THINGS happened as John and Lady Blount had planned them. Sister
Theophila, having satisfied herself that Unity Blake was not a second
time being thrown to the wolves--Lady Blount herself undertook the
negotiations--surrendered her without many regretful pangs. Unity Blake,
fatalistic child of circumstance, surrendered herself without coherent
thought. World authorities, vague in their nature, but irresistibly
compelling in their force, had governed her life from her earliest
years. The possibility of revolt, of assertion of her own individuality,
was undreamed of in her narrow philosophy. She had the outlook on life
of the slave; not the slave of the mettlesome temperament depicted by
the late Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe and the late Mr. Longfellow, but the
unaspiring deaf-mute of a barbaric harem. It is true that Lady Blount
asked her whether she would like to go away to a nice house by the
seaside, and afterward live for ever and ever with the kind gentleman
who gave her peppermint bull's-eyes and the kind lady who had visited
her one day, bringing her a pair of woollen mittens, and that Unity,
after the manner of her class, had said, “Yes, ma'am”; but the
consultation of Unity's wishes had been a pure formality. She had no
idea of what the seaside meant, having never seen the sea or speculated
on its nature. She could form no notion of her future life with the kind
lady and gentleman, save perhaps that the pokers of the establishment
might have other uses than as instruments of chastisement and that, at
any rate, they might be applied cold and not red-hot. If they had taken
her up without a word, and put her in an open coffin, and lowered
her into an open grave, and left her there, Unity would have made no
complaint, having at once no standard whereby to assess the right and
wrong done to her, and no tribunal to which she could appeal higher
than the vague world authorities above mentioned. The instinctive animal
might have clambered out of the pit and wandered about the country-side
in search of food and shelter, but that would have been all. The fervent
human soul would have played but a small part.
So one day the matron came and dressed her in the parody of attire which
she had worn during her lamentable excursion into the world, and men
carried her, a creature of no volition, down-stairs, and put her into
a cab with Lady Blount, and the two journeyed in a train for an hour or
so, Unity lying flat on her back along one side of the carriage, and the
lady sitting opposite, reading a magazine. The jolting of the train hurt
her, but that was not the lady's fault. Sometimes the lady spoke to her,
and she said, “Yes, ma'am,” and, “No, ma'am,” as she had been taught to
do at the orphanage; but what the lady was saying she did not very well
understand. She grasped, however, the lady's kindness of intention; and
now and then the lady, looking up from her magazine, smiled and nodded
encouragingly, an unfathomably mysterious proceeding, but curiously
comforting. On the opposite side of the compartment was the most
beautiful picture she had ever seen--lovely ladies in gorgeous raiment
and handsome gentlemen sitting at little lamp-lit tables, eating a
meal which chiefly consisted of scarlet birds; and there were other
gentlemen, not quite so handsome, hovering about with dishes and bottles
of wine; and the pillars of the hall were of pure marble, and the tops
of them gold, and the ceiling was golden, too. In the foreground sat
a peculiarly lovely lady in a red, low-cut frock, and an entrancingly
handsome gentleman, and they were bending over the table and he held
a wine-glass in his hand. Below she read the legend, “Supper at the
Coliseum Hotel.” She could scarcely keep her eyes off the picture. Lady
Blount, noticing her rapt gaze, questioned her, and from her answers it
was obvious that it was only the details that attracted her--the lovely
ladies, the handsome men, the glitter and colour of the preposterously
gaudy scene. The essence of it she did not grasp; her spirit was not
transported into the shoddy fairy-land; her imagination was untouched by
the potentialities of life which to a mind a little, a very little, more
awakened it might, with all its vulgar crudity, have suggested.
After the railway journey she was lifted into another cab, and taken
into a big house with wonderfully soft carpets and pictures on the
walls. They carried her into a pretty room that looked like a bower of
roses,--it had a rose-pattern wall-paper,--and from the window she could
see trees and a great rolling expanse of country. She wondered why the
place had no streets. They undressed her. A maid-servant, so trim and
spruce that she addressed her as “ma'am,” pointed to the heap of poor
garments and asked:
“What are we to do with these, my lady?”
“Bury them,” said Lady Blount.
“Ain't I never going out again, ma'am?” Unity inquired humbly.
“Of course, child. But we'll give you some decent clothes,” said Lady
Blount.
They put her in a bath and washed her. The soap smelled so good that
surreptitiously she got hold of the cake and nosed it like a young dog.
They dried her in warm towels, and slipped a night-dress over her meagre
shoulders. It was then, perhaps, that fingering the gossamer thing,
taking up a bunch of stuff in her fist and slowly letting it go, in a
dreamy wonder, she first began to realize that she was on the threshold
of a new life. Not even the soft bed or the delicious chicken-broth that
was brought later eclipsed the effect produced by the night-dress. It
had embroidery and all sorts of blue ribbons--an epoch-making garment.
Some time later, the maid, having drawn the curtains and smoothed her
pillow and tucked her in, said:
“If you want anything in the night, just touch that bell, and I 'll come
to you.”
Unity looked at her half comprehendingly. “Ring a bell? I should n't
dare.”
“Why?”
“It's only missuses that ring bells.”
“Those are Lady Blount's orders, anyway,” laughed the maid. “'Ere,” said
Unity, with a beckoning finger. “What are they treating me like this
for?”
So might a succulently fed sailor have suspiciously interrogated one of
a cannibal tribe.
“How else would you want them to treat you?” asked the unpercipient
maid. “You 've come down here to get well, have n't you?” She bent down
and tied a loosened ribbon in a bow. “I declare if you have n't got on
one of Miss Stella's nighties!”
“Who is Miss Stella?” asked Unity.
“Miss Stella?” The maid stared. To be in the Channel House and not know
who Miss Stella was! “Miss Stella?” she repeated blankly. “Why, Miss
Stella, of course.”
The days passed quickly, and in the pure, strong air and under the
generous treatment Unity began to mend. She also began to form a dim
conception of Miss Stella. It was gradually borne in upon her mind that
not only the household, but the whole cosmic scheme, revolved round Miss
Stella. Sometimes they called her by another name, Stellamaris, which
sounded queer, like the names of princesses in the fairy-tales they had
given her to read. Perhaps this Miss Stella was a fairy-princess. Why
not? Thus it came to pass that even in the darkened mind of this child
of wretchedness Stellamaris began to shine with a lambent glow of
mystery.
Now and then the kind gentleman came to visit her, with gifts of
chocolates (as became her new estate), which she accepted meekly,
though in her heart she regretted the peppermint bull's-eyes of fuller
and more satisfying flavour. She learned in course of time that he was
the husband of the woman whose image still brought sweating fright into
her dreams. To save her from waking terror, Lady Blount spent much time
and tact, enlisting her sympathy for John by convincing her that he
himself had received barbarous usage from the same abhorred hands.
Unity, whose habit of mind was to translate conceptions into terms of
the objective, wondered what form of physical torture was applied to
John. She pitied him immensely, but consoled herself by the reflection
that as he was very big and strong, his probable sufferings were not
inordinate. That so big and strong a man, however, should have suffered
unresistingly she could not understand.
“Why did n't he wipe her over the 'ed, m' lady?” she asked simply. The
“m' lady” was the result of the maid's instructions.
Lady Blount administered the necessary linguistic corrections, and,
proceeding to the sociological side, informed her that gentlemen never
struck women, no matter how great the provocation. Unity was quick to
apply the proposition personally.
“Then Mr. Risca will never beat me, even if I do wrong?”
“Good Heavens! no, child,” cried Lady Blount, horrified. “Mr. Risca is
as gentle as a kitten. You should see him with Miss Stella.”
“Miss Stella loves him very much, m' lady?”
“Of course she does.”
“And he loves her, too?”
“Everybody loves her,” said Lady Blount, tenderly. The next time that
John came to Southcliff he found a convalescent Unity. Dressmakers and
other fabricators of feminine raiment had been at work, and she was clad
in blouse and short serge skirt and her scanty, brown hair, instead of
being screwed up in a diminutive bun at the back of her head, was combed
and brushed and secured, after the manner of hair of young persons of
sixteen, with bows of ribbon. She stood gawkily before him, confused in
her own metamorphosis. At the orphanage she had worn the same uniform
from early childhood. During her excursion into the world she had
masqueraded as the grown woman. In the conventional attire of the
English school-girl she did not recognize herself. Her coarse hands,
scarcely refined by illness, hung awkwardly by her side. An appeal for
mercy hovered at the back of her dull and patient eyes. Despite the
trim dress and hair, she looked hopelessly unprepossessing, with
her snub nose, wide mouth, weak chin, and bulgy and shiny forehead.
Scragginess, too, had marked her for its own.
“Well, Unity,” said John, “so you 're up at last. Have you been in the
garden?”
She made the bob taught at the orphanage.
“Yes, sir.”
“And you 're feeling well and strong?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And don't you think it's a very lovely place?”
“Yes, sir,” said Unity.
They were always shy in each other's company, question and answer being
the form of their conversation. John, who could talk all day long to
Stella, felt curiously constrained in the presence of this unfamiliar
type of humanity; and Unity, regarding him at the same time as a god who
had delivered her out of the House of Bondage and as a fellow-victim at
the hands of the Unspeakable, scarcely found breath for the utterance of
her monosyllables.
“Sit down and go on with your work,” said he. He had come upon her
as she sat by the window of her room sewing some household linen. She
obeyed meekly. He watched her busy, skilful fingers for some time.
“Do you like sewing?”
“Yes, sir; can sew beautiful.”
John lounged about the rose-covered room. What could he say next. On
previous visits he had discoursed on their proposed life together, and
she had been singularly unresponsive. He had also plugged her mind full,
as he hoped, of moral precepts which should be of great value hereafter.
But being no original aphorist, he had exhausted his ready-made stock.
He thrust his hands into his pockets and looked out of the window. The
little town of Southcliff lay hidden below the bluff, and all that he
saw was the Sussex weald lit by the May sunshine and rolling lazily
in pasture and woodland into the hazy distance. Within, the monotonous
scrabble of the needle going in and out of stiff material alone broke
the silence.
Presently the maid came in.
“Miss Stella's compliments, sir, and if you 're disengaged, she would
like to speak to you for a minute.”
She had a habit of summoning thus politely, but autocratically, her high
ministers of state.
“I will come to Miss Stella immediately,” said John. He turned to Unity.
“Now that you can get about again, I suppose Lady Blount has told you
not to go to the other side of the house.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you understand why?”
She raised her eyebrows. Having lived under the despotism of the world
authorities, she had never dreamed of questioning the why and wherefore
of any ordinance.
“It 's forbidden, sir.”
“No one goes there without express invitation from Miss Stella,” said
John, indiscreetly. “If any one did, I don't know what would happen to
him.”
He left her with a new idea in her confused little brain. Mr. Risca was
obviously speaking the truth, as he himself had just been summoned by
the mysterious princess. Unity knew that she was very beautiful and
lay all her life on a bed looking out to sea; that she was an angel of
goodness; that she was worshipped by the whole household, even by
the humbler members of the servants' hall, who had never seen her. A
kitchen-maid summoned into the presence for the first time--it was a
question of the carriage of coal--decked herself out in her trimmest and
cleanest and departed on her errand with the beating heart of one who
approaches royalty. There was a tradition, too, that Miss Stella was
magically endowed with a knowledge of everything that went on in the
house and that nothing was done without her bidding and guidance.
Special flowers in the garden were grown for Miss Stella. Special fowls
in the poultry-yard laid eggs exclusively for Miss Stella. A day was
bright because Miss Stella had requested the sun to shine. Unity knew
all this, and when John went out, her heart began to flutter with a wild
hope. She laid her sewing in her lap and pictured the scene: the maid
would open the door. “Unity, Miss Stella desires to see you.” The
fairy-books said that you kissed a princess's hand. I think this must
have been Unity Blake's first day-dream. It was a sign of a spirit's
emancipation.
The days passed, however, without the dream coming true. But she was
very humble. Why should Miss Stella want to see any one so ugly
and unimportant? Besides, the garden, with its walks and lawns and
shrubberies and great, green trees; the unimagined sea rolling from,
the purple rim far away, to dash itself in spray upon the shingle of
the beach; the almost terrifying freedom; the young animal's unconscious
exultation in returning health; the feminine, instinctive delight in
tasteful dress; the singular absence of harsh, cold speech; the curious
privilege of satiating her young hunger at every meal--all these new
joys combined to protect her from disappointment. There was Constable,
too. At her first meeting with the great dog in the garden, she
was paralyzed with fright. He stood some way off, watching her with
pricked-up ears; then he walked slowly up to her, and smelled her all
over with awful gravity. She felt his cold nose touch her cheek. She
could not run. Every instant she expected him to open his huge mouth
and devour her. But after an eternity he turned away with a sniff, and
suddenly began to roll on his back, writhing his neck and body in
odd contortions and throwing up his great feet in the air. A gardener
appeared from a shrubbery close by, and Unity made a wild rush for
his protection. The man saw that she was frightened and reassured her.
Constable had only wanted to make certain that she was not a wicked
person come with intent to harm Miss Stella. He was Miss Stella's own
dog, her bodyguard, who saw to it that no unauthorized person came into
her presence.
“He would be fierce then?” she asked.
The gardener was amused. “He 'd gobble you up like winking.” He called
the dog, who rose in a dignified way from his gambol.
“Just pat him on the head, and don't look afraid,” counselled the
gardener.
So Unity, taking courage, did as she was bidden, and Constable,
searching her soul with his wise eyes, admitted her to his friendship.
From that time she looked forward to her casual meetings with the dog,
although she always felt a certain awe at his strength and bulk, even
when he allowed her to be most familiar. And he was invested with a
human significance that also made for reverence. Gambol though he might,
like the friskiest and least responsible of lambs, he filled, in
the workaday hours of life, a post of extraordinary honour and
responsibility. He had his being in that inner shrine of mystery where
the fairy-princess dwelt; he guarded her most sacred body; he was her
most intimate friend and servant. Sometimes, holding the dog's face
between her hands, she would ask a child's question.
“What does she talk to you about? Why don't you tell me?” And she would
whisper messages in his ear. Once she stuck a dandelion in his collar,
and bade him give it to his mistress with her love. Then frightened at
her own temerity, she took it back. The dream did not come true, but
Constable became a very substantial and comforting part of its fabric.
Then there was Walter Herold. He had the faculty of getting through
the deep-encrusted shell of apathy which baffled her other friends. His
quick, laughing eyes and sensitive face compelled confidence. He did not
wrap himself in the gloomy majesty of her protector, nor was he abrupt
and disconcerting like Sir Oliver. The iron repression of her life had
kept her dumb. Even now, when she took the initiative in conversation,
making a statement or asking a question instead of answering one,
instinct jerked her eyes from her interlocutor to space around, as
though in apprehension of the fall of an audacity-avenging thunderbolt.
Ignorant and inarticulate, she now had unjustly a reputation for
sullenness in the household. Keen and sympathetic as were Lady Blount
and the nurse, who had undertaken to give her elementary instruction in
personal and table manners, they could elicit nothing but commonplaces
from the chaotic mind. To Herold alone could the child that she was
chatter freely. She told him of her life at the orphanage, the daily
routine, the squabbles with school-mates. She spoke of her five-months'
inferno.
“But why did n't you run out into the street and tell the first
policeman you met?”
“I was always 'fraid of p'licemen. And 'ow was I to know that was n't
the regular thing in service? Where I came from, before I went to the
orphanage, everybody used to knock each other about. And sometimes they
used to beat us at the orphanage, but more often they put us in the cell
on bread and water. Most of the girls 'drather to be licked. When I was
at Smith Street, I thought the cell heaven.” She paused for a moment,
and her eyes hardened evilly. “I'm jolly glad she's in quod, though.
Will they beat her there?”
“No, my dear,” said Herold; “they 're trying to make her good.”
She laughed scornfully. “'Er good? If I 'd known then what I know now, I
'd 'ave poured scaldin' water over her. S'welp me!”
“I'm very glad you did n't, for you and I would n't be sitting here now
by this beautiful sea.” He put his hand gently on her head. “Do you know
how you can repay all these people who are so kind to you?”
“No,” said Unity.
“By trying to forget everything that happened to you in the past. Don't
think of it.”
“I must,” she replied in a dull, concentrated tone. “I should like to
have her 'ere now and cut her throat.” Herold remonstrated, and talked
perhaps more platitudinously than was his wont. When he reported this
interview to John, for it was from Herold that he learned most of the
psychology of Unity Blake, John frowned.
“That's a bad trait.”
“It will pass,” said Herold. “She has come from the dungeons into the
garden of life. She is for the first time just beginning to realize
herself as a human being. Naturally the savage peeps out. That will be
tamed. She has wonderful latent capacities for good. Already she has
invented a kind of religion with Stellamaris as divinity.”
“What does she know about Stella?” John asked roughly.
“Virtually everything,” laughed Herold. “We talk Stella interminably.
When she spoke of throat-cutting, I brought in Stella with great effect.
I made her go down on her knees on the big rock and look up at the
window and say, 'Princess Stellamaris, I am a bad and wicked girl, and
I am very sorry.' She looked so penitent, poor little kid, that I kissed
her.”
John laughed half contemptuously and then looked glum. “I can never get
a word out of her.”
“That's not her fault,” said Herold. “She confuses you, in some way,
with God. And if you stand over her like an early Hebrew Jah in his
most direful aspect, you can't expect the poor child to chirrup like a
grasshopper.”
“I 'll be glad when I get her under my own control,” said John.
And all this time, while she was being deified, Stellamaris remained
tranquilly unaware of the existence of her new devotee. The discipline
of the house was so rigid that not a hint or whisper reached the
sea-chamber. Perhaps Constable in his wistful, doggy way may have tried
to convey Unity's messages, but how can a whine and a shake of the head
and a touch of the paw express such a terribly complicated thing as the
love of one human being for another? If only Unity had let the dandelion
remain, or had slipped a note under his collar, Constable would have
done his best to please. At any rate, as the days went on, he showed
himself more and more gracious to Unity.
Now it happened one Saturday morning that Stellamaris was wearing a
brand-new dressing-jacket. It was a wondrous affair of pale, shot silk
that shimmered like mother-of-pearl, and it had frills and sleeves of
filmy old Buckingham lace. More than ever did she look like some rare
and sweet sea-creature. The jacket had come home during the week, but
though it had been the object of her feminine delight, she had reserved
the great first wearing for Saturday and the eyes of her Great High
Belovedest. Her chances for coquetry were few. She surveyed herself in a
hand-mirror, and saw that she was fair.
“Constable,” she said, “if he does n't think it perfectly ravishingly
beautiful, I shall die. You think it beautiful, don't you?”
Constable, thus appealed to, rose from the hearthrug, stretched himself,
and, approaching, laid his head against his mistress's cheek. Then, a
favourite habit, he put his forepaws on the edge of the bed, and stood
towering over the sacred charge and gazed with wrinkled brow across the
channel, as though scanning the horizon for hostile ships. He had done
this a thousand times with no mishap. He would as soon have thought
of biting her as of putting a heavy paw on beloved body or limb. But on
this particular occasion the edge of the bed gave treacherous footing.
To steady himself, he shifted his left paw an inch nearer her arm, and
happened to strike the Buckingham lace.
“Down, Constable!” she cried.
He obeyed; but his claw caught in the lace, and away it ripped from the
shoulder.
“Oh, darling, you 've ruined my beautiful jacket!”
Constable wagged his tail, and came up to be petted. A man would have
confounded himself in apologies, and made matters worse. In such a
circumstance the way of the dog may be recommended.
Stella rang the bell. The maid entered. Her Serene High-and-Mightiness
the nurse was summoned. Dismay reigned in the sea-chamber. The dressing
and undressing of Stellamaris was a tragic matter.
“If it 's not mended before Mr. Risca comes, my heart will break,” she
said.
The maid took the dressing-jacket and the torn lace down-stairs.
Inspecting them, she found the damage not irreparable. The rents might
be temporarily concealed from the unseeing eyes of man. But it would
take time. She was busy, in the midst of some work for her mistress.
Human nature asserting itself, she dratted Constable. On her way to her
room she glanced out of a window that overlooked the lawn. There, in the
May sunshine, sat Unity, hemming dusters. Now, Unity was made for higher
things of the needle than dusters. She had a genius for needlework. The
maid knew it. In a few moments, therefore, Unity had exchanged the dull
duster for the exquisite and thrilling garment, warm from the sweet body
of the Lady of Mystery herself. The maid brought the necessary battery
of implements with which such delicate repairs are executed, and left an
enraptured orphan on a rustic bench.
Unity set to work. The mending of torn lace is a ticklish affair under
the most prosaic of conditions: when goddesses and fairy-princesses and
Stellamarises are mixed up in it, the occupation absorbs mind and soul.
Unity's first awakening to the fact of an outside world was effected by
a huge, grayish blue head thrust between her face and her needle. It was
Constable, who had been let loose for his morning frisk. She pushed him
away. Even the most majestic of Great Danes is moist about the jowl.
Suppose he dribbled on the sacred vesture! Marrow-freezing possibility!
She held his head at arm's length, and bade him begone. But Constable
broke through her puny restraint and sniffed at the dressing-jacket.
He sniffed at it in so insistent and truculent a manner that Unity grew
frightened. She held the dressing-jacket high in the air.
“Just you clear out!” she cried and jerked the arm in an indiscreet
gesture. Whimsical fate decreed that it should slip through her fingers.
It fell on the lawn. She pounced. Constable pounced. He pounced first,
caught the jacket in his mouth, and trotted across the lawn. She
pursued. The trot became a loping gallop. She ran, she called. The
gutter child's vernacular came to her aid; she called him unrecordable
things. Constable, whose ears had never been so shocked before, galloped
the faster. He bolted into the house, head erect, the body of the jacket
in his mouth, and a forlorn sleeve trailing on the ground. Unity pursued
breathless, in the awful excitement of despair. She had no idea
of place. Here was a horrible dog--he had lapsed utterly from
grace--robbing her of the only thing in her life that had been precious.
Her childish soul was concentrated on the rescue of the holy garment.
Constable darted with scrabbling pads up the stairs. On the landing he
halted for a moment, and, panting, looked down on her at the bottom of.
the flight. She crept up slowly, using hypocritical terms of endearment.
He cocked derisive ears. When she had reached half way, he tossed his
head and loped on down a corridor, up more stairs. In the house not a
soul was stirring, not a sound was heard save the dull thud of the dog's
pads on the carpet. Outside a cuckoo expressed ironical views on the
situation. Once Unity nearly caught the robber, but he sprang beyond her
grasp.
At last he butted a door open with his head, and vanished. Unity
followed blindly, and stood transfixed a yard or two beyond the
threshold of the room.
It was a vast chamber, apparently all window and blue sky, and on a bed
by a window was a face framed in a mass of brown hair--the face of a
girl with beautiful eyes that looked at you like stars. To Unity it
seemed two or three miles from where she stood to the bedside. Constable
was there already, and he had surrendered the jacket. His tail wagged
slowly, and his head, with cocked ears, was on one side.
“Oh, Constable, it 's very good of you, but now you've done for my
jacket altogether! Why will you try to be a lady's maid?”
It was the most exquisite voice in the world. Unity stood spellbound.
She realized that she had unwittingly penetrated into the Holy of
Holies. It was the princess herself.
“Who are you, my dear?” asked Stellamaris.
[Illustration: 0128]
Unity's heart was beating. Her lips were dry; she licked them. She
made the orphan's bob. Something stuck in her throat. Her head was in a
whirl.
“Unity, m' lady,” she gasped.
A peal of little golden bells seemed to dance from corner to corner of
the vast room: it was Stellamaris laughing.
“I'm not 'my lady.' Only Aunt Julia is 'my lady.' But I've never seen
you before, dear. Where do you come from?”
Unity pointed. “Constable--the jacket--I was mending of it.”
Stellamaris at once appreciated the theatrical side of the situation.
She gripped the Great Dane by the dewlap in her fragile fingers.
“Oh, you silly dear Lord High Constable! It 's his scent,” she
explained. “Anything he finds in the house that I've worn, he always
brings me. Susan has to lock her door against him. You were mending my
lace?”
“In the garden.”
Stella laughed again. “Foolish Constable, I can see it all. What did you
say your name was, my dear?”
“Unity, m' lady.”
“Then come here, Unity, and let us see whether Constable has utterly
ruined the jacket. I did so want to wear it this afternoon.”
Unity walked the two or three miles to the bedside, and took the jacket,
and held it up for the inspection of four rueful eyes. There were great
wet marks on it, of course, but these would dry. Otherwise no damage
was done, Constable having carried it as tenderly as a retriever does a
partridge.
“How old are you, Unity?” asked Stella.
“Nearly sixteen, m' lady.”
“So am I. But how clever you must be to mend this! Now, when I try to
sew, I make great big stitches that every one laughs at.” She examined
the repairs that Unity had already executed. “I don't know when I've
seen such beautiful work.”
Unity's cheeks burned. Her heart was full. She could utter no word of
reply to such graciousness. Tears started into her eyes. Her nose began
to water; she wiped it with the back of her hand.
There was a swish of stiff skirts at the door. Unity turned guiltily and
beheld the nurse. Then, losing her head, she grabbed the dressing-jacket
and bolted like a frightened hare.
“What was that child doing in your room, darling?”
Stellamaris explained more or less to the nurse's satisfaction.
“But who is she?”
Faithful to the Unwritten Law, the nurse lied.
“Just a little girl from the village who has come in for the day to help
with the sewing.”
“I should like to see her again,” said Stella.
“I'm sorry you can't, darling.”
“Why?”
“She is going to London for good this afternoon.”
“I'm sorry,” said Stella.
And the word of the lie went forth, and to it were bound the entire
household from Sir Oliver to the kitchen-maid and John and Herold, when
they arrived for the week-end. Herold had no choice but the bondage, but
he sighed. It would have been better, he said, to bind Unity herself to
silence. Any fabric built of lies offended his fine sense. Beauty was
beauty, the highest good; but it must have truth as its foundation.
Beauty reared in falsehood was doomed to perish. The exquisiteness of
the Trianon ended in the tumbrils. The Tuileries fell in the cataclysm
of Sedan. Sometimes Herold played Cassandra, and on such occasions no
one paid any attention to his prophecies. He was disregarded now. For
the rest of her stay at the Channel House, Unity, as far as Stella was
concerned, had vanished into the unknown. No summons came to her from
the sea-chamber; but she had met her goddess face to face for a few
throbbing moments, and she fed on the blissful memory for many a long
day afterwards.