THE making and the executing of a good resolution are two entirely
different actions. The former is a process as instantaneous as you
please--one born of passion, heaven-sent inspiration, alcohol, or New
Year hysteria; the latter one of practical handling conditioned by the
entanglement of a thousand circumstances. If a man carried out with
lightning rapidity every good resolution he formed, he would inevitably
make marmalade of his affairs, and clog therein the feet and bodies of
many innocent people as though they were wasps. With evil resolutions it
is another matter. You want to play the devil, and the sooner and more
completely you do it, the nearer do you approximate to your ideal. But
it is very dangerous to do good, and involves a vast amount of weary
thought and trouble.
It was all very well for John Risca to resolve to go out of the life
of Stellamaris, but how could he do so without committing the manifest
absurdity of taking a ticket for equatorial Africa? He was beset by
forbidding circumstances. There was his work; there was Unity; there was
his aunt; there was Stellamaris herself; and, chief of all, there was
the baleful figure of the woman who went about with murderous hatpins.
Thus in an ironical way did history repeat herself. Six years before
he was all for flying to the antipodes on account of his wife, and was
restrained by consideration of Stellamaris; and now, when it would
be the heroical proceeding to fly to the ends of the earth from
Stellamaris, he was restrained by considerations in which his wife was a
most important factor.
He lay stark awake all night, wondering how he could carry out his
resolve. At dawn he came to the only sane conclusion. He could not carry
it out at all, at least in no desperate or brutal fashion. When he got
up and faced the daylight world, he scorned himself for a fool. The soft
clinging of her lips had transmuted the worship of years into the fine
gold of love. That was true, maddeningly true. His being was aflame with
the new and wondrous thing. But Stellamaris? To her the kiss that she
gave had been one of gratitude, affection, trust, weariness. She had
lain in his arms and had felt safe and sheltered, and so had kissed him,
the Great High Belovedest of her childhood. To her the kiss had meant
nothing. How could it? How could passion touch the creature of sea-foam
and cloud? And even allowing such an extravagant possibility, how could
he, great, rough, elderly, ugly bear that he was, inspire such a
feeling in a young girl's heart? He a romantic figure! He, with the
pachydermatous mug that offended his eyes as he shaved! He denounced the
monstrous insolence of his overnight fancy. He would keep tight grip on
himself. She should never know. As far as the infinitely precious one
was concerned, all would be well. So argued the human ostrich.
After his morning's work at the office of the weekly review, he went
to the Carlton, where the party of intimates had arranged to lunch. He
arrived early, but found Herold, who was earlier, waiting in the palm
court.
“Look here, old man,” said he as he sat down by his side, “forget the
fool nonsense I talked last night.”
“Did n't you mean it?” asked Herold.
“Yes,” said John, bluntly. “I did n't sleep a wink. But forget it all
the same. Things have got to go on outwardly just as they are.”
“As you like,” said Herold. He lit a cigarette, and after a whiff or
two, added: “I must repeat what I hinted at and what you seemed to reply
to. What about Stella?”
“It's absurd to think of her suspecting,” said John.
Herold's nervous fingers snapped the cigarette in two.
“She must never suspect,” said he.
“Do you think I'm a devil?” said John.
“No. You 're a good fellow. Who knows it better than I? But you 're
passionate and impulsive. You must be on your guard--not for the next
two or three days, but for ever and ever.”
“All right,” said John. “Now put the matter out of your mind.”
Herold nodded, squeezed the burning end of his broken cigarette into an
ash-tray, and lit another.
“You 're looking fagged out, Wallie,” said John, after a while. “What
have you been doing?”
“Nothing in particular. This part is rather trying, and I've not had
a holiday for a couple of years. I want one rather badly. I don't
complain,” he added, with a smile, glad to get away from the torturing
talk of Stellamaris. “During the two years I 've been working, scores
of better actors than I have n't been able to get an engagement. I'm
a spoilt child of fortune. My time will come, I suppose, when they no
longer want me.”
The talk drifted to the precariousness of the actor's calling. Even men
in demand from every management found a difficulty in making a living.
Herold instanced Brownlow, one of the few _jeunes premiers_ of the
stage, who had slaved every day for a year, and having been in four or
five successive failures, found himself, at the end of it, the recipient
of three months' salary. Six weeks' slavery at rehearsal for nothing,
and a two weeks' run! The system ought to be changed. John agreed, as he
had agreed to the same argument a thousand times before.
“But I don't like to see you so pulled down,” said he, affectionately.
Herold smiled and shrugged his shoulders. He, too, had not slept; but
he did not inform John of the fact. It was a significant aspect of their
friendship, if not of their respective temperaments, that John received
few of Herold's confidences. The essential sympathizers among men are
mute as to their own cares. Divine selfishness or a pride equally noble
seals their lips. John Risca, with a cut finger, would have held it up
for the commiseration of Herold, cursing heft and blade, and everything
cursable connected with the knife; but Herold, with a broken heart,
would have held his smiling peace.
For a moment he was convinced of John's faith in Stella's ignorance; but
only for a moment. When she entered the palm court with Sir Oliver and
Lady Blount, and he saw her eyes, dewy with a new happiness, rest on
John, he felt that, awakened or unawakened, Stellamaris loved not
him, Herold, but his friend. And when she came up to him in her frank,
gracious way, and let her gloved little hand linger in his, he laughed
and praised her radiance with a jest, and not one of the four dreamed of
the pain in the man's heart.
They took their seats in the gay and crowded restaurant.
“This is really a palace!” cried Stella, in great delight. “Why can't
every place be as beautiful as this?”
She had recovered from the emotional fatigue of the night before,
having slept the sound sleep of happy girlhood, and awakened to the shy
consciousness of impending change. The pink of health was in her cheeks.
Sir Oliver replied to her question.
“It takes a deuce of a lot of money to run such a concern.”
“But why has n't every one got money?”
“That's what these confounded socialist fellows are asking,” replied Sir
Oliver, helping himself largely to anchovies and mayonnaise of egg.
But Stella scarcely heard. She remembered the tramp who had not a penny
and the misery that had met her eyes during her rides abroad, and a
momentary shadow fell on her.
“I think there 's a great deal to be said for the socialists,” remarked
Lady Julia.
Sir Oliver laid down his fork and stared less at his wife than at the
blasphemy.
“There 's nothing to be said for 'em; nothing at all.”
“You 'll admit the uneven distribution of wealth,” said Lady Blount,
drawing herself up. She was rather proud of the phrase.
“Lazy dogs--all to get and nothing to do. You ought to be ashamed of
yourself, Julia.”
“Oh, darlings, don't get cross with me!” cried Stella, in distress. The
observance of the Unwritten Law had imperceptibly grown less strict as
the influence of the sea-chamber had waned, and the poor quarrelsome
pair were not at their old pains to hide their differences. “I never
meant to talk socialism.”
“My precious dove!” cried Sir Oliver, “who in the world said you did? It
was your aunt.”
“I believe it's John who is at the bottom of it, because he 's wearing a
red tie,” Herold interposed, with a laugh. “Oh, John, where did you find
it?”
“I think it suits him beautifully,” declared Stella, quick to follow
the red herring of a cravat. “It 's when he wears mauve or light blue or
green striped with yellow that he goes wrong. Belovedest,--” she turned
to him tenderly; she was placed between him and Sir Oliver,--“now that
I am like everybody else,”--her favorite euphemism,--“do let me choose
your ties for you.”
“Of course, dear; of course,” said John, who had been eating _hors
d'ouvre_ in glum silence. “Who is there with taste like you?”
It would be entrancingly delectable to wear ties chosen by Stellamaris.
Why, it would be coiling her sweet thoughts about his neck! This
concession at least was harmless. Then suddenly he remembered that for
the last two or three years Unity had taken charge of such details of
his wardrobe, and he had sufficient glimmering of insight into feminine
nature to know that between Unity with her domestic rights and a tigress
with cubs there was remarkably little difference. How was he to abrogate
one of her privileges? The gadfly question worried him. With such
trumpery concerns are the deepest emotions of human life complicated. He
who does not recognize them has no sense of values.
The conjugal wrangle having been checked, the meal proceeded gaily
enough. Stella spoke of the play and praised Herold's acting, but with
curious shyness avoided discussion of the theme. Herold noticed her
adroit detours. He also noticed, with a sensitive man's pain, many other
little things indicative of the awakening of Stellamaris. Once he saw
her lay her hand impulsively on John's, as she had been wont to do
since her childhood, and draw it quickly away, while a flush, like a
rose-edged fairy cloud, came and went in her cheek. He also caught her
glancing covertly at John, her brow knitted in a tiny frown, as though
she wondered at his unusual silence.
When the party broke up, John leaving early, owing to pressure of work
at the office, she said:
“I shall see you to-night, of course?”
“I'm afraid not. I have to see the review through the press.”
Her face fell piteously.
“Oh, Belovedest!” she cried. “And I can't have Walter, because he's tied
to his theatre.”
But the disappointment was on account of John, not on account of Herold.
“You 'll have Walter most of the afternoon,” remarked Lady Blount.
Stella laughed. “But I want everybody always,” she said disingenuously.
It had been arranged that while Sir Oliver should go to his longed-for
and seldom-used club, and Lady Blount visit certain cronies, Herold
should take Stella to the Zoological Gardens.
She turned to John.
“Are you quite sure you can't come too, dear?”
He shook his head. “A newspaper office is a remorseless machine--just
like a theatre. I must work.”
“I'm beginning to be frightfully jealous of work,” she said, with a
laugh.
“It 's the noblest thing a man can do,” said Sir Oliver.
At the zoo, Stella found a world of wonder, which drove disappointment
from her mind, and in her childlike gaiety and enthusiasm Herold forgot
his heartache for a while. Sufficient for the moment was the joy of
her exquisite presence, of her animated cheeks and dancing eyes, of
her beautiful voice rippling into exclamations of rapture at monkey or
secretary-bird or hippopotamus.
“These are springbok,” said Herold, in front of an inclosure.
Stella's brows knitted themselves into their customary network of
perplexity.
“But I 've read that men go out to shoot springboks.”
“I'm afraid they do,” said Herold.
“Men deliberately kill these beautiful, harmless things, with their
melting eyes?” Her own filled with moisture. “Oh, Walter! How can men
be so vile?” She knelt on the ground, and spoke to one, which poked its
sensitive nose through the railing. “Oh, you dear! Oh, you perfectly
lovely dear!”
Then she rose and took Herold by the arm, and a little shiver ran
through her shoulders. “I suppose men kill everything. I 've found out
they even kill one another. Would you or John kill creatures that did
you no harm?”
She looked at him straight, with the searching candour of a spotless
soul.
“I've shot birds which were afterwards eaten,” he replied uncomfortably.
“You see, dear, you eat partridges and pheasants, don't you? Well, they
have to be killed, just like sheep or oxen. Often in South Africa men's
lives depend on the supply of springbok meat they can obtain.”
“And does John shoot little birds?”
“John has n't had the opportunity of going about to shooting parties.
All his life he has had to work too hard.”
“I'm glad,” said Stella, curtly, and for a while she walked on in
silence, and poor Herold felt like an unhanged wallower in innocent
gore.
At last she said, “Are n't there any lions and tigers?”
“Of course.”
“Why have n't we seen them?”
“They roar dreadfully, and they're rather fierce and terrible,
Stellamaris.”
“Are you afraid of them?”
He noted the feminine, quasi-logical touch of scorn, and laughed with a
wry face.
“They 're behind bars, dear. But I thought they might possibly frighten
you.”
“Frighten me? Let us go and see them.”
So, seeing that Stellamaris was a young woman of intrepid and imperious
disposition, Herold dutifully took her to the Great Cat's House, where
again the child in her was enraptured by the splendour of the striped
and tawny brutes. She lingered in front of the lion's cage. The
four-o'clock meal was over. The lioness lay asleep in the corner, but
her mate sat up, with his head near to the bars, an enormous, cleaned
bone between his paws. The absurd and useless animal had struck a
photographic pose at which Herold, with a more sophisticated companion,
would have laughed. But Stellamaris took the lion too seriously. He
fulfilled all her dreams of a lion. She looked in breathless admiration
at the lion, and the lion, choke-full of food, regarded her with grave
benevolence. Again she pressed Herold's arm.
“How noble! How kingly!”
He assented. The lion was certainly doing his best to warrant the
impression.
“He is just like John,” said Stellamaris.
“Something,” said Herold, leading her out into the fresh air and
sunshine.
“That fearless, royal look,” said Stella--“don't you think so?”
Before replying, he took her to a shady bench where they both sat
down.
“John's the finest and the best and the bravest fellow in the world,”
said he, loyally.
Her eyes shone. She put out her gloved little hand in her familiar,
caressing way and pressed his gently. Her maidenhood did not glow at the
sisterly touch.
“I 'm so happy, my Great High Favourite, dear,” she said.
“Why? Why now more than usual?” He smiled wistfully.
The sky was blue, and the trees were heavy with leafage, and she had
just seen the king of beasts in his most kingly aspect, and he reminded
her of the man she loved, and her heart was young and innocent. Herold
once more became her chosen companion in the Land That Never Was. She
dropped her voice to a whisper, for staring people strolled along the
path ten yards away. Besides, there are times when the sound of one's
own voice is embarrassing.
“You love John, don't you, dear? You love him dearly, dearly, dearly, as
he deserves to be loved?”
“I would lay down my life for him,” said Herold, gravely.
She gripped his hand. “I know. He would do the same for you. Do you
think, Walter dear--” she paused and lowered her eyelids, “do you think
there's a more splendid man than John in the world?”
“I am his friend, Stellamaris, and I'm prejudiced,--Love is blind, you
know,--but I don't think so.”
She leaned back in her seat and meditated. Then she said:
“I wish you and I were sitting by my window. You and I understand each
other, but I miss the sea. You and I and the sea understand one another
better. Can't you see it this lovely afternoon? It 's quite calm, but
there 's a little kissing breath of wind, which makes it dance and
sparkle in the sun. It 's laughing with gladness. Trees are beautiful,
but they don't laugh.”
“They whisper eternal things,” said Herold.
“What?”
“The rhythm of life--fulfilment, as now, winter's decay, and the
everlasting rebirth of spring.”
“They don't tell me that. I don't understand their language,” replied
Stella. “To-day I want the sea, just with you--just you and I and the
sea.”
“And then you think I should understand all that the pink sea-shell that
is you is trying to tell me?”
She laughed. “I could tell the sea, and the sea could tell you.”
_Secret de Polichitielle!_ Had she not been telling him all the time,
as implicitly as maidenhood could tell man, of the great and wonderful
adventure of her soul? He was exquisitely near,--that he knew,--nearer,
indeed, to the roots of her being than the leonine hero of her dreams.
He alone of mortals was privileged to receive and treasure the overflow
of her heart. With him as joint trustee was the eternal ocean. He winced
at the irony of it all.
Presently she asked:
“Have you ever loved any one?”
He answered as he had done years before:
“I have loved dreams.”
She retorted in his own words:
“One can't marry a dream.” He shrugged his shoulders.
“You will love some one some day, and then you will want to marry her,”
she continued, with her direct simplicity. “And when you do, you 'll
come and tell me, dear, for I shall understand.”
“I 'll tell you, Stellamaris,” he promised. Then he sprang to his feet.
The pain had grown intolerable, “We have n't seen the giraffes,” said
he.
The child in her once more came to the surface. “I 've longed to see a
giraffe all my life,” she cried, and she accompanied him blissfully.
After leaving her at the hotel, Herold went home and suffered the
torments of a soul on fire. Tragedy lay ahead. Stellamaris, star of the
sea, steadfast as a star--he knew her. Love had come to her not in the
fluttering Cupid guise in which he visits most of the sweet maidens
among mortals, but in the strong, godlike essence in which alone he dare
approach the great ones. The sea-foam and mist formed but a garment
for this creature of infinite sky and eternal sea. They but shrouded or
touched to glamour the elemental strength.
She had given her love to John Risca, her Great High Belovedest. God
knows what dreams she had woven about him; the man's fine loyalty
asserted his friend's worthiness of any woman's dreams. The only, and
the hideous, consideration was the fact of John being tied for life to
the unspeakable. Himself and the pain of his love he put aside. What
were the unimportant sufferings of a thousand such as he compared with
one pang that might shoot through the bosom of Stellamaris? What could
be done to avert the tragedy? His faith in John Risca was absolute. But
John had shut his eyes to the glory shimmering in front of them. His
eyes must be opened. Stellamaris must be told. All foundations of the
Unwritten Law would have to be swept away, and she would survey in
terror the piteous wreckage of the whole fabric of her life.
How could he save her? How could he save her from inevitable pain?