'You might as well ask if I expected the sun to rise! But then, of
course, I did not know you were coming to this side of the world in less
than a month after I set sail. How closely, after all, we are enfolded
by the tabernacle of clay! Yesterday you were within reach of me, and
yet, when I found no letters here, and telegraphed to London and found
none had been delayed there nor sent on to Brussels too late to reach
me, why, a conviction strong as life fastened on me that something was
horribly wrong. I was about to send a cablegram, but found an
Australian mail would reach London to-morrow, so I waited to give time
to my lawyer to send any on that might have come. But I was as
miserable last night as--well, as I am happy now. And my good
stepfather would talk of nothing but some funeral scrap that has been
unearthed of a hut supposed to date back to the glacial period or some
equally impossible time. Yet all the while you were in the city of
Berlin! Of course, you did not come alone, Liebe? Is it with Esther
you came?'
'No.'
'Tell me, did Hector and Madonna really come? No? Do you want to give
me another joyful surprise? Ah, my poor darling! you have been very
ill.'
She was indeed paler than ever, and trembling at intervals all
over--striving to frame words in which to tell him all, yet shrinking
from the task--not as one shrinks from death, but as one shrinks from
stabbing the human being who is the dearest loved in all God's wide
universe. A species of physical and moral syncope had fallen on her, in
which for the time nothing was possible except to half hide her face and
hang on every word that Langdale uttered as a miser might gloat over the
treasure that is soon to be swept for ever from his possession. A dull
wonder had forced itself upon her when he spoke of his disappointment at
getting no letter. But she could not think nor reason--she could only,
in the feebleness of her great misery, postpone the moment in which the
truth must be revealed.
'Did you have a good passage, Liebe? Tell me the very day on which you
left. Why, that was just twenty-four days after I did! And our voyage
was longer than usual. We had no storms, but shortly after leaving
Mauritius our engine got seriously out of gear, and that made us ten
days later. Fortunately the sea most of the time was as calm as a great
swamp. I used to pace up and down the deck for hours, and fancy we were
riding side by side over the Peeloo Plain. Did you not find that a
quiet sea under a dim light is wonderfully like a grayish horizonless
stretch of Australian scenery. Tell me, Liebe, shall you want to return
soon to your beloved native land? But there is a still more important
question--one that must be settled this moment--when shall we be
married? To-morrow? What! crying, my own? Tell me, Stella, is there
some trouble I do not know? Your mother and all--are they well? Did
they approve of your coming? Only a brave, intrepid Australian girl
could have done such a thing.'
'Oh, Anselm! do not--do not praise me!' she cried in a choked voice.
A wild scheme fashioned itself in her mind to get away before he would
learn the truth--to bid him farewell, and then write and tell all and
never look upon his face again. But all nerve-power seemed to have
deserted her. There was a dull, deep noise in her head, which rose at
times and drowned all sound, like waves moaning against a rocky shore.
'Tell me about the Fairacre people,' he said, haunted with the thought
that some family trouble weighed on her.
'They were all well. Maisie I brought with me,' she forced herself to
say.
'And the friends with whom you came--do I know anything of them? By the
way, Liebe, do you know that I hurried here at my stepfather's request?
I met him going to his beloved museum--one full of miniature specimens
of man's primitive dwellings--with some young Royal Highness athirst for
knowledge. You must come with me to see them. If you go with the
Professor, you will never get away before the dawn of the next
century--and that wouldn't suit my plans in the least. You only
belovedest--do you remember the butterfly kisses you used to give
Lionel? Give me just two of them, in memory of our first delightful
squabble over the orphaned little angel.' He held his cheek against
hers to feel the flutter of her eyelashes.
But, instead, his face was wet with her tears. Then, for the first
time, a sudden pang of fear shot into his heart.
'Your stepfather may soon be here,' she said, raising her pallid,
tear-stained face.
'Yes, that reminds me of what I was about to tell you, Stella,' he said,
watching her face with a growing apprehension of some unknown disaster
dully creeping over him. 'He asked me to hurry here to do the honours of
the house for him to an Australian friend--you know he visited South
Australia in the beginning of this year--a Mrs. Ritchie, he said; do you
know her? I fancy I have some association with the name. Perhaps you
came with her--and I suppose also you know the Professor?'
'Yes, I know him,' she whispered, looking up into his face in miserable
helplessness, her lips dry and quivering, unable to articulate another
word. Then he knew that there was some trouble she had to tell
him--trouble that she found it difficult to speak of. She had several
brothers: perhaps the family had been visited by one of those trials
which wound people even more bitterly than death itself. He resolved
that she must tell it in the way easiest to her.
'I am teasing you about trifles that do not signify, love. There is some
trouble that weighs on you. But do not speak of it to-day if you would
rather not. Only remember that any grief which comes to us now must be
lighter, because shared between us. Ah, beloved, it seems incredible
almost that our great happiness is now assured--within our grasp....
Tell me, was there time for you to get the diary-letter I sent from
Mauritius?'
'I got only the one terrible letter,' she said faintly.
'Terrible, Stella? Did you, then, blame me so hardly for not telling
you all from the first? Perhaps that would have been best; yet it was
to save you unnecessary anxiety. But did you not like the long letter,
Blaettchen?'
'The long letter, Anselm? There was only the one short, dreadful,
blotted one, and the part of that letter--the one some woman sent
you--saying the rumour of death was untrue.'
She spoke slowly, hesitatingly, as if not certain that the words she
used would convey her meaning.
'Stella--my sweet St. Charity--tell me what you mean! I have not the
least clue. I wrote briefly in a separate note the cause of my visit to
England. I knew that virtually I was free to ask you to be my wife, but
I wanted the legal vouchers. And, as I said, the moment I got your
letter I felt that to keep silence was impossible--might appear to you
as a lack of confidence. And I knew--I knew, my darling, I could trust
you through life and death. Then, with that brief statement, there was
a much longer letter--my second love-letter to you, Blaettchen--in which
I tried to say a little of the thousand things that were in my heart. I
enclosed them together, and gave the letter safely into your friend's
possession when I found that you had gone out of town, and that there
was no possibility of my seeing you. But what other letter do you speak
of? My dear one, have you had a fever? Are you mixing this up with
some grief?'
'Betrayed! betrayed! betrayed!' she moaned with ashy lips. She had
drawn away from him, and leant against the back of the couch, white as
death, slowly grasping the treachery that had been put on them.
'Stella, dearest, speak to me; tell me all that causes your anguish. Do
you repent coming? Do you love me less than you did?'
'Oh no, no--my only love! God help us!' At the sound of the agony in
her voice, something of panic seized him.
'Is it that you did not get my letter--that a false one was given to
you?'
'I got a letter addressed in your hand, posted in Melbourne.'
'Posted? But I delivered it by hand when I found that you were away on
the twenty-second of September--the day I called.'
'I was not away. I did not go out of Melbourne for half a day during
the whole of my visit.'
'Great heavens! what made that woman lie so infamously? Tell me, my
darling, what was in the letter you got? You spoke of an unfinished one
from some woman. Do you remember the words?'
Stella, roused by the shock of discovering this undreamt-of treachery,
repeated, word for word, first, the unfinished letter in some woman's
handwriting--then Anselm's, telling of its abrupt beginning and close,
with its many erasures, one of them--that at the close--blotted, but not
illegible.
'Oh, Stella, could you believe that I would write like that, and enclose
such a letter, even if it had come? I would at least have seen
you--but, then, you could not imagine that such a diabolical imposition
was possible. But why did this woman, whom you visited as an equal,
behave worse than a common thief?' he asked with gathering wrath as he
thought of the misery Stella must have endured.
'She had her reasons, and she succeeded--she succeeded,' murmured
Stella; and then she slowly rose up. The moment had come when he must
know all.
Her gloves fell to the ground, and as he lifted them up a ring fell out
of one and rolled under the table.
'Ah, careless little Liebchen, is this the way you let our ring slip
off, with its tender old Italian motto? ... But this is not the ring I
gave you, darling child?'
He smiled, but there was a growing fear in his face.
'No, Anselm--I wear that ring next my heart.'
The biting tragedy of their story--fooled and betrayed as they had been
on every side--made her marriage appear to her each successive moment
more and more in the light of a mocking farce.
'Why, Stella--this is a wedding-ring!'
He looked at her, but she neither spoke nor met his
'Whose wedding-ring is it?'
He waited for her answer in sickening suspense. To their dying hour
they must both remember the awful stillness--broken only by the sullen
ticking of a clock, and then the strains of a military band that
suddenly broke out into 'Die Wacht am Rhein.'
'For God's sake, Stella, tell me how this ring came to be in your glove?
Whose is it?'
The agony in his voice made the words beat upon her heart with
unendurable pain.
'It is mine,' came the answer at last, with a low, wailing sound.
When he heard that, he stood looking at her, his lips parted in
breathless, incredulous horror.
Again there was a deep silence. This time it was broken by the
miserable sobbing of a woman whose head was bent in bitter shame.
And yet so strong and deep was the man's faith, he had not yet grasped
the worst. The wedding-ring was hers. She was, then, on the eve of
marrying some man in whose interest, or through whom, all these foul
treacheries had been practised. She had carried the ring with her. She
was on the eve of marrying, misled by the unscrupulous plotting of this
abandoned woman. It must have been with her she had come. Ah, now
matters grew clearer. He recalled Miss Morton's story of Stella's
supposed engagement--her own admission of having been engaged for a
week. It was to the brother of this woman with whom Stella stayed. It
was to renew that engagement, then, that this incredible fraud had been
practised. And it had almost succeeded. Thank God it was not too late
to defeat this wicked, cruel scheme!
These thoughts flashed through his brain like wild-fire. No wonder she
was wan with misery. What had she not endured during the nine weeks
that had passed since they parted! Oh, to think that through their
devilish stratagem she should be made to believe he could have written
such words after giving him her entire love and confidence!
'Stella--Stella darling, do not be so broken-hearted. It kills me to see
you like this. All will yet be well. We have found each other once
more. That makes up for all.'
She struggled for composure, seeking to frame words that would
extinguish the last spark of his hope. But she could not--she could not
utter them. The exhausting struggle, the determination not to be
overborne by grief, the constantly recurring effort to treat the part
that Langdale had played in her life as obliterated, had been but a
feeble subterfuge. Like a torrent long pent up, the passion of her love
rose and took possession of her. What law of God or man could justify
the semblance of a marriage compassed by the vilest imposition? She saw
that in some way Langdale had not yet comprehended the full extent of
the intolerable falsehood. Yes, that was the history of her marriage
from beginning to end--an impossible lie.
'Anselm, take me away,' she said, going up to him and placing her hands
in his.
'My dear one, do not be afraid. No contract entered upon through such
gross imposition can bind you.'
'No--but let us go away.'
'Where would you like to go, beloved?'
'Oh, away to the East--far away from everyone. I do not want anyone in
the whole world but you. You do not love me any less? You are my own
only love, are you not? Oh, Anselm, do not leave me, whatever happens.'
'Never again, Stella. We shall be married this very day. I shall see
these people and return this ring.'
She tried to smile, but broke instead into wild, hysterical laughter.
The blood had surged to her head. Her lips and cheeks were
crimson--glowing like coals; and there was a glittering light in her
eyes.
'Take me away, Anselm. Do not believe them if they say I do not belong
to you. It was all a horrible fraud, Anselm. Do you understand me?'
'Yes, my beloved, I understand. I understand how this misery has worked
on your mind,' he answered in a low, soothing voice, his lips quivering
as he looked at her. His practised eyes read too well the symptoms of
the fever that possessed her. It had lain latent in her blood for many
days, and had been fanned by this hour of strange, wild misery into
fierce life.
'Ah, but I must tell before we go. There must be perfect truth between
us. They wove such a frightful mesh of deceit round me. The air is
full of it--it chokes me. You and I, Anselm, must be free people under
an open sky. No concealment, no duplicity, no seeming. Do you not see
how that little rift at the beginning has wrecked us? You wished me to
tell Hector and Madonna--but I would not. Ah, dear Madonna, she would
not have let their poison fasten on me.--Anselm, for God's sake do not
look away! There are tears in your eyes. I may cry, because I am a
weak, foolish, faulty woman. But you must not; you must be strong for
us both.'
'Yes, my darling, I will be strong,' he replied, in a broken voice.
'And you, my dear one--will you not make me happy by sitting beside me
and resting?'
'No, oh no, I must not rest. I must tell you. You must understand how
it is. Do you know, Anselm, that treachery is the worst poison of all?
I will confess to you that since we have stood face to face to-day I
have formed two plans of deceiving you. The first was I would kiss you
good-bye as though I would see you again to-morrow, and then write you a
letter, and never look into your face again. Was not that a wild
infidelity to enter into my heart? Oh, what a wicked, wicked
thought--not to see you again, belovedest! And all that has grown out of
their duping me. And the other plan--I forget the other plan----'
'Your head pains you terribly, my darling--I know it does.'
'Yes, it beats all over it; and sometimes when your lips move I can
hardly hear what you are saying. But I must tell you before you take me
away. Do you know, beloved, how I now loathe the smallest speck of
concealment? It grows and grows till it makes a horrible stifling
atmosphere all round, heavy and thick with poison. It must be like
clear, fine crystal all round us. Oh, how they smothered my whole life
with lies...
'They destroyed your long letter--your beautiful letter, that I would
have kissed and put close against my heart, and thanked God for on my
knees day and night--that I would have stolen away to read over and over
to myself till I knew every word of it by heart. It would have flooded
my life with fresh love and hope. But instead of it they gave me one
that was turned into a tissue of awful lies--short, and hard and cruel,
but with your name at the end, clear as the sun at noon-day.... And
with your letter they put a woman's lying message.... I saw you day and
night--night and day sailing away to another woman--to your _wife_, to
the one who had been misrepresented, who still loved you. I followed
you on and on, till you reached her--till I saw you in her arms, and my
blood was on fire. I dared not go back to the old, quiet, harmonious
days, to my mother's peaceful home, where fierce jealousy and the stain
of unlawful love were only things hidden away within the covers of old
tragedies.... Don't you understand, Anselm, how I loathed
myself--madly, furiously jealous, because a husband was hastening back
to the wife he had unwittingly wronged! I tried to take comfort in the
belief she would win you back to happiness; but there was insanity in
the thought, and I flung it from me. I seemed to look into black depths
yawning in my soul. I could not deceive myself. I told myself if you
had come trampling on the bond that held you, I would have left all and
followed you to the ends of the earth. You were my highest good--my
conscience. What you asked me to do I would have done, glorying in the
thought of making some real sacrifice for your sake----'
'Oh, my darling, I know all the depth of your great love. Your eyes are
dim with pain. Let me soothe you into calmness!'
He came to her where she stood, leaning against the back of the
pedestal-table; but when he put his arms round her she drew back.
'No, Anselm; let me tell you all, then I will be calm, and you shall
decide. All these things have been feeding on me, shrivelling all that
was good in me till I began to reconcile myself--to look forward to a
mere blunted, soulless existence as something to live for.'
'Ah, my dear one, you wrong yourself; that you never could do!'
'Anselm, you do not know all. For twenty-three years I have been
slumbering through existence, looking on amused at the play, untouched
by passion, till I knew you. And when the forces that had thrilled me
through and through were turned aside--when all the better purpose of
life was defeated--I consciously made choice of the lower part, because
I knew myself too well to fancy that anything of the old magic could
return. It was so in religion. When the old vivid faith left me, it
never returned; and now do I not know what fond delusions we put upon
ourselves when we speak of the goodness and fatherhood of God?'
'Hush, my darling; do not speak like that! You know what beautiful holy
thoughts came to you.'
'Yes, when you once more woke the deeper, more spiritual, side of my
nature. But what became of me when I lost you? The only purpose that
made bare existence tolerable was to get away from all that reminded me
of the past. No family affection, no love of books, no thought of God,
could give me the smallest consolation; all--all was submerged in the
fever of passion. Only to forget; and do you not understand, Anselm,
that marriage without love was no more forbidding than the whole of
existence without love? And then I had known him from childhood----'
'But all that is changed now, Stella. Do not dwell on it, I implore
you,' he said. But the fear that had lodged so icily in his breast had
deepened, though not an inkling of the dreadful truth had yet come to
him.
'And he was rich. Yes, that counts, if you are thrown back on the lees
of life. And yet at the last, when it was too late, as I listened to my
mother that evening, a conviction came over me, if I had only waited--if
I had not been so insanely impatient, bent on drowning my sorrow and
humiliation. "In your patience ye shall win your souls." That was one
of the things my mother said to me the day before my unhappy marriage.'
'Your "unhappy marriage," Stella! What are you saying?' he cried,
drawing close to her, his lips parted in stony horror.
'Yes; is not that what it is called when lifelong vows are made in blind
ignorance, though they are found to be impossible lies? though----'
She stopped abruptly. No, not even in that hour, when she was borne by
the flood of misery which burst upon her far from the calm reserves of
ordinary life, could she reveal the double duplicity of her miserable
marriage. Langdale at once interpreted her words and sudden silence to
mean that the man to whom she was married was accessory to the criminal
imposition practised on her.
'Great God, Stella!--what are you saying?' he cried in a faint voice,
his face deadly white.
Strong man though he was, with a training which inures the mind to
sudden catastrophes in life, he was forced to lean heavily against an
armchair, by which he stood, as the full force of the ruin that had
overtaken her life dawned on him.
'Yes, Anselm. Now you know why, after the first joy of seeing you, I
was silent and afraid.... You know how that ring is part of the
mockery.... Ah, Anselm, how strangely you look at me! ... You despise
me! Oh, I cannot bear that!'
She gave a low cry, and covered her face with her hands. It was an old,
half-childish habit. Often had he seen her indulge in it when telling
tales to the Lullaboolagana children in the twilight, or expressing mock
contrition for letting fly some shaft of raillery that had too keen an
edge. The action, with its old mirthful associations, stung him in that
hour of almost unreal misery with intolerable pain. And yet there was a
shadow of anger on his face. The revulsion of bitter disappointment,
the cruel thought that a little patience, a little waiting would have
saved their lives from this dark shipwreck, rendered him for the moment
almost blind to her anguish.
'How could you dare to marry any man when you loved another?' he said,
looking at her sternly.
'Ah, you are going to leave me,' she said, in a low, broken voice.
'Forgive me before we part, Anselm--forgive me, beloved, for old love's
sake! It is getting dark--tell me what to do. I have been piecing my
life together, somehow believing those letters; but now--where shall I
go? What is to become of me?' She looked into his face in helpless
misery, and a sudden desperate resolve formed itself in his mind.
'Stella, we have been criminally, treacherously duped and deceived. But
you are mine, and I am yours; and this miserable mockery of a
marriage--are our whole lives to be sacrificed to this duplicity?'
'What do you want me to do, Anselm?' she said, drawing nearer to him.
'You must decide quickly. I cannot think, my head swims so strangely.
Do not take me away to-day; I must wait.'
He took her hands in his, and they almost scorched him. The delirium of
fever was in her face and voice. He fought with the whirl of feelings
that threatened to reduce him to the weakness of a woman, and then
answered in a low, emotionless voice:
'No, Stella, I will not take you away till you have calmly faced the
question in all its bearings. You have been ill for some time. You are
in a high fever now. You must rest, Stella; you must regain composure
for my sake and your own.'
Even as he looked at her, he saw that a certain vacancy had come into
her face.
'You must give me those letters, Stella, that you thought I sent you.
They furnish proof of the wicked imposition that misled you. Ah, my
darling, my darling, how you have suffered night and day! You must get
well and strong. Do not despair; all is not lost.'
His quiet, deep voice penetrated her with an involuntary sense of
confidence--of being directed and absolved from the necessity of action.
At this time the burning sensation in her temples had increased to an
overpowering vehemence.
'I am not as ill as you imagine,' she said, her voice sinking to a
whisper. But even as she spoke a dimness fell on her eyes, and she
swayed as though she would have fallen. He led her to the chair by
which he stood, and knelt at her feet, raising her hands reverently to
his lips.
'Stella, you know that there is nothing in the whole world I care for
but to help you--to protect you from all evil, do you not?'
'Yes--yes, I do; yes, I do,' she whispered, repeating the words over and
over as if they were the refrain of a song. Her face had blanched
somewhat, and a great exhaustion was creeping over her.
He released her hands, and she raised them tremblingly, kissing them one
by one where his lips had touched them. He saw the action, and he turned
away quickly, gazing for a few moments out through the window, but
seeing naught.
She leant back with closed eyes as if asleep, but opened them presently,
looking round with a perplexed expression.
'I do not know this place, do I? How quiet it is, with the busts of
people dead and all the grief hidden away in books. How very, very far
away everything seems! But you are here, Anselm? ... You have not left
me?'
'Yes, Stella, I am here.'
Then there was silence again. Presently there was a ring, and the
hall-door was opened. Langdale went out and met his stepfather in the
hall.