CONSTABLE, dragging the feet of an old hound, mounted the stairs behind
Stellamaris and followed her into the sea-chamber, and to the south
window, whither she went instinctively to gaze out over her beloved
sea, now gray and choppy, as the sky was overcast and a fresh breeze was
blowing. He had been the most unhappy dog alive, they told her, during
her absence. Since his dim, far-away puppy-hood not a day had passed
without his spending hours in her company. She had been the reason of
his existence. The essential one gone, there was nothing to live for; so
at first he had wandered round in a bewildered way looking for her,
and then, not finding her, he had refused food and pined, and, had she
stayed away much longer, would have died of a broken heart, after the
manner of deep-natured dogs. When she arrived, he was at the gate
to meet her. At her magical appearance he tried to prance as in his
youthful days, and lashed the whip of his tail against the iron railings
so that it bled. Sobered by age, he had not had what Stella used to call
a “bluggy” tail (the disability of his race) for years. But as prancing
and tail-lashing and whinnying do not accord with the muscles and wind
of an old dog, and as his heart was full, he had lain down at her feet,
his snout beyond his paws, trembling all through his great bulk. And it
was only after she had knelt on the ground beside him, thereby blocking
the path to Sir Oliver and Lady Blount, to say nothing of Morris, the
maid, and Simmons, the gardener, and the hand luggage, and had caressed
and kissed him, that he had found strength to stagger to his feet and
make way for his fellow-humans. After that he had not left her for a
second. Who could tell but that she might vanish again into thin air,
this time not to be reincarnated? Descartes, who said that the lower
animals were automata, could never have known the wonder of a dog's
love.
Constable followed Stella to the window and snuggled his great head into
the curve of her waist. Her arm, soft and precious, drooped about
his neck. Constable and the sea and herself had been secret-sharing
companions since the world was young. So she stood for a long time by
the open window, drinking in the salt of the sea-breeze, and communing,
in her own way, with the elemental spirit of the waters. Presently she
turned with a sigh, bent down, and took the old hound's slobbering chaps
between her hands and looked into his patient eyes.
“Are you glad I'm back, dear High Constable darling? Very glad? Not
gladder than I am, dear. No; you can't be. You've never been to London.
Oh, you would hate it. It pretends to be a beautiful place, but it
is n't. It 's a sham, dear. I'm sure you 've never heard of a whited
sepulchre; but that's what it is. And London's the world, my precious,
and the world is n't a bit like what you and I were led to expect. It
's full of ugliness and wickedness, and nobody can get at the truth of
anything.” Still fondling him, she sat on the window-seat. “Yes; you and
I are very much better off here. If you went abroad, you 'd be such a
miserable Constable. You would, darling.” She looked tragically at him,
and he, responsive to the doleful tones of her voice, regarded her in
mournful sympathy.
Then she laughed, and kissed him between the eyes.
“But I do so want to be happy. I 'll tell you a secret--oh, a great,
great secret--that no one knows.” She lifted the velvet flap of his
ear and whispered something below her breath, which Constable must have
understood, for he laid his cheek against hers; and so they stayed until
Morris, intent on unpacking, disturbed their peace.
Then came a day or two of rest during which she strove to reconcile
the irreconcilable,--her dreams in the sea-chamber and the realities
outside,--using her newly found love for talisman. And just as she was
trying to forget the ugliness of the world, a domestic incident cast her
back into gloom and doubt.
One morning she entered the morning-room on a scene of tragedy. Sir
Oliver stood with his back to the fire, looking weakly fierce and
twirling his white moustache; Lady Blount sat stern and upright in
a chair. A bulky policeman, bare-headed, stood at attention in the
corner,--there is something terrifically intimate about an unhelmeted
policeman,--while, in front of them all, a kitchen-maid in a pink cotton
dress sobbed bitterly into a smudgy apron.
Stella paused astonished on the threshold. “Why--” she began.
“My dear,” said Sir Oliver, “will you kindly leave us?”
But Stella; advanced into the room. “What is Mr. Withers doing here?”
Mr. Withers was the policeman, and a valued acquaintance of Stellamaris.
“Go away, darling,” said Lady Blount. “This has nothing to do with you.”
But Stella had been accustomed to rule in that house. Anything that
happened in it was her concern. Besides, she would have ugly things
hidden away from her no longer; and here was obviously an ugly thing.
“No, my dears,” she said in her clear voice; “I must stay. Tell me, why
is Eliza crying?”
“She's a wicked thief,” said Lady Blount.
Then Stella caught sight of a couple of rings and a brooch and a
five-pound note lying on a table.
“Did she steal those?”
Sir Oliver explained. The articles had been stolen during their absence
in town. He had applied to the police, with the result that the theft
had been traced to Eliza.
So that was a thief--that miserable, broad-faced girl. Stella looked at
her with fearful curiosity. She had heard of thieves and conceived them
to be desperate outcasts herding in the sunless alleys of great cities,
their hideous faces pitted with crime, as with smallpox; she never
imagined that they came into sheltered homes.
“What is Mr. Withers going to do with her?”
“Take her to prison,” said Sir Oliver, whereat the culprit wailed
louder.
“What is prison?” asked Stella.
“A place where they lock you up for months, sometimes for years, in
a stone cell, and make you sleep on a plank bed, and you have to pick
oakum all day long, and are known by a number, and--er--”
“Please, Oliver!” remonstrated Lady Blount.
“I want to know, Auntie,” said Stella, a gracious, white-clad figure
standing in the midst of them. She turned to the policeman.
“Are you going to take her to prison?”
“If Sir Oliver charges her, miss.”
“Of course I 'm going to charge her,” cried Sir Oliver. “It 's my duty.”
He drew himself up. “I should be failing in it if I did n't.”
“Then it depends on you, Uncle, whether she is locked up or goes free?”
“That's so, miss,” replied the policeman. “I can't arrest her unless
some one charges her.”
“What do you say, Auntie?”
“It 's very painful, dear. That is why I did n't want you to come in.
But people who do these things have to be punished.”
“But why have they to be punished?” Stella asked, feeling curiously calm
and remote from them all.
“They must be made examples of, dear. They must n't be let loose on
society,” said Sir Oliver. “It's a duty to one's country, a duty to
one's neighbours. I 'm afraid you don't understand, Stella. I implore
you to leave this matter in our hands.”
It was strange how the girl whom they had reared in blank ignorance of
life remained supreme arbiter of the situation. She said:
“You are afraid that if she were set free, she would rob somebody else?”
“Of course she would,” said Sir Oliver, testily.
“Would you, Eliza?” asked Stellamaris.
Thus appealed to, the guilty little wretch threw herself on the ground,
in horrible abasement, at Stella's feet.
“Oh, Miss Stella, don't let them put me in prison! For God's sake! don't
let them put me in prison! I 'll never do it again. I swear I won't.
Save me, Miss Stella!”--She clutched the white skirts--“Don't let them
send me to prison.”
She continued in terrified reiteration. Stella felt an icicle in her
bosom in place of a heart. She had never before seen humanity lowered to
the depths.
“Why did you do it?”
The crouching thing did not know. The drawer of the dressing-table had
been left unlocked. She had been tempted. It was the first time she had
stole anything. She would never do it again. And then she cried again,
“Don't let them send me to prison!”
“Julia, can't you prevent her making such a noise?” said Sir Oliver.
The bulky policeman, desiring to carry out Sir Oliver's wishes, came
forward and laid his hand on the girl's shoulder. She screamed. Stella
touched him on the arm, and he stood up straight. Then she opened the
door.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Withers, for your trouble; but we are not
going to have this girl put in prison.”
The kitchen-maid lay a huddled, sobbing mass on the floor.
“You 're doing a very foolish thing, Stella,” said Sir Oliver.
“You had much better let your uncle and me deal with this,” said Lady
Blount.
“My dears,” said Stella, very white, very dispassionate, cold steel from
head to foot, “if you put this girl in prison, I shall go mad. All
the things you have taught me would have no meaning. We say every day,
'Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against
us.' ”
“But, my darling child, that's quite different,” said Sir Oliver. “That
's a form of words referring to spiritual things. This is practical
life.”
“Is that true, Auntie?”
“No, dear, not quite. It's most difficult to know how to act,” replied
Lady Blount, resting her weary old head on her hand. “Do as you like,
child. What you do can't be wrong.”
Stella turned to the policeman, who had been looking from one to the
other and wondering from whom he should take his final instructions.
“We sha'n't need you any more, Mr. Withers.”
“Very good, miss.”
He saluted and went away. Stella shook the girl by the arm.
“Get up,” she commanded, “and go to your room. Don't speak. I can't bear
it. Go.”
The maid picked herself up and rushed out of the room. Stella confronted
the two old people. The morning sun streamed through the casement
window, and the light fell full on Sir Oliver's wrinkled old face
and spare form, and Stella, through the semi-military jauntiness and
aristocratic air of command produced by the thin features and white
moustache and imperial, saw, as by means of X-rays, all the weakness,
the foolishness, the pomposity, the vanity, that lay beneath. And yet
she knew that he loved her more dearly than any one in the world. She
looked at her aunt, and, in the awful flash of revelation that at times
sweeps through the young soul, she knew her to be a woman of little
intelligence, of narrow judgment, of limited sympathies; and yet, she,
too, loved her more dearly than any one in the world. Over them, she,
Stella, had achieved a tranquil victory. Ashamed and hurt to her inmost
heart by the stabbing consciousness of the humiliation she must have
brought on these two poor ones so dear to her, she had not a word
to say. Nor could they speak a word. There was a tense silence. Then
reaction came. All the love of a lifetime flooded Stella's heart, and
she threw herself by the side of Lady Blount and, her head in the old
woman's lap, burst into a passion of tears. Sir Oliver, with a palsied
gesture of his hand, left the women to themselves.
Once more poor Lady Blount, with her commonplace little platitudes,
preaching obedience to the law, tried to comfort Stellamaris, whose
intelligence had been scrupulously trained to the understanding of
nothing but obedience to the spirit. And once more Stellamaris went away
uncomforted. Guilt must be punished--a proposition which she found
it hard to accept; but, accepted as a basis of argument, was it
not punishment enough to reduce a human being to such grovelling
degradation? Did not the declared intention of sending that wretched
girl to prison imply pitilessness? Thenceforward hardness and suspicion
began to creep into Stella's judgments. Dreams of evil began to haunt
her sleep, and brooding by her window, she began to lose the consolation
of the sea.
Three week-ends passed, and John did not come to the Channel House,
making varied excuses for his defection. He wrote cheerily enough, but
Stella, with poor human longing for the magic word that would set her
heart beating, found a lack of something, she scarce knew what, in his
letters. Her own, once so spontaneous, so sparkling with bubbles of
fancy, grew constrained and self-conscious. John seemed to be eluding
her. One of the Sundays Herold came down. The Blounts told him of the
episode of the kitchen-maid and of the way in which Stella had taken the
law into her own hands.
“I never imagined she had such a spirit,” Sir Oliver declared. “Egad!
she stood up against us all like a little reigning princess.”
“But she broke down afterward, poor darling!” said Lady Blount.
Herold tried to question Stella on the subject, but met with no
response.
“Let us talk of pleasant things,” she pleaded.
He went away sorrowful, knowing the conflict in her soul--knowing, too,
that the strong soul has to fight its battles unaided.
Meanwhile Stella put on a smiling face to the world,--for, after all,
the world smiled on her,--and she was gentle with Sir Oliver and Lady
Blount. She mingled in such social life as the neighbourhood afforded--a
luncheon party, a garden party, where young men fell at her feet in
polite adoration, and young women put their arms round her waist and
talked to her of hats. She liked them all well enough, but shyly
evaded intimacy. They belonged to a race of beings with whom she was
unfamiliar, having passed their lives in a different spiritual sphere.
They frightened her ever so little; why, she did not know, for her
unused power of self-analysis was not sufficiently strong to enable her
to realize the instinctive shrinking from those, strangers to her,
who had been drenched from childhood in the mysterious and dreadful
knowledge of evil. She met them only on the common ground of youth and
talked of superficial things, fearing to inquire more deeply into their
thoughts and lives.
“I love to see her enjoying herself,” said Lady Blount.
Sir Oliver rubbed his hands, and agreed for once with his wife.
“There's nothing like a little harmless gaiety for a girl,” said he.
“She has been shut up with us old fogies too long.”
“She's beginning to realize now,” said Lady Blount, “the happiness that
lies before her in the new condition of things.”
ONE day when Stella was returning, unattended, from a small shopping
excursion in the village, a thin-lipped woman in black crossed the
road just before the turn that led to the gate to the Channel House and
accosted her.
“Miss Blount?”
“Yes,” said Stella, coming to a halt.
She had noticed the woman for some little time walking on the opposite
side of the way, and had been struck by a catlike stealthiness in her
gait. Now, face to face with the woman, she met a pair of pale-green,
almost expressionless eyes fixed on her with an odd relentlessness. The
woman's lips were twisted into the convention of a smile.
“Could I have the pleasure of a few words with you?”
“Certainly,” said Stella. “Will you come into the house with me? We are
almost there.”
“If you will excuse me, Miss Blount,” said the woman, holding up a
deprecating hand,--she was well-gloved and was dressed like a lady,--“I
would rather not go in with you. I have my reasons. I must speak with
you entirely in private. If we go round here, there is a comfortable
seat.”
Near the point at which they were standing the road up the cliff
diverged into two forks. The upper fork led to the gate of the Channel
House. The lower one was a pathway round the breast of the cliff. The
woman pointed to the latter. Stella hesitated.
“What have you so private to tell me that we can't talk in the garden?”
“It's something about John Risca,” said the woman with the thin lips.
Stella put her hand to her heart. “John--Mr. Risca? What is the matter?
Has anything happened to him?”
“Oh, he's in perfect health. Don't be alarmed. I only don't want us to
be interrupted by Sir Oliver or Lady Blount. Do come with me. I assure
you it's something quite important.”
She moved in the direction of the lone path, and Stella, drawn against
her will, followed. They, reached the seat. Below sank sheer cliff to
the rocks on the shore. Above sheer cliff rose to the crest on which
stood the Channel House. The sea sparkled in the sunshine. In the far
distance a great steamer, her two funnels plumed with gray, sped
majestically down Channel. The woman looked about her with nervous
swiftness. They were out of sight of human creature. Then she turned,
and the cold face changed, and Stella shrank from its sudden malignity.
The woman clutched the girl by her arm.
“Now, my lady, do you know who I am?”
“No,” said Stella, shrinking back terrified, and striving to wrench
herself free.
“I am John Risca's wife.”
Stella looked at her for an agonized moment, then, as white as paper,
collapsed on the seat, the woman still gripping her arm.
“John--married--you--his wife!” she stammered incoherently.
Louisa Risca bent down and scrutinized the white face.
“Do you mean to say you did n't know?”
Stella shook her head in frightened negation. Her ignorance was obvious,
even to the criminal woman now on the point of carrying out the fixed
idea of years. Gradually the grasp on her arm relaxed, and the woman
stood upright.
“You did n't know he was a rotter, did you?”
The word smote Stellamaris like a foul thing. She shivered. Mrs. Risca
kept her eyes fixed on her for a few seconds until, as it were, some
inspired thought flashed into them a gleam of joy.
“It 's jolly lucky for you that you did n't know. There 's a nice little
drop from here down to the rocks. I 've been here often before.”
Stella sprang to her feet and thrust her hands against the woman's
breast. .
“Let me pass! Let me pass!” she cried wildly.
But the woman barred the downward path. A few steps beyond the bench it
narrowed quickly upward until it merged into the cliff-side.
“I'm not going to. You've got to stay here,” said Mrs. Risca, seizing
Stella's wrists in a grip in which the girl's frail strength was
powerless. “If you struggle and make a fuss, you 'll have us both
chucked over. Don't be silly.”
Then Stella, calling to her aid her pride and courage, drew herself up
and looked the evil woman in the face.
“Very well. Say what you have to say. I will listen to you.”
“That 's sensible,” said Mrs. Risca, dropping her wrists. “I don't see
why you should have gone on so. I only wanted to speak to you for your
good and your happiness. You sit down there, and I 'll sit here, and we
'll have a nice, long talk about John.”
Stella sat on the extreme upper edge of the bench, Mrs. Risca on the
lower, and smiled on her victim, who drew a convulsive breath.
“He has been making love to you, has n't he?” she asked, enjoying the
flicker of pain that passed over the delicate features.
“Go on, if I must hear,” said Stella.
“And all the while he's been a married man, and I'm his shamefully
neglected and deserted wife.”
“How am I to know that you 're his wife?” said Stella.
“I thought you'd ask that, so I've brought proof.”
She drew two papers from a little bag slung over her arm, and handed one
to Stella. It was a certified copy of the marriage-certificate. Stella
glanced over it. Ignorant as she was in things of the world, she
recognized the genuineness of the official document. Her eyes were too
dazed, however, to appreciate the date. She passed the slip of blue
paper back without a word.
“Here's something else.”
Mrs. Risca gave her a discoloured letter, one which she had kept, Heaven
knows why, perhaps in the vague hope that it might one day be turned
into an instrument against her husband. It was an old, old, violently
passionate love-letter. Stella's eyes met a few flaming words in John's
unmistakable handwriting, and with a shudder she threw the letter, like
something unclean, away from her. Mrs. Risca picked it up from the path
and restored it, with the marriage-certificate, to her bag.
“He 's a pretty fellow, is n't he? Fancy his kidding you all the time
that he was a single man. And you believed him and thought him such a
noble gentleman. Oh, he can come the noble gentleman when he likes. I
know him. I 'm his wife. He wants to be taken for a rough diamond, he
does. And he's never tired of showing you what a diamond he is. And
for all his rough diamondness, he 's as vain as a peacock. Have n't you
noticed it, darling?”
She paused, and smiled horribly on Stellamaris. Stellamaris, from whose
brown pools of eyes all translucency had gone, looked at her steadily.
The girl's face was pinched into a haggard mask.
“I don't think you need tell me any more. Will you please let me go.”
“I have n't nearly finished, darling,” replied Mrs. Risca, finding a
keener and purer delight in this vista of exquisite torture that in the
half-confessed intention of throwing the innocent interloper over the
cliff. “I want to be your friend and warn you against our dear John. He
's the kind of male brute, dear, that any silly young girl falls in love
with. I know I did. He has a way of putting his great arms around you
and hugging you, so that your senses are all in a whirl and you think
him some godlike animal.”
Stella shuddered through all her frame at a memory hitherto holy, and
clenched her teeth so that no cry could escape. But the woman gloated
over the setting of the jaw and the tense silence.
“That 's John, my pretty pet. And he likes us young. He took me young,
and because I would n't hear of anything but marriage, he married me,
and then threw me over, and deserted me, and brought me into terrible
trouble, and all that he or any one else may say against me is a lie.
Oh! I know all about you. This is n't the first time I've been to
Southcliff. And as soon as you could get up and go about,--he knew all
along that you would n't lie on your back forever--trust him,--he comes
and makes love to you and kisses you, does n't he? And he can't marry
you, because he's already married.”
Stella rose, and straightened her slim figure, and threw up her delicate
head.
“I have heard enough. I order you to let me pass.” But the woman laughed
at the childish imperiousness. She knew herself to be of wiry physical
strength. To catch up that light body and send it hurtling into space
would be as easy as kicking a Yorkshire terrier over the edge of a pier.
She had once done that.
“You 'd make your fortune as a tragedy queen. Why don't you ask Mr.
Herold to get you on the stage? Sit down again, darling, and don't be a
little fool. I've got lots more to tell you.”
“I prefer to stand,” said Stella.
“It does n't matter to me whether you stand or sit, my precious pet,”
said Mrs. Risca. “I only want to tell you all about your dearly beloved
John. Oh, he 's a daisy! They 'll tell you all sorts of things about
me--about me and Unity--”
“Unity?” cried Stella, taken off her guard.
“Yes, darling. You went and saw her the other day, did n't you? Oh, no
matter how I know. I only mention it to let you see that I 'm telling
the truth. They 'll tell you all sorts of things about me and her; but
they 're all lying. What do you think of our friend John's relations
with Unity?”
“Mr. Risca is Unity's guardian,” said Stella in a cold voice.
The woman laughed again. “You little fool! She's his mistress.”
Unity again, with the baffling mystery surrounding her! The woman
spoke directly, as if in complete revelation. Yet Stella was still in
darkness, and the uncontrollable feminine groped toward the light.
“I don't understand what you mean,” she said haughtily.
“You mean to tell me you don't understand what a man's mistress is?”
It took her a few moments to appreciate the virginal innocence of the
white and rigid thing in woman's guise. When she did appreciate it, she
laughed aloud.
“You pretty lamb, don't you know what a wife is?”
Stella stood, the cliff above her, the cliff below, midway between her
sky and her beloved and dancing sea, a hard-eyed statue. The supreme and
deliciously unexpected moment of the criminal woman's life had come. She
rose and held Stellamaris with her pale-green eyes, and in a few brutal
words she scorched her soul.