Stella Maris, HeadpieceSTELLA MARIS
Stella Maris, Headpiece
BY WILLIAM J. LOCKE
Author of “The Beloved Vagabond,” “The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne,” “Septimus,” “The Glory of Clementina,” etc.
THEY found him lying on the sofa, a pitiable object, the whole of his head from the back of his neck to his eyebrows swathed in bandages. His clothes were mere limp and discolored wrappings. They looked as though they had been wet through, for the red of his tie had run into his shirt-front and collar. The coarse black sprouts on pallid cheek and upper lip gave him an appearance of indescribable grime. His eyes were sunken and feverish.
Unity uttered a little cry as she saw him, but checked it quickly, and threw herself on her knees by his side.
“Thank God you’re alive!”
He put his hand on her head.
“I’m all right,” he said faintly; “but you shouldn’t have come. That’s why I didn’t go straight home. I didn’t want to frighten you. I’m a ghastly sight, and I should have scared your aunt out of her wits.”
“But how, in Heaven’s name, man,” said Herold, “did you get into this state?”
“Something hit me over the head, and I spent the night in rain and sea-water on the rocks.”
“On the rocks? Where? At Southcliff?”
“Yes,” said John, “at Southcliff. I was a fool to go down, but I’ve been a fool all my life, so a bit more folly doesn’t matter.” He closed his eyes. “Give me a drink, Wallie—some brandy.”
Herold went into the dining-room, which adjoined the library, and returned with decanter, syphon, and glasses. He poured out a brandy and soda for John and watched him drink it; then he realized that he, too, would be the better for stimulant. With an abstemious man’s idea of taking brandy as medicine, he poured out for himself an extravagant dose, mixed a little soda-water with it, and gulped it down.
“That’ll do me good,” said John; but on saying it he fell to shivering, despite the heat of the summer afternoon.
“You’ve caught a chill,” cried Unity. She counseled home and bed at once.
“Not yet,” he murmured. “It was all I could do to get here. Let me rest for a couple of hours. I shall be all right. I’m not going to bed,” he declared with sudden irritability; “I’ve never gone to bed in the daytime in my life. I’ve never been ill, and I’m not going to be ill now. I’m only stiff and tired.”
“You’ll go to bed here right away,” said Herold.
John protested. Herold insisted.
“Those infernal clothes—you must get them off at once,” said he. John being physically weak, his natural obstinacy gave way. Unity saw the sense of the suggestion; but it was giving trouble.
“Not a bit,” said Herold. “There’s a spare bedroom. John can have mine, which is aired. Mrs. Ripley will see to it.”
He went out to give the necessary orders.Unity busied herself with unlacing and taking off the stiffened boots. Herold returned, beckoned to Unity, and whispered that he had telephoned for a doctor. Then he said to John:
“How are you feeling, dear old man?”
“My head’s queer, devilish queer. Something fell on it last night and knocked me out of time. It was raining, and I was sheltering under the cliff on the beach, the other side of the path, where you can see the lights of the house, when down came the thing. I must have recovered just before dawn; for I remember staggering about in a dazed way. I must have taken the road round the cliff, thinking it the upper road, and missed my footing and fallen down. I came to about nine this morning, on the rocks, the tide washing over my legs. I’m black and blue all over. Wonder I didn’t break my neck. But I’m tough.”
“Thank God you’re alive!” said Unity again.
He passed his hands over his eyes. “Yes. You must have thought all manner of things, dear. I didn’t realize till Ripley told me that I hadn’t let you know. I went out, meaning to catch the 7:15 and come back by the last train. But this thing knocked all memory out of me. I’m sorry.”
Herold looked in bewilderment at the stricken giant. Even now he had not accounted for the lunatic and almost tragic adventure. What was he doing on the beach in the rain? What were the happenings subsequent to his recovering consciousness at nine o’clock?
“Does it worry you to talk?” he asked.
“No. It did at first—I mean this morning. But I’m all right now—nearly all right. I’d like to tell you. I picked myself up, all over blood, a devil of a mess, and crawled to the doctor’s—not Ransome; the other chap, Theed. He’s the nearest; and, besides, I didn’t want to go to Ransome. I don’t think any one saw me. Theed took me in and fixed me up and dried my clothes. Of course he wanted to drag me to the Channel House, but I wouldn’t let him. I made him swear not to tell them. I don’t want them to know. Neither of you must say anything. He also tried to fit me out. But, you know, he’s about five foot nothing; it was absurd. As soon as I could manage it, he stuck me in a train, much against his will, and I came on here. That’s all.”
“If only I had known!” said Herold. “I was down there all the morning.”
“You?”
“I had a letter from Julia, summoning me.”
“So had I.” He closed his eyes again for a moment. Then he asked, “How is Stella?”
“I had a long talk with her. I may have straightened things out a bit. She’ll come round. There’s no cause for worry for the present. Julia is a good soul, but she has no sense of proportion, and where Stella is concerned she exaggerates.”
When a man has had rocks fall on his head, and again has fallen on his head upon rocks, it is best to soothe what is left of his mind. And after he had partly soothed it,—a very difficult matter, first, because it was in a troubled and despairing state, and, secondly, because John, never having taken Unity into his confidence, references had to be veiled,—he satisfied the need of another brandy and soda. Then Ripley came in to announce that the room was ready.
“Ripley and I will see to him,” said Herold to Unity. “You had better go and fetch him a change of clothes and things he may want.”
“Mayn’t I wait till the doctor comes?” she pleaded.
“Of course, my dear. There’s no hurry,” said Herold.
The two men helped Risca to his feet, and, taking him to the bedroom, undressed him, clothed him in warm pajamas, and put him into the bed, where a hot-water bottle diffused grateful heat. Herold had seen the livid bruises on his great, muscular limbs.
“Any one but you,” said he, with forced cheeriness, “would have been smashed to bits, like an egg.”
“I tell you I’m tough,” John growled. “It’s only to please you that I submit to this silly foolery of going to bed.”
As soon as Ripley was dismissed, he called Herold to his side.
“I would like to tell you everything, Wallie. I couldn’t in the other room. Unity, poor child, knows nothing at all about things. Naturally. I had been worried all the afternoon. I thought Isaw her—you know—hanging about outside the office. It was just before I met you at the club. I didn’t tell you,—perhaps I ought to,—but that was why I was so upset. But you’ll forgive me. You’ve always forgiven me. Anyway, I thought I saw her. It was just a flash, for she, if it was she, was swallowed up in the traffic of Fleet Street. After leaving the club, I went back to the office—verification in proofs of something in Baxter’s article. I found odds and ends to do. Then I went home, and Julia’s letter lay on my table. I’ve been off my head of late, Wallie. For the matter of that, I’m still off it. I’ve hardly slept for weeks. I found Julia’s letter. I looked at my watch. There was just time to catch the 7:15. I ran out, jumped into a taxi, and caught it just as it was starting. But as I passed by a third-class carriage,—in fact, I realized it only after I had gone several yards beyond; one rushes, you know,—I seemed to see her face—those thin lips and cold eyes—framed in the window. The guard pitched me into a carriage. I looked out for her at all the stations. At Tring Bay the usual crowd got out. I didn’t see her. No one like her got out at Southcliff. What’s the matter, Wallie?” He broke off suddenly.
“Nothing, man; nothing,” said Herold, turning away and fumbling for his cigarette-case.
“You looked as if you had seen a ghost. It was I who saw the ghost.” He laughed. And the laugh, coming from the haggard face below the brow-reaching white bandage, was horrible.
“Your brain was playing you tricks,” said Herold. “You got to Southcliff. What happened?”
“I felt a fool,” said John. “Can’t you see what a fool a man feels when he knows he has played the fool?”
Bit by bit he revealed himself. At the gate of the Channel House he reflected. He had not the courage to enter. Stella would be up and about. He resolved to wait until she went to bed. He wandered down to the beach. The rain began to fall, fine, almost imperceptible. The beacon-light in the west window threw a vanishing shaft into the darkness.
“We saw it once—don’t you remember?—years ago when you gave her the name—Stellamaris. I sat like a fool and watched the window. How long I don’t know. My God! Wallie, you don’t know what it is to be shaken and racked by the want of a woman—”
“By love for a woman, you mean,” said Herold.
“It’s the same thing. At last I saw her. She stood defined in the light. She had changed. I cried out toward her like an idiot,”—the rugged, grim half face visible beneath the bandage was grotesque, a parody of passion,—“and I stayed there, watching, after she had gone away. How long I don’t know. It was impossible to ring at the door and see Oliver and Julia.”
He laughed again. “You must have some sense of humor, my dear man. Fancy Oliver and Julia! What could I have said to them? What could they have said to me? I sat staring up at her window. The rain was falling. Everything was still. It was night. You know how quiet everything is there. Then I seemed to hear footsteps and I turned, and a kind of shape—a woman’s—disappeared. I know I was off my head, but I began to think. I had a funny experience once—I’ve never told you. It was the day she came out of prison. I sat down in St. James’s Park and fell half asleep,—that sort of dog sleep one has when one’s tired,—and I thought I saw her going for Stella—Stella in her bed at the Channel House—going to strangle her. This came into my mind, and then something hit me,—a chunk of overhanging cliff loosened by the rain, I suppose,—and, as I’ve told you, it knocked me out. But it’s devilish odd that she should be mixed up in it.”
“As I said, your brain was playing you tricks,” said Herold, outwardly calm; but within himself he shuddered to his soul. The woman was like a foul spirit hovering unseen about those he loved.
Presently the doctor, a young man with a cheery face, came in and made his examination. There was no serious damage done. The only thing to fear was the chill. If the patient’s temperature went down in the morning, he could quite safely be moved to his own home. For the present rest was imperative, immediate sleep desirable. He wrote a prescription, and with pleasant words went away. Then Unity, summoned to the room, heard the doctor’s comforting opinion.
“I’ll be with you to-morrow,” said John.
“You don’t mind leaving him to Mrs. Ripley and me just for one night?” asked Herold.
“He’s always safe with you,” Unity replied, her eyes fixed not on him, but on John Risca. “Good-by, Guardian dear.”
John drew an arm from beneath the bedclothes and put it round her thin shoulders. “Good-by, dear. Forgive me for giving you such a fright, and make my peace with auntie. You’ll be coming back with my things, won’t you?”
“Of course; but you’ll be asleep then.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said John.
She made him cover up his arm again and tucked the bedclothes snugly about him, her finger-tips lingering by his cheeks.
“I’ll leave you, too. Try and get to sleep,” said Herold.
They went together out of the room and back to the library.
“Has he said anything more?”
He stood before her trembling all over.
“What is the matter?”
He burst into an uncontrollable cry. “It’s that hellish woman again! He saw her spying on him outside his office, he saw her in a railway carriage on the train he took. Because she disappeared each time, he thinks it was an hallucination; and somehow he was aware of her presence just before the piece of rock came down.”
Unity’s face beneath the skimpy hair and rubbishy tam-o’-shanter was white and strained.
“She threw it. I knew she threw it.”
“So do I. He saw her. She disappeared as she did that night in the fog. A woman like that isn’t human. She has the power of disappearing at will. You can’t measure her cunning.”
“What did he go down for?”
He told her. Unity’s lips twitched.
“And he sat there in the rain just looking at her window?”
She put out her hand. “Good-by, Mr. Herold. When you see Miss Stellamaris, you’ll tell her I’m a good girl—in that way, you know—and that I love her. She has been a kind of beautiful angel to me—has always been with me. It’s funny; I can’t explain. But you understand. If you’d only let her see that, I’d be so happy—and perhaps she’d be happier.”
“I’ll do my utmost,” said Herold.
He accompanied her down-stairs, and when she had gone, he returned to the library and walked about. The horror of the woman was upon him. He drank another brandy and soda. After a while Ripley came in with a soiled card on a tray. He looked at it stupidly—“Mr. Edwin Travers”—and nodded.
“Shall I show the gentleman up?”
He nodded again, thinking of the woman.
When the visitor came in he vaguely recognized him as a broken-down actor, a colleague of early days. As in a dream he bade the man sit down, and gave him cigarettes and drink, and heard with his outer ears an interminable tale of misfortune. At the end of it he went to his desk and wrote out a check, which he handed to his guest.
“I can’t thank you, old man. I don’t know how to. But as soon as I can get an engagement—hello, old man,” he cried, glancing at the check, “you’ve made a funny mistake—the name!”
Herold took the slip of paper, and saw that he had made the sum payable not to Edwin Travers, but to Louisa Risca. It was a shock, causing him to brace his faculties. He wrote out another check, and the man departed.
He went softly into John’s room and found him sleeping peacefully.
Soon afterward Ripley announced that dinner was ready. It was past six o’clock.
“Great Heavens!” he cried aloud, “I’ve got to play to-night.”
After a hurried wash he went into the dining-room and sat down at the table, but the sight and smell of food revolted him. He swallowed a few mouthfuls of soup; the rest of the dinner he could not touch. The horror of the woman had seized him again. He drank some wine, pushed back his chair, and threw down his table-napkin.
“I don’t want anything else. I’m going for a walk. I’ll see you later at the theater.”
The old-fashioned Kensington street, with its double line of Queen Anne houses slumbering in the afternoon sunshine, was a mellow blur before his eyes. Whither he was going he knew: what he was going to do he knew not. The rigid self-control of the day, relaxed at times, but alwayskept within grip, had at last escaped him. Want of food and the unaccustomed drink had brought about an abnormal state of mind. He was aware of direction, aware, too, of the shadow-shapes of men and women passing him by, of traffic in the roadway. He walked straight, alert, his gait and general demeanor unaffected, his outer senses automatically alive. He walked down the narrow, shady Church Street, and paused for a moment or two by the summer greenery of Kensington Churchyard until there was an opportunity of crossing the High Street, now at the height of its traffic. He strode westward past the great shops, a lithe man in the full vigor of his manhood. Here and there a woman lingering in front of displays of millinery recognized the well-known actor and nudged her companion.
The horror within him had grown to a consuming thing of flame. Instead of the quiet thoroughfares down which he turned, he saw picture after shuddering picture—the woman and Stellamaris, the woman and John Risca. She attacked soul as well as body. The pictures took the forms of horrible grotesques. Within, his mind worked amazingly, like a machine escaped from human control and running with blind relentlessness. He had said years ago that he would pass through his hell-fire. He was passing through it now.
The destroyer must be kept from destroying or be destroyed. Which of these should be accomplished through his agency? One or the other. Of one thing he was certain, with an odd, undoubting certainty: that he would find her, and finding her, that he would let loose upon her the wrath of God. She should be chained up forever or he would strangle her. Shivering thrills diabolically delicious ran through him at the thought. Supposing he strangled her as he would a mad cat? That were better. She would be out of the world. He would be fulfilling his destiny of sacrifice. For the woman he loved and for the man he loved why should he not do this thing? What but a legal quibble could call it murder? Stellamaris’s words rang in his ears: “You say you love me like that?”
“Yes, I love you like that. I love you like that,” he cried below his breath as he walked on.
He knew where she lived, the name by which she passed. John had told him many times. There were few things in John’s life he did not know. He knew of the Bences, of Mrs. Oscraft, the fluffy-haired woman who lived in the flat below. Amelia Mansions, he was aware, were in the Fulham Road. But when he reached that thoroughfare, he stood dazed and irresolute, realizing that he did not know which way to turn. A passing postman gave him the necessary information. The trivial contact with the commonplace restored in a measure his mental balance. He went on. By Brompton Cemetery he felt sick and faint and clung for a minute or two to the railings. He had eaten nothing since early morning, and then only a scrap of bacon and toast; he had drunk brandy and wine, and he had lived through a day in which the maddening stress of a lifetime had been concentrated.
One or two passers-by stared at him, for he was as white as a sheet. A comfortable, elderly woman, some small shopkeeper’s wife, addressed him. Was he ill? Could she do anything for him? The questioning was a lash. He drew himself up, smiled, raised his hat, thanked her courteously. It was nothing. He went on, loathing himself as men do when the flesh fails beneath the whip of the spirit.
He was well now, his mind clear. He was going to the woman. He would save those he loved. If it were necessary to kill her, he would kill her. On that point his brain worked with startling clarity. If he did not kill her, she would be eventually killed by John; for John, he argued, could not remain in ignorance forever. If John killed her, he would be hanged. Much better that he, Walter Herold, whom Stellamaris did not love, should be hanged than John—much better. And what the deuce did it matter to anybody whether he were hanged or not? He laughed at the elementary logic of the proposition. The solution of all the infernally intricate problems of life is, if people only dared face it, one of childish simplicity. It was laughable. Walter Herold laughed aloud in the Fulham Road.
It was so easy, so uncomplicated. He would see her. He would do what he had to do. Then he would take a taxicab to the theater. He must play to-night. Ofcourse he would. There was no reason why he shouldn’t. Only he hoped that, Leonora Gurney wouldn’t worry him. He would manage to avoid her during that confounded wait in the first act, when she always tried to get him to talk. He would play the part all right. He was a man and not a stalk of wet straw. After the performance he would give himself up. No one would be inconvenienced. He would ask the authorities to hurry on matters and give him a short shrift and a long rope; but the length of the rope didn’t matter these days, when they just broke your neck. There was no one dependent on him. His brothers and sisters, many years his seniors,—he had not seen them since he was a child,—had all gone after their father’s death to an uncle in New Zealand. They were there still. The mother, who had remained with him, the Benjamin, in England, had died while he was at Cambridge. He was free from family-ties. And women? He was free, too. There had only been one woman in his life, the child of cloud and sea foam.
Stellamaris, star of the sea, now dragged through the mire of mortal things! She should go back. She should go back to her firmament, shining down upon, and worshiped by, the man she loved. And he, God!—he should be spared the terrifying agony of it.
Thus worked the brain which Walter Herold told himself was crystal clear.
It was clear enough, however, to follow the postman’s directions. He took the turning indicated and found the red-brick block, with the name “Amelia Mansions” carved in stone over the entrance door. The by-street seemed to be densely populated. He went into the entrance-hall and mechanically looked at the list of names. Mrs. Rawlings’s name was followed by No. 7. He mounted the stairs. On the landing of No. 7 there were a couple of policemen, and the flat door was open, and the length of the passage was visible. Herold was about to enter when they stopped him.
“You can’t go in, sir.”
“I want Mrs. Rawlings.”
“No one can go in.”
He stood confused, bewildered. An elderly, buxom woman, with a horrified face, who just then happened to come out of a room near the doorway, saw him and came forward.
“You are Mr. Herold,” she asked.
“Yes; I want to see Mrs. Rawlings.”
“It’s all right, constable,” she said in a curiously cracked voice. “Let this gentleman pass. Come in, sir. I am Mrs. Bence.”
He entered the passage. She spoke words to him the import of which he did not catch. His brain was perplexed by the guard of policemen and the open flat. She led him a short distance down the passage. He stumbled over a packed kit-bag. She threw open a door. He crossed the threshold of a vulgarly furnished drawing-room, the electric lights turned on despite the daylight of the July evening. There were four figures in the room. Standing and scribbling in note-books were two men, one in the uniform of a sergeant of police, the other in a frock-coat, obviously a medical man. On the floor were two women, both dead. One was John Risca’s wife, and the other was Unity. And near by them lay a new, bright revolver.
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 catastrophedid 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-smoldering vengeance. Unity was blackened. John responded to Herold’s lash. This must not be. Unity must not go to her grave in public dishonor; 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 afterward 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 vigor 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 taxicab, 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 shouldn’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.”
THATday, 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 down-stairs, 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 southwest 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 a 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 armor. 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,”
Then spake Sir Thomas Howard,“’Fore God, I am no coward,”
Then spake Sir Thomas Howard,“’Fore God, I am no coward,”
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 don’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 doesn’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 shouldn’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. 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 defenseless.
“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 mustache,—“A year ago I shouldn’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, haven’t we, Julia? And God knows we love you. You’re the only thing in the world left to us. It isn’t our fault that you are drawn into this ghastliness. It isn’t, God knows it isn’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 didn’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’ve got to 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 has 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.”
SOwhen Walter Herold went home late that night,—the theater 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 hasn’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.
(To be concluded)