They waited for the thunderclap during a second of intensity.
“What?” he asked.
“Those words. Those very words had just come to me, the meaning of everything. The terrible splendor of life. How did you know?”
“It was our souls that were going together through the storm.”
She released him, and withdrew a little.
“Did you know all that I was thinking?”
“Or all that the sea was telling you?”
“Did you feel that, too?” she asked breathlessly.
“I think so,” he replied.
“It was strange,” she said. “I hardlyknew that I was here. I seemed to be away in the midst of it all, but I don’t think I lost consciousness. I had adventures—curious adventures.” She paused abruptly, then she continued: “They seemed to be definite then, but they are all a blur now. It was a kind of battle between man and evil forces, and I think I felt a voice speaking through it, and saying that the splendor of man would never be subdued; and the impression I’ve got is, that I saw something, whether it was a shape or a scene I don’t know, but something great and grand and fierce and heroic, and the voice told me it was life. The only thing I have clear is the words, ‘the terrible splendor of life,’ the words you plucked out of me.”
“It is the great secret,” he said.
“Yes.”
There was another silence. The storm began to pass gradually away. The lightning became rarer, and the intervals longer between flash and thunder.
“It is beginning to be clear,” she said at last. “All that has troubled me. All that you guessed I was feeling, and that I told you of only when you compelled me. You have been right. Once—do you remember?—you said that if I saw God through the beauty and the vanity of the world all would be well.”
“I ought to have told you to see Him through the pain of the world,” said Herold.
“You have told me that, in other words, ever since; and I was deaf.”
“Not I, dear,” said Herold.
“Yes, you. Now I understand.” She drew a deep breath. “Now I understand. It’s like an open book. That woman—Unity—wait,” she paused, and put her two hands to her head in the darkness. “I have a glimmer of a memory—it’s so illusive. It seems that I saw Unity just now. I understand all that she was, all that she meant.” A flash showed the sea. “Yes, I was out there,” she cried excitedly, and pointed. “Just out there.” Darkness engulfed them. “I forget,” she faltered, “I forget.”
“But the sea has taken you back at last, Stellamaris,” said Herold.
She seized his hand and held it during the peal. Then she cried in a tone of sudden terror:
“Walter!”
“Yes?”
“What you said—your prophesy—the comfort of the sea—the deeper meaning—”
He leaped to his feet.
“Don’t think anything more of it. They were just foolish words to comfort you. You and I seem to have been on the Edge of Beyond and looked over, and we’re not quite normal. We must get down now to practical things. I’m just what I always was, dear, a fantastic person who rode with you into fairy-land. I am still. Nothing more.”
“Are you quite sure?” suddenly asked a deep voice out of the blackness of the room.
Stella with a little cry of fright sprang to Herold for protection. For a second or two they were still. In their exaltation the question seemed to come from some vast depth of the abysm of time. Their hearts beat fast, and they clung together, listening, and there was not a sound. Then the lightning played its dancing daylight about the room, and they saw John Risca standing by the door. They sprang apart.
In another moment the room was flooded with electric light. The drawing-room, for all its beauty, looked mean and unimportant. The lights showed up glaringly an old Florentine tapestry over the chimney-piece. It seemed to have singularly little relation to life. It jarred impertinently.
“I came in to find Walter,” said John; “I didn’t think Stella was still up. It’s late. You didn’t hear me. I’m sorry I inadvertently overheard.”
“There’s nothing, my dear John, that you could not have heard,” said Herold.
John came forward in his lumbering way.
“I know that, Walter.”
For a minute or two no one spoke. The three stood stock-still, their hearts thumping. Outside, the rain fell pitilessly on the flags of the terrace, and the waning storm flashed and growled. John’s burning eyes looked at Herold beneath heavy, knitted brows. At last he said:
“You love Stella. You have loved her always. You never told me.”
“That is not so,” said Herold. “You have found us in a foolishly false position. A thunder-storm is an emotionalpiece of business. My old intimacy with Stella has its privileges. I’ll leave you. Stella will speak for herself.”
John stretched out a detaining arm. “No, my friend; stay. We three must have a talk together. It was bound to come sooner or later. Let it be now.”
He spoke quietly, with dignity and authority.
“There is nothing for us to talk about,” said Herold,—Stellamaris stood clutching the back of an arm-chair, and looking from one man to the other,—“the words you overheard ought to tell you that. And in answer to your question, I can say that I am quite sure.”
“You lie,” said John, quietly. “You lie out of the loyalty of your heart—” he raised his great hand to check the other’s outburst—“God Almighty in Heaven knows I’m not accusing you. If ever man had deep and devoted and unselfish love from another, I’ve had it from you. And I have it still. It’s a matter not of reproach, but of reparation.”
“Don’t you think,” said Herold, “we might continue this extraordinary conversation in the library—by ourselves?”
“No,” said John in the obstinate tone that Herold had known for many years. “You and I are two men, and Stella is a woman, and a hell-mess just like that—” he pointed to the tempest—“has upset our lives. It’s time to put them to rights again.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Herold. “It’s a pity you have chosen to-night. Things are a bit abnormal. Let us go to bed and talk to-morrow, if you like, in the light of common sense.”
John folded his arms. “I’m going to talk to-night. I want you calmly to consider the position.”
“I do,” said Herold. “Stop,”—as John was about to interrupt,—“let me speak.”
“Yes,” said Stella, breaking silence for the first time; “let Walter speak.”
But she stood apart, fascinated by this strange duel, as her primitive ancestress might have done when two males fought for her with flint-headed axes.
“What I feel as regards Stella is neither here nor there. I’ve never told her that I loved her. I’ve never told you. Both you and she have told me that you loved each other. That was enough for me. I joined with Unity in seeking to remove the obstacle in the path of your happiness. If Unity had not forestalled me, I—well, God knows what I should have done! I left you asleep that evening, and went, half crazy, to the flat, and there I found what I found. But, anyhow, Unity committed murder and suicide to set the two of you free. If you want strong, blatant words, there you have them. A girl, one of God’s chosen, has laid down her life for the two of you.” He stood between them and threw up his hands. “Take each other. It is a sacrament.”
Stella, her arms still on the back of the chair, hung her head and stared downward. John cast a quick glance at her and then, a thing which he rarely did, drew his great frame up to its full height and challenged his friend.
“If you don’t love her, she loves you. I know.”
Herold said:
“You two belong to each other.”
“Then Stella must decide,” said John.
She threw out a flutter of delicate fingers and covered her face. “No, no!” she gasped.
The lightning flickered mildly in the well-lit room, and the eventual thunder reverberated in distant anger.
John again came close to Herold. “This may be an extraordinary conversation, but it has to be. If Stella loved me, do you think she would stand like that?”
Stella dropped to her knees, her face and arms huddled against the chair.
“My dear old man, I’ve learned many things of late. I can’t tell you exactly. I’m not good at that sort of thing. But Unity has been too big for me.”
Stella raised a white face.
“What do you mean? Say exactly what you mean.”
“I mean—oh, God knows what I mean.” He strode blindly across the room, returned, and faced the two, still near together. “Can’t you understand?” he cried, with a wide gesture. “I’m infinitesimal sand beneath that child’s feet. I’m a blind mole in comparison with her transcendent vision. I’m in the dust. Oh, God!” He turned away.
Stella rose, and, clasping hands to her bosom, went to him.
“Belovedest, for Heaven’s sake what is the end of all this?”
He halted and took her hands.
“Not shadows, not lies. Once I thought—indeed, I knew—you loved me. That was when you were an ignorant child. You loved some one you thought was me. Now your eyes are opened. You have passed through flames. Knowledge has come to you. You see me as I am, and your love has gone. I know, too, what I am. Unity has taught me. You can’t—you don’t love me, Stella. That I know. I’ve known it ever since that day when we put her into her grave.”
Herold came between them imploringly. “My dear man—my dear fellow—what is the use of this wild talk? You two love each other. Unity gave her life for the two of you. If you two don’t come together, it’s all overwhelming, blasting irony. I couldn’t believe in God after it. It would be hellishly cynical. Stella, in God’s name, tell him that you are bound by Unity’s sacrifice—that you love him and will marry him and make his life happy!”
Stella, very pale, looked at John. “If you want me, I will marry you,” she said in a clear voice.
John waved her aside. “I will not take you, my dear,” said he.
Spurned sex winced involuntarily.
“If you have stopped caring for me—”
“I stopped caring? I? Merciful God, I’ve never loved you so much. But you love a better man. What’s the good of saying the same things over and over again? But I’ll tell you this, both of you, that if Unity had not given her life, and if I had been free, I should have fought for you and had you despite everything. That’s my accursed nature. But Unity has not died in vain, and it’s because of that child’s death, the beauty and heroism of it, that I’m able to stand here and tear my heart out and throw it away. Don’t make any mistake,”—he turned fiercely on Herold,—“it’s not I who am giving her up. It’s Unity.”
“Very well,” said Herold. “Let us put it at that. It’s your point of view. You also force me to speak. It would be grotesque to keep silence any longer. Yes, I do love her. She is the beginning and end of life to me. If she had lain on her back all her days, I should never have married another woman. There! You have it now.”
The two men’s eyes held each other for a space. Stellamaris looked at the pair with a fearful admiration. They were men. Herold she had divined and known long ago; this, on his part, was only the supreme fulfilment of promise. But John Risca, who had passed through the illusion and disillusion of her soul, stood before her in new strength, a great and moving figure.
At last John drew a deep breath, turned to Stellamaris very gently, and smiled.
“And you?”
The smile sent swift pain through her heart. She made a step or two, and fell sobbing on his breast.
“O Belovedest, I am sorry! You have guessed right. Forgive me!”
He caressed the bowed head tenderly for an instant, then releasing himself, he clapped his hand on Herold’s shoulder and shook it with rough affection.
“I’m going to bed,” said he. He moved to the door. There he paused to nod a good night; but at sight of them both looking sadly at him he walked back a couple of paces.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m at peace with myself for the first time for years. There’s lots of happiness in the world left.” He smiled again. “Enough for the three of us—and for Unity.”
He left them, and went to bed in the room which Stellamaris had furnished for him long ago, and fell into the sleep of the man who has found rest at last in the calm and certain knowledge of spiritual things. Unity had not died in vain. And Stellamaris, sitting once more by Herold’s side in the wide bay of the window, and talking with him in a hushed voice of the wondrous things that had come to pass, knew that John Risca had spoken a great truth. It had been God’s will that so should the terrible splendor of the world be made manifest.
Herold asked for the million-billionth time in the history of mankind:
“When did you first find that you loved me?”
She replied, perhaps more truly than most maidens:
“There was never a time when I didn’t love you. I mean—I don’t quite know what I mean,” she said confusedly. “You see, I’ve lived a strange life, dear,” she went on. “You seem to have been a part of me ever since I can remember what is worth remembering. You have always understood things that went on inside me almost before I could tell them to you. I always wanted you to explain foolishnesses that I couldn’t speak of to any one else.”
“That’s very beautiful,” Herold interrupted, “but love is a different matter. When did the real love come to you?”
“I think it was that morning in the garden when you almost whipped me,” said Stella. She started an inch or two away from him. “And I’m sure you knew it,” she said.
And he remembered, as he had often remembered in his great struggle, her eyes, turning from agates to diamonds and her words, “Do you love me like that?”
“Heaven knows, Stellamaris dear; I did not mean to betray myself.”
She laughed the enigmatic laugh of a woman’s contentment, and Herold was too wise to ask why.
They spoke of deepest things. “There is something I must tell you,” said he, “which up to now I have had to keep secret, and it is right that you should know.”
And he told her the story of Unity and himself—the revolver, their talk of the evil woman, their parting words, his crazed adventure through the sunny streets.
She listened, her body leaning forward, her hands clasped on her knee. When he had finished, she sat without change of attitude.
“You did that so that another man could marry the woman you loved. Unity did that so that the man she loved could marry another woman. John came in to-night to sacrifice himself and give us both happiness. The three of you have done terrible and splendid things. I am the only one of us four who has done nothing.”
Herold rose, took a nervous pace or two. What she said needed more than a lover’s sophistical reassurance. He could speak a thousand words of comfort; but he knew that her soul required a supreme answer, a clue to the dark labyrinth through which she had worked. What could he say? He looked through the window, and suddenly saw that which to him was an inspiration. He threw the folding-doors wide. It had stopped raining long ago, though neither had noticed.
“Come out on the terrace,” said he.
She followed him into the gusty air. The sea still roared resentfully at the late disturbance of its quiet. The southwest wind that had brought up the storm had driven the great rack of black cloud above the horizon, and there below the rack was a band of dark but cloudless sky, and in it one star hung serene. Herold pointed to it.
“What have you done, dear?” His voice broke in a catch of exultation, and his usually nimble wit failed to grasp the lunatic falsity of the analogy. “You have done what that has done—come through the storm pure and steadfast.”
“Not I, dear,” she said, “but my faith in the God we breathe.”
“No; you yourself.” He put his arm around her, and all his love spoke. “You. The living mystery of beauty that is you.” He whispered into her lips. “You—Stellamaris—Star of the Sea.”
THE END