Although Stella had been in London for a day or two, the morning
of the funeral was the first time that John had seen her since the
riotous June day when he had waved farewell to the train carrying her
back to Southcliff. He had gone to the front gate to meet her in his
ill-fitting, outgrown frock-coat, sticking-plaster still hiding the
wounds on his scalp, and his heavy face white and drawn. She, in her
black dress, looked a startling lily enveloped by night; her great
eyes had softened from diamond into starshine. Behind her came the old
people, attendant ghosts. John folded her hand in his.
“Stella dear, how good of you to come!”
She said in a low voice:
“It is to ask forgiveness from you and her.”
He bowed over her hand. She passed into the house where Miss Lindon
received her.
“My dear,” she said, holding Stella’s hand, “I think our poor darling
will go to her grave very happy. She was always talking of you, ever
since she came to live here, and if you wonder what has become of the
beautiful lilies you sent, it’s because I have put them inside with
her, knowing that there’s where she would wish them to be. And now
you’ve come yourself, and I’m sure she wouldn’t ask for more.”
The weak mouth, set in the full, foolish face crowned with white
hair, worked dolorously. Stella, with a sudden movement, threw her
arm round her neck and broke into uncontrollable sobbing. A soul pure
and beautiful beyond question spoke to Stellamaris in simple words
and in silly yet exquisite sentiment. She clung very close,--why, the
unsuspecting and innocent lady never guessed,--but it made her broad
bosom swell with an emotion hitherto unknown to have a girl lay her
head there and sob and seem to find comfort; and, as she clung, the
lingering poison of the evil woman melted forever from Stella’s heart,
and she knew that the place whereon she stood, where Unity and she had
talked, that gimcrack, tawdry, bamboo drawing-room, was holy ground.
She had come, poor child, full of her fierce and jealous maiden
pride--she was only twenty, and life had been revealed to her of late
as a tumultuous conflict of men with devils,--she had come highly
wrought for battles with the Apollyons that straddled across the path;
she had come with high hopes of bringing help to the faint-hearted,
solace to the afflicted, of proving to her tiny world that she was the
help-giver instead of the help-seeker; she had come on the wings of
conquest; and she fluttered down like a tired bird to the surrender
of herself on, the bosom of the simplest and, in the eyes of men, the
least important creature on God’s earth.
She drew gently away and dried her eyes, and while Miss Lindon spoke a
few words to Lady Blount, she went somewhat shyly up to John.
“You should have let me know Miss Lindon long ago,” she said.
“I should have done many things long ago,” he replied. “But I myself
have known my aunt only the last few days.”
She regarded him somewhat incredulously.
“Yes,” he said, “it’s true. The last few days have taught me all kinds
of things. I never knew what she was”--he made a vague gesture--“until
it was too late. I think, Stella dear, I have gone through life with my
heart shut.”
“Except to me,” said Stellamaris.
“That’s different,” he said, with a turn of his great shoulders.
He left her abruptly and joined the group of the three elders by the
window. She came to Herold, who had been standing with his back
against the empty fireplace.
“You must be very tired.”
He saw her brows knit in their familiar little fairy wrinkles as she
anxiously scanned his face. Indeed, he was very weary, and his eyes and
cheeks showed it.
“There has been a lot not only to do, but to feel of late,” he said.
She put out a timid hand and touched his sleeve.
“You mustn’t do and feel too much, or you’ll break down.”
“Why should I, if you haven’t?” he asked with a faint smile.
“I think it cowardly to break down when one ought to be strong,” she
said.
“Are you afraid of my being a coward, Stella?”
She uttered a little cry, and her touch became a grasp.
“You! Oh, no! You? You’ve _been_ strong. There’s no need for you to
do any more. You’ve got to live your own life and not that of other
people--”
“The only life left to me,” he said in a low voice, “is that of those
dear to me.”
John lumbered up gloomily. “You must persuade him to take a rest,
Stella. He has been driving himself to death.” He laid a heavy hand on
his friend. “God knows what I should have done without him all this
time. Wait,” he said suddenly, with the other hand uplifted.
And all were silent when to a scuffle of feet succeeded a measured
tramp of steps descending the stairs. The bearers passed along the
passage by the door of the drawing-room. Unity was going forth on her
last journey through the familiar Kilburn streets.
They arrived at the cemetery. In the bare mortuary chapel Stella knelt
and heard for the first time in her life the beautiful words of the
service for the burial of the dead. And there in front of her, covered
with poor, vain flowers, was the coffin containing the clay of one
whom man with his opportunist laws against murder and self-slaughter
was powerless to judge. At the appointed time they went out into the
summer air and walked to the grave-side. The surpliced chaplain stood a
pace or two apart. The dismal men in black deposited the coffin by the
yellow, upturned earth. The group of six gathered close together. The
July sunshine streamed down, casting a queer projection of shadow from
the coffin-end.
“Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is
full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth
as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.”
Stella heard the chaplain’s voice as in a dream. The rattle of the
earth on the coffin-lid--“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust
to dust”--roused her with a shock. Below, deep in the grave, lay
Unity--Unity, who had taken a human life, and had taken her own for the
sake of those she loved; Unity, who in the approach to her murderous
and suicidal end was all but unfathomable to her; Unity, whom she had
read and thought enough to know to be condemned by the general judgment
of mankind. She stood tense until the end. A great peace had fallen
upon her. “Blessed are those that die in the Lord.” The simple words
held a mystic significance. They reiterated themselves in her brain.
Young, emotional, inexperienced, overwhelmed by the shattering collapse
of the exquisite, cloud-capped towers of her faith, she found in them
an unquestioned truth. By that grave-side, in the sacred presence of
the dead, not only of “the dear sister here departed,” but of the
inhabitants of all the gleaming stone and marble tenements around,
there could be no lying; such was the unargued conviction of her candid
soul. A voice, coming not from the commonplace, white-robed man, but
from the blue vault of heaven, proclaimed that Unity had died in the
Lord and that she was blessed. The message was one of unutterable
consolation. Unity had died in the Lord. The comforting acceptance of
the message indicated the restoration of Stella’s faith in God.
The mind of the child-woman is a warp of innocence shot with the woof
of knowledge, and the resultant fabric is a thing no man born can seize
and put upon canvas, and, for the matter of that, no woman, when she
has ceased to be a child.
* * * * *
Stella’s heart had softened toward John. Herold had told her how he had
nearly come by his death on the rocks below the Channel House. It had
moved her to the depths. And now she saw that he was bowed down with
grief for Unity. All resentment against him had died. She recovered her
faith, not perhaps in the wonder of the Great High Belovedest of the
past, but in the integrity of the suffering man. When they reached and
had reëntered the house, she took an opportunity of being alone with
him. The two elder ladies were up-stairs, and Walter and Sir Oliver had
gone out to smoke in the little front garden. Then she said with shy
gentleness:
“This must be very desolate for you, dear. Won’t Miss Lindon and you
come down with us to Southcliff? I have fallen in love with her. I
wonder whether I dare ask her. The sea air would do her good.”
“She would be delighted, I’m sure; but would you like me to come, too?”
he said, bending his heavy brows.
“Of course,” replied Stella. She flushed slightly and lowered her eyes.
“I’m afraid I’m not a very gay companion, Stella. In fact, I don’t
think I ever was one--except in the days when I used to tell you
fairy-tales about the palace--”
“Oh, don’t!” She could not restrain the quick little cry and gesture.
“We mustn’t talk about that any more. We’ve got the future to think of.
Reconstruction--isn’t that what they call it? We have got to look at
things as they are, and laugh sometimes.”
“I feel,” said he, “as though I could never laugh again.”
“Yet Unity meant to make you happy and not miserable,” said Stella.
“I know,” said he, “and that’s the devil of it.”
He paused for a moment, his hands thrust deep in his trousers’ pockets,
and his heel on the fender. At last he said: “It would be the best
thing in the world for the dear old lady. And God knows it will be good
for me. So if you’ll have us for a week or two, we’ll be glad to get
away from here.”
“I’ll ask Miss Lindon when she comes down.”
And Miss Lindon, coming down soon afterward with Lady Blount, received
and accepted the invitation. Sir Oliver, summoned from the garden,
expressed his approval.
“My boy,” said he, “we’ve been perfectly wretched without you. Make him
put in a long time with us, Miss Lindon. We three old folks will join
forces.”
Stella slipped out by the front door and stood by Herold, who was
leaning over the gate. Of course he too must come to the Channel House.
He smiled rather wearily and shook his head.
“Not just now, dear,” said he. “I have a week’s business to do in
London, settling my autumn arrangements. I’m going into management, you
know, and then I must run away for a bit--abroad somewhere, a little
mild climbing in Switzerland, perhaps.”
Stella’s face fell. “Going abroad?” she echoed. “For how long?”
“A month or so, if I can manage it. I want a rest rather badly.”
“Of course you do; but I was hoping,” she faltered, “that you could
find rest at Southcliff.”
“It’s good of you, dear,” said he, “to think of me. For Heaven knows
how many years I’ve looked upon the Channel House as a second home;
you can never realize what it has meant to me. But I need a complete
change, a sort of medicine I must take, no matter how nasty it may be.
Besides,” he added with a smile, “you will have John now.”
“John is John, and you are you,” said Stella. There was a little pause.
Then after a glance at his tired face, she said in a low voice “You’re
right, Walter; you must go away and get strong again. I spoke very
selfishly. I’ve not been accustomed to think much of other people.”
“Stellamaris dear,” he said, “if I thought I could serve you by
staying, I would stay. But there’s nothing for me to do, is there?
The--the what shall I say--the veil between John and you has been cut
in twain, as it were, by a flaming sword, perhaps. Unity did it. But
there’s no veil now. The only thing that has to be done is to bring
back the sunshine into John’s life. That’s for you to do, not for me.”
She looked at him queerly. Her face was so white, her dress so black!
The only gleam about her was in her eyes.
“I know that,” she said. “But who is going to bring back the sunshine
into your life?”
He leaned against the wooden gate and gripped the top bar tight. What
did she mean? Was she a woman or, after all, only the old fancied
child of sea-foam and cloud?
“When I can eat like a pig and sleep like a dog,” he said lightly, “and
feel physically fit, I shall be all right.” He smiled, and took her
black-gloved hand. “And when I see the roses in your cheeks and hear
you laugh as you used to laugh--that fascinating little laugh like a
peal of low silver bells--then I’ll be the Princess Stellamaris’s court
jester again.”
She smiled wanly. “You were never court jester; you were Great High
Favorite.” She sighed. “How far off those childish days are!”
“They’ll return as soon as you’re happy.”
“Life is too full of pain for me to find happiness in superficial
things,” said Stella.
For all his wretchedness he could have laughed, with a man’s sweet
pity, at the tone of conviction in her philosophic but childish
utterance.
“You must look for it and find it in the deep things,” said he.
She made no reply, but stood thoughtfully by his side, and drew with
her fingers little lines in the summer dust on the upper surface of the
bar of the gate.
“There’s something silly I want to say to you, Walter,” she murmured
at last, “and I don’t quite know how to say it. It’s about the sea.
I think you can understand. You always used to. Our long talks--you
remember? Since all this has happened, the sea seems to have no meaning
for me.”
“It will all come back, dear,” said Herold, “with your faith in God and
the essential beauty of the world.”
“But what is the essential beauty of the world?”
“My dear,” he laughed, “you mustn’t ask a poor man such conundrums and
expect an instantaneous answer. I should say roughly it was strength
and sacrifice and love.” He took a cigarette from his case and lit it.
“You’ll find the comfort of the sea again. I think it will have quite a
new meaning for you, a deeper meaning, when you sit by it with the man
whom you love and who loves you, as you know he loves you, and all the
past has become sacred, and there’s no longer a shadow between you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure. You see, Stellamaris dear,” he added after a second or
two, “you don’t need me any longer. Your happiness, as well as John’s
happiness, is in your own hands. I can go away with an easy mind. And
when I come back--”
“Yes? And when you come back?”
Pain started through his eyes. When he came back? What would be
left for him? His art, his ambitions? What were they? A child’s
vain toys cumbering his feet. His soul was set on the slip of pale
girlhood, startlingly black and white, with her mass of soft hair
beneath the plain, black hat, and her great pools of eyes, no longer
agates or diamonds, but aglow with remote flames, who, in poor common
earthliness, stood by his side, but in maddening reality was pinnacled
on inaccessible heights by the love between her and the man they both
loved. He felt that the pure had an unsuspected power of torture.
“When I come back? Well--” he broke off lamely. And they looked at each
other without speaking until they became aware of a human presence.
They turned and saw John, his huge bulk in the frame of the doorway,
watching them dully beneath his heavy brows.
* * * * *
At the Channel House Stella’s health began to mend. The black shadows
disappeared from beneath her eyes, and her lips caught the lost trick
of a smile. She no longer wandered desolate about house and garden, but
sought the companionship of those about her. The old folks discussed
and wrangled over the change.
“One would have thought,” said Lady Blount, “that this terrible affair
would have crushed her altogether.”
“Any one who didn’t know her might have thought so,” replied Sir
Oliver; “but I’ve watched her. I sized her up long ago. It’s
astonishing how little you know of her, Julia. She has lots of
pluck--the right stuff in her. And now John’s free and he’s down here.
What more can she want?”
“Poor fellow! He doesn’t seem to be much the happier for it.”
“You don’t expect him to go about grinning as if nothing had happened,
do you?” said Sir Oliver. “Can’t you understand that the man has had a
devil of a shock? He’ll get over it one of these days.”
“I don’t want him to grin; but I’d like him to look a little more
cheerful,” said Lady Blount.
But cheerfulness and John Risca were strangers. Even when he and
Stellamaris were alone together, looking at the moonlit sea from the
terrace outside the drawing-room windows, or in the sunshine of the
sweet cliff garden, the cloud did not lift from his brow. Unless they
talked of Unity,--and it relieved his heart to do so, and Stellamaris
loved to listen to the brave little chronicles of her life,--long
silences marked their intercourse. To get back to the old plane was
impossible. They could find no new one on which to meet. She gave him
all her pity, for he was a man who had suffered greatly, and in a way
it was she herself who had brought the suffering on him. Her heart
ached to say or do something that would rekindle the old light in his
rugged face; but an unconquerable shyness held her back. If he had
thrown his great arm around her and held her tight and uttered broken
words of love, pity would have flamed passionate in surrender. If he
had pleaded for comfort, pity would have melted warm over his soul.
But he made no appeal. Both were burningly aware that Unity had died
so that they could be free, no barrier between them. Yet barrier there
seemed to be, invisible, inscrutable.
Once Sir Oliver, who had joined them in the garden, asked:
“What are your plans for the future, my boy?”
“Plans? I have none. Just the same old round of work.”
“I mean your domestic arrangements.”
“I’ll go on living with my old aunt. We’re a queer couple, I suppose,
but we understand each other.”
“Humph!” grunted Sir Oliver, and he went away to tie up a drooping rose.
They walked on in dead silence, which was broken at last by John, who
made a remark as to Constable’s growing infirmities.
So the visit came to an end without a word having been said, and John
went back to his desolate house, physically rested and able to take
up the routine of his working life. Herold in Switzerland wrote
letters about snows and glaciers and crystal air. The calm tenor of
existence was resumed at the Channel House. Incidentally Stella found
an occupation. Old Dr. Ransome, in casual talk, mentioned a case of
great poverty and sickness in the village. Stella, followed by Morris
bearing baskets of luxuries, presented herself at the poor house in the
character of Lady Bountiful. At the sight that met her eyes she wept
and went away sorrowful, and then it dawned upon her inexperienced soul
that gifts costing her nothing, although they had their use, might be
supplemented by something vastly more efficacious. She consulted the
hard-worked district nurse, and, visiting the house again, learned
how to tend the sick woman and wash the babies and bring cleanliness
and air and comfort into the miserable place. And having made in this
way the discovery that all through her life she had accepted service
from all and sundry and had never done a hand’s-turn for anybody, she
plunged with young shame and enthusiasm into the new work. Afraid
lest convalescence on the part of the patient would throw her back
into idleness, she ingenuously asked the nurse if there were other
poor people in Southcliff who needed help. The nurse smiled. Even at
Southcliff there was enough work among the poor and needy for every day
in the week the whole year round.
“I’m glad,” said Stellamaris. Then she checked herself. “No, I can’t
be. I’m dreadfully sorry.” The little lines of complexity knit
themselves on her brow. “It’s a confusing world, isn’t it?”
The state of mind of Stellamaris at this period may be best described
as one of suspended judgment. It was a confusing world. She could not
pronounce a more definite opinion. The Land of Illusion was a lost
Atlantis of which not a speck remained. On the other hand, the world
was no longer the mere abode of sin and ugliness and horror to which
she had gradually awakened. Unity had taught her that. What, then,
was this mysterious complication of life in which she found herself
involved? It no longer frightened her. It interested her curiously.
“Excellency dear,” she said one day, “are there any books about life?”
He stared at her, covering his non-comprehension with the usual
military twirl of his mustache.
“Millions. What kind of life?”
“Life itself. The meaning of it.”
“Religious books? I’m afraid they’re not in my line, my dear.”
“I don’t think it’s religious books I want,” said Stella.
“Philosophy, then. Kant, Schopenhauer,--um--er,”--he hooked a name from
the depths of his memory--“Bain, and all those fellows. I could never
make head or tail of them myself, so I don’t suppose you could, dear.”
“Did you say Kant? I think I’ve seen a book of his in the library.”
She pulled down a dusty volume of the “Critique of Pure Reason” from
a top shelf and puzzled her young brains over it. It seemed to be
dealing with vital questions, but, like Sir Oliver, she was hopelessly
befogged. She asked the old doctor. He had a glimmering of her meaning.
“The best book in the world, my dear,”--he waved a hand,--“is life
itself.”
“But I can’t read it without a dictionary, Doctor,” she objected.
“Your heart, my child,” said he.
This was pretty, but not satisfactory. “Walter could tell me,” she said
to herself, and forthwith wrote him a long letter.
She lived in a state not only of suspended judgment, but also of
suspended emotion. The latter hung in the more delicate balance. Her
maidenhood realized it vaguely. She had half expected John to speak
of his love for her; at the same time she had dreaded the moment of
declaration; and, at the same time also, she had felt that beneath the
shadow of the wings of death it behoved mortal passion to lie still
and veiled. The anguish of the weeks preceding the tragedy had passed
away. She had no pain save that of yearning pity for an agonized world.
The old people in their dependence on her and in the pathos of their
limited vision once more became inexpressibly dear. The childish titles
were invested in a new beauty. Her pretty labors in sorrow-stricken
cottages, amateurish as they were, held a profound significance. Unlike
the thousands of sweet English girls up and down the land who are
bred in the practice of philanthropy and think no more of it than of
its concomitant tennis-parties and flirtations, she had come upon it
unawares, and it had all the thrill of a discovery. It was one little
piece fitted certainly into the baffling puzzle of life.
John came down again for the weekend. Stella found him gentle, less
gloomy, but oddly remote from her--remoter even than when he lay
crushed beneath the tragedy. Now and again she caught him looking at
her wistfully, whereupon she turned her eyes away in a distress which
she could not explain. Gradually she became aware that the Great High
Belovedest of the past had vanished into nothingness, with so many
other illusory things. The awakening kiss that he had given her as he
carried her in his arms faded into the far-off dreamland. On the Sunday
night they lingered in the drawing-room for a moment after the old
people had retired to bed.
“I must be going back by the early train in the morning, and sha’n’t
see you,” said he, “so I’ll say good-by now.”
“I’m sorry, dear.” She put out her hand. “I hope the little change has
done you good.”
For answer he bent down and touched her forehead with his lips. Then he
held the door open for her to pass out.
“God bless you, dear,” said he.
She went up-stairs, feeling in a half-scared way that something, she
knew not what, had happened, and she cried herself to sleep.