nothing come of it? Put an end to it. You want to get away; you need a
complete change; anyone can see that. You said in July you sometimes
thought of marrying me. Yes--no--yes. There it is in the horses'
hoofs. Summer, autumn, winter, spring--spring. It is spring now. We
won't have the smallest morsel of fuss. If we were married to-morrow,
everyone would say: "Well, goodness knows, they've been long enough
thinking over it." Let's put an end to it, Stella. Hear the horses'
hoofs, every one of them saying "Yes, yes--yes!" Stella, will you marry
me?'
There was a long pause. The sound of a railway whistle in the distance,
of snowy-breasted sea-gulls calling as they skimmed the waves, the deep,
solemn crescendo of the wide sea as it broke on the shining sand, the
merry cries of children on the shore--these came borne to them on the
balmy spring air. Memories that had a pang beyond the bitterness of
death surged up in Stella's mind. To the smallest detail, the hour in
which she had listened in speechless happiness to Anselm Langdale's
avowal of love rose up before her. An hour so near in time--but in the
sensations that turn hours into years remote as the first dawn of
consciousness.
'Answer me, Stella,' said Ritchie, his voice now low and husky with
contending emotion. 'Don't you know what to say? It's very simple--say
"Yes."'
Again there was a long pause.
'Yes,' she answered at last, and Ritchie turned quite pale through the
ruddy bronze of his cheeks. For a moment he almost reeled in his saddle
and doubted his senses.
'Stella, do you mean it? You will be my wife?'
'Yes,' she said, again looking into his face. He was agitated almost to
tears, while she was perfectly calm.
They rode on for a little time in silence. Something like rest stole
over Stella. She felt that her course was now fixed, her decision
unalterable--and there was relief in the thought. As for Ritchie, he
almost feared to give complete credence to the belief that after all
these years of unavailing hope--of waiting and rejection--he was in
truth an accepted lover. And even he, 'elementary human being' though
he might be in one of Stella's old phrases, yet experienced that quick
revulsion which so often sets in, of dread because of other
possibilities, now that this ardently longed-for happiness seemed within
reach. But as the first tumult of thought subsided, his joy rose high.
'Stella, you have said "No" so long; you must keep on telling me it's
all right now,' he said in unusually timid tones; 'I can hardly believe
in such luck for myself.'
'Don't be too glad, Ted; if you are, you're sure to be disappointed.'
'But if you were me, Stella, you couldn't help being too glad,' returned
Ted, with unconscious pathos.
Something in the words struck a chord in Stella's heart. She felt
softened and remorseful. She determined that, as far as in her lay, she
would quench the rising tide of hard, cold indifference, of scorn for
her own life and action, which was the first result of her momentous
decision. But when people feel one way and make resolutions in another
direction, it is a toss-up with circumstance which will be victor in the
first or subsequent encounters.
*CHAPTER XLI.*
When they reached Monico Lodge there was Cuthbert at the door, going
away after having waited for some little time. He helped Stella to
dismount, and the three went in together.
'Congratulate me, my dear fellow,' said Ted, the moment they went into
the drawing-room. 'Stella has promised this very afternoon to be my
wife--and this time there is to be no drawing back.'
The brother stared at Ritchie in an incredulous way, and then at his
sister.
She suddenly coloured deeply and said:
'Yes, Cuthbert, you may congratulate us; but we are going away almost
directly, so as to escape all that--and the wedding-gifts----' She felt
compelled to talk in a half-mocking tone, so as to save herself from the
imbecility of tears. 'Oh yes, the day after to-morrow, if you please.
By the way, I must go and tell Larry--I believe she's in.'
'Stella, darling, may God grant you every happiness!' said her brother,
kissing her first on one cheek and then on the other. He felt a pang of
misgiving which he could not conquer, and his face and voice were
exceedingly grave.
'Now, Cuthbert, don't be so solemn--at any rate, until the ultimate
disaster.'
'But you do--you are attached to Ted--or you would never have given your
consent?'
'Oh, my dear, it is unsafe to generalize about our delightful sex.
Don't you remember what St. Teresa said in one of her letters to a
Carmelite Father: "Your Reverence made me smile by saying that you could
tell her character so well. But we women are not so easily known."'
'But there are some things, Stella, it would be safe to prognosticate of
all good women.'
'Oh yes; as, for example, they all have ten fingers, and have learned
the Catechism and the Creed. But if it comes to asserting that they
believe the one and remember all the rest----'
'But what motive could or would be strong enough with you, darling,
except love in some degree?'
'Ah, of course--love. But a woman must not give her love till it is
asked. Isn't that one of the demure, unwritten statutes? Well, I am so
very proper that I am not going to give it even when asked--not until I
am married. It is the process of evolution. In the meantime, Ted vows
he has enough for two.'
'Oh, Stella, you pain me! I cannot believe you would look and speak
like this if your heart were really touched.'
'Now, Cuth, you know very well if my heart were touched I would be dead.
You see, it is a very hard-worked organ as it is. If it went through
all the impossible gymnastics ascribed to it by lovers, the human race
would have come to an end long ago. When one comes to think of it,
perhaps that is the best thing that could happen.'
'You are not well, dear. You flush up feverishly, and then you are
pale, with dark rings about the eyes. You looked very different when
you came from Lull. Dora and I both noticed it--and you were so dear
and tender. We were so delighted. I came to tell you, Stella, that our
wedding-day is fixed.'
'Oh! is it to-morrow? Because, if so, Ted and I will be married to-day.
Yes, I'm determined not to be like Cinderella, left with the cinders,
when you go straight to heaven like Elijah in a fiery chariot. But then
Elijah, poor man! had no Dora.'
'Well, Stella, I should be very unhappy if the girl who promised to
marry me could talk like you the day she was engaged. That reckless,
mocking tone--no girl who was happy could use it.'
'Unless it were an artifice to conceal her joy,' said Stella, laughing.
Then, in a graver tone: 'You see, dear, it does not do to generalize too
largely. On looking round among our married friends, does it not strike
you that the majority never committed the indiscretion of falling in
love at all, or if they did, that they have all they asked for, and
nothing of what they hoped, poor wretches? I, for my part----'
Here Laurette entered, followed by Ted. She threw her arms round Stella
with a little cry.
'Don't, Laurette; this is what I am determined to avoid,' said Stella,
holding her at arms' length. But Laurette was half intoxicated with
joy. Not till that moment had she really believed that her schemes
would be crowned with such complete success. She pecked once or twice
at Stella's cheeks with her hard little lips, and then turned to
Courtland, her face wreathed with smiles.
'Isn't it too delightful, after all these years of waiting?' she said to
him, pressing his hand with a congratulatory fervour. Courtland, pale
and erect, bowed, and murmured something in reply. Then he turned to
Ritchie, and took his hand.
'I congratulate you, Ted; you are a very lucky man! I pray God----'
There was a sharp break in his voice, and at the sound a cord seemed to
tighten round Stella's heart. The old bond between them had been a very
strong and tender one. Now that the half-petulant irritation of finding
herself, as she thought, displaced in his affection, was lost in the
storm that had swept away so many of the old landmarks, her heart went
out to him more fully. Only she had to guard against any treacherous
yearning for full sympathy and intimate communion. She must be
inexorable against her weakness on every side. She was struggling
against her whole nature as a strong athlete struggles for victory.
That was what made Ritchie's society safer for her in this crisis than
that of the old home circle. He was imperturbably good-natured; he had a
strong fund of animal spirits, and his hand could never touch any of
those inner cords which, if they vibrated at all, brought her in one
swift moment face to face with black despair and gnawing jealousy. She
conquered the climbing sorrow which her brother's emotion awakened; then
going up to him, and putting her hands in his, she said softly:
'Ah, you dear old boy, you have always been so good to me; Ted and I
will pull all straight, do not fear. As for you, never forget, though,
that you threw me over first.'
She raised the tips of her brother's fingers to her lips as she spoke,
and he was instantly melted by her caressing tenderness. She was always
confident of winning entire forgiveness for any outbreak of caprice or
wilfulness the moment she made up her mind to be quite good. This
confidence, modified by an air of imploring entreaty, had always been
one of her irresistible moods.
'Pull all straight?--I should think we would!' said Ted proudly,
possessing himself of Stella's left hand, while her brother held the
right.
'How long do you mean to keep up that wicked little story about my
throwing you over?' said Cuthbert, smiling fondly at her as he stroked
her hair. 'There never lived the human being who could make me do that.
And, Stella, whatever comes or goes, if ever you are in trouble or
perplexity, never forget that if need were I would lay down my life for
you.' He did not mean to say so much, but there was some undercurrent
of feeling at work which he could hardly analyze. He only knew that
from the first a strong misgiving beset him as to this marriage.
At Courtland's words a vague alarm rose in Laurette's breast. 'How very
absurd!' she thought to herself angrily. 'Women don't want their
brothers after they are married--not in that way.'
She herself had only wanted her brother's money, and the means by which
she had obtained some of it, and hoped for still more, rose before her,
for the first time, in an almost lurid light. A sudden panic fastened
on her lest there should be some loophole by which her machinations
should be detected. But she had gone too thoroughly to work to be
caught in the toils which wreck the half-hearted dissembler. It is not
cunning, but simplicity, that must patch and tell a tale which often
carries no conviction in a world where it is a common trade to make the
thing which is seem as though it were not. Simplicity, poor unthrift,
who makes no use of all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory
thereof, but to tell the truth, is all too often shamed into hiding her
pensive, virginal, unaffected brow before the bold, rouged, menacing
front of her successful rival--Mendacity.
But Laurette betrayed none of the uneasiness which shot athwart her
mind. Indeed, her anxieties at this time were so multiform that they
might be said to swallow each other, so that, on the whole, she kept up
as gay an appearance as though no cares oppressed her. Chief among them
was her husband's intrigue with this 'wretched little divorced actress.'
This had blossomed apace into a well-concocted scheme of indefinite
migration on his part with her theatrical company. Laurette knew this
definitely by means of examining the Honourable Talbot's pocket-book,
when he slept not wisely but too well. And yet she felt that her only
course was to make no sign; to feign complete ignorance, and take such
action at the last moment, that is, the eleventh of October, as might be
of vital service to her. Then that letter which she had got Mrs. Anson
to write. It was only after fully convincing herself that Langdale's
half-erased, mutilated narrative might not of itself serve her purpose,
that Laurette had hit on the scheme of boldly supplementing it by a
communication which would at once throw light on his supposed story, and
his action in hastening away without seeing Stella. She judged
unerringly, too, that the thought of his hastening back to a loving wife
anxious for reconciliation would stab the girl's pride into more active
resistance against grief than any other theory.
'Stella has it in her to be jealous--one can see that by the way she
took her brother's engagement,' reasoned Laurette. 'And if there is any
occasion on which jealousy may grow into a monster, surely it is when
the man who called you "sweet St. Charity," and the innermost leaf of
his heart, is supposed to be steaming away at the rate of seventeen
knots an hour to the beautiful woman he married before he left school,
so to speak. Not that I believe she is really dead--at any rate, if so,
her conduct is very unlike that of other people, who could do nothing to
oblige one in life so much as to leave it....'
Yes, all her calculations had been singularly favoured by Providence;
but this speedy engagement was of that order of good luck which all but
frightens one. It was almost sinister--like the appearance of a
sociable vulture in the desert when drawing near a well that may prove
empty. All that evening at Mrs. Joran's private theatricals the thought
rose at intervals, What if Stella and Langdale met abroad? And yet,
once the marriage had taken place, what would it avail? There was a
dance after the acting was over. Everyone was enraptured with Talbot's
masterly performance, and she replied to congratulations on this
abominable accomplishment as cheerfully as though it were not drawing a
husband and a father, as she styled him, even to herself, in her more
melodramatic moments, into the Bohemian depths of a strolling-player's
career. But she would save him despite himself--which was usually the
way people were saved when once they gave themselves up to the enjoyment
of being lost. And to secure that end what means were not legitimate?
Yet she could not resist the inclination to reassure herself, by
laughing inquiry of a distinguished judge, as to whether deception
practised to bring marriage about could in any way invalidate it.
'My dear Mrs. Tareling, what could have put such an uncanny idea into
your head? What marriage would be safe if once the plea of deception
were allowed to batter against the foundations of the holy institution
of matrimony?' said the judge, laughing. 'Take the deceptions which
Nature puts upon us, to begin with----'
'Now, Sir Henry, you are laughing at me! No one ever knows where Nature
begins or ends. I do not mean only with the complexions of my own dear
sex.' The judge laughed with real amusement at this sally: Laurette
fully knew the value of talking in an amusing way when she had an aim to
serve. 'I mean real deception: abstracting letters, and having others
written, and things like that, for which I have no doubt you could find
awful names in some of your awful books.'
The judge fixed his gray, penetrating eyes on the softly pretty,
exquisitely dressed young woman before him, vaguely wondering whose
interest she had at heart in this inquiry. 'These bright, pretty young
women have often a wonderfully altruistic vein in their natures,' he
reflected. Then, in a very lucid unpedantic way, he pointed out that if
people did things that had awful names in law-books, they might be
brought to account; but people were not supposed to marry because other
people abstracted letters or wrote sham ones. Marriage was a contract
between this man and this woman for certain ends, clearly set forth in
the Prayer-book and elsewhere and under certain conditions. If these
conditions were observed, no alleged deception on the part of anyone
else could, in the slightest, affect the contract.
'Well, after all, how beautifully simple and reasonable that is!' said
Laurette, with a glow of enthusiasm.
Even the term 'alleged deception' carried with it a kind of balm. It
made her reflect that not one scratch of her pen had been contained in
the letters that had suddenly changed the whole complexion of Stella's
life. She had erased, but she had not formed a single letter; and the
little note Mrs. Anson had written at her dictation was like eternity,
without beginning or end, without date or local habitation. After all,
what a bulwark to society the law was! Her spirits rose, and she felt
like an Eastern hero, as if she were destined to destroy Afrits.
A little afterwards, when in conversation with the Honourable Miss
Brendover, this lady said something of having spent the last winter in
Berlin, where the musical season had been very brilliant, it flashed
through Laurette's mind like an inspiration that Berlin was the very
city to which it would be safest for Ted and Stella to go in the first
instance. England would not be safe for awhile. Langdale would most
likely go on to Brussels before going there. Then he would get the
newspaper announcing the marriage, which she would send him the very day
after the event came off. Laurette had taken down the address he had
inclosed for Stella, which was that of his lawyer in London. Well,
after getting that newspaper, he would at once perceive there was
nothing to be done but bear his fate. He would not be likely to return
to Australia. He would, perhaps, drift about, travelling for awhile.
Now, France and Italy were the happy hunting-grounds of all travellers;
but Berlin--'My dear Milly, I wish you would tell my sister-in-law-elect
about the music in Berlin,' said Laurette. 'I fancy she thought of
going to Germany.'
'Oh, and then they will meet Talbot's cousins there--the Avenells! So
it will be quite nice and friendly for Mr. Ritchie in a foreign land.
He does not know German, I think?'
Before the evening was over, Stella had a long chat with Miss Brendover,
chiefly about the charms of winter in Berlin. At the same time Laurette
duly impressed Ted with the wisdom of going there direct if Stella
expressed any wish of the kind.
'I don't care a copper where Stella wants to go,' returned Ted.
'Whatever she wants to do, she shall.'
The subject somehow came up again as they drove home.
'I lost a waltz with you, Stella!' said Ted ruefully. 'What a lot you
and that old cousin of Talbot's had to say to each other!'
'Old?--she is charmingly young!' returned Stella. 'I know, because that
waltz of Strauss's--by the way, never ask me to dance to it--is one I
heard two hundred and fifty years ago. Oh, it was a strange, enchanted
sort of country--full of fairy stories, and I believed them all.'
Her cheeks were deeply flushed, and her eyes were shining with a
feverish light. Ted was always pleased when Stella was inspired with
something of her old gaiety, and yet there was something in the sound of
her voice that disturbed him.
'Did you tell Miss Brendover about this country, then? and was that what
kept you chatting so long?'
'Oh no--bits of it came trilling back in the music; but between I
listened to glowing accounts of wonderful Berlin concerts--eighty
trained musicians playing an accompaniment like one man, etc.'
'Shall we go to Berlin, Stella, and take Egypt and the other places on
the way back?'
'Happy thought!' cried Stella lightly. 'Charter a vessel direct, before
ten to-morrow morning.'
'No, but I am serious, Stella. The _Hindoo Fawn_ sails on the sixteenth
October.'
'Cannot we get away before then?' said Stella.
Ted's heart thumped wildly at the question.
'There is a French vessel----' he began slowly. But she held up her
hands.
'A French vessel--not for your life! There is some very good reason
somewhere--in the Book of Proverbs.'
'There is an Orient steamer on the ninth of October; but--but will your
mother consent to such haste?'
'Ah, that is your concern, Ted. You must explain everything when you
write. Mind, I take no responsibility beyond the usual fibs of the
marriage ceremony.'
Laurette was leaning back in a corner of the carriage, with closed eyes,
as if she heard nothing. No one could be more discreet and wary, and
less observant, where observation would have been an element of danger.
She roused up when they got home, and she sat rattling away to Stella
and Ted about all sorts of indifferent things.
'Did you see Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs' new poet, Stella--the young man with the
sombre expression and the long hair?'
'Is that one of the signs of a poet--not to go to the barber?' asked
Ted.
'Oh, besides that, you must write things--
'"What is life but a spectre of bale?
What is joy but a curse that is stale!"
That is one of the couplets Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs quotes in dusky corners
with a tremolo in her voice. I wonder why that little Mrs. Lee-Towers
makes a point of fastening on me on every available occasion of late?'
'Don't you approve of her, Laurette?' asked Stella, with a lurking
smile.
'Well, no. I think the way she flirts in public, using the last pattern
of young man she approves of like a fan, to keep her husband out of
sight, is a little too bare-faced. And then she seems to have them to
suit her style of dress. When she is in pale heliotrope velvet, it is
that large young idiot with a lisp and flaxen hair. But he seems to be
playing truant lately. It must really be a trying moment, when the
young man who seemed to have been sent by Heaven into the world to hold
your bouquet sympathetically begins to get out of your way.'
'What the deuce does her husband allow it for?--what is he like?' said
Ted, who was picking up leaves that had fallen from Stella's nosegay of
blush roses, and wondering why Larry did not find it necessary to go to
the nursery or somewhere. He had not been a moment alone with Stella
since their engagement.
'Oh, don't you know him by sight? He is rather a cadaverous-looking
man, with six or seven mouse-coloured hairs on his chin. He looks as if
he could ride in the air if he had the proper sort of broomstick. He
never opens his lips, unless you make a mistake about figures. No, he
isn't amusing; but nothing of that kind excuses a woman in such conduct.
You may congratulate yourself, my dear Ted----'
Stella rose with a bored expression. 'Good-night, _mes amis_,' she
said, kissing the tips of her gloved hand to both, and gliding out of
the room before Ted could reach the door--a proceeding which need hardly
be characterized as unsatisfactory to Ritchie.
'By Jove! I shall never be sure of Stella till we're safely and
substantially married,' he said, looking after her with knitted brows.
'True; therefore let it be on the sixth of October, and sail on the
sixteenth,' said Laurette decisively. 'You will reach Berlin before the
end of November. To be done in that time? Certainly--after a courtship
of five years.'
'It's more like ten,' broke in Ted; 'and we were engaged once before.'
'Yes, allude to that. No one can be surprised at your determination to
make sure of the young lady now.'
'Allude to it? I don't know how to allude to things. I shall simply
put it down in black and white. By the way, Larry, where is Tareling?'
Laurette murmured something in reply which was not audible; but as she
offered no explanation, this did not much signify.
'He did his part very well,' said Ted, taking out his cigar-case
preparatory to retiring. 'But do you suppose anyone would ever carry on
in that way in real life--hocussing people and stealing letters?'
'Oh, people must put something into plays,' said Laurette
contemptuously. As a matter of fact, her own little performance in that
line had been infinitely superior, and she may have felt something of
the scorn of a finished artist for a pretentious amateur. What did not
occur to her was the irony which underlay her discussion of such a
theme.