and withal profoundly grateful that she was freed from the haunting fear
of being forced to retire to the wilds of the Australian Bush, instead
of shining in her proper orbit. She remembered the learned judge's
words with a fresh glow of gratitude, and recalled with solemn approval
a maxim she had somewhere heard or read, that we can benefit others in
no surer way than by making the best of our own lives. How true this
was as applied to herself! The best use she could make of her life was
certainly to maintain her position in Melbourne society until she might
perhaps be called on to take her place among the titled aristocracy of
England. And in her efforts to keep this position she was securing
Ted's happiness, protecting Stella from the danger of entanglement with
a married man, and, most important of all, in a way to thwart the wild
folly of her husband and the father of her children. Being in a very
wakeful, active-minded mood, she wrote several letters to members of the
Courtland family. She begged pardon in a pretty, winning way for siding
wholly with Stella and Ted in the arrangement of being married in time
to leave by the sixteenth of October. This was partly because of
business arrangements which compelled Ted to leave by that date, partly
because, after all that had passed, prompt action was best. She was
taking the liberty of seeing to Stella's trousseau so as to save time:
not that it would be a very extensive affair; why should it? She had so
many pretty dresses, and she was going to the great centres of fashion,
etc., etc.
*CHAPTER XLII.*
Breakfast was late next morning at Monico Lodge, and the master of the
house did not make his appearance. There were times when he simply
haunted the place--being quite the closest approximation to a ghost the
neighbourhood could produce. It might, however, be urged by the
charitably inclined that his notions of day and night had been seriously
upset by having spent most of his life at the antipodes--being
thirty-one years of age when he left England six years previously.
'I wrote my letter to your mother this morning, Stella--I want you just
to look over it,' said Ted, as they rose from the table.
Laurette was deep in arrangements for her ball, and left the young
people to themselves in a little morning apartment off the
breakfast-room.
'And mind, Stella, directly after lunch we must go to see about your
dresses,' she said--an announcement which Stella received with
incredulous amazement.
'Stella, have you got a conscience?' asked Ted, as she ensconced herself
in an armchair behind a davenport by the window.
'Yes, occasionally; but it's good to let sleeping dogs lie,' said
Stella; and then, seeing Ted's aggrieved face, she held out her hand to
him. 'You may kiss the little finger, Ted, who was a traitor on your
side when there wasn't a cloud in the sky.'
'But sooner or later, you know, Stella----'
'Ah, later then! Now, what have you written?'
'"MY DEAR MRS. COURTLAND,
'"You will be glad to hear that Stella and I are fast engaged once more,
and with your kind consent we must be married on the fifth of next
month, so as to set sail for Europe on the sixteenth."'
'You see, Stella, I cannot make it any sooner,' said Ted, with a twinkle
in his eyes--his line being to keep Stella literally to her mood of last
night--'that is, as you object to the French line. There is an extra
boat to sail on the eighth.'
She sat staring at him as if she did not hear him. She was following in
the wake of a ship that went on its remorseless way day and night,
speeding every hour nearer to its goal. Did it bear hearts that beat
joyfully at the thought?
'I do not believe you hear what I say, Stella?'
'Oh yes, I do. What makes you think my mother will be glad for me to
leave her?'
'I don't; a fellow must say something. But about the French boat?'
'Do not speak of that line. There was only one little Christian boat
among them all, and it went down in a frightful storm in mid-ocean--a
long way off. But still at times I hear the cries of the drowning; and
there is a woman's face. She does not sink, but she has lost
everything!'
'Stella, if you want to spin a yarn as you used to, do tell a jollier
one than that thing. Anyone would think you saw it, and your eyes are
getting larger than ever.'
She got up and looked at herself in a little plush-framed mirror near
her.
He followed her, and put his arms round her.
'For God's sake, don't!' she cried, starting back as if she were
stabbed. And then the next moment she turned on herself with fierce
disdain.
She, whose whole frame had thrilled with rapture at the touch of lips
whose kisses were forsworn, what right had she to repulse the honest
love of a man who had been faithful to her from boyhood, to whom she had
promised all her future life?
'Forgive me, Ted,' she said humbly; 'but I am nervous lately, and you
took me by surprise.' She stroked his hand, and he flushed hotly under
the touch.
'All right, Stella. Now let's go on with this letter: "This hurry is
partly because of business arrangements, and also because, being engaged
before, and nothing came of it, it's better to avoid accidents. As for
me, I have waited so long, and felt often so frightfully down on my
luck, I would much sooner the wedding were to-morrow than any other day.
You have always been so kind to me, I'm sure you won't say a word
against this plan, for I know Stella couldn't bear to do anything
against your wishes. It would be only foolish sort of jawing for me to
say how much I love Stella. Long before I should be thinking of such
things I made up my mind she should be my wife. Many a day since I
thought this would never be. But it has come all right now. So hoping
you will concur in the above,
"I am, dear Mrs. Courtland,
"Yours most respectfully,
"EDWARD RITCHIE.
"P.S.--As Stella can have everything she wants in Paris or elsewhere, it
would be foolish for her to lay in a big stock of clothes. The dress
she has on now would be the nicest of all for her to be married in. She
will have a thousand a year for frills and things, and as much more as
she likes. So it would be foolery for her to have an army of trunks full
of things she can get where we are going."--How will that do, Stella?'
'Oh, very well, Ted; but are you sure that we are both awake? On the
fifth of next month?'
'Yes, fourteen long days. It's rather a shame, but I suppose we can't
fix it earlier? You won't go back on the date, Stella? After all, you
know, your mother has had you far longer than she should, if you hadn't
gone back on the first racket. Now you write and back me up. You see,
Cuth and Dora will be going back with you, and Tom engaged, and Allie
soon to be married: they won't miss you, Stella. It's not as though
your mother were a duck with one gosling.'
'Oh, Ted, what names!' and then Stella smiled.
'Go on, Stella; write your letter. I want to post it, and then take you
for a ride. Look at that young calf of a Dustiefoot, with his snout
against the window looking at you. It floors me how he finds out so
soon the room you are in.'
'I need not write a separate letter. There is room on this half-sheet
of yours.'
Stella took up a pen and wrote hastily.
'DEAREST MOTHER, AND ALL OF YOU,
'Do not be too much taken by surprise. We had better keep to the time
named by Ted, as we must get away on the sixteenth. We shall escape all
the Apostle spoons and things every household should be without. I
shall be married in a travelling-dress; and I really don't see what I
want with any more things, I have been so extravagant this last year;
and Tom has given me so many loans. I suppose he will throw an old shoe
for good luck, but will it be necessary, when one has a thousand a year
for frills? I kiss you all three times on the mouth.
'Your loving
'STELLA.'
'Don't you ever stop to think what you are going to say, Stella?'
'Not when I write to say that we are to be married in fourteen days.'
Ted read the lines Stella had written, and his face gleamed with joy.
'Oh, that is splendid!' he cried; 'but should you put that in about the
thousand a year? Shouldn't it be--"Will it be necessary, when we love
each other so much?"'
'It is indifferent. One of the advantages of so much social
superstition is that a good many things are taken for granted.'
Ted, notwithstanding, made the correction in his uncial, squarely
legible writing. Then he dwelt on the last sentence, and looked
reproachfully into the girl's face.
'You kiss everyone at Fairacre three times on the mouth, but you don't
kiss me once--and in two weeks you leave every man jack of them for my
sake. Stella, do you call it decent, or according to God's holy
ordinance, as it says in the Prayer-book?'
He bent over her, and she turned her cheek to him. But he took her in
his arms and covered her face with burning kisses. She turned deadly
pale and trembled, but remained as passive as if she had been drugged.
Then after a little she fought down the crowding thoughts that made the
present give place to what had been. Memory, like a rebel, betrayed her
to a surging host of recollections that seemed to stamp this moment with
a seal of infamy. But the keen pangs of wounded pride, of hopeless
love, and jealousy, came to her aid. She conquered her shrinking shame,
her instinctive revolt--reminding herself that it was less humiliating
to be kissed by unloved lips than by those that were so dear to her.
'Tell me, Stella, you are not sorry you gave me back your promise again
yesterday,' said Ted in a low voice.
'Sorry? Oh no--I am glad,' she replied, feeling for the time her words
were true--so fiercely did she seek to trample out that smouldering
jealousy which was ever ready to leap into consuming flame. He was more
than content with the answer. Yet, after she disengaged herself from
his arms, he tested her tardy, passionately longed-for submission a
little farther.
'Stella, come and kiss me on the mouth three times,' he said, in a
tremulous voice.
Almost to her own astonishment she obeyed. Yes, it was part of the
bargain. It made this incredible transaction all the more irrevocable.
It made those days she would give her right hand to sink in utter
oblivion more remote--more impossible. From that day she did not even
in thought go back from her approaching marriage. It was as though she
had drunk of some opiate that deadened her moral nature. She seemed to
escape all fears, all responsibility, and the envenomed darts of memory.
She was so much occupied during the day, she danced so much at night,
she was so bent on being amused all the time, that none but the closest
observer would have doubted the real source of this abandonment to
gaiety.
Once or twice Ted, in a clumsy but honest way, tried to speak seriously
of his own felt unworthiness, being misled by the statement Laurette had
once made as to Stella's suspicion of his failure in conduct. But
Stella treated these attempts like jugglers' plates--things to spin in
the air, but not to let them down with a crash.
'Have you any wives hidden away, Ted?' she asked; arching her brows at
him.
'Oh, come, Stella, you know very well you shouldn't talk in that way.'
It was a fact that at this time her irresponsible levity sometimes
wounded Ted's moral sense--chiefly because she was so unlike her former
self.
'Shouldn't I? Let me assure you people's wives do turn up when they
ought to be dead. But you haven't got one at all, it seems. No doubt
there was a time when you should have married some, but you didn't--so
it is all right. Isn't it beautifully simple?'
It was unpardonable, and Ted, who felt in a dumb way that she was his
higher conscience, began to think that after all he had no need to be so
remorseful when he thought over the curious difference presented by the
spotless record of Stella's life and his own. He supposed women of
sense always understood that things were so, though, of course, a line
must be drawn somewhere.
Stella was, in truth, passing through that phase of deterioration in
which some men gamble and drink deep so as to escape from themselves.
She succeeded by ignoring all her better aspirations, all the higher
capacities of her mind, in drowning thought, and numbing her sense of
what was right to a strange degree. She had a strong will, and the
unusual mental discipline through which she had passed early in life had
given her a rare power of controlling her thoughts. She exercised both
faculties to the utmost degree in casting from her memory the immediate
past. But this was so woven into the deepest fibres of her being that
to accomplish this object was to become, to a certain degree, morally
callous. It was one of those remedies infinitely more injurious to the
soul than the original disease.
Laurette was amazed at the change which had come over Stella. She was,
at the same time, a little afraid of the element of inconsequence bound
up with this alteration. It was all very well as long as nothing in
particular happened, but everyone knows that life is full of accidents.
It is not easy for women to deceive one another. This is one reason why
their strictures on each other often strike men as being malicious.
Laurette had a very definite idea that her future sister-in-law was
changed--not because she had grown indifferent to Langdale, but because
she cared too much. The last night of Stella's stay in Melbourne they
had been at a Government House ball, and on their return they sat
chatting for some little time.
'I suppose you will really live very little at Strathhaye, Stella, when
you return,' said Laurette, who was an adept at leading up to what she
wanted to say by beginning a long way off.
'I have hardly considered the matter,' replied Stella, playing with the
brilliant diamond hoop which was her engagement-ring.
'You take so kindly to Melbourne life now; and I must say you are likely
to be rather spoiled. You will be very popular. What story of yours
sent the old Marchioness Lismore into such roars of laughter?'
'Oh, a rather hideous anecdote about an old aboriginal, who wanted to be
baptized while he carried the remains of an enemy in his hair till he
should kill the next-of-kin as well. The old dame was talking quite
seriously about the possibility of Christianizing our natives, and I
felt bound to support her views.'
'Well, she laughed like a regiment--and what a wig she wears, to be
sure! The more one reads the society papers and sees of the English
aristocracy, the less one is impressed by them. Considering all it
takes to keep them going, they should be a little more different from
the common herd. I suppose the Marchioness invited you to visit them
when you go to England?'
'Yes; but I remembered the fate of your friends the Jorans, and I did
not commit myself. Besides, I don't want to go to England much now.'
'But of course you will go with Ted to see Uncle Matthew--and then there
are your own friends and relations.'
'I don't know. Claude's wife declares that family circles there get
upon one's nerves dreadfully. That, at any rate, is one striking
advantage of an aristocracy. They are not formal, and squeezy, and
peering timorously at other people to see how they behave.'
'How long do you think you'll be away?'
'Laurette, don't turn into a catechism without the answers. As long as
it is quite amusing.'
'You have decided upon Berlin for the winter?'
'Oh yes; we go direct there from Brindisi.'
'Well, Stella, you are certainly a very fortunate girl--nearly as
fortunate as Ted.'
'Call no man fortunate till he is dead, and no woman till she is
buried.'
'Oh, of course, I don't at all mean to say that, like everyone else, you
won't have your own trials. Men are pretty much alike in many ways. A
girl may marry the greatest milksop alive, but after all she is bound to
find herself hopelessly behind the scenes.'
'Don't you think, Larry, you might be a little more entertaining? You
remind one a little of a vivisector, who for certain experiments makes a
lesion in the neck of a guinea-pig, and then pinches its nose to throw
it into convulsions. I don't mind so much about my neck, but I am
rather sensitive about my nose.'
'Well, Stella dear, you must forgive something to the weakness of a
loving sister. I can't help seeing that lately you are more brilliant
and somehow harder. In the midst of my joy on Ted's account, I
sometimes ask myself, "Does Stella really love him enough? Will she be
able to overlook his faults, and help him, and lead him?"'
'Oh, Laurette, what have you been reading?' cried Stella, and she
laughed outright, looking on with an animated face, as though she were
witnessing a comedy.
But not a muscle of Laurette's face moved, either in mirth or anger.
'Ah, my dear, when you have my maturity of experience as a wife and
mother, you will better understand my anxieties. If I thought that you
did not really love Ted, I would say to you, even now, "Pause before it
is too late!"'
It was inexpressibly comic. Only the play of daily life is often marred
by the fact that we generally see--not the whole gem, but merely one or
two facets. Yet, on the other hand, to see comedy in its more intimate
bearings, as it affects ourselves, might frequently mean that all sense
of fun would be merged in that of tragic irony.
Stella sat with such undisguised amusement on her face, waiting for this
to go on, that Laurette instantly took up a fresh cue.
'But of course it is only my fears. And what makes it so very safe for
you, is having been friends ever since you were babies, I may say. But
it's just one of the things we women have to face--to take the world as
we find it. To do that in married life, one must start with a good
stock of affection. Where should I have been without it? We soon
discover that our fairy tales and imaginations have been raised far
enough away from reality. Many people were of opinion that if your
sister Esther, for instance, had not been so horrified and scornful when
she found Raymond went a little into queer society--my dear, why do you
stare so? I mean among the _peches a quinze sous_; now that you are to
be married, one may mention speckled fruit before you--affairs between
them might have turned out differently. I dare say she forgave him at
intervals; but if a man must forgive his brother seventy times seven,
how often must a woman forgive her husband? It's not put in the Bible,
partly, I think, because there is not enough arithmetic going to make it
up. And it's not only forgiving, but making light of it in a way. To
do that, one must really enjoy one's self--and that's what you have the
power of doing. You have to come down a cropper or two in your ideals,
but you will soon find that a young married woman in a good position,
with plenty of money and some brains, has more advantages, is more
perfectly independent, than any other creature in the world. You will
get on with all sorts of people. You can have a _salon_ if you try, and
succeed better than poor Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs. If no one else says smart
things, you will yourself. And then, of course, you will be sure to
have enemies, and they are often far more useful in amusing one than any
friends.... What could be more diverting than to watch people come to
you, their faces covered with smiles, their hearts on their lips, so to
speak, as they stretch out their hands to you? ... And yet you know all
the time they never say a true word of you behind your back, unless you
are ugly or stupid.... I expect you will bring back heaps of lovely
things; and of course you will go to Worth as you are coming home. Of
course, too, you will go to visit the Lillimore family. Talbot said the
other day his mother would be perfectly charmed to know you. There are
three unmarried sisters--unfortunately none of them under thirty-three,
and none of them very sweet-tempered; but how can you wonder? They are
very poor, and their letters are always like Jeremiah's
scroll--tenantless lands and mortgages.
'If ever Talbot succeeds to the title, I shall be at my wits' ends; for
what would be the use of being swallowed up in London society, and
passing your time scheming how to make ends meet, etc.? They do not
even give me any of those little details one longs for so. They write
sometimes about the "sausage people," and the "screw-makers," and the
"Jew money-lenders," meaning those who have made their money by these
articles. But, after all, what is the good of trying to throw names at
people about the way their money has been made? Land is going down and
down in England. They can't grow wool much, nor wine, nor cotton, and
the farmers are going to places where they can make more money, and
become gentry on their own account. And there's no class in all the
world that need money so constantly in large sums as an aristocracy.
They want to be always well amused, and well fed, and well dressed--the
dearest things in all the world--and, on top of it all, to do no work,
which is dearer than all the rest put together--to be, in fact, almond
tumblers, whose beaks are so soft they must be fed out of a spoon, which
is no doubt very genteel, as long as you can get people to feed you.
But the Middle Ages are long over. Why, even here, in a properly
democratic country, how soon everyone conspires to make you feel your
poverty! I have often thought if one continued hopelessly poor all
one's life, one would have to take to the love of God--there would be
nothing else left.'
'Surely you are not threatened with such destitution, Larry?' said
Stella, smiling. 'Why, Ted has more money than he knows what to do
with; he must give you some.'
'My dear, that is very sweet and good of you! but you know how absurdly
awkward one feels about taking money; and, of course, our poverty, after
all, is comparative. It consists largely in having to fall back on
second-rate tradespeople--not but what that is a bitter cross in itself:
they are more flattered by your patronage, but they charge nearly as
much; indeed, they leave out nothing but the style--like Surah, Muslin,
and Company, who descend to the paltriest details if you have a dress
made at their establishment--even putting the eyelet-holes down as an
extra--and then put in sundries one pound fifteen shillings. And there
is hardly anything in life more tiresome than a dressmaker who is not
quite _chic_. Her fingers are always cold, and she _will_ touch your
skin, and stick pins in you, and hold things in her mouth, and say in a
gushing way, "Yes, madam, it will be a most be-au-ti-ful fit," and then
take a cheerful snip out of your arms with her scissors. Stella, you
will never know anything of these small miseries.... Well, I wish it
were possible for me to come to your wedding; but Talbot cannot leave
town, as I said, and I must not go without him. But you are to stay
with us the few days you are in Melbourne before leaving. What a
charming idea that is of Ted's, to drive you in his new drag
four-in-hand from Adelaide to Strathhaye!'
Laurette found everything in Stella's lot all the more charming just
then by reason of Ted's action in presenting her only that morning with
a cheque for two thousand pounds.
*CHAPTER XLIII.*
It was the evening before Stella's wedding-day. She had returned, in
company with her brother Cuthbert and his _fiancee_, and their presence
and the interest of their new relationship shielded her from undivided
attention. A few days afterwards came Mrs. Wallerton, with her
children. Everyone knows how a family reunion serves to minimize the
concentration of attention on any one grown-up individual of the circle.
It is a small republic, in which, after the manner of limited
monarchies, those who reign do not rule. Claude Hector, aged eight
months, being the youngest member, and till then a complete stranger to
his older relatives, was a great centre of attraction.
Then Dora, with her pretty, affectionate little ways, drew great
attention. If anyone sang or played, Dora always begged for one more
song or a little more music. If one spoke a little hoarsely, she never
forgot to inquire next morning, with the deepest concern, after the
afflicted throat. She was always gliding about, to put a footstool
under someone's feet or to recover a straying newspaper or a dropped
needle. Then, when anyone spoke, she always listened with the most
reverential attention. When Cuthbert spoke, she would often murmur one
of his sentences over to herself, as if better to impress it on her
memory. She was, in fact, what is known in England as a very sweet girl.
In Australia, unfortunately, the species is so rare that no specific
name has had to be invented. Dora was to stay at Fairacre for a month
after the wedding, and Felix Harrison could not refrain from saying to
Allie that the change from Stella to Dora was rather soothing.