with an indefinable suspicion in his eyes.
'The matter with Stella?' she echoed, with a little, quick throb of
terror, which she kept well in hand, however. 'Nothing that I know
of--except that she has too many diamond sprays and necklaces and
precious stones, and a husband who adores her.'
'Well, I don't know, but I wouldn't mind laying a thousand to one that
there was some sort of deception at the root of this marriage. It's not
a month since she came here from Lullaboolagana looking like a rose in
June.'
'In December you mean, dear. Our roses are very shabby in June; and I
am sure Stella will never be in that condition. Oh, about the theatre.
You had better book three seats in the dress-circle for us two and John
Morton. Stella won't come, and of course Ted will not either. Have you
been speaking to her--just now, I mean?'
'No; I should say she is hardly fit to speak to anyone--excess of joy in
the possession of Ted and so many diamonds, I suppose.'
Laurette felt anxious, but she avoided the drawing-room for another
hour. When she went in she found Stella looking very pale and
exhausted, but composed. She had raised one of the blinds, and sat
embroidering near the bay-window. There was something in the expression
of her face that touched Laurette with a sudden, sharp thrill of
compassion. It was no longer hard and listless; all the cold scorn had
gone out of it; and in place of these there was an indescribable wistful
sadness--her eyelids were dark and slightly swollen, and when she looked
up one saw that her beautiful radiant eyes had grown heavy and dim. But
the only moral and politic course when a bride looks like this is to say
nothing.
'Oh, what have we here?' said Laurette, in a half-playful way, holding
up the little parcel Ted had left. 'Now, if you are not dying to see
this, I am; and may I, therefore, open it for you?' she continued.
Stella at once assented. It was a case containing an exquisitely-wrought
bracelet, set with extraordinarily large opals--one that Stella happened
to notice in a jeweller's window when she accompanied Ted into Collins
Street after reaching Melbourne on the previous afternoon.
'They are really too lovely,' said Laurette, holding them up so that
they caught the light and threw it back in a sheaf of quivering
rainbow-rays, but with an eerie flame not to be found in a rainbow.
'I shall be afraid to admire anything after this, except the sun and
trees,' said Stella, with a tremulous little smile. 'It is so kind of
Ted!'--there was a little quiver in her voice, and Laurette suddenly
rose and kissed her sister-in-law.
'You are not well, Stella; the weather is so atrocious; do lie down and
let me bathe your head.'
But Stella, thanking her, declared there was not much amiss. She would
have been glad to lie down, but she felt a stupor of moral and physical
exhaustion creeping over her, and feared to give way to it--feared that
the purpose she had formed of making a full confession to her husband
might slip from her when he returned if she did not resist this
benumbing lassitude.
In the afternoon there were callers, and Stella went to her own room to
write letters home. The effort seemed to use up all her energies. But
she dressed and sat at dinner with the rest, though eating was a mere
farce with her. She talked for some little time with Mr. Morton--a tall,
burly man, with dark curly hair and a sun-bronzed face, but with a voice
and manners as gentle as a woman's. She wondered a little that Ted did
not come; but when Laurette wished to stay at home with her, and forego
the theatre, Stella insisted on being left alone.
'It will not be long before Ted comes,' she said. 'I will rest till
then.'
Laurette made her lie down on the sofa in the drawing-room before she
went away. But soon after being left alone Stella went into the
breakfast-room, which was beyond the dining-room, and communicated with
it by folding doors.
Here she was in darkness, except for the light that came in from the
dining-room. The gas seemed to beat upon her tired eyes with such
wearying brilliance she found the change to the unlighted room very
grateful. She opened the window of this little room, and lay opposite
to it on the couch, looking out at the starlit sky. At every sound she
heard her heart seemed to beat in her ears. The moment Ted came in she
must tell him--she must not give herself time to reflect and draw back.
She knew it would hurt him, as well as herself, horribly; and yet she
had confidence in him that he would not be harsh or ungenerous. He
would help her--he would understand. Already, with all her agitation,
she felt something of the relief of being freed from the concealment
which his own loyalty made all the more intolerable.
Gradually her thoughts became confused--the light of the stars was
dimmed with the pale glory of a young moon; the wind, which had been
high all day, still rose into fitful gusts, swaying the scanty branches
of a Judas-tree that grew near the window hither and thither. She was
out in the Fairacre garden--and yet she was looking into Laurette's
house, and she saw a form she knew well approaching it. She heard him
asking for her, and then gradually all floated from her view. Then
there came a troubled dream in which she heard heavy, uncertain
footsteps--they sounded near her, and yet they were not mixed up with
any story. She was conscious of the thought that these stumbling sounds
were real, not part of a dream--and yet she did not wake up.
She had no conception how long she had slept when she became conscious
of a low murmur of voices. No, it was not a dream. The moonlight had
faded, for the moon was setting. She rose slowly--her temples were
throbbing. One leaf of the double folding-doors between the little
apartment and the dining-room was half ajar. The murmur of voices
resolved itself into words. It was Laurette who spoke.
'Stella is in her own room; she must not know.'
'What has happened?' cried Stella, gliding quickly into the dining-room.
Laurette, in a dark-crimson low-necked silk, as she had returned from
the theatre, was standing by the table in the centre of the room.
Tareling and Morton were near her, but Ted was not there. The quick
look of consternation on all three faces as she entered gave Stella a
sickening sensation of fear.
Then, before any could speak, she saw why they looked so strangely. One
lay on the couch at the further end of the room breathing heavily, but
pale and still. It was Ted; and with a low cry Stella knelt down by
him.
'Oh, Ted, Ted, you are hurt!--you do not hear me!' She held his
hands--they were cold, and his eyes were not quite closed; but there was
no sign of awakening. 'My God, what has happened? He is unconscious!'
she cried.
The men looked at her in a strange way, but did not answer.
'No, dear, he is not badly hurt,' said Laurette. She was very white,
and her hands trembled as she tried to raise Stella.
'How has he been hurt? You must tell me!' she cried, turning to
Tareling and Morton.
Laurette made despairing gestures to them as she stood behind Stella
that they should leave the room. But they were so confused that they
did not perceive this, or, if they did, failed to understand the drift
of Laurette's motions.
'It is not dangerous, Stella,' said Tareling in a low voice, taking her
hand in both his.
'Did the doctor say so?' cried Stella. 'Has he gone away? I must see
him for myself. Has he been long unconscious?'
'No--not very,' said Laurette.
'But what did the doctor say? What caused this?'
'Stella, it is not dangerous. You may believe Talbot--he knows,' said
Laurette desperately. If only these stupid men were out of the way, she
felt sure she could invent an illness, or at any rate make up a
fictitious account of the doctor's opinion.
'Not dangerous!--to lie like this!' She knelt down again, and held
Ted's hands, and whispered his name softly two or three times; but there
was not a tremor of consciousness.
The perspiration stood on John Morton's forehead in great drops.
'My dear young lady----' he said, placing his hand kindly on Stella's
shoulder. But then utterance failed him.
'Ah, you are deceiving me, you are--I can see it--you look at each other
so strangely! Talbot,' she said, going up to her brother-in-law, 'you
must tell me the whole truth. It is no use keeping it from me. Tell me
what the doctor said?'
'The doctor----' began Tareling. 'The fact is, Stella, we--there is--in
an attack like this--well, medical attendance is not usual; we--most men
know what ought to be done; it is--er--a form of exhaustion.'
A conviction had seized Stella that Ted must have been dangerously hurt,
and that all these blundering equivocations were well-merited efforts to
break the news gently to her.
'Do you mean that you have not called in a doctor at all?' she said,
looking from Morton to Tareling, and back again at Morton.
He, poor man! could do nothing but wipe his face, and crush his
handkerchief into a minute compass.
'Stella dear, you may believe Talbot,' said Laurette once more.
'Everything has been done that is necessary. Ted will be all right when
he wakes up a few hours later.'
'Wakes up?' repeated Stella, looking at the group around her with a
sharp thrill of ill-defined terror. She saw that Morton was somehow the
one most keenly affected. Laurette tried to cajole her. Talbot was
infinitely gentle in his manner, yet confused as she had never seen him
before; but John Morton's face was a picture of distress and yearning
pity.
Going up to him, Stella laid her hand on his arm, and said in a firm
voice:
'Mr. Morton, I insist upon knowing the truth. There is something you
keep back from me. Tell me in one word, is Ted badly hurt? if not,
what ails him? You know; I am sure you do.'
'He is not badly hurt; in one way, this is not serious.'
'In one way,' sha gasped, with parching lips--'in what way is such
protracted unconsciousness not serious?'
Morton had for some years worked a pearling boat off the unknown
northern coasts of Western Australia, and had been a spectator and an
actor in many wild scenes; but never had he known so acutely miserable a
quarter of an hour as the present.
'Well,' he said slowly, thus driven to bay, 'perhaps it is serious in
every way, only not as you think. You know the day has been very warm.'
'And the sun,' put in Laurette, 'often affects people without a regular
sunstroke.'
But Stella did not even notice her. A glimmering suspicion had dawned
on her. Talbot glided out of the room.
'Tell me the truth,' said Stella in a husky voice, still keeping her
hand on Morton's arm.
'I thought you knew something of this weakness of Ted's; that he
sometimes--not often--forgets himself; takes a little more stimulant
than is good for him.'
A low moaning cry escaped from Stella; and she trembled convulsively as
if in an ague-fit. They tried to draw her away, but she would not go.
She stood as if spell-bound, white and horror-stricken, looking at Ted's
insensible form and ghastly unmeaning face.
*CHAPTER XLV.*
Stella could never recall how the rest of the night passed. She had
vague recollections of sitting as if turned to stone, of hearing voices,
of speaking herself now and then, of pacing at intervals up and down the
room like some creature of the woods that had been suddenly trapped.
But look what way she would, Ted's vacant face met her eyes. She could
hardly be said to suffer acutely. She was rather in a waking trance, in
which the events of the past month rose up before her like a curious
panorama, of which she was merely a spectator. Once or twice she found
herself planning a secret journey--supping away into unknown haunts of
the desert where she might escape from these endless stratagems that
fate was practising upon her. But no coherent plan underlay these vague
flights. They belonged rather to those imaginative variations which we
sometimes make in a story that is distasteful.
At daybreak Ritchie showed signs of returning consciousness. Not till
then could Stella be prevailed on to leave the room. Laurette pleaded
with her to lie down and rest, but in vain.
'No one knows of this but ourselves,' she said. 'When we got home from
the theatre we found Ted rather confused. He had taken a little raw
brandy to steady his nerves, and that, of course, was a fatal mistake.
It was an unseasonably hot day, and no doubt he had taken some "long
drinks" previously.'
Stella looked at her strangely, but said not a word in reply. She
bathed and changed her dress, and went out into the little garden at
Monico Lodge and looked at the sun rising with eyes that saw nothing.
Her emotion and resolutions of the previous day rose up before her in so
mocking and sardonic a light.
After a little time she was joined by John Morton. He, too, had slept
but little.
'Stella, will you let me speak to you as if you were a sister?' he said,
taking her hand in his. 'You must not think that this is habitual with
Ted. It is only a couple of years since he began to forget himself now
and then--when he is mixed up with these fast turf people. I asked him
a few weeks before he was married whether you knew of this--tendency.
He said Laurette told him you had heard something. This is the first
time such a thing has happened since he was in the Retreat.'
'The Retreat? What Retreat?
'You remember, when Ted was at home about Christmas-time, you went to a
dinner-party at his father's house?'
'Ah, I remember!' cried Stella, and all the details of that event, and
Ted's altered demeanour when he came to bid her farewell, rushed back on
her mind.
'Yes; he told me all about it. There is a private Retreat in the
western district of Victoria, and Ted, in his disgust at finding that
even the prospect of meeting you did not serve to keep him straight,
went there for nearly six months. It is only when he is with
others--never when he is alone--and a little tells on him. I am certain
he will keep straight after this. I know it must vex you terribly; but,
Stella, you must not be too angry. Ted sent me to ask you to see him.
He is more unhappy than words can tell.'
Stella went slowly into the house. Laurette met her in the hall, and
led her into the breakfast-room, where Ted stood pallid and miserable,
leaning against the mantelpiece. Laurette would have left them, but
Stella called her back. There was something so cold and unmoved in her
face and voice that Ted's heart sank, if possible, more than before; but
his range of expression was limited.
'I know I have been a thundering jackass, Stella,' he said in a husky
voice. 'I don't know how to ask you to forgive me.'
'Do you suppose I do not?' she said in a level voice.
'Don't say you forgive me when you look like that, Stella,' said Ted.
'I know you have a right to be angry.'
'But I am not, any more than if you had small-pox or typhoid--only if it
were a merely physical malady you would soon recover. But what hope is
there for a vice that wrecks the will so completely--a vice that
overcomes a man till he lies sunk below the level of the brutes?'
The words were harsh, yet what added curiously to their force was the
quiet, passionless tone in which they were uttered, and the involuntary
shudder which shook Stella from head to foot as she spoke.
Ritchie flushed crimson, and for a little he did not speak.
'Do you mean,' he said at last very slowly, 'that I am not to be blamed
for this? Because, if you do, you are very much mistaken. I am to
blame most damnably, and I have been worse than an idiot; and I say
this--if it ever happens again----'
'Why did you say I knew something of this?' said Stella, suddenly
turning to Laurette without making any reply to her husband's
affirmations.
'Well, I made sure you did by your manner, and that long talk we had
before you went to Lull,' said Laurette composedly, meeting her
brother's doubting scrutiny without flinching.
Stella put up her hands to her temples, struggling to recollect what the
long talk was. And then Laurette, marshalling her forces, went on with
calm incisiveness:
'You have seen very little of the world yet, Stella. You have been
dreaming over romances, and poetry, and foolish scientific books, and
they make you feel as if you knew a great deal. You have several
brothers, and are intimate with a good many of their friends. You never
saw any of them the worse for drink, so you conclude they never in their
lives fell fast asleep with their riding-boots on. That is a little
discovery which is generally reserved for the sacred privacy of married
life. Take my word for it, there are very few families without one or
more in the same boat with Ted. Only, unfortunately, many have no power
of pulling themselves up as he has. Now, Stella, let me advise you to
rest for some hours. You know this is your last day before sailing----'
Stella, who stood gazing out of the window most of the time while
Laurette spoke, upon this turned, and looking at Ted without any trace
of emotion in her voice, said slowly:
'It is impossible that I should live with you as your wife. Nothing can
alter my determination in that;' and before Ted could say anything in
reply she left the room.
He stood for a minute or two as if stunned, and then walked in an
aimless way to the window, without saying a word. But after a little he
was seized with a fit of dizziness, and sank half fainting on a chair
that stood near. Laurette insisted upon his going to bed, and installed
herself as his nurse.
This proved to be an eventful day in Laurette's life. The English mail,
which arrived that morning by the express train from Adelaide, brought,
among other letters, one from his father to Tareling, with the
announcement that his eldest brother Cecil had suddenly been stricken
down with a stroke of paralysis, and that the physicians held out no
hope of his ultimate recovery, though there was no immediate prospect of
death. Lord Harewood had been ten years married, and his family
consisted of two daughters, the youngest seven years of age. The Earl
of Lillimore was seventy-six, and frail for his years, and Talbot was
the second son.
In the first moments after receiving this intelligence, Laurette was
conscious only of a great and solemn thankfulness. Only for her
undaunted efforts, Talbot, who might after this at any moment be called
in the kind ordinance of Providence to take his place among the peers of
Great Britain, would now be ploughing the main in the society of a
disreputable actress! The next moment she was more than ever alive to
the necessity of taking instant action, lest Stella should, in her
unreasonable caprice, decide not to go abroad. In another fortnight at
the most there would be a letter from Langdale, posted at Mauritius. If
Stella remained in Australia, Laurette could do nothing to prevent her
receiving this or any subsequent letter. Whereas, in her absence,
she--Laurette--would speedily write a note to Mrs. Courtland, asking
that any letters which came from abroad might be forwarded to
her--Laurette--in obedience to Stella's wish. She knew the scrupulous
way in which the Courtlands would fall in with an arrangement of this
kind, without comment or inquiry.
Something would no doubt turn up some day which would make Stella think
that there had been some 'extraordinary misunderstandings'--but then at
that time Laurette might be safely established among the hereditary
aristocracy of Europe! her husband an earl--her little son a lord! At
the thought Laurette could not forbear going into the nursery and
clasping the future Lord Harewood fondly to her bosom.... Yes, there
were occasions in life on which one must act for the present, and not
for eternity, or even the remote future. Who was it that advised people
to take short views in life? The counsel was sagacious enough for
Solomon himself; for, after all, no people were more egregiously
sacrificed at times than those who trusted nothing to the chapter of
accidents.
Laurette stole softly into the darkened room in which Ted lay. He
looked up eagerly, thinking it might be Stella. At sight of Laurette he
closed his eyes in dejected weariness.
'Ted, you must arrange that your voyage is not postponed,' she said,
sitting by his bedside.
'I don't see the good of arranging anything, if Stella sticks to what
she says, and I believe she will.'
'Fiddlesticks! No doubt she will for a time, but she has a strong sense
of humour, and she will soon perceive what a ridiculous attitude she
takes up. But, at the same time, it becomes you to make concessions,
and I will be your envoy.'
'What do you mean by concessions?'
'Give in to her whim till you can get her to relent. She cannot cease
to be Mrs. Edward Ritchie because sometimes you are not as steady as you
should be; but if she is wilful, there may be no end of scandal and
annoyance and trouble that will only widen the breach. Ask her to start
to-morrow with you as arranged, on her own conditions; or I will speak
for you, and then bring her in here to clinch the arrangement.'
Laurette found Stella in her own room. She was still curiously unmoved.
Laurette told a melting tale of Ted's utter unhappiness and remorse.
No, Stella was not angry nor unforgiving; but she could not alter her
decision. Did she, then, propose to separate from Ted? She did not
know, it was all so dark and horrible. She could not see her way. She
must send for Cuthbert; perhaps he would help her to think what was
right. She knew there was one crime she must not commit. The story of
her friend Cicely's life rose up before her, and she, for the first time
since this disastrous revelation burst on her, shed a few scalding,
humiliated tears.
'What crime do you mean?' said Laurette in a whisper.
'The crime of adding to the morally-paralyzed lives in the world,' said
Stella, in a dry, stern voice.
'What a dreadful idea to take up!' said Laurette indignantly. 'Why,
Talbot drinks three times as hard as Ted ever did, and I am sure neither
Gwendolen nor Howard is ever likely to be paralyzed. And there's my
father--he has drunk pretty heavily at times for the last twenty-six
years, and who is more respected than he is--Speaker of the House for so
long, and knighted, and all the rest of it?'
Though Laurette was oblivious of that elementary canon of heredity that
the further back a quality has been fixed the more likely it is to
reappear, her sharp eyes saw that her illustration conveyed no comfort.
'Of course,' she said, going on in an altered tone, 'if you want to send
Ted completely to the dogs, you will turn your back on him now. You
ought, by rights, to have, married him four years ago----'
'I ought to have been told of Ted's vice--and you seem to have prevented
his telling me the truth,' said Stella, in a low, hard voice.
'Well, I may have been to blame. You do not know what it is to have an
only brother. You may be thankful you were never tempted in the same
way. Not many of us fall into temptations that do not beset us. If
there were a sort of Greek chorus going on always to warn women off all
the possible shoals of matrimony, the world would soon come to a nice
pass. You all blame me. It is quite plain that in this matter I am the
earthenware pot going down the stream with copper kettles. But if it
was all to come over again I couldn't act differently. Here was Ted
hanging after you ever since he was a little shrimp in his first
knickerbockers; never thought of any other girl in his life--at least,
not to marry her. Uncle was a pig-headed old man, who insisted on Ted
leaving college when he was sixteen, because he said a squatter would
never want more than to write and see that a book-keeper could add up
properly. And then, before he was twenty, Ted is left his own master,
with thirteen thousand a year; and since that he has raised the annual
income of the station to fifteen thousand. It's ridiculous to speak as
if he were a slave to drink, or anything like it. It's only when he
goes with that Eversley and Wilmot lot--and now he's got you he'll see
precious little of them.'
Laurette spoke in a clear, emphatic voice, and she could see that some
of her arguments went home, though Stella made no response. The thought
of her sending for Cuthbert had terror in it, if only for the reason
that such a course would prevent the pair from leaving by the _Hindoo
Fawn_; and if any delay arose, with so many awkward contingencies in the
background, no one could tell what might happen.