Thenceforward a humming confusion reigned in the Channel House. The
story of the miraculous recovery spread through Southcliff. Sir
Oliver and Lady Blount held a little court every day to receive
congratulations. A few privileged well-wishers were admitted to the
sea-chamber, where Stella still lay enthroned by the window. She had not
realized the extent of her fame among the inhabitants until a garrulous
visitor told her that she was one of the pet traditions of the place and
that her great-windowed room at the top of the house on the cliff was
always pointed out with pride to the tourist.
In her mysterious seclusion she had become a local celebrity. This
interest of the little world grouped about the Channel House added a joy
to her anticipation of mingling with it. The affection in which she was
held by butcher and baker, to say nothing of the mayor and corporation,
cemented her faith (in which she had been so jealously bred) in the
delightful perfection of mankind.
Meanwhile she progressed daily towards recovery, very slowly, but with
magical sureness. Cassilis continued his treatment. Queer apparatuses
were fitted to her so that she could go through queer muscular
exercises. She was being put into training, as it were, for life. Every
new stage in her progress was marked by fêtes and rejoicings. The first
time that her bed could be wheeled into a room on the other side of the
house was a solemn occasion. It was July, and the rolling hills, rich in
corn-fields and forest greenery, were flooded with sunlight. The
earth proclaimed its fruitful plenty, and laughed in the joy of its
loveliness.
That which to those with her was a commonplace of beauty stretched
before Stellamaris's vision as a new and soul-arresting wonder. She had
only elusive, childish memories of the actual earth; for before she had
been laid upon her back never to rise again, she had been a delicate,
invalid child. She had seen thousands of pictures, so that she was at
no intellectual loss to account for the spectacle; but, for all her life
that counted, sea and sky in their myriad changes had been her intimate
conception of the world. And it had been her world--the only world that
her eyes would ever rest upon; and as it had never entered her head
to hope for another, it had sufficed her soul's needs. Indeed, it
had overwhelmed them with its largess, until, as Herold declared,
she herself had become a creature of cloud and wave. This sudden
presentation of a new and unrealized glory set her heart beating madly;
her cheeks grew white, and tears rolled down them.
“Now, is n't that a beautiful view?” said Lady Blount.
“Soon we 'll hire a motor, until you can buy one for yourself, and go
and explore it all, my dear,” said Sir Oliver.
“Southcliff lies just below there on the left,” said the nurse.
“See that red roof there between the trees? That's where our old friend
Colonel Dukes lives. Devilish good house; though, if he had taken my
advice when he was building it, it would have been much better.”
“And just over there,” said Lady Blount, pointing-, “is the railway that
takes you to London.”
“You 're quite wrong, Julia,” said Sir Oliver; “that's a bit of the
south coast line. Is n't it, John?”
“Oliver is right. You can't see the London line from here,” said John.
They went on talking, but Stella, in a rapture of vision, heeded them
not. Herold, who stood quite close to her, was silent. She held his
hand, and gripped it almost convulsively. John, with rare observation,
noticed that her knuckles were white. Her face was set in an agony
of adoration too poignant for speech. John, curiously sensitive where
Stella was concerned, realized that these two hand in hand were close
together on a plane of feeling too high for the profane. With a little
movement of deprecation which neither Herold nor Stella perceived, he
pushed the others toward the door and, following them out of the room,
closed it behind them.
“Better leave her alone with Walter,” said he.
“Quite so,” said Sir Oliver. “Just what I told you, Julia. We must let
her go slow for a bit and not excite her.”
“I don't remember you ever saying anything of the kind,” retorted Lady
Blount. “It was Walter.”
“Well, Oliver agreed with him, which comes to the same thing,” said
John, acting peacemaker.
But they wrangled all down the corridor, and when the two men were left
alone, Sir Oliver shook his head.
“A trying woman, John; very trying.”
Meanwhile Stella and Herold remained for a long time in the quiet room
without the utterance of a word. As soon as the others went, her grasp
relaxed. Herold drew a chair gently to her side and waited patiently
for her to speak; for he saw that her soul was at grips with the new
glory of the earth. At last a quivering sigh shook her, and she turned
her wet eyes away from the window and looked at him with a smile.
“Well?” said he.
“I feel that it is all too beautiful.”
“It makes you sad.”
“Yes; vaguely, but exquisitely. How did you guess?”
“Your eyes have been streaming, Stellamaris.”
“Foolish, is n't it?”
“I suppose it 's the finite realizing itself unconsciously before the
infinite. Is it too much for you?”
She shook her head. “I should like to stay here and gaze at this forever
till I drank it all, all in.”
“Have you ever read the life of St. Brigit?” he asked. “There's one
little episode in it which comes to my mind.”
“Tell me,” said Stella.
“She founded convents, you know, in Ireland. Now, there was one nun
dearly loved by St. Brigit, and she had been blind from birth; and one
evening they were sitting on one of the Wicklow Hills, and St. Brigit
described to her all the beauties of the green valleys below, and the
silver streams and the purple mountains beyond, melting into the happy
sky. And the nun said, 'Sister, pray to God to work a miracle and give
me sight so that I can see it and glorify Him.' So St. Brigit prayed,
and God heard her prayer, and the eyes of the nun were opened, and she
looked upon the world, and her senses were ravished by its glory. And
then she fell to weeping and trembling and she sank on her knees before
St. Brigit and said, I have seen, but I beseech thee pray that my sight
be taken again from me, for I fear that in the beauty of the world I may
forget God.' And St. Brigit prayed again, and God heard her, and the
nun's sight was taken from her. And they both lifted their voices to
heaven and glorified the Lord.”
Stella sighed when he had ended, and quiet fell upon them. She looked
dreamily out of the window. Herold watched her face, with a pang at his
heart. It was as pure as a little child's.
“It's a lovely legend,” she said at last. “But the nun was wrong. The
beauty of this world ought to bring one nearer to God instead of making
one forget Him.”
Herold smiled. “Certainly it ought to,” said he.
“Why did you tell me the story?”
“Because it came into my head.”
“There was some other reason.”
He could not deny, for in her candid eyes he saw assurance; yet he dared
not tell her that which dimmed the crystal of his gladness. He saw the
creature of cloud and foam gasping in the tainted atmosphere of the
world of men; the dewdrop on the star exposed to the blazing sun. What
would happen?
“I am going to get well,” she continued, seeing that he did not answer,
“and walk out soon into the gardens and the streets and see all
the wonderful, wonderful things you and Belovedest have told me of.
And”--she pressed her hands to her bosom--“I can't contain myself for
joy. And yet, Walter dear, you seem to think I should be better off if I
remained as I am--or was. I can't understand it.”
“My dear,” said Herold reluctantly, wishing he had never heard of St.
Brigit, “so long as you see God through the beauties and vanities of
the world, as you've seen Him through the sea-mists and the dawn and the
sunset, all will be well. But that takes a brave spirit--braver than St.
Brigit's nun. She feared lest she might see the world, and nothing but
the world, and nothing divine shining through. People who do that lose
their souls.”
“Then you think,” said Stellamaris, wrinkling her smooth brow--“you
think that the blind have the truer vision.”
“Truer than that of the weak, perhaps, but not as true as the strong
spirits who dare see fearlessly.”
“Do you think I am weak or strong?” she asked, with a woman's relentless
grip on the personal.
“What else but a strong spirit,” he replied half disingenuously, “could
have triumphed, as you have done, over a lifelong death?”
“Death?” She opened her eyes wide. “Death? But I've lived every hour of
my life, and it has been utterly happy.”
“The strong spirit, dear,” said Herold.
“Great High Favourite dear, what else could you say?”
She laughed, but the tenderness in her eyes absolved the laugh and the
feminine speech from coquetry.
“I might talk to you as John Knox did to Mary, Queen of Scots.”
Just as life had been translated to the hapless Miss Kilmansegg of the
Golden Leg into terms of gold, so had it been translated to Stella into
terms of beauty. History had been translated, accordingly, into terms
of romance. She had heard, indeed, of Mary Stuart, but as a being of
legendary and unnaughty loveliness. At the stem image of the grave
Calvinist she shrank.
“John Knox was a horrid, croaking raven,” she emphatically declared,
“and nobody could possibly talk like that nowadays.”
Herold laughed and turned the conversation into lighter channels. The
Unwritten Law prevailed over his instinctive impulse to warn her against
the deceptive glamour of the world. Then the hour struck for an item
in the invalid's routine, and the nurse came in, and Stella was wheeled
back to her high chamber.
Many days of her convalescence after this were marked with red stones.
There was the first day when, carried down-stairs, she presided from her
high couch at a dinner-party given in her honour, the guests being John
Risca and Walter Herold, Wratislaw and the nurse, Dr. Ransome and his
wife, and the gnomeheaded and spectacled Cassilis.
It was a merry party, and towards the end of dinner, when the port went
round, Stella's own maid coached for the part, at a sign from Sir Oliver
who commanded silence, spoke in a falsetto voice sticking in a nervous
throat the familiar words: “Miss Stella's compliments, and would the
gentlemen take a glass of wine with her.” And they all rose and drank
and made a great noise, and the tears rolled down John Risca's cheeks
and fell upon his bulging shirt-front, and Sir Oliver blew his nose
loudly and made a speech.
A great day, too, was her first progress in her wheel-chair about the
grounds of the Channel House. All was wonder and wild delight to the
girl who had never seen, or had seen so long ago that she had forgotten,
the velvet of smooth turf; the glory of roses growing in their heyday
insolence; the alluring shade of leafy chestnuts; the pansies clinging
to dear Mother Earth; the fairy spray of water from a hose-pipe over
thirsty beds; the crisp motion, explaining the mysterious echo of years,
of the grass-mower driven over the lawn; the ivy tapestry of walls; the
bewildering masses of sweet-peas; the apples, small and green though
they were, actually hanging from boughs; the real live fowls, jaunty in
prosperous plumage, so different from the apologetic naked shapes--fowls
hitherto to her, which Morris, the maid, had carved for her meals at
a side table in the sea-chamber, the cabbages brave in crinkled leaf,
unaware of their doom of ultimate hot agglutination, the tender green
bunches of grapes in glass-houses drinking wine from the mother founts
of the sun, the quiet cows on the gently sloping pasture-land.
At last she put her hands over her eyes, and Herold made a sign, and
they wheeled the chair back to the house; and only when they halted in
the wide, cool drawing-room, with windows opening to the south, did she
look at outer things; and then, while all stood by in a hush, she drew
a few convulsive breaths and rested her overwrought spirit on the calm,
familiar sea.
A day of days, too, when, still in glorious summer weather, they hired
an enormous limousine from the great watering-place a few miles off,
and took her all but prone, and incased in the appliances of science,
through the gates of the Channel House into the big world. They drove
over the Sussex Downs, along chalk roads, between crisp grass-lands
dotted with sheep, through villages,--gleams of paradises compact of
thatched roof, rambler roses, blue and white garments hung out on lines
to laugh in the sunshine, flashing new stucco cottages, labelled “County
Police” (a puzzle to Stellamaris), ramshackle shops, with odd wares,
chiefly sweets, exposed in tiny casement windows, old inns flaunting
brave signs, “The Five Alls,” “The Leather Bottell,” away from the road,
with a forecourt containing rude bench and table and trough for horses,
young women, with the cheeks of the fresh, and old women, with the
cheeks of the withered apple, and sun-tanned men, and children of
undreamed-of chubbiness. And to Stellamaris all was a wonderland of joy.
During most of the month of August the rain fell heavily and outdoor
excursions became rare events, and the world as seen from windows was
a gray and dripping spectacle. But Stella, accustomed to the vast
dreariness of wintry seas, found fresh beauties in the rain-swept earth.
The patter of drops on leaves played new and thrilling melodies; a slant
of sunshine across wet grass offered magical harmonies of colour; the
unfamiliar smell of the reeking soil was grateful to her nostrils. And
had she not the captivating indoor life among pleasant rooms in which
she had hitherto dwelt only in fancy? Hopes in the process of fulfilment
gilded the glad days.
She talked unceasingly to those about her of the happy things to come.
“Soon we 'll be teaching you to walk,” said John.
She glowed. “That's going to be the most glorious adventure of my life.”
“I 've never regarded putting one foot before another in that light,” he
said with a laugh. Then suddenly realizing what he had said, he felt a
wave of pity and love surge through his heart. What child of man assured
of a bird's power of flight would not be thrilled at the prospect of
winging his way through space? It would be indeed a glorious adventure.
“My poor darling!” said he, very tenderly.
As usual, she disclaimed the pity. There was no one happier than herself
in the wide universe.
“But I often have wondered what it would feel like.”
“To walk?”
“Yes. To have the power of moving yourself from one place to another. It
seems so funny. Of course I did walk once, but I've forgotten all about
it. They tell me I shall have to learn from the beginning, just like a
little baby.”
“You 'll have to learn lots of things from the beginning,” said John,
rather sadly.
“What kind of things?”
“All sorts.”
“Tell me,” she insisted, for ever so small a cloud passed over his face.
“Taking your place as a woman in the whirl of life,” said he.
She turned on him the look of untroubled sapience that proceeds from the
eyes of child saints in early Italian paintings.
“I don't think that will be very difficult, Belovedest. I'm not quite
a little ignoramus, and Aunt Julia has taught me manners. I have always
been able to talk to people when sick, and I don't see why I should be
afraid of them when I'm well. I 've thought quite a lot about it, and
talked to Aunt Julia.”
“And what does she say?”
“She assures me,” she cried gaily, “that I am bound to make a sensation
in society.”
“You 'll have all mankind at your feet, dear,” said John. “But,” he
added in a change of tone, “I was referring to more vital things than
success in drawing-rooms.”
She laid her hand lightly on his..
“Do you know, Belovedest, what Walter said some time ago? He said that
if I looked at the world and saw God through it, all would be well.”
“I can add nothing more to that,” said John, and, thinking that Herold
had been warning her of dangers, held his peace for the occasion.
Then there came a day, not long afterward, when she made the speech
which in some form or other he had been expecting and dreading.
“The next glorious adventure will be when you take me over the palace.”
He laughed awkwardly. “I remember telling you that the palace has run to
seed.”
“But you still live in it.”
“No, dear,” said he.
“Oh!” said Stellamaris in a tone of deep disappointment. “Oh, why, why?”
John felt ridiculously unhappy. She believed, after all, in the
incredible fairy-tale.
“Perhaps it was n't such a gorgeous palace as I made out,” he confessed
lamely. “As the cooks say, my hand was rather heavy with the gold and
marble.” She laughed, to his intense relief. “I have felt since that
there was a little poetic exaggeration somewhere. But it must be a
beautiful place, all the same.” His spirits sank again. “I could walk
about it blindfold, although we have n't talked of it for so long. Who
is living there now?”
“I 've sold it, dear, to some king of the Cannibal Islands,” he declared
in desperate and ponderous jest.
“So there's no more palace?”
“No more,” said he.
“I 'm sorry,” said Stellamaris--“so sorry.” She smiled at him, but the
tears came into her eyes. “I was looking forward so to seeing it. You
see, dear, I've lived in it for such a long, long time!”
“There are hundreds of wonder-houses for you to see when you get
strong,” said John, by way of consolation, yet hating himself.
“Westminster Abbey and Windsor Castle, and so on. Yes,” said Stella,
“but they 've none of them been part of me.”
So he discovered that, at one-and-twenty, on the eve of her entrance
into the world of reality, the being most sacred to him still dwelt in
her Land of Illusion. Two or three frank words would have been enough to
bring down to nothingness the baseless fabric of his castle in the
air, his palace of dreams; but he dreaded the shock of such seismic
convulsion. He had lied for years, putting all that was godlike of his
imperfect humanity into his lies, so as to bring a few hours' delight
into the life of this fragile creature whom he worshiped, secure in the
conviction that the lies would live for ever and ever as vital truths,
without chance of detection. And now that chance, almost the certainty,
had come.
John Risca was a strong man, as men count strength. He faced the
grim issues of life undaunted, and made his own terms. He growled when
wounded, but he bared his teeth and snarled with defiance at his foes.
In a bygone age he would have stood like his Celtic ancestors, doggedly
hacking amid a ring of slain until the curtain of death was drawn before
his blood-shot eyes and he fell, idly smiting the air. In the modern
conflict in which, fortunately, human butchery does not come within the
sphere of the ordinary man's activities, he could stand with the same
moral constancy. But here, when it was a mere question of tearing a
gossamer veil from before a girl's eyes, his courage failed him. Such
brute dealing, he argued, might be salutary for common clay; but for
Stellamaris it would be dangerous. Let knowledge of the fact that there
had never been a palace come to her gradually. Already he had prepared
the way. Thus he consoled himself, and, in so doing, felt a mean and
miserable dog.